Pobol Y Cwm
Oct. 17th, 2003 01:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hirezYour posts these days are mostly Welsh, but I still read them for the bits in between.
It's about information density.
Maybe I'm approaching the English language (or indeed any other human-interactive medium) the same way I approach(ed) C. If you start thinking in terms of context-dependency and macro-expansion... No, I think I'm too woolly-headed today to explore it properly. Perhaps someone else has a better idea?
What I tend to think is that the best writing works on your brain the same way a self-expanding archive or a viral payload might work on a computer. Just a few lines of innocent-seeming words unwrap into something conceptually far larger that keeps unfolding along lines that traverse dimensions that make your eyes hurt when you try to look at them.
It's about information density.
Maybe I'm approaching the English language (or indeed any other human-interactive medium) the same way I approach(ed) C. If you start thinking in terms of context-dependency and macro-expansion... No, I think I'm too woolly-headed today to explore it properly. Perhaps someone else has a better idea?
What I tend to think is that the best writing works on your brain the same way a self-expanding archive or a viral payload might work on a computer. Just a few lines of innocent-seeming words unwrap into something conceptually far larger that keeps unfolding along lines that traverse dimensions that make your eyes hurt when you try to look at them.
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Date: 2003-10-17 05:42 am (UTC)You're providing information but we're too dense to understand it?
[Actually I found the last post interesting where I understood it.]
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Date: 2003-10-17 05:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-17 06:21 am (UTC)Which makes it immediately obvious that I stole the whole idea from the Enki bits in Snow Crash.
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Date: 2003-10-17 06:59 am (UTC)Density is work, but it's always worthwhile.
"Omit needless words." - Strunk and White
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Date: 2003-10-17 08:58 am (UTC)"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to remove." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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Date: 2003-10-17 12:09 pm (UTC)Pant-y-grdl
Date: 2003-10-17 06:03 am (UTC)Welsh = I understand the occasional word, where a bit of English bursts through.
Put it down to luditism and spod denial.
On the whole the LJ witterings I most enjoy are those where you actually 'hear' the person come through.
Re: Pant-y-grdl
Date: 2003-10-17 06:32 am (UTC)I just lack the patience to pace myself and/or spread 'syntactic sugar' between the concepts. I have to bosh it all out in any old order because my fingers never work as fast as my brain. By the time they've got to the end of the sentence, I'm a paragraph ahead and the next bit that gets written down misses out a great lump of exposition or argument. (Which is why I don't do usenet or debate - I can't be bothered explaining how I got from A to B. This is what I think. Deal with it.)
(I, I, I... Sound like Julie Burchill.)
Viewed through the context of Factory/Peel/Ballard/Mark E Smith/O'Reilly/man pages/old NME, it becomes obvious that I'm thieving ideas and rearranging them in a careless and incompetent manner.
Re: Pant-y-grdl
Date: 2003-10-17 06:58 am (UTC)Think of yourself as a flying trapeze act, as opposed to an Open University physics lecture. The content is (in a sense) the same, but one covers the territory a lot more quickly than the other. And is also more fun.
So, what's next for MechaZazz ?
Re: Pant-y-grdl
Date: 2003-10-17 10:30 am (UTC)MechaZazz vs. Cybergoth.
MechaZazz goes to the zoo.
MechaZazz and the DIY.
The fridge that was a portal to the dimension of the ubergoths.
Richard Whiteley knows where you live.
The curious case of Converter's mountain-bike.
MechaZazz and the Metal Nite.
MechaZazz and the low-flying aircraft.
Re: Pant-y-grdl
Date: 2003-10-17 11:05 am (UTC)So, good stuff. A series. An exploration. And, in due course, action toys and some weekend-morning CGI.
Cultural shorthand strikes again.
Date: 2003-10-17 12:27 pm (UTC)[To everyone else: See? That's how it works. Overload the subtext and it collapses in on itself and emits referential cluons.]
A comic, I think.
(There was also a thing in 'Not 1983' that looked a lot like the list of books you'd find in the rear of a bad SF paperback. Parts of it went:
Nolan Shrike - The stars are slumbering - £2.50
Trumbull Q. Insecticide - Humbrol and the warrior planet - £1.75
TT 'Honest' Smith - Nude alien totty having sex with machinery - £4.50
Nolan Shrike - The stars awake! - £2.50
Nolan Shrike - Oh no, they've nodded off again - £3.00
Trumbull Q. Insecticide - Humbrol and the sixth dimension - £2.00
Trumbull Q. Insecticide - Humbrol goes to the zoo - £ gratis
)
Re: Cultural shorthand strikes again.
Date: 2003-10-17 12:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-18 06:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-19 04:19 am (UTC)And Pokey has gone all Kraftwerk. Soon he will have a bicycle and everything will be Correct.
(Actually, I'd envisaged it more like Tank Girl drawn by Los Bros. Because that's the last time I had anything to do with graphic novels. Apart from The Invisibles.)
clearly i have too much free time
Date: 2003-10-22 06:57 pm (UTC)[tank girl is teh s3xx]
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Date: 2003-10-22 08:28 pm (UTC)maybe that's why that's why i have no idea wtf he's on about half the time until about ten minutes after i've read it and am thinking about something else entirely ;)
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Date: 2003-10-24 03:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-24 01:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-24 02:02 pm (UTC)Re: Pant-y-grdl
Date: 2003-10-17 07:00 am (UTC)And I am as much your cultural miseducation twin as was likely on the other side of the world.
Re: Pant-y-grdl
Date: 2003-10-17 07:12 am (UTC)Re: cultural shorthand
Date: 2003-10-17 09:41 am (UTC)Re: cultural shorthand
Date: 2003-10-17 12:13 pm (UTC)Squeaky? No can do. Far to Gloucestershire for that.
Re: cultural shorthand
Date: 2003-10-18 02:49 am (UTC)Oh, and talking of which 'Johnny Palmer' cad-about town may well be making a Whitby appearance.
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Date: 2003-10-18 04:52 pm (UTC)we still have to have the 'who looks better in a miniskirt' contest! :P
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Date: 2003-10-18 05:31 pm (UTC)Though I suspect it'll turn out to be 'whose legs will blind passers-by and thus be a danger to shipping'
Praise 'Bob' for opaque tights.
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Date: 2003-10-18 06:15 pm (UTC)Re: Pant-y-grdl
Date: 2003-10-17 12:18 pm (UTC)<eccles>
Yuss ? You called ?
</eccles>