What is Sterl-speak?

I know it when I see it?

What thread was that in? I'll bet if you copy in whatever I said, everyone will say, "Yes, that does sound a bit like Sterling."

Or more likely they'll say "Corrrr, itXor GRATE like Fannington Oaks Tube Stop wiv ickly metley Chickunbare, thus I LAAAARFED!"

Tubes have stations. Buses have stops.

And "great" is spelled "great," Sinker: what's your point? :)

great is spelled great and GRATE is spelled GRATE... what's yours, abebe? >;-0…

Well, then ... er ... tube stations are spelled "tube stops," then. It's ... like ... a very clever pun on "tube tops" which you just ... didn't get. Even though I completely intended it. Yeah.

Er ... okay, focusing. Sterling, be aware that I wasn't apologizing for the mere presence of Sterlspeak. I was mainly apologizing for usurping it from its rightful handler. This avoids confusion come next year's "Best Posting Style" award nominations.

Thats from a Bobby Conn thread, no?

^ well obviously ^ and ^ as we all know ^ are my fave sterlspeak - patronising git

?;~{-

Pithy yet degenerate.

It's this thing...

...professorial and streetwise, e.g., 'marries' and 'full-on' in the same sentence...

Hmmm. Speaking of Sterling and stuff he writes:

Sterling lives, and I work, in a neighborhood called Hyde Park, where the University of Chicago is located. One of the campus papers is called the Chicago Maroon. The Chicago Maroon features one truly good music writer: Moacir P. de Sa Pereira. Moacir just reviewed the new Britney album. Here's the end of Moacir's review:

The duet with Justin Timberlake ("What It's Like to be Me") flows more smoothly than Timbo's description of his sex life ("her mouth ain't a virgin"), but those who want more growth now that Britney's all legal and stuff need look no further than the soon-to-be classic of liminal crisis, "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman." ... [W]e all know liminality is seksi.

I believe we have found Sterling's doppelganger.

Actual answer: Sterlspeak is like a high-tech grad study going glitch with slang, shorthand, linguistic equations, and Bartheties / Pynchonesqueities (the offhand-shorthand crossed-modifiers thing is All Barth All the Time, and I know because I always try to do it and then give up since Barth is unbeatable). Sterling does not care for Wallace but has similar tics, possibly secondhand from Sinker, probably because Wallace studied Barth. To wit:

"[W]hat I meant orig. was simply that the hair splitting was getting a bit extreme for a group of fairly homogenous politics, voting either labor or lib-dem, feeling (for the most part) slightly squeamish, and just sorta soforth."

["Just sorta soforth" is Barth as fuck.]

"Three hour speeches = holdover from the past. Communication with large numbers of ppl. requires brevity. All great modern revolutions took place under slogans of less than eight words. All modern wars took place with slogans of even fewer = 2-4 MAX."

[Sterling on Sterlspeak!:]

"I'd like to take credit for the occasional uses of 'on the [xxx] tip' and 'c.f.' as well as the extension, still rare, of roXoR and suXoR to the lovely term 'fuXoR'. Also, did I introduce the '!=' symbol, coz I'd sure like to take credit for that one." ... My 'et cet.' thing comes from Barth. But to get real Pynchon we'd have to adopt usw. which I don't see happening. Also, my stutter thing is classic Pynchon."

Also, the thread where he explains why Ally is a tart is good.