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Comport Yourselves!

Overanalytical explanations. And other things.

August 10, 2011

A Critique of the Article: “Spoiler alert: Stories are not spoiled by ‘spoilers’”

I was recently compelled to read the article, “Spoiler alert: Stories are not spoiled by ‘spoilers’,” which describes a psychological study conducted at the University of California, San Diego to assess the impact of spoilers on readers. In fact, the article appears to be a press release from the university. Also, I have not read the actual study. This is a critique of the article (i.e., press release) describing the study, in which subjects reported a better reading experience when they were provided spoilers for stories that they were assigned to read.

That said, my thoughts are as follows:

  1. There is no stipulation that the subjects were avid readers. Thus, knowing the end of a story might have enabled them to skip more of the text, providing the non-reader with a more pleasant “reading” experience.
  2. Even if the subjects were avid readers, there is no guarantee that he or she would be likely to enjoy all of the stories that were provided, regardless of spoilers. While a spoiler at the midnight launch party of a much-anticipated Stephen King novel could cause a showdown in the Barnes & Noble coffee shop, similar information for an obscure John Updike short story might be happily received.
  3. The literary stories were the least popular, with or without spoilers. This is interesting, because the enjoyment of a literary story should be more about the journey than its conclusion. The problem here is likely that, in order to instill a love of reading in school children, literary stories are xeroxed, distributed, assigned, read, skimmed, cliff-noted, highlighted, analyzed, discussed, lost and recycled. By the time a student is done learning to love reading, he or she can’t wait to read the next J.K. Rowling book, spoilers be damned.
  4. Any person who is actively avoiding spoilers would not have read this article, as it begins with the phrase, “Spoiler alert.”
April 12, 2011
Thanks for the reblog. Sorry about misspelling your name, though. It's been fixed. I really should double-check those things. (And, by the way, it sounds like your grad school's acceptance committee has a rather dark sense of humor.) asked by jessedarland

Thanks for reading and recommending the story! No worries about my name. Like I said, it happens all the time. I like a grad school with a sense of humor.

April 12, 2011
“Stay Alert” by The New Jersey Turnpike Authority, seen in a New Jersey Turnpike rest area, is a homage to classic propaganda posters of the twentieth century. With bold, bright lettering, the poster instructs the reader to “STAY ALERT.” To what, one might ask, should I be alerted? In answer to the question, the poster cleverly depicts a metaphor for the dilemma of existence. The path behind us is ever disappearing. The path before us is fraught with difficulties. As we follow the road of life, we are forever in competition with entities different from ourselves. Are we to be the truck, large and powerful, but slower and less wieldy? Or are we to be the car, lithe and agile due to limited emotional or physical baggage? Floating before us is the imminent drive for action, as illustrated by the giant floating coffee cup and saucer. The coffee is steaming; hot and ready and waiting for us in the foreground. We must stay alert — alert to our options, alert to the stimuli that reside before us, and alert to the competition we face along the way. “Stay Alert” is a piece that is both inspirational and pragmatic. It reminds us that life is, in summation, what we’ve paid attention to.

“Stay Alert” by The New Jersey Turnpike Authority, seen in a New Jersey Turnpike rest area, is a homage to classic propaganda posters of the twentieth century. With bold, bright lettering, the poster instructs the reader to “STAY ALERT.” To what, one might ask, should I be alerted? In answer to the question, the poster cleverly depicts a metaphor for the dilemma of existence. The path behind us is ever disappearing. The path before us is fraught with difficulties. As we follow the road of life, we are forever in competition with entities different from ourselves. Are we to be the truck, large and powerful, but slower and less wieldy? Or are we to be the car, lithe and agile due to limited emotional or physical baggage? Floating before us is the imminent drive for action, as illustrated by the giant floating coffee cup and saucer. The coffee is steaming; hot and ready and waiting for us in the foreground. We must stay alert — alert to our options, alert to the stimuli that reside before us, and alert to the competition we face along the way. “Stay Alert” is a piece that is both inspirational and pragmatic. It reminds us that life is, in summation, what we’ve paid attention to.

April 11, 2011 with 2 notes
        tags: short-story,. fiction. review. McSweeney's.

Good reads: "The Routes by Which I Attempted to Contact You," by Sheridan Macauly

I should probably avoid reviewing my own work, so here is a nice, short review of a story I wrote. Thank you, Jesse — you got it right (except for the spelling of my last name, which, incidentally, is misspelled all the time. I once wrote an essay about it, which later got me into grad school. In my acceptance letter, my last name was spelled wrong. True story).

newsroom:

This arresting piece on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency starts off light and playful, but by the end the reader is hit with a huge lump of late-night, internet-fueled nostalgia. Perhaps it’s meant to be played for laughs, but I found it very moving.

February 26, 2011 with 1 note
        tags: comic. comics. comics-explained. humor. analysis.

An Update is Available for Your Computer by Sticky Comics

An Update is Available for Your Computer by Sticky Comics

An Update is Available for Your Computer by Sticky Comics is a compelling critique on Mac user culture. Through hyperbole and spot-on graphical expression, it captures the innate entitlement infused by Apple into many Mac users. Mr. Steve Jobs, sheathed in black turtleneck from waist to chin, tells us of the latest, newest Mac product. We, salivating at its slick, smooth, gleaming fantasticness, are not only willing to spend whatever it takes to possess this product, but we thank Mr. Jobs for the opportunity. We love our sweet Mac products. And we will have them, whatever the cost. Thank you, Mr. Jobs. Thank you.

December 3, 2010
        tags: fiction-explained.

"Ponies" - a short story by Kij Johnson

A friend of mine called me today and said that I had to read this story. So I did. It was very thought-provoking.

“Ponies” by Kij Johnson is a fantasy horror story about a girl and her pony. Her pony, like all ponies, is able to talk and has wings and a horn. Unfortunately, to fit in with a clique called TheOtherGirls and their ponies, the girl and her pony need to attend a cutting where the pony loses her wings and horn.

At first, the story seems to be grisly social commentary on fitting in and the lengths to which people will go to do so. Ultimately, however, the story makes a broader point. The mutilation of the ponies in this story is not gruesome so much as absurd. The dreamlike quality of the ponies, who come in shiny pastel tones, have illuminated manes and bleed cotton candy, leads one to realize that the ponies are not real, but only exist in the imaginations of the girls who participate in the cutting ritual. The ritual is an allegory for the destruction of the abstract freedom of childhood. The children violently turn their flying, candyland unicorns into normal ponies and then run off to drink diet soda and play video games. The unstructured, make-believe playtime of their youth is replaced with commercialized and structured activity.

This story is about more than mean girls, cliques and fitting in. It is about the corruption of youthful joy, the drive to eradicate childhood dreams and the sacrifice of long-term creativity to short-term success. Dreams can be both beautiful and grotesque — in “Ponies,” beauty is defiled in a fantasy dreamscape. The horror is in its message: Dreams are killed all the time.

July 12, 2010
        tags: humor. graph. art-explained.
In this hand-crafted conceptual diagram, the artist explains the balance of coffee and alcohol he must achieve in order to stave off grumpiness while on vacation.

In this hand-crafted conceptual diagram, the artist explains the balance of coffee and alcohol he must achieve in order to stave off grumpiness while on vacation.

June 3, 2010
        tags: comic. comics-explained. garfield. humor. intellectually verbose. comics.
Today’s Garfield goes beyond the cat-dog-human cross-species interactions that generally define the comic’s theme, allowing us insight into the interaction between canine and insect. In this interpretation, the common constructs of animal behavior are reversed. Although bees are generally seen as the machination of the biological entity — a robotic creature that sacrifices its individuality in favor of an orderly, spiritless existence — here they are envisioned as fun-seeking, enfranchised individuals. The dog, which is often humanized and even revered as “man’s best friend”, is given the role of robot — a sort of biomechanical amusement park ride with which the bees might divert themselves. By humanizing that with which we least identify and mechanizing that with which we empathize, the comic breaks free of man’s mammal-centric bias with respect to the animal kingdom and enables the reader to view his or her own relationship with Earth’s other life forms in a broader context.

Today’s Garfield goes beyond the cat-dog-human cross-species interactions that generally define the comic’s theme, allowing us insight into the interaction between canine and insect. In this interpretation, the common constructs of animal behavior are reversed. Although bees are generally seen as the machination of the biological entity — a robotic creature that sacrifices its individuality in favor of an orderly, spiritless existence — here they are envisioned as fun-seeking, enfranchised individuals. The dog, which is often humanized and even revered as “man’s best friend”, is given the role of robot — a sort of biomechanical amusement park ride with which the bees might divert themselves. By humanizing that with which we least identify and mechanizing that with which we empathize, the comic breaks free of man’s mammal-centric bias with respect to the animal kingdom and enables the reader to view his or her own relationship with Earth’s other life forms in a broader context.

April 1, 2010
        tags: comics. comics-explained. humor. comic.
This riveting new stickycomics comic places “bros before ho’s” in a concrete context, trivializing the statement such that it becomes meaningless. Thus, it is transformed into a new thing and is a sort of feminine recapturing and reinterpretation of the term.

This riveting new stickycomics comic places “bros before ho’s” in a concrete context, trivializing the statement such that it becomes meaningless. Thus, it is transformed into a new thing and is a sort of feminine recapturing and reinterpretation of the term.

March 18, 2008

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