29: Happy Happy Joy Joy

June 27, 2008 12:59 AM

Show #29 features calls from members describing their happiest MetaFilter-related moments as well as recaps from the last few weeks of postings across all MetaFilter sites. It was recorded on June 25th, and runs about an hour long.

direct link

Calls
onlyconnect (talking about meeting NortonDC (he of We have cameras fame))

Meatbomb (Meatbomb's traveling roadshow)

Navelgazer (Stuff Nobody Likes)

not_on_display (his first deleted thread)

Projects
Garkov Garfield/Markov mashup

The Big Picture

Jobs
Columbia Business School Blogger

Operations assistant for online library-related product which features the following line in the listing: "You can read MeFi all day so long as our customers are happy and all your work is done. I'm trying to hire someone full-time but could also work with someone who's able to keep a regular part-time schedule. You could probably go to school at night and have this job during the day. Dependability is key."

MeFi Posts
Orphan works copyright list released by Google Books

Copyright story of Happy Birthday (a pretty smart, balanced comment about it all)

Sesame Street youtube round-up of stars saying the ABCs (Meatbomb's own sorta version)

Squirrel eats a cracker

Burger King ads from Europe (1, 2, 3, 4)

jessamyn: "Best comment on MetaFilter of 2008"

Popular posts and comments are now available in a feed format (MetaTalk post about it)

Platformer Primer

George Carlin obit thread

Ask MeFi
Resolved tag and feed in Ask MeFi

Help me find real-world "magic" items

Books to read about really cold places (for someone in a hot place)

How do deal-of-the-day sites work?

Help me make a friend understand she's being scammed (depressing comment describing the entire scam)

Used car low-ball offer scam

Why are dead deer bodies all over the Merritt Parkway (includes a story of someone that hit deer purposely)

How to drill through human teeth without breaking them?

Give me a bunch of brain teasers

For next time
Call (503) GO-LILAC and leave a message describing your favorite Ask MeFi thread of all time.

posted by mathowie to MeFi Podcast at 12:59 AM (73 comments total)

...recaps from the last few weeks of postings across all MetaFilter sites.

Not quite all, actually...
posted by flapjax at midnite at 1:50 AM on June 27, 2008

Not quite all, actually...

Good point. Poor travel. It's totally the pb of metafilter subsites.
posted by dersins at 2:01 AM on June 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

I think some things just get slighted on purpose. Some sort of conspiracy or something.
posted by Dave Faris at 4:56 AM on June 27, 2008

Some sort of conspiracy or something.

Nah, no conspiracy. Just lack of interest, really. See below:

Dave Faris: Music: 0 songs , 0 comments, 0 playlists
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:50 AM on June 27, 2008

Good point. Poor travel. It's totally the pb of metafilter subsites.

I've been wondering, but not enough to start a metatallk thread -- what's the status on travel, anyway?
posted by inigo2 at 6:24 AM on June 27, 2008

Call (503) GO-LILAC and kick them nasty thoughts.

MeFi got Back!
posted by ND¢ at 6:29 AM on June 27, 2008

We have a TravelFilter?
posted by yhbc at 7:06 AM on June 27, 2008

We decided to skip music this week (for the very first podcast ever that didn't include lots of cool music tracks) and use the calls to insert breaks instead. I thought it was a nice little experiment and no slights against music intended (last time I used tracks from the mefi music challenge exclusively).
posted by mathowie at 7:18 AM on June 27, 2008

I hear ya, Matt. S'cool. I just take every chance I can get to make direct links to the music page, is all...

Expecting double coverage from Music on the next podcast, though...
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:27 AM on June 27, 2008

"Leaking tranny fluid" is possibly the best phrase ever.*
posted by drezdn at 7:51 AM on June 27, 2008

I'm going to have to disagree with you on the subject of Lenny Bruce.
posted by Astro Zombie at 9:30 AM on June 27, 2008

I hate to be kind of a downer, or out of turn, or to take it too seriously, but I'm not really charmed by that BEST COMMENT OF THE YEAR. It's basically saying "Men think about sex and aggression nonstop and have to hide that to seem socially acceptable," right? I get that it's in the context of a really hilariously disgusting article, and might just be a response in kind, but the kind of popularity it boasts skeeves me out. Are all those people getting this as a joke in a way I don't? Because I can imagine writing something that describes the vapidity of women in a similar regard, but I expect it would be received very, very differently. Is it that the stereotypical shortcomings of male type minds haven't been lampooned to death around here, and there's some mileage left on that one, or is the big Institutionalized Power Discrepancy that makes it more okay to laugh at men? Or was it sarcasm? I haev a sense of humor, please help recalibrate it.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 9:33 AM on June 27, 2008 [13 favorites]

Are all those people getting this as a joke in a way I don't?

It may sound like an unfunny joke to you, but it's popular because it's actually not a joke.
posted by dersins at 9:43 AM on June 27, 2008

> I'm not really charmed by that BEST COMMENT OF THE YEAR.

Yeah mathowie didn't think it was that funny either. To me it was just a letter-perfect rendition of a guy-girl conversation in the context of the otherwise sort of mild "men are boring" thread. So I felt like part of the appeal of the comment was "they're only boring because they make themselves boring and actually have a rich internal monologue, let me show you it..." At the same time the description was so over-the-top as to not really (to me) be damning of any particular person and it was the response of the other person in the dialogue to an earnest recitation of desires revealed that made it so amusing. MeFi still being what MeFi is, that sort of thing plays well here.

But really if you don't think it's funny, you don't. The touchy subject matter is why I didn't sidebar it.
posted by jessamyn at 9:55 AM on June 27, 2008 [4 favorites]

I just read that "Best Comment of the Year" only moments ago and I found it to be quite funny. So funny in fact, that I'm glad my boss is out of the office or she might finally question whether I actually do any work of any sort round these parts. I guess that I see where you're coming from, but I took it as an over the top comment. Then again, I pretty happy go lucky and don't really tend to get riled up over things I read on the Internets. Or maybe I find it funny because I can imagine having a conversation like that, albeit not with a significant other.
posted by friendlyjuan at 10:00 AM on June 27, 2008

Because I can imagine writing something that describes the vapidity of women in a similar regard, but I expect it would be received very, very differently.

You're making the mistake in not realizing that the linked article was, in my opinion, a female version of pastabagel's comment. It's an exergation of people's misguided belief that their own internal monologue is, at all times, very interesting when, in reality, it is only interesting when it is exaggerated to the point of absurdity. Pastabagel's comment is the perfect response to the linked article and people in the thread because it shows that the author of the article loves herself way too much and thinks she is way more interesting than she really is. If a man had written that article, it would sound exactly the same but be filled with statements like THE BEST COMMENT EVAR. That's why I found it funny and still do find it funny. Its an absurd paradoy of a false reality that people believe about themselves. Those are always hilarious.
posted by Stynxno at 10:09 AM on June 27, 2008

I hate to be kind of a downer, or out of turn, or to take it too seriously, but I'm not really charmed by that BEST COMMENT OF THE YEAR.

Yeah, like I said immediately after, I didn't find it funny and haven't thought of banging dozens of strangers since I was 15 and hopped up on hormones.

Thinking I was a wet blanket myself (did I really say I don't think of people sexually anymore because I'm married?!) I went back and re-read the whole thread and that comment again last night to make sure I didn't miss anything. I did find the pacing and ADD-ness of it kind of amusing especially in the context of a conversation between a woman and a man where one is asking the other for their absolute honest thoughts and the crazy crap that usually flies through my head, but the rough sex aspects were kinda too Bud Light commercial fantasy for my tastes.
posted by mathowie at 10:11 AM on June 27, 2008 [2 favorites]

I only think about puppies and flowers and being nice to people.
posted by mattbucher at 10:11 AM on June 27, 2008

I only think about puppies and flowers and being nice to people.

I thought Pastabagel was being nice to people in his comment. In his own pistol-and-penis way.

(Incidentally, at the time, I thought it was hilarious, and still generally do, while my wife thought it was meh. Her exact words were "if that was you, they'd have to substitute in something about crappy old cars for the women, wouldn't they.")
posted by maxwelton at 10:18 AM on June 27, 2008

Well, I didn't think it's that funny, or, come to think of it, that over-the-top. I may be debauched. But I'm perfectly comfortable with equal opportunity lampooning, as long as our culture does keep cranking out moronic lockstep hens and cocks, and it worries me how flippancy about that isn't a foregone conclusion and how it sometimes results in 2nd vs. 3rd wave stuff, or overly binary gender debates around here. But yeah, pitch-perfect, true enough. I'm just stunned that Tim Allen is such a hot ticket here. Those guys all need to get laid more.

Stynxno, you're saying it was 200 favorites popular for turning that shit article on its head? Okay, so be it. Turnabout is funnier than over-the-top generic Kevin Smithery.

Thanks for the courteous replies.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 10:24 AM on June 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

The comment really worked for me because it painted such a nice careful-what-you-wish-for vignette. It was an almost Lovecraftian scenario, the female foil recoiling in shock and terror at the horrors, lurking ever under the surface, that she had unleashed into her own reality via some careless conversational feint.

(Most) guys aren't actually constantly sizing up the world in terms of a series of hypothetical acts of sex and violence, but insofar as there's a kind of common cultural running joke that they are, framing the men-mars-women-venus-conversationally-incompatible-lol thing as a shocking reveal of a caricature of exactly those "guys think about sexs/cars/guns/manlystuff constnatly" tropes seemed pretty damned funny to me, and maybe that's part of what some other folks were reacting to as well.
posted by cortex at 10:26 AM on June 27, 2008 [3 favorites]

GO-LILAC is a great phone number. It makes me wish mine didn't have so many lame, unspelly 1's in it.

Matt: You don't think the BEST COMMENT is funny, you don't think Cosby, Carlin, or Lenny Bruce are funny ... Have you considered the possibility that your sense of humour is broken?
posted by Sys Rq at 10:31 AM on June 27, 2008

I used to have 831-IM LOUSY which I really treasured.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 10:32 AM on June 27, 2008

(The other thing that I think was nice about the comment was that the dude isn't just being all GRR ARG FUCK KILL FUCK about it; there's a clear indication of thoughtfulness and savvy and stereotypically-hypermasculine-cultural literacy there. Not some Tim Allen crotch-grabbing HOOGH HOOGH HOOGH ape stuff but really attentive, even intellectual passion that just happens to be about ridiculous sex and murder and so forth. Dude as, not Lumbering Ape, but Hypermasculinity Geek.)
posted by cortex at 10:32 AM on June 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

My first pseudo-girlfriend's number was BED-LOVE.
posted by cortex at 10:33 AM on June 27, 2008

Oh, shit, if I wanted to throw away $5, I would totally create a sock puppet named Not Lumbering Ape, but Hypermasculinity Geek
posted by Astro Zombie at 10:34 AM on June 27, 2008

Yeah the "we should thank your parents for babysitting" was the perfect coda for me to that bit.
posted by jessamyn at 10:38 AM on June 27, 2008

you don't think Cosby, Carlin, or Lenny Bruce are funny

Dude, 1960s era albums, classic as they were at the time don't date well and play pretty much as unfunny in 2008. It's ok, times have changed and they were awesome back when they came out, but when you take them super far out of context where the f-bomb and talking about sex or politics is totally normal in comedy, the 1965 subversive classic comedy album is anything but.
posted by mathowie at 10:38 AM on June 27, 2008

I used to have 831-IM LOUSY which I really treasured.
WOW, me too! What a crazy coinci - oh, it's you.
posted by contraption at 10:42 AM on June 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

Dude, 1960s era albums, classic as they were at the time don't date well and play pretty much as unfunny in 2008.

Exhibit a for the defense:

"Thank You Masked Man."
posted by Astro Zombie at 10:53 AM on June 27, 2008

Yeah, there are certainly still funny bits, but talk to me after 35 minutes of the genius George Carlin talking about farts in 1964 when that was totally edgy.
posted by mathowie at 10:58 AM on June 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

I concede you may have a point.
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:02 AM on June 27, 2008

You hadda be there.
posted by Dave Faris at 11:07 AM on June 27, 2008

Pastabagel's stream of consciousness comment is a great definition of the effect of civilization. In order to achieve even an uneasy peace, we suppress our more fundamental urges.
posted by Cranberry at 11:56 AM on June 27, 2008

Nobody was ever made more civilized by not having a crazy orgy. I do, however, sublimate my desires to kill people into endlessly singing "Dead or Alive" on Rock Band.
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:13 PM on June 27, 2008

I agree with you, Cranberry, but all too often, that's portrayed as a man's burden, and women as the civilizing force itself. Maybe I've seen too many Westerns.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 12:14 PM on June 27, 2008

Regarding Pastabagel's comment, I partly feel like yeah, it takes an overly well-worn "Men are from Mars, male people drive like this, etc" kind of approach towards what it means to be a man (as well as the reactionary puritanical sputtering from women), but there are also so many fantastic turns of phrase that save it. By far, my absolute favorite part of the whole thing is when the male character, in trying to figure out how to have sex with the four women he sees, says:

Maybe if I called it a party

There's so much wonderful, depressing hope in that phrase. You can feel the gears turning in the character's head, the same surety in one's own hidden genius that you see in any design for a perpetual motion machine, or in any friend who starts dating someone awful with the idea that "I can change them, I can save them." I find such a delightful amount of pathos in that kind of doomed optimism.

"Of course this sounds ridiculous, I know it's a long shot, but I've been giving a lot of thought to how I can make this happen, and I think I've just hit on an idea that no one else has ever had before: Maybe if I called it a party. That's all it would take! This can work!"
posted by Greg Nog at 12:33 PM on June 27, 2008 [4 favorites]

I listen to the podcasts when I'm out for my postprandial constitutional. The volume levels go UP OH MY GOD PLEASE STOP SHOUTING IN MY EAR and then so low I can barely hear it. Since I'm listening on earphones, it's a bit annoying.

Is there anything that can be done, either at your end or mine, to make the levels more even? I'm using iTunes and an iPod.
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:09 PM on June 27, 2008

We're looking into it, corpse.
posted by cortex at 3:18 PM on June 27, 2008

talk to me after 35 minutes of the genius George Carlin talking about farts in 1964 when that was totally edgy.

Edgy, schmedgy.

Try this: Watch any Carlin special, or listen to any of his albums from any period. When he mentions farts (or, say, pussy farts (NSFW), which are, admittedly, an entirely different kettle of fish), take a drink.
posted by Sys Rq at 3:22 PM on June 27, 2008

I listen to the podcasts when I'm out for my postprandial constitutional.

*learns a new word*
posted by Tehanu at 4:12 PM on June 27, 2008

Is there a site where I can see what my cell phone number is when converted to text, that I can use without fear of getting a ton of phone calls/sms texts after submitting it, and also doesn't crash my browser with really slow javascript?
posted by Science! at 4:26 PM on June 27, 2008

We used phonespell.org and yeah were totally looking into the volume thing, apparently when we start laughing at things it gets really noisy even though most of the time we're not talking too hollery.
posted by jessamyn at 6:17 PM on June 27, 2008

even though most of the time we're not talking too hollery

I am totally adding "hollery" to my vocabulary! My daughter gets REALLY LOUD on the phone, especially when she's excited about something, and I often have to hold the receiver waaay away from my ear. Usually I just casually drop a "You're getting really loud" into the conversation, but from now on I'm going to say "You're being too hollery!"
posted by amyms at 7:26 PM on June 27, 2008

Pastabagel's story of manfriendery really made me day, by the way. You boys both seem like cool sorts.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 8:09 PM on June 27, 2008

Nobody was ever made more civilized by not having a crazy orgy.
=
Everybody was made more civilized by having a crazy orgy! More wine! Treasure bath!!!
posted by not_on_display at 8:45 PM on June 27, 2008

What I got out of this is that there's a secret website that's not allowed to be talked about, and Jessamyn is dating a n00b with a banjo? And nobody says anything about it, probably because you all knew about it already. Right? Right? Oh my God, it's high school all over again.
posted by nanojath at 8:47 PM on June 27, 2008 [2 favorites]

Thats my banjo.
posted by jessamyn at 9:32 PM on June 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

Great, and now everyone knows I'm a banjo-sexist.
posted by nanojath at 9:57 PM on June 27, 2008

Great, now everybody knows I'm a n00b.

**looking around** What?
posted by not_on_display at 10:17 PM on June 27, 2008

n00banjo.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 10:32 PM on June 27, 2008

"Fuck it. Let's ask Metafilter." Busted!
posted by NortonDC at 10:50 PM on June 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

Ah, now all is finally clear to me. Man, I'd forgotten all about that Sonnet post.

I should really be asleep right now.
posted by nanojath at 10:58 PM on June 27, 2008

Oh I come from n00-labama
a n00banjo on my knee
and I'm going to n00-siana
my n00 love for to see
oh, n00sannah, oh don't you cry for me
cause i come from n00-labama
a noobanjo on my knee
posted by flapjax at midnite at 11:34 PM on June 27, 2008 [3 favorites]

See, I didn't get the memo.
YCDTOMeFi.
This is my take on it...
posted by not_on_display at 12:11 AM on June 28, 2008

yeah were totally looking into the volume thing

Not to be all I-know-better-than-you and I-mentioned-this-before, but you guys need to either run your mics/phones/whatever through a nice hardware compressor/expander/limiter (say a dbx unit) before it gets recorded, or process the whole thing afterwards (which is easier, but the results aren't as good, because it'll set the level to the loudest person at any moment instead of equalizing all voices independently.)

So, like, your db level goes from -24 to +6 (clip!) over the course of a minute.

First you boost your incoming level so that the -24 becomes, oh, -12.

That makes your +6 into +16, so you compress so that +16 becomes 0.

Now your audio is going to vary within a 12db range, with the ideal digital peak of -6 right in the middle (more or less, you're not going for perfection here.) That's a much more respectable range than 30db.

Finally you put a hard limiter in at 0, so that random laughs or clunks or whatever that would have shot your original signal to clipland will at least be clipped in a softer and less noticeable way.

I'm sure someone will step in and complain about my particular db settings, but this is an example -- you're just trying to artifically boost the softest stuff, then compress down the loudest stuff, so it all ends up in a narrower volume range. When done correctly (which just takes a little practice) all anyone will notice is that you finally got the volumes evened out. If people start complaining that the noise is "pumping" or "pulsing" or "harsh", you've squeezed it into too narrow a range.

I so want to go buy you the equipment and spend an hour getting you hooked up, but I don't have that kind of time or travel cash, sorry

Incidentally if you're stuck with digital-only solutions, record everything on separate tracks, then do a mixdown to a mono track sending all channels through independent compressor/expander/limiters.
posted by davejay at 12:51 AM on June 28, 2008

Also, you'll need a pony.
posted by davejay at 12:52 AM on June 28, 2008

And I need a new phone number, because none of mine spell a goddamn thing. Once upon a time, I had not one, but two numbers in a row that ended in -DAVE. The phone company folks at the time were very agreeable for searching for available numbers.

sob
posted by davejay at 12:54 AM on June 28, 2008

most of the time we're not talking too hollery

i'd rather be in some dark holler
where the sun don't ever shine
than have to always change
the volume's shifting range
that makes me lose my mind

compress your pocast, please, mods
even out those nasty spikes
then i think you'll see
the MeFi 'cast can be
a podcast that everyone likes
posted by flapjax at midnite at 1:18 AM on June 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

Loved the podcast... especially the end. Happy stories make me happy. :)
posted by taz at 2:33 AM on June 28, 2008

I WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE LOVE STORY OMG OMG OMG OMG







OMG OMG OMG OMG SERIOUSLY THOUGH
posted by loiseau at 9:45 AM on June 28, 2008

Used to know a guy who had a phone number that spelled out SODOMY-9. Beat that. You can't.
posted by kindall at 11:31 AM on June 28, 2008

I could just about hear something when I turned the sound way up, but that was about it, so I gave up on this one.
posted by Artw at 12:22 PM on June 28, 2008

So this whooole "tell your happiest metafilter story" thing was just a ruse to break the news to us gently, wasn't it, Jessamyn? Tens of thousands of hearts just went *crack!*
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 5:29 PM on June 28, 2008

And I no longer even have BIG TWAT as my phone number to console me.

*sobs gently in corner*
posted by arto at 6:37 PM on June 28, 2008

davejay, you're the kind of person I'd like to go to a show with, so we can complain about the sound. It's where I get my fun. (I already have a sound-sensitive sweetheart, though.)
posted by Riverine at 9:23 PM on June 28, 2008

I listen to the podcasts when I'm out for my postprandial constitutional.

*learns a new word*

C'mon, dude, podcasts have been around for like, years.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:02 PM on June 28, 2008 [2 favorites]

So this whooole "tell your happiest metafilter story" thing was just a ruse to break the news to us gently, wasn't it, Jessamyn? Tens of thousands of hearts just went *crack!*

Yeah, sorry AV, I'm off the market.
posted by not_on_display at 10:46 AM on June 29, 2008

not_on_display's story makes me happy. "I like like you." Very sweet.
posted by onlyconnect at 7:45 PM on June 29, 2008

Oh, that's why not_on_display can't reset the timer. Maybe I should remove the "epic fail" note... nah.
posted by Pronoiac at 1:14 PM on July 1, 2008

Keep the EPIC FAIL note, please.. I'm somewhat stupidly proud of that post kthx!
posted by not_on_display at 8:08 PM on July 1, 2008

Best stories ever!
posted by danb at 10:21 PM on July 2, 2008

SODOMY-9

I always wondered what came after Butterfield 8.

davejay, you're the kind of person I'd like to go to a show with, so we can complain about the sound.

You mean the "pain in the ass" kind of person? Because that's what my wife calls it when I do it. Heh.
posted by davejay at 4:00 PM on July 15, 2008