He was probably betting on the fact that no one reads the short fiction.
no one reads the short fiction
I never do. But I know people who, conversely, read only the short fiction. And then there's eb, who refuses to read the cartoons. Are there several mutually inconsistent but equally loyal readerships of The New Yorker?
3 to Kotskah.
We need to find someone who only reads the poetry.
I mostly don't; or, rather, I generally start reading them and then start skimming and then find myself reading the movie reviews without being sure of how I got there. This one had the WTF moment in the first few paragraphs, though, so I read the whole thing. Weird story generally -- the moment when an otherwise reasonably sympathetic character muses that since his wife became pregnant, the fact that pregnant women are frequently murdered by their husbands now made sense to him was also disturbing.
Current literary fiction always makes me feel like a philistine.
7: FWIW Either comment could have employed the number method to much the same effect, since our obejctive is merely to minimize scrolling.
I despise the NYer's practice of stuffing an ordinary magazine full of assorted glossy advertizements and calling it a special issue on Journeys.
9: That issue annoyed the crap out of me too.
8: Yeah, numbers would work too. But the objective in this case is more to be clear what's being talked about than to minimize scrolling.
Occasionally the lack of a reference leads to comedy, but usually it just leads to confusion.
I'm delighted by the fact that in threads where the comments are short and persiflagic, several conversations can be going on, just as real space, and everybody is able to follow what goes to/responds to what. So no references are needed, either numbers or quotes. Not for always, or for every kind of thread, and threads can change tone and sometimes back again, but often.
At least the Fiction Issue has fiction (not that anyone reads it). Where are my Journeys, you punks?
I prefer quoting to numbers, mostly because I get the reference numbers wrong and send people into eternally recurring feedback loops.
I generally prefer quotes too, but number mistakes can lead to high comedy, such as this episode.
Where are my Journeys, you punks?
Sounds like you've stopped believin', SB.
But the numbers method often leads me to scroll back up to catch the reference and then back down again. Do the negative and positive scrolls cancel out?
Several years ago a "special fiction issue" featured three stories involving an older male academic or teacher interacting in creepy ways with much younger women. I got the feeling they had overplayed the "we know our target audience" card and, once I stopped masturbating, I resolved to stop reading their fiction.
So have you stopped masturbating yet?
And how about the stopping crying, FL? How's that coming along?
Jonathan Franzen, J.M. Coetzee, and . . . what else within the last few years?
That issue featured some of the semenal texts of our time.
Confusion only leads to comedy when the confusion can be resolved quickly, by the reader. Because explaining a joke ruins the golden hairy lobsters that are running up my pants leg.
That issue featured some of the semenal texts of our time.
Pwnage is transitive. "Seminal".
explaining a joke ruins the golden hairy lobsters that are running up my pants leg
That reminds me of the time we talked about how scientists discovered a new kind of lobster and we made jokes about it.
23: That issue featured some of the semenal texts of our time.
I don't read the New Yorker regularly--I'm a rather irregular reader, so I don't know whether that spelling with an 'e' rather than an 'i' was intentional. Of course, it shouldn't matter, since the root is the same, but, stil, I find it humorous given the istory of Unfogged humor.
NB: I have just deployed the perfect quotation/citation method. Number posting alone is simply laziness, but including a number in the citation is useful. It allows the person who wants to to check the quotation in context. This is especially useful when one is responding to a fairly long comment. It also gives one the chance to see the surrounding comments,and thereby better understand the conversation which induced a particular response in the person doing the quoting.
27: On a thread with thousands of comments, that might be useful. But isn't it safe to assume that quoting the text will be enough to find it easily enough? Especially given the presence of Ctrl+F.
I thought I had better make it explicit, lest I be mistaken for a New Yorker short fiction enthusiast, but I see that all my deliberation has earned me is pwnage!
Pwnage is transitive. "Seminal".
I often regret that my most developed expertises are musical and technical. Other disciplines seem to be a much richer source of puns and allusions.
But then, I'm probably better off this way.
Explaining a joke is like dissecting a hairy lobster. You learn a lot about the lobster, but the lobster tends to die in the process.
On the plus side, though, you end up with a nice lobster pelt.
I used to read the poetry first, toward the tail end of my New Yorker subscriber days -- more a move of desperation than anything.
I'm pleased to announce that my Atlantic Monthly subscription (purchased in a charity drive and thus not able to be cancelled consistent with human decency) ran out today. It got to the point where I was reading it just for Christopher Hitchens and Caitlin Flanagan.
I often regret that my most developed expertises are musical and technical. Other disciplines seem to be a much richer source of puns and allusions.
Also, regarding numbers and quoting, there are two concerns: one is avoiding undue scrolling, the other is being clear what your comment refers to.
For the latter, besides numbers or quoting, there's always the option of being just a little more explicit.
For example:
"I agree, FL."
is better than
"I agree."
because someone may comment in between your post and the comment you're agreeing with.
refuse to read 2: and because of that And then I don't I just rarely find who refuses to read don't usually look at them. the cartoons. the cartoons, them funny there's eb,
I don't know why it took me so long, but 18 made me fall in love with Labs a little. I take it you're no longer worried about your students reading the blog, Labs?
Also, I think the whole argument about how people should refer to previous posts is Just Wrong. #s is a time honored tradition, and I *like* the scrolling up and down, even when it's annoying. It adds to the cliquish in-group feel.
So there.
You have to read 2 to follow what 4 is referring to.
39: Just curious.
And besides, you said you liked scrolling.
I don't get it. I also don't get why my name didn't show up in 39.
Thank you, LB, for perfectly demonstrating why my inclusion of "39:" in 41 was a good idea!
If you look up "gullible" in the dictionary, there's a picture of me.
But "gullible" isn't in the dictionary!
If you look up "gullible" in the dictionary, there's a picture of me
...humping a microfilm machine.
I find it hard to believe that 36 was not written by a spambot.
Back to the post, perhaps it was such a powerful vibrator that it rattled her placenta to pieces right through the uterine wall?
As any fule kno, there is only one way to address comments to other comments, and that is the Chuck(le) Pelto way.
It even winds his fellow wingnuts up so they repeatedly ban him.
Hey, thanks! The link I posted was clearly going to expire in a week.
I thought this was going to be a post about Atul Gawande.
Would somebody please answer my highly important questions? At least the vocabulary parts?
I have never in all my days heard the term "persifleur," and I hope never to encounter it again.
Persiflage is the art of making fun of ogged.
Badinage is the art of making: incisive comments!
Okay, I'll take a crack at it.
I think that badinage has more flirty overtones. Persiflage, to me at least, suggests the kind of learned wit that's supposed to be light and chock-full of sprezzatura but usually comes off as ponderous. Like William F. Buckley making conversation at a cocktail party, say.
Doesn't badinage mean tying your lover up when you sex him/her?
Persiflage - bad. Bandinage - good.
Following 55—if the blog ever finds its way into book form (à la Language Log), it should be a two-parter: Persiflopolis, and Persiflopolis 2, chronicling the oggedian and post-oggedian eras respectively.
56 is right, I think. Persiflage is more straight comedy, light-hearted witty nonsense (think Peter Wimsey). Bandinage is more combative, but more romantic -- it takes two people. One person can provide all the persiflage in a conversation, but bandinage has to describe an exchange between at least two.
A bandinage is what you use to dress a rhetorical wound.
60 - Hmmm...I don't think I like where that comment is going. I don't want to be the protagonist everybody hates!
I used to read the NYer cover to cover (well, not the poetry) until I read a story with such a glaring plot hole that I stopped regularly reading the short fiction. It was a really awful story, too.
62 reminds me of the WaPo neologism contest. My favorite of the top ten:
Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller
I don't want to be the protagonist everybody hates!
Doesn't have to be you. What's Unf up to these days? Taking candy from babies, I bet.
Thank you all. Mostly.
I'm still stuck on what you call someone who engages in either, though. I mean, if persiflage is from persifler, it seems to me that just as flâner:flâneur then so persifler: <insert ac's forbidden word here>.
It's totally badineur and persifleur, although the second one doesn't get around much any more.
A Wit. (Preferably in a Sentence with those inexplicable 18C capital Letters.)
Persifleur seeks flaneuse for badinage, repartee. No Irish need apply.
Not to mention thofe almoft unreadable long Ss.
You realife, of courfe, that I have no problem with the long S.
Ooh, I lovef me some long fs When I waf reading in aeftheticf recently, I realized, while poring over a copy of the workf of the earl of Shaftefbury, that I waf very quietly reading out loud, and I was lifping.
Perfifleur feeks flaneufe.
Waƒ there a rule about which s's got the ƒ treatment and which didn't?
My favorite part of Adam Smith's lectures on rhetoric is the ten pages or so where he beats up on Shaftesbury, as, basically, a poser. It's vicious.
78- Yes, all lowercase non-final s's get extended.
Really, there'ƒ not much to diƒlike about Adam ƒmith if you can read him without reminding yourƒelf about all the modern poƒeurƒ appropriating him.
I ?u?pect you're not doing this right, ?lol.
Chacun à ƒon goût, dude. As Voltaire would say.
It's times like the?e I wi?h I ?poke French.
Literally, it's "dirty son of a goat".
I juƒt meant, I prefer my ƒ, as it looks more ƒcript-like. But to each his own. And thanks for the tip about uƒage.
(Okay, I know I've got to ƒtop this at ƒome point. Lord, grant me ƒenƒe. Juƒt not yet.)
Literally, it's "dirty son of a goat".
Ack! Another proof that M/tch M/lls is always correct!
ƒpeaking of which, are there people in New York who prefer The New Yorker's front liƒtings to, say, Time Out New York's, or is that ƒection now uƒeleƒs to the whole country?
belong to the Federalist Society
I'm going to hide out here in this thread so Ideali&402;t won't notice I just called him a poƒeur. I mean, I did it unwittingly, but do you think that matters?
Ideali&402;t
Okay, when you make a typo you have to give up. I give up.
I read them. Well, mostly. If a restaurant or a play gets a positive nod from a New Yorker critic, it definitively means more clout in the CV and press kit.
I read them.
I have to say, I got a little thrill when I moved to New York and realized that I'd just doubled the value of my weekly New Yorker. A small prize to compensate for my larcenous rent rate!
I'm not making enough money actually to act on most of the recommendations, mind you.
The thing is, long s isn't just f; it's a different character entirely. I gue?s I'm ju?t a ?tickler, though. Carry on.
I mean, I did it unwittingly, but do you think that matters?
No, I will track you down and be pissy and thin skinned wherever you are hiding. Besides, I was in the Federalist Society before it was cool. I'm old school, baby!
No, I will track you down
Damn, busted. Dude, for what it's worth, like SCMTim I was old school but I changed my mind, man. It remains slightly a mystery to me that you haven't.
Didja see the razor-sharp dildo that Anthony Perkins wields in Crmes of Passion? THAT would pop a placenta, no doubt...
long s isn't just f
Dude (holy smokes, now I've turned into Spicoli), ƒ isn't "just f" either.
It definitely isn't ?, though. That's all I'm saying.
(Not an Early-Modernist, eh, slol?)
I must admit I've begun to wonder if it was worth subscribing to the New Yorker at all.
Also, 36 deploys the citation method described in 27.
Not an Early-Modernist, eh, slol?
Ooh, busted twice in one thread. I think I must needs retire.
Mr. w-lfs-n: is my understanding correct that "ð" is a voiced "þ"?
106: Yes (in Old Norse--in Old English they're interchangeable).
Must've been one helluva orgasm if she couldn't decide whether she broke her water or hit the G-Spot.
I'm guessing Matthew Klam doesn't get much of the poon. If he does, I feel sorry for his girlfriends.
107/110 -- is schwa a character used in writing some actual languages (like I guess specifically Old Norse)? Somehow I had got the idea that it was an invention of orthographers. And I guess the schwa with a little tail hanging off it sounds like "er"? What is its name?
Ah. Now I looked on Wikipaedia and I guess you have switched from Old Norse orthography to IPA, from historical to synthetic -- Wikipaedia says: ? = "r-colored vowel" ("?, how did you get so r?"), ? = "near-close near-back rounded vowel". Is my thinking right that these were never used in writing an actual written language?
re: 108
Usually in Old English, as far as I remember, it's þ at the start of words and ð in the middle (orthographically speaking).
107: You missed the / /'s (or [ ]'s, depending).
/a:m s?? ? smart a:rs, ?lso t?i n?n rot?k aks?nts, lai:k ?n 107 lu:k t?i f?n?/
like SCMTim I was old school but I changed my mind
(Extends black-gloved hand to Idealist)
Join us, and together we can rule the galaxy.
Usually in Old English, as far as I remember, it's þ at the start of words and ð in the middle (orthographically speaking).
If I recall correctly, they're different sounds -- voiced vs. unvoiced.
Join us, and together we can rule the galaxy.
Tempting, but isn't this where you cut off my hand with your light sabre?
I'm all with the crappy allusions tonight.
120: Only if you turn him down. Come to the Blue side, Ideal!
Only if you turn him down. Come to the Blue side, Ideal!
Extremely tempting, but for what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?.
I did, after I'd posted 119, and hoped to hide my pwnédness in oblivion.
for what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
Nookie?
Whoa, you guys have been Wonketted!
I'm with 112: not enough poon. What gets me is that the fiction editor of the NYer must not be getting enough poon, either, else he'd've (assuming it's a he, since "has a poon" is a subset of "gets poon") caught that one. I mean, what's the point of getting a job at Conde Nast?
There is only one Wonkette, and her name is Ana Marie Cox.
That g-spot stuff is such bullshit. They don't exist.
Of course, people who'll believe in an oxymoron like "the female orgasm" will believe anything.
115: indeed, these are IPA symbols, which have never been part of the native orthography of any language (as far as I know) but are nevertheless often used for transcription of many actual languages.
116: it was intended to be a broad phonetic transcription, so []. And your Scottish accent (as reflected in your transcription) is at least as funny as my (rhotic) American one.
re: 133
Heh, we have an American social secretary type at my college who every year emails round prior to Burns' night asking for, and I kid you not, people with 'funny accents' or (and he said this one year) 'Groundskeeper Wullie' accents to read. Funnily enough, he gets no takers.
I presumed from the rhoticised schwa that you had a normal GenAm style accent where rhoticised vowels replace /r/. That's a non-rhotic accent from where I stand!
Technically, you're right of course. The American use of a rhoticised schwa is, iirc, classed as 'rhotic'
This comment thread made up somewhat for wasting my time on one of the most boring stories I've ever read. I'm so glad no one expects me to read the New Yorker.
94, 99: Well, yef; when you come up with a fcript that reprodufes the long S, I'll be the firft to ufe it, okay?
132: Oh, ye of little faith.
137 -- One easy way to do it would be to copy and paste from any of Teofilo's contributions to this thread, like e.g. 99: "?". There's probably a tidy ampersandy way of doing it, But I know not what.
As far as I know, there is no html code for ?. There are, however, other ways to insert special characters.
Apparently, it's ſ or ſ—that is to say, it's ſ or it's ſ
So say Wikipedia.
??´ œ¨ˆç? ?®ø?˜ ƒø? ?¨µ?ß ø?´® †?´ ¬å?¥ ?ø©
Does that somehow translate into spam?
Thanks, Matt. That was totally worth it. Off to call my broker!
If it makes you happy, teofilo, Google translates that as: "In the metal Spam Ttrgmk."
142 is "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" typed on a Mac with the Alt key held down.
(option key, actually, though it also says "Alt" on it)
131: I met both iterations; the original, definately hotter.
Which is really all that matters.
147: It is indeed ironic that Google was unable to translate the word meaning "translate." And you should be able to figure out what I meant by "in the metal."