ducks

“Hey, I got quoted in The Atlantic.”

“What?”

“I’m reading an Atlantic article about an AskMe thread, and they quoted me… OH WHOA, they blockquoted me.”

It was a good thread: full of compassion, laughter, and condolences. MeFi member dmd (identified in The Atlantic as Daniel Drucker) posted this question: “My father passed away this morning. I’m going through his file, and I came across JOKES.TXT … which contains only the punchlines. Can the Mind please tell me the jokes?”

He included the list of punchlines, and one by one, community members popped in to offer their sympathy and answer the question. (It’s worth pointing out that MeFi guidelines require AskMe responses to answer the question above all things; a response that doesn’t answer the question is promptly deleted. In a condolence thread, it’s possible that a response offering only condolences miiiight stand, but it’s by no means certain.)

By the time I saw that thread, someone had already explained the punchline about the ducks, but I was able to add a suggestion, and a memory of my own:

O9scar outlines the riddle above, but it’s worth mentioning that this one works best deployed not as a joke but as a casual bit of trivia tossed off when you see a V of birds in formation.

Person 1 [points to birds]: Hey, y’know when you see birds flying in V-formation? And sometimes one side of the V is longer than the other? You know why that is?
Person 2: No, why?
Person 1: More birds on that side.

If you do it casually enough and your friends are sufficiently curious about random subjects, you may even be able to use it on the same person more than once. I caught my own much-missed father with that gag several times. My sorrow for your loss, and thank you for that happy memory.

As MeFi member HotToddy (quoted in the Atlantic‘s closing paragraph) says in the MetaTalk appreciation of that thread, “What an amazing thing, your dad inadvertently arranging for your friends to tell you jokes all day long on the day he dies.”

My own father would have loved to be involved in this discussion — and now he is, through my memories and my story. I love you, Dad.

bookmark

[salty language alert!]

Elsa: I’m pretty sure some dumb f*ckers on the internet just ruined the next episode of “Mad Men” for me.
The Fella: Did you go to dumbf*ckruiners.com, baby?
Elsa: … yeeeeeah, that’s on me.
The Fella: Yeah, you should really delete that bookmark.

up the academy

Heads up, movie buffs: Mr. Videoport Jones (a.k.a., The Fella) and intrepid reporter Justin Ellis will be live-blogging the Oscars for the Portland Press Herald. The NXT Gal and I will be with them in the isolation booth, mixing cocktails and cracking wise. You can count yourself in on the Facebook event page, and tune in to the NXT Generation on Sunday night!

advice

Good advice from the internet!

- Not Martha’s Megan points out that “if you place a quarter over the cap of a bottle of beer before you open it, the top of the cap won’t bend and you can put it back on the bottle so the beer will keep overnight.” This is going to come in handy for the big bottles of scrumpy I buy, as well as the clamp-top Sparkling shiraz.

- Several of Evany’s rules to live by are my rules, too, and especially #2: “A lapel pin will make you feel better about almost anything.” It’s true. Try it on the jacket you just pulled out of storage, and see if you don’t feel better about April showers (whichever your hemisphere).

- Maggie stocks her pantry with a hands-off cheese plate kit: “We used to eat all the yummy snacks ourselves, and then have sliced fudgesicles and dry pasta curls when people came over. Now, once something goes in the jar, it’s for guests only.” Though I usually keep a decent assortment of dry goods on the shelf, designating it as entertainment rations makes a lot of sense… especially since you’d need to replace it periodically with fresh supplies, at which time you can give yourself permission to snarfle up the guest-only goodies.

- That’s my advice, by the way: “treat yourself like an honored guest.” You should afford yourself and your family the same small graces you would offer a guest. Use the pretty soap, the luxury sheets, and the nice wine glasses.

- Steve offers his traditional Valentine’s Day tip for a happy home: “The person who is home first must make a small fuss when the other person gets there.
Does it sound silly? Yes. Do I promise that it will set the tone for a nicer evening just about every time you do it? Yes.“

- Joolie knows that, even when the meteor shower is a bust, “it’s never a waste to spend two hours on a blanket looking at the sky and drinking beer with a cute guy.”

tastes

I have a friend, V., who loathes chocolate. She cannot bear the taste of it, and if offered a piece of something chocolatey, she will demur and, if pressed, explain.
For some reason, most people refuse to accept that she doesn’t like chocolate. They believe that she is somehow wrong about her own tastes. They urge her to try their favorite upscale chocolate, or their mother’s brownie recipe, or their childhood favorite candy bar.

I never understood that.

Related: what is the deal with all you some of you Twitter and FaceBook people, and your insistent winking enticements to join in?

to the isogloss!

If you’d grown up with him, you’d be astonished that his blog consists of more than chattering synopses of Gilligan’s Island episodes delivered over the dinner table with a disarming disregard for parental strictures against talking with one’s mouth full*.

Unbelievably, my brother shook off the yoke of his early narrative conventions and has gone on to glory: nominated for best expatriate weblog in the Third Annual Satin Pajamas Awards at Fistful of Euros.

C’mon. Help a brother out.
*Make fun of me for bouncing on the bed, will you?

Ask Me!

If you’re still not using Ask Metafilter, you’re missing out.
You’re missing intense and geeky discussions of specific word usage and shifts in the language.

You’re missing fun and useful threads of advice, like this one on getting through the winter.

You’re missing semi-sociological conversations about power dynamics and gendered space, like this question asking “What happens when men pass each other on the sidewalk?”:

Help me understand the power dynamics in play when two men pass each other on the sidewalk.
Over the last few years I’ve started to get an inkling that there’s a whole separate silent conversation happening between men on the street that I, as a woman, am not really ever aware of. How they make eye contact, how much space they allow for each other to pass, who moves aside, etc. When someone bumps me with their arm I assume it’s accidental; I’m starting to think such things between men are not always so (at least if the number of almost-fistfights my ex got into are any indication).

I realize much of this probably happens on an unconscious level, but I’d love to hear any explanations or rules anyone can lay out, and whether this is a constant thing or contextual.

The ensuing discussion is fascinating and in some places contentious.

Anyone can read Ask Metafilter, and if you pay the $5 cover, you can join, ask one question each week, and give advice all the live-long day.

MeFi meet-up!

Metafilter meetup in Portland, Maine, at The Flatbread Company on Saturday, September 17th!

Just enough chefs

If you aren’t reading the always informative, often funny, and entirely droolworthy Too Many Chefs, you should click it, baby, click it. And I’m not saying that only because Meg in Paris is sending me a salsa verda pot from Spain.

That’s right, I am one of the proud winners of August’s Friday Food Quiz! Thank you, Meg!

It seems a shame to drum up competition, but I’m a sporting girl. Take a look at the September Friday Food Quiz and test your food knowledge. Remember — no web searching, no cookbook peeking. This is a pop quiz, so answer off the pop top of your head. In the case of a tie, consideration is given to the funniest answers.
(All of the rules can be found here.)

Interdream access

I had a dream recently in which I was surrounded by swooping fronds of blue underlined text. I kept tapping these words as they floated past me, convinced that they were hyperlinked and would take me to another, cooler dream. When they didn’t, I assumed that the other dreams were just loading slowly.