Monday, November 25, 2013

Does Bruce Duensing Speak English?



Yes, I sometimes use a ten dollar word but I try to eschew academese.

There's this commenter on ufological topics, Bruce Deunsing, who seems to be making a valid point – if you can wade through his dense observations.

Then again, his response to a post at the UFO Iconoclast(s) site entitled "UFOs and the Rabble" is appropriate considering the post's bouts of bloviation.  (The essay is signed "RR," so I'm assuming the writer is Rich Reynolds or maybe Robert Redford.)  But while I can get the gist of the post with some effort Bruce's comment seems to be an exercise in "I-can-top-that-for-turgid-opacity."  Here's part of his response:

"What constitutes an advanced civilization? Of course this is a game of comparisons played by those as card in what remains of Ufology which has descended into the proverbial act of reading tea leaves based on their premise that their basis of comparison of such an advanced civilization compared to ours is always made in technological terms, which says a great deal about the observer than it does about the observed.

"If, as some have suggested, such as myself, that the whole of this subject is precognitive sentience based on upending rationality at the behest of logic to deconstruct the parameters of our orientation, then it should come as no big surprise that what is reported is always a chimera based on a technological series of non verbal communications, that are painted in our mind's eye as the work of a intangible surrealist."


I would print more but that would violate the rules of fair use – and also violate your mind by either inducing a headache or putting you into a coma.

One can only imagine what it is like to be around Bruce.  For example, after wrapping up a conversation, he might say:

"Rendering upon you an indication of termination of this discourse by invoking a congenial poncif that perfunctorily offers wish fulfillment vis-a-vis your existential sphere experiencing during a specific period of time positivism of a nature that conveys phenomenological joie de vivre to your rudimentary cerebral functions, i.e., intrinsic emotional state of a pleonastic qualitative quality."

While I would say:

"Have a nice day."

3 comments:

Doug said...

Yeah, what you said.

Reminds me of essays of literary criticism I had to read in college; nothing but run-on sentence after run-on sentence; separated by semicolons; all too long to follow our comprehend.

Bruce Duensing said...

I thoroughly enjoyed this post. Simple enough language for you? Style over substance? Sounds like much ado about nothing. Sorry to have irked your brain.

X. Dell said...

Reminds me of some of my freshmen students, doing their best to sound academic. Actually, academics often look down on those who use lots of convoluted wording and jargon.

The ten-dollar words are there to refer to issues and concepts that are complex, but previously defined. They become a shorthand, in a way.

For example, I could write "See this as if seeing it for the first time, not knowing what to make of its materials, colors or function; as if you were a baby without much frame of reference, and with few assumptions or associations."

Or I could write, "See this phenomenologically."