twitter

Overexplaining Underappreciated Tweets #3

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Twitter User:
ysplotchy

Tweet:
What am I doing for NYE? I’ll attempt to instill an interest in science in my children, I suppose.
(link to original tweet)

Overexplanation:
I wrote this on December 31st, sometime in the afternoon, I think.

As you probably know, my tweet used “NYE”, a popular abbreviation of “New Year’s Eve”.

But wait! WAS I referring to New Year’s Eve?!!!

If you thought so, this tweet probably made little sense to you. But if you were “on the ball” and not “fucking dull stupid” you realized from the remainder of the tweet that in actuality I was referring to this guy:

Yes, it’s Bill Nye, the Science Guy!

It’s okay. People were probably more focused on their NYE plans to get my Nye joke.

Maybe this tweet will be appreciated next year. But I am not counting on it.

music

Testing The Bounds of "Sweet Caroline" Singability

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Okay, so every time the Neil Diamond song “Sweet Caroline” is on, and Neil Diamond sings the words “Sweet Caroline”, you pretty much *have* to sing along with the horns going “BUM! BUM! BUM!” It’s a compulsion. I can’t explain it.

I was wondering how slowing down the song would affect one’s desire to sing along. Here are my findings.

(NOTE: The following are snippets of the song, not the entire song.)

Normal Speed – Completely Irresistible. Don’t bother fighting it.

26% Slower Than Normal – Mostly Irresistible. Oddly stately, regal.

42% Slower Than Normal – Still Pretty Damned Irresistible. A stoner anthem.

57% Slower Than Normal – Not Very Irresistible. I think the pain meds are kicking in.

88% Slower Than Normal – Resistibility Accomplished. That being said, this is a very nice moody piece. And the horns have the gravitas of a tragic Shakespearean death.

Thanks for listening. BUM! BUM! BUM!

zombies

Start Making Interesting Zombie Movies, Or Stop Making Shitty Ones

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Enough with the zombies. They aren’t interesting anymore. Dawn of the Dead came out in 1978. 1978! What other interesting zombie movies ARE THERE?!!

I don’t really like any of the recent zombie movies/shows I have seen. 28 Days Later. Zombieland. The Walking Dead. Okay, so we see how people act under duress. Enough already. Who cares?

I haven’t read the Jane Austen zombie book, but I am going to go out on a limb and say I hate it. Yeah, I hate something I haven’t read! DEAL WITH IT!

I am going to give you 3 Zombie Story Ideas. They might have been used already, they might have not. I’m not checking.

1) Vegetarian Zombies

The dead walk the Earth! But they don’t want to eat brains. They want grains, fruits, vegetables! They menace crops. They go after farmer’s markets. They invade supermarkets.

Maybe they get violent in their attempt to procure these non-meats. They are aggressive.

How does the non-zombie world treat them?

2) Sex Zombies

Zombies don’t want to eat your brains. They want to fuck your brains out. See, I just came up with the tagline. I did half the work for you.

The zombies are driven by their genitalia. To kill the zombie, you must destroy their junk. Ouch!

Depending on the zombies’ sex and sexual orientation, they will be moaning after “Tiiiiiiiits” or “Coooooooooooooock” or, you get the idea.

3) Eat A Zombie To Stay Alive

Okay, the zombies are like regular zombies. They eat people, they can be killed by destroying the brain.

The world is overrun by zombies. They outnumber the living.

Scientists have discovered that when a human being ingests zombie flesh, they give off a scent which repels zombies. Well, the zombie doesn’t want to eat the human, at least.

They have tried synthesizing the scent, coming up with a perfume, etc., but none of that works. The only thing works is eating zombie flesh.

Are there side effects to eating zombie flesh? I don’t know, haven’t thought of that yet. Perhaps some long-term effects that would be discovered in the course of the movie.

So, in this world zombie flesh is what’s for dinner. It’s a means of survival. How does this ripple out to society? There are chefs that attempt to make zombie flesh more palatable. Companies start marketing products. You get the idea.

I THOUGHT OF THESE THREE IDEAS IN AN AFTERNOON. COME UP WITH INTERESTING ZOMBIE MOVIES OR STOP MAKING ZOMBIE MOVIES.

P.S. I LOVED THE SHAUN OF THE DEAD

adopt-an-actor

Adoption: Always An Option

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It seems like only yesterday in 2007 when I called on some kind soul of the Internet to adopt David Warner. Alas, none answered the call.

David Warner, circa 2009. Note the despair.

Yet, in the final hours of 2010, when all hope seemed to be lost, you stepped up and opened your heart and home! To be more accurate, Scott of the LATEANDSOON Group did! (The rest of you did nothing, honestly.)

Congrats, Scott and David!

Barry and the Setbacks

Barry & The Setbacks: Episode 1

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Hi, a little present for you during this holiday season.

My friend Andy and I have started what we hope to be a series of webisodes around his old friend Barry.

We have come up with 10 or so ideas. Some of them have a basis in fact, some are completely made up.

Unlike my previous Streaking For The Shy movie, there wasn’t a lot of time spent scouting locations, storyboarding, rehearsing with actors, etc.

We had the idea, shot the thing in an afternoon without a script, Andy edited most of it, I wrote and recorded the theme song, and BAM! Finished.

I hope you like it. Oh, I play the prospective home buyer.

Barry & The Setbacks: Episode 1

twitter

Overexplaining Underappreciated Tweets #2

4 Comments

Twitter User:
ysplotchy

Tweet:
“Reap, those little slices of death; Oh how I loaf them.” — Edgar Allan Poe, Baker
(link to original tweet)

Overexplanation:
What went wrong here? I made Edgar Allan Poe a baker, and turned one of his most famous quotes into something a baker might say. How is that not funny?

Original quote: Sleep, those little slices of death; Oh how I loathe them.

Okay, okay, I think using “Reap” instead of “Sleep” was weak. Are there types of bread that rhyme with sleep? That would have been much, much better. I tried thinking of a better rhyme, but was unsuccessful. Reap was the best thing I could think of.

Still… I kept slices of death, and changed loathe to loaf. That was funny, wasn’t it? Yeah, it was. It was indeed.

twitter

Overexplaining Underappreciated Tweets #1

3 Comments

Twitter User:
ysplotchy

Tweet:
“Take me hunk, I’m drome!” — Spister Moonerism Brand Novelty Tees
(link to original tweet)

Overexplanation:
Spister Moonerism is a character I invented and have been playing around with for a couple months. As you may notice, the name is a spoonerism of “Mister Spoonerism”. I have had people chortle at the ingeniousness of the name itself (for good reason). That being said, I don’t expect all of my Spister Moonerism tweets to be favorited simply because I made another reference to the name. That is not why this particular tweet is underappreciated.

The briliance of this tweet hinges on my reference to an existing novelty t-shirt:

The source of the humor for the above shirt is that the words “drunk” and “home” are transposed. I believe the implication is that the person is so drunk they are jumbling up their words.

I thought to myself, why not take that shirt, and then spoonerize it! Not only have I transposed the words like the joke, I have also transposed letters! I have doubly transposed the shirt, deflating the original t-shirt’s humor in an original and fundamental way.

And note the added satisfaction of the word “drunk” becoming “hunk”. Does this add a little undercurrent of playful homoeroticism to the tweet? Yes, I think it does.

This tweet was not favorited or retweeted. I think I have sufficiently outlined and overexplained the tragedy of this to you, dear reader.

twitter

Overexplaining Underappreciated Tweets

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Hey, you! Twitterer! Nee Borp Doobie Crutch! *

As you already know, Favstar is the metric by which the value of tweets is measured. On the site, one can easily identify the number of times a tweet has been celebrated. It can happen in two distinct ways.

1) Favorited – By favoriting a tweet, someone has literally given it a gold star, as if to say, good job, fellow Twitterer! A+!

2) Retweeted – When one is retweeted (aka RT) by someone, the original tweet appears as part of their feed. In this case what they are saying is, “Hey, look at what my smart and/or funny Twitter acquaintance has to say!”

Unfortunately, many tweets are not celebrated with the fervor they so richly deserve. Some terrible tweet by Justin Bieber gets vaulted to the highest echelons of Twitter accolades, while an immaculate, ingeniously-constructed joke languishes in the fetid basement of ignorance and misunderstanding.

You might visit Favstar in anticipation of witnessing the abundant praise lavished on one of your especially chuckleworthy tweets, but… it’s not there! If it’s absent, that means NO ONE has favorited it. NO ONE has retweeted it. The injustice!

I do not offer to correct this injustice. I am unable to do so, unless I buy Favstar and make it work like the world is supposed to work.

What I *can* do is provide a service. Have you felt one or more of your tweets was underappreciated? Did you feel that perhaps maybe your audience was a bit, for lack of a better word, dim, dull, incapable of seeing something FUCKING BRILLIANT?

Here’s what you can do. In an email, provide me the underappreciated tweet, as well as a paragraph explaining the ingenuity of your tweet. Help us to appreciate this underappreciated tweet, my friend. You may contact me on the email address listed on my Blogger profile.

I will post your tweet and explanation on this blog, so everyone will realize what a mistake they made in not recognizing your genius. Better late than never, right?

So, are you with me? Let’s not be underappreciated… Let’s overexplain… TOGETHER!

* Standard informal Twitter greeting