In short, the blog posts here say what they say. Poorly or brilliantly they do so--seldom brilliantly--but it doesn't much matter, for this blog is more a storage place for a miscellany than a bunch of stuff intended for others to read and converse about. Writing for no audience is still my modus operandi and raison d'etre for web logging.
Note this blog is titled "Sort Me". That is to say, this is a place where a speaker-writer is expressing self-referential thoughts, confusions, complaints, observations, what-have-yous. It is by and about a me, this me. And it is for me, with perhaps your witnessing and noodling, should you care, to sort out, or sort through, whatever is here worthy of bother. "It is," in the catchphrase cliche of today, "all about me."
An aside here. The other reader (of only two, maybe three) of this blog took great offense a year or so ago at what he perceived was a personal attack against him. (Out of consideration for his blood pressure and mine, I have since deleted the post and his pornographic email messages.) Among his complaints in a vicious tirade--so vile I dare never quote him--was that bloggers, "he suspected," were "selfish bastards." Well, where has he been since writing was first invented? My blog even places that claimer right up front.
Idiot. Stupid idiot.
Attack the messenger, not the message? Holding things at arm's length is not one of the characteristics of good readers these days, or ever!
Textual. We are instructed from an early age to answer several questions about what we read. What is it about? is the first. The second is, what is the point or meaning? The first question is answered by the context for my post, but also by the text itself. The post I am referring to is about this writer's use of terms not used before but now does more so because their use brings him closer to describing the realities he encounters. "I didn't use these words before but now I do, because I see that they are apt in the world I experience and know something little about." (Writing about writing is always wordier and less elegant than the original.) And the particular words and phrase chosen for use stand out from a background formerly foreign to this same messenger. He must have heard or noticed them more as a result of a change in location or culture . . . than he did before some years ago, living in a different world, no doubt his own.
We learn early also that it is at the beginning of a piece of writing where we should be able to find what a writing is about and why it was written. (At least in the culture of writing in English.) From the title, this piece is advice to a reader and a writer that it is now acceptable to call a spade a spade, to tell it like it is, to not mince words, to speak one's mind, etc. And that might mean pointing out someone who I dare and deem to call an idiot, or stupid, or a stupid idiot--from now on. Like, for example,
Donald Trump is a stupid idiot.From the first lines of the post, I "now" use these words and I have been sliding "into reality" by doing so. With these words, you thus have the makings of the thesis statement for the piece.
The question is not whether I used these words previously, or whether the expression "stupid idiot" was common somewhere, or used by others in my country speaking the same English, or so on. These are questions not addressed by this expository snippet. The only thing addressed is the thesis statement with the words and expression and the rules for usage that obtain, or seem to obtain--in my case.
One might well ask (me),
- Where have you been that you have not used such language till now?
- Did you recently drop onto this planet from outer space?
And naturally, the argumentum ad hominem such questions actually reveal: "Stupid space cadet!"
I accept the judgment and sentence. I have just dropped from space and now find myself in a reality I previously didn't know about or acknowledge with words that others find all too familiar and useful. And because of that, I can be seen as an example of those words.
