semiotics

[Joel Katz]

also:  to use p-post windows (with 'shuttering' feature on MAC OS) to 
disguise surreptitious viewing of ass porn at work.



>Why read a p-post:
>
>Learn something (every so often)
>
>See who's at it again
>
>Amusement
>
>Penance
>
>Sadomasochism
>
>To feel superior
>
>Offering it up
>
>Inadvertence
>
>Boredom
>
>
>
>>
>>>From: John Doe <tristero69 at yahoo.com>
>>>
>>>So, by YOUR reasoning, the content of your e-mail
>>>response to me is: " Scupza was like oil, painted
>>>upwards of my vestibular clamshell,and freezone pizza
>>>rubric deflated tire over the right stance; pollywogs
>>>twiddle in their polian glee, but sinks my heart as
>>>waterfalls - the loon that laughs, the babe that
>>>bawls, is skittering under sticky-note pads..."
>>>etc......your argument ignores the obvious; sure,
>>>readers will bring their own takes on certain terms,
>>>which,due to their ambuguity, leave certain meanings
>>>"open"...but, and your own statements betray it, there
>>>is also the intended meaning; how would ANY
>>>communication occur, if everyone saw EVERY item as
>>>completely "open" to interpretations other than those
>>>in mind of the writer? Clearly YOU must read recipes,
>>>instructions for use on the back of products; do you
>>>always question the intended meaning of THOSE "texts"?
>>>...a text is not a device for generating
>>>interpretations;there is always the
>>>"what-the-writer-had-in-mind" just as you had "in
>>>mind" certain things and not others when you wrote
>>>your reply; that Theory stuff sounds all sexy in a
>>>thesis, but try convincing yourself you DON'T have
>>>intentions when you write or that most of your peers
>>>won't arrive at the same gist...I didn't glean from
>>>your e-mail that it was "about" the post Civil War
>>>Reconstruction plans of the United States Government
>>>for example...what interpretations can be safely
>>>EXCLUDED (trillions at least ) far outnumber what
>>>interpretations can  be sanely affirmed in any given
>>>instance...the Umberto Eco example of Casanove hardly
>>>exemplifies an absurd, wildly arbitrary guess at a
>>>POSSIBLE, and I stress POSSIBLE, meaning;apparently no
>>>reader thought the "meaning" was really : ' a palace
>>>made of green Jello' and this extreme "interpretation"
>>>only serves to show that theory aside, in PRACTICE, if
>>>we are honest with how our minds are decoding when we
>>>read, there is a rather limited range of sensible
>>>meanings from any given 'text'...very
>>>limited...occasional discoveries like the Eco example
>>>are normal and may or may not be revealing of the
>>>author's incorporation of subconcious associations..in
>>>some cases yes, in others no...hermeneutics has
>>>asserted this since post-scholastic days at
>>>least...this trend in Theory is so much fun these days
>>>because it allows people to feel "empowered" rather
>>>than "under the spell" of the writer;We Don't Want the
>>>Writer Telling Us What to Think, blah blah blah...it's
>>>so ecumenical and socialist...Yay!....Look Folks! -
>>>Even the Author Has No Real Control Over His
>>>Material!!! Yeeeeee Haaaaaa!....I hope they don't feel
>>>that way next time they read a recipe for how to cook
>>>Sea Bass.....perhaps TheoryHeads should ask themselves
>>>what happens mentally when a Reader interprets a
>>>technical manuel or a set of instructions on how to
>>>program a DVD player before they go making Grand
>>>Unified Theories on literary "texts"....ever wonder
>>>about that? Waht, exactly, is the difference between a
>>>novel and a technical manuel? If Theory can't answer
>>>or even address that problem, it has rather little
>>>credibility trying to explicate the interpretive
>>>process of fiction....and my final caveat concerns not
>>>what Goes On in the interpreting mind of an
>>>Intellectual, who presumably has a lot of associative
>>>resources in his mind when reading a fiction work to
>>>play with, but how about what goes on in a border-line
>>>retarded person when he reads Moby Dick? Barthes was
>>>so stupid he never stopped to consider that if he's
>>>gonna make generalizations about the Human Thought
>>>Process Engaged in the Act of Reading a Text, he'd
>>>better not ONLY look at other educated high-I.Q. types
>>>just like himself; he'd better account for less gifted
>>>people, because, if you deign to generalize about the
>>>Human mind, it includes non-intellectuals as
>>>well..other wise you are NOT really thinking through
>>>your premises; you're only talking about your own
>>>"kind"....you're talking to your own fan club...when
>>>fiction writer sits down to write a novel he is not
>>>deciding to contrive a "device"; ( meta-fiction
>>>writers aside, and even Barth and Coover have Intent
>>>)Faulkner didn't write "devices"; he expressed the
>>>human motivations and actions of "all these characters
>>>living in my head , clamoring for articulation"...that
>>>perhaps may strike you as a completely foreign notion,
>>>since you seem to feel that writers are mere
>>>transceivers and not Creators....but the majority of
>>>novel writers in history would find this idea of
>>>"there is no 'I' behind the text" as psychologically
>>>untenable...ironically the very writers we read (
>>>again, except for post-WWII representatives ) would
>>>find all this as horseshit;Theory just grew bored and
>>>unhappy with the idea that writers are Directors of
>>>Their Created Worlds, so it jumped on a new view,
>>>that's all...in thirty years it will be something
>>>else; meanwhile fictin writers will feel the way they
>>>always felt when rendering the imaginary worlds in
>>>their minds....
>>>
>>>
>>>--- "
>>
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