I don't do any work unless they force me. >

Cale recorded it c. 1994 as his contribution to the tribute album I'm Your Fan ... around the same time that Lenny had a second coming and Cale began to perform more piano-based material. He wrote to Cohen for the lyrics and got about 20 stanzas in reply. Cohen regularly does this: one reason his songs are so good is that they're pared down from longer versions.

Cale made his own selection of lyrics. The song can be 'spun' to make it seem more spiritual, sexy, biblical, contemporary, etc: but Cohen's words (c.1984) and Cale's arrangement (c.1994) are at the root of all later versions.

I'm also a big admirer of Cale's Heartbreak Hotel: more a deconstruction than an arrangement.

"Hamlet's Mill"

I've read this book as well- at first I thought the writers were "putting everyone on" with an elaborate practical joke- similar to the way Erich Von Daniken later admitted he never once believed in his own theory that "Aliens visited and gave primitive man technological knowledge like how to build a pyramid."

Look I don't want another argument but I don't understand your attraction to pseudo-scholarly pop cultural treatises such as these.

And I wouldn't say the authors are pointing out the bias of "modern science" against "ancient knowledge" (ancient ideas is more accurate)- they were more concerned that "modern mythographers" had been neglecting ancient and more recent, but still "outdated" sources on the nature and origins of myths-particularly cosmological myths related to both astrology and astronomy, and most particularly the one myth about the cycles of time favored by northern European peoples. People like my mother, so watch it!

Seriously though, the Scandinavian "Mill mythos" is not as prominent in northern European history as the authors suggest. There are literally dozens of other myths about time and the cosmos from the distant reaches of the past in this region of the world.

But they are not kidding, sadly enough. I think the best that could be said for this brace of psuedo scholars is that they found very old sources to be "groovy", and they found the "Cosmic Mill" myth to be "groovier" than other myths, so they argued that it is some kind of "ur-myth" that unifies primitive thought and somehow thus elevates its epistemological status, and relevance to the world today.

Come to think of it, it is pretty groovy- mainly because eccentric to the point of being more than a little silly. I also enjoyed their long, long sentences in the "style of the time" full of really big words and really cool sounding names nobody's ever heard of before.

Ok never mind then.

Post away- but seriously <madly deeply> I don't want to have to post another treatise on the definition of <The Natural Sciences> in my forum, particularly on the difference between astrology and astronomy.

This isn't a difficult distinction to make, or to understand, and the distinction has nothing whatsoever to do with "bias" or even opinion for that matter.

"I might call a dog's tail a leg, but it doesn't make it a leg."

Copryright 2010 by JFQ Enterprises and I didn't just steal this from Howard

It's never too late to become a teacher, at least in the West, thanks to the woefully low standards for official "qualification" to teach, at least with respect to teaching English.

The standards that Koreans are held to in order to qualify as an English teacher are so strict, strenuous, and rigorous, that Korean teachers have begun noticing that the "native speaking English teachers" like me who come here don't actually know what they're talking about.

I had no idea there were "extra verses."

<Dom> has swooped in with a better answer to your questions than I could ever supply, so I think I'll just delete his post, and then repost it verbatim but under my name instead.

*My* defence runs something like this:

1. Uh, irony?

2. Seriously? Well, out of 10,000 such treatises, one will be real science and not crazy. Like, say, the idea that people live in the antipodes upside-down, stuck to a big wet spinning ball by magic yet ungodly gravity glue.

About four more will be hilariously funny.

The remaining 9995 will be cretinous tripe, an execrably verminous denial of whatever intelligence our miserable species has evolved. And as such, fit for extirpation. I'll even do the extirping by hand. They should be deeply ashamed of their stupid selves.

Still, how do we configure these odds? One shot in 10,000 at a real scientific discovery isn't bad. If it's big enough, one in a million would do. And four funnies is more than some people get in a lifetime.

Works for me. Except perhaps in cases involving steel poles, glasses, and rapid acceleration.

"So, um, you wear dark glasses on your feet?"

No trying to sneak irony past me buster!

It has to be Pynchon. I'm not *quite* warped enough yet, though I could be conflating.

====\\\

bloody keyboard

<Canyonero>!

I will go back and hunt for it. I probably didn't see it.

Good job btw urging <Travis> to reopen his forum- <kurtrichards> also lent some support and even <Richard Taylor> asked <Travis> to reopen.

Brilliant thanks!!!

A Trick of the Tail-- title track from a brilliant record, first one without Pete-

Tony Banks really stepping up with the lion's share of the composing and sharing most of the lyric writing chores with Phil-

Phil answered all critics and all fears with his performance on this record.

He is simply terrific here.

<For another article Monique van de Griendt interviewed people who live in the village Wijk aan Zee about their opinions of the tournament. They all liked it, one reason being that bars and restaurants flourish during these weeks, though one man said that they had to be careful with the chess players running loose, as they would cross the street absentmindedly right in front of one's car. He said that car drivers in Wijk aan Zee would warn each other when the chess players were bound to arrive.>

Yes I saw that I got nominated.I'm not sure what that means though?

Things are pretty good with me,but I'm losing my correspondence games left and right!!!I was 1564 and now I'm down to 1478!!!

I've been trying to follow the convoluted course of the Corus chaos. (Still trying to figure out what happened in that Carlsen-Kramnik game the other day--seems to me The Kid was winning, but...Nb6??...)