regi

Push the pause button. If you'd like to psychologize, let me provide you some fodder. I learned to read before going to school. By the time I was in the third grade I was reading newspapers and the encyclopedia. In the third grade, reading class consisted of several students sitting in a circle, reading aloud from a typically boring third grade reader. By the time the second student had stammered their way through four paragraphs I had finished the book, and when called on had no idea where I was supposed to read. I received a bad grade in reading on my report card. When my mother, knowing how and what I read, asked that teacher why I received a bad grade in reading, the explanation was that I lost my place. Now I do not mind videos, and truly appreciate a good speaker which is very rare. Videos meant to be informative and instructive, especially on important subjects always disappoint me. The speakers are terrible and the content is shallow, which it must be. No important material can possibly be presented in depth in the length of time of a video. In the amount of time I might spend listening to videos' shallow presentation of an idea, I can read an entire book with an in depth explanation of the same material, which I can mark, and go back to recheck premises, for example. Occasionally (but very rarely) the actual text of a video is available. In those cases, I can read the text in one tenth of the time I would have to spend listening to the video. Videos for me are a huge waste of time. In my experience, very few videos actually explain anything. They are much more like propaganda attempting to "convince" rather than to explain. Their appeal is often to one's feelings, sentiments, or desires with a grudging nod to one's intellect. If someone honestly has something to explain, real information one can understand and judge for themselves, they will be able to write it so anyone can study it. I distrust anything that cannot be explained in writing. This is a very personal view of course, which extends to other things as well. My wife and I have not had a television for almost twenty years. We do occassionally watch an old movie (DVD on one of our computers). Sometime I'll explain why I think all media has a danger to it, because to enjoy it, one has to suspend, to some degree, their own control of their consciousness. (For most "entertainment" today, one must also suspend their moral judgement.) Randy

Thanks Michael. I had already looked up Peterson and Simon, which you referred to in earlier posts on this thread. Much appreciated. Randy

Please don't bother for me. I never watch videos. They don't give you time to think. I can read perfectly well and like to pause and consider each idea. If someone cannot present their ideas in a well written form, I distrust them. Thank you very much for the references and links. Randy

Perhaps you could provide a short list of authors or books that provide that new knowledge. Randy

Actually they don't, "cry," until they are in the pot. So perhaps they lied to me when I asked them if they felt emotion. Not one ever said they did, and I've asked scores of them. Same goes for clams. I've tortured thousands of them without complaint, and both lobsters and clams have rewarded me by tasting wonderful. Randy

Positively dripping purple.

How do you know that?

You are so right! Both the slicks (literary mags) and pulps were how most writers began their careers and supported themselves. Royalties only came after they became established writers, if they did. Where does a developing writer sell his work today? These are some writers who got their start in slicks and pulps: Collier's (1888) Ray Bradbury, Willa Cather, Roald Dahl, Jack Finney, Erle Stanley Gardner, Zane Grey, Ring Lardner, Sinclair Lewis, D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut. (I don't know if Collier's ever published Fitzgerald.) Saturday Evening Post (1897 discontinuous to present) Ray Bradbury, Agatha Christie, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, C. S. Forester, Robert A. Heinlein, Kurt Vonnegut, Louis L'Amour, John P. Marquand, Edgar Allan Poe, William Saroyan, John Steinbeck, Dorothy Parker, Jack London, and P. G. Wodehouse and Sinclair Lewis' serialized delicious novel, Free Air. The Smart Set (1900 - 1930) H.L. Mencken, O. Henry, Theodore Dreiser, D. H. Lawrence, Joseph Conrad, William Butler Yeats, Ford Madox Ford, Sinclair Lewis, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Aldous Huxley, Benjamin De Casseres, Eugene O'Neill, Dashiell Hammett, the forgotten James Branch Cabell, and introduced F. Scott Fitzgerald, (with his short story "Babe in the Woods.") Harper's (1850) Published hundreds of authors including: Horatio Alger, Theodore Dreiser, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Herman Melville, Joyce Carol Oates, J. D. Salinger, John Steinbeck, Hunter S. Thompson, Mark Twain, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, and Tom Wolfe. The Atlantic (1857) Ralph Waldo Emerson; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Harriet Beecher Stowe; John Greenleaf Whittier; and James Russell Lowell, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain and many later authors. Esquire (1930) Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Andre Gide, Julian Huxley, and many later writers. The New Yorker (1925) Truman Capote, Roald Dahl, Vladimir Nabokov, John O'Hara, Dorothy Parker, Philip Roth, J. D. Salinger, James Thurber, John Updike, Stephen King, E. B. White and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" which drew more mail than any other story in the magazine's history. Playboy (1953) Saul Bellow, John Updike, James Dickey, John Cheever, Doris Lessing, Joyce Carol Oates, Vladimir Nabokov, Michael Crichton, Ray Bradbury, John le Carre, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bernard Malamud, John Irving, and Kurt Vonnegut. Pulps (1890s to 1950s) Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Arthur C. Clarke, Joseph Conrad, Stephen Crane, C. S. Forester, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dashiell Hammett, Robert A. Heinlein, O. Henry, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Mark Twain, H. G. Wells, Tennessee Williams, and hundreds of other authors.

It's the unfortuante way I was brought up. I was taught it was impolite to ignore others. I was simpy trying to acknowledge your interest. It's the only reason for this reply as well. Randy

You really don't know? You really think it's chemicals in the brain? Well, OK then. Randy

Yes, I can see that. Wow. Does that bother you? Don't let it. It doesn't bother me. I'm not an objectivist, by the way. Randy

No doubt about it. Smut sells. Nothing wrong with giving people what they want, no matter how degraded it is. Randy

Who are these people? I've never heard of any of them, unless, "Pigero," is "Perigo," (Mr. Danger). Do any of them actually matter to you? Randy

Obviously.

I'm sorry you have such difficulties. You do understand what you do or do not take seriously is of no concern to me? There's no special claim. I'm only repeating what others claim about themselves. You read what all the psychologists say about rampant depression and discontent. You know the statistics of individuals who claim to be unhappy and depressed. I'm just taking their word for what they say their experience is. Read the news and you will. Randy

Absolutely! It is confusion, but it is mostly innocent. It is common English idiom to replace one's convictions, beliefs, or thoughts with an accompanying feeling. In American vernacular, "I feel," actually means, "I think or believe." "I feel it is important," "I feel it is wrong," "I feel it is necessary," and, "I feel it is right," means, "I think it is important," "I believe it is wrong," "I'm sure it is necessary," and, "I'm convinced it is right." It is because what we think and believe we are sure about and are convinced of is frequently accompanied by feelings we identify with what we believe is right, important, wrong, or necessary we can substitute the feeling for the thought. It is that substitution that is the cause of the confusion. If I believe something is wrong, when considering it, I will have a feeling resulting from that thought. The confusion is the result to misidentifying the feeling for the thought, or as the cause of the thought. Your example, "I 'felt' curious, is perfect. Before there can be a "feeling" of curiosity, there must first be a question in the mind, such as "why" or "what" or "how" whatever one is conscious of that produces that feeling.

One of the very first authors I was exposed to, after Rudyard Kipling. My mother read to me all of, A Child's Garden of Verses, and years later my wife and I read those touching poems to each other. I loved O. Henry, but more for irony than humor. For humor, no one has ever surpassed Twain for me. When I think of him, "Adams Diary," always comes to mind. You already know what I think of Fitzgerald. (Did you know that Zelda and Mencken's wife were friends?) Chandler and Hammett are unique stylists and story tellers. Not sure anyone could emulate them. I know who Roscoe Pound was, but since I have no use for man-made law, unless there was something uniquely profound in his writing, I cannot imagine being interested in it. What I know of his views, I'm surprised you are interested in them. Then, I have almost no use for anything written by lawyers, economists, sociologists, psychiatrists, or theologians, except for their almost universal negative influence. Thank you for your candidness. It's very refreshing. Randy

After all the tortured analysis and rhetoric, that's all any writer does. The fact you know it makes you unique. I understand that, but it surprises me coming from you. Your erudition convinces me you've read widely. I'd be interested in which authors you admire enough to read. Perhaps even some you loath to read. My wife and I are voracious readers, my wife more than I. Not reading would have the same limiting affect on my life as loosing one of my senses. Randy

Well then it must be right. We know consensus trumps reason every time. Personally I have burst that, "it's what everyone, or at least all the experts believe, so it must be true," bubble. I've never been bored in my life, not because I have an insatiable curiosity, but because I've always had more things I've wanted to do then I will ever have time to do, even if should live forever. Even when circumstances prevent me from doing what I would prefer, like waiting in a doctor's office, I have things I do, even if only in my mind. I have never understood boredom. I think a lot of people mistake an anxiousness for time to pass in anticipation of something for boredom, but most people live in a state of perpetual ennui because their own minds are so uninteresting, not from a lack of curiosity, just a lack of diversion or entertainment. Is there emotion associated with curiosity? Of course, just as everything else we think and are conscious of is accompanied by a corresponding emotion. Like the feelings of love a mother has when thinking about her children. Nothing changes a mother's love for her children, but when she is ill or the children are being particularly exasperating the feelings she has may be nothing like love, even though she loves them not a bit less. I've also broken the bubble that confuses feelings caused by my conscious thoughts as the cause of my thoughts. Most people are stuck in that bubble. Randy

Well it means a little more than that. Here's One refrain: "This the new style with the fresh type of flow Wrist icicle, ride dick bicycle Come true yo, get you this type of blow If you wanna Minaj I got a tricycle" Silly, but packed with meaning: "Wrist icicle," is slang for ejaculate dripping down the girl's wrist; "Ride dick bicycle" is the sex position with the girl on top also called the cowgirl position. "Get you this type of blow," refers to both falatio and drugs. "If you wanna Minaj I got a tricycle," is a play on the name of Nicki Minaj (the girl Ariana sang with) and "tricycle" makes it clear she's referring to a menage a trois. Of course the song is not, "meant to teach," but what is it meant to do? Since Ariana's fan base of well over a 100 million and consists primarily of girls from 8 to 18, do you believe none of them are learning anything from the song? Children are curious and will ask their friends and older sisters and they will all know what, "wrist icicle," "dick bicycle," "blow," and "tricycle mean." There is nothing wrong with children knowing the meanings of such words and phrases. They're going to hear and read them. My mother was very wise and totally candid with me and frankly explained every term I asked her about. By the time I was twelve I knew every detail about both male and female genitals and their function. I believe that is the ideal way for young people to learn about sex. I think learning those things from songs and media which treat sex is a kind of recreation with no particular significance beyond pleasure for pleasure's sake is disastrous. The saddest part of all is that the word "love" does not appear, even once, in that song. It is all and only about physical desire and fulfilling it in any way, even in defiance of any possible consequences (read the lyrics). When all children read, hear, and see of the relationship between individuals is sex, they will never know what love is. That's what I object to. Randy

Michael, I do not agree that a good writer attempts to make a reader feel anything. With the exception of humor and horror, writers who intentionally attempt to evoke an emotional reaction are not good writers, and the attempt is a mistake in any case. Every reader will have different emotional reactions to what they read determined by their own values and beliefs, just as they do to real life events and people. Personally, when I detect that a writer is attempting to produce an emotional affect I'm put off, because there is a distinct oder of manipulation in such writing. Good grief that sounds like "critical theory" on steroids. Is it possible Fitzgerald was only providing a beautifully crafted metaphorical description of the setting. No wonder it took three readings to appreciate the beauty of that description and to read into it what Fitzgerald never intended. Randy

Well I never said everythng he wrote was poetry. Does doggerel count?

You are right. My experience is that it is just the opposite is sadly what is actually happening. I believe your case is a delightful and hopeful exception. All my best to you and your family. Randy

I knew you didn't. Like every other device, most writers don't do them well, but the good writers do, which is why they are good writers. Good catch, by the way. Fitzgerald was a poet.

Really? You mean like this: "This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children's eyes. From the western half of the sky the sun was shying little golden disks at the sea—if you gazed intently enough you could see them skip from wave tip to wave tip until they joined a broad collar of golden coin that was collecting half a mile out and would eventually be a dazzling sunset. About half-way between the Florida shore and the golden collar a white steam-yacht, very young and graceful, was riding at anchor and under a blue-and-white awning aft a yellow-haired girl reclined in a wicker settee reading The Revolt of the Angels, by Anatole France." Randy