I’m not on holiday at the moment but taking the odd day off over the summer. Yesterday was one. I found a good set of amusing links, here are a few.
The New Devil’s Dictionary From The Verge updates Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary.
Examples:
blogger (n.): An invasive species with no natural predators.
GIF (n.): Many prefer to pronounce this word “GIF,” instead of the more controversial-sounding “GIF.”
music (n.): An art form whose medium is copyright law.
And so on.
This reminded me to google for an english translation of Flaubert’s Dictionary of Received Ideas, hoping as usual for a creative commons version that could be played with. As usual I didn’t find that but got In Place of Thought – The New Yorker by Teju Cole which adapts the idea for modern times:
COFFEE. Declare that it is intolerable at Starbucks. Buy it at Starbucks. EVOLUTION. Only a theory. FASCISM. Always preceded by “creeping.” FEMINISTS. Wonderful, in theory. FISH. A vegetable.
Ouch, that last one stung!
Bonus Twitter mashup
Checking Teju Cole (@tejucole) on Twitter as his ideas started as tweets, I found:
- He seems to have abandoned twitter and
- The Time of the Game, a synchronized global view of the World Cup final. Just the sort of thing I like on the web, except for the football element.