"E-reader devices", naming

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

Humans can be very, very silly.

Of course we are .....

We converse on forums like this to be enlightened, educated and amused (see last 2 arty posts). And also go wildly on occasion .....

What have squids and octopusses done that's noteworthy - they must be in danger of extinction - all their ink no longer needed if they can use an e-reader underwater !!!

[nekokami]

@chthulu, note that the unnamed male protagonist in my story becomes a squid as a result of his unfortunate (and deeply regretted) choice of meal, and Vera chooses to join him in cephalopodic paradise. (This is all in the bit right after the segment I submitted, of course. )

Edit: That being said, I loved your mournful addition.

[vivaldirules]

@ Cthulhu: What a beautifully sad story. Poor Phineas. Vera can be such a...human.

@ Patricia and Zelda_Pinwheel: I'm guessing that tepid was not what you had in mind.

[zelda_pinwheel]

@ Vivaldi : i think that is one of those double-edged comments... i cannot really reply, in fear you will react with "methinks she doth protest too much" ! what can i say, i can't help it if i have a broad (and sometimes bizarre) general culture....

[vivaldirules]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

@ Vivaldi : i think that is one of those double-edged comments... i cannot really reply, in fear you will react with "methinks she doth protest too much" ! what can i say, i can't help it if i have a broad (and sometimes bizarre) general culture....

Good point, ZP. I see now how the question is a loaded one. Withdrawn! Now on to the next episode of Vera. I'm imagining an encounter perhaps with a sinister-looking fellow in a straw hat at a Paris Brest. The possible word plays with that one are just too tempting to pass up. And then there's Love in a Deer Stand with Harv, Vera, and a couple dozen jelly-filled doughnuts from Dunkin' Donuts.

[montsnmags]

The Maker called me "Prufrock" - though it wasn't always my name and I have forgotten what it once was - but my friends call me "Proof".

I don't have friends, and I have nothing to prove, so you can call me whatever you like.

Down here - down where bright, shimmering surface-ripple has been been crushed into a beyond-darkness that compresses your every cell into an atom-sharp needle of singular pain; down where the the fluid-ice caresses the near-lifeless silt into the arcing glyphs that are the post-it notes of the Great Old Ones (Tue: vacuum R'lyeh; Wed: take all the Cthulhi to doctor for flu vaccinations; Sun: unchain the Dark between the stars and rend the Cosmos free of the incessant, pointless screeching of the multitude millions of meat-minds); down where the fish flicker and the small squid follow while the blunt-headed leviathan seek the thoughtfully eulogising many-armed embrace of the glorious master of this realm, Architeuthis Dux; down here where the slow-moving columns of cosmic rays plow like a bus through hell's kindergarten - down here...down here...

...down here I have been so very lonely.

Once upon a time I lived a Cephalopodan Fairy Tale ('Colour Me Lovestruck') amidst chromatically calcareous polypoidal real estate beneath the wavelets casting their solar iridescence through the relaxed, balmy, tidal currents. I was fast and food was fresh, and slow, and easy and filling, and I loved one who came with clumsy, limited and specialised limbs with recording devices and optics and vials and tools (as I know them now) and unchanging, pale flesh, and a single heart but hair of a blistering red brighter than the most flamboyant nudibranch's richest rouge.

I hate her. I hate her with the world-crushing passion with which I once loved her.

Down here - at the very bottom of it all, where the mud is probed and collected in my poly-alloy claws and sifted for the sunken dead for study and sustenance through my carbon filter-range and by which I hope to satiate my last wish of tasting, once again (dreaming of my fisherman's wife), the caffeine- and pastry-infused, bready flesh of my once-beloved; down here, where I lay, tentacles stapled out flat by 3,141 sub-skin electrodes, where I have been eviscerated to steep my entrails in the protein-soup of my research, where my hearts are encased in shells of polypropylene that beat to a nuclear power-pod's tedious rhythm, where my brain...my mind...my mind my mind my mind is going is...my mind has been "enhanced" with a nanotechnology that swarms over and through it like a coordinated attack of intelligent African Bees, rounding up and chasing my thoughts down others' desired paths, faster, faster, faster, FASTER!...and all of it and the machines and the computers and the engines and the plumbing, all of it that the Bees coordinate is surrounded by a loathsome, crustacean-like casing 50 metres wide, poly-alloy all, shaped like a Cornish pasty and studded with jointed metal legs and pincers and deft, manipulator-claws and silicate lenses and a myriad of marine-grade stainless steel antennae and scanning and filtering and crushing orifices and collection baskets and propellers and jets and lasers and explosives and drills and the creaking and groaning of unbearable pressure and none but the last of me - ...

...Down here, my thoughts are on her. Vera. Down here, where the cracks open on the flanks of the black-smoker chimneys into the upwelling, melting heat of the earth-core...down here, I will crack open the planet's heart to bring Vera, and my rampaging, self-flagellating thoughts to an end.

It is the least I can do.

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

...but I will be less, and so will you.




Cheers,
Marc

[vivaldirules]

"...unchain the Dark between the stars and rend the Cosmos free of the incessant, pointless screeching of the multitude millions of meat-minds..."

Butter on toast. I just want to know titles, Marc. Titles, please.

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by vivaldirules

Butter on toast. I just want to know titles, Marc. Titles, please.

I'm sorry ... "Butter on toast"? My poor brain refuses to give up an explanation for this (now I'm hungry) analogy. Is it because when Sunday comes we will all be "toast", and screaming our prayers to an absent God ("I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S NOT ARMAGEDDON!"). Do tell, for my insecure mind couples mine own ignorance with despair and self-loathing and the desire for breakfast, and I don't think we've got any bread left.

I can help you with Titles. You can call me:

- Sir Dunkendough Nutstoyou
- Lord of Light Summer Clothing
- Saint Beebop, Patron of Madness and Bellybutton Lint
- Supreme Mega-Emperor of the Brane of BotgrlwlllFLECH!
- Hey, you!

Is this what you mean, or am I once again confused? [gets out his cat o' nine tails and removes his shirt in enthusiastic anticipation]

Cheers,
Hey, you!

[Taylor514ce]

Writer's block... I had this great beginning of a thought, but can't get it to go anywhere. Ah well, I offer my stump of a space opera.

****

VERA lay unresponsive beneath him. Beneath, above, beside… our grammar wasn’t built for space, thought Harv. Another thought: no time for stray thoughts, focus, Harv, focus. The Venus-Earth Relay Antenna – regardless of its spatial relationship vis-à-vis the General Communications utility ship Kala Mari - shouldn’t be unresponsive. Harv knew the background noise in his mind was a defensive reaction, a nervous tic meant to fill the void of this silence. A silence so disturbing, so total, that he’d been forced out of his “administrative leave” to investigate. Harv knew VERA with a thoroughness bordering on intimacy, but another thought now bubbled to the crust of his consciousness: I'm looking at a corpse.

[moz]

Sorry to drift back to the original topic, but I'm reverting to liseuse as the spelling, it just seems better to me. Lisoose seems a bit made-up once I use it outside this thread.

[Taylor514ce]

They are both made-up. I'm afraid you'll cause even more universal confusion and eye-rolling if you use such a term in place of the simple and obvious "e-book display" or "e-book reader". Technically, since I'm the reader I prefer the former, but would never think of using a term that required it's own extra definition.

"What's that"?

"A lisuse."

"A what?"

"A lisuse"

"What's a lisuse"?

"It's a device for reading e-books... it's an e-book display."

"Why didn't you just say 'it's an e-book display'?"

"Because a lot of us e-book geeks decided in a forum thread that we were going to call them "lisuse".

"Ok, yeah - I'll have to run right out and get one... so when I ask for a 'lisuse' at Best Buy...<snicker, snort>"

[vivaldirules]

Hey, you can't come in here and just take this thread back to the original subject! Can you? Of course you can!

I'm still puzzled as to how you would pronounce Ver...uh..I mean liseuse. Can you provide a phonetic spelling or reference?

I have to agree and disagree with Planet Head. People ask what I'm carrying and I say "an ebook reader" and most don't even understand what that means. If I told them it was a liseuse it would be little different, although perhaps it would take a little longer before they understood.

By the way, nicely done, Planet Head. I only wish it was longer. You left us hanging.

[moz]

Yeah, when I say "oh, that's my iPod" people just stand there drooling blankly at me until I say "portable music player", at which point they understand. Same problem with every neologism or modernisation. IMO a single descriptive word beats having several phrases to refer to the same thing and the inevitable tendency to use a common brand instead (walkman or iPod anyone?)

My goal is just to keep using the words I prefer until I get sick of it or they become commonplace. Same as with queer and critical mass.

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by moz

... Same as with queer and critical mass.

I went to a queer and critical mass once - basically the priest called me a "poof" and sang hymns in the voice of Barbra Streisand. First ever RC service I've enjoyed.

Cheers,
Marc

[vivaldirules]

Oh, Saint Beebop, Patron of Madness and Bellybutton Lint, I'm still wanting titles. You can't just scuttle across the floors of silent seas and ignore the request.