For Special Needs Members Only

[magicam]

If you have been referred here by management or a compassionate fellow member, or you have uncontrollable urges to make irrelevant, thickheaded, repetitive or incomprehensible posts, this is the thread for you! Here, not a soul will question or criticize your absurdity, tediousness, etc! This idiot safe zone will be carefully monitored for your exclusive protection and pleasure.

So post in earnest, and enjoy the invigorating freedom of meaningless posting with nobody bothering you or listening to you!

[color:#CC0000]Note to normal members:[/color] This thread is for our special needs members only. Please respect their needs and do not disturb them here.

[Jolly Roger]

I am curious as to the definition of a "meaningless" post. Every post made on this or any forum has some value to someone, even if that someone is only the poster himself, otherwise he would not have posted the post. What you may consider meaningless, another magi may find humorous and informative. We are all unique in the world of magic, and that is what makes it all so interesting. My favourite posters on the forum in the short time I have been here are Munton, Lewis, Townsend, Goat and naturally RK. That is just an opinion, and I am sure other will come up with a quite different quintet. JR

[Richard Kaufman]

I think there are quite a few meaningless posts made on the Forum. I include among those posts whose meaning is understood only by the poster and one or two of his friends.

[Mark.Lewis]

I think if it weren't for the meaningless posts this forum would be as dead as a doornail. One post every three days seemed to be the norm if it weren't for all the "meaningless" people here to liven things up and give the odd nugget of information.

I have always found the lack of humour here to be somewhat painful.

And have you noticed that all the troublemakers here seem to be British? There is a reason for that. It is part of the British culture not to take ourselves too seriously (except for stuffy members of the Magic Circle of course). The "wind up" is part of our culture. We often forget that people of other countries don't quite understand this and in fact are not used to it so they get offended by it.

We are a vastly different people than North Americans even though we speak the same language.

I shall give you an example. In the Eddie Tullock book on trade shows he advises going up to a neighbouring booth beforehand and advising them that you may be drawing a crowd and that if it creates a problem for them to let you know. You are also supposed to say that if your microphone is too loud that they are to let you know and you will turn it down.

This advice works wonderfully well in North America every time I try it. And it works at consumer shows when I sell svengali decks or at trade shows where I don't.

So one day I went to England and found a venue to sell the svengali decks. I had completely forgotten that the British people were the nastiest people on the face of the earth (apart from Australians of course) and went to a neighbouring vendor with the same spiel that had worked in Canada and the US so well.

The reply was a trifle different though. It went like this, "If your @#$%-ing crowd blocks off my stall or if you make too much noise I will come round to you and break you @#$%-ing neck"

Yes. We British are different I am afraid. You mustn't take anything we say too seriously.

[mrgoat]

If you have been referred here by management or a compassionate fellow member, or you have uncontrollable urges to make irrelevant, thickheaded, repetitive or incomprehensible posts, this is the thread for you! Here, not a soul will question or criticize your absurdity, tediousness, etc! This idiot safe zone will be carefully monitored for your exclusive protection and pleasure.

So post in earnest, and enjoy the invigorating freedom of meaningless posting with nobody bothering you or listening to you!

[color:#CC0000]Note to normal members:[/color] This thread is for our special needs members only. Please respect their needs and do not disturb them here.

Now, that, friends, is an insightful, thought provoking, community-centric post.

Thanks Magicam - if that is your REAL name - another brilliant contribution from you.

I love your work.

Much love and respect


Damian

x

[Richard Kaufman]

I've been trying to shuffle a deck of cards tentatively held between my upper thighs by rocking back and forth very quickly and making other odd and hopeless movements. Anyone witnessing this madness would definitely take me to be a person with VERY special needs.

So, this, then, is where I belong, eh?

[Jonathan Townsend]

Too early or too late?

Anyone here using altered printouts of the wikileaks material as predictions in their shows? Figure a computer printout of a memo might make an interesting format for a confabulation or other sealed prediction item.

just typing - it's a special needs thing

[John Wilson]

I mean, who's fault is it if someone can't understand my/someone else's posts? Now for the repetitive posts, I can understand. In fact, Jack Pyle used to tell me all the time not to repeat myself. Him and my dad went way back.

[Glenn Bishop]

IHSM

Just my Opinion

[AJM]

A thread for meaningless posts?

I clicked on this and expected to see the Collected Works of Jonathan Townsend - oh well, just shows how wrong one can be...

:-)

[Jonathan Townsend]

"oh well, just shows how wrong one can be..."

The question remains whether or not one can learn and from that newly informed perspective change one's behavior - or is that trick not a part of magic either?

[AJM]

Yes and No.

T'would depend on a muggle's perspective on the ambiguities of magic(k)al histories (perhaps alternating), theories and performances as well as the time-shifting anomalies of the great wonders and mysteries of our art.

But perhaps the question that remains is this - ou sont les neiges dantan?

I trust this clarifies matters.

Kind regards

Andrew

[Jonathan Townsend]

Impressive Andrew,
Was that also a reference to Weil where others might go for the spotless mind quote?

Our audiences have read more magic in their literature via Rowling and others than we have in our magic shops. I'd like my performed tricks to resonate with the ideas they find in use in their fantasy literature. Not the props or the history per-se but at least the ideas.

This glass of water was once snow, and was once a cloud.
We can joke about it being half full of something else.

:)

Jon

[Jonathan Townsend]

Hi Andrew,

In reply to your PM, I much enjoyed some of Eco's essays which were published in English - and had read his books Role of the Reader/Limits of Interpretation a few years earlier after some other essays by scifi authors got me looking for how literature creates its ideal reader etc. When It came time to have a look at the book from which they made the movie Name of the Rose, I found myself with insufficient Latin to properly read the work and later found Foucault's Pendulum both readable as more of a caper and until the very end a lighter themed book. I guess his essay on how Victor Hugo got the reader enrolled and party to world of that fictional Paris was what affected me most of his works. His "Misreadings" were fun. :)

I did attempt to PM you in reply to the "winter's snow" line much earlier and checked again after your PM arrived to reply. I guess that's two points for you if you enjoy such things.

:)

Jon

[Jonathan Townsend]

Anyone ELSE using fake wikileaks documents in their act?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/de ... eaks-india