Great Quotes

Ah, I see. What a male-chaivinist twerp! I'm glad he gets poisoned in the end!

No kidding, Irnia. If he were only playing mad, why didn't he let Ophelia in on it? Jerk. Why does the woman always end up dead or ruined because of some idiot guy and his big plans?

Cos otherwise it wouldn't be a tragedy?

Oh Corwin, can't people have tragedies just by taking revenge on their mom and uncle without screwing over someone innocent?

I bet you are going to tell me that Greek men who fooled around on their wives and destroyed the lives of young women who fell for them were "heroes". No wonder Cybele turned the lot of them into pigs. Seems to be little change, really.

That has always disturbed me a bit about Hamlet. Among other things. The best defense I can offer, at the moment, would be this: Hamlet is a real person who has been subjected to a terrible trauma, discovering that his mother has successfully conspired with his father's brother to murder his father. It is of course totally irrational and unjust of him to take this out on Ophelia, who is apparently unconnected with the crime. Being a real human being and not an ideal rational being, he responds in irrational and unconstructive ways. One of his responses is to generalize from his mother to all womankind; another is to overgeneralize to as to condemn all sexuality ("take thee to a nunnery). Shakespeare is not saying, "If you find out that your mother has done something like this, you should take it out on your girlfriend." he's saying that in fact, alas, people will do this sort of thing, sometimes. This is a tragic fact about the human condition: we have the ability to have deep moral insights, but under stress, we can radically fail to live up to them. Hamlet's trauma causes him to question everything, even the value of human life itself. He is clearly very bright and serious, and given time and peace, he might have eventually worked his way out of it, but events move too fast.

I would add that I would hesitate to draw any conclusions about men in general from the story of Hamlet, just as I would not draw conclusions about women in general from the fact that Medea makes soup out of her children.

Besides, however terrible men may be, they do have that wonderful jar icy duh thing... [shudders]

Hee hee, I wasn't really generalizing about men, I was objecting to a common trend of "heroes" and the like treating other people as objects, a means to an end, and how infrequently this behavior is commented on.

BTW you know that "nunnery" was code for whore house, right? He was being quite rude, our mad Dane. Not saying it's not human, just saying that a people could object to using others that way, even if "love" and sexual politics are involved. It's also wrong of hot women to pretend they are interested in desperate, unattractive men for fun and profit. There are just fewer stories where the heroine does that and it's not even a side note. Most bad girls in stories die gruesome deaths and pay for their evil ways.

Well, Hamlet dies, too. But I'm not sure that we really disagree about anything at this point.

thanks for the conversation Ulrike, I did laugh out loud.
Ulrike: hello
prob: Why hello, Ulrike
Ulrike: Why not hello?
prob: I don't want to.
Ulrike: What's wrong with helloing?
prob: There is nothing wrong with hello, if you can stand that sort of thing.
Ulrike: Can you stand that sort of thing?
prob: I don't see where this is going... but, yes, I can stand that sort of thing.
Ulrike: Then what's the problem?
prob: Oh, I know you know what 'the problem' means!
Ulrike: But not what the problem IS.
prob: I believe your trying to tell me something.
Ulrike: My trying to tell you something didn't say anything.
prob: Then I will try to listen more carefully. It's not like I just ramble on and take no heed to what others say.
Ulrike: What about the purple mangroves?
prob: Purple is a royal color. and the color of lilacs. Did you know there are two old words that rhyme with purple? Hurple, that means to limp, and curple that is the second cinch like strap on a saddle. PURPLE
Ulrike: And yet, neither is a mangrove.
prob: In this neighborhood, heros are scarce.
Ulrike: Are mangroves your heroes?
prob: What have you been doing lately? Have you had any fun, or adventure?
Ulrike: I walked an excitable dog yesterday, and dug a bucket of dandelions.
prob: What can be said of the dreaded Monday?
Ulrike: That it was quite a lovely day?
prob: When the day is nice and the breeze blows, yes, I do.
Ulrike: You call Monday dreaded then?
prob: I seem to eat a lot of chocolate on Mondays.
Ulrike: Only on Monday? What about on the other days?
prob: Monday is a tough day!
Ulrike: No. It's not.
prob: Well, I am just not convinced, I think it was.
Ulrike: It's no tougher than any other day of the week, except after daylight savings. Maybe.
prob: You don't have to, you know.
Ulrike: Have to what? Change clocks at daylight savings?
prob: I slip quietly through morning mists, I leave no footprint upon the sand. Why would I not change clocks at daylight savings, if I wanted?
Ulrike: Probably because you have no clocks to change.
prob: If you wanted some, you should have asked earlier.
Ulrike: I don't want any more clocks.
prob: You don't, not at all, ever?
Ulrike: Not until some of them break down.
prob: Do you still think it can be used to sort acids and bases?
Ulrike: Depends on the antecedent of that pronoun.
prob: Just be careful what you say to Airi, she is a bigger gossip than I am.
Ulrike: Bigger in what sense?
prob: Wait one second, I think we need to define big, like with a standard unit of measurement, here.
Ulrike: Exactly. So what's your standard unit?
prob: You know, it's similar to being stock or standardized.
Ulrike: So...bigger means standardized? *scratches head*
prob: What dimentions make big, be exact?
Ulrike: THat's what I'm trying to find out.
prob: Are you kidding me? You are sure you are trying to find out?
Ulrike: Yes. Haven't you been paying attention?
prob: , Ulrike.

Adult..but I had to agree with the guest.
Guest188: your the virtual asshole, at least i'm a real one