or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
•
"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
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"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
August 09, 2004
Jake Sexton in Extra! (Exclamation Point In Original)
For reasons even I don't understand, I despise the word "bl*g." Out of the kindness of his heart, Bob Harris invented the alternate term "eblo" to refer to this site.
In any case, Jake Sexton, an occasional visitor here, has written an excellent article about b__gs in the August issue of Extra!, the magazine of Fairness and Accuracy and Reporting. Unfortunately it's not online, but perhaps this can be rectified.
The one flaw in the article is that it doesn't mention that the word "b@!g" is an abomination before God.
ALSO: Jake's website links to this article about the JibJab brothers suing Woody Guthrie's estate. They want to establish that their This Land Is Your Land parody is fair use -- ie, not a violation of the copyright.
This lawsuit, and the general issue of fair use, is actually quite important. If the little people (ie, us) can't parody previous works of art, the world will become bleaker.
Posted at August 9, 2004 06:01 AM | TrackBackI can see two good reasons to dislike the word "bl*g":
1. It's about as aesthetically appealling as chunky dirty dish water in a wine glass, as poetic as a fork stuck in steaming shit. It's just plain ugly.
2. It's often used in a decidedly adolescent manner, as a way of proclaiming that you're part of some imaginary in-crowd because you know that crowd's shizzle (that's Snoop lingo for "shit"). The bl*g realm, being not nearly clever enough for something like Snoop's stylized hip-hop-pig-latin, resorts to awkward nerdy gestures like "snark", "turkee", "troll", "preznit", and such. Nothing wrong with slang (every business and social circle in the world has its jargon), but I've been trying to stay away from hipper-than-thou code language, especially when its adherents are decidedly unhip and it's just plain ugly.
Nevertheless, I find it impossible to avoid using the word bl*g because it has simply become embedded in common parlance. But I have a notorious potty mouth, so blog you.
I suppose you can always use "web log" or "web journal".
Peace.
Posted by: Kai at August 9, 2004 11:10 AMKai,
I hereby declare that you and I are good friends. I'm afraid you don't have any say in this.
Posted by: Jonathan Schwarz at August 9, 2004 04:22 PMThey finally printed my article? The important question is, "where's my check?!" Dagnabbit.
Posted by: Jake at August 10, 2004 07:22 PM
