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[felis_ultharus]

So I've been at the office all weekend (I'm only halfway through my work-week). Trying to input attendance for a few thousand students on ancient '486 computers is an exercise in patience -- my computer sometimes freezes for ten minutes at a time while it does all the necessary calculations.

Writing on the thing-I-do-not-want-to-call-a-second-novel-at-this-early-stage is going well, but working on a second novel feels vaguely like cheating on a boyfriend.

Meanwhile, I've been reading Shakespeare. And the funny thing is that reading a Shakespeare play for the first time is that you keep stumbling against quotes you've heard dozens of times.

The funniest lines are the ones that sound completely different in context than in quotation. My favourite so far "If music be the food of love, play on." This is one of those sweet-sounding lines, fit for Hallmark cards, that you get in books of famous sayings, and quoted endlessly in old movies and bad newspaper articles.

The original context:

"If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die."

In modern English: "If music is the food of love, keep playing -- that way, by forcefeeding me, I'll want to throw up and won't be in love anymore."

You won't find that on a greeting card.

Comments

[em-fish.livejournal.com]

"If music is the food of love, keep playing -- that way, by forcefeeding me, I'll want to throw up and won't be in love anymore."

.... And that's whycome Shakespeare was so awesome.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

It's funny that a man who spent so much of his life making war on the clichés of his predecessors should have become transmuted into so many clichés himself.

[helenseidolon.livejournal.com]

That misuse of the quote has bugged me since CEGEP.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I can see how it would.

montrealais rattled off a few others when I mentioned it to him, including "Now is the winter of our discontent."

[maidenofirisa.livejournal.com]

I did not know that and I'm really amused know that I know. In my defense we do not read a lot of Shakespeare in Business.

Good luck with the not-novel. I promise I won't say anything to the Novel when I read it.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Thank you ^_^

There have been some business courses that have taught Shakespeare -- I think on the basis of Shakespeare's giving advice to the king being like advice given to the CEO.

Which is a scary, when I think too much about it.

[jenjoou.livejournal.com]

Why do you even have computers that old?! The money they would save on work hours would more than pay for better computers. I'm not talking capable of playing the most modern video games, just faster than a typewriter would be nice. :P

Well, thet other novel has been leaving you alone so much. It can't expect you to sit at home all the time waiting to be able to write it again. ;) Besides if this made you a cheater, I don't know what that says about me and my half a dozen half written novels. ;)

I find people tend to misquote things in general. Sometimes it's funny though. ^_^

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

The answer is that the previous owners were cheap in that "penny-wise, pound-foolish" way. We're hoping to get the new company to spring for things -- they seem a lot more sensible.

And I've decided the word for what you are is "polynovellous" ^_^