Geoff > Status Update

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "Larry wrote: "The thing I find most funny here is that we furiously debate as if these GR posts had any effect on the outcome. They do not. "

I've found this thread to be hellishly important."


"Personally important" is not the same as "effecting the outcome."

Zadignose wrote: "Larry wrote: "...The thing I find most funny here is that we furiously debate as if these GR posts had any effect on the outcome. They do not."

This opposes all intellectual pursuit. Metaphysician..."

This was not intended to oppose intellectual pursuit. If anything it says; "Pursue. Just don't get too excited about it." It's like the first rule of writing by an alternative pundit; "If you think that you have anything important to say, just forget about it."

Larry wrote: ""Personally important" is not the same as "effecting the outcome." "

Um, conversations among the electorate is the kind of thing that effects the outcome. If the outcome you are referring to is an electoral outcome. Otherwise, I'm not sure what you mean. But if our presuppositions are democratic presuppositions, I don't have any idea where else the outcomes might have a root.

Larry M
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Age 26, Saddle River, NJ
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Joined in February 2017

Oh. Nevermind.

Hey Larry, I see you read books in Dutch! I loved that recent episode of Zondag met Lubach. You guys are very funny :)

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "Larry wrote: ""Personally important" is not the same as "effecting the outcome." "

Um, conversations among the electorate is the kind of thing that effects the outcome. If the outcome you are refe..."

Okay, Nate. By posting my name here you have proven my point. You've made it personal and ended with a half-assed attempt at sarcasm. Expected same from someone. Alwys happens with little people who have been ignored.

Duh, for your edification I'll waste more time in defining "outcome" which some high school teachers seem to not understand.

One outcome was the election and now that's over. Finished. Kaput. Any possibly relevant discussion happened prior to that. Another form of outcome is what Trump chooses to do while in office. Inglais?

If you think what you write here now has any effect on those things you're probably experiencing a recurrence of your little man's delusion of importance.

jesus christ, man

Larry wrote: "Okay, Nate.."

Bye.

Speaking of the Dutch, this is rather concerning

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/w...

Larry, I'm genuinely curious. Are you a Geert Wilders supporter, an American who for whatever reason happens to know Dutch, or just a troll who randomly happened to pick a few Dutch books when constructing his fake identity? Please enlighten us.

Manny wrote: "Larry, I'm genuinely curious. Are you a Geert Wilders supporter, an American who for whatever reason happens to know Dutch, or just a troll who randomly happened to pick a few Dutch books when cons..."

Sorry, Manny. I was watching the video after I took down Old Glory for the night. Damn, you guys are really impatient.

Thank you. Sometimes I get so lonely. But, now I have a role model and a whole country that thinks like me.

However, as usual, my answer to your specific question is "None of the above." Don't you profs yet know to include that on your check-the-blocks tests?

Looking up Geert Wilders.

Okay, so where do the Dutch books come from?

Damn, I was off makin' bleep-bloops on the synthesizer and I come back and this thread all blew up - Nathan, make this easy for me, do I need to block anybody?

Zadignose just blew my mind

Manny wrote: "Okay, so where do the Dutch books come from?"

Oh, as usual you were way ahead of me. I just saw the book(s) on my personal list.

I did not put them there. It must be the result of more Russian hacking. And between you and me I don't even owe them all that much money, but I guess it's a big deal to those Russky losers.

Either that or it's the result of another GR librarian attack.

But to answer your question more directly; "Holland."

I hope this cures your curiousity.

Wilders sure is interesting. Have to see more, but I found it surprising that his stated hatred fror the Koran led to so many problems. We can all make fun of the Bible here, as nobody really gives much of a fuck. Yay America.

Yeah.

Larry wrote: "Manny wrote: "Okay, so where do the Dutch books come from?"

Oh, as usual you were way ahead of me. I just saw the book(s) on my personal list.

I did not put them there. It must be the result of m..."

Larry, watch out for those Russian librarians. They'll stop at nothing to make you look like a troll in the eyes of the GR intelligentsia (looks up spelling). But I see you're already on to them!

Please burn a couple of holy books for me, here in Australia people are going to think I'm trying to start a bush fire and arrest me if I try it. I envy you.

Geoff wrote: "Zadignose just blew my mind"

That's why I keep him around for. Dude brings it.

Oh wait! "Larry" just gave 5 stars to a book by Edward Drobinski! I know who this guy really is! Blocked!

April, your posts kill it - keep 'em coming and keep 'em feral.

Geoff wrote: "Oh wait! "Larry" just gave 5 stars to a book by Edward Drobinski! I know who this guy really is! Blocked!"

Who is he?!

Manny wrote: "Geoff wrote: "Oh wait! "Larry" just gave 5 stars to a book by Edward Drobinski! I know who this guy really is! Blocked!"

Who is he?!"

Do you remember "Goodreads Author Edward Drobinski"? He hung around threads making startlingly bizarre and uncomfortable comments a few years back - haven't heard anything from him in awhile though...

He had numerous sock puppet accounts to harass people after he got blocked, if I remember correctly.

I kinda feel like this wouldn't be an official epic Goodreads thread unless he showed up and got blocked though. Bravo, Edward!

I actually reviewed his Christmas book back in the day, but since then he went back and fixed the double "r" typo in Chrristmas that was in the original title, so my review doesn't make sense anymore.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Ah, right. Good ol' Edward. I should have recognised him.

Thanks y'all. One dollar's credit extended for a term of up to eight minutes.

I's hongry.

Geoff wrote: "April, your posts kill it - keep 'em coming and keep 'em feral."

: p

Just a note for those joining the thread now and criticizing us for, just to take this recent case as an example, being all intellectual and not talking about the working class, you should know that we probably already discussed your point. We have, again by way of example, talked at length about the need of early education, on the dangers of ivory tower isolation etc etc etc.

The "point" of this thread is that it permits a group of GR "friends" to hang out and talk, sometimes serious sometimes silly.

1892 January 1 – Ellis Island begins accommodating immigrants to the United States.

Totally off-topic, but in case anyone else reading cares (and you are probz all too cool to mind it staring out from every page), the G<3<3dreads romance week logo can be hidden with Adblock Plus Element Hiding Helper.

Jonathan wrote: 1892 January 1 – Ellis Island begins accommodating immigrants to the United States.
Profoundly relevant factoid. (I think it was in Tevye the Dairyman & Motl the Cantor's Son that I read the most detailed account of what going through Ellis Island was like.)

Damn, we're fast approaching modernism. Hunger has already been published.

The 'gay nineties' are here - hooray! live it up

David wrote: "The 'gay nineties' are here - hooray! live it up"

In 1896 I probably could have had unfettered access to opium, cocaine, marijuana, and real absinthe (not that watered down stuff they sell today...) - party till the sun comes up 19th century mo' fuckas

Anyway, 1896, the year in which Tristan Tzara, Antonin Artaud, and Andre Breton were born. A big year for the French avant-garde!

And also, let's not forget, the real "point" of this thread is to have a safe place for those in fear and anger and bewilderment at the effrontery, outrage, and idiocy of the New Right to come bitch, yell, rant, laugh, and share articles, fears, and hopes.

Antonomasia wrote: "Totally off-topic, but in case anyone else reading cares (and you are probz all too cool to mind it staring out from every page), the G<3<3dreads romance week logo can be hidden with Adblock Plus E..."

Seeing that stuff helps keep my elitist dander up.

1897 1898 -- another elitist twit=wad modernist is born [same shit ; different year ;; (damn you Geoff! simul=posting!)]

Geoff wrote: "And also, let's not forget, the real "point" of this thread is to have a safe place for those in fear and anger and bewilderment at the effrontery, outrage, and idiocy of the New Right to come bitc..."

Safe space protected by Teamsters with baseball bats.

1899 -- more art about to happen

(Sorry!) - A new century dawns!!

Geoff wrote: "(Sorry!)"

Damn! it's the century!! I'm partin' right now as we speak like it's 19-naught-naught!

"1901" -- the year the century actually begins.

Just checking that everyone's seen what Martin Bell has been doing with the Dear Leader...

http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.770014

Israeli Support for Trump Gives American Jews a Taste of Their Own Medicine

Nice piece.

Manny wrote: "

Just checking that everyone's seen what Martin Bell has been doing with the Dear Leader..."

Had not seen that, there is more yes?

Re : working classness and "intelligentsia," love of thinking, books, art, etcetera ... I never got this dichotomy totally (I mean, I get it, but it seems odd to me) because I grew up in rural nowheresville Southern Maryland (a tobacco field was my back yard) and the school system sucked and the only thing that kept/keeps my hometown alive is Pax River Naval Air Base - so a farmer/oysterman/fisherman/military town, right? And while I was middle class, a lot of my friends were legit impoverished. I hung out playing guitar and skateboarding and smoking weed with trailer park kids... But all of my friends, almost as a buttress against all this, embraced art, and books, and while maybe not "school learning," we definitely embraced Culture - poems, novels, subversive music and literature, "important" movies, etc. (and remember this was pre-Internet) - we might have been the minority, but we came from the same place as the ignorant angry white males - but we certainly didn't follow their ideological paths... Now, I do think moving to a city when I was 18 cemented my devotion to all of this, but even now, while I live in one of the most expensive regions in the country, I essentially live paycheck to paycheck, and would certainly put myself in the working class. Yet art and knowledge-for-the-sake-of-knowledge and self-improvement is and has been a priority. I don't understand why coming from rural or poor backgrounds should inhibit intellectual exploration, esp. with the internet, libraries, etc. In my experience, and in my thinking, knowledge is practically free, it is utterly democratic. As long as I am literate I can be the equal of anyone, if not by class, then by intelligence, analytic ability, and temperament. That is a radically liberating idea.

(1905 - the Russian Revolution)

In other words - why this anti-intellectualism, when intellectualism is objectively better as a human experience, and more fun?

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-ca...

"Evidently, Trump also does a lot of viewing at night, when he’s alone in the White House’s living quarters. “With his wife, Melania, and young son, Barron, staying in New York, he is almost always by himself, sometimes in the protective presence of his imposing longtime aide and former security chief, Keith Schiller,” the Times report said. “When Mr. Trump is not watching television in his bathrobe or on his phone reaching out to old campaign hands and advisers, he will sometimes set off to explore the unfamiliar surroundings of his new home.”

By any standard, this is a bit bizarre. “Usually presidents are into their 2nd term before major papers depict them as a forlorn wraith skulking through the empty White House,” the writer John Lingan tweeted."

Yeah, I've met a lot of people like this; with a couple of notable exceptions, I find them easier to get on with and more on my wavelength than other people who went to private schools (tho it was a really cheap private school which had worse facilities, clubs, subject choice and in some years exam results than the local comp. I think its only advantage was better crowd control.)
Often, however, they have felt like it was just them or them and a couple of other friends from their background who were into culture stuff, and then they usually escaped and moved to the city or something. They tend to be more scornful of the ignorant, prejudiced working class than lefties who grew up middle class dare to be. I think I've only met one big bunch of people similar to you & the friends you describe, but yeah, I've absolutely no doubt they exist.

As do ignorant, prejudiced, middle class right wingers. It's not as simple as headlines.

Yeah Trump went straight from the campaign trail to Daniel Plainview hold up in his private bowling alley.

Antonomasia wrote: "."

seeing as we are putting this sort of stuff out there: I grew up in a small village, most of my peers were the children of farmers or of generally working or lower-middle class people. The few, rich, posh people in the village sent their kids to private school. The local state comprehensive school I went to was pretty crap - no money, low standard of teaching, few went to uni. My mum was a primary school teacher and my dad was a chemical engineer. I had practically no friends until I managed to get out of there and get to uni. I was bullied pretty relentlessly for being a "nerd" and "standing gay" and "being a ginger" and getting books out of the school library etc etc. So I suspect, in line with what Ant said, at least part of my elitism is a "fuck you" to all those assholes who left me hiding in the toilets during lunchbreak. I think the key is to recognise this prejudice, and try and compensate for it (and I do try!).

July 4 1910 – African-American boxer Jack Johnson defeats white American boxer James J. Jeffries in a heavyweight boxing match, sparking race riots across the United States.

or this, which I did not know about

September 1 – The Vatican introduces a compulsory oath against modernism, to be taken by all priests upon ordination.

J, I'd always assumed you had gone somewhere high-powered in London, St Paul's or Dulwich College maybe. Seeing your take on things a bit differently now.

The bourgeois order grows sick and decadent. The cult of Nietzsche reaches an early apogee. Many will welcome war as relief from a mediocre culture.

Jonathan wrote: "seeing as we are putting this sort of stuff out there..."

Maybe then it's the outsider thing that spurs a move inward toward the life of the mind, because I was in many ways an outsider, both by fate and by choice in some regards.. And certainly, part of my willful elitism is a "fuck you", but, really, I have relatives and family friends in Appalachia who are certainly not intellectuals, certainly are Trump voters, real working class people, I mean in like muffler factories, farms etc., whom I would never, ever tell to fuck off or not look at with sympathy and empathy - it's very complicated. That being said, I do not at all understand their willingness to go through life without reading more than was required in high school and spending the majority of their non-work hours watching TV. And I'm not trying to be degrading, this is what they do.

September 1 – The Vatican introduces a compulsory oath against modernism, to be taken by all priests upon ordination."

Whoa! As a side comment, anybody else watching The Young Pope? Really good!

David wrote: "The bourgeois order grows sick and decadent. The cult of Nietzsche reaches an early apogee. Many will welcome war as relief from a mediocre culture."

Yes.