No, He Really Is a Cunning Linguist

[tex_maam]

Okay, I'm like... six weeks late to the game, but I finally saw Django Unchained last week. I won't write a whole review here, because the movie's too big and I'm too dumb (I need to see it at least two more times to get even half a grip on it).  Still, I'll get in line behind my hip compadre Matt Borgard in saying, "Loved that it was a movie about

Comments

[slgarner]

I would, without doubt, say that Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson is my favorite book of all time. One of the main themes that it explores is the nature of language as it relates to our brains and to human society.

“..this is just like life must be for about 99 percent of the people in the world. You're in this place. There's other people all around you, but they don't understand you and you don't understand them, but people do a lot of pointless babbling anyway. In order to stay alive, you have to spend all day every day doing stupid meaningless work. And the only way to get out of it is to quit, cut loose, take a flyer, and go off into the wicked world, where you will be swallowed up and never heard from again.”

~~~~~~~~~

“This Snow Crash thing--is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?”

Juanita shrugs. “What's the difference?”

~~~~~~~~~

“Entire sections of them simply cannot be translated - the characters are legible and well-known, but when put together they do not say anything that leaves an imprint on the modern mind."

"Like instructions for programming a VCR.”

~~~~~~~~~

And let's not forget my all time favorite...

"All these beefy Caucasians with guns. Get enough of them together, looking for the America they always believed they'd grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain't what it used to be. The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. But as long as you have that four-wheel-drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream. In twenty years, ten million white people will converge on the north pole and park their bagos there. The low-grade waste heat of their thermodynamically intense lifestyle will turn the crystalline icescape pliable and treacherous. It will melt a hole through the polar icecap, and all that metal will sink to the bottom, sucking the biomass down with it.”

[tex_maam]

Dudette, that is so awesome. SO freaking awesome. I have to read this book now - you had me at VCR instructions, but that last paragraph elevates it to the realm of moral imperative. Thank you so much for typing all this out - I've always known you loved the book, but having the free sample makes it so much more real!