in the centuries since my last post (ok, weeks. but in the 186,000 miles-per-second world of Sinister, i am light-years behind) i noted a desultory thread in re: the idea of content; viz, the pop culture and pop music. especially the articulations of Peter Miller and Youn J. Noh about the work of Lloyd Cole ... when i think on't, as i am wont, it arrives bearing the same blithe controversy that was being promulgated stateside in the 80s as to the 'canon' of literature as the West's abiding standard of shared references. the upshot of the ballyhoo was, simply, we are becoming low-class by lowering the academic rigors to admit, oh, stuff like semiotic revisioning of texts, african-american and feminist studies, offering MFA's in computer animation, etc. you know the type, right? (a lot of tosh and bother as to who was controlling the curricula...amounted to a few editorials and alan bloom's "the closing of the american mind" getting on the bestseller list for a few weeks. shows you how far down we are when we only get into these discussions when it becomes pop controversy, eh?) so, we are, in point-of-fact, in a post-literate society wherein the concept of a single, white-judeo-christian, english-speaking body of work is pretty much irrelevant, considering how multi-culti and polyethno have created incursions into the common lingua franca (is that right? maybe it means 'french tongue'? naw! couldn't be...?) to become the fair rate coin of intellectual exchange. oops. too much high-falutin' MLA-baitin' goin' on in this one. i should dele this but, as there are so many o-level or a-level or whatevers (never could make sense of your SAT process) and grad study folk on this list, i'd best leave it in in to show i'm just as foolish as ye. but let me shave it down. i do believe it was dr. johnson who said, in a letter (might've been to boswell-- might not): "I am sorry to write you such a long letter. I haven't the time for a short one." Which I take to mean, brevity is not only the soul of wit but responsible communication. (Unless he was being extremely Brit and meant that he hadn't time for 'a quick one'...which i understand means something altogether different over there. and knowing the good doctor's habits, one doubts he would EVER refuse a quick one.) but i digress. what i mean to say is that the allusions to books and movies of a certain era, the modern generation more or less, may 'date' the material, but that is also its strength. name-dropping (or, in rap, name-checking) is the way we transfer information packets (incidentally boys&girls, this is the ENTIRE foundation of the internet!--the very life's blood of our lovely little e-mail clusterf*ck) without having to go into graphic detail. when i say something like "clouds scudding across a spielberg sky" i am resonably certain that a fair percentage of my readers will be able to put the picture together without oil paint. or if i say "an application form as easy to fill out as an infinite jest book report" i, again, am willing to accept that i may leave a number of head-scratchers in my wake...and hope that the insightful will help to clean-up after me. i mean, c'mon! can anyone really say they get EVERY reference on this list? BTB-- David White wrote: "men, dont do that stupid warbly whistling all round the shop.and if you do dont stand with your hand on your hip and do andrew loyd webber. its not ladylike." I've never noticed it in supermarkets but I have noticed that everytime theres been somebody in my house to do domestic repairs or deliveries (gas man, electricity man, delivery men or whatever) they always do that warbling whistle thing. It's never a tune I've ever heard but seems to be kind of organic in that it constantly changes and doesn't seem to be one tune in particular. I reckon it must be part of the training. The only other place I've ever heard them is on trains. Theres generally some old bastard sitting right behind me whistling away in that incredibly annoying, through the teeth style that makes the sound penetrate through even the loudest personal stereo headphones. Grrr. and Jan Imgrund followed: My driving teacher was possibly the best (or worst, depending on your opionion about warbling) warbling whistler in the world. *warblewarblewarblewarble* turn the next right, please *warblewarblewarble* no, not this one. This one's one way in the other direction. Got you again, you fool!! *laughwarblelaughwarblelaughwarblelaughwarble*. How on earth are you supposed to concentrate with that? i suspect you've forgotten the one spot at which all gents whistle like a flock of songbirds: the gents; aka, the public urinal. seems to have something to do with the plumbing. (please feel free to create any double/triple entendres you may like from this. i prefer being the straight banana--more or less. which also leads to even more innuendo.) and that's my 15 minutes of flame. +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. 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