Great masterpieces... that suck!

[CrashBang]

Pink Floyd
I just don't get it. The Beatles? Yes, amazing, revolutionary. The Clash? One of my all-time favourite bands, simply incredible. But Pink Floyd? No, their music is lost to me, I find it very dull and lifeless
Radiohead
Similarly to Pink Floyd, they're dull. Their lyrics are fantastic but the music itself lacks emotion and any kind of flare whatsoever

 

[Koroviev]

Well, I never actually got around to reading it (I put it down when I encountered a sentence in the introduction that was not actually a sentence, but in fact a series of the most needlessly obscure words strung together in the name of obscene pretentiousness), but I'm going to say Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Based on what I could glean from the overwrought intro, the story is little more than a bland Victorian soap opera concerning some forsaken woman's purity. Yawn!

 

[Macgyvercas]

Snip

AWESOME! I'm not alone in my hate for Catcher in the Rye!

 

[someotherguy]

You're going a bit far here, mate. This thread has really ticked you off, hasn't it?

Your posts are offending a lot of people and you're clearly in a bad mood. I'd recommend just leaving the thread before any more damage is caused to any party. If things keep on devolving like this, somebody's going to be put on probation.

Ignorance, and the passionate defence of it, have that effect on me, sorry. But I don't react all that well to veiled threats either.

Whom am I offending, after all? People who say that emo teen-agers who cannot spell properly can judge world literature? The only thing offensive here is that kind of ignorance.

I'm not even sure how to properly articulate a response to this without getting a ban.

Here goes nothing. If you think their opinions are worthless, why are you enraged over it? If they can't spell properly, why do you care? Learn to get away from the things that bug you, and stop thinking so highly of yourself. They can state their opinions, it doesn't mean its right. I doubt they honestly believe that the things they're insulting had no impact on the world, they simply didn't like it.

 

[sokka14]

No-one who knows anything about literature would call Tolkien's books masterpieces. Yes he has created an immensely deep detailed universe, but it's written in such dull monotonous prose, and it just comes across as contrived and self-indulgent.
Except The Hobbit. That had a few redeeming qualities. Like being a decent length. And not having Tolkien's universe jammed down your throat.

 

[dorkette1990]

Any painting by Renoir. Who thought that guy was good?! Seriously, who ever thought he was any good? Calling Renoir good is like calling those awful little drawings of children with dogs good. Sure, people eat it up, but it has no lasting emotional value, it's not talented. He shows those little vanilla scenes, poorly painted and poorly designed. Same with Kincaid, the man couldn't paint himself outta a box.

 

[Nickolai77]

Edit: Truly, some of the old philosophers can be considered scientists.
If there is some 21th century philosopher who has contributed greatly to science, please enlighten me.

I'd suggest Richard Dawkins as an example of a philosopher/scientist, they do exist, but i will say he has done more to publicise science and philosophy rather than contribute to it.

It's probably best to describe these "philosopher-scientists" you elude to as "natural philosophers" (which is indeed what they called themselves) because they did not use scientific methods to uncover "truths" about the universe.

 

[Jonluw]

Edit: Truly, some of the old philosophers can be considered scientists.
If there is some 21th century philosopher who has contributed greatly to science, please enlighten me.

I'd suggest Richard Dawkins as an example of a philosopher/scientist, they do exist, but i will say he has done more to publicise science and philosophy rather than contribute to it.

It's probably best to describe these "philosopher-scientists" you elude to as "natural philosophers" (which is indeed what they called themselves) because they did not use scientific methods to uncover "truths" about the universe.

But tell me: Is he a philosopher and a scientist, or is he a philosopher whose works have contributed to science?

Edit: From what I see, he seems to be a scientist who also is a philospher and that any progress done with his philosophy is only the promotion of science, but I might be wrong.

 

[Nickolai77]

Edit: From what I see, he seems to be a scientist who also is a philospher and that any progress done with his philosophy is only the promotion of science, but I might be wrong.

I think you've answered your own question there. In a lot of his books he's explaining evolution (science) and how he thinks this disproves God(Philosophy). Science and philosophy do have a close and interesting relationship, which i think is mainly hinged upon the moral or philosophical implications of scientific advancements. For instance, my philosophy lecturer last year also sits on governmental advisory boards for bio-ethics.

That said, i agree there is a clear separation between the two subjects, but yet at the same time they do connect quite well.

 

[Jonluw]

Edit: From what I see, he seems to be a scientist who also is a philospher and that any progress done with his philosophy is only the promotion of science, but I might be wrong.

I think you've answered your own question there. In a lot of his books he's explaining evolution (science) and how he thinks this disproves God(Philosophy). Science and philosophy do have a close and interesting relationship, which i think is mainly hinged upon the moral or philosophical implications of scientific advancements. For instance, my philosophy lecturer last year also sits on governmental advisory boards for bio-ethics.

That said, i agree there is a clear separation between the two subjects, but yet at the same time they do connect quite well.

Yes, they are indeed connected; and philosphy may very well guide the direction of science. I just can't imagine philosophy directly leading to any progress being made.
For example the teacher on the bio-ethics board is helping the scientists in telling them in what direction they should take their science; but he still isn't responsible for any of the actual progress being made.

 

[krugerrand123]

Lord of the flies- I just found it boring
Avatar- It was average for me
Halo reach- I found it extremely repetitive and boring

 

[SergeMC]

there are some universally acclaimed bands that i just can't get into.
these are:
led zeppelin; although i can understand their impact on the industry, i can't listen to anything outside of stairway.
pink floyd; to me... sorry, just incomprehensible space rock. i don't get it and i think i never will.
black sabbath; i never understood why people liked ozzy's voice. and i never understood what makes tony iommi and geezer butler such awesome composers. even their albums with dio did not do anything for me.
and lastly, though it breaks my heart to say it, there are very few song by dio that i like. my respect for the man is unmatched, he is one of my childhood heroes, but his solo band, if you can call it that, never had the punch that his project with rainbow did.

yeah, that's my opinion, if you want to flame me, then flame me, i'm not worthy blah blah blah...

 

[Nickolai77]

Lord of the flies- I just found it boring

If you found that book boring you'd have jumped out of the window if you had to read William Golding's "The Spire." Basically it's about this priest who runs the construction of a new spire for a cathedral but goes mad and dies. Loads of symbols, metaphors and other hidden meanings- but plotwise is hardly a good read. The best novels, or indeed most works of art which can be called good, appeal to both the common audience and the critics- Golding often appealed to much towards the high-brow critics end of the spectrum.

 

[Qmonster]

Gone With the Wind. It's a ~3hr apology to the US South for the US Civil War. "Oh, I'm sorry we ruined your economy... that was based on the enslavement and degradation of an entire race. Our bad." *sigh*

 

[Mr.Squishy]

James Joyce wasn't a genius, he was just trolling everybody.

Ayn Rand was an autistic ***** who should've had her brains knocked out at birth.

BioShock is overrated, pretentious garbage that abuses lens flare and blur more than every shitty artist on deviantART put together.

Pink Floyd only had three good albums.

H.P. Lovecraft just needed to stop doing so many drugs writing, period.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy was impressive when I was in third grade--but that was a very long time ago. It takes a lot more than purple prose and elf cities to impress me now.

I don't give two tugs of a dead dog's dick for Anne Frank or her diary. Yeah, the Holocaust happened, thirteen million people died just because Hitler was prejudiced against them, I get it, can I put this loathsome piece of trash down now? Just because she died in a concentration camp doesn't mean Anne Frank was any less vapid, annoying, or worthless than the millions of teenage girls keeping diaries today.

Oh, and fuck Led Zeppelin, too. Robert Plant cannot fucking sing, period.

Deus ex
That game simply sucks.
No matter how good story or choices you make,if the gameplay sucks the game too sucks.

This.

One eyed bastard mother of god, THIS. I agree a 100% with this, although I would like to add that The Beatles are overrated, and while I won't say they suck, Pink Floyd have received a bit mor praise than I feel they deserve.

Well lots of famous things receive more praise than they deserve, sure. But you gotta watch out when you go calling millions of people "vapid, annoying, or worthless" - so you really think that millions of girls with diaries are worthless? Was your mother worthless when she kept a diary? Your other female relatives? Of course not. Yeah people go through retarded phases, but there are plenty of people out there that are more important than either of us that would look at your comment and say "wow, what a vapid, annoying, malcontent impotently raging on an inconsequential internet forum".

So who would you give as an example of someone that CAN sing? Because according to the accepted definition, that is, a person that can project their voice in a series of pitches in order to convey musical language to the listener, he CAN sing. So... like... I guess I just don't understand what you're getting at. I suppose you think he's not as good as Mariah Carey or something? I mean, you might not like their music, but both of them have perfect pitch, huge vocal ranges, and pretty serious projecting power. I dunno. If you're gonna make these wild statements you're gonna get called out to explain yourself sometimes.

I concede. Writing a diary does not make one vapid, annoying or worthless, I was merely agreeing that Anne Frank's diary does not make for reading that I personally find interesting. The same goes for the singing of Robert Plant, in that I merely do not find his singing or indeed the music of Led Zeppelin enjoyable.

 

[crazypsyko666]

20000 Leagues Under the Sea could have been an amazing book, incredibly creative, well-told, the characters were time-bombs, each with their own kind of detonation, but halfway through, it turns into an aquatic biology lesson. The descriptions get weary, the characters don't do shit, the scientist ends up describing all of the fish in the sea by their latin scientific subgroups. I couldn't stand it.

 

[jaketaz]

James Joyce wasn't a genius, he was just trolling everybody.

Ayn Rand was an autistic ***** who should've had her brains knocked out at birth.

BioShock is overrated, pretentious garbage that abuses lens flare and blur more than every shitty artist on deviantART put together.

Pink Floyd only had three good albums.

H.P. Lovecraft just needed to stop doing so many drugs writing, period.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy was impressive when I was in third grade--but that was a very long time ago. It takes a lot more than purple prose and elf cities to impress me now.

I don't give two tugs of a dead dog's dick for Anne Frank or her diary. Yeah, the Holocaust happened, thirteen million people died just because Hitler was prejudiced against them, I get it, can I put this loathsome piece of trash down now? Just because she died in a concentration camp doesn't mean Anne Frank was any less vapid, annoying, or worthless than the millions of teenage girls keeping diaries today.

Oh, and fuck Led Zeppelin, too. Robert Plant cannot fucking sing, period.

Deus ex
That game simply sucks.
No matter how good story or choices you make,if the gameplay sucks the game too sucks.

This.

One eyed bastard mother of god, THIS. I agree a 100% with this, although I would like to add that The Beatles are overrated, and while I won't say they suck, Pink Floyd have received a bit mor praise than I feel they deserve.

Well lots of famous things receive more praise than they deserve, sure. But you gotta watch out when you go calling millions of people "vapid, annoying, or worthless" - so you really think that millions of girls with diaries are worthless? Was your mother worthless when she kept a diary? Your other female relatives? Of course not. Yeah people go through retarded phases, but there are plenty of people out there that are more important than either of us that would look at your comment and say "wow, what a vapid, annoying, malcontent impotently raging on an inconsequential internet forum".

So who would you give as an example of someone that CAN sing? Because according to the accepted definition, that is, a person that can project their voice in a series of pitches in order to convey musical language to the listener, he CAN sing. So... like... I guess I just don't understand what you're getting at. I suppose you think he's not as good as Mariah Carey or something? I mean, you might not like their music, but both of them have perfect pitch, huge vocal ranges, and pretty serious projecting power. I dunno. If you're gonna make these wild statements you're gonna get called out to explain yourself sometimes.

I concede. Writing a diary does not make one vapid, annoying or worthless, I was merely agreeing that Anne Frank's diary does not make for reading that I personally find interesting. The same goes for the singing of Robert Plant, in that I merely do not find his singing or indeed the music of Led Zeppelin enjoyable.

Well... I can't argue with personal preference. Do you like Soundgarden? Just curious.

 

[archvile93]

I'm not a fan of TF2 due to all the hard countering, at least until the new weapons came out, which I'm still bitter about since I'm not allowed to use them without getting incredibly lucky or buying them which is a bigger rip off the MW2 map packs.

No idea what you mean by hard countering. However, in TF2 if you earn achievements for a specific class, you get new weapons for that class. Pretty simple.

bioshock, I know it has great atmosphere, but how does that excuse absolutely horrid and broken gameplay? I played through that game twice to make sure I just wasn't missing something, but just never saw it. I'm not a fan of TF2 due to all the hard countering, at least until the new weapons came out, which I'm still bitter about since I'm not allowed to use them without getting incredibly lucky or buying them which is a bigger rip off the MW2 map packs.

Out of curiosity, how was the gameplay broken for you? I also thought Bioshock had a few issues, but gameplay was never one of them for me.

1. Plasmids were all useless, except of course where they were abitralily made essential. They do virtually no damage, do not distract enemies (you'd think being on fire would cause someone to stop shooting at their enemies but no), yet require huge sums of eve to use.

2. Hit detection is awful. How many crossbow bolts can phase through an enemy's head failing to do any damage? answer, a lot.

3. Enemies have more health than an M1 tank, and that's not the big daddies I'm talking about, which mixes very poorly with my next issue.

4. I rarely had any ammo, and when I did it didn't last due to the reason above. I find more ammo in silent hill games. This wouldn't be so bad though if I could just get the plasmid that allows you to pull limitless amounts of ammo from your ass that magically disintigrates upon the users death that all the enemies get. You ever have to beat an elite bouncer to death? I did.

5. hacking is both difficult and often impossible and useless. Wow, ammo's now two dollars cheaper. That was worth the three health packs I went through due to being electricuted from getting unwinable boards. I wish my electric plasmid could do that much damage. Why didn't I hack this thing to give me stuff for free anyway?

6. And the level design, while attractive, wasn't exactly clear, causing me to get turned around often. And this is coming from a guy who had little trouble with the water temple in OoT.

Were we playing the same game? Hacking is the easiest thing in the game to do. I mostly hacked security cameras and turrets, but still. Also, electrocuting enemies standing in puddles of water was an easy way to get rid of people. Of course you had to upgrade your plasmids in order for them to be super strong. I never had major issues with the guns or hit detection and the splicers are stupidly easy to dispatch.

I think your problem was not taking the time to learn how to effectively use plasmids and instead tried to play it like a straight typical FPS. It's no wonder you hated it.

OP: I hated Catcher in the rye, Cats, and Romeo & Juliet.

Ah yes the upgrade your plasmids options. Now they'll only be slightly less useless. Tell me which plasmid was your favorite? The one that stunned enemies but did no damage not that you could break cover and take advantage of his immobility because then his eight buddies will tear you apart before you can say "wrench damage bonus"? One of the two that do very little damage and don't even serve as a distraction? You'd think being swarmed by angry bees or on fire would be distracting, but no they're still perfectly able to keep shooting at you with near flawless accuracy from their bottomless magazines. Is it the one that's only useful against nitro splicers since they're the only ones with attacks you can catch? Or maybe it's the one that freezes enemies but has the same problems as the first one in addition to the fact that if you kill him like that you can't loot the corpse and he'll probablt thaw before then, and you can't damage his actual health anyway? Oh and Like I said in a later post, hacking is easy, unless it makes the board unwinnable as it often doesn, like when it surrounded the end point with two layers of alarms.

 

[Ethylene Glycol]

David Lynch can put down the woodworking for a while and suck my balls. Eraserhead was just terrible.

Hmm. I'd try Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet before you completely write off Lynch. Mulholland Drive especially, besides being insightful about dreams and illusion, is pretty funny and thrilling. And weird, but not nearly as much as Eraserhead is.

Mmmm...I might. I thought I'd like Eraserhead, though, because a friend of mine said it was like Un Chien Andalou's two-hour brother...but I just couldn't sit past the first ten minutes. :T

James Joyce wasn't a genius, he was just trolling everybody.

Ayn Rand was an autistic ***** who should've had her brains knocked out at birth.

BioShock is overrated, pretentious garbage that abuses lens flare and blur more than every shitty artist on deviantART put together.

Pink Floyd only had three good albums.

H.P. Lovecraft just needed to stop doing so many drugs writing, period.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy was impressive when I was in third grade--but that was a very long time ago. It takes a lot more than purple prose and elf cities to impress me now.

I don't give two tugs of a dead dog's dick for Anne Frank or her diary. Yeah, the Holocaust happened, thirteen million people died just because Hitler was prejudiced against them, I get it, can I put this loathsome piece of trash down now? Just because she died in a concentration camp doesn't mean Anne Frank was any less vapid, annoying, or worthless than the millions of teenage girls keeping diaries today.

Oh, and fuck Led Zeppelin, too. Robert Plant cannot fucking sing, period.

Deus ex
That game simply sucks.
No matter how good story or choices you make,if the gameplay sucks the game too sucks.

This.

One eyed bastard mother of god, THIS. I agree a 100% with this, although I would like to add that The Beatles are overrated, and while I won't say they suck, Pink Floyd have received a bit mor praise than I feel they deserve.

Yeah--I like a lot of their music, but I'm more than willing to admit the Beatles are overrated. Any sufficiently-popular band is going to be, natch, but I won't pretend the Beatles were the greatest band ever.

Pink Floyd themselves don't suck, but I firmly believe that all their albums that weren't Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, or The Wall do.

 

[Hosker]

People really hate Lotr here, don't they?

I am really disliking Dracula, if that counts as a great masterpiece anyway. The first 4 chapters were brilliant though.