Getting to Know Pianoforte the MySpace Way

Pianoforte

Pianoforte

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I found this old post I had on my Facebook today and figured I'd copy/paste it here. It's pretty interesting and still holds true today. Keep in mind that this was posted to a Facebook audience of college kids. Nothing is meant to be offensive to anyone.


1. I believe in God. Deal with it.

2. I, at one point in my life, had a SERIOUS Final Fantasy problem. I would play so much that I would forget to eat until my mother would make me. Now, I just sound really nerdy discussing it in deep detail.

3. I play WoW, but do not have a WoW problem. Reference above: I learned my lesson.

4. Basketball is life without the bad parts.

5. My son is cuter than yours.

6. I have a nerdy interest in Language history.

7. I have an even nerdier interest in Neurolinguisitcs and Syntactical analysis.

8. I have cold hands.

9. Orange is the greatest color of all time (has nothing to do with any University or College)

10. I drum. It makes me happy. It makes others sad...sometimes angry.

11. I talk too much and don't listen enough.

12. I watch America's Next Top Model. (Marjorie Conrad and Anya Rozova were my favorites)

13. I weigh about 140 pounds and I don't care what you say, I'm not underweight.

14. I don't understand art that doesn't directly depict an object or action. This is probably due to my refusal to associate emotions with colors.

15. Country accents bother me.

16. Northern accents bother me.

17. Caffeine has abnormally dramatic effects on my body.

18. I want to learn to play every musical instrument possible. However, due to being horribly tonedeaf, I will most likely fail to learn anything that isn't percussive in nature.

19. I have a YouTube problem.

20. I am better than you at Super Smash Bros. Melee (Brawl, no so much =\)

21. I am way, WAY worse than you at any video game involving first-person view and/or guns.

22. I like to run.

23. I think J.R.R. Tolkien's literature is an insult to my intelligence and borders heavily on plaigirism.

24. I always wanted to learn to cook, but have yet to do so. Teach me if you can.

25. I DESPISE odd numbers, and having this thing end on one is driving me absolutely bonkers.
 
Pianoforte said:
23. I think J.R.R. Tolkien's literature is an insult to my intelligence and borders heavily on plaigirism.
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Not insulted but what did you mean? I mean I know he used some myths and legends but it always seemed like everyone else plagiarized him. Is there a comprehensive work that predates Tolkien's?
 
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The Mighty Gerbil said:
Not insulted but what did you mean? I mean I know he used some myths and legends but it always seemed like everyone else plagiarized him. Is there a comprehensive work that predates Tolkien's?
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He uses entire scenes, paragraphs, and, in some cases, multiple pages straight from Old English works both by anonymous and non-anonymous authors word for word, changing around names and location names and nothing else. I have some of the data about it lying around somewhere, as I had to write a research paper on it at one point during college. Of course, the more popularly known part is that the entire concept behind The Lord of the Rings is taken from an old German opera by Wagner.

Basically, he gathered lots and lots of old, not so well known texts written in different languages, translated them, mashed them all together, and changed the names. It wouldn't bother me so much if he had, at any point, given SOME credit to original authors or just acknowledged that the work wasn't entirely original. =\
 
Here's a brief example:

This is from LotR Two Towers:

Where now the horse and the rider? where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harp-string, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning?
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?

And this is a section from an Old English poem entitled "The Wanderer:"

Where is the horse gone? Where is the rider?
Where is the giver of treasure?
Where are the seats at the feast?
Where are the revels in the hall?
Alas for the bright cup!
Alas for the mailed warrior!
Alas for the splendour of the prince!
How that time has passed away,
dark under the cover of night,
as if it had never been!



It's stuff like this that bothers me.
 
Piano, that list is teh awesome.

If I grade myself literally point by point, I am only 7/25 Piano but could probably go to 20/25 substituting similar but different oddities for myself (e.g. for #25 8:08 and 12:34 are my favorite times and I always get excited if I glance at a digital clock when they're showing).

On Tolkein -- your quote is that goofy poetry/song stuff in LotR. I didn't know anyone actually read that stuff, I always totally skipped it! But it made me think that if J.R.R. had been born a century later that he'd totally be fluent in Klingon ... you know, one of "them" ;)
 
Numbers 9 and 14 seem to contradict themselves.

The very notion that you have a favorite color (form of emotion) seems to debunk number 14.

<Puts his psychology away.>

Very nice list and very nice dirt on Tolkien!
 
Odale said:
Numbers 9 and 14 seem to contradict themselves.

The very notion that you have a favorite color (form of emotion) seems to debunk number 14.

<Puts his psychology away.>

Very nice list and very nice dirt on Tolkien!
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I don't associate orange with any particular emotions, I just think it's wicked pretty, and I can see it clearly, despite my color blindness. Darker colors like navy blue, through purple all the way to black are kinda one big blob to me and brick red and tree bark brown are extremely difficult for me to distinguish. Through high school, I always wore really bright yellows, oranges, and blues because that way, I could actually be sure my clothes matched without having to ask my sister.

Remember that I wrote this a few years back when I first discovered the stuff about Tolkien and all that mess. He should very well respected as a translator, literature fan/buff, and for compiling all that stuff into a unique, modern collection. It's just that the words and general plot are unoriginal. I wish more people knew about it and/or that he would have just admitted it.
 
Gilga said:
On Tolkein -- your quote is that goofy poetry/song stuff in LotR. I didn't know anyone actually read that stuff, I always totally skipped it! But it made me think that if J.R.R. had been born a century later that he'd totally be fluent in Klingon ... you know, one of "them" ;)
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That's exactly what it would be like. To know of the stories and stuff he "quotes" is a pretty nerdy undertaking. He really brought that stuff out of nowhere and, inadvertently, created a new awareness about it among literature scholars.

Mad props to him though for the fact that he did solely create the foreign languages used in the books. He wrote full alphabets, lexicon, and grammars for his elfish and dwarven languages. They are uniquely his original creations and, as a linguistics guy myself, that's pretty cool and impressive.
 
Pianoforte said:
Here's a brief example:
Where now the horse and the rider? where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harp-string, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning?
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?

And this is a section from an Old English poem entitled "The Wanderer:"

Where is the horse gone? Where is the rider?
Where is the giver of treasure?
Where are the seats at the feast?
Where are the revels in the hall?
Alas for the bright cup!
Alas for the mailed warrior!
Alas for the splendour of the prince!
How that time has passed away,
dark under the cover of night,
as if it had never been!



It's stuff like this that bothers me.
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Have to say, that doesn't seem like plagiarism to me. Tolkien's poem may have been inspired by The Wanderer, but it is not even close to word for word and doesn't just use synonyms for the most part. Comparing the "Where is the horse and the rider?" to the first line of The Wanderer is understandable, but the rest of the poem uses quite different language to convey similar emotions, which I don't think is plagiarism. Also, you have to keep in mind that there have been so many pieces of literature written that it can often be difficult to have new ideas that are not similar to someone else's ideas.

Note: I may be somewhat biased on this, since I consider Tolkien's work to be about the best I have seen. (as evidenced by the character names I used in WoW)
 
Sheckle said:
26. Im O.C.D
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I've often wondered if I'm legitimately OCD. I show a lot of the symptoms. However, I've been told that I also show many of the symptoms of ADHD as well. Those two concepts seem quite opposed and I'm not sure if it's therefore possible to be both. So, I'll just continue to wonder for the rest of my life, since knowing wouldn't really help either situation anyway.
 
Grimbeorn said:
Have to say, that doesn't seem like plagiarism to me. Tolkien's poem may have been inspired by The Wanderer, but it is not even close to word for word and doesn't just use synonyms for the most part. Comparing the "Where is the horse and the rider?" to the first line of The Wanderer is understandable, but the rest of the poem uses quite different language to convey similar emotions, which I don't think is plagiarism. Also, you have to keep in mind that there have been so many pieces of literature written that it can often be difficult to have new ideas that are not similar to someone else's ideas.

Note: I may be somewhat biased on this, since I consider Tolkien's work to be about the best I have seen. (as evidenced by the character names I used in WoW)
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We're taught in our Literature programs at college that conceptual plagiarism is still punishable by law (and also that any 3 words in succession that seem intentional count as well) but that's kinda nit-picky, I agree. There are much better examples that I'll have to dig up from my old stuff. There a few occurences of literal word-for-word stuff, but it's been a long time.

Just for the record, I'm not denying that the man is talented. He's certainly a great author and much better than anybody currently writing (of course, the best artists of any kind are rarely popular in their own time).
 
Pianoforte said:
We're taught in our Literature programs at college that conceptual plagiarism is still punishable by law (and also that any 3 words in succession that seem intentional count as well) but that's kinda nit-picky, I agree.
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Wow that does sound kinda brutal. I've come up with lots of concepts all by myself only to find they already existed after the fact. With the scope of literature I could not possibly know it all and it makes me afraid to write anything for fear of being accused of stealing it. I mean the English language is finite and even more so when you limit it to three word combinations.
 
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