Post: #26

just discovering some of Lizard's top posts as recommended by Tokyo J.

Looks like he left the forum, though

Post: #27

I have nothing to add, only to agree, to the plaudits here, which are all true and deserved.

But WNB.

Post: #28

michelin: As the OP I am very pleased you bumped this dormant thread. In the two months since I started it many new members have joined the Forum, so it is good to bring TLOZ to their attention.

And let's not get too hasty in concluding The Lizard has left the Forum. I believe he is dedicating the summer to some serious work and I would not be surprised if he re-emerges in full force this fall. I for one am looking forward to it. In the meantime, there are some 3000 posts to tide us over!

Also -- thanks to everyone who posted in the thread. Those were some great responses.

Post: #29

reading through the posts that TJ links to - well worth it!

Post: #30

I just read Lizard of Oz's recent post in RIP London.

Notwithstanding all that is wrong with the world, I'm always struck by his optimism for the future. Like many of you on this forum, I have been deeply affected by the events in Europe, and in the West as a whole. I sincerely hope Lizard’s optimism imbues his life’s work- out there, in the real world, and that he is effecting change. Someone has to keep the barbarians from storming the gate.

Post: #31

The amount of extremely high quality posters that this forum seems to attract never ceases to amaze me.

Lizard of Oz has helped shaped this forum into what it is today and I think his posts have helped more men than we can all imagine.

Thank you Lizard for giving so much to this forum.

Post: #32

One of my favourite posters here, that is a very intelligent person for sure.

Post: #33

If I had to pick one rep point I am most proud of, it is TLOZ's.

Post: #34

(01-23-2016 08:39 PM)Atticus Wrote:  I just read Lizard of Oz's recent post in RIP London.

I enjoyed that post as well and will go ahead and link it here for posterity's sake: /thread-53210...pid1200087

As to the Lizard of Oz, the man is surely a treasure. I've been reading various online forums since the mid 90's and he is easily one of the best commenters I've come across. And this is despite the fact that I've often found myself in disagreement with his conclusions/arguments. The power of his eloquence, the scope of his erudition and the strength of his reasoning are such that even when our opinions diverge I cannot but admit he has made a good point worth considering. I also can't help but get a kick out of his hyper-eloquent, lecherous descriptions of the female anatomy. I picture him sitting in a stately looking old study, a UV light glowing brightly against his face, a copy of Boswell's Life of Johnson in one hand, the perky breast of a 19 year old nubile brunette in the other and the smile on his face a mile wide.

Cheers to the Lizard of Oz, a great contributor to the forum and probably our most singular poster. A truly inimitable and one of a kind voice.

Post: #35

For all the noobs and visitors, take a moment to learn some of what this forum is all about thanks to TLOZ.

Post: #36

Post: #37

Can someone make a TLOZ Smiley?

Post: #38

Post: #39

(04-24-2016 10:58 PM)Tokyo Joe Wrote:  

4000 base hits!

Post: #40

Post: #41

Great thread. I've noticed the value he brings to the forum and enjoy his posts and insight.

Post: #42

Wanted to bump this thread to say that even though LoZ has gotten some ribbings in the Trump thread especially during the low points of the campaign that I still appreciated his posts and commentary in there and I always took what he was saying seriously and in most instances agreed with him even if we both were wrong in some cases. The Trump campaign was truly a black swan event and it seems like the only people who were able to get it right were guys like Cernovich and Scott Adams and others who wouldn't be considered "intellectuals" even though they seem to do a better job of reading the actual world around us then a lot of these people do. I hope he continues to offer commentary during the next 4 years of the Trump presidency and I most definitely will be considering everything he posts with seriousness.

Post: #43

Thanks for the bump. TLoZ has had a real and tangible effect on the way I view the world. His love of life is infectious and comes out through his writing- it encourages all of us to view life for the wonderful opportunity it is, in all of its absurdity.

Post: #44

Anytime I am scrolling through a thread and see his logo, I stop on a dime. Sometimes, I have to read his post two or three times before I can fully appreciate the information and wisdom he is dispensing. Keep it up LOZ.

Post: #45

(11-10-2016 02:21 PM)AlphaRN Wrote:  Anytime I am scrolling through a thread and see his logo, I stop on a dime. Sometimes, I have to read his post two or three times before I can fully appreciate the information and wisdom he is dispensing. Keep it up LOZ.

Post: #46

Solid advice from an excellent writer:

(05-21-2016 08:39 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  I sent the following comments in reply to a poster who asked me in a PM about what he could do to improve his writing style. I thought they might be of interest to other guys as well, so I reproduce them below.

****************

Here are some things I would suggest:

-- When writing, aim for two things: clarity and flow. Don't worry about style and don't worry about being witty. Concentrate on saying what you want to say in a clear and consecutive manner and on following the logic of the subject as you actually think about it in your mind.

-- Write about things that you know about and that actually interest you. This is key. Most bad writing is bad because people write about subjects that do not really interest them or that they have no feeling about. That kind of writing is dead on the page and no amount of style or wit can salvage it, any more than makeup can make a corpse look beautiful. If you write about what you know and care about -- and especially if you ever write about things you love -- you will find that the words will present themselves, as if by magic. Then all you need is to have the discipline of making what you say clear and consecutive and of letting it flow in the way that it wants to -- which brings me back to the first point above.

-- Don't reach for words. A lot of writers are bad because they reach for words that they don't naturally use, as if those words could, in themselves, add anything to their discourse. Use the words that you already know and have a feel for -- the only exception is when you are writing a technical text and simply have to use the technically correct word.

This may seem like strange advice coming from me since I occasionally use unusual or complex words in my posts -- but I think you'll agree that their use never feels strained or unnatural. I don't reach for them, they just occur to me because they're part of my natural vocabulary. If you want to have a larger vocabulary, you have to read widely, and be interested in many things. But the truth is that it's not the most important thing; words are just tools.

A writer should love his words no more than a pimp loves his whores; they have one purpose and that is to go out on the street and turn tricks and any one that gets the job done is as good as another. A pimp that falls in love with his whores is a bad pimp and a writer that falls in love with his words is a bad writer. Never strain and never overvalue words as such, just use what's near to hand.

-- Pay attention to punctuation and paragraph breaks. Good punctuation helps a sentence flow, and good paragraph breaks help the page flow. When I see a paragraph that is getting too long I figure out a good place to break it off and this often improves the text in surprising ways.

-- If you can reach a state of relaxed concentration, that is the best state to do any writing from. Real tension or anxiety strains writing -- it's part of the reason why a lot of today's literature is so bad. But real sloppiness is not ideal, either. Relaxed concentration is best in writing just as it's best in life.

-- Even if you're not writing a letter to a particular person, sometimes it helps to write your text as if you have some particular reader in mind and you want that person to understand what you're saying -- to really understand it and feel it. It concentrates the mind and makes the writing more pointed and more purposeful.

I hope you find these suggestions to be of some use.

Post: #47

If you want to know what a modern day Man of Letters is - meaning an intellectual capable of grasping the most important issues of the day and communicating them actively and in real time to other men - look no further than TLOZ.

Gentlemen, you didn't know it but it's 1775 and you just received a letter from Thomas Jefferson that arrived by "post."

That post, is here /thread-30625...pid1502171

Post: #48

This thread deserves a bump

Post: #49

How to bump this thread:

Post: #50

(09-06-2016 11:14 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  ...

First, in most cases, bad habits -- such as hard drinking, in particular -- are not our way of escaping from some hidden psychological problem. They themselves are the problem and the cause -- not the effect -- of many serious problems. Extremely well-designed and thorough studies of hard drinkers and alcoholics -- some of the only really good "studies" out there -- have shown that these men do indeed have all sorts of problems, but these problems are the effect of hard drinking, not its cause. Prior to being hard drinkers, these men are not more troubled, on the whole, than others; it is only after years of hard drinking that many very serious problems, both physical and psychological, come to the fore.

The same is true of failings of various other kinds: the cliche is that of a man who takes to the bottle after he's lost his job, been betrayed by his wife, and so on. While that does happen occasionally, the sequence is more often the reverse one: the man loses his job or fails at his relationship because his bad habits have progressed so far that they are impairing his ability to function in society, in either subtle or obvious ways. The chain of causality mainly proceeds from the bad habit to its deleterious consequences, not the other way around. Even when the bad habit was initially formed as a response to some real or perceived calamity, its consequences are often longer-lasting and more significant than that initial cause.

We are too eager for purely psychological explanations, and give insufficient credence to very simple mechanical or biochemical ones. The malaise experienced by the man who drinks to excess, takes other drugs, or otherwise abandons himself to bad physical habits, is not some psychological substrate that these habits are meant to hide or distract from; more often than not, it is the direct or indirect effect of those very habits. And the prescription is also a simple one: remove the bad habits and replace them with good ones, and so many of these supposedly deep or hidden problems will simply go away.

We want to give our problems the prestige of being deep and hidden, and regard our habits -- the day to day physical texture of our lives -- as relative trivia, at worst a distraction that keeps us from seeing ourselves as we truly are. But this is not so. We are our habits, to a very large extent. Change these habits -- really change them, in a gritty way that takes the kind of perseverance that most men lack -- and you change a great deal about how you feel about your life every day; and what had seemed an intractable problem is not even "solved", it simply falls away as something that is no longer of use or relevance.

A related point is this: it is quite true that a man who gives up drinking will often feel extended periods of emptiness, boredom, and what I like to call fallowness -- I have written about this often in this thread. And it is also quite true that these periods represent a great opportunity. But this is not for the reasons that you might think.

The opportunity is not to get in touch with oneself, with your ineffable inner core. That is indeed what men will try to do -- they will turn inward and they will seek self-definition and self-knowledge of one kind or another. But what they will discover if they are honest -- and that is really the great opportunity -- is that these things come to an end very quickly. The self -- any self -- is a quite limited sphere; there is really not that much there. Your emptiness and boredom when you are left alone with yourself are well-justified; you are a boring subject. Introspection has its uses but they are rapidly exhausted. And what then?

Then -- perhaps -- you might remember that there is a whole world of things outside the self; otherwise known as life, or the world. And once you've exhausted every other possibility, you just might, out of utter boredom, desultoriness, and the belligerence of having nothing better to do and nowhere else to turn to, actually check out that world outside the self. You might sit on a bench one day in the late summer, completely dry, completely done with all the things that have preoccupied you for so long and so uselessly, and simply look out, in a very pure way; look out with a slug's or lizard's eye, an eye that is ready to take it all in because it's got nowhere else to turn to.

And it's then -- at that humble moment -- that the real opportunity presents itself. Because the world outside the self is, in fact, the source of all interest, variety, knowledge, of the greatest and deepest pains and pleasures. And there is nothing that makes, over time, for a more enjoyable and interesting and fulfilling life than turning away from the depredations of the self and turning towards the world, in a modest attitude of relaxed concentration. There is beautiful comedy in this conjunction: when a man is so stupefied, so dully and completely bored out of his mind, that in his exasperation he turns to the source of endless depth and interest that was there all along, always there for the taking but seemingly too mundane and modest to ever take notice of until there was literally no other choice. That is what the wagon can do, for those who are willing to follow the trail all the way to the desert, and past it.