@Gobbledydook:

Orwell's 5 Rules:

"Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print."

I both see the virtue of that statement and likewise think it's a bit outdated--we're the Meme Generation...and memes work, in part, because we're used to seeing those phrases, pictures and signs in print, er, on our screens.


"Never use a long word where a short one will do."

Reminds me of a dispute between Hemingway and Faulkner, the former saying something like "Poor Faulker, thinking big words mean big emotions," and the latter accusing Hemingway of never using a word that'd make his readers have to whip out a dictionary.

You'll notice both are award-winning legends...I think there's room enough in the literary world for compact Hemingway and crisp Orwell style as well as the wordier approaches of Faulkner and his ilk.

"If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out."

Again, good as a good-sounding rule, but in practice?

Take most monologues or speeches in Shakespeare, and chances are you can cut out words and keep the essence of what's being said--but you'd almost always lose something, too, be it poetry or the iambic flow of the line or just a cool phrase.

Just because you can cut a word doesn't mean you should have to, or even that you should. There's a difference between "make your point" and "make your point quickly and dryly"

"Never use the passive where you can use the active."

Don't have much to say against that one.

"Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent."

There I REALLY disagree with Orwell...whether it's T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, William Makepeace Thackeray in the century before, Asimov (on the jargon point, he used "everyday English" a lot, but had his fair share of jargon, too, more so than Bradbury by far) there are a TON of great English writers that have embraced foreign words and jargon as a way to bring flavor to their works.

And anyway, Gobbledydook, you're forgetting his SIXTH rule--

"Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous."

"A writer," Orwell once said, "can do very little with words in their primary meanings. He gets his effect if at all by using words in a tricky roundabout way."


"Roundabout way" and "cut and dry" rarely intersect.

Really, Santa?

You're going to get on ME for the Orwellian nastiness...

This from the guy who insists there's absolutely nothing wrong with the most Orwellian figure of them all, that Great Divine Daddy in the Sky ordering the death of every man, woman, children and (because He was in an extra-cranky mood) donkey from the Amalekites? The guy who insists THAT ancient Jewish crime wasn't a genocide is going to lecture me on the wrongs of modern-day Israel?

That's about as credible as Putin, fan of more dictators and vicious states than anyone here, lecturing me on passivity (or annexation for that matter.)

*peacefulness rather than passivity

You never attempted to even somewhat comprehend my argument on that topic. Mostly because you are a buffoon, lack any real aptitude for critical thinking, and as much as you try to play the affected literary snob, you are unable to analyze the simplest of literary passages. My argument was always historical and literary, yet as you are want to do, you smear those you argue with with some ramshackle framework of pseudo-morality that you make up as you go and then change when your barely constructed argument suits you. Yet that is niether here nor there and I appreciate that AGAIN, you resort to smearing me with a misinterpreted argument I made about 3 years ago.

Now that I have given you an avenue to escape your untenable and inhumane argument that you are barely bright enough to know that you are losing, I will remind you before you head off on a tangent that you are nothing more than an INGSOC apologist, a prole who wants so bad for Big Brother to really be a benevolent force that you are willing to toe the party line even when you know its bullshit. As I said,

obiwanobiwan's motto:

War Is Peace
Freedom Is Slavery
Ignorance Is Strength

the only thing I'll change is, as PE said, that it's not a new motto for you.

"My argument was always historical and literary,"

And my argument was simply that there IS no argument for justifying genocide, be it historical, literary, or otherwise.

"Yet that is neither here nor there and I appreciate that AGAIN, you resort to smearing me with a misinterpreted argument I made about 3 years ago."

As with my frequently referencing Putin's praising of Assad, the Kim Dynasty, Putin and Stalin, I would not mention that if you yourself did not continue to smear ME--

You ALWAYS take a combative stance with me, Santa, and immediately resort to pissing on me the second I show up in a thread, so you'll excuse me for doubting the sincerity of your point there when you've started this latest round.

"Now that I have given you an avenue to escape your untenable and inhumane argument that you are barely bright enough to know that you are losing, I will remind you before you head off on a tangent that you are nothing more than an INGSOC apologist, a prole who wants so bad for Big Brother to really be a benevolent force that you are willing to toe the party line even when you know its bullshit"

1. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn if I'm "losing" the debate in terms of popularity on a website for a board game...the only win or loss I care about in this context is the win or loss that the non-Hamas and Israeli people experience down on the ground--I think I'm right, I hope I am, and I hope history will prove me right...but even if that's not the case, I'd rather still they find a way to a Hamas-free peace.

2. Do you have me confused with Putin? Granted, he hates Orwell, but I'm not exactly a socialist...so, no, I'm not an apologist for that line of thinking at all. Out of curiosity, for whom am I a prole and who's Big Brother in your view of this and me? Since, if anything, I'm rather arrogant and my attacks have been lobbied at Big Brother figures like Stalin and Putin, and those are figures Putin33 likes...

Again, do you have us mixed up there, or is this just an excuse for your to trot out your Orwell Cliffnotes quote?

As for the quote itself, since you insist on repeating it--

What party line am I toeing? I'm a Democrat, and yet between they and the Republicans, it's the Democrats who are least sympathetic to Israel...is it Israel? As I've now said dozens of times I find them mostly to blame for what's going on in the West Bank and have said repeatedly that their settlements are imperialistic, morally wrong and politically stupid, I'm hardly toeing that line, either.

Do you have actual substance to your argument that I'm a prole praising a Big brother and those above points, or is appropriating Orwell all you've got?

After all, I can appropriate Mustachioed Mr. Eric Blair too--

If you want a picture of WebDip's future, imagine Santa, bitterly flaming me--forever.