Author Topic: "What Happens in Vagueness ....  (Read 4975 times)

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Online Pandora

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"What Happens in Vagueness ....
« on: March 05, 2011, 02:21:53 PM »
... Stays in Vagueness".

The decline and fall of American English, and stuff

Quote
I recently watched a television program in which a woman described a baby squirrel that she had found in her yard. “And he was like, you know, ‘Helloooo, what are you looking at?’ and stuff, and I’m like, you know, ‘Can I, like, pick you up?,’ and he goes, like, ‘Brrrp brrrp brrrp,’ and I’m like, you know, ‘Whoa, that is so wow!’ ” She rambled on, speaking in self-quotations, sound effects, and other vocabulary substitutes, punctuating her sentences with facial tics and lateral eye shifts. All the while, however, she never said anything specific about her encounter with the squirrel.

Uh-oh. It was a classic case of Vagueness, the linguistic virus that infected spoken language in the late twentieth century. Squirrel Woman sounded like a high school junior, but she appeared to be in her mid-forties, old enough to have been an early carrier of the contagion. She might even have been a college intern in the days when Vagueness emerged from the shadows of slang and mounted an all-out assault on American English.

I shocked an adult store-clerk into acknowledging his sloppiness - learned from his teenager, he said - when he used "like" in this manner by asking him, "It was "like" that, was it?"
"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." - Mark Twain

"Let us assume for the moment everything you say about me is true. That just makes your problem bigger, doesn't it?"

Online Pandora

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Re: "What Happens in Vagueness ....
« Reply #1 on: March 05, 2011, 02:30:23 PM »
Forgot, again, to give the H/T to Billy Beck who adds his piece:

Quote
My contention: this is a consequence of the assertions of modern and post-modern philosophy that there is no such thing as reality.

Note well that this phenomenon is concurrent with a similar decline in ethics, for the same reason. If there is no objective reality against which to refer one's own life, then values become unimportant. (I maintain that we can see this in so-called "distracted driving" cases: the value of safely and competently managing an inherently dangerous machine like an automobile, for the purpose of conducting oneself through reality, is given-over for the "value" of an instant text, as if there were no difference between the two in a context of immanent death.)

In the case of language (the purpose of which is to raise concepts and their referents in reality to the level of percepts for transmission between human beings), the necessarily subjective consequences of such a philosophy render language unimportant because the referents simply don't exist.

This, of course, is only very shortly removed from psychosis, but you can rely on me not to point out endless headlines to make my case.
"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." - Mark Twain

"Let us assume for the moment everything you say about me is true. That just makes your problem bigger, doesn't it?"

Offline BigAlSouth

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Re: "What Happens in Vagueness ....
« Reply #2 on: March 05, 2011, 04:51:36 PM »
. . .
I shocked an adult store-clerk into acknowledging his sloppiness . . .

Speaking of language, there is a huge difference between:

an adult store clerk; and
an adult store-clerk.

Last time I was in an Adult Store, I was a private process server, serving the owner with Summons and Complaint in a lawsuit. But THAT is another story . . .
The problems we face today are there because the people who work for a living
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Online IronDioPriest

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Re: "What Happens in Vagueness ....
« Reply #3 on: March 05, 2011, 04:53:00 PM »
I don't mean to take the thread on a tangent in the very first reply... but I'm LOL, and I'm gonna anyway!

Ah, the importance of dash-placement! When I first read "I shocked an adult store-clerk into acknowledging his sloppiness..." My eyes (mebbe my mind, Idunno) saw "I shocked an adult-store clerk into acknowledging his sloppiness..."

I was like, um, like Pan? Like, whaddaya doin' tellin' us about bein' in an adult-store?

Like, carry on...

 ::unknowncomic::

ETA: It's not just me!!!! ROTFFLMFAAOL!!!
"A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means."

- Thomas Jefferson

Offline John Florida

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Re: "What Happens in Vagueness ....
« Reply #4 on: March 05, 2011, 05:42:10 PM »
I don't mean to take the thread on a tangent in the very first reply... but I'm LOL, and I'm gonna anyway!

Ah, the importance of dash-placement! When I first read "I shocked an adult store-clerk into acknowledging his sloppiness..." My eyes (mebbe my mind, Idunno) saw "I shocked an adult-store clerk into acknowledging his sloppiness..."

I was like, um, like Pan? Like, whaddaya doin' tellin' us about bein' in an adult-store?

Like, carry on...

 ::unknowncomic::

ETA: It's not just me!!!! ROTFFLMFAAOL!!!




 It's safer to say yes it is!Who's gonna jump in with you on that one.
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Online Pandora

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Re: "What Happens in Vagueness ....
« Reply #5 on: March 05, 2011, 05:56:13 PM »
OMG, like, u ppl r like soooo imachur?
"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." - Mark Twain

"Let us assume for the moment everything you say about me is true. That just makes your problem bigger, doesn't it?"

Offline Dan

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Re: "What Happens in Vagueness ....
« Reply #6 on: March 05, 2011, 06:03:21 PM »
OMG! That sh*t's, like, sooo funny!
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Re: "What Happens in Vagueness ....
« Reply #7 on: March 05, 2011, 06:06:45 PM »
Alright, can somebody get serial around here or am I gonna have to go get the bat smiley again?
"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." - Mark Twain

"Let us assume for the moment everything you say about me is true. That just makes your problem bigger, doesn't it?"

Offline Glock32

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Re: "What Happens in Vagueness ....
« Reply #8 on: March 05, 2011, 06:06:56 PM »
Yes, you can chalk this up to the liberals' cherished notions of relativity. Truth and correctness are subjective things, so there is no objective standard of correctness...except for that assertion. It's always correct, because liberals say it is.

Why teach grammar, spelling, and syntax if the whole idea of proper language is bunk? History is bunk. Grammar is bunk. Knowledge is bunk.

Case in point: there are school systems that teach "African-American English" as an equally valid and correct alternative to standard academic English.

Some people are stupid, and some people are ignorant. Worse are those who revel in it.
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Re: "What Happens in Vagueness ....
« Reply #9 on: March 05, 2011, 06:10:29 PM »
ok, coming in late,  ::foilhathelicopter:: and here's like-totally what I get, like, ya know, the first thing that like, ya know,  totally jumps out at me, O.M.G. is Pan  ::bows:: and adult store  ::whoohoo::........

and my minds just fades..............................................

jeeezzzzuuuuusssss.......... I can't even concentrate enough to read the rest................


discalimer: beer-good.  ::beertoast::

hemm

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Re: "What Happens in Vagueness ....
« Reply #10 on: March 05, 2011, 06:12:06 PM »
Alright, can somebody get serial around here or am I gonna have to go get the bat smiley again?
oh sh*t, I'm about to get louis-ville-sluuugereded...........

I knew I shoulda read-the-thread............ ::pimp::

Offline Alphabet Soup

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Re: "What Happens in Vagueness ....
« Reply #11 on: March 05, 2011, 06:21:14 PM »
ok, coming in late,  ::foilhathelicopter:: and here's like-totally what I get, like, ya know, the first thing that like, ya know,  totally jumps out at me, O.M.G. is Pan  ::bows:: and adult store  ::whoohoo::........

and my minds just fades..............................................

jeeezzzzuuuuusssss.......... I can't even concentrate enough to read the rest................


discalimer: beer-good.  ::beertoast::

Actually, I like Hemm's post the best because it leans the heaviest on the iconography that shows the direction our culture is headed. At the rate we're going we'll soon be back to hieroglyphics...

Like...ya dig?

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Re: "What Happens in Vagueness ....
« Reply #12 on: March 05, 2011, 06:29:57 PM »
Akshully, Soup, you have a good point there about hemm's post.  That is what the smilies are about, after all.

*sign language*

"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." - Mark Twain

"Let us assume for the moment everything you say about me is true. That just makes your problem bigger, doesn't it?"

hemm

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Re: "What Happens in Vagueness ....
« Reply #13 on: March 05, 2011, 06:48:39 PM »
 ::whatgives::  ::whatgives::

 ::thinking::

 ::oldman:: ::oldman:: ::oldman::

 ::smallestviolin::

::angry:: ::angry:: ::angry::

 ::laughonfloor:: ::hysterical::

 ::pokeineye::  ::slapfight:: ::pokeineye::  ::slapfight:: ::pokeineye::


 ::popcorn:: ::popcorn::

 ::thumbsup:: ::thumbsup::

::stirpot::  ::stirpot::  ::stirpot::  ::stirpot::  ::stirpot::  ::stirpot::  ::stirpot::  ::stirpot::  ::stirpot::  ::stirpot::  ::stirpot::  ::stirpot::  ::stirpot::  ::stirpot::  ::stirpot::  ::stirpot::  ::stirpot:: ::stirpot::  ::stirpot::  ::stirpot::  ::stirpot::  ::stirpot::  ::stirpot::  ::stirpot::

Offline John Florida

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Offline Alphabet Soup

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Re: "What Happens in Vagueness ....
« Reply #15 on: March 05, 2011, 08:19:23 PM »
JF, I want to talk to you about your, ahem, boob-tube topics of interest, but first I have to tell Hemm that (egads!) I believe that I understood his last communique!  ::hysterical::

Offline The_Basseteer

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Re: "What Happens in Vagueness ....
« Reply #16 on: March 05, 2011, 08:24:25 PM »
A comma between "adult" and "store" would have solved the issue as they are both adjectives modifying clerk, "...an adult, store clerk...."
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Re: "What Happens in Vagueness ....
« Reply #17 on: March 05, 2011, 08:51:59 PM »
A comma between "adult" and "store" would have solved the issue as they are both adjectives modifying clerk, "...an adult, store clerk...."

Ah, see now, you perceive an "issue" only because it's Saturday night and silliness is afoot 'round heah.  8)
"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." - Mark Twain

"Let us assume for the moment everything you say about me is true. That just makes your problem bigger, doesn't it?"

Offline trapeze

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Re: "What Happens in Vagueness ....
« Reply #18 on: March 05, 2011, 09:11:31 PM »
Available at Amazon.

[blockquote]A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.

'Why?' asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

'Well, I'm a panda,' he says, at the door. 'Look it up.'

The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. 'Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.'[/blockquote]
In a doomsday scenario, hippies will be among the first casualties. So not everything about doomsday will be bad.

Offline John Florida

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Re: "What Happens in Vagueness ....
« Reply #19 on: March 05, 2011, 09:33:49 PM »
JF, I want to talk to you about your, ahem, boob-tube topics of interest, but first I have to tell Hemm that (egads!) I believe that I understood his last communique!  ::hysterical::

  Ok Talk to me.

Victoria's Secret Fashion Show 2010-2011 Part 2
All men are created equal"
 Filippo Mazzie