there are subtle nuances in every single one of those EXCELSIORS, I'll have you LOL

aero re: bad translations do you mean the big penguin edition? i dont own it but the big penguin ficciones is really irritatingly/poorly translated too, which is a shame because it's great to have all the stories in one book

if that's the new/authorized edition of Borges's poetry I've only skimmed it, I was kinda close to the principals involved in arguing w/the estate back when. so I should own up that I have a horse in the race. but, like - Borges was passionate about meter and rhyme, or so I was taught. Most of the translations you see act like he wanted to do some kind of speech-rhythm thing. No disrespect to speech-rhythm free verse cats, may they prosper, I love plenty of 'em, but Borges was not among their numbers.

^^^ last line here is the best lit joke I've ever made so I'm retiring, peace

Here's my dude and his story - I guess he still reads from the translations he did so it's cool to talk about it - the horse I have in the race is this is the guy who taught me to write in verse, which basically changed my life forever, so while I don't share his disdain for forms/poets he doesn't love, I am in awe of his mind

lol Reading

btw pffffffft 'literature'

those without stories write 'literature'

those who think they have 'stories' write memoirs

oh man this shit blew up in a way that I am sure means we have a rich future discussion of David Boring for its own merits on our hands

aero if you really want the pants sued off of you, try violating some of Beckett's stage directions

(question: can you counteract getting your pants sued off if you take your pants off preemptively? has scotus ruled on this matter)

I haven't actually read any Borges poetry. I am a dumb prose cat. But I vow to rectify this.

Nostromo is such a hulking pile of shit

"Let's get a sort of romance-style populist hero and call him nostro homo and then put him in a post-Flaubert modernist/realist novel where he appears for, like two pages at the end of each section, and then fill the rest of it with people talking in rooms"

"MAGNIFICENT!". -Noodle Vague

"I saw Alan Moore's head explode. I was there.". -Whiney G. Weingarten

No but srsly, High Society/Church & State shits all over Nostromo from a considerable height

what is going on here

just the usual inevitable breakdown of the EXCELSIOR thread into unrelated bickering, signaling the end of its era and the dawn of a new LOL

It is about time for a new thread/title.

did silby just name the new thread?

this one is only ~1100 posts long, we have plenty of room for meta bitching and unrelated pedantry

every lol thread has like 3 phases of those, it's like geology

i don't know how much we really need to tease out the appeal of shooters--like, at what point in human history were games not about violence (some games, that is. maybe most)? we just have the tech to do it better now.

really i feel like the dominant mode of "smart" game criticism draws too much from pop psychology (like my point immediately above) (but we don't have a critical vocabulary with which to properly tackle these topics) (yet). like bissell is not far removed from gladwell in terms of intellectual rigor. that's my main objection. also his face.

― adam, Monday, July 16, 2012 1:06 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i have a yen to read that nutbag Sim tbh but if you think Nostromo is shit you crazy

shorter/snappier: the end of an EXCELSIOR and the dawn of a new LOL

EXCELSIOR: funny shit or nblol?

Nostromo - the X-Men spinoff...?

lol @ idea that any of that shit is better than peak Cerebus

well that shatters my preconceptions about art

EXCELSIOR is a LOLmix (with some edits)

Mods, can we please put the LOL-filter on the word "EXCELSIOR" as a means of increasing the overall level of intelligence around here?

I was just confused by the Nostromo ref - Conrad? Alien? comics? whut?

Mods, can we please put the LOL-filter on requests to mods as a means of increasing the overall level of EXCELSIOR LOL LOL ROFL EXCELSIOR LOL around here?

I probably need to reread it, I found it to be kind of a hollow treatment of a bunch of themes that I'd seen done to death a hundred times before the novel finally came into my hands. One of those times being from Sim, who doesn't approach the desired natural resource exploitation angle, and who of course includes 30s comedic figures and Marvel/DC parodies but the underlying sociopolitical infrastructure seems about 10x deeper and more convincingly rendered (tho tbf he did have about 1500 more pages in which to develop said infrastructure

High Scoiety and Church & State are early, before the nuts stuff and probably the series' high point

I like p much every other earlier Conrad novel (Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness, Typhoon, the novel about the Narcissus) more than Nostromo btw

And...I'm done feeding the derail

(xp to NV, first 'it' refers to Nostromo)

it was sad when he got shot

Nostromo becoming a grouchy old has-been was genuinely pathetic, yes, but I had lost interest by then

a good deed hidden in silence dies

Lol. As I said I need to read it again.

Man, it turns out I really remember nothing of The Jungle outside descriptions of men cutting their hands into pulp and getting pussy gangrene in their bleeding eye sockets.

― the new dire homonomoreboobsativity (Eric H.)

Um, by "pussy," i mean "having puss."

― the new dire homonomoreboobsativity (Eric H.)

And by "puss," I mean "pus."

― the new dire homonomoreboobsativity (Eric H.)

Pussy Gangrene was really the worst Bond girl

― PITILESS LIVE SHOW (DJP)

IRL LOL

omg

love it

Excellent return to form.

lol @ Dan, but good typos can never be beat!

beautiful.

guys just take your parents' computers away and give them iPads, they will be so much happier.

― where can i get a mcdonalds quesadilla tho (silby), Saturday, July 14, 2012 7:01 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oddly, my mom gave her laptop to my sister as hers died, so my mom really does have just an iPad now!

― hot sauce delivery device (mh), Sunday, July 15, 2012 4:42 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that is not interesting

― jabba hands, Sunday, July 15, 2012 8:51 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

=D

i always think that's a cup of sideways coffee

oh it is

no that would be

≈D

8≈≈≈≈≈≈≈D

immanent tea bagging ^^^

it also looks like one of those WAAAAP WAAAP WAP WAP aliens from Sesame Street