Geh.

[xp_wildchild]

Anyone who tries to tell me -ever- that any of this useless poetry shit is useful? Is full of crap.

USELESS. Why do I need to know this? Wah wah wah, Lenore, wah wah, dead chick, wah wah.

Comments

[x-crowdofone.livejournal.com]

Oh, Poe? Sounds cool when read out loud--s' got a nice driving rhythm to it--but yeah, it's pretty much "waaah, my girlfriend left me and now this bird won't let me sit alone in the dark with my horrible life-shattering pain." At least Shakespeare does fart jokes.

You ever see the Simpsons take on "The Raven"? Was for one of the Halloween specials. Homer as the narrator, Bart as the raven.

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

Shakespeare does fart jokes? Dude.

.. and no, my folks were kinda uptight about me watching stuff like the Simpsons. Thought it'd get me, you know, in trouble. Funny how that totally wasn't frickin' effective and all.

[x-crowdofone.livejournal.com]

Yeah, because he was writing stuff for the actual commercial theater--Shakespeare was the seventeenth-century version of a sitcom writer, basically, and the theaters could be closed and everybody put out of a job just basically anytime the nobility felt like screwing them. So the playwrights had to suck up to the nobles like a dehydrated elephant, but at the same time they were getting a lot of their ticket sales out of the common working-class people, so they had to put stuff in to keep them amused, which ended up being a lot of fart jokes, and sex jokes, and stuff like that. Once you get the hang of the language, it's all over the place.

Chaucer did it too--"The Miller's Tale" has this whole sequence where a guy's trying to get a kiss from a girl he likes, and asks her to stick her head out the window so he can kiss her, only she sticks her butt out the window instead and farts in his face. Immortal classics of literature, man. :)

I've got that episode on tape in my room, if you wanna come watch it. Might give you a more fun perspective on the poem.

[x-sanfuaiyaa.livejournal.com]

What, are we missing The Simpsons from our DVD collection?

[x-cypher.livejournal.com]

Fart jokes, sex jokes, all kinds of bathroom humor. The nurse in Romeo and Juliet is totally foul. She makes this whole speech about Juliet fell on her face, and how she would fall on her back if she had more wit. Which is all totally about sex.

[x-crowdofone.livejournal.com]

I'm missing it from mine. Bet somebody has it, though, you're right.

Wait, wait wait, you like the Simpsons?

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

Poems about scary stuff aren't quite as stupid as reguarl ones, but the rest are -dumb-.

And why can't they just write it in normal English so everyone can frickin understand it? I mean "Wherefor art thou Romeo?" How am I supposed to know that means "Why did your stuipd parents name you Romeo anyway, you big dork?" unless someone told me, and that person had to be told and its just STUPID.

[x-sanfuaiyaa.livejournal.com]

I'd think that it would be in the rec room with the other 73043285895 DVDs.

I have been known to enjoy an episode or two. Is that so hard to believe?

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

Oh sure, it makes sense to you.

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

Everyone likes the Simpsons.

[x-cypher.livejournal.com]

It has to do with how the language has changed over the hundreds of years since Shakespeare wrote his poems/plays (or whoever claimed to be Shakespeare, if you're into all that Christopher Marlowe conspiracy theory crap). Back in the day, that was how people talked. And yeah, you could update the language, but then you get crappy stuff like that movie based on Othello with Julia Stiles in it.

[x-cypher.livejournal.com]

True, I have a little bit of an advantage, but it's not always just about the language. Sometimes it's about clever plays on words, or hinting at things without really saying them. That's part of comedy even today.

[x-icarus.livejournal.com]

It's written that way because it's not meant to be read or enjoyed by certain plebeians.

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

Wait, so not only did this guy write all stupid so we can't understand it but he might not have even written it?

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

But it doesn't even make SENSE!

[x-icarus.livejournal.com]

Or you get Ten Things I Hate About You which is fabulous.

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

What's a plebeian? Is that like a lesbian?

[x-cypher.livejournal.com]

True. It's kind of hit or miss.

[x-cypher.livejournal.com]

Um, no. It's a fancy way of saying "common folk". Except that Shakespeare _did_ write for the common folk. It's just that even the common folk used to talk like that back in the day.

[x-cypher.livejournal.com]

Well, there's a whole conspiracy theory that says Shakespeare didn't even exist, that another playwright named Christopher Marlowe actually wrote all of "Shakespeare's" stuff.

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

So normal people who weren't totally gay said shit like "Wherefore art thou?"

Man, no -wonder- they got plagues and stuff. They talked like DORKS and were obviously too stupid to make any sense!

[x-icarus.livejournal.com]

. . .

Yes, Kyle, a plebeian is like a lesbian.

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

Is this like that whole Oliver Stone one bullet thing?

[x-icarus.livejournal.com]

Watch it.

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

That's not what Ramsey said.