Date:         Sun, 16 Jun 1996 23:37:27 EDT
From: "t(wink)ies!" <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
Organization: Late Night Mussins, On Sheets
Subject:      Re: Filler: Anthromorphism

[to stretch a thread where no thread has been stretched before, to
bare the unseeable royal arse, and other fantastic pins apopping
bubbles:-]

A short time agone, Bill Lantry <lantry@fester.CPSC.SRU.EDU> stroked
his silky beard and pontificated:

-No-one should be cursed for spelling difficulties...  ;)

and I drifted far afield in re sponse:-)

should we bother pointing out that the word may well be "curst"?  or
possibly "accurst"?  nay, verily, methinks speling should be done with
great care, lest the magic go wild and turn your head around and around
and around...

but the scent of the game is in our nostrils, and we must put our head
down and track it to its lair, there to bay at the moon...

morphing, in modern nerd talk, refers to taking one image (that bane
of ol' Doc' Lantry's mental playground, where gymnastic leaps and
twists most outre are all the rage:-), plying it with solvents (the
image, not Doc Lantry), and transforming it into another image.  when
faces twist and blend into other faces, trees, etc. on the magic
lantern sitting in the corner of most hovels--(hum along, if you know
the melody) when the faces on tv turn into-o a tree, that's a
morphing!

(you may groan now)

so morphism, no doubt, is the tendency for creatures of all the weirds
to want to do this--the strange attraction of other shapes, the bubbling
fizz in your blood that pulls you to shapeshifting, to becoming a
werehedgehog or perhaps a Sunday squirrel, rambling around the grand
park begging for nuts?

anthro...if it walks like an ape, scratches like an ape, but isn't
really as hairy as an ape, it's probably human, all too human...poor,
very poor, too po' to talk to...anthropo...morphism...tending to change
into a poor human at the wink of a moonbeam?

So anthropomorphism refers to those poor animals who turn into humans
when the moon is full?  What foul evil would force that on the noble
savages of field and stream?  Unfettered by human lusts and
irrationales, they are true innocents, driven by destiny to...

(well, far enough along that odd tangent...let's see what the divine
book of webster has to say)

anthropomorphism...noun form of the adjective anthropomorphic...meaning
attributing human form or personality to a god or animal or object.

Aha!  so taking the cleft hooves of the faun and thinking they are human
feet of clay...or perhaps thinking that great Zeus is looking for love
in all the wrong species just because his dad, old Cronus, was a jealous
old fellow?  That's anthopomorphism?  And here I just thought it was
an invitation for a heavenly thunderbolt...

Oho!  Mix and match time...if attributing human form or persona to a god,
animal, or object is anthropomorphism, what is:

attributing godlike form or persona to a human?

simple recognition?  (thank you, thank you...)

attributing animal form or persona to a human?

Male bonding?  (they was iron men, and then the rain came, and now they're
rust, just rust...)

attributing object form or persona to a human?

a game for couch potatoes?

I'm sorry, but the use of analogy, metaphor, and similar comparisons
hardly seems like a pejorative...more like the work of a writer.

I grunt you, we should not fail to see the differences, but knowing
when to point out similarities, when to differentiate, and when to
shut up...that's what separates the silent from the loquacious.

or the just plain wordy
tink