My Father's Legacy

[Edward Rochester Esq.]

My Father's Legacy

Though the pants down beltings
belong in the past and your house
still holds a son's anguish, I do understand
punishment is meant to teach a lesson
but perhaps a belt didn't do the job --
where a length of oak, could have --
you see I'm still a fuck-up.

Perhaps a softer approach would have produced
success.

Anonymous

[Edward Rochester Esq.]

..........

[NancyGene]

Maybe an immediate willow branch or a sent-to-bed-without-supper would have been more effective than traumatizing the kid for the rest of his scared life. He will forever be afraid of pants, belts and sleeping on his stomach.

[George Dance]

This is an interesting addition to your "Father" series, and is archived along with the others.

Question: If the beatings are 'in the past', why would the house still 'hold a son's anguish'? Why wouldn't the anguish go 'in[to] the past' along with the reason for it?

[Michael Pendragon]

Because the son still wishes to burn down the house.

Really, George... considering how you wrote the poem this one is an OB to, you sure are acting dense regarding its meaning.

[George Dance]

On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 3:02:30 PM UTC-5, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 2:39:27 PM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> > On Thursday, December 29, 2022 at 9:33:54 AM UTC-5, blackpo...@aol.com wrote:
> > > My Father's Legacy
> > >
> > > Though the pants down beltings
> > > belong in the past and your house
> > > still holds a son's anguish, I do understand
> > > punishment is meant to teach a lesson
> > > but perhaps a belt didn't do the job --
> > > where a length of oak, could have --
> > > you see I'm still a fuck-up.
> > >
> > > Perhaps a softer approach would have produced
> > > success.
> > >
> > > Anonymous
> > This is an interesting addition to your "Father" series, and is archived along with the others.
> >
> > Question: If the beatings are 'in the past', why would the house still 'hold a son's anguish'? Why wouldn't the anguish go 'in[to] the past' along with the reason for it?
> Because the son still wishes to burn down the house.
>

That sounds like a reversal of cause and effect. Wanting to burn the house down because he felt anguished sounds reasonable enough; but feeling anguished because he wants to burn the house down does not. Is the idea

[ME]

Damn it dance. You wrote it. Own it.

[George Dance]

On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 7:06:01 PM UTC-5, ME wrote:
> On Sunday, 1 January 2023 at 19:01:14 UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> > On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 3:02:30 PM UTC-5, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 2:39:27 PM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> > > > On Thursday, December 29, 2022 at 9:33:54 AM UTC-5, blackpo...@aol.com wrote:
> > > > > My Father's Legacy
> > > > >
> > > > > Though the pants down beltings
> > > > > belong in the past and your house
> > > > > still holds a son's anguish, I do understand
> > > > > punishment is meant to teach a lesson
> > > > > but perhaps a belt didn't do the job --
> > > > > where a length of oak, could have --
> > > > > you see I'm still a fuck-up.
> > > > >
> > > > > Perhaps a softer approach would have produced
> > > > > success.
> > > > >
> > > > > Anonymous
> > > > This is an interesting addition to your "Father" series, and is archived along with the others.
> > > >
> > > > Question: If the beatings are 'in the past', why would the house still 'hold a son's anguish'? Why wouldn't the anguish go 'in[to] the past' along with the reason for it?
> > > Because the son still wishes to burn down the house.
> > >
> > That sounds like a reversal of cause and effect. Wanting to burn the house down because he felt anguished sounds reasonable enough; but feeling anguished because he wants to burn the house down does not.

> > > Really, George... considering how you wrote the poem this one is an OB to, you sure are acting dense regarding its meaning.

> Damn it dance. You wrote it. Own it.

No, MEatpuppet, you sound confused. I didn't write the above poem.

[Michael Pendragon]

The poem doesn't say that, George... and neither did I.

What does it profit a man to paint himself as a dunce so often, that others come to identify him as one?

Seriously, George. What do you think you gain from presenting yourself as an idiot?

[ME]

You wrote the original that inspired this one. Be happy that some of your doggerel actually inspired some good poetry.
Something most of us would ‘lest’ expect from you…,

[George Dance]

On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 7:38:13 PM UTC-5, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 7:01:14 PM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> > On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 3:02:30 PM UTC-5, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 2:39:27 PM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> > > > On Thursday, December 29, 2022 at 9:33:54 AM UTC-5, blackpo...@aol.com wrote:
> > > > > My Father's Legacy
> > > > >
> > > > > Though the pants down beltings
> > > > > belong in the past and your house
> > > > > still holds a son's anguish, I do understand
> > > > > punishment is meant to teach a lesson
> > > > > but perhaps a belt didn't do the job --
> > > > > where a length of oak, could have --
> > > > > you see I'm still a fuck-up.
> > > > >
> > > > > Perhaps a softer approach would have produced
> > > > > success.
> > > > >
> > > > > Anonymous
> > > > This is an interesting addition to your "Father" series, and is archived along with the others.
> > > >
> > > > Question: If the beatings are 'in the past', why would the house still 'hold a son's anguish'? Why wouldn't the anguish go 'in[to] the past' along with the reason for it?
> > > Because the son still wishes to burn down the house.
> > >
> > That sounds like a reversal of cause and effect. Wanting to burn the house down because he felt anguished sounds reasonable enough; but feeling anguished because he wants to burn the house down does not. Is the idea
> >
> The poem doesn't say that, George.

No, the poem doesn't say anything about that. That was you.

> ... and neither did I.

Actually, that is exactly what you said:
<Quote> > > > > Question: If the beatings are 'in the past', why would the house still 'hold a son's anguish'? Why wouldn't the anguish go 'in[to] the past' along with the reason for it?"
"> > > Because the son still wishes to burn down the house.</q>

Now, if that's not what you *meant* to say, try taking another stab at the question..
It's reasonable to think the son is feeling "anguish" in the days when he's being beaten. But why would he still feeling anguished years later, when he is not being beaten?

> What does it profit a man to paint himself as a dunce so often, that others come to identify him as one?
> Seriously, George. What do you think you gain from presenting yourself as an idiot?

Seriously, do you really think that throwing around your monkey-poo is going to take the attention off either your answer or your lie about it? You just claimed that Jim's boy is still feeling "anguished" because he "still wants to burn down the house" -- that he's subconsciously creating the "anguish" himself to try and justify his destructive impulses. That's not a bad explanation, and we can discuss that if you're willing to try being reasonable. Or, if that' i not what you meant, you can try explaining what you did mean, and we can discuss that.

[George Dance]

But that is not the poem we're discussing. "This one" is. Why not stop trying to deflect from some other poem, and take a stab at discussing this one?

> Be happy that some of your doggerel actually inspired some good poetry.

Perhaps you can explain why you think the above is "good poetry."

(You're using the word "doggerel" incorrectly, BTW. Doggerel is bad verse: verse that doesn't scan properly.)

> Something most of us would ‘lest’ expect from you…,

"Most of us?" Just how many of you are there, MEatpuppet? In addition to Steve and Clare, of course; we already know about those two.

[Michael Pendragon]

That is exactly what I meant to say. Perhaps you should take another stab at learning how to read.

Allow me to explain:

You asked: "If the beatings are 'in the past', why would the house still 'hold a son's anguish'? Why wouldn't the anguish go 'in[to] the past' along with the reason for it?"

I replied that since the son still wishes to burn down the house, his anguish is necessarily still very much alive, and very much connected to the house.

That isn't an answer to your question, so much as it is an explanation of the invalidity of your question.

The anguish cannot have gone "in[to]" the past, because the son still wishes to burn down the house.

If the anguish were gone, the house would not produce such an emotional response in the son.

Got it? Or are you going to play at being "George Dense" for another twenty exchanges?

> It's reasonable to think the son is feeling "anguish" in the days when he's being beaten. But why would he still feeling anguished years later, when he is not being beaten?
> > What does it profit a man to paint himself as a dunce so often, that others come to identify him as one?
> > Seriously, George. What do you think you gain from presenting yourself as an idiot?
> Seriously, do you really think that throwing around your monkey-poo is going to take the attention off either your answer or your lie about it? You just claimed that Jim's boy is still feeling "anguished" because he "still wants to burn down the house" -- that he's subconsciously creating the "anguish" himself to try and justify his destructive impulses. That's not a bad explanation, and we can discuss that if you're willing to try being reasonable. Or, if that' i not what you meant, you can try explaining what you did mean, and we can discuss that.
>

First off, "Jim's boy" is the same as George's boy -- as Jim's poem is a take off on your poem.

Secondly, I did not say that he was creating the anguish to justify his destructive impulses. That's purely your own invention.

I said, to put it bluntly: his butt still hurts.

Jim's/George's boy has never dealt with, nor gotten over, the whippings -- which he felt were unjustly administered. He has been nurturing a sense of outrage for the past 60 years (give or take), and still impotently wishes to exact revenge on his father -- even posthumously.

Finally, I am not "throwing around monkey poo." My question is a serious one.

Either you and your Donkey are the two stupidest people on the planet, or you're (often) feigning stupidity to achieve... what?

That's what I can't figure out. Why do you both pretend (assuming for your sake that you are pretending) to be too stupid to live?

Do you think you "win" some sort of backwardassed victory by making others repeat themselves?

Do you think that you're making us angry? And that that somehow constitutes a "win?"

You used to boast of having once been a member of Mensa. Now you seem hellbent on having us equate your name with words like "dense" and "dunce."

So, I'm asking you what you expect to gain by playing the idiot.

[Michael Pendragon]

Because this poem exists as a commentary on your poem.

One cannot discuss "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" without discussing "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love."

Jim's poem does not exist independently of yours (although it *could* -- but in doing so, would lose many layers of meaning, much of its symbolism, and it's humor).

And no one has said that he is anguished because he cannot burn down the house. He is anguished because he has never come to terms with the original anguish that he'd experienced as a child. Until he can make his peace with the past (and forgive his father), he will always experience such feelings.

Burning the house is symbolic means of coping with that anguish. It will probably be little more than a band aid, but it may open the door for him to address the sources of his anguish, and to come to terms with his past and to make peace with his father's memory.

> > Be happy that some of your doggerel actually inspired some good poetry.
> Perhaps you can explain why you think the above is "good poetry."

"Though the pants down beltings
belong in the past and your house
still holds a son's anguish, I do understand
punishment is meant to teach a lesson
but perhaps a belt didn't do the job --
where a length of oak, could have --
you see I'm still a fuck-up.

"Perhaps a softer approach would have produced
success."

I have already noted which of Jim's parody/OB poems I found to be exceptional. This one is not, IMHO, as well-written as those. Nevertheless, it still packs a pretty mean punch.

In this poem, Jim has your narrator (from "My Father's House") addressing the memory of his father (this means speaking to his father as though he were still alive).
The narrator (we'll call him "Young George") tells his father that he understands his rationale for using corporal punishment, but presents his current self (and life history) as an example of its failure to produce the desired results. In short, he's still a fuck-up.

The final line is a tacked on moral which is totally unnecessary -- and which sort of proselytizing moral is something Jim has an unfortunate tendency to indulge in. In this case, he is still attempting to convert his deceased father the out-dated "spare the rod and spoil the child" approach to child rearing.

> (You're using the word "doggerel" incorrectly, BTW. Doggerel is bad verse: verse that doesn't scan properly.)

No, George. Your poem is very poorly written, with forced rhymes, poor scansion, inversions, and (most of all) a light, sing-songy style that is at odds with the content (regarding the abuse of a child).

> > Something most of us would ‘lest’ expect from you…,
> "Most of us?" Just how many of you are there, MEatpuppet? In addition to Steve and Clare, of course; we already know about those two.

ME is pointing out how few people would expect a doggerel poem to inspire several good poems by others.

Usually it's the great poems that end up receiving such an honor.

You should be proud. Even if your own poems will never rise to that level, you can know that you've inspired some that have.

Kudos.

[NancyGene]

George Dance has never heard of PTSD. There is a certain red-headed prince who is still reacting to and moaning about losing his mother 25 years ago.

>
> That isn't an answer to your question, so much as it is an explanation of the invalidity of your question.
>
> The anguish cannot have gone "in[to]" the past, because the son still wishes to burn down the house.
>
> If the anguish were gone, the house would not produce such an emotional response in the son.

We think also that the son feels guilty for either not fighting back or for not running from the beating instead of waiting there, pants down, for the arrival of the father and the belt.

>
> Got it? Or are you going to play at being "George Dense" for another twenty exchanges?
> > It's reasonable to think the son is feeling "anguish" in the days when he's being beaten. But why would he still feeling anguished years later, when he is not being beaten?

Emotional trauma doesn't stop just because the original event is over. Ask a war veteran how he feels when he hears fireworks on New Year's Eve.

> > > What does it profit a man to paint himself as a dunce so often, that others come to identify him as one?
> > > Seriously, George. What do you think you gain from presenting yourself as an idiot?
> > Seriously, do you really think that throwing around your monkey-poo is going to take the attention off either your answer or your lie about it? You just claimed that Jim's boy is still feeling "anguished" because he "still wants to burn down the house" -- that he's subconsciously creating the "anguish" himself to try and justify his destructive impulses. That's not a bad explanation, and we can discuss that if you're willing to try being reasonable. Or, if that' i not what you meant, you can try explaining what you did mean, and we can discuss that.
> >
> First off, "Jim's boy" is the same as George's boy -- as Jim's poem is a take off on your poem.
>
> Secondly, I did not say that he was creating the anguish to justify his destructive impulses. That's purely your own invention.
>
> I said, to put it bluntly: his butt still hurts.
>
> Jim's/George's boy has never dealt with, nor gotten over, the whippings -- which he felt were unjustly administered. He has been nurturing a sense of outrage for the past 60 years (give or take), and still impotently wishes to exact revenge on his father -- even posthumously.

We don't think that George Dance took any psychology courses in college (nor read "Oedipus). Every boy has to symbolically kill his father in order to become a man. Evidently Jim's/George's boy never did that and never became a man, but is fixated on the memory of that house, the man who beat him, and the impotence that the boy felt during the beatings. Those memories are still in his conscious mind, and the speaker remains that boy.

[Michael Pendragon]

George can't admit to it, as he sees it as a sign of weakness.

Getting hung up on a past event that one can do nothing to correct is opposed to the teachings of Objectivism. An Übermensch would not allow unresolved childhood issues to keep him living his life to the fullest.

But a would-be Übermensch cannot accept the fact that he was once the helpless victim of a bigger, stronger, more powerful man than himself. The Nietzschean ideal of the Übermensch does not correspond to the image of a bare-assed little boy impotently awaiting his father's belt.

George can only address it in his poem by adding a disclaimer wherein the boy becomes a composite of himself and several boys he's known.

> > That isn't an answer to your question, so much as it is an explanation of the invalidity of your question.
> >
> > The anguish cannot have gone "in[to]" the past, because the son still wishes to burn down the house.
> >
> > If the anguish were gone, the house would not produce such an emotional response in the son.
> We think also that the son feels guilty for either not fighting back or for not running from the beating instead of waiting there, pants down, for the arrival of the father and the belt.

Definitely. Howard Roark would not have obediently submitted himself to it.

Young George was scared. He was too scared to fight back -- or to risk further punishment for running.

George wishes to burn down the house because it reminds him that he is not the Übermensch of his philosophical fantasies, but a cowardly man who will knuckle under to authority whenever it raises its ugly head (or takes off its belt).

> > Got it? Or are you going to play at being "George Dense" for another twenty exchanges?
> > > It's reasonable to think the son is feeling "anguish" in the days when he's being beaten. But why would he still feeling anguished years later, when he is not being beaten?
> Emotional trauma doesn't stop just because the original event is over. Ask a war veteran how he feels when he hears fireworks on New Year's Eve.

Exactly. But banning the fireworks would only remove a source of his recurring trauma -- it would not cure his PTSD.

> > > > What does it profit a man to paint himself as a dunce so often, that others come to identify him as one?
> > > > Seriously, George. What do you think you gain from presenting yourself as an idiot?
> > > Seriously, do you really think that throwing around your monkey-poo is going to take the attention off either your answer or your lie about it? You just claimed that Jim's boy is still feeling "anguished" because he "still wants to burn down the house" -- that he's subconsciously creating the "anguish" himself to try and justify his destructive impulses. That's not a bad explanation, and we can discuss that if you're willing to try being reasonable. Or, if that' i not what you meant, you can try explaining what you did mean, and we can discuss that.
> > >
> > First off, "Jim's boy" is the same as George's boy -- as Jim's poem is a take off on your poem.
> >
> > Secondly, I did not say that he was creating the anguish to justify his destructive impulses. That's purely your own invention.
> >
> > I said, to put it bluntly: his butt still hurts.
> >
> > Jim's/George's boy has never dealt with, nor gotten over, the whippings -- which he felt were unjustly administered. He has been nurturing a sense of outrage for the past 60 years (give or take), and still impotently wishes to exact revenge on his father -- even posthumously.
> We don't think that George Dance took any psychology courses in college (nor read "Oedipus). Every boy has to symbolically kill his father in order to become a man. Evidently Jim's/George's boy never did that and never became a man, but is fixated on the memory of that house, the man who beat him, and the impotence that the boy felt during the beatings. Those memories are still in his conscious mind, and the speaker remains that boy.
> >

An excellent point. And George attempts to compensate for this by 1) attacking those he instinctively recognizes as his betters, and 2) by supporting those he knows to be his inferiors. By dint of attacking his betters, he places himself (at least for the moment of the attack) in a superior position to them. If George can attack Jim, George is necessarily better than Jim -- at least until Jim, or one of his friends, puts George back in his place. And, whereas young George could not stick up for himself by defying his father, old George can stick up for the mildly retarded hillbilly who is at odds with the rest of the group.

> > Finally, I am not "throwing around monkey poo." My question is a serious one.
> >
> > Either you and your Donkey are the two stupidest people on the planet, or you're (often) feigning stupidity to achieve... what?
> >
> > That's what I can't figure out. Why do you both pretend (assuming for your sake that you are pretending) to be too stupid to live?
> >
> > Do you think you "win" some sort of backwardassed victory by making others repeat themselves?
> >
> > Do you think that you're making us angry? And that that somehow constitutes a "win?"
> >
> > You used to boast of having once been a member of Mensa. Now you seem hellbent on having us equate your name with words like "dense" and "dunce."
> >
> > So, I'm asking you what you expect to gain by playing the idiot.

Any ideas on why George wants to present himself as being inconceivably dense?

[NancyGene]

We see a certain lack of emotional maturity in both individuals.

>
> Getting hung up on a past event that one can do nothing to correct is opposed to the teachings of Objectivism. An Übermensch would not allow unresolved childhood issues to keep him living his life to the fullest.

Sort of like Tom Cruise in the "Top Gun" movies? Sometimes a person has to grow up and not blame his failures on his: parents, upbringing, poverty, city, lack of a toilet, reading habits, friends, or jealousy.

>
> But a would-be Übermensch cannot accept the fact that he was once the helpless victim of a bigger, stronger, more powerful man than himself. The Nietzschean ideal of the Übermensch does not correspond to the image of a bare-assed little boy impotently awaiting his father's belt.

He should have killed that little boy, along with the Belt-swinging Father and invented a new, strong, powerful Big Boy.

>
> George can only address it in his poem by adding a disclaimer wherein the boy becomes a composite of himself and several boys he's known.

Hidden in plain sight.

> > > That isn't an answer to your question, so much as it is an explanation of the invalidity of your question.
> > >
> > > The anguish cannot have gone "in[to]" the past, because the son still wishes to burn down the house.
> > >
> > > If the anguish were gone, the house would not produce such an emotional response in the son.
> > We think also that the son feels guilty for either not fighting back or for not running from the beating instead of waiting there, pants down, for the arrival of the father and the belt.
> Definitely. Howard Roark would not have obediently submitted himself to it.

Maybe the Little Boy never read Ayn Rand?

>
> Young George was scared. He was too scared to fight back -- or to risk further punishment for running.

The boys we know did and would have run. Or hidden the belt. Or locked the bedroom door. At some point, the Ideal Boy fights back. Bill Clinton did this with his stepfather.

>
> George wishes to burn down the house because it reminds him that he is not the Übermensch of his philosophical fantasies, but a cowardly man who will knuckle under to authority whenever it raises its ugly head (or takes off its belt).

There is a lot of building up in the George Dance autobiography but we suspect that much of the details are embellished. The truth may be too painful for him to admit. House in a box? How many of those were in the neighborhood? Was he bullied about that? Did the house fall down like a house of cards? Maybe it blew off of its foundation at the first Canadian wind? He didn't finish college. He wasn't chosen by voters. He is mostly disliked and ridiculed on newsgroups. Why is that? Can we trace it back to the beatings that he stoically took as a child? Sometimes children retreat into a fantasy life and develop their imaginations. That doesn't seem to have happened with George Dance.

> > > Got it? Or are you going to play at being "George Dense" for another twenty exchanges?
> > > > It's reasonable to think the son is feeling "anguish" in the days when he's being beaten. But why would he still feeling anguished years later, when he is not being beaten?
> > Emotional trauma doesn't stop just because the original event is over. Ask a war veteran how he feels when he hears fireworks on New Year's Eve.
> Exactly. But banning the fireworks would only remove a source of his recurring trauma -- it would not cure his PTSD.
> > > > > What does it profit a man to paint himself as a dunce so often, that others come to identify him as one?
> > > > > Seriously, George. What do you think you gain from presenting yourself as an idiot?
> > > > Seriously, do you really think that throwing around your monkey-poo is going to take the attention off either your answer or your lie about it? You just claimed that Jim's boy is still feeling "anguished" because he "still wants to burn down the house" -- that he's subconsciously creating the "anguish" himself to try and justify his destructive impulses. That's not a bad explanation, and we can discuss that if you're willing to try being reasonable. Or, if that' i not what you meant, you can try explaining what you did mean, and we can discuss that.
> > > >
> > > First off, "Jim's boy" is the same as George's boy -- as Jim's poem is a take off on your poem.
> > >
> > > Secondly, I did not say that he was creating the anguish to justify his destructive impulses. That's purely your own invention.
> > >
> > > I said, to put it bluntly: his butt still hurts.
> > >
> > > Jim's/George's boy has never dealt with, nor gotten over, the whippings -- which he felt were unjustly administered. He has been nurturing a sense of outrage for the past 60 years (give or take), and still impotently wishes to exact revenge on his father -- even posthumously.
> > We don't think that George Dance took any psychology courses in college (nor read "Oedipus). Every boy has to symbolically kill his father in order to become a man. Evidently Jim's/George's boy never did that and never became a man, but is fixated on the memory of that house, the man who beat him, and the impotence that the boy felt during the beatings. Those memories are still in his conscious mind, and the speaker remains that boy.
> > >
> An excellent point. And George attempts to compensate for this by 1) attacking those he instinctively recognizes as his betters, and 2) by supporting those he knows to be his inferiors. By dint of attacking his betters, he places himself (at least for the moment of the attack) in a superior position to them. If George can attack Jim, George is necessarily better than Jim -- at least until Jim, or one of his friends, puts George back in his place. And, whereas young George could not stick up for himself by defying his father, old George can stick up for the mildly retarded hillbilly who is at odds with the rest of the group.

Note also his use of "dearie" to us, his names for ME and the use of "little man," etc. to those who criticize him and his writings. He tries to build himself up by tearing others down, but that doesn't work because he cannot build himself up with the materials he has (even from a box). The hillbilly tries to play that game also, but he himself is a tool.

> > > Finally, I am not "throwing around monkey poo." My question is a serious one.
> > >
> > > Either you and your Donkey are the two stupidest people on the planet, or you're (often) feigning stupidity to achieve... what?
> > >
> > > That's what I can't figure out. Why do you both pretend (assuming for your sake that you are pretending) to be too stupid to live?
> > >
> > > Do you think you "win" some sort of backwardassed victory by making others repeat themselves?
> > >
> > > Do you think that you're making us angry? And that that somehow constitutes a "win?"
> > >
> > > You used to boast of having once been a member of Mensa. Now you seem hellbent on having us equate your name with words like "dense" and "dunce."
> > >
> > > So, I'm asking you what you expect to gain by playing the idiot.
> Any ideas on why George wants to present himself as being inconceivably dense?

It may be his Muse breaking through, exposing his true self. The confessions are already written and just need to be revealed.

[Michael Pendragon]

Agreed. But at least the Prince doesn't call everyone he addresses by childish names.

> > Getting hung up on a past event that one can do nothing to correct is opposed to the teachings of Objectivism. An Übermensch would not allow unresolved childhood issues to keep him living his life to the fullest.
> Sort of like Tom Cruise in the "Top Gun" movies? Sometimes a person has to grow up and not blame his failures on his: parents, upbringing, poverty, city, lack of a toilet, reading habits, friends, or jealousy.

So the fabled House-in-a-Box didn't come with indoor plumbing. Poor George!

> > But a would-be Übermensch cannot accept the fact that he was once the helpless victim of a bigger, stronger, more powerful man than himself. The Nietzschean ideal of the Übermensch does not correspond to the image of a bare-assed little boy impotently awaiting his father's belt.
> He should have killed that little boy, along with the Belt-swinging Father and invented a new, strong, powerful Big Boy.

And so he has! Presenting MENSA GEORGE!

Champion of pissbums, defender of the mentally infirm!

> > George can only address it in his poem by adding a disclaimer wherein the boy becomes a composite of himself and several boys he's known.
> Hidden in plain sight.

It's the proverbial 800 lb gorilla in the room.

> > > > That isn't an answer to your question, so much as it is an explanation of the invalidity of your question.
> > > >
> > > > The anguish cannot have gone "in[to]" the past, because the son still wishes to burn down the house.
> > > >
> > > > If the anguish were gone, the house would not produce such an emotional response in the son.
> > > We think also that the son feels guilty for either not fighting back or for not running from the beating instead of waiting there, pants down, for the arrival of the father and the belt.
> > Definitely. Howard Roark would not have obediently submitted himself to it.
> Maybe the Little Boy never read Ayn Rand?

He read the graphic novel version (complete with pop-up illustrations).

> > Young George was scared. He was too scared to fight back -- or to risk further punishment for running.
> The boys we know did and would have run. Or hidden the belt. Or locked the bedroom door. At some point, the Ideal Boy fights back. Bill Clinton did this with his stepfather.

(Almost) every boy reaches a stage where he is able to stand up to his father. Unfortunately, boy George never did -- and now spends his life attacking others as parental substitutes.

> > George wishes to burn down the house because it reminds him that he is not the Übermensch of his philosophical fantasies, but a cowardly man who will knuckle under to authority whenever it raises its ugly head (or takes off its belt).
> There is a lot of building up in the George Dance autobiography but we suspect that much of the details are embellished. The truth may be too painful for him to admit. House in a box? How many of those were in the neighborhood? Was he bullied about that? Did the house fall down like a house of cards? Maybe it blew off of its foundation at the first Canadian wind? He didn't finish college. He wasn't chosen by voters. He is mostly disliked and ridiculed on newsgroups. Why is that? Can we trace it back to the beatings that he stoically took as a child? Sometimes children retreat into a fantasy life and develop their imaginations. That doesn't seem to have happened with George Dance.
>

One can't retreat into something one hasn't got.

> > > > Got it? Or are you going to play at being "George Dense" for another twenty exchanges?
> > > > > It's reasonable to think the son is feeling "anguish" in the days when he's being beaten. But why would he still feeling anguished years later, when he is not being beaten?
> > > Emotional trauma doesn't stop just because the original event is over. Ask a war veteran how he feels when he hears fireworks on New Year's Eve.
> > Exactly. But banning the fireworks would only remove a source of his recurring trauma -- it would not cure his PTSD.
> > > > > > What does it profit a man to paint himself as a dunce so often, that others come to identify him as one?
> > > > > > Seriously, George. What do you think you gain from presenting yourself as an idiot?
> > > > > Seriously, do you really think that throwing around your monkey-poo is going to take the attention off either your answer or your lie about it? You just claimed that Jim's boy is still feeling "anguished" because he "still wants to burn down the house" -- that he's subconsciously creating the "anguish" himself to try and justify his destructive impulses. That's not a bad explanation, and we can discuss that if you're willing to try being reasonable. Or, if that' i not what you meant, you can try explaining what you did mean, and we can discuss that.
> > > > >
> > > > First off, "Jim's boy" is the same as George's boy -- as Jim's poem is a take off on your poem.
> > > >
> > > > Secondly, I did not say that he was creating the anguish to justify his destructive impulses. That's purely your own invention.
> > > >
> > > > I said, to put it bluntly: his butt still hurts.
> > > >
> > > > Jim's/George's boy has never dealt with, nor gotten over, the whippings -- which he felt were unjustly administered. He has been nurturing a sense of outrage for the past 60 years (give or take), and still impotently wishes to exact revenge on his father -- even posthumously.
> > > We don't think that George Dance took any psychology courses in college (nor read "Oedipus). Every boy has to symbolically kill his father in order to become a man. Evidently Jim's/George's boy never did that and never became a man, but is fixated on the memory of that house, the man who beat him, and the impotence that the boy felt during the beatings. Those memories are still in his conscious mind, and the speaker remains that boy.
> > > >
> > An excellent point. And George attempts to compensate for this by 1) attacking those he instinctively recognizes as his betters, and 2) by supporting those he knows to be his inferiors. By dint of attacking his betters, he places himself (at least for the moment of the attack) in a superior position to them. If George can attack Jim, George is necessarily better than Jim -- at least until Jim, or one of his friends, puts George back in his place. And, whereas young George could not stick up for himself by defying his father, old George can stick up for the mildly retarded hillbilly who is at odds with the rest of the group.
> Note also his use of "dearie" to us, his names for ME and the use of "little man," etc. to those who criticize him and his writings. He tries to build himself up by tearing others down, but that doesn't work because he cannot build himself up with the materials he has (even from a box). The hillbilly tries to play that game also, but he himself is a tool.
> > > > Finally, I am not "throwing around monkey poo." My question is a serious one.
> > > >
> > > > Either you and your Donkey are the two stupidest people on the planet, or you're (often) feigning stupidity to achieve... what?
> > > >
> > > > That's what I can't figure out. Why do you both pretend (assuming for your sake that you are pretending) to be too stupid to live?
> > > >
> > > > Do you think you "win" some sort of backwardassed victory by making others repeat themselves?
> > > >
> > > > Do you think that you're making us angry? And that that somehow constitutes a "win?"
> > > >
> > > > You used to boast of having once been a member of Mensa. Now you seem hellbent on having us equate your name with words like "dense" and "dunce."
> > > >
> > > > So, I'm asking you what you expect to gain by playing the idiot.
> > Any ideas on why George wants to present himself as being inconceivably dense?
> It may be his Muse breaking through, exposing his true self. The confessions are already written and just need to be revealed.

Denser than iridium
Osmium and platinum,
George Dance is dumb as they come
Blessed with a pea wit.

Stupid as a Donkey's ass
Full of childish, barnyard sass
Snarky, smarmy, dull, and crass
In short: full of shit.

[George Dance]

Great. All you have to do is explain what you meant by it.

> Allow me to explain:

The only one preventing you from explaining your comment so far has been yourself.

> You asked: "If the beatings are 'in the past', why would the house still 'hold a son's anguish'? Why wouldn't the anguish go 'in[to] the past' along with the reason for it?"
>
> I replied that since the son still wishes to burn down the house, his anguish is necessarily still very much alive, and very much connected to the house.
>
> That isn't an answer to your question, so much as it is an explanation of the invalidity of your question.

That is neither an answer nor an explanation. You're just repeating the answer I asked you to explain.

> The anguish cannot have gone "in[to]" the past, because the son still wishes to burn down the house.
>
> If the anguish were gone, the house would not produce such an emotional response in the son.

> Got it? Or are you going to play at being "George Dense" for another twenty exchanges?

I'm content to wait patiently for your explanation.

> > It's reasonable to think the son is feeling "anguish" in the days when he's being beaten. But why would he still feeling anguished years later, when he is not being beaten?
> > > What does it profit a man to paint himself as a dunce so often, that others come to identify him as one?
> > > Seriously, George. What do you think you gain from presenting yourself as an idiot?
> > Seriously, do you really think that throwing around your monkey-poo is going to take the attention off either your answer or your lie about it? You just claimed that Jim's boy is still feeling "anguished" because he "still wants to burn down the house" -- that he's subconsciously creating the "anguish" himself to try and justify his destructive impulses. That's not a bad explanation, and we can discuss that if you're willing to try being reasonable. Or, if that' i not what you meant, you can try explaining what you did mean, and we can discuss that.
> >
> First off, "Jim's boy" is the same as George's boy -- as Jim's poem is a take off on your poem.

No, his series of 8 poems (and counting) is not "simply" a "take off" of my one. It's more like fanfic than anything else.

>
> Secondly, I did not say that he was creating the anguish to justify his destructive impulses. That's purely your own invention.

So you're arguing that not being able to burn down the house is causing him real anguish? Then I guess we have to read the last poem in his series as a tragedy: The house is demolished, and now he'll never get to burn it down. Poor baby!

> I said, to put it bluntly: his butt still hurts.
>
> Jim's/George's boy has never dealt with, nor gotten over, the whippings -- which he felt were unjustly administered. He has been nurturing a sense of outrage for the past 60 years (give or take), and still impotently wishes to exact revenge on his father -- even posthumously.

That may be true of Jim's poem, but not of mine. My boy doesn't spend 60 years dedicating his life to burning down a house.

> Finally, I am not "throwing around monkey poo." My question is a serious one.

So was mine. Too bad you'd rather throw poo than seriously try to answer it.

>
> Either you and your Donkey are the two stupidest people on the planet, or you're (often) feigning stupidity to achieve... what?
>
> That's what I can't figure out. Why do you both pretend (assuming for your sake that you are pretending) to be too stupid to live?

More poo from Mr. Monkey. I guess, since you won't answer the earlier question -- Why does he feel anguish now? -- We'll try a new one: Why does Mr. Monkey always throw poo around in what he likes to call "discussions"?

> Do you think you "win" some sort of backwardassed victory by making others repeat themselves?

There's a piece of the puzzle: Michael Monkey may think he's doing it to get a "win".

> Do you think that you're making us angry? And that that somehow constitutes a "win?"

Here's another piece: Nichael Monkey hopes to make those he throws poo at "angry."

> You used to boast of having once been a member of Mensa.

No boasting.

> Now you seem hellbent on having us equate your name with words like "dense" and "dunce."

And here's another piece: Michael Monkey justifies his poo throwing my insisting the targets are making him do it. Sort of like a rapist trying to justify his actions by saying, "But she tempted me!"

> So, I'm asking you what you expect to gain by playing the idiot.

If an idiot wants to start a "discussion" with me, what else is there to do but play him?

[George Dance]

Indeed; however, if Raleigh had been writing a poem a day about the nymph and the shepherd, one could conclude that he was doing more than simply writing "commentary".and treat the series on its own terms.

> Jim's poem does not exist independently of yours (although it *could* -- but in doing so, would lose many layers of meaning, much of its symbolism, and it's humor).
>
> And no one has said that he is anguished because he cannot burn down the house.

"I replied that since the son still wishes to burn down the house, his anguish is necessarily still very much alive, and very much connected to the house."

> He is anguished because he has never come to terms with the original anguish that he'd experienced as a child. Until he can make his peace with the past (and forgive his father), he will always experience such feelings.

That doesn't describe Jim's boy. He seems obsessed with the idea (that he got as a child) of burning down the house. There is no sign of him wanting closure, reconciliation, or forgiveness.

> Burning the house is symbolic means of coping with that anguish. It will probably be little more than a band aid, but it may open the door for him to address the sources of his anguish, and to come to terms with his past and to make peace with his father's memory.

Or it may not. Since he never got to burn the house down, we'll never know, will we? He'll have to die as what he called himself, "a fuck-up".

> > > Be happy that some of your doggerel actually inspired some good poetry.
> > Perhaps you can explain why you think the above is "good poetry."
> "Though the pants down beltings
> belong in the past and your house
> still holds a son's anguish, I do understand
> punishment is meant to teach a lesson
> but perhaps a belt didn't do the job --
> where a length of oak, could have --
> you see I'm still a fuck-up.
>
> "Perhaps a softer approach would have produced
> success."
> I have already noted which of Jim's parody/OB poems I found to be exceptional. This one is not, IMHO, as well-written as those. Nevertheless, it still packs a pretty mean punch.
>
> In this poem, Jim has your narrator (from "My Father's House") addressing the memory of his father (this means speaking to his father as though he were still alive).

> The narrator (we'll call him "Young George")

You can call him that if you wish. Maybe I'll call him "Little Jimmy".

> tells his father that he understands his rationale for using corporal punishment,

That's hardly an epiphany. I think it's clear to most children that their parents punish them to produce "desired results." But it takes Little Jimmy 60 years or so to figure it out? And he's so impressed with that revelation, he has to go tell "the memory".

> but presents his current self (and life history) as an example of its failure to produce the desired results. In short, he's still a fuck-up.

> The final line is a tacked on moral which is totally unnecessary -- and which sort of proselytizing moral is something Jim has an unfortunate tendency to indulge in. In this case, he is still attempting to convert his deceased father the out-dated "spare the rod and spoil the child" approach to child rearing.
> > (You're using the word "doggerel" incorrectly, BTW. Doggerel is bad verse: verse that doesn't scan properly.)

> No, George. Your poem is very poorly written, with forced rhymes, poor scansion, inversions, and (most of all) a light, sing-songy style that is at odds with the content (regarding the abuse of a child).

So, you've said; but there are two other theads about and, if you wish to ever show some those things you're alleging, that would be the place to do them.

> > > Something most of us would ‘lest’ expect from you…,
> > "Most of us?" Just how many of you are there, MEatpuppet? In addition to Steve and Clare, of course; we already know about those two.

> ME is pointing out how few people would expect a doggerel poem to inspire several good poems by others.
>
> Usually it's the great poems that end up receiving such an honor.
>

That may indicate something.

> You should be proud. Even if your own poems will never rise to that level, you can know that you've inspired some that have.
>

As you pointed out, my poem has already risen to that level: it's inspired, not just an knock-off poem from the Chimp, but a knock-off series.

> Kudos.

[Michael Pendragon]

You really need to read through the entire post before responding to it, George.

> > Allow me to explain:
>
> The only one preventing you from explaining your comment so far has been yourself.

You do realize that "Allow me to explain:" implies that an explanation will follow, don't you?

> > You asked: "If the beatings are 'in the past', why would the house still 'hold a son's anguish'? Why wouldn't the anguish go 'in[to] the past' along with the reason for it?"
> >
> > I replied that since the son still wishes to burn down the house, his anguish is necessarily still very much alive, and very much connected to the house.
> >
> > That isn't an answer to your question, so much as it is an explanation of the invalidity of your question.
> That is neither an answer nor an explanation. You're just repeating the answer I asked you to explain.

I'm sorry, George. Apparently you're every bit as dense as the rumors say you are.

If you're incapable of understanding such a clear and concise explanation, I can only suggest that you contact Dr. Schwimmer and ask him to explain it to you.

> > The anguish cannot have gone "in[to]" the past, because the son still wishes to burn down the house.
> >
> > If the anguish were gone, the house would not produce such an emotional response in the son.
>
> > Got it? Or are you going to play at being "George Dense" for another twenty exchanges?
> I'm content to wait patiently for your explanation.

To paraphrase Nietzsche: He who dances with Donkeys too long becomes a donkey himself.

> > > It's reasonable to think the son is feeling "anguish" in the days when he's being beaten. But why would he still feeling anguished years later, when he is not being beaten?
> > > > What does it profit a man to paint himself as a dunce so often, that others come to identify him as one?
> > > > Seriously, George. What do you think you gain from presenting yourself as an idiot?
> > > Seriously, do you really think that throwing around your monkey-poo is going to take the attention off either your answer or your lie about it? You just claimed that Jim's boy is still feeling "anguished" because he "still wants to burn down the house" -- that he's subconsciously creating the "anguish" himself to try and justify his destructive impulses. That's not a bad explanation, and we can discuss that if you're willing to try being reasonable. Or, if that' i not what you meant, you can try explaining what you did mean, and we can discuss that.
> > >
> > First off, "Jim's boy" is the same as George's boy -- as Jim's poem is a take off on your poem.
> No, his series of 8 poems (and counting) is not "simply" a "take off" of my one. It's more like fanfic than anything else.

George Dance: too pompous an ass to realize that he's the butt of a joke.

> > Secondly, I did not say that he was creating the anguish to justify his destructive impulses. That's purely your own invention.
> So you're arguing that not being able to burn down the house is causing him real anguish?

No, George. I'm not.

> Then I guess we have to read the last poem in his series as a tragedy: The house is demolished, and now he'll never get to burn it down. Poor baby!

Boy George's anguish is caused by his impotence. It is his recognition from an early age that he is a coward who is willing to compromise himself... who is willing to obediently subject himself to unjust and abusive punishment... out of fear that he might receive additional punishment as a result.

His anguish stems from his ideal image of himself (Howard Roark) and the reality of what he is (a sniveling coward).

His anguish stems from his frustration -- both with himself and with a past situation that he is as impotent to change now as when he was a boy.

> > I said, to put it bluntly: his butt still hurts.
> >
> > Jim's/George's boy has never dealt with, nor gotten over, the whippings -- which he felt were unjustly administered. He has been nurturing a sense of outrage for the past 60 years (give or take), and still impotently wishes to exact revenge on his father -- even posthumously.
> That may be true of Jim's poem, but not of mine. My boy doesn't spend 60 years dedicating his life to burning down a house.

How many years does Boy George spend?

> > Finally, I am not "throwing around monkey poo." My question is a serious one.
> So was mine. Too bad you'd rather throw poo than seriously try to answer it.

It would help if you could identify the question in question.

(But you're really just going into deflection mode.)

> >
> > Either you and your Donkey are the two stupidest people on the planet, or you're (often) feigning stupidity to achieve... what?
> >
> > That's what I can't figure out. Why do you both pretend (assuming for your sake that you are pretending) to be too stupid to live?
> More poo from Mr. Monkey. I guess, since you won't answer the earlier question -- Why does he feel anguish now? -- We'll try a new one: Why does Mr. Monkey always throw poo around in what he likes to call "discussions"?
>

I've told you at least three times why he experiences the anguish now -- and have listed several of those reasons above.

If the poem is set in the present, and the narrator expresses a wish to burn down his father's (former) home, he is obviously still experiencing feelings of anguish.

Or do you think that burning down houses is a normal and healthy pasttime?

> > Do you think you "win" some sort of backwardassed victory by making others repeat themselves?
> There's a piece of the puzzle: Michael Monkey may think he's doing it to get a "win".

What are you talking about, George?

I'm asking you what you think you're achieving by acting like the densest dunce on the planet.

> > Do you think that you're making us angry? And that that somehow constitutes a "win?"
> Here's another piece: Nichael Monkey hopes to make those he throws poo at "angry."

WTF is wrong with you, George?

No one is throwing "poo" at you.

I could simply take your posts at face value and conclude that you're dumber than Donkey shit, but I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt.

Perhaps you really are the dunce that people say you are. I was wrong about the Donkey being a nice guy, and I may very well be wrong about your having a 120 IQ as well.

> > You used to boast of having once been a member of Mensa.
> No boasting.

Yes, boasting. Boasting doesn't necessarily mean that it's untrue. It means: "a statement expressing excessive pride in oneself : the act or an instance of boasting." (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/boast)

Mensa requires a minimum of a 132 IQ (which isn't even "genius" level) for acceptance. Both Corey and I have IQs that have been measured significantly above that mark, and I suspect that many others here could meet the Mensa requirements as well.

You're not quite so ridiculous as the Donkey boasting about his Perky or his topping the local reverbnation chart... but you're not too far from it.

> > Now you seem hellbent on having us equate your name with words like "dense" and "dunce."
> And here's another piece: Michael Monkey justifies his poo throwing my insisting the targets are making him do it. Sort of like a rapist trying to justify his actions by saying, "But she tempted me!"

That's not what I said, George.

We can only know one another from our posts to AAPC. If you act like a sub-moronic dunce in each of your posts, the logical conclusion for one to draw is that you are a sub-moronic dunce.

In some of our past conversations, I had gotten the impression that you were of slightly above average intelligence (approx. 120 IQ), but your posts of the past few months have been making me reconsider.

Perhaps you are suffering from dementia. Or perhaps you just smoked one joint too many. Who knows? But the intelligent George Dance I thought I knew seems to have left the building.

> > So, I'm asking you what you expect to gain by playing the idiot.
> If an idiot wants to start a "discussion" with me, what else is there to do but play him?

IOW: You think that by playing the fool, you are winning some imaginary game. Now that you agree with my evaluation of your behavior (above), can you tell me *what* you think you're gaining by doing so?

[George Dance]

I thought you claimed to have researched prefab homes, Michael.

> > > But a would-be Übermensch cannot accept the fact that he was once the helpless victim of a bigger, stronger, more powerful man than himself. The Nietzschean ideal of the Übermensch does not correspond to the image of a bare-assed little boy impotently awaiting his father's belt.
> > He should have killed that little boy, along with the Belt-swinging Father and invented a new, strong, powerful Big Boy.
> And so he has! Presenting MENSA GEORGE!

I am surprised you're so hung up on the fact I made it into Mensa. I suppose that also offends your notion of natural order, wherein everyone who disagrees with you must be "put in their place" a la Plato.

> Champion of pissbums, defender of the mentally infirm!
> > > George can only address it in his poem by adding a disclaimer wherein the boy becomes a composite of himself and several boys he's known.
> > Hidden in plain sight.
> It's the proverbial 800 lb gorilla in the room.

A completely invisible gorilla which no one but the alleged "betters" can observe. (Just like the Emperor's New Clothes, to mix metaphors.

> > > > > That isn't an answer to your question, so much as it is an explanation of the invalidity of your question.
> > > > >
> > > > > The anguish cannot have gone "in[to]" the past, because the son still wishes to burn down the house.
> > > > >
> > > > > If the anguish were gone, the house would not produce such an emotional response in the son.
> > > > We think also that the son feels guilty for either not fighting back or for not running from the beating instead of waiting there, pants down, for the arrival of the father and the belt.
> > > Definitely. Howard Roark would not have obediently submitted himself to it.
> > Maybe the Little Boy never read Ayn Rand?
> He read the graphic novel version (complete with pop-up illustrations).

That's a stupid comment from someone who just a couple of months ago was begging me to discuss /Atlas Shrugged/ with him (and whom I indulged). Another inconvenient fact goes into a monkey's memory-hole.

> > > Young George was scared. He was too scared to fight back -- or to risk further punishment for running.
> > The boys we know did and would have run. Or hidden the belt. Or locked the bedroom door. At some point, the Ideal Boy fights back. Bill Clinton did this with his stepfather.

> (Almost) every boy reaches a stage where he is able to stand up to his father. Unfortunately, boy George never did -- and now spends his life attacking others as parental substitutes.

That's even more revealing (of the source): Michael Monkey actually considers himself and NancyGoon to be aapc's "parental substitutes" here, trying to keep the group in order by putting everyone in their place through attacks and attempts at "ridicule".

> > > George wishes to burn down the house because it reminds him that he is not the Übermensch of his
philosophical fantasies, but a cowardly man who will knuckle under to authority whenever it raises its ugly head (or takes off its belt).

> > There is a lot of building up in the George Dance autobiography but we suspect that much of the details are embellished. The truth may be too painful for him to admit.

Not at all. Since NG wants to write an "autobiography" of me, let's see if we can provide some truth by answering their idle speculations.

> House in a box? How many of those were in the neighborhood?

There was no neighborhood. It was a house in the country, on my father's property.

>> Was he bullied about that?

No. I was bullied as a child, but (as I remember) mostly for being a "brain." Normal kids (midwits) don't seem to like "brains" any more than some midwit adults.

>> Did the house fall down like a house of cards? Maybe it blew off of its foundation at the first Canadian wind?

No, I actually checked it on Street View last month after Michael dug up the old poem. The house is still there, though the new owners have made some changes, including almost obscuring it with trees.

>>He didn't finish college.

That was a disappointment that I sometimes regret. But then I think of a young man I knew in college who seemed to have it made and went on to a successful career: an English teacher with a whole series of children's books. Then I remember that he did a Richard Corey. (That's a literary allusion for NG to google.) It makes no sense to dwell on the past, on things one cannot change.

>> He wasn't chosen by voters.

True enough; but (as I've explained when it's come up), I never ran as a Libertarian to get "chosen by voters" --if that were my goal, I'd have joined the Liberals or Conservatives.

>> He is mostly disliked and ridiculed on newsgroups.

Now, that is simply not true. On this group, for example, the "dislike" and attempts at "ridicule" are coming mainly from Michael Monkey and NastyGoon.

> > Why is that? Can we trace it back to the beatings that he stoically took as a child? Sometimes children retreat into a fantasy life and develop their imaginations. That doesn't seem to have happened with George Dance.

Good. Living a "fantasy life" sounds like living a life of delusion.

> One can't retreat into something one hasn't got.

See above.

Another attempt by the Monkey to deflect by hijacking the thread with one of his own poems. Let's see it he'll blame it in the "Donkey" again.

[Michael Pendragon]

The house-in-the-box did *not* come with plumbing. The plumbing costs were listed as additional charges, and would have been installed by a local contractor. From you statement (above), it would seem that your father chose to forego having it installed.

Poor widdle Georgie!

> > > > But a would-be Übermensch cannot accept the fact that he was once the helpless victim of a bigger, stronger, more powerful man than himself. The Nietzschean ideal of the Übermensch does not correspond to the image of a bare-assed little boy impotently awaiting his father's belt.
> > > He should have killed that little boy, along with the Belt-swinging Father and invented a new, strong, powerful Big Boy.
> > And so he has! Presenting MENSA GEORGE!
> I am surprised you're so hung up on the fact I made it into Mensa. I suppose that also offends your notion of natural order, wherein everyone who disagrees with you must be "put in their place" a la Plato.

I'm pointing out that your well known Mensa boast (which, infamously, earned you the nickname "Mensa George") is part of your desire to see yourself as a Randian hero: itself an attempt to compensate for your impotence, cowardice, and abject submission as a child.

As for putting one in their place, the human brain is designed to create order out of chaos, and achieves this largely through classification. This process occurs regardless of whether one agrees with the classifier's beliefs. Since I know you only through our interactions at AAPC, my classification of you is based on how you present yourself here.

> > Champion of pissbums, defender of the mentally infirm!
> > > > George can only address it in his poem by adding a disclaimer wherein the boy becomes a composite of himself and several boys he's known.
> > > Hidden in plain sight.
> > It's the proverbial 800 lb gorilla in the room.
> A completely invisible gorilla which no one but the alleged "betters" can observe. (Just like the Emperor's New Clothes, to mix metaphors.

Your inability to see would, in this instance, provide sufficient reason for relegating those who can to a superior position, n'est-ce pas?

> > > > > > That isn't an answer to your question, so much as it is an explanation of the invalidity of your question.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > The anguish cannot have gone "in[to]" the past, because the son still wishes to burn down the house.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > If the anguish were gone, the house would not produce such an emotional response in the son.
> > > > > We think also that the son feels guilty for either not fighting back or for not running from the beating instead of waiting there, pants down, for the arrival of the father and the belt.
> > > > Definitely. Howard Roark would not have obediently submitted himself to it.
> > > Maybe the Little Boy never read Ayn Rand?
> > He read the graphic novel version (complete with pop-up illustrations).
> That's a stupid comment from someone who just a couple of months ago was begging me to discuss /Atlas Shrugged/ with him (and whom I indulged). Another inconvenient fact goes into a monkey's memory-hole.

Not at all. In fact, my above statement is based, to a large degree, on your performance in said discussion.

> > > > Young George was scared. He was too scared to fight back -- or to risk further punishment for running.
> > > The boys we know did and would have run. Or hidden the belt. Or locked the bedroom door. At some point, the Ideal Boy fights back. Bill Clinton did this with his stepfather.
>
> > (Almost) every boy reaches a stage where he is able to stand up to his father. Unfortunately, boy George never did -- and now spends his life attacking others as parental substitutes.
> That's even more revealing (of the source): Michael Monkey actually considers himself and NancyGoon to be aapc's "parental substitutes" here, trying to keep the group in order by putting everyone in their place through attacks and attempts at "ridicule".
>

I said that you see us (and others) as parental substitutes, George.

In the above passage, you claim that I'm trying to keep order (taking on the parental role) by ridiculing those who disrupt the group (the naughty children). You have turned both NancyGene and myself into parental/authority figures who you can stand up to (from the relatively safe distance of 900 miles) as you should have done with your parents many years ago.

> > > > George wishes to burn down the house because it reminds him that he is not the Übermensch of his
> philosophical fantasies, but a cowardly man who will knuckle under to authority whenever it raises its ugly head (or takes off its belt).
>
> > > There is a lot of building up in the George Dance autobiography but we suspect that much of the details are embellished. The truth may be too painful for him to admit.
> Not at all. Since NG wants to write an "autobiography" of me, let's see if we can provide some truth by answering their idle speculations.

I must have missed NancyGene's post on that matter, George. Oddly, your statement has the farm-fresh scent of straw about it.

> > House in a box? How many of those were in the neighborhood?
> There was no neighborhood. It was a house in the country, on my father's property.

neighborhood
noun
neigh·​bor·​hood ˈnā-bər-ˌhu̇d

4: the people living near one another

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/neighborhood

Since the narrator of your poem (hereafter referred to as "Boy George") watched other children playing outdoors, his house-in-the-box must have been within sight of their homes.

Hence, they were neighbors living in a neighborhood.

At this point, it's becoming necessary to start keeping a list of words and phrases that "George Dense" refuses to understand.

*FWIW: I'm using "George Dense" to refer to the denser than dense persona you've decided to take on -- not as a comment on the "real" you.

> >> Was he bullied about that?
> No. I was bullied as a child, but (as I remember) mostly for being a "brain." Normal kids (midwits) don't seem to like "brains" any more than some midwit adults.

Once suspects that their labeling you as a "brain" was similar to the AAPC adults naming you "Mensa George." In both cases, the sarcasm appears to have been lost on you.

> >> Did the house fall down like a house of cards? Maybe it blew off of its foundation at the first Canadian wind?
> No, I actually checked it on Street View last month after Michael dug up the old poem. The house is still there, though the new owners have made some changes, including almost obscuring it with trees.

Were you carrying gasoline and matches at the time?

> >>He didn't finish college.
> That was a disappointment that I sometimes regret. But then I think of a young man I knew in college who seemed to have it made and went on to a successful career: an English teacher with a whole series of children's books. Then I remember that he did a Richard Corey. (That's a literary allusion for NG to google.) It makes no sense to dwell on the past, on things one cannot change.
>

I doubt that your friend's suicide was in any way related to his college education.

> >> He wasn't chosen by voters.
> True enough; but (as I've explained when it's come up), I never ran as a Libertarian to get "chosen by voters" --if that were my goal, I'd have joined the Liberals or Conservatives.

You would never have even been considered for the nomination. Like your Donkey with his boasts of having beaten four local musicians to the top of the local reverbnation chart, small fish with narwhalean complexes prefer to swim in small ponds.

> >> He is mostly disliked and ridiculed on newsgroups.
> Now, that is simply not true. On this group, for example, the "dislike" and attempts at "ridicule" are coming mainly from Michael Monkey and NastyGoon.

And ME, Jim, Ash, Robert, PJR, Cujo, Aratzio, and countless others. Let's face it, George -- you're almost as detested here as the Donkey.

> > > Why is that? Can we trace it back to the beatings that he stoically took as a child? Sometimes children retreat into a fantasy life and develop their imaginations. That doesn't seem to have happened with George Dance.
> Good. Living a "fantasy life" sounds like living a life of delusion.

It would to one with a stunted imagination.

That is not one of my poems, George. It is a rhyming commentary on your "George Dense" persona (which we've been discussing, above).

[George Dance]

At some point, one can hope. I'm trying to get to to stop deflecting with insults and attempted ridicule, and get on with it.

> > > You asked: "If the beatings are 'in the past', why would the house still 'hold a son's anguish'? Why wouldn't the anguish go 'in[to] the past' along with the reason for it?"
> > >
> > > I replied that since the son still wishes to burn down the house, his anguish is necessarily still very much alive, and very much connected to the house.
> > >
> > > That isn't an answer to your question, so much as it is an explanation of the invalidity of your question.
> > That is neither an answer nor an explanation. You're just repeating the answer I asked you to explain.
> I'm sorry, George. Apparently you're every bit as dense as the rumors say you are.
>
> If you're incapable of understanding such a clear and concise explanation, I can only suggest that you contact Dr. Schwimmer and ask him to explain it to you.

> > > The anguish cannot have gone "in[to]" the past, because the son still wishes to burn down the house.
> > >
> > > If the anguish were gone, the house would not produce such an emotional response in the son.
> >
> > > Got it? Or are you going to play at being "George Dense" for another twenty exchanges?
> > I'm content to wait patiently for your explanation.

> To paraphrase Nietzsche: He who dances with Donkeys too long becomes a donkey himself.

That's nice; but, as I said, I was kind of hoping for more from you than insults and attempted ridicule.

> > > > It's reasonable to think the son is feeling "anguish" in the days when he's being beaten. But why would he still feeling anguished years later, when he is not being beaten?
> > > > > What does it profit a man to paint himself as a dunce so often, that others come to identify him as one?
> > > > > Seriously, George. What do you think you gain from presenting yourself as an idiot?
> > > > Seriously, do you really think that throwing around your monkey-poo is going to take the attention off either your answer or your lie about it? You just claimed that Jim's boy is still feeling "anguished" because he "still wants to burn down the house" -- that he's subconsciously creating the "anguish" himself to try and justify his destructive impulses. That's not a bad explanation, and we can discuss that if you're willing to try being reasonable. Or, if that' i not what you meant, you can try explaining what you did mean, and we can discuss that.
> > > >
> > > First off, "Jim's boy" is the same as George's boy -- as Jim's poem is a take off on your poem.
> > No, his series of 8 poems (and counting) is not "simply" a "take off" of my one. It's more like fanfic than anything else.

> George Dance: too pompous an ass to realize that he's the butt of a joke.

I thought you were going to give me an answer rather than a "joke". Let's try again. Let me try rephrasing my question:

Jim's boy felt 'anguish' when he had to get a spanking. That's reasonable enough; as I said, those are old-brain, animal reactions; stimulus provokes response. But he's still feeling the same 'anguish' 50 years later, in response to no stimulus. So why is that?

> > > Secondly, I did not say that he was creating the anguish to justify his destructive impulses. That's purely your own invention.
> > So you're arguing that not being able to burn down the house is causing him real anguish?
> No, George. I'm not.

Then what do you think is causing Jim's boy's anguish? It's a simple fucking question, which neither NastyGoon or you seem capable of answering.

> > Then I guess we have to read the last poem in his series as a tragedy: The house is demolished, and now he'll never get to burn it down. Poor baby!

> Boy George's anguish is caused by his impotence. It is his recognition from an early age that he is a coward who is willing to compromise himself... who is willing to obediently subject himself to unjust and abusive punishment... out of fear that he might receive additional punishment as a result.
>

That sounds true of Little Jim: being locked in a car for doing an assigned task but not up to standard does sound both unjust and abusive. But there's no reason for him to consider himself a "coward" -- he submitted to a man who's not just bigger and stronger, but who is his father -- an authority figure (to him), his role model, and someone on whom he's completely dependent. He was doing what he was expected to do -- playing his social role, or doing his duty.

As for Boy George, there's no indication that he was abused or punished unjustly; that's just more imagined "subtext." And no reason to think he was being a "coward," any more than Little Jim.

> His anguish stems from his ideal image of himself (Howard Roark)

BZZT - Howard Roark was not even Ayn Rand's "ideal image".

> and the reality of what he is (a sniveling coward).

Except for the fact that neither boy was a snivelling coward then, and there's no reason (except for Little Jim calling himself a 'fuck-up') to think that either would be 50 years later.

> His anguish stems from his frustration -- both with himself and with a past situation that he is as impotent to change now as when he was a boy.

So that, finally, is your explanation: Little Jim is frustrated, 50 years later, because he can't change the past. He's been frustrated by reality.

> > > I said, to put it bluntly: his butt still hurts.
> > >
> > > Jim's/George's boy has never dealt with, nor gotten over, the whippings -- which he felt were unjustly administered. He has been nurturing a sense of outrage for the past 60 years (give or take), and still impotently wishes to exact revenge on his father -- even posthumously.
> > That may be true of Jim's poem, but not of mine. My boy doesn't spend 60 years dedicating his life to burning down a house.

> How many years does Boy George spend?

In my poem, Boy George thinks about burning down the house once. It's not clear whether he's thought about it in the past, or whether he continues to think about it in the future. All that is left to the reader's imagination; or, as you'd call it, to the "subtext".

> > > Finally, I am not "throwing around monkey poo." My question is a serious one.
> > So was mine. Too bad you'd rather throw poo than seriously try to answer it.
> It would help if you could identify the question in question.
>

<Quote> > > > > Question: If the beatings are 'in the past', why would the house still 'hold a son's anguish'? Why wouldn't the anguish go 'in[to] the past' along with the reason for it?"</q>

> (But you're really just going into deflection mode.)

How is repeatedly asking you to answer a question, and then to explain your unclear stupid answer (not to keep repeating it) a "deflection"?

> >
> > > Either you and your Donkey are the two stupidest people on the planet, or you're (often) feigning stupidity to achieve... what?
> > >
> > > That's what I can't figure out. Why do you both pretend (assuming for your sake that you are pretending) to be too stupid to live?
> > More poo from Mr. Monkey. I guess, since you won't answer the earlier question -- Why does he feel anguish now? -- We'll try a new one: Why does Mr. Monkey always throw poo around in what he likes to call "discussions"?

> I've told you at least three times why he experiences the anguish now -- and have listed several of those reasons above.
>
> If the poem is set in the present, and the narrator expresses a wish to burn down his father's (former) home, he is obviously still experiencing feelings of anguish.

Which of course was not an answer (or a good one, at any rate) to the question: *Why* is he feeling 'anguished'? What's the reason, what's the cause of the 'anguish'? it's only at the last go-round that I managed to drag one out of you: Little Jim is "anguished" because the spankings happened, and he's unable to change the past.

> Or do you think that burning down houses is a normal and healthy pasttime?

Neither Boy George, nor Little Jim, burned down any houses. You remind me of Slythera (the troll you copied the "Mensa George" name-calling from), who once read one of my poems and began accusing me of throwing acid in women's faces. (You and NastyGoon can have fun looking for that one.)

> > > Do you think you "win" some sort of backwardassed victory by making others repeat themselves?
> > There's a piece of the puzzle: Michael Monkey may think he's doing it to get a "win".
> What are you talking about, George?

The idea of getting a "win" on usenet did come from you. Obviously it's something you think about.

> I'm asking you what you think you're achieving by acting like the densest dunce on the planet.

I was trying to get you to answer a simple question, which you jumped into the thread on the pretense that you could do that. Finally, after two days, we have an answer: Little Jim feels "anguish" because he can't change the past.

> > > Do you think that you're making us angry? And that that somehow constitutes a "win?"

> > Here's another piece: Michael Monkey hopes to make those he throws poo at "angry."

> WTF is wrong with you, George?
>
> No one is throwing "poo" at you.

Yet coming up with a "win" and making others "angry" are your suggested motivations, not mine.

>
> I could simply take your posts at face value and conclude that you're dumber than Donkey shit, but I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt.
>
> Perhaps you really are the dunce that people say you are. I was wrong about the Donkey being a nice guy, and I may very well be wrong about your having a 120 IQ as well.

Yes, you're wrong about my IQ being 120. (See below.)

> > > You used to boast of having once been a member of Mensa.
> > No boasting.

> Yes, boasting. Boasting doesn't necessarily mean that it's untrue.

True. You called it untrue as part of a different insult.

> It means: "a statement expressing excessive pride in oneself : the act or an instance of boasting." (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/boast)

But I simply made a statement of fact: No boasting involved.

> Mensa requires a minimum of a 132 IQ (which isn't even "genius" level) for acceptance. Both Corey and I have IQs that have been measured significantly above that mark

Yes, we all hear from you, repeatedly, how much SMATR you are. You needn't keep saying it.

> , and I suspect that many others here could meet the Mensa requirements as well.
>

Oh, I'm sure you 'suspect' that NastyGood and the Chimp are as SMATR as you are. You needn't repeat that, either.

> You're not quite so ridiculous as the Donkey boasting about his Perky or his topping the local reverbnation chart... but you're not too far from it.

I've only mentioned it once, other than in response to someone (usually a troll like Slythera or yourself) bringing it up.

> > > Now you seem hellbent on having us equate your name with words like "dense" and "dunce."
> > And here's another piece: Michael Monkey justifies his poo throwing my insisting the targets are making him do it. Sort of like a rapist trying to justify his actions by saying, "But she tempted me!"
> That's not what I said, George.
>

You sure have: your entire meltdown in this thread has been a juxtaposition of poo-throwing and whining that I'm making you do it.

> We can only know one another from our posts to AAPC. If you act like a sub-moronic dunce in each of your posts, the logical conclusion for one to draw is that you are a sub-moronic dunce.
>
> In some of our past conversations, I had gotten the impression that you were of slightly above average intelligence (approx. 120 IQ), but your posts of the past few months have been making me reconsider.

Don't worry about that: i put no credence in your claims to have a 189 IQ either. Though I do think you have a high IQ (above 120).

> Perhaps you are suffering from dementia. Or perhaps you just smoked one joint too many. Who knows? But the intelligent George Dance I thought I knew seems to have left the building.

I think that's a very stupid assumption. I can think you're a worthless troll, without having to think you're unintelligent. I'm surprised that you can't.

> > > So, I'm asking you what you expect to gain by playing the idiot.
> > If an idiot wants to start a "discussion" with me, what else is there to do but play him?
>
> IOW: You think that by playing the fool, you are winning some imaginary game.

No, I was nicely pointing out that you've been acting like an idiot in this thread, and you're getting an appropriate response.

> Now that you agree with my evaluation of your behavior (above), can you tell me *what* you think you're gaining by doing so?

I've been correcting your errors and lies, noting and responding to your insults and logical tricks, and "setting the record straight" in other ways as well.

[Zod]

Well put, GD....

[Michael Pendragon]

There's nothing to get on with, George.

If you're unable to grasp the meaning of my words, you have no business calling yourself a writer.

> > > > You asked: "If the beatings are 'in the past', why would the house still 'hold a son's anguish'? Why wouldn't the anguish go 'in[to] the past' along with the reason for it?"
> > > >
> > > > I replied that since the son still wishes to burn down the house, his anguish is necessarily still very much alive, and very much connected to the house.
> > > >
> > > > That isn't an answer to your question, so much as it is an explanation of the invalidity of your question.
> > > That is neither an answer nor an explanation. You're just repeating the answer I asked you to explain.
> > I'm sorry, George. Apparently you're every bit as dense as the rumors say you are.
> >
> > If you're incapable of understanding such a clear and concise explanation, I can only suggest that you contact Dr. Schwimmer and ask him to explain it to you.
>
> > > > The anguish cannot have gone "in[to]" the past, because the son still wishes to burn down the house.
> > > >
> > > > If the anguish were gone, the house would not produce such an emotional response in the son.
> > >
> > > > Got it? Or are you going to play at being "George Dense" for another twenty exchanges?
> > > I'm content to wait patiently for your explanation.
>
> > To paraphrase Nietzsche: He who dances with Donkeys too long becomes a donkey himself.
> That's nice; but, as I said, I was kind of hoping for more from you than insults and attempted ridicule.

That's a valid observation, George.

If you want to have an intelligent discussion about your poem, you need to stop playing dense, and address the points that have already been made.

> > > > > It's reasonable to think the son is feeling "anguish" in the days when he's being beaten. But why would he still feeling anguished years later, when he is not being beaten?
> > > > > > What does it profit a man to paint himself as a dunce so often, that others come to identify him as one?
> > > > > > Seriously, George. What do you think you gain from presenting yourself as an idiot?
> > > > > Seriously, do you really think that throwing around your monkey-poo is going to take the attention off either your answer or your lie about it? You just claimed that Jim's boy is still feeling "anguished" because he "still wants to burn down the house" -- that he's subconsciously creating the "anguish" himself to try and justify his destructive impulses. That's not a bad explanation, and we can discuss that if you're willing to try being reasonable. Or, if that' i not what you meant, you can try explaining what you did mean, and we can discuss that.
> > > > >
> > > > First off, "Jim's boy" is the same as George's boy -- as Jim's poem is a take off on your poem.
> > > No, his series of 8 poems (and counting) is not "simply" a "take off" of my one. It's more like fanfic than anything else.
>
> > George Dance: too pompous an ass to realize that he's the butt of a joke.
> I thought you were going to give me an answer rather than a "joke". Let's try again. Let me try rephrasing my question:
>
> Jim's boy felt 'anguish' when he had to get a spanking. That's reasonable enough; as I said, those are old-brain, animal reactions; stimulus provokes response. But he's still feeling the same 'anguish' 50 years later, in response to no stimulus. So why is that?
>

I have already answered your question, George.

Here is what I said:

Boy George's anguish is caused by his impotence. It is his recognition from an early age that he is a coward who is willing to compromise himself... who is willing to obediently subject himself to unjust and abusive punishment... out of fear that he might receive additional punishment as a result.

His anguish stems from his ideal image of himself (Howard Roark) and the reality of what he is (a sniveling coward).

His anguish stems from his frustration -- both with himself and with a past situation that he is as impotent to change now as when he was a boy.

> > > > Secondly, I did not say that he was creating the anguish to justify his destructive impulses. That's purely your own invention.
> > > So you're arguing that not being able to burn down the house is causing him real anguish?
> > No, George. I'm not.
> Then what do you think is causing Jim's boy's anguish? It's a simple fucking question, which neither NastyGoon or you seem capable of answering.

Once again:

Boy George's anguish is caused by his impotence. It is his recognition from an early age that he is a coward who is willing to compromise himself... who is willing to obediently subject himself to unjust and abusive punishment... out of fear that he might receive additional punishment as a result.

His anguish stems from his ideal image of himself (Howard Roark) and the reality of what he is (a sniveling coward).

His anguish stems from his frustration -- both with himself and with a past situation that he is as impotent to change now as when he was a boy.

> > > Then I guess we have to read the last poem in his series as a tragedy: The house is demolished, and now he'll never get to burn it down. Poor baby!
>
> > Boy George's anguish is caused by his impotence. It is his recognition from an early age that he is a coward who is willing to compromise himself... who is willing to obediently subject himself to unjust and abusive punishment... out of fear that he might receive additional punishment as a result.
> >
> That sounds true of Little Jim: being locked in a car for doing an assigned task but not up to standard does sound both unjust and abusive. But there's no reason for him to consider himself a "coward" -- he submitted to a man who's not just bigger and stronger, but who is his father -- an authority figure (to him), his role model, and someone on whom he's completely dependent. He was doing what he was expected to do -- playing his social role, or doing his duty.
>

No, George. He was submitting himself to authority. And he appears to have accepted his punishment as just.

When my father attempted to punish me, I always went down swinging. I cannot conceive of myself lying in bed with my pants down, silently waiting for the belt.

> As for Boy George, there's no indication that he was abused or punished unjustly; that's just more imagined "subtext." And no reason to think he was being a "coward," any more than Little Jim.

1) Whipping a child with a belt is abuse.

2) Whipping a child with a belt is an unjust form of punishment.

3) If Boy George felt is was "doing what he was expected to do -- playing his social role, or doing his duty," then Boy George was a coward who had been bullied into abject obedience to authority.

> > His anguish stems from his ideal image of himself (Howard Roark)
> BZZT - Howard Roark was not even Ayn Rand's "ideal image".

We aren't talking about Ayn Rand. We're talking about George Dance. And Boy George Dance fell far short of the Randian ideal.

> > and the reality of what he is (a sniveling coward).
> Except for the fact that neither boy was a snivelling coward then, and there's no reason (except for Little Jim calling himself a 'fuck-up') to think that either would be 50 years later.

Any boy who would lie in bed with his pants down in anticipation of the belt is a sniveling, fully obedient, slave mentality coward.

> > His anguish stems from his frustration -- both with himself and with a past situation that he is as impotent to change now as when he was a boy.
> So that, finally, is your explanation: Little Jim is frustrated, 50 years later, because he can't change the past. He's been frustrated by reality.

1) Let us not forget that "Little Jim" is a character à clef, standing in for Boy George Dance.

2) To say that Boy George Dance is frustrated by reality is too general. He is frustrated by his past inability to stand up to his father, by his failure to live up to his idealized self-image, and by his father's death which has made revenge/resistance impossible.

> > > > I said, to put it bluntly: his butt still hurts.
> > > >
> > > > Jim's/George's boy has never dealt with, nor gotten over, the whippings -- which he felt were unjustly administered. He has been nurturing a sense of outrage for the past 60 years (give or take), and still impotently wishes to exact revenge on his father -- even posthumously.
> > > That may be true of Jim's poem, but not of mine. My boy doesn't spend 60 years dedicating his life to burning down a house.
>
> > How many years does Boy George spend?
> In my poem, Boy George thinks about burning down the house once. It's not clear whether he's thought about it in the past, or whether he continues to think about it in the future. All that is left to the reader's imagination; or, as you'd call it, to the "subtext".
>

He says that if he were a millionaire, he would burn it down. That seems much more definite than just a passing thought.

And since the "house" is both the title and the topic of the poem, the narrator's wish to destroy it (especially coming as it does in the penultimate stanza) makes it (his wish to burn the house) the focal point of the poem.

As NancyGene noted, it's hidden in plain sight.

> > > > Finally, I am not "throwing around monkey poo." My question is a serious one.
> > > So was mine. Too bad you'd rather throw poo than seriously try to answer it.
> > It would help if you could identify the question in question.
> >
> <Quote> > > > > Question: If the beatings are 'in the past', why would the house still 'hold a son's anguish'? Why wouldn't the anguish go 'in[to] the past' along with the reason for it?"</q>
> > (But you're really just going into deflection mode.)
> How is repeatedly asking you to answer a question, and then to explain your unclear stupid answer (not to keep repeating it) a "deflection"?

Because my answer has been made absolutely clear: the house has become a symbol for the unresolved anguish of his abusive childhood. It is "MY FATHER'S HOUSE." "My Father's," not "mine."

It is a physical substitute for his deceased father. He could take a dump on his father's headstone, instead... or paste his father's photo on a Bozo bop bag... but he has chosen the house and must therefore burn it down.

> > >
> > > > Either you and your Donkey are the two stupidest people on the planet, or you're (often) feigning stupidity to achieve... what?
> > > >
> > > > That's what I can't figure out. Why do you both pretend (assuming for your sake that you are pretending) to be too stupid to live?
> > > More poo from Mr. Monkey. I guess, since you won't answer the earlier question -- Why does he feel anguish now? -- We'll try a new one: Why does Mr. Monkey always throw poo around in what he likes to call "discussions"?
>
> > I've told you at least three times why he experiences the anguish now -- and have listed several of those reasons above.
> >
> > If the poem is set in the present, and the narrator expresses a wish to burn down his father's (former) home, he is obviously still experiencing feelings of anguish.
> Which of course was not an answer (or a good one, at any rate) to the question: *Why* is he feeling 'anguished'? What's the reason, what's the cause of the 'anguish'? it's only at the last go-round that I managed to drag one out of you: Little Jim is "anguished" because the spankings happened, and he's unable to change the past.
>

Once again:

Boy George's anguish is caused by his impotence. It is his recognition from an early age that he is a coward who is willing to compromise himself... who is willing to obediently subject himself to unjust and abusive punishment... out of fear that he might receive additional punishment as a result.

His anguish stems from his ideal image of himself (Howard Roark) and the reality of what he is (a sniveling coward).

His anguish stems from his frustration -- both with himself and with a past situation that he is as impotent to change now as when he was a boy.

> > Or do you think that burning down houses is a normal and healthy pasttime?
> Neither Boy George, nor Little Jim, burned down any houses. You remind me of Slythera (the troll you copied the "Mensa George" name-calling from), who once read one of my poems and began accusing me of throwing acid in women's faces. (You and NastyGoon can have fun looking for that one.)
>

No one said that you burned down any houses, George. WTF is wrong with you?

> > > > Do you think you "win" some sort of backwardassed victory by making others repeat themselves?
> > > There's a piece of the puzzle: Michael Monkey may think he's doing it to get a "win".
> > What are you talking about, George?
> The idea of getting a "win" on usenet did come from you. Obviously it's something you think about.

No... it came from an older conversation in which you described your "ethical" system of "Tit for Tat: as having been derived from "gamesmanship."

Gamesmanship is described by Merriam-Webster as follows:

1
: the art or practice of winning games by questionable expedients without actually violating the rules
2
: the use of ethically dubious methods to gain an objective

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gamesmanship

I'm asking you if playing dense is part of your "gamesmanship" technique, and what objective you expect to gain by employing it.

> > I'm asking you what you think you're achieving by acting like the densest dunce on the planet.
> I was trying to get you to answer a simple question, which you jumped into the thread on the pretense that you could do that. Finally, after two days, we have an answer: Little Jim feels "anguish" because he can't change the past.
>

Once again:

Boy George's anguish is caused by his impotence. It is his recognition from an early age that he is a coward who is willing to compromise himself... who is willing to obediently subject himself to unjust and abusive punishment... out of fear that he might receive additional punishment as a result.

His anguish stems from his ideal image of himself (Howard Roark) and the reality of what he is (a sniveling coward).

His anguish stems from his frustration -- both with himself and with a past situation that he is as impotent to change now as when he was a boy.

> > > > Do you think that you're making us angry? And that that somehow constitutes a "win?"
> > > Here's another piece: Michael Monkey hopes to make those he throws poo at "angry."
> > WTF is wrong with you, George?
> >
> > No one is throwing "poo" at you.
> Yet coming up with a "win" and making others "angry" are your suggested motivations, not mine.

You're the one who has admitted to using an "ethical" code derived from your understanding of "gamesmanship" here. It your posts are all attempts at "winning games by questionable expedients without actually violating the rules," then I would like to know how presenting yourself as an imbecile is supposed to achieve such an end.

> > I could simply take your posts at face value and conclude that you're dumber than Donkey shit, but I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt.
> >
> > Perhaps you really are the dunce that people say you are. I was wrong about the Donkey being a nice guy, and I may very well be wrong about your having a 120 IQ as well.
> Yes, you're wrong about my IQ being 120. (See below.)

Obviously. In the past, I estimated your IQ at 120. I know place it at half that.

> > > > You used to boast of having once been a member of Mensa.
> > > No boasting.
>
> > Yes, boasting. Boasting doesn't necessarily mean that it's untrue.
> True. You called it untrue as part of a different insult.

In the aim of maintaining some semblance of clarity here, let us address each other's insults when and where they arise.

> > It means: "a statement expressing excessive pride in oneself : the act or an instance of boasting." (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/boast)
> But I simply made a statement of fact: No boasting involved.

Does its being a fact in any way negate your pride in possessing it?

Does its being a fact in any way make it something to take pride in?

> > Mensa requires a minimum of a 132 IQ (which isn't even "genius" level) for acceptance. Both Corey and I have IQs that have been measured significantly above that mark
> Yes, we all hear from you, repeatedly, how much SMATR you are. You needn't keep saying it.

Precisely. Having a 189 IQ (genius level) is something to take pride in.

Having a 132 IQ (above average, but not genius) is, by comparison, kind of... meh.

Boasting of a 132 IQ in a group where several members possess genius level IQs, is... pathetic.

> > , and I suspect that many others here could meet the Mensa requirements as well.
> >
> Oh, I'm sure you 'suspect' that NastyGood and the Chimp are as SMATR as you are. You needn't repeat that, either.
>
> > You're not quite so ridiculous as the Donkey boasting about his Perky or his topping the local reverbnation chart... but you're not too far from it.
> I've only mentioned it once, other than in response to someone (usually a troll like Slythera or yourself) bringing it up.
> > > > Now you seem hellbent on having us equate your name with words like "dense" and "dunce."
> > > And here's another piece: Michael Monkey justifies his poo throwing my insisting the targets are making him do it. Sort of like a rapist trying to justify his actions by saying, "But she tempted me!"
> > That's not what I said, George.
> >
> You sure have: your entire meltdown in this thread has been a juxtaposition of poo-throwing and whining that I'm making you do it.

Not at all. If that's what you think, you're as illiterate as your Donkey.

> > We can only know one another from our posts to AAPC. If you act like a sub-moronic dunce in each of your posts, the logical conclusion for one to draw is that you are a sub-moronic dunce.
> >
> > In some of our past conversations, I had gotten the impression that you were of slightly above average intelligence (approx. 120 IQ), but your posts of the past few months have been making me reconsider.
> Don't worry about that: i put no credence in your claims to have a 189 IQ either. Though I do think you have a high IQ (above 120).
> > Perhaps you are suffering from dementia. Or perhaps you just smoked one joint too many. Who knows? But the intelligent George Dance I thought I knew seems to have left the building.
> I think that's a very stupid assumption. I can think you're a worthless troll, without having to think you're unintelligent. I'm surprised that you can't.

If you're implying that acting dense is a form of trolling, can you please explain what you believe you're gaining by doing so?

> > > > So, I'm asking you what you expect to gain by playing the idiot.
> > > If an idiot wants to start a "discussion" with me, what else is there to do but play him?
> >
> > IOW: You think that by playing the fool, you are winning some imaginary game.
> No, I was nicely pointing out that you've been acting like an idiot in this thread, and you're getting an appropriate response.

You've been playing the dunce from the start of this thread, George.

Belated IKYABWAIs do not help your case any.

> > Now that you agree with my evaluation of your behavior (above), can you tell me *what* you think you're gaining by doing so?
> I've been correcting your errors and lies, noting and responding to your insults and logical tricks, and "setting the record straight" in other ways as well.

By feigning stupidity?

Can you please explain how presenting yourself as dense corrects any "errors and lies." I mean, it's not like anyone has been accusing of having any intelligence.

[George Dance]

On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 3:36:20 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 8:00:29 PM UTC, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> George Dance has never heard of PTSD. There is a certain red-headed prince who is still reacting to and moaning about losing his mother 25 years ago.

I'm sorry, but I'll have to bring up your "psychologist" credentials again, "Dr." NG. In fact, I have heard of PTSD. What I have never heard from anyone but you before is that PTSD can be caused by one's mother dying 25 years ago, of by one's father spanking one >50 years ago. Those both look like your own theories.

> Emotional trauma doesn't stop just because the original event is over. Ask a war veteran how he feels when he hears fireworks on New Year's Eve.

That sounds like what I'd call an "engrammatic" reaction - the vet hears something that sounds like gunfire, and his old brain takes over. It doesn't mean he constantly feels the same way (like a "fuck up", as the Chimp put it) all the year through. Someone who did -- someone obsessed with the idea of returning to Vietnam to shoot Vietnamese, to get his mojo back -- would be suffering from much more than PTSD.

> We don't think that George Dance took any psychology courses in college (nor read "Oedipus). Every boy has to symbolically kill his father in order to become a man.

I haven't taken any psychology courses, but I have read /Oedipus Rex/ (if that's what you mean) in translation. I think you misunderstand the plot entirely. Oedipus did *not* want to kill his father -- he killed his real father in a fight, not knowing who it was -- and the only trauma he suffered came from realizing that he had killed his father (not from any failure to do so).

As for psychobabble (from Dr. Morrison et al) about "killing" one's father, that sounds like purple poetry rather than factual description. Maturation involves rejecting one's father's rules and authority, and living by one's own rules and judgement instead, but that is not necessarily even a violent process, let alone involving any "killing."

> Evidently Jim's/George's boy never did that and never became a man, but is fixated on the memory of that house, the man who beat him, and the impotence that the boy felt during the beatings.

Well, that was the point of my poem: to show a glimpse into the mind of an person traumatized by a past event -- and that you and Dr. MMP think the poem is straightforward autobiography just shows how good it is.
I just find your explanation out to lunch -- I think the boy is traumatized by what happened to him, not because of some loss of mojo he experienced by letting it happen.

> Those memories are still in his conscious mind, and the speaker remains that boy.

The speaker of the poem, yes. Me, no: I still have all the memories, but none of that alleged "trauma."

[George Dance]

On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 5:23:14 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 9:33:07 PM UTC, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 3:36:20 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 8:00:29 PM UTC, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 4:26:45 AM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> > > > > On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 7:38:13 PM UTC-5, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 7:01:14 PM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> > > > > > > On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 3:02:30 PM UTC-5, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 2:39:27 PM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> > > > > > > > > On Thursday, December 29, 2022 at 9:33:54 AM UTC-5, blackpo...@aol.com wrote:
> > > George Dance has never heard of PTSD. There is a certain red-headed prince who is still reacting to and moaning about losing his mother 25 years ago.
> > George can't admit to it, as he sees it as a sign of weakness.
> We see a certain lack of emotional maturity in both individuals.

Really? Then why were you using Prince Harry as an example of PTSD? There's more to PTSD than "lack of emotional maturity," you know; people who are suffering from it do not simply need to "grow up."

> Sort of like Tom Cruise in the "Top Gun" movies? Sometimes a person has to grow up and not blame his failures on his: parents, upbringing, poverty, city, lack of a toilet, reading habits, friends, or jealousy.

If you're talking about "Boy George" (Michael Monkey's name for the speaker in my poem, there's no sign that he's had "failures" or that he's "blaming" anything on his parents. In fact, except for the last two lines, there's no indication of how the events have affected him. It sounds like you, too, are reading "subtexts" into the poem.

Which, BTW, is completely different from Little Jim (my name for the speaker in Jim's poem). All he does is talk about "pants-down beltings", wishing that he'd been paddled instead (presumably so he could have kept his pants up), and complaining that having to pull them down turned him into a "fuck-up". A completely different speaker, from a completely different poem.

> > But a would-be Übermensch cannot accept the fact that he was once the helpless victim of a bigger, stronger, more powerful man than himself. The Nietzschean ideal of the Übermensch does not correspond to the image of a bare-assed little boy impotently awaiting his father's belt.
> He should have killed that little boy, along with the Belt-swinging Father and invented a new, strong, powerful Big Boy.

EARTH TO NG: Telling children to kill their fathers, because they spanked them, does not sound like sound psychological advice. I think the only worse advice would be telling them to kill themselves. If you were a real psychologist giving out such advice to children, I would have your license revoked, and you barred from any kind of counselling role in the future.

> > George can only address it in his poem by adding a disclaimer wherein the boy becomes a composite of himself and several boys he's known.
> Hidden in plain sight.

> > > We think also that the son feels guilty for either not fighting back or for not running from the beating instead of waiting there, pants down, for the arrival of the father and the belt.
> > Definitely. Howard Roark would not have obediently submitted himself to it.
> Maybe the Little Boy never read Ayn Rand?

Which "Little Boy" are you talking about now? If you mean me, no, not at that age. Nor had I read any Nietzsche, FTM. "Dr." MMP's theories about a Little Boy seeing himself as a "would-be Übermensch" seem to be based on data about an entirely different Little Boy.

> > Young George was scared. He was too scared to fight back -- or to risk further punishment for running.
> The boys we know did and would have run. Or hidden the belt. Or locked the bedroom door.

You're advising preteen children to fight back when their parents spank them? Indeed you are:

> At some point, the Ideal Boy fights back.

Yes, "at some point" , as part of the maturation process, a boy will reject his father's authority, and sometimes that even results in a physical fight. But that normally happens in the late teens. A 6-year-old who got into a fistfight with a parent trying to punish him would be abnormal, not merely precocious.

> Bill Clinton did this with his stepfather.

I had to look that up:
"He was barely 5 years old when his stepfather, Roger Clinton, fired a gun at his mother, Virginia Kelley. The bullet smashed into a wall next to where Kelley was seated."
https://apnews.com/article/6c177c056457b7d2f89cc906d2701d71

There's nothing in the story about 5-year-old Willie fighting his father, or doing anything really but passively observing.

> >
> > George wishes to burn down the house because it reminds him that he is not the Übermensch of his philosophical fantasies, but a cowardly man who will knuckle under to authority whenever it raises its ugly head (or takes off its belt).
> There is a lot of building up in the George Dance autobiography but we suspect that much of the details are embellished. The truth may be too painful for him to admit. House in a box? How many of those were in the neighborhood? Was he bullied about that? Did the house fall down like a house of cards? Maybe it blew off of its foundation at the first Canadian wind? He didn't finish college. He wasn't chosen by voters. He is mostly disliked and ridiculed on newsgroups. Why is that? Can we trace it back to the beatings that he stoically took as a child? Sometimes children retreat into a fantasy life and develop their imaginations. That doesn't seem to have happened with George Dance.

I think I already addressed this paragraph.

> > Any ideas on why George wants to present himself as being inconceivably dense?
>
> It may be his Muse breaking through, exposing his true self. The confessions are already written and just need to be revealed.

MMP appears to be calling me "dense" (as well as "in denial," and a whole host of other things) because of my failure to acknowledge the psychological trauma of a preteen "would-be Übermensch" being spanked on the bare bottom by a parent. But there is a far simpler explanation (which, by Occam's Razor, would be the preferable explanation). I was never, or at least never considered myself to be, a preteen "would-be Übermensch". I was a child being punished by a parent, and that was it.

[Michael Pendragon]

On Saturday, January 7, 2023 at 8:09:33 AM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 3:36:20 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 8:00:29 PM UTC, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> > George Dance has never heard of PTSD. There is a certain red-headed prince who is still reacting to and moaning about losing his mother 25 years ago.
> I'm sorry, but I'll have to bring up your "psychologist" credentials again, "Dr." NG. In fact, I have heard of PTSD. What I have never heard from anyone but you before is that PTSD can be caused by one's mother dying 25 years ago, of by one's father spanking one >50 years ago. Those both look like your own theories.
>

Trauma occurs in many forms.

Boy George lying in bed with his pants down awaiting a whipping obviously underwent a great deal of trauma. And the fact that he (or, for sake of argument, let's say his grown up counterpart) refuses to admit to his trauma shows that he has repressed it. Repression, however, does not address the problem, but merely forces it just below consciousness -- where it can well up and release itself at random moments similar to your paranoid outbursts here.

> > Emotional trauma doesn't stop just because the original event is over. Ask a war veteran how he feels when he hears fireworks on New Year's Eve.
> That sounds like what I'd call an "engrammatic" reaction - the vet hears something that sounds like gunfire, and his old brain takes over. It doesn't mean he constantly feels the same way (like a "fuck up", as the Chimp put it) all the year through. Someone who did -- someone obsessed with the idea of returning to Vietnam to shoot Vietnamese, to get his mojo back -- would be suffering from much more than PTSD.
>

An engrammatic reaction is a triggered memory. PTSD affects one regardless of external stimuli.

As for your example of the obsessed vet, it is applicable to your stance at AAPC wherein you lash out against perceived authority figures as if you were the vet and they were Vietnamese.

> > We don't think that George Dance took any psychology courses in college (nor read "Oedipus). Every boy has to symbolically kill his father in order to become a man.
> I haven't taken any psychology courses, but I have read /Oedipus Rex/ (if that's what you mean) in translation. I think you misunderstand the plot entirely. Oedipus did *not* want to kill his father -- he killed his real father in a fight, not knowing who it was -- and the only trauma he suffered came from realizing that he had killed his father (not from any failure to do so).
>

You're right about Oedipus (the play), however, in terms of Freudian psychology, each boy must overcome (symbolically "kill") his father as part of his passage to adulthood. According to Freudian psychosexual development theory, all male children experience "Oedipal" desires during the "phallic stage" (age 3 - 6), wherein they wish to replace their father as their mother's spouse. Replacing the father is symbolic form of killing him (removing him from his position as head of the family). The sexual aspects of this attachment may be unknown to the child, but still exist within him on a subconscious level. Those suffering from an"Oedipus complex" (a term Freud created) have failed to mature beyond the phallic stage of psychosexual development.

> As for psychobabble (from Dr. Morrison et al) about "killing" one's father, that sounds like purple poetry rather than factual description. Maturation involves rejecting one's father's rules and authority, and living by one's own rules and judgement instead, but that is not necessarily even a violent process, let alone involving any "killing."
>

Yes, but that maturation process involves getting beyond the desire to remove the father from the picture. This is normally accomplished during the latency stage wherein the boy (age 6 to puberty) transfers his desires from his mother to a friend his own age. While this attachment is not overtly sexual, it contains many unhealthy elements that materialize later in sexual bonds (jealously, dependence, possessiveness).

Since Boy George (in the poem) was not allowed to play with other children, he was unable to form such a bond -- and consequently, failed to go through the latency stage. He has, therefore, never been able to move beyond the Oedipal (phallic) stage, and still harbors revenge fantasies wherein he burns down a home symbolizing his father.

> > Evidently Jim's/George's boy never did that and never became a man, but is fixated on the memory of that house, the man who beat him, and the impotence that the boy felt during the beatings.
> Well, that was the point of my poem: to show a glimpse into the mind of an person traumatized by a past event -- and that you and Dr. MMP think the poem is straightforward autobiography just shows how good it is.
>

No, George. It shows that you *told* us that the poem was "largely" based on your childhood experiences, and that your father believed in (and put to use) forms of corporal punishment.

> I just find your explanation out to lunch -- I think the boy is traumatized by what happened to him, not because of some loss of mojo he experienced by letting it happen.

"Mojo" is not part of psychological terminology, Mr. Morrison; however, it is obvious that a young boy lying submissively in bed with his pants down awaiting the belt has lost any feelings of power/self-worth. To impotently submit to another's abuse leaves its psychological scars that manifest themselves throughout one's adult life. Childhood victims of sexual abuse suffer from similar trauma.

> > Those memories are still in his conscious mind, and the speaker remains that boy.
> The speaker of the poem, yes. Me, no: I still have all the memories, but none of that alleged "trauma."

You're in denial, George. Your trauma expresses itself in your posts. You categorize everyone into teams, and align yourself with the team you recognize as symbolizing the helpless child role: the derelicts, mentally infirm, semi-retarded; and lash out against anyone who demonstrates a superior understanding of language, culture, etc., or who possesses a superior talent for poetry (PJR, NancyGene, Jim, & co.). When you attack "Team Monkey," you are symbolically lashing out against your father.

[Michael Pendragon]

On Saturday, January 7, 2023 at 9:28:55 AM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 5:23:14 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 9:33:07 PM UTC, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 3:36:20 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 8:00:29 PM UTC, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 4:26:45 AM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> > > > > > On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 7:38:13 PM UTC-5, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > > On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 7:01:14 PM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 3:02:30 PM UTC-5, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > > > > On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 2:39:27 PM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > On Thursday, December 29, 2022 at 9:33:54 AM UTC-5, blackpo...@aol.com wrote:
> > > > George Dance has never heard of PTSD. There is a certain red-headed prince who is still reacting to and moaning about losing his mother 25 years ago.
> > > George can't admit to it, as he sees it as a sign of weakness.
> > We see a certain lack of emotional maturity in both individuals.
> Really? Then why were you using Prince Harry as an example of PTSD? There's more to PTSD than "lack of emotional maturity," you know; people who are suffering from it do not simply need to "grow up."

No one was saying that they did, George. Dr. NancyGene sees both signs of a lack of maturity and PTSD in both you and the Prince.

> > Sort of like Tom Cruise in the "Top Gun" movies? Sometimes a person has to grow up and not blame his failures on his: parents, upbringing, poverty, city, lack of a toilet, reading habits, friends, or jealousy.
> If you're talking about "Boy George" (Michael Monkey's name for the speaker in my poem, there's no sign that he's had "failures" or that he's "blaming" anything on his parents. In fact, except for the last two lines, there's no indication of how the events have affected him. It sounds like you, too, are reading "subtexts" into the poem.
>

1) Boy George is treated like Cinderfella (a family member used as an unloved servant). He is forced to do chores, is called "filthy" and not allowed to sit on most of the furniture, and is severely reprimanded (whipped with a leather belt) for any transgressions. Even Cinderfella wasn't whipped.
2) Boy George wishes to burn down his father's house (a symbol of both his childhood memories and his father).

I would hardly call such "subtexts" subtle.

> Which, BTW, is completely different from Little Jim (my name for the speaker in Jim's poem). All he does is talk about "pants-down beltings", wishing that he'd been paddled instead (presumably so he could have kept his pants up), and complaining that having to pull them down turned him into a "fuck-up". A completely different speaker, from a completely different poem.
>

Regardless of anything you might conceivably argue, it has been established that Jim intended his poem to be a parody of, and commentary on, yours -- and that the speaker in Jim's poem is intended to be the same as the speaker in your poem.

As much as you might understandable wish to deny it, the speaker in Jim's series of "Father" poems is you.

> > > But a would-be Übermensch cannot accept the fact that he was once the helpless victim of a bigger, stronger, more powerful man than himself. The Nietzschean ideal of the Übermensch does not correspond to the image of a bare-assed little boy impotently awaiting his father's belt.
> > He should have killed that little boy, along with the Belt-swinging Father and invented a new, strong, powerful Big Boy.
> EARTH TO NG: Telling children to kill their fathers, because they spanked them, does not sound like sound psychological advice. I think the only worse advice would be telling them to kill themselves. If you were a real psychologist giving out such advice to children, I would have your license revoked, and you barred from any kind of counselling role in the future.
>

NancyGene is referring to Nietzsche -- not advising a patient.

Have you read Nietzsche? Are you familiar with his philosophy?

Symbolically "killing" the frightened, submissive boy and overcoming/usurping the father, to recreate oneself as a new "powerful Big Boy" makes for a humorous comment on Nietzsche's " Übermensch."

Once again, wit is utterly lost on you.

> > > George can only address it in his poem by adding a disclaimer wherein the boy becomes a composite of himself and several boys he's known.
> > Hidden in plain sight.
> > > > We think also that the son feels guilty for either not fighting back or for not running from the beating instead of waiting there, pants down, for the arrival of the father and the belt.
> > > Definitely. Howard Roark would not have obediently submitted himself to it.
> > Maybe the Little Boy never read Ayn Rand?
> Which "Little Boy" are you talking about now? If you mean me, no, not at that age. Nor had I read any Nietzsche, FTM. "Dr." MMP's theories about a Little Boy seeing himself as a "would-be Übermensch" seem to be based on data about an entirely different Little Boy.
>

There is only one "Little Boy" in question in this discussion (George J. Dance). And one needn't have read Nietzsche or Rand to share in the sentiments that their philosophies express. One can also be retroactively affected after having read them.

> > > Young George was scared. He was too scared to fight back -- or to risk further punishment for running.
> > The boys we know did and would have run. Or hidden the belt. Or locked the bedroom door.
> You're advising preteen children to fight back when their parents spank them? Indeed you are:

She is not advising anything.

She is describing a healthy, normal response.

> > At some point, the Ideal Boy fights back.
> Yes, "at some point" , as part of the maturation process, a boy will reject his father's authority, and sometimes that even results in a physical fight. But that normally happens in the late teens. A 6-year-old who got into a fistfight with a parent trying to punish him would be abnormal, not merely precocious.
>

Age 3 - 6 is when the phallic stage of psychosexual development exists. It is at that age that the child will be at his most rebellious against his father.

> > Bill Clinton did this with his stepfather.
> I had to look that up:
> "He was barely 5 years old when his stepfather, Roger Clinton, fired a gun at his mother, Virginia Kelley. The bullet smashed into a wall next to where Kelley was seated."
> https://apnews.com/article/6c177c056457b7d2f89cc906d2701d71
>
> There's nothing in the story about 5-year-old Willie fighting his father, or doing anything really but passively observing.
> > >
> > > George wishes to burn down the house because it reminds him that he is not the Übermensch of his philosophical fantasies, but a cowardly man who will knuckle under to authority whenever it raises its ugly head (or takes off its belt).
> > There is a lot of building up in the George Dance autobiography but we suspect that much of the details are embellished. The truth may be too painful for him to admit. House in a box? How many of those were in the neighborhood? Was he bullied about that? Did the house fall down like a house of cards? Maybe it blew off of its foundation at the first Canadian wind? He didn't finish college. He wasn't chosen by voters. He is mostly disliked and ridiculed on newsgroups. Why is that? Can we trace it back to the beatings that he stoically took as a child? Sometimes children retreat into a fantasy life and develop their imaginations. That doesn't seem to have happened with George Dance.
> I think I already addressed this paragraph.

Not in any way that would negate its findings.

> > > Any ideas on why George wants to present himself as being inconceivably dense?
> >
> > It may be his Muse breaking through, exposing his true self. The confessions are already written and just need to be revealed.
> MMP appears to be calling me "dense" (as well as "in denial," and a whole host of other things) because of my failure to acknowledge the psychological trauma of a preteen "would-be Übermensch" being spanked on the bare bottom by a parent. But there is a far simpler explanation (which, by Occam's Razor, would be the preferable explanation). I was never, or at least never considered myself to be, a preteen "would-be Übermensch". I was a child being punished by a parent, and that was it.
>

I was also a preteen child who was physically "punished" by my father. But unlike you, I did not quietly submit myself to it. I ran, I fought back, I shouted threats, I did everything in my power to resist.

Your will to self seems to have been not only broken, but utterly destroyed, at a very early age.

[NancyGene]

On Saturday, January 7, 2023 at 10:20:44 PM UTC, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Saturday, January 7, 2023 at 9:28:55 AM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> > On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 5:23:14 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 9:33:07 PM UTC, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 3:36:20 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > > On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 8:00:29 PM UTC, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 4:26:45 AM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> > > > > > > On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 7:38:13 PM UTC-5, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 7:01:14 PM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> > > > > > > > > On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 3:02:30 PM UTC-5, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 2:39:27 PM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > On Thursday, December 29, 2022 at 9:33:54 AM UTC-5, blackpo...@aol.com wrote:
> > > > > George Dance has never heard of PTSD. There is a certain red-headed prince who is still reacting to and moaning about losing his mother 25 years ago.
> > > > George can't admit to it, as he sees it as a sign of weakness.
> > > We see a certain lack of emotional maturity in both individuals.
> > Really? Then why were you using Prince Harry as an example of PTSD? There's more to PTSD than "lack of emotional maturity," you know; people who are suffering from it do not simply need to "grow up."
> No one was saying that they did, George. Dr. NancyGene sees both signs of a lack of maturity and PTSD in both you and the Prince.

Correct. Also, repeatedly mentioning it as a means for publicity/attention does not make it go away. Maybe they both need therapy horses.

> > > Sort of like Tom Cruise in the "Top Gun" movies? Sometimes a person has to grow up and not blame his failures on his: parents, upbringing, poverty, city, lack of a toilet, reading habits, friends, or jealousy.
> > If you're talking about "Boy George" (Michael Monkey's name for the speaker in my poem, there's no sign that he's had "failures" or that he's "blaming" anything on his parents. In fact, except for the last two lines, there's no indication of how the events have affected him. It sounds like you, too, are reading "subtexts" into the poem.

After reading the entire poem, the words "they said it would be quite all right to take a drive to see it now" jump out. Who are "they" and why is it all right "now?" Is it for sale and the owners are holding an open house? Has the speaker just been released from prison for killing his father 13 years ago in that home? Does the speaker want to get rid of every speck of the father and the house?

> >
> 1) Boy George is treated like Cinderfella (a family member used as an unloved servant). He is forced to do chores, is called "filthy" and not allowed to sit on most of the furniture, and is severely reprimanded (whipped with a leather belt) for any transgressions. Even Cinderfella wasn't whipped.
> 2) Boy George wishes to burn down his father's house (a symbol of both his childhood memories and his father).
>
> I would hardly call such "subtexts" subtle.
> > Which, BTW, is completely different from Little Jim (my name for the speaker in Jim's poem). All he does is talk about "pants-down beltings", wishing that he'd been paddled instead (presumably so he could have kept his pants up), and complaining that having to pull them down turned him into a "fuck-up". A completely different speaker, from a completely different poem.
> >
> Regardless of anything you might conceivably argue, it has been established that Jim intended his poem to be a parody of, and commentary on, yours -- and that the speaker in Jim's poem is intended to be the same as the speaker in your poem.

And the voice is the same.

>
> As much as you might understandable wish to deny it, the speaker in Jim's series of "Father" poems is you.
> > > > But a would-be Übermensch cannot accept the fact that he was once the helpless victim of a bigger, stronger, more powerful man than himself. The Nietzschean ideal of the Übermensch does not correspond to the image of a bare-assed little boy impotently awaiting his father's belt.
> > > He should have killed that little boy, along with the Belt-swinging Father and invented a new, strong, powerful Big Boy.
> > EARTH TO NG: Telling children to kill their fathers, because they spanked them, does not sound like sound psychological advice. I think the only worse advice would be telling them to kill themselves. If you were a real psychologist giving out such advice to children, I would have your license revoked, and you barred from any kind of counselling role in the future.
> >
> NancyGene is referring to Nietzsche -- not advising a patient.

Yes, we were referring back to "having to kill one's father (metaphorically) in order to become a man." We are surprised that George Dance is not familiar with the concept.

>
> Have you read Nietzsche? Are you familiar with his philosophy?
>
> Symbolically "killing" the frightened, submissive boy and overcoming/usurping the father, to recreate oneself as a new "powerful Big Boy" makes for a humorous comment on Nietzsche's " Übermensch."

NancyGene tries to make therapy sessions fun for the patient.

>
> Once again, wit is utterly lost on you.

Stiff Person Syndrome.

> > > > George can only address it in his poem by adding a disclaimer wherein the boy becomes a composite of himself and several boys he's known.
> > > Hidden in plain sight.
> > > > > We think also that the son feels guilty for either not fighting back or for not running from the beating instead of waiting there, pants down, for the arrival of the father and the belt.
> > > > Definitely. Howard Roark would not have obediently submitted himself to it.
> > > Maybe the Little Boy never read Ayn Rand?
> > Which "Little Boy" are you talking about now? If you mean me, no, not at that age. Nor had I read any Nietzsche, FTM. "Dr." MMP's theories about a Little Boy seeing himself as a "would-be Übermensch" seem to be based on data about an entirely different Little Boy.
> >
> There is only one "Little Boy" in question in this discussion (George J. Dance). And one needn't have read Nietzsche or Rand to share in the sentiments that their philosophies express. One can also be retroactively affected after having read them.
> > > > Young George was scared. He was too scared to fight back -- or to risk further punishment for running.
> > > The boys we know did and would have run. Or hidden the belt. Or locked the bedroom door.
> > You're advising preteen children to fight back when their parents spank them? Indeed you are:
> She is not advising anything.
>
> She is describing a healthy, normal response.
> > > At some point, the Ideal Boy fights back.

We wonder how many times the "fight or flight" response was triggered in Little Boy George? What harm was caused in Little Boy George by his not choosing either of these and instead lying passively in bed with his pants down, waiting?

> > Yes, "at some point" , as part of the maturation process, a boy will reject his father's authority, and sometimes that even results in a physical fight. But that normally happens in the late teens. A 6-year-old who got into a fistfight with a parent trying to punish him would be abnormal, not merely precocious.

A six year old just shot his teacher.

> >
> Age 3 - 6 is when the phallic stage of psychosexual development exists. It is at that age that the child will be at his most rebellious against his father.
> > > Bill Clinton did this with his stepfather.
> > I had to look that up:
> > "He was barely 5 years old when his stepfather, Roger Clinton, fired a gun at his mother, Virginia Kelley. The bullet smashed into a wall next to where Kelley was seated."
> > https://apnews.com/article/6c177c056457b7d2f89cc906d2701d71
> >
> > There's nothing in the story about 5-year-old Willie fighting his father, or doing anything really but passively observing.

George Dance, you are not a good researcher: "When Billy was a big-for-his-age 14-year old, he broke down a door and confronted his drunken stepfather. Pointing to his mother and stepbrother, Billy said: " You will never hit either of them again. If you want them, you'll have to through me."
https://www.newsweek.com/bill-clinton-198464

> > > >
> > > > George wishes to burn down the house because it reminds him that he is not the Übermensch of his philosophical fantasies, but a cowardly man who will knuckle under to authority whenever it raises its ugly head (or takes off its belt).
> > > There is a lot of building up in the George Dance autobiography but we suspect that much of the details are embellished. The truth may be too painful for him to admit. House in a box? How many of those were in the neighborhood? Was he bullied about that? Did the house fall down like a house of cards? Maybe it blew off of its foundation at the first Canadian wind? He didn't finish college. He wasn't chosen by voters. He is mostly disliked and ridiculed on newsgroups. Why is that? Can we trace it back to the beatings that he stoically took as a child? Sometimes children retreat into a fantasy life and develop their imaginations. That doesn't seem to have happened with George Dance.
> > I think I already addressed this paragraph.
> Not in any way that would negate its findings.

Little Lost Boy George never developed an imagination. He was short-sheeted.

> > > > Any ideas on why George wants to present himself as being inconceivably dense?
> > >
> > > It may be his Muse breaking through, exposing his true self. The confessions are already written and just need to be revealed.
> > MMP appears to be calling me "dense" (as well as "in denial," and a whole host of other things) because of my failure to acknowledge the psychological trauma of a preteen "would-be Übermensch" being spanked on the bare bottom by a parent. But there is a far simpler explanation (which, by Occam's Razor, would be the preferable explanation). I was never, or at least never considered myself to be, a preteen "would-be Übermensch". I was a child being punished by a parent, and that was it.
> >
> I was also a preteen child who was physically "punished" by my father. But unlike you, I did not quietly submit myself to it. I ran, I fought back, I shouted threats, I did everything in my power to resist.

We think that is the "normal and healthy" response. To wait for it is not.

>
> Your will to self seems to have been not only broken, but utterly destroyed, at a very early age.

We have a break-through!

[George Dance]

On Sunday, January 8, 2023 at 2:08:09 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> On Saturday, January 7, 2023 at 10:20:44 PM UTC, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Saturday, January 7, 2023 at 9:28:55 AM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> > > On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 5:23:14 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 9:33:07 PM UTC, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
>Dr. NancyGene sees both signs of a lack of maturity and PTSD in both you and the Prince.
> Correct. Also, repeatedly mentioning it as a means for publicity/attention does not make it go away. Maybe they both need therapy horses.

Tell me, "Doctor"; do you think calling other people on the group immature makes you look like a "Doctor"? Do you think it makes you look "mature"? Do you think it will somehow shut them up? Do you even know what you're trying to accomplish?

> After reading the entire poem, the words "they said it would be quite all right to take a drive to see it now" jump out. Who are "they" and why is it all right "now?"

It's all right because "they" said it would be. Who "they" are is deliberately left to the reader's imagination.

> Is it for sale and the owners are holding an open house?

> Could be. He seems to be alone in the house, and I don't know if that would be the case in an open house, but it might be.

> Has the speaker just been released from prison for killing his father 13 years ago in that home? Does the speaker want to get rid of every speck of the father and the house?

That's imaginative; but in you're blaming the speaker's memories, and his desire to "get rid of" them by getting rid of the house on his failure to "symbolically kill his father". I'd expect that actually killing one's father would count as symbolically killing him.

> > 1) Boy George is treated like Cinderfella (a family member used as an unloved servant). He is forced to do chores, is called "filthy" and not allowed to sit on most of the furniture, and is severely reprimanded (whipped with a leather belt) for any transgressions. Even Cinderfella wasn't whipped.
> > 2) Boy George wishes to burn down his father's house (a symbol of both his childhood memories and his father).
> >
> > I would hardly call such "subtexts" subtle.

Those aren't "subtexts", as they're actually in the text. (1) As a boy, he did chores, didn't have unrestricted run of the house, had an early bedtime, and sometimes got the belt. (You could call MMP's embellishments of those facts "subtexts", if you want)
(2) As an adult, thinking back on all that, he expressed a wish to burn down the house (a symbol of his memories).

> > Regardless of anything you might conceivably argue, it has been established that Jim intended his poem to be a parody of, and commentary on, yours -- and that the speaker in Jim's poem is intended to be the same as the speaker in your poem.

As I've said before: one can't discuss the poem a poet "intended" to write.

> And the voice is the same.

It would be interesting to have you show, with reference to the texts, why you think so. At this point, it's not clear that you understand what a "voice" is.

> > NancyGene is referring to Nietzsche -- not advising a patient.
> Yes, we were referring back to "having to kill one's father (metaphorically) in order to become a man." We are surprised that George Dance is not familiar with the concept.

I tried to look that quote up, using "Nietzsche kill father", and found nothing. Are you quite sure that Nietzsche said that boys had to metaphorically kill their fathers to become men? It's possible that you're confusing what MMP's been saying about Nietzsche with what he's been saying about Freud?

> >
> > Have you read Nietzsche? Are you familiar with his philosophy?
> >
> > Symbolically "killing" the frightened, submissive boy and overcoming/usurping the father, to recreate oneself as a new "powerful Big Boy" makes for a humorous comment on Nietzsche's " Übermensch."
> NancyGene tries to make therapy sessions fun for the patient.

It certainly is amusing to hear your thoughts about Sophocles and Nietzsche, I'll grant you that.
> Stiff Person Syndrome.

I thought you'd abandoned that silly attempt at "diagnosis." Do I really have to comment more in that thread, too?

> > > You're advising preteen children to fight back when their parents spank them? Indeed you are:
> > She is not advising anything.
> >
> > She is describing a healthy, normal response.

Noted. "Doctor" NG thinks it's healthy and normal for children to fight their parents.

> We wonder how many times the "fight or flight" response was triggered in Little Boy George? What harm was caused in Little Boy George by his not choosing either of these and instead lying passively in bed with his pants down, waiting?

"Fight" and "flight" are not options one chooses; they're emotional reactions, based on fear, that one gives in to.

> > > Yes, "at some point" , as part of the maturation process, a boy will reject his father's authority, and sometimes that even results in a physical fight. But that normally happens in the late teens. A 6-year-old who got into a fistfight with a parent trying to punish him would be abnormal, not merely precocious.
> A six year old just shot his teacher.

And you find that "normal and healthy"?

> > Age 3 - 6 is when the phallic stage of psychosexual development exists. It is at that age that the child will be at his most rebellious against his father.
> > > > Bill Clinton did this with his stepfather.
> > > I had to look that up:
> > > "He was barely 5 years old when his stepfather, Roger Clinton, fired a gun at his mother, Virginia Kelley. The bullet smashed into a wall next to where Kelley was seated."
> > > https://apnews.com/article/6c177c056457b7d2f89cc906d2701d71
> > >
> > > There's nothing in the story about 5-year-old Willie fighting his father, or doing anything really but passively observing.
> George Dance, you are not a good researcher: "When Billy was a big-for-his-age 14-year old, he broke down a door and confronted his drunken stepfather. Pointing to his mother and stepbrother, Billy said: " You will never hit either of them again. If you want them, you'll have to through me."
> https://www.newsweek.com/bill-clinton-198464

While doing your "research," you should have checked whether age 14 falls within the "Age 3 - 6" period when MMP's postulated "psychosexual" rebellion is supposed to take place. It doesn't.

> Little Lost Boy George never developed an imagination. He was short-sheeted.

I was never imaginative enough to imagine 14 coming between 3 and 6, admittedly.

> > Your will to self seems to have been not only broken, but utterly destroyed, at a very early age.
> We have a break-through!

"Breakthrough." And, no, you really don't.

[Michael Pendragon]

On Thursday, January 26, 2023 at 8:27:37 AM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> On Sunday, January 8, 2023 at 2:08:09 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > On Saturday, January 7, 2023 at 10:20:44 PM UTC, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Saturday, January 7, 2023 at 9:28:55 AM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> > > > On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 5:23:14 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > > On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 9:33:07 PM UTC, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> >Dr. NancyGene sees both signs of a lack of maturity and PTSD in both you and the Prince.
> > Correct. Also, repeatedly mentioning it as a means for publicity/attention does not make it go away. Maybe they both need therapy horses.
> Tell me, "Doctor"; do you think calling other people on the group immature makes you look like a "Doctor"? Do you think it makes you look "mature"? Do you think it will somehow shut them up? Do you even know what you're trying to accomplish?
>

I believe she's suggesting your looking into the possibility of getting a therapy horse.

HtH & HAND

> > After reading the entire poem, the words "they said it would be quite all right to take a drive to see it now" jump out. Who are "they" and why is it all right "now?"
> It's all right because "they" said it would be. Who "they" are is deliberately left to the reader's imagination.

No, they aren't.

There are only three logical possibilities: 1) his doctors at the asylum, 2) the family currently living there, 3) the authorities upon his release from prison.

We can, however, rule out the third option, as he still has unresolved issues (i.e., he still wants to take vengeance on his father).

> > Is it for sale and the owners are holding an open house?
> > Could be. He seems to be alone in the house, and I don't know if that would be the case in an open house, but it might be.
> > Has the speaker just been released from prison for killing his father 13 years ago in that home? Does the speaker want to get rid of every speck of the father and the house?
> That's imaginative; but in you're blaming the speaker's memories, and his desire to "get rid of" them by getting rid of the house on his failure to "symbolically kill his father". I'd expect that actually killing one's father would count as symbolically killing him.
>

Agreed. Although, if the nightly beatings included anal rape, he might need to burn down the house as well.

> > > 1) Boy George is treated like Cinderfella (a family member used as an unloved servant). He is forced to do chores, is called "filthy" and not allowed to sit on most of the furniture, and is severely reprimanded (whipped with a leather belt) for any transgressions. Even Cinderfella wasn't whipped.
> > > 2) Boy George wishes to burn down his father's house (a symbol of both his childhood memories and his father).
> > >
> > > I would hardly call such "subtexts" subtle.
> Those aren't "subtexts", as they're actually in the text. (1) As a boy, he did chores, didn't have unrestricted run of the house, had an early bedtime, and sometimes got the belt. (You could call MMP's embellishments of those facts "subtexts", if you want)
> (2) As an adult, thinking back on all that, he expressed a wish to burn down the house (a symbol of his memories).

The his is not primarily a symbol of his memories. The poem's title is "My FATHER's House" [CAPS added for emphasis], and the narrator (significantly) refers to it as such. This makes the house of symbol of (and substitute for) his father -- in no uncertain terms.

It represents his memories as well, but this is a secondary interpretation.

> > > Regardless of anything you might conceivably argue, it has been established that Jim intended his poem to be a parody of, and commentary on, yours -- and that the speaker in Jim's poem is intended to be the same as the speaker in your poem.
> As I've said before: one can't discuss the poem a poet "intended" to write.

That isn't true, George.

When a poem is a blatantly obvious parody of another, one can *only* discuss it as such. My poem, 'Twilight Girl," is an obvious parody of Will Donkey's poem of the same name. The three main characters in it are intended to represent Will, Kathy, and Clay. Any other interpretation of the poem would be wrong.

Similarly, George's poem is an obvious parody of your poem. The primary characters can only be interpreted as George J. Dance and his father. Your attempt to make it a poem about Jim (IKYABWAI) would be laughable if it weren't so pathetic.

> > And the voice is the same.
> It would be interesting to have you show, with reference to the texts, why you think so. At this point, it's not clear that you understand what a "voice" is.

The voice (in this case, the identity of the narrator) is the same. Jim's first person narrator mimics your first person narrator, reusing portions of his original statements when applicable.

> > > NancyGene is referring to Nietzsche -- not advising a patient.
> > Yes, we were referring back to "having to kill one's father (metaphorically) in order to become a man." We are surprised that George Dance is not familiar with the concept.
> I tried to look that quote up, using "Nietzsche kill father", and found nothing. Are you quite sure that Nietzsche said that boys had to metaphorically kill their fathers to become men? It's possible that you're confusing what MMP's been saying about Nietzsche with what he's been saying about Freud?
>

I'd recently paraphrased Nietzsche by writing something along the lines of "He who dances with Donkeys too long becomes a donkey himself."

"Kill the father - fuck the mother" is a popular saying that is used to describe the Oedipus complex (and is closely associated with Jim Morrison's song, "The End").

IIRC, Nietzsche's theories of the Übermensch and the Will to Self have also been mentioned, but since you've failed to identify which Nietzsche reference you're talking about, I am unable to explain it to you.

> > >
> > > Have you read Nietzsche? Are you familiar with his philosophy?
> > >
> > > Symbolically "killing" the frightened, submissive boy and overcoming/usurping the father, to recreate oneself as a new "powerful Big Boy" makes for a humorous comment on Nietzsche's " Übermensch."
> > NancyGene tries to make therapy sessions fun for the patient.
> It certainly is amusing to hear your thoughts about Sophocles and Nietzsche, I'll grant you that.

This is a textbook example of a patient in a state of denial attempting to dismiss his doctor's opinions as worthless.

> > Stiff Person Syndrome.
>
> I thought you'd abandoned that silly attempt at "diagnosis." Do I really have to comment more in that thread, too?

This question can be solved with a visit to your local proctologist.

Once he has removed the invasive stick, you might wish thank Dr. NancyGene for her diagnosis of the same.

> > > > You're advising preteen children to fight back when their parents spank them? Indeed you are:
> > > She is not advising anything.
> > >
> > > She is describing a healthy, normal response.
> Noted. "Doctor" NG thinks it's healthy and normal for children to fight their parents.

Uh-duh! Children go from being entirely dependent on their parents (infancy), to learning from and obeying their parents (early childhood), to "fighting" their parents as a means of establishing their independence from them (teens).

> > We wonder how many times the "fight or flight" response was triggered in Little Boy George? What harm was caused in Little Boy George by his not choosing either of these and instead lying passively in bed with his pants down, waiting?
> "Fight" and "flight" are not options one chooses; they're emotional reactions, based on fear, that one gives in to.

Except that Little Boy George did not give into these normal responses to fear -- out of an even greater, and overruling fear.

> > > > Yes, "at some point" , as part of the maturation process, a boy will reject his father's authority, and sometimes that even results in a physical fight. But that normally happens in the late teens. A 6-year-old who got into a fistfight with a parent trying to punish him would be abnormal, not merely precocious.
> > A six year old just shot his teacher.
> And you find that "normal and healthy"?

Of course, not. That's an extreme example.

> > > Age 3 - 6 is when the phallic stage of psychosexual development exists. It is at that age that the child will be at his most rebellious against his father.
> > > > > Bill Clinton did this with his stepfather.
> > > > I had to look that up:
> > > > "He was barely 5 years old when his stepfather, Roger Clinton, fired a gun at his mother, Virginia Kelley. The bullet smashed into a wall next to where Kelley was seated."
> > > > https://apnews.com/article/6c177c056457b7d2f89cc906d2701d71
> > > >
> > > > There's nothing in the story about 5-year-old Willie fighting his father, or doing anything really but passively observing.
> > George Dance, you are not a good researcher: "When Billy was a big-for-his-age 14-year old, he broke down a door and confronted his drunken stepfather. Pointing to his mother and stepbrother, Billy said: " You will never hit either of them again. If you want them, you'll have to through me."
> > https://www.newsweek.com/bill-clinton-198464
> While doing your "research," you should have checked whether age 14 falls within the "Age 3 - 6" period when MMP's postulated "psychosexual" rebellion is supposed to take place. It doesn't.

Nor need it be viewed as such.

One progresses from the Phallic stage around the age of 6. If a 14-year old has progressed from the Phallic stage, he would be able to actively challenge his father at the age of 14.

> > Little Lost Boy George never developed an imagination. He was short-sheeted.
> I was never imaginative enough to imagine 14 coming between 3 and 6, admittedly.

You are obviously "playing" dense again.

(See above.)

> > > Your will to self seems to have been not only broken, but utterly destroyed, at a very early age.
> > We have a break-through!
> "Breakthrough." And, no, you really don't.

We don't have a breakthrough because the patient remains in denial.

We do have an astute diagnosis regarding one George J. Dance.

[George Dance]

On Thursday, January 26, 2023 at 11:44:08 AM UTC-5, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, January 26, 2023 at 8:27:37 AM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> > On Sunday, January 8, 2023 at 2:08:09 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > On Saturday, January 7, 2023 at 10:20:44 PM UTC, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > On Saturday, January 7, 2023 at 9:28:55 AM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> > > > > On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 5:23:14 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > > > On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 9:33:07 PM UTC, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> > >Dr. NancyGene sees both signs of a lack of maturity and PTSD in both you and the Prince.

> > > After reading the entire poem, the words "they said it would be quite all right to take a drive to see it now" jump out. Who are "they" and why is it all right "now?"
> > It's all right because "they" said it would be. Who "they" are is deliberately left to the reader's imagination.
> No, they aren't.
>
> There are only three logical possibilities: 1) his doctors at the asylum, 2) the family currently living there, 3) the authorities upon his release from prison.

You're being illogical again. I can immediately think of two more possibilities: (1) his family; (2) his employers. And even "Dr." NastyGoon can suggest two more: (3) absentee owners or (4) their agents:

> > > Is it for sale and the owners are holding an open house?
> > > Could be. He seems to be alone in the house, and I don't know if that would be the case in an open house, but it might be.
> > > Has the speaker just been released from prison for killing his father 13 years ago in that home? Does the speaker want to get rid of every speck of the father and the house?
> > That's imaginative; but in you're blaming the speaker's memories, and his desire to "get rid of" them by getting rid of the house on his failure to "symbolically kill his father". I'd expect that actually killing one's father would count as symbolically killing him.
> >
> Agreed. Although, if the nightly beatings included anal rape, he might need to burn down the house as well.

So, according to you, the "father killing" that isn't in the poem is evidence for the the "nightly beatings" and "anal rape" that also aren't in the poem. You don't seem any better as a reader than you are as a doctor.

> > Those aren't "subtexts", as they're actually in the text. (1) As a boy, he did chores, didn't have unrestricted run of the house, had an early bedtime, and sometimes got the belt. (You could call MMP's embellishments of those facts "subtexts", if you want)
> > (2) As an adult, thinking back on all that, he expressed a wish to burn down the house (a symbol of his memories).
> The his is not primarily a symbol of his memories. The poem's title is "My FATHER's House" [CAPS added for emphasis], and the narrator (significantly) refers to it as such. This makes the house of symbol of (and substitute for) his father -- in no uncertain terms.

It's his father's house (not his father's "his"), and his father's rules. What else should he call it? The subject of the poem is the "house" -- which, as I've said, is just a symbol for the memories.

> It represents his memories as well, but this is a secondary interpretation.

> > > > Regardless of anything you might conceivably argue, it has been established that Jim intended his poem to be a parody of, and commentary on, yours -- and that the speaker in Jim's poem is intended to be the same as the speaker in your poem.
> > As I've said before: one can't discuss the poem a poet "intended" to write.
> That isn't true, George.
>
> When a poem is a blatantly obvious parody of another, one can *only* discuss it as such. My poem, 'Twilight Girl," is an obvious parody of Will Donkey's poem of the same name. The three main characters in it are intended to represent Will, Kathy, and Clay. Any other interpretation of the poem would be wrong.

That contradicts what you said yesterday: "[A writer] can either agree with the reader's explanation, or offer an alternate explanation of his own -- bearing in mind that there are often multiple ways in which to interpret a poem, and that
> his readers' explanations are every bit as valid as his own."
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

You wrote that at Jan 26, 2023, 11:12:07 AM -- less than half an hour after you wrote this. So which do you believe; that a writer's interpretation of his work is the only "right one", or that any reader's "interpretation" is as "valid" as his? That's a rhetorical question; At this point it's fair to conclude you don't believe either one, but just will say what you think it takes for the win.

> Similarly, George's poem is an obvious parody of your poem. The primary characters can only be interpreted as George J. Dance and his father. Your attempt to make it a poem about Jim (IKYABWAI) would be laughable if it weren't so pathetic.

It's the Chimp's poem, based on the Chimp's own imagination. It's s'posed to be about me and my father, of course, but his characters are no more me and my father than, say, the characters in his writing about SCOTUS actually the members of SCOTUS.

> > > And the voice is the same.
> > It would be interesting to have you show, with reference to the texts, why you think so. At this point, it's not clear that you understand what a "voice" is.
> The voice (in this case, the identity of the narrator) is the same. Jim's first person narrator mimics your first person narrator, reusing portions of his original statements when applicable.

Not at all. My speaker recites memories, and represses his emotional response (until the end, when he expresses the wish to be free from them.) . The Chimp's speaker, OTOH, does nothing but; he doesn't just give in to his emotions, but wallows in them. He considers himself a loser and a failure, and blames his failures on his father. There's nothing of that in my poem.

> > > > NancyGene is referring to Nietzsche -- not advising a patient.
> > > Yes, we were referring back to "having to kill one's father (metaphorically) in order to become a man." We are surprised that George Dance is not familiar with the concept.
> > I tried to look that quote up, using "Nietzsche kill father", and found nothing. Are you quite sure that Nietzsche said that boys had to metaphorically kill their fathers to become men? It's possible that you're confusing what MMP's been saying about Nietzsche with what he's been saying about Freud?
> >
> I'd recently paraphrased Nietzsche by writing something along the lines of "He who dances with Donkeys too long becomes a donkey himself."
>
> "Kill the father - fuck the mother" is a popular saying that is used to describe the Oedipus complex (and is closely associated with Jim Morrison's song, "The End").
>
> IIRC, Nietzsche's theories of the Übermensch and the Will to Self have also been mentioned, but since you've failed to identify which Nietzsche reference you're talking about, I am unable to explain it to you.

While I suspect you're just playing dumb, I'll be happy to refresh your memory.
MMP: NancyGene is referring to Nietzsche
NG: Yes, we were referring back to "having to kill one's father (metaphorically) in order to become a man."

Nietzsche never talked about "having to kill one's father (metaphorically) in order to become a man." (any more than Sophocles did). NG has obviously confused "Nietzsche's theories of the Übermensch" with Freud's "Oedipus complex" theory. I don't blame them for that -- I'd put the blame on your rambling "explanations" -- but I am going to continue to point out that they don't know any of this theory you're talking about, and are simply following your lead.

> > > > Have you read Nietzsche? Are you familiar with his philosophy?
> > > >
> > > > Symbolically "killing" the frightened, submissive boy and overcoming/usurping the father, to recreate oneself as a new "powerful Big Boy" makes for a humorous comment on Nietzsche's " Übermensch."
> > > NancyGene tries to make therapy sessions fun for the patient.
> > It certainly is amusing to hear your thoughts about Sophocles and Nietzsche, I'll grant you that.
> This is a textbook example of a patient in a state of denial attempting to dismiss his doctor's opinions as worthless.

I suppose it might be, if there were a "patient", a "doctor," or a "textbook". But since there isn't - just you with your theory from a book you read decades ago, and your flunkie who's trying their best to support you but hasn't a clue.

> > > Stiff Person Syndrome.
> >
> > I thought you'd abandoned that silly attempt at "diagnosis." Do I really have to comment more in that thread, too?
> This question can be solved with a visit to your local proctologist.
>

I doubt a proctologist would have a professional opinion about comment on an NG thread. Their expertise is with a different sort of asshole.

> > > >
> > > > She is describing a healthy, normal response.
> > Noted. "Doctor" NG thinks it's healthy and normal for children to fight their parents.
> Uh-duh! Children go from being entirely dependent on their parents (infancy), to learning from and obeying their parents (early childhood), to "fighting" their parents as a means of establishing their independence from them (teens).

That's true enough, except for your attempt to smuggle in the "fighting" and "symbolic killing". (You may think that, when one of your teenaged children argued with you over a house rule, that the rule was just an excuse or rationalization, and they're were really trying to "symbolically kill" you, but that's just your theory.) But that's not what NG said: they were saying that children subject to corporal punishment -- preteens -- should run away or fight their parents -- not for a rational reason like establishing their independence, but as part of a symbolic murder ritual.

> > > We wonder how many times the "fight or flight" response was triggered in Little Boy George? What harm was caused in Little Boy George by his not choosing either of these and instead lying passively in bed with his pants down, waiting?
> > "Fight" and "flight" are not options one chooses; they're emotional reactions, based on fear, that one gives in to.
> Except that Little Boy George did not give into these normal responses to fear -- out of an even greater, and overruling fear.

Again, I think you're setting your own thoughts on the poem. While you wouldn't say how you were punished, you told me that you constantly gave in to your fear. So you've got the idea that giving in to fear is normal and healthy, It's so normal and healthy to be give in to fear, to you, that someone who doesn't just obviously has to be giving in to some imagined "greater" fear.

> > > > > Yes, "at some point" , as part of the maturation process, a boy will reject his father's authority, and sometimes that even results in a physical fight. But that normally happens in the late teens. A 6-year-old who got into a fistfight with a parent trying to punish him would be abnormal, not merely precocious.
> > > A six year old just shot his teacher.
> > And you find that "normal and healthy"?
> Of course, not. That's an extreme example.
> > > > Age 3 - 6 is when the phallic stage of psychosexual development exists. It is at that age that the child will be at his most rebellious against his father.
> > > > > > Bill Clinton did this with his stepfather.
> > > > > I had to look that up:
> > > > > "He was barely 5 years old when his stepfather, Roger Clinton, fired a gun at his mother, Virginia Kelley. The bullet smashed into a wall next to where Kelley was seated."
> > > > > https://apnews.com/article/6c177c056457b7d2f89cc906d2701d71
> > > > >
> > > > > There's nothing in the story about 5-year-old Willie fighting his father, or doing anything really but passively observing.
> > > George Dance, you are not a good researcher: "When Billy was a big-for-his-age 14-year old, he broke down a door and confronted his drunken stepfather. Pointing to his mother and stepbrother, Billy said: " You will never hit either of them again. If you want them, you'll have to through me."
> > > https://www.newsweek.com/bill-clinton-198464
> > While doing your "research," you should have checked whether age 14 falls within the "Age 3 - 6" period when MMP's postulated "psychosexual" rebellion is supposed to take place. It doesn't.
> Nor need it be viewed as such.
>
> One progresses from the Phallic stage around the age of 6. If a 14-year old has progressed from the Phallic stage, he would be able to actively challenge his father at the age of 14.
> > > Little Lost Boy George never developed an imagination. He was short-sheeted.
> > I was never imaginative enough to imagine 14 coming between 3 and 6, admittedly.
> You are obviously "playing" dense again.
>
> (See above.)

Fortunately, we don't have to go down tha rabbit hole again, since it turns out that Bill Clinton is irrelevant anyway (and I think I'll snip all mention of him in the next go-round). As you've told us on another thread (and no one doubts you're paraphrasing Freud accurately):

"An Oedipus complex occurs when a boy fails to mature beyond the Phallic Stage of psychosexual development. To pass from the Phallic Stage, the boy needs to symbolically kill/usurp his *father* (not his mother, nor his uncle, nor his brother, nor his babysitter, nor his grandfather, nor anyone else administering punishment to him). This has nothing to do with the trauma from corporal punishment, nor does it eliminate the trauma. It merely allows the boy to pass to the next stage of psychosexual development."
https://groups.google.com/g/alt.arts.poetry.comments/c/vhO7kDQSMqw/m/dJZIkTm6AQAJ?hl=en

Bill Clinton didn't do anything to kill or usurp his biological father, since his biological father had died before Clinton was born. The example is irrelevant. Your "colleague" has gotten the Oedipus Complex wrong yet again; wrt Sophocles, wrt Nietzsche, and now wrt to Bill Clinton. .

[Will Dockery]

Hyphens, like apostrophes, matter.

[General-Zod]

Ha ha...

[Will Dockery]

Again, well put, George.

:)

[Michael Pendragon]

On Friday, February 3, 2023 at 2:43:41 PM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> On Thursday, January 26, 2023 at 11:44:08 AM UTC-5, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Thursday, January 26, 2023 at 8:27:37 AM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> > > On Sunday, January 8, 2023 at 2:08:09 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > On Saturday, January 7, 2023 at 10:20:44 PM UTC, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > On Saturday, January 7, 2023 at 9:28:55 AM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
> > > > > > On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 5:23:14 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > > > > On Monday, January 2, 2023 at 9:33:07 PM UTC, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > >Dr. NancyGene sees both signs of a lack of maturity and PTSD in both you and the Prince.
> > > > After reading the entire poem, the words "they said it would be quite all right to take a drive to see it now" jump out. Who are "they" and why is it all right "now?"
> > > It's all right because "they" said it would be. Who "they" are is deliberately left to the reader's imagination.
> > No, they aren't.
> >
> > There are only three logical possibilities: 1) his doctors at the asylum, 2) the family currently living there, 3) the authorities upon his release from prison.
> You're being illogical again. I can immediately think of two more possibilities: (1) his family; (2) his employers. And even "Dr." NastyGoon can suggest two more: (3) absentee owners or (4) their agents:
>

You'll note that I had specifically said there were only three *logical* possibilities, George.

Since your poem doesn't identify who "they" are, as a reader, one only entertains such possibilities as make sense in the context of the poem.

As to your proposed alternatives: he shouldn't require the permission of his family, and certainly not that of his employer.

Dr. NancyGene's suggestion that it could be absentee owners and/or their agents is really too big of a stretch -- nor would absentee owners allow some stranger permission to wander through their house.

Returning to the three logical possibilities, the first two are more likely than the third, which, being an unusual circumstance (Joey Stout notwithstanding), requires additional support from the poem's text.

> > > > Is it for sale and the owners are holding an open house?
> > > > Could be. He seems to be alone in the house, and I don't know if that would be the case in an open house, but it might be.
> > > > Has the speaker just been released from prison for killing his father 13 years ago in that home? Does the speaker want to get rid of every speck of the father and the house?
> > > That's imaginative; but in you're blaming the speaker's memories, and his desire to "get rid of" them by getting rid of the house on his failure to "symbolically kill his father". I'd expect that actually killing one's father would count as symbolically killing him.
> > >
> > Agreed. Although, if the nightly beatings included anal rape, he might need to burn down the house as well.
> So, according to you, the "father killing" that isn't in the poem is evidence for the the "nightly beatings" and "anal rape" that also aren't in the poem. You don't seem any better as a reader than you are as a doctor.
>

No, George; according to me, anal rape would provide a strong motivation for wanting to burn down a house. While the poem's imagery suggests anal rape, it cannot be established to have taken place. We must therefore dismiss it as part of the narrative, but hold onto its implications as a second layer of interpretation.

> > > Those aren't "subtexts", as they're actually in the text. (1) As a boy, he did chores, didn't have unrestricted run of the house, had an early bedtime, and sometimes got the belt. (You could call MMP's embellishments of those facts "subtexts", if you want)
> > > (2) As an adult, thinking back on all that, he expressed a wish to burn down the house (a symbol of his memories).
> > The his is not primarily a symbol of his memories. The poem's title is "My FATHER's House" [CAPS added for emphasis], and the narrator (significantly) refers to it as such. This makes the house of symbol of (and substitute for) his father -- in no uncertain terms.
> It's his father's house (not his father's "his"), and his father's rules. What else should he call it? The subject of the poem is the "house" -- which, as I've said, is just a symbol for the memories.
>

I have *never* referred to my childhood home as "my father's house." It was either "our house," or "my house," or "the house I grew up in."

You claim that the house symbolizes your narrator's memories, yet he takes no ownership of it (or of his memories which it represents). If so, referring to it as "my father's house" is an example of bad writing, as it negates the symbolism you were trying to establish.

That a child would feel so emotionally distanced from his home as to refer to it only as his father's property, indicates that he felt like he was only being allowed to stay there out of the generosity of his father's heart. You have also hinted at this in your various explanations of the poem. Your child has no reason to believe that house his home, and must toe the line or submit himself to corporal punishment.

> > It represents his memories as well, but this is a secondary interpretation.
>
> > > > > Regardless of anything you might conceivably argue, it has been established that Jim intended his poem to be a parody of, and commentary on, yours -- and that the speaker in Jim's poem is intended to be the same as the speaker in your poem.
> > > As I've said before: one can't discuss the poem a poet "intended" to write.
> > That isn't true, George.
> >
> > When a poem is a blatantly obvious parody of another, one can *only* discuss it as such. My poem, 'Twilight Girl," is an obvious parody of Will Donkey's poem of the same name. The three main characters in it are intended to represent Will, Kathy, and Clay. Any other interpretation of the poem would be wrong.
> That contradicts what you said yesterday: "[A writer] can either agree with the reader's explanation, or offer an alternate explanation of his own -- bearing in mind that there are often multiple ways in which to interpret a poem, and that
> > his readers' explanations are every bit as valid as his own."

You're attempted to force an absolute statement into a context where it doesn't fit.

I'm sure you're familiar with the adage that the only absolute is that there are no absolutes.

When interpreting a poem, the reader has to work *within the context* of the poem. If a poem is specifically about Will, Kathy, and Clay, the reader cannot claim that it is about the Three Stooges or the Three Little Pigs. If a poem is set at a taco restaurant, the reader cannot say that it is set at the Super Bowl or on a plane.

Note that I said there are *multiple* ways to interpret a poem -- not "an infinitude of ways."

In the context of your poem, in which a 6-year old boy lying in his bed awaiting physical punishment with his pajama pants dutifully pulled down and his naked bottom exposed, *suggests* anal rape. There is simply no getting around that fact. This doesn't mean that he was anally raped. However, the suggestion would operate on a symbolic level; to wit: the boy *associated* the beatings with anal rape, in the sense that he was powerless, under the control of his father, emasculated, etc.

> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> You wrote that at Jan 26, 2023, 11:12:07 AM -- less than half an hour after you wrote this. So which do you believe; that a writer's interpretation of his work is the only "right one", or that any reader's "interpretation" is as "valid" as his? That's a rhetorical question; At this point it's fair to conclude you don't believe either one, but just will say what you think it takes for the win.
>

I did *not* say that a writer's interpretation is the only "right one." I said that *the context* of "Twilight Girl" does not allow the reader to assign any identity to the characters apart from that of Will, Kathy, and Clay -- anymore than a reader could claim that "Paul Revere's Ride" was about anyone other than Paul Revere.

You have stated that you had intentionally left your poem "vague" on certain points. In doing so, you have allowed the reader a greater than usual degree of freedom in interpreting your work. "Twilight Girl" leaves little to the reader's imagination. It is meant as a parody of Will Donkey's poetry (set to the tune of "Twilight Time"). In "Twilight Girl," Will clearly pimps his wife to the Mexican patrons of a taco stand in exchange for money to buy himself tacos. His son, Clay, is curled up in the bed of his pickup truck as this is going on. This is not my interpretation, but a literal reading of the text.

Similarly, your poem contains depictions of certain incidents which *must* be read as written: a) the narrator revisits his boyhood home, b) he recalls incidents from his childhood when he had been living there, c) these incidents include his having had to do chores which kept him from playing with friends, removing his shoes before entering, not being allowed to sit on the living room furniture, having been thought of as "filthy" due to being a boy, and getting whipped on what appears to be a regular basis with a leather belt, and d) the adult narrator expresses his desire to burn down his father's house. This is also not my interpretation, but a literal reading of the text.

Where the reader's interpretation comes into play is where it accounts for the things you'd left vague -- not in regard to those that you'd specified.

> > Similarly, George's poem is an obvious parody of your poem. The primary characters can only be interpreted as George J. Dance and his father. Your attempt to make it a poem about Jim (IKYABWAI) would be laughable if it weren't so pathetic.
> It's the Chimp's poem, based on the Chimp's own imagination. It's s'posed to be about me and my father, of course, but his characters are no more me and my father than, say, the characters in his writing about SCOTUS actually the members of SCOTUS.
>

You're being silly. They're as much about you and your father, and SCOTUS, as Longfellow's poem was about Paul Revere.

They aren't you -- they're *about* you.

Are you too dense to understand the difference?

> > > > And the voice is the same.
> > > It would be interesting to have you show, with reference to the texts, why you think so. At this point, it's not clear that you understand what a "voice" is.
> > The voice (in this case, the identity of the narrator) is the same. Jim's first person narrator mimics your first person narrator, reusing portions of his original statements when applicable.
> Not at all. My speaker recites memories, and represses his emotional response (until the end, when he expresses the wish to be free from them.) . The Chimp's speaker, OTOH, does nothing but; he doesn't just give in to his emotions, but wallows in them. He considers himself a loser and a failure, and blames his failures on his father. There's nothing of that in my poem.
>

There needn't be any of that in your poem.

IIRC there are no tacos in Will Donkey's "Twilight Girl" (those are taken from another poem of his).

A spoof, or parody, doesn't have to mimic every element of the poem it's making fun of. Weird Al Yankovic's song parodies use the melody of the originals, but little else.

> > > > > NancyGene is referring to Nietzsche -- not advising a patient.
> > > > Yes, we were referring back to "having to kill one's father (metaphorically) in order to become a man." We are surprised that George Dance is not familiar with the concept.
> > > I tried to look that quote up, using "Nietzsche kill father", and found nothing. Are you quite sure that Nietzsche said that boys had to metaphorically kill their fathers to become men? It's possible that you're confusing what MMP's been saying about Nietzsche with what he's been saying about Freud?
> > >
> > I'd recently paraphrased Nietzsche by writing something along the lines of "He who dances with Donkeys too long becomes a donkey himself."
> >
> > "Kill the father - fuck the mother" is a popular saying that is used to describe the Oedipus complex (and is closely associated with Jim Morrison's song, "The End").
> >
> > IIRC, Nietzsche's theories of the Übermensch and the Will to Self have also been mentioned, but since you've failed to identify which Nietzsche reference you're talking about, I am unable to explain it to you.
> While I suspect you're just playing dumb, I'll be happy to refresh your memory.

Why so suspicious, George?

This has been a long, convoluted series of conversations taking place over several different threads, and one cannot be expected to remember the details from a week or two ago.

> MMP: NancyGene is referring to Nietzsche
> NG: Yes, we were referring back to "having to kill one's father (metaphorically) in order to become a man."
>
> Nietzsche never talked about "having to kill one's father (metaphorically) in order to become a man." (any more than Sophocles did). NG has obviously confused "Nietzsche's theories of the Übermensch" with Freud's "Oedipus complex" theory. I don't blame them for that -- I'd put the blame on your rambling "explanations" -- but I am going to continue to point out that they don't know any of this theory you're talking about, and are simply following your lead.
>

Or, maybe, she just typed the wrong name by mistake. Either way, does it matter?

> > > > > Have you read Nietzsche? Are you familiar with his philosophy?
> > > > >
> > > > > Symbolically "killing" the frightened, submissive boy and overcoming/usurping the father, to recreate oneself as a new "powerful Big Boy" makes for a humorous comment on Nietzsche's " Übermensch."
> > > > NancyGene tries to make therapy sessions fun for the patient.
> > > It certainly is amusing to hear your thoughts about Sophocles and Nietzsche, I'll grant you that.
> > This is a textbook example of a patient in a state of denial attempting to dismiss his doctor's opinions as worthless.
> I suppose it might be, if there were a "patient", a "doctor," or a "textbook". But since there isn't - just you with your theory from a book you read decades ago, and your flunkie who's trying their best to support you but hasn't a clue.
>

Like it or not, you have been psychoanalyzed by two bona fide armchair psychologists. You are free to accept our diagnoses or to reject them.

> > > > Stiff Person Syndrome.
> > >
> > > I thought you'd abandoned that silly attempt at "diagnosis." Do I really have to comment more in that thread, too?
> > This question can be solved with a visit to your local proctologist.
> >
> I doubt a proctologist would have a professional opinion about comment on an NG thread. Their expertise is with a different sort of asshole.

We've talked about this before, George... humor.

The joke is that you have a proverbial stick up your ass.

> > > > > She is describing a healthy, normal response.
> > > Noted. "Doctor" NG thinks it's healthy and normal for children to fight their parents.
> > Uh-duh! Children go from being entirely dependent on their parents (infancy), to learning from and obeying their parents (early childhood), to "fighting" their parents as a means of establishing their independence from them (teens).
> That's true enough, except for your attempt to smuggle in the "fighting" and "symbolic killing". (You may think that, when one of your teenaged children argued with you over a house rule, that the rule was just an excuse or rationalization, and they're were really trying to "symbolically kill" you, but that's just your theory.) But that's not what NG said: they were saying that children subject to corporal punishment -- preteens -- should run away or fight their parents -- not for a rational reason like establishing their independence, but as part of a symbolic murder ritual.
>

Thank you for making that (your original statement) clear.

I wholeheartedly concur with my esteemed colleague on this. When my mother pulled a strip of Hot Wheels track out of the box I kept them in -- I ran. When she caught me, I tried to grab the track and wrestle it out of her hands. In the end, I'd end up getting swatted with the track -- and I probably got a few more swats than if I hadn't run and fought.

But it is psychologically healthier to protect/defend myself than to submit to it like an Eloi marching into the Morlocks' underground slaughterhouse.

> > > > We wonder how many times the "fight or flight" response was triggered in Little Boy George? What harm was caused in Little Boy George by his not choosing either of these and instead lying passively in bed with his pants down, waiting?
> > > "Fight" and "flight" are not options one chooses; they're emotional reactions, based on fear, that one gives in to.
> > Except that Little Boy George did not give into these normal responses to fear -- out of an even greater, and overruling fear.
> Again, I think you're setting your own thoughts on the poem. While you wouldn't say how you were punished, you told me that you constantly gave in to your fear. So you've got the idea that giving in to fear is normal and healthy, It's so normal and healthy to be give in to fear, to you, that someone who doesn't just obviously has to be giving in to some imagined "greater" fear.
>

Fight or flight our human instincts, George. It is not a matter of having any choice.

Little Boy George can tell himself that he was acting out of some rational awareness that his was the most logical course to pursue; but Little Boy George would be full of little boy shit.

Little Boy George submitted to the severe punishment because his fear of the alternative punishment outweighed it. "Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all."

> > > > > > Yes, "at some point" , as part of the maturation process, a boy will reject his father's authority, and sometimes that even results in a physical fight. But that normally happens in the late teens. A 6-year-old who got into a fistfight with a parent trying to punish him would be abnormal, not merely precocious.
> > > > A six year old just shot his teacher.
> > > And you find that "normal and healthy"?
> > Of course, not. That's an extreme example.
> > > > > Age 3 - 6 is when the phallic stage of psychosexual development exists. It is at that age that the child will be at his most rebellious against his father.
> > > > > > > Bill Clinton did this with his stepfather.
> > > > > > I had to look that up:
> > > > > > "He was barely 5 years old when his stepfather, Roger Clinton, fired a gun at his mother, Virginia Kelley. The bullet smashed into a wall next to where Kelley was seated."
> > > > > > https://apnews.com/article/6c177c056457b7d2f89cc906d2701d71
> > > > > >
> > > > > > There's nothing in the story about 5-year-old Willie fighting his father, or doing anything really but passively observing.
> > > > George Dance, you are not a good researcher: "When Billy was a big-for-his-age 14-year old, he broke down a door and confronted his drunken stepfather. Pointing to his mother and stepbrother, Billy said: " You will never hit either of them again. If you want them, you'll have to through me."
> > > > https://www.newsweek.com/bill-clinton-198464
> > > While doing your "research," you should have checked whether age 14 falls within the "Age 3 - 6" period when MMP's postulated "psychosexual" rebellion is supposed to take place. It doesn't.
> > Nor need it be viewed as such.
> >
> > One progresses from the Phallic stage around the age of 6. If a 14-year old has progressed from the Phallic stage, he would be able to actively challenge his father at the age of 14.
> > > > Little Lost Boy George never developed an imagination. He was short-sheeted.
> > > I was never imaginative enough to imagine 14 coming between 3 and 6, admittedly.
> > You are obviously "playing" dense again.
> >
> > (See above.)
> Fortunately, we don't have to go down tha rabbit hole again, since it turns out that Bill Clinton is irrelevant anyway (and I think I'll snip all mention of him in the next go-round). As you've told us on another thread (and no one doubts you're paraphrasing Freud accurately):
>
> "An Oedipus complex occurs when a boy fails to mature beyond the Phallic Stage of psychosexual development. To pass from the Phallic Stage, the boy needs to symbolically kill/usurp his *father* (not his mother, nor his uncle, nor his brother, nor his babysitter, nor his grandfather, nor anyone else administering punishment to him). This has nothing to do with the trauma from corporal punishment, nor does it eliminate the trauma. It merely allows the boy to pass to the next stage of psychosexual development."
> https://groups.google.com/g/alt.arts.poetry.comments/c/vhO7kDQSMqw/m/dJZIkTm6AQAJ?hl=en
>
> Bill Clinton didn't do anything to kill or usurp his biological father, since his biological father had died before Clinton was born. The example is irrelevant. Your "colleague" has gotten the Oedipus Complex wrong yet again; wrt Sophocles, wrt Nietzsche, and now wrt to Bill Clinton. .
>

But you're the one introducing the *biological* element into the equation. Freud didn't. I didn't. The man was raising him and sleeping with his mother. He fits the psychological bill.

[W-Dockery]

Michael Pendragon wrote:

> On Friday, February 3, 2023 at 2:43:41 PM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:

>> On Thursday, January 26, 2023 at 11:44:08 AM UTC-5, michaelmalef...@gmail..com wrote:
>> > On Thursday, January 26, 2023 at 8:27:37 AM UTC-5, george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
>> > > On Sunday, January 8, 2023 at 2:08:09 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
>> > > > On Saturday, January 7, 2023 at 10:20:44 PM UTC, michaelmalef...@gmail.com wrote:

None of the above is actually a part of the "Twilight Girl" poem, though.

[Michael Pendragon]

See below, dumbass.

[W-Dockery]

Says Michael Pendragon, the delusional little monkey boy who has fantasies about being a better poet than T.S. Eliot.

And so it goes.

🙂

[Michael Pendragon]

On Saturday, February 4, 2023 at 7:56:36 AM UTC-5, Will Dockery wrote:
> Michael Pendragon wrote:

> > Will Dockery wrote:
> >
> >> I'll let George Dance speak for himself, just as he doesn't need you putting words in his mouth either, Pendragon.
>
> > I quoted his statements, Donkey.
>
> > What's scrawny, white and red all over?
>
> > George's butt.
>
> Again, why do you lie and misrepresent so much, Michael Pendragon?
>

I don't recall having written that one, Donkey -- but I certainly LOL'd at your repost.

[Will Dockery]

Another impersonation post?

[Michael Pendragon]

I may have written it. I couldn't find the original to check.

In either case, I'm readily willing to take credit for it.

[NancyGene]

We found it--it seems to have been written by you. Great observation.
https://groups.google.com/g/alt.arts.poetry.comments/c/L7W32Mg5GDM/m/JqV70nxPAAAJ
"Song and Poems and Stories are NOT necessarilly autobiographical!!!"
michaelmalef...@gmail.com
Dec 4, 2022, 10:55:52 AM
to

[Will Dockery]

Apparently another Google Groups glitch.

[Michael Pendragon]

Thanks, NancyGene.

[Zod]

Well put and nailed it G. D.