Monthly Archives: February 2009

76: What They Really Mean

(1) “No one is saying that …”, a locution beloved of pundits and politicians.  =  “You might say that, but if so I can safely ignore you, because you don’t count.”

(2) “No one believes that …”: similar to above.

(3) “That’s a given”  =  “I’m not going to bother giving you reasons for what I just said.”

(4) “You know,”  =  “I don’t need to ask you what you know, because I’m telling you what you know.”

(5) “Remember …” is ambiguous. “Remember” [can mean] “You are now functioning as my offline memory device,” or, in the sense of “recall”, “Remember” [means] “I know you didn’t know that, but I’ll just pretend you did!”

(6) “I don’t know what you’re talking about” = “I know what you’re talking about.”

(7) “You can’t be serious!”  =  “I know you’re serious, but I can’t think of a valid way to dispute what you’re saying.”

(8) “That’s OK.”  =  “That’s not OK.”

(9) Disbelief : This used to be called “skepticism,” when it was more respectable.

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75: “And To Its Most Death Develops”: Sex Junk Emails – I

[Excerpts from the week's sexually oriented junk email. This stuff is slightly less literate than the emails that offer me a few million dollars for pretending to be next of kin to some dead government minister, but it is more direct and -- to the point.]

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Is yours Below 5 Innches Long? Cheerio!

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We Guuaranteees Bigger Pen-nis [is this from Gollum?]

Howdy!

Would you like to see your penis grow inch by inch month by month?

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Do you very want to be engaged in love, but does not can? Purchase itself magic pills!

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The in cre ase of the s iz es of the s ex ual m em be r probably is a conclusive fact.

Be convinced of it!

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The si wx zes and form p mr en tw is, though are defined even at birth of the man, can be subjected changes. The bo kg d gfh y the man can stop the further growth per thirty years, but the growth of the m xz em qi ber does not stop! From scientific researches we know, that p wwg en sr is at the man grows and to its most death develops.

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Your m umn em mjx ber will inc hly re mp ase on 5-7 cen tu time xd ters in le zuf ng iyy th!

Your me yac m uhg be xf r on some centimeters becomes thicker!

Your sexual m vpc em vlk be sl r will lose confusing curvature and it becomes ideal by a st cwg raight line!

And now make a real step to this – b sno uy our me acs ans for incr hy ease of the m fdg em yl be tzy r.
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Betwene everie flancker, and of what breadth and ladies and gentlemen. This is your captain speaking. [not sure if this is about sex, but it was time for a break]

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Do the favourite woman of happy! Purchase itself medicine!

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Know her from the sexual side how is she inside exactly

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Realize all of her dreams with our help for short time

Have you ever heard this, “Damn it! Your p en is is really tiny!”?

Didn’t you feel stupid?

Don’t let ladies prefer dildo to you!

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Double Your Penis Size

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Don’t you look upon your diminutive willy as worth worrying about?

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Men always would like, that at them all was more, than at others.

And now make a real step to this – buy our means for increase of the member.

If the man speaks you, that to him all the same with what at him the size of the member – he dissembles.

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73: A Fiction Writer’s Exercise

I typed-off a David Foster Wallace story a few days ago. It was only 708 words, but typing it gave me a feel (literally – in the fingers) for what he is doing, how well he does it. Reading is good, but not the same, because it’s mostly passive. If you force yourself to write the words he wrote, in the same order, with the same rhythms, you experience the story as a writer. When your fingers stumble, that’s a sign he’s doing something you haven’t learned to do yet — structure, wording, tense, dialog. There’s an awful lot that David Foster Wallace does that we writers haven’t learned to do.

(“Only the copied text commands the soul of him who is occupied by it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text …” –Walter Benjamin)

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72: Writers: Do You Use a Thesaurus?

My contribution to a discussion about thesauri in the About.com Guide to Fiction Writing:

“I use, very frequently, the edition of Roget’s published in 1965 by St. Martin’s Press — a wonderful reference book, although time-consuming and clumsy to use. I think that publishers of alphabetical thesauri just don’t understand the thesaurus concept, or how one can best be used. I would be pathetically grateful if someone would publish Roget’s in a PC-loadable/searchable format. I have yet to find even a barely adequate thesaurus on disk or on the Web. This includes thesaurus.com, the thesaurus on the American Heritage Dictionary disk, and the thesaurus function of Merriam-Webster on line. With so much marginally useful stuff on the Web, I would hope that someone could put Roget’s there.”

[Gutenberg.org has a Roget's, but it's from 1911 and without hypertexting or other user tools]

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71: Billions and Billions

New Scientist, 24 Jan 09, interview with James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia theory:

“I think it’s wrong to assume we’ll survive 2˚C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4˚C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. … [T]he cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less. …” [Q: It’s a depressing outlook.] “Not necessarily. I don’t think 9 billion is better than 1 billion.”

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70: Steve Jobs on Death

“In 2004, [Steve] Jobs received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and had surgery, which apparently was successful. He did not disclose the illness until a speech at Stanford University in 2005. “No one wants to die,” he said. “Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent.”  (Washington Post, 15 Jan. 2009, page A-1 continuation)

Death is the one big thing we know that other Earthly beings don’t. What is the one big thing we don’t know?

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