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Ultimate: lost forever Let the people have their little box...

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Posted 09 August 2004 - 03:16 AM

While i found your article on the co-opting of the word 'ultimate' amusing, i wanted to discuss a few things.

First of all, i don't agree that there should be a ban on the word 'ultimate'. (I know you only said that for comic purposes, but for the sake of a discussion...) They took the word. they can have it. I mean, if we ban it they'll just co-opt another cherished word in our joyously exclamatory lexicon.

Besides, this is the kind of thing that becomes funny for people like us years from now. I mean, how rad was saying 'rad' when 'rad' was 'in'? Not very. But we look back on that era and appreciate their 'utilization of an obscure colloquialism' in various decidedly non-rad contexts (examples fail me), which ironically makes such an activity or product rad in the eyes of us losers. So, think of the children of the future. It amuses me to think of what sort of campy junk us of the 'turn of the century' generation (ugh... awful word) will be remembered for...

That's just the way i see it. No doubt many will see differently. Kill me with words!
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Posted 09 August 2004 - 08:42 AM

Are you actually comparing a dictionary-defined word like "ultimate" to dodgy early-90s slang like "rad"?
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Posted 09 August 2004 - 11:56 AM

I am, in so much as they are both marketing buzz-words. And really, rad is just an abbreviation of a dictionary-defined word. The english language is meant for manglin'!
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Posted 09 August 2004 - 12:14 PM

Well then you didn't catch my point. The article was regarding misuse of the word "ultimate" in general, not the fact that it's used as a "marketing buzz word".
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Posted 09 August 2004 - 12:16 PM

Well, in your examples you cited some sort of advert, and some new-fangled variaition on a sport that i assume was created to show on TV occasionally and have adverts play inbetween rounds or something...
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Posted 09 August 2004 - 10:37 PM

By looking at that picture, of two kids playing frisbee, you assumed that ultimate frisbee was designed for TV? Man...you've been missing out on the best part of owning a frisbee. I am saddened by this.
Anyway, my point was that the definition of "ultimate" seems to have been lost. It now gets bandied about like the term "alternative" was bandied about to apply to any and all rock music in the early 90s, and how "punk" is now bandied about to describe any music played by no-talent gits with spiky hair.
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Posted 10 August 2004 - 10:49 AM

"Alternative" to what? I like to ask.

I was amused when the highly produced, effects-heavy and orchestrated debut album from The Smashing Pumpkins was grouped in with the label "grunge," a term briefly used to describe pared-down, under-produced rock music. As though counter-culture lyrics made a thing "grunge." I suppose we should go back and reclassify Bob Dylan.

Anyway, I think the article on the word "ultimate" is amusing. Reader's point might have been made better with a word other than "rad,' so let's pretend his example was "wicked" or "awesome," both over-used in late-80's and fairly silly now.

Ultimate Frisbee, by the way, is a really lame attempt to spice up Frisbee Football, itself a lame attempt to make playing with a frisbee fun. It's a fucking frisbee. Jerry Garcia is dead. Let's all move on.
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).
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