Here's some things I don't take seriously at all:
Communism
Religions except for Judaism, Catholicism and Lutheranism, and Anabaptists (Amish, etc.)
Scientists when they talk about anything other than science
Poets when they talk about anything other than poetry
Models
Actors
Anyone who lived in the 19th century
Swedish surrealists
Anyone who lives south of the Rio Grande
Anyone who lives north of the USA
Russians
Germans
Spanish
Italians
Red China
North Korea
Romance novelists
Governors
Senators
Dogs
People who fold their tissues instead of crumpling before wiping
The Book of Esther
Swedish speaking Finns
Finns from Somalia
People who drink soda
People who drink beer in public
Clowns
People who write letters to the editor
Happy people
Calm people
Rabbits living in suburban areas
Squirrels
Chipmunks
Moose
Deer
People with Lyme's Disease
White clouds w/o darkness
The notion of paradise
People who show their bellies
People with lots of jewelry
People who have had plastic surgery
Anybody who appears on MSNBC
Anything that appears in the NYT
People who look like other people who are trying to be individualist (punks, hippies, feminists with short hair and angry looks)
Very fat people
Happy Hour
Peanut dishes at bars
Yogurt pretzels
Clothes salesmen
Gift shoppes
Mexican restaurants
Scandinavian food (unless it is made by my wife's mom)
Motorcycles with sidecars (unless they're driven by Nazis in WWII movies)
Station wagons
Answers that appear to be complete
No. 3 pencils
Red pens
Orange pens
People whose pant length is either inadequate or too long
Men with long hair who have to shake it out of their face in order to accomplish something
Any professional whose profession is to be angry about the state of their identity group
The "Indian" Ocean
"Indiana"
Pakistan
Kuwait
Iraq
The Taliban
Billionaires
Consultants
Psychotherapists
Anarchists
Libertarians
Swedish people after about the 11th century
Romans
Canaanites
Egyptians
Algerians
Tunisians
Curling
Pink combs
Clothes with brand names printed on them
I am beginning to realize this is a gushing well of irreverence that cannot possibly be capped
But there are some things I take seriously
Lists, for instance, if they're heartfelt
Saturday, January 22, 2011
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9 comments:
What about...
snowmen
people who are very serious
weather forecasters
astrologers
people who are arrogant
anyone who reads their horoscope (even just for entertainment)
fundamentalists
officiousness
mayors
wigs
Whigs
lobbyists
Crocs
tattoos
hybrid cars
feminism
lawn ornaments
The planet Pluto
Meteorites
Fire "hydrants"
Creamy sauces
Cheese with blue specks in it
Cheese with hair growing out of it
Cheese that bounces
People who use monogrammed cloth handkerchiefs
Marbles
Bazooka bubble gum sticks
Starlings
Caterpillars (the bugs)
Music that you have to study to get
Musicians with attitudes
Tastycakes
Jelly beans
Marshmallows
People who "express themselves" with handguns (or bombs)
Plastic bags
Newspapers that are primarily ads
Shopping stations
Caste systems
Casting calls
Strings of negative numbers with multiplication and all the stuff
That Matthew said (it's weird -- we're on the same page)
Satire
Parody
Burlesque
Irony
Sarcasm
Exaggeration
Hyperbole
Double Entendre
Absurdity
Fantasy
Euripides
Aeschylus
Sophocles
You tell me I have "issues" with Eastern Europeans, and then you list a catalogue like this???
Are Eastern Europeans mentioned somewhere? I did list Russians, but they are not generally regarded as Eastern European.
The list is partially facetious: partially not. The idea behind it is partially to list my own failures to understand certain groups, concepts, even items (marbles).
When people say, "He's lost his marbles," I would think that was more or less a good thing.
I don't see why people own marbles.
They're pretty, but why would you own them?
I never understood that.
I think everyone's mind down deep is a muddle of things, partially explicable, partially not, and the attempt to force it into a reliably PC format is quite comical. Even within the ultra-PC left, there are all kinds of anomalies within even the most self-righteous poseur.
There is no real uniformity among people either to the left or to the right. We are all anomalous.
That said, my Venn diagram overlap with Matthew's list was almost perfect. the only thing I had trouble with on his list was "hybrid cars." My mind is more or less open toward hybrid automobiles.
What's the matter with them?
Anyone doing a serious job or helping someone else do a serious job is someone I take seriously.
Hybrid cars are efficient, so I am not prepared to laugh at them. Should I?
I have the sense that people who are pretending to be in a victim group of some kind are living off of self-righteousness, and aren't doing any serious work for their constituency (instead, they want their constituency to remain victimized, so that they can continue to do their "job" as it is explained in the book BLACK NO MORE by Harlem novelist George Schuyler). what would Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton do if they couldn't scream about racism? The Tawana Brawley situation was useful to Sharpton, a meal ticket.
Somehow my criterion of the efficacy of something in doing a job is the basis of my litmus test.
It might also be Matthew's criterion: what real service do astrologers perform? What real job does a tattoo perform? If anything, it is the absence of value added.
Lobbyists, he writes, and lawn ornaments.
Feminists are complex. There are all kinds of feminists. I rather liked the Jungian feminists of the 70s although I can no longer take Jungian thought seriously. It mixes together all cultures in an attempt to find a universal unconscious based on archetypes. so, all mother images are the same whether it's Christ's mom, or the cannibalistic Nut of Egyptian motherhood.
Jungianism makes a mess of everything, and is therefore not useful.
Lawn ornaments wreck the uniformity of the grass, and make a mess of the neighborhood.
Fundamentalists are just a menace.
Snowmen and arrogant people are just cold nonentities. Perhaps the former has a use for children.
Marxist feminism posits an us vs. them mentality which is always already unhelpful, especially if you are among the "them" category which is to be attacked and abused.
But it doesn't even stand for family life, or for male children. I find this appalling.
It's non-functioning, and is a threat to a healthy and diverse neighborhood as it too often relies upon a shallow and impoverished account of men and men's roles in women's lives, in order to push its strange viewpoint.
Maybe it can be reformed.
Maybe Russia can be reformed, and start to work.
I doubt it.
On the other hand, there are women in Finland who are feminists, and I take them seriously. I don't know why for certain, but I think it's because the Lutheran side, and also they could never take Marxism seriously as the American feminists have.
Marxism just doesn't work. It provides a simple dichotomy of good and bad at its foundation, which leaves its practitioners simple-minded. It's probably a little better than Jungianism, but not very much.
wow
i get listless when it coems to lists
what about franz liszt
can you take him seriously
and what about J
what odd nod does this portend
is he making some sort of self confession here
imbecilic behaviour
seems surreal to me
i've been way away from computers
lately
maybe i spend a half hour a day
maybe nothing depending
anyway
glad to see you're keepin 'on
time is a jet plane
it moves too fast
anyway
i'm surprised you have not eulogized
captain beefheart here
the last musician
jh
So many eulogies for Beefheart I couldn't keep up, and I decided mine didn't matter that much. I posted comments on others' eulogies instead.
Nice to have you back, since you're only online a half hour a day!!
I asked my freshman students where they went online and all of them go to Facebook.
Inequality is another thing I can't take seriously. This is a somewhat serious problem. When Nussbaum accepted polygamy she was doing it only if women could also practice it. In a sense, this is equality.
But in a deeper sense, it isn't.
Because 1 = 1.
3 doesn't equal 1.
So polygamy is saying, three of you is worth one of me.
Or Bin Laden's dad was saying I'm worth 100s of those.
Structurally, it's wrong.
People then say, why don't we all make the same money, as in communism.
Well, then why are some doing nothing, and others doing a lot, and getting paid the same? that, too, is inequality.
If equality is the great arbiter of fairness, then we have to get it right. Probably none of us like inequality, but on the othre hand, I shouldn't have the equal right to play on the Knicks with amare Stoudemire.
Not only have I never played much bball, but I am 5 ten, and 54 years old, and weigh only 173 pounds.
Fairness also has to have something to do with merit.
It's very hard to get all this to make sense.
Before God, we're all equal. But, in front of the fans of the NBA, not so much.
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