Anchor ads are not supported on this page.
Print Edition
Classifieds
Stories
Events
Contests
Music
Movies
Theater
Food
Life Events
Cannabis
May 15, 2024
May 8, 2024
May 1, 2024
April 24, 2024
April 17, 2024
April 10, 2024
April 2, 2024
March 27, 2024
March 20, 2024
March 13, 2024
March 6, 2024
February 28, 2024
Close
May 15, 2024
May 8, 2024
May 1, 2024
April 24, 2024
April 17, 2024
April 10, 2024
April 2, 2024
March 27, 2024
March 20, 2024
March 13, 2024
March 6, 2024
February 28, 2024
May 15, 2024
May 8, 2024
May 1, 2024
April 24, 2024
April 17, 2024
April 10, 2024
April 2, 2024
March 27, 2024
March 20, 2024
March 13, 2024
March 6, 2024
February 28, 2024
Close
Anchor ads are not supported on this page.
The Measure of Success
SD... (I kinda like S, still)... >Blog forthcoming? :) No. Poems, prolly. A novel, possibly. A blog? No. I grasp your sense of this as lit, but if I'm to go balls to the walls with these things, I want a genre that backs me up and lives after. I am a poet. A futzing, slap-dash, clumsy fumbler.. but a poet.— February 3, 2010 11:26 p.m.
The Measure of Success
fruit bats suck socks bit time.— February 3, 2010 11:09 p.m.
The Measure of Success
>I cut it off the second I saw what was involved!!! Could it be, Cuddle, that you're not exactly a snake aficionado? Is that what you're hinting at?— February 3, 2010 11:09 p.m.
The Measure of Success
See... I'm already wanting to retract "malevolent fruit bat", because it's only part of the story. But, it *is* part of the story. And I can't tell it. Gah.— February 3, 2010 9:37 p.m.
The Measure of Success
nan... I suppose you realize how hard it is to come up with a graceful response to such. I am unequal.— February 3, 2010 9:27 p.m.
The Measure of Success
S.... as you sketch these sketches, I have a sense you could write them with love. I think you could write them well and respectfully. But, you'd be most rarely blessed if they could be read that way, so I grok the fear. I can write about my dead great uncle, who I last saw picking imaginary bugs off his clothes and spitting without spit into a coffee can at his feet, and my mythological great grandfathers, brothers who dueled with shotguns in the East Texas woods, and both lived to tell the tale, but never spoke to each other again, but I cannot write about my mother, who is a malevolent fruit bat. Because... she could read it and they could not. So, we both sublimate. At best. So, yes.— February 3, 2010 9:16 p.m.
The Measure of Success
Hell, he can mispronounce initials. There's a bookstore in Asheville, NC, called "Malaprop's". He likes it. He'll say, "Let's go to Missus Mapplerops!"— February 3, 2010 5:43 p.m.
The Measure of Success
I love my dad too. He has a way with words! I really should be compiling notes, toward a future volume. He calls opera "cat killing music", fr'instance. How great is that? And, he is the world's preeminent master of the malapropism. You know those wiggly creatures under the microscope? Those are "spurtazurmas". You know those creatures that eat other creatures? Those are "predicators".— February 3, 2010 5:38 p.m.
The Measure of Success
Well expressed, S (may I call you S? that's not too familiar?) Part of what's going on in this instance, I think, is that Cuddlefish had not only a theme and a thread... she had an agenda: "This was a themed blog, and I was pushing on toward the final post, or posts, in which I would wrap everything up in a sort of final summation." Editorial-by-installments, I suppose it was. I've actually had no first-hand experience with that. That's an oddball creature, genre-wise, no doubt with its own dynamics and aesthetics. I agree. And, I also know that I have written things that make me cringe and squick, and have been happy to wave the wand of deletion (though I also know it never really goes away). My points had less to do with the morality of retraction and deletion (or its impact on this new thing that is in many ways literature), than with the impulse that motivated it. "The idea that something I was writing might be hurtful to people I didn’t know..." the impulse to avoid that is admirable. "I had shaped people’s thinking on a subject"... the impulse to avoid that is not. Was anything Cuddlefish said malicious? Did she indulge in ad hominem attacks? We don't have the deleted docs, but I very much doubt they were. Could they have been hurtful to people she didn't know? Possibly. Sucks to be a grown up, don't it? It might well be that by speaking with conviction on an issue she knew, she gave others pain.— February 3, 2010 5:32 p.m.
The Measure of Success
OK, a proviso to what I have said. Internet dynamics can insulate us from human consequences, such that we become overly enamored of rhetoric, and forget that for every speech there is an audience, and that audience comprises people... people. Or, as my dad says, "Sometimes my alligator mouth overloads my tadpole butt." But... I stand by my points on civic discourse.— February 3, 2010 5:13 p.m.