A Conversation with Bjorn

The BBQ Pit
41

And, no, it doesn’t make any more sense written out as prose than it does as a pop lyric.

I agree with Casdave–it sounds like a Happy Thought off a calendar, or something from Hallmark.

But Now We Know, thanks to Fenris’ timely intervention…

Geez, I almost got in a flame war with CF, WM7, and Bucky over a Cat Stevens lyric, UNLAWFULLY APPROPRIATED and UNATTRIBUTED by an unscrupulous Icelander.

Hey, how about those Cod Wars, Viking? Canada whupped your inbred Icelandic asses pretty good, huh?

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen

42

no it didnt take me 3 whole days to come up with that, i wrote it just before i sent it. that is; i wrote it and sent it when i finished it, took me maybe 3 minutes.

as for:

.
sorry about that, i was a bit inspired by that song, propably because it was playing on the radio just before i started writing the “poem”. but the words are mine, although similar to stevens lyrics.

the text i posted was supposed to serve two purposes. first was the method of reading(no doubt you considered this a poem, due to the style it was posted in), second was naturally what the text said.

reading: i really do not care if you consider what i posted a good or bad “poem”, for the purpose of the text was not really what it seemed to be. it was basically like buckys non-space non-enter post. it was “style”.
i presented that same “poem” in following posts as plain text. why? because there are more ways in reading a “poem” than one.
i am not waging a war against the standards of the written language, i am mearly making a point that everything is not what it may seem to be.

the text points out that you are an individual, but there are other individuals out there as well. treating those individuals any different than you would treat yourself would be false, for that would mean that you are not an individual.
what you do may or may not affect other individuals, the only thing you have to “worry” about is; leave it to the other individual/s to decide if your words/actions affect them.

bj0rn - again, sorry that i didnt mention cat stevens as an inspiration to the style in which i wrote my text. i really did not notice it until fenris pointed it out. thanks fenris, good to know there are observant people around.

43

Notthemama…

Is this what you had in mind here? I woulda sworn the OP was something totally different from this.

44

BjOrn

Wether I agree with what were trying to do or not, one thing is for certain, your last post was much easier for me to understand than some others.

Yes there were a few flaws in your grammar here and there but they did not seriously detract from the message you were putting across.

The problem up to then was that your style deconstructed the language so much that it was style which became the issue rather than content.

Sometimes we need to learn the rules first before we can push the limits safely.

Bucky broke the rules in layout but adhered to the rules in writing and there was a playful purpose in that.

You have improved and I respect the effort you have put in to do this.

45

I would treat five year old children differently than I would treat myself, or old women, or young men who are blind, etc. etc. There is nothing “false” about it, and I could discriminate as an individual.

Bjorn is now in competition to stand as the dumbest person with whom I have ever had any experiences. Mentally retarded students of mine AT LEAST TRY to communicate with others; they don’t just say “it’s my style” and refuse to change. What is it like to be dumber than someone whose brain was damaged in the womb?

I am not flaming here. I mean this as a completely non-sarcastic, non-ironic statement of fact.

By this point, for Bjorn to not change means that he sincerely does not give a flying fuck about anyone’s viewpoint nor does he wish to communicate. His meglomania is such that he is always right. As things stand now, I wish for a mild case of carpal-tunnel syndrome to attack him when he thinks about posting to the SDMB (but not during other times; I don’t want to screw up his real life).
Bucky

46

Um, Jezebel, (if I can get a word in here, now that the Bjorn-bashing has officially commenced)…thanks, guys…it’s OK, I know I said it was ok…
No, actually this wasn’t what I had in mind. I seriously thought that Bjorn, given an opportunity, might flower, if not into a devastatingly entertaining conversationalist, at least into a reasonable competent one. I see now that I was probably mistaken. You know the kind of conversation I mean, more challenging than just MPSIMS “who’s got a stomachache?”, not quite as deep as “Good vs. evil”. Oh, well, live and learn, I suppose.
And at least I can say I tried.
Bjorn, if you still want to talk, I’ll be here, but conversation consists of something more substantial than “deep thoughts”, unless you’re prepared to explain what the “deep thought” in question MEANS to you. Don’t just throw a poem at us and expect us to understand instinctively why you like it, or what it means to you. EXPLAIN to us why you chose that particular poem.
Do you know what “gnomic” means? “Gnomic” means “one who speaks in aphorisms.” An aphorism is the same thing as an “adage”, an “axiom”, or a “truism”. Someone who speaks in “gnomic utterances” is someone who uses lots of mysterious sayings, that don’t always make sense. If you get a rip in your shirt, he’ll say, “A stitch in time saves nine.” Or if you’re talking about balancing your checkbook, he’ll say, “A penny saved is a penny earned.” It’s not always applicable to the subject at hand.
There are people who don’t know any other way to talk than this. They’re very hard to converse with.
A perfect example is in the movie “Mystery Men”. The character played by Wes Studi, I can’t remember what his super-hero name is, speaks in “gnomic utterances.” He only says things like, “You must master your rage, or your rage will master you.” See?
I understand that you want to make a point that people have a right to their opinions. Fine, I agree with you. Now can we move on to something else?
Want to talk about movies? Or books? What have you been reading lately? Want to talk about Icelandic whale harvesting? Or fishing rights? I don’t care, just give me a starting point.
Your posts defending your selection of poem are noted. You are forgiven. Don’t do it again.
But I swear, this is not going to turn into yet another Bjorn-bashing thread. If it looks like happening, I’ll e-mail Lynn and ask her to close the thread, and then you’ll all have to go back to the “Sarcasm” and “Letter” threads and sit and wait and wait and wait while they load. :rolleyes:

So, Jezebel, you can stick around if you want, see what happens.

Anybody got a deck of cards?

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen

47

I know what the “sarcasm” thread is, but what is the “letter” thread? Thanks.

Back off, man. My brother’s a lawyer. (Thanks, Wally!)

48

Notthemama, I think that it was truly a heroic effort, but alas, a lost cause. I’ve watched bj0rn throw a fit about people criticizing his style, but the first opportunity he gets to talk about something besides his style, what does he do? Talk about his style.

Oh, well. That’s life, I suppose, in a masochistic sorta way.

I got the cards. What’ll it be? Poker? Hearts? Go Fish?

49

Sorry, Bean, I misspoke myself in the heat of composition. Of course it’s the “Message to Bjorn” thread.

Actually, Jez, I’m goshdarned if I’m gonna give up that easy. Do you suppose he has any hot-button topics? I thought the Iceland whale harvesting thing might do it. We’ll see. I’ll put together some cites just in case.

Potholes in the streets of Reykjavik? Ugly American tourists in Reykjavik? People who can’t spell “Reykjavik”?

Maybe it’s just been so long since he talked about anything EXCEPT his “style”, so long since he did anything besides parry other people’s thrusts, that the machinery’s just a little rusty. I think the experiment itself is fascinating, though. Sorry if nobody else shares my fascination. Nobody at this end understands why I’m “doing e-mail” all the time, either.

Let’s start a thread where we all feel sorry for ourselves because our families don’t understand our relationship with the SDMB. (“They’re not really your friends, you know”, “they’re not really like that in person”, “don’t come whining to me if you get flamed”, etc.)

And actually, I’m absolutely horrible at playing cards. Even Go Fish constitutes a challenge. :rolleyes: Is there a foundation somewhere for the Card-playing Challenged? Rummy for Dummies?

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen

50

Oh. I was wondering about that.

I, too, was hoping that the “Message to Bjorn” thread wouldn’t degenerate into Bjorn-bashing. But, alas, it soon did. Ces’t La Vie (sp??). I suppose that we can only create them and try to raise them right. They will do what they wish when they go out into the cold, hard world. sighhhhh

51

ok, this is going to be a bit difficult.

that is not true. please read the posts i made before you make statements like that.
i did what notthemama asked about in the op:

i presented my thoughts in a “poem” i wrote, which what critizised for being bad and stolen.

my “poem” was not read in context to what it contained. so i posted it again, using a different style. yet again i am yelled at. what am i supposed to think here notthemama? you tell me!

as for the “conversation, just because”:
i have posted a few threads since i began posting on this message board, some of them here in the pit, other threads in the great debates.

if you are interested; “~55% of the icelandic nation is stupid”(rough translation from the mouth of the current prime minister before last elections).

the case:
Davíð Oddsson(icelands prime minister for the past few years) is being interviewed in television along with the heads of other political parties. he is asked why he and his party doesnt want to give any promises in their campaign, to which he replies: “my grandmother always told me to promise little but do much” (how the hell are you going to be able to do anything that you havent said you are going to do…eh…). and right after that: “i can not belive the icelandic nation is so stupid that they vote for promises”. Davíð Oddsson and his party, the independance party won the election with little over 40% of the votes.

my question, what the hell is wrong with people?

another thing: “advertisments”.
in many cases are ads direct lies. how the hell can anyone put up with them? not to mention when you go to the movies, you have to watch em for 20 minutes or so before the movie starts. and here in iceland there is a break in the middle of the movie for 10 minutes or so where they show ads. hell! im not paying for watching ads, the theater is getting paid for showing em…i should get my ticked bloody well for free!

bj0rn - sorry if the post is a bit chaotic, thinking about this got me a little bit upset.

52

You asked, “What the hell is wrong with people?” You mean because they voted into office a man who refused to make empty campaign promises? Or do you mean just in general?

This guy, David Oddson (I’m sorry I don’t know how to make Icelandic characters), said something like, “I cannot believe the Icelandic nation is so stupid that they would vote for promises”? That sounds to me like kind of a compliment, you know. He’s saying, “The Icelandic people are not stupid enough to cast their votes only on the basis of promises, to vote just for whoever promises them the most stuff.”

You must have more than two parties there, if he won with 40%, right? So the other 60% must have been split up between at least two other parties? (Oh, no, I didn’t realize there was going to be math on this test… :slight_smile: )

Did the other parties make campaign promises, or did they also refuse to say? Maybe this was just his gimmick to get into office, you know, “I’m the guy who’s being totally honest with you”. Did he say that he supported anything at all, or was he just totally silent on the issues? Did other people find this irritating?

Maybe he thought that, since he was evidently seeking re-election, everybody ought to know by now what he and his party stood for, and he didn’t see any point in saying it all over again.

You ask, “how the hell are you going to be able to do anything that you havent said you are going to do?” I understand that you’re frustrated that he apparently wouldn’t say what he stood for. Do you think he was just being sneaky? Maybe he was just trying to be honest with the voters.

I don’t know how high (or low) the standards on “honesty from policians” are over there, but over here they’re pretty low. We all just automatically ignore probably 99% of what our politicans tell us, especially the ones who are running for election. If a politician won an election and actually came through on more than one of his campaign promises, we’d all drop dead of shock. We just expect them to lie to us. Evidently you have higher standards…?

Do they have Monica Lewinsky-type sex scandals over there? Or bribery scandals, or Watergate-type “got caught spying on the opposition” scandals?

On the subject of advertising:

Well, you sure have my sympathies on the subject of ads in the middle of movies. Here you have to sit through usually 5 or 10 minutes at the beginning, but it’s usually just ads for coming attractions (although there are a few regular ads sneaking in–bummer!) Maybe they can get away with that where you are because there’s nowhere else for people to go. There’s no competition.

Maybe people in Iceland just need to go to the bathroom more often, so they put that nice 10-minute bathroom break in the middle! :slight_smile:

And as for ads being direct lies, well, yeah, absolutely. Everybody knows it, there’s absolutely nothing anybody can do about it, so we just all learn to live with it, I guess. You learn to filter out the worst of it. Like I’ve got this permanent banner ad here at the bottom of my monitor, courtesy of Juno Internet. I just learn how to get it out of the way and work around it, trying to remember that the ad is what makes it possible for me to have free Internet.

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen

53

thanks for a good reply notthemama.

i never said empty campaign promises. true enough, they exist. Davíð Oddsson(if you really want to, you could copy and paste. but im not expecting you to ;)) has publically humiliated people more often than once, the example i provided was the only one i saw, so thats the example i remembered.

take for example the elections before last. there was a party that said: “12000 new jobs in the next 4 years”. something that could be considered an “empty campaign promise”, but its the sort that happenes all by it self. they hardly had to do nothing to acomplish it. now, this party allied with Davíð Oddsson and his independance party to form a government(another thing i find silly, more on that later). anyway, the allied party lost a couple of congress men during last elections, every single one of them to the independance party.
its kind of difficult to explain, but basically everything was arranged like this: if something was going good, the independance party took credit for it, but if something was going bad, the allied party got blamed for it. somehow nobody managed to see through it…

another thought; why do they have to form a majority? why cant they go to congress with their number of congressmen, propose their own legislations(opinions, ideas…) and be voted yes or no by the whole congress. if your party has alot of congressmen, that party has higher chances of a favourable outcome for a given legislation.

bj0rn - chickens for sale…!

54

um, there are just a few things id like to get straight, one is this about the ads. i was watching tv one time and every 15 minutes or so there would be a 5 minute break for ads AND it just so happens that i was watching tv in the US of A at the time. this i found very annoying and in the end i gave up on it and went to bed.

No competition ??? oh i forgot, we just have one movie-theater in Iceland and its located in a three story snowhouse/mall (it has an elevator) :: :rolleyes:::

55

**

ROFLMAO! Sounds familiar. If something is going good, the Republicans take credit for it, and if something starts going bad, the Democrats get blamed for it. Except for when it’s the other way around. And somehow nobody ever manages to see through it.

I’m getting the impression that politics is politics no matter where you go. No matter whether it’s Washington or Reykjavik, they have to get together a majority, because that way they have a better chance of getting their own legislation passed. You have to wheel and deal to get anything done. “It’s not WHAT you know, it’s WHO you know.” You vote for my bill, and I’ll vote for yours. Goodness, if we didn’t have that principle in operation, Congress would get even less done than it already does! :slight_smile: They’d spend all their time voting down each other’s legislation.

True, it would be more honest to do it the way you described, to have each party propose their own legislation, and have the entire Congress vote on it, but what if you’re introducing some kind of unpopular legislation, say, a new gas tax? That’s going to be shot down within the first two minutes, I’ll bet. But what if there’s another party that’s also introducing an unpopular bill, like a new bill tightening the controls on auto emissions? You could go to them and say, “Hey, if you’ll vote for my gas tax bill, I’ll vote for your bill regulating automobile emissions.” Then you’d get both bills passed. It’s all about making allies in order to get your party’s agenda passed into law.

Hi, skupla! Welcome to the “Conversation with Bjorn” thread.

I’m not quite sure I take your point about the ads on TV. You’re saying, “Yeah, they have ads on TV, too”? Well, can’t argue with that. (Just because this is the Pit doesn’t mean we’re obligated to have an argument, you know. :slight_smile: )

A three-story mall? Cool. But what do you mean by “snowhouse”? Not an igloo, surely? :confused:

Yes, I do take your point about competition for the movies–if people don’t like having their movie interrupted, they can go shopping or something.

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen

56

competition facts from iceland:
6 oil companies, the only price difference you get is when you pump your own gas.
8 movie houses in reykjavik alone(serving perhaps 150.000 people), no price differance.
3 bank companies, 3 insurance companies, 3 telephone companies and i dont even want to talk about the food buissiness or politics in relations to this.

perhaps no differant from other countries, but it still sucks!

bj0rn - chickens for sale…!

(You know, I find it helps to copy it to WordPad and then fix all the punctuation errors, etc., so they’re not so distracting. Then I usually light some incense, sacrifice a chicken to the spirit of Kate Turabian, and get really drunk. Then it actually starts to make sense.) - notthemama

57

I wasnt trying to start an argument I just thought it was funny that you said we had your “sympathies on the subject of ads in the middle of movies”, considering that on icelandic TV they never break up a movie or show for ads. Not even the one station that relies solely on ads for income.

And the igloo thing is really just a joke on ignorant people who mix up Greenland and Iceland. Not that I think you are ignorant, it was just a funny thing to say. IMHO :slight_smile:

58

No competition. Bummer, man.

Not to change the subject or anything, :slight_smile: but I just read this totally strange article in the Chicago Tribune about robot dogs, specifically robot pet dogs, and I am still flabbergasted. Hopefully this link will work and you can go see what I mean. (Let me know if it doesn’t work and I’ll just copy it in my next post.)
http://chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/article/0,2669,SAV-0004130121,FF.html

My mind just boggles. Would you pay good money for a robot pet, I mean a serious pet, not just a Furby? This woman actually seems to believe that her robot dog is real–she speaks of it as having “moods”, and says it “likes to” play with her other, real dog.

Is this mostly a Japan thing, this obsession with robots and robot toys? I don’t get out of the house much, so I don’t know.

Question: is it better to have a robot dog, or a real dog, or no dog at all? On the one hand, the robot dog wouldn’t pee on the floor, but on the other hand, the robot dog can’t give you love, but on the OTHER hand, this Ms. Miyoko Hoshino seems to think that HER robot dog does love her.

Sheesh. You wonder what the real dog thinks.

:rolleyes:

How much would you pay to have a robot pet dog? $100? $500? Not even 50 cents? :smiley:

This article says you have to “educate” it, like a Furby, and that it can take months to “grow up” from a puppy to an adult “dog”. Well, what’s the point? If you’re going to have something that takes months to “grow up”, why not get a real dog? Oh, I forgot, there’s that “pee on the floor” problem. Also, when you’re tired of it or want to go on vacation, you can just turn it off.

You just have to wonder what goes through some people’s heads.

P.S. to Skupla: It’s cool. I am probably one of the few people around here who actually does know the difference between Greenland and Iceland, geography being one of my FAVORITE things, no kidding.
:smiley:

Also, I read Smilla’s Sense of Snow. :wink:

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen

59

I really don’t see what’s so bad about bjorn. from what i’ve read, his posts are not that bad or hard to understand. Though I am new and am uneducated in bjorn history, from what i’ve read so far, it’s nothing.

notthemama, I’d go with the real dog all the way, even with the pee. I don’t think man will be able to make something that really simulates anything as conplex as a dog for some time.

Please excuse my spelling. i recieved my education in the United States.

60

Hi, Ace! Welcome to the SDMB! And welcome to the “Conversation with Bjorn” thread, such as it is. As you can see, he hasn’t posted for over a week; I think he’s been out of town or having final exams or something. (At least, I’m hoping that that’s all it is. I’d hate to think I drove him off by changing the subject from Icelandic politics to robot dogs.)

I think most of the raggin’ on Bjorn is just kind of tradition. He does remain defiant when people tell him to fix his grammar mistakes, and I think that’s what sets some folks off like an explosion in a fireworks factory. The accepted mode at the SDMB, when someone corrects your grammar or spelling, is to thank them kindly for the input and promise to try to do better. Bjorn, you may have noticed, doesn’t bother even saying that. To some people this is like a red flag to a bull.

Anyway, thanks for the input re robot dogs. I’m always surprised, myself, at the number of people out there who have a real dog but who treat it like a robot. They get a dog but are then unpleasantly surprised at the amount of attention and care it needs, so they end up dropping it off at the pound, you know? I think something like this robot dog is tailor-made for people like that. They can have all the cachet of owning the latest AKC top-10 breeds with none of the hassle.

I thought Furbys were the stupidest toy to come down the pike in a long time, but they’re still selling reasonably well. Go figure.

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen