Template:Totoafrica: Difference between revisions

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Where to start?  
Where to start?  


For one thing, [[Kilimanjaro]] ''doesn’t'' rise above the [[Serengeti]]. You can’t even ''see'' it from the [[Serengeti]], unless you get in a hot air balloon and take a telescope: they’re about 250 kilometres from each other.<ref>From the ground, all but the top 900m of a 6,000 metre mountain would be over the horizon. Check it out for yourself at [https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/earth-curvature this earth curvature calculator]! I am reliably informed that an object 1km tall 300km away would appear about 3mm high. If you could even see it through the trees, atmospheric perspective etc., this is not really rising at all, let alone like Olympus, or even a sleepy leopress. </ref>
For one thing, [[Kilimanjaro]] ''doesn’t'' rise above the [[Serengeti]]. You can’t even ''see'' it from the [[Serengeti]], unless you get in a hot air balloon and take a telescope: they’re about 250 kilometres from each other.<ref>From the ground, all but the top 900m of a 6,000 metre mountain would be over the horizon. Check it out for yourself at [https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/earth-curvature this earth curvature calculator]! I am reliably informed that an object ~1km tall ~250km away would appear about 4mm high, if you could even see it through nearby trees (with or without napping [[leopress]]es), haze, atmospheric perspective etc. This is not really rising at all, let alone majestically, like Olympus might (if it weren’t rising above a national park in Greece, of course). </ref>


[[Kilimanjaro]] rises above the [[Tsavo]] national park.<ref>Why ''didn’t'' he put “Tsavo”? It would have scanned better.</ref>
[[Kilimanjaro]] rises above the [[Tsavo]] national park.<ref>Why ''didn’t'' he put “Tsavo”? It would have scanned better.</ref>
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And we haven’t even got onto the fact that THE LINE DOESN’T SCAN FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.
And we haven’t even got onto the fact that THE LINE DOESN’T SCAN FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.
===An unhappy collision of contrary rhythms===
{{toto analysis}}
So let’s get on to that. Here we cite Adam Bradley’s ''The Poetry of Pop'', a wonderfully patient examination of modern doggerel,<ref>[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Poetry-Pop-Adam-Bradley/dp/0300165021/ The Poetry of Pop], p90.</ref> to validate our own count: the line scans with an already outrageous ''fourteen'' syllables — iambic pentameter it is not — but Paich then jams ''twenty-one'' syllables into that space. Bradley drily observes:
:“the rhythmic and melodic structure of the line forces the lead singer, Joseph Williams, into circumlocutions of stress that end up mangling the final word of that longest line; instead of “Seren''get''i”, the rhythm and melody of the song force him to pronounce it as “''Ser''engeti”... I understand this moment now as an unhappy, though fleeting, collision of contrary rhythms. The song still moves me, however, all the more now for this small window into the world of its rhythm.”
Mr. Bradley is clearly a glass-half-full sort of chap.
{{olympus}}
{{olympus}}
{{sa}}
{{sa}}
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