Tuesday, August 14, 2012

MKMOT (August 14, 2012)

So, a lot of imaginary people have asked me "Marv, you're such an impeccable speller. Why is that?"

Well, I don't remember much about my childhood, but I do (vaguely) remember one incident. I was in 2nd grade, and somehow I got into a debate with a classmate over how to spell "penis". I thought it was "penus". In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't know. Anyhoo, some little hellion in the room had a Speak & Spell (toy!). So one of us typed in one version or the other, and the end result was an audible, robotic pronunciation that, whether right or wrong, was loud and intelligible enough for the teacher to hear. Well, for some reason, her course of action was to have me write "I will not type penis into a Speak & Spell" or something to that effect some unmemorable number of times.

I'm mostly over the trauma of this incident, but it still raises some interesting questions. Namely, why was Mrs. Smith so obsessed with penis? And did she find work soon after? Regardless, a valuable lesson was learned, and to this day I have little tolerance for people who can't spell. Oof.

I-t-apostrophe-s O-p-e-n.




48 comments:

  1. Guess Kinja doesn't want to accept my brilliant pun involving Tan Mom and Fiddler on the Roof. Fine then. Suck it, comment save fail.

    ReplyDelete
  2. [Looks at New York Cosmos article;]

    Paster of Posts > Pacer of Posts

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  3. Guy Who Is Probably Gamboa, Because All The Guy Whos Are Probably Gamboa, Because That's What Some Guy SaidAugust 14, 2012 at 11:35 AM

    Question to get the discussion (Kinja!) flowing:

    If you could pull a lever and magically cause any five Deadspin commenters to increase their commenting frequency, who would you choose?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. With almost no thought, and in no particular order, other than number 1:

      5. cheese-mac (or Sean, or whatever...I don't see why he can't comment and edit)
      4. Mattingly's Sideburns
      3. TDK
      2. Hume
      1. MKM!

      Delete
    2. No thought, top of my head:

      TDK
      Bevraj of Choice
      Taco_Mailman
      DJ Jazzy Jeff Weaver
      The Comment Faerie, because that would probably mean they're smacking people down more often.

      Delete
    3. Ummm . . . Steve U?

      I can't be the only one who has noticed. The guy has made like 4 jokes in 10 days. With the last redesign, Steve U was the standard-bearer, and he soldiered on even in the early days of Kinja. But it sure looks for all the world like he's drifting away, and that's a terrible loss.

      So, the correct answer is Steve U.

      Also:

      Bevraj of Choice
      Mattingly's Sideburns
      David Hume
      All Over But The Sharting

      Delete
    4. I second literally all of the above. If Hume were around more, I'd lose my shit. In addition:

      ClintonPortishead and Stev D have popped in rarely, and they would be welcomed back.

      I know SponsoredbyV8 and BBAM claim to be "swamped" at "work" or "whatever", but I don't buy it. Miss 'em.

      And SavetoFavorites has this aggravating habit of leaving an absolute gem in a thread long after it's been forgotten, and disappearing for a while.

      And Uwebollocks or something whatever I guess

      Delete
    5. All of the starred ones?

      I used to wake up 30 minutes early every morning just so I could quickly flip through all the posts, scan for the multiple gems in each, and get my day off to a funny start.

      I also had these great visions of spending my summer alone (family goes back to US) staying up late commenting. That's how I got started last year and it was insanely fun.

      On the plus side, it is nice to get more sleep these days.

      / Goes back to sleep

      Delete
    6. I choose denial re: Steve U. He's fine, and commenting regularly. Everything's fine! Kinja treats me fine!

      Love all the folks mentioned here above... let's add the following:

      SSE
      Hatey
      Achiever
      Stev D
      Bullet_Tooth_Tony (I'm lost trying to parse Drew's stuff without the guy)

      Delete
    7. The Amazing SneijdermanAugust 14, 2012 at 12:34 PM

      Azure Texan made a triumphant return a couple months ago, but he's faded back into the ether it seems. He would be a nice addition.

      Delete
    8. Azure Texan . . . would be a nice addition.

      There's the understatement of all understatements. He'd draw a crowd almost immediately.

      Delete
    9. Amen to Tex. I must have blocked out the memory because it's too painful dealing with the loss. Jesus Christ, is that man incredibly brilliant and funny.

      Delete
    10. In addition to Azure Texan, another obvious one would be Gourmet Spud.
      More recent guys that would be good to see include Delonte and Always Winning.

      and shuttledik.

      Delete
    11. Azure Texan
      Len Bias Cocaine Surplus
      Gourmet Spud
      Weed Against Speed
      Bobby Big Wheel

      Delete
  4. Nice choice of video this morning. That's the finest sampling of a legendary Beastie Boys track that any Scientologist has ever done.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Must everything be about the Beastie Boys?

      One unique talent and future Hall of Famer sampled another, with outstanding results. This is probably my favorite Beck tune.

      Delete
    2. Yes, everything that post-dates 1986 can in some way be traced back to the Beastie Boys. It's fact.

      Beck is shit. Beck is absolute shit. But anyone can sound good when they've got So Whatcha Want to back them up.

      Delete
    3. I don't own any of his stuff, but Beck is a unique talent that deserves way more credit and respect than you're giving him.

      Perhaps he needs to do some spoken word covers to garner your respect.

      Delete
  5. To rebut.

    FACT: Skyline Chili is worse than inedible; it will go down, lay waste to your gullet, and continue downward, unimpeded by gastric juices and GI-tract bends, until it lands in a toilet/a campground/your shorts/a pair of shorts you're trying on. It's overrated, drippy horseflop, and it BELONGS on overcooked spaghetti with raw onions; it's in its element there.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I laughed at that thread. If you want to jazz up spaghetti noodles, I recommend chorizo and cheese instead.

      Delete
  6. I JUST figured out today that you Guy Whos are linking to pictures with your names. I'm really, really embarrassed. Am I the only one completely unaware of this?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Prepare to be even more embarrassed now that you have this knowledge. Embarrassed in the sense that now you have to perform serious self-analysis and ponder the metaphysical as you find yourself 'ctrl-clicking/open in new tab' while at work to see the jpeg associated with the "Guy who sprayed his dog with diarrhea". Not that I encountered this problem yesterday or anything. Just an example.

      Delete
    2. Hah! Yeah, I think a lot of them may have to wait until after work.

      Delete
    3. Actually, they're all tame and totally SFW. The diarrhea dog pic was pretty charming!

      Delete
    4. @RAC

      That's hilarious. The true value in the Guy Who's is (usually) in the link.

      Delete
    5. Mr. Gamboa,

      Thank you for mentioning True Value Hardware on this website. We appreciate your loyalty. Please continue to enjoy our stores, our friendly employees, and low prices on tool, lumber and firearms.

      Delete
  7. Or maybe they're awful, I've lost track. Either way, I'm banging a homeless chick tonight, boss!

    ReplyDelete
  8. This one is mostly for Erg, as I messaged him last night about whether he was a Slashdot reader. Just spinning some ideas for how Kinja could theoretically be (realistically) improved, even though it almost certainly won't happen. But whatever, I'm on lunch here, so off I go.

    Slashdot has gone downhill from its glory days, but it was basically Reddit/Digg for tech stories way before either of those sites. Slashdot, owing to its founders love of the open source programming movement, had a very liberal commenting policy. This, of course, led to a lot of trolls. Most notably, Slashdot was the birthing grounds for the GNAA (don't look this up at work).

    Slashdot tended to draw a very knowledgeable crowd who added a lot to the community, but they also drew the aforementioned trolls. They had to find a way to minimize the trolls while encouraging healthy discussion, even from newbies or anonymous users.

    Their answer was user moderation. It worked like this: If you posted anonymously (which always displayed, in a tongue in cheek way, as "Anonymous Coward"), your comment was considered to be a "0". A registered user, just for going to the trouble of having an account, would default to a +1. Comments ranged from -2 to a max of +5.

    Comments went above or below the designated threshold through the use of karma points. All registered users would, from time to time, receive five karma points to distribute. If you found a comment you liked, give it a karma point. If you found a comment that was a troll or flamebait, give it a negative karma point. Over time, users who consistently received good karma points would have their account bumped up to a default of +2 for their initial comments. An account that received several negative hits would default to a -1. Obviously, this is a bit like the star system, only behind the scenes.

    The key to the system was that every user could filter the comments as they saw fit. Want to see everything? Fine, set your view to show -2 and above (the system would still display the score of any given comment, so even in that view you could quickly filter out the good comments). Want to see only the best comments? Set your view to show only +5 and above. [Users who chose to moderate by karma points had to view all comments]. The system also allowed users to designate a post as "insightful", "funny", "offtopic", etc. Users could choose to view only funny comments, if they so chose.

    Obviously, some of this would go against what Gawker is going for with Kinja. But it'd be interesting to see if they decide to let the users have more of a say in all of the threads, as opposed to just giving the user control over threads they start. Essentially, the Slashdot system gave a way to the entire community to "dismiss" a thread. That right there would be a significant improvement, and would make the Faerie's jobs easier, since it'd be pretty trivial to program it so that the Faerie squad is alerted whenever a thread received a set number of "negative" votes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh no, we could never have a system in place like that! It'll deter Gawker's new "conversationers" from feeling welcome to have witty insightful "conversations."

      There's magic in the wisdom of the masses! MAGIC!

      Delete
    2. I think last week's midnight shift caught up with me and I'm not up to giving this the attention I'd like. And y'all can stop cheering, I'll get back to it another time.

      But at the least I will say that Kinja's algorithm appears to be progressing. Looking at today's posts you'll see that burners are pretty much all shifted to the right unless they've received a response from a non-burner. Makes it easier to ignore them if you're not compulsive. For those who haven't commented much during Kinja's installation, you may not have enough points, or whatever Kinja uses to rank commenters, to not be commingled with them. If this is the case the only way you're going to gain points is to comment, and have people respond to your comments, thus creating a 'discussion'.

      Comment well and prosper.

      Delete
  9. Anybody see that Funbag question today? Second team, baby!

    Can someone tell my coach?

    ReplyDelete
  10. Seriously, those of you who keep trying to analyze me and think of ways of making me better need to stop. You're giving me a complex, and everyone else a headache. Go and enjoy your "lives" you batteri...I mean people.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Just what the heck did you do to your faeries, Jer..er..Kinja?

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    5. Moi? I assure you I knew my mother & father.

      Delete