Potshots at the poem

[albion]

This is the poem. If you think it vulgar, pretentious, copied, or something other, say why.

Excitement's Crave


All those mortal's surviving birth
Upon facing maturity,
Take inventory of their worth
To prevailing society.

Choosing values becomes a task;
Oneself must seek satisfaction.
The selected route will unmask
Character when plans take action

Accepting some work to perform
At fixed pay, but promise for more,
Is a recognized social norm,
As is decorum, seeking lore.

Achieving while others lifting
Should be cause for deserving fame.
Leisure tempts excitement seeking,
What's right and expected seems tame.

"Jessie James" has been seen by all,
And "Son of Sam" has an author.
Others now feel temptations call.
Sacramento should make an offer.

To make a movie of my life
That will pay for my planned exile.
Just now I'd like to add the wife
Of a Mafia lord to my file.

Your East Area Rapist
And deserving pest
See you in the press or on T.V.

[albion]

Here is the lyrics to the Who song, The Seeker.


"The Seeker"

I looked under chairs
I looked under tables
I'm tryin to find the key
To fifty million fables

They call me the seeker
I been searchin low and high
I wont get to get what I'm after
Till the day I die

I asked bobby dylan
I asked the beatles
I asked timothy leary
But he couldn't help me either

They call me the seeker
I been searchin low and high
I wont get to get what I'm after
Till the day I die

People tend to hate me
Cuz I never smile
As I ransack their homes
They wanna shake my hand

Focusing on nowhere
Investigating miles
I'm a seeker I'm a really desperate man

I wont get to get what I'm after
Till the day I die

I learned to raise my voice in anger
Yeah but look at my face ain't this a smile

I'm happy when life's good and when its bad I cry
I got values but I don't know how or why

I'm lookin for me
You're lookin for you
Were lookin at each other and we don't know what to do

They call me the seeker
I been searchin low and high
I wont get to get what I'm after
Till the day I die

[albion]

If you notice, the author is talking about seeking. The seeker seems expressive of that, as well as including "ransacking" and "value". I was thinking about some of the terms tonight. Satisfaction is a word that can have various meanings, including revenge or reparations. I ran across this line tonight as well. I wouldnt have thought to equate "decorum" with "glory", but in this translation it seems to be the case. At least at first glance.


"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" is a line from the Roman lyrical poet Horace's Odes (III.2.13). The line can be translated as: "It is sweet and glorious to die for one's country."


"When Brecht was 16, the First World War broke out. Initially enthusiastic, Brecht soon changed his mind on seeing his classmates "swallowed by the army".[7] Brecht was nearly expelled from school in 1915 for writing an essay in response to the line Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori from the Roman poet Horace, calling it Zweckpropaganda ("[cheap] propaganda for a specific purpose") and arguing that only an empty-headed person could be persuaded to die for their country. His expulsion was only prevented through the intervention of his religion teacher.[10]"

"The Threepenny Opera[1] (Die Dreigroschenoper) is a "play with music" by Bertolt Brecht, adapted from German dramatist Elisabeth Hauptmann's translation of John Gay's 18th-century English ballad opera, The Beggar's Opera,[2] with music by Kurt Weill and insertion ballads by François Villon and Rudyard Kipling. The work offers a Socialist critique of the capitalist world. It opened on 31 August 1928 at Berlin's Theater am Schiffbauerdamm.

By 1933, when Weill and Brecht were forced to leave Germany by the Nazi seizure of power,[3] the play had been translated into 18 languages and performed more than 10,000 times on European stages.[4] Songs from The Threepenny Opera have been widely covered and become standards, most notably "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer" ("The Ballad of Mack the Knife") and "Seeräuberjenny" ("Pirate Jenny"). In 2015 the Library of Congress added "Mack the Knife" by Louis Armstrong and Bobby Darin to the National Recording Registry."

[almagata]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT98KVV356o

This is an LP transfer of the 1976 New York Shakespeare Festival's revival production of "The Threepenny Opera." This recording should not be confused with the original 1954 New York production recording, nor the 1994 Donmar Warehouse production recording in England. Unlike Marc Blitzstein's version which ran during the 1950's for six years and featured the incomparable Lotte Lenya, this translation is less sanitized and more in keeping with the seedy and sexual nature of the original german play.

From the liner notes to the album - "the successful Blitzstein version was an adaptation rather than a translation, and in comparing it to the original, we were surprised at the extent to which his treatment vitiated the political and sexual thrust which gives the work its relentless power. Blitzstein sweetened and cleaned up Brecht's unsparing lyrics, partially in deference to stage censorship...but in doing so he in many instances changed Brecht's meanings around entirely, and throughout he softened the impact of Brecht's biting ferocity. He also attempted to make the lyrics more 'singable' by fitting them into conventional musical patterns, and in this he succeeded admirably."

[Mr Hood]

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Attachments:

[almagata]

www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2155/whats-the-story-behind-mack-the-knife

The character of Macheath, later to become Mack the Knife, first appeared in The Beggar's Opera by John Gay (1685-1732). Gay was a popular English playwright and poet, a friend and collaborator of Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope.

The Beggar's Opera is a comic ballad opera, the first of its kind, and took London theatre by storm. Gay uses lower-class criminals to satirize government and upper-class society, an idea that has been used often ever since. A century and a half later, the title characters in Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance note that they are more honest than "many a king on a first-class throne." And in our time, wasn't it Bob Dylan who wrote, "Steal a little and they throw you in jail; steal a lot and they make you a king?"

The main character of The Beggar's Opera is a swashbuckling thief called Macheath. He's a dashing romantic, a gentleman pickpocket, a Robin Hood type. He is polite to the people he robs, avoids violence, and shows impeccable good manners while cheating on his wife. The character is usually understood as partly a satire of Sir Robert Walpole, a leading British politician of the time.

The Beggar's Opera was a success from its first production in 1728, and continued to be performed for many years. It was the first musical play produced in colonial New York; George Washington enjoyed it.

We now skip about 200 years to post-WWI Europe and Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), a distant cousin of this SDSTAFFer. World War I had a revolutionary impact on the arts. The avant-garde movement, in despair after the war, embraced the concept of the anti-hero. Gay's play was revived in England in 1920, and Brecht thought it could be adapted to suit the new era - who's more of an anti-hero than Macheath? So in 1927 he got a German translation and started writing Die Dreigroschenoper, "The Three Penny Opera."

Brecht worked with Kurt Weill (1900-1950) on the adaptation. He did far more than just translate Gay's play, he reworked it to reflect the decadence of the period and of the Weimar republic. Mostly, Brecht wrote or adapted the lyrics, and Weill wrote or adapted the music. Gay's eighteenth-century ballads were replaced with foxtrots and tangos. Only one of Gay's melodies remained in the new work. The play parodies operatic conventions, romantic lyricism and happy endings.

The main character is still Macheath, but Macheath transformed. He's now called Mackie Messer, AKA Mack the Knife. ("Messer" is German for knife.) Where Gay's Macheath was a gentleman thief, Brecht's Mackie is an out-and-out gangster. He's no longer the Robin Hood type, he's an underworld cutthroat, the head of a band of street robbers and muggers. He describes his activities as "business" and himself as a "businessman." Still, the character does manage to arouse some sympathy from the audience.

So, we finally get to your song, the "Ballad of Mack the Knife" (Die Moritat von Mackie Messer) from The Three Penny Opera. The song was a last-minute addition to appease the vanity of tenor Harald Paulson, who played Macheath. However, it was performed by the ballad singer, to introduce the character. The essence of the song is: "Oh, look who's coming onstage, it's Mack the Knife - a thief, murderer, arsonist, and rapist." (If these last two startle you, be patient for a couple paragraphs.)

[albion]

Translation of a freemason poem. The beginnings seem similar.

freemasonry.bcy.ca/texts/regius.html


Here begin the constitutions of the art of Geometry according to Euclid.


Whoever will both well read and look
He may find written in old book
Of great lords and also ladies,
That had many children together, y-wisse; (certainly)
And had no income to keep them with,
Neither in town nor field nor frith; (enclosed wood)
A council together they could them take,
To ordain for these children’s sake,
How they might best lead their life
Without great dis-ease, care, and strife;
And most for the multitude that was coming
Of their children after their ending
They send them after great clerks,
To teach them then good works;
And pray we them, for our Lord’s sake.
To our children some work to make,
That they might get their living thereby,
Both well and honestly full securely.
In that time, through good geometry,
This honest craft of good masonry
Was ordained and made in this manner,
Counterfeited of these clerks together;
At these lord’s prayers they counterfeited
geometry,
And gave it the name of masonry,
For the most honest craft of all.
These lords' children thereto did fall,
To learn of him the craft of geometry,
The which he made full curiously;
Through fathers' prayers and mothers' also,
This honest craft he put them to.
He learned best, and was of honesty,
And passed his fellows in curiosity,
If in that craft he did him pass,
He should have more worship than the lasse, (less)
This great clerk’s name was Euclid,
His name it spread full wonder wide.
Yet this great clerk ordained he
To him that was higher in this degree,
That he should teach the simplest of wit
In that honest craft to be parfytte; (perfect)
And so each one shall teach the other,
And love together as sister and brother.
Furthermore yet that ordained he,
Master called so should he be;
So that he were most worshipped,
Then should he be so called;
But masons should never one another call,
Within the craft amongst them all,
Neither subject nor servant, my dear brother,
Though he be not so perfect as is another;
Each shall call other fellows by cuthe, (friendship)
Because they come of ladies' birth.
On this manner, through good wit of geometry,
Began first the craft of masonry;
The clerk Euclid on this wise it found,
This craft of geometry in Egypt land.

[guest]

I'm new, just didn't get logged in correctly for some reason, so I'm on as a guest. My username is cofw (or cloudofwitnesses from the main board)

Do you really think the guy who wrote "Mad is the word" wrote this?

I have a crazy theory. On the Punishment torn out page there is the crossed out word Melanie, but crossed out with two backward Z's, one on top of the other. Could Melanie referenced to Zodiac be Melanie Graysmith, the ex of Robert Graysmith? The divorce wasn't sweet. Was Melanie, a writer, the author of Excitement's Crave? Were they in touch?

[almagata]

CofW, I don't know the answer to your question but I don't think it is a crazy thought. We have some strong indications that Zodiac and EARONS have some commonalities. I don't know much about the Graysmiths other than Robert Graysmith is viewed as an expert on the Zodiac case and that he was a cartoonist prior to becoming an author.

[Mr Hood]

Sept 2, 2016 5:37:20 GMT guest said:

I'm new, just didn't get logged in correctly for some reason, so I'm on as a guest. My username is cofw (or cloudofwitnesses from the main board)

Do you really think the guy who wrote "Mad is the word" wrote this?

I have a crazy theory. On the Punishment torn out page there is the crossed out word Melanie, but crossed out with two backward Z's, one on top of the other. Could Melanie referenced to Zodiac be Melanie Graysmith, the ex of Robert Graysmith? The divorce wasn't sweet. Was Melanie, a writer, the author of Excitement's Crave? Were they in touch?

I think there's more than 1 EAR/ONS and more then 1 Zodiac. However, they are in the same 'group' The EAR/ONS who wrote Excitements Crave is smarter than the one who did the CJB poem. Mad is the word was written by the EC writer.
But what do I know? It's just my opinion.

[cofw]

Sept 2, 2016 8:36:35 GMT Mr Hood said:

Sept 2, 2016 5:37:20 GMT guest said:

I'm new, just didn't get logged in correctly for some reason, so I'm on as a guest. My username is cofw (or cloudofwitnesses from the main board)

Do you really think the guy who wrote "Mad is the word" wrote this?

I have a crazy theory. On the Punishment torn out page there is the crossed out word Melanie, but crossed out with two backward Z's, one on top of the other. Could Melanie referenced to Zodiac be Melanie Graysmith, the ex of Robert Graysmith? The divorce wasn't sweet. Was Melanie, a writer, the author of Excitement's Crave? Were they in touch?

I think there's more than 1 EAR/ONS and more then 1 Zodiac. However, they are in the same 'group' The EAR/ONS who wrote Excitements Crave is smarter than the one who did the CJB poem. Mad is the word was written by the EC writer.
But what do I know? It's just my opinion.

Curious how the EC writer is the same as Mad is the word. Much of the Custer essay is generally considered plagiarism, correct? But I'm sure there's a good reason here I don't know about, like the reference to Mafia, etc

[Mr Hood]

Sept 2, 2016 16:26:54 GMT cofw said:

Sept 2, 2016 8:36:35 GMT Mr Hood said:

I think there's more than 1 EAR/ONS and more then 1 Zodiac. However, they are in the same 'group' The EAR/ONS who wrote Excitements Crave is smarter than the one who did the CJB poem. Mad is the word was written by the EC writer.
But what do I know? It's just my opinion.

Curious how the EC writer is the same as Mad is the word. Much of the Custer essay is generally considered plagiarism, correct? But I'm sure there's a good reason here I don't know about, like the reference to Mafia, etc

The Custer essay is plagiarism but some of what is contained in it is true for the writer. It just so happened that somebody picked a well known battle because they were taught it along with other battle tactics and it had parts that were true for the writer, it's clever, very clever.

[cofw]

Well I'll take your word for it. I've only glanced at it, and the EC poetry is just too awful to read (but I don't deny it could add substantial significance to the case.) I studied English and American Lit in college, but ended up writing code for a living. I do think a gripping fiction novel could be pulled from the main forum alone. Any thoughts on that? Should I write a first chapter?

[Mr Hood]

Sept 2, 2016 23:07:06 GMT cofw said:

Well I'll take your word for it. I've only glanced at it, and the EC poetry is just too awful to read (but I don't deny it could add substantial significance to the case.) I studied English and American Lit in college, but ended up writing code for a living. I do think a gripping fiction novel could be pulled from the main forum alone. Any thoughts on that? Should I write a first chapter?

If you ended up writing code for a living, you can read EC and understand it's complexity surely

What would your novel include I wonder....

[cofw]

I'll have to write an algorithm to figure it out. We're generally a lazy lot.

I don't consider my neighbor (or NOI) to be that absolute. If he is the guy, I wouldn't be surprised, all things considered, but I've seen other POI's out here who have more air tight cases. If it were someone else, I'd actually be way more pleased.

The setting would be similar to ours, with a questionable neighbor in a remote hill area. He would be an unsuspecting EAR to most people, except to his closest neighbors, who have always felt a certain unease around him. Then the media blitz happens, as it did in June recently. FBI sketches are posted everywhere. The wife notices one and is blown away. The family gathers around the monitor, and they all agree. He's the one. The husband (myself) takes it less seriously, his work load too large to handle more stress.

The wife contacts the FBI, then dives into the forum, and finds little interest in the NOI, having no location history for her suspect. Over the course of a week she gets deeper and deeper into the forum, neglecting her family all the while. There are red herrings, mockery and even bans from forums. Much tension occurs between husband and wife. She orders yearbooks and Ancestry accounts, creates false emails and Facebook accounts. She starts contacting strangers with dubious backgrounds, even sex offenders and drug traffickers. (Keep in mind this would all be fiction, with fictional characters)

Then she discovers more about the NOI's background. From here I would follow much of the discovery taken place for me with the connection to Iran-Contra. More tension between family and mom--chapter after chapter. In a near breakdown, she contacts a shady figure on the forum who turns out to be her neighbor. A dark, late night later his face shows up in her window. She freaks, but isn't scared off. That same night she finds clear evidence pointing to him. The next night he attacks using the same MO of the EAR. He nearly succeeds, ligatures and all, but her husband, recognizing that his wife has been right all along, frees himself at the last moment and shoots dead the NOI, or so they think.

They call LE, but when LE arrives, the body of the NOI is gone, with no trace of him having been there. LE laughs them off. The family is forced to become fugitives (much like Jason Bourne). Action after action scene later they make enough contacts to slowly unravel what happened. In the end, they breach the highest level of the CIA to find out about a plea bargain given the EAR years back, granting him immunity from any crimes he committed in his past. The cover-up is exposed, but do to the absence of the EAR, he is considered to still be alive. (sequel)