Not considering a vuvuzela June 17, 2010 4:06 PM   Subscribe

Steven Chu is not considering a bomb was one of the funniest things I've seen on this site in weeks.

I guess I just like random humor and normal things that seem silly as hell when taken out of context, but I laughed for two minutes at that thing. I think it's weird that it was flagged and got deleted (with no more explanation than "what") while the equally useless vuvuzela silliness, for instance, stands.
posted by scrowdid to MetaFilter-Related at 4:06 PM (63 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite

I guess I just like random humor and normal things that seem silly as hell when taken out of context

You will love Tumblr!
posted by desjardins at 4:08 PM on June 17, 2010 [4 favorites]


Single link to a picture with no context? Oooh, wait, I can still flag it? Awesome.
posted by not_on_display at 4:10 PM on June 17, 2010


Then again, I've been known to think certain things are funny that NO ONE else does, so I'm not too surprised. Maybe I'm just wondering, say, if a Chu-post-hater-but-Vuvuzela-post-liker could shed some light on the distinction.
posted by scrowdid at 4:11 PM on June 17, 2010


I mean, it's an absurd caption and photo, but without any context, it's pretty lightweight for a post here. We regularly delete single link .gif or .jpg posts unless they're really amazing.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:13 PM on June 17, 2010


I think it's weird that it was flagged and got deleted

what
posted by SpacemanStix at 4:14 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]


Slow day at work?
posted by Lutoslawski at 4:17 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]


Fair enough on the single-image thing.

Slow day at work ---> I work in entertainment and I like to study what makes different kinds of comedy appeal to different kinds of people in different ways, so it's kind of like what I do for work. I guess I shouldn't have framed this post so closely along the lines of HWY WAS THIS THREAD BALEETED though.
posted by scrowdid at 4:23 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]


Thin and silly isn't forbidden exactly but it's real minefield territory and stands a good chance of being deleted. If someone posts it with that reality in mind and is a good sport about the deletion, we're in okay shape.

A single image without context for the lulz is about the thinnest of the thin on that front and I'd give a post with that format exceptionally low chances of surivival. So I do not think it is at all weird that it was flagged, and it was flagged a lot. It should not be surprising that it was deleted. I laughed while I deleted it, for what it's worth, and am glad you enjoyed the thread while it was around, but it was not a post that someone reasonably familiar with metafilter should expect to stick around.

The vuvuzela thing is thin in its own right but it's at least a thing-on-the-web-that-does-something, which is a little more interesting to work with than a static image and a jokey headline, and given the vuvuzela fever the world is in the grips of right now I'm feeling like that's The Vuvuzela Post and folks can do with it what they need to.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:25 PM on June 17, 2010


I actually thought the Jesus destroyed by lightning thread was funnier. That one made me laugh to teariness, while this one just made me smile.

Still wondering what the context was for the photo/caption . . . and too lazy to look. Does anyone know?
posted by bearwife at 4:26 PM on June 17, 2010


Vuvuzela time! does something, and the post had a description about what it did (View any web site like you're at the South Africa World Cup!), whereas one funny picture is just a funny picture. It sits there, being funny (or not, depending on your brand of humor). MetaFilter is not a humor site of that sort. We support the wordy sort of humor, or the music pieces that are engaging, and even SLYT posts tell a story, within the videos themselves, or people get annoyed.

For this particular piece, I would have set it up as the punchline:
There have been nine efforts to date to stop the BP gulf oil spill, with discussion of using an atomic bomb to seal the leak. Don't worry, it's not going to happen. Whatever he is thinking about, Energy Secretary Steven Chu is not considering a bomb.
Ba da BING!
posted by filthy light thief at 4:37 PM on June 17, 2010 [6 favorites]


Somebody set up us the bomb.
posted by MaryDellamorte at 4:39 PM on June 17, 2010 [2 favorites]


[edit: with recent discussions turning to the use of an atomic bomb to seal the leak.]
posted by filthy light thief at 4:44 PM on June 17, 2010


Dr. Strange Chu
posted by Juicy Avenger at 4:48 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]


I hate that I find stuff like this so funny: "HWY WAS THIS THREAD BALEETED"
posted by theredpen at 4:54 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]


I've been trying to check Twitter frequently. I am following the mefi new-FPP feed. I am surprised at how much crap is submitted.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:00 PM on June 17, 2010


This is not Reddit.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:00 PM on June 17, 2010


It could be if we all tried a little harder.

And if we had a FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU section.
posted by GuyZero at 5:05 PM on June 17, 2010 [3 favorites]


That Cortex guy totally stole my line.
posted by Devils Rancher at 5:07 PM on June 17, 2010


I am also surprised at the number of single-link reddit posts that migrate to mefi. Utter crap.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:07 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]


vuvuzela time is surprisingly unpopular on reddit. those guys are slipping.
posted by GuyZero at 5:10 PM on June 17, 2010


vuvuzela time is surprisingly unpopular on reddit.

Nonsense. It actually manages to make reddit substantially more tolerable.
posted by Nothing... and like it at 5:20 PM on June 17, 2010




Single link to a picture with no context?

This would have been pointless with context.
posted by grobstein at 6:18 PM on June 17, 2010 [2 favorites]


Am I the only one that immediately thought "Stephen Chu is spamming?"
posted by shmegegge at 6:19 PM on June 17, 2010 [2 favorites]


It wasn't a great post. But it was better than most.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:23 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]


So I do not think it is at all weird that it was flagged, and it was flagged a lot.

I'm not ashamed that I flagged it, but I also didn't get it. It had "BP" and "Nuclear" as it's only tags and that was it for context, and once I put the whole thing together of who he was, and the Russian plan, etc., I thought it was a fine cation and only becomes funny once you take it out of context, so it was like a vacuum of knowledge was required to make one laugh.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:23 PM on June 17, 2010


There's no way Steven Chu can get rid of all those vuvuzelas. We don't have enough nukes any more.
posted by lukemeister at 6:25 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]


I just saw it now. And lol'd.
posted by delmoi at 6:25 PM on June 17, 2010


What is up with that bizarre NY Times "close window" GIF? Why is it an icon at all? And what's with the aliased text? That thing looks like it was created in 1998 and is just sneaking along hoping that no one notices it is there.
posted by smackfu at 6:37 PM on June 17, 2010


Scrowdid, thanks for allowing me to use your deleted post to to make a stupid joke in the FPP just above yours about authors using a barking dog in all of their books.

As for your post. Well...

I didn't flag it. I didn't have to. Maybe it will become something that future MeFites will wonder about if they don't have the right Firefox Greasemonkey script.

And now:

Oven-Fried Onion Rings

Makes 24 rings, serving 4 to 6
We had the best results with kettle-cooked potato chips.


1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 large egg, at room temperature
1/2 cup buttermilk, at room temperature
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Table salt and ground black pepper
30 Saltines
4 cups kettle-cooked potato chips
2 large yellow onions, cut into 1/2-inch-thick rounds
6 tablespoons vegetable oil
Adjust oven racks to lower-middle and upper-middle positions and heat oven to 450 degrees. Place 1/4 cup flour in shallow baking dish. Beat egg and buttermilk together in medium bowl. Whisk remaining 1/4 cup flour, cayenne, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper into buttermilk mixture. Pulse saltines and chips together in food processor until finely ground and place in separate shallow baking dish.
Pull apart rings in each round, discarding any that are less than 2 inches in diameter. Working one at a time, dredge each onion ring in flour, shaking off excess. Dip in buttermilk mixture, allowing excess to drip back into bowl, then drop into crumb coating, turning ring to coat evenly. Transfer to large plate and repeat with remaining onion rings.
Pour 3 tablespoons oil onto each of two rimmed baking sheets. Place in oven and heat until just smoking, about 8 minutes. Carefully tilt heated sheets to coat evenly with oil, then arrange onion rings on sheets. Bake, flipping onion rings and switching and rotating position of baking sheets halfway through baking, until golden brown on both sides, about 15 minutes. Transfer onion rings to paper towel-lined plates to drain briefly. Serve immediately.

MAKE AHEAD
Oven-Fried Onion Rings can be breaded in advance and refrigerated for up to an hour. Let them sit at room temperature for 30 minutes before baking; if baked straight from the fridge, the onions will not soften properly and will remain crunchy.
posted by Splunge at 7:15 PM on June 17, 2010 [5 favorites]

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posted by turgid dahlia at 7:15 PM on June 17, 2010


Oh. Apologies. It wasn't scrowdid's post. Sorry jtajta. But my thanks and recipe stand.
posted by Splunge at 7:20 PM on June 17, 2010


Turgid dahlia that is the most interesting close up of a sperm cell that I have ever seen in ASCII format. Kudos.
posted by Splunge at 7:22 PM on June 17, 2010


I flagged it.

As fantastic post.

After it was deleted.

Just to be a dork.

posted by slogger at 7:22 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]


Gary's Landlord from Hell has been concluded. Not worth a MeTa, probably worth a vuvuzela.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:33 PM on June 17, 2010 [7 favorites]


I keep trying and trying to get the joke, and I keep not getting it.
posted by meese at 7:39 PM on June 17, 2010


Probably you're thinking about the bomb too much.
posted by fleacircus at 7:53 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]


I'm going to piggyback on this thread by asking: should I eat it?
posted by killdevil at 8:10 PM on June 17, 2010


Oven-Fried Onion Rings

Goes well with toddlers.
posted by zarq at 8:26 PM on June 17, 2010


Flagging recipes as noise. Because your self-satisfaction is fucking annoying.
posted by Space Coyote at 9:06 PM on June 17, 2010 [2 favorites]


I made the "somebody set us up the bomb" joke in the thread (beatcha by over four hours, Dellamorte!), and I was really pleased with it. It was really good.

FUCK YOU GUYS FOR FLAGGING THE THREAD OUT OF EXISTENCE.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 9:06 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]


_____________________________________________________________________
|I keep trying and trying to get the joke, and I keep not getting it.|
|posted by meese                                                     |
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Photo: meese is not getting the joke.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 9:24 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]


Sometimes, someone will tell a pun, and I won't get it. And they'll explain, "No, see, the word 'bank' can mean a place of business or the side of a river!" And I still don't get it, because all they did was replace one word with a different word that sounds the same. I don't think this means there's anything wrong with puns in general but, instead, that I am incapable of getting puns.

I'm guessing it's the same sort of thing here.
posted by meese at 9:34 PM on June 17, 2010


SLNYT?
posted by GilloD at 9:43 PM on June 17, 2010


FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU

I say this on a daily basis.
posted by adamdschneider at 9:49 PM on June 17, 2010


I am glad for this meta, because I missed the original post, and now I can favorite this one to get to the original post.
posted by davejay at 10:19 PM on June 17, 2010


This is an example of a joke that actually IS funnier once you explain it.
posted by not_on_display at 10:24 PM on June 17, 2010


Oh, wait!

Is that an actual caption provided by the NYT? I was functioning under the assumption that it was a caption intended to be funny. But if it's an actual, no-humor-intended caption, then I can get how it's funny.

Data sure was right when he said humor is difficult to understand.
posted by meese at 10:33 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]


I'd rather be thin and silly than thick and serious.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:49 PM on June 17, 2010


So what if it's the same price as in town?
posted by fleacircus at 10:56 PM on June 17, 2010


_________________________________________________________________________
|Oh, wait!                                                              |
|                                                                       |
|Is that an actual caption provided by the NYT? I was functioning under |
|the assumption that it was a caption intended to be funny. But if it's |
|an actual, no-humor-intended caption, then I can get how it's funny.   |
|                                                                       |
|Data sure was right when he said humor is difficult to understand.     |
|posted by meese                                                        |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Photo: meese is getting the joke
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 10:56 PM on June 17, 2010 [8 favorites]


I thought it was funnier than most attempts at humor here, but I can still see why it was removed.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 11:29 PM on June 17, 2010


so it was like a vacuum of knowledge was required to make one laugh.

Yeah, no. I'm familiar both with Steven Chu, Nobel-Prize-winning head of the DOE, and the insane notion that we should nuclear bomb the hole in the Gulf of Mexico. It was, as meese said, the fact that NYT used a picture of Chu staring at my breasts and captioned it the way they did that made it funny.

And now I've explained the joke, and I've exposed my man-breasts to Steven Chu, who could only look on in bewilderment. So thanks for that.
posted by dirigibleman at 11:33 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]


One afternoon a student said "Roshi, I don't really understand what's going on. I mean, we sit in zazen and we gassho to each other and everything, and Felicia got enlightened when the bottom fell out of her water-bucket, and Todd got enlightened when you popped him one with your staff, and people work on koans and get enlightened, but I've been doing this for two years now, and the koans don't make any sense, and I don't feel enlightened at all! Can you just tell me what's going on?"

"Well you see," Roshi replied, "for most people, and especially for most educated people like you and I, what we perceive and experience is heavily mediated, through language and concepts that are deeply ingrained in our ways of thinking and feeling. Our objective here is to induce in ourselves and in each other a psychological state that involves the unmediated experience of the world, because we believe that that state has certain desirable properties. It's impossible in general to reach that state through any particular form or method, since forms and methods are themselves examples of the mediators that we are trying to avoid. So we employ a variety of ad hoc means, some linguistic like koans and some non-linguistic like zazen, in hopes that for any given student one or more of our methods will, in whatever way, engender the condition of non-mediated experience that is our goal. And since even thinking in terms of mediators and goals tends to reinforce our undesirable dependency on concepts, we actively discourage exactly this kind of analytical discourse."

And the student was enlightened.
posted by Meatbomb at 3:17 AM on June 18, 2010 [19 favorites]


And the student was enlightened.
posted by Meatbomb

Boot to the head.
posted by not_on_display at 5:14 AM on June 18, 2010 [1 favorite]


Steven Chu is climbing a mountain...

Why is he climbing a mountain?
posted by utsutsu at 7:06 AM on June 18, 2010 [1 favorite]


Because it was there?
posted by Babblesort at 7:35 AM on June 18, 2010


I would like 3:46 back for boot to the head, please.
posted by Mid at 7:47 AM on June 18, 2010


God, every time I read the word "vuvuzela" I actually hear "vulvazilla" in my head.
posted by molecicco at 7:57 AM on June 18, 2010 [3 favorites]


"Steven Chu is climbing a mountain...

Why is he climbing a mountain?"


First there is a mountain.

Then there is no mountain.

Then there is.
posted by mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey at 7:58 AM on June 18, 2010


"I would like 3:46 back for boot to the head, please"
posted by Mid

And one for Jenny and the Wimp.
posted by not_on_display at 3:47 PM on June 18, 2010


MetaFilter is serious business.
posted by homunculus at 4:38 PM on June 18, 2010

Boot to the head
Ugh, comedy album pantomime, what a perversion.
so: boot to the head!
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 9:11 PM on June 18, 2010


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