June 02, 2006

Marshall McLuhanisms to refresh your mind. These thoughts are perhaps more relevant now than ever.

Something to chew on as we head into the weekend.

  • "The car has become the carapace, the protective and aggressive shell, of urban and suburban man." Zoology. A hard bony or chitinous outer covering, such as the fused dorsal plates of a turtle or the portion of the exoskeleton covering the head and thorax of a crustacean. Good stuff, thanks kinnakeet.
  • McLuhan said a lot of stuff that at first appears profound, but actually says nothing substantive.
  • Julia Child said a lot of substantive stuff that wasn't profound though. Yeah. Noodle that one.
  • I've always thought of Julia Child as a modern philosopher in the art of living well.
  • Hi, Kinnakeet! "I may be wrong, but I'm never in doubt." -- M. McLuhan Heh!
  • "If you don't like the booze, you can use vanilla."
  • "Cassoulet, that best of bean feasts, is everyday fare for a peasant but ambrosia for a gastronome, though its ideal consumer is a 300-pound blocking back who has been splitting firewood nonstop for the last twelve hours on a subzero day in Manitoba."
  • I have never understood "The medium is the message." For me, extra large has always been the message.
  • (and thanks for nuthin', TUM. Now I'm sittin' here with no buzz and I smell like a freakin' cupcake.)
  • "Life itself is the proper binge." -Julia Child You think that's not profound?
  • I think it is the wellspring of profundity, but then again I am a true Epicurean.
  • hi monkeys. Newly registered here. I read a rumour that MoFi was going toes-up and realized that I read here a couple of times a week.. so :D I'm in. McLuhan is like any dead philosopher; his thoughts can't evolve any farther. We're stuck in his era if we want to understand what he was talking about. He seems to have thought deeply about the ways that western culture was/is changing, and I'm betting his influence is more pervasive that we think. His work is now in some of the textbooks that train the new thinkers. He is a great source for taglines, if nothing else. "Moral indignation is a technique used to endow the idiot with dignity." and "Violence, whether spiritual or physical, is a quest for identity and the meaningful." are two that I know and use. In his honour, my message is medium.
  • "Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television" I prefer Dr. Brain Oblivion's quotes. More timely : )
  • well played reflecked! and welcome. As for you other scalawags, I should have known you'd roll over for a kind woman bearing food! Make it . um . . Bob Villa? . . OOh no wait - John Madden. Yeah. Nowhere near as provocative as McLuhan, unless you're big into athlete's foot.
  • I thought we covered athlete's foot in the shoes or no shoes thread....
  • Boom!
  • "When you are on the phone or on the air, you have no body." Q: Where are you when you are on the phone? A: Cyberspace --The Budget Gourmet
  • I think a school friend said it best: "You rub it, you hit it and it hurts." Let us all contemplate.
  • Hi, reflecked, and welcome, new monkey! let athlete's foot be on the wane stay caught in someone else's dirty drain and never nest among my scrawny toes nor in my always running nose
  • 'tis spring! I fear there's pollen in the air my eyes like freshets flow and redly glow
  • "There is no love sincerer than the love of food." --George Bernard Shaw "No man is lonely while eating spaghetti." --Robert Morley When I posted the link last week, I was feeling more than a touch of despair over the state of world literacy. Erudition is clearly endangered as well as the verbal skills necessary for the useful comprehension of past wisdom or the essential debate thereof. Then I read the above this morning, and as usual, you Monkeys have restored my faith that somewhere, someone is actually still thinking. And reading. And eating. *pauses to savor bite of blueberry cheese blintz souffle* Mmmmmm. *sigh* Thank you all. *offers souffle all around* PS There is an excellent and challenging verbal IQ test for y'all to have fun with here: http://similarminds.com/intdoor-verbal.html
  • Thanks for the kind welcomes, folks. kinnakeet, that is a fave, that verbal link. I always do well (word geek, here), and always find at least one word that I have to guess at. This time it was "eleemosynary" (essentially, alms-giving), and of course I looked it up afterwords, how could I not? There's a hill o' fun in finding a new word to avoid using in casual conversation, lest eyes roll. What kind of cheese? I use home-made softcurd with blueberries when baking.
  • Welcome Reflecked, and hail fellow word-lover! I use this recipe: http://www.virtualcities.com/ons/or/m/orm77022.htm and recommend it highly. Sad, isn't it, that nobody has any real fun with language anymore? The eye-rolling comment is something I can identify with all too well... I've left more eyes rolling than Dr. Frankenstein's assistant (I was a Medieval English Literature major--'nuff said). It's just that language is so, so, tasty when it's beautifully used (though that souffle is pretty exceptional too.)
  • It's just that language is so, so, tasty when it's beautifully used Makes me want to eat my words!
  • Erudition is clearly endangered as well as the verbal skills necessary for the useful comprehension of past wisdom or the essential debate thereof Sad, isn't it, that nobody has any real fun with language anymore? What a fucking crock of shit.
  • kinnakeet and reflecked, I feel yr pain. even my husband rolls his eyes at my word choices, but I refuse to be hemmed into a box of crass and limited options to express myself...I aspire to be as eloquent as that fucking twat, the quidnunc kid...
  • people have more fun with language when they understand its grammar when folk don't know the rules they can't have fun breaking 'em
  • my sister used to make her own clothes from odd materials, like paper. she once made a dress entirely from old vouchers. to her dismay, the first time it rained on her new dress it was completely destroyed, as the vouchers proved very absorbent. she concluded it was a bad idea: a sucking frock of chit.
  • I am desirous only of intense flamewar with new/ish members. Please attack my views with POWERFUL FORCE. I thank you.
  • i sp4m u! i hav mI T sp4m fu! flEEEE R pay teh piper! /n00bish member
  • i sp4m u! That is so goddam cute! :)
  • *searches around for weapon, finds only ground glass* *seeks container that will also serve as projectile* *chucking sock of frit*
  • I had a pet hen as a kid. She used to eat dirt and ground-up oyster shells, and talk to me when I petted her. Yep, she was a clucking chook full of grit.
  • coll E dawg dUd! hahahahaha monk EEEEEE i fling sp4m fu yrs trU liar /c0llingw00d 3 French h3nz 4 tur tL duvz hahahaha
  • everything's gone cuckoo!
  • I love all this rapid-fire playing around with bullets of clever verbiage. Yep, it's like a bucking Glock of wit.
  • North Americans have a peculiar bias. They go outside to be alone and they go inside to be social. -- Marshall McLuhan This actually tell ye more about the rest of the great world's crochets.