I’m a pretty big Douglas Adams fan, so I was sorta miffed the universe hadn’t given me so much as a memo about this thing until after it’d started airing. And then I go and find out that it isn’t even the first Dirk Gently TV series they’ve made. I mean, what the heck, universe! Get your act together!

Anyway, I gave it a look-see and I have some thoughts on it that I will now share with you:

• It’s weird. It’s a weird show. I mean that mostly in a good way. It’s not really like anything else I’ve seen on TV recently. It has a manic energy that I find refreshing, even exhilarating.
• It’s very unlike the Douglas Adams book. Any of the books. Just way totally 100% different. I mean, look, Doug was never very concerned with keeping the different media incarnations of his stories particularly consistent, but tonally speaking this show’s quite a stretch. I don’t think that’s bad per se, but it could make for mismatched expectations and the concomitant disappointment that often follows thus.
• I overdid it with the previous point. The fundamental hallmark of any Dirk Gently story is: a bafflingly complex plot involving some kind of supernatural and/or science-fictional chicanery that makes absolutely zero sense until all of a sudden it does and then the end. The show has clearly been cast in that mold. It doesn’t hit the trope as totally out of the park as does, say, the first Dirk Gently book, but it does a good job and has other things to recommend it to boot.
• Regarding Dirk, the character: the writers seem perfectly content to give you nothing to grip on to, character-wise, for the first several episodes. We’re talking the exact opposite of say that advanced polymer scientists have extracted from the fingerpads of geckos. He’s a very non-grippy character, is what I’m saying.
• There is a really quite spectacular costume in the penultimate episode and the series is possibly worth watching for that alone.
• The series is also possibly worth watching solely for Jade Eshete because she is awesome as the character Farah Black, which character is rad as all get-out and if people only watched this show they would know what I’m talking about.
• It took me like four episodes before I finally put my finger on it and realized that the bad guy is Chief from BSG.

So anyway, in a world where half the friggin’ conversations I have are about television shows, why isn’t anyone talking about this one? It’s maybe not the bestest show in the world, but it’s pretty good and different to boot. I mean, I can’t even give you a solid show to compare it to because it defies comparison so fundamentally. I guess Doctor Who, that’s a thing to compare it to.

Worth chattin’ about, anyway, that’s what I say. Chat-a-tat.

With respect to U.S. presidential elections, the term “Electoral College” usually refers to a whole elaborate apparatus whereby different states are allocated different numbers of electoral votes, and rather than directly voting in a president, the citizenry instead elects a bunch of electors who subsequently go off and do the actual dirty work of electing the president.

When you break it down, however, the Electoral College (EC) isn’t a single apparatus at all! In fact, it comprises a number of distinct and independent components, none of which really rely on any of the others. To wit:

1. Each state is allocated some number of electoral votes in a way that is sort-of-but-not-quite-entirely proportional to population.
2. Each state gets to decide how exactly it wants to allocate its electoral votes.
3. A bunch of randos make a super-duper double pinkie swear to vote for the person we asked them to (they totally will, don’t even worry about it you guys) and then meet in semi-secret to cast their vote for president in the only vote that actually matters.
4. If no one’s a clear winner after all of this, Congress gets to figure it out.

Referring to all these components with the single label “Electoral College” is basically bogus, because it suggests that all these elements must belong to a single package. The (false) implication being that petitioning for any ONE of these things to change is tantamount to asking for ALL of them to change.

As our old buddy Confucius said, the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper names. To this end, I propose we start referring to the above aspects of the EC by a separate name. Here are some ideas for how to do that.

The SCAM

Because electoral votes are disproportionately allocated to states with lower populations, rural voters have an outsized impact on who is elected. Broadly speaking, this is bad for Democrats, and good for Republicans.

But let’s delve deeper into the disagreement here, by way of dialogue:

Democrats: Our system of non-proportionally allocating votes makes a sham of American Democracy, turning it into some sort of sad, sick joke.

Republicans: Ah, but this system has the unique advantage of being founded upon two-century-old criteria originally developed to appease a bunch of gross slave-owners.

Democrats: [Bewildered sputtering]

Republicans: Hooray, we win!

The fundamental principle behind non-proportional vote allocation is this: Some votes matter more than others. This is a simple statement of fact, independent of anyone’s political leanings. You may or may not agree with this principle, but your agreement or lack thereof is largely immaterial, because our system asserts it to be so. Full stop.

In an effort to further our Confucian aims, I propose we refer to this principle as “Some Citizens Are More Equal Than Others”. We can shorten this to Some Citizens Are More Equal—or simply Some Citizens Are More. SCAM for short.

States Are Gonna State

The EC system also allows for each state to determine how to allocate its own electoral votes. I mean, we’ve got all these fifty states lying around, so we might as well use ’em for something, right?

The cool thing about this approach is that it opens the door to a wide array of zany electoral fun. And zany fun is 100% definitely what we want to optimize for when designing our federal elections.

E.g., if Pennsylvania sets aside one of its electoral vote to allocate based on whether Punxsutawney Phil gets spooked by his shadow on Election Day, it can do that. If Indiana wants to give half its votes to the winner of the Indy 500, it can do that. If Florida decides to award all its electoral votes based entirely on the voting patterns of people who have willingly chosen to live in Florida … well, it can actually do that.

Zany, right?

“But Greg!” I hear you protest, “these are all absurd counterfactuals, and none of these things would ever happen! And even if they did, the Supreme Court would surely find them unconstitutional or something. States can’t just ignore citizens’ votes!”

To which I say: D’oh, you got me! Guilty as charged. Like, can you imagine? What if a state did something nutso-crazy, like allocating 100% of its electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote, no matter how slim the margin of victory was? I mean, that’d be like dumping half of population’s votes straight into the toilet! In a state like Texas or California where the popular vote is practically a foregone conclusion … why, gosh, there’d hardly be any reason for a person to vote at all! You’d get massive non-participation all across the nation! What a stupid idea that would be! Ha! Ha ha!

Anyway, I call this principle: “We Have All These States, So Ummm, Cool, Knock Yourselves Out”. Or WHATS SUCK YO for short.

The TWERPs

So far, nothing about the Electoral College system is particularly collegial, collegiate, or otherwise college-y. Enter the TWERPs.

TWERP stands for Those Who Elect the Real President—what you might otherwise call an “elector”. ¹ Votes for a candidate in the general election are actually votes for TWERPs who have pledged to vote for that candidate. But it’s not until mid-December that the TWERPs get together and vote. Then, and only then, is the real winner of the election determined.

In theory, TWERPs can vote for whomever they want in December. In practice, this doesn’t happen because of the aforementioned pledging. But I heard somewhere that the Founding Fathers were totally cool with the idea of a TWERP voting against their pledge, if it meant they’d be countering certain tyranny. Except I also heard somewhere that lots of states have made it illegal for TWERPs to vote for anyone other than the candidate they pledged for. Those laws probably aren’t constitutional² because why would the constitution bother with these TWERPS if we’re not going to let them do the one thing they’re allowed to do?

Anyway, my point is that this is a very well-thought-out system that definitely deserves to be preserved at all costs.

The Failsafe

A candidate only gets elected if they have votes from more than half the TWERPs. If no one gets enough TWERPy votes, the election gets kicked over to Congress for the final decision.

Let me repeat, just so this is clear: our Plan B failsafe for the biggest decision our nation collectively makes every four years … is to let Congress figure our shit out for us.

My simple catchy name for this failsafe provision is: “Unbelieveably Stupid”.

And So

Thus, we can characterize the monolithic “Electoral College” as an arrangement with four independent components:

1. Non-proportional allocation of votes amongst states (SCAM)
2. Each state chooses how to assign its own votes (WHATS SUCK YO)
3. A bunch of weirdo electors (TWERPs)
4. An Unbelievably Stupid failsafe

I’m sure there are other ways to decompose the situation, other principles we could distill out from the sludge of our Electoral College.

What I find interesting is that in this last election, many Hillary supporters loudly decried the SCAM, while also desperately clinging to the TWERPs for a miraculous last-minute turnaround. This isn’t exactly inconsistent—if you’re being forced to play a game with shitty rules, you can argue for better rules while still playing the game as best you can. People can walk and chew gum at the same time, after all. But it’s not a great look, rhetorically speaking.

Conversely, Trump supporters mocked the anti-SCAMmers as not understanding how elections work. Yet what would these folks have said if the TWERPs had exercised their Constitution-given rights en masse and voted someone other than Trump into office? Can you imagine the absolute shitstorm that would have ensued?

All the while, WHATS SUCK YO got no play from anyone, even though the winner-take-all system employed by almost every state skewed the results of the election far more profoundly than the big SCAM. How would have candidates campaigned if votes of liberals in Texas or conservatives in California actually mattered? What would have happened to voter turnout?

The whole situation is a bummer, of course. Some states are actually trying to do something about it, in the form of the National Popular Vote Interstate compact. The idea here is that if enough states can get together, they can collectively take advantage of WHATS SUCK YO to ram the national popular vote winner through the electoral college. I’m highly skeptical of this as a solution, both in terms of it being actually implementable and also being widely accepted without lots of people’s heads exploding. But A+ for effort and enthusiasm, y’know?

I’m going to be a technical writer at Twitter.

What does a technical writer do?

I’ll be writing internal technical documentation for software engineers.

Can’t engineers write their own documentation?

They can! I’ll be helping them do that, too.

When do you start?

October 24.

So. Twitter, huh?

Yep.

I think I signed up for a Twitter account a while ago. I never really used it.

That’s not a question.

Oh, come on. This is what you’re doing?

What do you mean?

You’re doing the thing where you write an FAQ and one of the questions isn’t actually a question and then you call it out for not being a question.

I … guess so?

Isn’t that kind of a tired joke?

Um.

And now you think calling out the fact that it’s a tired joke is somehow going to make the joke not as tired? Don’t you realize that awareness of doing something bad doesn’t excuse the fact that you’re doing the bad thing; in fact, it kind of makes it worse?

Hey, let’s not forget that you’re the one who thought the best response to me announcing my new job at Twitter was to say, “I don’t use Twitter.”

Touché.

So screw you.

Sorry, man.

Look, I didn’t mean for this FAQ to become a whole big thing. I just wanted to announce a thing that’s happening, is all.

Sounds like you got more than you bargained for, didn’t you?

It sure seems like it.

By the way …

Yeah?

You do realize that technical writing is all about brevity and directness, right?

Sure. Of course.

And this FAQ is, like, the complete opposite of that?

Ugh. I really don’t need this from you right now.

Does this mean you’re going to stop using Facebook? Should I start tweeting at you all the time?

I’m leaving.

Hey, did you hear that Disney’s going to buy Twitter soon?

Can you really say anything important in just 140 characters?

What’s your favorite hashtag, bro?

But there’s one part of the Brexit vote that the US could gain a lot from imitating: It has an extremely clear, easy-to-understand ballot.

The question is written in plain language: “Should the United Kingdom remain in the European Union or leave the European Union?” And while it’s a yes-no question, the options make it perfectly clear which one you’re choosing and how you should do it. (The Scottish referendum ballot in 2014 was even clearer: “Should Scotland be an independent country?”)

And I mean, my goodness—isn’t it beautiful? So clear! So simple! This is a wonderful example of the kind of drafting clarity that gets writers’ and designers’ hearts all a-flutter. Imagine going into a voting booth and seeing that ballot, its two huge empty boxes, each one calling out to you, inviting you to fill it up, tempting you to lay down your big, thick, juicy X in its sultry frame … well, it makes voting almost seem fun.

More importantly, the ballot makes it seem like leaving the EU is a simple, straightforward process. I mean, first you’re in the EU; then you’re not. End of story. Right?

Except we’ve found out that Brexit is a little more complicated than all that. In fact, no one seems to know how the hell it’s going to work. The UK has to invoke something called Article 50, but it’s not clear who’s actually going to so, or when. Then there’s the matter of renegotiating all the UK’s trade agreements. And by the way, does Parliament has to vote on the matter?

It’s a total friggin’ mess. But the design of the ballot simply abstracts it all away. Suggests none of the complexity involved. Offers zero context for what leaving the EU actually entails.

The Vox article I linked to at the top of this post goes on to present a few examples of what it criticizes as poor ballot design. And it’s true that those examples are far from paragons of clarity. In my view, however, they do feature one major benefit: they reveal the guts of how the laws in question would actually work. When I’m voting on whether to allow Uber and Lyft to operate in my city, for example, I’m not sure it’s a bad thing to be reminded—in the voting booth—of what existing laws would need to get repealed for that to happen.¹

The Vox article also references several studies that show how poorly designed ballots can obscure issues, decrease voter participation, and lead to thousands of votes getting thrown out without being counted.² Those things are bad, and I agree that it’s important to design ballots thoughtfully. But thoughtful design goes further than clean lines and Strunkian minimalism.

Voting is a serious activity with potentially enormous consequences. It is not a Futura activity. It’s not even a Helvetica activity. It’s a Times New Roman activity, through and through.

Though the Brexit ballot may indeed be a model of “drafting clarity”, it’s also a model of obfuscation: a terrific example of why you should be extremely careful when you start dumbing down complex ideas in the pursuit of simplicity.

Then again, why not take a mulligan? It’s not like it’s that hard. We do elections all the time. Just get everyone back together in a week or two and try again.

It’d be expensive.

So would exiting the EU. By a significantly larger margin.

It’s not even a contest. A UK Treasury report estimated that a Brexit would result in the UK’s GDP being “6.2% lower than it would otherwise have been by 2030,” or around $6,000 per household. That’s a lot. Multiply that by the population of the UK, and again by fifteen years, and it’s a lot more. Even if that math isn’t perfect, I hope you get the idea.

If the cost of averting all that loss is merely the price of running another referendum, that’s an amazing investment. It’d rank up there among the best investments in UK history, if not world history, period.

The people have already made their will known.

This argument makes no sense to me. If Brexit really is the will of the people, what’s the risk of running another referendum? They’ll just make their will doubly known. Huzzah huzzah.

And if the result of the second referendum is to stay in the EU? Then, I mean, whew—right? We really dodged a bullet there!

Think about it this way: Brexit is an enormous decision, impacting directly millions of Britons and indirectly impacting pretty much everyone else on the planet. So I don’t see why it’s unreasonable to insist that we (they) get it right.

If we run another referendum and Brexit wins again, what’s to stop us from running a third? Or a fourth? Where will the madness stop?

Simple: with the second referendum. Period. No more sour grapes after that. Everyone goes into it knowing that it’s for realsies this time.

Calling for a re-vote would be unprecedented!

So is leaving the EU. So what? Unprecedented stuff happens all the time.

You’re only calling for a re-vote because the referendum turned out opposite how you wanted it to. You’d never ask for a re-vote if the UK voted to stay in the EU.

That may be true, to an extent. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that, in cases were there’s significant uncertainty as to whether a particular course of action is better than the status quo, it’s best to stick to the status quo.

But, fine: let’s imagine an alternate universe where Brexit was voted down, and all the pro-Brexiters started calling for a re-vote. Even in this case, I’m not convinced I’d be against a re-vote. To paraphrase what I argued above: It’s Important To Get These Things Right.

I’d need to be convinced that a second referendum would be a sound financial investment, though.

The obvious explanation—which I think explains why most people’s blogging efforts never really get off the ground—is that a personal blog is fueled primarily by the author’s need for social and creative expression, and while a blog may have been a great medium for that once upon a time, nowadays these needs are way more effectively served by outlets like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Social networks like those ones don’t simply provide you a platform from which you can express yourself; they also ensure, to some extent, that you’ll have an audience paying attention to you, giving you feedback on how super terrifically great your expressions of self are.

So my blog occupies this weird interstitial space. What need is it fulfilling that isn’t already being met? I have Tumblr for posting links, quotes, and all the tiny random snippets of culture which I think are cool and want to remember for myself.

I have Facebook for sharing more important stuff that I want to put in front of as many eyes as possible, and also for sharing stupid Pokémon jokes.

And I have Twitter for complaining about public transportation.

What about creative writing?

But this whole “Superseded By Other Platforms” explanation can’t be all, because I actually do have a conceptual niche carved out for this blog: it’s supposed to be an outlet for my creative writing.

That obviously hasn’t panned out these past few years—or, at least, it hasn’t amounted to much in the way of actual content. As it turns out, a blog is not a very good place to share creative material. Anything I’m proud of, I’m going to save it and send it out for publication rather than waste it here. Anything I’m not proud of, I’m not going to want to share. And anyway, most of the creative writing I do is for my novel, which really doesn’t translate well into blog-sized snippets.

Another issue is that this blog feels heavyweight. This isn’t actually written down anywhere, but for some reason, I feel like everything I post here has got to be … well, if not perfect, then at least substantial and somehow complete.

For example, this very post is taking forever to write; I’m crawling through it, trying to make sure I don’t toss out half-thoughts or unsupportable statements or poorly-written sentences. Which is dumb, because the only way to actually make sure of any of those things is to leave the post, let the post sit for a while, and come back to it later. Which is totally not going to happen. It’s a stupid blog post. The three people reading it are going to be okay if it’s not perfect.

How I Use Facebook (or: How Not to Use Facebook)

So let’s redefine what this blog’s all about, shall we? And let’s try to do it in a way that’ll end up with me actually making use of this space.¹ Here’s an idea: maybe I can use this blog like how most normal people use Facebook.

My current Facebook “strategy” is to maintain as high a signal-to-noise ratio as possible. I’m actually kind of paranoid about it. I don’t know why.² I don’t post often, and when I do, I try to avoid sharing anything everybody else is already talking about; that is, I optimize for quality and novelty of content.

I also tend to avoid posting my own commentary about anything current or political. By default, I assume my opinions are all dumb and wrong and poorly-thought-out. Since I tend to live by the philosophy that it’s better to remain silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubts, this means I usually stay pretty silent.

I don’t actually think this is an especially good way to use Facebook. For reasons. But it works for me. And I’ve had people compliment me on the quality of my feed, which is cool.

However, it also means that whenever I have an impulse to share something on Facebook, I have to shut it down maybe 95% of the time.

A new charter

One of the nice things about this blog is that hardly anyone reads it. Not that my Facebook is blowing up like gangbusters, but it’s got a larger readership than this.³ So if I say something dumb or offensive, it’s unlikely to bum many people out. And the people who will read it are all close friends and family—folks who’ll cut me some slack (I hope) if (when) I say something really astronomically idiotic.

So here’s my new charter:

This blog will be a place where I can post stuff I’m too self-conscious to post anywhere else.

This shall include, but is not limited to:

• Half-baked ideas
• Poorly conceived arguments
• Commentary on things about which I’m unqualified to comment
• Opinions no one asked for
• Opinions no one needs

Now, are these really the sorts of things I should be posting to the website that bears my name? Like, won’t a dumb post on my personal blog reflect more poorly on me than something boneheaded I say on Twitter or Tumblr, or some other more “disposable” platform?

I don’t know. Maybe?

But, like, look: despite all these words I’m writing, I’m probably not going to post here any more than I already do. So I doubt it’s going to matter.

Now excuse me while I hit “Publish” without rereading a word of any of this.

• Continuing work on my novel.
• Interning at PanLex (staring June 20, for eight weeks).
• Writing crossword puzzles that get rejected by the New York Times.
• Working part-time as a technical writer at my old company.
• Trying to launch a podcast about writing with a former classmate.
• Failing to update my Moby Dick or Earthbound blogs regularly.

I would like to be making better progress on the creative endeavors … but all things considered, it could be a lot worse. So that’s something, I guess??

Best List of the Best Music of 2014: My Spotify List

(Admittedly, I may be biased about this one.)

Incidentally, this blog post is made somewhat redundant by the existence of this “Best of 2014” Spotify playlist. However, Spotify doesn’t have everything on it, so I’m gonna round out this blog post with music I found on the internet that ain’t on Spotify.

Best Devo-esque Japanese Pop Song from the 80s: “Modern Lovers” by Moonriders

This is a weird and wonderful song, made even more wonderful by the fact that the lead singer, Keiichi Suzuki, helped compose the music for the video game Earthbound. (Video games and Japan are going to be a recurring theme in this list, just FYI.)

Best Insane Mashup Album: Mouth Silence by Neil Cicierega

The mashup between “I Want You Back” and Pokémon news clips (it starts at around minute 12:00) will never ever fail to put a smile on my face (barring, of course, some kind of neurodegenerative calamity).

It hardly needs be said that the “Chop Suey”/”Crocodile Rock” mashup is 100% perfect.

Best Frustratingly Low-Quality Recording, New Orleans Street Jazz: “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” by Doreen’s Jazz

I found a whole new respect for jazz clarinet after stumbling upon Doreen Ketchens. I just wish the recording quality on this video were better.

Best Frustratingly Low-Quality Recording, Other: “Sanges Sweet & There is a Light that Never Goes Out” by Camille

I found the above video while searching for the track “Sanges Sweet – Version Courte” from Camille’s album Music Hole, because that song is flippin’ gorgeous. I came up short for the album version, but found the above live recording instead. With a bit of Smiths thrown in? Don’t mind if I do.

(Some kind soul has since uploaded the album version I was originally looking for. I feel like the video might get taken down soon, so enjoy while you can.)

Best Song That Sounds Happy But Is Actually Extremely Sad: “The Procession of Celestial Beings” by Joe Hisaichi

This is a selection from the soundtrack to the film The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, which was easily the best animated film of the year—maybe even the best film of the year, period. The song sounds rather cheerful, but if you’ve seen the movie then you know it’s actually extremely bittersweet.

Incidentally, the whole soundtrack is really great. If you have time, I’d recommend listening to the whole video above, not just the selection I’ve chosen.

And speaking of Princess Kaguya…

Best Sappy Closing Credits Song: “Inochi no Kioku” by Kazumi Nikaido

Also from the Princess Kaguya soundtrack. Not much else to say than this is super pretty and I like it a lot.

Best Overclocked ReMix: “Coming to Chimerica” by Binster

To be honest, I didn’t even remember this song until I started trawling through my saved Youtube videos from this year. But I wanted to put an OCRemix somewhere on this list, and it turns out that this song is a ton of fun, so in it goes.

Best Album Chock-Full o’ Thick ‘n’ Crunchy 80s Synths: Dangerous Days by Perturbator

This song is actually totally available on Spotify, so I’m actually not sure why I’m putting it on this list.

Oh, right! I remember why. It’s because it’s so very dang delicious.

Best Song from a Fourteen-Year-Old Musical: “The Origin of Love” from Hedwig and the Angry Inch

This is also available on Spotify, although the movie version above is a bit different from the album version. (The actual song begins at around 1:10.) I’m including the video here mostly because I love the accompanying animation, done by artist Emily Hubley.

Best Incredibly Sappy Video Game Cover: 

This song is essentially a bunch of children singing about love to the tune of a video game song. The performance isn’t even particularly good. I’m actually kind of ashamed about putting this up here. I can’t imagine anyone enjoying this unless they’ve played any of the games from the Earthbound series. Even then, it’s a stretch.

Best GWAR Cover of a Kansas Hit: “Carry On My Wayward Son” (by GWAR, duh)

Mainly here as a palate-cleanser from the previous song.

Fun Fact! This is the first time in human history that a GWAR song has ever been described as “a palate-cleanser”.

Best Live Performance Extensively Featuring a Kazoo: “Fuerteventura” by Russian Red

I went to see Russian Red in concert this year! She is great. And she plays the kazoo! What’s not to like?

Nothing! That’s what.

Best Live Performance Discovered Via an Nobel-Winning Economics Blogger: “Sonsick” by San Fermin

I don’t remember how I originally found out about San Fermin, but I do remember that upon researching the band further, I discovered that Paul Krugman likes them, too! He linked to thislive performance of “Sonsick” on his NYTimes blog. Who’d’a thunk it?

One of my favorite moments in the video is the cut to the horn players at 3:42. The saxophone player is super into it! Yeah! I like that saxophone player a lot!

Best Song Representing the Dissolution of a Longstanding Mystery: “Even at My Aunt’s” by Chisato Moritaka

OK, so there’s a story here.

A long time ago, I once borrowed an imported Bemani-style Game Boy Color game from a friend. I ended up playing this game a whole lot, enough so that I learned most of its songs by heart. However, the game was entirely in Japanese, so I didn’t really know anything about the songs I was playing—not even their titles, which were for the most part written in kana rather than Roman characters.

Now, seeing as how time is an eternal march toward undying and infinite chaos, I eventually lost track of the game. But a few of its catchier tunes stuck with me. One song in particular would keep popping into my head; after a few years it got to the point where I could scarcely remember more than a few notes of melody. It was kinda driving me nuts. But I figured there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

Then I realized: I could solve this problem . . . with technology.

So, starting with naught but this half-remembered melody and the recollection that my mystery game had been an installment of the Beatmania series, I managed to successfully track that friggin’ song down.

BOOYAH.

Here’s how I did it:

1. Downloaded a Game Boy Color emulator.
2. Sleuthed around on GameFAQs to figure out exactly which Beatmania game I was looking for. (Beatmania GB2 GotchaMix)
3. Downloaded the appropriate ROM.
4. Re-learned out how to navigate the game’s Japanese menus.
5. Found the cheat code (on GameFAQs) to unlock all hidden songs in the game.
6. Played through songs until I finally found the one in question.

As complicated as all that sounds, it really only took like an hour. And most of that time was spent first trying to find the song on Youtube, which path ended up being a dead-end.

Can I just point out how incredible this whole story is? I mean, consider the sheer amount of technological and informational infrastructure that went into solving this problem. The hardest part of the whole process wasn’t emulating a Game Boy Color on my computer; nor was it obtaining a ROM of an obscure Japanese rhythm game from the 90s; nor was it even finding a cheat code for said game.¹ No: the most time consuming part was me trying to save time by scouring the hundreds of videos of Beatmania songs that people have uploaded to Youtube.

If this story doesn’t epitomize all the promise and peril of modern technology in a single stroke, then I don’t know what does.

Anyway, this is the song that I was looking for. It’s pretty definitely worth it???

Most Linguistically Novel Version of a Song You’re Probably Sick to Death Of: “Let It Go” (Multi-Language Full Sequence) from Frozen (Various Dubs)

Maybe you don’t like this song. Maybe you once liked it but now hate it to death. Maybe you already saw this video back when it was making the rounds earlier this year and it does nothing for you.

Whatever. I don’t care. I think it’s cool. I especially like the Japanese bit at 1:13. It’s cool and screw you.

Best Song I’m Just Adding in Here So That We End on a More Upbeat Note than “Screw You”: “Star Bit Soufflé” by Stemage

(See award title.)

It’s true!

There are literally hundreds of recorded instances of a ship’s harpooner accidentally impaling his fellow sailors under the sleep-delusion that he was spearing a whale or some other sea beast.

This was a huge problem on whaling vessels, as you might imagine. And even to this day no one really knows why it was so. One leading theorist of the day suggested that

as harpooning is such a singular physical act, requiring all manner of unconscious coordination, and because it is a practice undertaken exclusively in circumstances of the greatest physical and psychological duress, it must needs be that the nervous system of the slumbering harpooneer involuntarily and spontaneously relives the whole physical sequence of events in order to practice for further harpooning runs—or perhaps to experience previous runs again, in his instinctual attempt to analyze what may be improved for future eventualities.

Whatever the case, the whole thing got to be so problematic that many harpoon producers actually began to sell “safety” harpoons. These were made out of rubber, and later on, foam. The idea was for harpooneers to keep one of these safety harpoons in their sleeping quarters, so that if they were ever to experience a sleep-harpooning fit, they would grab the harmless rubber weapon rather than a lethal steel-edged one.

As it turned out, the safety harpoon never gained much traction amongst harpooneers, as they found themselves all too often grabbing their safety harpoons rather than the real deal—an easy mistake to make in the chaotic shipboard confusion preceding a whaling run. But unexpectedly, the general non-harpooning populace—and children in particular—had great fun using the safety harpoons for play-fighting.

One of the most successful safety harpoon companies was the Norton Edward Rodgers Foundry. Originally, this company operated a blacksmithy oriented at making products for New England fisherman. During the late 19th century, the company transitioned into making safety harpoons exclusively. Eventually, it expanded into making toy weapons of all sorts.

The company still exists today—albeit under a much more familiar name. That name? It was derived from the initials of the original Norton Edward Rodgers Foundry, of course: NERF.