"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
Category: I do these sorts of things so you don’t have to
So, I decided to give the first epi of “Zero Hour” a shot. Big mistake.
Let me digress. Gentle readers, you know my opinion of Dan Brown’s “works”. I’d generally rather read something written by a rabid baboon than subject myself to one of his pieces of feces. “Zero Hour” was conceived and written by a less talented aspirant to Dan Brown’s mantle who’d been lobotomized and suffered a stroke, then was gotten drunk and slapped upside the head and given a crayon to scribble with.
But I praise it too highly.
Gagamaggot. It made me want to scoop my eyes out with a spoon.
Not even going to hint at this book’s title. From the first paragraph of the prologue:
“. . .light of the two moons surrounding the planet. . .”
WTFugeddaboutreadingit?!? Trying to imagine how someone could even THINK of “two moons surrounding [a] planet” is not something I want to deal with any more than I want to deal with a book written by someone who could even possibly imagine such a turn of phrase, let alone actually use it in a novel.
Book has a “four star” rating out of five on Amazon, which tells me that there are a LOT of stupid people reading and rating books on Amazon. Or else all the raters are the author’s mother under different screen names.
. . .for a “Free! Save $12.95!” book. You tell me:
“This is a story about loss, overcoming adversity, and the triumph of the human spirit. . . “
Right. Nuh-uh. Not reading a thinly-disguised (or not at all disguised) touchy-feely crap. Clicking on by. . .
*meh* I purchased another 18 books this last week that ALL looked like much better bets than the one described by the blurb that began with the above off-putting remark. *heh* Three “new” purchases were from the book cart at the local library, picked up today when I returned the ones I checked out last Saturday. Between all the books in my own library, “discoveries” (mostly its new acquisitions) at the local public library and ebooks, I have quite enough books lined up to read without messing about with someone trying too hard and going all “emo” in my eyeballs.
Whether one considers social networking forums, specialty forums focused on whatever topic, blogs, or even professional “news” outlets and “scholarly” articles posted on the Internet, I’ve come to the conclusion that well over half the people that present themselves as English speakers would benefit greatly from buying and religiously using Rosetta Stone English Level 1 for as long as it takes to master basic–very basic–English.
*sigh* It’s just one more thing in a long, long list of dirty laundry issuing from an increasingly dumbed down popular culture, but it’s one of those things that irk me even more than people who have apparently been jamming a fork behind their eyeballs and stirring long enough to miss the first R in FebRuary. *sigh*
Whadafug you talkin’ ’bout, Willis?
OK, I’ll just let that one slide and answer the question anyway.
This A.M. I woke hearing a children’s song–well, almost always sung as a children’s song–in my mind’s ear. A real earworm the thing is. Anywho, After a couple of hours, I thought, “Hmm, Self, I wonder if folks have posted any YouTube videos of this song?” So, in answer to my question to Self, I did what any moderately curious person asking such a question of Self might do and input a lil searcherooo.
Yep. Lots of folks have posted videos of the song, and of the first page of searches returned EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM RENDERS THE TUNE DIFFERENTLY AND ALL OF THEM WRONG. “Why,” I asked Myself, “would these people who can play guitar or piano (well, keyboard) get the tune wrong–sometimes by one note in a phrase, sometimes by several?”
They’re illiterate. The song isn’t some folk song but has an actual composer and actual written music and lyrics still under copyright. Sure, anyone can get a mechanical license to produce a version of the song, but any even semi-musically-literate person should AT LEAST be able to GET THE NOTES RIGHT–at least ONCE!
Searching instead for the first recording of the song–by Peggy Lee of all folks!–yields someone who WAS musically literate actually singing the notes that Arthur Hamilton wrote:
Any moderately musically literate person will hear many, many examples of performers (I refuse to call them “artists”) rendering otherwise well-known tunes wrong–usually in ways that limit the range of notes, narrowing the tune to eliminate intervals that either the singer or his audience can’t discern.
Yeh, yeh, it’s just a kids’ song, and most of the other music butchered by pop ears and performances is just pop fluff, but it’s also another area where our culture is getting dumber and dumber.
Think about two common meanings of “dumb” there. When the culture becomes UNABLE to express certain things because it’s both dimmer-witted–lacking the wit to express something–and “mute” as it were, lacking the actual means of expressing a thing, then that area of the culture is drifting into a “dark age” where not onl;y does it not know how to do something but it is losing the memory of once being able to do a thing.
And it’s not just music that this applies to in our culture, folks. A widespread Dark Age coming. . . maybe.
Sure, when I was a wee tad, I occasionally heard strange word pronunciations (strange to my ear because I lived in a somewhat literate family environment and began reading at an early age), like “warsh rag” for “wash cloth” (“warsh” never seemed to be accompanied by “cloth” for some reason) and “drore” for “drawer”. Somehow, though, I was never exposed during my formative years to people who simply could not pronounce the months of the year correctly. Hence my least favorite month of the year, a time of the year nowadays when I have to continually bite my tongue to keep from shouting
Answer: It’s the guy with the bad golf swing who’s also poorly photoshopped to back up the laughable claim that he goes skeet shooting “all the time”.
Note: the photoshopped pic purporting to be of The Zero with his saddle oxfords, golf gloves and a shotgun turned up in a Tweet from New Republic with a link to a fake White House site. TNR, of course, is just anther limb of the Democrat Octopoid Hivemind. Since it was caught out, it’s tried to blame its stupidity on Twitter.
What? Oh, this article about the feds making those who unlock their dumb phones criminals. Sure, the info is pretty much useless to Olde Phartes like me who just use a cell phone to make calls (don’t try calling my cell phone, cos I won’t answer), but it’s interesting nonetheless.
Still, how many times can one read something like,
“There’s more than a few ways around this. . . “
. . . without gagging and searching for a way to dopeslap, then tar, feather and hang the author from the highest tree?
There ARE. . . ways, idiot. Count it out. Plural. Got it? (No. He can’t count and can’t parse a simple sentence in English. Typical Hiveminder.)
