CSotD: Missing connections
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We'll start on the philosophical couch with an Existential Comics that you can enjoy even if you don't know squat about Leibniz or even Karl Marx, because surely you'll get the Freud parts. Go read the rest.
To tell the truth, I remember Marx and even Engels, but I don't know anything about Leibniz and I was supposed to be reading this stuff in college.
I may have been absent that day.
Which reminds me of an old "Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet" gag.
Never mind classes: I didn't even go to my college graduation, but that was okay. They handed out the diplomas by GPA, so, by the time they realized I wasn't there, it was pretty much over anyway.
Going for the Triple Juxt:
(Dustin)
(Zits)
I was less blown away by any of these gags themselves — not that they didn't make me chuckle — as I was by the fact of them all dropping on the same day.
I'm taking it as a meaningful convergence, like a horoscope: "This would be a good day to check your brain/mouth filter."
Maybe they should have run them yesterday and sent copies to Warren Beatty. We'll get to that in a minute.
Meanwhile, TruthFacts gets marked down slightly for not making the "Problems with Wifi" segment larger.
I like meetings where everyone around the table takes a turn trying to get the wifi to work and then they finally call in someone who doesn't wear a tie so they can actually get the damn thing running.
Of course, if it's a teleconference of some sort, it's even more fun because at least when you're all in the same room, you know what's going on.
The humor being predicated on the fact that it was going to be a colossal waste of time even without the technical delay.
When someone gets back to me with "I was on a conference call," I want to sympathize with them, but even "I was in a meeting" calls for some pity.
And then there was the conference back at the Dawn of Time, when we got educational people from all around the chain to come to Corporate for a two-day conference and I was tasked (you get "tasked" at these things) with a presentation on the Internet, because I was already using it and everyone was supposed to.
So I was addressing a dozen or so people who had no idea of how the thing worked and were scared to touch it in the first place.
It's hard to tell the story in a way that makes the ending a surprise, but, of course, the Internet connection worked for the first presenter, wasn't needed for the next presenter and then went flat dead when it was my turn.
Since we'd moved the projector, the first step was to disconnect and reconnect the whole thing and turn it on and turn it off.
Again. And again.
While my audience is thinking, "If he can't get it to work, I shall never ever go near it."
Finally, we called upon the techies, who cheerfully told us there was nothing wrong with the projector but they had simply turned off the connection and hadn't turned it back on.
This being back when a corporate office could have the Internet down for an hour in the middle of the day without anyone noticing.
This also being so far back in time that, when we met again, I brought in Dr. Bob from the Internet Tourbus and that ought to give some of you a jolt of virtual nostalgia.
Not only did I have him physically there, but we moved the meeting from Corporate to a vocational school so we'd be surrounded by people who actually knew how to keep things running.
Belt and suspenders, baby.
I understand the next Academy Awards are going to be held at the offices of Price-Waterhouse on the same principle, but we'll get to that in a minute.
Speaking of technical nostalgia, this 1957 Rip Kirby provides one more reminder of how all this Internetty stuff has complicated the task of writing good mysteries and thrillers. (And, no, kids, I don't think private detectives could really commandeer Air Force jets even back in those less stuffy days.)
These days, our villain, Silk, would be far more concerned about how to avoid having Kirby able to track him than Sirene would be about how to let him know where she was being taken.
Though one cunning plan would be to leave Africa and head for the USA where access would not be as stable and sweeping.
So anyway.
So anyway
So anyway, for those of you who, like me, didn't stay up for the Academy Awards, here's a nice collection of sketches by Ann Telnaes of the highlights.
And this was not like when your team is losing and so you turn off the TV only to discover the next day that they made an amazing comeback, because, in that case, you can at least find out what happened.
Pretty clear than even the people wandering around with coffee and bleary eyes have no idea what happened, so you might as well be well-rested.
Which may be the only "pretty clear" thing about it.
First of all, how could you — or even Homer Simpson — hand someone the wrong envelope for the last award of the night?
Second of all, this:
(Emma) Stone said "We would have loved to have won best picture. But we are so excited for ‘Moonlight.’ I think it’s one of the best films of all time. I was also holding my ‘best actress in a leading role’ card that entire time. So whatever story, I don’t mean to start stuff, but whatever story that was, I had that card.”
Maybe she should put her next-door neighbor, that Parker kid, on the case.
Anyway, in my day, we knew how to protect sensitive information.
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