Here, here, Randy.



BTW, speaking of semiotics.If you haven't already, check out the novel,
"Just a Couple of Days" by Tony Vigorito.an interesting book about the
complete loss of language and symbols.



Best,

Kim (Rustypuff)



_____

From: letterbox-usa@yahoogroups.com [mailto:letterbox-usa@yahoogroups.com]
On Behalf Of Randy Hall
Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2008 10:55 PM
To: letterbox-usa@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [LbNA] Would you like to help me bury Limited Edition T-Shirts?




> Maybe HIDE is a better word?

"Plant" seems to have been the jargon settled upon, at
least in my small, perhaps out of touch view of this
world and its linguistic evolution.

> Geez, we can go over these definitions forever.

We could. Or, we could spend more time discussing the
discussion of the idea than the idea. Whether or not the
fact that we are doing so speaks to either the quality of
the idea or the quality of the discussers is left to the
role of the reader.

I'll admit that I am personally always taken aback by the
suggestion that this idea or that idea is not "letterboxing",
keeping in mind that the original letterbox didn't even
contain stamps, much less the boundaries some people like to
draw around hand-carved, bespoke, or otherwise. Me, I hate
boundaries, but that's just me. Why is Jan 12th, 2008, the
right date to bound the game on this line? Perhaps Jan 12th,
1860 should have been the day to bound it that it shall
contain nothing but a logbook :-) (That would have helped
people like me who don't really care all that much about
stamp art or creating it, yet still want to find a way to
enjoy this sort of activity anyway).

The meme market will mercilessly kill lame ideas on its
own -- no need to arbitrarily draw boundaries; doing so makes
one come off as narrow-minded, self-important, and parochial,
at least to me, and being snooty or nasty in the process only
makes it look even sillier. JMHO, of course. How's that for
not being PC? (One thing I hope we all can agree on is that
we need less PC BS and more frank discourse; Human linguistics
makes being PC impossible anyway (both the literature
and the archive of mapsurferspeak will demonstrate from a
linguistics point of view why this is so -- at least if one
accepts the general gist of the arguments from the "East Pole"
school of thought, or, perhaps, even not, but they are so
compelling, how can you not?)).

Anyway, I try to avoid terms like "letterboxing" and
"letterboxes" just for these reasons -- modern "letterboxers"
have bounded them with so much baggage and boundaries. Avoid
those terms, and you can do what you want, and no one will
get in your face about it. That's my experience, anyway. Call
them "shirtboxes", and people will leave you alone for sure,
since it seems clear that negative, non-constructive answers
are not desired; yet sometimes, in some peoples' minds,
negative, non-constructive answers are warranted (but, IMHO
these generally play better off-list). I mean, I think it
is ok to say -- "I really don't like the idea, and don't really
have any suggestions, sorry.". Most people, however, tend to
keep to themselves when they have such opinions, or find a
nice or subtle way to convey them.

And furthermore, I would avoid the term "bury", because it
ain't PC :-) despite the fact that there seems scant
difference between moving rocks around and moving dirt around,
and 99% of the environmental damage done is placing
non-biodegradable trash in the environment, regardless of how
it is concealed. Of course, the arguments for bury, which
you never hear, are that it is less prone to becoming visible
trash, and less likely to result in visibly destructive
"hack searches". But I will not even hint a pro-bury platform
here, as doing so will generate more flames than walking into
a dungeon full of red dragons, and lord knows, the list don't
need that, does it?

And, of course, it wouldn't be a mapsurferspeak post without
mentioning the word semiotics.

Cheers
Randy





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