josh blog

Ordinary language is all right.

One could divide humanity into two classes:
those who master a metaphor, and those who hold by a formula.
Those with a bent for both are too few, they do not comprise a class.

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1 Jul '12 09:44:51 PM

Voice; calling out; calling out to you; calling you out; calling on you; calling upon you all.

1 Jul '12 09:32:27 PM

Voice; having a voice; having a say.

Finding your voice; having your say.

1 Jul '12 05:25:38 AM

Pirate Prentice's 'Firm', i.e. the Special Operations Executive (a successor to Section D of the Secret Intelligence Service, aka MI6), is the earliest They in Gravity's Rainbow.

Late in the book, when he finds he still works for the Firm, as a 'double agent'—for '… no one has ever left the Firm alive, no one in history—and no one ever will'—Pirate begins to cry:

'… he understands where he is, now. It will be possible, after all, to die in obscurity, without having helped a soul: without love, despised, never trusted, never vindicated—to stay down among the Preterite, his poor honor lost, impossible to locate or to redeem.'

30 Jun '12 09:42:01 AM

OK, Herder, this sentence has eight exclamation points in it. And not all at the end!

30 Jun '12 01:48:57 AM

Herder uses so many exclamation points!

29 Jun '12 11:10:17 PM

The Dude's only form of ID is a value club card from Ralph's. But even it says 'Jeffrey Lebowski' on it.

29 Jun '12 11:08:31 PM

The joke about lacking proper identification is to only have a library card. Only having a gym ID doesn't strike the same note, even if it too lacks a photo. A library card is an emblem for books, words, for just the things not to be trusted by anyone who asks to see your ID. (Only certain books, certain records, count for them.)

Libraries are themselves trusting places.

29 Jun '12 11:04:46 PM

Figures who are moved to ask, or offer, their names in those environs where mutual anonymity prevails: rubes, children.

29 Jun '12 11:03:18 PM

Think how remarkable it is that we can ride the bus, walk down the street, make our own way through a public place, without a tinge of curiosity about what others' names are.