New Testingstan

High school lit was just an exercise in telling the teacher what he wanted to hear, I never learned about themes and more importantly, what I see in a story till I started hanging out here and chatting with Dan on live.

Now that's a sad comment on the B.C. education system.

i think our discussions on sunshine were the greatest since because the movie lacked action scenes and focused on more human aspects and symbolisms, our analysis actually focuses on those aspects and we have a great time rattling on about characterizations and themes

this might have something to do with the fact that sunshine totally lacks pew pews

yes you could quantificate and computate the gigajoules of solar energy bombarding the icarus' mirror

but it does not have the allure of explosion pew pews

explosion pew pews stimulate the reptile brain's testicular dumbass function

and weak limp chorizo'ed fat nerds subliminate their inadequacies with rargh megatonnes

and so you've got these chuds spending gods so long time anal-lyzing these pew-pews and getting into dick-waving contest with other fatsos and their other pew pews

as some kind of emasculatory compensatory mechanism

so its their shitness as people that makes them unable to discuss themes and shit because they're too busy going on about how long and how hard their turdolasers are

Aaron wrote:High school lit was just an exercise in telling the teacher what he wanted to hear, I never learned about themes and more importantly, what I see in a story

It was a similar thing with me.

The teacher would never explain why my interpretation was wrong (or admit that it wasn't) and so I got frustrated with it. Which makes me wonder whether or not that's a big part of people looking down on it.

Well, that and the general antipathy towards artistic stuff that isn't pop-art or is deep or, well, whatever.

its the lol liberal arts majors rargh engineering thing

and it has to do with the whole... atmosphere of the places where these discussions are taking place

if you've got a bunch of dickless landwhales acting out in the anonymous interweb out of a broken need to feel bigger than other retards on the web using their prosthetic imaginary sci-fictional self-esteem enhancement pills to bloat themselves up in their ooooh-so-intellectulocrucibloid flamenkrieg gewhers

then the quality of actual artistic discussion we observe, or lack of thereof, is not rly surprising

Except I'm talking outside of fatty-nerd internet stuff.

The general population of the world seems to have that sort of mentality. That's my impression from watching TV and the reaction of everyman characters to anything artistic and deep. I hate to point him out as an example, but, well, look at Al Bundy on Married with Children.

Edit: What I mean is that people see him deriding the sort of things we're talking about and whole-heartedly agreeing with him.

its totally an insecurity thing

they fixate on things that can be used in their insecurity-crutching mechanisms, like lame useless technical weapons bullshit, and don't give a shit about things that don't really feed into their neuroses and are dismissive towards those who actually think these other things actually matter

when, turns out, these things in art like sci-fi that don't give a shit about their neurotic compulsions to categorize and quantify are actually pretty damn important

and it turns out they're just a bunch of sadsack pedantics going on over useless unimportant minutiae

The Spartan wrote:Except I'm talking outside of fatty-nerd internet stuff.

The general population of the world seems to have that sort of mentality. That's my impression from watching TV and the reaction of everyman characters to anything artistic and deep. I hate to point him out as an example, but, well, look at Al Bundy on Married with Children.

oh ah

i'll have to think about that for a while

i am unsure about the general population of the world since i wasted spent more internet time interacting with a non-general and more-specific group of sadsack people instead

man shroom you're kinda bitter over how much time you spent on sdn aren't you

SPARTAN:

maybe it stems from the same reason as the "fatty-nerd internet stuff" but is a less severe manifestation

why do most people who don't appreciate art and deep stuff still watch and consume media?

it satiates something in them, maybe something superficial, but i bet its something similar to the things that satiate the fatty-nerd internet stuffers

except on a less dysfunctional level

so the general populace will simply go 'hur hur nice akshum movie, lol dumb artistic analysis shut up'

rather than the more neurotic fatso 'aaaargh categoricomputate weaponz yields, shaddap limp dick arts major, engineeringinginginginginginging!' reaction to bullshit

uraniun235 wrote:man shroom you're kinda bitter over how much time you spent on sdn aren't you

absofuckinglutely

its just that, after sort of figuring out what the hell is wrong with that place and some of those there, i realized that it's quite... ugly

unhealthy

sick

like an aggregation of a whole lot of wrong things in people, like myself

and seeing it go on and on and lots of folks without a clue and the futility of it all

mother forgive me

Shroom Man 777 wrote:its just that, after sort of figuring out what the hell is wrong with that place and some of those there, i realized that it's quite... ugly

unhealthy

sick

like an aggregation of a whole lot of wrong things in people, like myself

and seeing it go on and on and lots of folks without a clue and the futility of it all

mother forgive me

much like america


no but seriously i kinda get where you're coming from, it just seems like you've been getting even angrier about it as time passes when hopefully after having left for a few weeks (months? i can't remember how long) you'd be moving past it and not letting it get to you so much

The Spartan wrote:

Aaron wrote:High school lit was just an exercise in telling the teacher what he wanted to hear, I never learned about themes and more importantly, what I see in a story

It was a similar thing with me.

The teacher would never explain why my interpretation was wrong (or admit that it wasn't) and so I got frustrated with it. Which makes me wonder whether or not that's a big part of people looking down on it.

Well, that and the general antipathy towards artistic stuff that isn't pop-art or is deep or, well, whatever.

Of course the curriculum presents stuff in a terrible way, Shakespeares stuff was a lot of plays and it doesn't carry over well to taking turns reading out loud.

We did get to watch that Romeo movie though.

DAGGER 9mm!

uraniun235 wrote:no but seriously i kinda get where you're coming from, it just seems like you've been getting even angrier about it as time passes when hopefully after having left for a few weeks (months? i can't remember how long) you'd be moving past it and not letting it get to you so much

mmm yeah

well, i don't really think or whatever about it much since i've been doing a whole lot of shit lately, but yeah when it gets prompted occasionally in like these discussions there's a whole lot of bitterness in me that comes out I guess

like some kind of bitter nostalgia

maybe its not entirely the place itself

like, the reaction it elicits from me is not only just because of whats wrong with it, but also what i see inside me

like how you could say a person's reaction is not only due to a piece of artwork's composition

but also because of how that artwork's composition resonates or reflects from things already inside that person

the whole, what's in there, only what you take with you thing

i should really just quit going BLARGH BLARGH TEO FATTIES FUCKEM thing

but this place gives me therapy i guess

a chance to reflect on it, around chill people who by and large are pretty okay and not-stupid and not-fat

goddamn 10 years of life wasted

fuck

(i guess this is why i react quite a bit whenever i see destructionatorb and buck ustra wasting their time and souls o'er there)


i hope my continuous screeding of 'gods fuck that place' is a sign that i'm getting better in severing myself from past shit rather than a sign of my getting worse

anyway

Aaron wrote:We did get to watch that Romeo movie though.

DAGGER 9mm!

anthony hopkins' titus movie and voldemort's coriolanus are pretty fucking badass

Look, a lot of the world's population has neither the time, motivation or intellectual capacity for deep thoughts or pondering more than one or two moves ahead in the game of life. That includes First Worlders or there's no other explanation for tailgate parties and soccer hooligans. The Matrix is about as deep into philosopy most people want to get in their entertainment.

That means that people who care about art and aesthetics have always been, and will always be, a minority. WRT to TEO, there's also little evidence to support an assertion that fattynerds are deeper thinkers than your average plumber, bank teller, college student or politician.

Talking about sci-fci stuff that most people don't watch gives average fattynerds who were picked last for kickball in elementary school an excuse to feel superior to other people because of DEEP SECRET KNOWLEDGE. liking and knowing everything about xxx scifi series awesome doesn't make them better people. But, shhh, don't tell them that!

Shroom Man 777 wrote:goddamn 10 years of life wasted

tapestry [tng]

Knubble tov wrote:

Jose Arcadio Bakendia wrote:I think that there are several reasons here

one is that it's quite possible to get a high school education in america w/o ever developing the tools necessary to extract meaning beyond the broadly didactic.

When I took an AP lit class, we read shit but never analyzed it. Fast forward to the end of my first year in university: I never made a grade higher than a C on a paper. Fast forward seven years and when I took another lit course and I got perfect scores on every paper because I learned that just watching shit for surface-level entertainment is stupid. Writers take the time to put themes in their work and ti simply disregard them is insulting.

uraniun235 wrote:(bonus question: why do people listen to a song multiple times?)

I play an instrument and when I learn songs by ear or by tablature (many are wrong, so I go by ear again), it takes multiple listens. I also like analyzing lyrics too and figuring out the time signatures. I'm still not good with time signatures, so I keep trying to learn.

On the first, we in America use the Austrian method of schooling: "sit down, shut up, and memorize! You vill not learn to zink, ve vill teach you vhat to zink!" It's a great way to turn the hordes of average intellects into factory workers, but a terrible way to teach kids to adapt to circumstances.

On music: anecdote:I listen to many songs over and over again, because I like them so much I want to be able to remember every note, chord, riff and word. Repetition helps memorization, what? Memorizing songs also means that even if you have no MP3 player, phone, or other element of civilization, you can still entertain yourself.

Right now I'm on a Cruxshadows kick.

Shroom Man 777 wrote:i hope my continuous screeding of 'gods fuck that place' is a sign that i'm getting better in severing myself from past shit rather than a sign of my getting worse

I'm gonna go ahead and say it's probably a sign of getting worse rather than better, dude. Or, at least, not getting better, as opposed to getting worse. I mean, if you had a friend who broke up with a girlfriend or parted ways with a friend, and every time they heard their name mentioned your friend went "GOD, FUCK 'EM," would you suppose they're doing better than someone who just shrugs and goes "eh, whatever"?

Well wallowing in things isn't really healthy, or so my doc says.

Akhlut wrote:

Shroom Man 777 wrote:i hope my continuous screeding of 'gods fuck that place' is a sign that i'm getting better in severing myself from past shit rather than a sign of my getting worse

I'm gonna go ahead and say it's probably a sign of getting worse rather than better, dude. Or, at least, not getting better, as opposed to getting worse. I mean, if you had a friend who broke up with a girlfriend or parted ways with a friend, and every time they heard their name mentioned your friend went "GOD, FUCK 'EM," would you suppose they're doing better than someone who just shrugs and goes "eh, whatever"?

I'd think that depends on context?

Count Chocula wrote:Look, a lot of the world's population has neither the time, motivation or intellectual capacity for deep thoughts or pondering more than one or two moves ahead in the game of life.

What use is planning in the long-term anyway? How many people who planned in the long-term 30 years ago are now fucked because they forgot to factor in a worldwide depressionrecession that's wiped out a lot of investments they were told were totally safe? I mean, there's only so much contingency one can actually plan for without getting Tugg Speedman about it.

Stofsk wrote:jesus christ questor, way to break the page formatting by posting that stupidly long number

I was expressing my inner frustration over hearing Taylor Swift, and then Justin Bieber ON KEARTH!

There may have been themes relating to futility and the triumph of crap over art.

Count Chocula wrote:On music: anecdote:I listen to many songs over and over again, because I like them so much I want to be able to remember every note, chord, riff and word. Repetition helps memorization, what? Memorizing songs also means that even if you have no MP3 player, phone, or other element of civilization, you can still entertain yourself.

It boggled my mind to read a post that appeared to imply that listening to songs over and over again is stupid.

Zod wrote:

Akhlut wrote:

Shroom Man 777 wrote:i hope my continuous screeding of 'gods fuck that place' is a sign that i'm getting better in severing myself from past shit rather than a sign of my getting worse

I'm gonna go ahead and say it's probably a sign of getting worse rather than better, dude. Or, at least, not getting better, as opposed to getting worse. I mean, if you had a friend who broke up with a girlfriend or parted ways with a friend, and every time they heard their name mentioned your friend went "GOD, FUCK 'EM," would you suppose they're doing better than someone who just shrugs and goes "eh, whatever"?

I'd think that depends on context?

Everything's context dependent, obviously, and this isn't nearly as bad as someone raging obsessively over an ex-girlfriend or the like, but it's still less than optimal for Shroom, in my opinion.

good song = dopamine. rinse and repeat.

Shroom Man 777 wrote:why do most people who don't appreciate art and deep stuff still watch and consume media?

I can't speak for everyone of course, but often when I get home from work I have absolutely no desire to think. I've been thinking all day; my brain is tired. As a result I tend to consume entertainment that lets me just turn my brain off and relax.

On the other hand, I'll also do things like go to the museum on weekends, play guitar (even if only by rote) and learn other languages. I'll also read books, not all of which are pulp fiction, like the one I'm reading now on the history of the square root of -1.

There's also a desire (more generally again, not me specifically) not to be bored so passing time "usefully" is a motivation too rather than just sitting around twiddling thumbs.

uraniun235 wrote:I'm not saying "learning sports statistics" is a cool thing to do, I'm saying that amassing meaningless trivia isn't restricted to nerds going on about genre fiction.

I guess my basic assumption, which may be wrong, is that people who uncritically consume entertainment product (in whatever form) are actually in the majority.

How are you supposed to critically consume sports, though? It's a tribalistic experience based on emotional connections with a location being represented by a group of people you support.