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Do Conveniences Cripple Us?

00:03 / 16.10.04

Luxuriating in the archival breadth of a 40 GB iPod versus a high-maintenance CD player; reveling in the cell phone after cashing in your cordless after destroying your antediluvian handset; ogling the daikon-inflected multicultural microwaved worldcuisine before retiring to your 5.1 cable-DVD-Tivo-Playstation-2-frenzied entertainment vortice and then to unconsciousness:-- doesn't all of this do to the attention span what mass transit, cars, television and elevators do to the body? Are conveniences leaving you horribly out of shape?

00:16 / 16.10.04

I couldn't read that actually, all the way through.

00:17 / 16.10.04

I certainly ....ooooh, look IBM has a new Architect for DB2 Content Manager....

00:20 / 16.10.04

It certainly don't rhyme.

unheimlich manoeuvre

00:23 / 16.10.04

well not all the time.

00:25 / 16.10.04

I've just been writing a program that reformats Project Gutenberg literature so that you can read it on your iPod. (I have, honestly, you can download it from my site.)

What does *that* mean?

unheimlich manoeuvre

00:26 / 16.10.04

*cough* apologies

...

not only to mention how the dull and reckless pursuit of profit and convenience leaves my mind also out of shape.

13:01 / 16.10.04

I do hope the middle-brow party line isn't going to be enforced rigidly around here. Barbelith seems different from the Fowler's-Modern-English-Usage-worshipping minions on less erudite boards. All of you seem eclectic and inviting from a distance. I hope that perception's correct.

More on rhythm in prose:

The discipline of conventional prose is *not* to rhyme or fall into obvious meter. Other writers used to make fun of Dickens for lapsing into iambic pentameter; many twentieth century writers (such as Ford Maddox Ford) spent days ferreting out and removing unintentional rhymes.

Personally, I don't mind intrusions of meter into prose -- free verse has made it all meter, really -- and I enjoy elaborate cadences. Are there really no fans of Thomas de Quincey or Thomas Browne on these boards?

Contrary to Fowler's premise, a Latinate vocabulary and complex sentence structure aren't always indicative of a meretricious middle-class person with upper-class pretensions. Some people express themselves that way sincerely; they grew up reading old books from some relative's well-stocked study. Their style might strike you as unnecessary or opaque, but that's really how they think.

Also (and I hope this doesn't sound self-aggrandizing):

The subject of rhyming seems strangely pertinent. I've had rhyming poetry (along with *vers libre*) publised in the Mississippi Review, Storming the Reality Studio (Duke University Press) and many other anthologies and periodicals. Certain of those poems have also been translated into Japanese, German and French for other anthologies. Recently, my essay on poetry and music notation was published in a critical anthology titled _An Exaltation of Forms_ (Michigan University Press). The examples I give in that essay are from Thomas Campion, Sidney Lanier, Celia Zufofsky and (you guessed it) my own "Justine Variations." Perhaps including "Justine" was simply an excuse to get my work into a book with Pulitzer-winning poets. If so, *that* would be an example of obnoxious class warfare.

13:29 / 16.10.04

I like Thomas Browne... Hydriotaphia is my favourite.

I think the above posts are not so much critical of your prose style as facetious comments on having short attention spans - the topic might get a more serious response in the Head Shop.

For my part, I don't find that my personal attention span has fallen - when the conditions are right. I am very easily distracted. I do quail when reading of scholars from previous centuries, who either seem to have studied for hours and hours on end with no lapse of concentration, or to have performed prodigious feats every day before lunchtime, but perhaps this is a false perspective... they can't all have been like that.

This post has been a minor distraction from the paper I am supposed to be writing...

14:17 / 16.10.04

"I've just been writing a program that reformats Project Gutenberg literature so that you can read it on your iPod. (I have, honestly, you can download it from my site.)

"What does *that* mean?"

It means I'd be thrilled to beta-test your program whenever it's finished.

14:29 / 16.10.04

Yep, it would be much better in the Head Shop for a serious discussion.

Just make sure if you go off topic in there...(Like the bit you posted about prose, for example. which confused me for a minute when I matched it up with the rhyming post and Gutenberg)...just make sure you must warn everyone first. Those who visit HS like to keep things orderly and flowing.

15:15 / 16.10.04

Threadrottery warning:

The discipline of conventional prose is *not* to rhyme or fall into obvious meter.

True, but the discipline of thread summaries here a often is.

Boy, where are Haus and Flyboy when you need them? Welcome aboard and prepare to be candled.

Warning ends.

15:48 / 16.10.04

It means I'd be thrilled to beta-test your program whenever it's finished

It exists at the moment (gutenPod) though the easy version is OS X only; it's built around a Perl script so can also be run on any system that has Perl. There is however an example that can be copied across to an iPod connected to a Windows machine.

It doesn't do very much apart from reformat the text so that you can read it on an iPod at the moment, but I'm open to suggestions.

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:24 / 17.10.04

I hope this doesn't sound self-aggrandizing

Your optimism is admirable but unfounded.

02:34 / 23.10.04

My response to the last few posts can be found on this thread: http://www.barbelith.com/topic/16959.

As for "threadrot": If I understand it, Barbelith's Etiquette FAQ states that threadrot is usually tolerated (and, occasionally, even encouraged) in the Conversations Forum -- especially, I would think, if the poster in question is responding to charges made in other off-topic posts (see the very first response in this thread).

Besides, why introduce the subject of threadrot and invite flyboy to troll if your purpose is to avoid topic disintegration?

Regrettable Juvenilia

15:52 / 23.10.04

You were the one who invited me.

Tryphena Absent

17:48 / 23.10.04

People in this country are taller and have bigger feet than ever before. They live longer, generally they're extremely healthy. The idea that Playstation's are making us all fatter and lazier is a little odd, if you like exercise you take it and if you dislike exercise than you find an excuse to avoid it. If we didn't have elevators than buildings wouldn't be so large! I think the same logic applies to our brains, the fact that a giant proportion of our population can read is in itself a triumph... I'll be back to this thread later to continue talking about brain food and mental discipline.

20:23 / 23.10.04

Cripple is a bit of a sensationsal word to use don't you think? Well it gives me an image of a maniacal Kathy Bates hobbling me with a t.v. anyway.
Quite obviously they (modern appliances) can have an adverse affect on ones health but that's just modern living. If people want to be fit they'll usually do something about it. Where as in the days of yore people probably got their recommended daily amount of excercise in a way that was easily incorporated into their own work or play or travel without actually having to have a responsibility or critical need to do so outside their normal routine. These days people have to add a new category excersise. Simple as that.

22:21 / 23.10.04

Thoreau said something like, "We don't ride upon the train; it rides upon us." I think there is something absurd, at least, about the fact that so much of our civilization is based on making things more convenient while, in the US more than 60% of the population is seriously overwheight (ok, the stat's off the top of my head but I think it's pretty close), and we're seeing all kinds of expensive problems that arise from that... We speed up life and feel both overwhelmed and lonely? Alienated? This would perhaps be better in the Headshop, but still...