Brad: What am I up to tonight? Well, I'm hitting the Finnish again...
Brad: You're what!? What tomfoolery is this!? Why play Sisyphus?
Brad: My dear one, you can and should be a Debbie Downer if you want to be--you have logic, the majority opinion, and inertia on your side. And me? Behind me are assembled 5.4 million snowpeople (including Santa Clause, trolls, and various humanoids), some 200,000 reindeer, and 187,888 lakes. But, alas, I am not equipped with rejoinders. I shelter behind the vintaged commandments: respect people and country, avail oneself of the uniqueness, when in Roma and whatnot.
Brad: Kind sir, I see. Perfectly reasonable! I respect your respect for the Finns. Those sweaty nudists, reveling in the phantasmagoria of the northern lights, drinking the drink, and skiing the freaky fluke of Europe. Why not go native?
Brad: Assuredly, yes, a staid people with eccentric habits. I'm keen to join the club, but even they discourage learning their hairy tongue.
Brad: Haha, hairy?
Brad: Dotted, you know, not bald, but covered by a spotty turf, a prickly rug. For instance, "Miten täällä on yht'äkkiä näin vitun suuri määrä ihmisiä?" The question is this: Am I, AbelarBrad, bold enough to hug the bizarre to the bosom, to subject myself to an obscure and thankless toil? What kind of insane person wouldn't? Balls to sanity, normality, nationalism, conformity, pragmatic or instrumental logic, cost-benefit analysis, inference-to-the-best-explanation, optimization, conventional wisdom, the profit motive. Balls to the whole kit and kaboodle. Balls to Mitt Romney. I'm taking lines from the illogicians. Now is the time to suck the shock elements up the nostrils to discordianize the chains of command in the brain, the 'mind-forg'd manacles' that Blake wrote about. A friend I met this weekend said it best, "Hay que aprovechar chingada mierda, hay que aprovechar" (OK, I added the green language). Cachai? Moreover, what's a greater despoil of time: to dedicate oneself to a moribund language without hope of using it let alone becoming its master, or, given just one chance in a lifetime, failing to affix the lips to the cultural fire hose? And what is culture anyway? Bingo!, you guessed it, it starts with "lang" and ends with "uage"! It's not enough to ski and sauna to my heart's content, I need the langue and parole, I need Finnish.
So that's my rant for the day.
Brad: All hail the sultan of Finnophilia, ye squanderer of resources, cultural omnivore, engrossed in the fallacy of the unbounded, cosmopole lost in orbit. Get a real job, you eternally adolescent hipster day-tripper, you millenial, and then come talk to me--in English, if you please, the language of the ungraspable past devouring the future, the language of the always.
Brad: You're what!? What tomfoolery is this!? Why play Sisyphus?
Brad: My dear one, you can and should be a Debbie Downer if you want to be--you have logic, the majority opinion, and inertia on your side. And me? Behind me are assembled 5.4 million snowpeople (including Santa Clause, trolls, and various humanoids), some 200,000 reindeer, and 187,888 lakes. But, alas, I am not equipped with rejoinders. I shelter behind the vintaged commandments: respect people and country, avail oneself of the uniqueness, when in Roma and whatnot.
Brad: Kind sir, I see. Perfectly reasonable! I respect your respect for the Finns. Those sweaty nudists, reveling in the phantasmagoria of the northern lights, drinking the drink, and skiing the freaky fluke of Europe. Why not go native?
Brad: Assuredly, yes, a staid people with eccentric habits. I'm keen to join the club, but even they discourage learning their hairy tongue.
Brad: Haha, hairy?
Brad: Dotted, you know, not bald, but covered by a spotty turf, a prickly rug. For instance, "Miten täällä on yht'äkkiä näin vitun suuri määrä ihmisiä?" The question is this: Am I, AbelarBrad, bold enough to hug the bizarre to the bosom, to subject myself to an obscure and thankless toil? What kind of insane person wouldn't? Balls to sanity, normality, nationalism, conformity, pragmatic or instrumental logic, cost-benefit analysis, inference-to-the-best-explanation, optimization, conventional wisdom, the profit motive. Balls to the whole kit and kaboodle. Balls to Mitt Romney. I'm taking lines from the illogicians. Now is the time to suck the shock elements up the nostrils to discordianize the chains of command in the brain, the 'mind-forg'd manacles' that Blake wrote about. A friend I met this weekend said it best, "Hay que aprovechar chingada mierda, hay que aprovechar" (OK, I added the green language). Cachai? Moreover, what's a greater despoil of time: to dedicate oneself to a moribund language without hope of using it let alone becoming its master, or, given just one chance in a lifetime, failing to affix the lips to the cultural fire hose? And what is culture anyway? Bingo!, you guessed it, it starts with "lang" and ends with "uage"! It's not enough to ski and sauna to my heart's content, I need the langue and parole, I need Finnish.
So that's my rant for the day.
Brad: All hail the sultan of Finnophilia, ye squanderer of resources, cultural omnivore, engrossed in the fallacy of the unbounded, cosmopole lost in orbit. Get a real job, you eternally adolescent hipster day-tripper, you millenial, and then come talk to me--in English, if you please, the language of the ungraspable past devouring the future, the language of the always.
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