h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A87887687 John Brown's Body: The Battle Hymn of Snark

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I tweaked comparatively little here and there - mainly added a few links - so let me know if you're happy for this to go to the next step.

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Looks great.

Button Pressed!

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I keep wondering how you would go about rescuing this from the Flea Market: A2370223

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I, too, am baffled.

I am unfamiliar with the ritual described here...perhaps it has gone away. I would hope so. I vaguely remember a recording...

Oh, lordy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gyvTV5OJ5E

I managed to listen to this long enough to verify that he segued from 'Dixie Land' to 'glaw-ry'. I then turned it off, because that was quite enough of that.

Elvis' 'singing' hurts my ears. I also consider the Confederacy to have been a joke in the worst possible taste. (Worse than the current administration, as long as he keeps his hand off that button.)

If I were to rewrite this, it would be to make mock.

I just found this lovely rant by a historian:

http://wesclark.com/jw/foolishness.html

I've only done an update before, never a Flea Market rescue. One reason is style. Another is content.

Question: If I took it on, could I leave out the bits I disagreed with or could refute with evidence?

Am I stuck with the grammar, spelling, and syntactical errors?

If you wanted to do a rescue, you can feel free to correct grammar, spelling, other errors and make whatever changes you saw fit, although it is usual to keep some of the original entry in there somewhere. If you wanted to, say, present an opposing side of an argument, delete whole sections or change the conclusion, that would be permissible. A degree of good-natured mocking too would be fine – but I'd recommend no more than you can reasonably get away with without offending the original author. Mind you, as this appears to be considered an almost-religious obsession, I suspect it would not take much to upset him.

I don't get it, to be honest.

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You're right, nobody *should* get it. The deaths of 600,000 people did not add up to a romantic era. And, as my German friends said about World War II, the Civil War was 'not funny'.

Then I won't take it on, though I might consider writing an entry sometime about how people remember the Civil War, and what can be wrong with it. Maybe Florida Sailor and I could do it together - he's a very conscientious type of reenactor who knows what he's doing.

As the historian I've linked to wrote:

'Allen Nevins...once attempted to emphasize the war’s enormous tragedy by making this profoundly powerful point: “We can say that the multitude of Civil War dead represent hundreds of thousands of homes, and hundreds of thousands of families, that might have been, and never were. They represent millions of people who might have been part of our population today and are not. We have lost the books they might have written, the scientific discoveries they might have made, the inventions they might have perfected. Such a loss defies measurement.” Nevins wrote those words in 1961, and it seems unlikely that his admonition... will impress Civil War enthusiasts to abandon the romantic myths of the war in favor of a stark realism that lays out, without any varnish, how Americans suffered and sacrificed as they killed one another in droves.'

I really don't want to put that kind of serious subject matter in the same entry with a rhinestone cowboy in Vegas singing 'Dixie' in a doleful voice.

Tell you what, though: I'll try to get around to writing an entry on 'Dixie' one of these days soon. Maybe that will help?

If you do write about Dixie, please make sure you let me know when in the song is the most appropriate time to hold a flag, salute, put your hand over your heart, pick your nose, put your hands over your eyes in the whacky goggles pose and make raspberry noises with your armpits.

I've nothing against a degree of patriotism in, say, the Olympic Games where people from all around the world come together in the name of friendly competition and each represent their countries, trying to do well for the people back home. When Patriotism turns into saying, 'Isn't it wonderful that lots of people have died for their country?' then the answer has to be no, it isn't. Without detracting from individuals making the ultimate sacrifice for their friends and friends, overall when a situation results in mass death, how can it be anything other than a tragic waste? Making mass death pretty, bright and colourful and attractive isn't respecting history but not learning the lessons and wanting to repeat it…

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I'll bet that's going to be the best summary of human behaviour I'll read all day, BB. Amen, amen, amen.

I DO need to write about 'Dixie', then. The song has almost as much gravitas as 'On Ilkley Moor Baht 'At''. It's like marching into battle singing 'Bad, Bad Leroy Brown'.

Lincoln liked it. The second verse goes, 'There's buckwheat cakes and Injun batter, makes you fat or a little fatter...'

That's NOT a parody version.

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