rattus rattus’ blog

Words ought not to be trusted – you can never be sure if they mean what they say.
— Ashleigh Brilliant

Let’s assume that when people say something they generally mean something different. Then, the question “What do you mean?” generally makes no sense at all.

If you think that some people at least sometimes do say what they mean, well, I anyway do understand something different from what they say let alone what they mean.

So, what does it mean when someone says that she or he makes a lot of use of dictionaries and thesauruses searching for word origins? Like Dave Pollard just wrote? Or like half of my own blog?

What does it mean if someone is especially picky about words, if we try to be precise, if we try to avoid obfuscation and ambiguity, and if we moreover foster meaning with references?

Experts of wording driving away from their audience, burying augury of knowledge in wisdom, the paradox of communication, blatant honesty about lying.

Of course, this makes sense to us, anyway.

“Fantasies are free.”
“NO! NO! It’s the thought police!”

It’s paradoxical to say one is not free to think what one thinks. On the one hand, and as a destined liar anyway, since I think that I am not free to think what I think I’d never tell anyone. On the other hand, if we were all free to think what we think I’d prefer to think that we are not.

[Ratta says, just because you read something on a blog does not mean it is true.]

Someone has to say it all:

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
— Bertrand Russell.

Useless, but true (fun).

Cartoon by hugh macleod

just because this is “Art” doesn’t mean anyone fucking cares.

I do not care. I do not care that no one cares. I do not care about a piece of “Art” telling me that I possibly do not care. What does it mean to take no care? Ignore me! If I do not care that I do not care I could just as well care about it. … And, yet, we have not talked about what “Art” means, nor why anyone fucking should care or why anyone would want to care at all.

Using words to describe magic
is like using a screwdriver
to cut roast beef.

— Tom Robbins

At the beginning of the film “United 93” it says

It’s time.

It’s time. This is what the crusaders of ecology and sustainability keep telling us, too.

It’s time that we ask what is time.
Never forget.

[G]

Someone came by and asked