I assert my right to be hexameters

[sovay]

Wait, verse is obsolete?


You are 'regularly metric verse'. This can take
many forms, including heroic couplets, blank
verse, and other iambic pentameters, for
example. It has not been used much since the
nineteenth century; modern poets tend to prefer
rhyme without meter, or even poetry with
neither rhyme nor meter.

You appreciate the beautiful things in life--the
joy of music, the color of leaves falling, the
rhythm of a heartbeat. You see life itself as
a series of little poems. The result (or is it
the cause?) is that you are pensive and often
melancholy. You enjoy the company of other
people, but they find you unexcitable and
depressing. Your problem is that regularly
metric verse has been obsolete for a long time.
What obsolete skill are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Also, I take umbrage with "unexcitable and depressing." What if I'm Sapphic stanzas? Elegiac couplets? Or even, God help us, galliambics? Metrics may put your blood pressure through the top of your head, especially if you are asked ex abrupto to distinguish between penthemimeral, trochaic, and hephthemimeral caesurae (not to mention bucolic diairesis) in a given line of Homeric verse, but I hardly find it depressing.

Don't all crowd to share my enthusiasm at once . . .

At least I'm represented by William Blake.

The eternal gates' terrific porter lifted the northern bar;
Thel enter'd in & saw the secrets of the land unknown:
She saw the couches of the dead, & where the fibrous roots
Of every heart on earth infixes deep its restless twists:
A land of sorrows & of tears where never smile was seen.

Comments

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I didn't think it was a very good quiz. I mean, it said French was obsolete. With Latin I can at least restrain myself from screaming when people say that, because no matter how useful, vital, interesting, necessary, and impressive a language it is there are going to continue to be people who think it doesn't matter and it is impossible to talk them all out of their stupidity. However, saying French is obsolete? I think some people in, you know, France would be really upset about that, not to mention Africa, South America... yeah, just not a good quiz.

[sovay]

I'm with you in clenching my teeth and not screaming about Latin. Quoting pointedly from Catullus is so much better, anyway: pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo . . . Also I just realized I'm listening to "Estuans Interius" from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, whose "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi" is ripped off so often for film scores that I think it's a counter-argument for the obsolescence of Latin all in itself.

I went and looked at all the possible results for this quiz, and I agree with you. Out of its selection, I think only Gregg shorthand and QBASIC really fit the bill; I don't know a single person who uses Gregg shorthand (although I know some whose handwriting resembles those illegible loops and squiggles) and computer languages evolve so quickly that I wouldn't be surprised to learn (from a somewhat more reliable source) that QBASIC has indeed bitten the dust. But I'm sure somewhere in the world there is someone who still uses shorthand and QBASIC. Also, French. Go figure . . .

[dgr8bob.livejournal.com]

I'll bet I could still bash out QBASIC if I had to, and I can virtually guarantee someone in the world still gets paid to do it. In any case, Visual Basic is 90% the same thing, and against all semblance of reason MS Office is written in that.

They just had to pick the tamest thing Blake ever wrote too, didn't they? Unexcitable and depressing, indeed.

Silent as despairing love, and strong as jealousy,
The hairy shoulders rend the links, free are the wrists of fire;
Round the terrific loins he siez'd the panting struggling womb;
It joy'd: she put aside her clouds & smiled her first-born smile;
As when a black cloud shews its light'nings to the silent deep.

[sovay]

Thanks: that's much better Blake. Is that from America: A Prophecy?

So much for QBASIC. (I should know better than to make pronouncements about languages I don't speak, especially when they're computer languages.) Now all we need is someone who juggles and knows shorthand, and we can completely disprove this quiz . . .