Re: a comment on Bri's Room (not done) by Sunshine Conkey	zodiac 69.132.67.140	16-Dec-05/3:58 PM
Yes, of course. No one here has suggested Ayn Rand wasn't a good writer, wasn't intelligent, wasn't writing from her perspective or for her time, et cetera, et cetera. No one has even said Ayn Rand was simplistic. If you think anyone has said these things, please, please go back and read our messages. At the risk of putting this conversation even further off track, I'll tell you what I don't like about Ayn Rand's ideas: Her books often overwhelmingly measure success (in life, as an egoist, etc) by characters' contributions to INDUSTRY only. I'm not ignoring her books' positively portrayed writers, artists, and even regular businesspeople, but I wish they'd gotten more play (not to mention, come off better in the end). Personally, I consider myself living a satisfactorily Randian life under the radar with my wife and my normal job, without having to measure my greatness by the size of my skyscraper.
Re: a comment on You Have It Backwards by LilMsLadyPoet	wilco 24.92.74.122	16-Dec-05/3:56 PM
1) Am I wrong in thinking that you have to have a Bachelor's Degree before you go to grad school? That's what they told me and I'm gonna be pissd If I found I I could have gotten here straight out of high school. I'm not trying to say anything bad about your mother (Lord knows that's just not right), but I'm just trying to figure this out. 2) People in America are scared every day..Have you been to an inner city housing project lately? Many of these people have no food, no heat, no water and any second a stray bullet could come through the window and take off the top of Little Billy's head. You wouldn't believe the things that these people come up with to make it through...from popping out babies like a Pez dispenser to get more welfare to making crap out of garbage and selling it to the white folks who think it's quaint. The point is that, people will invent regardless of their socioeconomic status and regardless of their freedom from "terror, horror and immediate harm".
Re: a comment on Bri's Room (not done) by Sunshine Conkey	LilMsLadyPoet 207.69.139.10	16-Dec-05/3:49 PM
We called our 'smoker's hill' the same! LOL
Re: a comment on Bri's Room (not done) by Sunshine Conkey	LilMsLadyPoet 207.69.139.10	16-Dec-05/3:48 PM
I read a bunch of those books... Flowers for Agernon was one of my morbidly favorite books of all time. And LawnMower Man..whew...it's wild. I like them both...though i am not sure how they relate to this topic...I don't see the connection to educating past inteligence level....?
Re: a comment on Bri's Room (not done) by Sunshine Conkey	LilMsLadyPoet 207.69.139.10	16-Dec-05/3:45 PM
"When money buys power and presidents, when people buy into the belief that intellegence belongs to the wealthy, and when people no longer feel they have control of their own destinies, then Democracy, as powerful as we know it capable of being, will fail to be what it should be." Perhaps you did not read clearly? Sees you are taking things out of context.
Re: a comment on Bri's Room (not done) by Sunshine Conkey	LilMsLadyPoet 207.69.139.10	16-Dec-05/3:42 PM
I promise I will scan through and find the passage if you trly want me to...I have been on a re-read-A-thon of all her stuff, so I am not sure where it is, but I believe in Fountainhead, and then resaid again in Virtue of Selfishness, I think. Crap...I ALWAYS mispell it...that, and carress...caress...see?! Mispelling things speaks to lack of education or motivation to be careful,it does not indicate lack of intelligence. (I admit I had to go back, take out the E again, and put in the I!) I believe the statement is more about educating someone beyond their capacity to understand the responsibility one should assume, when one has risen in power and position because of the education he has been afforded. With great knowledge comes great responsibility. Intelligence refers to the innate ability to process and use the education one gains in a way that benefits one's slef and others. Educating a person beyond his ability to understand the responsibility that comes with increated knowledge leads to people of power who do not deserve to be in power, who do not know how to apply the knowledge they have, and who often do more harm to themselves and others than they would have had they not risen beyond a level they could fully undertstand. (The current president kinda exemplifies my point.)
Re: Privacy by Dovina	wilco 24.92.74.122	16-Dec-05/3:40 PM
I'm delighted that this isn't about religion...I do wish that you use a little punctuation...It just makes it easier to read, y'know.
Re: I love to see the sunrise by amanda_dcosta	wilco 24.92.74.122	16-Dec-05/3:37 PM
The 2nd line of the second stanza and the 4th line of the third read a little awkwardly. It's simple and you could probably beef it up with a little imagery. Your thoughts are good, but the thing about poetry is that youu need to find an interesting new way to say it. For example, in the first stanza, instead of just tellign us you love the sunrise because each day is exciting and new, tell us why...
Re: Lost Identity by TLRufener	wilco 24.92.74.122	16-Dec-05/3:32 PM
I don't kow if this qualifies as a leaving rant... I'm trying to figure out what this is all about..you sound as if you think that the users of Poemranker have forced you to alter your writing to a point where you don't enjoy doing it anymore..If thats the way you feel, then I'm not sure hoe it happened.
Re: a comment on Bri's Room (not done) by Sunshine Conkey	LilMsLadyPoet 207.69.139.10	16-Dec-05/3:25 PM
Contrary to what is posted here, she said as much, indeed. I have read, some several times: Fountain Head, Atlas Shrugged, Anthem, The Virtue of Selfishness, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (Expanded 2nd. Edition, and am currently waiting on a copy of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, so that I may have a copy for my library, and to read again....thank you very much. She wrote from her perspective and time...one must always take that into account when reading authors from a different time period than one lives in. There was nothing simplistic about her. She was very concrete, and not very compassionate. I think if she lived in our time, and had had the gift of time, she would have grown and expanded her philosophy to better reflect what could be learned from the time of her death until now. That aside...she was an owesome writer, who did what no one else had done: formed heroic characters, and formulated a new philosophy to base her characters on. She was astoundingly intellegent...and one can embrace certain of her principles, without embracing them to a fanatical degree.
Re: Lost Identity by TLRufener	zodiac 69.132.67.140	16-Dec-05/3:19 PM
Surely this isn't about us? Oh, dear. You've got us all wrong. We didn't tell you to write like this.
Re: a comment on You Have It Backwards by LilMsLadyPoet	zodiac 69.132.67.140	16-Dec-05/3:15 PM
"I have less intellegence (on average)" makes me think you haven't gotten what I'm saying about averages (or intelligence) after all. Same goes for "we all need to get more money if we want our IQ's to rise". Yes, you could say 'I'm being silly', but it would really help if you'd shown us you could answer seriously first.
Re: a comment on You Have It Backwards by LilMsLadyPoet	zodiac 69.132.67.140	16-Dec-05/3:12 PM
You've spent the last three days railing against the evils of socialism, but you can't come up with an individualistic way of expressing your mind? The phrase of the people is good enough for you? That's as communist as anything I've seen on this site.
Re: a comment on Bri's Room (not done) by Sunshine Conkey	LilMsLadyPoet 207.69.139.10	16-Dec-05/3:11 PM
I did not know the quote belonged to him, and what is the difference, indeed.
Re: a comment on You Have It Backwards by LilMsLadyPoet	LilMsLadyPoet 207.69.139.10	16-Dec-05/3:06 PM
No, next time I promised to put it in a form that could loosely be refered to as poetry. I just did not want to continue the discussion within the string of someone else's poem, where the discussion started. I did a no-no , apparently, by posting this as a poem, but since I did, we are discussing the subject here. See, I didn't KNOW the rules, because I too am without good fortune and money, therefore I have less intellegence (on average), than wealthier people...or so Zodiac has informed me. I guess we all need to get more money if we want our IQ's to rise, then we could be inventors and innovators:)
Re: a comment on You Have It Backwards by LilMsLadyPoet	LilMsLadyPoet 207.69.139.10	16-Dec-05/2:57 PM
Surely, one can embrace the quote and say that it sums up one's own thought. I was simply saying that I agree with the quote.
Re: a comment on I love to see the sunrise by amanda_dcosta	LilMsLadyPoet 207.69.139.10	16-Dec-05/2:52 PM
:>
Re: a comment on CHRISTMAS EVERYDAY by amanda_dcosta	-=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. 81.151.150.39	16-Dec-05/2:21 PM
"and i feel that baby jesus is true. there's nothing false about him," Nothing false... apart from His beard. Contrary to popular belief, Jesus's's beard didn't reach full maturity until He was six years old. In the meantime, He made do with a false beard crudely woven by a local shepherd.
Re: a comment on CHRISTMAS EVERYDAY by amanda_dcosta	-=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. 81.151.150.39	16-Dec-05/2:17 PM
HE WAS NOT HUMAN. HE WAS NOT OF THIS EARTH. TREAD CAREFULLY, AMANDA. YOU'RE MEDDLING IN POWERS YOU CANNOT POSSIBLY COMPREHEND...
Re: Privacy by Dovina	zodiac 69.132.67.140	16-Dec-05/1:10 PM
I'm getting from this that perverts ought to have more privacy, but there's no privacy for anybody. Poor perverts. If you don't think that's what this poem's saying, you might consider (1) punctuating normally and (2) making real sentences (rather than strings of nouns and adjectives) as ways of reducing ambiguity and keeping people from making my mistake. Personally, I think that's an ace thing to write poetry about, and I'm glad to see you taking on more complicated subjects.