Re: virus: Axioms

Eva-Lise Carlstrom (eva-lise@efn.org)
Tue, 18 Mar 1997 00:12:50 -0800 (PST)


On Mon, 17 Mar 1997, Tim Rhodes wrote:

> On Mon, 17 Mar 1997, Tadeusz Niwinski wrote:
>
> Actually, in spoken form it can be. I've found with children you can
> speak utter and total gibberish, but if you inflect it as you would an
> interesting tale they will sit in silence, competely fascinated until you
> reach the "end" of the story.

There was an episode of M*A*S*H in which Col. Potter ended up reading a
bedtime story to several Korean waifs, only the only thing he had around
to read was a gun manual, and they didn't understand English anyway. They
were rapt. I think there is an age limit on this attention to gibberish,
which probably corresponds roughly to when people start having a much
harder time learning a second language without an accent. Babies and
small children absorb linguistic information that older humans have
learned to disregard as irrelevant and thus can no longer hear.

> > I had a party not to long ago at which we played a series of old
> surrealist games. Many of the poems and stories that resulted had as much
> to say about the nature of truth and the human condition as anything that
> has been said here (and that is not to belittle our conversations!)

Yay! Anyone for a round or two of Exquisite Corpses? I have the book of
surrealist games that Loki gave me right here....Actually, exquisite
corpses wouldn't work well via email, but they do work well in a really
boring lecture class.

Eva