Random Thought Thread (main page)

I think the problem is that I should be eating coleslaw where the cabbage is replaced with sliced potatoes and the mayo is replaced with boiling oil.

So, at what point do you add the raisins?

That's the nice thing about raisins -- they won't add extra liquid to your coleslaw.  In fact, if the National Raisin Council is looking for a new advertising hook, that might be just the thing.

I know we've got awhile, but based on our experience with the other Random Thought Thread, I am looking forward to when we hit page 666 on this one.

So I’ve been able to go this decade without knowing what Ready Player One was and finally looked it up on wikipedia. It is a book, soon to be turned into a movie. From the description of the plot:



Okay, wikipedia, a bit odd that you supply a link for a routine phrase such as “ask her out.” Let’s read on:

Oh, I see why.

oh my god

butterscotch hard candies have always been awesome

50 Shades of Grey (2017)

And caramels in any form. 

It nearly killed me, but by god, I got that coax run through that wall.
  It was a lot more complicated than it sounds.

So did I!  Specifically this page:






As the text is kinda hard to read, the page is about the narrator consuming pop culture from what's apparently supposed to be some sort of comprehensive list of "nerdy" pop culture, because apparently he's decided he'd like to be a "nerd", or whatever, I guess.  I'd like to highlight a specific snippet of this passage:
"I memorized lyrics.  Silly lyrics, by bands with names like Van Halen, Bon Jovi, Def Lepperd, and Pink Floyd.
I kept at it.
I burned the midnight oil.
Did you know that Midnight Oil was an Australian band, with a 1987 hit called "Beds Are Burning"?"

Yeah, guy, I knew that Midnight Oil is a band, and that they sang "Beds Are Burning", as does literally anyone who a) was born before 1981, or b) was exposed to at least three hours of classic rock radio as a child.  Thanks for being super condescending though!  Also "bands with names like Van Halen, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, and Pink Floyd" (emphasis mine)?  The main character is a human being from Earth, right?  Like how do you not know who any of those artists are before you decide "Must become walking pop culture encyclopedia"?  Also, at one point he implies that before he undertook this pop culture project, he hadn't seen Star Wars.  Who hasn't seen Star Wars, but then sees a supposedly comprehensive list of pop culture and decides to devour it all and become a giant pop culture nerd or whatever?  Like, had he just never heard of Star Wars before?  I imagine him reading through the list and going "Apparently there's a movie trilogy called, Star...Wars?  No, that can't be right; it must be a typo.  Stars aren't sentient!"

Like, I imagine the first page of the book must go something like: "One day, I was walking around outside and this guy rolled past my house in this big metal thing and apparently it's called a "car", and then he took out these small paper rectangle things called "envelopes" that have these other pieces of rectangular paper called "mail" inside of them and he put them in this thing that's called a "mail box".  But, I didn't know what any of these things were called until I talked to the guy (apparently he's what's known as a "mail man"), and he said to me "Yeah man, don't you know what nouns are?"  And I said "Nouns?  What are nouns?"  And he said "There's this thing called a 'dictionary'.  It's got a list of what are known as 'words' inside of it, and some of the words are what are known as 'nouns'; I'd recommend memorizing what some of them are."  So I bought one of those dictionary things and I started memorizing a bunch of those noun things that that guy was talking about.  And I memorized nouns.  Nouns, with names like "apple", "ant", and "aunt" (it took me a long time to get the difference between those last two down, but what can I say, I'm an obsessive), nouns with names like "bat", "book", and "bike", nouns with names like "cat", "couch", and the aforementioned "car", nouns with names like "dog", "dad", and "dollar", nouns with names like "eye", "elephant", and "elbow"'. . ."and nouns with names like "zoo", "zebra", and "Zimbabwe".  I kept at it.  I burned the midnight oil.  Did you know that "oil" is a noun, and it means 'a kind of viscous liquid that doesn't mix with water'? And after that, I met the mail man again while he was delivering the mail, and told him about my accomplishments, and he said "Wow man, looks like you've really learned a lot."  And I said "Learned...is...noun?"  And he said "Man, you've got a real treat in front of you."  And then he told me about this class of words which are called "verbs".  And that's when things really got crazy."



As an aside, it is a good thing that he implies that Pink Floyd was a band best known for their output in the '80s, though.  Most people will tell you that Pink Floyd's most famous and successful albums were Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall, which were all released in the '70s.  And most people will tell you that fans who've listened to more than just the hits will also hold up albums like The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Meddle, and Animals, which are all from the '60s and '70s, as being on par with, or even better than, those aforementioned more famous albums.  But that's a common misconception.  Most people don't know this, but the Pink Floyd song that is the most popular, the most culturally relevant, and the most beloved by fans, is actually by far "One Slip" off their 1987 album A Momentary Lapse of Reason, closely followed by the sound of a record player running without a record in it because you didn't buy the album from 1983's The Final Cut.  Nothing else even comes close.

I don't know that Hippo is a book vendor, though I do know that she's a skilled typeface artificer.

www.discogs.com/

This will tell you how much it's worth as well as what the demand is so you can assess how likely it is to sell. I'd try their marketplace too, since the only way a record store is going to make money is by shortchanging you. 

Just give it all to me.

This sounds atrocious, but I have to admit my reaction’s not totally negative, though it’s giving me early-2010s nostalgia rather than nostalgia for a time I wasn’t alive for. The relatively innocent sort of eighties-aesthetic-reappropriating stuff—a cafe opened near me where they had a DeLorean in the window and Calvin & Hobbes posters in the bathrooms, for instance, plus the proliferation of eight-bit stuff online and the pre-“thinkpiece” mode of looking at old pop culture —is something I can’t muster really bad feelings for, even if I generally loathe that sort of nostalgia-for-nostalgia philosophically.