The limits of nerdship culutral edition ([size=1]omnibus[/size])

[Jizzelbin]

Yeah, so someone said something about some Led Zeppelin song that I know had something to do with some nerd shit, like hobbits or whatever.

I have tried, and failed, to watch a single Harry Potter movie, even with rifftrax.

Ditto that Lord Rings thing. (I like the *Screwtape* by CS Lewis, that's like the same guy right? joke, whatever)

Also I finally saw the Star Wars, for real, like a year ago.

But I like that Jackson guy because of the thing with Melanie Lynskey and .... the skinny one who was in that horrible unwatchable movie about the Lusitania or whatever.

And I saw all the Star Treks and ST NTG and played the theme music from the piano reduction when I was old enough and tried to hide my imaginary boner from my hot old professor teacher who in retrospect was probably like 30 and I totally could have got with her.

And thanks to my ineffectual nerd father I copped his Thomas Covenant stuff and the Heinleins and the Piers Anthony and whatever. I was an illiterate child, who hadn't yet discovered jerking it in a closet 24/7, so suck it, 1980s bush.

Oh yeah, so, also that real CS Lewis guy, whatever.

ETA And, it wasn't until I "learned" the classical languages that I understood that that other nerd Burgess was probably just screwing around. Just a regular consul kind of guy. well fuck off I don't know shit and it's all in a dictionary so fuck off. also, fuck off.

I forgot what I was going to say, but also, suck my hose knob gobblers.

[What Exit?]

The primary Zep songs relating to Middle Earth are probably "The Battle Evermore", In Title only "Misty Mountain Hop", with some possible inspiration,

Stairway to Heaven: possibly the "she" in the song being Galadriel and lines about looking to the West. But inspired only and not actually about Middle Earth.

Ramble On has the line "Twas in the darkest depths of Mordor I met a girl so fair. But Gollum, and the evil one crept up and slipped away with her."

Rush had some Lord of the Rings inspired songs early on also. Less surprising for a Progressive Rock band though I suppose. I think Styx may also have had one or more but I am not a big enough Styx fan to recall.


Other stuff
Tolkien (Lord of the Rings) and C.S. Lewis were for a time very close friends and Lewis in particular took some inspiration from Tolkien's stories of Middle Earth for his own Narnia.

Heinlein is awesome though dated badly of course but I think he was the best Sci-Fi writer there ever was.

Piers Anthony is/was an entertaining hack but hey he was a very successful entertaining hack who never did anyone any harm and has far less pretensions of his own greatness than Stephen King at least.

The Thomas Covenant stories I read when they were fairly new. At the time the choices in the Fantasy section of bookstores were pretty slim. Donaldson wrote an interesting world with one of the least likeable main characters ever. But I do not recommend these books to anyone.

Harry Potter movies. I like them but I can see being bored silly if you didn't read the books. To some degree they are companions to the books more than stand alone films. My wife has no use for them and tended to fall asleep during them until she stopped going with the kids and me.


I love the Original Star Trek show and Star Trek IV "the Whale Movie" but I am well aware of how dated the show is and how remote now the sensibilities of a 60s adventure show is. Even Star Trek II has aged poorly from my last viewing of it. Wrath of Khan was awesome for it time like the original series. I find it awesome though my son can still enjoy Star Trek despite how much it has aged.

Star Wars, I never really got the awesomeness of Star Wars. I didn't think the first movie was worthy of the hype. Empire was pretty good but the next 4 are to me garbage. Just unwatchable dreck.

Well that is my take and rambling answers to your op. Have a good weekend.

[Jizzelbin]

Holy shit. You put Rush in bold?

That is some messed up shit.

Well, I shouldn't talk, given some ELP Yes Genesis and so forth vinyl lurking on the shelves.

But still, that is pretty messed up.

I will defend the Thomas Covenant books -- the whole white gold and leprosy thing was pretty fly.

I believe, however, that all of these articles of culture are for children, and that nerdocy is nothing more than an expression of the lack of sophistication of a stunted consciousness.

ETA and Neil Peart is NOT a competent jazz drummer, despite what people say. And also, The christmas special of Star Wars with the Chewbacca family is the greatest. And Mark Hamill is awesome in an awesome movie *Corvette Summer*. And don't start about his voice work in some Batman stuff -- Batman sucks. Star Trek's pretty good, I think TOS holds up, especially the movies, as arch meta-commentary. Also, TNG. Make it so, numbah one!

[What Exit?]

I not really too big of a Rush fan. Yes & ELP are both among my favorite bands though. Prog Rock early Genesis had some good stuff and pop-rock Collins Genesis had some acceptable stuff. My 4 top bands are Zep, Floyd, Yes & The Beatles. My favorite tends to depend on who I am listening to. Then groups like the Who & CSN&Y.

The nerdbit might be fair, but what is not? I'm a huge baseball fan and a football fan and caring about sports and the results can also be described in the same terms as lack of sophistication of a stunted consciousness but are not really nerdy at all an outside of the weirdish fantasy football/baseball culture are very mainstream. Oh, SABR-stat heads are full-blown nerds but that is a small subset of baseball fans.

I'm not sure what interests do not show a lack of sophistication of a stunted consciousness. Is Opera really more sophisticated than going to a rock concert or just established as such?

[Jizzelbin]

I not really too big of a Rush fan.

Glad to hear it. Not sure why I'm glad, because I don't care, but for some reason Rush just loses.

Yes & ELP are both among my favorite bands though.

Nothing wrong with that. And in the Tarkus future keyboards rule! With armadillos, or whatever. Yeah, I think Emerson is just average in technique, and Tony Banks and the other one, but they were doing something new back in the day.

]Prog Rock early Genesis had some good stuff

Is there any other kind?

My 4 top bands are Zep, Floyd, Yes & The Beatles. My favorite tends to depend on who I am listening to. Then groups like the Who & CSN&Y.

Well, I came by my Zeppelin honestly, what with being a tweenage kid who inadvertently learned blues piano by trying to decide between Page and Clapton and listening to JPJ and John Mayall's pianos going on in the background, and then all the stride/drunk delta/church things on piano I'd been hearing kind of came out and made some sense.

True story, literally yesterday I was doing a little physics lab about some geometric optics and, break out the prism for diffusion of light. Yeah, it took all of my courage to not make some stupid joke about Floyd.

Most times I don't care when celebrities croak, but Rick Wright recently, Ernest Borgnine, and Levon Helm, just kind of like "waaah?"

THese days I just enjoy making it sound pretty, even though it's not a legitimate solo piano style, I like that country flavor, some Nick Hopkins (I know, Nicky, but to be cool, randomly alter the name to the more straight one), and especially a lot of Levon + Richard Manuel and The Allman Brothers + Chuck Leavell.

The nerdbit might be fair, but what is not? I'm a huge baseball fan and a football fan and caring about sports and the results can also be described in the same terms as lack of sophistication of a stunted consciousness but are not really nerdy at all an outside of the weirdish fantasy football/baseball culture are very mainstream. Oh, SABR-stat heads are full-blown nerds but that is a small subset of baseball fans.

Well, I was just kind of riffing. I secretly was afraid I might be a nerd, and I hate nerds. I hate everybody, basically, especially pansies who try to be special and interrupt my everyday walking down the street mojo, but since nerd is a concept that everyone knows, and it is not a very well-delimited concept, I thought it was a good point-of-entry into some informal phenomenology.

I'm not sure what interests do not show a lack of sophistication of a stunted consciousness. Is Opera really more sophisticated than going to a rock concert or just established as such?

Yeah, you are right. I mean, go into a classical record shop, and there's like a million neckbeards ineptly slobbering over the hot female or male or whatever violinist. I don't know in culture why jazz is supposed to be sophisticated, to me it's raw, dirty music, probably got a good PR, I guess.

But still, the whole point I was going for in OP was...what's the line? At what point is the chair not a chair? What's the concept, how do we know it, and how do we describe it formally?

[Jizzelbin]

The nerdbit might be fair, but what is not? I'm a huge baseball fan and a football fan and caring about sports and the results can also be described in the same terms as lack of sophistication of a stunted consciousness but are not really nerdy at all an outside of the weirdish fantasy football/baseball culture are very mainstream. Oh, SABR-stat heads are full-blown nerds but that is a small subset of baseball fans.

I'm not sure what interests do not show a lack of sophistication of a stunted consciousness. Is Opera really more sophisticated than going to a rock concert or just established as such?

That is exactly my question.

And you've given a nice example of why the concepts need to be elucidated, which was my question from the start.

Obviously, sports and arts are the same. No, I'm not talking about some figure skating vs a fluxus burn-the-Yoko-Ono-hegemony, but, generally, one may agree that expression in the form of play is, abstractly, unidimensional to the plane of the field of expression.

And then, from there, you can go into various details about whatever, but I mean in general, including the semantics for the average person.

So, once we have this establishes, we go on to the qualities of conscious perception.......I had a nice sentence to express but I just remembered I was rereading Deleuze's essay onTE Lawrence just yesterday on the train (fine, OK, part of me wanted to get with this woman also waiting for the train and so I picked that out of my bag rather than K&R for review because not nerd but also I do actually read regular things like Deleuze and pop philosophy)....I'ma go get it...ok

les plus beaux e'crivains ont des conditions de perception singulie'res qui leu permettent de puiser ou de tailler des percepts esthe'tiques comme de ve'ritables visions, quitte a' en revenir les yeux rouges

Yeah, so whatever good people who say good things adjust sensory notions as though in proportion to real sense data. Or something. I'm a terrible translator, and I find it very difficult.

Also, not sure why that seemed important. OK, yeah, I can see some stuff, but I'm just rambling on, so whatever.

Good talk. Asnneck.