There's a cunning device attached to this website that notifies me of the briars and snags of world-wide-webitude o'er which intrepid internetians have lept their way hither. This enables me to distill elaborate statistical conclusions. For instance, at least half the people who read this blog appear to do so because they've typed chastity pants into Google. Winner of today's Lexicon Harlot Memorial Prize for Excellence in Googling One's Way to Glory goes to whoever googled Terry Eagleton is my underpants and clicked on the first site that came up.
[Special condition: conferral of your chocolate frog depends on documentary proof that Terry Eagleton is indeed your underpants.]
11 comments:
Have you ever looked up his faculty profile page? He will only receive correspondence by post. Oh to be powerful enough to forsake email forever!
And just below, I note, a juicy NYT article slagging off the MLA, which I've bookmarked for future consumption. Some days I find that sort of thing very therapeutic.
I like email.
I do too, but I also like curmudgeons and luddites. And I'm in a contrary mood.
I'm not (in a contrary mood). (Ha!) (Hm.)
I think I'm in a contrary life!
Email has destroyed most written correspondence and for that it has my eternal contempt, even though, like most internet things (facebook, etc), it actually serves the admirable purpose of allowing one to avoid more personal contact with people one does not want to have much personal contact with.
Email has destroyed most written correspondence --> my god, you're right..
Yes, what do you mean, Eyrie? I find that email facilitates written correspondence, rather than destroying it.
Well, mostly I'm in a bad mood and when I'm in a bad mood I like to rail against random things as an exercise in irascibility, without necessarily being all that earnest in what I'm saying, but I mean handwritten rather than typed correspondence, the sensuousness of physically writing something for someone. No one sends me proper letters anymore! Sigh! That kind of contact is more real than any I've had on the internet, not least because it's patient and more forgiving.
I would also suggest that email and the internet generally make or allow people to say things they wouldn't say if they had to hunt down a bit of paper, physically write it, put it in an envelope and mail it. Also, email is often used to fob people or appointments off- it's easier to fob someone off in an email than in person or on the phone. I know I use it that way more often than I use it to have a real conversation with someone.
I'm not a luddite and I value the internet as a very efficient and democratic means of exchanging information.
I think that's why Eagleton probably has it set up that way. It would be very easy for someone to send off a gushing fan or hate email without thinking, but, if you have to write physically, you also have to pause and think about why you're writing. The contact is more real and reflective. You own your words and take more responsibility for them, perhaps.
Eyrie, if you buy stuff off ebay, the person you bought it off pretty often writes a little note to accompany the thing, whatever it is.
So I have to spend money to get a little bit of personal attention- I should have known!
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