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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1549 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 19, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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Favorite line of poetry or prose? For cleverness, beauty, or metaphor.

Almost certainly not what you're looking for, but I have been having a lot of fun using a combination of ChatGPT and SunoAI to write song lyrics that are hyper-specific to me and people I know and inside jokes between us. My brother had a negative encounter with some random guy in a monster truck who hates electric vehicles and had to make it known, so I made a song about him, and one of the parts the AI generatred was

His dog ran off, his ex did too,

Guess they got tired of his dumb tattoo.

("Diesel Forever" misspelled on his arm...)

Which made me laugh way too much and is now one of my favorite lines in a song.

"War is good business, invest your son."

That line was incredibly influential to teenaged me.

"Mejor los indios".

What is this from?

Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West, by Cormac McCarthy.

Context: It's a graffity that shows up after our protagonists succesfully hunted down a large group of indians, took their scalps and arrived as heroes in Chihuahaha, which had offered a bounty for this purpose. They then proceed to party so hard that the townspeople end up wishing for the Indians instead of the Gringos.

I find it hilarious.

"With a car you can go anywhere you want" he said to himself, out loud.

I love poetry, but this just cracks me up.

"I always wonder why birds choose to stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on the earth, then I ask myself the same question."

-Harun Yahya

They fuck you up, your mum and dad,
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had,
And add some extra just for you.

The Tiger - Nael

The tiger

He destroyed his cage

Yes

YES

The tiger is out

One of the few poems that reliably induce frisson in me. I felt it again just reading it.

This isn't what you asked, but some of my favorite poems are:

Ulysses, The Present Crisis, Lepanto, The White Man's Burden, Recessional, various hymns (to be clear, this is not an endorsement of every sentiment found therein),

From Virgil's Georgics:

Poor creatures that we are, the best days of our lives
are first to fly

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn. A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road. One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive, Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles. I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

  • Czelaw Milosz, Encounter 1936

“There can be no doubt that gods have appeared, not only in ancient times but even late in history; they feasted with us and fought at our sides. But what good is the splendor of bygone banquets to a starving man? What good is the clinking of gold that a poor man hears through the wall of time? The gods must be called.”

  • Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil

I first saw this on Calling the Gods on Arya Akasha By Curwen Ares Rolinson

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