(no subject)

[which_chick]

I spent the day at home with my sore throat. Surprisingly, this was more productive than I expected it to be. I'm not deathly ill, mind, just cranky and unable to eat a whole lot. Also behind the cut, underneath all the productive stuff, is a question about Alexander Pope.



Dumb-ass home improvement project completed: CD Bookshelf built & installed. CDs stacked on shelf. Yay! Number of partially-disassembled unsuitable bookcases in the living room has been halved!

Dumb-ass home improvement project completed: ceiling fan blades removed, cleaned, installed in flipped, less-saggy position. This is a project? Yes. It involved power tools and standing on a chair.

Dumb-ass home improvement project completed: bathroom sink drain taken apart, freed from hair (using hand snake), reassembled (yuck!). I realize that most people do not have to take apart their bathroom sink drains once a year to clean out the wads of hair ick that keep them from draining. I'm not a *huge* fan of taking the drain apart, but seeing as how I comb and put up the hair in front of the mirror and, in that process, a lot of the hair (which is egregiously long and tangly) falls into the sink... I've come to terms with the taking apart of the drain. Plus, it's PVC and pretty easy to do. I am not ON PURPOSE washing hair down the sink, but the incidental hair that washes down the drain is apparently enough to fuck up the drain on a yearly or every-other-year basis.

Dumb-ass home improvement project completed: spices inventoried, shopping list for Penzey's order compiled. No tools involved, but fiddly and annoying. Proper shopping includes accounting for use rate and whether or not we already have a proper jar for that kind of spice.

Dumb-ass home improvement project completed: Remade bed with freshly washed New! Flannel! Sheets!! There were multiple steps in this project, including washing and drying the new sheets.

Still on the to-do list:

-- Laundry.
-- Vacuuming (hah!). (I am listing this because it needs to be done. Do not, for a moment, think that it is GOING to get done.)
-- Coffee table sinking under weight of crap piled on it.
-- Aluminum fins need to be pulled off of dead copper baseboard pipe for recycling. (It's in the middle of the living room floor and I'm getting tired of stubbing my toes. Those edges, they are the sharpness.)
-- Dishes could be done if I get ambitious.
-- I could make food for the coming week.
-- I need to buy a lightbulb and fixor the hallway lack o' light.
-- I need to wash the glass shades for the dining room lamp-ish thing. They're icky.
-- I could call a roofing guy about the leaking roof problem.
-- I could repaint the living room with some expectation that it would be a color OTHER than "tar" in five years, specially now that I don't smoke in it.
-- I could sort through my socks for the ones that don't stay up anymore and throw them away.

Or, y'know, internet porn. There's always that.

And the promised Alexander Pope question: What do you call that very funny thing that Alexander Pope does in Essay on Criticism?

Seriously. Is there a word for that literary technique? (I mean BESIDES OMG Funniest Thing Evar!!, which probably isn't true for anyone but me and a few other socially-stunted English major types because most people rate fart jokes and folks being hit in the crotch with dodgeballs a lot higher on the amusement scale than Alexander Pope's snarky literary technique.)

What literary technique? The one where he's whining about something WHILE DOING THE THING that he is whining about. Seriously, it is just awesome. Really. More awesome than a little. I honestly think it's one of the most perfect funnies ever, which tells you a lot about where my head is at. (But not, perhaps, as much about where my head is at as you probably think, because I also rate the cow-in-boots scene from Real Genius pretty darned high -- it's easily a thousand hysterions, there.)

Since not everyone has Alex's Essay on tap, as it were, here's the part in question...

These Equal Syllables alone require,
Tho' oft the Ear the open Vowels tire,
(The line bitching about open vowels is all made of open vowels. How cool is that?)

While Expletives their feeble Aid do join,
('do' is yer feeble expletive, here.)

And ten low Words oft creep in one dull Line,
(See,and there are ten words in the dull line complaining about dull lines.)

While they ring round the same unvary'd Chimes,
With sure Returns of still expected Rhymes.
Where-e'er you find the cooling Western Breeze,
In the next Line, it whispers thro' the Trees;
If Chrystal Streams with pleasing Murmurs creep,
The Reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with Sleep.
Then, at the last, and only Couplet fraught
With some unmeaning Thing they call a Thought,
A needless Alexandrine ends the Song,
That like a wounded Snake, drags its slow length along.
(and this hyar is an Alexandrine.)

Leave such to tune their own dull Rhimes, and know
What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow;
(roundly smooth IS roundly smooth, languishingly slow is what it says.)

And praise the Easie Vigor of a Line,
Where Denham's Strength, and Waller's Sweetness join.
True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance,
'Tis not enough no Harshness gives Offence,
The Sound must seem an Eccho to the Sense.
Soft is the Strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth Stream in smoother Numbers flows;
(See, and the two lines preceding this go along nicely)

But when loud Surges lash the sounding Shore,
The hoarse, rough Verse shou'd like the Torrent roar.
(and this one reads like hell because it's SUPPOSED to)

When Ajax strives, some Rocks' vast Weight to throw,
The Line too labours, and the Words move slow;
(Y'know, I probably think this is funnier than it is.)

But anyway, this is the sort of thing that I find very, very amusing. And my friend not_your_real, in an email to me, wrote the following commentary about someone's blog: It is rather amusing, although some of the longer sentences no verb, which weird clause structure.

I awarded her the Alexander Pope Medal for Best Use of Recursive-Textual-Mockery in an email, 2007 season.

(But there's no question! You said there would be a question!!)

Is it sensible to call what Pope does in Essay on Criticism and what NYR did in her email "Recursive-textual-mockery"? Or is there some word for it that I don't know about? Has someone named this thing, the thing where you are DOING the thing that you are complaining about, intentionally and for amusement purposes? (Doing the thing you are complaining about WITHOUT intent-to-amuse is generally referred to as hypocrisy, cf The Religious Right.)

Comments

[electroweak.livejournal.com]

Perhaps we could call it "reverse irony," where irony is used in its technical sense ("the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning").

[not-your-real.livejournal.com]

Recursive stuff: This reminded me of the putative "Dictionary of self-defining linguistic terms", mentioned in Conlang postings, which includes such entries as "metasethis", "rhotarirm", "ümläut", "haplogy", "voizing", "syncpe", and "asphiration".