David S. Atkinson's Blog, page 237

Finding Amusement In The Facebook Nickleback Trick

I was amused to see that someone has put together a page where you can find out which of your Facebook friends likes Nickleback, supposedly for the purpose of finding out who you should unfriend. I wouldn’t unfriend people just because they like something I don’t like, but I did think this was funny.

Personally, I’m not even sure who Nickleback really is. If I’ve heard any of their music before, I’m not immediately aware of it. I’m certainly not a big fan. I don’t think my MP3 library has a single song of their. However, I’m not exactly a huge hater either. I just don’t know enough about them to feel passionate one way or another.

Apparently someone does, though. Apparently some people really, really hate Nickleback. That’s amusing in and of itself. Putting together a page so you can seek out and commit defriending vengeance on people who do like them is even funnier.

I don’t know, maybe Nickleback deserves this. Maybe they don’t. The fact this kind of thing is generated is humorous either way.

Comparing Stephen Colbert’s Career Track to Jon Stewart’s

Well, Stephen Colbert will apparently be succeeding David Letterman as host of The Late Show. Personally, I’m not that concerned. For one thing, I’m sure Colbert will do a fine job. For another, I haven’t watched Letterman for years anyway (though I used to watch quite a bit). The thing that struck me was finding myself contrasting the career tracks of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart.

I mean, Colbert was a smaller player on Stewart’s The Daily Show for a while there before getting his own show. His show was a humorous political show similar to The Daily Show. Now he’s going to be moving up to a bigger time general variety show.

Meanwhile, Jon Stewart was a smaller player way back in the early nineties in his own general variety show on MTV, The Jon Stewart Show. Then he moved up when he went to head the humorous political show that is The Daily Show.

Isn’t that at least mildly amusing? They both have moved up to bigger things…but in completely opposite paths. Okay, maybe it isn’t so interesting. I just thought it was an amusing observation, a connection between the two stars.

Instead Of A Blog Post Today Let’s Have Something Completely Different

Instead of a blog post today, let’s just look at this section from a classic Monty Python sketch (“The golden age of ballooning“):

Louis: Right! OK! Let’s get ‘em.

(He and his two dukes are suddenly galvanized into action. They are about to grab the plans when Joseph enters, clad only in a towel and rather silly bath hat.)

Joseph: Just a moment!

Jacques: Joseph!

Joseph: (indicating the king) This man is not Louis XIV!

Jacques: Joseph! Are you out of your mind!

Joseph: I’ve been looking it up in my bath. Louis XIV died in 1717. It’s now 1783! Answer me that!

Louis: Did I say Louis XIV? Oh, sorry, I meant Louis XV… Louis XV.

Joseph: He died in 1774!

(Louis, getting rather hot and angry, comes over to Joseph belligerently.)

Louis: All right, Louis XVI!… listen to me, smartarse, when you’re King of France,… you’ve got better things to do than go around all day remembering your bloody number.

(Putting his face very close to Joseph’s. He butts him sharply and viciously on the bridge of the nose with his forehead in the time-honoured Glaswegian way.)

Joseph: Aaaaaarh!

(He reels away, clutching his nose in agony. Louis approaches Jacques, equally belligerently.)

Did Virus Shield Really Have NO Anti-Virus Functionality?

I got a good laugh recently when I found out that Virus Shield, one of the top paid apps in the Android (Google Play) store for a bit, turned out to be a scam. People paid $3.99 for it and all it apparently did was displayed a small icon indicating an infected status and then a slightly different icon indicating a clean status. Funny.

However, I don’t think it’s COMPLETELY accurate that the scam app had no anti-virus function. After all, didn’t the app take up storage space? Didn’t it utilize processor and memory resources? At least some? Wouldn’t that storage space and processor/memory resources therefore not be available for viruses?

As such, didn’t the scam app have some, miniscule anti-virus effect? Sure, it took up resources a virus might otherwise be able to utilize. Sure, you could have done the same thing with pictures of cats wearing people clothes. However, it didn’t have absolutely NO anti-virus functionality.

After all, we need to be fair.

The New Skepticism

I have noticed a new kind of skepticism creeping into my analysis of the items I see on social media. It doesn’t always operate, but I’ve noticed that I’m skeptical of certain things in a way I never was before.

For example, I saw a social media post by a friend that claimed a horrible roller coaster accident had happened at a Six Flags or some such amusement park. The post claimed that an entire roller coaster had gone off the rails and killed something like fifty people. Horrible, right? Well, I was skeptical.

You see, there was no link to an article. There was just a video link that supposedly was too graphic to be shown on the news. For one thing, I didn’t want to see that. More relevant though, I immediately wondered whether or not this was real without some kind of other citation.

I checked my various news gathering sites. I saw nothing about such an accident. I even tried searching them for any kind of similar accident in case someone had just decided that this wasn’t front page news. Nothing.

It seemed to me that if this had really happened, there would have been some other kind of reference to it in the news. It wouldn’t have gone by unnoticed entirely, especially since the video had supposedly been determined to be too graphic by some news source. As such, that should have meant they were at least reporting on the tragedy.

As such, I determined it hadn’t really happened. I’m not sure if the video was a prank or a scam, but someone was trying to appeal to people who wanted to see horrible things by making up something about a horrific tragedy. I wasn’t going to watch the video either way, but I really wasn’t going to watch anything about something that waved such red flags at me.

Something was fishy.

The Fifth Blurb For “The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes!”

Time to share another blurb for The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes! (Look here, here,  here, and here for the previous four). Closer and closer to publication!

Here we go:

My vision of hell involves being trapped in a Wal-Mart, but in The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes , David S. Atkinson makes a good case for Village Inn. On the other hand, he argues that it could be heaven: drinks are refilled, breakfast is always served, and the check never arrives. What more could you want? Filled with a cast of characters brought to life through the vivid imagination of Cassandra, lovers of literary fiction will enjoy this wildly inventive story. I know I did!



- Jeremy Morong, author of On The Backs of Dragons

I love getting blurbs. Love it.

How Did I Live That Long In Omaha And Not Know They Once Had A World’s Fair?

I went to a reading at the Tattered Cover the other night for The Swan Gondola By Timothy Schaffert. I didn’t know much about the book, but I’d heard friends saying good things about it so when I noticed it on the events list I decided to go. Big surprise for me? The book is set at the 1898 World’s Fair in Omaha.

I was not aware that Omaha had ever hosted the World’s Fair.

Okay, it wasn’t actually called the World’s Fair in 1898. It was called the Trans-Mississippi Exposition. The World’s Fair was a colloquialism at that point, I believe.

Still, I lived in Omaha a long time. How did I never hear about this? Or, did I hear and just forgot. This was a huge thing, taking up a massive 180-acre tract in what was then undeveloped North Omaha to build this gigantic city (featuring a 2,000 feet long lagoon encircled by 21 classical buildings) for a summer. 2.6 million people attended, which is a lot for Omaha though smaller than the 27 million visitors to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair (World’s Columbian Exposition) (Omaha always ends up coming across as a little version of Chicago). How could I not have heard about an undertaking this big in Omaha’s history?

Granted, nothing of the fair remains today other than supposedly a marker in Kountze Park, which I can’t be sure I’ve ever visited. Still, how did I miss this?

Then again, I didn’t realize that Aksarben was Nebraska spelled backwards until I was almost 19. Maybe I just didn’t pay enough attention.

Easter Is Coming

Well, Easter is coming. That means I really need to start figuring out what I’m going to do. Am I going to wish people a Happy Easter? I’ve got to figure this out soon, before Easter gets here.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have an anti-holiday wish habit. I see all sorts of people on various social media wishing everyone a merry Christmas, happy Thanksgiving, happy Halloween, happy Valentine’s Day, happy St. Patrick’s Day, happy Guy Fawkes Day, whatever. It wears me down after a while, seeing wish after wish after wish after wish. It’s not that I’m necessarily down on the holidays…but doesn’t everyone get sick of hearing about it sometimes? Just a little bit?

Maybe I’m just a grouch.

Anyway, I tend to try to liven things up a bit by posting “Happy Easter!” regardless of what holiday it happens to be. I’m getting known for it. It screws with things a little bit wishing that instead of whatever holiday it happens to be.

However, soon it will actually be Easter. Do I wish people a happy Easter? Do I pick something else to wish people? Do I go silent entirely?

Well, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I’ve got to pick something…and I’m running out of time to think.

The First Step In The Master Plan For Las Vegas Revealed

Well, the world’s tallest Ferris wheel is now open in Las Vegas. It’s pretty big, and that alone might impress you…but it might not. After all, it’s just a really tall Ferris wheel. Or…is it? You see, there are secret and dark plans in the works.

The world’s tallest Ferris wheel might not seem like a hugely noteworthy event…until you learn about the plans for the world’s tallest Tilt-A-Whirl. Then we have to consider the proposed world’s tallest merry-go-round, and the world’s tallest ring toss, as well as the world’s tallest corndog stand.

I think you can see how this is coming together.

That’s right, the world’s tallest Ferris wheel is just a first step in a sinister plot to turn Las Vegas into an immense Coney Island for giants.

Do you think humans will be welcome there? I think not. Even if they don’t plan to grind our bones to make their bread, they’d probably squish us. No, the giants will mean the end of Las Vegas for humans.

I can only hope I’ve warned people in time. Beware the world’s tallest Ferris wheel in Las Vegas.

April Fool’s Day Demonstrates Resentments With Each Other

I’m not much for April Fool’s Day to begin with. It just seems like kind of a crappy holiday. No day off, no food, no love, nothing. Just a bit of humor. I dig humor, but April Fool’s Day kind of leaves me cold in most years.

I started thinking about it, though, and I think it’s actually worse than that. I started thinking about the April Fool’s Day gags I tend to see. Most of them seem to involve at least a certain element of cruelty. Granted, a lot of humor does as well. Still, though April Fool’s Day is supposed to be about a laugh…I think it demonstrates our underlying resentments with each other. We seem to be kind of pissed.

Think about various April Fool’s Day pranks you’ve seen. There are some that delivery fake bad news only to make people happy when the truth is revealed to be different. However, most are the opposite. The joke is held within news so good people want to believe it, and then a laugh is had when people are taken in.

But…that still leaves people with the disappointment that the good news wasn’t real.

I vaguely remember hearing about one where someone was jokingly misinformed that they won the lottery…and then told that it was just a joke and they hadn’t. Ha ha. So funny. That almost makes up for the crushing disappointment I now face in going from thinking I was set for life to realizing I’m not. Way to make my normally happy life seem crappier. What a good joke.

See? Contrary to the holidays that are at least supposed to bring people closer together, there seems to be an aggressive motivation behind April Fool’s Day. It’s buried in humor, and humor at least makes some people feel better, but the thorns are always there.

I suppose we’re only human, though.