What the world is coming to...

[Visla Eraclaire]

The following overheard conversations speak to the total collapse of society.

Prima is an acquaintance of mine
Secunda is my roommate

Prima: "Something wicked this way comes."
Secunda: "What wicked this way comes?"
Prima: "Oh I dunno, it's a Harry Potter reference."
Secunda: "I don't know when that is in Harry Potter, but it's a few hundred years too late."

In Prima's defense... I guess there are some witches in GODDAMNED MACBETH!!!


For the musically inclined, the following was overheard in a record store and was said without irony...

"What was that band that Paul McCartney was in before Wings?"

WINGS?! ARE YOU SHITTING ME? Someone in the world has heard of WINGS but can't remember THE BEATLES?


Share your own outrageous tales of utter failure.

[Caden Law]

The world moves constantly. Things are forgotten, rediscovered, relished in, and then forgotten again. You can't expect everyone to know about the exact source of a quote that crops up everywhere from Max Payne to Harry Potter; Shakesphere stopped being at the forefront of entertainment centuries ago. The Beatles thing is also no big deal; it's about damn time someone had the luxury of forgetting them.

[Visla Eraclaire]

Fine if you forget the Beatles. But don't fucking remember WINGS INSTEAD. If you can NAME Paul McCartney, and your recollection doesn't include the Beatles, you're doing it wrong.

And I don't expect that most people can say that "Something wicked" is from Macbeth. I just expect that they should at least be able to recognize that it's older than that populist pablum, Harry Motherfucking Potter.

[Godhand]

The Beatles thing is also no big deal; it's about damn time someone had the luxury of forgetting them.

No. Fuck you, faggot.

Also, if it wasn't for my horse I never would have spent that year in college.

[Visla Eraclaire]

Good one, Mr. Black. I've seen that bit live.

[Tainted Bushido]

And I don't expect that most people can say that "Something wicked" is from Macbeth. I just expect that they should at least be able to recognize that it's older than that populist pablum, Harry Motherfucking Potter.

Umm...Something wicked this way comes is Puck. Puck had nothing to do with Macbeth, but more Midsummer Night's Dream.

Small fiat but if you're taking umbrage over that, might want to get your Shakespeare right. Macbeth was "Double, double toil and trouble."

[Terminus Mortis]

... Ho ho, he's right.

[Visla Eraclaire]

Umm...Something wicked this way comes is Puck. Puck had nothing to do with Macbeth, but more Midsummer Night's Dream.

Small fiat but if you're taking umbrage over that, might want to get your Shakespeare right. Macbeth was "Double, double toil and trouble."


... Ho ho, he's right.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_wicked_this_way_comes_(phrase)

Ho ho, no he's not.

While he's right that "Double, double toil and trouble" is a quote from Macbeth's witches, it's kind of stupid to assume I'd confuse the two. Macbeth Act 4 Scene 1 (http://www.clicknotes.com/macbeth/T41.html), the Second Witch delivers the line "By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes." I'd figure you were just arrogant if I could find the line appearing in Midsummer, but it doesn't. I looked, something you obviously didn't bother to do.

The only thing more embarrassing than if I had gotten it wrong is that you got it wrong trying to correct me. Or possibly that someone agreed with you ALSO without checking.

We're on the internet, people... come on. I don't know whether this should be a point of pride or shame you more, but you seem to have made at least a fairly original mistake. When I Googled the phrases I didn't even see any sites that erroneously connected Midsummer to the quote. Maybe they were at the end, admittedly I didn't go that far once the answer was clear.

[Saxon]

And I don't expect that most people can say that "Something wicked" is from Macbeth. I just expect that they should at least be able to recognize that it's older than that populist pablum, Harry Motherfucking Potter.


I hate the theatre and I gratefully forgot a lot of what I read of Harry Potter. However, I do remember the phrase "Something Wicked This Way Comes" from the movie Something Wicked This Way Comes.

My grandfather told me, "I remember when you were six. You were seven." And then he took a spoon and threw at the window and cackled madly to himself.

[Visla Eraclaire]

I hate the theatre and I gratefully forgot a lot of what I read of Harry Potter. However, I do remember the phrase "Something Wicked This Way Comes" from the movie Something Wicked This Way Comes.

My grandfather told me, "I remember when you were six. You looked seven." And then he took a spoon and threw at the window and cackled madly to himself.


See, that's good enough for me. It's in SO many things that it should at least give a hint that it's older than whatever you might think it appears in. I'm not actually familiar with the movie, but it's based on the Ray Bradbury book of the same name that my friend remembered the phrase from. The difference between him and the person I'm mocking is that he said, "It's the title of a Ray Bradbury book, at the very least, but I'm sure it's older."

In fact, as my friends and I were discussing, many Shakespearean phrases are older than the writer himself. I wouldn't cite Something Wicked as one of them. More like the phrase "It's Greek to me." which is often cited to the play Julius Caesar, but is in fact a saying that dates back to the time of Julius Caesar himself (though Caesar did know Greek).

[Ataraxis]

Something along those lines happened to me at the theater. While the credits of Iron Man were rolling, someone asked me what the name of the song was.

'You know, the one by that band with the guy who bit off a bat's head,' he added.

Then someone else answered Crazy Train, and they both laughed and agreed and patted each other on the back, feeling pretty good about themselves.

Good grief. Only Nick Fury made the wait worth a damn.

[Visla Eraclaire]

I'm sure there are some out there at this point that think the song was created as the theme to the movie Iron Man

[Terminus Mortis]

I remember it from Midsummer. I had to read it for a class last year. "I looked, something you obviously didn't bother to do," is more than a bit hypocritical now isn't it? Googling it might not be digging deep enough.

Sidenote: I fucking hate theatre. That class sucked.

[Visla Eraclaire]

So your argument is, "I still think I'm right but cannot present any evidence other than that opinion."

Show me a cite of the line from Midsummer. Granted, even if you can, it doesn't make me wrong, but it makes you LESS wrong.

It's not my duty to look. You're saying it's in Midsummer, prove it. I've given citations to it from Macbeth. I've done my job. I'm not going on a wild goose chase just because you think you remember something from a class you hated.

Also, Googling the phrase and Macbeth turned up citations very very quickly. And the wikipedia page mentioned only Macbeth. Neither of these are conclusive if this were a serious citation war, but... it seems to me very unlikely that if the phrase were in Midsummer that neither would show anything to support that idea.

* * *

This is another thing that's really irritating. I can't seem to make a single claim without someone disagreeing and then acting like it's my job to substantiate their claim. You make a claim, you prove it.

For it to work the other way, the disagreement would have to raise a presumption. I.E. The mere suggestion that P raises a presumption that P is true and all proponents of the position ~P (not P) must present evidence to rebut the presumption.

This is the exception, it's not the rule. That doesn't keep everyone and their lawyer from trying to act like whoever their opponent is has the burden of proof regardless of who's making an assertation of fact.


E.G.

Visla claims P (Something Wicked is from Macbeth)
Bushido claims ~P (Something Wicked is not from Macbeth) and Q (Something Wicked is from Midsummer)

Visla must now present evidence of P, having been challeneged by ~P.
Visla presents evidence of P and claims ~Q.

Terminus now claims that Visla must also present evidence of ~Q.

False. No real evidence of Q has been presented. I challenge the proponent of Q to present evidence thereof.

[Tainted Bushido]

Ehh, my bad, Foolish things these mortals be is the midsummer night's famous line. Oh well, Well played Visla, however at least I man up to it and research. ;)

[Visla Eraclaire]

Research is best done before claims are made, and I have little desire to "man up"; however, I accept your retraction.

Now the topic can go back to what it was intended to do: Chastize people who don't know the sorts of basic things educated people should be aware of.

I was bored during Federal Income Taxation and I was discussing the Wings/Beatles story with someone. We were debating how many Beatles songs the average person should be able to name...

As asside from merely amusing stories, is there anything of this sort that you figure everyone should just know to be considered minimally well-versed?

This isn't intended to demean the disadvantaged or the uneducated. That's a whole other matter. If you're worried about eating tomorrow, you don't need to know the name of Caesar's wife. Those who have leisure time are another matter though... and everyone on this forum is among that number.

[Ataraxis]

Well, most people would say Pompeia without hesitation. I say that it's like asking who's that one president's wife. In fact that'd be easier, considering how many wives each Caesar had.

More of a general, happens-all-the-time situation: people think I'm on meds when I tell them that Shakespeare's the true father of the Ents. Now imagine the rabid Tolkien groupie-rage when they hear the truth about elves and dwarves and heck, the ring.

And I've asked before, to random students. Most only remember half the songs on the soundtrack to Across the Universe. Almost no one could name over twenty, and I'm being lenient since I counted 'Sergeant Pepper's band club thingy'.

Which reminds me that today, during a mecanized modeling class, a student complained that the teacher was playing Beatles songs in the background, saying 'If you catch me listening to the Beatles, then something's really wrong with my life'.

[Godhand]

Good lord, this is truly a generation of swine.

[Arsène]

Your generation gave us Yoko and lead us into that terrible age known as the 80s.

In one of my classes, a student read their report out loud on inflation. A student, and I remind you this is college (albeit 101) English, raised her hand and asked why "they couldn't just cut down more trees to make more money."

[Visla Eraclaire]

I"m Super Drunk!!!!

[Godhand]

Thank you so much for posting!

[AdventWings]

I once told a university student to go find a thesaurus while discussing a scientific paper. Then he asked me if it's a carnivore or an herbivore.

My country is so, so sad.

[Ma Navu]

A classmate of mine never learned the proper way to use the Spell Check function on a computer.

We were all told to write about a book and bring it in the next day so that a fellow classmate can check it for any errors. My friend wrote about the story with King Lear (I'm not such a hot-shot when it comes to memory, so the I can't grasp the title). He typed it out and proudly told me beforehand "I used Spell Check, so I bet'cha a hundred bucks that you won't correct anything."

During the editing process, I laughed my ass off.

"What's so funny?" I pointed to the comedic sentence that stated something along the lines of, "King Leer fleas the thrown." He still owes me $100 to this day.

[Visla Eraclaire]

That's actually a pretty good one. The sad thing is homophone errors like that turn up even in published court opinions.

[Caden Law]

I had to do peer editing for a religious conservative homophobic today.

The opening sentence was, "God damn these fagots!"

He was trying to come off as tolerant.

'Nuff said.

[Ma Navu]

I can't think of anything else to say except, "Haha, oh wow."

[Arsène]

http://www.fstdt.com/fundies/top100.aspx?archive=1

I believe this site displays, quite clearly even, everything wrong in the world.

One of my favorites?

"One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn't possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it." [emphasis added]

[Visla Eraclaire]

Wow, that site will entertain me for a long time.

"No, everyone is born Christian. Only later in life do people choose to stray from Jesus and worship satan instead. Atheists have the greatest "cover" of all, they insist they believe in no god yet most polls done and the latest research indicates that they are actually a different sect of Muslims."

Allahu Akbar, apparently... "The latest research indicates" is a major warning flag for uncited bullshit

[Saxon]

Crazy, crazy people.

EDIT: I found two.

"Me and like-minded Christian students are trying to organize a mock stoning of openly gay students at our campus. We will be using crumpled up gray/brown construction paper to represent rocks, and will recite bible verses in opposition to their sinful nature. We will throw a volley or two of these "rocks" at every Gay person we happen to encounter that day."

And this one just creeped me the fuck out;

"A man can have sexual pleasure from a child as young as a baby. However he should not penetrate, sodomising the child is OK. If the man penetrates and damages the child then he should be responsible for her subsistence all her life. This girl, however does not count as one of his four permanent wives. The man will not be eligible to marry the girl's sister."