Sir Barken Hyena

UI/UX Designer by profession, Composer and Musician by obsession, Arizonan by choice.
"join Spengler in hell" - somebody on X said to me

[Sir Barken Hyena @TFletcherDesign]

@justalexoki they smell wrong, always

[Sir Barken Hyena @TFletcherDesign]

@LordIxabert Thoreau's cabin on Walden Pond was a half hour walk from a pub, general store and a post office. It would today be considered to be in a "walkable neighborhood". So I say anything goes.

[Sir Barken Hyena @TFletcherDesign]

@uncledoomer I've grown, I'm not mad they are stupid.

[Sir Barken Hyena @TFletcherDesign]

@LordIxabert First time I read Gibbon I struggled the first 50 pages or so...and then a light switched on. He puts more in a sentence than modern writers put in chapters. And it's clear while being rich and delicious.

[eigenrobot @eigenrobot]

all this talk about aborting disabled kids reminds me of a story from my own life. i guess ive never opened up about it before.

when in my early 20s i had a fling with this girl. call her rachel. rachel was a serious lefty, which meant something then. grew up poor and hard, sharp enough to move up but two feet in the old culture.

one morning out of nowhere she started describing a scenario to me, with some warmth and animation. what would i do, she asked, if she got pregnant and the baby was disabled. like, really disabled. i believe she used the phrase "fucked up beyond hope of living a normal life."

i found this incredibly off-putting. but it was one of those questions that obviously had a correct answer, and i had the presence of mind to deliver it looking her dead in the eye.

"i suppose," i ventured, "i would have to name it rachel."

[Sir Barken Hyena @TFletcherDesign]

I did that with my oldest son, around 16-17 he ballooned up. His uncle, my brother, died at 55 from being overweight his whole life. I relentlessly told Torin: that'll be you. He'd say I'm not that fat I'd say you are a fucking whale headed for an early grave. Mom resisted this but I didn't care.

He got the shit scared out of him, lost his pounds right away back to his correct weight is still there today, he'll be 32 next month.

You really do have to be cruel to be kind some times.

[Sir Barken Hyena @TFletcherDesign]

@TheWorthyHouse I'm hopeful a general crushing implosion of the entire economic system is coming that'll do them in. What happens to rest of us? Fuck if I know.

[Sir Barken Hyena @TFletcherDesign]

@copperstate2026 @andybiggs4az @andybiggs4az has responded to comments I made on his tweets, he's not hiding. How can you possibly be so deluded as to think these ads will work? Everyone knows it's the opposite problem.

[Sir Barken Hyena @TFletcherDesign]

@MuseZack Bingo, and local officials probably lied about the size for payroll fraud, etc.

[Ixabert @LordIxabert]

To perform Shakespeare in an Elizabethan accent is one of the stupidest ideas ever to afflict the history of drama. If there exists a more efficient method of reducing Shakespeare from the rank of a universal poet to that of a curious local antiquity, I've yet to encounter it.

Nothing could be better calculated to make Shakespeare smaller, duller, more remote, more provincial, more "dated", and less intelligible than obliging him to speak in a laboriously reconstructed accent of the 16th century.

The effect is always disastrous. The illusion of timelessnes vanishes at once. We're immediately distracted by the fact that the author happened to live in 16th century England, even though the play itslef might take place in ancient Rome, Mediæval Scotland, pre-Roman Britain, or 14th century Denmark.

Instead of allowing Shakespeare to address the permanent conditions of mankind, he's dragged back into the particular historical circumstances of his personal existence and exhibitted as a mere object of antiquarian curiosity. His claim to universality instantly collapses.

The absurdity becomes particularly apparent in the historical and classical plays.

When we watch Julius Cæsar, we do not wish to be continually reminded, by the intrusive affectation of an "authentically period" pronunciation, that Shakespeare happened to live under Queen Elizabeth, just as we do not care to be reminded that the actor who plays Mark Antony hails from Alabama because he has chosen to adopt a Southern drawl; it leaves us reflecting, not on Rome, tyranny, honour, ambition, or fate, but the actor's vocal arrangements and national origin.

Though I remain a resolute defender of archaic spellings, obsolete usages, & many other venerable eccentricities, I must draw the line somewhere.

The revival of Elizabethan pronunciation is barbarism too far.

By all means, preserve the texts, preserve the punctuation marks, retain the spellings. But the barbaric accents of the time should be buried and forgotten.

Only Received Pronunciation, obviously, possesses the necessary universality, dignity, clarity, elegance, correctness, and civilising influence required for the proper transmission of Shakespeare to a modern audience.

Everything else, I am afraid, is sheer gibberish.

[Sir Barken Hyena @TFletcherDesign]

Something similar has happened with period "authentic" performance in music. Lots of good has come out of it but it gets a bit stupid when people claim you can't play Bach on a Steinway (or a synthesizer for that matter). Of course you can. Much like your archaic spellings, I like the sound of a harpsichord, but for most it makes Bach "antique", which is exactly what he isn't! As "the father of music" he's always contemporary.

[🪄PICTUREPLANE🌙 @pictureplane]

There is so much forgotten DIY music from the mid 2000s and 2010’s. It’s crazy. So many touring bands selling CDR’s, xeroxed tapes and homemade t shirts at their shows. None of it online or preserved. People today have no idea

[Sir Barken Hyena @TFletcherDesign]

I ran a CDr label from 2001 to 2006 called "microrelease". Over that time I sold about 500 CDr's. It was easy, I just posted in forums about it. I had PayPal on a website for purchaes. It was cool. MP3 blogs and downloads killed it.

No idea if any of them still play, those early writables were crap.

[Sir Barken Hyena @TFletcherDesign]

@PamphletsY @NapoleonBonabot You are an idiot. There's no point explaining, because you are an idiot. Idiots blurt things out without comprehension, and they hear things, without comprehension. Capicse?

[Sir Barken Hyena @TFletcherDesign]

@eigenrobot still, that pumpkin coach was a pretty sweet ride, almost as cool as the Weinermobile.

[Sir Barken Hyena @TFletcherDesign]

@MungoJerryLTD The first time I heard this I thought it was a lost classic from the 50s.

[Sir Barken Hyena @TFletcherDesign]

@christopherrufo But I knew Al Gore, and he's no Al Gore

[Sir Barken Hyena @TFletcherDesign]

@PastPaulitics The Mummy will become a baker and wreak havoc, luring the unsuspecting to their demise with irresistibly yummy croissants and tarts.

[Sir Barken Hyena @TFletcherDesign]

@FilmLadd Silicon Valley is a Trendiness Mill aimed at Wall Street fools and it has been for a long time. I remember in 2001 working for a realty website, the realtors were freaking out about their impending demise.

[Sir Barken Hyena @TFletcherDesign]

Yep, and it was a massive textile factory: cotton cloth and agave rope which could be exported, carried by people and dogs all over the southwest. And then a stream of artistic Mimbres pottery from New Mexico as luxury item came down in to the lowlands. Parrot feathers from Mexico, seashells...

In Tempe when digging the streetcar they found the burial of a disabled young girl, she had some kind of severe birth defect but was cared for into her teen years, and buried with jewelry. A queen? Imagine the stories buried in the dust.