It strikes me that one of the great untapped ideas for a Web doohickey would be a Groundskeeper Willie Insult Generator. Given the sheer amount of Simpsons geekery online, you'd think at least one of those Cheeto-gorging leet-speakers would have worked out a word bank and a java program to generate an endless string of phrases in the form "[NOUN]-[VERB]ing [NOUN]-[VERB]er" by now.

Insights Into Failed Comedy, Part 1: Originally, the example insult in this entry was "Cheetoh-munching," but munching really doesn't conjure up the ghastly -- and thus funny! -- spectacle of the fictive "two bags a day" Internet zombie's consumption habits. But gorging? Ah, le mot juste!

Insights Into Failed Comedy, Part 2: Also, "Cheetoh" was misspelled, and poor spelling never helps comedy.


Three Replies to Constructible Comedy

Aaron Shurtleff | November 22, 2006
I think poor spelling can make great comedy. I know people who are still laughing that a (now former) vice-president could not spell potato.

Not that they think the current president is raising the bar...

Kris Weberg | November 24, 2006
Ach! Pipe doon, ye bug-needlin' Quayle-mocker!

Amy Austin | December 20, 2006
"Tomato, Tomahtoe." (Tomater, tamatah, mater... the list could go on -- but I suppose the courteous thing to do would be to resurrect my own dead blog!)


Berserk Wig

Legend has it that Kris Weberg's head is filled with delicious candy, which is why he avoids blindfolded children carrying sticks. Fortunately for you, he's decided to empty the leftovers here at his blog for your amusement and bemusement. Read more »

Collaborative Theatre with Irrational Actors

At a certain point, I guess everyone realizes that it's no use arguing with someone who's coming from virtually a different planet in terms of assumptions and opinions. And at a certain other point, some people realize that they cannot stop despite the uselessness of going on. While that sort of argument only very rarely happens to me here at TC, it certainly happens to me elsewhere, where I use various Zaba-proof psuedonyms to conduct my arguments about subjects ranging from the pointless to the inane. Go »

Silk appears in Rome

Hi, all! This will be the second blog I've authored and the fourth blog with which I've been involved as an author, and I still haven't really worked out just what to say in these introductory posts. As most of you know, though, I'm wordy enough once I get rolling that content shouldn't be a problem. Go »

Don't Leave Me Hangin' on the Telephone

"Goodbye" is, increasingly, the midpoint of every conversation I have online or on wireless. Every phone call with a friend or relative seems to turn into one of Eliot's winding streets, though usually neither tedious nor insidious. I thought this might help, but it's painfully generic advice: There are several ways that you can end a long phone call without making up a story or sounding rude: Leave the conversation open. Go »

Like the first census in China

Quite possibly the best non-TC blog post ever. The comments are the funniest part. It does raise an interesting, if commonly-known point about the Internet (or, as Senator Ted Stevens calls it, "a bunch of tubes"): It's like your permanent record from grade school, only real....and Go »

Imaginary Exploits of a Hairpiece Gone Mad

I stop blogging for a week to read up on political theology, and the world goes awry: planets vanish from the heavens, fantasy football gains a stereotypically "feminine" counterpart, and America's children become catastrophically dumber. And the worst of it is, I haven't really got much to post about in my life, unless someone here is up for a discussion of Walter Benjamin's metaphor of the automaton and the dwarf, which is nowhere near as funny as the dirty joke you probably just made up while reading that phrase. (See, there's this chess-playing automaton, and it represents historical materialism, but the machine is animated by a hidden dwarf who represents theology....oh, Go »

Like, Real Gone, Daddy-O

I've been fairly busy for the last several days, going through writing-tutor training for Fall, reading for exams, and using Go »