The perfect comment? Does it exist? Here are some of my imperfect comments deconstructed.Great post! Great pix! Great philosophy! Meaning: I haven’t got the hang of blogging, I’m still into post-cards.
Loved your photo of the Grand Canyon. The white dot in the corner is in fact a 1997 Harley Davidson, the one with the power-operated kickstand. Meaning: I am unaware of natural beauty and am fixated on steel things that go broom-broom.
(0) Meaning: I am an inoffensive wading bird. I have left a footprint soon to washed away by the tide. Plus a neat pile of waste products. I shall now fade away.
My grandson Zach… Meaning: They’ll never love me but they may love him.
In 1947, when we ate stewed pebbles twice a week for lunch… Meaning: Deprivation and old age – an unbeatable plea for sympathy.
Your post about Barbara Cartland’s views on chivalry didn’t go far enough. You will remember in Ulysses when Bloom meets Dedalus… (Five hundred words later) … which goes to prove Joyce’s pre-eminence. Meaning: It’s been five weeks since I reminded people I’ve read Ulysses.
Ca va sans dire. Meaning: If you’ve got it, flaunt it.
Rebutting this thesis, Heidegger said… Meaning: Even if you haven’t got it, flaunt it.
The bottle was a touch pricey at… Meaning: Flaunt it in another way.
The pouches under my eyes… Meaning: I’m so self-effacing.
I banged my head on the beams inside. Meaning: But I’m physically impressive.
8 comments:
Great post! Loved the expansion of the equation!
BB, do love your deconstructions. Commenting after this one makes me shiver in my boots though!
Here's to laughter!
Clink Clink
Prost! Cheers!
Avus: Well, you already know what I think about "Great post!".
Julia: Sounds like an invitation. So: "shiver in my boots" - yes here I am using a cliché but everyone knows I'm far too clever to be using it unknowingly.
RW (zS): Clink, clink (Italicised?). Could be the sound of leg manacles.
Oh, you've caught me!
I don't suppose I'd be allowed to leave a little laughing emoticon thing would I? You know, the one with the capital D followed by the hyphen (I always use a wiggly one but that's optional) and a closing bracket? Or even a LOL? (In fact I never but never do LOL, though I don't turn anyone away who does. Not that I think I do much to provoke anyone to LOL...)
Funny how we tailor our comment vocab to our perception of the prejudices and preferences of the blogger. There are things I say as a matter of course in some places that I probably wouldn't dare say here.
Am I jealous of people who get more comments than I do but most of them are utterly bland and indistinguishable one from another? I'm really not. And I genuinely am past the stage of needing to know if people have been there or not; I no longer feel obliged to comment everywhere I go, though I suppose I still think it's polite to try to say something sometimes, an empty or anodyne comment is fairly pointless. Tangential ones can be more interesting.
But let's not get too self-conscious or we wouldn't ever dare comment at all, would we?
Lucy: If you were to leave an emoticon it might as well be an epigram in urdu. I wasn't around at the dawn of time when these things were explained. I have begged various bloggers to explain, but none has.
As to LOL, let's deconstruct. First it's an abbreviation, second it stands for a cliché, third (I'm told) it's ambiguous (laughs instead of love). Since most of the people clustering round WW are striving to communicate it seems a dead loss. Thrice damned, in fact, for being (1) excessively businesspeak, (2) unimaginative, (3)fuzzy-headed. Confessions of adoration should be rare enough to ensure they have value - they shouldn't be scattered around and they should (as a tribute to the adoree) show some signs of effort. Were I to embark on an expression of adoration to...? Well, what about you, you're handy enough - I would, so help me God, try to come up with something unique. Alas, this would not now include a sonnet; spiffy and adoration seem incompatible.
Tailoring to the addressee. It's true, isn't it? The mind goes into another gear. Do super-sensitive recipients do comparisons and weep into their Horlicks when they discover that the hated X is drawing more polysyllabic comments?
Yes, I am jealous. But I never thought much of the stone.
Love out loud? Sounds rather like the kind of thing you don't want to be in the next hotel room to...
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