Re: Circuit City Sucks: firing then offering to rehire at lower pay..



On Fri, 30 Mar 2007, BMJ wrote:

Straydog wrote:


On Thu, 29 Mar 2007, BMJ wrote:

Straydog wrote:

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Yeah, but books don't give one bragging rights with the neighbours. I mean, how effective is "*My* edition of Shakespeare is better than *your* edition! Nyah-nyah!!"



Among die-hard collectors, if they had a 400 years old edition, with WS's signature, making it worth $ 25,000, then it would leave YOUR paperback copy in the dust!


Of course, but to the average citizen, that smacks of upper-class snootiness.


There are three options at "come backs" on that:

1. T.S.
2. Eat your heart out
3. High brow beats low brow anyday

Do you actually think that the local bumpkins would be impressed with "highbrow"? Those in my area certainly wouldn't, which is one reason I avoid them.

Let me tell you that some 35 years ago I saw, for the first time in my life, real scrimshaw. I was impressed. Some 15 years ago I saw a scrimshaw shop in Hawaii. With pieces with price tags in the $5,000-10,000 range and believable. I wish I had the money.


Besides, books don't have turbo-charged diesel engines and chrome bumpers.


Which, of course, rust and corrode and wear out and become obsolete and worthless, unlike true antiques which become more valuable and priceless with age!

Of course, but an antique book can't be parked in your driveway to show off to the neighbours unless, of course, one happened to live in a community dedicated to the fine arts, the residents of which wouldn't think of leaving their books in their driveways.

All markets of valuables have their populations of swooners...but you are talking about parking your "prize" in the driveway. Real valuables would not be put out in public like that. In the book business of antiquarian books, many of the dealers will have their "prize" items locked away in a back room where you might not even be allowed to see what they have unless they "know" you.

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Oh, so you want to make things difficult by making the users think, eh? ;-)


Better to separate the men from the boys, goddesses from the teenie-bopers.

In my neighbourhood, it seems that the "men" are those who holler the most and make the loudest beer belches, confirming that, perhaps, the australophithecenes are still with us.

We all build our own nests, don't we?


I guess that's why there's no reality literature like "Survivor: Jane Austen".


The Epic of Gilgamesh (author unknown)

Whoever doesn't finish it get voted off the island?

The Iliad, by Homer
(said to be the greatest war story [1200 BC] ever written)
The Odyssey, by Homer
(said to be the greatest adventure story [just after 1200 BC] ever written)
circa 750 BC
14,000 and 11,000 lines of poetry, respectively, thought by historians to have been memorized and handed down that way for 600 years
before being written down. Some scholars thus think that Homer really was not the author.

From the book "A Handbook of Greek Literature-From Homer to the Age of
Lucian (~200 AD?)" by H. J. Rose (458 pp, first printed 1934, my copy printed 1965), I learned that there were many many hundreds of ancient Greek poets, creating very complex poetry and even poetry where the recent scholar had to look and notice that the author used all words that always excluded one letter of the alphabet. At that time, all writings were in the form of poetry.

I think we seriously underestimate how much intelligence existed back then and overestimate how intelligent we are today.


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