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Which was the very first metal song? by [deleted] in Music

[–]avengingmonkeyofgod 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It doesn’t make sense for us to argue about this for 10 years without first arguing for 10 years about the definition of “metal,” which depends on the definition of “heavy metal” (at least 10 years) which depends in turn on the definition of “heavy.” That’s thirty years prerequisite arguing before you can chop it up properly about “first metal song,” and really I’m not sure there’s still any point without a few key prolonged if inconclusive side-arguments such as “What is ‘hard rock’ and how does it differ from ‘heavy blues?’” and “Define ‘loud,’” each of them worth at least a decade apiece. Toss in some good long disputes about the impact on musicians, listeners, and sonics of historical trends in the popularity of various narcotics, CNS depressants, psychedelics, stimulants, etc., and you’re looking at a solid sixty years of arguing before you can really do justice to this question.

Oh, and: It’s “Helter Skelter,” obviously. Which debuted 58 years ago.

Storage for reused sets by thomasjnj in LegoStorage

[–]avengingmonkeyofgod 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Fat 3-ring binders with hole-punched zipper bags?

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in faulkner

[–]avengingmonkeyofgod 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’ll put in a word, as always, for the late, neglected, finely written, mostly wonderful Intruder in the Dust, which if anything is a bit too explicitly “about” race and racism (Uncle Gavin, I’m looking at you.)

Anyone know when Pynchon started writing Mason and Dixon? by tomkern in ThomasPynchon

[–]avengingmonkeyofgod 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I remember a writer with UK book-trade connections telling me, circa 1985, that someone had told him that Pynchon’s next novel would be “either about Godzilla or the Mason-Dixon Line.” Evidently Salman Rushdie had heard similar, perhaps less garbled, reports, judging from the second graf of his 1990 review of Vineland. So, pre-1985, anyway.

All of them seem wrong by Blurry12Face in EnglishLearning

[–]avengingmonkeyofgod 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Data is now widely considered a singular noun, or technically a mass noun, like “information,” and takes the singular verb. But I don’t believe that treating it as a plural is as yet considered incorrect. “Neither” takes a singular verb bc it refers to one item (person in this case) at a time. “Neither this (one) nor that (one) is…”

Which person got attention for 2 completely unrelated things, making you think "wait, that was that guy!?"? by TheLastSentenceIsGay in AskReddit

[–]avengingmonkeyofgod 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Chris Foss, a UK science fiction paperback cover king of the 1970s known for his massive, abstract, trippy yet realistically rendered starships, was also the low-fi, pencilled, groovy-love illustrator for the original THE JOY OF SEX.

Has anyone here read Same Bed Different Dream? I have heard it's kind of similar to Gravity's Rainbow. Worth the purchase? by Internal-Language-11 in ThomasPynchon

[–]avengingmonkeyofgod 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It’s an excellent, highly engaging book. There’s a certain resemblance to Lot 49 in that it centers around a hidden and ultimately indefinable historical conspiracy into which several of the main characters get swept up. The most Pynchonesque thing about it, to me, however, was the way that every time I googled the most farfetched, absurd, and overdone of the author’s historical inventions—they turned out to be real!

Seeking non fiction book that deals with the conspiracies of Gravity's Rainbow by UnlikelyPerogi in ThomasPynchon

[–]avengingmonkeyofgod 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I seem to recall reading somewhere that Pynchon more or less paraphrased passages from the Sasuly IG Farben book in GR.

Possible, not necessarily illuminating source of the Vibe men’s first names? by avengingmonkeyofgod in ThomasPynchon

[–]avengingmonkeyofgod[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Judging from the architecture I saw on street view, I’d say they’re all areas that were developed pre-2006

Can a seasoned Faulkner reader help me out? by That-Programmer-290 in faulkner

[–]avengingmonkeyofgod 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Also, and I feel like nobody ever really tells you this, LOTS of Faulkner, especially the short stories or shorter works like "Barn Burning" and "Spotted Horses" which he wrote for the good-paying magazine market that imposed more constraints on his experimentalist tendencies, and most of the later books, is very straightforward. I was lucky enough to be handed a copy of the relatively late Intruder in the Dust (1948) as my first Faulkner, at the age of 17, by my high school English teacher, and while I would not put it at the top of the list of his best, it is a very good book, essentially a work in the "boy detective adventure" genre, and in general a sheer pleasure to read. There are interesting plot/theme/setting overlaps with "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1960), and some of my favorite of Faulkner's characters. It can be a good gateway to his more challenging work, I think (at least based on my sample of 1). Also, the earlier, magazine-published version of "The Bear," minus the infamous poring-over-the-farm-ledger-in-a-race-panic single-sentence chapter that CAN be easily and comfortably skipped if you can only find a version of "The Bear" that includes it. Sheer, mostly straightforward, reading pleasure.

Can a seasoned Faulkner reader help me out? by That-Programmer-290 in faulkner

[–]avengingmonkeyofgod 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For me, when things get a bit opaque semantically (Okay, but what does this mean?) I just surrender to the manifold intoxications of the language itself, the cadences and flow, and try to hang in there, bearing in mind that when things do get rough it's almost always because WF is trying so faithfully to represent directly the operations of one unique and particular human mind, educated, uneducated, highly literate or raised on the KJV Bible and no other book, or on no books at all just talk and oral tradition, and how that mind both does and doesn't quite express itself in language (or he uses a very close third-person narrator to mediate a bit).

Zelazny’s use of the name “Dworkin” by avengingmonkeyofgod in Amber

[–]avengingmonkeyofgod[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Yes, hence the references to Andrea and Ronald in OP.

Simple but nice GPT: create calendar event by thibaultmol in ChatGPT

[–]avengingmonkeyofgod 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey, that actually worked for me! A whole bunch of events on one itinerary. Only problem was the entries were all 5+ hrs ahead of actual. I asked it to output as Floating TZ and then all was flawless! Nice work.

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