Yup.. sedimentary

Post #25,207 by Ashton 1/22/02 9:43:01 PM Reply	Yup.. sedimentary - Rocks! Not to worry. As with the Augean Stables, there's never a dearth of muck; however - one must be careful not to shovel shit against the tide. Methinks that what we (all) lack right now are - enough really excellent speakers: as from Twain --> HL Mencken (Tom Lehrer! does it with song). The more TLA-ridden and convoluted the speech habits taught wannabe polit. speech writers - the more skewerable is their drivel BUT.. The sort of bald-faced simplicity which is capable of cutting through cant so effectively that - the HS dropout (and even the MBA) and the chicken-plucker all get it right away! Now That needs artistry, especially re timing. If you saw the recent 4 hrs on Mark Twain (in 2 sessions) on PBS: seems he may have been the most enthralling speaker Murica has ever heard and.. he wrote about his noticing the supreme effect of... .. .. timing, and set out to perfect it. Problem with written convention is, for timing .. ... ya gotta do weird stuff. Newspaper editors' copies of Strunk would never let ya get away with it. Anyways - we know what we lack (along with Laugh In and The Smothers Brothers). SNL says it all: There IS no decent humor on Prime Time Drivel at all. A humorless culture (or humor-deprived) is what gets us these inane speeches with silly slogans and 0 content. Find a solution to our cultural desert and .... they might even Love ya - 'cause I don't believe yet that: Muricans are nearly as stupid as the crap they are forced to watch. I also don't believe this is by accident - but how could you prove that? Ashton (Note that the likes of Geo Carlin - can only get a gig on HBO or in Vegas. 'Controversial' remains the bugaboo of the euphemistic society. Gotta go tinkle..)
Post #25,249 by marlowe 1/23/02 9:31:42 AM Reply	How very Taoist. There's a time to go with the flow, and there's a time to divert the flow. Since there's a natural bias in human nature toward the former, one must compensate by concentrating on the latter. It is no accident that the West has attained such Herculean strength in the world. The Chinese go with one flow. The Muslim fundamentalists go with another. But we Anglophones engineer the flow to go with us. So it is that those who fail to emulate our success get washed ashore like dead whales, and those who oppose us are flushed down the toilet of history. I'll grant bin Laden and his ilk this much: they know how to plug the pipes. (And we did have a water pressure problem during the last administration.) But we are the civilization that invented the plunger and DraNo, and we will prevail in the end. Ross Perot had a phrase to describe their fate: a giant sucking sound. No one cutting through cant these days? I think you sell Rumsfeld short. [link\|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html\|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html] Sometimes "tolerance" is just a word for not dealing with things.
Post #25,263 by Simon_Jester 1/23/02 12:03:47 PM Reply	How does the line go... Paraphrasing.... (book not near...growlf) The wise who hears the Tao knows it to be true. The fool who hears the Tao laughs. But it would not be the Tao if the fool were not to laugh.
Post #25,270 by marlowe 1/23/02 12:49:19 PM Reply	The very wise who hear the Tao... know it to be half true, and are able to see beyond it. [link\|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html\|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html] Sometimes "tolerance" is just a word for not dealing with things.
Post #25,379 by Ashton 1/23/02 9:03:24 PM Reply	But we could not know that.. For the Very Wise obey the principle, Those who know don't say Those who say ... And then there's Greg Folkert's little sig by ~ Tan Sat? There are two basic Principles in life: 1) Don't tell everything you know.
Post #25,453 by marlowe 1/24/02 10:24:55 AM Reply	The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. From which it follows that the eternal Tao cannot be told. That which we cannot speak of must be passed over in silence. And this tautology is the only concession I'm willing to make to the positivists. But none of this is an acceptable excuse for intellectual laziness. Excelsior! [link\|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html\|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html] Sometimes "tolerance" is just a word for not dealing with things.
Post #25,795 by Ashton 1/25/02 7:35:08 PM Reply	Alas.. the incessant chatter of 'intellect' is listed first among the conditions which must be overcome / silenced - even to begin. Universally. Mind-chatter: Lose it or be Used by it. (Eureka! beats Excelsior even with 2 pawns handicap.. in the last of the ninth) Ashton
Post #25,940 by marlowe 1/27/02 8:41:30 AM Reply	Ashton, you are the undisputed master... of unintended irony. [link\|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html\|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html] Sometimes "tolerance" is just a word for not dealing with things.
Post #26,233 by Ashton 1/29/02 2:45:03 AM Reply	Thou sayest, Grasshopper

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