Chomsky & filling in & keeping viable & two words

[fflo]

Didn't get to Noam's talk today on The Corporatization of the University, but went last night, on a little prompting from Lorrel, to the linguistics one, What is Language? (a personal perspective) (I think that was the subtitle he sorta announced from the stage as having been left out).  There was a good bit I had to think my way around, given references to concepts of linguistics I don't know beans about.  But as it went on I was more and more with him---maybe finding a way to fill in, as he talked about our doing, in our thinking/language, as with the evocative nature of ambiguity.  In locating language as more "about" what is generated within us, in a subsystem of the body (like an organ, say) that we can make observations about as it does it things, vs. being primarily a communication thing, he made one point, when challenged by a questioner, about how very many ways we have of communicating.  He gave a few examples, and we filled in more.  Then "Everything you do says something," he said, and I liked that much.  I liked that as an accountability thing, though that's not what he was talking about.

Kids will do just about anything to keep their parents viable, including turning on themselves.  Keeping a relationship viable is, yes, a worthwhile thing, and some cost to oneself in such a mission is not inherently bad, really goes with the territory, but a body can get carried away.  A body can get carried away that way.

The two words were:  pudding wrestling.

Pudding wrestling is part of what you miss when you miss the pudding wrestling.