Bakker XLIII - the prattle of unnumbered years

[Humble AK]

32 minutes ago, sologdin said:

how's it a good sign for you, since you're on fire with hate?

Another Bakker book provides him more tinder for the hate to burn brighter? Everyone needs a hobby.

[Darth Richard II]

Exactly. Can;t be a super villain if you don;t have annoying self righteous heroes to fight.

[Sarcellus]

That's interesting because I'm a product of the haters. If it wasn't for all the nay-sayers saying there are so many "obvious and consensual" flaws, I would have never taken it upon myself to argue the opposite.

[Darth Richard II]

...you know I'm joking around, right?

[sologdin]

1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

...you know I'm joking around, right?

duh.  we know that you play gandoki with RSB on the weekends, in the style of nansur athletes.

[Darth Richard II]

Naw we play splatoon now. But always with black ink.

[kuenjato]

So from TPB it's looking pretty certain that TGO will be this year. RSB mentioning that he's going through the copy edits pretty much confirms what I suspect -- they're releasing the book without much in the way of editing. He also states he'll need some return to old-school numbers to get the third series confirmed. I kinda wonder how that can happen at this point. He might be better just optioning with a different publisher.

[sologdin]

or, if the third series is cocked up, he could skip it by kickstartering the fourth series and just summarize the third in the 'what has come before' section, publishing salient flashbacks otherwise.

proposed fourth series titles with taglines:

Faceballs: Skinspies Give Great Helmet

4184 - Black Semen on a Face Forever

BraveHITB: Outlawed Poon in Outlawed Tights

[Sarcellus]

17 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

...you know I'm joking around, right?

No (though, my post wasn't specifically referencing you). And that's my problem with these threads. Westeros is easily the busiest internet venue to feature Bakker, thus the number one place to accrue new readers. And these threads are shite ambassadors.

13 hours ago, kuenjato said:

So from TPB it's looking pretty certain that TGO will be this year. RSB mentioning that he's going through the copy edits pretty much confirms what I suspect -- they're releasing the book without much in the way of editing. He also states he'll need some return to old-school numbers to get the third series confirmed. I kinda wonder how that can happen at this point. He might be better just optioning with a different publisher.

Outreach, outreach, outreach. The second reason I engage as I do. Because I'm selfish and Bakker's words have changed me for the better. And I would like more of them so I facilitate as I can.

 

On that note, the first LostCast has been posted and the TTT re-read Cast is also up.

[.H.]

tSA Cast #12 - The Thousandfold Cast (Thousandfold Thought ReRead Cast)

A link for anyone who might be interested.

[Larry of the Lake]

B&N here farted, I do declare!

Seriously, can you pull the brakes on the hate train for once?

[Darth Richard II]

You know its been one of those weeks were I had to go back and loo to see if I actually said that.

[Larry of the Lake]

I think its time to stop drinking when that's what I go with instead of just reposting solo's parody titles or gandoki doozie. Just gimme this book already.

[Hello World]

Is it me or was this thread supposed to end like 10 pages ago?

[Larry of the Lake]

Is it me or was this thread supposed to end like 10 pages ago?

According to prophecy it closes at 144,000 posts.

[Hello World]

Actually, nevermind, I’m seeing things...

[Kalnestk Oblast]

Actually, nevermind, I’m seeing things...

WHAT DO YOU SEE

[sologdin]

so, i've been given a fine copy of poe's collected works and am working my way diligently through it.  in so doing, it occurs to me that AK is auguste dupin.  from 'the murders in the rue morgue':

Quote

We were strolling one night down a long dirty street, in the vicinity of the Palais Royal. Being both, apparently, occupied with thought, neither of us had spoken a syllable for fifteen minutes at least. All at once Dupin broke forth with these words:

“He is a very little fellow, that’s true, and would do better for the Théâtre des Variétés.”

“There can be no doubt of that,” I replied unwittingly, and not at first observing (so much had I been absorbed in reflection) the extraordinary manner in which the speaker had chimed in with my meditations. In an instant afterward I recollected myself, and my astonishment was profound.

“Dupin,” said I, gravely, “this is beyond my comprehension. I do not hesitate to say that I am amazed, and can scarcely credit my senses. How was it possible you should know I was thinking of ———?” Here I paused, to ascertain beyond a doubt whether he really knew of whom I thought.

——— “of Chantilly,” said he, “why do you pause? You were remarking to yourself that his diminutive figure unfitted him for tragedy.”

This was precisely what had formed the subject of my reflections. Chantilly was a quondam cobbler of the Rue St. Denis, who, becoming stage-mad, had attempted the rôle of Xerxes, in Crébillon’s tragedy so called, and been notoriously Pasquinaded for his pains.

“Tell me, for Heaven’s sake,” I exclaimed, “the method — if method there is — by which you have been enabled to fathom my soul in this matter.” In fact I was even more startled than I would have been willing to express.

“It was the fruiterer,” replied my friend, “who brought you to the conclusion that the mender of soles was not of sufficient height for Xerxes et id genus omne.”

“The fruiterer! — you astonish me — I know no fruiterer whomsoever.”

“The man who ran up against you as we entered the street — it may have been fifteen minutes ago.”

I now remembered that, in fact, a fruiterer, carrying upon his head a large basket of apples, had nearly thrown me down, by accident, as we passed from the Rue C——— into the thoroughfare where we stood; but what this had to do with Chantilly I could not possibly understand.

There was not a particle of charlâtanerie about Dupin. “I will explain,” he said, “and that you may comprehend all clearly, we will first retrace the course of your meditations, from the moment in which I spoke to you until that of the rencontre with the fruiterer in question. The larger links of the chain run thus — Chantilly, Orion, Dr. Nichols, Epicurus, Stereotomy, the street stones, the fruiterer.”

There are few persons who have not, at some period of their lives, amused themselves in retracing the steps by which particular conclusions of their own minds have been attained. The occupation is often full of interest; and he who attempts it for the first time is astonished by the apparently illimitable distance and incoherence between the starting-point and the goal. What, then, must have been my amazement when I heard the Frenchman speak what he had just spoken, and when I could not help acknowledging that he had spoken the truth. He continued:

“We had been talking of horses, if I remember aright, just before leaving the Rue C———. This was the last subject we discussed. As we crossed into this street, a fruiterer, with a large basket upon his head, brushing quickly past us, thrust you upon a pile of paving-stones collected at a spot where the causeway is undergoing repair. You stepped upon one of the loose fragments, slipped, slightly strained your ankle, appeared vexed or sulky, muttered a few words, turned to look at the pile, and then proceeded in silence. I was not particularly attentive to what you did; but observation has become with me, of late, a species of necessity.

“You kept your eyes upon the ground — glancing, with a petulant expression, at the holes and ruts in the pavement, (so that I saw you were still thinking of the stones,) until we reached the little alley called Lamartine, which has been paved, by way of experiment, with the overlapping and riveted blocks. Here your countenance brightened up, and, perceiving your lips move, I could not doubt that you murmured the word’stereotomy,’ a term very affectedly applied to this species of pavement. I knew that you could not say to yourself’stereotomy’ without being brought to think of atomies, and thus of the theories of Epicurus; and since, when we discussed this subject not very long ago, I mentioned to you how singularly, yet with how little notice, the vague guesses of that noble Greek had met with confirmation in the late nebular cosmogony, I felt that you could not avoid casting your eyes upward to the great nebula in Orion, and I certainly expected that you would do so. You did look up; and I was now assured that I had correctly followed your steps. But in that bitter tirade upon Chantilly, which appeared in yesterday’s ‘Musée,’ the satirist, making some disgraceful allusions to the cobbler’s change of name upon assuming the buskin, quoted a Latin line about which we have often conversed. I mean the line

Perdidit antiquum litera prima sonum

I had told you that this was in reference to Orion, formerly written Urion; and, from certain pungencies connected with this explanation, I was aware that you could not have forgotten it. It was clear, therefore, that you would not fail to combine the two ideas of Orion and Chantilly. That you did combine them I saw by the character of the smile which passed over your lips. You thought of the poor cobbler’s immolation. So far, you had been stooping in your gait; but now I saw you draw yourself up to your full height. I was then sure that you reflected upon the diminutive figure of Chantilly. At this point I interrupted your meditations to remark that as, in fact, he was a very little fellow — that Chantilly — he would do better at the Théâtre des Variétés.”

so, approach perhaps the RSB as a gloss on the most ancient of detective fictions and adopting thereby the conventions thereof?

[Sci-2]

Great stuff Solo!

I come with a much more pedantic offering - some discussion with Chomsky on universal grammar.

Quote

Is the acquisition of language biological?

I don’t see how anyone could doubt that. Just consider a newborn infant. The newborn is barraged by all kinds of stimuli, what William James famously called “one great blooming, buzzing confusion.”1 If you put, say, a chimpanzee or a kitten or a songbird in that environment, it can only pick out what’s related to its own genetic capacities. A songbird will pick out a melody of its species or something from all this mass because it’s designed to do that, but it can’t pick out anything that’s relevant to human language. On the other hand, an infant does. The infant instantly picks language-related data out of this mass of confusion. In fact, we now know that this goes on even in the uterus. Newborn infants can detect proper- ties of their mother’s language as distinct from certain— not all, but certain—other languages.

=-=-=

Quote

Words are learned very early, and, if you look at the meaning of a word with any care, it’s extremely intricate. But children pick up words often after only one exposure, which means the structure has got to be in the mind already. Something is being tagged with a particular sound. By, say, two years, there’s pretty good evidence that the children have mastered the rudiments of the language. They may just produce one-word or two-word sentences, but there’s now experimental and other evidence that a lot more is in there. By three or four, a normal child will have extensive language capacity.

Either this is a miracle or it’s biologically driven. There are just no other choices. 

 

[sologdin]

so, i was trying to sell the RSB to someone the other night, and, after being horrified by the bad gender politics and dreadful violence and whatnot, she suggested perhaps that the denouement of the story will likely answer the voluminous black semen output of prior installments with sable skene ejaculation.  perhaps that is the return of the female cunuroi, even, or the emergence of an inchie with invasive onyx ova showers that traumatically attach to any hematic surface.  i jitter with anticipation.