A twenty-something dude's girlfriend approached him as he was using the computer card catalog*:
"What's taking so long?"
[Voice louder than appropriate, even if used outside a library, which it wasn't (it was used inside)] "I'd be done already, but there's bum cum all over the keyboards!"
There is some serious class conflict in this library. I wouldn't be surprised to see an increase in already-ludicrous levels of security.
*Cannot access internet/porn.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Island Nations: A Thing Thereabout
1) Quatloos, a "Cyber-Museum of Scams & Frauds" discusses a scheme involving a fictitious island nation called the Dominion of Melchizedek. From Quatloos:
The so-called Dominion of Melchizedek (hereinafter "DoM") is a fake nation which exists only in cyberspace, or in the literature and actions of the scam artists who perpetrate this fraud. There is no real Dominion of Melchizedek, but this doesn't stop the scammers from selling utterly worthless bank licenses for tens-of-thousands of dollars.
The DoM attempts to hold itself out as some sort of quasi-religious body, even to the point of having its own version of the Bible. But for all their self-righteousness, the truth is that the DoM not only commits fraud, but also materially facilitates the fraud of others by creating phony banks, stock exchanges, arbitration forums, etc., in an attempt to give some illusory legitimacy to criminals who are directly defrauding the public by way of pyramid-scheme bank debenture scams and other criminal schemes.
According to Melchizedek's Web site (which DOES EXIST), the President of the country, whose name appears below a Star of David, is a former law enforcement official from Los Angeles (he doesn't really exist, but they have a photo!).
The story rapidly gets less slightly less interesting when reality kicks in. The guys behind the Dominion are just a father-son team of felons convicted of evil doings numerous times.
The story gets more interesting again when you realize there are several fictitious island nations on the Internet. Presumably they could declare war on each other in some sort of Battlespace Involving Information.
But back to the main thing: Tlon kind of happened in 1996!
Monday, July 16, 2007
My Job of Many Colors
Applying for a job at a major media research company, I came across the following (optional) drop-down-menu question (if I knew HTML I could probably actually program the thing right in here. Maybe I'll get a book from the library today, but probably not):
Ethnicity:
-Hispanic (Spanish-Speaking)
-Not Hispanic (Spanish-Speaking)
I mean they had a separate category for "Race," but still pretty funny that a company openly parses job applicants along the Hispanic-Not divide.
This brings me to a larger point mostly about the Facebook, but about other Web sites too. For a while, the "Political Views" category on the FB's profile information yielded a drop-down menu with, I think, five categories: Very Liberal, Liberal, Moderate, Conservative, Very Conservative. People responded (at least I picture it this way) largely by gleefully placing themselves in one of these categories ("Conservative"), thinking about it for a second then deciding that it wasn't that big a deal even if the labels weren't perfect ("Liberal," "Very Liberal"), or out-and-out flouting Zuckerberg's categories and refusing to answer the question (the soon-to-be-added "Others").
Right, right. We took Anthropology and Sociology in undergrad so we all got that factoid about the Census and college applications forcing people to identify themselves using problematic categorizations. But it appears that we could easily allow people to type in their own categorizations, then dump the entries in a database, control for misspellings or variations on the same concept, and get a more adequate distribution of data. If we felt like imposing problematic categories on the data ex-post, we certainly wouldn't have a problem doing so; we'd just have to, for example, include "biracial" self-identifiers in the larger "minority" category. At least the underlying data would be more specific.
In my mind I'm picturing infinitely divided pie-charts. Each slice is a slightly different shade of the color next to it. Look at it one way, it's a color wheel; just some red, some yellow, whatever. Look closer, and there's a bajillion variations. With computers, we should be able to make job-applicant pools act in a similar way. There seems precious little reason for the multiple-choice cop-out now that we have Google or even, God help us, Concordance.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Executive Thrasher
From the guy over at Water and Vegetables, in case you haven't seen it:
I can do this because it's skateboard related. Sorry about not blogging for a sec but I've been doing edit tests for magazines pretty nonstop. It can drain even the savviest of sieves, including me. See you tomorrow with some actual ideas. Or maybe in a couple minutes.
I can do this because it's skateboard related. Sorry about not blogging for a sec but I've been doing edit tests for magazines pretty nonstop. It can drain even the savviest of sieves, including me. See you tomorrow with some actual ideas. Or maybe in a couple minutes.
Monday, July 09, 2007
COME OUT TO PLAAAAY
Like Cam throwing that laughable dis at Hov in '05, I feel I will ultimately lose a battle with Hua Hsu but someone has to throw a shot here.
The impetus for the gig comes from a Hsu Slate slideshow documenting in slapdash fashion the way YouTube has caused the demise of rap battles.
My main beef here is that, according to Hsu, rap battles go back to '96 (some might say they go back further but let's stick within the guy's argument). Despite this long and storied history and the elapsed time between the epic battles (often years), it's only been like six to twelve months since rappers have been using YouTube, and although maybe some of this idea about using a new medium to replace dis tracks has some weight, I can't help but think that in six more months we'll have a "The Rap Battle's Rebirth: Rappers Using YouTube To Do Awesome Freestyles," all because rappers went back to rapping after dabbling in the vids.
I'm thinking it'd be very easy for a rapper to say something like "You don't even rap you just YouTube" but making it rhyme, and suddenly everyone will be back on the mixtapes. But it might not even have to go that far ... Allhiphop.com shows Gucci Mane dissing T.I. in a (strictly!!!) audio file that was uploaded two hours and thirty six minutes ago, showing at least a little heartbeat on the dis track's monitor.
Beyond all that, Hsu's claim that YouTube vids are unimaginative neglects the creativity involved in the new artform. Cam and 50 are throwing cool video shots at one another, the disses aren't as "unimaginative" as is claimed, and video and audio are by no means mutually exclusive, so even if YouTube replaces the mix tape, who's to say it's bad for the music or the creative expression?
Add those shakey stilts to the massive counterexample of Lil Wayne's audiofiles actually posted on YouTube (often only with only a still shot of himself kinda like the TK thing I wrote about earlier). The "Ether" and "Show Me What You Got" disses on Jay-Z basically put the one nails not hammered by Kingdom Come firmly in the pinebox. I'm shaking mad at arguments made more to get a piece together than to show something really happening. Like the YouTube thing is a bit in itself, why throw in "It's bad for rap" for almost no reason.
So the whole thing just makes me a lil frowny on the edges.
The impetus for the gig comes from a Hsu Slate slideshow documenting in slapdash fashion the way YouTube has caused the demise of rap battles.
My main beef here is that, according to Hsu, rap battles go back to '96 (some might say they go back further but let's stick within the guy's argument). Despite this long and storied history and the elapsed time between the epic battles (often years), it's only been like six to twelve months since rappers have been using YouTube, and although maybe some of this idea about using a new medium to replace dis tracks has some weight, I can't help but think that in six more months we'll have a "The Rap Battle's Rebirth: Rappers Using YouTube To Do Awesome Freestyles," all because rappers went back to rapping after dabbling in the vids.
I'm thinking it'd be very easy for a rapper to say something like "You don't even rap you just YouTube" but making it rhyme, and suddenly everyone will be back on the mixtapes. But it might not even have to go that far ... Allhiphop.com shows Gucci Mane dissing T.I. in a (strictly!!!) audio file that was uploaded two hours and thirty six minutes ago, showing at least a little heartbeat on the dis track's monitor.
Beyond all that, Hsu's claim that YouTube vids are unimaginative neglects the creativity involved in the new artform. Cam and 50 are throwing cool video shots at one another, the disses aren't as "unimaginative" as is claimed, and video and audio are by no means mutually exclusive, so even if YouTube replaces the mix tape, who's to say it's bad for the music or the creative expression?
Add those shakey stilts to the massive counterexample of Lil Wayne's audiofiles actually posted on YouTube (often only with only a still shot of himself kinda like the TK thing I wrote about earlier). The "Ether" and "Show Me What You Got" disses on Jay-Z basically put the one nails not hammered by Kingdom Come firmly in the pinebox. I'm shaking mad at arguments made more to get a piece together than to show something really happening. Like the YouTube thing is a bit in itself, why throw in "It's bad for rap" for almost no reason.
So the whole thing just makes me a lil frowny on the edges.
Power to the People Making AdSense with Their Mouths
Is Jessica Hopper Dennis Hopper's hard-partying, hard-faced, wildly fuckable daughter who ultimately just wants to be cuddled in the middle of the night?
[. . .]
[. . .]
Of course not.
Sulky points me to this tinyluckygenius, who judging by her screen name thinks some pretty good things about herself, and suddenly I'm reading pseudo-art blog posts that try to take a Strokes angle on the trials and tribs of loving music and being a feminist at the same time (apparently these things are at odds, sometimes).
None of this would really be a thing if Sulks didn't point out to me that this lady did some simmering a summer ago by starting a big thing about the Magnetic Fields guy being a racist, all of which was pretty ridic in the wash (I'm not together on all the details, but from what I hear Hopper dissed the singer for writing in the Times that he liked music and listing only white performers), but illustrates the power of baby girl's angles.
My knee-jerk has me urged to riff all over this as lamezoid bligablag in a similar way that Keyhole dissed Manohla Dargis for taking a throwaway feminist jab at Transformers.
But on second thought, are we so wrong to hate on someone for being unnerved by Kelly and The Game? Feminist reactions to chauvinism in hip hop are usually beside the point in my mind but not totally without merit, and it's not like the genius doesn't have any moves. Plus you don't want to always be the guy who's defending meatheaded stuff about hating women as not really hating women or "just words."
The cityskape is alive with a lot of ugly stuff, and some of it is probably even worth blogging. Living in Taco-town has taught me that much, so I gave the tiny dancer a chance. I zipped to her most recent post and suddenly she even had me going with her on a ride for a sec:
Good refs, the sentence has speed and the lady is doing some observations. The shoes thing is maybe a little Sex and the City, but hey it's 2007 and L7 and Bratmobile now mostly appear on XM 54 between midnight and one a.m., so I can't blame Hopper for some pomo third-wave pogoing, even if generally I'm not for it. We can at least relate to hating what you're doing in the search of fun, and there's some directions you can take with an observation that's acute like this.
So, Hoptown, where you driving this motorcycle? To a graveyard with a pocket full of acid tabs? In other words, are you taking this lonesome cityskape snippet to a place that will make us understand this internet-and-80s-mediated world a little better? Do you love them ho's?
NO!
Hoppers doesn't even close us out with a complete sentence. Yeah you're a feminist but you ain't [got] a predicate.
But this brings us to an interesting juncture. I've thought before about music being largely a thing that mediates our life and permeates through our personalities, illustrating our prejudices and highlighting our personal experiences more than being a thing that just sits outside ourselves that we can critique in a sorta highfalutin' way. I've also claimed that I would rather read reviews that contain anecdotes and illustrative examples and bracket notions of whether a tune is good or not in favor of discussing its intersection with real life, something music writers are rarely interested in.
So maybe the situation is that to get at this arty approach to "culture" minutely defined as that which media-savvy people with B.A.'s and some connections to magazines think about, we're going to get some stuff/criticism/anecdoting that isn't totally heartfelt, maybe even a little hateful, and / or not really interested in the right things. And a bajillion people are sometimes going to read it.
Blogger/journalists who can sometimes write a sentence can get surprisingly far in this game, regardless to the level of thought in their ideas or the checkability of their refs. And sometimes an odd perversion of PC comes through and people can even be attacked over it??? And without complete sentences! I'm gonna write awktown and I'm gonna mean it.
But, as they say, we're all just bloggin.
[. . .]
[. . .]
Of course not.
Sulky points me to this tinyluckygenius, who judging by her screen name thinks some pretty good things about herself, and suddenly I'm reading pseudo-art blog posts that try to take a Strokes angle on the trials and tribs of loving music and being a feminist at the same time (apparently these things are at odds, sometimes).
None of this would really be a thing if Sulks didn't point out to me that this lady did some simmering a summer ago by starting a big thing about the Magnetic Fields guy being a racist, all of which was pretty ridic in the wash (I'm not together on all the details, but from what I hear Hopper dissed the singer for writing in the Times that he liked music and listing only white performers), but illustrates the power of baby girl's angles.
My knee-jerk has me urged to riff all over this as lamezoid bligablag in a similar way that Keyhole dissed Manohla Dargis for taking a throwaway feminist jab at Transformers.
But on second thought, are we so wrong to hate on someone for being unnerved by Kelly and The Game? Feminist reactions to chauvinism in hip hop are usually beside the point in my mind but not totally without merit, and it's not like the genius doesn't have any moves. Plus you don't want to always be the guy who's defending meatheaded stuff about hating women as not really hating women or "just words."
The cityskape is alive with a lot of ugly stuff, and some of it is probably even worth blogging. Living in Taco-town has taught me that much, so I gave the tiny dancer a chance. I zipped to her most recent post and suddenly she even had me going with her on a ride for a sec:
So out of desperation, you and your friends go the bar you hate trying to make good on yr efforts, and the vibe is like an episode of Cheaters and everyone is acting like the James Spader character in an 80's teen drama and you sit there sucking down yr ice water and thinking "I put on shoes for this?!"
Good refs, the sentence has speed and the lady is doing some observations. The shoes thing is maybe a little Sex and the City, but hey it's 2007 and L7 and Bratmobile now mostly appear on XM 54 between midnight and one a.m., so I can't blame Hopper for some pomo third-wave pogoing, even if generally I'm not for it. We can at least relate to hating what you're doing in the search of fun, and there's some directions you can take with an observation that's acute like this.
So, Hoptown, where you driving this motorcycle? To a graveyard with a pocket full of acid tabs? In other words, are you taking this lonesome cityskape snippet to a place that will make us understand this internet-and-80s-mediated world a little better? Do you love them ho's?
You walk home with your best friend, each carrying an end of yr bent up bike, trying to remember the chronology of the Husker Du discography and it's all the lame-fun you need right there. Aging loners waxing nerdy in the night light.
NO!
Hoppers doesn't even close us out with a complete sentence. Yeah you're a feminist but you ain't [got] a predicate.
But this brings us to an interesting juncture. I've thought before about music being largely a thing that mediates our life and permeates through our personalities, illustrating our prejudices and highlighting our personal experiences more than being a thing that just sits outside ourselves that we can critique in a sorta highfalutin' way. I've also claimed that I would rather read reviews that contain anecdotes and illustrative examples and bracket notions of whether a tune is good or not in favor of discussing its intersection with real life, something music writers are rarely interested in.
So maybe the situation is that to get at this arty approach to "culture" minutely defined as that which media-savvy people with B.A.'s and some connections to magazines think about, we're going to get some stuff/criticism/anecdoting that isn't totally heartfelt, maybe even a little hateful, and / or not really interested in the right things. And a bajillion people are sometimes going to read it.
Blogger/journalists who can sometimes write a sentence can get surprisingly far in this game, regardless to the level of thought in their ideas or the checkability of their refs. And sometimes an odd perversion of PC comes through and people can even be attacked over it??? And without complete sentences! I'm gonna write awktown and I'm gonna mean it.
But, as they say, we're all just bloggin.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Thought about Wrestling and Rap
John Cena Reverses Mystikal's Career Trajectory by Rapping First Then Joining the Military
Early Cena
Wrestling contains some of the most heavily mythologized personas in the New Era age, as discussed in the previous post on Chris Benoit and Owen Hart.
Rap might benefit from the application of wrestling's model by developing a McMahon-type "heel" and "face" structure. Labels could recruit wack or one-trick rappers to join a sub-stable and then pretend to feud with their face rappers. Some of the greatest moments in rap stem from beef but beef often turns mad-cow and people get shot, so why not just fake the feuds, save some lives, and let everybody listen to some crazy dis tracks.
Early Cena
Wrestling contains some of the most heavily mythologized personas in the New Era age, as discussed in the previous post on Chris Benoit and Owen Hart.
Rap might benefit from the application of wrestling's model by developing a McMahon-type "heel" and "face" structure. Labels could recruit wack or one-trick rappers to join a sub-stable and then pretend to feud with their face rappers. Some of the greatest moments in rap stem from beef but beef often turns mad-cow and people get shot, so why not just fake the feuds, save some lives, and let everybody listen to some crazy dis tracks.
Friday, July 06, 2007
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Two Things (Both Suicide-Related)
1) Of course we all know Chris Benoit died recently. I've been reading a lot about professional wrestling on Wikipedia, and a few link clicks in I was at Owen Hart's page. Hart died in a tragic accident when his harness unbuckled as he was being lowered from the ceiling at a live event. He fell nearly eighty feet and landed chest-first on the ring's turnbuckle.
Benoit's death is tragic and puzzling, but what is striking about Hart's demise is that he died as a heel, or bad-guy/joke wrestler. All wrestlers go through cycles of heel/face to help generate audience interest, but the indignity of being a national joke for a while is compensated by the promise of turning face again, often within several months.
What I didn't know before was that the stunt that killed Hart was designed specifically to amplify his heel status and make him more of a joke. Hart's storyline portrayed him as a weakling with delusions of superhuman power. Ironically, his harness was set up so that he would fall on his face once he was lowered to a safe distance from the mat, so the crowd could jeer him for attempting to fly. Obviously, the entire joke took a horrendous turn.
One of the many downfalls of a career in professional wrestling is that you may die in a moment of extreme public humiliation. Obviously the WWE doesn't put its wrestlers through the same risk that caused Hart's death, but the heel/face convention is a necessary part of wrestling's continually evolving plotline.
It is likely that Benoit died for wrestling just as Hart did, and the symbolism is equally resonant. Benoit likely flew into a steroid rage that led him to murder his wife and son in his home, then take his own life by hanging himself on the cord of a weight machine. Benoit's role in the WWE was that of an athletic talent; obviously almost every pro wrestler uses steroids, but they become especially necessary for those whose athleticism is essential to their character.
The overlap of fantasy and reality that is part of wrestling's huge appeal makes it one of the few forms of entertainment where endangering a character, either physically or psychologically, also endangers his actor alter-ego. There will be more posts on wrestling in the future.
2) I got some Eliott Smith CDs from the library today. I missed out on him when he was still and only really took an interest in him reading the SPIN story of his death. The tunes are good, but no one talks about this guy anymore, like not even a little. That strikes me.
Benoit's death is tragic and puzzling, but what is striking about Hart's demise is that he died as a heel, or bad-guy/joke wrestler. All wrestlers go through cycles of heel/face to help generate audience interest, but the indignity of being a national joke for a while is compensated by the promise of turning face again, often within several months.
What I didn't know before was that the stunt that killed Hart was designed specifically to amplify his heel status and make him more of a joke. Hart's storyline portrayed him as a weakling with delusions of superhuman power. Ironically, his harness was set up so that he would fall on his face once he was lowered to a safe distance from the mat, so the crowd could jeer him for attempting to fly. Obviously, the entire joke took a horrendous turn.
One of the many downfalls of a career in professional wrestling is that you may die in a moment of extreme public humiliation. Obviously the WWE doesn't put its wrestlers through the same risk that caused Hart's death, but the heel/face convention is a necessary part of wrestling's continually evolving plotline.
It is likely that Benoit died for wrestling just as Hart did, and the symbolism is equally resonant. Benoit likely flew into a steroid rage that led him to murder his wife and son in his home, then take his own life by hanging himself on the cord of a weight machine. Benoit's role in the WWE was that of an athletic talent; obviously almost every pro wrestler uses steroids, but they become especially necessary for those whose athleticism is essential to their character.
The overlap of fantasy and reality that is part of wrestling's huge appeal makes it one of the few forms of entertainment where endangering a character, either physically or psychologically, also endangers his actor alter-ego. There will be more posts on wrestling in the future.
2) I got some Eliott Smith CDs from the library today. I missed out on him when he was still and only really took an interest in him reading the SPIN story of his death. The tunes are good, but no one talks about this guy anymore, like not even a little. That strikes me.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Me, Too
From Jorge Luis Borges, "The Art of Verbal Abuse," Selected Non-Fictions. Ed., trans. Eliot Weinberger. New York: Penguin, 1999.
If only Borges could blog.
I say that about once a day.
A conscientious study of other literary genres has led me to believe in the greater value of insult and mockery.
If only Borges could blog.
I say that about once a day.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Heinz-Dog Ketchup Ads Not As Intriguing As First Thought
There is a that helps exphttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.giflain in part the weirdo homemade Heinz ads that are proliferating/procreating all over YouTube.
I encourage you to click the link and watch a disgusting orgy of viscous tomato "stuff" get slopped on to all manner of food. A promised perk of participating in the contest: "Your video will be seen on YouTube." And maybe blogged about on Ideelz! This contest is huger than you think.
Even though, much like the bad guys in a Die Hard movie, the KetchupYouTubers (FrenchFryers) have revealed that their primary motivation is money, the tonal similarity among the three previously posted videos is unnerving, as is the impression that these videos have been stolen from people's homes and uploaded onto the internet for the sake of humiliation.
That said, I'm pretty excited to make my own YouTube ketchup video.
I encourage you to click the link and watch a disgusting orgy of viscous tomato "stuff" get slopped on to all manner of food. A promised perk of participating in the contest: "Your video will be seen on YouTube." And maybe blogged about on Ideelz! This contest is huger than you think.
Even though, much like the bad guys in a Die Hard movie, the KetchupYouTubers (FrenchFryers) have revealed that their primary motivation is money, the tonal similarity among the three previously posted videos is unnerving, as is the impression that these videos have been stolen from people's homes and uploaded onto the internet for the sake of humiliation.
That said, I'm pretty excited to make my own YouTube ketchup video.
Can You Be Serious Marines
Along with this quote:
LCPL Chad Codwell, from Baltimore, Maryland, with Charlie Company 1st Battalion 5th Marines, carries an experimental urban combat skateboard which is being used for manuevering inside buildings in order to detect tripwires and sniper fire. This mission is in direct support of Urban Warrior '99.
More data here.
Dogs and Ketchup - An Internet Trend?
I was trolling YouTube for some interesting videos of pets and animals for an application to TheDailyTube (using search terms such as "animal funny" and "crocodile funny") when I came across not just one, but several homemade advertisements for Heinz Ketchup.
The last one embedded is "Dan's Heinz Commercial #4," implying three preceding commercials of a similar nature. That makes a total of at least six amateur ads, three of which focus primarily on dogs' relation to the condiment.
Is this just because the "cats" in catsup makes for easy jokes? Or is there a deeper correlation between the personality type that makes amateur ads and an equally distributed affinity for pets and tomato sauce?
Also note: The similar apartments. Very Office Space.
The last one embedded is "Dan's Heinz Commercial #4," implying three preceding commercials of a similar nature. That makes a total of at least six amateur ads, three of which focus primarily on dogs' relation to the condiment.
Is this just because the "cats" in catsup makes for easy jokes? Or is there a deeper correlation between the personality type that makes amateur ads and an equally distributed affinity for pets and tomato sauce?
Also note: The similar apartments. Very Office Space.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Satan the Academic
From the Edith Grossman translation of Cervantes' Don Quixote:
This is a recurring thing in the novel; Satan as the smartest being around, or at least a superlatively smart one. There is little comment in the novel about Satan as a source of evil, making him sort of the figurative equivalent of, say, Einstein or Stephen Hawking. In the middle ages, I guess people gave the devil more cred than he gets nowadays, mutating as he has into a pitchfork-weilding little imp with hooves, which is more cute than anything else.
Really the only recent cultural product that posits Satan as a gifted rhetorician is The Exorcist. Father Merrin explains:
In Spawn, the Devil, as far as I can tell, doesn't spend much time reading and is more a warlike despot fighting against the forces of Heaven.
It's hard to come up with a definitive figure of the devil for the aughties - horror movies are more concerned with torture and psychosis lately than the supernatural - but I'm about to poke around and see what's hiding in comics or movies or books. The Devil is everywhere so it shouldn't be too hard to dig something up.
[The book is] so difficult to read that not even Satan can understand it. (199)
This is a recurring thing in the novel; Satan as the smartest being around, or at least a superlatively smart one. There is little comment in the novel about Satan as a source of evil, making him sort of the figurative equivalent of, say, Einstein or Stephen Hawking. In the middle ages, I guess people gave the devil more cred than he gets nowadays, mutating as he has into a pitchfork-weilding little imp with hooves, which is more cute than anything else.
Really the only recent cultural product that posits Satan as a gifted rhetorician is The Exorcist. Father Merrin explains:
Especially important is the warning to avoid conversations with the demon. We may ask what is relevant but anything beyond that is dangerous. He is a liar. The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us. But he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. The attack is psychological, Damien, and powerful. So don't listen to him. Remember that - do not listen.
In Spawn, the Devil, as far as I can tell, doesn't spend much time reading and is more a warlike despot fighting against the forces of Heaven.
It's hard to come up with a definitive figure of the devil for the aughties - horror movies are more concerned with torture and psychosis lately than the supernatural - but I'm about to poke around and see what's hiding in comics or movies or books. The Devil is everywhere so it shouldn't be too hard to dig something up.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Thing re Double Negs
From Baugh and Cable, A History of the English Language (2nd Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002):
1) Double negs ok?
2) Instincts. Killer instincts.
For a long time English permitted the use of a double negative. We have now discarded it through a false application of mathematical logic to language; but in Elizabethan times it was felt merely as a stronger negative, as indeed it is today in the instinct of the uneducated. (248)
1) Double negs ok?
2) Instincts. Killer instincts.
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