The joys of vacation mean that I’m still taking it easy at the moment, so enjoy these links plundered from the depths of ye olde internets:
- The Best Time I Pretended I Hadn’t Heard of Slavoj Žižek – Glorious meditation on trolling Marxists expanded into an all-purpose method for annoying the hell out of people who like a certain class of stuff (like Steampunk!).
The other night, I pretended I didn’t know who Slavoj Žižek, the Slovenian Hegelian Marxist and cultural critic, was. I’ve done this before, but never to such triumphant effect. This Marxist bro I was talking to made a reference to Žižek that he obviously assumed I would get, and my heart sank. He was a nice guy, actually, but I saw the conversation stretching out in front of us, and I saw myself having to say things about Žižek and listen to him say things about Žižek, and I saw that I really did not want this to happen. “This is a bar,” I wanted to say, the same way that my grandmother might have said “This is a church.” A bar is not the appropriate venue for a loud, show-offy conversation about The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology.
Brilliant.
- Rey is a Palpatine – J. Kenji López-Alt is probably most famous for Serious Eats, but this is a remarkably well thought out theory as to who Rey’s parents are in the new Star Wars trilogy. Spoilers, I guess, but I like this theory much better than pretty much any other speculation I’ve heard…
- Edgar Wright’s 1000 Favorite Movies – You know I love lists, but this is pretty excessive. Still, I’ve seen a little over half of these (if my count is correct, and it’s probably not because this is a list of 1000 freakin movies; these sites should easily allow a simple click and count functionality for lists like this.) I shudder at the thought of doing a top 100 of all time, this must have been excruciating, especially once people started chiming in with the “I can’t believe you left out…” (especially when, as sometimes happens, the offending movie/director is actually on the list but the commenter didn’t notice it because there are 1000 movies on the list.)
- A teen stripper, an arson and the case of the telltale potato – Alright, fine, I’ll read your stupid article (it turns out that the headline is more evocative than the actual story, but that’s some clickbaity headline writing)
- How ‘Advantage Players’ Game the Casinos – We’ve all heard these stories before, but I’m a sucker for mathematicians legally taking advantage of the Casinos.
- Wolfie’s Just Fine – A New Beginning – A pitch perfect homage to Friday the 13th, Part V: A New Beginning that gets all the little details just right. You know, for the 3 or 4 of us who actually like that movie. Also, the band’s name itself is a great little reference.
- Ask a Manager: my best employee quit on the spot because I wouldn’t let her go to her college graduation – Dear lord, the person who wrote this letter is the worst. Great response by the column writer.
And that should do it for now…