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Over at Unqualified Offerings, Jim Henley put up a one-word post saying “Blog.” Its comment thread didn’t so much follow as blossom, or perhaps effuse. It’s brilliant. Have a look.
Addendum: Mike Ford’s being brilliant again. From the comment thread of our own instantiation of “Blog”:
You people have no inkling of the facts.
You people just don’t see the situation.
You people sit alone and grind an ax.
You people start and bring your own damn nation.
You people sleep with partners made of straw.
You people’d unconvert old Johnny Knox.
You people sturmed the drang off Godwin’s Law.
You people, get your hands out of your socks.
You people, by the merest act of saying,
“You people,” spin the prop atop your beanie;
“You people” is your one-string banjo playing,
“You people” goes da capo senza fine.
Here sits a church, the browser is its steeple:
Open the tab, and see the typing people.
Further addenda: There have been moments, reading this thread, when I’ve honestly thought I was going to injure myself by laughing immoderately. I can’t do justice to the whole, but here are a couple of sequences. The first were all posted by Greg London:
sheepish comment by latecomer, with apology for not being overly funny due to self deprecating excuse.Ajay’s sequence:
——-
“in a snowstorm, uphill, both ways” post referencing ancient computer hardware.
——-
completely unrelated comment by frequent poster.
——-
apology by frequent poster confessing that recent post was put on the wrong thread.
——-
“I know I’m being pedantic here but” post invoking philosophical arguments to the meanings of several terms used by previous poster ending by proclaiming the previous poster is an idiot, for some definition of “idiot”.
——-
flamewar ensues
——-
attempt by a third party to mediate ongoing flamewar which only reignites topics that had been previously buried and forgotten.
——-
original flamers flame mediator
——-
mediator drops off list.
——-
haiku is posted
which conveys some new insight,
rhymes with “Nantucket”.
——-
picture of rabbit with a pancake on its head is posted.
ajay ::: (view all by) ::: April 12, 2006, 05:21 AM:
Plaintive remark that I blogged this two weeks ago, in detail. Link to blog named after obscure part of human brain.
ajay ::: (view all by) ::: April 12, 2006, 05:27 AM:
Blindingly erudite post in foreign language (German?). Reply in more obscure foreign language (ideally dead; Latin? Sumerian?). Learned chortle from third poster at unsuspected ambiguity in Sumerian post. Question about making replica clothes of obscure Oriental dynasty. Long conversation between at least four people who know all about said clothes and wear them in their spare time. Offer to sell mysterious item of clothing, nature unknown except to above four people. Parody of Dante. Reference to Early Church Father. Interjection about emergency medicine.
ajay ::: (view all by) ::: April 12, 2006, 05:31 AM:
Long, bloodcurdlingly detailed advice from James D. Macdonald about what to do in event of some dire emergency (heart stops, house floods, leg falls off, children attacked by whale, etc.) Posters stunned into silence. Long, contemplative pause as commenters look thoughtfully at own houses, children, legs, etc. Timid, Piglet-like question. Terrifyingly learned and hope-destroying reply.
Er, Teresa, that comment thread link doesn't go to Unqualified Offerings but to some site called Making Light....
This is the link you want.
Hello, Dave, and a belated Happy Birthday to you. I just tracked down the problem, which was a missing equals sign. The link should work now.
Predicate-free self-referential expression of admiration.
Expression of surprise that no one has thought of this before.
hillarious. that reminded me of this song by Davinci's Notebook.
I remember this from alt.callahans; it's called an existential argument.
Just to play along: Largely content-free reference to obscure baseball statistics orthogonal to original point asserted.
It reminds me of Kuro5hin's "Confusingly titled meta story" from 2001.
String of letters indicating much laughter, expressions of thanks for the link.
Point of information that it has been done before.
Reference to something similar that I am reminded of by this post.
O fishhead tree!
O fishhead tree!
How squamous are your branches!
They writhe!
They throb!
They vibrate so!
Just like the mob on Arsenio!
O fishhead tree!
O fishhead tree!
You adumbrate flanges!
Well, Grant - I see that the date stamp on your link is August 24, 2001.
Don't you know that 9/11 changed everything? Therefore, your link doesn't count.
I am somehow reminded that one of the tracks on the original Woodstock album (various artists) was entitled "Rain Dance" and consisted of the audience making its own music in a deluge when nobody was game to go on stage. Since my memory is notoriously prone to slippage, this may not be true. But it ought to be.
To my mind, this is an established and efficient method of communication.
Dave, now that you've brought up 60s/70s music:
Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing Me Softly with his song...
A sad song about someone singing a sad song about someone, that seems like it could be about the singer singing the song (not the singer sung about), that seems like it could be about me (when I'm in a certain mood). It's also a song about how humiliating it can be when a cheap pop song pushes all your sentimental buttons, which is in itself a cheap pop song that pushes all your sentimental buttons. So it's self-referential along more than one axis. (Furthermore, it puts me in the position of being a man listening to a woman singing about listening to a man singing about a woman. Reflective symmetry?) Kind of a neat philosophical trick for a song I don't even particularly like.
That does it. Now I've got to write a book called "Goedel, Escher, Flack."
(It's also proving to be a fairly resilient earworm. Apologies to anyone I may have infected.)
Quote of observation that it has been done before.
Dry agreement: additional examples linked cleverly within statement.
Metainformation. (Possibly even metaphor. Not to mention metonym.)
Obscure and longwinded commentary, beginning vaguely on-topic, but winding its way through linguistics, physics, and chemistry, eventually ending up as a seemingly endless list of integers having some odd property that the poster never explains, and that apparently is supposed to be obvious.
Obligatory attempt to one-up previous links to other examples with one dated even earlier.
entirely off-topic remark from poster who is unclere on teh comcpet of thredded coments deoide of punctuashun or capitollization and annoingly misspellede with added typoes for youre amusemnte
That does it. Now I've got to write a book called "Goedel, Escher, Flack."
"Google, Usenet, Blog -- an Unending Grammatic Blight" by Hogless Dufstadter
A ponderous and exceedingly self-referential examination of language, thought, communities, and knitting, told in the form of a flamewar between Achilles and the Tortoise over the true nature of Spam.
Oh, and of course,
Extremely vile pun.
Rueful correction of earlier post--it was called an Existential Flame War.
Admission of having too much time on hands; remark about future conversation with therapist; light chuckle at TChem's comment; enthusiastic non-sequiturization of the dominant paradigm; lunch.
Takes offense at perceived lack of sensitivity displayed by all previous posters.
Comment about the mathematical properties of various permutations of the word "blog", when considered as a 32-bit integer, most significant bit first. This translates into the value 1651273575, which is not prime, but which has the prime factorization 3 x 5 x 5 x 7 x 3145283. The latter number of course resembles pi in a superficial way, but does not otherwise have any relationship to pi, or e, or any other irrational number.
This is just to comment
I have ignored
the content
that was in
the blog entry
and which
you were probably
hoping
was relevant
Forgive me
rewriting this poem is fun
so silly
and so pointless
Expression of delight at the wittiness exhibited in various comments.
Cllng th mdrtrs "fscsts" bcse thy dsmvwlld my wrthwhl cmmnts.
entirely off-topic remark from poster who is unclere on teh comcpet of thredded coments deoide of punctuashun or capitollization and annoingly misspellede with added typoes for youre amusemnte
Observation that any sufficiently devolved spelling is indistinguishable from work by Geoffrey Chaucer (who hath a blog).
Request for help right now with a homework project on the phenomena of blogs and comment threads.
off-topic poster retrunss too expres dissmay that comet was ignored fales to undetstadn coment about chaucer and has snit
Poster vanishes up own arse. Exeunt, stage left, in confusion.
I was just coming down the pass to Keswick when the first Tornado passed me on the left.
Needlessly posted out-loud worry that one has committed all of these laughable faux pas on other threads, followed by no apology but an unstated resolution to continue in the same way on subsequent threads.
Sudden worry about the plural of faux pas coupled with unwillingness to look it up in a dictionary or on the web.
Query as to current whereabouts of Namedropper von Comment
Pedantic remark about the correctness fo faux pas as a plural, including customary typo.
Insufficiently pedantic praise of pedanticism, with spurious British spelling.
Irritated correction of spurious British spelling with unsubtle use of pedantry.
Meek retraction of pedantry, in sufficiently florid grammar to render the content of said retraction effectively moot.
(Subtle pun hidden inside, requiring knowledge of at least one dead language or moribund academic tradition to be comprehensible.)
Previous comment in quotes.
Acronym for a physical reaction to something humorous one really never does in real life.
On-topic reply with digression in reference to a cat I once knew.
Post referring fans of Namedropper von Comment to comment #406 in Jim Henley's thread.
Rightwing drive-by attacking liberals for laziness, ad hominems, irrelevance, and statements above poster's head.
Request for homework assistance is answered with hilariously misleading misinformation.
Witty sonnet by Mike Ford. Sonnets in response by Claude Muncey and Jim Macdonald. Retaliatory double dactyl by Virge and villanelle by Kevin Andrew Murphy. First riff on "This is just to say." Funny quatrain by Avram Grumer summarizing original post. Poem in pre-modern English by one of the regulars. Jo Walton weighs in, impressively, and thread goes into hyperdrive. Moderator declares it a game, starts keeping track.
Thanks from a site admin for the reference in post #7.
Misplaced comment about particle.
You people have no inkling of the facts.
You people just don't see the situation.
You people sit alone and grind an ax.
You people start and bring your own damn nation.
You people sleep with partners made of straw.
You people'd unconvert old Johnny Knox.
You people sturmed the drang off Godwin's Law.
You people, get your hands out of your socks.
You people, by the merest act of saying,
"You people," spin the prop atop your beanie;
"You people" is your one-string banjo playing,
"You people" goes da capo senza fine.
Here sits a church, the browser is its steeple:
Open the tab, and see the typing people.
Re D.'s reference to "lunch", long, complicated but delicious sounding recipe (with only one or two ingredients omitted).
Post intended for previous entry.
Post intended for long-abandoned thread.
What astonishes me is that it took until #430 to get to Mornington Crescent.
Post pointing out that it has been done before, while making reference to the good old days on the Internet.
Idle speculation as to Namedropper von Comment being big-endian or little-endian, with a snarky assumption that from his comments one can just tell that he must use the Wrong Operating System.
OS snark is accompanied by an impugning of von Comment's parentage.
Politely sidelong comment from moderator about not making pinatas of persons long since banned.
sheepish comment by latecomer, with apology for not being overly funny due to self deprecating excuse.
Pathetic and late post by regular lurker to "join in". Now with added quotation marks...
"in a snowstorm, uphill, both ways" post referencing ancient computer hardware.
completely unrelated comment by frequent poster.
apology by frequent poster confessing that recent post was put on the wrong thread.
"I know I'm being pedantic here but" post invoking philosophical arguments to the meanings of several terms used by previous poster ending by proclaiming the previous poster is an idiot, for some definition of "idiot".
attempt by a third party to mediate ongoing flamewar which only reignites topics that had been previously buried and forgotten.
haiku is posted
which conveys some new insight,
rhymes with "Nantucket".
picture of rabbit with a pancake on its head is posted.
Diatribe about latest political situation, sparked by a coincidental similarity of newly elected politician's name to the poster in comment #47.
Reply to Elise, showing off Mornington Crescent/ISIHAC in-knowledge by sly dropping of phrases "in nid" and "double-platform loop".
Plays Definitions on "blog." Begins to sing One Song to the Tune of Another.
Fawning and obsequious apology to moderator and list participants for transgression that apparently only occured in the poster's version of reality.
Post attributing controversial statement to incorrect commenter, followed by sharp attack on misidentified commenter's ability to reason clearly.
another lurker unlurks with nothing particularly interesting to say just to get in on the fun
spam spam spam spam spammity spam, wonderful [abrupt deletion and adjustment to filters]
Increasingly digressive tangential subthread among two or three posters.
Apologies for making needed correction. False claim of hating to rain on anyone's parade. Gleeful assertion that previous poster mispelled $PHRASE as $UTTERLY_DIFFERENT_PHRASE. Belligerent enquiry as to which part of $SOME_OTHER_PHRASE said poster finds so hard to understand. Hackneyed gibe concerning battle of wits and unarmed foe. Avoidance of responsibility by insertion of final smiley.
Post with very little to say, merely agreeing with all previous posters, including those with contradictory positions.
Shake of head at one's own pathetic inability to come near the tremendous cleverness of all the other commenters.
Pleading for mental processes regarding pre-pubertals.
Plaintive remark that I blogged this two weeks ago, in detail. Link to blog named after obscure part of human brain.
Blindingly erudite post in foreign language (German?). Reply in more obscure foreign language (ideally dead; Latin? Sumerian?). Learned chortle from third poster at unsuspected ambiguity in Sumerian post. Question about making replica clothes of obscure Oriental dynasty. Long conversation between at least four people who know all about said clothes and wear them in their spare time. Offer to sell mysterious item of clothing, nature unknown except to above four people. Parody of Dante. Reference to Early Church Father. Interjection about emergency medicine.
Long, bloodcurdlingly detailed advice from James D. Macdonald about what to do in event of some dire emergency (heart stops, house floods, leg falls off, children attacked by whale, etc.) Posters stunned into silence. Long, contemplative pause as commenters look thoughtfully at own houses, children, legs, etc. Timid, Piglet-like question. Terrifyingly learned and hope-destroying reply.
Sexist comment.
Complaint about censorship by feminazis.
Disemvowelling all around, followed by acerbic warning from TNH. Applause.
ntntnlly dsmvwlld wtty cmmnt, whch ll Mkng Lght rglrs cn rd s qckly s rdnry prs, bt whch bffls ts trgts ntrly.
Indignant post blaming the moderators for disemvowelling an innocent party.
Orphan post appears after thread abandoned.
Politely snarky request that persons posting recipes please ensure that quantity of all ingredients are listed. Bemoans loss of last of last year's rhubarb, weeks before new crop availability.
Reference to mini-play starting ~25 minutes into episode 241 of This American Life.
Request for clarification of the differences between ingredients in different countries, leading to an exhaustive exposition of the relative properties of approximately equivalent substances.
Irrelevant anecdote about local equivalent substance of which a poster is fond/tried once in the reign of Queen Anne/is violently allergic to but still loves.
Profuse apology. Lame excuse. False promise that will never do this again. One of the missing ingredients for recipe with incoherent measurement. Apology.
Rambling, dull, irrelevant anecdote about contributions to astronomical science being stifled by academic mafia.
Painful, unsuccessful attempt to relate anecdote to a previous irrelevant comment made three days ago and ignored for several hundred comments since.
Lame sock puppetry, attempting to attract attention to own previous post by posing as somebody else.
Multiple post with apology for first instance.
Lurker thinks of something to say, but is too shy to post it.
Plaintive complaint about browser not displaying last 400 posts.
Orthogonal and largely tone-deaf comment picking up on some obscure point upthread now all but forgotten by the other posters, now elaborated on at terrifying length. Ammended during Preview to make the phrasing more careful, but twice as tedious.
Na ravtzngvp cbfg va ebg13 nccrnef.
Posts own version of recipe earlier posted by someone else, with all ingredients listed, including variants and with sentimntal recollections of previous occasions on which results of said recipe were consumed, as well as persons who had provided recipe to poster, in this and other versions.
Adds, disguised as casual afterthought, remark about remarkable achievement of offspring of sibling, both unknown to most posters and lurkers.
Long list of individuals who died under mysterious circumstances and who have no more than four degrees of separation from well heeled individual. How can you deny this evidence?
Lame comment posted just to mark place where one left off reading, in tomorrow's Last 400 Comments.
Reminder that some browsers may require you to press F11 twice to see all the comments, posted without thinking about the display glitch causing the people who need to see said comment being unable to do so.
Attempt to shanghai thread with long, incomprehensible argument designed to prove malfeasance of previous adminstration ending with poorly spelled insults at all other posters.
Irate posting about lack of responses to previous argument after an immediate refresh showed no additional postings. Intimations about other posters heritage, parentage, social skills and cliquishness.
Complaint about the glitch that causes long threads to go to a blank page with just ads, forcing one to click the back button.
Helpful explanation that the blank page with ads is not a glitch, it is a feature.
Commiseration with blank page "feature" problems. Admonition to fellow readers to not talk so much.
Thanks to original recipe poster for corrections. Extended discussion of changes necessitated by loss of rhubarb and incompleteness of recipe.
Erfcbafr gb ravtzngvp EBG13 cbfg. \/46u3|y 1n5u|71n6 w1771(15m5 1n |3375p34k, pr35um48|y 1n 7h3 83|13f 7h47 n080dy 3|53 (4n r34d 17. 3rny v4fhy6f v4 38613yrr6 whf6 v4 pnfr.
Comment posted almost entirely for the sake of making a Buffy reference.
Pointed comment noting that, given the language skills evident on this site, simply mixing ROT-13 and /33+ is insufficient to mask the real !/\/5u|7. Suggestion re: using an Aramaic translation cypher from ancient Celtic followed by 133+-ing the Enigma -engined output of said translation, just to make it a little bit of a challenge.
with syntax bizarre unpunctuated comprehensible and barely by non-native just psychotic or english speaker poster post
poster same for apology english bad "syntax bizarre with" be should saying post
Poster expresses deep and abiding fear of lobsters.
Heh. Indeed.
Mandatory Roomba tie-in comment.
Random rant about The Evils Of New York Publishers who do not recognise talent when they see it. Polite flame war explaining difference between employer's website and personal blog.
Request for help identifying half-remembered story/movie/TV show seen once when poster was home sick at age 10.
Arcane string of semi-logical connections and deductive leaps constructed for the sheer joy of pointing out how all this relates to dinosaur sodomy.
Irrelevant post for the purpose of seeing one's name on a popular thread.
Post ruefully noting that Sarah S beat me to the dinosaur sodomy link.
Seriously out-of-touch poster demads explanation of how dinosaurs, in combination with sodomy, could be either relevant or amusing to original topic.
Urgent post with added emphasis, said urgency leading to effed-up html tag.
Inquiry as to whether a story lacking in dinosaurs can make up for it by removing some sodomy and adding lobsters. Includes comment that suggests (inaccurately) that poster had guessed correctly about Mr Stross's phobia.
Note that comment by "Glenn Reynolds or someone claiming to be him for amusement value" was posted by someone (cough cough) with an e-mail address at "NOSPAMyahoo.com"; suggestion that this must be an alternate-reality-based e-mail hosting service.
Nostalgia about similar thread , uninteresting to and unfamiliar to all except [at most] one other poster here.
Return sonnet, destroyed in preview page due to structural and personal awkwardness.
Startling link of thread topic to some unspeakable knitting project; general wiggins ensue.
Dramatic, terse, presumably colonial lobster recipe, including phrase "boiled well until they be dead".
Long, detailed discursion on the malfeasance of a vanity press or other publishing scam, culminating in eventual comeuppance for the culprit du jour. (Paranoid conspiracy followup about font-kerning and Photoshop artifacts in POD books.) Gratuitous nudibranch reference.
Confusion about relevance or otherwise of personal anecdote involving grandmother and cans of coffee shipped across the Atlantic just after the War.
Smart-alec remark to the effect that self-referential discourse is the senescence of a medium.
Half-dozen comments playing with self-referentiality, just to be polite. (O the embarrassment. All die.)
Commenter is put in mind of certain interesting aspects of SS. Barbara, Margaret of Antioch, and Catherine of Alexandria.
Reference made to ancient Particle with a portrait of Margaret's cute pet dragon.
Proprietor posts long cheerful descriptive recipe, which contains no firm quantities or cooking times, lapses into Middle English at several critical points, and includes digressions about reverse distillation and obscure varieties of citrus that run as long as the actual cooking instructions.
Moderator admits has been trying to find that picture again. Makes hazy reference to Jesus eating a guinea pig.
Molesworth's account of skool pla invoked to describe effect of Ajay's comments, other comments as well.
Link to Photoshopped image of SS. Barbara, Margaret of Antioch, and Catherine of Alexandria as The Supremes (w/Queen o'Sheba as D. Ross), found by application of search engine technology that may violate unpublished DHS regulation carrying severe criminal penalties. Link slashdotted, multiply mirrored, and then implodes.
Belated translation of Whyrf' cbfg.
brief comment on minor point that is (almost) all one can compass if one attempts to take a day's posts at one gulp.
another brief comment on an entirely different small point -- picked out with some ... liberal ... punctuation (that might suggest speech if living people could speak parends).
Moderator writes long post describing recurrent friction-generating interactions involving a dozen or so regulars; shakes head fondly, deletes post.
(Moderator catches self reading foregoing, shaking head fondly, and reaching for delete key. Is startled.)
ad hominem directed at circular argument poster
circular poster bifurcates issue with ad hominem poster
attempts to bring thread back on topic fail as non-sequitor topic becomes hugely popular topic
reference to microsoft and bill gates made. Godwin's other law satisfied.
Commenter proposes amendment to Godwin's Law stating that infractions of it don't count if absolutely everyone ignores them.
Idle proposal of airshow involving SS. Christina the Amazing and Joseph of Cupertino mutates into discussion of whether bilocation is teleportation or simultaneous presence of two alternate realities: extension, substance, accident report, parking in NYC, evidence of miracles, worse in Bay Area, silicon, AI, can kraut, six bagels, wave asterisk.
His followers called him MAHASAMATMAN. His friends called him...
Random link to pictures of Cats in Zeppelins.
Reference to "Serenity" made. Fond memories of "Firefly" recalled.
Request made for a Yet Another Story IDentification. Can't remember anything from the entire book other than at one point there is a totally irrelevant scene involving two secondary characters having a conversation about some insignificant factoid. Despite not being able to remember anything of the plot, significant characters or events, poster reminisces about how great it was reading it.
YASID request is answered, including book title, author, year published. Also, it is pointed out that half of what was in the original request was actually wrong.
Rather long and detailed flame war erupts regarding how Star Trek teleporter technology would be implemented in real life. Two camps emerge: "worm hole tunnels" and "matter disassemblers, transmitters, recievers, reassemblers". Both claim the other side's solution is far too complex to ever be feasible.
entire post made in pirate speak. Arr.
pst lks dsmvwlled bt ws ctlly typd tht wy fr cmdc ffct
Combination of YASID, lobster, and coffee can comments into mention of Theodore Cogswell's short story "Emergency Rations".
Pedantic correction of error in Latin which would have been recognised and ignored anyway by anyone who cared.
Discussion of vanity presses using POD spawns sub-thread reminiscing about days of hot lead. Side-track to Victorian era equivalents of APAs.
Query as to whether the author of the YASID ever published a short story in a collection on [theme]...poster seems to recall such, but can't place what the [theme] was, when it might have been published, or any of the other authors or stories in the anthology.
Star Trek transporter squabble expands into discussion of whether a disassembled and reassembled person is the same person as before.
Transporter squabble ranges into the semiotic value of unexpected goatees.
"some unspeakable knitting project"
Steals obvious joke from Douglas Adams about "fabric of space-time". Makes obvious and strained reference to HP Lovecraft. Posts. Realises how lame post looks. Retreats in embarrassment.
Naive request for explanation of every abbreviation (e.g. YASID) and in-joke encountered in the thread to date. Attempted ingratiation. Shrubbery.
Insecure commenter's earnest explanation that she knew what everyone meant all along, followed by a clear demonstration that most of the math and all of the foreign language passages were beyond her comprehension, and besides, she has no ready access to rhubarb.
Long explanation of how the transporter really works, with formal citations from Stargate SG-1, a 1968 Doctor Who serial, and an episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series. Marathon comment ends with an expression of confusion over words that disappeared when comment was previewed, and rueful compl
Comments on "Blog":