Clusterheadaches.com Message Board


    
      
        Clusterheadaches.com Message Board
        (http://www.clusterheadaches.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi)
      

        New Message Board Archives >> Oct-Dec 2003 >> TThe Sad Repulblican
        
(Message started by: kim on Nov 23^rd, 2003, 3:30pm)

Title: TThe Sad Repulblican
Post by kim on Nov 23^rd, 2003, 3:30pm

If we could not meet face to face
and argue out respective place
if we never strood breadth to breadth,
underneath a safe tree, shadowed by poetry.
we'd pass beneath in misery................

We all want the same thing

Title: Re: TThe Sad Repulblican
Post by Brian_Y on Nov 23^rd, 2003, 4:12pm

What's a "Repulblican"?

Title: Re: TThe Sad Repulblican
Post by Charlie on Nov 23^rd, 2003, 4:34pm

A Repulblican is a Lawng Guyland Republican.

Yup. I agree. The Bills need a win http://www.netsync.net/users/charlies/gifs/COUCH SMILEY.gif

Charlie

Title: Re: TThe Sad Repulblican
Post by cathy on Nov 23^rd, 2003, 6:22pm

Baiting Banality.

"Banal" is a word stigmatizing a rerun of a tired old formula. Much of what you see, hear, and read is a rerun of almost hopelessly conventionalized forms with new, or apparently new, content filled into the blanks of the form. Television news stories, pop songs, sitcoms and adventure flicks, stories, novels, plays, writing assignments, students' essays, teachers' lectures--you name the form, its tendency is to sink into banality. It is easy, in one sense, to get the knack of a current stylized form and allow its machinery to produce pages for you--but it goes hard on you to do so, because this process eats the heart out of your writing and eventually out of you as well. One day you wake up and you hate writing, you hate yourself, you don't even know yourself anymore. You've been replaced by talking machines.

It takes a bit of wit to bust out the banality of these forms. They happen when you can't, don't, don't want to, or aren't allowed to--rethink the subject matter. With essay tests, for example, experience tells you that graders are often looking for answers that distill a text or lecture, and you've been punished for diverging from orthodoxy. They may not be the safest venue for busting up banality: too many educators have bought the myth that students must first assimilate the already known, and only then venture into thinking for themselves. I wish all of that were already over for you--in high school, if not before.

But in writing that matters to you, whether you are writer or reader or both, you achieve some fresh perspective. How do you do that, when so much has already been thought, and so often at that? Any one of this A to Z of rhizomes can grow into your writing, but for this venture, let's bait Banality directly. Give yourself about a page for this rhizome. Don't restate a common opinion: consider what is learned through the "thought experiment" of arguing the opposite of that consensus, even if you learn only an exception or a limitation to the consensusÖ Now that everyone's beginning to admit television violence is harmful, argue its benefits. People normally think of Christianity as a benign force in the world: argue that it is the cancer at the heart of western civilization. We are accustomed to enjoying the range of freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution: argue that we are the most tightly controlled population on earth. World War II is usually described as the victory of the free world over the fascist dictatorships of the axis powers: argue that the fascism lost the battle but won the war. Now that the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union has fallen apart, argue that the Soviet experiment was one of the highpoints of western humanism. Start with any asumption people around you seem to take for granted: argue its opposite. This technique teaches you how much oft-repeated opinions limit vision and imagination.

Title: Re: TThe Sad Repulblican
Post by kim on Nov 23^rd, 2003, 7:51pm

baiting banality :)

Cath: We are going to sloppy joe's where we will battle banality :DCaptain Barbara will take us fishin next morning.......Wes, too! After we will ride bikes and shout incoherently - followed by a sort nap, a quick dinner and more foolgannery ( I don't know if that is a word)......................

I won't, however, give up the hanes her way 8) Ever. :D

Title: Re: TThe Sad Repulblican
Post by BarbaraD on Nov 23^rd, 2003, 7:52pm

Cathy, the weird thing is - I actually think I understood what you just said and agree with you.... On the other hand........ [smiley=laugh.gif]

Hugs BD

Title: Re: TThe Sad Repulblican
Post by Opus on Nov 23^rd, 2003, 8:09pm

on 11/23/03 at 19:51:39, kim wrote:

foolgannery ( I don't know if that is a word)......................

Kim, since when did that stop ya,

Opus/Paul

Title: Re: TThe Sad Repulblican
Post by kim on Nov 23^rd, 2003, 9:39pm

ukay. :D I GOT it. 8)

Foolgannery: Happy go lucky ; everbodies happy.....
then...

alawng comes...........are ya ready? ;;Dhere we go:

Foolschmammery: over the edge; doomed to fall off bike and laugh your ass off on the sidwalk; .................this i try to avoid..........however it has been known to happen; ....................... :-[

LUCKILY FER ME :DI always fall down RITE next to the street guy with the fresh ORANGE JUICE and ICE COLD WADDA. He don't even look funny at me and Captain Barbara NEVER tells me to GET THE HELLBACK IN THE GODDAM BOAT. :)

Title: Kim can't spell "the"
Post by rumplestiltskin on Nov 24^th, 2003, 1:08am

And to think....only out of sheer boredom did I open this thread.

Cathy

That flat out blew me away! As good as the best I've ever read here.

Way too much of me there...dogpaddling in the "no swimming" zone.

Cry in the sunshine, walk in the night.
den