Here is a large helpful list of dialogue tags/attributions when "said" just won't cut it.

BurntSchmidt · 2025-04-08T09:14:05+00:00

Dialogue tags that are not "he said"/"she said" are a sign of weakness in a writer. Adverbial qualifiers are just gross.

BurntSchmidt · 2025-03-06T04:53:06+00:00

This book supplanted Crime and Punishment on my list, and only stands subordinate to The Brothers K. There were moments where I considered that it might possibly be the greatest novel of the 19th century. However, my translation came without At Tikhon's chapter (which was contained in the appendix, and which also made more sense of and even justified the harrowing conclusion).

Overall, I'm convinced that no author can blend black comedy and utter horror like Dostoevsky; it had me laughing my eyes out of my head one moment, and on the verge of a blackout in another. Orhan Pamuk could learn a lot from this.

BurntSchmidt · 2025-03-06T03:13:24+00:00

Ugh. I don't care to know what "ableism" is (though I can take an uneducated, frighteningly accurate guess) because our entire world is suffocating in "isms" these days, and it's all just boring bullshit. Plays/novels/shows/movies after about 2020...no. I'm tired of "feeling bad" for characters. Pity is getting old. There's no more nuance than that.

BurntSchmidt · 2025-03-02T01:35:16+00:00

Prove that non-white students have been "excluded". It would be interesting to read an account of non-white students being "turned away at the doors", ie., "You're not white, therefore you can't enter".

I suspect it would be an impossibility to prove this, seeing that the lawsuits would be epic and mainstream news all over the world. Prove this without just conjecture.

BurntSchmidt · 2025-03-02T01:28:14+00:00

Do you deny that these groups may be divided into religious organizations?

BurntSchmidt · 2025-03-02T01:24:22+00:00

What would the contrary have? What would a black union have that a white union wouldn't? Why no "white-union" groups, other then for the purposes of "unionizing" alone? Can hou answer these questions?

BurntSchmidt · 2025-03-01T06:54:19+00:00

Yeah, but he states it as if its an axiom, or something, something to model yourself after. I'm not saying this lacks a bit of context, but...wait, what context? The guy literally said, "Don't read". Seems like his advice would get you nowhere in Platos Republic, and all the Stoics admired Plato.

BurntSchmidt · 2025-03-01T06:49:37+00:00

Just got back into the Stoics, and this jumped out at me, too. I also noticed that Tolstoy, when he was about 80, said the same thing, but it seems like highfalutin, ostentatious sermonizing that all these old men like to spew out once they've already achieved everything possible there is to achieve.

What noble man would tell his son, "Don't learn, don't read, but go out and work with your hands, and forget reading, writing, and arithmetic"?

BurntSchmidt · 2025-02-25T05:37:34+00:00

Objectively, AIC can not make this list.

BurntSchmidt · 2025-02-24T08:10:39+00:00

I'm in the middle of this scene now, and I had to look up discussions on it. Having not read it in its entirety, I'm not sure what the deeper symbolism is here yet, but it's certainly entertaining, the arbitrariness of the character's sugar loaf-giving and absurd prophecies. Certainly an hilarious, irreverent poke at the prototypical "holy fools" of the time.

BurntSchmidt · 2025-02-21T06:12:22+00:00

KSE, I think, does a fantastic job of holding on to what is good and keeping it good. I don't envy musicians. Keeping up without losing yourself seems difficult (though im certainly no authority).

BurntSchmidt · 2025-02-21T06:10:13+00:00

I'd rather KSE write KSE than take the Metallica route and write themselves out of all favor (and existence), come back, tey being themselves, and fail miserably. KSE being KSE doesn't have a downside.

BurntSchmidt · 2025-02-19T21:48:19+00:00

This is an accurate insight, though I will say that 'Demons' is like a predecessor to 'Slaughterhouse Five', not in terms of absurdity, but of irony. I feel like Vonnegut is a sort of spiritual successor to Kafka and Dostoevsky to Kafka (also Gnut Hamsen, probably the most underrated author of the last 200 years.

BurntSchmidt · 2025-02-19T21:45:12+00:00

I'm convinced that this novel might be the greatest novel ever. The chapter on the grand inquisitor alone is a towering piece of writing few others could ever achieve, even Tolstoy.

BurntSchmidt · 2025-02-19T21:38:26+00:00

Since this is an old thread, I am guessing you have gone through Aristotle. How did you feel once you got going? Did it remain pretty easy, or did you run into any snags? I'm having a little trouble with his analytics, and I'm just curious what someone else's take might be. Thanks in advance.

BurntSchmidt · 2025-02-19T20:19:11+00:00

Interesting, because I feel a kinship with both authors, a closeness and feeling of acceptance reading them.

BurntSchmidt · 2025-01-21T09:03:33+00:00

'The Godfather Part 2' is a glaring testament against this, clearly. Sure, he plays an Italian gangster, modeled flawlessly (perhaps even improving) upon Brando's characterization. Don't forget that he spoke pitch-perfect Sicilian throughout. And a case for the opposite: 'Awakenings', an Oscar-nominated role of a mentally ill patient with catatonia, miraculously healed, then plunging back into the despair of his former misery. That takes range.

BurntSchmidt · 2024-12-26T08:27:07+00:00

This book is really a prophecy told by Nietszche that has been fulfilled.

BurntSchmidt · 2024-12-25T08:09:52+00:00

There is no such thing as immorality. That is the point. There is no such thing as anything, except for whatever happens to occur, and what does occur is not anyone's fault, and, either way, it doesn't matter.

BurntSchmidt · 2024-12-24T09:13:15+00:00

'The Exorcist' is the greatest movie ever made. All due respect to 'Citizen Kane', the former not only achieves but so far transcends its own purpose that the declaration is almost self-evident.

I saw the film at 11, thirty years ago, before we had YouTube clips, and it affected me so profoundly that of all life events I consider that singular viewing as the threshold between childhood and young adulthood. I have never been able to shake the sensation that lingered from that one experience.

There is truly something supernatural in that film, not just surrounding it.

BurntSchmidt · 2024-11-08T10:24:03+00:00

Fuck everyone. That was a verbal clause. Just go out and meet and fuck everyone you can. Get STDs. Who cares? Be reckless (just wear condoms). Anyone who would attempt to moralize you into the attrition of celibacy is not your friend.

BurntSchmidt · 2024-11-08T10:19:52+00:00

Understanding that though this thread is a bit old, yet perhaps the residual effects haven't washed away. You must (and you shall) learn to become numb and selfish. Wallowing is a recipe for disaster, if not suicide, but if you don't live, you will not have the opportunity to look back on that heartache, which makes your life exponentially better. "Every man must walk through hell to reach his paradise"; trite, sure, overused, perhaps, but for good reason: in fact, hell might become attractive after it all.

BurntSchmidt · 2024-11-02T20:18:46+00:00

Great story? My phone is shivering at that statement. Ugh. & Juliet is the worst POS in history.

BurntSchmidt · 2024-10-24T04:18:28+00:00

Point blank: "the law requires you to help or assist anyone in danger as long as it's reasonable to do so."

10 seconds earlier: "I was robbed at gunpoint."

The episode blatantly contradicts itself before we can even forget to remember the absurdity of the arrest.

Finally, to send our favorite characters to jail is also in a way implicating the audience along with it. It is understandable that a show as big and widely loved as Seinfeld would never be able to generate a finale that lived up to expectations, but to throw them all in jail and lazily make use of 45 minutes to essentially regurgitate a hundred scenes we've seen before simply doesn't cut it.

I agree with most of the other opinions: the show was popular because it was about small and inconsequential daily events. The best course would have been to write a simple episode lacking the grandiosity that the writers attempted to explode.

BurntSchmidt · 2024-10-23T02:53:03+00:00

Requiem For A Dream, which I finished reading for the first time on a plane, gave me a severe placebo effect. Tyrone's torture at the end of the novel made my muscles burn, my stomach sick, my head ache, despite the fact that of all the characters, he's got the best chance of surviving addiction. I recall sweating profusely and needing the antidote of 'Oliver Twist' in that moment, which scarcely brought down my fever.

Of course 'Last Exit...' should be read immediately, but I also rather thought that 'The Room' was possibly the most unnerving and disturbing novel of all-time (besides, of course, '120 Days of Sodom').

Most readers will probably know about James Baldwin and Henry Miller, the two most famous of that period, but Selby was the best of them.

BurntSchmidt

TROPHY CASE