Can we have a Wanker's Corner?

[onebatmother]

Hello.

It's been noted in the past that there are some pretentious wankers amongst us who like to discuss some general subjects (eg.Porn, Religion) in a fairly, erm.. academic manner, and that this sometimes seems to intimidate and/or infuriate other posters.

There doesn't seem to be an easy solution to this problem: there's no doubt that people really do feel intimidated and that it might prevent them from posting on a subject that concerns them. It also must feel hijack-y at times.

At the same time, it's hard for the Wanker's to be told that they mustn't post anything that might intimidate.

Would it be possible to have a special place, with very hard chairs to keep us awake, that we may call our own?

The worst piece of co-opting of the Wall-E sort is that ad for McDonalds that is just a set of images of growing your own real food and being wholesome. THat is just a terrifying example of consumerism gobbling up its antithesis to make it safe.

It's perhaps not as clever as you think, Threadie
I mean that artefact is both a document of a disempowerment, and simultaneously a means of extending that disempowerment by its prominent display in our culture (the corner shop), as a triumphalist totem of that disempowerment, and an active block to the empowerment of women (you and that cunt are the same. we look at that cunt and we see you. you cannot escape your identity as cunt. etc)

I think, though, that beyond my political position on porn (leftish, feminist), there are many interesting things to discuss. A masturbatory culture is an intriguing idea (and also reflects the idea that porn is a particular symptom of a wider dynamic.)

I just don't have the background to understand these things well enough. At university I was shackled into the dry but wonderfully rigorous confines of Anglo-American philosophy. A faint look of pain passed over dons' faces at the word 'postmodern'.

But I think that part of the pleasantness of my foray into nudism was the reclamation of the real in place of the ersatz. Though not for the glabrous women.

snort! yes, that toddler's bits thing really is an odd simulacrum.

My dear, my own education consists entirely of cobbled together bits gleaned from books which I have skimmed on the run for reserach purposes. Rigour is not a concept I understand. I can bandy, but little else.

you on the other hand sound entirely at ease vide Sun 10-Aug-08 23:02:13. Really.

Well, you bandy with great aplomb.

I have fairly positive feelings towards cheesestring (re Threadwworm's post of 23.02), although I think that with their overpackaging and high price they belong to a decadent age of excessive consumption which is fast receding. But I am generally happy about the principles of commerce being applied to cheese production and consumption - this is an arena in which consumer choice might be said unequivocally to be a good thing, and in which the application of market forces is entirely appropriate.

What I am very very unhappy about is the way that the principles of the market have become elevated into an erzatz moral code penetrating every area of public and private life. In the absence of genuine moral absolutes, the trinity of profit, competition and consumer choice has become the principle to which everyone must defer when deciding what is right or good. So pornography must be OK, because people willingly buy it. Non-competitive or loss-making public services on the other hand - however vital they may be to the public - are not OK. It is nonsense. But it is so pervasive we barely even see it.

Am I being unreasonable to be proud that I got sent to wankers' Corner?

It was the first time anyone ever took any notice of me

ooh - link please Constance, how very exciting!

It was when I was called 'littlewoman', but it seems to have fallen off the chat board, OBM. Probably just as well, because I was drunk and having a total leftist rant about swearing and feminism

I managed to grovel my way out of being sent there anyway

That is exciting. I must admit to being dubious, not to say horrified, when onebat made the Wankers' Corner request - but she was right. Like Kevin Costner - build it and they will come...

lol IB, they will come - especially on a Friday night, round about closing time

Wait - Anglo-American philosophy? Wow - I didn't think they (the US) had had any philosophers since uhm, lemme think. Dewey. Oh wait - Rorty? Didn't he die last year? I had a bit of a soft spot for him, to be honest. But y'know. He didn't have much er, va-va-voom. Here I would prefer not to unpack the conceptual apparatus contained within the portmanteau term "va-va-voom."

Well, that's not altogether fair I think. There have been plenty of very great US philosophers in recent years. Kripke, Nagel, Rawls, Nozick, Charles Taylor. Alistair McIntyre(?) And anyway, you don't really have to be either British or American to practice Anglo-American philosophy, since its a tradition, an approach rather than a geographic concept originating with Russell, Frege, Wittgenstein, Moore etc.

So - I failed my entry exam to wankers' coroner.

Would I be eligible for any re-sits??

Your last post was marked by the (American-owned) private SATS-marking company that entertained all all a few weeks ago. You scored 111.7%. So you're in!!

and snort at 'va-va-voom':discuss

Sorry: I was a bit snooty in my rejection of the no-American-philosophers remark. It is only because I am a wanker.

Hey - if we ever actually get this wankers coroner thing set up would it be okay if I started a thread about camille paglia's, uhm, oeuvre?

No. Now go and do the dishes.

Camille's oevres are shrivelled and unproductive.

"Baron" is the word I believe you are looking for. "Baron" - haha. WTF. You picture an old gold mining town, a solitary tumble-weed rolling along the deserted high street - a shutter clacking in the wind. Cut to shot of gecko scurrying behind massive phallic cactus as the shadow of a vulture flits across the ground.

You've lost me - when I think of Baron I think of Prussians, lost estates, Hello magazine and Eurotrash. or The Bosh sp? during WW1 perhaps..

Haha - homonyms. BARREN.

mm, yes I got the homonym - you lost me with the evocative wild west reference though. Having said that, I can well imagine Miss P in a pair of stout leather chaps.