sitting behind a desk, a couple of years down the road from when i waited/bartended, that story reminded me of how much fun it was to wait tables. at least at the last (and best) place...
Am I right in assuming that you celebrate Easter by taking a bunny over to a bunch of kids for them to pet, and then killing it and eating it in front of them?
We can all follow the story of the server load averages here. Seems that anything in the ballpark of 3 and below is ok; above that is slow. It was up at 20 earlier today. (Three numbers are last minute, five minutes, and fifteen minutes.)
I'll admit, though, that I haven't yet read any reviews where he ripped anyone's lungs out. Maybe that happened some week I didn't read the food section.
I'd heard something like that. I thought the gripe was that he has basically no expertise? Plus he wrote that dumb book about Bush (which I haven't read, but pass judgement on, having read people who might have read it.) Next week: Einstein had some good ideas, but went a little too far.
Adam Platt's a pretty good restaurant critic, though (despite having eaten at vanishingly few of them) I thought his top 101 was a little bit too close to the conventional wisdom. I really like the modifier "vanishingly."
I think the rip on Bruni is not so much that his book on Bush was dumb, but that his reporting on Bush during the 2000 campaign was dumb, and so he bears a fair amount of responsibility for the mess we're in.
I think the rip on Bruni is not so much that his book on Bush was dumb, but that his reporting on Bush during the 2000 campaign was dumb, and so he bears a fair amount of responsibility for the mess we're in.
Yes. The immortal Daily Howler site has rightly trashed Bruni for that. He is a complete hack.
I admit it. I thought you'd steered me wrong, Apo. I wasn't terribly impressed. And then came the second half. Seriously great. Plus, how can you not love a guy rocking the Smooth Criminal look?
also (back on topic) you should all go eat at that restaurant, the East Coast Grill. oysters on the half shell AND fried plaintains! AND a bloody mary mixing buffet thing...
Mmf! -- Have you been there and can recommend it, or are just going on Bruni's delectable-sounding descriptions? I have not been there but have found Bruni's descriptions misleading the once or twice I have followed up on them. (My dining budget is such that I am far more likely to follow say Eric Asimov's recco's than Bruni's -- and by happy serendipity I have found Asimov to be more reliable. You guys know he is Isaac's son? Does he even still write the $25 and under column? I feel so out of the loop since I moved to Joisey.) (And as long as I'm rambling: this morning I woke up with a mangled quote running through my brain, "Synthesize it? Ma'am, I can't even read it!" Can anyone help me with what the original is, and its source? I'm thinking probably like Twain or W.C. Fields, or some such.) (Here's a gratuitous parenthesis, just for you!)
hey jeremy - i've been several times, most recently in november for sunday brunch, which might be the only time they offer the bloody mary mixing buffet thing which is just...yummy. i find them really good. boston, fresh seafood, + caribbean influence.
i'm not sure what you mean by asimov vs. bruni because i don't read ny times restaurant reviews that much. it's reasonable for seafood (especially if you find oysters filling and don't order lots of prosecco!) but it's not cheap. i'm vaguely remembering $20-25 per person for brunch.
ach... now i have to go out and eat something, because this is making me hungry. corner crepes!
Gah! I wait tables/bartend at a sushi restaurant as a 2nd job and that article just makes me realize how much I don't want to put up with the Fri. night crowd tonight. Ah well, hopefully tips will be decent. Though I'd kill for some fried seafood right about now...
Hmm. Mmf! -- Just checked the NYTimes site and apparently Asimov now writes "Diner's Journal", a column with which I am not familiar. When I was living in the city he was one of the writers of the "$25 and Under" column, and of those writers he was the most likely to review places where dinner would realistically cost less than $25. Bruni generally reviews more expensive places. But it may well be that East Coast Grill, the place he worked for a week, is not as high-end as the places he writes about as a critic. Yeah, this seems likely to me now -- I can't picture an expensive NY food destination place hiring a waiter with little (and years ago) experience for a week so he could write a story about it. And, restaurant critics are not supposed to get chummy with their targets.
I had dinner with Eric Asimov a couple of times, when I was living in Queens and friends with Jim Leff, who is proprietor of Chowhound -- he was a nice guy and that probably predisposed me to react favorably to his columns. But I like to think that just confirmed for me an impression which I already had formed from his writing.
Wow -- it is pretty addictive to type in your handle, Mmf! You are robbing yourself by relying on the memory of your browser (if you do so) instead of retyping it into the Name box with each posted comment.
i live in paris. but i took this thing known as an airplane in november... i used to live in boston. :)
east coast grill was also a good place for bruni to go undercover because it has amazing food but goes for a very casual atmosphere on purpose.
and the servers are apparently appreciated by their boss. a dreadful ex of mine once told me a story of going there with a bunch of law students and being asked by the management to *leave and never come back*. he wouldn't say what had happened. i was torn between 1)being horrified that i knew someone who was part of a group that had (apparently) mistreated a waiter like that, and 2)impressed with the management.
Wow. What a world! I have heard of "airplanes" but had no idea people could actually use them to transport themselves across vast bodies of water as you relate. And multiple journeys within one lifetime -- gasp!
If you're in the city again give us a holler. Some kind of meeting up seems like it would be in order.
well, you could do a grep and replace on unfogged.com/mt-comments.cgi with whatever you rename it too... but I guess that'd be pretty processor intensive
103 -- No it wouldn't. Unless I am misunderstanding. It looked to me like you suggested searching for all instances of mt-comments and replacing them with the new file name. But -gg-d only has the opportunity to do that with files which are on his own web site. Are you suggesting he distribute a script to the 'Sphere at large and ask everybody to run it? Because this does not seem credible to me.
ah. true. I was thinking of lonks within unfogged to other websites. I'm totally pwned on this one, if only for premature pwnage (it was my first time, I swear!).
I know little about this com-puut-tor stuff that you are talking about, but doesn't his website receive a request every time someone clicks a link from elsewhere? Can he make the translation at his end, redirecting them to the appropriate place?
That's what I said in 92. I'm looking into how to do that now. What I don't know is whether it would happily redirect spammers to the right place too, in which case it would be a lot of effort for nothing.
Is there a way to keep up with comments without constantly hitting the Reload button? That must put a load on the sever, particularly with long comment threads
110: I'm pretty sure it would redirect everyone, unless you were to check the referrer. Then you'd basically requiring commenters and comment readers to click a comments link from the unfogged main page, rather than going right to a comments thread. (Which would make me sad.)
Tourette's Syndrome is no laughing matter. Just ask SomeCallMeMotherfuckingTim. Please call the number at the bottom of the screen make your tax-deductible donation today. Every penny helps.
Thanks for the RSS link. Now I need to find one that'll run on OS 9.2. I've been wondering what RSS was all about, but hadn't wondered enough to actually find out.
Good advice, Apo, but I think I'm not likely to exhibit anything more than a pregnant pause.
Safari might. Netscape 7.02 might. I thought it did, but now I can't find it. Netscape is not at all stable. I think if I shut down and re-load I might find the news reader. Or if I turn off Java.
I really should get a new computer and move up to OS 10.4, but the thought of spending a whole lot of money to keep up with changes I don't particularly want just irritates me.
Safari might. Netscape 7.02 might. I thought it did, but now I can't find it. Netscape is not at all stable. I think if I shut down and re-load I might find the news reader. Or if I turn off Java.
I really should get a new computer and move up to OS 10.4, but the thought of spending a whole lot of money to keep up with changes I don't particularly want just irritates me.
Wow, this is a new feature:
In an effort to curb malicious comment posting by abusive users, I've enabled a feature that requires a weblog commenter to wait a short amount of time before being able to post again. Please try to post your comment again in a short while. Thanks for your patience.
Hey, where'd the bridgeplate.rdf feed come from? I've been using the comments.xml feed in Sage, which is good for searching the comments on the recent posts, but not so good for getting the comments as they come in.
138: Thank you, Tweedle, but the Mozilla site says, on its Thunderbird page: "Mac OS 9 and earlier are not supported "
I hate the thought, but I may have to cave in to social pressure and get a younger computer and even, perhaps, something a bit faster than dial up. Does the (N/2)+7 rule apply to computers?
I figured out how I screwed up in 129/129: aliens took over my computer. Really. I have a certian antipathy I HATE THE BASTARDS to software that HATE HATE HATE thinks it's smarter than me.
I forgot that I had Jave enabled. I had Google news in another tab. Despite the fact that the Google news window wasn't active, wasn't even visible, Google decided it should update itself. It seized control. Everything else stopped. So when nothing happened for 30 seconds after I hit POST, I figured I had missed actually hitting the button (need glasses) and hit it again. Nothing had happened because Google had taken control of my computer. It controlled the vertical. It controlled the horizontal. I find this HATE EVIL BASTARDS irksome.
It is a story of a disorganized kid party clown written as a male tearjerker. Not only is the article long but page 5 is somehow longer than pages 1-4 combined.
144 - Michael, I think if you have Javascript enabled in your browser, Googlenews will automatically update every so often no matter what. Sux on dialup. May suck less if you use just the text version. I've looked and find no way to turn off the auto reload short of disabling Javascript altogether. As customizable as GNews is, it would make sense for them to have this as a personalization preference setting, but no.
144: I think you're right. I spend, it seems, half my life clicking through Preferences to turn Java and javascript and Cookies on or off. Usually I remember, but not always. So I rant.
By the way, pay no attention to the intrusive voices that sometimes appear in my posts. I'm pretty sure it's not god.
I think that usage of irony is correct, although maybe indicates the writer being a little overeducated. Irony is humor that depends on the audience knowing something the subject of the humor is unaware of: It is ironic to watch a manager boast of the loyalty of his employees, when the better informed audience knows that his accountant is robbing him blind. Likewise, it is ironic to see the Great Zucchini attempt to answer a banana when the phone rings, when the better informed audience knows that you can't answer a banana.
161: Thanks LB. That makes sense. For the record, I wasn't trying to get all irony-police on his ass, just trying to understand what he could be referring to.
The preschoolers-irony thing brings me back to an argument I had many moons ago. Ellen and I were having dinner at a friend's house and also invited were a couple who were involved in Waldorf School education. I forget how it came up but apparently one of the objectives of the Waldorf School program (at least as this couple understood/explained it) is to prevent young children from being exposed to the concept of irony. -- I nearly lost it -- do you propose to turn your child into an emotional cripple I wanted to know -- though I forget precisely what words I used to phrase the question, which I asked several times with different phrasing and stress -- it seemed totally perverse to me, to cut the kid off from one whole side of human experience like that. Basically the whole evening was a back-and-forth between me and this couple where they were trying to explain to me No it's good you see, here are the reasons laid out in Waldorf School literature, and then me saying but then he's not going to understand anything that happens in the next several years of his life, and like that.
I don't know much about child rearing, nor about Waldorf schools, but their position as described doesn't strike me as outrageous.
We protect kids from lots of things. We protect them from hunger, and from violence and cruelty directed at them (or, at least, we say we're supposed to). We protect kids from seeing violence and cruelty and sex (to some extent).
Irony, as LB defined it above, is inherently cruel. Finding someone else's ignorance amusing is not a demonstration of empathy. It doesn't build strong communities twelve ways. It's not clearly distinguishable from finding others's pain funny.
If we want to provide young kids with the best of worlds in which to grow up, a world in which they're not touched by hunger or cruelty, I can see avoiding irony.
Hmm. where does the bogusity lie? Is it in the idea of protecting kids? In the idea of protecting kids from seeing cruetly? In the idea that irony is inherently cruel?
Or is it in the possibility of not understanding things? I must admit there's a lot in the world I don't understand. Darfur. Ruanda. Neoconservatism. So maybe the idea of not understanding doesn't bother me so much.
in re 168: One certainly can talk to a banana. I do it all the time. My therapist says it's okay, but I should let him know immediately if the banana starts talking back.
Note to self: build cell phone earpiece and microphone unit into plastic banana. See if Ogged finds it amusing. p.s. be sure to patent the idea. Query: is look and feel of bananaphone patentable? Copyright?
Filtered through this many layers of hearsay, I'm a little bit suspicious of Osner's story, but if it's true, he's right, that's insane. MHS, we protect kids from having bad experiences directed at them, but no one I know makes a concerted effort to shelter their kids from the knowledge that there are bad things in the world. When someone dies, you try your best to explain to your kid what dying is; you don't say, "Grammy took a long vacation." I don't even know how protecting people from irony would work, because it would seem to be something that would just arise naturally in human expression. Anyway, irony's a valuable tool in pointing out the cruelties, absurdities, and stupidities of the world. Which exist. And should be observed. By children too.
Fair enough, Tia. Maybe there's a distinction to be made. We don't try to completely shelter kids from the knowledge that there are bad things in the world, but we don't wallow in it, either. We don't say "hey kids! there's was a great bloody accident just across town! Let's go see if we can look at all the dead bodies."
Similarly, perhaps there's a point where it's bad to say "let's all laugh at the stupid great Zucchini, who doesn't know you can't answer a banana. Then we can all laugh at Joey who doesn't know how to solve a quadratic equation. When we grow up we can mock and deride stupid liberals."
Okay, I think that last sentence got out of hand, and took on agency of its own. But is there a distinction in there somewhere?
Michael -- I guess what it comes down to for me is as follows: cruelty is part of the fabric of our world. It is around us all the time. You can respond to cruelty by freaking out or by grinning. (This is emphatically not an exclusive 'or' btw.) Being able to see the humor in cruelty is I think a necessary part of being human. If you can't do it you just spend all your time freaking out, and freeze up inside. And before you file me away as a sicko and not worth talking to, obviously it gets more difficult and less rewarding to joke about cruelty, as the cruelty becomes more atrocious. Poking Curly's eyes? Funny. Holocaust? Not so much.
IIRC the Waldorf couple's response to this line of argument was Well but our kids are Just Little Kids -- we don't want them laughing at Bugs Bunny just yet, when they're older it'll be different -- and the art of Chuck Jones did come up in the discussion -- but that just didn't make any sense to me. Dark humor is sewed up in some of my fond memories of young childhood and it seems like it would be harder to develop later in life.
Then we can all laugh at Joey who doesn't know how to solve a quadratic equation
Johnny is going to be laughed at much harder and more frequently if he is able to solve quadratics. And believe me he is going to benefit greatly from a strongly developed sense of irony.
I know I'm the outlier here, and in no position to file anyone away as a sicko.
There's the third possible reaction to cruelty: "we are not amused." One can recognize it as common and accepted in the culture, but say that I'm not going to play. I don't know. Perhaps I'd be happier, and lead a fuller life (or some such) if I really could enjoy things like "fear factor" on TV. I can handly Bugs because that's obviously both unreal (no temptation to empathize) and has elements of cleverness.
Is laughing at J for greater knowledge (e.g solving quadratics) also considered irony? Because I agree, that's another very unfortunate phenomenon.
Tia, that's a good point. I hadn't thought about irony directed at self. But I draw a distinction - I can be cruel to myself, if I want, but I shouldn't do it to others.
Is laughing at J for greater knowledge (e.g solving quadratics) also considered irony?
The kids who are laughing at Johnny are not practicing irony, not as I see it. But what I was talking about was, if Johnny has a good sense of irony he can feel less hurt about it, sort of "isn't it ironic that their laughing at me and tormenting me, acting all superior when in fact they suck." Not exactly that but along those lines, you know. I think this is a useful defensive mechanism.
I'm not sure that the ideal response to being mocked for one's knowledge is to be amused by the others' ignorance. Human, and understandable, yes; but perhaps not ideal. It somehow tastes like retribution, which I don't think I like. It tends to escalate.
Wow did you write that after I wrote 188 or before? Because it was really fast if the one, or prescient if the other. In any case I think it is probably the best thing Johnny can hope for.
It certainly is a useful defense mechanism. I'm not condemning anyone who thinks it from time to time.
But if I may again stretch an idea far beyond anything recognized among mortal men, the whole "I'm great, they suck" thing underlies a whole lot of the miseries of the world. Like nationalism, and Darfur.
This may be wholly impractical (I know little of child development) but there's another answer for Johnny: "People sometimes do bad things. They are doing a bad thing. Unfotunate, but true. You are being good. Keep being good. Recognize that being good won't protect you from people being bad."
In what sense is irony necessarily cruel? It's a crucial developmental stage for children to realize that they can know something someone else doesn't--e.g., if you put a toy in a box in front of the child, and then invite another adult in and ask the new person to find the toy, up until a certain point the child will *genuinely expect* the adult to know where the toy is because the child himself knows. It's important for kids to learn that that's not how things work.
It's also important, for heaven's sake, for kids to get to be silly. Part of silly kid fun is, e.g., laughing at the coyote when he falls, yet again, off the cliff. It's not *cruel* because it isn't about laughing at the coyote's pain, or wishing him ill; it's about laughing at the incongruity of the thing. Incongruity is an important component of irony, and that, I maintain, is not only acceptable for kids to learn, it's good for them.
MHS, irony is not just being mean. The bananaphone, as I understood LB to explain it, is in the "dramatic irony" category, though actually, I don't think the bananaphone is functioning that way. I think the irony is more in the "situational" or maybe "incongruous" category, consulting Wikipedia's categories of irony. To a three year old, it's ironic to see a powerful grownup baffled by concepts the three year old has mastered. Irony would be a poor tool for harrassing anyone simply for their quadratic equation solving ability. It's rather better suited for deflating pretention, exposing absurdity, etc. How do you feel about Jane Austen? Catch-22?
I think it's kind of ironic that we have an irony objector here at irony central. (Come and get me, Saiselgy!)
193: Frankly, the only person I have ever known to be able to consistently maintain this attitude without a glint of irony and avoid being an obnoxious prat is Alyosha Karamazov, and he is very, very special.
I was relying on LB's definition from 161, because I don't really know what irony is. She said:
Irony is humor that depends on the audience knowing something the subject of the humor is unaware of: It is ironic to watch a manager boast of the loyalty of his employees, when the better informed audience knows that his accountant is robbing him blind.
That led me to think it cruel. Something about being amused by someone's ignorance (especially when it's going to lead them to unfortunate results).
it's not the realization that some people know things that other's don't, it's the amusement at the ignorance. Does that make any sense?
Can we amend #193 to "People sometimes do bad things. You do bad things sometimes too--everyone does. Doing bad things doesn't make you a bad person; on the other hand, it is mean, and they shouldn't be doing it, and you should try not to react to it by doing bad things yourself" etc.
Displaying a total lack of irony, I have to admit that the "good / bad acts" vs. "good / bad people" thing is really important to me w/r/t talking to kids.
To clarify: I believed at the time and still believe that the couple were using "irony" as shorthand for "jokes which involve people being mean to each other". Not a particularly good definition but I think it is the one they were using -- it is one that I've been suckered into using any time I go over this argument, I guess because I want to be responding to the actual argument they were making rather than to the far more ludicrouse one they were not.
#197: Irony can be mocking, or not. It can just be about incongruity, and in fact, it needn't be funny. For instance, child narrators are ironic, because the reader is supposed to understand things about the story being told that the narrator him- or herself doesn't really get. It's not cruel, it just adds a level of depth to the narrative.
If incongruity is a part of irony, that's a cow of a different color. I love puns, which are a form of incongruity. I also like bananafones. I don't think either would actually hurt anyone's feelings. Except perhaps a banana's.
Maybe I need to follow Tia and learn a typology of irony, and not be overbroad.
Well, MHS, go read the Wikipedia page. I just did, because I've gotten into boggy "what is irony" conversations before, and I always have to consult some authority whenever I do. If I may speak for her, I really don't think LB meant her explanation to be an exhaustive definition of irony; there are lots of kinds. I think she was just trying to explain how it was functioning in the scene. Moreover, crucial to the existence of irony in the scene is that the person who is ignorant is a big, smart, grownup. There would be no irony if another preschooler did something dumb. It's the contrast between the expected (grownups tell us what to do) and the observed (grownup is confused) that creates irony.
Actually, now that I think about it, the real irony at the core of that scene is the classical kind, with a literal and intended meaning, in that the kids understand that the grownup is "playing" dumb, so there are two levels: the literal one, grownup thinks it's a phones, and the other: of course he doesn't.
Okay, I've looked at Wikipedia. I'm convinced that "irony" is the wrong term.
But there is a form of humor that does involve people being mean to each other. I think that's what JO and I were talking about, and which the Waldorf parents were referring to. It's not simply amusement at incongruity. It's not amusement at the unexpected.
I don't know what to call it. Somehow "being a big meanie" doesn't seem formal enough. But as best as I know kids are often cruel, and find amusement in cruelty. I don't think JO, or I, or the Waldorf parents like it.
Maybe it is amusement at the transgressive. Pointing and laughing at funny looking people is in this category. But something tells me that not all amusement at the transgressive is mean - sometimes it's the incongruity of the transgression that provides the amusement.
Is it something we should try and keep kids away from? Or discourage? Or disapprove? I think there's something in there somewhere that I don't like, even if it's wrong to call it irony.
I don't mean to hang LB with that definition. I picked it, and announced it at the beginning, because it was handy and I didn't have a better one.
Incongruity is actually the most important aspect of irony as it's usually defined. Most definitions I've seen include 3 senses (I haven't read Wikipedia's):
1) The use of words to express a meaning opposed to their usual meaning.
2) A situation in which events come together incongruously.
3) A situation in an observed scene in which the audience knows something that a participant doesn't.
The tie linking these three meanings is that they are incongruous: they are examples of things not working the way they usually do. However, they are quite different from each other, which is why "irony" is such a difficult term to use and is so often misunderstood. Personally I prefer to only use it for my 2, which is often called "situational irony." My 1 is basically sarcasm, and I see no reason to not just call it that (I've heard people claim that there's a difference, but I'm not convinced). My 3 is what LB was describing ("dramatic irony"). I'm not sure it's useful to group this meaning together with the others, but I doubt it comes up very often.
Anyway, that's my understanding of the meaning of irony. On preview I see that MHS has already consulted Wikipedia and decided he's not talking about irony, so this is not a very useful comment. I spent a lot of time on it, though, so I'm going to post it anyway.
Was it tweedledum or tweedledee who said "a word means what I want it to mean, no more and no less?"
Someone else once said "they're my comedic bits and I'll call 'em whatever I want to call 'em", but I don't remember who.
I knew someone named Ron who adopted, as his nom de BBS, Iron. Others thought it because he fancied himself an ironist. Somewhere there's a blog commentator whose real name is Ronnie, but who posts as Irony.
It seems all this talk of irony has been beside the point, since Osner and Schneider has apparently been talking about the same thing, which may or may not really be irony.
Sorry, Teofilo. I do appreciate the education. Seriously. For decades I've avoided the word irony because I didn't really know what it meant. In retrospect, that was clearly wise.
Yeah. I thought I'd avoided the (situational irony?) of mismatched definitions by announcing my definition way back in 175. But I didnt include the pointer to her 161, and apparently I misunderstood her definition. Oh well. Clearly the audience knew more than I did.
Ironic indeed, but you were apparently using the same definition as Osner, to whom you were replying, so whether it was the proper definition wasn't important.
Teofilo, I don't think your (1) is the same as sarcasm. I think it encompasses sarcasm, but includes other things.
For example, I think this comment of mine:
I think it's kind of ironic that we have an irony objector here at irony central. (Come and get me, Saiselgy!)
is ironic without being sarcastic, in that I was purposefully referencing the expected criticism that the "irony" I was observing was not technically irony. So my intention is not the same as the literal meaning of my words, but I'm not being sarcastic either. It got less ironic with my parenthical though, because I started to make my joke explicit.
Re. Waldorf, then, I do think it's important to recognize that kids are not adults, and that bitter or black humor, whcih is great for adults, isn't so great for kids, who tend more towards slapstick or goofiness (which is why kid jokes are often so broad, and often not all that funny or sophisticated). So in that sense, yes; whatever the humor the Waldorfians were objecting to, they may have a point; it's probably better to err on the side of sincerity with small kids.
217 - Yeah, that's the conventional explanation, I suppose. I guess I'm just not convinced that the comment you quote is ironic in any of the senses I mentioned. This is actually the use of the term that I'm least comfortable with, and it's cases like it that lead me to avoid it entirely.
Thank you, B. I think I agree with you. I was assuming that the Waldorf school was for small kids, although upon reflection I think they may go up through high school. I'm pretty sure they do k-6. Nnot sure about 7-12.
Also, teofilo, if all of us had been clever enough to conduct this o-earnest conversation about irony with a consistent consciousness about the incongruity and an intent to convey that consciousness to the other participants, I think that would have been non sarcastic verbal irony.
I see what you're saying, Tia, and I agree, I just don't really see what is gained by using the same term to include both that and sarcasm as well as the other meanings I mentioned. It seems like a recipe for confusion, is all.
Michael - Thanks for the link. Seems like a strange movement.
I can't imagine banning irony (in the LB sense) from children's literature in the hopes of teaching children not to mock others for being weak. Among other things, irony illustrates differences in perspectives. Desdemona is innocent, but Othello doesn't know it (but we do!) Juliet isn't dead, but Romeo doesn't know it (don't kill yourself, Romeo!) Oedipus is trying to escape his fate, but everything he does confirms it (poor Oedipus!)
In order to make sense of such stories, we have to adopt or at least consider the other person's perspective.
Now, there is humor-based-on-the-ignorance-of-another that is objectionable. (Top of my head, Dumb and Dumber, where the pair gives a blind kid a dead bird. How the fuck was that supposed to be funny?) But setting up expectations and reversing them is harmless in and of itself, especially if the target is someone normally respected or understood to be pretending to be silly.
I don't have kids (opening myself to the 'you aren't a mommy' trump card), but that seems to be the difference between acceptable and unacceptable mocking. It's funny if I pretend,while helping little Jack put on his coat, that I think it goes on his foot, or on his head, or on my head. It's not funny if another child does it.
Yeah, Cala, go out and have a kid and then come on back. We'll talk to you then. I'll pencil you in for mid-December.
I didn't read the whole thread, but I can see banning snark and sarcasm. The kind of "irony" popular with "Cocktail Nation" is a different thing than the traditional irony of the orthodox ironists of the age-old Church of Irony.
I enjoy "understood to be pretending to be silly." I have not seen Dumb & Dumber and I'm ignorant of "Cocktail Nation".
In the wee hours of last night I remembered from where I stole this idea. Sorta. I think it was an op-ed piece in the Sunday NYT, in the not too dim past.
It was talking about Fox TV's American Idol. In the early rounds they put hopeful - but dreadful - people on national television so that the panel can insult and humiliate them, and the viewer gets to see these unfortunates driven from the stage in tears. I've not seen this myself, although I think I've seen promos promising such amusement and entertainment.
The op-ed piece (if that's what it was) argued that this is not family friendly TV, this is not family values TV, and that this isn't the sort of thing that teaches good lessons to children. I agree.
I don't know if this can be described as snark. It doesn't feel like sarcasm. I'm surely not going to call it irony. But I'd agree with even a gnome infested school that whatever we call it, we shouldn't encourage young kids to enjoy it.
I'm not saying we should ban Othello, or R&J (although I'm not sure they're really apt for 6 year olds, either). I'm not a mommy either, but there are things I won't watch even with another adult. American Idol, as described, is one of 'em.
Oh, the problem with American Idol, for kids, is that it's voyueristic--and not in a good way. It's setting people up to fail, and then being entertained by their misery. Hell, most reality tv is about people behaving badly in some way or another, and is therefore not great kids tv. Bad behavior in funny, self-conscious, "naughty" ways where it's basically a safe situation is *great* for kids--reassuring, encourages independence, etc. etc. But bad behavior in which people can actually get hurt is awful.
If you want to get rid of comment spam, use the turing test hack we use, and you'll almost never get any spam. Unlike MT's anti-spam measures, it saves bandwidth, (and, of course, it actually works); unlike Blogger's turing test, it's not unbelievably tedious.
still slow?
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 3:40 PM
the magic 8-ball says "yes"
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 3:40 PM
Yeah, still seems slow to me too. I just emailed them again.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 3:42 PM
Next, I rip out their lungs.
Anything for you guys.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 3:44 PM
sitting behind a desk, a couple of years down the road from when i waited/bartended, that story reminded me of how much fun it was to wait tables. at least at the last (and best) place...
Posted by mike d | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 3:48 PM
Man, that's one bold reporter. He'll do anything for an exotic story. I'm waiting for his alligator-rassling piece.
The servers in the picture were cute. I suppose that if he boinked any of them he couldn't write about it in the Times anyway, though.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 4:41 PM
Emerson:
Am I right in assuming that you celebrate Easter by taking a bunny over to a bunch of kids for them to pet, and then killing it and eating it in front of them?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 4:44 PM
Still slow.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 4:45 PM
Not too slow for me no more.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 5:33 PM
We can all follow the story of the server load averages here. Seems that anything in the ballpark of 3 and below is ok; above that is slow. It was up at 20 earlier today. (Three numbers are last minute, five minutes, and fifteen minutes.)
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 5:37 PM
The servers in the picture were cute.
Must disagree. The
chickyoung lady in the front has upper arms that would make Rosie the Riveter proud.Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 5:37 PM
What, a woman with big arms can't be cute? Or is it the "cute" that you're objecting to? Anyway, she has a nice smile.
Which is the last thing you'd see before she ripped out your lungs.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 5:47 PM
You guys do realize that Frank Bruni is the terror of New York cuisine, right?
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 5:47 PM
I'll admit, though, that I haven't yet read any reviews where he ripped anyone's lungs out. Maybe that happened some week I didn't read the food section.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 5:49 PM
I'd heard something like that. I thought the gripe was that he has basically no expertise? Plus he wrote that dumb book about Bush (which I haven't read, but pass judgement on, having read people who might have read it.) Next week: Einstein had some good ideas, but went a little too far.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 5:50 PM
Adam Platt's a pretty good restaurant critic, though (despite having eaten at vanishingly few of them) I thought his top 101 was a little bit too close to the conventional wisdom. I really like the modifier "vanishingly."
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 5:52 PM
He vanishingly shtupped her...
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 5:56 PM
Which counts as no real schtupping as all, as far as she was concerned.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 5:57 PM
Stet all typos, or your lungs will be in peril.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 5:58 PM
I think the rip on Bruni is not so much that his book on Bush was dumb, but that his reporting on Bush during the 2000 campaign was dumb, and so he bears a fair amount of responsibility for the mess we're in.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 6:00 PM
I'm a brute, Tim, but I'm not allowed within 50 yards of children.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 6:34 PM
By her own claim, Bruni is good friends with Ann Coulter, so if that's not enough, I don't know what is.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 6:50 PM
God, I'd love to see Ann Coulter condemned to waiting tables in SoHo for eternity.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 7:25 PM
I'm sure many of you have already seen that "waiter," the psuedonymous author of Waiter Rant has dared the Times to make him a food critic for a week?
Posted by Matt #3 | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 7:38 PM
Pre-emptive anti-Wolfson strike: I know I'm missing a comma.
Posted by Matt #3 | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 7:40 PM
You know, there hasn't really been much reason to worry about Wolfson grammar corrections since classes started (scroll up).
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 7:44 PM
7: Don't be silly. That's not what Emerson does with the rabbit.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 8:02 PM
I think the rip on Bruni is not so much that his book on Bush was dumb, but that his reporting on Bush during the 2000 campaign was dumb, and so he bears a fair amount of responsibility for the mess we're in.
Yes. The immortal Daily Howler site has rightly trashed Bruni for that. He is a complete hack.
Posted by Frederick | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 8:03 PM
That's not what Emerson does with the rabbit.
Well, he might "eat" the rabbit, but only in the slang sense of that term.
Posted by Frederick | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 8:05 PM
You guys have it all wrong. Screwing rabbits is gay. I would never do something sick like that.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 8:27 PM
Nobody said "screwing." Guilty conscience, Emerson?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 8:30 PM
The language of insinuation is pretty transparent, thank you.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 8:41 PM
And furthermore, there's nothing wrong with being gay. But I'm not.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 8:42 PM
See, I thought the implication was some kind of weird masturbatory thing. But hey, if you wanna say you screw bunnies, that's cool.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 9:38 PM
Bitch, you're not gay, so you don't understand those people. But that's OK. Who does?
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 9:44 PM
Things are back up to speed, yes?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 9:54 PM
Wow, wolfson's comments 1-2 about women and their labia of death in the thread eb links in 26 are terrifying stuff.
Posted by Frederick | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 9:55 PM
Well, I'm not getting the error signals now, so presumably, yes.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 10:00 PM
John, I'm not homosexual, no. But I'm completely prissy.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 10:01 PM
On topic...
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 10:07 PM
Seems faster.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 10:08 PM
Back offtopic again: I feel certain that Labs needs to see this.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 10:33 PM
Oh god, that's great. His signature move is the bitch slap. Pimp! Plus, those dives are crazy.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 10:39 PM
Back on topic: no more 404 errors. Yay!
Posted by Frederick | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 10:44 PM
42:
I admit it. I thought you'd steered me wrong, Apo. I wasn't terribly impressed. And then came the second half. Seriously great. Plus, how can you not love a guy rocking the Smooth Criminal look?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 10:49 PM
Hoyl shit that is teh awesome!!!1!
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 10:53 PM
Click through to his web page. Excellent background.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 10:58 PM
Very nice. Like Tim, I was at first confused, then enthralled.
Also bizarrely awesome, this David Hasselhoff video, via Ezra.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 11:00 PM
He's from Fontana, California!
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 11:02 PM
Hah, that guy in Apo's link is from Fontana, California.
Perhaps that was your original point.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 11:03 PM
fuck
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 11:03 PM
Perhaps that was your original point
No, pure serendipity.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 11:04 PM
He's also 6'3". Are we sure he's not the Gayatollah?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 11:14 PM
I don't think so. He doesn't look Mexican.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 11:19 PM
The Daily Howler explains why Bruni is a shill for Bush.
Posted by Frederick | Link to this comment | 01-26-06 11:42 PM
Uh oh, I just got another 404 error when I posted on the thread below.
Posted by Frederick | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 1:54 AM
Yup, it's baaaccckkkk. Maybe the resource hog has recommenced hogging.
Posted by Frederick | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 1:55 AM
also (back on topic) you should all go eat at that restaurant, the East Coast Grill. oysters on the half shell AND fried plaintains! AND a bloody mary mixing buffet thing...
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 5:38 AM
Mmf! -- Have you been there and can recommend it, or are just going on Bruni's delectable-sounding descriptions? I have not been there but have found Bruni's descriptions misleading the once or twice I have followed up on them. (My dining budget is such that I am far more likely to follow say Eric Asimov's recco's than Bruni's -- and by happy serendipity I have found Asimov to be more reliable. You guys know he is Isaac's son? Does he even still write the $25 and under column? I feel so out of the loop since I moved to Joisey.) (And as long as I'm rambling: this morning I woke up with a mangled quote running through my brain, "Synthesize it? Ma'am, I can't even read it!" Can anyone help me with what the original is, and its source? I'm thinking probably like Twain or W.C. Fields, or some such.) (Here's a gratuitous parenthesis, just for you!)
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 6:46 AM
hey jeremy - i've been several times, most recently in november for sunday brunch, which might be the only time they offer the bloody mary mixing buffet thing which is just...yummy. i find them really good. boston, fresh seafood, + caribbean influence.
i'm not sure what you mean by asimov vs. bruni because i don't read ny times restaurant reviews that much. it's reasonable for seafood (especially if you find oysters filling and don't order lots of prosecco!) but it's not cheap. i'm vaguely remembering $20-25 per person for brunch.
ach... now i have to go out and eat something, because this is making me hungry. corner crepes!
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 7:04 AM
Gah! I wait tables/bartend at a sushi restaurant as a 2nd job and that article just makes me realize how much I don't want to put up with the Fri. night crowd tonight. Ah well, hopefully tips will be decent. Though I'd kill for some fried seafood right about now...
Posted by Karyn | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 7:12 AM
Hmm. Mmf! -- Just checked the NYTimes site and apparently Asimov now writes "Diner's Journal", a column with which I am not familiar. When I was living in the city he was one of the writers of the "$25 and Under" column, and of those writers he was the most likely to review places where dinner would realistically cost less than $25. Bruni generally reviews more expensive places. But it may well be that East Coast Grill, the place he worked for a week, is not as high-end as the places he writes about as a critic. Yeah, this seems likely to me now -- I can't picture an expensive NY food destination place hiring a waiter with little (and years ago) experience for a week so he could write a story about it. And, restaurant critics are not supposed to get chummy with their targets.
I had dinner with Eric Asimov a couple of times, when I was living in Queens and friends with Jim Leff, who is proprietor of Chowhound -- he was a nice guy and that probably predisposed me to react favorably to his columns. But I like to think that just confirmed for me an impression which I already had formed from his writing.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 7:17 AM
Also -- for some reason I though you lived in Canada, Mmf!
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 7:18 AM
Wow -- it is pretty addictive to type in your handle, Mmf! You are robbing yourself by relying on the memory of your browser (if you do so) instead of retyping it into the Name box with each posted comment.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 7:21 AM
Paris, non?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 7:25 AM
Yeah, that's right, Paris! Which is equally not-NY. So what gives huh?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 7:26 AM
i live in paris. but i took this thing known as an airplane in november... i used to live in boston. :)
east coast grill was also a good place for bruni to go undercover because it has amazing food but goes for a very casual atmosphere on purpose.
and the servers are apparently appreciated by their boss. a dreadful ex of mine once told me a story of going there with a bunch of law students and being asked by the management to *leave and never come back*. he wouldn't say what had happened. i was torn between 1)being horrified that i knew someone who was part of a group that had (apparently) mistreated a waiter like that, and 2)impressed with the management.
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 7:31 AM
and i lived in NYC this summer. well, fort greene actually. i am having trouble getting settled.
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 7:34 AM
Wow. What a world! I have heard of "airplanes" but had no idea people could actually use them to transport themselves across vast bodies of water as you relate. And multiple journeys within one lifetime -- gasp!
If you're in the city again give us a holler. Some kind of meeting up seems like it would be in order.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 7:38 AM
was teasing of course. will definitely holler when i go back to new york...i like meet-ups. also that city exerts a lot of gravitational pull on me.
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 7:49 AM
was teasing of course.
Likewise.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 7:53 AM
Fort Greene is NYC. mmf!, don't you start an outer borough v. Manhattan flame war.
Happy Birthday, Wolfgang!
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 7:56 AM
Happy birthday, bphd!
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 8:02 AM
Hey, it's Bphd's 150th birthday too? Happy birthday, bphd!
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 8:07 AM
I've heard that being born in 1756 makes you more than 150.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 8:10 AM
No, I think you're wrong. Learn to count, Drymala.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 8:13 AM
Damn, Bphd has been around a while. No wonder she's so smart.
(The 1 and the 2 are right next to each other on the keyboard, smartass.)
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 8:14 AM
I've heard that being born in 1756 makes you more than 150.
Again demonstrating the unreliability of counting on the grapevine for information like this instead of sitting down and doing the math for yourself.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 8:15 AM
I've heard of counting on your fingers but how do you count on the grapevine?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 8:17 AM
One grape at a time.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 8:18 AM
(The 1 and the 2 are right next to each other on the keyboard, smartass.)
I make that mistake myself sometimes, Roz.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 8:19 AM
The 1 and the 2 are right next to each other on the keyboard, smartass.
What I mean is, I haven't had *that* much sex.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 8:20 AM
Hey speaking of slowdowns... Did some saboteur put dope in the punch?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 9:19 AM
Another Cambridge place to hit is River Gods. It is teh good. Really weird interior, but good food too.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 9:42 AM
I'm only one hundred and FORTY-NINE, thank you very much. And I will be for the rest of my life.
Thanks, Joe & Tia!
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 9:46 AM
I'm enjoying reading their response as being in a very sarcastic, passive-aggressive tone.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:08 AM
notably the mt-comments.cgi file
Tip #1 for reducing comment spam (and the accompanying server load) is to have your comment script named anything other than mt-comments.cgi.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:19 AM
Time for a new host!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:21 AM
Yeah, I should do that.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:21 AM
I might suggest a tip jar for any additional cost incurred.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:22 AM
The renaming, not the re-hosting. They've been really good, actually.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:22 AM
apo. if I rename mt-comments, won't that break all the links to the comments? (I'll have to set up some kind of redirect, no?)
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:25 AM
Or you could programmatically all the inter-comment links to point to the right place.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:25 AM
People also lonk to comments from other web sites.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:29 AM
Well, fuck 'em.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:30 AM
With pleasure!
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:32 AM
92: Oh right. Yeah, that would suck.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:32 AM
well, you could do a grep and replace on unfogged.com/mt-comments.cgi with whatever you rename it too... but I guess that'd be pretty processor intensive
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:32 AM
Tweedledopey is pwn'd by 93.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:34 AM
Jeremy, while you've been away, we've retired pwned-as-preempted.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:35 AM
I can dream, can't I?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:37 AM
I wasn't sure if programmatically was descriptive enough.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:38 AM
As well, to pwn your 99, my way would get rid of the "lonk (sic) to comments from other websites" problem.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:39 AM
103: How? It wouldn't break lonks from unfogged to a comment elsewhere, but it would still break lonks from elsewhere to unfogged, right?
Posted by Matt #3 | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:42 AM
103 -- No it wouldn't. Unless I am misunderstanding. It looked to me like you suggested searching for all instances of mt-comments and replacing them with the new file name. But -gg-d only has the opportunity to do that with files which are on his own web site. Are you suggesting he distribute a script to the 'Sphere at large and ask everybody to run it? Because this does not seem credible to me.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:43 AM
ah. true. I was thinking of lonks within unfogged to other websites. I'm totally pwned on this one, if only for premature pwnage (it was my first time, I swear!).
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:43 AM
I know little about this com-puut-tor stuff that you are talking about, but doesn't his website receive a request every time someone clicks a link from elsewhere? Can he make the translation at his end, redirecting them to the appropriate place?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:56 AM
That's what I said in 92. I'm looking into how to do that now. What I don't know is whether it would happily redirect spammers to the right place too, in which case it would be a lot of effort for nothing.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:58 AM
Or we could all shut the fuck up.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:59 AM
I agree that this blog would be better without comments.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:01 AM
Is there a way to keep up with comments without constantly hitting the Reload button? That must put a load on the sever, particularly with long comment threads
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:05 AM
Not to mention the comments that do nothing but point out punctuation errors, like leaving the period off the end of a sentence, Michael.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:11 AM
Michael, you can get a feed of recent comments at www.unfogged.com/bridgeplate.rdf
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:12 AM
110: I'm pretty sure it would redirect everyone, unless you were to check the referrer. Then you'd basically requiring commenters and comment readers to click a comments link from the unfogged main page, rather than going right to a comments thread. (Which would make me sad.)
But there may be a yet-cleverer solution.
111: Hit reload less often.
Posted by Matt #3 | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:13 AM
111 -- I have heard tell of something called RSS that is supposed to help with that tho I have never used it and do not know if Unfogged supports it.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:15 AM
That's a great name for the comments feed.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:16 AM
Some of us are no longer particularly concerned with missing periods
Netscape 7.02 doesn't seem to know what to do with a REF file, and sadly, neither do I.
Hitting reload less often does work. In fact, I get a lot more done if I only hit it twice a day
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:19 AM
MHS, that file isn't for your browser, but for a news reader. Here's a very good one.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:20 AM
that should be RDF, resource description file. The D is adjacent to the E, and I think they've been transgressing their proper boundaries
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:21 AM
Some of us are no longer particularly concerned with missing periods
You'll say that right up until you find out you're pregnant, Michael.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:25 AM
Thanks for the link to GreatNews, -gg-d! You have broken my RSS cherry.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:27 AM
Umm, where the fuck tom on this shit? Jeebus. After besting Wolfson in a tech-off, you can't just hare off to parts unknown.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:28 AM
where the fuck tom on this shit? Jeebus.
Tourette's Syndrome is no laughing matter. Just ask SomeCallMeMotherfuckingTim. Please call the number at the bottom of the screen make your tax-deductible donation today. Every penny helps.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:31 AM
Tom's never around anymore, here or in the meatosphere.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:31 AM
Thanks for the RSS link. Now I need to find one that'll run on OS 9.2. I've been wondering what RSS was all about, but hadn't wondered enough to actually find out.
Good advice, Apo, but I think I'm not likely to exhibit anything more than a pregnant pause.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:31 AM
Doesn't Safari have a built-in RSS reader? I don't know if Safari is available in 9.2 though.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:39 AM
meatosphere
Wow--there's a worldwide community devoted to the meatus?
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:43 AM
Safari might. Netscape 7.02 might. I thought it did, but now I can't find it. Netscape is not at all stable. I think if I shut down and re-load I might find the news reader. Or if I turn off Java.
I really should get a new computer and move up to OS 10.4, but the thought of spending a whole lot of money to keep up with changes I don't particularly want just irritates me.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:45 AM
Safari might. Netscape 7.02 might. I thought it did, but now I can't find it. Netscape is not at all stable. I think if I shut down and re-load I might find the news reader. Or if I turn off Java.
I really should get a new computer and move up to OS 10.4, but the thought of spending a whole lot of money to keep up with changes I don't particularly want just irritates me.
Wow, this is a new feature:
In an effort to curb malicious comment posting by abusive users, I've enabled a feature that requires a weblog commenter to wait a short amount of time before being able to post again. Please try to post your comment again in a short while. Thanks for your patience.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:47 AM
oops, must have been my fault. I probably double clicked POST. Sorry.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:48 AM
there's a worldwide community devoted to the meatus?
Just mine.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:49 AM
Sorry, should have capped:
There's a worldwide community devoted to The Meatus?
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:51 AM
Apostropher is The Meatus!
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:53 AM
Now we know your hero name!
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:59 AM
When are you going to tell us the origin myth? Or is this something that requires Tia?
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 12:00 PM
Quickly! To the Meat Cave!
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 12:06 PM
When are you going to tell us the origin myth?
It has been told.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 12:11 PM
MHS, if they have Thunderbird for 9.2, you can use that.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 12:26 PM
The meatosphere cowers!
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 12:36 PM
136: Ow, jeez, single file. I can't accomodate you all at once.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 12:38 PM
I can't accomodate you all at once.
If I had a dollar for every time a woman has said this to me...
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 12:44 PM
three dollars?
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 1:27 PM
Hey, where'd the bridgeplate.rdf feed come from? I've been using the comments.xml feed in Sage, which is good for searching the comments on the recent posts, but not so good for getting the comments as they come in.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 1:42 PM
138: Thank you, Tweedle, but the Mozilla site says, on its Thunderbird page: "Mac OS 9 and earlier are not supported "
I hate the thought, but I may have to cave in to social pressure and get a younger computer and even, perhaps, something a bit faster than dial up. Does the (N/2)+7 rule apply to computers?
I figured out how I screwed up in 129/129: aliens took over my computer. Really. I have a certian antipathy I HATE THE BASTARDS to software that HATE HATE HATE thinks it's smarter than me.
I forgot that I had Jave enabled. I had Google news in another tab. Despite the fact that the Google news window wasn't active, wasn't even visible, Google decided it should update itself. It seized control. Everything else stopped. So when nothing happened for 30 seconds after I hit POST, I figured I had missed actually hitting the button (need glasses) and hit it again. Nothing had happened because Google had taken control of my computer. It controlled the vertical. It controlled the horizontal. I find this HATE EVIL BASTARDS irksome.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 1:42 PM
OT, but this article is pretty good.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 2:04 PM
Dude, it's five pages; give us a synopsis.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 2:07 PM
It is a story of a disorganized kid party clown written as a male tearjerker. Not only is the article long but page 5 is somehow longer than pages 1-4 combined.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 2:12 PM
Not to worry, via the magic of the internets you can make it be one very long page.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 2:15 PM
144 - Michael, I think if you have Javascript enabled in your browser, Googlenews will automatically update every so often no matter what. Sux on dialup. May suck less if you use just the text version. I've looked and find no way to turn off the auto reload short of disabling Javascript altogether. As customizable as GNews is, it would make sense for them to have this as a personalization preference setting, but no.
Posted by Mr. B | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 2:24 PM
Ok, that was long, but worth it. Thanks, Joe O.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 2:29 PM
Why are people writing "-gg-d"? Has Ogged become the "He Who Must Not Be Named" of unfogged?
Posted by Frederick | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 2:34 PM
The ways of the Jews are mysterious indeed.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 2:46 PM
151 No, it's someone else.
Posted by Mr. B | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 2:46 PM
144: I think you're right. I spend, it seems, half my life clicking through Preferences to turn Java and javascript and Cookies on or off. Usually I remember, but not always. So I rant.
By the way, pay no attention to the intrusive voices that sometimes appear in my posts. I'm pretty sure it's not god.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 3:07 PM
Thanks Joe. That article actually got me misty.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 3:11 PM
"After the peekaboo age, but before the age of such sophisticated understanding, dwells the preschooler...He comprehends irony but not sarcasm."
I don't understand this though. What kind of irony do preschoolers understand? Big man little now, I guess, but that's about it.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 3:13 PM
Eliot wrote Prufrock in preschool.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 3:15 PM
No wonder Prufrock was having such trouble with impotence.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 3:18 PM
Pre-schoolers voices are quiet and meaningless like rats feet on broken grass in our dry cellar.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 3:18 PM
grassglassPosted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 3:18 PM
I think that usage of irony is correct, although maybe indicates the writer being a little overeducated. Irony is humor that depends on the audience knowing something the subject of the humor is unaware of: It is ironic to watch a manager boast of the loyalty of his employees, when the better informed audience knows that his accountant is robbing him blind. Likewise, it is ironic to see the Great Zucchini attempt to answer a banana when the phone rings, when the better informed audience knows that you can't answer a banana.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 3:19 PM
His mom obviously forbade him peaches, too.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 3:19 PM
"over broken glass"
That's what I get for going by memory. Whimper.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 3:20 PM
And put The Little Mermaid on over and over again to keep him entertained.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 3:22 PM
Does that mean that they get irony, though? Seems to mean that they get a funny banana.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 3:23 PM
I hear you've a pretty funny banana, ogged.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 3:25 PM
Well, they get that it's funny when they know something that the silly man doesn't know. I think that's the minimal case of irony.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 3:25 PM
I suppose talking to a banana wouldn't be funny unless you knew it couldn't be done. Or maybe I'm not thinking like a kid.
What's this "I hear" crap, Joe? Courage of your perversions, young man!
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 3:28 PM
They know about vagendas, too.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 3:29 PM
Would it be ironic to see the Great Zucchini attempt to cut the birthday cake with a series of spoons when all he needs is a knife?
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 3:40 PM
It's like meeting an attractive man, and meeting his attractive spouse.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 3:41 PM
What if, in your dreams, the man of your dreams is married? What then?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 3:43 PM
161: Thanks LB. That makes sense. For the record, I wasn't trying to get all irony-police on his ass, just trying to understand what he could be referring to.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 3:50 PM
The preschoolers-irony thing brings me back to an argument I had many moons ago. Ellen and I were having dinner at a friend's house and also invited were a couple who were involved in Waldorf School education. I forget how it came up but apparently one of the objectives of the Waldorf School program (at least as this couple understood/explained it) is to prevent young children from being exposed to the concept of irony. -- I nearly lost it -- do you propose to turn your child into an emotional cripple I wanted to know -- though I forget precisely what words I used to phrase the question, which I asked several times with different phrasing and stress -- it seemed totally perverse to me, to cut the kid off from one whole side of human experience like that. Basically the whole evening was a back-and-forth between me and this couple where they were trying to explain to me No it's good you see, here are the reasons laid out in Waldorf School literature, and then me saying but then he's not going to understand anything that happens in the next several years of his life, and like that.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 5:40 PM
I don't know much about child rearing, nor about Waldorf schools, but their position as described doesn't strike me as outrageous.
We protect kids from lots of things. We protect them from hunger, and from violence and cruelty directed at them (or, at least, we say we're supposed to). We protect kids from seeing violence and cruelty and sex (to some extent).
Irony, as LB defined it above, is inherently cruel. Finding someone else's ignorance amusing is not a demonstration of empathy. It doesn't build strong communities twelve ways. It's not clearly distinguishable from finding others's pain funny.
If we want to provide young kids with the best of worlds in which to grow up, a world in which they're not touched by hunger or cruelty, I can see avoiding irony.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 7:33 PM
Yeah well that's basically the position the couple was outlining to me and it sounded and continues to sound bogus.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 7:41 PM
Hmm. where does the bogusity lie? Is it in the idea of protecting kids? In the idea of protecting kids from seeing cruetly? In the idea that irony is inherently cruel?
Or is it in the possibility of not understanding things? I must admit there's a lot in the world I don't understand. Darfur. Ruanda. Neoconservatism. So maybe the idea of not understanding doesn't bother me so much.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 7:48 PM
in re 168: One certainly can talk to a banana. I do it all the time. My therapist says it's okay, but I should let him know immediately if the banana starts talking back.
Note to self: build cell phone earpiece and microphone unit into plastic banana. See if Ogged finds it amusing. p.s. be sure to patent the idea. Query: is look and feel of bananaphone patentable? Copyright?
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 7:50 PM
Filtered through this many layers of hearsay, I'm a little bit suspicious of Osner's story, but if it's true, he's right, that's insane. MHS, we protect kids from having bad experiences directed at them, but no one I know makes a concerted effort to shelter their kids from the knowledge that there are bad things in the world. When someone dies, you try your best to explain to your kid what dying is; you don't say, "Grammy took a long vacation." I don't even know how protecting people from irony would work, because it would seem to be something that would just arise naturally in human expression. Anyway, irony's a valuable tool in pointing out the cruelties, absurdities, and stupidities of the world. Which exist. And should be observed. By children too.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 8:33 PM
My therapist says it's okay, but I should let him know immediately if the banana starts talking back.
No irony here. I'm feeling safer already.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 8:41 PM
Fair enough, Tia. Maybe there's a distinction to be made. We don't try to completely shelter kids from the knowledge that there are bad things in the world, but we don't wallow in it, either. We don't say "hey kids! there's was a great bloody accident just across town! Let's go see if we can look at all the dead bodies."
Similarly, perhaps there's a point where it's bad to say "let's all laugh at the stupid great Zucchini, who doesn't know you can't answer a banana. Then we can all laugh at Joey who doesn't know how to solve a quadratic equation. When we grow up we can mock and deride stupid liberals."
Okay, I think that last sentence got out of hand, and took on agency of its own. But is there a distinction in there somewhere?
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 8:47 PM
Michael -- I guess what it comes down to for me is as follows: cruelty is part of the fabric of our world. It is around us all the time. You can respond to cruelty by freaking out or by grinning. (This is emphatically not an exclusive 'or' btw.) Being able to see the humor in cruelty is I think a necessary part of being human. If you can't do it you just spend all your time freaking out, and freeze up inside. And before you file me away as a sicko and not worth talking to, obviously it gets more difficult and less rewarding to joke about cruelty, as the cruelty becomes more atrocious. Poking Curly's eyes? Funny. Holocaust? Not so much.
IIRC the Waldorf couple's response to this line of argument was Well but our kids are Just Little Kids -- we don't want them laughing at Bugs Bunny just yet, when they're older it'll be different -- and the art of Chuck Jones did come up in the discussion -- but that just didn't make any sense to me. Dark humor is sewed up in some of my fond memories of young childhood and it seems like it would be harder to develop later in life.
Nice idea about the Bananaphone.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 8:48 PM
hmm, it hadn't occured to me at the time that the sentence quoted in 180 could be taken as making fun of anyone other than myself. Perhaps I erred.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 8:50 PM
Then we can all laugh at Joey who doesn't know how to solve a quadratic equation
Johnny is going to be laughed at much harder and more frequently if he is able to solve quadratics. And believe me he is going to benefit greatly from a strongly developed sense of irony.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 8:51 PM
I know I'm the outlier here, and in no position to file anyone away as a sicko.
There's the third possible reaction to cruelty: "we are not amused." One can recognize it as common and accepted in the culture, but say that I'm not going to play. I don't know. Perhaps I'd be happier, and lead a fuller life (or some such) if I really could enjoy things like "fear factor" on TV. I can handly Bugs because that's obviously both unreal (no temptation to empathize) and has elements of cleverness.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 8:57 PM
MHS, irony is not exclusively outwardly directed.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 8:57 PM
Is laughing at J for greater knowledge (e.g solving quadratics) also considered irony? Because I agree, that's another very unfortunate phenomenon.
Tia, that's a good point. I hadn't thought about irony directed at self. But I draw a distinction - I can be cruel to myself, if I want, but I shouldn't do it to others.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 9:00 PM
Is laughing at J for greater knowledge (e.g solving quadratics) also considered irony?
The kids who are laughing at Johnny are not practicing irony, not as I see it. But what I was talking about was, if Johnny has a good sense of irony he can feel less hurt about it, sort of "isn't it ironic that their laughing at me and tormenting me, acting all superior when in fact they suck." Not exactly that but along those lines, you know. I think this is a useful defensive mechanism.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 9:06 PM
I'm not sure that the ideal response to being mocked for one's knowledge is to be amused by the others' ignorance. Human, and understandable, yes; but perhaps not ideal. It somehow tastes like retribution, which I don't think I like. It tends to escalate.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 9:06 PM
Wow did you write that after I wrote 188 or before? Because it was really fast if the one, or prescient if the other. In any case I think it is probably the best thing Johnny can hope for.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 9:09 PM
It certainly is a useful defense mechanism. I'm not condemning anyone who thinks it from time to time.
But if I may again stretch an idea far beyond anything recognized among mortal men, the whole "I'm great, they suck" thing underlies a whole lot of the miseries of the world. Like nationalism, and Darfur.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 9:10 PM
If there's one thing I'm not, it's prescient. Mutual simultaneous thinking, I believe.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 9:11 PM
This may be wholly impractical (I know little of child development) but there's another answer for Johnny: "People sometimes do bad things. They are doing a bad thing. Unfotunate, but true. You are being good. Keep being good. Recognize that being good won't protect you from people being bad."
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 9:14 PM
In what sense is irony necessarily cruel? It's a crucial developmental stage for children to realize that they can know something someone else doesn't--e.g., if you put a toy in a box in front of the child, and then invite another adult in and ask the new person to find the toy, up until a certain point the child will *genuinely expect* the adult to know where the toy is because the child himself knows. It's important for kids to learn that that's not how things work.
It's also important, for heaven's sake, for kids to get to be silly. Part of silly kid fun is, e.g., laughing at the coyote when he falls, yet again, off the cliff. It's not *cruel* because it isn't about laughing at the coyote's pain, or wishing him ill; it's about laughing at the incongruity of the thing. Incongruity is an important component of irony, and that, I maintain, is not only acceptable for kids to learn, it's good for them.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 9:17 PM
MHS, irony is not just being mean. The bananaphone, as I understood LB to explain it, is in the "dramatic irony" category, though actually, I don't think the bananaphone is functioning that way. I think the irony is more in the "situational" or maybe "incongruous" category, consulting Wikipedia's categories of irony. To a three year old, it's ironic to see a powerful grownup baffled by concepts the three year old has mastered. Irony would be a poor tool for harrassing anyone simply for their quadratic equation solving ability. It's rather better suited for deflating pretention, exposing absurdity, etc. How do you feel about Jane Austen? Catch-22?
I think it's kind of ironic that we have an irony objector here at irony central. (Come and get me, Saiselgy!)
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 9:20 PM
193: Frankly, the only person I have ever known to be able to consistently maintain this attitude without a glint of irony and avoid being an obnoxious prat is Alyosha Karamazov, and he is very, very special.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 9:23 PM
I was relying on LB's definition from 161, because I don't really know what irony is. She said:
Irony is humor that depends on the audience knowing something the subject of the humor is unaware of: It is ironic to watch a manager boast of the loyalty of his employees, when the better informed audience knows that his accountant is robbing him blind.
That led me to think it cruel. Something about being amused by someone's ignorance (especially when it's going to lead them to unfortunate results).
it's not the realization that some people know things that other's don't, it's the amusement at the ignorance. Does that make any sense?
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 9:24 PM
Can we amend #193 to "People sometimes do bad things. You do bad things sometimes too--everyone does. Doing bad things doesn't make you a bad person; on the other hand, it is mean, and they shouldn't be doing it, and you should try not to react to it by doing bad things yourself" etc.
Displaying a total lack of irony, I have to admit that the "good / bad acts" vs. "good / bad people" thing is really important to me w/r/t talking to kids.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 9:24 PM
To clarify: I believed at the time and still believe that the couple were using "irony" as shorthand for "jokes which involve people being mean to each other". Not a particularly good definition but I think it is the one they were using -- it is one that I've been suckered into using any time I go over this argument, I guess because I want to be responding to the actual argument they were making rather than to the far more ludicrouse one they were not.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 9:27 PM
#197: Irony can be mocking, or not. It can just be about incongruity, and in fact, it needn't be funny. For instance, child narrators are ironic, because the reader is supposed to understand things about the story being told that the narrator him- or herself doesn't really get. It's not cruel, it just adds a level of depth to the narrative.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 9:28 PM
No problem with the amendment in 193. I should have thought of that myself. It's a distinction I try to observe, also.
Still thinking about the other points.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 9:28 PM
If incongruity is a part of irony, that's a cow of a different color. I love puns, which are a form of incongruity. I also like bananafones. I don't think either would actually hurt anyone's feelings. Except perhaps a banana's.
Maybe I need to follow Tia and learn a typology of irony, and not be overbroad.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 9:32 PM
Well, MHS, go read the Wikipedia page. I just did, because I've gotten into boggy "what is irony" conversations before, and I always have to consult some authority whenever I do. If I may speak for her, I really don't think LB meant her explanation to be an exhaustive definition of irony; there are lots of kinds. I think she was just trying to explain how it was functioning in the scene. Moreover, crucial to the existence of irony in the scene is that the person who is ignorant is a big, smart, grownup. There would be no irony if another preschooler did something dumb. It's the contrast between the expected (grownups tell us what to do) and the observed (grownup is confused) that creates irony.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 9:33 PM
Actually, now that I think about it, the real irony at the core of that scene is the classical kind, with a literal and intended meaning, in that the kids understand that the grownup is "playing" dumb, so there are two levels: the literal one, grownup thinks it's a phones, and the other: of course he doesn't.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 9:38 PM
Okay, I've looked at Wikipedia. I'm convinced that "irony" is the wrong term.
But there is a form of humor that does involve people being mean to each other. I think that's what JO and I were talking about, and which the Waldorf parents were referring to. It's not simply amusement at incongruity. It's not amusement at the unexpected.
I don't know what to call it. Somehow "being a big meanie" doesn't seem formal enough. But as best as I know kids are often cruel, and find amusement in cruelty. I don't think JO, or I, or the Waldorf parents like it.
Maybe it is amusement at the transgressive. Pointing and laughing at funny looking people is in this category. But something tells me that not all amusement at the transgressive is mean - sometimes it's the incongruity of the transgression that provides the amusement.
Is it something we should try and keep kids away from? Or discourage? Or disapprove? I think there's something in there somewhere that I don't like, even if it's wrong to call it irony.
I don't mean to hang LB with that definition. I picked it, and announced it at the beginning, because it was handy and I didn't have a better one.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:03 PM
's what iron man has above his iron shin.
Posted by Mr. B | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:04 PM
Incongruity is actually the most important aspect of irony as it's usually defined. Most definitions I've seen include 3 senses (I haven't read Wikipedia's):
1) The use of words to express a meaning opposed to their usual meaning.
2) A situation in which events come together incongruously.
3) A situation in an observed scene in which the audience knows something that a participant doesn't.
The tie linking these three meanings is that they are incongruous: they are examples of things not working the way they usually do. However, they are quite different from each other, which is why "irony" is such a difficult term to use and is so often misunderstood. Personally I prefer to only use it for my 2, which is often called "situational irony." My 1 is basically sarcasm, and I see no reason to not just call it that (I've heard people claim that there's a difference, but I'm not convinced). My 3 is what LB was describing ("dramatic irony"). I'm not sure it's useful to group this meaning together with the others, but I doubt it comes up very often.
Anyway, that's my understanding of the meaning of irony. On preview I see that MHS has already consulted Wikipedia and decided he's not talking about irony, so this is not a very useful comment. I spent a lot of time on it, though, so I'm going to post it anyway.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:09 PM
It's like goldy and bronzy except it's made of iron.
Posted by Baldrick | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:10 PM
Was it tweedledum or tweedledee who said "a word means what I want it to mean, no more and no less?"
Someone else once said "they're my comedic bits and I'll call 'em whatever I want to call 'em", but I don't remember who.
I knew someone named Ron who adopted, as his nom de BBS, Iron. Others thought it because he fancied himself an ironist. Somewhere there's a blog commentator whose real name is Ronnie, but who posts as Irony.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:11 PM
It seems all this talk of irony has been beside the point, since Osner and Schneider has apparently been talking about the same thing, which may or may not really be irony.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:12 PM
Osner and Schneider has
I am become Yglesias, destroyer of words.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:13 PM
Sorry, Teofilo. I do appreciate the education. Seriously. For decades I've avoided the word irony because I didn't really know what it meant. In retrospect, that was clearly wise.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:13 PM
No problem. I also avoid the word, because it's just so damn hard to tell what people mean by it.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:14 PM
a void
the word
Posted by Mr. B | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:17 PM
Yeah. I thought I'd avoided the (situational irony?) of mismatched definitions by announcing my definition way back in 175. But I didnt include the pointer to her 161, and apparently I misunderstood her definition. Oh well. Clearly the audience knew more than I did.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:22 PM
Ironic indeed, but you were apparently using the same definition as Osner, to whom you were replying, so whether it was the proper definition wasn't important.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:25 PM
Teofilo, I don't think your (1) is the same as sarcasm. I think it encompasses sarcasm, but includes other things.
For example, I think this comment of mine:
I think it's kind of ironic that we have an irony objector here at irony central. (Come and get me, Saiselgy!)
is ironic without being sarcastic, in that I was purposefully referencing the expected criticism that the "irony" I was observing was not technically irony. So my intention is not the same as the literal meaning of my words, but I'm not being sarcastic either. It got less ironic with my parenthical though, because I started to make my joke explicit.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:28 PM
Re. Waldorf, then, I do think it's important to recognize that kids are not adults, and that bitter or black humor, whcih is great for adults, isn't so great for kids, who tend more towards slapstick or goofiness (which is why kid jokes are often so broad, and often not all that funny or sophisticated). So in that sense, yes; whatever the humor the Waldorfians were objecting to, they may have a point; it's probably better to err on the side of sincerity with small kids.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:29 PM
"apparently", yes. There was some negiating over definitions, but I think there was some shared meaning.
In the beginning was the word, and then there were blog commenters, avatars of Shiva, all of us.
Now that I've actually used Wikipedia once, I find myself compusively checking words I know perfectly well. Aaargh.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:30 PM
214:
Be!
'Cause it's just
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:32 PM
217 - Yeah, that's the conventional explanation, I suppose. I guess I'm just not convinced that the comment you quote is ironic in any of the senses I mentioned. This is actually the use of the term that I'm least comfortable with, and it's cases like it that lead me to avoid it entirely.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:36 PM
Thank you, B. I think I agree with you. I was assuming that the Waldorf school was for small kids, although upon reflection I think they may go up through high school. I'm pretty sure they do k-6. Nnot sure about 7-12.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:36 PM
Wait, so what is this Waldorf thing? I've never heard of it.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:37 PM
Also, teofilo, if all of us had been clever enough to conduct this o-earnest conversation about irony with a consistent consciousness about the incongruity and an intent to convey that consciousness to the other participants, I think that would have been non sarcastic verbal irony.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:40 PM
It's a bunch of schools that follow a certain philisophy of education. see http://www.awsna.org
I just posted that in the wrong thread. I think I'm getting sleepy
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:42 PM
having butchered both 'negotiating' and 'philosophy', I'm sure I'm getting sleepy. Or it's Shiva manifesting again.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:46 PM
I see what you're saying, Tia, and I agree, I just don't really see what is gained by using the same term to include both that and sarcasm as well as the other meanings I mentioned. It seems like a recipe for confusion, is all.
Michael - Thanks for the link. Seems like a strange movement.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 10:56 PM
Waldorf: I can't get past the gnome thing.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-27-06 11:33 PM
209: Humpty Dumpty, dammit!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-28-06 7:42 AM
I can't imagine banning irony (in the LB sense) from children's literature in the hopes of teaching children not to mock others for being weak. Among other things, irony illustrates differences in perspectives. Desdemona is innocent, but Othello doesn't know it (but we do!) Juliet isn't dead, but Romeo doesn't know it (don't kill yourself, Romeo!) Oedipus is trying to escape his fate, but everything he does confirms it (poor Oedipus!)
In order to make sense of such stories, we have to adopt or at least consider the other person's perspective.
Now, there is humor-based-on-the-ignorance-of-another that is objectionable. (Top of my head, Dumb and Dumber, where the pair gives a blind kid a dead bird. How the fuck was that supposed to be funny?) But setting up expectations and reversing them is harmless in and of itself, especially if the target is someone normally respected or understood to be pretending to be silly.
I don't have kids (opening myself to the 'you aren't a mommy' trump card), but that seems to be the difference between acceptable and unacceptable mocking. It's funny if I pretend,while helping little Jack put on his coat, that I think it goes on his foot, or on his head, or on my head. It's not funny if another child does it.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 01-28-06 9:08 AM
Yeah, Cala, go out and have a kid and then come on back. We'll talk to you then. I'll pencil you in for mid-December.
I didn't read the whole thread, but I can see banning snark and sarcasm. The kind of "irony" popular with "Cocktail Nation" is a different thing than the traditional irony of the orthodox ironists of the age-old Church of Irony.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-28-06 10:09 AM
I enjoy "understood to be pretending to be silly." I have not seen Dumb & Dumber and I'm ignorant of "Cocktail Nation".
In the wee hours of last night I remembered from where I stole this idea. Sorta. I think it was an op-ed piece in the Sunday NYT, in the not too dim past.
It was talking about Fox TV's American Idol. In the early rounds they put hopeful - but dreadful - people on national television so that the panel can insult and humiliate them, and the viewer gets to see these unfortunates driven from the stage in tears. I've not seen this myself, although I think I've seen promos promising such amusement and entertainment.
The op-ed piece (if that's what it was) argued that this is not family friendly TV, this is not family values TV, and that this isn't the sort of thing that teaches good lessons to children. I agree.
I don't know if this can be described as snark. It doesn't feel like sarcasm. I'm surely not going to call it irony. But I'd agree with even a gnome infested school that whatever we call it, we shouldn't encourage young kids to enjoy it.
I'm not saying we should ban Othello, or R&J (although I'm not sure they're really apt for 6 year olds, either). I'm not a mommy either, but there are things I won't watch even with another adult. American Idol, as described, is one of 'em.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-28-06 11:12 AM
Oh, the problem with American Idol, for kids, is that it's voyueristic--and not in a good way. It's setting people up to fail, and then being entertained by their misery. Hell, most reality tv is about people behaving badly in some way or another, and is therefore not great kids tv. Bad behavior in funny, self-conscious, "naughty" ways where it's basically a safe situation is *great* for kids--reassuring, encourages independence, etc. etc. But bad behavior in which people can actually get hurt is awful.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-28-06 12:44 PM
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Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 01-28-06 2:06 PM
157: "Eliot wrote Prufrock in preschool."
Then he rewrote it in college.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 7-06 7:29 PM