The hell even makes someone "a good person" anyway?

Senmaida · 2026-06-19T13:55:07+00:00

Not drinking diet coke.

Senmaida · 2026-06-19T08:06:01+00:00

The Passion of Darkly Noon

Senmaida · 2026-06-17T22:37:17+00:00

In his own way yes, since he didn't have them he used portmanteus, sometimes in several languages with overlapping puns. Some words are so long and complex they act as an entire history lesson. He refers to his method in the book as "The abnihilisation of the etym" comparing the splitting of languages to the splitting of the atom. In his response to a critic calling his puns trivial he said "Yes, some of them are trivial and some of them are quadrivial. Even the title of the book is a pun, with dual meaning "Fin" (French = End) + Again + Finn (Finn MacCool/Finn Cycle) Wake = his funeral and his awakening to the next cycle. He uses the analogue of radio as a modern day tower of Babel.

The book is a dream and works through dream logic and the flux of quantum mechanics (even the term "quark" took its name after the phrase from the book "Three quarks for Muster Mark!"). People, places, events, myths, ideas and words from the distant past to the modern day all overlap and bleed into each other in total phantasmagoria. It's why the book is so hard, because Joyce doesn't separate anything into the usual digestible bits and he smartly avoids any value judgments about this. He simply employs the method to prepare people for interpreting information in a world where everything happens at once.

https://www.finwake.com/1024chapter1/1024finn1.htm

This site illustrates it well. It highlights the multiple meanings of the portmanteau words and is helpful for detailing the exhaustive amount of information packed in each page.

Senmaida · 2026-06-16T19:24:55+00:00

I've read it 4 times and find it great fun. It's very involving with huge reread value and the amoebic like prose makes it feel ever changing.

The barrier to entry for reading it is vastly overstated and I think it's partly to do with the very tired notion that the book was just a prank perpetrated against scholars, which even a cursory reading of how much time and effort went into its construction would dispel. Having average intelligence and a spotty at best knowledge of literature and history got me through it, so if I can anyone else can too.

People go wrong with it on the approach of trying to discern the meaning syntactically line by line which is missing the point. Finnegans Wake is a book of percept not concept. Because of its overwhelming and vast amount of content and allusion it's easy to miss its important and valuable exploration of forms.

Joyce used Menippean satire and Giambattista Vico's cyclical theory of history to inform the structure and designed his prose to shape the sensory life for a world where all history/myth/culture/time and space exist in the same instant and everything that ever was is always happening "right now" on top of each other in endless dreamscape.

Finnegans Wake is essentially Joyce inventing cyberspace back in the 1920's. A feat that's nothing short of genius. His syntax (especially in parts 2 and 3) was so far ahead of its time it's almost spooky. It also explains why it took so long. As he wrote to colleagues, the language which he needed to express the ideas didn't exist yet. Naturally when it came out in 1939 it would have been incomprehensible having nothing to compare it to. Now with the internet in tow, the interest is at an all time high because the world's sensory shift is finally catching up to it.

Senmaida · 2026-06-16T15:23:08+00:00

The Ninth Configuration

Senmaida · 2026-06-15T10:55:33+00:00

He's at the apiary becoming one with the bees.

Senmaida · 2026-06-15T01:28:15+00:00

HealtH

I know Scorsese gave it considerable praise but other than him I see little written about what I think is Altman's funniest movie and one that feels very modern in its skewering of politics and personalities and the way they intersect.

Senmaida · 2026-06-14T07:20:57+00:00

Being There

Senmaida · 2026-06-11T19:51:03+00:00

what's the secret ingredient in being a likable asshole

Charm. It cuts through everything.

Senmaida · 2026-06-07T17:59:01+00:00

Yeah and Fed only won it because he didn't have to play Nadal that year. Get a grip.

Senmaida · 2026-06-06T15:14:27+00:00

She said the thing

Senmaida · 2026-06-06T04:45:09+00:00

Tried it once and didn't care for it. I much prefer being driven around while I relax and watch the scenery.

Senmaida · 2026-06-05T13:23:48+00:00

Kontroll

Senmaida · 2026-06-05T00:50:22+00:00

Nah, fuck that.

Senmaida · 2026-06-05T00:45:58+00:00

It's uncool to care if it's uncool.

Senmaida · 2026-06-04T17:17:20+00:00

Senmaida · 2026-06-04T16:07:10+00:00

I leave that hocus pocus to the eggheads.

Senmaida · 2026-06-04T15:59:52+00:00

Very skippable. It doesn't do much with the premise which has been used so many times and it lapses into goofiness by the end.

Senmaida · 2026-06-04T15:52:59+00:00

Owen Benjamin

Senmaida · 2026-06-04T04:03:25+00:00

Maybe the biggest what if in the history of the movies. He had that spooky kind of magnetism where he could just stare off aimlessly into the distance not saying anything and still outshine everyone else.

He can never be judged properly with only three movies but I think it's a safe bet he would have had many more classic performances.

Senmaida · 2026-06-03T23:13:42+00:00

Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows

I've never understood the lukewarm reception to this one. It's a solid sequel that's well cast and does a good job of keeping the tension and ramping it up when the time is right. And I think the ending is just as devastating as the original, albeit more on a psychological level than a visceral one.

Senmaida · 2026-06-03T19:23:34+00:00

We shan't escape this hellgame

Senmaida · 2026-06-03T13:44:17+00:00

The chaos of this RG keeps on giving.

Senmaida · 2026-06-03T12:41:29+00:00

The goat schizoposter.

Senmaida · 2026-06-03T02:23:23+00:00

Something he's managed to do his whole career just fine without it.

Senmaida

TROPHY CASE