Vocaboly.com

[Guest]

Inspired by: http://shakespeareforums.com/showthread.php?p=256#post256

Hamlet should be required reading everywhere.

If you deprive students of the most-quoted, most-performed, and
most-cited play in all of history, you might as well just sell degrees
and let them party the whole time.

[Daniel Kessler]

jollyrogership@yahoo.com wrote:

[Art Neuendorffer]

[Guest]

Don't sell degrees, give them away free. Then the only ones who will
read or attend a performance of HAMLET will be those capable of
appreciating it.

--Bob G.

[BCD]

jollyrogership@yahoo.com wrote:

[Christopher Jahn]

Daniel Kessler <dkessler@pop.cybernex.net> wrote in
news:42AAEC21.50579F65@pop.cybernex.net:

[Chess One]

<jollyrogership@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1118496888.169675.131170@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

[Spam Scone]

Chess One wrote:

[Guest]

Or do we stand firm in the ivied courtyards and battle the
postmodernists, who believe not in the truth, nor in the notion of
private property, and in battling them, do we resort to their political
subterfuges, to their lies? For anyone who speaks the Truth in their
context is quickly defeated. But we own consciences whereas they own
but instincts--we have apprehension and aptitude where they have but
appetite, and thus the crew of the Good Ship owns the vulnerable yet
sublime mark of man--character.

Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be
one man picked out of ten thousand. II,ii (Hamlet, William Shakespeare)

And honesty places us at a disadvantage, for to speak the Truth of
their mendacious mediocrity marks us as dangerous dissenters. So how
can young poets come to the fore in a world sedated with crass
temptations and unbounded rock'n'roll--when we have higher standards,
of what use are those higher standards in advancing our cause, when
they but make us villains in this inverted culture, where wistful
honesty is arrested and corruption and deconstruction and subterfuge
are given free passage under the assumed identities of culture, irony,
and art? Is it more noble to accept this fate and endure the whimsical
opinions of the united front of fringe elements, or do we take up arms
against their ocean of blind fury?

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!

Hamlet-III, i (William Shakespeare)

But my merry maties--there is a third option which transcends the two
that Hamlet contemplates above, and that is the poetry which contains
Hamlet's contemplation. For while Hamlet's question may not be easily
answered, there's a beauty in his honest struggle, and that is where we
might find a safe harbor for our aspirations of a renaissance--within
literature. In words we might set the better parts of our eternal souls
down, and in epic poetry find the use for character that has no use in
other modern realms of politics and entertainment. And via living
poetry, we can take it upon ourselves to move the entire context of the
Great Books into the hearts and souls of the rising generations,
against the Pedant's self-serving warnings that the Great's words will
crumble if moved from academia's jurisdiction. But I say the children's
spirits provide a much more honest and secure foundation for the Great
Books, and thus to hold the Greatest Book of them all close to one's
heart is to be born again .

Like the engineers who moved the light out of harm's way, we neither
have to oppose the wild ocean of postmodern whimsy, nor do we have to
let it level the lofty beacons of the Great Books. But now, buoyed upon
the wonders of the internet revolution, we can engineer a renaissance.
We can transfer the center and circumference of the Great Books to a
new locale, where they shall be safe from being eroded by the advancing
ocean of conceit and ignorance which in God's absence shall always
influence the shifting sands of popular opinion. We can keep the Light
of all Lights lit, so that the faithful might gain safe passage through
the daily culture, and the seekers of truth might return to port with
the greatest spiritual treasures ever known to man.

The postmodernsists lost, never ye fear,
For Shakespeare yet exists--he lives on here.

http://shakespeareforums.com/showthread.php?p=256#post256

[Ven Hawkins]

jollyrogership@yahoo.com wrote:

[Captain Ranger McCoy]

With all the thousands of publishers and millions of dollars of
government grants and billions of dollars of venture capital with which
we're supposedly competing with out here on the net, how was it that
three poets came to own the World's Classical PortalTM? For a few
simple, complimentary reasons. First off, most venture capital firms
are only interested in short-term monetary gains, and so the creation
of everlasting poetry and literature does not show up on their radar.
Thus we have little or no competition from any well-financed sector.
And even if we did, their money would buy hype far more easily than it
would ever buy integrity and profundity of meaning, and thus even if
they wanted to, the venture capitalists could not create nor enhance
classical literature by investing in it. They are excluded from the
club. The poet alone can create literature by investing his spirit's
time. And though there is no pay for the initial labor, once a classic
is written, it gets free passage to all corners of this watery globe.
It must be known, it must be read, and only foolish, nihilistic tyrants
and vindictive feminists have ever tried to inhibit the Greats'
inevitable propagation.

Governments, by their very nature, prefer bureaucracy over art, and
thus their self-serving investment of other peoples' money usually
finances esoteric farces. And the contemporary publishing houses, lying
somewhere between the postmodern business gurus and the postmodern
socialists, naturally must harbor all the requisite postmodern
prejudices against the Greats--it is in their character to refrain from
passing the literary judgements that define and defend God's higher
aesthetics. But as is so often the case, the iron rails of their
political prejudices have become the iron bars of their prison. Thus it
is that the WWW RenaissanceTM is owned by the three sonneteers and the
tens of thousands who have signed their souls aboard jollyroger.com.

The individuals who "thought differently" have arguably produced the
greatest and most enduring wealth ever known to mankind. Some prominent
venture capitalists in Silicon Valley have recently mused that they
have been at the center of the greatest legal creation of wealth in
history, but really they have been at the center of the greatest
inheritance. Perhaps they have forgotten the giants upon whose
shoulders they have stood upon, including Newton, Einstein, Planck,
Bohr, Shockley, Galileo, Gauss, Brillouin, Rutherford, Schroedinger,
Faraday, Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Hamilton, Moses,
Aristotle, Socrates, and all the countless souls and innovators who
labored for, studied, advanced, and sometimes gave their lives for the
Science and Truth which sets us free.

For the classics would exist without the internet, but the internet
would not exist without the classics. The robust free-market economy
would not exist were it not for The Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution, and in turn these documents would not exist were it not
for all the classical and biblical poetry which preceded them. Venture
capitalists, and the second-rate, superficial, rock'n'roll publishing
and university CEOs who seek to imitate them only to end up satirizing
them, are inextricably anchored to bottom lines. And all profound
innovations and renaissances only ever belong to the free
spirits--those who venture beyond money on towards the actual creation
of wealth's deeper meanings. The "New New" thing has ever been the
eternal.

>From http://williamshakespeares.com

[Guest]

On the supreme value of Shakespeare!

http://jollyrogerwest.com

Classicalmba.com: Open Source Business Philosophies
Doing Business The Old Way, With New Technology
Dr. Elliot McGucken

It may be argued that peoples for whom philosophers legislate
are always prosperous. --Aristotle

You don't need to go to business school. You don't need an MBA.
Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest leaders of all times, learned all
he needed to know from the classics--especially the Bible and
Shakespeare. The classics are "open source," meaning that they are
available to all for free, and so it is that in addition to emphasizing
the use of open source software to enhance your business's bottom line,
we emphasize using the classics to enhance your business's higher
principles. Here's a free publication Dr. E's been assembling:
NAVIGATING AN INTERNET BUSINESS WITH A CLASSICAL BUSINESS PHILOSOPHY.
And here's the outline of a talk Dr. E regulary gives to Duke students,
Classical Business Principles for Ecommerce: Balancing Open Source and
Proprietary Paradigms to Optimize Business. And here's the Authena.org
project, which is devoted to Open Source Digital Rights Management and
the Business of Content. And finally, here's Homer's Open Source
Odyssey 2001: Classical Computing and a Brief History of Open Source:
(On Patents, Trademarks, and Business Principles).

As the philosophy of modern business is rooted in technology, it is
thus rooted in open source, as all science and technology have advanced
by an open source philosophy. If you're running a business, whether
it's a sole-proprietership, a startup, or a public company, the
contemporary marketplace demands that your strategy leverage an open
source philosophy.

The mark of wisdom is to read aright the present and to march
with the occasion. --Homer

The purpose of this site is to celebrate an optimal blend of
time-honored traditions, such as principled accounting and
conscientious customer-service, and the latest innovations in business
and technology. Both proprietary and open source paradigms play
invaluable rolls in successful businesses these days, and the prudent
leader must know when to select which. But even proprietary
technologies, such as Micrsoft Windows and the Intel Architecture, are
built upon thousands of open source hours, given freely by scientists
and engineers in the pursuit of truth and excellence.

Although the one constant entity in business and technology is
change, the philosophy which recognizes this and continuosly strives to
adapt may be constant. In the midst of continual innovation and
evolution, there are those ever-fixed stars which must be navigated by,
which are known as Truth. Open Source adheres to these precepts, as
although culture and software are always evolving, the open methods by
which they best progress remain fixed.

Business, like art and literature and academia, has not escaped
postmodernization. The once noble professions of accounting and
business law have of late been tainted by the relativistic philosophies
which have bestowed upon us postmodern art and a general decline in
civility. It is as if truths no longer matter, but only that which is
believed to be true. Too often in recent times, hype, mathematical
gimmicktry, and fictional creations on the balance sheet have been
passed off as innovation and creativity. The entrepreneur's road is a
long and hard one, and too many tried to take too much credit in
walking down it, while all they were doing was hitching a ride on hype.
In short, talk is cheap.

He is not wise to me who is wise in words only, but who is wise
in deeds. --SAINT GREGORY

The better businesses, like the better literature, have ever been
fashioned to withstand the test of time. While the insiders and
ambitious dishonest may cash out in short-term pyramid schemes passed
off as entrepreneurial ventures, the greater public is oft left holding
the bag. And in the long run, the public's faith in the institutions
they invest in is eroded.

[Guest]

Shakespeare & the Bible would solve 90% of society's ills.

http://jollyrogerwest.com

The marriage of cultural liberalism and big business bureaucracy has
benefited the literary arts in no discernable way. The vast increase of
postmodern corporate administration in the New York publishing world
has tarnished its once noble countenance, and today, the literary
industry at large is in an economic decline, which shall force a sea
change and an eventual spiritual revival. We here at Western Canon
University know that the free market, like time, technology, and the
Truth, is on our side.

Throughout the sixties and seventies the industry enjoyed great
economic growth while fostering a spiritual decline, but again we see
that money can never be worth more than meaning itself, and while one
can cash in during periods of decline by deconstructing the Greats and
selling smut, there comes that day when there is nothing left to
deconstruct, and the smut fails to titillate the hardened, dispirited
consumer. The once racey glitz bores the slacker-grunge generation, as
we've been participating in it all since fourth grade. Kurt Cobain
mocked the industry as he screamed, "here we are now, entertain us, I
feel stupid, and contagious," and while he came from the intoxicated
Dionysian perspective, we're sailing in from the sober Apollonian
perspective. Kurt Cobain was a consumnation of the postmodern irony, as
he rebelled against the liberal machine while becoming one with it.
We're rebelling by declaring independence from it. Once upon a time it
was fashionable to skip school and get stoned, but today we're skipping
the getting stoned part and following our yearning to erect a
University.

Whereas Cosmopolitan and The New Yorker once provided a stepping stone
for the young author while publishing the subtle prose of Fitzgerald,
Salinger, and Hemingway, today the magazines print articles on how to
shape your butt, meaningless poetry, and the insipid story of the week
penned by some writer who happens to suffer through parties with Tina
Brown. Time and again postmodernism's strategy has triumphed in our
culture, where the essence of an institutiuon is scuttled, leaving but
a shell to play host to the postmodern leader's blend of politics and
ego. But postmodernism is not self-sufficient, and it eventually runs
out of sustenance to pillage, plunder, and commandeer. Mark Twain once
said that you cannot pray a lie, and the devastating repercussions of
the postmodern ideology are manifesting themselves in the publishing
industry. The New York Times recently reported that 45% of all adult
trade books which get shipped out to bookstores get shipped back to be
pulped. Harcourt Brace recently considered eliminating its entire line
of literary fiction, as the literature they publish loses money. This
is tantamount to the doctor who realizes that his prescription is not
working and then decides to kill his patient.

Once upon a time there were only editors who might have rejected a
young author's Great Book, but today they receive diligent help from
scores of postmodern literary agents and agencies who blossomed
overnight in the wake of the dumbing down of literature, which now, in
this liberated age, can be anything. The desperate corporate publicists
hype the gratuitous glitz, publishing and promoting the Howard Sterns
and Dennis Rodmans and Sapphires, and with the decline money they make
off of soft porn, gossip, and new-age advice, they then massage their
literary egoes by attempting to create literary authors of all genders,
races, and sexual orientations. They funnel the soft-porn money into
marketing campaigns for indecipherable literary tomes such as Pynchon's
Lewis and Clark and Foster's Infinite Jest, complete with carboard
cutout displays for the Barns and Noble debut. Once a year they happen
upon a Cold Mountain and decide to publish it, and things are cool for
awhile, but still, Cold Mountain falls short of affecting the
prevailing postmodern attitude, for it forgets to fulfill its
contemporary literary duty and acknowledge the present. More often than
not the publishers print huge, meandering books, reveling in
postmodernism's pernicious, immature inside joke, mocking the
sensibilities of their customers, denying them the importance of their
Reality, flooding the market with literary mediocrity, crying wolf a
thousand thousand times, desparately filling the back covers with
soundbites of exquisite praise that would have made Shakespeare proud,
and then, when they have finished with their thorough desecration and
blatant hucksterism, they resort to claiming that the American public
is too backward to enjoy the indecipherable trash. But instead of
purchasing the stillborn books, the American public is logging onto the
internet, where they have the hopes of finding something that didn't
have to first make it on by a gauntlet of ten self-appointed postmodern
literary experts. And out here they're finding the WWW literary
renaissance.

And so it is that during the postmodern liberal reign of terror, the
university and the literary industry have both known decline. It is no
mystery that they have shared in the same fate. Both the university and
the literary culture are built with the brick of the printed word, and
without a humble acknowledgement of God's supreme, omnipotent,
ubiquitous divinity, the printed word lacks authority, and the bricks
crumble to sand. The ivory tower of Babel might seem higher today then
fifty years ago, with bigger football stadiums, and larger, more
gallant administrations replete with lawyers, with more departments and
courses and computers and technology transfer programs, but the cause
of the univerity is lost somewhere in-between the widening fissure
between the English and Physics departments. C.P. Snow's two cultures
have become twenty, with as many languages, and while we reach for the
heavens and probe the atom, we begin to find our most fundamental
essence, the printed words of our heritage, drifting beyond our grasp.
In the beginning there was the Word, and in the end there wasn't, some
might say, but I contend that in the beginning there was the Word, and
so too shall it be again. At least upon the world's largest campus.

The postmodern press remains oblivious to the decline, as postmodernism
conveniently deconstructs the very ruler by which one might guage
aesthetic quality, and thus there is no way for them to measure the
fall. They commandeered the scientific method, and left the true spirit
of science behind, which demands that one remain absolutely loyal to
reality. And science can never be loyal to the reality of the printed
word, for it cannot discern it.

Some of the elder postmodernists have attempted to project their
gnawing emptiness upon us with the belittling "generation-x, slacker,
grunge" monikers, but I contend that inspite of their command of the
universities and presses, we're awakening to a renaissance. Time shall
let us speak for ourselves. Deconstructing the greats was futile, and
the misled, condescending academics only succeeded in deconstructing
their own souls. For Shakespeare still exists within our immortal
spirits. Many of the aging liberal elite might have been agile in
subterfuge, or skillful with a slander, or good at, "hiding one thing
in the depths of his heart, while speaking forth another." They might
have been deft with hermeneutics theory, and dextrous with
deconstruction, but none of these intellectual vices nor treacheries
are honored by time. They are honored but by bureaucracy.

Those who truly understand the nature of vital creativity, the
principles of rugged individualism, the foundations of freedom, and the
basis of intellectual integrity, spend their lives out-running the
relentless, plodding, machinations of bureaucracy, and we hope they
find a haven of encouragement at Western Canon University. There shall
always exist the perpetual rift between the artist and the
administrator. Both will consider the other one to be arrogant, to be
deceitful, and to be dishonest. Both shall wish to be given credit for
the same entities, but the difference is that whereas one shall forever
seek the credit by commandeering it, the other shall seek credit by
creating it.

And so it is that Western Canon University has come to be. Once upon a
time the scientific spirit was utilized to degrade the Greats and exalt
the postmodern bureaucracy, but now the tide has turned, and modern
science's offspring, the WWW, is allowing us to resurrect the context
of the Greats. For while science is at heart indifferent, man's
immortal soul is not, and it must forever seek the nobler path.

Ten years ago we set out upon a journey to acquaint ourselves with the
greatest that had ever been thought and said, and now, ten years later,
we find ourselves in the midst of a renaissance rooted in the printed
word. As poets and authors coming of age at the end of the second
millenium, we came to realize that a modern cultural context for
contemporary Great Literature was lacking. So in addition to composing
new works, we have also found it necessary to create a context in which
they can take root and blossom. The WWW has presented the ideal tool
for this. These simple sentiments and yearning for traditional values
in both our lives and our literature, shared by the free-thinkers
throughout the world, have given birth to the world's largest literary
journal and the world's most-active literary cafe, and thus we have
reason to believe that God willing, our sentiments might also beget the
world's greatest university.

[Captain Ranger McCoy]

Hamlet should be required reading!!!!

Then Macbeth and the Tempest.

And Romeo & Juliet!!!

:)

[Guest]

Argrhrghrg matie!

Jollyroger.com should be required reading at all universities!!

Ahoy then!

See ye aboard The Jolly Roger! The world's largest, most-feared
literary frigate!!

Avast!!

http://jollyroger.com