Remember last year when I told you about Joe McDaldno and his foolish ambitions? Well, the game he was trying to fund is actually coming out now! It’s very exciting! I already have my beautiful copy of the PDF, but don’t worry: it’s only because I’m perfect.
Category: Connections
Confirmation bias at work
- Airlines tired of flying air marshalls first class anywhere they want for no reason
- Pilot refuses full-body scan on grounds that he is not going to hijack his own plane
- British Airways chairman massages temples, points out that shoe bomb did not actually work
It’s nice to finally see a little backlash to TSA securititis coming from inside the airline industry. If the sheer annoyance of half a billion people couldn’t change the way Security Theater is conducted, maybe pissy pilots and CEOs will.
Dear both of my remaining readers
You may remember that Stephen and I used to do a podcast! Then, we got tired, and he bought a condo, and I got a job where I couldn’t spend all day fucking around and editing podcasts. So the podcast stopped!
We’ll be on a biweekly-if-we-can-manage-it schedule for this season, but it’s for reals. We’ve got some amazing guest stars lined up that I can’t even tell you about–because I decided not to. I hope you will listen! But only if you like mean jokes about bad people.
I hate Lev Grossman
What’s that? Lev Grossman wrote a vacuous cover article for Time? I am taken aback! The Stranger (and its sister publication here, the Mercury) grate on me with their preciousness from time to time, but I admire the execution of Noah Kalina’s mirror-parody. It would have fit right into Modern Humor Authority, and I don’t think I’ve ever said that before about something that actually showed up in print.
If none of the preceding makes sense to you, you can pretty much reduce this entire post to its title.
How the HELL did it take me this long to find out about Hyperbole and a Half? Allie Brosh is the best humor columnist alive and she’s been doing it for years and nobody ever told me! (Until Leigh tweeted about it. Thanks, Leigh!) I cannot get through one of her posts without doing the weird crying soundless death-rattle laugh thing that always bothers my roommates, and lately “go to the motherfucking BANK like an ADULT” has been my private mantra when I’m trying to make myself do difficult things.
Stories We Tell, The
My dear friend Joe Mcdaldno–writer, game designer, and fascinating Renaissance human–was kind enough to interview me about Anacrusis for his nascent radio show/podcast, The Stories We Tell. This marks the third podcast to feature me, and my second time on Canadian radio. Soon, listening to my nasal drone trail off in the middle of half-baked jokes will be completely unavoidable!
Incidentally, the term I can’t think of at around 16:45 is syllepsis (and more generally zeugma).
Epiphiniamb
I suddenly realized why I hate the “humor” in Shakespeare so much: comic timing depends on confounding your expectations of rhythm in speech, so nothing is funny in meter! Also Shakespeare was bad at jokes.
Pedagogues and Mountebanks
This is pretty spectacular.
“I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer – not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition – a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave.“
That’s an excerpt from Erica Goldson’s valedictory address, which she wrote and issued earlier this year. Read the whole thing: it’s brief but convincing.
I wasn’t first in my class, but I was close, and I was aware of many of the issues Goldson raises even then–though less concerned, at a more self-centered time in my life, and mostly just happy that they were working in my favor. (Another thing we had in common: the textbook inspirational English teacher.) I’m less complacent these days, less willing to accept the cruel theater of fear and shame that we expect smart young people to suffer with piety. Our schools are bad, and their splash damage is everywhere.
I’m not sure what use I can be to education reform right now. It’s one of those issues that is never urgent but always important, and I need to figure out a path to involving myself in the cause. Erica Goldson’s example seems like a good start.
Thus begins… VOCABULARY WEEK on ANACRUSIS