Well, they can’t all be winners can they, kid?
just be grateful it wasn’t an aspirin
Pyhrrus, a disappointed pier…
Source:
Opening of chapter 2, Nestor, from Joyce, Ulysses:
*-- You, Cochrane, what city sent for him?
– Tarentum, sir.
– Very good. Well?
– There was a battle, sir.
– Very good. Where?
The boy’s blank face asked the blank window.
Fabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in some way if not
as memory fabled it. A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of Blake’s wings of
excess. I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry,
and time one livid final flame. What’s left us then?
– I forget the place, sir. 279 B. C.
– Asculum, Stephen said, glancing at the name and date in the gorescarred
book.
– Yes, sir. And he said: Another victory like that and we are done for.
That phrase the world had remembered. A dull ease of the mind.
From a hill above a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his officers,
leaned upon his spear. Any general to any officers. They lend ear.
– You, Armstrong, Stephen said. What was the end of Pyrrhus?
– End of Pyrrhus, sir?
– I know, sir. Ask me, sir, Comyn said.
– Wait. You, Armstrong. Do you know anything about Pyrrhus?
A bag of figrolls lay snugly in Armstrong’s satchel. He curled them
between his palms at whiles and swallowed them softly. Crumbs adhered to
the tissue of his lips. A sweetened boy’s breath. Welloff people, proud that
their eldest son was in the navy. Vico road, Dalkey.
– Pyrrhus, sir? Pyrrhus, a pier.
Maverick, there’s a balm in the base?
OK, here is the 9¢ explanation. The senior chieftain of the dwarves having gone a bit loopy went on walkabout. While out and about he went to his family’s ancestral home. Unfortunately said home was occupied by a whole lotta orcs. He was killed and his body mutilated. The orcs allowed his companion to go free to spread the tale.
The rest of the dwarves gathered together and waged a war of vengeance on the orcs. At the end of the war the dead chieftain’s heir suggested the take up occupation of their ancestral city. This is the point the quote comes in. Basically they were too weakened by the war to actually gain and hold the spoils of their victory.
Please do not post false balm threats.
Thank you.
Fixed title.
And the word you are looking for is “Pyrrhic”.
Someone set us up the-- OW! My eye!
OK, OK, I’m backing out of the thread… please put down the pointèd sticks.
You did. 
No, “three-headed dogs being equal”.
Pyrrhic!
Am I first?
Why don’t you tell us something else about Jack London, clematis boy?
(You know the smiley face is assumed, right?)
There’s no point in closing the balm door after the cow’s already loose.
I am above posting a joke involving loose cows and bag balm.
That’s abominable.
Three-headed dogs are inherently unequal. They’re always bickering, and then two of the heads gang up on the other head.
And they always win because two heads are better than one.
This thread is Da Balm.
The battle was just outside the doors of Khazad-dûm, if I recall correctly.
(But I did have to look up how to spell Khazad-dum. And for gods’ sake, please don’t include me in some kind competitive list of Tolkien geeks. My pleasure is only in pointing out the errors of others (well, Skald mostly) not in bragging about my lack of a life).