"The ratio of critics to artists was part of what took me a lot of effort to understand. In Nou Occitan, where I grew up, there were many artists and a few critics, and the critics were looked down on and rather pitied, as people who couldn’t paint, sing, write, or whatever. It was a point of honor for Occitan artists to ignore critics, or else to chastise them rather than to reply to them.... This allowed truly atrocious artists to have someone they could look down on, since any real Occitan would rather make a rotten work than a sound argument. Better still, given how bad our art was, it kept the number of people who might point that out so small that they could not possibly get around to looking at most of it.
    Here in Tamil Mandalam, though, it was quite the reverse. The critics were so numerous and so respected that hardly anyone dared any art; what there was of new works was highly polished and refined little gems, bits of formal perfection, which were nevertheless attacked regularly for their triviality. Where the mostly-young Occitan poets were sloppy, emotional, often bathetic, and prolific far beyond demand, the Tamil poets labored for decades to become brilliant specialists, masters of prosody with not much more feeling than most people associated with chess masters."

--3arth Mad* of Glass


45.

spliff Upas sly I of if · pulp apanthropinization
waniand as is slipknot my · dictionary polyps uffish
diary of spook cutbacks slag up · caracul spilth nap


46.

military gigantic · slut I storm fauxzindiq grotto
Aymara aglow gingham · ignominious dark and strong
bildar scop is slowly ruinous · starry widom


"Starry wisdom"= catast*rism.



Th* Wom*n Paint*rs of Mithila.


"O Feedled Gruntbuggly,
?...Thy nacturations are to me!
As plurdled gabbleblochits on a lurgid bee.
Groop, I emplore thee, my foonting turlingdromes.
And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles
or I will rend thee in gabberwarts with my burglecruncheon,
See if I don't!"

--sampl* of Vogon Po*try (Douglas Adams)