#yes i did the anagram just so i could make that pun

[queenofhearts7378]

“So this is Jake's fault, right?” Randy asked.

Danny made a noise of agreement as they continued running down the hallway, red flashing against their eyes and alarms ringing through the air.

And okay, it wasn't really Jake's fault they were being chased by a killer robot after breaking out of some holding cells.

Ever since Jake had turned 16, he'd been getting more duties outside of New York, really stepping up into his role as the American Dragon. NYC was still his home, his main area of protection, and the main capital of the magical community; he wasn't leaving anytime soon.

But occasionally a smaller community would reach out, asking for help with bigger problems they couldn't handle and he couldn't answer over the phone or e-mail. So Jake began traveling (through mundane or magical means), and solving the problems in person.

And occasionally dragging his out-of-town friends along with him.

Which is how the four of them ended up here: in an off-the-books government facility in Horrible, Arkansas, and made up of the same branch as the GIW.

(Danny had groaned out loud in his and Rand's cell, thunking his head against the bars when he heard that.

The agent that was interrogating them gave him a weird look.

“He's from Amity Park.” Randy said solemnly, patting Danny’s shoulder.

The agent went white so fast Randy honestly thought he was about to pass out before fleeing the room.

“Wow,” Randy said, “Y'all's city really is a curse.”)

The four of them had literally stumbled onto the grounds, got searched and had most of their stuff taken away, and thrown into holding cells where agents would periodically come to interrogate them on how they found the place and who else knows about it.

Danny had phased them through the back wall as soon as they were left alone, and accidently ran directly into a wall of weapons that fell on top of them both. Randy only got a sore shoulder, but something zapped Danny and he hadn't been able to transform since.

Which was when the alarms went off.

And when they discovered that the facility used killer robots as security and were all too happy to shoot a couple of teenagers.

Now they were running for their lives trying to find their stuff and their friends without getting shot by the robots or the agents.

They skidded around another corner, and Danny grabbed open the nearest door, throwing it open to check for their stuff.

Instead they were met with two startled agents in the middle of grabbing their weapons.

Randy didn't waste the chance and spun around Danny, landing a kick in the first man's diaphragm and then bringing his knee up just as the man bent over to gasp for air.

(The ninja suit let him be faster, stronger, more bouncy, and protected him from hard hits. The lessons and training of 800 years worth of ninjas were pressed into the fabric enabling him to fight when he had never done it before. He still had training though. He spent hours in the Nomicon practicing the moves and katas his brain knew but his body didn't. Following the footsteps and marks the Nomicon drew out around him, mirroring the poses the illustrated samurai and dragons went though. And lately, following along next to the First Ninja as he performed the moves next to him, occasionally fixing his posture, as Plop Plop chattered nearby.

Being the Ninja wasn't all cool flips and awesome weapons. Even without the mask, Randy was still a ninja.)

Danny took the chance to leap onto the other agent's back trying to get his weapon, throwing the man off balance right as he tried to shoot Randy.

The shot went wide and hit the wall, leaving a faint scorch mark on the white plaster. Randy dived under the shot, rolling forward right past the agent. He kicked his leg out, catching him in the back of the knee, right as Danny yanked the weapon out of his grasp and leapt off the agent's back. Between the teenager using him as a springboard and his leg giving out on him, the agent hit the floor hard. Danny didn't give him the chance to get his bearings and swung the weapon, clocking him over the head.

He swayed for a minute before hitting the ground. He wasn't unconscious but he wasn't getting off the floor anytime soon.

Randy and Danny high-fived before fleeing back out the door.

“Randy, that was awesome!” Danny exclaimed as they checked the other doors for their stuff. “I didn't know you could do that!”

“I know, I know, I'm the Bruce McCheese. Hold your applause,” Randy bragged as he opened the last door in the hallway to reveal yet another supply closet. Running past Danny, he punched him in the shoulder, “I'm still a ninja without the mask Casper.”

“What was that? I couldn't hear you over your ego getting in the way!” Danny laughed as he turned the corner, only to catch a metal leg in his stomach. His back hit the wall and his stolen weapon went flying away from him.

“DANNY!” Randy screeched, knowing he wouldn't get there in time as the security bot charged up to fire.

His feet and hands moved before he could think about it.

‘Separate - Gather - Free’

Randy could feel the energy pool through him, starting with his feet (“Your stance grounds you,” First Ninja said, “It centers you. It's the most important part of using the spells.") and surging upwards through his body in a way he's never felt while in the suit. Randy could feel the air thicken in his palms and he thrust out his hands just as the energy hit his palms and the top of his head.

“Ninja AIR-FIST!”

He could see the ninja magic hit the security robot and smash it into the wall. All the energy that had surged through him faded out, leaving Randy feeling like he just played Grave Puncher for two days straight.

He swayed for a moment, exhaustion hitting him like a brick, before he stumbled over to a gob-smacked Danny.

“Since when could you do that?” Danny asked as he scrambled to his feet.

Randy braced himself against the wall, “Uhhhhhhhhh……now I guess?”

Danny looked at the dented wall, then back at Randy. “Can you do it again?”

“Nngh….think I'll pass out if I did.”

“Alright, last resort then. And I still can't go ghost.”

Randy groaned. “Man we are shoobed.”

“We just need to find the others…..and our stuff.” Danny crouched down in front of Randy. “Alright hop on. You look like you're about to pass out now.”

“Pretty sure it'd just slow us down.” Randy said, even as he wrapped his arms around Danny's neck.

“Dude it's like I'm holding a couple of grapes. What are you, 80 pounds soaking wet?”

“Screw you too.” He dug his heel into Danny's thigh, “Giddee up. I think I hear the others breaking things up ahead.”

Jake and Adrien were indeed in the next hallway over, both transformed and absolutely wrecking anything they came across.

“Hey guys!” Chat grinned at them, impaling the last security bot with his staff. “We were looking for you!”

“Yo Ribbons! What happened to you?” Jake flew over to hand them their backpacks.

“Turns out Mister Ninja over here can use his ninja magic out of the mask.”

Jake blinked at them, “You can do that?”

“Apparently,” Randy said as he slid off Danny's back, “if I want to feel like I went ten rounds with a hoard of robo-apes.”

“Oof.” Jake shook his backpack at them as Randy pulled on his mask. “Well we found the main computer room, stole a bunch of hard drives that I'm going to give to Spud and Tucker, and Chat broke like, everything in there with a Cataclysm so no need to worry about cameras.”

“And we found out what they are called.” Adrien chimed in, “Beings Under Government Surveillance. They had a sign.”

“Bugs?”

“B.U.G.S.!”

“No wonder the GIW are such pests!” Danny and Adrien said together, high fiving. Randy snickered at the pun.

“Yeah, you're all comedians, can we go? The missing fairies are running loose and I've got to figure out if they need to move, or if they'd be fine with some more magic barriers around their town.”

“And I really gotta talk to the Nomicon. It's wack they didn't warn me about this.”

~~~~

Later in the Nomicon:

First Ninja stared at him in disbelief, “You did what.”

[therealvinelle]

Is it true that Tom Riddle has a different name in a lot of translations because publishers thought making the anagram in book 2 would be super important so they changed the name rather than just letting that one thing not work in the translation? What's Tom's name in your Norwegian copy?

I'll have you know almost everybody have different names in the Norwegian translation. I'm sure Harry would too, if the translator could get away with it, sadly his name was on the title card.

Some of this is for pronunciation, Hermione Granger is made Hermine Grang so we're not all sounding like Victor Krumm trying to make sense of her name, others are given more of an overhaul to convey the pun or vibe from the original name. Alastor "Madeye" Moody is Alastor "Galøye" Bister ("Galøye" is literally "Madeye", while "bister" means "terse").

Other examples of translations include the Black family being Svart (Norwegian word for Black) but by and large keeping their constellation names and spelling (with such exceptions as Alfar ("ph" isn't how we spell the f-sound, and the d would doesn't really work either - it's a phonetic translation of Alphard) and Narsissa (the c would be a problem)), and foreign characters like Victor Krumm and Gellert Grindelwald stay (almost: Victor is now Viktor.) the same, presumably because they're foreign in-universe.

For punny translations we have not just the names, but places and things being made punny to best reflect the original. Diagon Alley is made Diagonalgangen, "The diagonal hallway" that with the -en ending becomes "walking diagonally". Heh. Quidditch is rumpeldunk, the snitch is "snoppen" (a euphemism for penis. I commend the translator for making the game somehow that little bit gayer than it already was), Rita Skeeter is Rita Slita (conveying that she's an exhausting, tireless person), Cornelius Fudge is Kornelius Bleouf (a made-up surname that coincidentally is pronounced the same as "bluff"). It keeps going.

Some people didn't get punny names, simply names that captured the vibe. The Crouch family is now Kroek, Percy is Perry, and Tom Riddle (whom I'll get further into below) is Tom Venster.

(Though, since you've got me talking about one of my favorite niche subjects: the translator did make a pun out of Tom's name that isn't in the original series.

Tom is a common name in Norwegian, but it also is the word for "empty". We have an unrelated idiom, "full av faen" - literally "full of the devil", figuratively a malicious or cruel person. For use in conversation, I could use it about a person but also about a particularly grouchy cat. My friend had a horrible day so now they're full av faen, I tried petting that cat but it's full av faen.

The chapter where we meet eleven-year-old Tom Riddle is titled "Tom, eller full av faen".

I can only imagine the translator had been waiting four books to make that pun.)

In other words, yes Tom's name was trnaslated. In Norwegian the full name is Tom Dredolo Venster, with the anagram being "Voldemort den store" (Voldemort the great). That's right, we suffered even worse secondhand embarrassment in Norway.

I am quite fond of the translated name, as it in my opinion captures the vibe of Tom Riddle very well. An ordinary name with a very nice ring to it, and you don't actually know anybody else with that exact name. Dredolo, the oddball middle name, is as foreign yet fitting with the rest as Marvolo is in English. It's a name that rolls off the tongue.

The Danes, by comparison, have Romeo Gåde Detlev. Which is a very... eyecatching name, I've seen it go viral several times (along with the French Tom Elvis Jedusor), but the problem is that Tom was named for his father, an English gentleman in the 1920's, and this name sounds like a cultural melting pot. Gåde, originally the middle name that stood out and had Mrs. Cole assuming Merope came from an exotic background, is now the most normal name in there.

I want to be lenient, I do, the translator hadn't read Half-Blood Prince at the time and didn't know how much emphasis would be placed on Tom's name being ordinary. But, well, he made the name a different ethnicity, and I can only imagine he must have wanted the first name "Romeo" quite badly. We're left with a name that signals completely different things, which I do think is relevant when Tom's name being painfully Muggle and ordinary, growing up in 1930's London, had such an impact. Being perceived as foreign, which he would be with that name, would change things. His shedding the name to become Voldemort also takes on a very different meaning when he's an Englishmen who spent the first few decades of his life being asked if his parents fled the Soviet Union.

So, not a fan of Romeo Detlev.

As for Tom Elvis Jedusor, that one I have no problem with. Elvis wouldn't become a star until several decades after Tom's birth, and the middle name is supposed to be unusual anyway. The rest of the name sounds appropriately French, no notes. (Though the Danish translator should have taken some for how to give readers a funny, but plausible name).

[twinhood-2dot0]

Best Of: Video Game Soundtracks

AAAAAAA I’m sorry, I forgor 💀. You can punish me if you wanna. I’m just gonna write this really short post anyways.

Stardew Valley

Stardew Valley’s calming music is popular with gamers and non-gamers alike, created by the sole developer of the game, ConcernedApe. He made the game pretty much all by himself. It’s content rich and has fun gameplay that can extend to months and all the art, music, programming, everything was done by one person. You can see why it’s inspiring.

My favourites are:

The name may have played a role

Minecraft

Created by Daniel “C418” Rosenfeld, Minecraft has an awesome collection of tracks too. It’s unique in a way that unlike most music you hear in video games, it’s pretty much random. Due to how the gameplay works, he couldn’t really makes tracks to fit specific situations, so he had to make general purpose tracks that could play at random intervals. Which is why this meme exists.

An awesome piano track, the most iconic one I think.

Eponymous track.

Another great track.

Microsoft seems to not want the artists to keep their license to their music that they made, so it seems like they don’t want to work with C418 anymore, which is sad, but we did get this fire (pun intended) track by the awesome Lena Raine, who also worked on Celeste, another prominent indie game and Deltarune, Undertale’s alternate universe sequel(???), yes that’s an anagram.

Undertale

How can we not talk about Undertale when talking about video game music? Undertale has both great battle themes and ambient themes. A 101 of them to be exact. Granted some are uhhh best described as random noise??? Anyways, 

funni meme song

Best boss music to grace the earth

Another awesome battle theme

Have to use hyperlinks because arbitrary limit :(

Calm music that sadly won’t hit as hard until you’ve played the game :(.

I could go on but you can just hit shuffle play and find great tracks.

Undertale Soundtrack

Pokémon

As you know, Pokémon made most of my childhood, so their music is really impactful. None of these are official uploads and some are piano arrangements because Nintendo is a garbage company with 0 love for their pretty loyal community and they took down the one channel on YouTube that had a pretty comprehensive list of Nintendo music.

Littleroot Town Theme From Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald

Theme for the starting town in Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald, the first Pokémon games I ever completed and my favourites, even if they’re 4 years older than me.

Pallte Town Theme from Red and Blue

Starting Town theme for the first ever games in the series, Red and Blue. Also one of the first games I ever played.

Battle Theme for Red and Blue

Misc

Korobeineki

Tetris Theme

Batman: Arkham City Menu Theme

Just the title theme, but there are more great tracks for stealth sections and such.

[kaibutsushidousha]

What do you mean by ridiculous names ? Is there puns or the name very unusual with fancy kanji/unusual readings for them ?

All of the above. Using older kanji makes sense since the story is set in Taishou, but most names are either unsubtle puns or relatively direct descriptors of the characters, like Gyokko meaning “jade vase”. Unusual readings don’t often all that often, but a great example is 不死川 being spelled as Shinazugawa instead of the more obvious Fujigawa (same kanji as Killer Killer’s Fujigawa btw). 

Not only that, but there also a few examples of names that are straight up regular words with no twist to them whatsoever: Muzan (cruelty), Giyuu (heroism) and Agatsuma (my wife).

Kamado means “furnace gate”, because the Kamado family sells charcoal. It’s an outdated kanji for furnace (竃) to keep that Taishou flavor. Now, Tanjirou is a much more competent and interesting name, one of my favorites in the manga. Depending on whether you interpret its 治 as the 治 in 治す or the 治 in 退治, the meaning of his name could be either “healing son of charcoal” or “demon-slaying son of charcoal”, fitting perfectly with how Tanjirou’s goals involve both killing demons and getting a cure for his sister’s predicament. Not mention a lot of Heian mythology associating slaying oni with curing illness. And the charcoal part is because Tanjirou, of the Furnace family who sells charcoal, sells charcoal. By the did I mention Tanjirou sells charcoal? But anyways, there’s even another layer to this name and which it’s why it’s one of my favorites: it can be sort of a namefication of the verb 歎じる(tanjiru), which means to mourn, reflect Tanjirou’s main trait of sparing sympathy for pretty much every demon he kills.

Nezuko means “shrine bean girl”. Specifically Heian era shrines, so it’s maybe this kanji is too old even for the Taishou era (so old that a lot of people on the internet don’t know to type it or don’t bother the conversion takes too long). But it fits the character since Heian is when we got most of the oni related mythology this series is mostly about. The “bean girl” part is probably there only to sound cute.

Agatsuma, as mentioned earlier, means “my wife”. I already considered one of the funniest I’ve ever seen before I even started the manga and it only better after actually seeing Zen’itsu’s character. Zen’itsu has a cool double meaning like Tanjirou, with 逸 potentially being from 逸する or 逸物, so his name means either “goodness missed” or “goodness at its best”, which fits how Zen’itsu is normally an absolutely terrible person in every aspect but shows himself to be ultimately caring and competent when pushes come to the shove (even if through the power of stress napping most of the time).

Hashibira means “beak flattened”. A rare name I have no idea how it connects to the character. Inosuke’s kanji mean “helper of the elegant” but the intent is clearly a pun on inoshishi (boar). Besides, looking at the meaning feels like a moot point because everyone is “the elegant” compared to Inosuke.

Both Kanawo’s names are antiquated as heck, mainly there for the series Taishou era flavor. Tsuyuri is one of Japan’s most notoriously unusual ateji names (yeah, there are only 3 instances of the manga using real people names and one of them is the name known for being weird), with it’s kanji meaning “chestnut flower falling” and the kana means “rainy season starting”, because chestnut flowers fall in early May, signaling the start of the rainy season. Kanawo’s “birthday” is in May btw. Anyways, the name was probably chosen for her specifically because of flower kanji in the middle and her Breath of Flowers. Kanawo is a katakana name, so no proper meaning, but it overall feels very old because it’s a name that uses “wo” instead of “o”. Taishou flavor, as I mentioned.

I’m skipping Gen’ya to his brother’s section because their names are matching.

Ubuyashiki means “childbirth grounds”. Kagaya had 5 children so it checks. Besides, with their family curse, pretty much all the Ubuyashikis can do is give birth to the next generation as much as they can before they kick the bucket. Kagaya means “radiant!”. Yes, the exclamation mark is part of the name’s meaning. I’m sure it’s a name all pillar agree with.

Tomioka means “wealth hill” it’s a rare instance of a real people name in this series, so I assume it must a reference to some one, but I have no idea who. Giyuu, as already mentioned, is just the regular word for heroism. Military volunteers are actually called “giyuu soldiers” in Japanese even.

Similarly, Kochou is the regular word for butterfly (although not the most commonly used). Shinobu is a hiragana name, so no proper meaning (much like Kanae and Kanawo’s katakana names), but name Shinobu is normally written with 忍 (the shinobi kanji) or 偲 (remembering, but most often in the context of remembering a dead person). The latter has obvious meaning in Shinobu’s relationship with Kanae, but the former might also have an interesting meaning behind it. The shinobi kanji is made with the heart kanji under the blade kanji (insert Monogatari reference here), so a huge cliche in ninja-themed literature is the saying “a shinobi without a heart is just a blade” (surprisingly never mentioned once in Naruto, as far as I can remember). I believe this thematically connects to Shinobu’s central character trait of wanting to have Kanae’s kindness but not being able to bring herself to be that empathetic to demons. She tries to be Shinobu but can’t force herself to retain the heart she lost, so she ends up just being a blade.

Rengoku is the regular word for purgatory, as you probably know from it being also the name of his ninth kata. Kyoujurou means “congratulating son of apricorns”, with father Shinjurou being “congratulating son of yew plum pine” and his brother Senjurou being “congratulating son of thousand”. The pun here is probably with 享受(kyouju; happily accepting something) vs 信受 (shinju; accepting a fact, in a somewhat resignated way). Another possibility less related to the conflicted with his character is 教授(kyouju; professor) since he’s a mentor character.

Uzui means “roof marrow”, but real pun is with uzu uzu, the gitaigo for impatience, a character trait fitting for a character completely centered around rejecting shinobi philosophies. Also reflects how his very first sympathetic moment was him honestly admiting that his impatience to save his wives caused him to make a few bad moves. Tengen is the Japanese reading for Tianyuan, which is the heaven’s energy which composes everything according to some ancient Chinese traditions. You may have heard of it as the “celestial unknown” or the “heavenly element”. Don’t know what it has to do with Tengen’s character though.

Kanroji means “nectar temple” and Mitsuri means “honey lazuli”. The “temple” and “lazuli” part are kanji commonly used in names, so that’s a pretty much just thrown in there to make her name sound more like a name. The real keywords here nectar and honey, since those are two words that can be used as horny words in a very subtle way, but suddenly look a lot less subtle when they are about the Love Pillar.

Himejima means “scream island”, but specifically the sad, crying kind of scream, matching with how Himejima is pretty much always crying out of compassion for others. Also, archaic kanji for “island” because Taishou. Gyoumei means “carita afterlife”. Carita is an umbrella term for all forms of spiritual training in Buddhism. It includes a lot of things we see associated with him in the manga, like sitting under waterfalls, reciting chants, etc.

Tokitou means “time transparent”. Possibly a clever amnesia reference (in the sense of how his past time was invisible to him)? Muichirou means “first son of no”, in a ridiculous match with his twin Yuichirou (”first son of yes”). Yuichirou references that multiple times in his backstory, saying it’s supposed to mean “no worth” or “no point”, only to then say it’s supposed to mean “no limits” in the climax of the flashback.

Iguro means “elegant black”. It’s an obvious anagram on guroi (gorey). Now, Obanai is easily the most incomprehensible name in the series. It means “small banana inside”, which is nonsensical enough for me to know for sure there’s a hidden pun involved, but I can’t find it for the life of me. The closest I can get is a pun with the English word “overnight” (OBAaNAIto), but I still don’t know Iguro’s character enough to know what “overnight” has to do with him.

不死川 would mean “immortal river“ as Fujigawa, but due to ateji it be comes more like “river of not dying“. Like with Kanroji’s names, the river kanji is only there to make the name look more like a real name (note: it’s not working) and the “not dying“ part is what really matters. Sanemi is introduced showing off his chest covered in scars and having Kanroji commenting on how he’s got a new scar in his last mission, immediately conveying to the audience that he’s a dude that’s not dying despite injuring himself a lot. Now Sanemi is a much more complicated name because 実 has dozens of meanings and I had no way of knowing which one is supposed to apply to him until Gen’ya finally came into play. Looking at them as paired names, Sanemi means “more reality“ and Gen’ya means “more illusion“. Can’t say why Sanemi is supposed to represent truth or Gen’ya is supposed represent lies, though. Could be something about how Sanemi knows the truth about how he felt about his brother while was fed Sanemi’s lies in their reencounter, could be about how Sanemi is a true breath user while Gen’ya is a fraud who needs to rely on Breath of Gun or going Kirby on the demons to fight, who knows. On a semi-related note, all of their other siblings had generic unrelated names. I guess their parents didn’t think of going with “more half-truth“ or “more ommision“ names before dropping the naming pattern.

Kyougai means “echoing fanfare”. Two sound related words for the drum guy. Pretty basic.

Rui is a regular word for bad influence, fitting of how he forced others into his abusive family play. It’s written with the radical for thread, so I that’s one of the ones I find more clever than ridiculous.

Enmu, on the other hand, means “nightmare dream”. And if that wasn’t redundant enough, it’s also an anagram for nemu(sleep).

Kaigaku means “sly peaks”. The peaks part is common surname kanji, so only the “sly” part matters. Obvious traitor name, which must be why he was unnamed in Zen’itsu’s first flashback. 

Nakime means “sounding woman”. Very self-explanatory, she’s a woman who plays a biwa.

Daki means “fallen princess”, which is already meaningful enough for her character, but more importantly, it sounds very close to Dakki, the Japanese for the Daji, a famous Chinese monster disguised as an imperial courtesan. Giyuutarou is a name used for courtesan assistants, as already explained in the manga itself. Daki’s human name Ume is plum.

Gyokko means “jade vase”, as I said in the intro paragraph. Competing hard with Nakime for the title of most to-the-poing name in the series.

Hantengu means “half tengu”, because his ability is to split in halves and the tengu is the youkai species he’s themed after. Kinda weird how all oni in Kimetsu are themed after classic Japanese monster but only Daki, Hantengu and Douma get to be named after the ones they represent, I wish that was done more often. Anyways, his emotion bodies all have the kanji for their respective emotion in their names.

Akaza has my favorite name in the series, which makes sense considering everything else about him is also great. His human name is Hakuji, meaning “lion-dog healer” (yes, same ji in Tanjirou, but “demon-slaying” can’t be considered as a possibility for him for obvious reasons). As explained during his backstory, he’s named after lion-dog statues often seen guarding temple entrances. He’s someone who is supposed to be there to protect others. The healer part of his name also fits with how his spent half of his human life nursing his loved ones. And then Muzan turned him into Akaza. Due to its outdated kanji, even Japanese fans find his name a bit hard to interpret, but Akaza is generally agreed to mean “castrated dog sitting on a pit”. Delightfully humialiating name with delicious irony. In the chapter “The Useless Lion-dog”, Muzan turns the lion-dog who failed to guard its two families into a castrated dog sitting on a pit. All his nobility was neutered and he was left sitting still in a pit as he has no home to guard. Before this becomes a full Akaza meta on how he’s a full anti-thesis of what Hakuji swore to be, let’s get back to talk about names. His wife Koyuki’s name mean “love snow”. The love part represents how she’s a love interest of Hakuji and the snow part reflects she always a snowflakes hairpin and how Akaza projects the image of a snowflake on the floor when he activates his compass ability.

Douma means “child exhausted”, fitting his childish nature, especially in how he’s portrayed as a child who still hasn’t developed empathy at the age of 20, and with how his backstory is all about him being exhausted by human emotions after listening to hours of worshippers narrating their own tragedies. But most importantly, he named after Doumahoushi aka Ashiya Douman, the mythological villain he’s themed after. I like how he’s the only oni themed after a human villain rather than an actual oni or youkai like all the rest, but he might be the one oni who understands humans the least.

Kokushibou means “black death pupils”. Pupils as in eye pupil, not students, of course. He has no students, but he sure has a lot of pupils. Also eyes are often used as symbol for envy, which is the main theme of his backstory. Lastly, his name is a pun on kokushibyou aka the black plague, the disease that killed the most people in the world, just like he’s the oni who killed the most people. The 3 Upper Moons all have pretty unironically good names, all things considered. His human family name means “successor country”, probably in reference to how his brother passed down his hinomaru (symbol of Japan, the country) earrings to his next generation all the way down to Tanjirou. His name Michikatsu means “rock winner”. The winner part is obvious but I don’t know the (outdated) rock kanji was picked. His brother is Yoriichi meaning “fated one”, which probably on feeds Kokushibou’s complex harder.

Lastly and most ridiculously, Muzan Kibutsuji. Kibutsuji means “demon dance road”. Yes, the oni kanji is right there on his name, same demon kanji as the demons everyone faces. And as mentioned in the opener, the name Muzan is literally just the regular word cruelty. I’m commenting stuff with a friend as I read and we semi-consistently refer to Muzan as Meanie Demonbroadway because that’s just how stupid his name is. I really love it. Thank you anon for this opportunity to talk about Meanie Demonbroadway in a public space.

[kumeko]

escape room

Prompt: seven, mc, fluff

A/N: I haven’t written in 2nd person in so long and Seven is the hardest one for me to grasp, so I hope this came out well. Written for @purinblossom for the @mystic-messenger-secret-santa

Summary: Seven might be better at being Sherlock but you’re determined to prove you’re no Watson.

…

…

…

…

��It’s kinda funny,” Seven comments, turning over a chess piece to examine the bottom. “To be on this side of the law.”

 For him, it must be. You wouldn’t know—unlike the hacker-extraordinaire, you haven’t done worse than maybe a parking ticket or two. Well, that and maybe that time you stole a water bottle (completely by accident, leaving it in the shopping cart until you noticed in the parking lot and it was far too late to go back). You pick up a magnifying glass of a nearby desk, lifting it to your eye. “Really?”

 He snorts at the sight and you break out into laughter yourself. The glass warps the room into a funhouse mirror and you have no idea how anyone uses such a thing. Then again, it might not even be a real magnifying glass—this is an escape room, after all. It can be a clue or a red herring.

 “Yeah, really, Miss. Bug-Eyes.” He gestures at the room, at the filing cabinet in the corner and the desk stacked with folders and coffee mugs. It looks like an old detective’s room, you have to admit, almost like the set piece from a movie. “We’re cops. Considering my backstory, it’s elementary.”

 Well, that was the setting provided before you entered the room. Seven liked picking strange and fun dates and after hearing that you could get trapped in a room with no escape but your wits, he wasted no time asking you to come. The scenario of this room is that you are detectives trying to break into the room next door and catch the thieves before they escape.

 “It’s kinda funny.” You echo his choice of words, a brow raised, “To try and escape from a room after spending a week doing nothing but that.”

 “…true.” Seven rubs his head, a sheepish grin on his face as though this hadn’t occurred to him.

 “At least it’s more fun this time.” You go back to examining the room because really, it is much better than getting trapped in a room with a ticking time bomb and a boy who ignored your every advance.

 And who knows, maybe this time you can escape on your own. Though, judging by the pace Seven was working, it seems like a slim chance. Within the first twenty minutes, Seven already solved three puzzles and you aren’t sure if it is his whimsical personality that helped him or just dumb luck. A mixture of both, probably. Half of these puns and riddles felt like something he’d put in the chat room. This whole room might be a little too easy for him but he is having fun and that is all that mattered.

 Well, that and beating him. At least in one clue. You aren’t sure exactly how seriously Seven is taking this—he had dressed and acted like Sherlock Holmes the moment you stepped on the property, but you are more than just Watson.

 Hopefully. Triumphantly, Seven pulls out a folder from one of the drawers and you can almost see the light bulb over his head. “Aha! By jove, I’ve got it!”

 You’re pretty sure he’s slipped character again but you’re not certain what detective he’s pretending to be now. Instead, playing along, you peek over his shoulder at the file. Holding the magnifying glass to your eye, you squint. “Yes, I see it, the future of the company is at stake.”

 “The company?” Seven almost drops the paper, shock written all over his face. “No, then who will feed Elly?”

 “Not us, I’m afraid.” You pat his shoulder comfortingly, shaking your head sadly. “We can barely feed ourselves.”

 “No, not Elly!” He sniffs, once, twice, and then slowly starts to organize the set of cue cards hidden within the folder. “I’ll save her. I’ll save us all.”

 Sometimes it was too easy to slip into a scene. You perch on a nearby chair, examining the chess pieces now. Beneath each is a number but you don’t know what it means. Seven’s humming a made-up ditty as he circles a letter on his cue card. “Like a transformer, we’ll combine chess and the cards.”

 “Are you saying a Decepticon did it?” You eye the computer suspiciously.

 He grins, a thing of light, and you’re glad you’ve put the spyglass down or you’d go blind. “Maybe, maybe not.” Picking up a cue card, he points to the capital letter at the top of the card. “Combine this with the chess board and tadahhhh!” He writes down a series of positions and moves the chess pieces to each position. “A chess match!”

 “A chess match,” you repeat, nodding your head. “Harry Potter style?”

 “Buzz, buzz!” He crosses his arms, shaking his head. “If only.”

 “If only,” you sigh in agreement, before adding seriously, “So we finish the match?”

 “Ding ding ding.” He squeezes your hand before moving to the chess board. Tapping his chin, he stares at the board for a moment before moving the knight, then the bishop, and finally the queen. “Checkmate. A7.” Excited, he practically runs to the computer and starts typing. “Combine the letters from the other moves with this one, it’s an anagram and—” He presses the enter button triumphantly.

 Only for an invalid password error to pop up.

 “Huh?” He stares at the screen blankly. “Maybe it’s a different anagram?” Seven tries again only to get the same warning.

 You’re missing something. You move back to the chess board, returning the pieces to the initial positions. Maybe Seven made a wrong move or—

 Or maybe it is something simpler, far simpler than his over-active mind could comprehend. You laugh as you stare at the pieces, at the single letter the chess pieces make. From Seven’s angle, it hadn’t been obvious, but from where you’re standing you can see the K. While he’s still distracted with the computer, softly muttering how he is a hacker and he has broken into security systems far more advanced than this one, you practically skip to the filing cabinet and pull out the K folder. Inside, you find a small scrap paper with the word Knight scrawled on it.

 “I’ve got this,” you announce, pushing him out of the chair.

 He plops to the ground with no protest, staring up at you curiously. “Ohhhh? A challenger appears?”

 “A champion arrives,” you correct, typing in the password.

 It doesn’t work. As you stare at the screen, flustered, he chuckles. “Where’s the champion?”

 You glower at him before a stroke of inspiration hits you. Looking back at the chessboard one last time, you spot where the knight stands—E3—and type that instead.

 The computer screen loads and Seven’s jaw drops. It’s adorable, really, and even though the timer is still counting down (only fifteen minutes left!) you steal a kiss. He’s not too shocked to not lean in and you push away before your quick peck turns into a full on make out session.

 You are really competitive, after all, and Seven still has three clues on you.

[spamzineglasgow]

Blissful Tendencies: An Interview with Robin Boothroyd

Robin Boothroyd’s pamphlet Another Green World, which takes its title from a 1975 Brian Eno album, will shortly be released through SPAM Press. In advance of the pamphlet’s launch in London this week, SPAM editor Maria Sledmere caught up with Robin to find out more about his thoughts on procedural strategies, ambient poetics, influence, post-internet poetry and writing as an act of attention.

Robin published his crowdfunded landscape poem Quintet for Wind and Light in 2016. He also has a debut collection forthcoming with Sine Wave Peak.

You can pre-order a copy of Another Green World here.

Can you talk about your first encounter with Brian Eno’s album Another Green World, and what drew you to write a pamphlet after it?

I read about it before listening to it. This was in an article on the Quietus celebrating the album's 40th anniversary. Instead of focusing on historical context, as is usually the case with such pieces, the writer had foregrounded their personal experience of the record, and there was something in the way it had made them feel which struck a chord with me. Further, the piece mentioned Eno's Oblique Strategies cards used during the album’s composition – flash cards drawn at random to open creative pathways – which I instantly knew would be useful in my work. So the album has always been associated with creativity for me. With this context, and the way the music floored me when I first listened to it, it was perhaps inevitable that I'd write a pamphlet inspired by Another Green World. In fact, I've written two!

What was the process of writing, responding and revising?

In 2016, I went to a workshop at the Poetry School led by Emily Berry. One of the exercises she gave us to do, I think via Wayne Holloway-Smith, was to give us a sheet of song lyrics with every word of every line erased apart from the first. We then had to write a poem using this skeletal structure. I enjoyed working with the tension between improvisation and constraint, and thought it might be worth applying the exerciseto a sequence. And what better source than an album which was already central to my personal mythology? Turns out it's pretty hard to write more than one though! So I sought out some prompts to finda way into the poems. I realised I had a string of key words, so I decided to use Google's suggested searches to 'autocomplete' some of the lines. These were then used either as a springboard for improvisation or verbatim asa new line.

Can you talk a bit about what the title means to you. It could imply a kind of iteration: Oh look, another green world. Or maybe it’s an invitation, a gesture towards/into some alternative space. Are we exhausted with utopia, or is this doing something different? What kind of green world do you want to conjure?

You know, I haven’t really given the title much thought! It’s always just denoted the album. It’s surprising how often such things go unnoticed. For example, it took me around 20 years to realise that The Beatles is a pun. But to answer your question, I’d lean towards the alternativespace idea. Because I’m very much interested in the power of the imagination to conjure an alternate reality, another green world.

Your practice of generating lines from Genius song lyrics and Google search results mixes improvisation with intertextuality, a kind of poetic aleatory that has its lineage in everything from Mallarmé to Sam Riviere. What drew you to this technique, and who are some of your favourite influences that use variations of it?

I have to admit that I needed to look up the word 'aleatory', an anagram of a Tory ale. I see that it means 'used of the element of chance in poetic composition', so it's bang on! I'd be lying if I said that Riviere's work wasn't an influence. There are certainly parallels between the generative technique he used for Kim Kardashian's Marriage and my own. Another influence would be Jackson Mac Low's Complete Light Poems, which were composed using chance operations, a chart listing 280 kinds of light and a code based on dedicatees' names. It’s such a fascinating book!

What do you understand by the term ambient poetics? Would you describe Another Green World in this vein?

For me, poetry – whether writing or reading it – will always be an act of attention. And the ambient, at least by Eno's definition, is the opposite: an atmosphere, a vibe. Which is to say, a form which is intentionally undemanding of your attention. So the idea of an ambient poetry is a paradoxical one, and therefore attractive to me. I’d describe the work of Aram Saroyan as ambient, and Void Studies by Rachael Boast. Another Green World is more concerned with mood than it is with meaning, so I suppose it is in some ways ambient, yes.

I’m interested in what happens when you structure a poem in song form, with verse, chorus and instrumental sections. It’s like something escapes, deliciously, in my reading: I’m aware that the poem is a compression of something bigger, like it retains its virtual charge. How did you find using this structural constraint: was it a mode of compression or expansion? Do you see the lines as playfully ‘set’ to music or is it more complicated than that?

Every poem is a performance. Poetry is performed when it’s written, and it’s performed when it’s read. When I sourced the album’s lyrics from Genius, they included various descriptors in square brackets – [Verse], [Chorus], [Epic guitar solo] – which I found amusing and theatrical, so I chose to keep them in as remnants of the songs. I’m glad you feel that these make them retain their charge. For me, their presence highlights the performance of the poem. I invite the reader to imagine – which is to say perform – the guitar solo, for example. So it’s a compression before an expansion.

When you first submitted the pamphlet, you highlighted the fact that Eno’s album Another Green World is ‘pre-internet’. Given SPAM is self-described as a post-internet publication, obsessed with putting the internet on the page, as it were, how do you see the relationship between post- and pre-internet in terms of both music and poetry?

Many people would have you believe that we read less these days, but it’s simply not true. If anything, we read more – instant messages, articles, emails, social feeds. It’s just that reading isn’t centred on the book any more. I’m fascinated by the different attitudes and registers between these bodies of text, and seek to recreate them in the poem. That’s post-internet poetry for me. I was born in the mid-80s, so I experienced the majority of my childhood before the invention of the internet. And there’s a tendency, among my generation, to yearn for those blissful offline days when we weren’t barraged with information or paralysed by the anxiety of the infinite. Pre-internet as prelapsarian. Another Green World is interesting to me because it demonstrates the hopeful yearning of much late-70s experimental music, which has often been characterised as ‘nostalgic for the future’. Perhaps every generation is defined by their nostalgia.

Many of the poems are, like their Eno namesakes, ‘instrumentals’. How do you understand this working of a clearing, of silencing voice or lyric articulation in the space of a pamphlet?

It started as a joke. I was surprised to find entries for the instrumental songs on Genius, which is fundamentally a database of song lyrics. The idea of a poem withno words was amusing to me, so I kept them in at draft stage. But the more I read them, the more I felt that they could also offer an imaginative space – room to dream – triggered by the titles. When you silence the poem, the poem sings.

Another Green World has obvious environmental connotations. You describe a previous publication, Quintet for Wind and Light, as a ‘landscape poem’. Do you see Another Green World, as well as its procedural germination, as ecological in any way, a kind of reflexive, pastoral intervention within the contemporary?

Hmm. I’m not sure. What I remember finding in Google’s suggested searches was a desire for connection &/or information, most often regarding technology. Very few were pastoral or ecological in nature. But as I touched on before, the poem is a space for the imagination to go to town. This is how Another Green World is linked to the Quintet, by conjuring (sometimes imaginary) landscapes. Looking through the pamphlet, I see that the titles are pastoral: ‘Over Fire Island’, ‘In Dark Trees’. And some of my original lines concern nature: ‘Picking rosehips in winter’, ‘Who knew snakes don’t have legs’. Perhaps I wrote them to emphasise the contrast between the physical and digital worlds, which could be ecologically motivated.

It strikes me that there’s this strange quotidian tenderness throughout. Lines like ‘I’ll frogtie you with twine’, ‘Just add plant food’, ‘I’m eating a gluten rich flapjack’, ‘Taking my sweet time’. I’m seeing this as a sort of recognition of what’s worth keeping, an ethic of noticing and sharing. I love that line, ‘Everything not saved will be lost’, how it reminds us of our contemporary over-archivisation of every tiny detail of life. What function does poetry have as an everyday archive; is it something about accumulating a more humble mythos for the present, or something else?

When Frank O’Hara writes 'It is 12:20 in New York' and tells us about the walk he goes on, I really feel that it is 12:20 in New York. The poem becomes the present moment. I value the quotidian in poetry because it’s where life takes place. Not every moment is an epiphany. A few years ago, I wrote a set of lighthearted ‘rules’ for my poems, and the first one is 'be attentive'. Even outside of poetry, I’ve always made a point to enjoy the little things in life because they add up to something bigger. I suppose you could describe it as a kind of grounding technique, self-care. The everyday is also intensely personal. One of my favourite books is The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon, written around the year 1,000. It’s a diary in which she kept lists of her likes and dislikes. ‘Things that can't be compared’, ‘Things that create the appearance of deep emotion’, ‘Splendid things’. These give us such a clear portrait of what she was like as a person; her hopes, dreams, fears, desires (and, by extension, those of the society at the time) are all there in the lists. In a way, our internet search histories give us the same portrait today.

In the pamphlet’s epigraph, comprising the opening words of Eno’s record, there’s this line ‘Everyone just ignores them’, the words that ‘float in sequence’. Do you think we tend to ignore the elements of poetry or music we find difficult in this way? Is there something about beauty or function in meaning’s recalcitrance here, or are we just lazy readers/listeners?

I’m not sure whether people do ignore difficult artworks. I think they tend to hate or dismiss them. ‘Rubbish!’ Or, ‘My toddler could’ve done better!’ Perhaps that’s the same thing. For Eno, I think he was commenting on the fact that a great pop song doesn’t need good lyrics because no one pays attention to them anyway. They just hum the tune. You can’t not pay attention to the words in a poem, so I thought it would make an interesting epigraph.

How do you want people to read Another Green World?

As an invitation to play. I'd hope to elicit laughter and spark daydreams.

How do you see this pamphlet in relation to your other work and ongoing projects? What’s next in the world of Robin Boothroyd?

Quintet and Wind and Light, my previous pamphlet, was also inspired by Another Green World. It even quotes some of the lyrics! So they’ve always been two sides of the same coin. As for what I’m working on at the moment, I’ve started to gather a selection of concrete/minimal poems that I’ve been writing on and off for about five years. They’re a mixture of word associations and hybrids (e.g. ‘rhinoctopus’), and a couple were published on M58 back in 2015. My working title is Atomised. I’ve also begun a new landscape poem, ‘Vermilion Cliffs’. In terms of publications, Holiday Eyes, my first collection, is forthcoming on Sine Wave Peak.

~

[libraryofrewrita]

Chapter 13: Questions and A Request

After a few minutes of awkwardly staring at each other, Kenny was the first one to break the silence, much to the relief of everyone there.

"Umm...hi. Do you mind if I study the Yo-kai near you?"

Not really knowing what else they could do, Nate and Katie nodded and with a huge smile on his face, Kenny knelt down to Jibanyan's level and started to carefully examine him as Nathaniel closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and sighed.

"Okay, Hovernyan. What did you do this time?"

He said that in a tone that suggested Hovernyan did this sort of thing often, which honestly wouldn't have surprised anyone in the group at this point.

"Well...you were complaining about needing more time to either get rid of the Wicked Yo-kai or actually getting around to making that certain thingy you and Kenny were discussing."

Nathaniel blinked in surprise before glancing at the group, studying them for a few more minutes before finally answering,

"We'll talk at the secret base. Come on, Kenny."

Kenny looked up from studying Jibanyan and muttered,

"Aww..."

Nathaniel pointed at the group.

"You three. Come with us and bring your Yo-kai with you. I have a feeling that some questions will be answered."

Kenny covered his mouth in what was clearly an attempt to hide his excitement at being able to study both Jibanyan and Whisper further, but the spark in his eyes gave away his true thoughts on the matter.

*****

If anyone had asked Nate and Katie how they had imagined today going, they would tell you that they hadn't planned on going back in time, having their butler be threatened by a Yo-kai they couldn't even see or sense, and being led to a secret base by their own grandfathers who were right around the same age as them, but in all fairness, it was a strange day for everyone here.

"Alright, we're here. Don't touch anything. A lot of the stuff in here took forever to make."

The group went into a clubhouse-like structure that was also connected to a treehouse, a combination that would make any kid jealous. Nathaniel pointed to a small section that was lined with cushions and said,

"Sit over there. You're going to be here for a while."

Not really having a better suggestion, they did what he said and went over to the cushions. Nathaniel leaned on his wooden bat and said,

"First question, who are you?"

We didn't think this far! What do we do?!

Trying his best to not look suspicious while he tried to think of something, he looked towards the wrist where his Yo-kai Watch usually rested and an idea suddenly appeared in his head.

Got it!

"Nathan Amano."

Thankfully, Katie seemed to have the same idea as she said,

"Katie Kodama."

"Lucas Hikage."

Nate and Katie weren't quite sure why Lucas gave Nathaniel a false last name as well or where Hikage even came from, but they couldn't really question him about it at the moment. Nathaniel slowly nodded, seeming to accept that, but the look in his eyes implied that he knew that they were keeping something from him.

"Okay, second question. How do you know Hovernyan?"

"He just showed up and asked for our help."

"Actually, that sounds about right. That is something he would do."

"Wait...where's our Yo-kai?"

Nathaniel kept one hand on his pepper bat as he pointed upwards.

"They're with Kenny. My friend just loves any chance to study any new Yo-kai he comes across, especially since..."

Nathaniel trailed off and cleared his throat, trying to act like he didn't forget that he didn't really know these random kids in his secret base that well and that he shouldn't be discussing something very sensitive to both him and Kenny...at least, not yet.

"Well, nevermind about that. Since Hovernyan most likely dragged you all the way out here to the country, the least I could do is give you three something to do for me and Kenny."

*****

While Nathaniel was questioning the kids, Kenny took the Yo-kai to the upper level of the clubhouse. Kenny went over to a planter that was filled with different herbs and had some small pouches in front of them. Kenny picked up one of the pouches and after examining the contents, he dumped out some Bitter Medicine onto a piece of paper and opened the canteen he had been carrying.

"This should help speed up the healing for your scratches."

Whisper just took the Bitter Medicine out of Kenny's hand, quickly swallowed it, and took the canteen being offered to him as he washed down the bitterness of the medicine.

Definitely better than asking one of my companions if I could drain some of their energy to heal, or worse, having disinfectant spray being used on my scratches.

As his scratches healed up, Whisper watched Kenny grabbed one of the many sketchbooks scattered around, opening it to a blank page, and a pencil off of a small desk and started a small sketch of Whisper and Jibanyan.

"Will you answer some questions for me?"

Kenny pointed his pencil at Whisper, who nodded, not really sure what else to do.

"What's your name and what Rank are you?"

"I'm Whisper and I'm a Rank C, Jibanyan is a Rank D, and the-"

"Oh, no. I just need information about you and...Jibanyan, right? I've seen Komasan and Komajiro before."

Whisper and Jibanyan looked at the Koma Brothers, who just looked back at them with a confused expression as Kenny scribbled the information down.

"Tribe and Attribute?"

Whisper pointed to himself and said,

"Slippery and Drain,"

He then jabbed his thumb in Jibanyan's direction and continued,

"And he's Charming and Fire."

Kenny made a few content hums as he scribbled down the information, but before he could ask about anything else, he heard the kids downstairs calling the other Yo-kai down for something.

"Sorry. Our friends need us."

The four Yo-kai scrambled down the ladder and rushed to join the three kids they were traveling with and all seven of them walked off into the distance.

"Maybe they're bounded to them or something...?"

As he pondered this question, Kenny closed his sketchbook and climbed back down to Nathaniel and was surprised to see that Hovernyan was nowhere to be found.

"Wait...where's Hovernyan?"

"Oh, he just left. He said something about wanting to make sure that they knew where they were going or something."

"So, what do you think of them?"

Nathaniel crossed his arms and said,

"Well, they seem nice, but I'm pretty sure they're hiding something."

Kenny hummed in agreement.

"Yeah. They all had a strange aura, but for some reason, two of those auras are similar to ours..."

Nathaniel looked at his friend in surprise, but he knew better than to question him.

"Maybe it's just because they can see Yo-kai like us."

"Maybe..."

*****

Meanwhile, with the main group...

"So, we have to pick up a few things in Springdale?"

"Not the Springdale you're familiar with, but yes."

Hovernyan floated along with them as the three kids told the Yo-kai what they were doing.

"And all of this is so that the Yo-kai Watch can come into existance?"

"Yep."

They came to the area where the bus stop was back in their own time, only for Hovernyan to say,

"I hate to break it to you guys, but the bus doesn't come down here in this time. We have to walk to the train station."

Even though Nate and Katie were used to walking all over town back in their own time, they still couldn't believe what they just heard.

"Are you kidding me?"

"Wait, we have bikes. We can just bike down there."

Lucas raised a finger and said in a sheepish tone,

"Actually, I don't have one...on me, at least."

As much as riding a bike would be easier for them, they really didn't want to make Lucas feel left out, so they all agreed to just deal with it and walk down to the train station. As they walked, Nate asked Lucas the question that was burning in his mind,

"Hey, Lucas? Why did you call yourself Hikage?"

Lucas shoved his hands into his pockets and said,

"Well, if you want the honest truth, I panicked. Even though my powers haven't surfaced yet, my aura isn't exactly very subtle. If I get identified as a member of the Enma bloodline and if anyone finds out that you guys are friends with me, especially in this time period, it's not going to be pretty. You saw the results of what happened when my grandfather passed away and it was because of your intervention that it didn't become a total disaster."

"Yeah, that's true, not to mention the fact that your grandfather is alive in this time period...at least I think so..."

Lucas nodded and hummed in response, confirming their thoughts.

"But why did you choose Hikage?"

"I saw the name in a book once and it was the first name that popped into my head that couldn't be used to decipher the anagram that is my human identity. Where did you two get Amano and Kodama from?"

"Those are the model names of our Yo-kai Watches. Speaking of which, I think we're far enough away to put them back on now."

They stopped to dig out their Yo-kai Watches and slipped them back on.

"Much better."

Soon, they found themselves in front of the train station, amazed with how different things looked in this time period.

"Wait...how much is this going to cost?"

The issue of money had never been brought up until now and that was when the boring lectures about the value of money throughout history they had to sit through in class suddenly came into their heads.

Oh, great...this is going to be more difficult than we expected.

"Oh, don't worry about that. With a little Yo-kai magic, your financial worries will be a thing of the past, no pun intended."

They wanted to question Whisper about what he meant about the financial thing, but they didn't want to sit through another money lecture, especially since they needed to get a few things done.

"Hey, Hovernyan? When we're done with this, how are we going to get back home? Do you have another Time Stone we can use?"

"No, I only had the one Time Stone and that was only because I lost something that would've made this whole thing a lot simpler."

Hovernyan pulled out a Yo-kai Medal out of his cape and flipped it like a coin. When the Yo-kai Medal hit the ground, a large, purple, three-parted mirror appeared in it's place.

"Hello, Hovernyan. It's great to see you again! I see you have some new friends with you as well!"

Hovernyan gave a hearty chuckle and turned to the group.

"This is Miradox, the result of Mirapo being fused with Espy. You can travel through him like a Mirapo, but you are also able to travel to other times with him. Just say the word and you can easily travel with him back and forth through time. He's generally a friendly Yo-kai, so unless you managed to make him mad at you, he'll easily give you his Yo-kai Medal."

"It's that simple?"

Miradox nodded as well as a mirror could nod and handed Nate his Yo-kai Medal.

"Thanks, Miradox!"

"No problem! Just summon me when you wish to return to your time!"

"Wait...you know we're not from this time period?"

Miradox grinned and laughed.

"Of course! I know everything when it comes to time and space!"

While they knew better than to question the talking mirror, the kids couldn't help but wonder if Miradox was aware that his tone made him sound like he was trying to mess with them.

"Well, it was nice to meet you, Miradox, but we have stuff to do."

Miradox smiled and disappeared in a puff of purple smoke.

"Well, let's get going, everyone!"

After paying for their tickets, they boarded the train and headed to the Springdale of the past.

Previous Chapter: https://libraryofrewrita.tumblr.com/post/173910886514/chapter-12-the-encounter-the-kids-looked-through Next Chapter: https://libraryofrewrita.tumblr.com/post/177559417354/chapter-14-old-springdale

[its8simplejulesblog]

The Get to Know Me Post

Cheers to being unoriginal and self-absorbed! 

What is your full name?- Julianna Michaelina Larock 

What does your name mean?- It means my parents are Italian and they wanted me to have a last name that was too easy to make puns out of

Are you named after anyone?-Nope! I am uniquely my own person (along with the millions of other girls with a name that is a variation of Julianna) 

Does your name make any interesting anagrams?- Lame, Rock, Line, Mile, Hail, Nail

If you had to change your first name, what would you change it to?- I always liked the name Leigh, pronounced like Lee, but make it ~hipster~

Where are you from?- The most exciting state on the east coast 

Where were you born?- The most exciting state on the east coast 

Where did you grow up?- The most exciting state on the east coast 

Who did you look up to growing up?- My mom for sure. She has always been graceful in the face of adversity and taught me to do the same. She has a passion for learning and being the best version of herself while holding steadfast to her beliefs. 

What are your best characteristics?- I’d like to think that I am very empathetic and eager to become more knowledgable on any topic that interests me.

What are your favorite things about yourself?- This was not true for the longest time, but I love my eyes. They’ve always been brown and opinion kind of dull, but in the sunlight they’re beautiful so I changed my mind. Also I have a lot of hair and it’s very versatile so I like that too. 

Which of your parents are you closest to?- I don’t like this question. Both, but in different ways. My mom is my best friend, and I feel comfortable telling her anything. However, my dad has always pushed me to be the most successful (in my own terms) version of myself and I really respect that. 

Which of your parents are you more like?- Again, both. However, I’ve always said that I look more like my dad, but have the mannerisms of my mom. 

Are your grandparents still married?- My dad’s father, unfortunately, passed away a few years ago, but my mom’s parents are still together and they’re adorable. We facetime them often (yeah, they use facetime, they’re COOL grandparents) 

What relative was important to you growing up & why?- My grandmother on my mom’s side is the most caring woman I have ever met in my life. She has had a couple strokes, so she can’t keep up physically as much as she used to, but she would give her heart and time for virtually anyone. She is the kindest soul I have ever met in my entire life and honestly I almost cry every time I think about her she’s so cute. 

What is one thing that you’ve never revealed to your parents?- A boring answer, but really nothing. Everything I haven’t explicitly told them I’m sure they could easily guess on their own because of conversations we’ve had. 

What would your parents have named you if you were the opposite gender?- Jaden 

What do you call your grandparents?- On my mom’s side: Grandmom and Poppop; on My dad’s side: Brabby 

What is your best physical feature?- I like how long my legs are. I like feeling tall without actually being ridiculously tall. 

What is your biggest accomplishment?- Flying to China alone for the STEM road trip was a huge deal. I might even write about that trip actually. 

What is your biggest fear?- Being outcasted 

What is your biggest regret?- Being a people pleaser, or at least trying to, in highschool 

What is your eye color?- Brown, and I love it now 

What inspires you?-Anyone that can be unapologetically confident in themselves 

What is the most important thing in your life?- Being content, so that I can use my skills to make others happy 

What has required the most courage of you in your life so far?-Speaking Chinese at the schools in China. I knew it was necessary for them to feel comfortable, but I also didn’t want them to laugh at me haha. 

Who is your favorite actor?-Penn Badgley 

Who is your favorite actress?- Anne Hathaway 

Who is your favorite celebrity?- Currently Hannah Ann Sluss (solely for the way she slayed Peter alive during the finale, get him girl)  

Who is your favorite musician?- Rex Orange County 

Who’s your favorite person in the world?- Me :) (it’s gotta be that way) 

What is your favorite childhood memory?- My brother and I used to put bowls on our heads and build rocket ships out of cardboard boxes. Oh! Also we had an inflatable ball pit, that was interesting. 

What is your favorite color?- Maroon 

What is your favorite cultural activity?- Well my uncle is Chinese (my aunt met him in the peace corps) so whenever we go to their house in D.C we make a lot of traditional Chinese food and anything involving eating is immediately my favorite activity

What is your favorite drink?- Non alcoholic: Lemonade Alcoholic: Whiskey Sour

What is your favorite fairytale?- I love Goldie Locks because it teaches us that sometimes being average is favorable LOL 

What is your favorite food?- A good Philly Cheesesteak <3

What is your favorite holiday destination?- Spain Spain and always Spain

What is your favorite ice-cream flavor?- Cookie Dough 

What is your favorite music genre?- I’ve been into Trap Music lately but I also like Indie which is inherently the complete opposite of trap 

What is your favorite physical activity?- Yoga 

What is your favorite quote?- “Be the change you wish to see in the world” 

What is your favorite snack?- S’mores or Brown Sugar poptarts, but only those two flavors 

What is your favorite song?- Best Friend by Rex Orange County 

What is your favorite sport?-Swimming 

What is your favorite time of the day?- Sunset/ Dusk 

What is your favorite type of clothing?- Sweatpants 

What is your favorite way to pass time?- Reading or Writing 

What is the name of your favorite restaurant?- The Melting Pot 

What is your all-time favorite town or city? Why?- A three-way tie between Philly, New York City, and D.C. I’ve probably spent equal time in each, and I have people I love in each so I simply could not choose :) 

What is your favorite candle scent?-Frosted Cranberry from Bath and Body Works 

What is your favorite social media channel?- Michelle Phan on Youtube 

Where’s your favorite place to take an out-of-town guest?-Honestly, to the mall..or the beaches 

What was your favorite subject in High School?-English or Biology 

What was your least favorite subject in High School?- Math 

What was your favorite TV show when you were a child?- When I was really little it was Teletubbies, in Middle School I liked Shake-It-Up (sorry) and I also watched a LOT of Food Network. 

What do you love about your favorite TV Show?- That it didn’t require any thought 

Are you scared of heights?- No! In fact, I love them. I love ferris wheels and zip-lining and I want to go skydiving and bungee jumping. 

Are you high maintenance?- With my parents, yes, but not with anyone else. 

Are you more inclined to “build your own empire” or unleash the potential of others?- Unleash the potential of others. We would have to work together anyway at some point. 

Are you more likely to avoid conflict or engage it head-on?- It absolutely depends. There are times when conflict just makes it worse. However, it someone is directly attacking you or your character, or not holding themselves accountable then that needs to be addressed. 

Are you a dog person or cat person?- Dog

Are you a fan of any sports team?- We like the Eagles and the Steelers in this house 

Are you a good cook?- Yeah! I used to make really good chicken parmesan and I also made a lot of shrimp crostini. 

Are you an early adopter or late-adopter?- Early

If you had more courage what would you do differently in your life now?- I would just say whatever was on my mind all the time.

What is good about how you are living your life right now?-I am, for once, the epicenter of all of my priorities. 

If you could eliminate one weakness or limitation in your life, what would it be?-Literally COVID-19. 

Who has left the most impact on your life?- I mean..myself. No one else can ultimately make my decisions for me.  

What aspect of your life needs tremendous improvement?-Oh my diet is trash, I need to stop eating whatever is in sight. 

Congrats if you made it this far, there were 371 of these, but I figured I’d spare you ;) 

-Julia 

[furederiko]

"Boy! I'll put my faith into your words." Kyuranger episode 29 heralds the arrival of the show's big bad, while delivering a fatal blow to its audience's heart...

- The goal of 'Save Naga' team has to be put on hold, because a much dire problem has arisen. As shown last week, the ORION spaceship has 'returned' to the present day as a wreck, an ancient wreck. It's been sitting there for 300+ years, and nothing inside it had seemingly changed. Even Horologium Kyu Globe is still stuck on its cockpit. - Leaving behind Balance and the others as they continue looking for a way to bring Naga (who gets a special day off) back into the light, Lucky heads out solo with the Leo Voyager to check on the 'Time Travel' team. I'd argue that they should've just form Kyuren-Oh and go all together, but Naga is equally a critical issue that needs to be taken care of right away. Otherwise Echidna would reach and eliminate him first. A Kyuranger without a core member like Naga can't actually be called Kyuranger, right? - Arriving 333 years prior in the past, Lucky is greeted by two things: his friends all unconscious on the ground, and a hostile-looking mysterious man in white. Unlike Lucky, audience should have met the latter last week. But this time we finally hear him introducing himself as... Orion, the Strongest Warrior of the Orion Constellation System. He's not being hostile to Lucky though, but to a Deathworm that jumps out behind him. The Deathworm then runs away after swallowing one part of Argo Kyu Globe's component. Before you think that this scene is not important, do remember how Puppis was found in the present day... Fun fact: In case your Math is a little worse than mine, 3 + 3 + 3 equals 9. So the 333 years time jump must be a fun little nod as well. Hmmm... who would've thought Puppis was hidden on the Deathworm's body that long? - Hahaha... OF COURSE Orion - who reveals he's on Earth having just placed Tsurugi in the cold sleep - doesn't easily believe anything that comes out of Lucky's mouth. It would be delusional nonsense to him. Particularly the part about Don Armage being alive in the present day, because the warrior had just witnessed his death not long ago. Trivia: Can't believe it took me 29 episodes to realize this stupidly obvious pun: Don Armage is an anagram for the word 'Armageddon'. How could I have missed that all these time? *smh* - Lucky's statements are immediately confirmed by Tsurugi, who (along with the others) conveniently comes to his senses. Not only Don Armage is still reigning to the present time, he was also the mysterious attacker than assaulted ORION and the 'Time Travel' team. His death in the final battle, was nothing more than Past-Tsurugi and Orion's false assumption. Yes, the 'Time Travel' did mess around with the flow of time by showing up there (which resulted to the ripple effect we saw last week), but they weren't exactly responsible for the Don's revival. He was never defeated to begin with! - The same with the Vice-Shoguns. Tecchu, Akyanba, and Kukuruga... all three shows up safe and sound to ambush the ORION, eventhough Past-Tsurugi and Orion believed they have defeated them before. I wonder if there's a hidden secret for this, then? Also, these are not the ones from present time. These look different, less monstery, so they must be the originals! Gotta admit, I really much prefer this more 'natural' plain look of them. Aside from Akyanba's horrendous chest piece, of course... - Hold on... if Raptor is able to fly ORION to a safer place, does that mean the past has just been changed again? I mean, geographically-speaking, now it shouldn't be in the spot where 'Save Naga' team found it before, right? That means, the 'Time Travel' team was meant to die at that moment, but Lucky stepped in and somehow messed up the rule of nature once again. Hmmm... this is why the logic of time travel tends to be... confusing to figure out. - Goodness grace, how I LOVE seeing Orion in action. Particularly that hexagonal 'Crystal Shield' that complements his 'Crystal Club' weapon nicely. His actor imbues him with this angry, brash, roughness, but also mature heroic aura, which feels different to the youngsters (including Commander Xiao, who acts like a teenager every now and then) of Rebellion. It all fits with the mythology of Orion being the 'Great Hunter', and the unpopular theory that he might actually be a disguise of Herakles! - His 'old-man' chemistry with Leo Red is fun as well, to the point Tsurugi is calling them as quite a combination" later on. And that might not be a coincidence. After a brief disagreement between Orion and Lucky, Tsurugi has a friendly heart to heart river-side talk with the former. Yes, we finally understand why Tsurugi had that 'sudden change of heart' during the Reds Rivalry episode: because Lucky somehow lit a fire inside him! That's right, proven over and over again, Lucky does serve as the motivator of the team... - Their conversation gets more interesting, because it leads towards... Orion's newborn child. While Orion makes a detour on Earth to deal with Tsurugi, his wife has taken the child to safety in her home world. Where? The... *drumrolls* Leo System? Yep. By comparing this to Lucky's un-lucky past, then this is pretty much a confirmation to my theory (as well as that latest spoilery rumor). If you ask me, he is most definitely Orion's son. But how is Lucky NOT 333 years old then? Let's see... perhaps time travel has anything to do with that? - By the way, Over-Time might have refered to Orion's child with a male pronoun 'HE' in their subtitle, but as far as I can tell, the dialogue NEVER explicitly stated the gender. Both Orion and Tsurugi only uses the word 'Kodomo' that vaguely means 'Child'. A most likely intentional choice, to keep the reveal a surprise, so that critical audience like yours truly don't catch the twist much earlier than it should be. However, there's also the possibility that Orion himself is still unaware of the gender. That makes sense since he hasn't returned home yet. - As for the disagreement, it's about Lucky's decision to change the past, by tracking Don Armage, and ending his threat right away, once and for all. Much like Pyxis, it seems Holorogium also has a limited energy, so it can only be used one more time to get the team back to the present time. That means the team isn't allowed to do other 'sidetrips'. Anyone can say and complain as much as they want about Lucky, about him being TOO optimist in this situation (Orion even calls him STUPID, clearly being a metaphor to some audience right now... *grins*). But even I have to admit, he has a really strong and logical point here. Waiting around to heal before taking down Don Armage, means giving him a chance to recover as well. In the end, the difference in power level between the two parties would only stay the same anyway. So why not just... go for broke, right? If they succeed, then the present universe will be rid off Armage's wrath. If they don't, they die a hero and things just continue the way it mostly was. - Looks like the other Kyurangers are also thinking the same thing. They won't abandon Lucky and letting him fight on his own anyway. It's an inspiring heroic moment, until Orion steals the show once more by lending his hand. He can even singlehandedly fend off Kukuruga's attack, the proof of being the strongest man from his star system. It seems a fire is lit inside him too, as he becomes convinced after hearing Lucky's rousing speech. Aaaaw... this is the part where I wish Orion has the ability to become a Kyuranger too. - Draco Commander summons Ryutei-Oh with Aquila Pink (LOL at that stylish wing commentary) and Dorado Yellow to deal with giant Tecchu; Scorpius Orange, Taurus Black, and Phoenix Soldier tag team to face Kukuruga; and Leo Red joins forces with Orion to defeat Akyanba. As their resolutions resonate with one another, the combination of Leo Red and Orion's power begins to... unify and form a NEW POWER. What a giant tease though, because the process is halted halfway before fully resulting anything. LOL. Fun fact: The episode itself is keeping this new power a mystery, but then an official Bandai commercial for said item was aired as soon as the episode ended. Someone from either Bandai nor TV Asahi didn't get the note, huh? LOL - Only Kukuruga is left, so giant Don Armage decides to show up and enter the battle himself. The Kyurangers send an "All Star Crash!" attack, and blast him away. But if Phoenix Soldier's attack didn't work the last time, will this one, with just 7 out of 12 members do much better? NOPE. Armage reveals his true form instead, and it's a no brainer! I mean... an ugly-looking brain-infested winged-skeletal alien creature, like one would expect from a B-level horror flick (or "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle". Kraang, anyone?). And he debuts with a chilling warning shot! A bullet of darkness that pierces through Lucky's gut, paralyzing him instantly. OH NO... yet another cliffhanger!

Overall: If I didn't know anything about Kyuranger, and you came to me saying "Old-man, episode 29 is the show's penultimate!", then I think I would've believed you. In older seasons with smaller scope and lesser quality (like... Ninninger, perhaps?), this episode COULD likely serve as one. The team was already facing the show's big bad, hence the intensity and stakes involved here DID feel like a climax. But we all know that's not the case, because there's still around 19-20 episodes after this. Yep, THAT MANY! Meaning there's still more coming ahead of us, eventhough this episode alone was already a beast to unpack. If there's one issue I had with this episode, it's the whole time travel paradox thingy. Thankfully, the action and general tension totally made up for it. And of course, that shocking cliffhanger too. Holy Moly indeed... Next week: Seeing White... PS: TV-Asahi began airing special announcement by Lucky and Sentou regarding the Super Hero Time's timeslot schedule change, that will come into effect October 1st, 2017. You can also catch it online. Meanwhile, a promotional video for "Kyuranger Bluray Collection Vol. 1" has also been released. The extra feature looks real fun! Dang it, if only I have an abundant extra money to purchase one... *sigh*. And that "Special Event" DVD too! Aaaawww... T_T

Episode 29 Score: 8,4 out of 10

Visit THIS LINK to view a continuously updated listing of the Kyutama / Kyu Globes. Last Updated: September 5th, 2017 - Version 2.13. (WARNING: It might contain spoilers for future episodes)

All images are screencaptured from the series, provided by the FanSubber Over-Time. "Uchu Sentai Kyuranger" is produced by TOEI, and airs every Sunday on TV-Asahi. Credits and copyrights belong to their respective owners.

[ciathyzareposts]

Game 46: Haunt (1979)

Haunt doesn’t have a title screen

Well, I had a week off.  I’ve been pretty good about keeping to a schedule of late, but ever since I started playing Rogue my desire to blog has somewhat dimmed.  The problem is, I don’t want to play anything else, but the blog cannot survive on Rogue alone.  It’s a great game, but after a while it’s hard to find things to say about it.  On top of that, I’m really into Dungeons & Dragons right now.  My interests run in cycles.  Sometimes I’m obsessed with D&D, sometimes with comics, and sometimes with video games.  At the moment, video games is near the bottom of the cycle.  Never fear, it’ll get to the top again.

What all of the above means is that I’m cutting my posts back to once a week, for the most part.  On Sundays(ish) I’ll post about whatever game is next on my chronology.   On Wednesdays(ish), I’ll post about Rogue, if I have something new to say about it.  Once I’m done with Rogue I might pick up the pace again, but I’m not sure about that.  We’ll see what happens.

For today’s post, I’m tackling Haunt, which is another mainframe-based text adventure.  (It’s often written as HAUNT, all caps, and I don’t know why.)  I’m not sure why I get so trepidatious about the mainframe adventure games.  Zork was one, and it’s undoubtedly the best game I’ve played for the blog so far.  Colossal Cave Adventure, Acheton and Battlestar have all rated well.  The mainframe games do tend to be better on average than their home computer equivalents, but they also tend to be longer.  Perhaps that’s it.  I like making progress on the blog, and short games are great for that.  I’m at the point where I’d almost rather play a short but terrible game than one that’s long and pretty good.  I have no idea how big Haunt is, and that makes me nervous.

Haunt was created starting in 1979 by John E. Laird, who is currently a computer science professor at the University of Michigan.  He would have been studying for his Ph.D at the time.  Laird worked at Xerox PARC for a bit before getting into academia, and he’s significant enough to merit his own Wikipedia page, but I don’t think he did anything else in gaming beyond creating Haunt.  The game was developed from 1979 to 1982, but as usual I’m playing it in the year that the game’s development started.

Getting the game running was a bit of a nightmare.  It requires TOPS-20 emulation; I gather that TOPS-20 was the operating system for the DEC-20 mainframe.  To play the game, I had to go to twenex.org and create a TOPS-20 login.  Then I needed to download a telnet client; I ended up going with PuTTY, which can be found here.  It was a lot of rigmarole, and not the sort of thing I’m used to, but I got there in the end.

The game kicks off with its backstory, and, well… it’s weird.  Get a load of this.

This stuff is wild.

For those who don’t want to squint at my screen caps, the gist is that there’s a bloke whose wife got killed by a moose.  He bought the land where the incident happened, built a mansion called Chez Moose, and set about trying to return her to life.  He wasn’t seen again for seven years, and was declared dead.

What also happened on the fateful day of that picnic was that the man’s child was kidnapped by gypsies (which I’m aware isn’t a word I should be using, but I’m going with what the game says. Apologies to any Romani people who may be reading.).  Only that child will apparently be able to enter the house and find the treasures inside without going mad and committing suicide.  So yes, it’s a treasure hunt, but the story around it is bizarre enough that I can excuse it.

Also wrapped up in this story is an obscure hereditary disease called “Orkhisnoires sakioannes”.  I’ve no idea what this is getting at.  Google just points back to articles about this game, so I gather that it’s completely made up.  I guess it could be a pun or an anagram, but I’m not at the stage where I’m going to try and solve it just yet.

That’s mighty nice of the government, who are always wonderful chaps.

The game began with me standing at a bus stop. My inventory contained a watch and a couple of bus tokens.  I tried moving off in various directions, but there’s nowhere to go from the bus stop.  The only thing to do was to wait until a bus pulled up, get on board, and exit when it dropped me at the front gate of Chez Moose.

I could see the mansion from the front gate; it was dark, but there were lights coming from the windows.  There was seemingly no way to open the gate, so I did a lap of the perimeter wall.  I found a gate with a buzzer on the east wall, but decided to ignore it for now.  The wall was surrounded with a forest, which I’m pretty sure is only there for show.  I tried to explore it, but it very quickly became impenetrable.  The road to the south was bordered by a similarly impenetrable forest, but I discovered that if I went far enough east or west I’d end up back at the bus stop.  I could wait and catch the bus again, but only once.  After that, I had no tokens left, and being unable to catch the bus I sat down on the corner and starved to death.  Going home and living the rest of my life was not an option, I suppose.

Another weird thing happened while I was exploring the wilderness.  At the stroke of midnight, a ghostly moose appeared and charged right through me.  It didn’t seem to have any negative effect, but I’m a little concerned about it.  I wonder if there’s a way to avoid it somehow, or if it’s tied into the whole going mad and committing suicide thing?

Yep. It’s a ghost moose alright.

There’s also a weird area just off the south-west corner of the wall that has no description at all.  It’s just a blank space.  I’m not sure if this is significant or not, but I’ve learned not to dismiss this kind of thing.  I’ll have to remember it when I’m thinking of ways to earn extra points.

With nothing else to do I approached the east gate and pressed the button.  There was a buzz, but nothing else happened.  At this point, I got really stuck, and I almost searched for a walkthrough, which would have been pretty shameful at this early stage.  It turned out that all I had to do was press the button a couple more times.  The buzzing woke up the person on the other end, and after a series of questions he let me through the gate.  Some of those questions were simple (name, quest, etc.) and some of them were weird trivia.  The most common one I’ve gotten is “What was the first production system with more than 1500 productions?”  The answer to this is “Haunt”, which apparently has something to do with the language it was coded in; I only knew the answer to this by looking at bluerenga.blog.  The other question I keep getting is “What is the capital of Assyria?”  I’ve tried Assur, and the alternate spelling Ashur, but it keeps telling me I’m wrong and I’m not sure why.  Google wouldn’t lie to me.  (Actually, I’ve just realised that the answer is probably “A”, which is the sort of dumb thing I would write on geography tests when I didn’t know the answer.  I’ll have to try that next time.)

After answering the questions I was let inside, and informed that I wouldn’t be getting back out through the gate.  The mansion grounds were mostly areas of lawn, with the mansion at the centre and an empty garage to the north-east.  I also found a grave in the north-east corner, which I dug up.  Inside was a bone from the Missing Link, which I took with me.  Taking it increased my score, so I gather that it’s one of the treasures I’m seeking.  There’s also a dry garden bed, which I’m thinking I need to water, but at the moment I don’t have anything appropriate.

The mansion has two entrances.  On the north side is some ivy, which I was able to climb up to a balcony.  Inside was a master bedroom, and a bathroom.  I tried flushing the toilet, and it spun around so rapidly that I was knocked over and cracked my head open on the bathtub.  A “10th level cleric” came by and resurrected me, and I found myself back outside the wall with an empty inventory.  I was able to buzz myself back into the mansion grounds, and I tried climbing the ivy again.  This time I tried to test climbing back down, which was also fatal.

There’s something very undignified about being resurrected by a bus driver.

I wonder if maybe I can jump down?  I dismissed it at the time, but it’s worth a shot.

On my next try I gave up on the ivy, and decided to go through the front door.  The only way to open it was to knock, and the game gave me a very unusual greeting.  I hadn’t mentioned that the guy on the other end of the buzzer asked me about my sexual preference.  I’m not sure if it factors in elsewhere in the game, but it does get a mention here.

I’ve been called worse.

Once I was inside the house, the door slammed behind me and couldn’t be opened.  This game just loves cutting off the path back to the start…  In the foyer was a bowl of candy, which I took with me and resisted the urge to eat.  Exploring west, I found a closet containing a wet suit with fully functioning scuba gear.  I was pretty skeptical about finding a place where this would come in handy, but I put it on anyway.

North of the foyer was the main hall, with passages heading east and west, and stairs leading upwards.  The game mentioned that there was a horrible noise coming from upstairs.  There was also an old chair, which I took with me.  It had a plaque on the back that said it was made by Louis XIV, so I figured it was another treasure.

I explored west, finding a dark hall with a safe.  The safe was shut, and had a combination lock with three two-digit numbers.  The game gave 10-10-10 as an example, and I tried it.  I wasn’t surprised that it didn’t work, but I was a little surprised that the game acknowledged that I was being a bit of a smart-arse by trying it in the first place.  Haunt responds to quite a lot of things I wouldn’t expect, and generally has something amusing to say.

West of the safe was an art room, with a modern art painting inside.  I tried to take it, only to be told that it was worthless.  I held on to it anyway.

East of the main hall was a library, with a bust of Homer and shelves full of books.  I tried to read a book, only to be told that all of the pages were “virtual”, and that the book disappeared.  I tried again, and found a book about vampires, and how to kill them.  Just the usual methods, nothing too revelatory here.  Trying another book, I was told that the rest were all made out of wood, so I left the library and headed upstairs.  (The stairs creaked ominously, and I started to think that I’d only get a few shots at using them before they’d collapse or something.  I went up and down them about a dozen times, with no trouble, so it’s probably just there for spooky ambience.)

The upper hall had passages heading north, west, and south.  The stairs also continued up, but I decided to save those for later.  First I went south, into a dark room with a casket.  I’d already been warned by the book to expect vampires, but I went and stupidly opened the casket anyway.  Sure enough, I found Dracula inside.  He got up to try and bite me, but I quickly left the room, and he didn’t follow.  When I went back in he was back in his casket.  I didn’t have anything I could obviously use to kill him, so I left him where he was.  (Dracula’s been in quite a number of adventure games that I’ve played for the blog.  He’d have to be a front-runner for the most frequently recurring character or monster.)

Exploring east, I was getting closer to the “horrible noise” I’d heard from downstairs.  Eventually, at a dead end, I recognised it as an Alice Cooper record.  Seriously, when it comes time for me to give this game its RADNESS Index, can I knock it down a couple of points for this?  Alice Cooper rules, particularly in the 1970s.  He sings about getting it on with skeletons.  Anyway, there was a wire running along the floor, so I pulled it and the noise stopped.  I’m not sure if this affected anything.

North of the upper hall was a “dull room”, with a closet to the west.  Inside the closet was some gold (another treasure) and a ventilation shaft leading south.  Of more interest, though, was a skeleton and a note scrawled on the wall.

All of our dads are skeletons, deep down.

Plot development?  In a game from the 1970s?  I’d come into this game expecting another treasure hunt with arbitrary puzzles.  For the most part that’s what Haunt has given me, but there are hints that it has deeper mysteries to unravel.  Who is Bas?  Is it me?  What’s the deal with the illness, and the crop?  I’m intrigued by all of this, and I really hope that it plays out further and isn’t just a bit of story detail thrown in at the beginning.

I explored the ventilation shaft heading south, which led into a maze of ducts.  The maze was small though, and the areas easily differentiated by their exits.  It didn’t take me long to navigate, and I soon found myself in a ventilation shaft over the torture chamber. I couldn’t open the grill to get down though, so there was nothing to do but retrace my steps back to the upper hall.

I decided to go upstairs, and found myself in a laboratory.  There was something under a sheet, and a lever on the wall.  First I tried looking under the sheet, but either the game wouldn’t let me or I couldn’t find the right verb-noun combination.  So I threw the lever, and was not entirely surprised when a monster emerged from under the sheet.

I really want to know what he does for a trick.

The monster’s “trick or treat” greeting was a little more unexpected.  Luckily I had a bowl of candy on me, and when I gave it to the monster he left, crashing through the west wall.  I followed through the hole, and found a bar.  There was no alcohol, but there was a bottle of turpentine (or “turps” as its known around these parts) which I took with me.

I had an instant brainstorm upon finding the turps, and decided to pour it on the modern art painting that I’d found.  The paint washed off to reveal a valuable Rembrandt underneath; I’d found another treasure.

I was somewhat stuck at this point, and did quite a bit of stumbling about achieving not much of anything.  Eventually I found myself back in the library, and on a whim I tried turning the bust of Homer.  This opened a secret door to the east.  I wasn’t able to get through while wearing my wetsuit, so I took it off and slipped through the opening into a secret room with stairs leading down.

The stairs led down to a wine cellar, where I found a diamond corkscrew (another treasure, which brought my tally up to five, I think).  I went exploring among the empty wine racks, and was lost in a maze.  The racks apparently stretched on infinitely in all directions, and try as I might I couldn’t find any way out.  Just as I was about to give up (and the game started mocking me) I found a trapdoor in the floor.  It was open, so I slipped through.

It led down into a room, where I found a drunk ghost.  Despite being drunk, the ghost blocked every single action I tried to make.  Even basic commands like INVENTORY and LOOK were unavailable to me.

This game has a lot of euphemisms for being drunk.

I figured that, whatever the solution was, it must be completely divorced from my inventory.  At least I hoped so, as I couldn’t look to see what I had.  I tried all sorts of things, including various levels of invective and a quote from Thor: Ragnarok, before hitting on the amusingly simple solution: BOO.  The ghost disappeared, and I was able to continue on.

Beyond I found the torture chamber that I’d seen from the ventilation shaft earlier.  Someone rushed out and closed the door behind them.  Of more interest was the supposedly sexy female who was imprisoned there.  I set her free and, well, one thing led to another…

I am a female lover, after all.

I opened the duct and crawled my way back to the main house, but at that point I was really quite stuck as to what to do next.  I was also well overdue to write this post, so I decided to call it a day and switch off.  I don’t think I have anywhere else left to explore inside the main area of the house, but I also don’t know how to get back outside.  Well, I guess dying gets me back outside, but it also loses points, and dumps my inventory, so that’s not a good solution.  And I’m pretty sure that I do need to get back outside to beat the game.

One thing I haven’t mentioned is that while I was doing all of this exploring, my character was slowly going mad.  I’d occasionally get a message about how the house was getting to me.

On my next game I’m going to try STAY SANE or DON”T GO MAD. You never know.

The messages gradually ramped up in intensity, until I went completely mad and killed myself.  (Oddly enough, this is the second game in a row that I’ve played with suicide as a theme; Space II had it as well.)  After I died I was resurrected by a passing cleric, and was able to continue playing, and had no more problems with going crazy.  I’m not sure what effect it has on the game, aside from a loss of points.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten with Haunt.  It’s quite fun so far, and has enough of its own style and quirks to stand out from a lot of its contemporaries.  If it actually follows through on its promise it could be a real stand-out, and a game that’s well ahead of its time.  I suspect that it won’t quite get there, but I’m still holding out hope.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-46-haunt-1979/

[samanthasroberts]

ReflexLOLogy: Inside the Groan-Inducing World of Pun Competitions

From the moment he spoke, I knew I was screwed. On the surface, the guy wasn’t particularly fearsome—pudgy, late thirties, polo shirt, plaid shorts, baseball cap, dad sneakers—but he looked completely at ease. One hand in his pocket, the other holding the microphone loosely, like a torch singer doing crowd work. And when he finally began talking, it was with an assurance that belied the fact that he was basically spewing nonsense.

“I hate all people named John,” he said with surprising bravado. “Yeah, that’s right, that was a John diss!” The crowd roared. John-diss. Jaundice. A glorious, groan-inducing precision strike of a pun.

Welp, I thought. It was fun while it lasted.

If you’re an NBA rookie, you really don’t want to go up against LeBron James. Anyone’s trivia night would be ruined by seeing Ken Jennings on another team. And if you find yourself at the world’s biggest pun competition, the last person you want to face is four-time defending champion Ben Ziek. Yet that’s exactly where I was, on an outdoor stage in downtown Austin, Texas, committing unspeakable atrocities upon the English language in front of a few hundred onlookers who were spending their sunny May Saturday reveling in the carnage.

The rules of the 39th annual O. Henry Pun-Off World Championship’s “Punslingers” competition are simple: Two people take turns punning on a theme in head-to-head rounds. Failure to make a pun in the five seconds allowed gets you eliminated; make a nonpun or reuse a word three times and you’ve reached the banishing point. Round by round and pair by pair, a field of 32 dwindles until the last of the halved-nots finally gets to claim the mantle of best punster in the world and what most people would agree are some pretty dubious bragging rights. It’s exactly like a rap battle, if 8 Mile had been about software engineers and podcasters and improv nerds vying for supremacy. (Also just like 8 Mile: My first-round opponent had frozen when his turn came to pun on waterborne vehicles. Seriously, yacht a word came out. Canoe believe it?)

Eventually, there we stood, two among the final eight: me, a first-timer, squaring off against the Floyd Mayweather of the pun world. Actually, only one of us was standing; I found myself doing the world’s slowest two-step just to keep my legs from trembling. I’d been a little jittery in my first couple of rounds, sure, but those were standard-issue butterflies, perched on a layer of misguided confidence. This was the anxiety of the sacrificial lamb. I was punning above my weight, and I knew it. Once the judges announced that we’d be punning on diseases—hence Ziek’s joke about star-crossed livers—we began.

“Mumps the word!” I said, hoping that my voice wasn’t shaking.

Ziek immediately fired back: “That was a measle-y pun.” Not only was he confident, with a malleable voice that was equal parts game show host and morning-radio DJ, but his jokes were seemingly fully formed. Worse, he was nimble enough to turn your own pun against you.

“Well, I had a croup-on for it,” I responded. Whoa. Where’d that come from?

He switched gears. “I have a Buddha at home, and sometimes”—making a rubbing motion with his hand—“I like to rubella.”

I was barely paying attention. Diseases, diseases—oh! I pointed at people in different parts of the audience. “If you’ve got a yam, and you’ve got a potato, whose tuber’s closest?”

“There was a guy out here earlier painted light red,” Ziek said. “Did you see the pink guy?”

“I didn’t,” I responded. “Cold you see him?”

Again and again we pun-upped each other, a philharmonic of harmful phonics. From AIDS to Zika we ranged, covering SARS, migraines, Ebola, chicken pox, ague, shingles, fasciitis, streptococcus, West Nile, coronavirus, poison oak, avian flu, gangrene, syphilis, and herpes. Almost five minutes later, we’d gone through 32 puns between the two of us, and I was running dry. As far as my brain was concerned, there wasn’t a medical textbook in existence that contained something we hadn’t used. Ziek, though, had a seemingly endless stockpile and tossed off a quick alopecia pun; I could have bald right then and there. The judge counted down, and I slunk offstage to watch the rest of the competition—which Ziek won, for the fifth time. Knowing I’d lost to the best cushioned the blow, but some mild semantic depression still lingered: Instead of slinging my way to a David-like upset, I was the one who had to go lieth down.

Author Peter Rubin doing the punning man.Ryan Young

When I was growing up, my father’s favorite (printable) joke was “Where do cantaloupes go in the summertime? Johnny Cougar’s Melon Camp.” This is proof that—well, it’s proof that I grew up in Indiana. But it’s also proof that I was raised to speak two languages, both of them English. See, there’s the actual words-working-together-and-making-sense part, and then there’s the fun part. The pliant, recombinant part. The part that lets you harness linguistic irregularities, judo-style, to make words into other words. It’s not conscious, exactly; it just feels at some level like someone made a puzzle and didn’t bother to tell me, so my brain wants to figure out what else those sounds can do.

A lifetime of listening to hip hop has reinforced that phonetic impulse. Polysyllabic rhymes aren’t strictly puns, but they’re made of the same marrow; when Chance the Rapper rhymes “link in my bio” with “Cinco de Mayo” in the song “Mixtape,” I get an actual endorphin hit. Besides, rap is full of puns already: instant-gratification ones—like Lil Wayne saying “Yes I am Weezy, but I ain’t asthmatic” or MF Doom saying “Got more soul than a sock with a hole”—as well as ones that reveal themselves more slowly. Kanye West might be more famous for his production than his lyricism, but he endeared himself to me forever on the song “Dark Fantasy” by spitting the best Family Matters pun of all time: “Too many Urkels on your team, that’s why your wins low.”

I was punning above my weight, and I knew it.

Whether this is nature or nurture, though, the end result is the same: I’m playing with language all the time, and Kanye and I aren’t the only ones. “I can’t listen passively to someone speaking without the possibility of puns echoing around in my head,” says Gary Hallock, who has been producing and hosting the O. Henry Pun-Off for 26 years. He’s seen the annual event grow from an Austin oddity to a national event and watched dad jokes, of which puns are the most obvious example, take hold in the millennial consciousness; a dad-joke-devoted Reddit board boasts more than 250,000 members. “I’ve often compared punsters to linguistic terrorists,” Hallock says. “We’re literally stalking conversations, looking for the weak place to plant our bomb.”

And we’ve been doing it for a long, long time—verbal puns date back to at least 1635 BC, when a Babylonian clay tablet included a pun on the word for “wheat”—and the world has been conflicted about them for nearly as long. (Linguists can’t even agree whether the word pun derives from French, Old English, Icelandic, or Welsh, though there’s no point heading down that scenic root.) On one hand, puns are the stuff of terrible children’s joke books. Oliver Wendell Holmes likened punsters to “wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered witticism.” On the other, God, how can you not feel a little thrill when you make a good one or a begrudging joy when you hear a better one?

Humor theorists generally agree that comedy hinges on incongruity: when a sentence or situation subverts expectations or when multiple interpretations are suggested by the same stimulus. (Also, yes, humor theorists are a thing.) That stimulus can be visual (looking at you, eggplant emoji!) or auditory (what up, tuba fart!); most commonly, though, it’s linguistic. Language is slippery by nature, and of the many kinds of wordplay—hyperbole, metaphor, spoonerisms, even letter-level foolery like anagrams—nothing takes advantage of incongruity quite like puns, of which there are four specific varieties. In order of increasing complexity, you’ve got homonyms, identical words that sound alike (“Led Zeppelin’s guitarist was interrogated last week, but detectives weren’t able to turn the Page”); homophones, which are spelled differently but sound the same (“I hate raisins! Apologies if you’re not into curranty vents.”); homographs, which sound different but look the same (“If you’re asking me to believe that a Loire cabernet is that different from a Napa cabernet, then the terroirists have won.”); and paronyms, which are just kinda similar-sounding (“I have a ton of work to do, but I ate so much cucumber chutney that I have raita’s block”). When we hear a pun, the words we hear aren’t the words we think we hear, and the burden’s on us to crack the code.

Granted, there are people out there who hate puns, and maybe rightly so. But for many of us, that decryption process is a reward unto itself. “Humor happens when something important is being violated,” cognitive scientist Justine Kao says. “Social norms, expectations. So for people who are sensitive to the rules that language follows, puns are more entertaining.” In other words, if you work with words on a daily basis—writing, editing, translating—you’re simply primed to appreciate them more. Behind every great headline, any editor will tell you, is a great pun. (I have a colleague at WIRED who once looked at a page about chef’s knives and gave it the headline “JULIENNE MORE”; people lost their goddamn minds.)

Still, even among the nerdiest of word herders, there are some rules. Two years ago, Kao and two colleagues at Stanford and UC San Diego decided to prove empirically that incongruity was the root of humor. They tested people’s reactions to hundreds of sentences that varied from one another in minute ways. Some used homophones; some didn’t. Some added detail supporting the nonpun interpretation of the sentence; some stripped detail away. They were able to demonstrate that ambiguity of meaning is necessary for a pun to be perceived—but it’s only half of the equation. (And literally, there’s an equation.) After all, “I went to the bank” is ambiguous, but it’s not a pun. The true determining factor of a pun’s funniness is what the team calls distinctiveness.

Take the sentence “The chef brought his girlfriend flours on Valentine’s Day.” It’s a homophone, so it’s not the most complex pun. But if you turn the chef into a pastry chef, that added vocation property makes the pun more distinctive. “When you’re able to identify keywords from different topics,” Kao says, “it clues you in on the intentionality of it—you’re forcing together two things that don’t often co-occur.”

Of course, “The pastry chef brought his girlfriend flours on Valentine’s Day” still isn’t funny. It’s the kind of pun a bot would make, and maybe has made in the decades since programmers created the first pun generator. There’s no storytelling to it, no drama. A good pun isn’t just an artless slab of sound-alikeness: It’s a joke that happens to hinge on wordplay. A truly formidable punner knows that and frames a sentence to make the pun the punch line. The longer you delay the ambiguity, the more tension you introduce—and the more cathartic the resolution. A pun should be an exclamation point, not a semicolon.

But was I a truly formidable punner? I’d thought so—hell, my lifelong dream is seeing Flavor Flav and Ellen Burstyn cohosting a talk show, just so it can be called Burstyn With Flavor—but after Austin, I had my doubts. I’d cracked under pressure once; until I tried again, I’d never know fissure. As it turned out, a second chance was around the corner.

The Bay Area Pun-Off, a monthly philharmonic of harmful phonics.Ryan Young

Compact and jovial, Jonah Spear is a dead ringer for Saturday Night Live’s Taran Killam—or at least for Taran Killam in high school: Spear recently shaved off a grizzled-prospector beard and looks about half of his 34 years. He’s also a professional play facilitator and counselor at an adult summer camp (no to phones and drinking, yes to sing-alongs and bonfires). That loosey-goosey vibe has carried into the Bay Area Pun-Off, a monthly event Spear began hosting in January that’s just one of a handful of competitive punning events popping up across the country.

If the O. Henry Pun-Off is the Newport Folk Festival, then its Bay Area cousin—like Punderdome 3000 in Brooklyn, Pundamonium in Seattle, or the Great Durham Pun Championship in, well, Durham—is Coachella. The audience is younger, and the raucous atmosphere is fueled as much by beer as by unabashed pun love. It started in the living room of a communal house in Oakland in January 2016 but quickly outgrew its confines; in June the organizers even staged a New York City satellite event.

But on this Saturday night, a week after O. Henry, it’s a high-ceilinged performance space in San Francisco’s Mission District where I’m looking for redemption. The pool of contestants at the Bay Area Pun-Off is small by O. Henry standards, and we commence with an all-hands marathon on tree puns designed to winnow the field of 12 down to eight. “I’m just hoping to win the poplar vote,” one woman says. “Sounds like birch of contract to me,” says someone else. A lanky British guy whom I’ll call Chet rambles through a shaggy-dog story involving a French woman and three Jamaican guys to get to a tortured “le mon t’ree” punch line. The crowd eats it up.

“Keep the applause going. It takes balsa get up here and do this.”

When you’re waiting for 11 other people to pun, you’ve got plenty of time to think of your next one, so I try to Ziek out a good-sized reserve of puns—and when it’s my turn, I make sure that my puns build on the joke that came before me. “Keep the applause going,” I say after someone boughs out. “It takes balsa get up here and do this.” After someone delivers a good line, I admit that “I ended up being pretty frond of it.” They’re not distinctive, but at this stage they don’t need to be, as long as they’re ambiguous. Things go oak-ay, and I’m on to the next round. (What, yew don’t believe me? Olive got is my word.)

After I indulge in a muggleful of Harry Potter puns, I find myself in the semifinals against a Quora engineer named Asa. Spear scribbles the mystery topic on a small chalkboard hidden from sight, then turns it around. It says … diseases. The same category that knocked me out in Austin? The category I dwelled on for the entire flight home, thinking of all the one-liners that had eluded me?

This time, there’s no running dry. Not only do I remember all the puns I used against Ben Ziek, but I remember all the puns he made against me. So when Asa says, “I’m really taking my mumps,” I shoot back with “That’s kinda measly, if you ask me.” I reprise puns I’d made in Austin (“Did you see that Italian opera singer run through the door? In flew Enzo!”); I use puns that I’d thought of since (“My mom makes the best onion dip. It’s HIV little concoction you’d love”). Asa fights gamely, but I have immunerable disease puns at my fingertips, and it’s not much longer before the round is over.

And then, again, there are two: me and Chet. The difference now is I’m locked in: no nerves, no self-consciousness, just getting out of my brain’s way and letting the connections happen. When Spear announces the theme—living world leaders—I don’t even start trying to stockpile puns. I just wait, and they come.

Chet opens the round: “Ohhhh, BAMA. I don’t know anything about world leaders!”

This time, just hearing him mention Obama conjures up a mental image of Justin Trudeau. Before the laughter even dies down, I nod my head encouragingly: “True, tho—that was a decent pun!”

It’s Austin all over again, just in reverse: Now I’m the quick one and Chet’s the one who has to scramble. He fumbles through a long story about rock climbing that leads to a pun about his cam-bell. (And before you ask: Chances are he wasn’t actually talking about Kim Campbell, who was prime minister of Canada for all of six months in 1993, but in the heat of the moment no one realized he’d just screwed up David Cameron’s name.)

My turn? No problem. Just keep flipping it back to him. “Another patented long-ass Chet story,” I say. “I am Bushed.”

“Well,” Chet says, then pauses. “He thinks he can just … Blair shit out.”

It’s his one solid blow. I talk about the “bonky moon” that’s shining outside that night. I confide in the audience about my own alopecia problem, and how I needed to buy a Merkel. And each time, the audience is right there with me. They don’t necessarily know what’s coming, but they’re loving it. Chet’s used three US presidents and two prime ministers; meanwhile, I’ve been from South Korea to Germany, by way of Canada.

Even better, I’ve got another continent in my pocket. “Have you guys been to Chet’s farm?” I ask the audience. “He has this group of cows that won’t stop talking.” I wait a beat. “They are seriously moo-gabby.”

What happens next is a blur, to be perfectly honest. I can’t even tell you what comes out of Chet’s mouth next, but it’s either nothing or it’s the name of someone dead—and either way, the Bay Area Pun-Off is over.

I might not have been able to vanquish Ben Ziek; this may be my only taste of victory in the world of competitive paronomasiacs; hell, I may never know the secret to the perfect pun. But as long as I’ve got the words to try, one thing’s for sure: I’ll use vaguely different words to approximate those words, thereby creating incongruity and thus humor.

Or maybe I’ll just plead raita’s block.

Phrase the Roof!

Author Peter Rubin set up a Slack channel here at Wired to crowdsource the punny headlines for the opening illustration to this story. He compiled more than 150 of them. Here are the ones we couldnt fit.

1. PRESENTS OF MIND

2. SHEER PUNDEMONIUM

3. VIRULENT HOMOPHONIA

4. OFF-SYLLABLE USE

5. PUNBELIEVABLE

6. HEADLINE BLING

7. LIVE A CRITIC, DIACRITIC

8. FEAST OF THE PRONUNCIATION

9. VERBAL MEDICATION

10. THE BEST OF BOTH WORDS

11. SUFFERING FROM INCONSONANT

12. DAMNED WITH FAINT PHRASE

13. THE SEVEN DEADLY SYNTAXES

14. THE NOUN JEWELS

15. PUNS THE WORD

16. CONSONANT READER

17. FARTS OF SPEECH

18. PUN-CHEWATION

19. GRAMMAR RULES

20. POISSON PEN

21. PUNS AND NEEDLES

22. DEATH AND SYNTAXES

23. THE WRITE STUFF

24. MAKING THE COPY

25. SLAIN LETTERING

26. PUN AND GAMES

27. VALLEY OF THE LOLZ

28. NOUN HEAR THIS

29. WHATEVER FLOATS YOUR QUOTE

30. PUT A VERB ON IT!

31. CRIME AND PUN-NICHE-MEANT

32. TIC TALK

33. ECCE HOMONYM

34. DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXTS ASS

35. WRITES OF MAN

36. VERB APPEAL

37. THE RHYME DIRECTIVE

38. SLOGAN’S RUN

39. REBEL WITHOUT A CLAUSE

40. BURNS OF PHRASE

41. ARTLESS QUOTATIONS

42. BON MOT MONEY, BON MOT PROBLEMS

43. JESTIN’ CASE

44. LET ‘ER QUIP

45. ADVERB REACTIONS

46. INFINITE JESTS

47. ARTS OF SPEECH

48. DIGITAL PUNDERGROUND

49. THE PUN-ISHER

50. IMPUNDING DOOM

51. BEYOND PUNDERDOME

52. BAUHAUS OF CARDS

53. TEXTUAL HARASSMENT

54. IT’S A PUNGLE OUT THERE

55. GRAND THEFT MOTTO

56. IT HAD PUNNED ONE NIGHT

57. PLEASE GRAMMAR DON’T HURT EM

58. RHETORICAL QUESTIN’

59. ACUTE PUNS? SURE

60. BAWDILY HUMORED

61. DAMNED IF YOU INNUENDO, DAMNED IF YOU INNUENDON’T

62. TROUBLE ENTENDRES

63. WITS UP, DOC

64. SELF-IMPROV MEANT

65. PUN-EYED JOKERS

66. LAUGHTERMATH

67. JAPES OF WRATH

68. MAKING HA-HAJJ

69. MUTTER, MAY I?

70. BATTLE OF HALF-WITS

71. DEMI-BRAVADO

72. MALCONTENT MARKETING

73. NON-SILENT OFFENSES

74. ORAL HIJINX

75. THE PUN-ISHER

76. NOUNS, YOUR CHANCE

77. TEXT OF KIN

78. OH, PUN AND SHUT

79. JOKE OF ALL TRADES

80. PATTER UP

81. SCHTICK IT TO EM

82. BOOS HOUNDS

83. IT’S NOT EASY BEING GROANED

84. FAR FROM THE MADDENED CROWD

85. COMPETITIVE DEBASING

86. THE PUNFORGIVEN

87. THE PUNCANNY VALLEY

88. INTENTIONAL FORTITUDE

89. CHURCH OF THE LETTER DISDAIN

90. POETRY IN MASHIN’

91. CREATIVE SENTENCING

92. DAAAMN, DACTYL!

93. NO CONTEXT

94. A TALE OF TWO SILLIES

95. THE WIZARD OF LOLZ

96. IT’S A PUNDERFUL LIFE

97. WHAT’S HA? PUNNIN’

98. THE ZING AND I

99. THE WILD PUNS

100. THE PUN ALSO RISES

101. HOW THE REST WERE PUNNED

102. RAGING SYLLABLE

103. DANGEROUS ELISIONS

104. GOODWILL PUNTING

105. FELLOWSHIP OF THE WRONG

106. INGLOURIOUS LAST WORDS

107. THE LIMITATION GAME

108. APPETITE FOR DISTRACTION

109. HOW I MEANT ANOTHER

110. LARKS AND RECREATION

111. COMEDY OF AIRERS

112. DECLARATION OF INNER PENANCE

113. BOO HA-HA

Senior editor and pun criminal Peter Rubin (@provenself) wrote about the roadblocks to VR in issue 24.04.

This article appears in the October 2016 issue.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/12/reflexlology-inside-the-groan-inducing-world-of-pun-competitions/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/09/12/reflexlology-inside-the-groan-inducing-world-of-pun-competitions/

[adambstingus]

ReflexLOLogy: Inside the Groan-Inducing World of Pun Competitions

From the moment he spoke, I knew I was screwed. On the surface, the guy wasn’t particularly fearsome—pudgy, late thirties, polo shirt, plaid shorts, baseball cap, dad sneakers—but he looked completely at ease. One hand in his pocket, the other holding the microphone loosely, like a torch singer doing crowd work. And when he finally began talking, it was with an assurance that belied the fact that he was basically spewing nonsense.

“I hate all people named John,” he said with surprising bravado. “Yeah, that’s right, that was a John diss!” The crowd roared. John-diss. Jaundice. A glorious, groan-inducing precision strike of a pun.

Welp, I thought. It was fun while it lasted.

If you’re an NBA rookie, you really don’t want to go up against LeBron James. Anyone’s trivia night would be ruined by seeing Ken Jennings on another team. And if you find yourself at the world’s biggest pun competition, the last person you want to face is four-time defending champion Ben Ziek. Yet that’s exactly where I was, on an outdoor stage in downtown Austin, Texas, committing unspeakable atrocities upon the English language in front of a few hundred onlookers who were spending their sunny May Saturday reveling in the carnage.

The rules of the 39th annual O. Henry Pun-Off World Championship’s “Punslingers” competition are simple: Two people take turns punning on a theme in head-to-head rounds. Failure to make a pun in the five seconds allowed gets you eliminated; make a nonpun or reuse a word three times and you’ve reached the banishing point. Round by round and pair by pair, a field of 32 dwindles until the last of the halved-nots finally gets to claim the mantle of best punster in the world and what most people would agree are some pretty dubious bragging rights. It’s exactly like a rap battle, if 8 Mile had been about software engineers and podcasters and improv nerds vying for supremacy. (Also just like 8 Mile: My first-round opponent had frozen when his turn came to pun on waterborne vehicles. Seriously, yacht a word came out. Canoe believe it?)

Eventually, there we stood, two among the final eight: me, a first-timer, squaring off against the Floyd Mayweather of the pun world. Actually, only one of us was standing; I found myself doing the world’s slowest two-step just to keep my legs from trembling. I’d been a little jittery in my first couple of rounds, sure, but those were standard-issue butterflies, perched on a layer of misguided confidence. This was the anxiety of the sacrificial lamb. I was punning above my weight, and I knew it. Once the judges announced that we’d be punning on diseases—hence Ziek’s joke about star-crossed livers—we began.

“Mumps the word!” I said, hoping that my voice wasn’t shaking.

Ziek immediately fired back: “That was a measle-y pun.” Not only was he confident, with a malleable voice that was equal parts game show host and morning-radio DJ, but his jokes were seemingly fully formed. Worse, he was nimble enough to turn your own pun against you.

“Well, I had a croup-on for it,” I responded. Whoa. Where’d that come from?

He switched gears. “I have a Buddha at home, and sometimes”—making a rubbing motion with his hand—“I like to rubella.”

I was barely paying attention. Diseases, diseases—oh! I pointed at people in different parts of the audience. “If you’ve got a yam, and you’ve got a potato, whose tuber’s closest?”

“There was a guy out here earlier painted light red,” Ziek said. “Did you see the pink guy?”

“I didn’t,” I responded. “Cold you see him?”

Again and again we pun-upped each other, a philharmonic of harmful phonics. From AIDS to Zika we ranged, covering SARS, migraines, Ebola, chicken pox, ague, shingles, fasciitis, streptococcus, West Nile, coronavirus, poison oak, avian flu, gangrene, syphilis, and herpes. Almost five minutes later, we’d gone through 32 puns between the two of us, and I was running dry. As far as my brain was concerned, there wasn’t a medical textbook in existence that contained something we hadn’t used. Ziek, though, had a seemingly endless stockpile and tossed off a quick alopecia pun; I could have bald right then and there. The judge counted down, and I slunk offstage to watch the rest of the competition—which Ziek won, for the fifth time. Knowing I’d lost to the best cushioned the blow, but some mild semantic depression still lingered: Instead of slinging my way to a David-like upset, I was the one who had to go lieth down.

Author Peter Rubin doing the punning man.Ryan Young

When I was growing up, my father’s favorite (printable) joke was “Where do cantaloupes go in the summertime? Johnny Cougar’s Melon Camp.” This is proof that—well, it’s proof that I grew up in Indiana. But it’s also proof that I was raised to speak two languages, both of them English. See, there’s the actual words-working-together-and-making-sense part, and then there’s the fun part. The pliant, recombinant part. The part that lets you harness linguistic irregularities, judo-style, to make words into other words. It’s not conscious, exactly; it just feels at some level like someone made a puzzle and didn’t bother to tell me, so my brain wants to figure out what else those sounds can do.

A lifetime of listening to hip hop has reinforced that phonetic impulse. Polysyllabic rhymes aren’t strictly puns, but they’re made of the same marrow; when Chance the Rapper rhymes “link in my bio” with “Cinco de Mayo” in the song “Mixtape,” I get an actual endorphin hit. Besides, rap is full of puns already: instant-gratification ones—like Lil Wayne saying “Yes I am Weezy, but I ain’t asthmatic” or MF Doom saying “Got more soul than a sock with a hole”—as well as ones that reveal themselves more slowly. Kanye West might be more famous for his production than his lyricism, but he endeared himself to me forever on the song “Dark Fantasy” by spitting the best Family Matters pun of all time: “Too many Urkels on your team, that’s why your wins low.”

I was punning above my weight, and I knew it.

Whether this is nature or nurture, though, the end result is the same: I’m playing with language all the time, and Kanye and I aren’t the only ones. “I can’t listen passively to someone speaking without the possibility of puns echoing around in my head,” says Gary Hallock, who has been producing and hosting the O. Henry Pun-Off for 26 years. He’s seen the annual event grow from an Austin oddity to a national event and watched dad jokes, of which puns are the most obvious example, take hold in the millennial consciousness; a dad-joke-devoted Reddit board boasts more than 250,000 members. “I’ve often compared punsters to linguistic terrorists,” Hallock says. “We’re literally stalking conversations, looking for the weak place to plant our bomb.”

And we’ve been doing it for a long, long time—verbal puns date back to at least 1635 BC, when a Babylonian clay tablet included a pun on the word for “wheat”—and the world has been conflicted about them for nearly as long. (Linguists can’t even agree whether the word pun derives from French, Old English, Icelandic, or Welsh, though there’s no point heading down that scenic root.) On one hand, puns are the stuff of terrible children’s joke books. Oliver Wendell Holmes likened punsters to “wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered witticism.” On the other, God, how can you not feel a little thrill when you make a good one or a begrudging joy when you hear a better one?

Humor theorists generally agree that comedy hinges on incongruity: when a sentence or situation subverts expectations or when multiple interpretations are suggested by the same stimulus. (Also, yes, humor theorists are a thing.) That stimulus can be visual (looking at you, eggplant emoji!) or auditory (what up, tuba fart!); most commonly, though, it’s linguistic. Language is slippery by nature, and of the many kinds of wordplay—hyperbole, metaphor, spoonerisms, even letter-level foolery like anagrams—nothing takes advantage of incongruity quite like puns, of which there are four specific varieties. In order of increasing complexity, you’ve got homonyms, identical words that sound alike (“Led Zeppelin’s guitarist was interrogated last week, but detectives weren’t able to turn the Page”); homophones, which are spelled differently but sound the same (“I hate raisins! Apologies if you’re not into curranty vents.”); homographs, which sound different but look the same (“If you’re asking me to believe that a Loire cabernet is that different from a Napa cabernet, then the terroirists have won.”); and paronyms, which are just kinda similar-sounding (“I have a ton of work to do, but I ate so much cucumber chutney that I have raita’s block”). When we hear a pun, the words we hear aren’t the words we think we hear, and the burden’s on us to crack the code.

Granted, there are people out there who hate puns, and maybe rightly so. But for many of us, that decryption process is a reward unto itself. “Humor happens when something important is being violated,” cognitive scientist Justine Kao says. “Social norms, expectations. So for people who are sensitive to the rules that language follows, puns are more entertaining.” In other words, if you work with words on a daily basis—writing, editing, translating—you’re simply primed to appreciate them more. Behind every great headline, any editor will tell you, is a great pun. (I have a colleague at WIRED who once looked at a page about chef’s knives and gave it the headline “JULIENNE MORE”; people lost their goddamn minds.)

Still, even among the nerdiest of word herders, there are some rules. Two years ago, Kao and two colleagues at Stanford and UC San Diego decided to prove empirically that incongruity was the root of humor. They tested people’s reactions to hundreds of sentences that varied from one another in minute ways. Some used homophones; some didn’t. Some added detail supporting the nonpun interpretation of the sentence; some stripped detail away. They were able to demonstrate that ambiguity of meaning is necessary for a pun to be perceived—but it’s only half of the equation. (And literally, there’s an equation.) After all, “I went to the bank” is ambiguous, but it’s not a pun. The true determining factor of a pun’s funniness is what the team calls distinctiveness.

Take the sentence “The chef brought his girlfriend flours on Valentine’s Day.” It’s a homophone, so it’s not the most complex pun. But if you turn the chef into a pastry chef, that added vocation property makes the pun more distinctive. “When you’re able to identify keywords from different topics,” Kao says, “it clues you in on the intentionality of it—you’re forcing together two things that don’t often co-occur.”

Of course, “The pastry chef brought his girlfriend flours on Valentine’s Day” still isn’t funny. It’s the kind of pun a bot would make, and maybe has made in the decades since programmers created the first pun generator. There’s no storytelling to it, no drama. A good pun isn’t just an artless slab of sound-alikeness: It’s a joke that happens to hinge on wordplay. A truly formidable punner knows that and frames a sentence to make the pun the punch line. The longer you delay the ambiguity, the more tension you introduce—and the more cathartic the resolution. A pun should be an exclamation point, not a semicolon.

But was I a truly formidable punner? I’d thought so—hell, my lifelong dream is seeing Flavor Flav and Ellen Burstyn cohosting a talk show, just so it can be called Burstyn With Flavor—but after Austin, I had my doubts. I’d cracked under pressure once; until I tried again, I’d never know fissure. As it turned out, a second chance was around the corner.

The Bay Area Pun-Off, a monthly philharmonic of harmful phonics.Ryan Young

Compact and jovial, Jonah Spear is a dead ringer for Saturday Night Live’s Taran Killam—or at least for Taran Killam in high school: Spear recently shaved off a grizzled-prospector beard and looks about half of his 34 years. He’s also a professional play facilitator and counselor at an adult summer camp (no to phones and drinking, yes to sing-alongs and bonfires). That loosey-goosey vibe has carried into the Bay Area Pun-Off, a monthly event Spear began hosting in January that’s just one of a handful of competitive punning events popping up across the country.

If the O. Henry Pun-Off is the Newport Folk Festival, then its Bay Area cousin—like Punderdome 3000 in Brooklyn, Pundamonium in Seattle, or the Great Durham Pun Championship in, well, Durham—is Coachella. The audience is younger, and the raucous atmosphere is fueled as much by beer as by unabashed pun love. It started in the living room of a communal house in Oakland in January 2016 but quickly outgrew its confines; in June the organizers even staged a New York City satellite event.

But on this Saturday night, a week after O. Henry, it’s a high-ceilinged performance space in San Francisco’s Mission District where I’m looking for redemption. The pool of contestants at the Bay Area Pun-Off is small by O. Henry standards, and we commence with an all-hands marathon on tree puns designed to winnow the field of 12 down to eight. “I’m just hoping to win the poplar vote,” one woman says. “Sounds like birch of contract to me,” says someone else. A lanky British guy whom I’ll call Chet rambles through a shaggy-dog story involving a French woman and three Jamaican guys to get to a tortured “le mon t’ree” punch line. The crowd eats it up.

“Keep the applause going. It takes balsa get up here and do this.”

When you’re waiting for 11 other people to pun, you’ve got plenty of time to think of your next one, so I try to Ziek out a good-sized reserve of puns—and when it’s my turn, I make sure that my puns build on the joke that came before me. “Keep the applause going,” I say after someone boughs out. “It takes balsa get up here and do this.” After someone delivers a good line, I admit that “I ended up being pretty frond of it.” They’re not distinctive, but at this stage they don’t need to be, as long as they’re ambiguous. Things go oak-ay, and I’m on to the next round. (What, yew don’t believe me? Olive got is my word.)

After I indulge in a muggleful of Harry Potter puns, I find myself in the semifinals against a Quora engineer named Asa. Spear scribbles the mystery topic on a small chalkboard hidden from sight, then turns it around. It says … diseases. The same category that knocked me out in Austin? The category I dwelled on for the entire flight home, thinking of all the one-liners that had eluded me?

This time, there’s no running dry. Not only do I remember all the puns I used against Ben Ziek, but I remember all the puns he made against me. So when Asa says, “I’m really taking my mumps,” I shoot back with “That’s kinda measly, if you ask me.” I reprise puns I’d made in Austin (“Did you see that Italian opera singer run through the door? In flew Enzo!”); I use puns that I’d thought of since (“My mom makes the best onion dip. It’s HIV little concoction you’d love”). Asa fights gamely, but I have immunerable disease puns at my fingertips, and it’s not much longer before the round is over.

And then, again, there are two: me and Chet. The difference now is I’m locked in: no nerves, no self-consciousness, just getting out of my brain’s way and letting the connections happen. When Spear announces the theme—living world leaders—I don’t even start trying to stockpile puns. I just wait, and they come.

Chet opens the round: “Ohhhh, BAMA. I don’t know anything about world leaders!”

This time, just hearing him mention Obama conjures up a mental image of Justin Trudeau. Before the laughter even dies down, I nod my head encouragingly: “True, tho—that was a decent pun!”

It’s Austin all over again, just in reverse: Now I’m the quick one and Chet’s the one who has to scramble. He fumbles through a long story about rock climbing that leads to a pun about his cam-bell. (And before you ask: Chances are he wasn’t actually talking about Kim Campbell, who was prime minister of Canada for all of six months in 1993, but in the heat of the moment no one realized he’d just screwed up David Cameron’s name.)

My turn? No problem. Just keep flipping it back to him. “Another patented long-ass Chet story,” I say. “I am Bushed.”

“Well,” Chet says, then pauses. “He thinks he can just … Blair shit out.”

It’s his one solid blow. I talk about the “bonky moon” that’s shining outside that night. I confide in the audience about my own alopecia problem, and how I needed to buy a Merkel. And each time, the audience is right there with me. They don’t necessarily know what’s coming, but they’re loving it. Chet’s used three US presidents and two prime ministers; meanwhile, I’ve been from South Korea to Germany, by way of Canada.

Even better, I’ve got another continent in my pocket. “Have you guys been to Chet’s farm?” I ask the audience. “He has this group of cows that won’t stop talking.” I wait a beat. “They are seriously moo-gabby.”

What happens next is a blur, to be perfectly honest. I can’t even tell you what comes out of Chet’s mouth next, but it’s either nothing or it’s the name of someone dead—and either way, the Bay Area Pun-Off is over.

I might not have been able to vanquish Ben Ziek; this may be my only taste of victory in the world of competitive paronomasiacs; hell, I may never know the secret to the perfect pun. But as long as I’ve got the words to try, one thing’s for sure: I’ll use vaguely different words to approximate those words, thereby creating incongruity and thus humor.

Or maybe I’ll just plead raita’s block.

Phrase the Roof!

Author Peter Rubin set up a Slack channel here at Wired to crowdsource the punny headlines for the opening illustration to this story. He compiled more than 150 of them. Here are the ones we couldnt fit.

1. PRESENTS OF MIND

2. SHEER PUNDEMONIUM

3. VIRULENT HOMOPHONIA

4. OFF-SYLLABLE USE

5. PUNBELIEVABLE

6. HEADLINE BLING

7. LIVE A CRITIC, DIACRITIC

8. FEAST OF THE PRONUNCIATION

9. VERBAL MEDICATION

10. THE BEST OF BOTH WORDS

11. SUFFERING FROM INCONSONANT

12. DAMNED WITH FAINT PHRASE

13. THE SEVEN DEADLY SYNTAXES

14. THE NOUN JEWELS

15. PUNS THE WORD

16. CONSONANT READER

17. FARTS OF SPEECH

18. PUN-CHEWATION

19. GRAMMAR RULES

20. POISSON PEN

21. PUNS AND NEEDLES

22. DEATH AND SYNTAXES

23. THE WRITE STUFF

24. MAKING THE COPY

25. SLAIN LETTERING

26. PUN AND GAMES

27. VALLEY OF THE LOLZ

28. NOUN HEAR THIS

29. WHATEVER FLOATS YOUR QUOTE

30. PUT A VERB ON IT!

31. CRIME AND PUN-NICHE-MEANT

32. TIC TALK

33. ECCE HOMONYM

34. DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXTS ASS

35. WRITES OF MAN

36. VERB APPEAL

37. THE RHYME DIRECTIVE

38. SLOGAN’S RUN

39. REBEL WITHOUT A CLAUSE

40. BURNS OF PHRASE

41. ARTLESS QUOTATIONS

42. BON MOT MONEY, BON MOT PROBLEMS

43. JESTIN’ CASE

44. LET ‘ER QUIP

45. ADVERB REACTIONS

46. INFINITE JESTS

47. ARTS OF SPEECH

48. DIGITAL PUNDERGROUND

49. THE PUN-ISHER

50. IMPUNDING DOOM

51. BEYOND PUNDERDOME

52. BAUHAUS OF CARDS

53. TEXTUAL HARASSMENT

54. IT’S A PUNGLE OUT THERE

55. GRAND THEFT MOTTO

56. IT HAD PUNNED ONE NIGHT

57. PLEASE GRAMMAR DON’T HURT EM

58. RHETORICAL QUESTIN’

59. ACUTE PUNS? SURE

60. BAWDILY HUMORED

61. DAMNED IF YOU INNUENDO, DAMNED IF YOU INNUENDON’T

62. TROUBLE ENTENDRES

63. WITS UP, DOC

64. SELF-IMPROV MEANT

65. PUN-EYED JOKERS

66. LAUGHTERMATH

67. JAPES OF WRATH

68. MAKING HA-HAJJ

69. MUTTER, MAY I?

70. BATTLE OF HALF-WITS

71. DEMI-BRAVADO

72. MALCONTENT MARKETING

73. NON-SILENT OFFENSES

74. ORAL HIJINX

75. THE PUN-ISHER

76. NOUNS, YOUR CHANCE

77. TEXT OF KIN

78. OH, PUN AND SHUT

79. JOKE OF ALL TRADES

80. PATTER UP

81. SCHTICK IT TO EM

82. BOOS HOUNDS

83. IT’S NOT EASY BEING GROANED

84. FAR FROM THE MADDENED CROWD

85. COMPETITIVE DEBASING

86. THE PUNFORGIVEN

87. THE PUNCANNY VALLEY

88. INTENTIONAL FORTITUDE

89. CHURCH OF THE LETTER DISDAIN

90. POETRY IN MASHIN’

91. CREATIVE SENTENCING

92. DAAAMN, DACTYL!

93. NO CONTEXT

94. A TALE OF TWO SILLIES

95. THE WIZARD OF LOLZ

96. IT’S A PUNDERFUL LIFE

97. WHAT’S HA? PUNNIN’

98. THE ZING AND I

99. THE WILD PUNS

100. THE PUN ALSO RISES

101. HOW THE REST WERE PUNNED

102. RAGING SYLLABLE

103. DANGEROUS ELISIONS

104. GOODWILL PUNTING

105. FELLOWSHIP OF THE WRONG

106. INGLOURIOUS LAST WORDS

107. THE LIMITATION GAME

108. APPETITE FOR DISTRACTION

109. HOW I MEANT ANOTHER

110. LARKS AND RECREATION

111. COMEDY OF AIRERS

112. DECLARATION OF INNER PENANCE

113. BOO HA-HA

Senior editor and pun criminal Peter Rubin (@provenself) wrote about the roadblocks to VR in issue 24.04.

This article appears in the October 2016 issue.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/12/reflexlology-inside-the-groan-inducing-world-of-pun-competitions/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/165253970052

[allofbeercom]

ReflexLOLogy: Inside the Groan-Inducing World of Pun Competitions

From the moment he spoke, I knew I was screwed. On the surface, the guy wasn’t particularly fearsome—pudgy, late thirties, polo shirt, plaid shorts, baseball cap, dad sneakers—but he looked completely at ease. One hand in his pocket, the other holding the microphone loosely, like a torch singer doing crowd work. And when he finally began talking, it was with an assurance that belied the fact that he was basically spewing nonsense.

“I hate all people named John,” he said with surprising bravado. “Yeah, that’s right, that was a John diss!” The crowd roared. John-diss. Jaundice. A glorious, groan-inducing precision strike of a pun.

Welp, I thought. It was fun while it lasted.

If you’re an NBA rookie, you really don’t want to go up against LeBron James. Anyone’s trivia night would be ruined by seeing Ken Jennings on another team. And if you find yourself at the world’s biggest pun competition, the last person you want to face is four-time defending champion Ben Ziek. Yet that’s exactly where I was, on an outdoor stage in downtown Austin, Texas, committing unspeakable atrocities upon the English language in front of a few hundred onlookers who were spending their sunny May Saturday reveling in the carnage.

The rules of the 39th annual O. Henry Pun-Off World Championship’s “Punslingers” competition are simple: Two people take turns punning on a theme in head-to-head rounds. Failure to make a pun in the five seconds allowed gets you eliminated; make a nonpun or reuse a word three times and you’ve reached the banishing point. Round by round and pair by pair, a field of 32 dwindles until the last of the halved-nots finally gets to claim the mantle of best punster in the world and what most people would agree are some pretty dubious bragging rights. It’s exactly like a rap battle, if 8 Mile had been about software engineers and podcasters and improv nerds vying for supremacy. (Also just like 8 Mile: My first-round opponent had frozen when his turn came to pun on waterborne vehicles. Seriously, yacht a word came out. Canoe believe it?)

Eventually, there we stood, two among the final eight: me, a first-timer, squaring off against the Floyd Mayweather of the pun world. Actually, only one of us was standing; I found myself doing the world’s slowest two-step just to keep my legs from trembling. I’d been a little jittery in my first couple of rounds, sure, but those were standard-issue butterflies, perched on a layer of misguided confidence. This was the anxiety of the sacrificial lamb. I was punning above my weight, and I knew it. Once the judges announced that we’d be punning on diseases—hence Ziek’s joke about star-crossed livers—we began.

“Mumps the word!” I said, hoping that my voice wasn’t shaking.

Ziek immediately fired back: “That was a measle-y pun.” Not only was he confident, with a malleable voice that was equal parts game show host and morning-radio DJ, but his jokes were seemingly fully formed. Worse, he was nimble enough to turn your own pun against you.

“Well, I had a croup-on for it,” I responded. Whoa. Where’d that come from?

He switched gears. “I have a Buddha at home, and sometimes”—making a rubbing motion with his hand—“I like to rubella.”

I was barely paying attention. Diseases, diseases—oh! I pointed at people in different parts of the audience. “If you’ve got a yam, and you’ve got a potato, whose tuber’s closest?”

“There was a guy out here earlier painted light red,” Ziek said. “Did you see the pink guy?”

“I didn’t,” I responded. “Cold you see him?”

Again and again we pun-upped each other, a philharmonic of harmful phonics. From AIDS to Zika we ranged, covering SARS, migraines, Ebola, chicken pox, ague, shingles, fasciitis, streptococcus, West Nile, coronavirus, poison oak, avian flu, gangrene, syphilis, and herpes. Almost five minutes later, we’d gone through 32 puns between the two of us, and I was running dry. As far as my brain was concerned, there wasn’t a medical textbook in existence that contained something we hadn’t used. Ziek, though, had a seemingly endless stockpile and tossed off a quick alopecia pun; I could have bald right then and there. The judge counted down, and I slunk offstage to watch the rest of the competition—which Ziek won, for the fifth time. Knowing I’d lost to the best cushioned the blow, but some mild semantic depression still lingered: Instead of slinging my way to a David-like upset, I was the one who had to go lieth down.

Author Peter Rubin doing the punning man.Ryan Young

When I was growing up, my father’s favorite (printable) joke was “Where do cantaloupes go in the summertime? Johnny Cougar’s Melon Camp.” This is proof that—well, it’s proof that I grew up in Indiana. But it’s also proof that I was raised to speak two languages, both of them English. See, there’s the actual words-working-together-and-making-sense part, and then there’s the fun part. The pliant, recombinant part. The part that lets you harness linguistic irregularities, judo-style, to make words into other words. It’s not conscious, exactly; it just feels at some level like someone made a puzzle and didn’t bother to tell me, so my brain wants to figure out what else those sounds can do.

A lifetime of listening to hip hop has reinforced that phonetic impulse. Polysyllabic rhymes aren’t strictly puns, but they’re made of the same marrow; when Chance the Rapper rhymes “link in my bio” with “Cinco de Mayo” in the song “Mixtape,” I get an actual endorphin hit. Besides, rap is full of puns already: instant-gratification ones—like Lil Wayne saying “Yes I am Weezy, but I ain’t asthmatic” or MF Doom saying “Got more soul than a sock with a hole”—as well as ones that reveal themselves more slowly. Kanye West might be more famous for his production than his lyricism, but he endeared himself to me forever on the song “Dark Fantasy” by spitting the best Family Matters pun of all time: “Too many Urkels on your team, that’s why your wins low.”

I was punning above my weight, and I knew it.

Whether this is nature or nurture, though, the end result is the same: I’m playing with language all the time, and Kanye and I aren’t the only ones. “I can’t listen passively to someone speaking without the possibility of puns echoing around in my head,” says Gary Hallock, who has been producing and hosting the O. Henry Pun-Off for 26 years. He’s seen the annual event grow from an Austin oddity to a national event and watched dad jokes, of which puns are the most obvious example, take hold in the millennial consciousness; a dad-joke-devoted Reddit board boasts more than 250,000 members. “I’ve often compared punsters to linguistic terrorists,” Hallock says. “We’re literally stalking conversations, looking for the weak place to plant our bomb.”

And we’ve been doing it for a long, long time—verbal puns date back to at least 1635 BC, when a Babylonian clay tablet included a pun on the word for “wheat”—and the world has been conflicted about them for nearly as long. (Linguists can’t even agree whether the word pun derives from French, Old English, Icelandic, or Welsh, though there’s no point heading down that scenic root.) On one hand, puns are the stuff of terrible children’s joke books. Oliver Wendell Holmes likened punsters to “wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered witticism.” On the other, God, how can you not feel a little thrill when you make a good one or a begrudging joy when you hear a better one?

Humor theorists generally agree that comedy hinges on incongruity: when a sentence or situation subverts expectations or when multiple interpretations are suggested by the same stimulus. (Also, yes, humor theorists are a thing.) That stimulus can be visual (looking at you, eggplant emoji!) or auditory (what up, tuba fart!); most commonly, though, it’s linguistic. Language is slippery by nature, and of the many kinds of wordplay—hyperbole, metaphor, spoonerisms, even letter-level foolery like anagrams—nothing takes advantage of incongruity quite like puns, of which there are four specific varieties. In order of increasing complexity, you’ve got homonyms, identical words that sound alike (“Led Zeppelin’s guitarist was interrogated last week, but detectives weren’t able to turn the Page”); homophones, which are spelled differently but sound the same (“I hate raisins! Apologies if you’re not into curranty vents.”); homographs, which sound different but look the same (“If you’re asking me to believe that a Loire cabernet is that different from a Napa cabernet, then the terroirists have won.”); and paronyms, which are just kinda similar-sounding (“I have a ton of work to do, but I ate so much cucumber chutney that I have raita’s block”). When we hear a pun, the words we hear aren’t the words we think we hear, and the burden’s on us to crack the code.

Granted, there are people out there who hate puns, and maybe rightly so. But for many of us, that decryption process is a reward unto itself. “Humor happens when something important is being violated,” cognitive scientist Justine Kao says. “Social norms, expectations. So for people who are sensitive to the rules that language follows, puns are more entertaining.” In other words, if you work with words on a daily basis—writing, editing, translating—you’re simply primed to appreciate them more. Behind every great headline, any editor will tell you, is a great pun. (I have a colleague at WIRED who once looked at a page about chef’s knives and gave it the headline “JULIENNE MORE”; people lost their goddamn minds.)

Still, even among the nerdiest of word herders, there are some rules. Two years ago, Kao and two colleagues at Stanford and UC San Diego decided to prove empirically that incongruity was the root of humor. They tested people’s reactions to hundreds of sentences that varied from one another in minute ways. Some used homophones; some didn’t. Some added detail supporting the nonpun interpretation of the sentence; some stripped detail away. They were able to demonstrate that ambiguity of meaning is necessary for a pun to be perceived—but it’s only half of the equation. (And literally, there’s an equation.) After all, “I went to the bank” is ambiguous, but it’s not a pun. The true determining factor of a pun’s funniness is what the team calls distinctiveness.

Take the sentence “The chef brought his girlfriend flours on Valentine’s Day.” It’s a homophone, so it’s not the most complex pun. But if you turn the chef into a pastry chef, that added vocation property makes the pun more distinctive. “When you’re able to identify keywords from different topics,” Kao says, “it clues you in on the intentionality of it—you’re forcing together two things that don’t often co-occur.”

Of course, “The pastry chef brought his girlfriend flours on Valentine’s Day” still isn’t funny. It’s the kind of pun a bot would make, and maybe has made in the decades since programmers created the first pun generator. There’s no storytelling to it, no drama. A good pun isn’t just an artless slab of sound-alikeness: It’s a joke that happens to hinge on wordplay. A truly formidable punner knows that and frames a sentence to make the pun the punch line. The longer you delay the ambiguity, the more tension you introduce—and the more cathartic the resolution. A pun should be an exclamation point, not a semicolon.

But was I a truly formidable punner? I’d thought so—hell, my lifelong dream is seeing Flavor Flav and Ellen Burstyn cohosting a talk show, just so it can be called Burstyn With Flavor—but after Austin, I had my doubts. I’d cracked under pressure once; until I tried again, I’d never know fissure. As it turned out, a second chance was around the corner.

The Bay Area Pun-Off, a monthly philharmonic of harmful phonics.Ryan Young

Compact and jovial, Jonah Spear is a dead ringer for Saturday Night Live’s Taran Killam—or at least for Taran Killam in high school: Spear recently shaved off a grizzled-prospector beard and looks about half of his 34 years. He’s also a professional play facilitator and counselor at an adult summer camp (no to phones and drinking, yes to sing-alongs and bonfires). That loosey-goosey vibe has carried into the Bay Area Pun-Off, a monthly event Spear began hosting in January that’s just one of a handful of competitive punning events popping up across the country.

If the O. Henry Pun-Off is the Newport Folk Festival, then its Bay Area cousin—like Punderdome 3000 in Brooklyn, Pundamonium in Seattle, or the Great Durham Pun Championship in, well, Durham—is Coachella. The audience is younger, and the raucous atmosphere is fueled as much by beer as by unabashed pun love. It started in the living room of a communal house in Oakland in January 2016 but quickly outgrew its confines; in June the organizers even staged a New York City satellite event.

But on this Saturday night, a week after O. Henry, it’s a high-ceilinged performance space in San Francisco’s Mission District where I’m looking for redemption. The pool of contestants at the Bay Area Pun-Off is small by O. Henry standards, and we commence with an all-hands marathon on tree puns designed to winnow the field of 12 down to eight. “I’m just hoping to win the poplar vote,” one woman says. “Sounds like birch of contract to me,” says someone else. A lanky British guy whom I’ll call Chet rambles through a shaggy-dog story involving a French woman and three Jamaican guys to get to a tortured “le mon t’ree” punch line. The crowd eats it up.

“Keep the applause going. It takes balsa get up here and do this.”

When you’re waiting for 11 other people to pun, you’ve got plenty of time to think of your next one, so I try to Ziek out a good-sized reserve of puns—and when it’s my turn, I make sure that my puns build on the joke that came before me. “Keep the applause going,” I say after someone boughs out. “It takes balsa get up here and do this.” After someone delivers a good line, I admit that “I ended up being pretty frond of it.” They’re not distinctive, but at this stage they don’t need to be, as long as they’re ambiguous. Things go oak-ay, and I’m on to the next round. (What, yew don’t believe me? Olive got is my word.)

After I indulge in a muggleful of Harry Potter puns, I find myself in the semifinals against a Quora engineer named Asa. Spear scribbles the mystery topic on a small chalkboard hidden from sight, then turns it around. It says … diseases. The same category that knocked me out in Austin? The category I dwelled on for the entire flight home, thinking of all the one-liners that had eluded me?

This time, there’s no running dry. Not only do I remember all the puns I used against Ben Ziek, but I remember all the puns he made against me. So when Asa says, “I’m really taking my mumps,” I shoot back with “That’s kinda measly, if you ask me.” I reprise puns I’d made in Austin (“Did you see that Italian opera singer run through the door? In flew Enzo!”); I use puns that I’d thought of since (“My mom makes the best onion dip. It’s HIV little concoction you’d love”). Asa fights gamely, but I have immunerable disease puns at my fingertips, and it’s not much longer before the round is over.

And then, again, there are two: me and Chet. The difference now is I’m locked in: no nerves, no self-consciousness, just getting out of my brain’s way and letting the connections happen. When Spear announces the theme—living world leaders—I don’t even start trying to stockpile puns. I just wait, and they come.

Chet opens the round: “Ohhhh, BAMA. I don’t know anything about world leaders!”

This time, just hearing him mention Obama conjures up a mental image of Justin Trudeau. Before the laughter even dies down, I nod my head encouragingly: “True, tho—that was a decent pun!”

It’s Austin all over again, just in reverse: Now I’m the quick one and Chet’s the one who has to scramble. He fumbles through a long story about rock climbing that leads to a pun about his cam-bell. (And before you ask: Chances are he wasn’t actually talking about Kim Campbell, who was prime minister of Canada for all of six months in 1993, but in the heat of the moment no one realized he’d just screwed up David Cameron’s name.)

My turn? No problem. Just keep flipping it back to him. “Another patented long-ass Chet story,” I say. “I am Bushed.”

“Well,” Chet says, then pauses. “He thinks he can just … Blair shit out.”

It’s his one solid blow. I talk about the “bonky moon” that’s shining outside that night. I confide in the audience about my own alopecia problem, and how I needed to buy a Merkel. And each time, the audience is right there with me. They don’t necessarily know what’s coming, but they’re loving it. Chet’s used three US presidents and two prime ministers; meanwhile, I’ve been from South Korea to Germany, by way of Canada.

Even better, I’ve got another continent in my pocket. “Have you guys been to Chet’s farm?” I ask the audience. “He has this group of cows that won’t stop talking.” I wait a beat. “They are seriously moo-gabby.”

What happens next is a blur, to be perfectly honest. I can’t even tell you what comes out of Chet’s mouth next, but it’s either nothing or it’s the name of someone dead—and either way, the Bay Area Pun-Off is over.

I might not have been able to vanquish Ben Ziek; this may be my only taste of victory in the world of competitive paronomasiacs; hell, I may never know the secret to the perfect pun. But as long as I’ve got the words to try, one thing’s for sure: I’ll use vaguely different words to approximate those words, thereby creating incongruity and thus humor.

Or maybe I’ll just plead raita’s block.

Phrase the Roof!

Author Peter Rubin set up a Slack channel here at Wired to crowdsource the punny headlines for the opening illustration to this story. He compiled more than 150 of them. Here are the ones we couldnt fit.

1. PRESENTS OF MIND

2. SHEER PUNDEMONIUM

3. VIRULENT HOMOPHONIA

4. OFF-SYLLABLE USE

5. PUNBELIEVABLE

6. HEADLINE BLING

7. LIVE A CRITIC, DIACRITIC

8. FEAST OF THE PRONUNCIATION

9. VERBAL MEDICATION

10. THE BEST OF BOTH WORDS

11. SUFFERING FROM INCONSONANT

12. DAMNED WITH FAINT PHRASE

13. THE SEVEN DEADLY SYNTAXES

14. THE NOUN JEWELS

15. PUNS THE WORD

16. CONSONANT READER

17. FARTS OF SPEECH

18. PUN-CHEWATION

19. GRAMMAR RULES

20. POISSON PEN

21. PUNS AND NEEDLES

22. DEATH AND SYNTAXES

23. THE WRITE STUFF

24. MAKING THE COPY

25. SLAIN LETTERING

26. PUN AND GAMES

27. VALLEY OF THE LOLZ

28. NOUN HEAR THIS

29. WHATEVER FLOATS YOUR QUOTE

30. PUT A VERB ON IT!

31. CRIME AND PUN-NICHE-MEANT

32. TIC TALK

33. ECCE HOMONYM

34. DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXTS ASS

35. WRITES OF MAN

36. VERB APPEAL

37. THE RHYME DIRECTIVE

38. SLOGAN’S RUN

39. REBEL WITHOUT A CLAUSE

40. BURNS OF PHRASE

41. ARTLESS QUOTATIONS

42. BON MOT MONEY, BON MOT PROBLEMS

43. JESTIN’ CASE

44. LET ‘ER QUIP

45. ADVERB REACTIONS

46. INFINITE JESTS

47. ARTS OF SPEECH

48. DIGITAL PUNDERGROUND

49. THE PUN-ISHER

50. IMPUNDING DOOM

51. BEYOND PUNDERDOME

52. BAUHAUS OF CARDS

53. TEXTUAL HARASSMENT

54. IT’S A PUNGLE OUT THERE

55. GRAND THEFT MOTTO

56. IT HAD PUNNED ONE NIGHT

57. PLEASE GRAMMAR DON’T HURT EM

58. RHETORICAL QUESTIN’

59. ACUTE PUNS? SURE

60. BAWDILY HUMORED

61. DAMNED IF YOU INNUENDO, DAMNED IF YOU INNUENDON’T

62. TROUBLE ENTENDRES

63. WITS UP, DOC

64. SELF-IMPROV MEANT

65. PUN-EYED JOKERS

66. LAUGHTERMATH

67. JAPES OF WRATH

68. MAKING HA-HAJJ

69. MUTTER, MAY I?

70. BATTLE OF HALF-WITS

71. DEMI-BRAVADO

72. MALCONTENT MARKETING

73. NON-SILENT OFFENSES

74. ORAL HIJINX

75. THE PUN-ISHER

76. NOUNS, YOUR CHANCE

77. TEXT OF KIN

78. OH, PUN AND SHUT

79. JOKE OF ALL TRADES

80. PATTER UP

81. SCHTICK IT TO EM

82. BOOS HOUNDS

83. IT’S NOT EASY BEING GROANED

84. FAR FROM THE MADDENED CROWD

85. COMPETITIVE DEBASING

86. THE PUNFORGIVEN

87. THE PUNCANNY VALLEY

88. INTENTIONAL FORTITUDE

89. CHURCH OF THE LETTER DISDAIN

90. POETRY IN MASHIN’

91. CREATIVE SENTENCING

92. DAAAMN, DACTYL!

93. NO CONTEXT

94. A TALE OF TWO SILLIES

95. THE WIZARD OF LOLZ

96. IT’S A PUNDERFUL LIFE

97. WHAT’S HA? PUNNIN’

98. THE ZING AND I

99. THE WILD PUNS

100. THE PUN ALSO RISES

101. HOW THE REST WERE PUNNED

102. RAGING SYLLABLE

103. DANGEROUS ELISIONS

104. GOODWILL PUNTING

105. FELLOWSHIP OF THE WRONG

106. INGLOURIOUS LAST WORDS

107. THE LIMITATION GAME

108. APPETITE FOR DISTRACTION

109. HOW I MEANT ANOTHER

110. LARKS AND RECREATION

111. COMEDY OF AIRERS

112. DECLARATION OF INNER PENANCE

113. BOO HA-HA

Senior editor and pun criminal Peter Rubin (@provenself) wrote about the roadblocks to VR in issue 24.04.

This article appears in the October 2016 issue.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/12/reflexlology-inside-the-groan-inducing-world-of-pun-competitions/

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The best new portfolio sites, March 2017

Hey everybody, it’s March. I’ve only got one pun for this month, and I already used it a year ago, so I’m just going to spare you all, okay?

Let’s get to looking at portfolios. This month, the trend continues to be asymmetry mixed with minimalism and generous white space. It’s all very elegant and post-brutalism—that didn’t take long now, did it? From a UX perspective, it’s not bad if you don’t go overboard on the JS. From an aesthetic perspective, it’s beautiful.

From the perspective of a guy who writes these articles every month, I’m ready for the next trend, now.

Samantha Zhang

It’s rare to see a designer trust their content (which in this case is their work) as much as Samantha Zhang does. Many of the minimalist sites I find still depend on some gimmick or trend to set themselves apart.

That approach is so common, it makes sites like this one stand out by their sheer simplicity. It’s just good type, a simple layout, and it’s done. As a UX guy, I would not be sad if most of the web looked like this.

I know, I know. It’ll never happen, and that’s probably for the best.

Rakesh

Like any true rock star, Rakesh only gives us his first name. He also gives us a beautiful dark interface to stare at.

Like the Samantha’s site, its defining feature is great type, but it could hardly be called minimalist. It’s more like a collage of text and images that nonetheless manages to look professional, rather than purely artistic. It’s a pleasure to read through.

Clearleft

Here’s a big one! In the minds of many Clearleft will always be “those web standards guys”. That’s still a big part of their identity, but it’s only one part of their identity these days. To reflect that, they’ve updated their site bigtime.

It looks a bit more semi-corporate now, with a clear focus on selling to larger clients (which makes sense, considering…). The actual portfolio section of the site is consequently made up of full-blown case studies. The whole site… well do I really need to tell you it looks good? It’s Clearleft. Just go look.

    Tobias van Schneider

Tobias van Schneider kept things dead simple when he designed his site. It’s big, fat text, and lots of photos. Okay, that does nothing to describe the skill behind his use of big fat text and photos, which is considerable. There’s lots of contrast, it’s all easy to read, and the whole site is well organized.

It has to be. It needs to show off his his aried skillsets and projects, after all. Tobias is no one-trick-pony, and I think this site does a great job of conveying this.

P22

P22 is one of those sites that looks dead simple until you start actually navigating through it. The classic type-and-borders look hides some well-executed animation, and other JS-based touches that enhance the experience.

Alexis Facca

Alexis Facca’s site showcases its sense of style in its organization, type, and animation. Most notably, it uses page transitions designed to look like distortion. I happen to think it’s cool. If there was ever an example or brutalism that actually looked good, this might be it.

Or maybe it’s just minimalism with a “digital” flavor.

Volkhaus

Volkhaus is another site that is very minimalist, but distinguishes itself (at least on its home page) with animation.

Paack

Paack give us some more of that asymmetrical minimalism with a nice twist: it scrolls horizontally. Horizontal scrolling is hardly a good idea for most sites, but for sites with relatively little content, it works.

Pro tip: Paack remaps the scroll wheel to work properly with horizontal scrolling. Be like Paack. Don’t just rely on a gimmick. Pay attention to the details.

Grant Burke

Grant Burke’s portfolio is text heavy, and mixes a dead-simple premise with a striking shade of gold-ish yellow. That’s right, yellow is back, baby, and cheating its way onto this list. His site also works perfectly with JS turned off.

My only complaint is the needlessly small text. I can see why it was done in this case, but it’s still not great. Otherwise, this site ticks pretty much all of my personal boxes.

Maison Carnot

This site is a living, breathing current trend! Asymmetry! Text overlapping on stuff! Serif headings and sans content!

No, but really, it looks great, and you should steal ideas from it. It just also happens to be the epitome of current design trends, and I can’t help but be a bit sarcastic.

sguardiostinati

sguardiostinati. I don’t know if that’s a person’s name or what, but it seems to be the name of a small film studio in Italy. Their site looks a bit like a spreadsheet or database at first glance, with the rows expanding to show you what each project is about.

Okay, that sounds boring, but it’s a surprisingly elegant approach, and it’s elegantly styled as well.

Moreau Kusunoki

Moreau Kusunoki’s portfolio defies current trends by, well, using a grid. That’s the great circle of life, really. For this architectural portfolio, the grid is thematically appropriate, and well executed.

If you want a bit more detail, however, you can switch to “list view” which looks a bit like (can you guess where I’m going?) a spreadsheet. It turns out that one of the most efficient ways of displaying information at a glance is becoming more popular on the web. Who knew?

The hilarious thing is that I don’t think anyone will ever use tables for it.

Anagram

I don’t normally advocate preloaders or heavy JS, but Anagram is getting a free pass. I mean, the site looks great. That’s part of it, but it’s not why they get a free pass.

Go to the page. Click and drag it, or swipe through it on your phone. See that effect? That’s why they get a free pass. Whomever does this next won’t, but they do. It’s just that much fun.

Juliette Neveu

Juliette Neveu’s portfolio brings us yet more of the now-popular minimalist-but-asymetrical style. It’s modern. It defies conventional grid layouts. It’s pretty. Most importantly, it fits rather well with the style of her client work.

Veintidos Grados

Veintidos Grados presents a clean, dark design with plenty of animation. There’s a lot to this one, so it’s hard to describe properly, but it’s worth going in and checking out all of the little details.

Heydays

Heydays takes a bold risk by making their portfolio a slideshow. That’s it, by the way. Just a full-screen slideshow, with some navigation scattered along the edges. It makes a bold impression, to be sure.

Alessandro Carpellini

Alessandro’s portfolio has a similar slideshow setup, but it’s restricted to the header of the site. There’s text below for anyone who wants to know more. It’s still bold, but doesn’t lack for relevant information.

Hum Creative

Okay, I’ve talked about how bored I’m getting with the trends featured on this site, but Hum Creative is still great. It’s peak trend, with its minimalist, asymmetry, and navigation scattered to the four corners of the screen, but it’s just so beautifully executed, that I had to include it here.

What really pushed this site over the top for me were the little details. There is a wave in the middle of the “H” when you scroll. There are custom-branded mouse cursors that don’t seem over the top or irritating. There is a minimum of stylish animation.

And then there are the screen savers. Yes, screen savers. They show up if you haven’t interacted with the site for a while. This would be really irritating on a text-heavy site, but here it’s kind of amusing.

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