Dialect Fashion (should bend to love and bow to passion….) with appologies to Kalman and Ruby

As a kid I remember watching a public service commercial with a Sherriff from the Deep South, complete with a heavy southern drawl warning against the dangers of speeding, namely the fact that you couldn’t afford the ticket he would give you. I remember the tag line, “y’all be careful”- namely the thick southern accent or dialect that the character used. This came back to me when I heard about a Facebook analysis of “E-laughter” and how we write also has a dialect that one day may be track able and quantifiable. It is possible that our on line writing style will be one day evolve to be as distinct as a writer’s voice, imagine posting in a “Faulkeresque” or “Hemingwayesque” style or are we too busy writing to think about how we communicate.

 

 

 

 

The title of this post is a nod to “Hold me Thusly”to Kalman and Ruby. If anyone has a file of the song please share it with me. Thanks.

“A society is judged by what it mourns”

Gorilla Coffee is one of those places etched in my memory of Brooklyn, great coffee and a great place to hang out with people. I was getting the former to do the latter when I noticed the tattoos on my Barista (this makes me wonder if Barista is gender specific Is there a Baristo and a Barista? But I digress). In the crook of each elbow there was a bird pierced by an arrow. This unusual tattoo was mirrored on the other arm and I had to ask the meaning. “ They commemorate sailors lost at sea” was the reply. Now, I don’t know about you but I don’t think there are all that many sailor lost at sea these days, but, alas, there holding my coffee I was proved wrong.
Of course people get tattoos to mark life’s passages, entrances and exits yet we don’t seem to carry this physical reverence to the digital world. In the electronic world there is nothing more to mark a passing than pushing the delete button and emptying ones recycle bin on the desktop. An e mail love letter, a Facebook friend or an electronic diary can be deleted with the push of a button. Do we think so little of our digital memories that we see them as worthless and make no notice of their passing? Have we no sense of morning in our digital world? Bertol Brecht once said, “A society is judged by what it mourns”. If that is the case we must hold our digital reality in such low esteem that like smoke rings they can be wiped away with just a wipe of our hand with no thought to their passing or existence?

the Death of Optimisim

My kids were watching the Matrix the other night and it made me realize how good the effects and the ideas are behind the movie are. Of course the whole “Allegory of the Cave” idea where we are only living in a shadow land of what is real has been around since, well, Plato, it still has a real resonance today. The thing is what if it isn’t so much a cautionary tale made for the pessimistic society but does that have to be the case? Does the future have to be so bleak and do we have to constantly be warring against the machines. Since when is optimism a dirty word? Why must we always be at war with the future? And if we are does it mean that we have no control over what is happening? Are we unwilling to be positive about the future?  Or are we creating a world that we have no control over and are afraid to imagine greater than we ever have before?