Here’s an amazing in-the-moment video of an actual writer working his craft!
Category Archives: Goofing
If you look closely…
…you can see Phil Wade in the background.
Have a good weekend.
Mrs. Olson, abortonist
Scandinavians are so culturally identified with coffee that one of America’s foremost brands actually made a Scandinavian (of unspecified nationality) their spokeswoman for more than twenty years, a period of time popularly known as “our long national caffeine-induced nightmare.”
From 1965 to 1986, Virginia Christine, an actress of Swedish extraction, played “Mrs. Olson” in one of the longest-lived commercial campaigns in history. Throughout those years this diabolical old harridan, obviously unhappily married herself, insinuated herself into other people’s domestic problems, like this.
According to her Wikipedia page, Ms. Christine spent her declining years as a Planned Parenthood volunteer, which explains a lot, it seems to me. Clearly she was slipping contraceptive drugs into these people’s coffee. Which obviously accounts for the dropping birth rates that characterized the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s.
Coffee. A clear and present danger to the republic.
ThinkGeek’s Useless Box
What Do The English Do on the Fourth of July?
A genuine Englishiander gives us this rundown of what his people do on The Fourth of July (besides watching American TV). One thing they do is watch fireworks:
“Crowds of people dress in red coats and gather under large scaffolds, which are extensively rigged with explosive fireworks. At an agreed-upon time across the country, the fuses are lit and the fireworks shoot downward, into the throng that has gathered underneath. This serves to remind the British people of the pain and suffering that came from the defeat endured by the King’s Army, and to prepare younger generations of English men for the eventuality of a second battle in which the Crown retakes what is rightfully British land.”
“All web content deserves to go viral.” Share This!!
Just in time for Friday the 13th, your new, favorite website has launched. ClickHole, from the makers of The Onion, “is the latest and greatest online social experience filled with the most clickable, irresistibly shareable content anywhere on the internet.” It says so right on the About page. It has “only one core belief: All web content deserves to go viral.”
It’s spontaneously generated (not written by any actual humans) appears on the site, just begging to be clicked and shared. If anyone needs help on just how this “clicking” process works, scroll the About page for a helpful illustration.
Share your results for great quizzes like “How Many Of These ‘Friends’ Episodes Have You Seen?” I got “Nice! ‘You know math?!’ Yep, looks like you’re a borderline ‘Friends’ genius! Wish you were around when Joey posed as a combat medic in Iraq during season 8!”
Read George R.R. Martin’s confession: “When I Started Writing ‘Game Of Thrones,’ I Didn’t Know What Horses Looked Like.”
Watch and share this touching video: “What This Adorable Little Girl Says Will Melt Your Heart”
And best of all: “8 Touching Pics Of Celebrities And Their Dads.”
(via 10,000 Words)
No More Plagiarizing, I Mean It.
“There is a difference between inspiration and imitation,” so stop copying Ace Ventura: Pet Detective in this workshop. (via Prufrock)
All righty then.
In other news, they had automated hot dog machines in Gothenburg, Sweden, in the 1950s.
11 Ways to Support Your Local Author
“Anyone can support an author’s book release by doing different things to help the book sell and get noticed,” writes Chuck Sambuchino. He has 11 fairly obvious ways to do it, but these points need to be made because people on the Internet don’t have much sense–can we all agree on that?
His points include buying the book for yourself and others, reading that book in public, posting selfies of you reading that book in public, posting photos of you reading that book in “private” (the more sensational, the better), and rearranging bookstores.
I personally attest to this last point. Several times I stuffed a few Harry Potter books into the Star Wars collection in order to make room for a few of Lars’ books on the Hot New Reads by J.K. Rowling display. Once I got the store manager shouting about it, which is great publicity I tell you.
One great way to support a book that Sambuchino doesn’t list relates to hard-bound books only. If the book you want to promote has a dust jacket, you can swap it with a great NY Times bestseller’s dust jacket for increased crossover sales. It’s hard to recommend a best time to try this bit of good-hearted subterfuge, because customers and managers alike tend to rat you out. Maybe if one person starts a fire in the Survival Tech section, another person will have the time to swap dust jackets.
Twelve Reasons Why God Can’t Get Tenure, Rebuttal
Twelve top reasons why God can’t get tenure (from the Internet of Yesteryear)
- He’s authored only one paper
- That paper was in Hebrew
- His work appeared in an obscure, unimportant publication
- He never references other authors
- Workers in the field can’t replicate His results.
- He failed to apply to the ethics committee before starting His experiments on humans.
- He tried to cover an experiment’s unsatisfatory results by drowning the subjects.
- When subjects behavior proved his theory wrong he had them removed from the sample.
- He hardly ever shows up for any lectures. He merely assigns His Book again and again.
- His office is at the top of a mountain, and He doesn’t keep office hours anyway.
- When He learned that His first two students sought wisdom, He had them expelled.
- His exams consist of only ten assigments which most students fail.
Rebuttal: Why God Did Receive Tenure.
- The one publication was a Citation Classic.
- The Hebrew original was widely translated courtesy of the author.
- Being written before journals existed, references were hard to come by.
- Original treatises that found a new area often require their own monograph.
- Although research has been sparse since the Creation, the professor has taught a number of courses: Human anatomy 212; Ancient Middle Eastern History 101, 102; Hydrology 207; Human Development 350; seminar on Egyptology; extended field trips to the deserts between Egypt and Palestine; Politics of Theocracies 277; Military Science Special Topic: Use of Voice as a Municipal Assault Weapon; Criminology 114; guest lectures in the Vet School: Digestive Anatomy of Whales; Wisdom & Ethics 550; Special seminar: Fertilization without sperm; Winemaking 870; Healing by miracle 987; Theology 101, 102, 230, 342, 350, 466H, and 980.
- The substitute teacher (son) was highly committed to his work.
- The substitute teacher cancelled the original ten requirements.
- The twelve teaching assistants formed numerous discussion groups.
- The substitute teacher knew students names without an attendance sheet.
- The professor’s weekly Sunday lectures by surrogate instructors are attended by 974 million students.
College Theses Boiled Down to a Laugh Line
I believe these are actual submissions from grad and undergrad students, but the result is funny. Last December, a Harvard student put up “LOL My Thesis” as a way to procrastinate her own thesis writing. Here are some submissions:
Reed College: NERO WAS ACTUALLY AWESOME AND I CAN PROVE IT, and building programs act as excellent predictors to how your rule is going to end.
Steton Hill University: It is possible to write an urban fantasy novel featuring vampires who aren’t having sex. But then multiple agents and editors will tell you it’s nonpublishable. Thanks, Twlight.
Princeton: Sauron is pretty evil. Voldemort is also pretty evil. Sauron and Voldemort are also pretty similar, but they are not EXACTLY the same. I will now talk about them for 90 pages.
Boston University: Sir Arthur Cannon Doyle is the Nostradamus of forensic science.
Texas Christian University: Museums are culturally appropriative pack rats, and people are noticing.
U.C. Berkeley: If You Took Out the Best Part of This Book, It Wouldn’t Be as Good.
A student from John Hopkins University offers the actual thesis for comparison: Homegrown Solutions: Global Environmental Change and Sustainability
Translation: Cities aren’t really doing anything but the fact that they’re doing things is a thing and eventually the government may notice that it’s a thing.
I found this site via a Facebook friend, who had another friend add this comment:
My actual thesis was something like “Interactive storytelling through the medium of narrative games facilitates a stronger Aristotelian catharsis, producing more proper pleasure, making them a more powerful tool for sharing hope in a sin-scarred world.”
Translation: “Somebody make a video game based on Christian principles that doesn’t make me want to tear my thumbs off, please.”