Comments on: Blog and Blah http://johnrlong.com/2006/12/14/blog-and-blah/ I just blather on and on about stuff that interests me, mostly politics and sex and sometimes movies and art. Sun, 19 Jun 2011 14:42:05 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1 By: laocoon http://johnrlong.com/2006/12/14/blog-and-blah/#comment-202 Sat, 16 Dec 2006 07:09:19 +0000 http://www.johnrlong.com/2006/12/14/blog-and-blah/#comment-202 There are a few things I know about communications. One is that people will express things over the phone, in IMs and/or emails differently than they would in person. I also think there’s a difference in the communications between the phone, an IM and an email. Mostly, it seems that people are much more abrasive and brash in telecommunications and far more soft spoken and nonconfrontational in person. I experience what Macluan would call the medium being the message. Personally, I’ve been known within the past year to write letters in longhand because that is yet another way of expressing one’s self that produces a very different kind of discourse between humans. To me, it seems extraordinarily intimate, but that’s the Romantic that remains hidden behind my cynicism.
The other thing I know is that sometimes when you trip and slip and almost fall and you look back and can’t see what it was you tripped on, then it’s almost always the damn midgets with their tin cans and strings.
blogblah!!!

]]> By: redcupper http://johnrlong.com/2006/12/14/blog-and-blah/#comment-201 Fri, 15 Dec 2006 13:49:32 +0000 http://www.johnrlong.com/2006/12/14/blog-and-blah/#comment-201 but first you have to submit an application in triplicate and wait for approval via text message. That way we can keep the riff raff out. Yours is still in the application process. We may reject it John X because of your unnatural attraction to midgets. Text me and we can talk about it.

]]> By: John X http://johnrlong.com/2006/12/14/blog-and-blah/#comment-200 Thu, 14 Dec 2006 23:06:15 +0000 http://www.johnrlong.com/2006/12/14/blog-and-blah/#comment-200 The very devices that keep us (peripherally) connected to other human beings—human beings we might never meet, or might never have met WITHOUT the aid of these devices (as in, a Viennese girlfriend)—seem to also serve as moats, keeping actual human beings at bay.

Consider the phenomenon of text messaging, which is the rage among the young, who wouldn’t dream of making an actual phone call to a friend when they can laboriously punch their encoded bullshit out with their thumbs.

And why do they prefer this to actual conversation?

Because when you text somebody, you don’t have to bother with the messiness of a free-flowing conversation. The stilted nature of texting is preferable to having someone out-talk you, or say things you’d prefer not to hear.

Some people form conversation groups that meet regularly so they can sit across from actual human beings. There’s one at the Red Cup most mornings. Wish we could see you there from time to time….

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