Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Justin C who wrote (53475)	7/18/2000 12:17:27 PM
From: Gauguin	Respond to of 71178

I thot of TV too. But then last night I was watchin PBS again, and by george, the good stuff is pretty handy to have come over the air and into your home. Man o man, is it. So it's TV content (or non-content), that's bio-hazardous; and to get rid of that we'd have to exterminate. You know, "make more room." Hee hee. It make me giggle just thinking about it. If I had cable? I'd never get anything done, between History and all. My "production" would be seriously effected. Heck, that's partly why I quit going to the library. And put my books away. Been thinking of getting them out? Hmmmm..... Probably "not prudent at this juncture." No; best not to be drawn to the dark side. Like my big book of Monet's Water Lilies? I was just wondering where that is. I even have a SWELL place to read them, but fortunately it's jammed with boxes. Thank goodness! Yes. Irresponsibility rules the Paul Roost. Kind of wherever he goes.

To: Justin C who wrote (53475)	7/18/2000 4:15:16 PM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (6) \| Respond to of 71178

Justin, I'm reading Sven Birkerts' The Gutenberg Elegies (which I started a few months ago, and, as usual, never finished). It's about the effect of the electronic age on the printed word, not just how technology has changed the way information is transmitted, but the way in which we view it and absorb it. He believes that we are losing the soul of our collective body, that we are no longer able to absorb in depth but only laterally. EVerything is too fast, too much, too overwhelming. ANd as I was reading last night, I realized that I was frustrating myself because i was rushing- tapping my foot, thinking about the next book, the next project. I was a victim of what he was writing about. I didn't want to stop and consider his sentences which are very well-written and are full of THOUGHTS. We are under such an onslaught of stimuli. I wonder if shopping would be different if it were done in silence. What about restaurants? I'm so tired of YELLING in restaurants. Did I ever tell you about the time we got a call from the principal of CW's school (k-6) He was in kindergarten and there was an assembly. The kids wouldn't be quiet and he stood up on his seat and shouted, "EVERYBODY SHUT UP!" Of course he got in trouble. He was very indignant- he said they were being rude and not listening to the teachers. I told the teacher that I thought they should have thanked him. Little 6 year old trying to help out their inadequate asses. I didn't really say that. We took him out of that school after they called us in first grade because he finished all his work so fast and was getting into trouble distracting the other students by rolling his pencil up his desk with his tongue. I asked the obvious-- why don't you give him something to DO. But no-- everyone has to move at the same pace in the system. So we went to private school. Where was I? I llike to think that I'm doing now what Birkerts talks about doing in his writing. I think a lot of us here do it. He says- ideas are not the sum and substance of thought; rather, thought is as much about the motion across the water as it is about the stepping stones that allow it. Gaugs is the master of this-- "exploratory digressiveness". Thinking is not simply utilitarian, bur can also be a kind of narrative travel that allows for picnics along the way We take a lot of picnic breaks.