View Full Version : Weirdest conversations you've overheard
Post all weird conversations that you've overheard in public places.
One was at a zoo, and there was a steep slope and I overheard a little kid saying "can we ski down this hill, mummy?". Then the mother said, "I think you need snow for that, dear".
I also heard at a car boot sale, and this is more or less the exact wording,
"I came upon a blackbird in my bedroom this morning incidently, and the only way I could extract is was with a union jack!"
Another one was this foreign couple trying to speak english, it was obviously english but I couldn't understand a word they said, but for some reason every sentance they said ended with the word "car".
Another one was in a coffee shop, there was this teenage boy, and he was looking at the new twenty pound note with a friend. He said, "I think the queen looks nicer on this, more like a mum, although I don't think she'd steal your pocket money when she can't pay the window cleaners".
The strangest conversations I've overheard were to "strange" for me to keep listening.
But one I do recall is someone talking about how the male genitals are clean and that you shouldn't be ashamed to touch it it because it's not dirty if you wash it. And so if someone touches it, they shouldn't feel like their hand is dirty.
This conversation happened as I was walking in the guys bathroom at school. Needless to say I walked out right after hearing that, because they were at stalls right next to each other, and they didn't know I was there.
No, I'm not joking either.
And, why is PEN15 blocked? Where all old enough to use that word, aren't we?
And, why is PEN15 blocked? Where all old enough to use that word, aren't we?
Well, I'm 13 and my parents won't let me say that.
I can't think of any strange conversations I've heard at this current moment. But i'll keep thinking.
EDIT: Wait, I can think of one...
(warning: contains what COULD be called racism)
Me and my family were at a rowing tournament that my brother was racing in.
After the first race I overheard a coach giving a debriefing to his crew saying "Ok well that was ok racing but you HAVE to remember that in sport, there is no "i" in team."
The coach then turns to a black skinned crew member and says "but there's a "u" in cu** "
At least, that's how I remember it.
I'm suprised people like that are ever employed to be coaches.
Well, I'm 13 and my parents won't let me say that.
Why not?
Penıs is the medical term for it. That's what doctors call it too.
What term do they let you say? Pecker? Dick? Shlong?
Shlong? I've not heard that one before :confused:
Alien King
3 Jun 2007, 21:03
Shlong? I've not heard that one before :confused:
Have you not? I've always thought it to be the most imaginitive.
And bonz is right, peni5 is the most technically correct word for it.
AndrewTaylor
3 Jun 2007, 21:20
Please let's not start this discussion.
*Splinter*
3 Jun 2007, 22:12
*Crazy old bearded lady ambles up to me and friends*
"BLESSINGS FROM THE DINOSAURS"
*ambles past*
Shlong? I've not heard that one before :confused:
NSFW - NSFW - NSFW
Do a Wikipedia search (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shlong). ;)
NSFW - NSFW - NSFW
SupSuper
4 Jun 2007, 01:49
NSFW - NSFW - NSFW
Do a Wikipedia search (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shlong). ;)
NSFW - NSFW - NSFW:eek: That's far more pen1s than I should ever have to look at...
Pigbuster
4 Jun 2007, 03:47
NSFW - NSFW - NSFW
Do a Wikipedia search (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shlong). ;)
NSFW - NSFW - NSFW
NSFW. :p
Star Worms
4 Jun 2007, 14:05
While in the lab getting blood from anaethetised mice: "This one's not breathing.... I think it's dead"
NSFW - NSFW - NSFW
Do a Wikipedia search (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shlong). ;)
NSFW - NSFW - NSFW
:confused:
*listens to more Pink Floyd to ease the pain* :p
"And the worms ate into his brain."
The coach then turns to a black skinned crew member and says "but there's a "u" in cu** "
Why is that racist? It's didn't have to be about his race, he could have been a **** for any NUMBER of reasons.
That's far more pen1s than I should ever have to look at... I shudder to think what kind of person would get a piercing there.
Anyway, to try to drive this thread vaguely back on topic (although it is still distinctly pen1s related), I once heard a girl in my form describing what I can only imagine was a very retarded deam. I didn't hear most of it, but I remember them talking about a man with pen1ses coming out of his arms (with hand gestures). Luckily I never have to see them again.
SupSuper
4 Jun 2007, 17:43
Sounds like she's been watching too much japanese porn.
Also, I'm not Bonz. :p
Alien King
4 Jun 2007, 17:50
Why is that racist? It's didn't have to be about his race, he could have been a **** for any NUMBER of reasons.
I can't find anyone saying it was.
Ok I'll edit my last post.
Now why don't we all get back on topic and stop talking about p- *AHEM*, yes.
wigwam the
4 Jun 2007, 20:44
I once overheard someone- while leaving school-
"hitler was really a giant frog"
Is Hitler really in the conspiracy of all important people being reptiles from space?
Sounds like she's been watching too much japanese porn.
Also, I'm not Bonz. :p
Very probably, she seemed like the type.
And yea, sorry about that. :o
AndrewTaylor
5 Jun 2007, 10:14
Is Hitler really in the conspiracy of all important people being reptiles from space?
I think you can put anyone you want in there -- it will remain equally false.
That's what they want you to beleive..
*Splinter*
5 Jun 2007, 18:50
Are we allowed to enter conversations we were involved in?
*long silence*
Craig: singing
"Nig. Nog. The cow says wog. Everybodys such a cooooon.
Pull the trigger out comes a nigger, everybodys such a cooooon."
*silence*
Me: "Man Craig you're friggin weird..."
EDIT: Gasp! Why isnt THE N WORD censored? :eek:
shadowman
5 Jun 2007, 23:20
... wow.
The N word isn't censored, but my shlong is? Aaaanyways, I've had quite a few. Like once, well, this one was typed.
?: How would you like to die?
Me: Any way as long as I'm not there to see it. Then I remembered Rimmer.
Much laughing ensued.
Maybe you had to be there; my Dad and I are big Red Dwarf fans.
*I'm gonna eat you little chickie. I'm gonna eat you little chickie. I'm gonna eat you little chickie. Cuz I like eating chicks.*
And before Slick gets here, Cat was talking about a chicken.
Pigbuster
6 Jun 2007, 03:51
The N word isn't censored because this is a British forum.
...or something.
Isn't it offensive over there, too?
The N word isn't censored because this is a British forum.
...or something.
Isn't it offensive over there, too?
I don't think it's as bad as over in the US.
Jimbob jr.
6 Jun 2007, 13:43
I knew some guy that kept randomly shouting: "I am not a dinosaur" really loudly (not on his own, or i'd have been scared stiff)
http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/
robowurmz
8 Jun 2007, 08:46
Well, this is a wierd conversation I was part of, and overheard.
There's this guy at my school called Angus, so he comes up to me and says, "If we roasted our own meat, what would we taste like?". I, being completely baffled by his inane logic, replied, "Mr.Burgess the Geography teacher went to the Amazon and asked some cannibals what it was like, and they said pork."
"Thanks!"
They walked out the door, and just on the edge of earshot, the guy next to Angus said, "So you're pork..."
Paul.Power
12 Jun 2007, 17:58
It's nine years old now, but:
In Welsh class:
Pupil: "Sir, why do we have to learn Welsh?"
Teacher: "Because Welsh is the language of Heaven, boyo!"
pilot62
12 Jun 2007, 18:15
The only time I've really seen written Welsh is on my English GCSE papers.
How's that for irrelevant irony?
Paul.Power
13 Jun 2007, 00:19
The only time I've really seen written Welsh is on my English GCSE papers.
How's that for irrelevant irony?WJEC board?
pilot62
13 Jun 2007, 11:07
Yep. Although considering all the questions and extracts/poems etc are in English, I find the Welsh instructions a bit pointless even for Welsh speakers.
AndrewTaylor
13 Jun 2007, 12:05
No, that's fair enough. I can see why they did that.
Our English Literature GCSE paper had a section on "poems from other cultures and traditions", though, including at least one that was not written in English.
That's like setting maths problems on a French exam.
Alien King
13 Jun 2007, 12:49
Our English Literature GCSE paper had a section on "poems from other cultures and traditions", though, including at least one that was not written in English.
It would have been cruel if they asked you to investigate the use of language in said poem.
AndrewTaylor
13 Jun 2007, 13:32
There was a translation alongside it, but really, that's still not in any meaningful sense "English Literature".
Alien King
13 Jun 2007, 13:34
There was a translation alongside it, but really, that's still not in any meaningful sense "English Literature".
Indeed.
Fortunatly for me, my English GCSE was seperate from the optional, English Lit GCSE.
I still had to do poems from other cultures though.
Paul.Power
13 Jun 2007, 14:26
No, that's fair enough. I can see why they did that.
Our English Literature GCSE paper had a section on "poems from other cultures and traditions", though, including at least one that was not written in English.
That's like setting maths problems on a French exam.Oh, I don't know, maths problems in a French exam wouldn't be so bad.
They'd probably just give you some numbers in French, let you do the working out, and then expect you to give the answer in French.
As long as it's simple-level arithmetic that could be taught simply by telling people what the equivalent words for "plus", "minus" and so on were, what's the problem? French people have to do sums too y'know.
Alien King
13 Jun 2007, 14:38
Oh, I don't know, maths problems in a French exam wouldn't be so bad.
They'd probably just give you some numbers in French, let you do the working out, and then expect you to give the answer in French.
As long as it's simple-level arithmetic that could be taught simply by telling people what the equivalent words for "plus", "minus" and so on were, what's the problem? French people have to do sums too y'know.
Yes, but solving a quadratic would be a bit much.
Although, that is drifting away from basic arithmetic.
pilot62
13 Jun 2007, 19:40
Indeed.
Fortunatly for me, my English GCSE was seperate from the optional, English Lit GCSE.
I still had to do poems from other cultures though.
Our poems from other cultures weren't actually from oher cultures. The main one we did was a half Pakistani who'd lived her entire life in England. Apart from the fact she was half pakistani, it was exactly like any other English poem.
Yes, but solving a quadratic would be a bit much.
Although, that is drifting away from basic arithmetic.
True, but given some of the people in my French class have proved they can't take the dates someone went on holiday away from each other, I think even basic arithmatic might be a bit much.
Alien King
13 Jun 2007, 19:44
Our poems from other cultures weren't actually from oher cultures. The main one we did was a half Pakistani who'd lived her entire life in England. Apart from the fact she was half pakistani, it was exactly like any other English poem.
The poems we had were in English, but some were about other cultures. I think...
In anycase, I've never like poetry. I really hate the questions the exam board set too.
Maths and Science are so much easier at GCSE level (for me in anycase).
Anyway, this is thread was derailed a long time ago. Mabye we should get back on track.
Jimbob jr.
14 Jun 2007, 08:31
Oh, I don't know, maths problems in a French exam wouldn't be so bad.
They'd probably just give you some numbers in French, let you do the working out, and then expect you to give the answer in French.
As long as it's simple-level arithmetic that could be taught simply by telling people what the equivalent words for "plus", "minus" and so on were, what's the problem? French people have to do sums too y'know.
But 'plus' and 'moins' are so easy cos they're used in french a lot.
Paul.Power
14 Jun 2007, 10:25
Anyway, this is thread was derailed a long time ago. Mabye we should get back on track.There's something incongruous about the fact that I was the last person to make an on-topic post.
Although it could be argued that I sent this thread off topic without even trying, such is the power of my offtopicness.
Alas, I cannot really make an on-topic contribution to this thread to get it back on the rails. I had to go back nine years to give you one weird conversational snippet.
pilot62
14 Jun 2007, 13:59
The poems we had were in English, but some were about other cultures. I think...
In anycase, I've never like poetry. I really hate the questions the exam board set too.
Maths and Science are so much easier at GCSE level (for me in anycase).
Anyway, this is thread was derailed a long time ago. Mabye we should get back on track.
What board do you do? We did WJEC and or Lit. poem was *evil*.
Maths and Science are much easier, but geography has been a complete doss these last few years.
The topic is dead anyway.
yappydog
14 Jun 2007, 15:13
Weirdest thing I've overheard recently:
A group of students who generally discuss nothing but how to destroy pink computer-generated creatures suddenly started talking about quadratics written in French and poetry from other cultures.
It was really creepy.
;) :p
Alien King
14 Jun 2007, 16:20
What board do you do? We did WJEC and or Lit. poem was *evil*.
Maths and Science are much easier, but geography has been a complete doss these last few years.
The topic is dead anyway.
Edexcel
Science (Double Award), History, Music, ICT (DiDA), Spanish (I think).
AQA
Maths, English (I think), Product Design
English was either AQA or Edexcel, but I'm pretty sure it was AQA.
The_Reapr
14 Jun 2007, 19:02
God, that bloody poem about the shop bloke was awful.
Plenty of surreal conversations occur around these parts. While I can't, and in any case wouldn't, quote it verbatim, there was one hour long discussion debating whether or not turtles ate jellyfish.
I had no idea how on earth the conversation got onto that, so I asked. What I got in return was something involving a rabbit backing into a tunnel to avoid a fox (apparently they didn't know whether or not rabbits could move backwards, and so debated whether a rabbit would sense things behind them - I dunno, whatever), and then into a balloon, which sort of looks like a jellyfish. Or something like that.
I couldn't make this stuff up if I wanted to. Really.
AndrewTaylor
14 Jun 2007, 19:54
We never did that one. We did William Blake.
Personally, I can't stand his poems. They're trite, clichéd, and the rhymes are tortured at best. And I object to the pretentious retention of the archaic spelling "tyger". I mean, what kind of a poem is this -- and bear in mind this guy is heralded as one of English literature's greats:
I was angry at my friend
I told my wrath; my wrath did end
I was angry at my foe
I told it not; my wrath did grow.
I don't know if people talked that way in his time, but to my modern ears, the use of the word "did" just sounds like it's in there to make it rhyme, and when something sounds like that, a poet has, in my view, failed. Now compare it to these lines:
I've been hung,
Drawn and quartered,
Slowly slaughtered
Like a goat
By the tongue
Of a woman,
Who just wouldn't
Let it go
That's a far more complex rhyme pattern, all done in little tiny short lines so he has to rhyme every few words, and it still sounds totally natural. If I hadn't put the line breaks in, you'd probably not have noticed it rhyming at all. Those lines of "poetry" were written by Neil Hannon, for an album track on Absent Friends, and a song with enough melodic complexity that it really doesn't need clever words to carry it.
So someone explain to me why Blake is a better poet than Hannon. He didn't even do tunes for his stuff. And his woodprints were rubbish as well.
We never did that one. We did William Blake.
Personally, I can't stand his poems. They're trite, clichéd, and the rhymes are tortured at best. And I object to the pretentious retention of the archaic spelling "tyger". I mean, what kind of a poem is this -- and bear in mind this guy is heralded as one of English literature's greats:
English poetry is one of those 'modern art' things. In other words, it only makes sense if you're on drugs.
pilot62
14 Jun 2007, 23:28
Edexcel
Science (Double Award), History, Music, ICT (DiDA), Spanish (I think).
AQA
Maths, English (I think), Product Design
English was either AQA or Edexcel, but I'm pretty sure it was AQA.
I don't think I do any excedel, we're mostly OCR. Did AQA Maths though, that was great fun (as far as maths tests go).
We never did that one. We did William Blake.
Personally, I can't stand his poems. They're trite, clichéd, and the rhymes are tortured at best. And I object to the pretentious retention of the archaic spelling "tyger". I mean, what kind of a poem is this -- and bear in mind this guy is heralded as one of English literature's greats...
Well, to be fair, you can't always compare two poems which were written centuries apart. In the same way, no one would have ever spoken quite like Shakespeare did, with lots of long, archaic and often invented words and phrases, and I know some people who have immense difficulty understanding him, but it doesn't stop him being seen as a literary 'great'. I don't think Blake is cliched as such, at least not at the time, I think it's more the cliches developed from his poems, as he was a very influential poet.
We did 'London' by Blake, and again it had some fairly dubious rhyming, but all in all it was quite a good poem, IMHO. Rhyming isn't everything, he used a wide variety of structural and linguistic techniques: caesura, enjambment, metaphors, etc, and the poem contained a much deeper, more complex and more intelligent meaning than the example you give from Neil Hannon. Poetry isn't, and never has been, a competition to see who can find the most similar sounding words.
I don't see your problem with 'tyger' either. It's one letter different. It doesn't detract from the poem (although to be fair, it doesn't add to it either) and it's supposed to be very good. I'm not sure I agree that it's an excellent poem, and he's certainly not my favourite poet, but I fail to see how you can object to Blake on that basis.
Kelster23
15 Jun 2007, 02:42
English poetry is one of those 'modern art' things. In other words, it only makes sense if you're on drugs.
That and videos like 'Pink Floyd: The Wall' and 'The Beatles: Yellow Submarine"
Anyone ever seen Yellow Submarine? I only watched like the first 15 minutes. Even my mom asked if it was one of those videos that you had to be on drugs to understand...
wormthingy
15 Jun 2007, 09:10
That and videos like 'Pink Floyd: The Wall' and 'The Beatles: Yellow Submarine"
Anyone ever seen Yellow Submarine? I only watched like the first 15 minutes. Even my mom asked if it was one of those videos that you had to be on drugs to understand...
I just looked up the Yellow submarine one. It's awesome. :cool:
'The Beatles: Yellow Submarine"
Anyone ever seen Yellow Submarine? I only watched like the first 15 minutes. Even my mom asked if it was one of those videos that you had to be on drugs to understand...
Oh yeah, I saw some of that too! But yeah, it was AWESOME!
Really though, what were you expecting for a movie started from a song about loads of people who live in a yellow submarine in a green sea?
The_Reapr
15 Jun 2007, 13:25
Well, that is a crap poem. It's like that... god knows what film it was. Had Clive Owen, heralded as a powerful British drama, all it was was two bloody hours to get the point across that there are shades of grey in all things. I suppose at least the poem is straight forward. I mean, it's impossible to not understand it.
What causes all this holding up crap poets as literary greats is a bunch of folk with too much time on their hands finding hidden meanings that were probably never even intended. I much prefer the literary works of 4.252.99.182. Now his work has meaning.
I once tried to prove my point on the whole thing once in my English class - two bloody pieces of coursework on poetry. I debated that anyone can make up a bunch of irrelevant comments about a grouping of words and make them seem insightful. My teacher challenged me to prove it.
So I explained the complex meaning of Lordi's Bringing Back The Balls To Rock, saying f' all on the spot. I mean, their character Biomechanic Man is clearly an examination of the state of affairs caused by the Industrial Revolution.
It is probably the only time the line "The Devil is a loser and he's my *****" has been cited in a piece of prospective coursework.
For those wondering who or what 4.252.99.182 is, I recommend you read the superb Fisher Price by him.
pilot62
15 Jun 2007, 18:59
What causes all this holding up crap poets as literary greats is a bunch of folk with too much time on their hands finding hidden meanings that were probably never even intended. I much prefer the literary works of 4.252.99.182. Now his work has meaning.
I once tried to prove my point on the whole thing once in my English class - two bloody pieces of coursework on poetry. I debated that anyone can make up a bunch of irrelevant comments about a grouping of words and make them seem insightful. My teacher challenged me to prove it.
So I explained the complex meaning of Lordi's Bringing Back The Balls To Rock, saying f' all on the spot. I mean, their character Biomechanic Man is clearly an examination of the state of affairs caused by the Industrial Revolution.
It is probably the only time the line "The Devil is a loser and he's my *****" has been cited in a piece of prospective coursework.
For those wondering who or what 4.252.99.182 is, I recommend you read the superb Fisher Price by him.
We read the book to kill a mockingbird, and much the same thing happened. True, it is a book with quite a lot of symbolism in it, but half the hidden meanings our teacher came up with were, frankly, crap.
One boy laughed out loud at our teacher when she read out a list of what she though was symbolism, and she got very angry with us, but we ALL agreed afterwards that she was talking bollocks.
Poetry is even worse, you get people saying the use of any old everyday object symbolises something.
But I don't care any more, I've done my GCSE and I never have to analyse a bloody poem again.
Kelster23
15 Jun 2007, 19:00
Oh yeah, I saw some of that too! But yeah, it was AWESOME!
Really though, what were you expecting for a movie started from a song about loads of people who live in a yellow submarine in a green sea?
I know I wasn't expecting a bunch of blue fluffy things that attack humans with a giant glove monster!
AndrewTaylor
15 Jun 2007, 23:11
Well, to be fair, you can't always compare two poems which were written centuries apart. In the same way, no one would have ever spoken quite like Shakespeare did, with lots of long, archaic and often invented words and phrases, and I know some people who have immense difficulty understanding him, but it doesn't stop him being seen as a literary 'great'.
Doesn't teaching 15 year olds Blake and Shakespeare (or worse still, Oliver Sodding Twist, a so continuously featureless tome that we skipped large chunks of it at our English teacher's recommendation) strike you as being a bit like introducing someone to Radiohead by playing them Kid A and Amnesiac on a constant loop until they get it?
Returning to the subject of Blake's dodgy rhyming, why not just have the poem not rhyme? The moment I'm noticing tortured rhymes, I'm not listening to the poem. They're like bad special effects. They just distract me. That detracts from the poem. If your big ideas are big and clever enough then they should be able to stand on their own merits without a rhyming pattern to support them. So unless people genuinely went around in those days saying "oh, no, I did lose my keys!" that's just... bad poetry. Isn't it?)
We read the book to kill a mockingbird, and much the same thing happened. True, it is a book with quite a lot of symbolism in it, but half the hidden meanings our teacher came up with were, frankly, crap.
One boy laughed out loud at our teacher when she read out a list of what she though was symbolism, and she got very angry with us, but we ALL agreed afterwards that she was talking bollocks.
Poetry is even worse, you get people saying the use of any old everyday object symbolises something
Oh, God yes. We had this poem (from other culture and tradition) called "X". The last line was "x". And our teacher had us write a big list of everything "x" can mean. Oh, my, that was a hell of a list... Jesus. Chi. Ten. Kiss. Wrong. Unknown. Eggs. Football. Buried treasure. Signature. Mulder's informant. Poison. Pornography. Cheap and nasty lager. Former lover. Ray used in medical imaging. Horizontal position. And so on.
I didn't consider it very likely that the author of the poem meant more than two of those things. There simply isn't a character for any list of concepts you care to draw up. This was just a pointless list of gibberish.
PS. Ste, have you taken to referring to authors by their IP addresses?
Paul.Power
15 Jun 2007, 23:36
I enjoyed my Eng Lit set texts. Animal Farm was fun because at the same time we were doing 20th Century Russia as part of our History coursework, leading to a great deal of synergy between the two courses. An Inspector Calls was fun because I just loved reading Inspector Goole's lines. Plus I was still at that age where I still cared about politics (I'm not saying I'm apathetic now: I still care about politics. But I don't care), so the subtext was fun, as well as it being a serious wake-up call regarding Edwardian England and how much the First World War changed everything.
We also got lucky with our Shakespeare play in Eng Lang: Much Ado About Nothing is a Shakespearian comedy that is genuinely funny. Seriously. I mean, usually I find the tragedies funnier (a view admittedly inspired by Humphrey Carpenter's inspired re-telling of Macbeth in Shakespeare Without the Boring Bits and confirmed by I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again's equally inspired parody), but this was one Shakespearian comedy where - somehow - it worked (and oddly, Carpenter's version didn't work as well).
And I object to the pretentious retention of the archaic spelling "tyger".
Spike Milligan (a man who should be on any English poetry syllabus, but regrettably was not on mine) nailed that one:
Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright,
Watch out, you'll set the jungle alight.
The_Reapr
16 Jun 2007, 00:03
PS. Ste, have you taken to referring to authors by their IP addresses?
Alas, I had hoped someone was equally well acquainted (that can't be right, I'm sure) with the Uncyclopedia joke Fisher Price: The Retrospective (http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Fisher_Price:_A_Retrospective). Essentially, they took a 4 word vandalism ("go eat s*** f***ers", apologies for circumventing the filter), and wrote nothing short of an essay on it, drawing ridiculous interpretations of it any English teacher would be proud of.
It's a funny read (albeit not as funny as the original Fisher Price's talk page regarding revert wars), and I thought that it may have had some relevance to the topic at hand (regarding poetry and prose). I used the IP address since, like the article points out, it was a mere vandalism.
Gee, that took longer than I thought to explain. Back to the (current) topic, I too enjoyed An Inspector Calls, yet the only part I really hated of it was the Inspector's monologue towards the end - seemed too forced. Was the point of the play really so much in question?
Paul.Power
16 Jun 2007, 00:25
What we need is an image macro that pairs an appropriate image with the phrase "Gentlemen, the thread is ours".
Ideally, that bit in Pirates of the Carribean that I nicked the phrasing from.
pilot62
16 Jun 2007, 01:13
Doesn't teaching 15 year olds Blake and Shakespeare (or worse still, Oliver Sodding Twist, a so continuously featureless tome that we skipped large chunks of it at our English teacher's recommendation) strike you as being a bit like introducing someone to Radiohead by playing them Kid A and Amnesiac on a constant loop until they get it?
I don't know, it's not as if that's all you do in lessons. Teachers in the higher sets where you do these things in detail would generally expect you to have a reasonable understanding of English to begin with, and they do teach you rather than throwing the books at you. I admit though, there would probably be much better ways of teaching English.
Also, there are plenty of poems that don't rhyme. Most poems do rhyme to some extent, because it makes the poem seem, to paraphrase our teacher, more ordered and structured, and generally it just sounds better, but there are plenty of poems without it.
Gee, that took longer than I thought to explain. Back to the (current) topic, I too enjoyed An Inspector Calls, yet the only part I really hated of it was the Inspector's monologue towards the end - seemed too forced. Was the point of the play really so much in question?
I found the play mostly good, but it began with Birlings huge monologues, which I found boring and largely pointless, and ended with another speech from Inspector Goole, as you said, which basically reiterated the same point a dozen times. Apart from that, I thought it was a good, enjoyable play too.
The only other problem with it for me was that I'm really not a liberal-minded person, and found myself hoping Birling would get out alright, which sort of spoilt the ending for me. I really don't think that's what Priestly intended though. ;)
Oh, God yes. We had this poem (from other culture and tradition) called "X". The last line was "x". And our teacher had us write a big list of everything "x" can mean. Oh, my, that was a hell of a list... Jesus. Chi. Ten. Kiss. Wrong. Unknown. Eggs. Football. Buried treasure. Signature. Mulder's informant. Poison. Pornography. Cheap and nasty lager. Former lover. Ray used in medical imaging. Horizontal position. And so on.
I didn't consider it very likely that the author of the poem meant more than two of those things. There simply isn't a character for any list of concepts you care to draw up. This was just a pointless list of gibberish.
PS. Ste, have you taken to referring to authors by their IP addresses?
Well, that's the secret to being a good poet. Your poems require three things:
1: To not make sense. This is so that people can't take the poem as-is.
2: To appear as if it's supposed to make sense. This makes people think you're smarter than them, because they're unable to understand it.
3: To be so incredibly vague that the poem, when taken to be symbolic, suddenly has loads of meanings to it.
Kelster23
18 Jun 2007, 07:05
Well, that's the secret to being a good poet. Your poems require three things:
1: To not make sense. This is so that people can't take the poem as-is.
2: To appear as if it's supposed to make sense. This makes people think you're smarter than them, because they're unable to understand it.
3: To be so incredibly vague that the poem, when taken to be symbolic, suddenly has loads of meanings to it.
So basically a bunch of organized random words with many meanings?
Like the word set.
One was [I did not say anything in it] a long time ago in school, when the teacher asked my friend [the michael jackson fan] about a CD he had brought in for Homework. when he was asked what he thought the Idea of the song was, [he had brought in "thriller"] he replied: "well, i'm not too sure, but I watched the music video where michael jackson is taking out his girl friend to the cinema, but she doesn't like it, and they go outside, and it's got lots of realy cool stuff in the film they watch, then Zombies rise, and then they get michael jackson, but he doesn't "die" exactly, he just starts dancing, and then the girlfriend screams, and runs away to michael jacksons mansion, and then..."the teacher interupted my friend [who was incidently also called "michael"] "hold on michael, but I think the idea is, that the monsters are not realy out to get you, but just want you to join in their dance." michael looked disapointed.
the final, even older one: on my 8th 9th or 10th birthday, we went to london/brighton. while walking, we encountered an angry man who got angry when a car that he was trying to stop started going away, then he stoped it and started swearing at the driver. the driver then just got very annoyed and ran off. we went round the next corner, and lol'ed!:D
Paul.Power
27 Jun 2007, 21:02
Close, but no cigar (http://forum.team17.co.uk/showthread.php?t=32756)
Ha! nice try, ive edited it! now, look in that link...
Actualy, now I don't want a cigar. These things are bad for your health you know.
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