The following was found on an e-mail list whose mission is to discuss the
activity of being on an e-mail list. Recursive, yes. My kind of place!

I've never bought a dog in a pet shop, except for Prairie Dogs. I bought our
last Norwegian Rat (Fax Rat) in a pet store. We have two dogs now (D-Dog and
Dixie) and have turned many more offers away at the front door. While I was
away in Poland the two dogs got into a competition around 8:00 each night to
excitedly bark... the conjecture was that they were hoping I was coming home
at a normal hour. They missed their tricks and ice cream treats.

I certainly hope Bill Clinton does not get tired of his new pooch and decide
to leave it along the road in Alexandria. That would certainly make for a bad
example to Americans. Possibly with Chelsea out of the White House (a crapper
by another name) Bill needs something to give him unquestioning devotion? I
wonder what happens when Bill goes to the pound, or does he send the SS?
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Yes I did, for a few paranoid seconds, imagine that the listowner had
seized the chance to keep me off the list. Yet I also knew that the
other listmember to whom I wrote (a Portlander - they seem to be
honorable people for the most part) would not be party to such a
conspiracy.

However, the plot appeared to thicken - yesterday I decided to write to
yet another listmember (in Seattle) and ask their opinion. My email to
them was returned as 'not known at this address'.

I began to wonder if the entire list was a figment of my imagination.

But not to be overcome, I dug out an old email address for the Seattle
correspondent and wrote again.

This morning when I downloaded my email, there was the latest crop of
posts from the list - so I have been resubscribed, though no word from
the listowner. And the Seattle correspondent had replied to me - telling me to
use the new email address (the one which didn't work), that the
Portland listmember was away on holidays and that they would try and
find out what was going on.

A happy ending - except that the latest posts mainly consist of
complaints about Bill Clinton buying his puppy from a pet shop
(apparently this sets a bad example to potential American dog-owners).
Such can be the mundanity of a canine list.

Of course, after I had posted to ND about my lost list, it occurred to
me that it was a metaphor for how I felt about *this* list, which seems
somewhat lost to me as it goes off on its reading mission (in which I'm
not participating, though I am dutifully reading the posts).

[Not wishing to divert anyone from *the task* - but these days, aren't
we all meant to be multi-tasked?]
********************************************
If you think yo have trouble with understanding Gab & Eti then ponder this
gem.
********************************************
Here's an example that comes to mind.

1.  At times, at least, Doobie and I comment on list interactions under two
different genres of discourse, which I will call the genre of linguistic
analysis, and that of the psychoanalytic study of groups.

2.  At times, at least, our comments are seen by others as in opposition.

3.  Doobie has described, and I have experienced, our comments as not in
opposition; I think we have each been at times somewhat surprised at being
taken by others to be in opposition.

4.  Each of us has made an effort to learn something of the phrase regimes of
the genre of discourse of the other (Doobie, as far as I can tell, to greater
effect than I).

5.  Though the two of us do not experience our phrases as in opposition, I at
least would not go so far as to define them as being in agreement either.

6.  Yet they do not seem to simply pass by one another utterly unrelated;
there appear to me to be occasions when our phrases seem to point to the same
referent -- sometimes even to convey a similar sense.  Usually they seem *to
me* to supplement or complement each other in the effort to understand
interaction patterns *even when* they appear in some sense to be at cross-
purposes.

Ryotard seems to insist on the irreconcilability and incommensurability of
different genres of discourse, and that only local and context-specific
criteria of validity can be formulated (this last bit is a 'politically'
important part of his approach and one that has been significant in
postmodernist discourse beyond 'language games')

I am not sure if/how J-FL's game/fighting/agonistic approach accounts for the
situation in which I, for example, find Doobie's (for example) phrases to be
more supplemental or complementary than in opposition to mine.  (Though other
readers see an opposition, I believe not precisely gratuitously.)  (And even
though it is probably true that there is no way to resolve a litigation with
justice to both.)

Perhaps this is where the "polytheism of values" in which no one domain of
discourse and knowledge is privileged over others, and the politics of the
"temporary contract" (things he refers to elsewhere) come in?
********************************************
What are they smoking?

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