As this newsletter goes to press, we are learning terrible details about a shooting at the Washington Navy Yard. I feel silly talking about Facebook humor on such a dark day, but I suppose we all must press on. Often we turn to the words of Churchill at a time like this; he reminded us that “All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.”
Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
Recently my wife Kate forwarded me a blog post about “7 Ways to be Insufferable on Facebook.” Although we may not agree with its premise, this humor piece draws our attention to the rampant insecure narcissism evident in almost every available status update. While as a rule I try not to read articles with numbered lists in them, in this case I made an exception because of the piece’s focus on two questions that I try to answer positively with my newsletters: 1) Is the topic interesting or informative, and 2) is the piece entertaining? As I read the blog entry, I realized that I try to maintain attention to these two concerns in my newsletters, so that you might have something to reflect upon before rushing on to the Pub Quiz hints that you see below.
We might wonder if Facebook is insufferable because of the ways that it offers a platform for our friends’ self-important sharings, or if it should be intolerable because of the hours lost. A Google search for the phrase “Facebook is wasting my life” reveals more than 25 million hits. Andy Borowitz reflected this concern in his send-up of Facebook Home, the Android phone overlay that replaces a user’s home screen with a steady stream of photographs from your friend’s Facebook updates.
Here’s how Borowitz put it in his fake press release:
Explaining the development of Facebook’s new phone software, Home, Mr. Zuckerberg said, “Our research showed that Facebook users still had a few hours a day when they were leading somewhat healthy and productive lives. Our new software will change all of that.”
Mr. Zuckerberg said his developers had worked for months developing Home, “which seizes control of your phone and makes it good for little other than Facebook—much like many Facebook users themselves.”
By bombarding the user with status updates on a twenty-four-hour basis, he boasted, “Home transforms Facebook from just a social network into something akin to a neurological disorder.”
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition renamed Attention Deficit Disorder to “Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder predominantly inattentive,” but we all know what it means. Either we, our friends, or our children suffer from it, or we are encouraged to by social networks and other distractions. Most of us recognize the problem, including in ourselves, but few of us are willing to drop a social medium such as Facebook. Our excuses to stay distracted are largely convincing.
I have to keep up with Facebook, because how else would I convince people to come to the poetry readings I host? For instance, this coming Thursday night at 8 the poet Jill Stengel will celebrate her book release party at the John Natsoulas Gallery. If you’ve never come to one of these readings, and you appreciate free food and drink, then this might be the Thursday to join us. Jill’s new book is titled Dear Jack, which the great Beat poet David Meltzer has called “Subtle, sly & wry, deeply moving in its deceptive simplicity.
And then Friday I myself will be giving a poetry reading with a local poet-hero of mine, James Lee Jobe. James and I will be reading original work at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis Friday at 7:30, and this event will also feature free wine and food (in this case, cookies). I will be reading some new poems, including a couple about my son Jukie.
There’s only one hint in the words above, and a great number of hints in the words below, for tonight you should expect questions on ubiquity, space travel, great artists (such as Picasso and Van Gogh), psychometrics, the letter “I,” animated films, people who have broken records set by Elvis, venerable changes, ESPN estimations, great Kings, matters of taste, US Senators, Groucho Marx, words that end with the names of women, food and drink, dark secrets and the letter “A,” mistyped nostalgic purses, alternatives to Corinthians, Stanley Kramer, final forays, musical lists, founding fathers, retails sales, US states, St. James, Ang Lee films, veteran sportsmen, fashion expenditures, and Shakespeare.
I look forward to seeing you this evening!
Your Quizmaster
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Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:
1. Mottos and Slogans. Adopted in 1967, what US state’s state motto is “North to the Future”?
2. Internet Culture and Biometrics. What F-word feature most excites enterprise computing experts and biometrics geeks about the new iPhone to be announced tomorrow?
3. Islands in Michigan. Michigan’s Mackinac Island can be reached by private boat, by ferry, and by small aircraft. Some enterprising people sometimes visit the island using a form of transportation that was first patented in 1915. What are the ten letters in the name of this form of transportation? It’s not “hovercraft.”
4. Simon and Simon. Which of the following Simons had the Simon of Simon and Schuster for a dad? Carly Simon, Neil Simon, Paul Simon the musician, Simple Simon.
5. Sports. EPL is the anagram for the UK’s primary football competition. What does EPL stand for?
P.S. Happy belated birthday to Pub Quiz regulars Kriss Nigliazzo and Brandon Winter!