<p>I thought post-modern deconstructionism was going out of fashion. My favorite phrase from cupboard's piece: "lysosomal absolution" - an impressive conflation of modern cellular biology and ancient religious philosophy.</p>
<p>There you are, Coureur, deconstructionism lives on in our attempts to do textual analysis. We're all turning into Alan Sokal faced with post-modern gobbledygook.</p>
<p>Maybe cupboard just bought a new "SAT Vocabulary Words" book.</p>
<p>There's that cutty pasty word again!</p>
<p>Is he an architect or graphic artist? It's a gender assumption, but I'm sticking with it and I won't say why.</p>
<p>On deconstructionism...can we start a thread? I tried to read a literary analysis book written by a deconstructionist and I decided that it is either simply beyond my intellectual capacity at this point, or incredibly bad writing. Can anyone explain it to me?</p>
<p>Patient:</p>
<p>I wouldn't try! French students are taught Boileau's motto: "Qui se concoit clairement, s'enonce aisement" (apologies for the lack of accents or cedilla). Translation: What is clearly conceived is easily expressed. I'm convinced that deconstructionism is a belated rebellion against that motto. If you want a laugh, though, google Sokal. He is a physicist who pulled a prank on the editors of Social Text by sending in an article that purported to critique scientific methodology. After the editors published it (they have a system for refereeing articles, but none of them thought to ask a real scientist to look at it) he wrote another article in a journal called Lingua Franca explaining that the previous one was bunk and was intended to expose po-mo gobbledygook. The whole affair is very funny. It generated tons of exchanges, got translated into several languages and got Sokal invited to lots of places.</p>
<p>In his piece Sokal managed to write quite few sentences that, while grammatically correct, were completely devoid of meaning - basically total nonsense. Yet it was published with high praise as an important breakthrough in post-modernist thinking. It was the clearest example I've ever seen of pretty much an entire school of thought being exposed as an empty fraud in a single stroke.</p>
<p>There are, however, post-modernists still out there earning a living. They splutter at the whole affair and place all the blame on the journal editor rather than ask any hard questions of their own discipline.</p>
<p>Oh that's just peachy. I now have sgio's Unabomber as a fan. Boy oh boy, I'll sleep well tonight.BTW The deconstructionism ,post-modernism conversation has reminded me that my subscription to "Women of the World Wrestling Federation" is about to run out. Do any of you have their toll-free?</p>
<p>You are just TOO much fun....I have this image of ccparents all over the country bursting into laughter over their computer monitors when they read your posts. You must stay and entertain us, often.</p>
<p>Patient, as y'all can clearly tell by my last post, I didn't pay enough attention in class. As I can clearly tell by the "discussion" , y'all did. </p>
<p>BTW Please excuse the y'all. I tend to get quite provincial when I'm intellectually threatened, which is often.Hence the WWF reference. I went to a high school football game last night plus I've spent the whole evening trying to get the Nascar Channel to come in with just rabbit ears. Well, I gotta go crank the General Lee and head over to the Super Walmart for some more tin-foil. But I'll be back soon . Maybe all the big words and scary people will be gone by then.</p>
<p>curmudgeon, I wouldn't be so frightened that you have a fan. And we should get a book on curmudgeonisms published after this. It'll contribute to your daughter's college fund. Beats a book on deconstructionism. :)</p>
<p>Curmudgeon,</p>
<p>Is it true that U-Haul trailers in the South are called Y'all-Haul trailers?</p>
<p>Coureur, that is incorrect, at least in Texas. In Texas the trailers are known as Yee-haw! Trailers.</p>
<br>
<p>In Texas the trailers are known as Yee-haw! Trailers.< <em>Sputter!</em></p>
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<p>And in parts of New York....Trailers are called "Home."</p>
<p>See, this thread had died because we had all been cured of our addiction to the Dark Place, and now we all have been FORCED to go there because of certain very funny threads being moved there, having to do with embarrassed teenagers. And then of course once you're there, you just HAVE to peek at the "Americans flock to Canadian immigration website" thread and the whole vicious cycle begins again.</p>
<p>Excuse me, I have to go put my paper bag over my head so that I can go pick up my children from school.</p>
<p>have you noticed that the number of people lurking at this thread is pretty close as the number of people lurking to see what's in the cafe?</p>
<p>Do ya get the feeling you're being watched?</p>
<p>Patient--yeah, how sneaky and underhanded. I've been lured down to the cafe because of the "how to embarass your kids" thread, and now I've POSTED in the CAFE! I've never done that before. Ohmygosh, what is happening to me!</p>
<p>And what the heck is lysosomal absolution?</p>
<p>I don't know. "Absolution" means formal forgiveness or relief from guilt, penalty, or sin. "Lysosomal" means pertaining to a lysosome, and a lysosome is an organelle in certain cells, such as the white blood cells, that contains proteolytic enzymes that the cell uses to destroy foreign cells it engulfs.</p>
<p>How those two words fit together is beyond me. We need a post-modernist to explain it to us.</p>