Challenge of Interest

[dr_mabeuse]

In keeping with the dictum that dull people talk about themselves, mediocre people talk about events, and smart people talk about ideas, say something interesting that (a) isn't about you, (b) isn't about someone else on the boards, (3) isn't about your kids.

I no longer believe it can be done.

---Zoot

 

[impressive]

The proposed cuts to Medicaid suck muchly. Write members of Congress immediately.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

You've proved your point . No-one can reply!

 

[cantdog]

I believe its unwelcome here, anyhow. Those Philosophy threads brought complaints from everyone, for instance.

Ideas, eh? Today, it's been Mortality. Not likely to be popular, either.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

I've fucked it again!

 

[elfin_odalisque]

Non-smoking day - does that apply to crematoria?

 

[sophia jane]

I've fucked it again!

you're fucking hilarious today.

SJ

 

[gauchecritic]

Can ordinarily dull people be humorous. Not in the tortured Hancock style or the Paggliachi tears of a clown way but someone who doesn't actually find generally amusing things funny. Would they be able to write a humorous story simply by knowing what it is supposed to be?

 

[BlackShanglan]

Symbolist literature has inherently more life and legs than realist literature. While symbolist literature begins more apparently "foreign" - unlike the world we know - it stays equally distant however long the work exists. It seeks to enunciate powerful truths that span time and culture, and because it relies implicitly on reader enaction of its symbolic matrix, it is automatically "updated" and brought into contemporary reality each time it is read. Realist literature begins by feeling more familiar because it attempts to present the world as it physically is at the time of writing. However, because the world changes relatively rapidly, realist works age badly and eventually become incomprehensible. Thus Shakespeare's tragedies, largely symbol and archetype, still strike home - but the comic relief, rooted in realism, puns and contemporaneous meaning, grows more obscure with each passing year. The parts that survive are those that are those based on character - well-drawn, humorous personalities who in themselves are not "realistic" to any specific time or place.

(Are you sorry now, Zoot?)

Shanglan

(Edited to add: Damnit, I forgot the "interesting" part.)

 

[BlackShanglan]

Can ordinarily dull people be humorous. Not in the tortured Hancock style or the Paggliachi tears of a clown way but someone who doesn't actually find generally amusing things funny. Would they be able to write a humorous story simply by knowing what it is supposed to be?

I think not. (And therefore, according to Sartre, I am not. Quite a pickle.) Humor relies so heavily on shade and nuance and absurdity, which are very difficult to define. I think that the same problems that prevent us from explaining why something is funny would prevent someone from making humor by the numbers.

Shanglan

 

[Liar]

I think not. (And therefore, according to Sartre, I am not. Quite a pickle.)

Descartes.

#L, knee deep in rhetorical philosopy.

 

[yui]

Not to be naïve, but isn't part of being interesting being interested?

Or not.

Luck,

Yui

 

[impressive]

I think not. (And therefore, according to Sartre, I am not. Quite a pickle.)

That, my four-legged friend, is a logical fallacy -- denying the antecedent.

See: http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/index.htm

 

[neonlyte]

Seven Skirts for Seven Seas

Let me tell you why the village of Nazare is famous for fishing and why the fishermens women folk wear seven underskirts.

The fishing beach is sheltered to the north by a promontory cliff 318 metres high surmounted by a thin band of whitewashed houses; the village of Sitio from where D. Fuas Roupinho leapt to his death chasing a stag from the woods on a foggy September morn in 1182, yet the waves roll in across 5000 kilometres of Atlantic Ocean and break with a thunder and a roar that hides the lighthouse in a curtain of salt laden spray where the cliff reaches down to touch the sea.

The fishermen roll their high swept prow boats down the beach, over logs, oarsmen assembled, ready to strike and power the craft up the face of the wave; it hovers, momentarily poised, prow a silhouette against the afternoon sun, balanced across the crest of the wave, crashing down and pulled away by muscle straining oarsmen into the ocean to fish.

A kilometre off shore, the seabed falls away plunging 2000 metres, an almost vertical underwater cliff where the cold waters from the deep and the warm waters of the coastal shelf meet and trap fish at a hidden boundary, a bounty for the brave and courageous who care to pit against oceans swell.

It is fitting that the village is where Vasco da Gama came in 1497 to receive blessing at the church of Our Lady of Nazare before setting out to discover the world on a voyage that embraced the world's oceans, if not the world's lands. Seven oceans he named on that voyage and in tribute to his bravery and safe return the town's women took to wearing seven skirts; layered underskirts trimmed with hand embroidered lacework, bizarrely at odds as they sort and salt the catch on the beach.

When the wind changes, and the sea boils, and waves foam like giants on the sand, the fisher women descend unbidden from their homes and line the beach wailing for the men at sea, calling them safely to the shore, clutching their underskirts to their lips and eyes to give their men the luck and courage of Vasco da Gama.

 

[Liar]

Not to be naïve, but isn't part of being interesting being interested?

Or not.

Yep. One of those.

 

[Guest]

Symbolist literature has inherently more life and legs than realist literature. While symbolist literature begins more apparently "foreign" - unlike the world we know - it stays equally distant however long the work exists. It seeks to enunciate powerful truths that span time and culture, and because it relies implicitly on reader enaction of its symbolic matrix, it is automatically "updated" and brought into contemporary reality each time it is read. Realist literature begins by feeling more familiar because it attempts to present the world as it physically is at the time of writing. However, because the world changes relatively rapidly, realist works age badly and eventually become incomprehensible. Thus Shakespeare's tragedies, largely symbol and archetype, still strike home - but the comic relief , rooted in realism, puns and contemporaneous meaning, grows more obscure with each passing year. The parts that survive are those that are those based on character - well-drawn, humorous personalities who in themselves are not "realistic" to any specific time or place.

(Are you sorry now, Zoot?)

Shanglan

(Edited to add: Damnit, I forgot the "interesting" part.)

I scanned most of this post, cos I'm apparently one of the dull ones and didn't understand a fucking word, except those two.

It's RED NOSE DAY tomorrow, and is the twentieth anniversary.

(Hey, I'm talking about an event now, that means I'm elevated to mediocre. WHOOP! )

So, yes, all you Brits, dig deep. You know it's in a good cause, both here and in Africa.

BE SILLY! GET CRAZY! ACT LIKE AN ASS and GIVE COMIC RELIEF YOUR MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!



Loulou

 

[Liar]

In keeping with the dictum that dull people talk about themselves, mediocre people talk about events, and smart people talk about ideas, say something interesting that (a) isn't about you, (b) isn't about someone else on the boards, (3) isn't about your kids.

I no longer believe it can be done.

---Zoot

You know, smart people can be terribly dull.

 

[impressive]

You know, smart people can be terribly dull.

You've obviously been to a Mensa meeting.

 

[yui]

You know, smart people can be terribly dull.

And uninterested.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

People should get on their knees and thank God for lawyers.

 

[cheerful_deviant]

You know, smart people can be terribly dull.

I agree, take me for example.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Descartes.

#L, knee deep in rhetorical philosopy.

Sorry, don't know where my brain was. Deeply embarassed here -

Shanglan

 

[impressive]

People should get on their knees and thank God for lawyers.

Couple of assumptions there, Joe.

 

[BlackShanglan]

That, my four-legged friend, is a logical fallacy -- denying the antecedent.

See: http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/index.htm

*Psst ... Imp ... wasn't actually convinced that I didn't exist. But thanks for the reassurance. *

 

[Guest]

People should get on their knees and thank God for lawyers.

One out of three isn't bad.