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Vanguard Boojum, v. 1, issue 1
11
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Vanguard Boojum page nine (... continued) SCHLAGN (which is good Plattdeutsch for "to strike" [a blow],, though strafed might be more appropriate; however, jades Ding hat seine Zeit...) Someone in Esquire once remarked that the admission most difficult for a man to make is that he has no sense of humor; so I suppose your opening paragraph represents courage of a sort. As a joke, there was nothing wrong with ______; lots of us thought it funny and it became the base for several corollary jokes some also found funny. As an explanation, however, ______! is pretty deadly, and reminds me of nothing so much as the 1916 German edition of Bruce Bairnsfeather, wherein each cartoon had a scholarly footnote. To top it off, the declared motive is nonsense. If the term SatEvePost and PM have accurate referents in the minds of nearly everyone who uses them, it doesn't make a damn whether or not they do not any longer correspond with the more universal referents of "Saturday", "evening", "post", or "post meridian". Neither Loopf or ______ are satisfactory solutions to the problem, not because they are harder to say than "Saturday Evening Post", but simply because there is no problem until you attempt to introduce your unpronounceable into the situation. ... Wow: It's a shame to introduce a dissonance into your approval of On the Philosophy of the Filler, but the shadow of Sereda tags even the most obliging of poets. "The Blish ... apparently feels much as I do about ... capsule wisdom." the hell. "Annoyance ... insult ... anger." Annoyance is an emotion I have somewhat overworked in the pages of Vanguard, but I have seen only one item that I thought justified any anger on my part, and none that I thought worth being labelled insulting. (Nor bo I bother hating anybody because I disapprove of their publication.) Besides indulging the typical Futurian habit of working up a hectic flush over every small annoyance, (why not sue, damon?) Gell Publications do a considerable amount of kibitzing this mailing. Like the capsule wisdom business, this a practice to which I must also plead guilty, but again like the Filler question it is one I have weighed in the balance and found wanting. It is unfair to members outside of New York, who must occasionally feel discouraged at the thought that whatever they hope to say well about a given item has already been said badly in the previous mailing by some insider. It isn't possible or desirable to smother our local delight in looking over each other's shoulders while reviews are being written, but let's at least give the outsiders a chance to publish their opinions simultaneously with ours. As I pointed out in Tumbrils #2, the Futurians have no monopoly on the literate material, and do not deserve the advantage of prior comment as if they were a bunch of first-string critics at a private premier. ... A Rose is a Rose: My "rich ripe remark" is an example of "A is A" all right, deliberately taken out of context and made to serve as a discredit for my entire stand. I this is not a low trick for winning an argument, I have never seen one. The analysis presupposes that I have preselected my witnesses and excluded everyone who gave contrary testimony. Since I have indicated that this is not so, and since damon knows it is not so, what is the purpose of invoking semantics to imply that it is so? A knowledge of the science of meaning is no defense against this kind of thing. The tool does not exist that cannot be misused, and semantics is as much a collection of low tricks for winning an argument as the notorious Schopenhauer rules for Debate if it is manipulated by a skillful hand. (Incidentally, how much of a defense did Van Vogt's obviously thorough knowledge of the literature of semantics provide against emotional predelictions and fuzzy-minded
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Vanguard Boojum page nine (... continued) SCHLAGN (which is good Plattdeutsch for "to strike" [a blow],, though strafed might be more appropriate; however, jades Ding hat seine Zeit...) Someone in Esquire once remarked that the admission most difficult for a man to make is that he has no sense of humor; so I suppose your opening paragraph represents courage of a sort. As a joke, there was nothing wrong with ______; lots of us thought it funny and it became the base for several corollary jokes some also found funny. As an explanation, however, ______! is pretty deadly, and reminds me of nothing so much as the 1916 German edition of Bruce Bairnsfeather, wherein each cartoon had a scholarly footnote. To top it off, the declared motive is nonsense. If the term SatEvePost and PM have accurate referents in the minds of nearly everyone who uses them, it doesn't make a damn whether or not they do not any longer correspond with the more universal referents of "Saturday", "evening", "post", or "post meridian". Neither Loopf or ______ are satisfactory solutions to the problem, not because they are harder to say than "Saturday Evening Post", but simply because there is no problem until you attempt to introduce your unpronounceable into the situation. ... Wow: It's a shame to introduce a dissonance into your approval of On the Philosophy of the Filler, but the shadow of Sereda tags even the most obliging of poets. "The Blish ... apparently feels much as I do about ... capsule wisdom." the hell. "Annoyance ... insult ... anger." Annoyance is an emotion I have somewhat overworked in the pages of Vanguard, but I have seen only one item that I thought justified any anger on my part, and none that I thought worth being labelled insulting. (Nor bo I bother hating anybody because I disapprove of their publication.) Besides indulging the typical Futurian habit of working up a hectic flush over every small annoyance, (why not sue, damon?) Gell Publications do a considerable amount of kibitzing this mailing. Like the capsule wisdom business, this a practice to which I must also plead guilty, but again like the Filler question it is one I have weighed in the balance and found wanting. It is unfair to members outside of New York, who must occasionally feel discouraged at the thought that whatever they hope to say well about a given item has already been said badly in the previous mailing by some insider. It isn't possible or desirable to smother our local delight in looking over each other's shoulders while reviews are being written, but let's at least give the outsiders a chance to publish their opinions simultaneously with ours. As I pointed out in Tumbrils #2, the Futurians have no monopoly on the literate material, and do not deserve the advantage of prior comment as if they were a bunch of first-string critics at a private premier. ... A Rose is a Rose: My "rich ripe remark" is an example of "A is A" all right, deliberately taken out of context and made to serve as a discredit for my entire stand. I this is not a low trick for winning an argument, I have never seen one. The analysis presupposes that I have preselected my witnesses and excluded everyone who gave contrary testimony. Since I have indicated that this is not so, and since damon knows it is not so, what is the purpose of invoking semantics to imply that it is so? A knowledge of the science of meaning is no defense against this kind of thing. The tool does not exist that cannot be misused, and semantics is as much a collection of low tricks for winning an argument as the notorious Schopenhauer rules for Debate if it is manipulated by a skillful hand. (Incidentally, how much of a defense did Van Vogt's obviously thorough knowledge of the literature of semantics provide against emotional predelictions and fuzzy-minded
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