For some reason I woke up imagining the worst articles that could come from an effort to mix the Internet with a mediocre English department. Here are a couple:
Because I could not stop for Snapchat – Imagining Dickinson in the Social Media Milieu
#YourBlueEyedBoy – Cummings as Meme
Do you have any? Open thread.
Joey Maloney
lolmythesis.com
jeffreyw
Veni, vidi, tweeti.
rikyrah
As always, the real gems are the comedic gold in the comments.
………………………………
THIS BOBBY BROWN BIOGRAPHY SEEMS LIKE IT WILL BE THE GREATEST BOOK OF ALL TIME
Panama Jackson, 6/16/16
………………………………………………
Hal
I had an interview last week for a position in the hospital I work. Higher pay grade, way more room to advance, better and more stable department. The interview went great and the job itself was something I did in another hospital, so I had knowledge of the job that from what I made out from comments the folks interviewing me gave, some others who interviewed did not.
But now I’m convinced I didn’t get the job. I sent thank you emails and got no response and no request for references or suggestions of a second interview. It’s literally been two days so I realize I’m being paranoid, but this is going to suck if I don’t get this job. Plus I’ve never been turned down for a job I actually interviewed for, so this will be a first. ugh.
boatboy_srq
“Life; Death;…decisions – in five minutes or less.” Directing Shakespeare for YouTube.
boatboy_srq
@Hal: Sounds too early to tell. My current job took five weeks to make a decision – and it’s a great place with great people, and my interviews went a well as yours sound like it did..
debbie
@Hal:
The hiring process is so much slower than it used to be. Two days is nothing. Did you send a follow-up email?
OzarkHillbilly
@Hal: Fuhgedaboudit, you were looking for a job when you interviewed for this….. Ah, never mind.
maya
Rather longish composed during Limbaugh’s brush with opiates:
The Rush
Once upon a mid-day dreary,
While I pondered weak and weary
Over the faint and fading feedback roar
Of my favorite AM station
(Owner, of course, Clear Channel Communication)
Searching for my sole fixation,
The talking-head I most adore,
The one who stokes my conservative core,
Only Rush, and no one more.
II
I was one among the righteous legion,
Standing by my bust of Reagan,
At full attention, as if poised for war.
I never felt such dread anxiety,
Since I quit that, all-too-liberal, John Birch Society,
Left with only my Christian piety
I stood shaken, shaken, to that very core,
Until I heard his mighty roar,
Oh, roar, Rush, roar, and roar some more.
III
True, he never served in our armed chorus,
A rare deferment kept him from becoming porous
On some forgotten battlefield of 60’s lore.
Still, he’s a genuine Patriot First Class,
Hunkered down behind his studio plate glass,
Wasting disloyal peace-nuts for their cowardice
With his trusty Auto-Mike 16 on full bore.
I salute you! latter day He-Man of War.
With Tail-gunner Rush, who needs the Marine Corps?
IV
What is this? In rehabilitation!
Who’ll now guide this Great White Nation
Through the machinations of the Mid-East War;
The storms of leftist aberration;
Injustices of reverse discrimination;
Interpretations of Bush pronunciation?
My Prozac spills upon the floor,
How much more can I endure?
Without Rush, not much more.
V
I’ll miss his callers’ voice of reason,
His producers screened tree-hugging treason,
That’s the way with total air-wave war.
The vast liberal media should be inflicted
With legislation and be restricted,
All caller’s views shall be pre-scripted.
Clear Channel’s version of Shock & Awe,
Where only the choir is heard before,
The preacher Rush, and not one more.
VI
His daily show was a veritable treasure trove
Of talking points from boy-genius Rove.
(I can hear those laughing, liberal jackals at the door!)
Left without God’s Right Wing Man,
Stranded now without a plan,
Should I join the Klu Klux Klan?
Hannity and other ditto-heads galore,
Rush to staunch the oozing sore
Left by Rush, whoozing out the door.
VII
Rush did nothing wrong, nothing wanton,
So he chugged some Oxycontin.
We know minority celebs who’ve done far more.
What Rush has done is no disgrace. In fact,
He alone deserves a special place,
Where all can view his upturned face,
And come to praise him by the score.
I know! Let’s blast away those other four
And mount Rush up, on Mount Rushmore.
VIII
It’s not hard to see why Rush’s addicted,
With the White Man’s Burden his back’s afflicted.
It’s painful for him to guard alone against the shiftless poor,
And fight the spate of other welfare state damnations,
Caused by hordes of refuse immigrations.
Who’ll now be the Shinning Hope for us Caucasians;
Who’ll keep those dusky hordes far oft our sacred shore
And snuff that lamp besides the Golden Door?
Only Rush, there’s no one more.
IX
Outside it’s growing dark and rainy,
If only I could bunker down with Cheney,
Steel away inside his bomb-proof chamber door.
Safe with Cheney, safe and certain,
Hearing wondrous Tales of the Halliburton,
Of lush oil fields behind the Muslim Curtain,
Lush fields of oil we can’t ignore,
If we’re to fuel our Hummers 4,
We’ll need to rush, into a few wars more.
X
Oh, Good Goldwater, he’ll be out tomorrow!
Freed from pain, bereft of sorrow.
I know he’ll be even better than before.
He’ll truck no solace for the anorexics –
Just a swift hard kick to the solar plexus.
Might that also work on the homo-sexists?
I can hardly wait to find out for sure,
My once grieved heart begins to soar,
Rush shall return, for evermore.
Schlemazel Khan
@Hal:
I have changed job/companies 8 times over my career. WIth those changes I would imagine I have had over 100 interviews. Some I knew I owned & I really wanted the job others I was not sure about. The only constant in all of it was the total lack of concern the companies have for the job hunters. Places that offered me jobs (some I took a few I turned down) places that I never heard from again and places that at least sent a form letter rejection, none of them, not one, was the least bit communicative helpful or kind. I learned to accept it
The other thing I learned was that some of those jobs I would have killed to get but didn’t turned out to be losers. In one case it was a “dream job” and I knew the guy they hired instead of me. That guy was useless so I was fairly upset. But I did learn through mutual friends that the dream was really a nightmare, a living hell working in a toxic environment. A couple moths later I got an offer for a job I would not even have heard about had I gotten the first one, a job that turned my whole career around. The doofus that got the job I thought I wanted was actually fired because he was incompetent. He was not unhappy about that
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemazel Khan:
That’s because incompetence is no reason to deny unemployment benefits.
Schlemazel Khan
@maya:
That is epic! Thanks
Schlemazel Khan
“Families hate 2 kids love Plan to wed Both dead now. SAD!”
tweet from W Shakespeare
Not sure that is in keeping with what you wanted but I thought it funny
Hawes
Two paradigms diverged into the woods
And I took the more disruptive one
Frost’s Wisdom for Tech Startups
mental.masala
That great old country standard “She Thinks I Still Care”* is a good candidate for an update to the social media era. For example, the first verse
Could be updated with references to tagging pictures on Facebook, hitting up her snapchat, accidentally sending a text, and the other things the young folks are doing on social media.
* Written by STEVE DUFFY and DICKEY LEE LIPSCOMB
Iowa Old Lady
@Hal: They may still be interviewing, or there may be a committee that hasn’t met yet because someone is on vacation. Waiting does suck though.
maya
@Hal:
They may have a list of other applicants they need to interview. And then there’s the hiring committee’s evaluations. Process can take awhile. Not hearing from them immediately can be a good thing. I would think that with your experience within the hospital, or any hospital, you could have your pick of many jobs in that field. Patience.
Hal
@maya:
This is great and reads like half the posts I see on Facebook from people I went to high school.
Lamh36
@Hal: been there…I’ve never not been offered a job that I actually got interviewed for. I just give good interview. but maybe 2 months ago it did happen and I actually knew the person who was offered the position instead and it was a coworker. to boot…
bystander
AM Joy contemplates Clinton’s VP choices in a slide show. Sherrod Brown, Tom Perez, and then the unknowable military man to shore,up her testicularity. The General was represented by a stock photo of a Russian general, however.
Betty Cracker
“71,428 Tweets: Storifying Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past”
“What Is the Sound of One Hand Fapping? Reddit Explores Zen Koans”
Lamh36
what in da hell.. hell even if I believed it i certainly wouldn’t want to hear it from an elected official…to peddle in conspiracy theories against ur own party nominee.
it’s one did the things that pissed me off about SOME Bernie supporters
Democratic Congresswoman Suggests Trump May Be a Clinton Plant http://bit.ly/1OttWB9
Randy P
My week ended with great job news. No, not my job. My boss’ boss, a very bad and much disliked manager. An email at the end of the day Friday from upper management announced that he was promoted to a job at the main office. At least they phrased it as a promotion. The important fact is, it’s non-managerial.
He’s not evil, not even stupid. Just somehow has a way of using employees in the worst possible ways. Fond of scheduling you for meetings an hour past your usual departure time for instance, and then keeping you waiting for another hour because he’s so busy with other meetings.
I’ve heard about his hiring that he was considered a real coup when he was hired. Apparently he had a stellar record of technical accomplishment. But that does not make a manager. And even in the technical part of his job, I didn’t have a lot of respect or agreement with his decisions on which projects were worthwhile and which ones not to care about.
So all-in-all I expect morale on Monday morning to be pretty good.
Randy P
I’ll bet if you searched the journals in the last 10 years or so you’d find titles eerily similar to what people are proposing here as jokes.
A grad school colleague of my wife’s (not English, but Communications) wrote her thesis on something or other to do with PowerPuff Girls.
Ninedragonspot
Killer (M)Apps: iOS9 and the Post-Colonial Literary Imagination
Shelley
Just can’t get behind the Tweet
Lamh36
hell even if I believed it i certainly wouldn’t want to hear it from an elected official…to peddle in conspiracy theories against ur own party nominee.
it’s one did the things that PO’d me about Bernie supporters
Democratic Congresswoman Suggests Trump May Be a Clinton Plant
Shelley
The sky is blue.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Hal: Remember to breathe; they may be talking amongst themselves – or running through the planned interviews, then planning to reconvene for discussions at the end of those.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Lamh36:
That made me laugh! And I was told that once. I had a 2 year term appointed job clerking for a group of DOL judges, so we were all looking for new jobs as our terms neared the end. When a number of us were discussing our searches, one of the judges said “Bella, you should give seminars on how to interview. I’ve never interviewed a candidate who was better in an interview.”
My reply:
But Rudy you didn’t hire me.
His response:
Of course I didn’t; I couldn’t have a woman who was smarter than I am working for me.
Did I mention that this was the Department of Labor? It still cracks me up. The next judge I talked to did hire me, and Rudy’s law clerk was a nice guy, but quite dim.
gogol's wife
@Hal:
Too soon to panic. And I wouldn’t think a response to a thank-you e-mail would be appropriate in the middle of a job search.
gogol's wife
@bystander:
Marshal Zhukov?
aimai
@Betty Cracker: Hasn’t that been done with the All England Summarize Proust Contest?
Hal
@bystander: Every time I see Sherrod Brown on msnbc he looks like he just woke up from an all night bender. Dude’s going ton have to shave and get a haircut.
JPL
@Lamh36: In order to believe that Trump wants to lose, you also have to believe that he wants to ruin his brand. Trump’s groupies can’t afford to stay in Trump hotels, or play golf on his courses.
Albert Z.
Minding Your Own Beeswax and the Middlemarch Twitterverse
Ruckus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
That’s not a smart man. I always wanted people smarter than me working for me. Made my job so much easier. Point them in the right direction, watch them kick ass and make both of us look good. And I didn’t have to answer asinine questions all day.
ThresherK
@aimai: This week a Jeopardy! contestant responded with both the French and English names to a clue prompting for the title of the first part of “Remembrance of Things Past”.
What made it the Most Jeopardy! Thing Ever was that only one version was reuired. He started saying something in French, got no “You’re right” or “That’s wrong” from Alex, then switched to English, and initially lost the money on the clue because he didn’t finish in time.
However, after the commercial, the judges reviewed the tape and determined that he said the complete French title “Du côté de chez Swann”.
(And, yes, I had to look up “Du côté de chez Swann”.)
schrodinger's cat
Balloon Juice techies, I need help. I dropped my laptop. It was an accident, unfortunate collision between me and rampaging kitteh and a dangling power cord. It works fine except that the wireless card seems to be damaged. Laptop has an ethernet port too. Can I get intertoobz on this laptop again? Can I buy an external wireless card?
ETA: Dell Latitude E6400 is the laptop I have.
schrodinger's cat
Balloon Juice techies, I need help. I dropped my laptop. It was an accident, unfortunate collision between me and rampaging kitteh and a dangling power cord. It works fine except that the wireless card seems to be damaged. Laptop has an ethernet port too. Can I get intertoobz on this laptop again? Can I buy an external wireless card?
ETA: Dell Latitude E6400 is the laptop I have
West of the Rockies (been a while)
“Romeo, Doff Thy Breeches: Sexting in the 14th Century”
Johnny Coelacanth
No, but I did wake up the other morning with “She solved her epistemological dilemma with this one weird trick. Philosophers hate her!” in my head. I took it as a sign that I am spending too much time online.
Johnny Coelacanth
@schrodinger’s cat: Yes to both questions. If you have an Ethernet port, you could go wired. There are also good USB wireless adapters in the $50 range. Did you check your device manager, see if maybe the adapter’s just been disabled, or is it dead dead?
ThresherK
@schrodinger’s cat: I have much the same model (E6410) in drydock right now. All I could suggest is, is the wifi manual switch (right edge, above the earphone jack) turned off?
Randy P
@Johnny Coelacanth: “Epistomology” is one of those words that puts me instantly to sleep. Others are “deconstruction”, “ontological” and “post-modern”.
Miss Bianca
@Hal: It’s been *two weeks* for me since I heard about an interview position – with my old library district. So I feel your pain. : ( I’m sure that by now I haven’t got the position, but I would have felt better hearing from them. I guess I’d better get on the horn.
ETA: You’ve inspired me to fire off an email – asked “for old times sake” if they’d let me know what their decision was. Didn’t add “for courtesy’s sake”, tho’ that’s what I wanted to say.
schrodinger's cat
@Johnny Coelacanth: The usb ports near the adapter look dented I think the wireless card is physically damaged.
schrodinger's cat
@ThresherK: Nope that’s not it I have turned it on and off several times.
Ruckus
Drumpf doesn’t think that he can fail. He would never attempt to fail. His very public (I left the L out of that last word. Almost left it out) bankruptcies were never mistakes, they were shrewd business deals. Donny’s major problem is that he doesn’t realize that he doesn’t hold enough (any?) of the cards in this deal. He’s such a racist/misogynist/asshole that he thinks things will always work out for him in the end, because he’s great, much bigger, better, smarter, etc, etc than everyone else. My dog was better looking, smarter, etc, etc than drumpf and he was an old, ornery bastard with a 90 percent tendency to bite. He even bit the hand that fed him once.
ETA This was for #32 JPL, don’t know why that didn’t show up in the comment
aimai
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Sheer genius!
I’ve been wracking my brains but I just feel kind of dull this morning. Can’t think of anything to add–and I’ve been interdisciplinary in my day. :(
Miss Bianca
Well, I don’t know if it’s interdisciplinary or not, but I decided for the sake of a story I am writing that I needed a “Journal of Lycanthropy Studies”.
ThresherK
@schrodinger’s cat: Is it out of warranty, and are you the “take it apart with a tiny screwdriver” type?
(No idea if the wireless bit is part of the motherboard, but if you’re going down that road, find it out before you start.)
schrodinger's cat
@ThresherK: Out of warranty. I have upgraded laptops including putting new harddrives, more memory etc. I don’t enjoy it though. I am trying to see if there is quick and dirty solution that does not involve dismantling the laptop.
ThresherK
@schrodinger’s cat: Good luck. I’d offer you parts from mine but it’s being repaired, rather than in the “parts donor” stage of life. Johnny Coelacanth’s idea sounds good.
gogol's wife
@Miss Bianca:
I’m almost certain that already exists, published at the University of Nebraska, I think.
/not serious but maybe serious
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@aimai:
Thank you! And people told me an M.A. in English Lit would not be a useful degree….
(They were not entirely incorrect. I just said farewell to 14 years as an adjunct. I may be doing some job interviews of my own soon.)
Miss Bianca
@gogol’s wife: Laughing, loving it!
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@gogol’s wife:
An American Werewolf in Lincoln?
Peale
“The snarling pit of ravenous Argonauts: did the AeschylusIan Chorus Presage Blog Commentary by 2,500 Years? Here’s 11 Things You Didn’t Know”
Lymie
I have job angst, too! Offered a job at slightly more in the same hospital. Same kind of data science, different data. Problem is, I like my current colleagues. The manager is the problem – stress inducing interactions, doesn’t understand how to manage senior level professionals. So much uncertainty, but so much stress in the current role. Do I go for it?
randy khan
I Can Haz Divinity: LOL Cats as Transcendentalism.
J R in WV
@Hal:
We once hired a guy for a programmer position who was visually impaired and working in a Cobol environment, mainly because we knew he had bought a new suit for the interview… he had missed taking off one tag. He seriously wanted the job.
After the (three person) interviewing committee held all the interviews, and we agreed on the guy I mention, I got him a 32-inch monitor, which made him cry, no one ever attempted to meet his disability before, he had been using a green-screen terminal previously. Then we sent him to windows development training.
Miss Bianca
@Lymie: Does it pay enough extra to make the hassle of dealing with new boss worthwhile?
@randy khan: You, sir, are a beast.
Redshift
Hoo boy! I’m at the Virginia Democratic convention this weekend. Everything was going pretty smoothly, and Ms. Redshift and I were congratulating ourselves that we’re not like Nevada.
Aaaaaand then some Bernistas voted against the adoption of the rules, and demanded a roll call vote even though despite shouting they were obviously not louder on the voice vote.
The chair allowed a roll call vote to move things along, which they lost badly. (Other random attempts at parliamentary procedure were quashed.)
Kropadope
@Redshift: They demanded a vote in a Democratic process, the gall…
trollhattan
@schrodinger’s cat:
Does at least one of the USB ports work? Plug in a USB wireless adapter and hopefully you’ll be back in bidnez.
Had the motherboard video go out on a laptop and dove in to see if it could be replaced. A fool’s errand, that. Its replacement has a discrete video card, should it ever happen again, accessible from a bottom cover.
trollhattan
@Redshift:
Bernie is becoming transparent before our eyes and will soon attain invisibility. It’s over.
WaterGirl
@Hal: Repeat after me: No news is no news. I learned this during a patch where I applied for 7 positions and got interviews for all 7. After each interview, I would think “oh, if I don’t here from them by [insert day here] that means I didn’t get it. Some took weeks to get back to me andI I was absolutely positive that I didn’t get them. In the ned, I got 6 job offers out of the 7, and that’s when I learned that “no news is no news”.
Hope you get it, though! But if you don’t, it might turn out to be a blessing in disguise, like when someone else makes a higher offer on the perfect house the you really wanted… and then you look some more and find an even better house.
aimai
@West of the Rockies (been a while): I just had a “job interview” for the first time in…decades. I put it in quotes because it was for a volunteer position at an internship for my new life as an MSW student. Weird experience. I’m massively overqualified for it, and they may well reject me for just that reason. We’ll see! Wheeee! I wish you luck with your job interviews. It is scary out there.
aimai
@Kropadope: Perhaps its the way people do things, and not that they do them, that is the problem? People can eat dinner at your house and do it generously, as part of a family dinner or they can walk in, take the food off the table, retreat to a corner and refuse to share. Both kinds are guests or family at a dinner party, but the whole experience is quite different for everyone else.
Uncle Cosmo
@Schlemazel Khan: The classic (pre-UToob, pretweet) gloss on The Waste Land:
(For the multitudes unfamiliar with the reference, here you are)
randy khan
@Miss Bianca:
*blushes*
Aleta
“To tweet yourself in a world that is constantly tweeting something else is the greatest accomplishment”: Impulse, Identity and Integrity in a Non-Emersonian World
Aleta
@randy khan: too funny!
Aleta
@maya: Incredible, thanks.
Jay C
Well, Congratulations! and a hearty Mazel Tov! to Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky: they have just welcomed their second child. Nice news, but something of a surprise, as I had read that Chelsea was not due til August. Of course, this was something I had seen re-posted from some wingnut site: the plan, apparently, was for Chelsea to deliver right before (or even during) the Dem Convention in order to try to get sympathy votes for Hillary. SRSLY.
Wonder what sort of message the new parents will be getting from Ivanka Trump? She and Chelsea are (or were) besties IRL;
I wonder if that friendship is/will be another casualty of the 2016 campaign….?
Redshift
@Kropadope: Oh, so you think voice votes aren’t democratic?
They demanded a roll call vote after a voice vote that they really obviously lost. Gumming things up to prevent the majority from proceeding isn’t about democracy, it’s about trying to get your way even though you didn’t win.
Kropadope
@Jay C:
What? They couldn’t get her to hold it in for three more months til just before the election? Is the only time the polling matters anyway.
Kropadope
@Redshift:
Maybe they thought they were just inherently quieter people. Obviously they still lost, but are you really going to fault people for wanting to engage in the formalities and get the details right? People doing what they need to do to make sure they are counted?
Miss Bianca
@Kropadope:
OK, now *that* was the first belly laugh of the day. No Sanders supporters I have *ever* met have been anything but the loudest people in the room. The thought that any of them could be THAT self-deluded would be poignant if it weren’t so hilarious.
@Redshift: Good on you for being there. Glad to hear that the level of shenanigans appears to be on the “manageable” side rather than the “WTF?!” side.
Gelfling545
@Randy P: In Education, bad (and they have to be really bad) principals are “promoted” to central office and never heard from again. I think it’s like the top floor in that Dr Who episode.
Glaukopis
@Ruckus: I disagree. He’s a grifter and knows it’s a con. It’s just a question of how to get out while leaving others holding the bag and shouldering the blame so that his reputation as successful person still has some credibility. Although I think that’s going to a lot harder after this run. I do think that his narcissism and fantasies of presidential power have kept him in longer than it would have otherwise, however.
Thoughtful David
@Redshift:
Hey, Red, I’m at the VA convention too. Fifth CD group, near last row. I’ll look for you.
boatboy_srq
@schrodinger’s cat: IIRC the Wi-Fi cards on those are expansion boards. You may have just unseated the connector. Is there a repair place nearby you trust to disassemble it and check?
Carbon Dated
Call the roller of dank memes. — Visualizing Wallace Stevens