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I take little that is posted in this forum seriously anymore.
I am not defaming anyone with the "just making a living" statement. It is a harsh truth of the job. My friends that are/have been messengers and dispatchers never really had words like his - they dynamic, yes - but the words, no. Does not mean they weren't capable of them, but not too many of them that depend on it to pay rent and buy food wear it like some badge of honor. It is an often times thankless job that you really have to dig deep to find satisfaction in - and that takes time. |
Teiaperigosa, do you honestly believe that people who are not fans of this style of social sciences/ humanities writing are "functionally illiterate" or not capable of handling "complexity"?
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Originally Posted by mander
Teiaperigosa, do you honestly believe that people who are not fans of this style of social sciences/ humanities writing are "functionally illiterate" or not capable of handling "complexity"?
He has to... His fancy studying of nothing would have been completely pointless if it didn't allow him to be "functionally literate" and lord it over the rest of us slobs who can see it for what it really is(pedantic and mostly devoid of meaning). What I want to read is a post-modern ethnography of his attempts to troll for sex with random strangers. That would probably be amusing. How he does it not because he can't get laid otherwise but rather as a deconstruction of the dominant talk first then sex paradigm. |
Originally Posted by mander
Teiaperigosa, do you honestly believe that people who are not fans of this style of social sciences/ humanities writing are "functionally illiterate" or not capable of handling "complexity"?
but those are good fighting words right? |
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Originally Posted by dutret
What I want to read is a post-modern ethnography of his attempts to troll for sex with random strangers. That would probably be amusing. How he does it not because he can't get laid otherwise but rather as a deconstruction of the dominant talk first then sex paradigm.
http://i18.tinypic.com/477zo7t.gif |
First…skaters encounter the wallness of the wall, sensing how the pool presents itself as a surface changing from floor to wall under their very feet…[T]he higher up they go, the more vertical, the more wall-like that surface becomes. This involves a quadruple movement of body and architectural surface: initially comes the sudden compression of body hitting the bottom curve of the transition, where terrain is felt to press back on the skater, translating momentum into a forced acceleration of his or her trajectory up the wall; at this point the second stage arrives, tense compression is released, and the skater feels the enclosed concave curvature of the transition give way to vertical flatness, and to a corresponding sense of speed and expansivity of space. The third stage is that stalling space-time where the skater reaches the top of the trajectory, hangs momentarily, and begins the kickturn - for the skater, this is a highly physical yet simultaneously fantastical and dream-like experience, where space-time are conflated and frozen into a dynamic-yet-stable instance.
Sorry if Im "functionally Illiterate" but if I had ever thought of skateboarding like that while actually skateboarding I probably would have given it up for something more exciting like say..... knitting Anybody else every think of that S**t while skating in a pool?!?!? I can't imagine it, skateboarding is supposed to be FUN not metaphysical. IMHO |
Originally Posted by teiaperigosa
sorry...this IS good writing
what does this suck the life out of? I felt that the entry exuded vibrance, liveliness and an emotionally affected perception of the author's experience.
Originally Posted by teiaperigosa
messengering, as both those who've done it and those who've only imagined it know, is very different than most other jobs...you've never heard it described in this manner? sorry, but that half-assed metaphysics extrapolation you talk about is precisely connected to... "a person trying to make a living"...'s ABOUT a person trying to make a living (and perhaps being a bit introspective about the ever complex world they work in). did those people you speak of not have any relation to the stuff the blogger posted? no body aches? no relationship to dispatcher? no sense of their movement as an economic route? no knowledge of the subtleties of riding diff aves? no sense of freedom despite hardships?
people write about all sorts of stuff that people do and jobs that people have. they talk and write about life in general, their environment, how it makes them feel, etc. I hope these cynical responses are because this is another post about messengering on a fixed forum that would rather not hear the artistic grandeur of such a ****ty job, and NOT because you all cannot relate to the blogger's need to express something about an experience that questioned the rigidity and order of the world around him (note: my interpertation). I've only mess'ed for a few weeks in my life, and have had a fair share of conversations with other messengers that in some way or another touched on most references in the blog, plus much more (from God, the system, to *****es, and beyond)...and those were unprovoked on my part. messengers don't live life just to be messengers, and are very diverse in behavior, views, etc. Most messengers don't make a career out of it. Messengering is a part of their life (for however short or however long), and to appreciate the experience for what it is is something that I bet many of these people can do in some way or another. No, they may not look at the experience in the same way as the OP blogger, but stop this shiet about messengers not thinking about anything and just "riding their bike to make money" ...fuk outta here...they are living LIFE to make money and making money to live LIFE... I'll take the metaphysics...leave 'em with me if you don't want em messing is NOT a ****ty job. at least not where i do it and who i work for. it's the best job i've ever had. it's fun, i make decent money, i've met tons of great people and i get paid to ride my bike around all day like a maniac. i think this author spent a lot more time thinking about messing than he did actually being one. doing it for a 6 months or a summer isn't really enough time to know all the intricacies of the job and the lifestyle, and i think the author really did over analyze it a bit. for a guy that has only messed for a couple of weeks, you sure are defensive about the whole thing. i don't know any messengers that are in this job for the money. they're in it because they love it, or the like the freedom, or they're a misfit that has trouble fitting in elsewhere or something along those lines. nobody is getting rich at this job. but it's often a better paycheque than minimum wage. |
Hey, those of you who didn't like one or another aspect of what I wrote could, y'know, address your comments directly to me. I'm right here.
165, is that a Pathfinder badge? If so, hooah. I was a 37F. |
Psy Ops? That is just plain cruel. You guys played the WORST music. Ha
11B2P |
Yeah, you know what the t-shirt said: "PSYOP: Because physical wounds heal."
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Originally Posted by adamgreenfield
Hey, those of you who didn't like one or another aspect of what I wrote could, y'know, address your comments directly to me. I'm right here.
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lol
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i think this is a case where the language you used only served to make the relatively simple points in your essay inaccessible. like seriously, who uses 'sobriquet' instead of 'nickname', and how is there any gain in descriptive power from it?
There is little doubt that there are inequities, frustrations, and imbalances beyond number bound up in the figure of the bike messenger, but I despair to think what cities would be without the specific quality of their exertions. |
Who uses "sobriquet" instead of "nickname"? Anyone seduced by the assonance you get when you tack the former onto "self-styled," that's who. There's a rhythm to it, too. I like the English language, you know? I want to make it do tricks.
And anyway, "relatively inaccessible" to whom? The folks who read my site or buy my books don't seem to have any problem with the way I write. Don't get me wrong - I'm not slagging anybody who doesn't like the way I write, let alone implying that they're somehow not intelligent enough to get it. But I do know my audience. I'm not sure this is going anywhere, frankly. Like I say, I'm happy if you got anything at all out of the post, sorry if you didn't, and especially sorry if you feel that post didn't repay the time you invested in reading it. I happen to think it's a pretty neat piece of writing...but then, I would. Others may or may not agree, and that's fine too. |
Originally Posted by morbot
i despair to think that they would probably not be much different In NYC, the dynamic is multiplied tenfold. Maybe things wouldn't look much different but folks would be in their cars more, idling more, unable to find parking at all, people would be more pissed than they already are, they just wouldn't all know why prolly. |
Oh dear sweet jesus.
If y'all liked that, go get Culley's book. It's a study in writing technique; the parts where anything is actually happening are quite well done, but then he slips into stuff like this that belongs tatooed in the author's navel. Re: your post above, making the language do tricks and using it well are two different things. I recommend the Nabokov book on Gogol as a starting place. Also, if I'm not mistaken you would be making better use of the language if you referred to your published canon in the singular. |
Maaaaaaaaan. That was soooooooo deep.
He, like, gets it, you know? Duude. *takes another toke* |
In other news, saying that you are the only one who understands the Tao means you don't understand the Tao.
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you know, you dont have to love all of something to find some value in it
and hating all of something is usually silly adam, i like some of your english tricks and forgive the ones that dont work for me ill let you caricatures get back to the comic strip that is this thread now |
Originally Posted by schnee
Maaaaaaaaan. That was soooooooo deep.
He, like, gets it, you know? Duude. *takes another toke* +1 schnee gets it too |
Originally Posted by schnee
Maaaaaaaaan. That was soooooooo deep.
He, like, gets it, you know? Duude. *takes another toke* |
Originally Posted by schmee
In other news, saying that you are the only one who understands the Tao means you don't understand the Tao.
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Originally Posted by Gadeux
you know, you dont have to love all of something to find some value in it
and hating all of something is usually silly adam, i like some of your english tricks and forgive the ones that dont work for me ill let you caricatures get back to the comic strip that is this thread now |
Do you know what my Grandpa would've said? He would've said you're all a bunch of god-dammed fruitcakes. Then he would have thrown an empty beer can at you.
Because "cursorily" is dumb. It's just dumb. |
Originally Posted by mander
yeah we're the stereotypes
r u getting sarcastic with me? ive recorded this personal attack |
Originally Posted by koyman
rather, saying you understand the tao means you do not understand the tao.
I'm gonna go ride my bike and then write something prosaic and mundane about it later on. 100 words max. |
Originally Posted by Gadeux
r u getting sarcastic with me?
ive recorded this personal attack |
I rode my bike.
Nobody was out, except rabbits and one very bored-looking coyote. I had fun. |
Also, if I'm not mistaken you would be making better use of the language if you referred to your published canon in the singular. More importantly, got a question for you-all: Iain Borden's book on skateboarding is, if anything, denser than mine, and just as prone to theoryspeak. He leans far more heavily than I would dare on names like Lefebvre and Foucault. And perhaps more seriously, he's never been a skater. Despite this, the book was comparatively well-received by the skater community - I'm not sure if Thrasher or Transworld ever reviewed it, but a reviewer for Sidewalk, the British equivalent, said "There's absolutely no way I can do this book justice here...it's incredibly thought-provoking, especially from the perspective of actually being a skateboarder. I highly recommend it." Now skaters are, for the most part, no more tolerant of bull**** than bike messengers/riders. So what do you think accounts for the fact that Borden's book seems to have pleased a very tough audience, while what I wrote for the most part just pissed you off? Do you think the fact that my piece was posted on the Web had anything to do with the difference in receptions? |
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