Re: Two Basic Forces by dougsoderstrom	5-Sep-04/3:25 AM
You fucking retard. I've never read anything this stupid, seriously. Oh, and by the way, your use of ellipses is soooooo cool AND literate! Maybe you do it to seem like a "normal", "chatty", and "generally well-liked guy" instead of "one of the educated elite". Or maybe it's just because you're the dimmest guy ever! Enjoy your life! P.S.-If I were at all inclined to make a conversation out of this, I'd say the primary "forces" "molding" "man's character" are his tendencies to blunder around into things alot and not learn very much from what he's blundered into. This probably leads him to do as many "good" or "selfless" things as "evil" or "selfish" things, since neither is necessarily harder or more distasteful than the other, and since both of those categories are the dampest of turds anyway. So it's not like you're going to get with a lot of nice, non-desperate chicks talking about them! Maybe you should stop! Affectionately, zodiac
Re: a comment on Swimming in Space & Fishing for the Luridness Monster by SupremeDreamer	5-Sep-04/2:58 AM
The above comment is true only inasmuch as Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is a steaming turd-burrito discharged by a fat bowel-challenged lardsack of self-glorifying guff and gobbled with relish by gabbling wolf-reared infants whose only salvation is their insistence that it is, in fact, fois gras. The most obvious retort here is that I don't know shit about "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." I do, and you can't prove otherwise.
Re: a comment on St. Patrick’s Cathedral by Dovina	3-Sep-04/2:17 AM
Whatever. Anyway, I'm embarrassed by my part in this entire conversation. The only topic worth discussing here was -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I.'s asking if you envy the comfort of believers; and the answer is yes, you should, since you're in the worse position of believing only in a ridiculous, halfassed, and frankly unsustainable way, and not even knowing that -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. was making fun of you by asking. You're clearly the moralist here, as far as the negative, not-really-knowing-what-you're-talking-about sense that you clearly mean, and doubly so for supposing as you do that morality is strictly religious, judgmental, and poorly-thought-out - though, of the three of us, really only yours seems to be. Try again. PS-you misspelled "excercise"
Re: a comment on St. Patrick’s Cathedral by Dovina	1-Sep-04/4:15 AM
1) I was pretty sure you were making fun of Dovina for suggesting so in the first place. 2) Nurturing, even by a robot, is not morally neutral. There is a rather interesting and amusing note in the memoirs of Master Wellington-Beeves concering an Irish infant abandoned in a forgotten back courtyard at Cambridge and somehow allowed to grow to maturity more-or-less undisturbed, but that's hardly applicable to this discussion. 3) It's hard to say there's "very little correlation between high church-going levels and low murder rate", because the moral influence of religion extends to most nonbelievers, as Dovina has demonstrated. You can't say a moral is innate simply because the practical reason for it has been forgotten or become irrelevant. I can't imagine what reason might have been for the refrigerator thing, but the condemnation of gayishness, especially gayish monogamy, was probably at some point pretty practicaly, involving political and species-minded motivations. At any rate, gayfear still has to be learned (and unlearned).
Re: a comment on St. Patrick’s Cathedral by Dovina	1-Sep-04/4:06 AM
I believe all practical religions have some conception of hell, and that it's probably not possible to believe in a good afterlife without believing in a bad one. Note that the few religions which have tried to do away with their ideas of hell (e.g., modern, ecumencial, American Christianity, for the most part) are all colossal wallowing failures.
Re: a comment on St. Patrick’s Cathedral by Dovina	31-Aug-04/3:23 PM
PS-If you envy (or whatever) the comfort of believers because you struggle with all these problems surrounding religion while they don't - well, that's kind of backwards isn't it? If you're going to be a nonbeliever, why don't you try just not worrying about God (or whomever) and whatever he or it is or isn't doing, since right now you just seem like a regular believer with commitment problems? You might as well be one of those Existentialist Frenches or Stephen Daedalus. PPS-If the "unanswered questions" you struggle with are Why is there so much suffering in the world or something such, you're still a believer! QED.
Re: a comment on St. Patrick’s Cathedral by Dovina	31-Aug-04/3:11 PM
Everyone, including myself my first weeks here, kind of expects Islams to be some kind of monomaniacal robots. The first times we all saw Islams drinking liquors or associating with women or some other vaguely or specifically haram thing, we all screamed bloody murder at them. Then we realized Islam in most of the Middle East is pretty much just like Christianity in America with two important exceptions: 1) they occassionally blow themselves up, and 2) they pray about 5 times a day. Anyway, the short of it is that these two things - which incidentally, nearly every Islam doesn't do - are so anathema to Western thinking that we have to assume anyone who would consider doing them is an android or some freakishly orthodox fundamentalist. They're not. Really. If you must know, it's insanely easy to contemplate blowing yourself up, for political as well as financial reasons, and then give it some thin coating of religion. Especially here, where pretty much everyone just sits around contemplating all kinds of illogical actions and theories in ridiculously angry-sounding voices (hint: it's the language!) anyway. And the majority of people who blow themselves up don't know the Qu'ran from my ass, seriously. So anyway, talking about the Iraqi resistance or Al Quaeda as anything really connected to Islam is kind of bunk. It's probably, in fact, as much bunk as talking about the Crusades in terms of Christianity. And just look at the number of mostly-Christian Westerners who've self-righteously marched to their deaths in Iraq this year. Or nonbelievers, for that matter. Oh God, I'm afraid I've gotten you frightfully confused now.....
Re: a comment on St. Patrick’s Cathedral by Dovina	31-Aug-04/2:49 PM
Sure, but I would avoid any of the following typical assumptions: 1) People with religion are as a whole more content than people without. Sure it sounds nice and believable, but how can you tell? I would guess they aren't, for the reason above and because I think believers are more likely than nonbelievers to be stupid and hurt themselves. Besides, believers can't, like, bang any chick they want whenever they want or do a fatty bag of smack, while nonbelievers can; and believers seem more likely than nonbelievers to be somewhat desperate and unhappy people to begin with. 2) If people were somehow utterly isolated, they would still, kind of instinctively, have a moral code, conscience, and sense of guilt. If you were to somehow strand an extremely young child on an island, he would probably smear himself in his own feces, pleasure himself whenever, and basically kill whatever thing he felt like for a pretty long time without any sense of shame. I imagine he'd eventually break out in a nasty rash or otherwise logically come to the conclusion that feces-smearing, self-gratification, and wanton killing aren't healthy, at which point he'd grow some kind of morality and shame. But there's nothing that's convinced me he'd just have it instinctively, like an animal or Aboriginal would. If there were a bunch of people stranded on the island, they'd probably get it faster, since, say, killing or stealing would be more likely to lead to a quick consequence. This is, I think, the only original basis for morality. But there's no way to tell, is there, since you couldn't strand a 4-year-old Irish on an island without him bringing some kind of moral training with him? 3) Religion has caused more slaughter or murder or et cetera than any other thing. Bunk. And how do you know? And it's probably also prevented more by making the majority of people not murder-prone. As far as "wallyish morals" go, I can't think of any. I think the wallyish part is just that most believers (like nonbelievers) have forgotten whatever practical purposes they had in the beginning and have likely added all kinds of garbage onto them, like genuflecting or, for Islams, entering a lavatory right-foot-first. Can you think of any which are purely wallyish?
Re: a comment on abortion by darylchew	31-Aug-04/1:44 AM
Was that "horrible accident" congenital virginity stemming from prenatal unattractiveness?
Re: a comment on St. Patrick’s Cathedral by Dovina	31-Aug-04/1:37 AM
In all seriousness, does worrying about death and some vague and sort of unpleasant-sounding Hereafter keep you from being comfortable? And is it really fair or very well-informed to propose that people with religion feel, on average, more comfort than nonbelievers? As far as "Discrepancies are expunged for them by faith" goes, well that's a load of wash, isn't it? There wouldn't even be a sense of there being "Discrepancies" if there weren't a religion saying things are or should be some way and anything else is a deviation. In short, I think you're going about it kind of backwards. Even here, within sight of Palestine and a 5-hour bus ride from Iraq, I'd say religion mostly keeps most of the people in the world from killing me whenever they feel like it - or, say, taking my stuff or my wife. It does this by making them feel bad about nearly anything harmful they might consider doing to me. Since I do (or keep from doing) all of these things for perfectly sensible reasons of my own which don't have anything to do with guilt or conscience or whatever, it's likely that I'm slightly more comfortable than most believers, isn't it? Why shouldn't it be for all non-believers, including yourself? Please, please take this comment seriously. I'm sorry for making fun of you so much before. Thanks, zodiac
Re: a comment on Sir Magnedrol vs. The Dragon (part 1) by Phalkon	28-Aug-04/7:49 AM
The two poems preceding these comments are the best I've ever posted on poemranker. I'd forgotten them.
Re: The Distance Fighter by shit	26-Aug-04/6:39 AM
Dear bleedingrose, You've made a grammatickal (or otherwise-sensickal) mistake in nearly every line of this post. Please, please stop offending the world with the terribleness of your writing. Thanks, zodiac
Re: a comment on A Stitch In Time by Dovina	26-Aug-04/2:00 AM
I'm dropping the pretense of poem-critiquing and starting a parallel site where (for a nominal fee) you can get a semi-witty (or at least Post-worthy) quotable "blurb" for anything you happen to have written, sight unseen. Please send a half-dinar, the title of the work you wish to have blurbed, and a fresh white melon to zodiac, c/o The Crack, Islamland. We'll be in touch.
Re: a comment on Symphony of Despairs by Prince of Void	26-Aug-04/1:45 AM
For the last twenty four hours, I've been suffering from a bad bout of superdysentery and the aftermath of a local diet composed almost entirely of various starches wrapped around, or stuffed into, other starches. However, I'm pleased to report I still had enough gruelly unction left in me to, upon reading your comment and its preceding, presumably unedited, version, promptly evacuate it into the seat of my Thursday dishdash. Thank you, thank you so much for being you!
Re: a comment on Mississippi Burnin. by SupremeDreamer	22-Aug-04/5:43 AM
Xist means something like 'influenced by or attentive to the quality X'. I meant it in the sense that you're influenced negatively by the fact of someone's being British, racist, sexist and so on, which I'd think was easy enough to figure out from context. Your comment on 'saves'/qualifiers is utterly shortsighted. Saying a qualifier and 'save' are the same thing is like saying the statement 'X - 2 > 0 for all numbers greater than 2' is weak because I 'saved' it by limiting the possible Xs to >2. If you can't see why that's a dim thing to say, you need your retinas reattached. I've never said anything about how many poems I have or haven't read or commented on. Please stop making silly assumptions. PS-I'm married to a woman. And 'lololol' doesn't make any sense to me. Thanks, zodiac
Re: a comment on Corner of 30th and Tibbs by klosterfobik	22-Aug-04/5:10 AM
Would you say that money is used by business-inept money snobs to make them seem more rich? PS-You are a dork.
Re: a comment on Mississippi Burnin. by SupremeDreamer	16-Aug-04/7:52 AM
Very well. I respectfully submit (or re-submit) that the term 'PC' as it's used in America always refers to cliquish whitefolk who are embarrassed about not knowing any real Coloureds and think referring to Females and Homos as Persons will improve their chances of getting laid by one or the other. Anyone who has ever met a Coloured or Homo or spent any time in the company of Females knows this is not the case. In addition, 'PiCs' (or 'Persons with PC', as they would have it,) have historically shown themselves to be frightful racistists, sexistists, dunceistists and generally stuck-up virgin introverts. They laugh at 'un-PC humor' because they think it's genuinely funny and true, so their laughter is almost always a kind of lewd repressed giggle and disgusting. If I've mentioned once on this and similar posts, I've mentioned a thousand times that SupremeDreamer has never been nearer to Deep South than Oakland (cf. the adjective 'cold' used in reference to Mississippi), and that despite coming from a renowned hotbed of political correctness, he has never in his life been correct, to say nothing of politically correct. cat, I'm sorry to have been so hard on you before, but your continually saying things like 'friends of the rainbow that is earth', 'prejudice' instead of 'prejudiced', 'semantics' instead of god-knows-what, and other irrational gobbledygook pisses me off beyond belief, for reasons which probably have more to do with my own hopeless gay introversion than your dimness or whatever. I hope you can come to see me as a decent guy who just feels really bad about himself because he doesn't have any friends or something (and so 'takes it out' on 'aspiring internet poets' in rambling anonymous tirades,) and if we ever meet in public, I know you'll think I'm a nice guy with real feelings. Anyway, no hard feelings (I hope!;-p) Thanks for helping to make poemranker all it can be! PS-I read all your poems and you're all aces! -zodiac
Re: a comment on Mississippi Burnin. by SupremeDreamer	15-Aug-04/6:27 AM
Dear cat, You've been proven wrong and generally marked yourself as a gigantic dim about a dozen times on this page without your knowing it. Your idea of intelligent argument is attacking nearly everything besides your massive generalizations by calling them massive generalizations, and then hoping some frankly nauseating mixture of logicphobia, specious self-deprecation and general cutesiness will get you out of being called a blundering dim to your face. And you've committed the carnal dim of reading "Could you explain what you mean by X" as "I have no idea what X means in reality". Dim, dim, dim. PS-You're not PC, since you're patently an anti-PCist, a Britishist, and an internet-userist. You've just been taught that a bunch of things are bad to say about certain downtrodden ethnics and are afraid to think anything else. -0- PPS-You're totally wrong; richa pretty much hates -=Dark_Angel=-. -0- PPPS-"Most" isn't a save, it's a qualifier. Only an purebred dim would think it's anything else, but that's because only dims (including most Americans) think mainly in clodheaded generalizations themselves. -0-
Re: a comment on Mississippi Burnin. by SupremeDreamer	15-Aug-04/5:53 AM
It seems like every time there's an argument on this site, you come in with something about "the information processing level" - which, incidentally, strikes me as a load of fluff. Do you find that it's an absurdly easy way out of almost any argument?
Re: a comment on Mr. Stryker, Do You Really Want Some Kind of War? by cat	13-Aug-04/3:25 AM
"Because people who have nice jobs and healthy relationships don't respond to 3077 posts, do you know why, because they have a life, which you obviously do not," is the 9th Buncombe Dodge of the Invertebrate Lobster.