To bring this discussion to a more sensible starting point, let's go with the old adage, "A good artist copies, a great artist steals". Now, right off the bat, let me express to you in earnest that I do not consider myself a "great artist". Not even a shitty one. I'm just some dude who rambles incoherently in a public forum where maybe two to three people take any interest, and I'm sure that's more out of pity than true interest. But the point I'm trying to get across is that there is a lot of inherent wisdom to be found in that quote, and I will try to blather and babble my way through an explanation.
It has long been stated by people that have associated with my closest friends and I that we speak our own language, a mish-mash of self-referential asides and endless quotes from movies and television. It is a language of shared experience and is frequently used by myself as a litmus test to determine who would interest me in a conversation.
Why bother asking what kinds of movies you like when I can simply say, "Just hang loose blood, she gonna catch up on the rebound on the medicide"? If that statement elicits laughter, then I at least have some basic semblence of the sense of humor I'm dealing with. From there I can try more esoteric fare. (My ultimate in esoteric is so obscure that, to date, ONE person has ever gotten it.) Do they like Python? Are they into absurdity, silliness, slapstick, etc. I can determine more about a person based on what they recognize than I can from 20 minutes of discussion. And luckily for someone who has this kind of mindset, I seem to have a limitless memory for this sort of information.
The human brain is designed to establish connections. That's all we do. We see something and we relate it to something else. We see ice and we think of cold. We see planes and we think of imminent and untimely death. I see ANYTHING and I relate it to The Simpsons. (That last line is no joke. I have an encyclopedic knowledge of the first 9 seasons of that show. Speak to me for more than 5 minutes and you're bound to hear the phrase, "That reminds me of something from The Simpsons...")
It's precisely these connections that make the internet such an interesting medium to work with. Everything I see, everything I hear, everything I think is being processed by a brain that works endlessly to find some way of trivializing a situation or humoring me. And, going full circle to the beginning of all this, these connections are ultimately associated by me into the links I provide with my posts.
If you're one of the three or so people that bothers to both read my posts AND follow my links, thank you. There's as much time and thought put into the links as there is the meat of the text and it is very pleasing and fulfilling to know that SOMEBODY took the time to sup on the entire stew that spews forth from my fingers.
As an aside, I apologize for the lack of links. Ironic, I know, but everybody and their brother decided that link time was the best time to chat. Hard to keep your mind focused.... :P
Technorati: bonez, e, jive, steal, artist, monty python, the simpsons
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