Category: Connections

“Who’s the agent in charge to get my sister-in-law into bed these days.”

January 26, 2011 /

In the grand tradition of Dada Everything, and appropriately via Adam Parrish, comes Josh Millard’s Previously, on the X-Files… It’s fun! In a few minutes of hitting refresh to perform my valuable human function of sorting random nonsense from random inspiration, I was able to generate some pretty great stuff, like Dana Lebowski, Scully’s Terrible Realization and Scully/Langly: Dance Remix. But the best part about it is that the transcripts from which it draws seem to include a great many standalone ellipses, which work beautifully in the context of textual noise. Besides creating these amazing awkward moments, you also get tense standoffs and very confused Mulders and this spectacular failure to communicate.

Someone make one of these for Next Generation now please yes.

Confirmation bias at work

October 27, 2010 /

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

October 22, 2010 /

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

September 23, 2010 /

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.

September 14, 2010 /

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

September 13, 2010 /

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

August 24, 2010 /

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.