getfiscal posted:the prompt for the management class was something like: "explain how the workplace in the film 'office space' was dysfunctional". and you were supposed to be like oh the guy had excessive ownership over his stapler and should have been a team player or something. and too many TPS reports. but i stayed up all night trying to force myself to write that bullshit and i was like naw. so i wrote a long essay about how no productive work is performed in the film and that everything they do is ultimately meaningless because they are not producing use-values or whatever. i said that the tendency to lie and steal was rational given that their work was meaningless. i wasn't trying to be dumb i just really thought that that was what was up.
PC Load Letter: Error And Facsimile In The Pre-Idiocracy Information Economy
c_man posted:a better version of that chart would be if the bottom half were the star trek federation on the left and the star wars rebels on the right
wouldnt you describe the federation and especially its military wing starfleet as incredibly authoritarian though tbh
it only hides these elements by virtue of existing in a post-scarcity society
Lykourgos posted:how did grover furr own mccaine
not saying that's an impress feat or anything, though
MindMaster posted:babyhueypnewton posted:MindMaster posted:isnt the empire from star wars clearly leftist?
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3514675&userid=118075&perpage=40&pagenumber=1
read supermechagodzilla's posts itt for all your marxist-leninist star wars needsthese are a fun read thanks
Obsessive fandom (of the sort that results in Wookiepedia) is fueled by fantasy of total positive knowledge. Star Wars fans desire 'answers' that will provide a complete picture of the Star Wars virtual universe, so that its entire teleological design can be fully comprehended. (What are the clone wars, how did Yoda use a lightsaber, etc.) Since no such design actually exists, the point of fandom is the desiring itself. Fans do not 'actually' want these answers. It's just endless desire. And Lucasarts has gladly catered to with the endless supply of tantalizing 'Expanded Universe' materials cataloged as Wookiepedia.
YES!
i think tolkien understood this very well in a conservative way, with tolkien things were mentioned (the "lost continents", the background of the bad guy), but they were always in the background, consciously intended to function similar to the skybox or low-res renditions of distant buildings in a videogame, not to be examined too closely. the proper radical thing to do is to create a fiction which approaches these barriers without making them "clear", since making them clear simply creates a barrier of the real which recedes forever
the part where SMG owns a bunch of liberal tumblrites is sweet. now i know the prequels are revolutionary and i still have to purge myself of liberalism more.
babyhueypnewton posted:MindMaster posted:babyhueypnewton posted:MindMaster posted:isnt the empire from star wars clearly leftist?
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3514675&userid=118075&perpage=40&pagenumber=1
read supermechagodzilla's posts itt for all your marxist-leninist star wars needsthese are a fun read thanks
Obsessive fandom (of the sort that results in Wookiepedia) is fueled by fantasy of total positive knowledge. Star Wars fans desire 'answers' that will provide a complete picture of the Star Wars virtual universe, so that its entire teleological design can be fully comprehended. (What are the clone wars, how did Yoda use a lightsaber, etc.) Since no such design actually exists, the point of fandom is the desiring itself. Fans do not 'actually' want these answers. It's just endless desire. And Lucasarts has gladly catered to with the endless supply of tantalizing 'Expanded Universe' materials cataloged as Wookiepedia.
YES!
i think tolkien understood this very well in a conservative way, with tolkien things were mentioned (the "lost continents", the background of the bad guy), but they were always in the background, consciously intended to function similar to the skybox or low-res renditions of distant buildings in a videogame, not to be examined too closely. the proper radical thing to do is to create a fiction which approaches these barriers without making them "clear", since making them clear simply creates a barrier of the real which recedes foreverthe part where SMG owns a bunch of liberal tumblrites is sweet. now i know the prequels are revolutionary and i still have to purge myself of liberalism more.
i like how you made it so that you only see his posts (i just finished reading all of them) it makes it seem like the people he quotes are really a single dumbfuck ogre which exists solely to ask him convenient questions.
MindMaster posted:i think tolkien understood this very well in a conservative way, with tolkien things were mentioned (the "lost continents", the background of the bad guy), but they were always in the background, consciously intended to function similar to the skybox or low-res renditions of distant buildings in a videogame, not to be examined too closely. the proper radical thing to do is to create a fiction which approaches these barriers without making them "clear", since making them clear simply creates a barrier of the real which recedes forever
except when he actually wrote about all of that garbage in gory detail
c_man posted:MindMaster posted:i think tolkien understood this very well in a conservative way, with tolkien things were mentioned (the "lost continents", the background of the bad guy), but they were always in the background, consciously intended to function similar to the skybox or low-res renditions of distant buildings in a videogame, not to be examined too closely. the proper radical thing to do is to create a fiction which approaches these barriers without making them "clear", since making them clear simply creates a barrier of the real which recedes forever
except when he actually wrote about all of that garbage in gory detail
well when did he do that? maybe we are thinking of two different things. i don't mean the fights or killings, i mean the glimpses of background information you get which suggest more depth than there actually is (which is a good thing)
Edited by ArisVelouchiotis ()
MindMaster posted:well when did he do that? maybe we are thinking of two different things. i don't mean the fights or killings, i mean the glimpses of background information you get which suggest more depth than there actually is (which is a good thing)
c_man posted:MindMaster posted:well when did he do that? maybe we are thinking of two different things. i don't mean the fights or killings, i mean the glimpses of background information you get which suggest more depth than there actually is (which is a good thing)
yeah i know, but that book is very strange. it's not told as a factual account but as an obvious myth from inside the world itself (i think it's even framed in a heart of darkness sort of way in the book, i don't remember, i haven't read it in a long time, or maybe that was the lord of the rings itself). it's not told as "fact" but enhances the idea that the world itself is virtual - also notice the map of tolkien's worlds, they're always framed after narrative rather than "realistic" geological ideas with impossible mountain ranges and rivers.
what i also liked in tolkien was that the elves werent some master race but were implied to be damned by virtue of their own immortal infinity. they were envious of men because men have genuine agency because of their limited lifespans and abilities
i'm not going to say that tolkien was a great writer or anything because ahah he wasnt but he was a relatively intelligent conservative in the same vein as chesterton, though not as skilled
MindMaster posted:(i think it's even framed in a heart of darkness sort of way in the book, i don't remember, i haven't read it in a long time, or maybe that was the lord of the rings itself)
wrong. factually incorrect. aahahahahaha sorry chum. this is where it ends. there's no coming back. hang up your posting pants, bang your head against the wall repeatedly and cry and cry and cry and cry and cry, for you are literally and officially Wrong
c_man posted:what? i started reading it a while ago and iirc it started off with god creating the universe without any sort of metatextuality
that was the main series then, but still i recall that it wasnt told as the kind of positive truth that would make up a wiki, everything became progressively more mythlike, with less characterization and detail the further back in "time" you went, and i remember other details like that as well. i recall that you don't like zizek (or did you?), but:
In today’s proliferation of new forms of spirituality, it is often difficult to recognize the authentic traces of a Christianity which remains faithful to its own theologico-political core. A hint was provided by G.K. Chesterton, who turned around the standard (mis)perception according to which the ancient pagan attitude is one of the joyful assertion of life, while Christianity imposes a somber order of guilt and renunciation. It is, on the contrary, the pagan stance which is deeply melancholic: even if it preaches a pleasurable life, it is in the mode of “enjoy it while it lasts, because, in the end, there is always death and decay.” The message of Christianity is, on the contrary, one of an infinite joy beneath the deceptive surface of guilt and renunciation: “The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children, and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom.”
Is not Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings the ultimate proof of this paradox? Only a devout Christian could have imagined such a magnificent pagan universe, thereby confirming that paganism is the ultimate Christian dream. Which is why the conservative Christian critics who expressed their concern at how The Lord of the Rings undermines Christianity with its portrayal of pagan magic miss the point, i.e., the perverse conclusion which is unavoidable here: You want to enjoy the pagan dream of pleasurable life without paying the price of melancholic sadness for it? Choose Christianity!
This is why C.S. Lewis’s vision of Narnia is ultimately a failure: it doesn’t work because it tries to infuse the pagan mythic universe with Christian motifs (the Christ-like sacrifice of the lion in the first novel, etc.). Instead of Christianizing paganism, such a move paganizes Christianity, re-inscribing it back into the pagan universe where it simply doesn’t belong—the result is a false pagan myth.
(god in pain)
i remember a letter by tolkien in some foreword or something which actually says this directly, it was addressed to a priest who criticized him for his "paganism" and he gave a reply stressing the endless multiplicity of god, how it is a neccessary feature of god that he survives universalization. the whole central theme of tolkien is the way in which true agency and humanity is always structurally limited, which is why the all knowing and all capable elves can't do anything, their knowledge bars them from true belief.
TG posted:also, mindmaster, what youre describing sounds more like the book of lost tales, which has the framing device of a mortal man who visits the elves where they tell him stories that make up their mythology
oh yeah i remember reading this too but it wasn't what i was thinking of, i think in the beginning of the lord of the rings he says something like "this whole story is a book i found somewhere written by a guy long ago"
but yeah i think the story you're describing is how you should read tolkien in general, it's supposed to be a virtual mythic world with a few real characters in it.
you can do the whole lacanian spiel where the ring is the object cause of desire (round because "orbital", circling a void) and the becoming invisible is the passage from meaningless, mythic symbolic-real into horrifying real-real, inserting the finger into the hole of the ring is an image of a penis penetrating a vagina, a more subtle phallic metaphor than an actual penis-shaped object, etc but this feels almost a little too easy. the only important thing is that the world becomes derealized in the ring-reality because that is how it really is
it wouldve been a better story if he had just been a more evocative writer though, and didnt use as many tedious songs. his strong suit are the descriptions of landscapes (always empty and devoid of what we would consider realistic infrastructure or features, except for a few isolated areas like the hobbits' land) but it's not really readable to me anymore
also old chub is 8% and is the most delicious beer ever
TG posted:most ipas are ~8% and also dont taste like piss
also old chub is 8% and is the most delicious beer ever
sorry for your broken palate
TG posted:most ipas are ~8% and also dont taste like piss
the first is wrong, the second depends on how hydrated you are
