I am so tempted to head down to my local on the first Friday in the month, where I do very occasionally perform, do that very number and dedicate it to @Gamma Gamaliel.
You're missing the point I was making but that's probably because I expressed it so cack-handedly.
But yes, I was in a hole and should have stopped digging.
Give me a Jethro Tull cover over a PowerPoint thingummy in a service any day of the week.
The open-mic analogy, like all analogies, is only approximate. You were saying how the opportunity for people who have been marginalised and only given a token voice in other settings to participate and contribute in your church meetings is empowering.
I was agreeing and drawing on an example where that can also happen in a context I'm familiar with. That ain't saying that the two things are equivalent or equally important.
It ain't as if I'm saying you should shut up shop and heft yourself back to Blighty or run a whacky arts group or something.
But yes, I can see how I annoyed you and I regret that.
FWIW your posts would be orders of magnitude better if you did your thinking out loud or extemporising or whatever you want to call it first and then edited it down, massively, before posting.
Sure. More self-discipline required. I think aloud at my keyboard here. It's no excuse, but in my 'normal' writing I think, draft, redraft, edit and revise. I hone and distil. I'm not Ernest Hemingway but difficult though it might be to believe, I do aim for concision.
Trouble is, I'm sometimes on a kind of blowhole break when I board Ship and simply tap away. My fingers are faster than my mind.
I can see when I've goofed and always regret it but it's become a bad habit. I goofed with Karl, I've goofed with you. I've goofed with many others.
It's more through negligence and weakness but sometimes my own deliberate fault.
Mea culpa.
I will try to post more sparingly and compose and edit in advance.
*decloaks* ... The new Hell is kinda soft. Everybody seems comfortably numb. Shine on you crazy diamonds and find your misplaced childhoods. *wipes target off back and recloaks*
And now Gamma's thread in Heaven has gone all sideways, because even when trying to show how much he appreciates people he can't resist the urge to tell them what they should and shouldn't like.
I don't usually comment in Hell, but WTF on the American appreciation thread in Heaven? Really? What was the actual intent? Or surreptitiously passive aggressive? That went pear-shaped in a NY minute. GG, you're being an arse.
Gamma, do you really see it like that? That you’re simply a bastard sometimes and you can’t help it? That seems very avoiding of responsibility to me.
After living in this veil of tears for over 50 years, I have come to the conclusion that everyone is capable of being one of those. The very fact that we become one of those is because we can't help it. If we could help it, we wouldn't be one.
Everyone has the capacity to be a nasty, awful person. It's only a matter of how far we need pushing before we become one.
GG seems to have a lower threshold than others. Me? I'm pretty much there all the time. You? Well I don't know. That is for you to determine. I'm sure others will help if you ask around though.
I agree, we all have the capacity to be a nasty person. I wasn’t suggesting otherwise in the slightest. Though I also believe most of us have the capacity to reflect and find ways to control our behaviour, or strategies to reduce it happening. Plus the understanding that an apology and taking responsibility for our actions is more effective for moving forward than a simple ‘Oh well, I can be a bastard sometimes! I simply can’t resist the temptation after a while!’ If you say that in a work setting for misdemeanours, you are likely to get fired - you need to have some capacity to take responsibility and control yourself.
So I was curious whether Gamma really believed he couldn’t help it, and saw it simply as a case that he is a bastard and there’s nothing to be done. And a bit dubious, as I imagine he has had responsibilities in his life, so can’t really be as childish as all that.
I interpreted it literally, as crying so much that your tears are like a veil over your face! I never heard the expression before - I see from googling that it’s in the Bible, but it’s not in the translations of the Bible that I’ve read.
Ah good, I thought he was someone who would normally apologise, which is why his post here confused me - guess he was just being hellish because it’s Hell.
On the responsibility thing, sure, I can regulate my levels of bastardliness. In real life most people don't think I'm a bastard at all. People tell me I'm a nice guy and far too guileless for my own good.
I couldn't possibly comment on that but I acknowledge that I can be a pain aboard Ship and this latest episode is one I'm not proud of.
That is actually how I imagine your real-life self, Gamma - kind of cheery, friendly, nice, a bit guileless and childish/childlike sometimes, and sometimes not knowing when to stop when you are joking around. Or maybe in real life it is easier for you to tell if you are upsetting someone, so you stop, or maybe in real life people are less likely to be upset or to tell you if they are. That is how I interpret you, anyway, rather than you being a bastard.
I interpreted it literally, as crying so much that your tears are like a veil over your face! I never heard the expression before - I see from googling that it’s in the Bible, but it’s not in the translations of the Bible that I’ve read.
I would like to apologise for saying veil instead of... err... actually no I don't so you can all fuck off.
I've only heard of the 'vale of tears' in the wellknown ? prayer to the Virgin
'Ad te suspiramus,gementes et flentes in hac lacrimarum valle'
'To thee do we send up our mournings and weepings in this vale of tears'
Ah, I do know the Salve Regina - first I knew it from the musical Evita, which doesn’t have the lacrimarum valle bit (and as a kid, I thought Tim Rice had written it - I didn’t realise it was from a real prayer! ), and now I know it from when I visit a convent and the nuns sing it every day, so I memorised it. I did look at the translation on Wikipedia, but didn’t pay much attention to it. It says ‘valley of tears’.
He's fucking doing it a fucking gain in Eccles. Look, Gam, you don't like metal, I get that, but your constant slagging it off as if your subjective tastes were an objective assessment is a way of expressing your sneering sense of superiority over its fans. That's fucking obvious. Take it and stuff it. I know life is shit for you at the moment but metal fans are not your punchbag.
I took it as banter, in a bit of a winding you up way, rather than a sneering sense of superiority. I've never seen snobbery as one of Gamma's flaws. Winding people up, though, yes.
*shrugs* I like opera and people often say it's shit.
He's fucking doing it a fucking gain in Eccles. Look, Gam, you don't like metal, I get that, but your constant slagging it off as if your subjective tastes were an objective assessment is a way of expressing your sneering sense of superiority over its fans. That's fucking obvious. Take it and stuff it. I know life is shit for you at the moment but metal fans are not your punchbag.
Comments
But yes, I was in a hole and should have stopped digging.
Give me a Jethro Tull cover over a PowerPoint thingummy in a service any day of the week.
The open-mic analogy, like all analogies, is only approximate. You were saying how the opportunity for people who have been marginalised and only given a token voice in other settings to participate and contribute in your church meetings is empowering.
I was agreeing and drawing on an example where that can also happen in a context I'm familiar with. That ain't saying that the two things are equivalent or equally important.
It ain't as if I'm saying you should shut up shop and heft yourself back to Blighty or run a whacky arts group or something.
But yes, I can see how I annoyed you and I regret that.
Trouble is, I'm sometimes on a kind of blowhole break when I board Ship and simply tap away. My fingers are faster than my mind.
I can see when I've goofed and always regret it but it's become a bad habit. I goofed with Karl, I've goofed with you. I've goofed with many others.
It's more through negligence and weakness but sometimes my own deliberate fault.
Mea culpa.
I will try to post more sparingly and compose and edit in advance.
"Yes, you're right. I'm sorry"
Sounds more like meth than drink.
To be fair, I wasn't the one calling George Washington a slave-owning rapist either.
But yes, I was acting like an arse when farting all over Sabine's little ditty about flitting through the snow to visit Grandma in the woods.
I can be a bastard like that.
So, fair call.
I can resist temptation for only so long - a New York minute, I'll remember that and then the bastardliness reemerges.
So whip my ass.
After living in this veil of tears for over 50 years, I have come to the conclusion that everyone is capable of being one of those. The very fact that we become one of those is because we can't help it. If we could help it, we wouldn't be one.
Everyone has the capacity to be a nasty, awful person. It's only a matter of how far we need pushing before we become one.
GG seems to have a lower threshold than others. Me? I'm pretty much there all the time. You? Well I don't know. That is for you to determine. I'm sure others will help if you ask around though.
So I was curious whether Gamma really believed he couldn’t help it, and saw it simply as a case that he is a bastard and there’s nothing to be done. And a bit dubious, as I imagine he has had responsibilities in his life, so can’t really be as childish as all that.
‘Vale’ - as in valley - ‘of tears’. Unless you’re actually a nun.
Firenze
(Bastardy quotient variable: pedantry reliably 100%)
Someone call a wahhhhhhm-bulance!
I had no right to poke fun at Sabine's post.
On the responsibility thing, sure, I can regulate my levels of bastardliness. In real life most people don't think I'm a bastard at all. People tell me I'm a nice guy and far too guileless for my own good.
I couldn't possibly comment on that but I acknowledge that I can be a pain aboard Ship and this latest episode is one I'm not proud of.
I would like to apologise for saying veil instead of... err... actually no I don't so you can all fuck off.
On you go
Such labour'd nothings, in so strange a style,
Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile
Firenze's choice was choice! Personally, I have always liked this one.
'Thatcheright paused as though to make a cough,
'Apology? No, you can all ...'
AFF
Find the irony in Idaho?
(No, we won't got there .. )
Otherwise we'll enter an endless loop of apologies. It'd be like the Flying Dutchman.
It feels like that already at times.
'Ad te suspiramus,gementes et flentes in hac lacrimarum valle'
'To thee do we send up our mournings and weepings in this vale of tears'
*shrugs* I like opera and people often say it's shit.
Link?