Re: Whats with the Kate (B) jargon?

[johnz@eaglet.rain.com (John Zimmer)]

hasn@midway.uchicago.edu writes:

>not implying that Kate Bush fans get a life, BTW.
>I'm just saying that is it necessary to bring the 
>( IMO, rather tackyish) Kate Bush jargon into it?
>This is an honest inquiry, since I absolutely cannot
>visualise of Kate Bush being the be-all-and-end-all
>(however she is a great songwriter/performer/singer)
>I do understand the nature of fan clubs, but why 
>this jargoning deal?  

Strictly speaking, I'd say it's not "necessary to bring...jargon into
it".  But slang and jargon arise for a couple of reasons: for brevity 
('Katemas' instead of 'celebration of Kate's birthday', '8 Mb of RAM' 
instead of '8 million 8-bit words of random access memory', not to mention
IMO and BTW  ;) and socially, to indicate identification with and membership
in a group.  This latter is a two-edged sword, because it's so easy to use 
it in an exclusionary way as well, but I can't honestly recall any such Kate-
related instances here.  As for her being the be-all-and-end-all, most such
sentiments are expressed with a (implied) wink-and-a-nudge.

The anarchy that is USENET allows us a great deal of freedom: to say what we
want to say, read what we want to read, and change the channel when we don't 
like what we see.


John Zimmer
johnz@eaglet.rain.com        "She really IS!"