The Thing at the End of Your Fork

[mangosteen]

Have you ever picked up an otherwise mundane object and intentionally viewed it as if it were completely foreign to your experience? Sure, the brain catches up a few seconds later and forces you over to what it "actually" is, but just for a few seconds, you get to see it as A Fascinaing Object, like you've never seen one before.

I just did that with a credit card. An abstraction, piled on an abstraction, piled on further abstractions, still.

I think I'll be using cash for the next little while.

Comments

[dsrtao]

It happens to me with words fairly frequently. Repeating a word -- especially one without roots in a language I know -- can do it all by itself. Lunch. Lunch. Lunch.

[sweh.livejournal.com]

"Lorry" is one that gets me occasionally. Yesterday it was "Lady".

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

oh god, all the time. especially if i'm sitting in the car with nothing to do waiting for someone, just zoning out.

grocery.

[mangosteen]

For me, it's "daughter."

[ceo]

gaZEEbo.

[jss]

Macadamia.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

Recommended reading: Paying with Plastic (I have the first edition, hope it did not degrade).

[sweh.livejournal.com]

Cash, itself, is an abstraction. How far back are you gonna go?

[mangosteen]

Sometimes it's enough to go a couple of turtles back down the stack.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

"cash"

that's the paper that has been blessed by the treasury wizards to be a marker for value that doesn't exist so that the shared illusion of "currency" can continue.

[mangosteen]

As opposed to the shiny yellow metal? :)

It's still turtles all the way down.

[xthread.livejournal.com]

Note to self: force feed Ruby to Mangosteen, he needs more Android Sisters in his life.

[klingonlandlady.livejournal.com]

For that matter, gold has ittle intrinsic value other than that people seem to agree it's pretty and they want it, or they are sure other people must want it.

May I suggest trading in socks, ammunition, whiskey and sewing needles?

[rmd.livejournal.com]

That's the thing that confuses me about the "BUY GOLD IN CASE OF DISASTER" people.

Also, the precious metals bubble can go ahead and pop any time so I can buy shiny things because they're pretty not because OMG BUY GOLD/SILVER/PLATINUM BECAUSE IT'S REAL.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

This.

[ceo]

Well, gold has the advantage of being a) relatively rare (and you can't just make more of it) and b) difficult to counterfeit in a way not trivially detectable.