To the super-qualified sudden-housewife: Contact a local charity or other nonprofit -- especially a small, non-bureaucratic one, like a food pantry -- and offer your services. No matter what your field is, you clearly have skills in organization, networking, dealing with people. Even if you go in there and pack groceries for hungry people, you'll quickly find out where your skills are needed, and you'll be useful on a basic level rather than being frustrated. And then, if you want, you could parlay that into a paying field.
Good advice. Plus, this is a chance to find what else you're good at, that you never noticed or considered because you were focusing on the skills and talents you had and were needed in your profession. That was obviously a good idea at the time, but not a reason to think those were the only talents and skills you could have or develop. Give them a chance to show themselves. You'll hardly be wasting your time in the process.
Or you could represent Donald Trump. He seems to be running out of mouthpieces. Imagination and a robust fantasy life needed, but no actual legal expertise required.
A: I want to say “Yes,” but I am confused by the question. Can anyone explain?
I'll try to explain. The Florida house is not crazy, they are fascist, homophobic, bigoted assholes. Once you accept that, and the fact that they think it is RIGHT to be fascist, homophobic, bigoted assholes, everything else they do fits right in.
Until recently, I was of the opinion that genuine evil (think Hitler) was a relatively rare phenomenon, and that people in general were just swept up with it, kind of as though they were in a trance. But no. This is flat-out evil. Premeditated, intentional, inexcusable evil.
I read it as the poster saying the wording implies that there are NO hermaphrodites: Everyone, according to the framers of the proposed law, is born either male or female. Binary.
Regarding the cannibal riddle, the correct answer is 99. The original number of 100 cannibals has to include you, since you've obviously revealed yourself as being one. Unless you just decided to convert to cannibalism for the sake of the riddle.
Yes, hermaphrodites (or intersex individuals) do, in fact, exist. And in keeping with the obviously extensive understanding of human sexuality shown by amateur statehouse obstetricians, sexual determination and sexual differentiation are far more complex than simply doing the deed, since they occur at the molecular and hormonal levels. Much too complicated for the average statehouse hack, who is clearly just as willing to ignorantly weigh in on pregnancy and fetal development.
Maybe it's because the entries have a tendency to get funnier as I read, but the TWO worthy entries to "What Does God Look Like?" made me LOL. None of the winning entries did so. They were funny, but I did not laugh. My question: Is it just me? Or does a list of funny sayings or entries or whatevers increase in their ability to make one laugh as they go along? And if so, how do you account for that in the judging?
There are always more than a few among the honorable mentions that make me laugh, but only sometimes one of those that place. The reason for that could simply be that there are many more HMs, so more chances to appeal to me.
It's EVERYONE's experience that we (or earlier, each of us) have chosen the wrong winner, that X and Y in the honorable mentions were MUCH funnier.
The Czar, in character, would answer: That is because you simply do not understand humor as well as I do.
But except for objective issues of craft (e.g., meter in poems) we all find different things more or less funny than some other person will, based on our own experiences and taste.
This week, among the four top winners, two were my choices and two were Gene's.
I agree completely. We even find different things more or less funny at one time than we might at other times, for the same reasons. We also all have the same experience as the words you put in Gene’s mouth. We just wouldn’t say it, and he probably would! But it’s true for each of us, I think: No one else DOES understand what’s humorous to us as well as we do, and our own is the only standard we really have.
I think that's probably just your personal reaction, this week, to the different kinds of humor we presented today -- you just liked the ones for a contest we listed far down, because they're in chronological order of contest. In fact, I try NOT to read all the entries at once, so the ones at the bottom of the pile aren't disadvantaged by my fatigue or just getting weary of reading 800 of the same kind of jokes. I do enjoy judging retrospective contests like this one, because there's so much variety.
Let me again suggest, a contest of "contests." Anyone can enter an Invitational, but it takes a truly diabolical mind to come up some no one in their right mind could understand, let alone be inked.
We did actually, possibly more than once, run a contest to suggest a contest to which there would be only one good entry. (The idea was that someone would come up with a good joke, then suggest it be a contest -- not thinking about how we could run 30 jokes with those same parameters.)
The winner, by Beverley Sharp: A contest to come up with a name for an older-adult swim diaper. Winner: Deep Ends.
Next to actors banging on about their "craft," authors trying to describe their creative impulses is the auditory or visual equivalent of watching paint dry for me. Something now that I've discovered TikTok, I do only occasionally. Next in line would be wading through hundreds of attempts at being funny. So, although as a paid subscriber I'm no longer obligated to, I feel I still must extend kudos and an "attaboy/girl" to Pat and Gene for this public service. Yes, I do know someone has to do it --- but to set aside large, unrecoverable swaths of their lives in the interests of tough love and retribution goes well beyond the call of the even now required duty.
Re: the pepper joke. Weirdly I heard it for the first time Tuesday from a 90-year-old friend (he told it as a guy ejaculating). My very first thought was that might have been a good joke to try writing a poke for. But no time to try this week so someone else has to do it.
In his article titled "The Art of Slowing Down," Gene lists several artifacts and practices that identify him as someone living in the 1910s. I wish to add a few other indicators.
Do you maintain your grocery list using a cell phone, or do you compile using pen(cil) and paper?
When you use a pen, do you print or do you write in cursive?
What kind of pen do you use? Ballpoint? Rollerball (TM)? Fountain?
If you use a fountain pen to compile your grocery list in cursive, you are, indeed, a denizen of the 1910s, and I salute you!
The first version of "mess with our Heads" was in The Czarist era, Week 391 in 2001, under a different name.
Spinning Out of Control
Real Headline: Sanders Won't Commit to Redskins
Alternative Subhead: Daniel 'Santa' Snyder Pledges Reduced Ticket Prices, 'Mercedes Day' Fan Appreciation Promotion
Real Headline: Trace Levels of Scotchgard Found Absorbed in Humans
Alternative Subhead: Environmentalists Optimistic, Predict Drop in Toilet Paper Use
This week's contest, suggested by Greg Arnold, Herndon: Take any headline in today's Washington Post and create a subhead (which Arnold defined, in a bravura show of technical expertise, as "whatever you call that headline-like thing in smaller type below the main headline") that spins the story in an opposite or unexpected direction, as in the above examples. Use headlines from any item in the Sunday Post, including advertising. Ignore existing subheads. Include the page number of the headline with your entry.
Thank you, Cash! I hope everyone takes some time to explore the fabulous Master Contest List of all the Invitational contests, complete with links to both the announcement and the results. (NRARS.org)
The winner that week, by the great Sarah Worcester:
Head: The Buck Goes There
Bank: New Patrons Don't Know Tipping Etiquette, Exotic Dancers Complain
The resounding international success of the "Squid Game," the South Korean survival drama. has highlighted — perhaps as never before — the existence of what must be thousands of non-English language films made primarily for domestic markets, but with similar potential international appeal. And, coincidentally, how to provide not only efficient and effective translation but perhaps, more importantly, interpretation across a variety of linguistic cultures for this possible treasure trove. While ChatGPT and Dall-E 2 presently strut and fret their hour upon the stage --- as a film buff, I am much more fascinated by the opportunities AI is providing to see these normally unavailable films and in a choice of language, without subtitles or often awkward dubbing.
One technology being advanced — at least for the efficiency or "cosmetic" side — is auto-dubbing. While there are number of approaches, all make use of one or more components of AI to smooth out dubbing — lip and motion synching, for example — and provide "on-demand" dialogue in your choice of language with the actual actors speaking it. Without getting into (too much more) eye-glazing detail, the original actors record some text in their own language. Then a neural network (a series of algorithms designed to recognize underlying relationships through a process that mimics the way the human brain operates) learns the actors’ voices. A program then absorbs this vocal data and applies it to a digital translation of the script and AI generates perfectly timed dialogue from the film in the foreign language of choice.
So much for eventually getting rid of the irritating anomalies of the present translation/dubbing process, but we’re still left with the nagging issue of interpretation — especially problematic with subtitles because of their inherent limitations. Dealing with cultural factors in language when it comes to literature can be more or less easily handled via asides or footnotes. Not so easy with film. So how to deal with these often "untranslatables" which can make a difference to the integrity of a film and its full understanding and enjoyment will be a critical issue in ultimately providing the broadest possible access to this hidden wealth of foreign film.
For years, Gene has told us that he is the Ultimate Arbiter of humor, that what is funny is not a matter of personal taste, that humor is an objective quality that resides outside the audience. Yet it has been obvious for decades to any Loser that The Empress prefers a clever turn of phrase, while The Czar prefers a guffaw. Gene acknowledged as much when he resurrected the Invitational and discussed the stylistic differences between his judging and Pat's judging. To me, that undercuts Gene's claim to be Ultimate Arbitership.
This is also a metaphysical reason why Gene cannot be The Decider,other than Dubya having claimed that title for himself. A Czar's judgment is fallible. If Gene wants to be an infallible judge of humor, he cannot be a Czar. He must proclaim himself The Humor Pope, and his pronouncements must be the comedic equivalent of the [real] Pope speaking ex cathedra. The Humor Pope's pronouncements must be ex commodo, i.e., from the commode.
I think that as being authoritative (or authoritarian) goes, Czar is a secular equivalent of Pope. (The title of Empress was my best equivalent for his successor.)
Maybe I'm loath to award a contest prize to something so randomly stupid it's funny -- though I have /literally/ R'edOFL at such things -- but it's an overstatement to say that I Like Clever, He Likes Funny. Just compare Years 1-11 of the Invitational with Years 12-30. Both sides of the succession are sick with both literary references and politics and poop. And I bet I have more sex jokes.
I don't know why I'm stuck on this...maybe because pedants gotta pedant. But the preferred nomenclature for a person with confusing or multiple sex markers is currently "intersex." Could change again. But "hermaphrodite" is definitely deprecated.
As you may know the term "intersex" is itself controversial since an influential cohort of those dealing with intersexual conditions decided to put both terms essentially to rest in favor of calling these conditions DSD or Disorders of Sex Development. Which, by and large, went over like a lead balloon for a good many intersex persons who rightfully did not want to be stigmatized as having a disorder --- however convenient and satisfying the new terminology was for medical professionals.
I did start typing words to that effect, and then I sort of punted with "could change again"! Thank you for this! I see that the Intersex Society of North America has not yet changed their nomenclature, though I imagine many in the medical profession have?
To the super-qualified sudden-housewife: Contact a local charity or other nonprofit -- especially a small, non-bureaucratic one, like a food pantry -- and offer your services. No matter what your field is, you clearly have skills in organization, networking, dealing with people. Even if you go in there and pack groceries for hungry people, you'll quickly find out where your skills are needed, and you'll be useful on a basic level rather than being frustrated. And then, if you want, you could parlay that into a paying field.
Good advice. Plus, this is a chance to find what else you're good at, that you never noticed or considered because you were focusing on the skills and talents you had and were needed in your profession. That was obviously a good idea at the time, but not a reason to think those were the only talents and skills you could have or develop. Give them a chance to show themselves. You'll hardly be wasting your time in the process.
What she said.
Or you could represent Donald Trump. He seems to be running out of mouthpieces. Imagination and a robust fantasy life needed, but no actual legal expertise required.
😹
A: I want to say “Yes,” but I am confused by the question. Can anyone explain?
I'll try to explain. The Florida house is not crazy, they are fascist, homophobic, bigoted assholes. Once you accept that, and the fact that they think it is RIGHT to be fascist, homophobic, bigoted assholes, everything else they do fits right in.
Until recently, I was of the opinion that genuine evil (think Hitler) was a relatively rare phenomenon, and that people in general were just swept up with it, kind of as though they were in a trance. But no. This is flat-out evil. Premeditated, intentional, inexcusable evil.
We're trying to figure out why the poster seems to think the wording would imply hermaphrodites.
I read it as the poster saying the wording implies that there are NO hermaphrodites: Everyone, according to the framers of the proposed law, is born either male or female. Binary.
EXACTLY.
That's how I read it, too, and your explanation kinda parallels mine that I already sent in a comment to the Czar/Empress.
I'll hang here for a few minutes if you want to ask questions here in the comments.
Regarding the cannibal riddle, the correct answer is 99. The original number of 100 cannibals has to include you, since you've obviously revealed yourself as being one. Unless you just decided to convert to cannibalism for the sake of the riddle.
Right!
Yes, hermaphrodites (or intersex individuals) do, in fact, exist. And in keeping with the obviously extensive understanding of human sexuality shown by amateur statehouse obstetricians, sexual determination and sexual differentiation are far more complex than simply doing the deed, since they occur at the molecular and hormonal levels. Much too complicated for the average statehouse hack, who is clearly just as willing to ignorantly weigh in on pregnancy and fetal development.
Maybe it's because the entries have a tendency to get funnier as I read, but the TWO worthy entries to "What Does God Look Like?" made me LOL. None of the winning entries did so. They were funny, but I did not laugh. My question: Is it just me? Or does a list of funny sayings or entries or whatevers increase in their ability to make one laugh as they go along? And if so, how do you account for that in the judging?
LOL is largely a construct of the Web. Very few written things -- even funny things -- have the capacity to evoke a LOL. Cherish those that do.
Well, there's my answer. It IS just me. I pay $5 a month because just about every time, at least one of the entries makes me laugh out loud.
There are always more than a few among the honorable mentions that make me laugh, but only sometimes one of those that place. The reason for that could simply be that there are many more HMs, so more chances to appeal to me.
It's EVERYONE's experience that we (or earlier, each of us) have chosen the wrong winner, that X and Y in the honorable mentions were MUCH funnier.
The Czar, in character, would answer: That is because you simply do not understand humor as well as I do.
But except for objective issues of craft (e.g., meter in poems) we all find different things more or less funny than some other person will, based on our own experiences and taste.
This week, among the four top winners, two were my choices and two were Gene's.
I agree completely. We even find different things more or less funny at one time than we might at other times, for the same reasons. We also all have the same experience as the words you put in Gene’s mouth. We just wouldn’t say it, and he probably would! But it’s true for each of us, I think: No one else DOES understand what’s humorous to us as well as we do, and our own is the only standard we really have.
AMEN, as the religious might say.
I think that's probably just your personal reaction, this week, to the different kinds of humor we presented today -- you just liked the ones for a contest we listed far down, because they're in chronological order of contest. In fact, I try NOT to read all the entries at once, so the ones at the bottom of the pile aren't disadvantaged by my fatigue or just getting weary of reading 800 of the same kind of jokes. I do enjoy judging retrospective contests like this one, because there's so much variety.
Let me again suggest, a contest of "contests." Anyone can enter an Invitational, but it takes a truly diabolical mind to come up some no one in their right mind could understand, let alone be inked.
We did actually, possibly more than once, run a contest to suggest a contest to which there would be only one good entry. (The idea was that someone would come up with a good joke, then suggest it be a contest -- not thinking about how we could run 30 jokes with those same parameters.)
The winner, by Beverley Sharp: A contest to come up with a name for an older-adult swim diaper. Winner: Deep Ends.
Full results here. http://nrars.org/inviteText/0946.html
Re: Gene Pool - we named our firstborn, intentionally, after Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes. These days we’re just grateful we didn’t name him Dilbert.
And so is he.
Meanwhile, Watterson named his character after John Calvin, who I'm guessing would not have been amused.
We didn’t name anybody after Thomas Hobbes.
Next to actors banging on about their "craft," authors trying to describe their creative impulses is the auditory or visual equivalent of watching paint dry for me. Something now that I've discovered TikTok, I do only occasionally. Next in line would be wading through hundreds of attempts at being funny. So, although as a paid subscriber I'm no longer obligated to, I feel I still must extend kudos and an "attaboy/girl" to Pat and Gene for this public service. Yes, I do know someone has to do it --- but to set aside large, unrecoverable swaths of their lives in the interests of tough love and retribution goes well beyond the call of the even now required duty.
👍👍
Re: the pepper joke. Weirdly I heard it for the first time Tuesday from a 90-year-old friend (he told it as a guy ejaculating). My very first thought was that might have been a good joke to try writing a poke for. But no time to try this week so someone else has to do it.
Pogo.
In his article titled "The Art of Slowing Down," Gene lists several artifacts and practices that identify him as someone living in the 1910s. I wish to add a few other indicators.
Do you maintain your grocery list using a cell phone, or do you compile using pen(cil) and paper?
When you use a pen, do you print or do you write in cursive?
What kind of pen do you use? Ballpoint? Rollerball (TM)? Fountain?
If you use a fountain pen to compile your grocery list in cursive, you are, indeed, a denizen of the 1910s, and I salute you!
The first version of "mess with our Heads" was in The Czarist era, Week 391 in 2001, under a different name.
Spinning Out of Control
Real Headline: Sanders Won't Commit to Redskins
Alternative Subhead: Daniel 'Santa' Snyder Pledges Reduced Ticket Prices, 'Mercedes Day' Fan Appreciation Promotion
Real Headline: Trace Levels of Scotchgard Found Absorbed in Humans
Alternative Subhead: Environmentalists Optimistic, Predict Drop in Toilet Paper Use
This week's contest, suggested by Greg Arnold, Herndon: Take any headline in today's Washington Post and create a subhead (which Arnold defined, in a bravura show of technical expertise, as "whatever you call that headline-like thing in smaller type below the main headline") that spins the story in an opposite or unexpected direction, as in the above examples. Use headlines from any item in the Sunday Post, including advertising. Ignore existing subheads. Include the page number of the headline with your entry.
Thank you, Cash! I hope everyone takes some time to explore the fabulous Master Contest List of all the Invitational contests, complete with links to both the announcement and the results. (NRARS.org)
The winner that week, by the great Sarah Worcester:
Head: The Buck Goes There
Bank: New Patrons Don't Know Tipping Etiquette, Exotic Dancers Complain
Another possible bank would be: Bears aren’t the only ones who shit in the woods.
Truth be Told, I remembered it because I got HM ink and knew what to search for ;-)
The resounding international success of the "Squid Game," the South Korean survival drama. has highlighted — perhaps as never before — the existence of what must be thousands of non-English language films made primarily for domestic markets, but with similar potential international appeal. And, coincidentally, how to provide not only efficient and effective translation but perhaps, more importantly, interpretation across a variety of linguistic cultures for this possible treasure trove. While ChatGPT and Dall-E 2 presently strut and fret their hour upon the stage --- as a film buff, I am much more fascinated by the opportunities AI is providing to see these normally unavailable films and in a choice of language, without subtitles or often awkward dubbing.
One technology being advanced — at least for the efficiency or "cosmetic" side — is auto-dubbing. While there are number of approaches, all make use of one or more components of AI to smooth out dubbing — lip and motion synching, for example — and provide "on-demand" dialogue in your choice of language with the actual actors speaking it. Without getting into (too much more) eye-glazing detail, the original actors record some text in their own language. Then a neural network (a series of algorithms designed to recognize underlying relationships through a process that mimics the way the human brain operates) learns the actors’ voices. A program then absorbs this vocal data and applies it to a digital translation of the script and AI generates perfectly timed dialogue from the film in the foreign language of choice.
So much for eventually getting rid of the irritating anomalies of the present translation/dubbing process, but we’re still left with the nagging issue of interpretation — especially problematic with subtitles because of their inherent limitations. Dealing with cultural factors in language when it comes to literature can be more or less easily handled via asides or footnotes. Not so easy with film. So how to deal with these often "untranslatables" which can make a difference to the integrity of a film and its full understanding and enjoyment will be a critical issue in ultimately providing the broadest possible access to this hidden wealth of foreign film.
For years, Gene has told us that he is the Ultimate Arbiter of humor, that what is funny is not a matter of personal taste, that humor is an objective quality that resides outside the audience. Yet it has been obvious for decades to any Loser that The Empress prefers a clever turn of phrase, while The Czar prefers a guffaw. Gene acknowledged as much when he resurrected the Invitational and discussed the stylistic differences between his judging and Pat's judging. To me, that undercuts Gene's claim to be Ultimate Arbitership.
This is also a metaphysical reason why Gene cannot be The Decider,other than Dubya having claimed that title for himself. A Czar's judgment is fallible. If Gene wants to be an infallible judge of humor, he cannot be a Czar. He must proclaim himself The Humor Pope, and his pronouncements must be the comedic equivalent of the [real] Pope speaking ex cathedra. The Humor Pope's pronouncements must be ex commodo, i.e., from the commode.
I think that as being authoritative (or authoritarian) goes, Czar is a secular equivalent of Pope. (The title of Empress was my best equivalent for his successor.)
Maybe I'm loath to award a contest prize to something so randomly stupid it's funny -- though I have /literally/ R'edOFL at such things -- but it's an overstatement to say that I Like Clever, He Likes Funny. Just compare Years 1-11 of the Invitational with Years 12-30. Both sides of the succession are sick with both literary references and politics and poop. And I bet I have more sex jokes.
I don't know why I'm stuck on this...maybe because pedants gotta pedant. But the preferred nomenclature for a person with confusing or multiple sex markers is currently "intersex." Could change again. But "hermaphrodite" is definitely deprecated.
As you may know the term "intersex" is itself controversial since an influential cohort of those dealing with intersexual conditions decided to put both terms essentially to rest in favor of calling these conditions DSD or Disorders of Sex Development. Which, by and large, went over like a lead balloon for a good many intersex persons who rightfully did not want to be stigmatized as having a disorder --- however convenient and satisfying the new terminology was for medical professionals.
I did start typing words to that effect, and then I sort of punted with "could change again"! Thank you for this! I see that the Intersex Society of North America has not yet changed their nomenclature, though I imagine many in the medical profession have?