The new chat thread - now with bitter arguing

[rahvin]

Well, if you expected strap-ons, anal rape and me taping that all - I'm so sorry to disappoint you :Smug:

I was expecting you duck taping that all, at the very least.

 

[plintus]

I was expecting you duck taping that all, at the very least.

The girl was so hot - that would melt

Wouldn't work.

 

[GONE Ridin' Hood]

Ah well, as always I'm the target of criticism around here. I'll try to be polite with what I'm about to write:

1- Rhavin, I believe that you are a very elitist person, I'm not surprised since a lot of Italians I've met are like that. Nothing new lads, nothing new.

2- My language skills on this phorum do not represent the ones in real life, you can ask anyone that has met me and they'd say I've a pretty good English.

3- As Taliesin said, telling me to drop my carrer is pathetic, it makes you sound as if you were a little bit too obsessed with my person.

4- I can write rather well, thank you, I just don't bother to correct it so much around here (I know I should, though ), yet that is no excuse to insult me the way you did.

5- Sorry if I insulted you when saying the fact that Italians, along with Japanese, have the worst (if not the worst) pronounciation/accent in English in the whole world.

Oh bu bu bu did I insult your Italian pride? Ohhhh please forgiiive me, spare me from the mght of your anger.

6- It makes me rather sad to see that a person who is only "a few" thousand miles away, aka me, can affect you so much. Apparently spending so much time in the library is not so good lads :Smug: .

7- I won't post here that much now, congratulations, you did it! Do you want a trophy or package of candies with that?

8- Nevertheless, I won't stop posting here (gott I'm so stubborn hehe).

Why?

Because I've made a lot of friends here who have actually done something for me, in an emotional, monetary or any other way. Thank you Kov, Kathleen, Undie , Emmafald (j/k Frank), Mart and Nico (Venecians are truly sometihng different ).

You are all wonderful people, don't change.

- LBRH

 

[rahvin]

@LBRH: Please accept this gift as a way of burying the hatchet.


Edit: Also, I have no idea who this rhavin person is that you keep addressing.

 

[GONE Ridin' Hood]

^

 

[hyena]

@danny: you have my wise response in the other thread, but please do stop the racial hostility, it makes you look like an idiot. also, everyone off the "librarian" jokes, please - it's not funny. it's weird how anything that is perceived either as "too uncool" or "too not-uncool" (which is different from "cool") ends up being ground down in this forum. so if tomorrow plintus or kov or i were to flaunt our incomes, no, heavens forbid. but if rahvin's "just" a librarian, no, heavens forbid. well, sorry, not anyone can be students anymore, we're old.

 

[afz902k]

LBRH, I've read your CD reviews in Spanish and those have some typos, and grammatical awkwardness too. But really, they're good enough, at least you write Spanish better than the broad majority of latin americans do.

And about the English, I don't want to put you down or anything, but I too am told by many people that I'm good at it and I know that's not really the truth. I think I'm just average at English, and even that is probably pretentious.

And generalizations based on race are not a very smart thing to get engaged in, unless you're going to start accepting you like to park in your lawn and eat beans the whole day. (I actually like BEANS!, and my house does not have a lawn, it was mercilessly devoured by the family donkey)

 

[rahvin]

but if rahvin's "just" a librarian, no, heavens forbid. well, sorry, not anyone can be students anymore, we're old.

You know, "librarian" is usually synonymous to "front office librarian", and I understand how that would be uncool. It takes some explaining to specify I work with the administration, and I don't really care enough to clarify, most of the times. I like my job, and the only reason why I'd aim at some career advancement would be to earn more money. Passion or ambition really only factor in other things I do.

 

[hyena]

You know, "librarian" is usually synonimous to "front office librarian", and I understand how that would be uncool. It takes some explaining to specify I work with the administration, and I don't really care enough to clarify, most of the times. I like my job, and the only reason why I'd aim at some career advancement would be to earn more money. Passion or ambition really only factor in other things I do.

i think your attitude is extremely reasonable.

i came to the conclusion that discussing coolness of jobs makes no sense except if you're trying to choose between two or more offers for yourself.

jobs clearly reveal a person's positioning in a kind of social ladder. it is, by all means, the most evidently shared one, and it does hold an objective importance; i do not want to pass off as a random scientologist who believes that the world outside does not exist and all that counts is where you stand in the ladder towards spiritual clearing. the outside world and its balances of power are incidentally something that i put a lot of stock in on a personal level. but thinking in terms of "coolness", which is what fuels the use of job A or job B as a reason for either belittling or applauding, is just beside the point: it does not accomplish anything either way.

if guy 1 chooses to take over the world and guy 2 chooses not to, well, let them. it's about personal freedom. if i'm guy 1 and guy 2 is my son, i might get irked, because i have a responsibility. if guy 2 is my live-in partner, it might be good or bad that he takes a different path. if guy 2 is my friend and wants advice to improve his station, i'll give. but if he doesn't and is consistent in not wanting it (ie he doesn't whine about too little money), i'll just leave him be.

 

[afz902k]

I hope one day I can be a librarian in the vein of Señor Bibliote-taco, a popular character in Guadalajara, who:
- Works at a library.
- Is well versed in "everything culture".
- Takes ladies and booze to the library and then proceeds to misbehave.
- Can not be fired because he has ties with the most feared druglords in the area AND with high-rank politicians.

 

[GONE Ridin' Hood]

^ yeah I agree I agree, and I love beans too . Are you being sarcastic about the donkey ?

Concerning my reviews, thanks hehe, it's really fun to them .

I guess the typos are not entirely my fault, as another guy also edits/reads the review. Still, typos are everywhere and in most reviews, so it's nothing to be surprised about.

What I would really want to know to which "grammatical awkwardness" you're refering to, I would very much like to correct that and to improve the page in general.

What did you think of my reviews as in, objectivity?

Concerning the racial stuff, if we get into this, then I think that Rhavin should stop his elitism and criticizing my carreer. I'm just paying him with his own coin, so you know.

Still, I do believe what I said about Italians and Japs, but I actually didn't meant to offend anyone with that; sorry for that being the case with you Claudia. Yet my perspective on that won't change, as I believe it's rather accurate.

 

[rahvin]

@hyena: It's an interesting discussion and an interesting position. The "coolness" of a job is almost entirely irrelevant to me: I used to work as a PI, which would probably make some mouths water, but it made me extremely unhappy and I wouldn't get back to anything like that. Some people who gain instant fame and appreciation used to have uncool jobs: take Stephen King, who worked part-time for a local laundry until well after his first bestselling novel. It doesn't matter much to the public that he's probably under-educated and was a total slob for years: his creative mind (and I say this with as much sarcasm as humanly possible) is what he's going to be remembered for. I don't think it's worth it to become Stephen King so that you don't work part-time for a local laundry anymore: I'd much rather remain a librarian and read more essays on the media per year than Stephen King has dollars in the bank.
Which clearly doesn't mean I wouldn't want the money, and even more the fame, to be brutally honest.

@afz902k: I take the lady (only one) to the library, from time to time, and the booze I used to get right outside. I also cannot be fired, but I don't mingle with politicians or drug lords, as of yet. Might think about it.

@LBRH: My own coin is the Euro. And I like beans too. Now you know what to do.

 

[hyena]

@danny: you didn't offend me - i know i'm an elitist and i'm happy about it. i just don't think it's an ethnic trait, that's all.

 

[Makaan]

@Rahvin
What´s a PI?
Wiki gives:
In professional occupations

* Photographic interpreter, an aerospace and strategic reconnaissance term
* In legal shorthand, it refers to a Plaintiff
* Principal investigator
* Private investigator

 

[Kovenant84]

@hyena: It's an interesting discussion and an interesting position. The "coolness" of a job is almost entirely irrelevant to me: I used to work as a PI, which would probably make some mouths water, but it made me extremely unhappy and I wouldn't get back to anything like that. Some people who gain instant fame and appreciation used to have uncool jobs: take Stephen King, who worked part-time for a local laundry until well after his first bestselling novel. It doesn't matter much to the public that he's probably under-educated and was a total slob for years: his creative mind (and I say this with as much sarcasm as humanly possible) is what he's going to be remembered for. I don't think it's worth it to become Stephen King so that you don't work part-time for a local laundry anymore: I'd much rather remain a librarian and read more essays on the media per year than Stephen King has dollars in the bank.
Which clearly doesn't mean I wouldn't want the money, and even more the fame, to be brutally honest.

@afz902k: I take the lady (only one) to the library, from time to time, and the booze I used to get right outside. I also cannot be fired, but I don't mingle with politicians or drug lords, as of yet. Might think about it.

@LBRH: My own coin is the Euro. And I like beans too. Now you know what to do.

On the topic of cool, you might want to invest in some glasses. I hear they would accentuate your sexuality in said field of work.

And just out of curiosity, what is your actual opinion on him? My brother is currently going to school for creative writing and I often compare him to SK. Just wondering if you'd think of that as a good or bad thing.

~kov.

 

[afz902k]

I like my job (most of the time), but I don't think a lot of people would say it's cool. I, too, don't really care about that.

@LBRH:

Regarding the spanish awkwardness, I'll just address it on general terms.

· The usage of derived adverbs in spanish is not as well-seen as in english. Using words that end in "mente" is often a sign of having a limited vocabulary, more so if you're using the same word twice in a single paragraph, or even in the same sentence.

· Expressions such as "tan mucho más arriba" (so much more higher) are just hilarious.

· Using too many contradictions is odd: You seem to love writing like this: "X song is Y in Z way, BUT that doesn't mean W!"; You do that over and over. Perhaps you could try some different structures from time to time?

· You should avoid redundancy like the plague. If you must express the same (or almost the same) idea in two consequent sentences, at least use some synonyms to add variety.

· If you are going to make direct analogies, don't forget to include words that concatenate concept A with concept B.

Take, for example, your sentence: Empieza con un ritmo diciendole a uno "Esto aún no ha acabado y viene lo mejor".

The first part, "Empieza con un ritmo...", is in Presente Durativo. Now the second part is in Gerundio, and you do not specify a connection from one verbal time to the other - more specifically, you succeed in letting the reader know that when the song starts there is a certain vibe (which you describe later), but you don't succeed at defining which role does the rhythm take in creating that vibe, thus, leading to awkwardness.

It could be fixed by saying:

Empieza con un ritmo que, de cierto modo, hace pensar: "Esto aún no ha acabado y viene lo mejor",

or:

Empieza con un ritmo [adjective], como diciendo: "Esto aún no ha acabado y viene lo mejor"

About the objectivity, I'd say you give too high grades, but that's of course not a very objective thing to say.

 

[rahvin]

@makaan: private investigator.

@kov: I don't like SK. I'm actually going through the trouble of reading all of his works, but my opinion of him isn't changing (so far): he has a limited vocabulary and constantly goes for the "shock effect" through metaphors or stream-of-consciousness-like paragraphs. The few good ideas he's had, he's buried under an avalanche of redundancy. The thing I like the least about him is how he thinks it's always cool to mix horror-inspiring situations with everyday stuff, obviously hoping the reader will go "Wow, I never made this connection, now I'm never going to look at a watermelon the same way!"
Come to think of it, what bothers me the most is how much of a one-trick pony he soon turned out to be concerning these things: they would have been ok once or twice, I guess, but spread abundantly over around a hundred books it's just like reading cheap romance literature.

 

[hyena]

@hyena: It's an interesting discussion and an interesting position. The "coolness" of a job is almost entirely irrelevant to me: I used to work as a PI, which would probably make some mouths water, but it made me extremely unhappy and I wouldn't get back to anything like that.

I think you are focusing on one of the important points here. Again, I do not want to sound like someone who claims that there is no objective social hierarchy, but I am more and more under the impression that when looking at other people's choices one should always start by asking the question about which weight person A assigns to it (of course with the PI example we are referring to charm and adventure rather than power, but I think that the idea can be generalized).

Take my boss, for example: while he occupies a position that has a reasonable objective prestige going with it, over five years of knowing him I have come to the conclusion that he does not really care about this aspect. I used to be completely flabbergasted when he actually complained about being invited to internationally relevant events, because he'd rather stay home with his family. And I used to think quite lowly of him because of his lack of ambition.

However, I recently realized that this is not the point. The fact that my boss lacks ambition doesn't put him neither here nor there in a universal scale of values. I still criticize the fact, but it is for a different - and I hope more sensible - reason than mere proximity with an archetype that I built for myself: his lack of interest in the big picture sometimes makes him an uneffective boss, in that he neglects his duty of introducing people who work with him to it. Again, that's not evil or stupid per se, but it is professionally irresponsible, and I have told him in more than one occasion (normally when asked rather than out of my own nagging good heart) that he should work on this aspect if he wants to stop failing in one field that's part of the reason why he gets a high wage.

 

[rahvin]

@hyena: I agree with your reasons to criticize your boss. I, too, find it annoying when people with responsibilities don't act in accord to their position because of either disenchantment, pessimis, or outright self-loathing. For instance, many a time I've heard people high up in this university's administration complain that "meetings are all useless" and "nothing ever gets done" and "everybody just wants to go to lunch asap". I don't really see this as lack of ambition as much as a forceful way of saying, look how disingenuous I am, I so know how the system works! It's upsetting when it comes from figures of relative authority, like the teachers who don't show up on election day and then complain that the new Department politics are unacceptable.

The difference is that while I'm certainly not dying to go to meetings, lectures, or presentations, I put aside my lack of ambition and try to act responsibly with regards to my role in the administration. I attend about 4-5 assorted public meetings per month, and I have a say in what my boss decides - mainly because he's an incompetent scaredy cat. I'm aware that we're neither saving human lives nor making meaningful changes for the future generations, but as long as I accept the responsibility of doing my part, I'll do it without sounding completely jaded.

 

[hyena]

The difference is that while I'm certainly not dying to go to meetings, lectures, or presentations, I put aside my lack of ambition and try to act responsibly with regards to my role in the administration. I attend about 4-5 assorted public meetings per month, and I have a say in what my boss decides - mainly because he's an incompetent scaredy cat. I'm aware that we're neither saving human lives nor making meaningful changes for the future generations, but as long as I accept the responsibility of doing my part, I'll do it without sounding completely jaded.

I loathe teh type of jadedness that you describe: interestingly enough, here it is found more in the lower ranks than the higher ones. In the case of my boss, lack of ambition does not materialize in criticizing the state of the world in a hapless way, but rather in answering repeated requests to do or say something that he should say to promote his collaborators with lines such as "I don't think it is that important". Which makes sense to him, since he really believes that. But that's mixing private and public capacity, which is just stupid.