Hit It!

I guess the question is asking whether you believe these abstract qualities exist in finite amounts at any given moment. If they are finite and can be exhausted and then replenished over time, then it would be beneficial to only "use" them when they are most needed.

But I think you could also argue a "fuel for the fire" idea. Being spontaneous and creative all the time will make you more creative and spontaneous at any one time than if you tried to cage up that energy and make it do your bidding. It will just atrophy when it's not being used.

It's probably somewhere in the middle. Or along an entirely different axis in the Blerd Dimension.

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Now let's talk about hip-hop.

La Di Da Di- Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh. Released April 15, 1985.

LYRIC SELECTION!

And when we rock up on the mic we rock the mic RIGHT!

Isn't that a really redundant line, Ricky D?

All he's saying is that when he raps on the microphone he raps on the microphone very well.

Why not cut the first half of the line?

Well, you could argue that then it wouldn't fit the meter and it wouldn't sound as good and that he's just filling the line with redundant words to keep with the beat.

BUT THAT'S NOT A VERY GOOD ARGUMENT, I THINK!

I think, there's an ingenious reason that the grand wizard Slick Rick uses this redundancy and it's going to tie together the picture and the caption-picture and the words underneath it. And it goes a little something like this:

Let's look at the lyrics that come before this line.

La-Di-Da-Di We like to party.

We don't cause trouble. We don't bother nobody. We're--

just some men that's on the mic-
and when we rock up on the mic we rock the mic RIGHT!

What's happening here is that Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh are concentrating their efforts! Their rapping personas do not extend beyond the act of rapping and that's precisely what makes them so adept at rocking the mic!

What are they saying about themselves? That they're innocuous, inconspicuous, not worthy of being rapped about. They're just "some men" who happen to be "on the mic"

Slick Rick is responding to rappers who merely use their rhymes to talk about all of their ridiculous exploits. He's making an aesthetic argument about hip-hop. And that argument is

HOW you say something is more important than WHAT you say.

A rapper could go up on stage and talk about all the shiny weapons he's purchased, and all the shiny ladies that love him, and all the shiny clothes he bought that are very expensive and how he came up from nothing and all of that could be the 100% bona fide truth but he would still be a terrible rapper if he just read it like a grocery list with terrible rhymes.

So how does Slick Rick challenge this? How does he assert his rhyming supremacy?

By rapping extremely well about nothing at all!

and when we rock up on the mic we rock the mic RIGHT!

That's an undeniably catchy line. He's got alliteration, he's got consonance, he switches up the tempo after rhyming fairly slowly in the opening lines, and the final "RIGHT" goes high-pitched just to really punctuate it and make that "OHHHH!" moment. The elements of his speech are very dynamic. It's like a magic trick. How did he go from being so average to being awesome in one line?!

But he's not really saying anything at all in terms of content. He's showing, he's demonstrating, that he cares about his craft and that the only way to be an excellent rapper is to rap excellently. When you do that, then nothing else matters. You can be a totally regular dude that doesn't stand out in any way. The rhymes trump all. There's no lifestyle for Slick Rick. He's not going around looking to do amazing things so that his rhymes will improve. His rhymes can be about anything and they will sound awesome

BECAUSE ALL SLICK RICK KNOWS HOW TO DO IS BUST SICK RHYMES!

So I hope that justified the length of that seemingly empty line.

The next challenge would be reconciling all of this with the remainder of the song which does nothing but talk about Slick Rick's day and how he does awesome things all the time. Gucci underwear, ladies fighting over him, and the like...

I guess you could say that this introduction frames everything he's about to talk about. Yeah, you should be impressed by how broken-hearted ladies and their mommas can't keep their hands off Slick Rick, but more importantly...the WAY Slick Rick presents himself is what makes these things cool.

Ricky, ricky, ricky, can't you see?
Somehow your words just hypnotize me.
And I just love your jazzy ways,
Oh MC Rick my love is here to stay.

My love is here to stay too, MC Rick. My love is here to stay too.

Snoo Too Gooooo!!

Have You Ever Sent a Text to a Pharaoooohhhhh.............

Just...just a terrible parody of Kanye West's Monster. Unacceptable really and only related to the picture and the title by the most tenuous of associations.

Also...

TENUOUS!

means 'weak or slight'. Or 'very slender or fine'

comes from the Latin 'tenuis' which means thin. 

That's an easy word.

a synonym could be the word NEBULOUS

which can refer to a cloud or haze OR a vague concept/ idea.

Comes from the Greek 'nebula' which means mist.

AND THAT! Remains me of a very cool word.

MIASMA!

which refers to a highly unpleasant smell or vapor OR an oppressive or unpleasant atmosphere that surrounds or emanates from something.

It comes from the Greek miainen--to pollute which lead to miasma--which means defilement.

BUT! Funner fact!

ohh...I can't find it on Google. It was something I heard in a mythology class about how miasma was the stink on criminals, dead people, and the afterbirth and therefore only women could touch them. And how women embodied life and death. Those crazy Greeks. So so frustrated by women.

Not anything like our society where we have magazines, websites, and books for each gender telling people how to act and be loved and accepted based on sweeping generalities, misinformation, and the need to push cold, hard product.

(I'm getting all of these definitions and etymologies from Google, by the way)

AHHHH! Would you like to I'm a PHARAOH?!?!?!

Fernliness

EUPEPTIC!

NOUN

GREEK!

eu- well, easily

+

peptein- to digest

means!

of or having good digestion or a consequent air of healthy good spirits.

_________________________________________________________________

This is my 1,000th post! 

(I have 521 posted and 479 in drafts that date from 2007-2011)

Never Was a Cloudy Day

Boffo On You, Dino-Boy!

Optimism-

From the Latin- optimum- BEST THING!!

The doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, everything right that is wrong. It is held with the greatest tenacity by those most accustomed to the mischance of falling into adversity and is most acceptably expounded with disproof- an intellectual disorder, yielding to no treatment but death. It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious.

Ambrose Bierce-- The Devil's Dictionary

expound- verb. explain the meaning of (a literary or doctrinal work).

disproof- noun. a set of facts that prove that something is untrue.

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convincible*?

Extraneous Strangeness

Words!

Strange!

The "stra" in strange comes from "extra-" (Latin) meaning 'outside of'.

So, even if it's not intentional at all, when we use the word 'strange', we're creating a spatial relationship. This also means that 'strangeness' and 'normalcy' are measures of location. In the same way that 'loud' and 'quiet' are measures of volume. And again, the 'extra-' in 'strange' is telling us why we could think of it this way.

Then we can imagine a circle or some kind of amorphous blob or rectangle or hexagon and everything beyond its borders is what we would call 'strange'. It's outside of the border of normal.

BUT! Is there any word that suggests the opposite of 'strange' using the same spacial connotations? In other words, is there any word that means 'normal' that suggests 'inside of''?

I submit to you to, dear reader, that there is NOT!

normal- comes from normas, which means a rule. or a judge, or a carpenter's square or something.

average- comes from an arabic word meaning damaged merchandise

plain- comes from the Latin plangere which is to lament. Meaning 'plain' is related to 'complain'.

Let's take a look at the word 'internal'. It comes from the Latin, inter- which means "between". This fits with our earlier concept of borders of normal. Yet, "internal" doesn't tell us anything about the 'normalness' of something. You wouldn't describe anyone or anything as 'internal'.

Well, why is any of this important? It's important because language, and therefore thought itself, is assembled around dichotomies! To understand light, there has to be dark. To understand good, there must be not-good. To understand chocolate chip cookies, there must be cookies without chocolate chips in them. life/death. Car crash/ pony ride. Blah blah blah!

BUT! If we find a word like 'strange' which has no apparent opposite, then that gives us permission to make wild jumps in logic to reconcile our earlier assumption about dichotomies!

If we lack the capacity to talk about the things within the boundaries of normal as normal, then I conclude that these things are non-existent and incapable of being expressed!

And this is because language necessarily makes things 'strange'. Language exists so that we can take the gobbledy-gook in our brains (what is inside of us--what we could call 'normal' in some sense) and turn it into something that exists outside of our heads and can be interpreted and heard.

And there's the same spacial relationship! Language has to be 'outside' in some sense to be language. We learn language from the outside. We use language to interact with and affect the outside.

And therefore! To use the word 'strange' in its usual, limited, dismissive sense is to deny the underlying strangeness of anything and everything that can potentially be understood or felt or expressed. The regular usage is a conceited, egotistical, ostentatious stance that assumes the person contains some universal truth or knowledge that can be purely expressed and purely understood in all times and all places throughout the history of everywhere and forever! And they have judged something against this great, infallible nugget of truth they possess and deemed it 'strange'. 

HA-HA! And HA! again!

But I hear you say, wise reader, "Well aren't you proud? You've made another argument for relativism. Bust out the champagne (SEVERE EYE ROLL!)"

And this is true, sarcastic reader. To some degree, I have. And I apologize.

But  wouldn't it be a better world if we were able to recognize our own thoughts as a kind of 'strangeness'? Instead of assuming that the things outside of us are deficient or wrong or incapable of being known because they are outside of us? As soon as we choose to express what is inside of us, those things must also become strange. And if we don't express them then they are, in effect, nothing. Recognizing the underlying strangeness of everything puts us in a much better position to make judgments and evaluate stuff. It liberates us from the bias of ourselves! We can't just make quick assumptions using that gobbledy-gook. We have to take the time to be considerate and evaluate things and use reason and arguments before we talk about the validity or normalness of something. Or its worth in being included or recognized or shared.

And maybe that's the best we can hope for at this point. 

---------------------------------------------------------------

Also, here are some words that don't sound like what they mean.

pulchritude-- great beauty

effulgent- radiant, shining

lugubrious- tremendously sad.

Heads on Heads

Word of the Day!

Juxtaposition!
noun

juxta- Latin. near

+

position- english. position

Funnest of Facts: juxta is related to the word JOUST! The thing where noble knights charged at each other full speed on horseback and smashed big sticks into each other.

the act or insistence of placing two or more things side by side.

That's the dictionary definition but I like the sense of the word that involves smashing two things together that don't belong! Let them fight it out and see what survives!

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Divergent Thinking.

I've become a fan of the mantra: QUANTITY over QUALITY. Yes. Quantity.

And divergent thinking is all about. The question of divergent thinking isn't "can you come up with the correct answer?" but rather, "how many answers can you come up with?"

You're assembling the raw material of your brain. You're pulling out the thoughts and ideas you didn't even know you had and let convergent thinking make sense of it after.

I think it's important and it's something I hope to promote if I ever get myself a teaching jorb.

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Henrik Ibsen

The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right.

Frogue

Rend- verb
Old English- rendan

tear (something) into two or more pieces with violence!

Render- verb

Latin- rederre- give back. 

re- back. dare- give.

cause to be or become: make

OR

represent or depict artistically

Topography of the Helter-Skelter

topography

topos- place (Greek)

+

graphia- writing (Greek)

=

a detailed description or representation on a map of the natural and artificial  features of an area

OR!

the distribution of parts or features on the surface of or within an organism

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helter-skelter

"perhaps from Middle English  skelten to come, go"

in undue haste, confusion, or disorder

Rhyming nonsense means confusion and urgency!

This is my Goodbye face

98, shoulda been there

I saw her staring there

Body Language. Stare at Sun

Nautical Things

Cereal Box

Those are pretty much the same sound, cereal box!

Jungle Him

Cellophane

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