Random thoughts post 'em

[Ziggy and Angelbaby]

Because when I'm typing I have an incredible grasp of the English language that's so instinctual that I get A's on papers about Emily Dickinson without actually READING any Dickinson. I can be shockingly persuasive inside of those sixteen pages that I appear to know exactly what I'm talking about and how it relates to modern day. It's not that I can't do that, it's another thing I'm incredibly good at actually, it's just quicker to not read fifteen pages of poems and just type the paper.

Good bullshitter, gotcha. xD Though I'm not certain you answered the question I intended. Why did you choose to be an English major, specifically? How does this benefit you in the long run? "I'm good at convincing people that I'm more knowledgeable than I actually am" might have been applicable in any number of subjects or fields (psychology, law, medicine, auto mechanics, just for examples). Why English, in particular?

Also, you might actually get something out of a little Emily Dickinson:

'Hope' is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

I've heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.

[Kadae]

I want to get to know everyone here, that would be nice.

I feel the same way. Everyone here is pretty darn-tootin' awesome!

Also, since poetry has been brought up, do any of you have any favourite poets?

[Shadow Step]

Good bullshitter, gotcha. xD Though I'm not certain you answered the question I intended. Why did you choose to be an English major, specifically? How does this benefit you in the long run? "I'm good at convincing people that I'm more knowledgeable than I actually am" might have been applicable in any number of subjects or fields (psychology, law, medicine, auto mechanics, just for examples). Why English, in particular?

That was covered in the "grasp of the English language." In other fields you actually have to know what you're talking about, in English I can say, "Clearly the author's intentions were satirical because of their crippling anxieties in public that eventually led to their suicide. Therefore, rather than view this as a positive reading, it's clearly a jab at modern social expectations."

In psychology you would actually have to know something about psychology, same with law, medicine, mechanics, etc. English all you have to do is put out a paper that's full of special words that seem like they might be true and you're done. You don't even have to be RIGHT, you just have to make people think.

[Fiction]

Kaltes-Herzeleid, Shadow Step, Sour Soul...perhaps people did notice, but simply didn't comment because they assumed that other things were going on in your life and you would be back in your own time?

In any case, I'm pretty sure I would notice if any of you stopped posting, simply because it seems that I log into the forum every single day to see what people are up to.

My random thought: It's really starting to bother me that nobody seems to know the entire chorus of "Hello! My Baby," just the "Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal" lyric. I seriously thought everyone knew the chorus.

it's RAGTIME girl? I think it was RAT-A-TAT girl.

Yeah I'm sorry.

[Ziggy and Angelbaby]

That was covered in the "grasp of the English language." In other fields you actually have to know what you're talking about, in English I can say, "Clearly the author's intentions were satirical because of their crippling anxieties in public that eventually led to their suicide. Therefore, rather than view this as a positive reading, it's clearly a jab at modern social expectations."

In psychology you would actually have to know something about psychology, same with law, medicine, mechanics, etc. English all you have to do is put out a paper that's full of special words that seem like they might be true and you're done. You don't even have to be RIGHT, you just have to make people think.

So, in the long run, you will better grasp the English language... Something you profess to have achieved already. But, to what end? English teacher? Novelist? Editor? Roaming internet grammar critic? Have I mistakenly overestimated the significance of selecting a major? Or, rather, the significance of being an English major within a scholastic context?

You don't necessarily have to be right in psychology, law, medicine, or mechanics, either. You just have to convince others that you're more right than they are. It's entirely possible to be incompetent in a field that, in and of itself, might inspire some measure of confidence or reverence among the lay.

And your example makes no sense without the benefit of hindsight; and, even then, arguably little. It was necessary for the author to commit suicide for the reader to interpret their work as satirical? There wouldn't have been a clue otherwise? xD Generally speaking, accurate reading comprehension (so far as the writer's intended message is concerned) is something that should be possible to accomplish without knowledge of the author's life and, especially, their demise. Unless, of course, the author went out like Robert E. Howard.

"All fled, all done, so lift me on the pyre;
The feast is over and the lamps expire."

^ Granted, so far as I'm aware, Howard didn't write those two lines; though he did quote them at a meaningful juncture.

[Shadow Step]

So, in the long run, you will better grasp the English language... Something you profess to have achieved already. But, to what end? English teacher? Novelist? Editor? Roaming internet grammar critic? Have I mistakenly overestimated the significance of selecting a major? Or, rather, the significance of being an English major within a scholastic context?

You don't necessarily have to be right in psychology, law, medicine, or mechanics, either. You just have to convince others that you're more right than they are. It's entirely possible to be incompetent in a field that, in and of itself, might inspire some measure of confidence or reverence among the lay.

And your example makes no sense without the benefit of hindsight; and, even then, arguably little. It was necessary for the author to commit suicide for the reader to interpret their work as satirical? There wouldn't have been a clue otherwise? xD Generally speaking, accurate reading comprehension (so far as the writer's intended message is concerned) is something that should be possible to accomplish without knowledge of the author's life and, especially, their demise. Unless, of course, the author went out like Robert E. Howard.

"All fled, all done, so lift me on the pyre;
The feast is over and the lamps expire."

Addressing the second part first, you would think, but 90% of literature professors will go, "Okay, did you look up who this is at all and what their life was like?" Knowing nothing about Emily Dickinson you might assume she had some homosexual feelings, reading a quick bio of her life reveals that's not even remotely a secret and people pretty much accept she has sex with her sister-in-law, which sheds a lot of light on some of her poetry. It might seem a bit strange, but they do in fact often ask people if they know about obscure tidbits from the lives of certain authors because it's the only way to get context for certain things. I had one kid, overly religious, try and argue a poem was totally not homosexual at all, until the professor pulled up the guy's biography and pointed out that he commonly had male intercourse, never had female callers, and died unmarried. Some people need the biography, badly. I wish I could remember who the poet was, because it was just one line where he like oogles a statue and makes a remark about the muscle structure.

As for the end goal, it's first worth noting that my achievement is only in sounding intelligent. I've actually gained quite a bit of knowledge about story making and technical aspects like comma usage. I'm eloquent, but eloquence means nothing if your prose is broken, disjointed, and grammatically salad. Towards what I'm going to do, I don't know. Whatever I'd like to when I'm wrapped up with it I guess. I've been working on a novel for several years already, I've written the length of two novels in fan fiction (for ponies) and am rewritting a LOT of it for being terrible. But, I'm also working on getting a capture card and a mic for recording let's plays and kicking around the idea of starting a three man indie dev studio with a guy. I've also always got a few stand by ideas that I've never really put down as well.

[Ziggy and Angelbaby]

Addressing the second part first, you would think, but 90% of literature professors will go, "Okay, did you look up who this is at all and what their life was like?" Knowing nothing about Emily Dickinson you might assume she had some homosexual feelings, reading a quick bio of her life reveals that's not even remotely a secret and people pretty much accept she has sex with her sister-in-law, which sheds a lot of light on some of her poetry. It might seem a bit strange, but they do in fact often ask people if they know about obscure tidbits from the lives of certain authors because it's the only way to get context for certain things. I had one kid, overly religious, try and argue a poem was totally not homosexual at all, until the professor pulled up the guy's biography and pointed out that he commonly had male intercourse, never had female callers, and died unmarried. Some people need the biography, badly. I wish I could remember who the poet was, because it was just one line where he like oogles a statue and makes a remark about the muscle structure.

As for the end goal, it's first worth noting that my achievement is only in sounding intelligent. I've actually gained quite a bit of knowledge about story making and technical aspects like comma usage. I'm eloquent, but eloquence means nothing if your prose is broken, disjointed, and grammatically salad. Towards what I'm going to do, I don't know. Whatever I'd like to when I'm wrapped up with it I guess. I've been working on a novel for several years already, I've written the length of two novels in fan fiction (for ponies) and am rewritting a LOT of it for being terrible. But, I'm also working on getting a capture card and a mic for recording let's plays and kicking around the idea of starting a three man indie dev studio with a guy. I've also always got a few stand by ideas that I've never really put down as well.

Sounds like you've adapted to write specifically for the eyes of the professors. I'm so far removed from that now that I'd more or less forgotten what that's like. xD I'm a stubborn writer. I consider my audience, sure, but I'm ultimately writing what I want, how I want; that probably wouldn't garner high marks from teachers, nowadays. x3

And fair enough; thanks for answering. ^ ^

[Ziggy and Angelbaby]

Also, since poetry has been brought up, do any of you have any favourite poets?

I enjoy the ever-cheerful poetry of H.P. Lovecraft:

Spoiler

Nemesis
by H.P. Lovecraft

Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,
I have liv’d o’er my lives without number,
I have sounded all things with my sight;
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.

I have whirl’d with the earth at the dawning,
When the sky was a vaporous flame;
I have seen the dark universe yawning,
Where the black planets roll without aim;
Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name.

I had drifted o’er seas without ending,
Under sinister grey-clouded skies
That the many-fork’d lightning is rending,
That resound with hysterical cries;
With the moans of invisible daemons that out of the green waters rise.

I have plung’d like a deer thro’ the arches
Of the hoary primordial grove,
Where the oaks feel the presence that marches
And stalks on where no spirit dares rove;
And I flee from a thing that surrounds me, and leers thro’ dead branches above.

I have stumbled by cave-ridden mountains
That rise barren and bleak from the plain,
I have drunk of the fog-foetid fountains
That ooze down to the marsh and the main;
And in hot cursed tarns I have seen things I care not to gaze on again.

I have scann’d the vast ivy-clad palace,
I have trod its untenanted hall,
Where the moon writhing up from the valleys
Shews the tapestried things on the wall;
Strange figures discordantly woven, which I cannot endure to recall.

I have peer’d from the casement in wonder
At the mouldering meadows around,
At the many-roof’d village laid under
The curse of a grave-girdled ground;
And from rows of white urn-carven marble I listen intently for sound.

I have haunted the tombs of the ages,
I have flown on the pinions of fear
Where the smoke-belching Erebus rages,
Where the jokulls loom snow-clad and drear:
And in realms where the sun of the desert consumes what it never can cheer.

I was old when the Pharaohs first mounted
The jewel-deck’d throne by the Nile;
I was old in those epochs uncounted
When I, and I only, was vile;
And Man, yet untainted and happy, dwelt in bliss on the far Arctic isle.

Oh, great was the sin of my spirit,
And great is the reach of its doom;
Not the pity of Heaven can cheer it,
Nor can respite be found in the tomb:
Down the infinite aeons come beating the wings of unmerciful gloom.

Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,
I have liv’d o’er my lives without number,
I have sounded all things with my sight;
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.

And this piece by Lewis Carrol made a lasting impression on me:

Spoiler

JABBERWOCKY
Lewis Carroll

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

[Fiction]

I love how different Deadmau5's first album is from his later albums.

[Kadae]

I enjoy the ever-cheerful poetry of H.P. Lovecraft:

And this piece by Lewis Carrol made a lasting impression on me:

Ah, yes.

Personally, I'm a fan of Charles Baudelaire's poetry. Here's an English translation of one in particular that I remember:

Spoiler

Sadness of the Moon

Tonight the moon dreams with more indolence,
Like a lovely woman on a bed of cushions
Who fondles with a light and listless hand
The contour of her breasts before falling asleep;

On the satiny back of the billowing clouds,
Languishing, she lets herself fall into long swoons
And casts her eyes over the white phantoms
That rise in the azure like blossoming flowers.

When, in her lazy listlessness,
She sometimes sheds a furtive tear upon this globe,
A pious poet, enemy of sleep,

In the hollow of his hand catches this pale tear,
With the iridescent reflections of opal,
And hides it in his heart afar from the sun's eyes.

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)