Snowclones don't come with flavored syrup.
According to Wikipedia,
A snowclone or catch structure is a type of formula-based cliché which uses an old idiom in a new context. It was originally defined as "a multi-use, customizable, instantly recognizable, time-worn, quoted or misquoted phrase or sentence that can be used in an entirely open array of different jokey variants by lazy journalists and writers."
This weekend, for example, I was 6 months late in hearing about lolcats. And then preceeded to update my Gmail status to say "I"m in ur gmales..." Dan's reply was "Tracking your spamz."
I got to update Wikipedia for the first time ever, too. But that's another story. Further proof that Wikipedia is more than just Stephen Colbert's personal playground. Or maybe not, considering I was updating the List of Snowclones.
But snowclones are fascinating besides my wikipedia update and laggard internet meme. A, it's a pretty cool new word. B, there are some snowclones that I don't know the original for. Pink is the new black. X is the new Y. What was the first one of those? According to Wikipedia, Pink is the new black was the original. That doesn't ring true. Why doesn't it ring true?
Geeks also seem to rule supreme in the world of snowclones.
- Original X: "go to statement"; from title of a letter about computer programming languages by Edsger Dijkstra (1968, chiefly computer science)
I mean, really. Then again, the one I added (I couldn't keep it in) is no less geeky:
- These are not the X you're looking for.
- Original X: "droids". From the movie Star Wars (1977).
They're in-jokes for different slices of culture. Yet, reading through them, there are few I don't recognize. Perhaps English as a Second Language teachers everywhere will have to add Snowclones to their curricula. Idioms for the cool kids.
If you like conceptual art, think about honking.
I went to LACMA this weekend to check out the Dan Flavin exhibit. I'm a secret conceptual art lover. Anything DIA related, I'm in. Robert Irwin, sign me up. Richard Serra, my claustrophobia is your claustrophobia. Fred Sandback, I love your yarn.
So when my sister mentioned the Dan Flavin exhibit, I was in. It's phenomenal. I'd seen some of his stuff at Dia:Beacon years ago, but it was all in one room, and kinda small stuff. And though I'd just finished reading "Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees," I didn't quite get it. I don't know if I even got it this time, but I think I did.
Your whole consciousness changes. Getting close to the sculptures, slowly, is like feeling your brain change. We accidentally entered the exhibit from the back, drawn into the room holding one of his "barriers" from 1973. The room is a the essence of green. As you stay in the room, you feel it become
less green. And when you look back at the daylight, it looks pink. You know your brain is playing tricks on you, but it's still pretty awesome. Or maybe that's what makes it awesome.
My sister is a trained monkey.
My sister finished her PhD in Musicology last Semester. Yay Caroline! Since then, she's picked up some random jobs. Teaching at UCLA. Tutoring children left behind. And being a trained monkey.
Seriously. Now, I don't know all the facts. I'm just supposing here. But she's been temping for Google. She had to take a test to qualify for this job. She can't tell me what the test was like. All I know is, it's 10 hours a week. Roughly $7000 K a year. And it's fairly mindless: she does other stuff during the work, including watching TV. This is a Gen X-er we're talking about. She doesn't have magical Gen Y multi-information stream skills.
Figure, a software engineer costs Google roughly $250K a year. That's 37 Carolines. What I want to know is, is she just teaching the search results? Or does Google take all this data (which I've got to assume is rating search results, or something like it), and then figure out ways that PhDs are smart that computers aren't. And then get their software engineers to code that into the algorithm?
1000 trained monkeys only costs Google $7M a year. That's not a lot, in Google dollars.
Dan tells me that if you poke around on Google, you'll find some stuff about it. Apparently, they have a crazy team of researchers world-wide, mainly at Universities. Being trained monkeys.
Maybe the world is telling me something.
It just took me 4 tries and 3 error messages to post my first blog entry in 2 years. I think Blogger knows something I don't.
Kinda like Southwest. Who has decided I'm a CUNNTT.
I flew to LA last weekend, and the confirmation Southwest's computers "randomly" served me was CUNNTT. I think it's trying to tell me something.
I have a computer science degree, and I realize that a computer isn't smart enough on it's own to serve me that confirmation number, or not, but it still feels purposeful. Like Southwest knows something I don't. You tell me. Am I?
Let me try this again.
It's been a while. Hi.
After my family members discovered my blog, and I started having a professional life again, blogging seemed weird. With poking from my colleague, Pete Mortensen, I've decided to try again.
Driving home tonight from rehearsal, I thought to myself, I'm going to sit outside on my boyfriend's patio, have a beer, and blog. And that sounded ridiculously great. Maybe it's the self-goodness that comes with sharing your thoughts with the world. Or just the beer. Either way, I'm back.
