Marry me, John Hodgman


sorabji.com: What do you want?: Marry me, John Hodgman
THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016).

By Spider on Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - 04:02 pm:

    When I first approached this book, I wanted to write about the mole-men. It was clear I was going to write a list of 700 mole-men names—that was one of the very first jokes I thought of for the book. Like, let's take it to the next level of unnecessary strangeness. And so it seemed almost immediately inevitable that people would say, "Oh, the new hobos in this book are the mole-men." But then as I was working on the Presidents and the section on Presidential history and the little table of all the Presidents, I came to think these guys are the new hobos. They're all crazy, you know. They're all insane personalities that are so outsized and strange. To want to become the President is, I think, such a bizarre ambition that it is automatically deranging. But I found myself newly fond of and fascinated by Thomas Jefferson. Of the first three Presidents, I always liked him the best because he was an eccentric. He was an amateur paleontologist, who collected ancient mammoth bones and spread them out on the White House carpet, and wore slippers to dinner, and invented macaroni and cheese. You know, he was one of the great polymaths of our time. But it wasn't until I had to justify this joke that I had made in the first book about how the mole-men had initially settled Virginia and build their mole-manic palace in Monticello that I had to find the connection somehow between Thomas Jefferson and the mole-men that I discovered that Thomas Jefferson really needed the influence of the mole-men in order to exist in real life, This was a guy who—much like the other founding fathers—but I think especially in Jefferson's case, was a man of means, an accomplished attorney, a landowner, a slave-owner who had zero reason in his economic or even for a long time political profile to become a radical. And yet, he was so profoundly influenced by certain ideas that he risked treason in order to break with England and form a new nation. And that change in him has never been, I don't believe, sufficiently explained by actual scholarship. Obviously, he was influenced by the French Enlightenment thinkers, but to the degree that he would risk his life, it's hard to see that. It is an essential mystery of his character. So how much different is it to suggest that he was actually influenced by a group of mole-men that he discovered on his land, writing a declaration of independence and learning the skill from them?

    As Voltaire says, "If the mole-men didn't exist, man would have to invent them."

    -- http://www.avclub.com/content/interview/john_hodgman



    His hometown is my current locale. Is that not a sign? OH, and one night I was walking past our local bookstore and I saw him in there addressing a crowd, ostensibly in support of his first book, but it could be simply that he is exceptionally popular with my neighbors. Also, he seemed like a wee little man, but I myself am borderline wee and the RSI in my right wrist makes it difficult for me to open jars. See, it's fate.


By Danielssss on Monday, October 27, 2008 - 01:56 pm:

    Listening. Just listening. Perhaps, listening. Anybody listening?

    DJ MOLE-LICIOUS: MOLE RAP

    MP3 LINK

    Yo, I ain't no informant
    I ain't on the face of De Niro
    I ain't no chemistry constant called Avogadro


    I'm just a mole.
    In a hole.

    About Moles…

    Moles dive deep in the earth's underground
    They don't use eyesight, they use smell and sound

    Tapidae is the name of mole's mammal family
    Darwin noted that their eyes were rudamentary

    Moles eat invertebrates, aquatic insects
    earthworms, molluscs, and snack on Rice Chex

    Male moles are boars, females are sows
    When moles escape from owls, moles take bows

    They are Tribe Talpini, Genus Euroscaptor
    The star-nosed mole has tentacled olfactory receptors (bitch!)

    Predators include the Red-tailed Hawk
    Moles don't look at you, so moles don't gawk.

    Moley-Moley, burrowing slowly
    Moley-Moley, gets underneath the goalie,
    Moley-Moley, eat earthworms with Stoli

    I'm just a mole
    In a hole.

    Yo, I got a whole mole army, yo
    How many moles you got?
    six point oh two times ten to the twenty third.

    ....................Perhaps mole-men were really the Anazasi who took the evolutionary leap backward and thus suicidally ensured their demise when they retreated underground in the 1300's??

    Just a thought. Just listening. Borderline wee with RST... just listening


By Spider on Monday, October 27, 2008 - 03:20 pm:

    I would marry him just for inventing the word "mole-manic". It's not that my standards are low; they are merely very narrow.


By droopy on Tuesday, October 28, 2008 - 01:03 am:

    i'm going to write a song about the naked mole rat

    someday

    it may even make you want to marry me

    Danielssss


By Danielssss on Tuesday, October 28, 2008 - 04:54 pm:

    In 1980 or 1981 I myself acheived favored mole status...in that my company awarded me an award, the prestigious "Mole of the Month" Award for keeping my head down, staying in the dark, keeping my nose to the grindstone, and forever fostering confusion and chaos while keeping my peers in the dark all the time.

    I thought it was a positive thing.

    We ought to start a thread dealing with standards for marriage. And distinguish between "low" and "narrow" please.


By Danielssss on Tuesday, October 28, 2008 - 05:02 pm:

    No shit, I still have the award, right on the wall next to my "On the Wilde Side" award Oscar having his zipper down.

    Perhaps the marriage thang is closer to mirage thang, which is closer to the garage thang, which is, well you get the idea. Moving on out...

    And Droop, as much as I love you, there's not enough vodka in all of Texas to make anyone marry me. For sure. I wonder if mole men are that different from goat men??


By Danielssss on Thursday, October 30, 2008 - 01:33 pm:

    see goatman legend, urban legend, and other drivel.

    Nonsense, my goat is kind and loving to humans, misguided as they are. Not at all as depicted by the legends surrounding the goatman/men of either Virgina or Georgia. Til I googled, didn't know there was a legend or a real man who called himself the goat man. WTF everyone can be famous with the internet.

    Goat is good. Goat is kind, beneficent, clean and reverent, well slightly irreverent. I mean, what makes something worthy of being reverent?

    Goat makes good cheeses but is tough as hell to barbeque pointing out the *fact* that humans ought not consume other living aninmals.

    Lesson for the day. So I must be the goat rattling thread killer once again.


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