The comment that sparks off the twisted tale is by Nerrefid. I'll leave a gap for that, and for all subsequent contributions other than my own. Let me know if you're happy to have yours inserted.
She bowls less past word of mouse, while projectiles of sundered descriptions waivered the heirs and graces. Lopsidling higgardly pigpoke, our hero papered cracks to little approval. Gutcha! the titled whirlygigged. Fine trolling.
TimMason Apr 3 at 4:39 AM EDT RE: luck and bad luck all in one day in response to the message by Nereffid Dr. Pasteque writes :
Why, we wonder, does the hero/narrator hold his story for so long at the foot of the mountain, thrusting digression after digression upon the reader rather than getting on with the business at hand, that is to say, to climb the bloody mountain?
The first reason is, of course, that it is incumbent upon the post-modern author to torture the reader - we may invoke Artaud in passing - until he or she will accept any old nonsense rather than remain suspended upon the rack. The mental pain induced by the flickering promise of a tale constantly deferred sets the reader up for the sucker punch.
A second reason, more specific to the text with which we are engaged here, is that the narrator is himself uncertain as to the underlying identities that he has so willfully distributed. It is well-known to all mythologists that the denizens of mountain tops are celestial; either Nerrefid is, under any reasonable reading, a God*, or the mountain is, in fact, a cloaca, Nerrefid frozen eternally in its depths.
If, then, the narrator climbs the mountain, he acknowledges that it is he who is Satanic. There are several clues that might (mis)lead us into following this line - most clearly the basilisk-like eye, but one may also cite his awe before the "stern" woman who, the alert reader (it is of the utmost pleasure to any writer to fool the alert reader) sees as clearly, albeit surprisingly, linked to the villain/God at the top of the mountain.
If, on the other hand, he determines to plunge into the cloaca he will be faced with the dreadful suspicion that the undreadable message was, in fact, written by an earlier self and was to the effect that the would, inevitably, forget to equip himself with a pair of cheap but effective diving goggles.
*The story of "Jack the Giant Killer", so beloved of stupid boys everywhere, is founded upon this reversal. Jack is a thief and a murdered who, what is more, spread bare-faced lies about his celestial victim. Nietzche in short trousers.
TimMason Apr 3 at 10:37 AM EDT RE: luck and bad luck all in one day in response to the message by Nereffid Emerging from a cloud of chalk-dust, professor Zucchini intones :
My esteemed colleague is, once again, speaking of that concerning which he should shut his cake hole. As has been established - and upon the firmest of foundations - by myself and my long-time collaborator Katrina Korroborrovic - all writing is nothing more than the attempt to overcome that fundamental dialectic which of the world assures us that the All is in the One and the One is the All. The narrator's attempts to distinguish between Up and Down, between British sternity and USAnian lackadaisikallity, between Nereffid and non-Nereffidity is bound to fail and his tale will be forced to navigate between the Scylla of kitsch and the Charybdis of despair.
TimMason Apr 6 at 11:46 AM EDT RE: Do Not Feed The Trolls in response to the message by 68stationwagon You drive West on 80 and it won't take too long, 'Til the road starts climbing up to mountain time. There's a girl I know there, she lives free and easy, And she shows me wonders and she takes my mind.
And she's wild as eagles, She's as sweet as honeysuckle, Her life's flowing like a mountain stream. And she takes me somewhere, And it's good to be there, And she pulls me into her bright golden wing.
TimMason Apr 6 at 11:59 AM EDT RE: Do Not Feed The Trolls in response to the message by TimMason Professor Darnkneedle writes :
My esteemed colleagues are, as so often, twisting and turning in the thickets of oblivion and the partridges of tumultuous throng. Nereffidity, as Derrida so rightly adumbrated, is a teacup short of backfacing Nothingness. This should be bared in whatever passes for Mind at this altitude.
Beyond Nereffidity the candidate seeks reward, and what reward, we ask, other than the high-turtled feminine? Doubtless, if conditions of post-modernity (which, in their outer prevercity, allow that Fleetwood Mac post Peter Green is worthy of fulsome praise) prevail, the feminine will turn out to be Pete Townsend in a Frock.
TimMason Apr 7 at 1:21 PM EDT RE: what is and what isn't in response to the message by 68stationwagon NOTE BENE
The hereunder signed and consigned hereby testyfries that he is nobbut an amanuensis to the tiresome trio who, summoned by whatever academically declined necromancers have enchained his pen-fist, are commenting upon the comic epic which is unrolling before the eyes of millions in this place. Under no other crisomances would a word concerning Queen, Mayhem, or post-Green Fleetwood Mac be tapped out with these fingers. liars being unavailable and burial undinlouded, he will now stick his ears between dejohnette left and right and await developments.
TimMason Apr 9 at 10:14 AM EDT RE: developments in response to the message by 68stationwagon Newsflash
Inspector Yates of the Yard, in the course of a brief press conference, revealed that Scotland Yard was re-opening the Case of the Dead Author, which had been prematurely closed in 1978. New evidence, he said, had been brought to light. Asked to comment on whether this was related to reports of the Author's having been sighted in activity on the eMusic General Board, he declined, stating that is was too early to reveal their leads.
In a later off-the record conversation, an un-named source close to Inspector Yates suggested that the Yard had become interested in accounts emerging from etherland informants according to which not only had the Author been impressing his writings upon the unwary eyes of a captive readership, but that he had gone so far as to impose upon their lug-holes a seedy mash-up of 1970s French disco.
Asked why the Author had been reported dead in the first place, our source opined that the wily fellow had engineered the reports himself so as to arouse sufficient sympathy for legislators around the world to pass draconian legislation aimed at guaranteeing an income for life to his descendants unto the fifteenth generation.
The mash-up was later sighted in the Cafe Leffe opposite Montparnasse railway station. On being asked to offer insight, the mash-up responded with a pout, lighting a cigar with a 500 franc note. Francs no longer being legal tender, an outraged management expelled the perpetrator and your correspondent was unable to pursue the interview.
TimMason Apr 26 at 11:27 AM EDT RE: continuitly in response to the message by 68stationwagon There's a troll. There! Over your left shoulder!
Ayesleedittally, we will ditsinglish in this place twixt trolls *in-house* and out-house trolls. The first is everybody, and the second is everybody else.
TimMason May 21 at 12:24 PM EDT RE: Anecdotes and other perfunctory tales in direct response to the topic by BigD-Bluez "... narrative is the principal way in which our species organizes its understanding of time." (H. Porter Abbott)
TimMason May 21 at 12:28 PM EDT RE: Anecdotes and other perfunctory tales in response to the message by TimMason ... narratives are privileged forms of discourse which play a central role in almost every conversation.[3] Our efforts to define other speech events with comparable precision have shown us that narrative is the prototype, perhaps the only example of a well formed speech event with a beginning, a middle, and an end. (William Labov) TimMason May 21 at 12:43 PM EDT RE: Anecdotes and other perfunctory tales in response to the message by TimMason "The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life."Â (William Faulkner) TimMason May 21 at 12:34 PM EDT RE: Anecdotes and other perfunctory tales in response to the message by TimMason "A child's need for stories is as fundamental as his need for food." (Paul Auster) TimMason May 21 at 12:38 PM EDT RE: Anecdotes and other perfunctory tales in response to the message by TimMason "Many years ago along the Illinois-Wisconsin Border There was this Indian tribe They found two babies in the woods ..." (John Prine)
TimMason May 21 at 1:02 PM EDT RE: Anecdotes and other perfunctory tales in response to the message by TimMason Gregor Samsa and his sister : a beetle dies and a butterfly spreads her wings.
TimMason May 21 at 1:13 PM EDT RE: Anecdotes and other perfunctory tales in response to the message by TimMason "People don't see the world before their eyes until it's put in narrative mode." Brian de Palma
TimMason May 22 at 1:56 AM EDT RE: Do Not Feed The Trolls in response to the message by Dr. Mutex [Modulator] To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing."” Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)
TimMason May 29 at 1:54 PM EDT RE: somewhere between camping and berlin in response to the message by 68stationwagon Professor Clunchbracket writes :
It should be noted at this point that the lack of a written history far from being, as the commons would have it, an indication of backwardness, is a sign that the unpenned community is far in advance of our ink-blotched selves. As James Scott has made clear, the best and the brightest, at the first sight of a tax collector with his attendant scribes, took to their heels and the hills, never to look back.
If your history isn't written down, you can make it up as you go along.
TimMason May 31 at 2:22 PM EDT RE: man u heads for the hills in response to the message by 68stationwagon Dr. Housingfast remarks :
The unwary might be tempted, on reading the latest letter from elsewhere, to surmprise that it is of a palimpsestical relationship to the story of a high-perched purveyor of drones to the world's lugholes and his childerly criss-crossing from one Big Water to the Other. Invoked thus would be the final paroxysm of prepostmodernity, spiritual redemption, and the difficulties facing children from broken homes.
This would, however, be a clear case of overreading. Despite the skillful attempts at politeness on the part of the waiter, it is obvious that these two fools have, through trollish incompetence, excess of bourbon, and smudged spectacles, caught the wrong damn train.
TimMason May 30 at 5:04 PM EDT RE: man u heads for the hills in response to the message by TimMason My goodness, that last one was frightening. Jerry Garcia looked downright sinister. Terry Pratchett is right about clowns.
TimMason May 31 at 9:00 AM EDT RE: Feelosoffy of ups and downs in response to the message by 68stationwagon
burke! that's impossible.
If we were to consult that most un-Irish of Irishmen, Edmund on his occasions, and spirited foreandaftbear of the villain of the piece (offstage laughter traduced in EvilBits) we oncounter a binary hop viz. the byootifer and the suplimb.
The one, you will readily admit, is not the other.
Similar hop can be fleared from East to West or back again. From South to North, turn the mop through nifty degrees and stop. Up and Down.
As the down express - pleazing to the eye - streaks past the up - awesome and terridactyling in its misplaced misapprehensions - Wooooooshhh.
Hand over pumping heart. Faintly damned by the Kingston Onion, our Irish Thinker turns his ire upon the French. Britishly stern.
TimMason Jun 2 at 3:36 PM EDT RE: The Trolls' Manifesto in response to the message by TimMason Friends, sisters, brothers, sons and cousins to the sixth degree.
For too long and in this place our light has been bushelled. We can no longer stand by and accept with good grace the sullying of our collective name and our solidary endeavours. We must fight to write what is right and to right what is written. Let it rain.
Let it rain upon the light-hearted fools who would reduce our noble function to that of the gnat or flea, zipping in to nip oncely and then buzzing orft to the great cyber Elsewhere. That is not our style.
The True Troll stands and renders blow for blow, cut for cut, and thruppence extra on Sundays.
Let it rain on the faint-hearted defenders of widow and mite who slight our outrageous chest-pummelings by gently referring us to FAQs, explanations, cards, pop-ups, pop-ins, or small print afterthunk upon an unseen contract.
The True Troll has nothing but contempt for such legalistic poppy-cock.
Let it be proudly proclumped that the True Troll will turn and rip your mattyforsical trousers from your rump, chew them up and swallow them down rather than go softly into that binary night.
But how many of Schroedinger's cats can dance on the head of a Heisenburg's Pinsicle? (Or to put it another way, Now you See Them, Now you Don't). (cue song by Veronica Lake)
TimMason Jun 12 at 3:18 PM EDT RE: I'll take a fifth of O-Positive in response to the message by 68stationwagon It is wonderful what a couple of aspirin will do. In the case of the present writer, they will, if dissolved bubbily in an ounce or two of Soya milk laced with ginger, reduce any fever-imagined Thunder God to his constituent parts (e.G. Thhhhzzzlipchfff and Wompbbblkkrk)* in next to nobody's time and Tartuffe.
It is now time to feed the Trolls.
As is well known to Freudians, Jungians, Rogerians (but recused by Lacanians, as well one might expoct) that which seeks the Troll is Love. We will, then, put lip to microphone and croon of men, women, and off-airs of the heart. Tenderly the Troll will melt.
TimMason Jun 12 at 4:01 PM EDT RE: I'll take a fifth of O-Positive in response to the message by TimMason Melted Troll, spread lightly on unleavened bread or stuffed in a pita or, perhaps, drizzled over a well-oiled roquette salad, is a delightful moment slipped between tenderly frizzled Portuguese sardines and a steaming plateload of coeur de boeuf with chips.
Let us not tarry. Travelers with crumpled paper must be back-turned for higher strings. Pffft.
TimMason Jun 12 at 4:19 PM EDT RE: I'll take a fifth of O-Positive in response to the message by TimMason But if there is no love to be had in the heart of troll-city*, then a portion of Hopple-Cromple will have to fill the bucket.
TimMason Jun 13 at 3:24 AM EDT RE: I'll take a fifth of O-Positive in response to the message by 68stationwagon Vlad the Implala slyly remarks :
Many a great mind has strained from the trite and marrow over the crucial question of whether Fold or Crumple. To the simple of heart and mind, there is no doubt that the former is a deliberate gesture involving thumb, forefinger, a little moisture, perhaps, and a frown of concentration, while the latter is no more than a throw-away gesture into the nearest bucket.
But this is not true. While the fold may, as in the case, referenced above, of the record-breaking dozen of pliages, be the product of highly focused attention, it may also be the result of a rapid flap of the hand, and may even, as when I attempt to wrap an offering of chocolates for my wife, to ease her moments of desparation, look to be little more than a clumsy crumple.
Intention tells us nothing. The fold and the crumple are not distinct species, but way stations along the track that takes us from the nothingness of the untouched paper to the nothingness of the paper well-ironed.
All crumple is suspect. The origami master may, with what appears to be no more than a casual tightening of the palm, produce a barely legible masterpiece. Your everyday clod-hopper, such as the author of these lines, may with deliberate forethought, albeit devoid of malice, produce exactly the same result. But while the former is of the highest art, the latter is but an abject fall from grace.
TimMason Jun 13 at 1:43 PM EDT RE: HomeComing in response to the message by 68stationwagon The poet tells us : His eyes were never dry of tears while the sweetness of life ebbed away from him in his comfortless longings for return, since the nymph was dear to him no longer. At night-time, true, he slept with her even now in the arching caverns, but this was against his will; she was loving and he unloving. He passed the daytime seated upon the rocky shore, shedding tears and gazing outwards towards the barren sea.
Nostalgia, the pain of not returning home.
Home, like the river, dissipates before the returning hero. Reverse treads cannot lead you back to the place where your clouds of glory puffed through the sainted crack (not safe for work, however high in culture it may be estamped).
The only sure way of getting back to there from here is officiated by the Coroner. Call home and page Penelope.
TimMason Jun 14 at 3:29 AM EDT RE: HomeComing in response to the message by 68stationwagon Dr. Peaseblossom frets :
I find it distressing to have to repeat the obvious, but I see that I once again have to draw your attention to the basics. It has long been established that there is only one story, and that it goes thus: Boy meets girl
Boy goes out for a drink with his mates
Boy wakes up with a headache, to find he is another girl's bed
Boy staggers home, thinking up excuses
The excuses are the story. Homer invented it, and errant boys have been using it ever since.
TimMason Jun 18 at 5:34 PM EDT RE: Do Not Feed The Trolls in response to the message by 68stationwagon Let a headstone be placed at the intersection between eMu and The Big River. Anacondas and electric eels will gambol around it as the muddy water froth and chafe. A frog perches on top of it, pwaaaaking melodiously and flicking an occasional tongue at a passing mosquito. Downloaded, the mosquito satisfies the frog's hunger no longer than an instant. Hollow belly rumbles.
A fibreglass hull, equipped with outboard, chugs into view. Don Pedro and his son, Felipe, are fishing - or rather Felipe is fishing, while Don Pedro keeps a lookout for dragons. Don Pedro knows the dragons well, for he has conversed with them many times. They tell him things. The Don stashes their information away, until he may exchange it for whisky or a fistfull of American dollars.
He gestures to Felipe, who deftly lassooes the headstone, strips off his shirt and rolls over the side to disappear beneath the water. He returns to the surface, draws breath, and slips down again. He repeats this several times, until at last he emerges grasping a sealed bottle. Before he clambers back onto the boat, he hands the bottle to Don Pedro. The Don chips off the seal with a sharp blade and thrusts in a slim finger. He withdraws a crumpled sheet of paper. He does not examine the paper, but takes a large leather wallet out of a waterproofed case, carefully puts the paper, now smoothed, into the wallet, and locks it in the case. He nods at Felipe, who starts the engine.
The frog watches them go, flicks a last mosquito out of the air, and then plops into the river and into the jaws of an anaconda. The serpent submerges and arrows away in a direction that is at roughly ninety degrees to that taken by the Don and Felipe. The headstone spins around slowly, and then sinks until it is no longer visible.
Overhead, a cloud takes on the shape of a vintage american stationwagon.
Posts
105 comments:
Nerrefid summons the genie
68 immediately responds
Nerrefid takes a bow
Some intervening post before 68 gets into the swing
Further intervention before 68 posts to the story again
Nerrefid, who has been asked if he'll be the villain, replies
Tim Mason chips in :
That's no story. Where's the missing tableau?
68
68
Nerrefid with music
68 comments on musical choice
68 meta mode
68 * 3
68
68
68
68
68
68 has a shower
68 admits to being unable to read
"britishly stern" is way out of date.
gwynwyn chips in
68 invokes porieux
68 hears the letter read
Dr. Mutex makes a couple of comments
68 harks back to deirdre
68 goes to sleep
68 ruminates on diabolical html etc.
68 has breakfast
68 takes his bike
She bowls less past word of mouse, while projectiles of sundered descriptions waivered the heirs and graces. Lopsidling higgardly pigpoke, our hero papered cracks to little approval. Gutcha! the titled whirlygigged. Fine trolling.
68 warns of soundtrack
68 prepares to leave the hostel
68 collects a letter
68 sets off
68 makes his way to the mountain
Nerrefid injects a villainous comment
TimMason Apr 3 at 4:39 AM EDT RE: luck and bad luck all in one day
in response to the message by Nereffid
Dr. Pasteque writes :
Why, we wonder, does the hero/narrator hold his story for so long at the foot of the mountain, thrusting digression after digression upon the reader rather than getting on with the business at hand, that is to say, to climb the bloody mountain?
The first reason is, of course, that it is incumbent upon the post-modern author to torture the reader - we may invoke Artaud in passing - until he or she will accept any old nonsense rather than remain suspended upon the rack. The mental pain induced by the flickering promise of a tale constantly deferred sets the reader up for the sucker punch.
A second reason, more specific to the text with which we are engaged here, is that the narrator is himself uncertain as to the underlying identities that he has so willfully distributed. It is well-known to all mythologists that the denizens of mountain tops are celestial; either Nerrefid is, under any reasonable reading, a God*, or the mountain is, in fact, a cloaca, Nerrefid frozen eternally in its depths.
If, then, the narrator climbs the mountain, he acknowledges that it is he who is Satanic. There are several clues that might (mis)lead us into following this line - most clearly the basilisk-like eye, but one may also cite his awe before the "stern" woman who, the alert reader (it is of the utmost pleasure to any writer to fool the alert reader) sees as clearly, albeit surprisingly, linked to the villain/God at the top of the mountain.
If, on the other hand, he determines to plunge into the cloaca he will be faced with the dreadful suspicion that the undreadable message was, in fact, written by an earlier self and was to the effect that the would, inevitably, forget to equip himself with a pair of cheap but effective diving goggles.
*The story of "Jack the Giant Killer", so beloved of stupid boys everywhere, is founded upon this reversal. Jack is a thief and a murdered who, what is more, spread bare-faced lies about his celestial victim. Nietzche in short trousers.
Nerrefid protests
TimMason Apr 3 at 10:37 AM EDT RE: luck and bad luck all in one day
in response to the message by Nereffid
Emerging from a cloud of chalk-dust, professor Zucchini intones :
My esteemed colleague is, once again, speaking of that concerning which he should shut his cake hole. As has been established - and upon the firmest of foundations - by myself and my long-time collaborator Katrina Korroborrovic - all writing is nothing more than the attempt to overcome that fundamental dialectic which of the world assures us that the All is in the One and the One is the All. The narrator's attempts to distinguish between Up and Down, between British sternity and USAnian lackadaisikallity, between Nereffid and non-Nereffidity is bound to fail and his tale will be forced to navigate between the Scylla of kitsch and the Charybdis of despair.
68 continues up the mountain
TimMason Apr 6 at 11:46 AM EDT RE: Do Not Feed The Trolls
in response to the message by 68stationwagon
You drive West on 80 and it won't take too long,
'Til the road starts climbing up to mountain time.
There's a girl I know there, she lives free and easy,
And she shows me wonders and she takes my mind.
And she's wild as eagles,
She's as sweet as honeysuckle,
Her life's flowing like a mountain stream.
And she takes me somewhere,
And it's good to be there,
And she pulls me into her bright golden wing.
TimMason Apr 6 at 11:59 AM EDT RE: Do Not Feed The Trolls
in response to the message by TimMason
Professor Darnkneedle writes :
My esteemed colleagues are, as so often, twisting and turning in the thickets of oblivion and the partridges of tumultuous throng. Nereffidity, as Derrida so rightly adumbrated, is a teacup short of backfacing Nothingness. This should be bared in whatever passes for Mind at this altitude.
Beyond Nereffidity the candidate seeks reward, and what reward, we ask, other than the high-turtled feminine? Doubtless, if conditions of post-modernity (which, in their outer prevercity, allow that Fleetwood Mac post Peter Green is worthy of fulsome praise) prevail, the feminine will turn out to be Pete Townsend in a Frock.
You have been warned.
And punctuated.
68 lays down the soundtrack
TimMason Apr 7 at 1:21 PM EDT RE: what is and what isn't
in response to the message by 68stationwagon
NOTE BENE
The hereunder signed and consigned hereby testyfries that he is nobbut an amanuensis to the tiresome trio who, summoned by whatever academically declined necromancers have enchained his pen-fist, are commenting upon the comic epic which is unrolling before the eyes of millions in this place. Under no other crisomances would a word concerning Queen, Mayhem, or post-Green Fleetwood Mac be tapped out with these fingers. liars being unavailable and burial undinlouded, he will now stick his ears between dejohnette left and right and await developments.
Tim Mason
68 meets villainy
TimMason Apr 9 at 10:14 AM EDT RE: developments
in response to the message by 68stationwagon
Newsflash
Inspector Yates of the Yard, in the course of a brief press conference, revealed that Scotland Yard was re-opening the Case of the Dead Author, which had been prematurely closed in 1978. New evidence, he said, had been brought to light. Asked to comment on whether this was related to reports of the Author's having been sighted in activity on the eMusic General Board, he declined, stating that is was too early to reveal their leads.
In a later off-the record conversation, an un-named source close to Inspector Yates suggested that the Yard had become interested in accounts emerging from etherland informants according to which not only had the Author been impressing his writings upon the unwary eyes of a captive readership, but that he had gone so far as to impose upon their lug-holes a seedy mash-up of 1970s French disco.
Asked why the Author had been reported dead in the first place, our source opined that the wily fellow had engineered the reports himself so as to arouse sufficient sympathy for legislators around the world to pass draconian legislation aimed at guaranteeing an income for life to his descendants unto the fifteenth generation.
The mash-up was later sighted in the Cafe Leffe opposite Montparnasse railway station. On being asked to offer insight, the mash-up responded with a pout, lighting a cigar with a 500 franc note. Francs no longer being legal tender, an outraged management expelled the perpetrator and your correspondent was unable to pursue the interview.
68 takes a first tumble in the tombs
Katrina kicks thread about to see if it breaks
68 adds to soundtrack
Tim goes for postmodernist Canadian minimalism at this stage in the game.
68 goes meta
TimMason Apr 26 at 11:27 AM EDT RE: continuitly
in response to the message by 68stationwagon
There's a troll. There! Over your left shoulder!
Ayesleedittally, we will ditsinglish in this place twixt trolls *in-house* and out-house trolls. The first is everybody, and the second is everybody else.
68 takes breath after troll attack
Dr. Mutex gives some advice
68 has an episode with a guard
68 offers garbled output
TimMason May 21 at 12:24 PM EDT RE: Anecdotes and other perfunctory tales
in direct response to the topic by BigD-Bluez
"... narrative is the principal way in which our species organizes its understanding of time." (H. Porter Abbott)
TimMason May 21 at 12:28 PM EDT RE: Anecdotes and other perfunctory tales
in response to the message by TimMason
... narratives are privileged forms of discourse which play a central role in almost every conversation.[3] Our efforts to define other speech events with comparable precision have shown us that narrative is the prototype, perhaps the only example of a well formed speech event with a beginning, a middle, and an end. (William Labov)
TimMason May 21 at 12:43 PM EDT RE: Anecdotes and other perfunctory tales
in response to the message by TimMason
"The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life."Â (William Faulkner)
TimMason May 21 at 12:34 PM EDT RE: Anecdotes and other perfunctory tales
in response to the message by TimMason
"A child's need for stories is as fundamental as his need for food." (Paul Auster)
TimMason May 21 at 12:38 PM EDT RE: Anecdotes and other perfunctory tales
in response to the message by TimMason
"Many years ago along the Illinois-Wisconsin Border
There was this Indian tribe
They found two babies in the woods ..."
(John Prine)
TimMason May 21 at 1:02 PM EDT RE: Anecdotes and other perfunctory tales
in response to the message by TimMason
Gregor Samsa and his sister : a beetle dies and a butterfly spreads her wings.
TimMason May 21 at 1:13 PM EDT RE: Anecdotes and other perfunctory tales
in response to the message by TimMason
"People don't see the world before their eyes until it's put in narrative mode." Brian de Palma
Dr. Mutex interjects explonation
TimMason May 22 at 1:56 AM EDT RE: Do Not Feed The Trolls
in response to the message by Dr. Mutex [Modulator]
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing."” Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)
68 invites me to choose music, which I do
68 rounds out soundtrack and alerts Dr. Mutex
68 tribulations with sigur ros t-shirt continue
Sigh ...
68 invokes an in-train conversation
TimMason May 29 at 1:54 PM EDT RE: somewhere between camping and berlin
in response to the message by 68stationwagon
Professor Clunchbracket writes :
It should be noted at this point that the lack of a written history far from being, as the commons would have it, an indication of backwardness, is a sign that the unpenned community is far in advance of our ink-blotched selves. As James Scott has made clear, the best and the brightest, at the first sight of a tax collector with his attendant scribes, took to their heels and the hills, never to look back.
If your history isn't written down, you can make it up as you go along.
68 continues train conversation
TimMason May 31 at 2:22 PM EDT RE: man u heads for the hills
in response to the message by 68stationwagon
Dr. Housingfast remarks :
The unwary might be tempted, on reading the latest letter from elsewhere, to surmprise that it is of a palimpsestical relationship to the story of a high-perched purveyor of drones to the world's lugholes and his childerly criss-crossing from one Big Water to the Other. Invoked thus would be the final paroxysm of prepostmodernity, spiritual redemption, and the difficulties facing children from broken homes.
This would, however, be a clear case of overreading. Despite the skillful attempts at politeness on the part of the waiter, it is obvious that these two fools have, through trollish incompetence, excess of bourbon, and smudged spectacles, caught the wrong damn train.
TimMason May 30 at 2:09 PM EDT RE: man u heads for the hills
in response to the message by 68stationwagon
HEALTH WARNING
The following scrap was found in a camper's waste-bin and may be toxic. Do not feed the lions.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
... left the other behind ... rolling down the track ... (illegible) ... railroad tricksters
TimMason May 30 at 5:04 PM EDT RE: man u heads for the hills
in response to the message by TimMason
My goodness, that last one was frightening. Jerry Garcia looked downright sinister. Terry Pratchett is right about clowns.
TimMason May 31 at 9:00 AM EDT RE: Feelosoffy of ups and downs
in response to the message by 68stationwagon
burke! that's impossible.
If we were to consult that most un-Irish of Irishmen, Edmund on his occasions, and spirited foreandaftbear of the villain of the piece (offstage laughter traduced in EvilBits) we oncounter a binary hop viz. the byootifer and the suplimb.
The one, you will readily admit, is not the other.
Similar hop can be fleared from East to West or back again. From South to North, turn the mop through nifty degrees and stop. Up and Down.
As the down express - pleazing to the eye - streaks past the up - awesome and terridactyling in its misplaced misapprehensions - Wooooooshhh.
Hand over pumping heart. Faintly damned by the Kingston Onion, our Irish Thinker turns his ire upon the French. Britishly stern.
TimMason Jun 2 at 3:36 PM EDT RE: The Trolls' Manifesto
in response to the message by TimMason
Friends, sisters, brothers, sons and cousins to the sixth degree.
For too long and in this place our light has been bushelled. We can no longer stand by and accept with good grace the sullying of our collective name and our solidary endeavours. We must fight to write what is right and to right what is written. Let it rain.
Let it rain upon the light-hearted fools who would reduce our noble function to that of the gnat or flea, zipping in to nip oncely and then buzzing orft to the great cyber Elsewhere. That is not our style.
The True Troll stands and renders blow for blow, cut for cut, and thruppence extra on Sundays.
Let it rain on the faint-hearted defenders of widow and mite who slight our outrageous chest-pummelings by gently referring us to FAQs, explanations, cards, pop-ups, pop-ins, or small print afterthunk upon an unseen contract.
The True Troll has nothing but contempt for such legalistic poppy-cock.
Let it be proudly proclumped that the True Troll will turn and rip your mattyforsical trousers from your rump, chew them up and swallow them down rather than go softly into that binary night.
Be warned. You have seen nothing yet.
The Master Troll (her sign)
68 meta
68 invokes a cat
amclark2 names the cat
BigD-Bluez explones the cat
68 confirms the cat
Dr. Mutex lets the cat out of the bag
Bluesboy folklores the cat
TimMason Jun 5 at 12:20 PM EDT RE: I'll take a fifth of O-Positive
in response to the message by Dr. Mutex [Modulator]
you must remember that cats love to play with string.
They do, don't they, the sweet little fur-brained poppets.
But how many of Schroedinger's cats can dance on the head of a Heisenburg's Pinsicle? (Or to put it another way, Now you See Them, Now you Don't). (cue song by Veronica Lake)
amclark2 pursues the cat
Letter for Elise by Anne Queffelec
amclark2 invokes Beatle
68 with origami
TimMason Jun 5 at 3:43 PM EDT RE: I'll take a fifth of O-Positive
in response to the message by 68stationwagon
Heroic those rail cocottes:
Art's been gone a long time, but Vita's still breathing.
Damn. Head hurts. Going down with swine fever...
68 in the train
68 sings a hymn
TimMason Jun 12 at 3:18 PM EDT RE: I'll take a fifth of O-Positive
in response to the message by 68stationwagon
It is wonderful what a couple of aspirin will do. In the case of the present writer, they will, if dissolved bubbily in an ounce or two of Soya milk laced with ginger, reduce any fever-imagined Thunder God to his constituent parts (e.G. Thhhhzzzlipchfff and Wompbbblkkrk)* in next to nobody's time and Tartuffe.
It is now time to feed the Trolls.
As is well known to Freudians, Jungians, Rogerians (but recused by Lacanians, as well one might expoct) that which seeks the Troll is Love. We will, then, put lip to microphone and croon of men, women, and off-airs of the heart. Tenderly the Troll will melt.
*My apologies to the blind bard.
TimMason Jun 12 at 4:01 PM EDT RE: I'll take a fifth of O-Positive
in response to the message by TimMason
Melted Troll, spread lightly on unleavened bread or stuffed in a pita or, perhaps, drizzled over a well-oiled roquette salad, is a delightful moment slipped between tenderly frizzled Portuguese sardines and a steaming plateload of coeur de boeuf with chips.
Let us not tarry. Travelers with crumpled paper must be back-turned for higher strings. Pffft.
TimMason Jun 12 at 4:19 PM EDT RE: I'll take a fifth of O-Positive
in response to the message by TimMason
But if there is no love to be had in the heart of troll-city*, then a portion of Hopple-Cromple will have to fill the bucket.
*Bobby Bland
68 has a husband go missing
TimMason Jun 13 at 3:24 AM EDT RE: I'll take a fifth of O-Positive
in response to the message by 68stationwagon
Vlad the Implala slyly remarks :
Many a great mind has strained from the trite and marrow over the crucial question of whether Fold or Crumple. To the simple of heart and mind, there is no doubt that the former is a deliberate gesture involving thumb, forefinger, a little moisture, perhaps, and a frown of concentration, while the latter is no more than a throw-away gesture into the nearest bucket.
But this is not true. While the fold may, as in the case, referenced above, of the record-breaking dozen of pliages, be the product of highly focused attention, it may also be the result of a rapid flap of the hand, and may even, as when I attempt to wrap an offering of chocolates for my wife, to ease her moments of desparation, look to be little more than a clumsy crumple.
Intention tells us nothing. The fold and the crumple are not distinct species, but way stations along the track that takes us from the nothingness of the untouched paper to the nothingness of the paper well-ironed.
All crumple is suspect. The origami master may, with what appears to be no more than a casual tightening of the palm, produce a barely legible masterpiece. Your everyday clod-hopper, such as the author of these lines, may with deliberate forethought, albeit devoid of malice, produce exactly the same result. But while the former is of the highest art, the latter is but an abject fall from grace.
68 and the detective
68 the detective sits in a park
TimMason Jun 13 at 1:43 PM EDT RE: HomeComing
in response to the message by 68stationwagon
The poet tells us :
His eyes were never dry of tears while the sweetness of life ebbed away from him in his comfortless longings for return, since the nymph was dear to him no longer. At night-time, true, he slept with her even now in the arching caverns, but this was against his will; she was loving and he unloving. He passed the daytime seated upon the rocky shore, shedding tears and gazing outwards towards the barren sea.
Nostalgia, the pain of not returning home.
Home, like the river, dissipates before the returning hero. Reverse treads cannot lead you back to the place where your clouds of glory puffed through the sainted crack (not safe for work, however high in culture it may be estamped).
The only sure way of getting back to there from here is officiated by the Coroner. Call home and page Penelope.
68 introduces lawman to headstone - leading me to Lizzie on the Thames
TimMason Jun 14 at 3:29 AM EDT RE: HomeComing
in response to the message by 68stationwagon
Dr. Peaseblossom frets :
I find it distressing to have to repeat the obvious, but I see that I once again have to draw your attention to the basics. It has long been established that there is only one story, and that it goes thus:
Boy meets girl
Boy goes out for a drink with his mates
Boy wakes up with a headache, to find he is another girl's bed
Boy staggers home, thinking up excuses
The excuses are the story. Homer invented it, and errant boys have been using it ever since.
68 smoothes out paper
68 on all 4s
68 - the fifth page
68 has a conversation with the headstone
TimMason Jun 18 at 5:34 PM EDT RE: Do Not Feed The Trolls
in response to the message by 68stationwagon
Let a headstone be placed at the intersection between eMu and The Big River. Anacondas and electric eels will gambol around it as the muddy water froth and chafe. A frog perches on top of it, pwaaaaking melodiously and flicking an occasional tongue at a passing mosquito. Downloaded, the mosquito satisfies the frog's hunger no longer than an instant. Hollow belly rumbles.
A fibreglass hull, equipped with outboard, chugs into view. Don Pedro and his son, Felipe, are fishing - or rather Felipe is fishing, while Don Pedro keeps a lookout for dragons. Don Pedro knows the dragons well, for he has conversed with them many times. They tell him things. The Don stashes their information away, until he may exchange it for whisky or a fistfull of American dollars.
He gestures to Felipe, who deftly lassooes the headstone, strips off his shirt and rolls over the side to disappear beneath the water. He returns to the surface, draws breath, and slips down again. He repeats this several times, until at last he emerges grasping a sealed bottle. Before he clambers back onto the boat, he hands the bottle to Don Pedro. The Don chips off the seal with a sharp blade and thrusts in a slim finger. He withdraws a crumpled sheet of paper. He does not examine the paper, but takes a large leather wallet out of a waterproofed case, carefully puts the paper, now smoothed, into the wallet, and locks it in the case. He nods at Felipe, who starts the engine.
The frog watches them go, flicks a last mosquito out of the air, and then plops into the river and into the jaws of an anaconda. The serpent submerges and arrows away in a direction that is at roughly ninety degrees to that taken by the Don and Felipe. The headstone spins around slowly, and then sinks until it is no longer visible.
Overhead, a cloud takes on the shape of a vintage american stationwagon.
No more was saven
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