…when’s the last time you saw the word “chortle” in a newspaper headline (see the previous entry)? Or heard it in a conversation?
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Month: February 2005
“First, I’ll need two dozen oysters, some of that Harry Potter ecstasy,
a bottle of Viagra and a subscription to Maxim…”
Have you ever used the word “boner” mean “an embarassing mistake” rather than “manifestation of male sexual arousal”? I haven’t, but the writers at DC Comics have — in fact, they devoted an entire issue of Batman to boners!
So will the guy who wrote this comic.
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Video: The "Jump the Shark" Moment
In 1985, one Sean J. Connolly coined the phrase “jump the shark”,
which his friend John Hein would use as the name of his web site 12
years later. For those of you who haven’t been keeping up with your pop
culture, here’s the definintion of “jump the shark”, taken from the
site:
Q. What is jumping the shark?
A. It’s a moment. A defining moment when you know that your favorite
television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on…it’s all
downhill. Some call it the climax. We call it “Jumping the Shark.” From
that moment on, the program will simply never be the same.
“Jumping the shark” comes from the fifth-season episode of Happy Days
in which the Fonz accepts a challenge from a rival to waterski-jump
over a shark. The rival chickens out at the last minutes, but the Fonz
is too cool to win by forfeit and makes the jump anyway. I have vague
memories of this episode (remember, this was September 1977 and I was
9) but I understand how “jumping the shark” became synonymous from
“it’s all downhill from here.”
If you’ve never seen the “jumping the shark” moment, you’re in luck:
someone recently posted it in Windows Media format [2.5 MB, enclosure],
and it’s even cheesier than I remember. Especially since the Fonz does the jump wearing his stolen-from-Brando trademark leather jacket/white T-shirt combo.
From the look of it, this is going to be one of those years that I’ll
look back upon and say “Whoa, I was pretty busy back then!”. Hence the
shortage of more personal “Hey, look at what I did” entries. It’s not
that I haven’t been up to interesting stuff; it’s just that those
entries take the most time and energy, and those are at a premium. I
find it far, far easier and quicker to write op-ed entries and point
you to interesting things on both the web and in real life. I plan to
get back to writing some “It Happened to Me” stories soon, but in the
meantime, I hope you’re still enjoying the sort of posts I’ve been
making of late.
Kirrily “Skud” Robert has started a blog on a little-covered but much-needed area of discussion: Geek Etiquette.
Kudos, Kirrily!
A free giant Santa “Pez” dispenser to the first person who can tell me in the comments why this T-shirt is rude.
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Happy 40th, Canadian Flag!
It’s easy to forget that while Canada is one hundred years older than I am (Confederation took place in 1867, I was born in 1967), our flag is less than three years my senior. For forty years, it’s been the symbol of a great place to live, synonymous with hockey, highly regarded by vexillologists (it gets high marks for its clean, clear design) and a protective disguise that young Americans sew on their backpacks while travelling through Europe and Asia.
Happy 40th, Canadian Flag!
Here’s more on the flag:
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Chess is Now a Water Sport
[via The Colbinator] Here’s an interesting way to liven up those stuffy chess matches.