I love it when you speak space cornish.

[hirez]

Yet more people telling me that they read this thing but don't understand the half of it. As if it were my problem.

Life's hard when you're a guerilla ontologist. Which is, I don't know, putting a name to something that's just normal. In that I can and do say please and thank you and get invited to weddings and served lager in normal pubs where they have football, but sooner or later the mask will slip and I'll say something or think out of turn and then they're all staring at me like stuffed owls. Even in bloody metal pubs where you might think that a certain lack of conformism might be tolerated after several pints.

I react badly to being told that my weltanschauung is in error, it seems. I have a fine collection of blank stares, mostly from women. Shame, that. (Hm. Find the reference, free the pointer, reclaim the memory-space for something more useful, I think.)

We also find you Nocturnal Emissions.

This weekend featured trouser-repair and waiting for things to turn up in the post.

Comments

[cookwitch.livejournal.com]

I find it better to say this;

"I have no idea what that means, but it sounds fabulous!"

Sometimes I do not understand the things people say, doesn't mean I don't like listening.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

There is, I think, a whole pile of stuff in that one statement that needs unpacking. Somehow.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

I understand most of it, and what I don't understand impels me into self-education so that I can understand it all, which is all to the good. There is no such thing as useless knowledge.

[liz-lowlife.livejournal.com]

I find you make make more sense when wearing stockings...

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

It's like art, innit? Sometimes you don't need to understand it; you can look at it, and it'll look back at you, and prod your brain; you don't necessarily need to prod _its_ brain.

That's how I like to think of hirez, of course, innit.

:-)

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Thank you. You're too kind. (I need a specific icon, don't I?)

[liz-lowlife.livejournal.com]

Yes...a special stockings one for special people like me! :oD

[jendama.livejournal.com]

I try to understand what you write or glean the message/theme among the words. Sometimes, that requires me to engage with Google but it is usually quite enlightening and entertaining--that's a good thing.

I've never had a problem with your world view. For the bits that I don't understand, I just chalk it up to you being British and move on! :)

[silentq.livejournal.com]

My brain goes into a slightly different state when I'm reading your posts, almost like I de-focus, and just let the meaning come without trying too hard. Sort of like when I'm reading certain (other) authors, their language rewires my brain. I enjoy it. :)

[easterbunny.livejournal.com]

Ontologies, weddings, stuffed owls. Validation complete.

[janinemarriott.livejournal.com]

I think what I said is "I wish I understood what you were saying half the time". Also u may need to be more direct with people (ie me) when you want them to stop by saying something cryptic like 'Shut up'. BTW did you decide what colour shirt was suitable to drink half pints in? I decided it wasn't colour it that was the issue, style is the problem. Maybe paul smith in its patterned phase or anything by Ben Sherman

[sarah-mum.livejournal.com]

What do they want, subtitles?

[maluse.livejournal.com]

I read the last sentence as "waiting for things to turn up in the past", which sounds like it ought to mean something profound (or perhaps just that one is an accidental historian).

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I fear you were a lightning conductor for a set of people who's first language is Snide, rather than English. Sorry about that. We should hunt them down and employ sarcasm. They don't like it up them.

Given my experiences in the Old Market Tavern, lilac t-shirts are right out.

A Keane or Snow Patrol shirt would be worn by the sort of bed-wetters who drink halves.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

You're worryingly close to the truth of the matter.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

You know, there's a reasonable amount of irony in so many splendid but derailing comments...

[janinemarriott.livejournal.com]

Glad it wasn't mainly about my gentle teasing re the tshirts that make people girlie. I was worried cos my choice of words was poor. If you ever need help with the sarcasm employing, I'm your girl. I lean towards it more easily than I should! Ah yes moany dull band tshirts would work. Can I therefore throw coldplay into the mix?

[avocadovpx.livejournal.com]

>> they read this thing but don't understand the half of it.

Obviously the polarity is reversed in their feature/bug detector.

>> Life's hard when you're a guerilla ontologist. Which is, I don't know, putting a name to something that's just normal. In that I can and do say please and thank you and get invited to weddings and served lager in normal pubs where they have football, but sooner or later the mask will slip and I'll say something or think out of turn and then they're all staring at me like stuffed owls. Even in bloody metal pubs where you might think that a certain lack of conformism might be tolerated after several pints.

I would have to read the first 30 pages of the novel this paragraph starts, even if the next 29 of them were ghostwritten by Clive Cussler and zombie Barbara Cartland. There's quite a lot to be said for well-placed details and an attitude.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

So I think there are several different pieces to this.

One of them is that when I hear/read the phrase 'I read it but don't understand you' (or words to that effect), the implicit statement that follows is 'so you should explain it for me.' Which, I don't know, sounds an awful lot like 'I am too special to 'highlight, right-click, Google', which is what I do all the damn time when reading things on that there internets.

I mean, what am I supposed to say to that? 'Sucks to be you, then'?, 'Don't worry, Spongebob is on the television soon'? 'Just get the fuck away from me, your stupid might be catching'?

Another is that am I only noticing this odd gender difference because of some previously unrecognised privilege? That would be really rubbish of me if so. Although I could be mistaking some edge-case of a reasonably sensible strategy for dealing with tiresome men who jabber excitedly about compilers or rubbish books with spaceships on the cover.

I also suspect that this is just a modern version of something I've had to deal with A Lot, and I've become so disenchanted with the Blank Stare that my reaction is, um, somewhat disproportionate. Although obviously I have absolutely no right to anyone's attention.

Ugh. Confusing. I've missed several of the jolly interesting points I wanted to make because I've forgotten them in the mumble hours between riding into work this AM and now. Blast.

Perhaps this should be a post of its own...

[hirez.livejournal.com]

See comment to sushidog which maybe covers about half of what I was attempting to get at.

Please, throw Coldplay into the mixer. A cement one for preference.

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

I don't think "I don't understand this" _necessarily_ implies "so you should explain it for me"; at least, not always; the impression I get frhe comments here is that a lot of people enjoy your posts not simply despite the fact that they don't entirely understand them, but _because_ they don't entirely understand them, and so they get their heads stretched a bit.

Also, I think the "not understanding" bit is not always about not bothering to Google; you have a talent for making connections in a way which can seem rather obscure to anyone who isn't in your headspace, so even if each opf the steps is perfectly familar, the route between them isn't, necessarily.

This is not in any way a criticism of you; trying to keep up with your train of thought if fascinating and exhilirating, and sometimes difficult, when you do a Matrix-style side-step into a different dimension. But that's a good thing, as far as I'm concerned.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I should also note, as if it were not already abundantly thingy, that present company is utterly excepted. I mean, self-selecting group, innit.