From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V14 #53 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Wednesday, March 2 2005 Volume 14 : Number 053 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Fuck you, Jeff's faggy asshole kitten-raping boss! [Jeff ] Re: spazz [Rex Broome ] Re: spazz ["Stewart C. Russell" ] Re: spazz ["Matt Sewell" ] Re: spazz [Rex Broome ] Re: Fuck you, Jeff's faggy asshole kitten-raping boss! [Jeff Subject: Re: Fuck you, Jeff's faggy asshole kitten-raping boss! On Tue, 1 Mar 2005 14:02:36 -0800, Rex Broome wrote: > Which kinda proves my point... the prevailing PC-ification of the > feg-list is overstated at best. And kinda proves your point, since my > sloppy use of language didn't really achieve much. Alrighty, then. I guess we should compare the lengths of our posts again then. That might be feggy, though. - -- ...Jeff, proving his point The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2005 12:36:27 +1300 From: James Dignan Subject: Re: This is...um... where? Albuquerque? >You got it. Similarly, "Shaun of the Dead" was a (the?) romzomcom. ..or so it's said over on the fansite of such things (this is information I got from romzomcomdom.com) James - -- James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.- =-.-=-.-=-.- You talk to me as if from a distance .-=-.-=-.-=-. -=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time .-=- .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2005 18:30:54 -0500 (EST) From: Christopher Gross Subject: Re: Fuck you, Jeff's faggy asshole kitten-raping boss! I'd just like to point out that gwu.edu has had a spam filter installed since last August, and this message and its replies were the first Feg list mail ... indeed the first legitimate mail from anyone ... that I've seen get filtered. I think it was the addition of "Jeff" to the porn-spammy subject line that did the trick. "Cocksuckler" sounds like some kind of climbing vine, something like honeysuckle but with more phallicly-shaped blossoms. - --Chris ______________________________________________________________________ Christopher Gross On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog. chrisg@gwu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2005 19:19:09 -0800 (PST) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Re: Fuck you, Jeff's faggy asshole kitten-raping boss! Christopher Gross wrote: > "Cocksuckler" sounds like some kind of climbing vine, > something like honeysuckle but with more phallicly-shaped > blossoms. No, "cocksuckler" just sounds like it was done particularly well.... ===== "I had naively believed all these many years that Americans genuinely believed in freedom of speech. [But I] discovered there that when you made an utterance that was remotely contrary to what the White House was saying, then they attacked you. For a South African the deja vu was frightening. They behaved exactly the same way that used to happen here [during apartheid]: vilifying those who are putting forward a slightly different view." -- Desmond Tutu __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2005 21:45:33 -0600 From: steve Subject: Re: Fuck you, Jeff's faggy asshole kitten-raping boss! On Mar 1, 2005, at 11:03 AM, The Great Quail wrote: > It's not like Robyn Hitchcock is Natalie Merchant here. Thank goodness, look what she did to poor Stipe! A better girl singer - - - Steve __________ In press conferences, TV ads, and interviews this year, President Bush has manifested a series of psychopathologies: an abstract notion of reality, confidence unhinged from facts and circumstances, and a conception of credibility that requires no correspondence to the external world. - William Saletan ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2005 22:20:35 -0600 From: Jeff Subject: Re: Fuck you, Jeff's faggy asshole kitten-raping boss! On Tue, 1 Mar 2005 21:45:33 -0600, steve wrote: > On Mar 1, 2005, at 11:03 AM, The Great Quail wrote: > > > It's not like Robyn Hitchcock is Natalie Merchant here. > > Thank goodness, look what she did to poor Stipe! Huh? > > A better girl singer - > > I agree. But as much as I tend to dislike Merchant's music, I think she's underrated in looks. Not that that's important in buying records, I'm just sayin', trying to stir up someone to accuse me of something so I can claim not to be all PC. - -- ...Jeff The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2005 21:50:46 -0800 From: "Asshole Muthafucka" Subject: Re: Fuck you, Jeff's faggy asshole kitten-raping boss! i like the scene in *Crumb* where zwigoff asks him if anybody ever got offended at his depiction of blacks: "oh, yeah! ...but it was all white liberals." <...and I said, hey, it bugs me when you call me Poopyface, could you stop? - - most people (though, I'm guessing, not Eddie...) would say, oh, I didn't know that bugged you, sorry> well, as much as i like to consider myself the world's reigning asshole, i can only think of about four times in eight-plus years' posting to this board that i've ever issued a not-in-jest personal insult: two to elizabeth morgan (who had it coming), and two to eb (who's had it coming far more than just twice). but how do you know it's "clearly intended to offend"? i think, actually, that this is the very heart of the matter. the purpose of words is to be (or, at least, *ought to be*, in my opinion) *descriptive*. *intentions* should be conveyed through context and inflection. sure, "wetback" is a "loaded" word. and sure, the guy surely does mean it to offend. but, frankly, that ought to be the very least of our concerns. our job -- us being privileged whitepeople, i mean -- is to expose injustice, lies, and double-standards; and to the extent that we're able to, to lessen them. so if the guy's advocating anti-immigrant policies, and he actually has some sort of power to help implement anti-immigrant policies, then *that's* what we should be taking offence at (unless, of course, he's advocating sending the fucking crackers back to europe). it turns out that lauren doesn't like "faggy" backing vocals (at least in the specific instance). fine, that's her opinion. but, while i probably prefer robyn's "Dark Green Energy" backing vocals to stipey's, i *do* like stipey's -- in other words, i like "faggy" backing vocals (at least in the specific instance). fine, that's my opinion. the *word* is merely descriptive, yes? (having said that, i don't think that, even with this example to help me out, i would be able to identify "faggy" vocals all by my lonesome. like, if somebody played me five songs, and told me to pick out the one with "faggy" vocals, i doubt that i'd be able to. ...but then, i'd also not be able to pick out the songs with the "emo" or "shoegazer" vocals, to pick two styles that have been discussed here.) now, one may say that the reason certain words lose their neutrality (or, were never imbued with neutrality in the first place) and become "loaded" words is that they were borne out of hatred/intolerance. fair enough. but isn't that *all the more reason* to co-opt those words? i remember reading an interview with tarantino, in which he said that the reason he used the word "nigger" so much in *Reservoir Dogs* and *Pulp Fiction* was to de-stigmatise them, to remove the taboo. clearly, he didn't succeed. but good on him for trying. the principal reason i titled my blog *Not Counting Niggers* was, simply, to pay homage to the eoponymous orwell essay. but a secondary reason was the hope that the blog would begin showing up in web searches for the word "nigger". et voila, the blog is the top-ranked page in a google search of the word, and a post entitled "Only Another Dead Nigger" is the second-ranked page in a google search for "dead niggers". sure, 95% of the comments on the blog are to the effect that i'm a complete dumbass, and that the commenter hates niggers and towel-heads (and often jews, too). but the percentage of viewers that bother commenting is, of course, very small. and while i've no way of knowing how many people have, as a result of reading the blog, begun to think in a different way about race and class relations vis a vis u.s. foreign policy; if it's more than zero, i'm happy. and if it's as many as one, it was, in my opinion, worth offending some white liberals over (a lot of sites link to the blog as "Feed The Fish" rather that "Not Counting Niggers", as much sense as that makes). at the risk of beating a dead horse, is this really what we need to concern ourselves with? i mean, think about the effort that was made holding the bush administration's feet to the fire when it was flailing around trying to come up with the least-possible-offensive name of the "operation" to bomb the fuck out of afghanistan (including with cluster bombs and radiological munitions) -- and yet 95% (or something like) of americans were *in favour* of the "operation"! okay, if you're an afghan that just got the shit bombed out of you, do you think you're going to give some miniscule fraction of a fuck that at least enough white liberals put enough time and energy into the matter to ensure that the "operation"'s *name* wasn't "offensive" to you? cross my heart: it was intended solely (as you initially surmised) as a joke/minor provocation, and (as stewart surmised) a reference to the movie. (which, by the way, having now screened a *third* time -- the last time with the subtitles turned off -- i *still* say is pretty damned close to a perfect piece of work.) well, even that lauren felt compelled to explain herself indicates *some* level of thought-policing. let me guess: you're trying to make them put commas inside close-quotes? i've only in the last day or so more less fully recovered from my sick -- the sickest i've been, i think, in ten years (at least, this is the first time in ten years that i've gone to the doctor and taken out a prescription). i wasn't kidding when i said earlier that i'd been "coughing up stuff that would terrify darwin"! oddly enough, i had assumed from the symptoms that i'd be diagnosed with acute chlorine inhalation (or something). but instead i was told that i'd an ear infection -- even though the ears were the one thing that weren't bothering me at all! KEN "A black hole in a bottomless pit" THE KENSTER ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2005 00:56:24 -0500 From: "Lauren" Subject: Re: horny drunken clowns with guns not allowed! > Perhaps the argument shouldn't be, don't be so sensitive about people using words you don't like Conceded, I was sensitive and felt a bit chastised (although I wasn't 100% sure, either because irony is *just* that way...or maybe I'm just slow on the uptake...) > it should be, don't be so sensitive about someone pointing out the implications of your words. In this case, one of the implications of my use of the word faggy has been an insane amount of growth in the use of said word on the list....so what's the take away on that? And in this case, I don't think it's any more legitimate to use the term for discussion or emphasis or irony than it is to use it as I did to describe the released version of "Dark Green Energy" (I mean, you've heard the damn song!) - if one thinks such a word is a problem, at some point, discussing it (seriously, or worse IMO, ironically) in becomes part of the problem. For example, someone asked when I used the word, "What if a homosexual joined the list to-day?" [sic]. Uh...what if a homosexual joined the list *to-day*? xo Lauren - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---------------------------------------------- "I hate all music. Except 'Roadrunner' by The Modern Lovers." - John Lydon ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2005 10:50:10 -0500 (EST) From: Jill Brand Subject: spazz i told my 13-year-old daughter to stop acting like such a spaz (spazz? spas?) the other day, and she lectured me on how inappropriate it is to use such language. I have stopped calling her midget; vertically challenged is, however, acceptable. BTW, do any of you ever watch PBS historical documentaries? I loathe that "historical present" crap, for instance, "If Roosevelt doesn't meet with Churchhill at sea, we are all speaking German now." We now call those speakers chronologically challenged at home. Jill ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2005 08:25:06 -0800 From: Rex Broome Subject: Re: spazz Jill: > i told my 13-year-old daughter to stop acting like such a spaz (spazz? > spas?) the other day, and she lectured me on how inappropriate it is to > use such language. I have stopped calling her midget; vertically > challenged is, however, acceptable. "Spaz" by the Elastik Band is a really, really awesome song. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2005 11:53:08 -0500 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: spazz Rex Broome wrote: > > "Spaz" by the Elastik Band is a really, really awesome song. Hell yes! I think I discovered it when I was thirteen, and passed tape copies of it around all my friends. We used to cycle down the road yelling it to one another. I probably haven't heard it twenty years. But I think I can remember all the words. Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2005 16:56:08 +0000 From: "Matt Sewell" Subject: Re: spazz Damn your fast fingers, Rex! My thoughts exactly, darling* - one of my very favourite tracks on the Nuggets boxset. Wish there was anything else by them... Cheers Matt *for the benefit of the other Mr Broome >From: Rex Broome >Reply-To: Rex Broome >To: Jill Brand >CC: fegmaniax@smoe.org >Subject: Re: spazz >Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2005 08:25:06 - -0800 > >Jill: > > i told my 13-year-old daughter to stop acting like such a spaz (spazz? > > spas?) the other day, and she lectured me on how inappropriate it is to > > use such language. I have stopped calling her midget; vertically > > challenged is, however, acceptable. > >"Spaz" by the Elastik Band is a really, really awesome song. > >-Rex ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2005 09:08:25 -0800 From: Rex Broome Subject: Re: spazz On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 11:53:08 -0500, Stewart C. Russell wrote: > Hell yes! I think I discovered it when I was thirteen, and passed tape > copies of it around all my friends. We used to cycle down the road > yelling it to one another. > > I probably haven't heard it twenty years. But I think I can remember all > the words. You might have it on CD without realizing it... it's on the first Nuggets box set. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2005 11:09:22 -0600 From: Jeff Subject: Re: Fuck you, Jeff's faggy asshole kitten-raping boss! First, just let me state that gmail amused me no end by putting a link saying "Invite Asshole to Gmail" at the bottom of this post. On Tue, 01 Mar 2005 21:50:46 -0800, Asshole Muthafucka wrote: > <...and I said, hey, it bugs me when you call me Poopyface, could you stop? > - most people (though, I'm guessing, not Eddie...) would say, oh, I didn't > know that bugged you, sorry> > > well, as much as i like to consider myself the world's reigning asshole, i > can only think of about four times in eight-plus years' posting to this > board that i've ever issued a not-in-jest personal insult: two to elizabeth > morgan (who had it coming), and two to eb (who's had it coming far more > than just twice). I was assuming it'd be an *in-jest* personal insult, fwiw... And that's cuz I'm not Eb. > sure, "wetback" is a "loaded" word. and sure, the guy surely does mean it > to offend. but, frankly, that ought to be the very least of our concerns. > our job -- us being privileged whitepeople, i mean -- is to expose > injustice, lies, and double-standards; and to the extent that we're able > to, to lessen them. So - to return this to the origins of this discussion - what Aaron should have done, rather than gently question Lauren's use of the word "faggy," was say, oh by the way, I've donated $25 to the Cambridge Gay Men's Society on her behalf? The point is: this isn't an either/or situation. At that moment, talking about language made sense. In the longer moment we live in, yeah, "exposing injustice" etc. is more important. But isn't calling attention to potentially hurtful everyday behavior lessening injustice at least to some extent? (And really: I hate to keep picking on Lauren here, since it's clear she didn't want to offend anyone. So, uh, for what it's worth, I hereby extend an official "I'm not picking on Lauren" olive branch in her general direction.) > now, one may say that the reason certain words lose their neutrality (or, > were never imbued with neutrality in the first place) and become "loaded" > words is that they were borne out of hatred/intolerance. fair enough. but > isn't that *all the more reason* to co-opt those words? i remember reading > an interview with tarantino, in which he said that the reason he used the > word "nigger" so much in *Reservoir Dogs* and *Pulp Fiction* was to > de-stigmatise them, to remove the taboo. clearly, he didn't succeed. but > good on him for trying. I think defanging words can be done by those that get injured by the fangs - not by those bearing the fangs. And even that doesn't always work: the word "nigger" is probably far more commonly used now than it was 20 years ago, and at least some of that (counting the variant spelling) is due to hip-hoppers' attempts to reclaim, or at least redefine, the word. You'll notice that plenty of blacks don't appreciate that effort either. > say: they're nowhere near so pliable, not even when it's mere facts about, > say, comma usage > that I'm trying to squeeze into their brains.> > > let me guess: you're trying to make them put commas inside close-quotes? Well, not only. We Americans are completely illogical on that one - but I can't change that standard, or the perception of writers who don't know it, all by myself. Oh, and one more reply to Lauren: I think it makes an enormous difference whether a word is being used, or merely being described or mentioned. Words, as arrangements of letters on the page, aren't magic (one reason I think it's absurd to censor and write "f*ck* for "fuck" when anyone who can read knows what word you mean). Their effect depends upon their meaning, and that meaning is enmeshed in a network of communication, most certainly and directly including their context in a particular sentence, but also what we know of the speaker and the audience context. So someone saying to a complete stranger, "Wow, that's a really faggy shirt" is at a lot more risk of being obnoxious (even if it was meant as, somehow, a compliment) than someone, say on a linguistics list, asking "what is the origin of the word 'faggy'?" And yes, there are a zillion things more important than this. But (one point of what I said yesterday) there are two zillion things more important than arguing about it. It's funny to me that people who don't like it when others "police" language then turn around and get exercised in their efforts to police policing. (BTW: I read some of this at my offcampus job - at one point, my boss did wander by, but not close enough to see the subject line... ) - -- ...Jeff The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2005 12:42:18 -0500 From: The Great Quail Subject: Do you see a sign outside of my house saying.... Jeff "Kill Whitey" writes about Tarantino, > I think defanging words can be done by those that get injured by the > fangs - not by those bearing the fangs. I would hardly call Tarantino a fang-bearer. Let's see, gave Samuel L. Jackson two of his best roles ever, made the career of Ving Rhames, cast a Black woman as Jackie Brown, and made a bunch of awesome movies that are respected among Blacks, Whites, Asians, white trash trailer park inhabitants, film critics, and probably half-Creole Amerind lesbians in wheelchairs as well. Then there's the fact that his Black actors were cool with it, and not to mention the fact that the characters he was creating *really do use that language,* and of course that he also knew when his white characters used it, it had a different effect.... - --Quail ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2005 10:00:07 -0800 (PST) From: Benjamin Lukoff Subject: Re: Fuck you, Jeff's faggy asshole kitten-raping boss! On Wed, 2 Mar 2005, Jeff wrote: > Oh, and one more reply to Lauren: I think it makes an enormous > difference whether a word is being used, or merely being described or > mentioned...So someone saying to a complete stranger, "Wow, that's a > really faggy shirt" is at a lot more risk of being obnoxious (even if it > was meant as, somehow, a compliment) than someone, say on a linguistics > list, asking "what is the origin of the word 'faggy'?" I would hope that someone on a linguistics list asking about the origin of the word "faggy" would be running almost *zero* risk of being obnoxious. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2005 13:22:44 -0600 From: Jeff Subject: Re: Do you see a sign outside of my house saying.... On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 12:42:18 -0500, The Great Quail wrote: > Jeff "Kill Whitey" writes about Tarantino, > > > I think defanging words can be done by those that get injured by the > > fangs - not by those bearing the fangs. > > I would hardly call Tarantino a fang-bearer. *sigh* I see I need to spell everything out again. Tarantino *personally* doesn't seem to be a fang-bearer - but as a white guy, he's in the class of people who, should he walk into a bar in an all-black neighborhood and say, "Hey niggaz!" would strongly run the risk of not having his words accepted for their friendly, nonchalant employment of a cheerily defanged vocabulary. Yeesh. Do I need to say this doesn't mean I think all white guys individually bear some sort of share of collective guilt or bad boohoo over race history in the US? Or that, despite all that, privilege (defined here as "unearned advantage") still accrues to them regardless of their personal feelings or actions, at least in many situations? Or that if you want proof, you need only look at nearly any statistical abstract of the US and see that white guys on the whole have it way better than anyone else? I hope not. - -- ...Jeff The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2005 14:24:41 -0500 From: "Bachman, Michael" Subject: RE: Do you see a sign outside of my house saying.... Jeff "Kill Whitey" writes about Tarantino, > > > I think defanging words can be done by those that get injured by the > > fangs - not by those bearing the fangs. The Grerat One came back with: > I would hardly call Tarantino a fang-bearer. Let's see, gave Samuel L. > Jackson two of his best roles ever, made the career of Ving > Rhames, cast a Black woman as Jackie Brown, and made a bunch of awesome > movies that are respected among Blacks, Whites, Asians, white trash trailer park > inhabitants, film critics, and probably half-Creole Amerind lesbians in > wheelchairs as well. > > Then there's the fact that his Black actors were cool with it, and not to > mention the fact that the characters he was creating *really do use that > language,* and of course that he also knew when his white characters used > it, it had a different effect.... He may also be credited with reviving John Travolta's career as a serious actor. No Pulp Fiction, no Get Shorty. Even though John has had some down time since. I am hoping he does a Vega Brothers movie, Vic Vega (Mr. Blonde/Michael Madsen from Reservoir Dogs) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta from Pulp Fiction). Have to be a prequel to those movies of course. Maybe Virginia Madsen could be in it as well as perhaps Valerie Vega? Michael B. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2005 11:55:36 -0800 (PST) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: RE: Do you see a sign outside of my house saying.... "Bachman, Michael" wrote: > I am hoping he does a Vega Brothers movie, Vic Vega (Mr. > Blonde/Michael Madsen from Reservoir Dogs) and Vincent > Vega (John Travolta from Pulp Fiction). Have to > be a prequel to those movies of course. Maybe Virginia > Madsen could be in it as well as perhaps Valerie Vega? On the commentary track to the anniversary edition of Pulp Fiction, he mentions that he's thought about doing it. I don't know how you could make Travolta look young enough at this point. And I think Victoria Vega sounds better as a character name.... ===== "I had naively believed all these many years that Americans genuinely believed in freedom of speech. [But I] discovered there that when you made an utterance that was remotely contrary to what the White House was saying, then they attacked you. For a South African the deja vu was frightening. They behaved exactly the same way that used to happen here [during apartheid]: vilifying those who are putting forward a slightly different view." -- Desmond Tutu __________________________________ Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday! Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2005 17:57:17 -0500 From: The Great Quail Subject: Re: Do you see a sign outside of my house saying.... >> I would hardly call Tarantino a fang-bearer. > > *sigh* I see I need to spell everything out again. Tarantino > *personally* doesn't seem to be a fang-bearer Well, I mean, with due respect -- you did write that comment immediately following a discussion on Tarantino's use of the word "nigger." - --Quail ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V14 #53 *******************************