|
|
handles with care buy sinclair
Daniel A. Foss (ST002578@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Sat, 7 May 1994 19:27:28 EDT
particular handle it was. Which at minimum represented giving aid and
comfort to the New Age. The New Age itself is a handle; one of those
Thingies you anthropologists confect your most opaque theories, to an
immigrant, about; here, [Greco]nyms, where [Greco] is a Greek word
preceding the *nym* part. Eponym, toponym. First whiff of it, before
you were born, was Levi-Strauss' chapter in The Savage Mind about
different sets of rules for naming horses, dogs, and humanoid children.
Speaking of the esthetics of the hardly-worth-mentioning, let's talk
about it, but some other time, please. Next week, sometime. For now,
incredible, isn't it, how this thread about handles has been allowed
to subsist on ANTHRO-L since January without anyone opening the theoretical
can of worms, so unanthropological of you, don't you think. Maybe we
really oughta theorize about why you were so incongruously atheoretical
about Steve Mizrach and his handle. But next week sometime. Stingy with
the digressions tonight, as this is being typed on a Lapptop, and the Lapp
is being rented by the hour. Said that for the sole reason that it's Racist,
and I no longer have Stephanie J. Nelson's crosshairs on the back of my
neck, hee hee. However. Dwight S. Read, a handle, has invoked an obscure,
by reason of the rarity of deviance, cultural norm prohibiting him,
regardless of his personal inclinations, in any, from responding to
the handle Steve Mizrach's handle, Seeker1, which reminds me that, long
ago, I found the handle New Age, what, it's not over yet, after all this
time, so viscerally grossoutifying, that whatever it turned out this
New Age thingie was, is, even, I have rediscovered the Comma, folks, which
I didn't even know, yet, I'd be against it, if or when I'd ever get around
to looking it up. [Note: As should have been anticipated, the Explainers
disagreed among themselves; no agreed-upon boundary definition existed.
Just that, well, you know, when this writer attended an anthropology
dissertation defense, the star performer having done a study of the
practice of witchcraft religion in Suffix County, Long Island, this
was the quintessential Hard Stuff. As was the New Age Fair at the Holiday
Inn in our fair county's Riverhead, reincarnationists, numerologists,
crystal peddlers, the works. Pyramid power does work; stand the thing on its
pointy end, keeps my mattress up.]
It becomes obvious, in the light of such cultures as the Chinese, where
for many centuries, the names of children were not the same as subsequent
literary names and scholarly-official names, which are yet not nicknames,
the adoption, that is to say, of contrived names in sequence or in layers,
is normative, rather than our own practice of having one Real Name inscribed
on our Birth Certificates, the same as our Legal Name, unless or until we
Legally change it. In the armenian-Jewish subculture there is found the
phrase, "What was it before," which I wanted to ask Seeker1, because this
handle, Seeker1, was to me offensively NewAgey. And when he disrobed to
appear as Steve Mizrach I then wanted to say, "That's funny, you don't
look Jewish," as concludes the old story about the yenta on the subway
poking the guy, yenta is sexist, I know, with her elbow demanding he
confess he's Jewish. Steve Mizrach will tell the story if he likes. I
say this because they don't have subways in Florida. This is, specifically,
New York City Racism, Stephanie. [Note: The viewing audience, we hope, has
picked up on our, the plural form indicates, we've just been crowned
Emperor, inclusion in the text of details of petty, arbitrary Political
Correctness conventions, no more, no less stupid and arbitrary as the norm
Mizrach mindlessly attacks in full certainty that there exists a Read, not
necessarily by that name, everywhere who will as mindlessly or even more,
defend it.]
Daniel A. Foss is a handle. Daniel A. Foss, who comes to you mediated,
*cannot be the same* as Daniel A. Foss, qua organism. Though it is true
that Daniel A. Foss, organism, may take on, in such rare Real Life occasions
as may present themselves, quirks originating in Daniel A. Foss, mediation.
Only a True-Self-crazed culture would care this much about the cultural
norm heretofore in dispute. Suppose, finally, our culture had instead some
rule making it normative to address regular posters with the rank of
Silverback reverentially as Great Uncle; would the Mizrachian challenge
then entail calling the gorilla in question Dwight Read, or what, can
I call you Foundit1 instead, Steve?
Daniel A. Foss
|