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Heaven: I feel I ought to like this but I DON'T

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  • KarlLB wrote: »
    If it makes you feel better you may be a supertaster - how are you on brassicas, especially sprouts?

    Sprouts and so on are fine (though green peppers can disappear off the face of the planet for all I care). Fortunately, the number of foods that repel me are very few.
  • KarlLB wrote: »
    stetson wrote: »
    I struggle with a lot of Wallace Stephens but some of his stuff does hit the spot.

    The thing you have to remember about Stevens is that his poems aren't really about the things they describe, but rather about the mind creating its own reality using those things as the raw material.

    The first stanza of this poem kind of sums it up.

    I'm sure it does to those who can make head or tail of it.

    I'd like to know what he was smoking when he wrote that.
  • Well yes.

    I like 'The Snow Man's by Stevens.

    'One must have a mind of winter ...'

    But the rest literally leaves me cold.

    I can see what he's trying to do, what he's getting at, but it's too much like hard work.

    I like some of 'The Blue Guitar' too, though.
  • KarlLB wrote: »
    Beatmenace wrote: »
    mousethief wrote: »
    The most unremittingly tragically sad book ever written IMO is The Silmarillion. I love it, I read it at least once a year and bawl my eyes out.
    I forced myself to read it through once. I have tried again numerous times and can never finish. It's the most unremittingly dull book ever written. It makes Ulysses look like an exciting page-turner.

    The Silmarillion is Wagner's Ring cycle of literature. Same tone, same sturm und drang same interplay of gods and monsters, same high tragedy and inescapable doom.

    Perhaps it is best consumed on the first go like one should first experience The Ring: In four parts, spaced a year apart. Not over a four day weekend at Bayreuth.

    AFF



    No question that the early part of the Silmarillion is hard work , but it gets far more enjoyable the further you get into it.
    I have now read it all a number of times.

    Can't be said of any of the Tolkien works re-assembled by Christopher Tolkien - I have tried but just cant get further than 100 pages.

    Has anyone EVER finished Children of Hurin?

    Yup. Me. Boy #1 read it when he was about 10. Why? It's a cracking story, lots of death, betrayal, malice, deception and despair, not to mention incest, suicide and dragons. What more could you want?

    I'm not sure I want either incest or dragons.

    Death, betrayal, malice, deception and despair sound ok, though.

    Suicide?

    Only if there are more fucking elves ...
  • Climacus wrote: »
    Amen. I'm always rather fascinated with people (none here) who think you should like something because they do. And it's because you don't understand how great it is that they tell you in painful detail what you already know and can't understand why you're not converted. We are different.

    Summer. Can't stand the blasted season. Give me a cold, wet, windy winter's day like today any day.

    Most modern music. I'm sorry; I'm just not wired to listen to it. On a 7 hour road trip give me 9 episodes of Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time podcast. I don't want 'driving songs' or somesuch. I think it may be sensory overload for poor me: music and words -- I can only concentrate on one at a time! :help:

    Climacus you must be my long lost twin. Here Here.

  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    KarlLB wrote: »
    Beatmenace wrote: »
    mousethief wrote: »
    The most unremittingly tragically sad book ever written IMO is The Silmarillion. I love it, I read it at least once a year and bawl my eyes out.
    I forced myself to read it through once. I have tried again numerous times and can never finish. It's the most unremittingly dull book ever written. It makes Ulysses look like an exciting page-turner.

    The Silmarillion is Wagner's Ring cycle of literature. Same tone, same sturm und drang same interplay of gods and monsters, same high tragedy and inescapable doom.

    Perhaps it is best consumed on the first go like one should first experience The Ring: In four parts, spaced a year apart. Not over a four day weekend at Bayreuth.

    AFF



    No question that the early part of the Silmarillion is hard work , but it gets far more enjoyable the further you get into it.
    I have now read it all a number of times.

    Can't be said of any of the Tolkien works re-assembled by Christopher Tolkien - I have tried but just cant get further than 100 pages.

    Has anyone EVER finished Children of Hurin?

    Yup. Me. Boy #1 read it when he was about 10. Why? It's a cracking story, lots of death, betrayal, malice, deception and despair, not to mention incest, suicide and dragons. What more could you want?

    I'm not sure I want either incest or dragons.

    Death, betrayal, malice, deception and despair sound ok, though.

    Suicide?

    Only if there are more fucking elves ...

    Sorry. The suicides are both mortals. Elves are mostly bit players in this one.

    The incest is accidental but is what prompts the suicides.
  • Just what we need today. Accidental incest.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    Well yes.

    I like 'The Snow Man's by Stevens.

    'One must have a mind of winter ...'

    But the rest literally leaves me cold.

    I can see what he's trying to do, what he's getting at, but it's too much like hard work.

    I like some of 'The Blue Guitar' too, though.

    I think my favorite is Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird. I believe the singular in the title is important, indicating that it's always the same blackbird under consideration.

  • MaryLouiseMaryLouise Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    I wince at most commentaries on Wallace Stevens -- one of my favourite Stevens poems is The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain, which is indebted to Henry James' short fiction, Altar of the Dead (available on Project Gutenberg).
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    Tangent Alert
    [qb].... Inversions of word order tends to happen more in rhyming verse rather than blank verse, it's often necessary to get a rhymning word to the end of a line. It jolts, even in the best rhyming poetry. It's hard to sustain rhyme for any length of time without lapsing into inversion. [/qb]
    Not sure that I quite agree there. If you're writing verse, even if you play with the form a bit, I've found you need to accept the conventions that particular form has built into it. One of these is that the rhyming word doesn't just have to rhyme. Sometimes the form forces you to invert so that the word that comes at the end of the line where the rhyme is one that's important, that carries some emphasis, rather than just convenient for the rhyme. Another is, that this applies much more to the second word, the one that rhymes with the previous one.

    Also, different forms work differently. Ballad metre with stanzas, for example, handles quite differently from on-running rhyming iambic pentameters. And what works in verse intended to be read, is different from what works in verse that is intended to be sung.

    End of Alert

    On the main theme of this thread, I've always rather liked LOTR, but I thought the film version was overinflated rubbish. Also the battle scene in the last of the three went on far too long and gave the impression this was all done just because a large part of the world's cinema audiences likes fight scenes.

    I've never seen anything with Jim Carrey in it that has been remotely funny, or would not have been improved by someone else playing the part he was playing.

    And I've good friends to whom I daren't admit this. I think Bob Dylan (St Bob to some) is rubbish, droning, nasal and tuneless, and words that are obvious. As I think I've said before, when in history weren't the times a'changing.
  • Point taken on inversion of word order in rhyme schemes.

    And yes, enjambment and so on ... very important.

    Yes also to 'Thirteen Ways To Look at a Blackbird'.

    But no to more fucking elves. I don't care if they've got bit parts.

    Why can't someone make a LoTR remake of the last few tiresome films, lots more battle scenes but this time with the Orcs winning?

    Call it something like Big Bastard Bloody Orcs Kill All The Fucking Elves.

    I'd pay to see it.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    If you skipped the battle scenes, it could be a lot cheaper, just the credits, then a blank screen, and a rasping voice in the dark cinema "I'm the dark lord, and I won. Now **** off home and you're not getting your money back at the door", followed by credits in silence.
  • Enoch wrote: »
    I've never seen anything with Jim Carrey in it that has been remotely funny, or would not have been improved by someone else playing the part he was playing.
    I feel the same way about Adam Sandler.
  • I feel the same way about both Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler.
  • Enoch wrote: »
    If you skipped the battle scenes, it could be a lot cheaper, just the credits, then a blank screen, and a rasping voice in the dark cinema "I'm the dark lord, and I won. Now **** off home and you're not getting your money back at the door", followed by credits in silence.

    This.

    Better still, in prominent letters as a frontispiece to the book itself:

    'Don't read unless you want to turn into a boring geek.'

    Or, 'Elves ain't real, right? So don't bloody start.'

    Or, 'Read a proper novel you know-head. One without bloody elves in it.'

    Or, 'Skip the bloody landscape descriptions. You'll get through it quicker.'

    Or, 'Going to waste your pathetic life? Read on ...'

    Or, 'One book to bore them all/ One book-binder to bind them / A publisher to find the geeks / And from their cash unbind them.'
  • Or, 'Elves ain't real, right? So don't bloody start.'
    Nothing in any novel that isn't a historical novel is real. The situation is contrived, the people are phony, and the locations are idealized. Get over yourself. Your jokes about LOTR ceased being funny three years ago.
  • The truth hurts sometimes Mousethief ...

    But yes, the jokes are a bit stale and flat.
  • Sorry to hurt you.
  • Au contraire, you didn't hurt me at all.
  • DafydDafyd Hell Host
    Or, 'One book to bore them all/ One book-binder to bind them / A publisher to find the geeks / And from their cash unbind them.'
    For someone who claims to be bored stiff by Tolkien it is suspicious how readily you can recall that verse to parody it.

  • mousethiefmousethief Shipmate
    edited August 2018
    Au contraire, you didn't hurt me at all.
    My inference then was wrong because I thought you knew the wise do not attempt to read the emotions of others, and thus must have been referring to yourself.
  • Au contraire, you didn't hurt me at all.
    It’s only a flesh wound?

  • RossweisseRossweisse Hell Host, 8th Day Host, Glory
    Pigwidgeon wrote: »
    That says more about the audience than it does about Wagner's music.

    When I saw the full Ring Cycle a couple of months ago, I was not aware of any snoring, nor was there any when I saw Das Rheingold locally this spring. Even the dress rehearsal for Das Rheingold -- the hall was packed with teenagers and I was concerned that there would be talking and distracting lights from them texting. I did not hear a sound (except appropriate responses to what was happening on stage), I did not see the light from a single screen, and the minute the final note ended I heard more applause and cheering than I've ever heard at any other performance.

    Ahh-men. That's been my experience as well. (My kids love it.)

    By the way, the "Ring" was among Tolkien's influeces.


  • RossweisseRossweisse Hell Host, 8th Day Host, Glory
    Enoch wrote: »
    ...And I've good friends to whom I daren't admit this. I think Bob Dylan (St Bob to some) is rubbish, droning, nasal and tuneless, and words that are obvious. As I think I've said before, when in history weren't the times a'changing.

    Thank you. One of the worst voices of all time.


  • Grrr at Dylan haters. Philistines.

    Grr at Gamma for
    Well yes.

    I like 'The Snow Man's by Stevens.

    'One must have a mind of winter ...'

    But the rest literally leaves me cold.

    I can see what he's trying to do, what he's getting at, but it's too much like hard work.

    I like some of 'The Blue Guitar' too, though.

    I 'literally' almost called you to hell for that.

  • Simon Toad wrote: »
    Grrr at Dylan haters. Philistines.
    Nah, we just like music so much that we hate what he does to it.
  • I know the man's music is only for an elite, like the people who gave him the Nobel Prize for Being Fantastic.
  • The only Nobel prize less appropriate was the one they gave to Obama for getting elected.
  • Rossweisse wrote: »
    By the way, the "Ring" was among Tolkien's influences.

    What little I know about LotR (I've never read it) suggests to me that, had Tolkien been a student at Wagner's University, he would have been failed on account of plagiarism.
  • HugalHugal Shipmate
    My O level/CSE teacher said Shakespeare is crap and we are not going to study him. I therefore found Shakespeare for myself and love it. I did it as part of my OU degree.
    Talking of which. In another course we looked at The Colour Purple. I found it really dull and boring
  • I don't claim to be wise, Mousethief ...

    I'd have readily accepted a Hell Call over Wallace Stevens, but I have listed three of his poems I like.

    So a Purgatory call would have been more appropriate. I didn't say I disliked ALL Wallace Stevens, simply that I find him difficult to get into.

    Confession is good for the soul. That was a confession on my part. I'm not saying Stevens is crap, simply that I find him hard to get into.

    On the Tolkein parody ... One doesn't have to be an afficionado to be able to parody LoTR. It's become part of popular culture.

    For all Mousethief's attempts to claim it was an underground thing that only the cognoscenti and the initiates in the Catacombs could understand in their crepuscular darkness, it was always popular as far back as I can remember. When would I first have become aware of it? 1973? 1974? Earlier perhaps, 1971 or '72.

    I can quote Abba lyrics. Does that make me a fan?
  • Meanwhile, nice one Nick Tamen ...
  • 'And it burns, burns, burns, the Ring of Fire ...'

    I wonder if Johnny Cash was inspired by Wagner's Ring Cycle, Tolkein's epic or a searing chicken madras from a takeaway in Wolverhampton?
  • By 1971 the catacomb days were long over.

    I've written parody myself (want to help me find a publisher for the Hardboiled Hobbit?). So I'm not sure what the point is there.
  • mousethief wrote: »
    ...want to help me find a publisher for the Hardboiled Hobbit?

    Is that a cook book?

  • There was a very lewd and scurrilous parody circulating in my school days, Bawd of The Rings with its hero one Dildo Bugger.

    Which is probably as much, if not far more, than you need to know about it. I didn't get beyond the first page of that one.

    I made my excuses and left.
  • It was Bored of the Rings and it's still in print.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    edited August 2018
    mousethief wrote: »
    It was Bored of the Rings and it's still in print.

    Couldn't hold a candle to my mate Jeremy's Jeff and the PMC*, what with its references to smoking Merrymage Pipeweed (or Southfumbling Funherb) at Bimbo Boggit's hole at Fag End.

    *PMC - Pre Mediaeval Code, enforcers of which chased our heroes and their enemies across middle-earth confiscating items like bazookas, outboard motors, vital electronic medical
    equipment** and Sherman tanks.

    **No, really, that's why Dave, Kevin, Wullom and Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnn were raised as orphans***.

    ***because as the quads were born, their mother told the doctor their names but only got so far with the last one before the PMC agents removed the oxygen machine.
  • RossweisseRossweisse Hell Host, 8th Day Host, Glory
    mousethief wrote: »
    The only Nobel prize less appropriate was the one they gave to Obama for getting elected.

    This is where we really need the :notworthy: emoji. Thank you, MT.
  • Looks like I came up with the better title, 'Bawd' beats 'Bored'.

    Perhaps it ought to be 'Board of the Rings', some kind of government committee.

    'One Board to file the Rings / A recruitment Board to find them / A Committee Chair to steer them there / And in a ring-binder bind them.'
  • mousethief wrote: »
    It was Bored of the Rings and it's still in print.

    And, of course, in my collection.
  • DafydDafyd Hell Host
    Rossweisse wrote: »
    By the way, the "Ring" was among Tolkien's influeces.
    Is there anything in Tolkien that is more likely to come from Wagner than from the Poetic Edda or from the other medieval texts that Wagner used as his sources?
  • Dafyd wrote: »
    Rossweisse wrote: »
    By the way, the "Ring" was among Tolkien's influeces.
    Is there anything in Tolkien that is more likely to come from Wagner than from the Poetic Edda or from the other medieval texts that Wagner used as his sources?
    This.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    Mozart. I don't dislike all of his music; some of his symphonies are grand (especially No. 40), but I don't revere him as the be-all and end-all of musical genius.

    That was Bach.
  • Which one?

    ;)
  • PDQ
  • QED?

    Meanwhile, yes, Tolkein derived inspiration from the same sources as Wagner. Much as I think LoTR is over-rated I'd no more accuse Tolkein of plagiarism than T H White for mining Mallory for The Once And Future King.
  • ClimacusClimacus Shipmate
    edited August 2018
    Fine food. I want something that tastes delicious, but I have my price limits. I occasionally go to fancy meals, usually at the invitation of friends, and never feel as if it was worth the money. I just don't "get it". I also feel uncomfortable among the fine diners and "discussions" on the provenance of the food or wine. It all sounds a bit too much to me.

    But all power to those who love it. I know it means a lot.

    Ian,
    sitting by the fire in a pub on a cold, rainy winter's night with a cider and $14 lamb meatballs for dinner -- and very content.
  • balaambalaam Shipmate
    It is the start of the football season. Lots of Yay.

    But with all those fantastic different codes there is always football to see.

    Association Football - Fantastic
    Rugby Union - Great
    Rugby League - Even better than Union
    Australian Rules - Also good
    Gaelic Football - Never watched it, but I'm sure I'd like it.

    But there is a code of football that I don't understand. In the above codes if players stop the game to argue with the referee/umpire or to roll about on the floor pretending to be injured we do not like it. It interrupts the flow of the game. So imagine a code where every 5 minutes they call a time out for ten minutes. Or every time the other side gets the ball the whole team walks off and another attacking or defensive team comes on, all time that should be watching the game play.

    American Football, I am looking at you. A game that spends more time with the game interrupted than it does being played does not deserve to be called football. Indeed it hardly qualifies as a sport.
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