menardian

[jazzfish]

Language, Languages, and Dialect in Aspects, an essay by Andrew 'Draco Concordans' Plotkin. I got to the line near the end of the essay where he reiterates the essay's secret title and I started laughing so hard I couldn't explain myself for about a minute, because GODDAMMIT MIKE.

Even if you've not read Aspects, if you've any interest in linguistics or conlangs ('constructed languages') I imagine it's a fascinating read. (And then you'll want to go read Aspects, but that's only proper. I'm itching for a reread myself.)

Also a shout-out to my ENGL1204 teacher, Dr Elizabeth Richey, who I believe was at Tech on loan from somewhere in South Carolina. She introduced me to Borges, without which I would not have cracked up nearly so much. As someone whose name I have forgotten (probably on Making Light) said, the real benefit of a classical education is that you get all the jokes.

Comments

[jazzfish]

I am excited to hear what you think, of both the book(-fragment) and Zarf's essay.

(And yeah, Last Exit was quite good. There's some way in which it rubbed me not-quite-right, and that might just be down to it being a mostly quite grim book despite being fundamentally hopeful. But I am glad I read it, and glad I have a copy so I can reread it.)

[davidgoldfarb]

I did think that Last Exit went on a little longer than it might have. It didn't help that I guessed a key part of the ending well in advance — I've been thinking about that particular Lovecraftian trope for some small time now, sparked both by stuff Kurt Busiek has done in Astro City and by Paul Cornell in his "Witches of Lychford" series.