The Conversations

April 8, 2013.

The Party's over.

The Imaginary Dinner Party Game began February 18, 2013. I proclaimed the Dinner Party Game over on March 2 when all of the seats at the table had been filled. On March 3, I posted this:

I was one-upped by Miss M's Friend the other day. I pronounced the Dinner Party Game finished. He countered with a question, "How can we be finished when our guests haven't had any conversations?"

Right he was! How can you have people such as we all invited around a table and then not allow them to converse?

Silly me. 

And so... . We have the basic framework of how the Conversation Game will go, we're just working on the Game Board logistics.

To begin...

On March 4th our imaginary guests began conversing.

By April 8, 2013, we'd all had our say. More or less.

This page is a work in progress-- I've just finished the rough draft converting the spreadsheet of the conversation threads to text dialog. We were stymied in the late days by blogger .tiff/jpg issues.

Stay tuned.

For those who aren't Plykers, or who haven't been following the Dinner Party and Dinner Party Conversation Games, I'll provide a better explanation of what these are all about as time allow. For now, see

http://bigfoodetc.blogspot.com/search/label/dinner%20party

and

http://bigfoodetc.blogspot.com/search/label/conversations

Here's the completed Game Board

For Plykers-- here is the current state of Conversation along with remaining players & guests. I'll keep this updated.

TABLE ONE left side

Jack Kerouac (Miss M's Friend): The only people for me are the mad ones. Mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved. Desirous of everything at the same time. The ones who never yawn or say a common place thing. But burn burn burn. 

Harper Lee (Daughter C): I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks. [Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird, Pt. 2 chapt. 23]

Mark Twain (Miss M): The human race consists of the damned and the ought to be damned. [Author's notebook]

Gordon Ramsey (A. Leland): Well, Chefs are nutters. They're all self-obsessed, delicate, dainty, insecure little souls and absolute psychopaths. Every last one of them. [from an interview]

Julia Child (Kat): I think careful cooking is love, don't you? The loveliest thing you can cook for someone who's close to you is about as nice a Valentine as you can give. [ttp://www.thekitchn.com/happy-100th-birthday-julia-child-a-few-lessons-in-perseverance-from-her-letters-175661]

Christopher Wallace (Daughter C):  Stay far from timid, only make moves when your hearts in it, and live the phrase sky’s the limit. [Notorious BIG Sky's the Limit]

Lewis Carroll (A. Leland): That's the reason they're called lessons. Because they lesson from day to day.

John von Neumann (Tony): Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.

Neal Stephenson (Kat): Well, all information looks like noice until you break the code. [Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash]

Teddy Roosevelt (Kat): Knowing what's right doesn't mean much if you don't do what right. 

James Cash Penney (Miss M): The men who have furnished me with my greatest inspiration have not been men of wealth, but men of deeds. [J.C. Penney, Lines of a Layman, Chapter 1] 

TABLE ONE right

Jack Kerouac (Miss M's Friend): The only people for me are the mad ones. Mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved. Desirous of everything at the same time. The ones who never yawn or say a common place thing. But burn burn burn. 

George Carlin (Miss M's Friend) I don’t like ass-kissers, flag wavers, or team players. I like people who will buck the system. Individualists. I often warn people, somewhere along the way someone is going to tell you, “There is no ‘I’ in ‘Team’.” What you should tell them is this, “Maybe not. But there is an ‘I’ in ‘Independence’, ‘Individuality’, and ‘Integrity’.”

Henry David Thoreau (Miss M's Friend): If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice for another, then, I say, break the law. [Civil Disobedience]

Robert Johnson (Miss M): It’s the last fair deal goin’ down. [Robert Johnson, Last Fair Deal Goin' Down]

Patrick Stewart (Kat): It is what you do from now on that will either move our civilization forward a few tiny steps, or else... begin to march us steadily backward. [as Star Trek: The Next Generation's Jean Luc Picard]

Quinten Tarentino (Miss M): For those regarded as warriors, when engaged in combat the vanquishing of thine enemy can be the warrior's only concern. Suppress all human emotion and compassion. Kill whoever stands in thy way, even if that be Lord God, or Buddha himself. This truth lies at the heart of the art of combat. [Kill Bill Vol. 1]

Benjamin Franklin (Tony): Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. [by heart]

Richard Feinman (Tony): The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.

Jesse James (A. Leland): No, I think it taught me to be independent and never expect a handout and never wait for anybody to hand you anything in any aspect of my life.

Lauren Becall (Mr. Big Food): You know ... you're not very hard to figure, only at times. Sometimes I know exactly what you're going to say. Most of the time. The other times... the other times, you're just a stinker. [from her portrayal of Slim in To Have and Have Not (1944)]

Sam Colt (Mr. Big Food): The good people in this world are very far from being satisfied with each other and my arms are the best peacemaker. [Samuel Colt, 1852]

John Ford (Mr. Big Food): Be careful or you'll blow yer brains out. [from Ford's Wagon Master (1950), spoken by character Travis Blue (played by Ben Johnson)]

Robert E. Lee (A. Leland) I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (Marica): ... and repeatedly asked ourselves the questions: "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?" [Letter form a Birmingham Jail]

Thomas Jefferson (Marica): All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. [Thomas Jefferson letter to Roger C. Weightman dated June 24, 1826]

C.S. Lewis (Daughter C): If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

Ayn Rand (Marica): We made it. We created it. We brought it forth from the night of the ages. We alone. Our hands. Our mind. Ours alone and only. We know not what we are saying. Our head is reeling. We look upon the light which we have made. We shall be forgiven for anything we say tonight. . . . [written by "Equality 7-2521," the main character of Rand's novella Anthem (1938)]

TABLE TWO left

Amelia Erhart (Marica): Help! [common knowledge]

William Shatner (Kat): If you're asking how I stay so healthy and boyishly handsome? It’s simple. I drink the blood of young runaways.

James Taylor (Daughter C): That's the motivation of an artist-- to seek attention of some kind.

Oscar Wilde (Miss M's Friend): Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not the sitter.

LaVar Burton (Daughter C): As long as we are engaged in storytelling that moves the culture forward, it doesn't matter what format it is.

Diane Keaton (Daughter C): You're the reason that I got out of my room and that I was able to sing and, and, and you know get more in touch with my feelings and all that crap. [As Annie Hall in Annie Hall]

Alan Alda (Miss M): You can't get there by bus, only by hard work, risking, and by not quite knowing what you're doing. What you'll discover will be wonderful: Yourself!

Denis Leary (Miss M's Friend): Most people think, life sucks and then you die. Not me. I beg to differ. I think life sucks, then you get cancer, then your dog dies, your wife leaves you, the cancer goes into remission, you get a new dog, you get remarried, you owe 10,000,000 dollars in hospital bills but you work hard for 35 years and you pay it back and then one day you have a massive stroke, your whole right side is paralyzed, you have to limp around the streets and speak out of the left side of your mouth and drool, but you go into rehabilitation and regain the power to walk and the power to talk and then one day you step off the curb at 67th Street and BANG, you get hit by a city bus and then you die. Maybe.

Les Stroud (Kat): In the adventure known as life, there are those who live it vicariously, and enjoy the ride from the safety of an arm-chair; and that's good. There are those who have a few chances to realize incredible and life-changing experiences; and though they don't repeat them, they carry with them a growth and personal philosophy for the rest of their lives. And there are those for whom a taste, is never enough; for whom the lust of adventure, is nearly insatiable. And if you add to that the overwhelming desire to create, and to share, then you get where I reside. For the end of one adventure, only signifies the beginning of another. [From the episode of Survivor Man where Les goes to Papua New Guinea]

Thomas Edison (Marica): Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Keith Richards (Miss M's Friend): Good music comes out of people playing together, knowing what they want to do and going for it. You have to sweat over it and bug it to death. You can't do it by pushing buttons and watching a tv screen.

J.L. Austin (A. Leland): ...it has long been afforded me what philosophy is so often thought, and made barren of--the fun of discovery, and the pleasures of cooperation, and the satisfaction of reaching agreement. [J.L. Austin "A Plea for Excuses"]

Anton Dvořák (Marica): I am convinced that the future music of this country must be founded on what are called Negro melodies. ... These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are the folk songs of America and your composers must turn to them. [1892]

Jerome (Jerry) Garcia (Miss M): You have to get past the idea that music has to be one thing. To be alive in America is to hear all kinds of music constantly: radio, records, churches, cats on the street, everywhere music. And with records, the whole history of music is open to everyone who wants to hear it.

TABLE TWO right

Amelia Erhart (Marica): Help! [common knowledge]

Philip K. Dick (Tony): Has perspiration odor taken you out of the swim? Ten-day Ubik deodorant spray or Ubik roll-on ends worry of offending, brings you back where the happening is. Safe when use as directed in a conscientious program of body hygiene. [Ubik (a novel)]

Gene Roddenbury (Daughter C): A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on and licks it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away. ["The Cage" (Star Trek first pilot), spoken by John Hoyt as "Dr. Philip Boyce" (0:06:18)]  

Alvin Plantinga (A. Leland): What is important about the idea of transworld depravity is that if a person suffers from it, then it wasn't within God's power to actualize any world in which that person is significantly free but does no wrong—that is, a world in which he produces moral good but no moral evil. ["God, Freedom, and Evil," 1977]

Mike Judge (Mr. Big Food): Nobody likes a know it all who sits around talking about their genitalia. [Hank Hill;  King of the Hill episode 1X2 (1/19/1997)]

Bertrand Russell (A. Leland): Affectionateness is an emotional habit which is good in moderation, but can easily be carried too far...Some people who are moralists...imagine that it consists in a desire for the happiness of the beloved object. This is only very partially the case; in fact, affection, in its instinctive manifestations is bound up with jealousy... [Bertrand Russell's Dictionary of Mind, Matter, and Morals (1953)]

Joel Salatin (Tony): Realize that agendas drive data, not the other way round.

Hunter S. Thompson (Mr. Big Food): We can't stop here. This is bat country. [from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)]

Willie Nelson (Mr. Big Food): On the road again, like a band of gypsies we go down the highway, we're the best of friends, insisting that the world keeps turnin' our way, and our way is on the road again. [1980]

Ron Paul (Mr. Big Food): It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking. [End the Fed (2009)]

John Wayne (Marica): Republic. I like the sound of the word. It means people can live free, talk free, go or come, buy or sell, be drunk or sober, however they choose. Some words give you a feeling. Republic is one of those words that makes me tight in the throat - ... Republic is one of those words. [Col. Davy Crockett played by John Wayne in The Alamo (1960)]  

Grace Kelly (Miss M): I don't care who's right or who's wrong. There's got to be some better way for people to live. [Grace Kelly as Amy Fowler Kane in High Noon, 1952]

Thomas Hunter-Dixon (Tony): Scale-free networks are particularly vulnerable to intentional attack: if someone wants to wreck the whole network, he simply needs to identify and destroy some of its hubs.

Nassim Taleb (Tony): The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.

Mitch Hedberg (Miss M's Friend): I used to do drugs. I still do drugs. But I used to, too. [from the album, Strategic Grill Locations]