What do you find beautiful?

A Neurotic

The Scalpel

They'd stunned me groggy with Demerol and bland
assurances, but I could see it: a dour adolescent scythe.
100 I'd hate to meet that 99 tad when it grows 98
up. And here's what else I saw: my glowing corpse

amidst a huddle of apprentice docs - this is a teaching
hospital I've died in. Of course I can't hear a word
they're saying. "Let him be a lesson to you?" "What did
he do to be so black and blue?" I'm now curriculum

to them, though to the scalpel I'm the sweetest dream
that labour knows. And to myself? I'm like a dwindling
star. I watch the energy leap off me in tarry blobs
and writhing spurts of flame. How can they stand so close?

So this is what I came to, this last pyrotechnic dither.
The last imploding gleam of me winks out, reflected
by the scalpel. That's a nice touch, I think, that mortal
flashbulb fading, first on the blade, then on the retina.

I love this poem deeply, especially the closing lines, as the already-dead narrator describes the death of their consciousness. OK that's a mindfúck but the language is beautiful.

Konata

A Neurotic wrote: »

The Scalpel

Wow, good poem. Who's the poet?

A Neurotic

Hotaru wrote: »

Wow, good poem. Who's the poet?

No idea >_<

It was given to me on a handout, with no poet. Google has never heard of it.

Konata

A Neurotic wrote: »

No idea >_<

It was given to me on a handout, with no poet. Google has never heard of it.

Ack, how irritating.

I just threw the lyrics into Google there to have a look and was delighre when a result came up.

Turns out it's your blog :P

A Neurotic

I'll claim it as my own!

Konata

A Neurotic wrote: »

I'll claim it as my own!

You're certainly the only Google result anyway.

On the topic of poetry - though a bit morbid, I've always loved this little poem by Dorothy Parker. It's called Rhyme Against Living:

If wild my breast and sore my pride,
I bask in dreams of suicide;
If cool my heart and high my head,
I think, "How lucky are the dead!"

One poem from the LC that has always stuck with me was Ambulances by Philip Larkin:

Closed like confessionals, they thread
Loud noons of cities, giving back
None of the glances they absorb.
Light glossy grey, arms on a plaque,
They come to rest at any kerb:
All streets in time are visited.

Then children strewn on steps or road,
Or women coming from the shops
Past smells of different dinners, see
A wild white face that overtops
Red stretcher-blankets momently
As it is carried in and stowed,

And sense the solving emptiness
That lies just under all we do,
And for a second get it whole,
So permanent and blank and true.
The fastened doors recede. Poor soul,
They whisper at their own distress;

For borne away in deadened air
May go the sudden shut of loss
Round something nearly at an end,
And what cohered in it across
The years, the unique random blend
Of families and fashions, there

At last begin to loosen. Far
From the exchange of love to lie
Unreachable insided a room
The trafic parts to let go by
Brings closer what is left to come,
And dulls to distance all we are.

SligoBrewer

Poetry

Davidius

I hope I'm not the only one who hates poetry.

Pygmalion

Davidius wrote: »

I hope I'm not the only one who hates poetry.

I'm not sure if I've posted this here before, very probably I have, but this time it's for you:

And yes, I did try to find more Mathsy ones first but didn't find anything more substantial than going over primary school level stuff :P.

Scooping the Loop Snooper

an elementary proof of the undecidability of the halting problem

No program can say what another will do.
Now, I won't just assert that, I'll prove it to you:
I will prove that although you might work til you drop,
you can't predict whether a program will stop.

Imagine we have a procedure called P
that will snoop in the source code of programs to see
there aren't infinite loops that go round and around;
and P prints the word "Fine!" if no looping is found.

You feed in your code, and the input it needs,
and then P takes them both and it studies and reads
and computes whether things will all end as the should
(as opposed to going loopy the way that they could).

Well, the truth is that P cannot possibly be,
because if you wrote it and gave it to me,
I could use it to set up a logical bind
that would shatter your reason and scramble your mind.

Here's the trick I would use - and it's simple to do.
I'd define a procedure - we'll name the thing Q -
that would take a program we will call P (of course!)
to tell if it looped, by reading the source;

And if so, Q would simply print "Loop!" and then stop;
but if no, Q would go right back to the top,
and start off again, looping endlessly back,
til the universe dies and is frozen and black.

And this program called Q wouldn't stay on the shelf;
I would run it, and (fiendishly) feed it itself.
What behaviour results when I do this with Q?
When it reads its own source, just what will it do?

If P warns of loops, Q will print "Loop!" and quit;
yet P is supposed to speak truly of it.
So if Q's going to quit, then P should say, "Fine!" -
which will make Q go back to its very first line!

No matter what P would have done, Q will scoop it:
Q uses P's output to make P look stupid.
If P gets things right then it lies in its tooth;
and if it speaks falsely, it's telling the truth!

I've created a paradox, neat as can be -
and simply by using your putative P.
When you assumed P you stepped into a snare;
Your assumptions have led you right into my lair.

So, how to escape from this logical mess?
I don't have to tell you; I'm sure you can guess.
By reductio, there cannot possibly be
a procedure that acts like the mythical P.

You can never discover mechanical means
for predicting the acts of computing machines.
It's something that cannot be done. So we users
must find our own bugs; our computers are losers!

Arcade Panda

This album is incredibly beautiful. It's a concept album about a man who works in a hospital and falls in love with one of the patients, a self destructive girl suffering from bone cancer. I love it all really but this song is particularly heart wrenching....

Two

In the middle of the night I was sleeping sitting up
When a doctor came to tell me, "Enough is enough"

He brought me out into the hall (I could have sworn it was haunted)
And told me something that I didn't know that I wanted to hear:
That there was nothing that I could do to save you
The choir's going to sing, and this thing is going to kill you
Something in my throat made my next words shake
And something in the wires made the lightbulbs break
There was glass inside my feet and raining down from the ceiling
It opened up the scars that had just finished healing
It tore apart the canyon running down your femur
(I thought that it was beautiful, it made me a believer)
And as it opened I could hear you howling from your room
But I hid out in the hall until the hurricane blew
When I reappeared and tried to give you something for the pain
You came to hating me again and just sang your refrain

You had a new dream, it was more like a nightmare
You were just a little kid, and they cut your hair
Then they stuck you in machines, you came so close to dying
They should have listened, they thought that you were lying
Daddy was an asshole, he ****ed you up
Built the gears in your head, now he greases them up
And no one paid attention when you just stopped eating
"Eighty-seven pounds!" and this all bears repeating

Tell me when you think that we became so unhappy
Wearing silver rings with nobody clapping
When we moved here together we were so disappointed
Sleeping out of tune with our dreams disjointed
It killed me to see you getting always rejected
But I didn't mind the things you threw, the phones I deflected
I didn't mind you blaming me for your mistakes
I just held you in the door-frame through all of the earthquakes
But you packed up your clothes in that bag every night
And I would try to grab your ankles (what a pitiful sight)
But after over a year, I stopped trying to stop you
From stomping out that door
Coming back like you always do
Well no one's going to fix it for us, no one can
You say that, "No one's going to listen, and no one understands"

So there's no open doors and there's no way to get through
There's no other witnesses, just us two

There's two people living in one small room
From your two half-families tearing at you
Two ways to tell the story (no one worries)
Two silver rings on our fingers in a hurry
Two people talking inside your brain
Two people believing that I'm the one to blame
Two different voices coming out of your mouth
While I'm too cold to care and too sick to shout

You had a new dream, it was more like a nightmare
You were just a little kid, and they cut your hair
Then they stuck you in machines, you came so close to dying
They should have listened, they thought that you were lying
Daddy was an asshole, he ****ed you up
Built the gears in your head, now he greases them up
And no one paid attention when you just stopped eating
"Eighty-seven pounds!" and this all bears repeating

So sad but really gorgeous at the same time:(

Davidius

Pygmalion wrote: »

Post

That's more of a statement that's of superfluous length, not a touchy-feely thing like Poetry.

Pygmalion

Davidius wrote: »

That's more of a statement that's of superfluous length, not a touchy-feely thing like Poetry.

But it rhymes.

Are you saying that it needs more than rhyme to be a poem?

Davidius

Pygmalion wrote: »

But it rhymes.

Are you saying that it needs more than rhyme to be a poem?

My bad, people just keep refering to touchy-feely nonsense that means the opposite of what it says as poetry. I'd forgotten that a real poem is just a series of rhyming sentences.

EDIT:
I was going to drag up a picture of Awesome Prime to accompany that "My bad" but I realised it's on my desktop's harddrive.

norwegianwood

Davidius wrote: »

I hope I'm not the only one who hates poetry.

Leaving Cert wrecked poetry for me tbh....yet another win for the education system.

msbrightside

Scaffolding

Seamus Heaney



Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job’s done
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.

jumpguy

msbrightside wrote: »

Scaffolding

Seamus Heaney



Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job’s done
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.

I actually think that's a negative poem. "Bridges" signify connection communication, and co-operation, while "walls" signify ignorance, lack of communication. So, when the bridges fall, they have a wall. So, when the relationship fails, they can always be confident to know they have built an emotional block between them.

/my interpretation

msbrightside

jumpguy wrote: »

I actually think that's a negative poem. "Bridges" signify connection communication, and co-operation, while "walls" signify ignorance, lack of communication. So, when the bridges fall, they have a wall. So, when the relationship fails, they can always be confident to know they have built an emotional block between them.

/my interpretation

To be honest, I never thought of it like that! I viewed it in a totally different way. I see the walls as a symbol of the things their relationship was based on. That even if they fight, they know that they still have the foundation that the relationship was formed on.
I worded that very poorly, but i couldn't be bothered fixing it..too tired!

Anyway, I'd say your interpretation is better than mine. I'm not a big poetry fan! I'll look at it different from now though.!

jumpguy

msbrightside wrote: »

To be honest, I never thought of it like that! I viewed it in a totally different way. I see the walls as a symbol of the things their relationship was based on. That even if they fight, they know that they still have the foundation that the relationship was formed on.
I worded that very poorly, but i couldn't be bothered fixing it..too tired!

Anyway, I'd say your interpretation is better than mine. I'm not a big poetry fan! I'll look at it different from now though.!

It's different people's perceptions that make poetry like any art. There's no right or wrong answer.

sock puppet

The results of our economics exam today formed close to a perfectly normal distribution. A mean of 54, a median of 53, and 50-60 was the mark that most people got. Now if that's not beautiful I don't know what is.

Fago!

The sun breaking though the clouds as if heaven was opening up.

Swing music, BBQ ribs, perfectly executed guitar harmonys, comedy radio.

A pink/purple/black haired girl with braces or glasses, possibly wearing a floral dress. Or some sort of emo girl.

rainbow kirby

The Mandelbrot set, fractals are awesome.

Extrasupervery

Honesty

I'm liking this today

Ginja Ninja

just that last line says it all for me "Life is too short to be anything but happy"

EDIT: to save a double post:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY

I'm a huge fan of Obama's speechs."yes we can" will be remembered for years,it's such a good speech

Konata

This is a piece of music from the film Spirited Away. I just love it, so beautiful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZNkrhgMr3Y

Ginja Ninja

someone mentioned fleet foxes earleir,this is lovely:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrQRS40OKNE

D4RK ONION

Our universe is so incredible

A Neurotic

I came across this on another board as a "must-watch video". The site claims that the world would be better if everyone watched it. I watched, and I agree on both counts.

http://gizmodo.com/5513783/the-world-would-be-better-if-everyone-watched-this-video

Tar.Aldarion

niiice

Jamie Starr

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_jztM5LGqU

I really enjoy this song having no real understanding of the lyrics (because it's a mix of Japenese and French, or something to that effect), but in another way, I get it completely. Suppose that's what beauty is for me-I don't even claim to understand it, but from time to time it still speaks to me.

That picture Onion posted is case in point: I'm almost always convinced that those types of pictures can't be real, because I have absolutely no idea what is going on, but undenialbly it still reaches me on some level, so it must be true!

A Neurotic

Also -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc