Fuck Your Impractical Hipster Room Decorations

That the photo blog Fuck Your Noguchi Coffee Table has as many followers as it does proves conclusively that other people like making fun of hipsters as much as I do. Maybe more.


By posting the worst examples of ultra-hip interior decorating, Fuck Your Noguchi Coffee Table sends a clear message that it’s not cool to copy designs that you saw on the internet, it’s not cool to buy quirky old things when you’re under thirty-five, and it’s not cool to own a terrarium. Actually, it’s pretty ridiculous to do all of those things, and the more of its bland abominations you look at, the clearer the uninspired repetition of fashion clichés becomes. Here’s another example:


Ignoring the dangerously low-hanging chandelier for a moment, take a look at this picture. At first glance, it may appear interesting, aesthetically pleasing, unique, etc, but then look closer. What is this a picture of? Stacks of books on a table. The whole table. This presents the question of why the occupants of this apartment have chosen to render useless a perfectly good table that could otherwise have been used for eating, card-playing, building model airplanes, spontaneous after-dinner lovemaking, or blueprint examination. This may appear to be a perfectly logical way to display one’s book collection (as one might display an athletic trophy or a soda bottle from an exotic country) until one considers that books meant to be opened and read, and the whole purpose of vertically storing books spine-outward on a bookshelf is so they can be easily removed and used for this purpose. If books are stacked one on top of another, removing one for reading becomes a tedious exercise as one must either slide the uppermost books to one side or awkwardly move the upper portion of the stack into a separate stack as one attempts to retrieve the desired book. And this is made more difficult by there being a fucking vase thing on top of the books. How is anyone supposed to read anything on that table without accomplishing a minor feat of acrobatics?

The stacks of books epitomizes my problem with these designs: they stress looks over practicality. For the people who took these photos, books are meant to be looked at, not read; vintage typewriters are meant to be admired, not used (we have computers for that); and oversized taxonomic illustrations are meant to provide rooms with character, not actual information.

I prefer rooms that look lived in, imperfectly designed, and even a little messy. I feel more comfortable in them. If a room looks like something out of a magazine cover, I feel as if I’ve wandered into a place I don’t belong, as if my being there has thrown off the intricate balance that the designer hoped to achieve. (There are no people in the Fuck Your Noguchi Coffee Table photos.) An ideal room need not be curated to achieve a desired result; it should evolve naturally through the objects we bring to it because those objects mean something to us or just happened to catch our eye. That's a look that can't be faked.

Worlds of Power: Mega Man 2 (A Review)

Isn’t it a little strange that our hero has chosen to attack Quick Man with his bare fists?

The Worlds of Power book series was a moneymaking scheme concocted by marketing extraordinaire Seth Godin to sell video-game based books to adolescent boys who spent most of their free time playing NES (though, to be fair, anything that helps adolescent boys enjoy reading can only be a good thing). The series included novelizations of Metal Gear, Castlevania 2, and Ninja Gaiden, as well as two junior edition books for younger readers: Mega Man 2 and Bases Loaded 2. All contained helpful game hints in upside-down boxes, though sadly, none included the quintessential center insert with eight pages of color photos.

In the Mega Man 2 novelization, author Ellen Miles imagines the eponymous character as a whiny eight-year old with a limited vocabulary and a penchant for clichés like “cool your jets” and “he was just full of hot air.” The plot proceeds as follows: Mega Man is transported to a robot boss’s lair, kills some enemies, then easily defeats the boss. Repeat seven times, and then add in a slightly expanded version for Dr. Wily’s castle. There’s also a poorly-developed subplot where Mega Man accidentally becomes human and must deal with his newfound emotions for the first time, but this was handled a lot better in the movie Blade Runner. Several times in the book, Mega Man encounters obstacles like oversized enemies, or weapons that seem to have no effect on the bosses, but each of these challenges is quickly remedied as the Blue Bomber continues on his quest (fortunately, the author leaves out the part of the game where you choose the wrong boss, find out that all your weapons are useless, and have to go back and choose another).

The most annoying loyalty to the game comes when Mega Man has to fight all eight robots a second time by going through teleportation machines. Instead of omitting this relatively unimportant scene, in an act of deft narrative summary, Miles describes each battle in a single alliterative sentence (“He wiped out Wood Man,” etc), leaving only Air Man’s battle described in minor detail (presumably because she couldn’t think of a destructive verb beginning with A).

To make things more exciting for younger readers, the author also litters the book with italicized KaBoom!s, Whump!s, Pow!s, and FWOOSH!s of the type one might expect from the Adam West Batman series. Even more annoying is Bubble Man’s habit of inserting underwater sounds into his speech, which is poorly handled at best:

Mega Man swam through the gates. Bubble Man was waiting for him. “Mega blorble man!” he cried. “How gurgle dare you enter my king-burrble-dom!

While I’m quoting, here’s a typical example of the author’s attention to detail:

The door to the Robo-Transometer* swung open, letting in a stream of light. Mega Man stirred. His head hurt.

“My head hurts,” he said.

*Robo-Transometer (n): a machine capable of both cloning robots and making them human.

The Game Tips (requiring the reader to turn the book upside-down like a Slylock Fox puzzle) range from revealing enemy weaknesses to laughably basic advice (“To kill Air Man, carefully jump the tornadoes to get close to him”). Amazingly, later in the book, the same tip is repeated twice within ten pages (“To get to Heat Man, use the C weapon to cut through the wall”), meaning that either the editor got a little lazy, or this tip was so important that it had to be repeated twice for the forgetful reader.

I’m probably being a little hard on this book considering it had a target audience of eight year-old boys back in 1989, but it was a fun way to kill a half hour. I definitely had a good time making fun of this book that I wouldn’t have had making fun of a book based on Call of Duty 4 because childhood memories of the gameplay, however cheesy, made it fun. While one can’t possibly attribute any objectivity to this nostalgia, it will add a noticeable degree of enjoyment for any twentysomethings who grew up with NES.

Or, you could skip the book and watch this video of James Rolfe reading it in its entirity instead.

Why Discussions Turn Into Arguments (or, People Don't Listen, Part II)

A: Have you ever read a really interesting article online, but when people posted their comments it was obvious that they didn’t really understand what the author was saying and instead posted tangential comments based around the topic under discussion?

B: People make off-topic comments all the time, like male enhancement ads on the Rane forums.

A: I don’t mean off-topic like spam; I mean off-topic like they couldn’t quite grasp the writer’s point and were arguing in a different direction.

B: No, I know exactly what you mean. That happened a few weeks ago when I was reading a discussion about the Occupy movement and somebody posted about how Obama was being a socialist by not approving that oil pipeline.

A: No, you’re still talking off-topic.

B: I think that’s quite different than the male enhancement example.

A: Listen! Pick a random topic, say, Monopoly. Monopoly is a game based primarily on luck. If I’m the last person to roll in a five-player game, my odds of landing on unowned properties are greatly reduced. They’re reduced even further if one of the other players gets doubles and can buy a second property on the same turn. If I can buy fewer properties, I have a weaker chance of developing a strong position later in the game.

B: That’s ridiculous! Lots of games are based on luck! Settlers of Catan, for instance: if nothing but fours and tens come up, then the players who build on the fours and tens are going to get a shit-ton of resources every game. Cribbage is the same way: if I get a twenty-nine hand, it’s going to be pretty hard for you to beat me. Or in Hearts...

A: You see what just happened?

B: What?

A: I said that Monopoly is a game based primarily on luck, especially in larger games.

B: You didn’t mention anything about larger games.

A: I implied it. Anyway, I was saying that in larger games, Monopoly is based primarily on luck. You didn’t respond positively or negatively to that comment; you just went on to talk about how lots of games have luck in them.

B: Are you saying there’s no luck in cribbage? If we cut a starter card that gives me an inside-double run and helps you out not at all, isn’t that luck?

A: Of course it is, but I was only talking about Monopoly.

B: Maybe you weren’t being clear enough!

A: Do you think Monopoly is based primarily on luck?

B: In larger games?

A: In larger games.

B: Any game with dice or cards intrinsically involves some degree of chance! That’s the way of the world!

A: Yes, but do you think that degree of chance is substantial enough in a game of Monopoly to cause an imbalance?

B: In a large game, or a small game?

A: A large game.

B: How many players constitutes a large game?

A: I don’t know. Five.

B: You don’t know? This doesn’t seem like a well-thought out argument to me.

A: Fine! We’ll say more than four. Four or more players constitutes a large game.

B: You said five before.

A: Five is more than four! I’m trying to explain as best I can: Do you think that the degree of chance in a game of Monopoly involving more than four players is enough to create an imbalance for the player or players who are last to move their pieces?

B: I think the Chance cards have a lot to do with it as well.

The Mole That Poked His or Her Head Above Ground

All of my co-workers consistently misuse the genderless plural pronoun in place of a singular pronoun, as in the following example:

Someone left their book on the table.

Their is a pronoun used for more than one person (They left their books on the table), but here, only one person left a book. You wouldn't say Cinderella left their slipper at the ball because that doesn't make sense either.

People talk like this everywhere, and it's a reality I've grown to accept, like the prevalence of pro football or the existence of Crocs. Today, however, I found this in a kindergarten newsletter:

Every group of moles has a guard. The guard mole pokes his or her head above ground and warns the other moles of danger.

I was aghast at such an awkward, though grammatically-correct sentence from one of my co-workers. His or her head? What had caused such a pedantic shift?

I've come up with two explanations, possibly related:

1. Because the subject in question was the guard, the writer felt more inclined to use singular pronouns, as the is generally only used for one of something.
2. Because the sentence is about an animal, misusing their in place of singular pronouns seemed less appropriate.

Whereas in previous centuries, the teacher's sentence would have been commonplace, our language is constantly changing (and whoever be he who thinketh othewife might best have his head cleft clean from his body), and the singular their may be here to stay. I predict that in a generation or two, the casual their will be formally regarded as correct, and blog entries like this one will seem as dated as they are condescending.

Want to learn more?
The Genderless Pronoun: 150 Years Later, Still an Epic Fail
The Epicene Pronouns: A Chronology of the Word that Failed

A Bizarre, Saturnalian Cover

1967 Bantam paperback edition of Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49*

I love old paperback art, and this one is no exception. Paisley designs should be integrated into far more book covers.

Also, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in a bizarre, off-the-wall, novel that still manages to retain a concrete hold on its plot and characters. (It's also short!) Pynchon's prose expresses the most everyday actions in strikingly unique ways, and for that I adore it.

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* I hate it when items that normally appear in italics (i.e. book titles) appear inside other items that normally appear in italics (i.e. picture captions) so that the italics cancel each other out and the former must then be unitalicized. It just looks wrong to me.

Relative Nostalgia

More and more often, I see our generation united by common memories of mass consumer and pop culture from our childhoods (approximately 1983 to 1996), thus firmly establishing the popularity of sites like The Angry Video Game Nerd, the Nostalgia Critic, and this site examining awesome VHS covers from the ‘80s.

The ‘80s covers might be a different story, but were all those cartoons, movies, Nickelodeon shows, video games, and commercials really worth enshrining, or were we just at an impressionable age where even marginally serviceable entertainment would blow our minds? Is it possible that today’s mass culture (mediocre by our standards) has the same effect on kids, and in twelve years we’ll have a whole new generation talking about how cool the Geico gecko was?

Answer: not fucking likely.

Even Lincoln Had an Editor

This country of ours was founded 87 years ago by a group of men who believed very strongly that freedom was the most important thing for their new nation, and also thought that all men and women were legally considered equal under the law.

During the Civil War in which this country is currently engaged, we’ve been put to the ultimate test of whether or not America can “make it,” so to speak. That battle occurred right here under our very noses. This battlefield is thus being dedicated today to honor those who died here to keep America going. I definitely think that this dedication is a good idea.

But, in a way, we can’t really dedicate this battlefield at all. The fact of the matter is that it’s already been dedicated by the brave men and women who died here, and there’s really nothing we can do to add to or take away from that. Everyone will probably forget today’s ceremony, but they should never forget what our fighting men did on that day. Actually, it’s our job to make sure that they don’t forget it. This is a pretty big job, and we should work even harder to remember all the people who we honor; so we’d better roll up our sleeves and do it, because it would be a terrible tragedy if all of those men died for nothing, and we should make sure that America—where the people have control over the government—remains united for a long, long time to come.