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Whether you believe that the universe tends toward good, bad or mediocre, there's still the question of where to assign these capacities. Are people good, bad, good+bad, bad+mediocre, etc.?
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Sep. 24th, 2007
Whether you believe that the universe tends toward good, bad or mediocre, there's still the question of where to assign these capacities. Are people good, bad, good+bad, bad+mediocre, etc.?
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That's not a word!
Sep. 24th, 2007 12:54 pmYou know what really pisses me off? When I'm reading an otherwise cogent, insightful and pretty well-written work on the philosophy of Victorian corsets ['Hooked and Buttoned Together:' Victorian Underwear and Representations of the Female Body, Casey Finch, Victorian Studies 34(3):337-363], and the author pulls a sentence like this out of his/her ass:
The ideology of reproduction was troped into a system of erotics where the meaning of sexuality operated not as a public "fact" but as a private secret.
TROPE is not a verb! It's a noun, a pretty obscure noun, unless you live in the rarefied atmosphere of the academy. Bloody hell, people! "System of erotics" is just as bad. What is a "system of erotics?" Nobody knows! How am I supposed to enjoy my history of underwear if you keep making up jargon-laced sentences that don't actually mean anything?!
Why not write something like this:
Erotic images centered around women's reproductive capacities and visible sexual signs slowly changed into a set of erotic ideas about sexuality as dissociated from public reproduction and thus secret and hidden.
Sure, my version definitely has more words in it, but it's much more readable, especially if you stopped living in an English department upon graduation.
Histories of underwear should be lucid, limpid, lively, highly illustrated and see-through, not complicated, obscure and difficult to undo.
P.S. And, if you're going to use "trope" as a verb, don't use it twice within 4 pages! Bad form, as Captain Hook would say.
The ideology of reproduction was troped into a system of erotics where the meaning of sexuality operated not as a public "fact" but as a private secret.
TROPE is not a verb! It's a noun, a pretty obscure noun, unless you live in the rarefied atmosphere of the academy. Bloody hell, people! "System of erotics" is just as bad. What is a "system of erotics?" Nobody knows! How am I supposed to enjoy my history of underwear if you keep making up jargon-laced sentences that don't actually mean anything?!
Why not write something like this:
Erotic images centered around women's reproductive capacities and visible sexual signs slowly changed into a set of erotic ideas about sexuality as dissociated from public reproduction and thus secret and hidden.
Sure, my version definitely has more words in it, but it's much more readable, especially if you stopped living in an English department upon graduation.
Histories of underwear should be lucid, limpid, lively, highly illustrated and see-through, not complicated, obscure and difficult to undo.
P.S. And, if you're going to use "trope" as a verb, don't use it twice within 4 pages! Bad form, as Captain Hook would say.
Books to read:
Sep. 24th, 2007 01:46 pmGarnered from the bibliography of the jargonlicious article on philosophy of corsets:
The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World
Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England
Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity
The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World
Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England
Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity
We have long had magnetic alphabets on our fridge, but those have only so much entertainment value because we quickly reach the limit of 52 letters [2 alphabets]. When we moved into our new apartment, I bought some magnetic poetry. I enjoy using it, but then I want to preserve my stupid creations for all eternity, which prevents me from raping them for recombination. So I've decided to photograph the results of my magnetic maundering. As you can see, it's all in character: long sentences that take unexpected turns as they tell fantastic stories burbling with unusual conflict.
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