I’ve been in a bit of a rut lately with regard to intake of new content – I’ve been busy with both school and various creative projects and not left a lot of time to keep up with things. But I have a pile of things – mostly articles, some comics and the like – bookmarked, that I go back and read when I need a pick-me-up or motivation boost or something else of the sort, and that I find myself oft... »
Ever since I was a kid who got sent to bed far earlier than I was actually prepared to sleep, I’ve had a tendency to pick up somewhat nonstandard and ultimately not very useful skills on a whim – I taught myself to juggle one-handed (poorly), while sitting on my bed in the dark using Koosh balls (remember them?); I taught myself to write left-handed, and then in the dinosaur footprint alphabet fro... »
Being of a femme-ish presentation (more tomboy, or just ‘gamer,’ really), I am assumed to be straight by nearly all of the people I meet. This is annoying, though something I’m unfortunately quite used to. A recent internet white rabbit hunt had me reading about femme flagging using colored nail polish, and thence to the hanky code and other sartorial signals historically or currently used to co... »
When I get into conversations with friends about books, we often fall into discussion of not just our favorites, but those that have influenced our thinking the most. I can trace certain things about myself directly to novels (and legends, and sometimes movies) because of how strongly some elements affected me, and that is at once both fascinating and a bit frightening. Janny Wurts’s Wars of Ligh... »
It’s convention season again, and while I’m not one to go hopping through several over the course of the year (grad school schedule and budget makes that an impossibility), my one non-negotiable vacation each year is Dragon*Con. Whenever I go there, or to a Renaissance festival (not yearly, but frequent), it feels like I’m stepping into a bubble completely removed from the rest of the world, and ... »
In the last Humor AI, I asked what it was about slapstick comedy, awkwardness, or other negative situations that made them funny. There was a really excellent comment on that post that made the point that people seem to use laughing at other people’s awkwardness or misfortune to distance themselves from it and/or to signify some understanding of the situation. That plays directly into one of the ... »
There were some great comments on last week’s post, and several people mentioned the aspect of surprise or violation of expectation – plays on words and unexpected connections between concepts. References and the sense of being ‘in’ on a situation were also mentioned, and both those themes were identified in my previously-mentioned mini-workshop on the subject. »
Some time ago, I got into an extensive, drawn-out discussion with a group of friends about the nature of humor and what makes something funny. The first time we talked about it, we just named things we could think of that we found humorous and described what it was about those things that made them funny. When we were having trouble identifying some unifying factor, we decided to each keep a jou... »
