over the past few days, the activity on this blog has been unbelievable, owing mostly to the first Philippine Graphic/Fic Awards. SFF readers started swarming out of the woodwork to drop in their spare change, and some of more "literary" bg have dropped by as well...
(yes, i'm exaggerating, there are only about 2 or 3 really regular commenters on here, but apparently, that's enough to start a cascade.)
and it's come to this: something's come to my attention that has made me rethink my entire perspective of genre vs. literary fiction writing, and it's shaken me to the core.
intrigued? well, as with all things in real life, it isn't as dramatic as you'd expect.
but for now, i must cogitate.
23 comments:
i'm omitting many of the necessary qualifications here (what, if this were a legal document, would be preambulated by a 'whereas' and suchlike), and this may strike you as a drooling oversimplification, but my take is, barring what people who think of themselves as guardians of the literary canon are saying (we plain mortals can easily ignore them), the distinction between 'genre' and 'literary fiction' appears to be very slim. in fact, i think 'literary fiction' is itself a genre.
i'm not sure if this makes sense; it would probably take many hours and bottles of beer and packs of cigarettes before i come up with anything mildly coherent.
but just to illustrate a tiny little point, something to think about (or not): when pynchon's 'gravity's rainbow' came out, not only did it win the national book award, it also won the nebula (or was it the hugo). that should say something.
there's actually a lot of that cross-genre awards thing going about recently. but my main observation that has lead to this meditation is how a spec fic reader is more likely to be able to appreciate a "mainstream" literary work than a "mainstream" reader is to appreciate spec fic.
now the knee jerk response to that would be, well, of course, spec fic material is weirder, more unfamiliar territory to most people... people can more easily "relate" to the material that primarily constitutes "mainstream" fiction.
surprisingly, however, in many cases, it does not appear to be the material that is in contention. it's the writing.
going back into semi-fanboy mode (indulge me, it's the easiest example given the context of this blog), the opinion on Atha has been divided in terms of style.
(there have been opinions on the story itself, too, but those opinions appear independent from writing criticisms, and i don't see as clear a division between "literary" and "spec fic" types on that, and here i'd like to focus on those opinions that have a beef with the writing style)
i personally can't figure out what's so bad with the writing. can't pick out the nuances some people (mainly those with a more trained, "literary" bg) seem to pick up on immediately. surely a few flaws aren't enough to damage the entire piece?
of course, i've never formally trained in any sort of writing, never taken anything up remotely close to the kind of literary classes a lot of people dropping by here seem to have... so what do i know, right?
i would be supremely grateful, however, for some enlightenment.
i've always said, the same rules for "good writing" should apply across all such "genres" of writing. but all this leads me to think, maybe i'm wrong...
picking up from your example... my quarrel with Atha is precisely with the language. it's not problematic in the sense of being convoluted or out-and-out bad. it's just so damn lifeless. it doesn't read smoothly so i can't get into the story. the language must not draw so much attention to itself that the text is rendered unreadable.
in Atha, the syntax, phrases, word combinations...you've heard them all before, it's almost hackneyed. for me, it's a case where the prose style gets in the way of the story.
but i want to make clear that style here refers to something as basic as sentence structure, word choice, rhythm. no matter the content, language/style is what makes a story or poem or blog post come alive, makes it fly. if the prose is wooden, the darned thing just can't take off.
i know that sounds really harsh. but it's a problem of many writers, even those who've won god knows how many palancas. they don't seem to have an ear for music. and if the writing has no rhythm or music, if the language holds no surprises, why bother? might as well read a phone book or a washing machine instruction manual.
sairo: that's exactly what surprises me. because for me, admittedly a reader who leans further towards spec fic than anything else, and who has never actually studied either literature or writing, the style of Atha soars. it is dynamic and involving, and colors the physical senses as well as the abstract intellect. they gather around the images and raise them up, so that, while being pretty themselves, they still do not restrict your attention to themselves.
the arrangement of the words, for me, flow smoothly through both the mind and the tongue, so that they aren't painful for reading out loud, hearing out loud, or reading in silence. the rhythms and cadences, i find, far from being wooden, are as moving as brilliantly syncopated and beautifully executed piece of improvised jazz. and if there is grit in the narrative voice, it only serves to further enhance the feel for the world the narrator and Conrad are living in.
and instead of being hackneyed, mundane, or cliched, to me, the narration feels simply familiar. i don't mean that it feels ordinary; merely that it is the voice you hear of someone you know, telling you a story you may or may not have heard before, but invites you to listen either way.
many have commented on Atha's editing, and i'm sure that has something to do with your complaints. but i still don't get it. normally, no matter how biased i may be with my own opinions, i can see the point of the other side. in this case, i just can't seem to see it.
it's even more surprising for me, given the fact that up until now, i'd thought i had a particularly jaded palate.
it appears that my response to Atha's writing is nearly the absolute opposite of yours. opposing opinions are fine, except that, in this case, i don't think it's simply a matter of subjectivity. and it leads me to ask an important question given the line of thinking this has put me on: are you a spec fic reader?
i can't say i am. when i encounter a writer i like, i tend to read everything i can by that writer before i move on to another one. i'm very monogamous that way. hence, i'm not as big a bookslut as the love of my life. like a virgin, kumbaga.
but i have flirted with some writers who prefer to set their stories beyond consensus reality. i've had flings with kurt vonnegut and even played lolita to michael moorecock when i was 11. and there was this unforgettable one night stand when i was 21 with this hunky cyberpunk anthology called Mirrorshades (ed. bruce sterling) which i really really really liked.
spec fic is such a super-broad genre that many mainstream/realist writers have produced some work that can be loosely labeled as sf. and anyway, what defines sf is its content, its concerns, the fact that it chooses to skew even a little bit this thing called reality. what does NOT define sf is its use of language.
this is just rephrasing and oversimplifying even more what paul said about literary fiction being a genre in itself. but i'll say it anyway: for writing to be good--whatever the content--the language must be good, or at the very least, surprising and enjoyable. brave or witty or clever enough to say something totally unexpected.
which is to say that all good writing can be classified under the hyperdupermegagenre of 'literary writing'. think fahrenheit 451. think king james bible. think shel silverstein and maurice sendak. think calvin and hobbes. think satan rules and other songs by los chupacabras. think theoretical physicist michio kaku's meditations on 10-dimensional hyperspace.
so, no. i'm not an sf reader. but i know good writing when i see it. to be less angas, lemme just say that i like reading a lot of wildly differing styles. but always, always it is good language--quiveringly brilliant prose--that gets me off very time.
going back to the writer of Atha: she's young so it really is unfair to nitpick and compare her to all the big names out there. i wasn't doing that. i was comparing the language of her winning piece to stuff submitted by other, younger students in my classes. and their language kicks her language's ass big time. this is not meant to demean her in any way. i'm just saying slow down a bit with the praises. yes, she's competent now. but give her 5 or 10 years of what the tanders writers call literary apprenticeship...i'm sure by then, she'll really blow your mind.
sairo: the fact that literary fiction is itself a genre is not in contention.
what is for me is all the debate about the insistence on quality in the spec fic genre, and how readers receive it, and how spec fic readers judge works compared to more "literary" readers.
for instance, i go back to your earlier statement:
"and if the writing has no rhythm or music, if the language holds no surprises, why bother? might as well read a phone book or a washing machine instruction manual."
this totally misses the point of having the spec fic genre. certainly a degree of competence is requisite, but you said it yourself, style is not a prerequisite for "good spec fic."
which is what's totally shaking my world right now. because i've always insisted on similar standards for judging spec fic and more "mainstream" literary fiction.
i'm beginning to think that reading background certainly plays a big role when it comes to this sort of thing. spec fic-specific reading seems to innure one to an appreciation for the idea and wonder of a work and the imagery (no matter how many times the idea has been re-used; after all, there are no truly "original" ideas left out there, and the question is merely whether you've "heard it all before") elicited by the words as much or maybe even more so than the words themselves.
the effect of which may be to blind readers such as myself to the kind of "nuances" readers such as yourself show more sensitivity to.
in contrast, having a more "literary" background may make you insensitive to the wonder and ideas and imagery a certain writer is trying to evoke.
put it this way: a flower is beautiful. a spec fic reader is more likely to find the same flower beautiful every time he sees it, but a literary reader needs to be able to see it in a different light or angle each time he sees it in order to appreciate it.
i know it's a poor example since a literary reader can read the same book over and over again, but i hope you see my point.
going back to Atha: i admit, i may have been blinded by this sort of imbalance between the valuing of the imagery and ideas suggested by the words, and yet the blinding seems so complete as to obscure for me the flaws you see in it. what distresses me about that is that i've always thought that i could just as easily be turned-off by an awful turn of phrase as the next jaded reader (i have a ton of books i can't get past the first few pages of because of this; books that have been praised by both readers and critics alike).
all this has led me to question my "objective" aesthetic sense. i may continue to write what i write, and read what i like reading, but as a writer, it bothers me because i know i'll probably miss those nuances in my own writing, and that will probably hinder me from becoming a truly great writer.
on the flipside, i'm not sure i want that kind of knowledge: i'm jaded enough a reader as it is. i'm not sure i can take any more "jading."
incidentally, i plead the "three-beers-in-me-and-
that's-my-limit" defense for whatever idiocy i may have put out there in the last comment.
"but you said it yourself, style is not a prerequisite for "good spec fic.""
i did not and would never say that. i did say spec fic is not defined by a particular use of language, the way poetry is. which is another way of saying that labeling a text as spec fic should not be used as an excuse for bad prose. not that i'm accusing you of doing this. it's just that too many of people defend bad writing by saying it's "pomo" or "meta" or "experimental" or "sf". that just riles me.
"after all, there are no truly "original" ideas left out there"
we all know this, and the enormity of this truth leads many to despair. so what's a writer to do? say it in a different way, make it seem as if it were an original idea. in writing as in technology, we need to know what's been done before in order to rework it into something new. at the risk of sounding like a hippie: every single act of creation alters the world, even just a little bit. so the quality of this creation/utterance/performance matters is we are to make (warning: so earnest, it's gag-worthy) this world a better place.
"a spec fic reader is more likely to find the same flower beautiful every time he sees it, but a literary reader needs to be able to see it in a different light or angle each time he sees it in order to appreciate it."
nyek. i'm sorry but this sounds condescending on so many different levels. shift topic na lang...
re an "objective aesthtic sense": no such animal exists. i dunno who first said this i remember one poet-scholar-critic admit that in the end, "there's no accounting for taste." it's the favorite caveat of the small literary barkada that always judge writing contests in the philippines.
i rarely, almost never, quote butch dalisay but i do agree with what he said at the baguio workshop in 1999. just three words: raise. the. stakes.
last hirit: best not to blog when drunk. mahirap na. cheers!
last last hirit: please give the love of my life a birthday hug for me. thanks!
sairo: ok, here it goes: define "good" versus "bad" prose? i accept levels of competence, but what i keep going back to and what you keep seeming to dismiss is the fact that i found Atha's writing to be really effective for me, while you merely found it "competent" (or am i misinterpreting you again?), so it doesn't really seem to be a competence issue. which is why i've been looking for and asking for and hoping for your "objective criteria" for saying it wasn't as well-written as it could be.
my other point was that my own preference seems to stem from my spec fic slanted reading background. and while you've "dabbled" in sf tinged works, it isn't the same at all.
when you said that sf is not defined by the use of language, you were hitting something very true about the genre. ok, i'm sorry for using the phrase "not a prerequisite" but i'm not making excuses. i'm talking about the genre as it is. pulp is a significant part of sf (and i imagine other genres as well, but that's a whole different set of arguments), and while there are some really "well-written" pulps out there, a lot of it isn't... what i, as in me, personally, found "wooden", to take one of your adjectives... and yet given the material, even these "substandard" pulps really worked. something that doesn't seem to quite work for non-sf works.
"we all know this, and the enormity of this truth leads many to despair. so what's a writer to do? say it in a different way, make it seem as if it were an original idea. in writing as in technology, we need to know what's been done before in order to rework it into something new. at the risk of sounding like a hippie: every single act of creation alters the world, even just a little bit. so the quality of this creation/utterance/performance matters is we are to make (warning: so earnest, it's gag-worthy) this world a better place."
and we're back to Atha. i agree with this statement: i raised the point trying to see if the ideas might have been behind your tepid attitude towards Atha. because the thing is, this is exactly what Atha's prose did for the material. again, the qualifier, "imho"
now i've been hoping for the emergence of a set of "objective standards" (yes, i apologize for the use of the phrase "objective aesthetics"... however, the point is there in the wording) you could give me as to why you reacted to Atha with a "meh" and not the "wow" i did. and yet there doesn't seem to be one. is there? i'd really like to know.
from what i gather, what you've been saying is that it's a matter of "not-up-to-par", if "competent", writing... but given that it was effective (and beautiful) for a certain subset of readers, isn't that a possible (just a possible, i'm not forcing it) sign that Atha is a matter of taste and not a question of "good" "competent" or "bad" prose? i could go back to all the things i've said about why the story's prose worked for me, and you could go back to all the reasons why it didn't for you... so it appears at this point that it falls into the "taste" category.
again, no, i'm not trying to make excuses for "bad writing" in sf. i'm trying to find the validity in that "bad writing" concept. if you're only talking about levels of competence, fine. but in terms of effect?
Atha, at this point, appears to be evidence of the polarization i've been talking about all along, between readers with an sf slant and those without.
and so far, it appears to be a matter of taste.
as for the condescending bit, i'm sorry you see it that way, but it still seems like a valid metaphor as far as i've seen from this discussion so far.
so here's to more beer in the future.
are you sure you want me to give him a birthday hug for you? baka may mangyari...
Ngar! Sabi na nga ba! Brokeback Atha!
Though seriously, I have to chime in here: I'm not like skinny who found Atha In Exelcis Deo but then again, of the short-listed works, I found it had the best prose GIVEN its concept and execution. (For example, I reviewed Strange Map of Time as having good prose, but this actually hampered the magical realism of the story.)
Here's my question, Sairo: what's your examples of good prose? That way I'll have a better idea of comparison to your description of Atha. ;-)
sairo: help, skinnyblackcladdink wouldn't let go of me!!
i deny everything.
banzai cat: i gave some rather facetious examples in my second comment here, which i'll paste here again for ease:
think fahrenheit 451. think king james bible. think shel silverstein and maurice sendak. think calvin and hobbes. think satan rules and other songs by los chupacabras. think theoretical physicist michio kaku's meditations on 10-dimensional hyperspace.
i can also add the names of my semi-recent favorite writers to the list: marguerite duras, pico iyer, diane ackerman, michael ondaatje, a.s. byatt, paul auster. but that would simply underscore my literary bias.
you want good pulp? there's always stephen king, who just recently came out with the colorado kid. you want a good sf prose? look at j.g. ballard. black humor set in consensus reality? go for t.c. boyle.
but for an even closer example, just read the stuff written by the love of my life here and here. and i'm not saying he's good just because it's his birthday. he really is brilliant. just frickin lazy.
sbcdink: see above for my "objective standards". i can also go to the trouble of annotating/editing Atha to prove my point. but i won't. unless i get paid good money for it. hee hee.
paul: oya lasseunai. mameu oyateu aduerei. yeh.
Hehe yah I saw the satan rules thing. Where the hell does EC get his stuff?!? (Does that mean you also know carljoe?)
Actually, I like your literary bias as I have AS Byatt and Pico Iyer on my radar. But given that, it's true that "Atha" isn't in the league as those you've mentioned. However, neither were the rest, which is why I pegged "Atha" as the best of the lot. Likewise, given the ambience and tone of the story, I thought the prose fit quite rightly. It's a matter of handling, which is a tricky thing.
(On the other hand, I haven't read Stephen King's mystery but I heard it didn't get good reviews. However, I do know that King's overall prose isn't one for flash and dazzle but rather pretty straightforward. Which makes me wonder why call it good pulp writing; isn't pulp writing verging almost on the purple?)
sairo: i'm assuming this is what you mean by your objective bits:
"it's just so damn lifeless. it doesn't read smoothly so i can't get into the story. the language must not draw so much attention to itself that the text is rendered unreadable.
in Atha, the syntax, phrases, word combinations...you've heard them all before, it's almost hackneyed. for me, it's a case where the prose style gets in the way of the story.
but i want to make clear that style here refers to something as basic as sentence structure, word choice, rhythm. no matter the content, language/style is what makes a story or poem or blog post come alive, makes it fly. if the prose is wooden, the darned thing just can't take off"
and yet, your analysis doesn't seem to apply to my personal reading experience...which seems to indicate that the result is still subjective.
even your choice of examples underscores a major diff between "literary" and "SF" thinking in terms of readership... but i'll say no more as i've no doubt you'll go back to that condescending thing.
hehe, yeah, we were just talking about annotating Atha, but i guess that would be taking this discussion a bit too far... unless anybody here's up to it.
thanks to this discussion, i've finally come to some conclusions i'm comfortable with. which isn't necessarily a good thing, but i'll let it lie there for awhile. me, i'm fragile, see? plus, at the moment, i'm enjoying just being a hack and not tangling horns with giants.
when i build up enough courage, i'll have paul line-edit my own stuff (if he's willing to, without charge. heh), get an idea of what exactly is going on in those heads of yours, and what a lowly hack like me can do to raise. the. stakes.
if it turns out to be necessary, that is. like i said, right now with my relatively "lowly" SF bg, i seem to be fine with a certain degree of "hackness" in my reading AND writing.
bc: pulp exemplifies the other reason why we read: simple pure fun that doesn't rely on language. (no, i disagree that reading a story with "bad" writing is necessarily commensurate to reading a phonebook.)
Stephen King, who i personally find unreadable, is a great pulp writer because he's a pure storyteller. you don't read him for his prose; you read him for his stories.
somehow, i feel another blazing set of comments coming my way...
I suppose that explains the little red laser dots ranging all over your blog. ;-)
Actually, yeah, I was confused why pulp was mentioned since as far I know, pulp is all about the story and not about the language. What I can remember, those stories were written quick by their writers for the money in magazines (hence pulp magazines). Look at PKD or Robert E. Howard. Heck, look at Lovecraft! Of course the stories themselves or the ideas were really great, which is why you could excuse the bad prose.
Now, gotta get back to work...
that's exactly why pulp was mentioned: because in pulp, it's all about the story and not the language.
from where sairo seems to be coming from (don't shoot! don't shoot! please GOD DON'T SHOOT!), nothing excuses "bad writing" in a work of fiction.
what i'm trying to establish here is whether such standards as are used to "judge" more "mainstream" literary works really should be considered the same standards for "judging" spec fic.
which, it appears to me now, they do not. modern spec fic, after all, has very definite roots in pulp.
taking a break from insane translation project to throw another wrench into this discussion here. this is the most fun i've had recently, but i gotta admit it's been a slow week. i've been sober since saturday nite. not good. bawi ako this weekend.
where was i?
we can be reductive and say that everything is subjective, it's all about having different tastes as readers and writers. fine. i won't quarrel with that. but. let's go back to my three favorite words of the day:
raise. the. stakes.
NOT raising the stakes is what's wrong with a lot of the reading and writing and awards-giving that goes on these days. not just in pinas but pretty much everywhere.
here in korea, we've been reading & reviewing a lot of korean lit in translation, their Canon. the best of the best nila. korea is really itching to be the next japan in every way, including having international bestselling writers like the 2 murakamis & that banana chick.
but: my buddy s & i pretty much agree it's not happening anytime soon because the quality of these korean texts (or the english translations) are not up to world standards. ka-sagwa ng prosa. but i blame the bad translation, hopefully it aint the writers' fault. sana lang.
anyway, writers have to realize they can't afford to be insular (in terms of geography or genre). must we continue patting ourselves on the back for getting our nth palanca? hanggang dun na lang ba?
the moment you decide to write, you're already in competition with other writers. you write in english, you compete with all the writers of the english-speaking world, regardless of genre. you write in a specialized genre like children's lit or young adult or sf, you're in competition with the all the best writers in these genres all over the world.
shift topic.
good pulp seems an oxymoron noh? but if i may...
good prose need not be crammed with modifiers; i like duras for example because her prose is so stark and clean and straightforward. no frills. but good prose can also be mindbendingly complex, as in the run-on sentences of the love of my life and his demigod, dfwallace. it takes all kinds to make good prose. but it has to sing.
stephen king's not that great a prose stylist, i admit. but he's cleaner than most bestsellers and a good storyteller. and readable to a certain degree. and damn, he made a lot of money writing those books. in my time (ca. high school and early college), i did read some of his work and enjoyed it.
my favorite whipping boy on the other hand (that blithering idiot-heretic dan brown) is so frickin awful i kept throwing the book at my bedroom wall when i was reading. but heresy aside, you gotta admit that dan brown just really can't write for shite. as mysteries go, watching an old episode of scooby doo is much more involving that that da vinci code crap.
hmmm...ano pa ba?
there was a mention of "effect" somewhere. i think "effect" says a lot about both about reader and writer. i'll stop right there, heh.
banzai cat: easy fagela & i go waaaaay back, we've been good buddies for more than 10 years now. i know most of the guys in the band: carljoe, bayaw joel and mikael too. i think easy writes good hooky songs because he knows how to tell a good story and has a wickedly clever grasp of language. i dunno if they still play easy's old stuff (ma ling, etc.) but The Easy EP is worth having. they might have copies at sarabia UP shopping center. or you can just steal their mp3s from paul. bayaw joel also told me they have a demo CD or something somewhere...
sbcdink: at no point was i being objective when i made my comments re Atha. i really wanted to like it but i'd read her writing before and no matter how wonderful and interesting her details and images... her diction (word choice) and syntax (sentence structure, word collocation) just isn't that developed yet. she doesn't hear the rhythms of language clearly yet. she doesn't seem conscious of the beats. but i really really was hoping the text would read better than i expected. but no.
I'd comment later but I found this quote from Italo Calvino which was quite apt to Sairo's "raise the stakes":
"Overambitious projects may be objectionable in many fields, but not in literature. Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond all hope of achievement. Only if poets and writers set themselves tasks that no one else dares imagine will literature continue to have a function."
Italo Calvino rawks.
dtglki-- a digital language for the birds
the problem with the idea of raising.the.stakes as you say is the question of exactly how you want to raise the stakes? you're coming from the standpoint that language, or quality of language, appears to be the most important point of literature. comes with your bg.
me, i like oxymorons. they vocalize the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time.
and "good pulp" only sounds like an oxymoron because you insist on looking literature one way, and only one way.
the problem with writers who hold their literature too highly is that they seem to belittle the reader. certainly the responses of a reader to a writer say something about the reader, but what writers don't acknowledge is that the way they respond to a reader says something about them, too. I will write what I think is GOOD, and what is GOOD FOR THEM TO READ, and the reader must catch up to ME.
i personally believe there is value in striking a balance rather than simply striving for a stubborn, single-minded objective that leaves everyone else behind. neither approach should be reviled. and this translates, in a way, into the value of genres. genres are a "market" reality, but i believe they go a step beyond that: they reflect the diversity of human experience, and the value of giving importance to each. again, we must go back to subjectivity. as we've established that that is not in contention, i'll only add that subjectivity produces an important question for your three favorite words, because your insisting on only one way of doing it.
Stephen King and Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling write popular fictions. while they exhibit competence, skill and talent in varying degrees, their value is not measured by their use of language, nor should they be. now i personally don't have very high opinions of their works, but i understand their importance and relevance to people in general. it isn't the language, but the effect that they have on people that gives them value to people: they encourage people to read. they stimulate them to imagine. and they cause them to think. the fact that what they say is trite, ridiculous or just plain dumb isn't the contention: it's the fact that their saying what they do gets people to do those three things.
they too have raised.the.stakes.and they haven't done it by focusing on language.
and that, ultimately, is my point. there are different genres. this cannot be denied no matter how much more "literary-oriented" writers from the different genres wish it were otherwise. the expectations for each genre must ultimately learn to take into account each genre's strengths, faults, and aims.
on a side not, possibly tangential in its relation to the main thread of discussion, i personally don't agree that it's a necessarily bad thing that writers should fall into genres. a writer, after all, can write in any genre he wishes, and even produce "slipstreams" and hybrids and whatnot. rather, the problem comes when a writer becomes trapped in a genre against his will.
this was the main point i was trying to ferret out and the question i was hoping to answer: should there be a universal standard for "judging" literature from different genres?
the question is iffy, and so is the answer. but at the moment, i would have to say know. Calvino's comments notwithstanding (i agree the man's a genius, but i don't necessarily agree with him), literature serves various functions that require different approaches.
"Only if poets and writers set themselves tasks that no one else dares imagine will literature continue to have a function."
this, i believe, is too limited a statement, and devalues a large body of literary work that is, even if it does not appeal to writers and readers of a "higher mind", are important nonetheless.
So, have you firmed up your ideas on the standards of language? I thought you had good points on those...
ibhnegg-- a bad (or negative) egg
bc: well, yes, and they are scattered through (and possibly hidden in) the billion or so comments i've posted on this blog, on yours, and maybe a couple other sites since the topic surfaced.
i suppose i should eventually put them all in one post, but, to sort of sum everything up, there's this to be said about our world: things are always as they should be, and things are never as they should be. live and let.
hpzbz - mz'z grmm
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