I loved this story, “RE: Thesis defense issue – kalirush 🐍” —and only later learned that it was a riff on an old McSweeney’s piece that, yeah, is fun but suffers from the baked-in McSweeney’s problem (i.e., that it “approaches humor with a lab coat and tweezers.”)
Anyway, this amateur fan-fic riff is better, because it is actually funny, not just theoretically funny and basically funny shaped.
[the image above is an XKCD comic]
A handful of seasonally-appropriate tales:
Six years later, I still love this sketch. I think what most resonates for me (as a “half-a-Jew”) is that it highlights both ends of that experience of being “mixed”, how in the space of five minutes you can whipsaw from feeling like a Jew-weirdo-outcast to feeling not-Jew-enough. In a single convo you can go from feeling feel the cut of someone else’s bigotry to finding yourself voicing and breathing fresh life into that very same bigotry. #America!
… I don’t agree with them about everything, but they’re fun to listen to and they’ve got a pretty way of saying what they’re saying:
The Imagination Station in Toledo (where I was helping folks find the Good Noise™ all last December) is hosting their very own M
ini Maker Faire this September. Great folks down there, and a great location along the river. I’ll be there all day with the Loud Lab (amplified Slinkies, simple DIY synths, electric diddley bows. and more)—so mark your calendar. And, if you’re a maker sorta a person, consider applying and showing off what you do (the application deadline is fast approaching).
See you in September!
My DIY musical instrument/noise-toy book Junkyard Jam Band is part of the Brainiac 2 Humble Book Bundle. If you’ve never bought one of these “bundles” before, the deal is this:
This is a commercial/charitable fundraising situation. The Humble Bundle folks and No Starch Press have bundled together a bunch of awesome books. Pay as little as $1 to get a few, $8 to get a bunch, and $15 to get them all. If you go in at the $15 level, you get ~$300 in books (all digital, all in multiple formats, all totally DRM-free, so you can read them however and wherever you like). It’s a really awesome deal (I bought plenty of Humble Bundles way before I ever was part of one—and, I’ll be straight with you: Being part of one as an author is a really big boon for me, too; my last Humble Bundle put an additional 30,000 copies of my book in front of eager makers, and helped me make enough money to stay afloat that year).
Even if you only drop a buck for the first five books, you’re getting some great stuff—Medieval LEGO is fun, the Scratch book is solid, and my son loved Lauren Ipsum (which is sort of a modern computer-science take on Phantom Tollbooth; he’s easily read it a half dozen times). Moving up to the $8 tier doesn’t just get you my book (which regularly sets you back ~$20), but also two of my favorite intro programming books (I learned Python from Teach Your Kids to Code, and Scratch Programming Playground is what taught my kid to code) and a really great manga book that’ll explain electricity to anyone. And, of course, going whole hog just piles on the awesomeness (again, I’m especially pleased to see a couple DIY hands-on electronics books here, especially since Arduino has gotten so dirt-cheap to get into). Every purchase doesn’t just benefit my publisher and me, but also Teach for America.
