Guy Garvey, lead singer of Elbow, sounds like Winnie the Pooh

In my continued attempt to find some search term niche in which this blog shows up on the first page of Google results (is it satire?), I offer you the following means to ruin the experience of listening to Elbow, a good band.

Watch this.


And with that fresh in your ears, listen to this Elbow song.
Embedding disabled by request: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL4mywCOJXA#t=00m53s

Nevermind that he's singing "There's a hole in my neighbourhood down which of late I cannot help but fall," Guy Garvey, lead singer of Elbow, sounds like Winnie the Pooh. And once you realize this, you can't unhear it. Winnie's there in every track, albeit with a little more effort in his pronunciation. Still Winnie. You think he's singing about an Audience with the Pope, but it's just a metaphor for honey. Seldom Seen Kid? Because he's stuck.




You can't unhear it.

Definition of KORY STAMPER

1: Someone who is hot.

When I typed "Kory Stamper" and Google autocompleted “is hot” I learned something.

She's not a bikini model or porn shoot fluffer, but she has caused forty five people to ask of the following video “why do i get a boner when i see this woman?”



The problem is that Kory Stamper, in addition to being a total babe, is smart and a feminist too, so she understands how focusing on her physical qualities necessarily excludes focusing on her mental ones. Now, a case could be made that exploring the cause of our strange boners would be a positive way of celebrating the sexuality of a 30-something mother, but it's too difficult to extricate the objectifying MILFness with so little blood in my brain. So we will ignore her seductive delivery and instead engage her arousing ideas.



The word irony is a sore spot for anyone who doesn't use it. It gets thrown around as a sort of...thing (like, The Thing) that refers to anything remotely funny or unexpected. In Satire?blog's inaugural post I wrote that “[irony's] reclamation by hipsters caused a recession in the meaning market worse than the 1995 crash/release of Jagged Little Pill,” a sentence so darling I wanted to share it twice.

Perhaps Morissette and hipsters* aren't to blame though. In the above video Mrs. Stamper brings her Merriam-Webster descriptive-as-opposed-to-proscriptive lexicography-A-game and we find surprisingly, irony has been sloppily applied for at least 150 years. Merriam-Webster's Ask-the-editor videos have similarly softened my stance on who vs. whom, I hope vs. hopefully, and mercifully, they as a singular pronoun by revealing their lack of pedigree. It seems irony is just a problematic term for any human brain, past or present. It has a lot of conceptual pieces, specifically reversal, expectation, intention, and humor, all mixing and activating in response to each other simultaneously. Alone, a single drop of humor can muddy an entire lake of meaning, and when you try to assess intentions and expectations of different actors in the situation on top of it, it's no wonder irony is the solution anytime there's a whiff of displeasure in the air.

Kory Stamper also has a new blog. I just discovered it while writing this post. Like a window into her sexy lexicographer brain, the blog is about words, and it's pretty exciting to see that behind-the-scenes. I just glimpsed the body of text, but here's a a quick peek at one of its curves:

When I began reading and marking, I would begin reading an article and get halfway through it before realizing that I hadn’t marked a thing. I had made the classic rookie mistake of engaging with the content. If you’re on the hunt for interesting vocabulary–and particularly if you’re reading something that piques your interest–you need to intentionally miss the forest for the trees. You must focus only on the language used without caring at all about the point made with that language. But you can’t just skim. No, you need to be able to read closely enough to catch a subtle grammatical or lexical shift in a word, but not so closely that you forget your primary objective (MAKE CITATIONS). It’s not reading, and it’s not not-reading. It’s unreading. (source)

Suddenly I realize that's the climax of the text. I normally don't comment prematurely, but that was exceptionally tight prose. Beforeplaying next time I'll be sure to explore a little longer, dear reader. Anyway, there's nothing that can reduce my refractory period more than a tease of Orwellian doublethink like unreading. I'd bookmark it. Twice.



*Hipster is problematic for the same reason as irony. It works anywhere you want to refer to the counter-culture or exclusivity, broad concepts. And perhaps we might extend hipster to any search for authenticity, at which point this self-aware footnote reveals "is it satire?" to be a hipster question, thereby fulfilling both the premise and object of this blog simultaneously. And how! I think the appreciation of this...meta recursion...justifies us keeping the lower primates in zoos, right?

A call to the shamans, the elders.

Today I wanted to finally pay homage to the primogen of Satire?blog, the straw(man) that broke the camel's back and propelled me to ask "is it satire?" in the shirt-ripping manner that I now do. Please give a warm look of quoi while I bring to you the very definition of the ineffable, TransguyJacePDX.



You might expect me question the utility of spiritual shamans and elder healers in a 21st century policy struggle or to start in on sentences like, "there were the use of sound weaponry," or "...synchronicity...one after another." You know, really shit on him from atop my throne of words. But I'm not. I love this video. It is perfect.

Every thing I've covered on satire?blog so far has obvious extra-textual clues that indicate its intent. For instance, a single shitty hip hop song may be an obvious caricature of art and music, but in the context of a well-established industry which excretes the same waste week after week it is obviously not meant as satire, which makes my tone of ineffability a facade. We could just say these things suck, but pretending they might be intentional makes a greater rhetorical impact and serves as a writing exercise. A healthy exercise, I think, but deliberate and a little unfulfilling.

Jace Transguy doesn't have extra-textual clues. He only has 200+ views on the video and I suspect my post on facebook is at least 100 of those. No one has written about him. No one buys what he makes. He obviously has an agenda, but only in the most recondite sense does his audience have any influence on it. It's almost as if he doesn't exist at all. As his transient delivery calls out to the shamans, this ghostly obsession with spirituality suggests a wish to reach out from the great beyond for a child-vessel in which to be born again; satanically, not satirically.

This lack of corporeality makes it difficult to see Trans Jaceguy as an object of satire as well. At 200+ views, the lack of internet presence makes a strong case that he is not a memelogical agent designed to spread virally and undermine the Occupy Wallstreet movement. On the other hand, what would a satire of a white-collar, ostentatious, liberal look like? If you saw the protesters as entitled, wet-behind-the-ears whippersnappers who've never gotten their hands dirty a day in their lives, isn't this the speech you would write? Obliviousness to consequences, "there were many cities who...for the first time...really encountered force from police, that they had never seen before," grandiose arcs of victimization, "people in wheelchairs were tear gassed," abstract gobbledygook, "reactionary responses...occupied spaces," and problematic grammar throughout, delivered by someone with "trans" in his username who is less than clean-cut. Perhaps you might use someone more self-righteous, or perhaps you were going for dim-witted stammering, but this is 95% of the idea. He may not have sang Kumbaya (the viewer assumes a bum pawned his acoustic guitar for hootch), but his heart was definitely bleeding from those rubber bullets. All told, this is a particularly mean-spirited caricature by whoever made it.

At once, Guy Jacetrans's video is both a heartfelt call to shaman/elders, and a clear indictment of university education in the hands of youth. It is completely ambiguous. A strong case can be made for either interpretation, and best of all, there is no key at the end of the text to check our answers. That's what sets this video apart from all the others and makes it truly thrilling. Is it satire? I don't even...!

Save a Life: Stop Shopping

The day after Thanksgiving, the leading cause of accidental death in the United States between 4am and 6am is Black Friday. The leading cause of preventable death in those hours is still probably heart attack, which makes it sound more preventable than adults trampling other human beings underneath their feet. But it is not.





John Barryman explains how companies have adapted to life-threatening shopping.

As a precaution to avoid the 2008 incident where someone died, a Wal-mart store in Upland, CA decided to remain open all night to avoid lines and door-rushing. Unfortunately for them, customers began tearing into the shrink-wrapped products that were meant to be open and distributed for sale at 5 AM.

When turned away by employees, they started fighting inside, forcing the Wal-Mart to call police to kick all the customers out and close to clean-up in time for the sale at 5 AM.

The people, naturally, were pissed off, and it seems at that moment, most of them turned into zombies, banging on the glass doors and even eating some brains (not really on that last one). Some got crafty and tried to sneak into the back entrance and the lawn and garden section. Through-out the entire night, there was chanting of "let me in, let me in" and cops had to remain until 6:15 AM.

This coming from one of the store managers trying to calm the crowd, "It was scary." Meaning that crowd could have teared him limb from limb.

The arms race continue to escalate. One woman, evidentially applying lessons learned from the war in Iraq, deployed her offensive capability preemptively. "Moments after a Walmart in Los Angeles opened its doors at 10 p.m., one woman reportedly used pepper spray on at least 20 customers – some of whom were children – to keep them away from the discounted electronics she planned to buy."1

I say to the rest-of-the-world, alien observers, and ancestor spirits, that this is just what happens. It is the unavoidable outcome of incomes so high people can't remember what it's like to think about their own survival, while still too low for every wish automatically manifest via Sphere magic. We are the victims here, victims of our own success. Our government is agile and effective, our roads lead everywhere, and our economy provides for our every need. We have good reason to camp outside of stores for hours; it's the only means we have to improve our lives! John adds, “Here in the U.S., no matter how many civil liberties are denied certain groups, no matter how unhappy people are with their government, what it really takes to get people riled up is 40% off of a DVD set.” I don't know what he's saying on the first two points, but yeah, DVDs!

Our corporate string pullers are to thank. They're so effective at making and marketing widgets they can co-opt entire holiday traditions like Christmas, Valentine's Day, and now Thanksgiving to create this consumer carnival. It is a marvel the way gratitude, love, and Christ have been grossly fashioned into shiny gadgets and greeting cards to create the awesome Frankensteinian cultural creation of Black Friday. Only in America.

I don't recall hearing about Black Friday much until the mid 2000s. It was then that watching obese people squeeze through small entrances, like their own blood cells through plaque-laden arteries, became a guilty pleasure. In those days I still watched evening newscasts, and Black Friday reporting was a seductive mixture of corporate shilling during the lead up and stoic restraint in the aftermath. At first it didn't make sense why news producers feel coverage of the nearby sales serves the public good, nor the on-air talent showed so much restraint while reporting. Watch the corners of the anchor's mouth as he tries not to yell “fuck” during the following report.



You may also have noted the empty look in his eyes as hatred for mankind disintegrates the emotional centers in his brain. It now makes sense now 5 years later, as I too have discovered the way widgets fulfill me. Black Friday is education.

These door stampedes reacquaint adults with lessons learned in school about not running and how to queue. We see the pregnant lady mixing up those childhood drills as priority one is getting her wig back on, later considering getting off her belly. That's stop drop and roll lay there, lady. That's a fire safety technique! Perhaps she was trying to remain under the door frame until the shaking stopped. I'd like to think she was just dumbfounded by the savings.

It doesn't always turn into a gunfight or stampede. Here's what it looks like when things don't go horribly wrong:




Oh who am I kidding. Still horribly wrong. I can only take this as a critique of an educational system which provides no instruction in asking philosophical questions. If I had my buddy record me while I cackled and grabbed box after box of vibrators, that's what it would mean; it seems like a pretty obvious testament to the vibrator-shaped hole in our souls/intellect. So is this satire, or am I going to be posting videos of the first dirty bomb going off in the parking lot of a Walmart next Black Friday?

Back Dat Azz Up to 1999

In 1999 I had identified as a fan and consumer of hip hop for almost two years. It was a lot of Bad Boy and No Limit, some of it bad, some of it good, and some great. In those days we had to buy plastic discs from stores, and so I own No Way Out, Harlem World, Life After Death, Ghetto D (which I used as research for a report on crack),



Unpredictable, Da Last Don, Da Game Is to Be Sold, Not to Be Told and Top Dogg.

I used Sky's the Limit for a poetry presentation in 7th grade. It was edgy at the time to introduce profanity in the classroom, especially as something as revered as poetry. It was also the most meaningful example of poetry in my own life so completely appropriate.



If pressed I can probably remember a handful of movies I watched and games I played in middle school, but it is hip hop I am constantly drawn back to, at least insofar as Bad Boy and No Limit are hip hop. According to This American Life feature on middle school, what we learn in those ages forms the foundation of who we are as adults. So while Marion Strok can still perform tap dances she learned as a middle schooler, I can recite the 10 Crack Commandments, a manual, a step-by-step booklet, for you to get to get your game on track, not your wig pushed back.

I begin to suspect that something was up with the 1999 release of "Back Dat Azz Up" by Juvenile. The lyrical content wasn't particularly dangerous or exciting, nor did it discuss any of the issues I knew concerned Black Americans like growing up in poverty, dead homies, or the flow of capital within crack production and distribution circles. The song is about asses. Asses are what the video should be about, not the song! Most offensive of all, the song employed a rhyme scheme--or more accurately did not--where each line ended with "yeah." It felt like the rap equivalent of reaching into ones coat and coming back with a middle finger.



Being a life-long hip hop fan is a lot like standing on a trap door: the knowledge that any given week a particularly egregious example of hip hop might hit, and undermine the fan's attraction to the whole genre. For me, Back Dat Azz Up was the first time. The song was such an earache I began to wonder, is it satire? Could this be a caricature of the music I loved?

It's already absurd for any middle class American white to listen to music of political and economic struggle, and so the tonal line is thin between hip hop music which mocks itself and its listener, or affirms its own worth. Allow me to explain this ambitious claim. In most art, the actual audience is usually the intended audience, and the thematic messages are likely to arrive safely. This safety gives the artist room to play with expectations, such as through satire. But when the actual audience is largely across a confusing cultural gap from the intended audience, as is the case with hip hop, playing with expectation becomes a volatile experiment (given that record executives know the majority of hip hop is purchased by young white suburbanites, intended audience probably deserves quote marks). The potential thematic takeaway by the audience may not be the intended one at all. To a degree all art has this same dynamic, and that's what makes it so fun and provoking. But this dynamic also impedes the communication between the sender and receiver, which is why the tonal line is so thin for hip hop.

What is the thematic takeaway of Back Dat Azz Up? The question itself is parody. The answer? Also parody. This is the problem of being a hip hop fan. The only space in which Back Dat Azz Up can be considered art is that Juvenile knew what he was doing. And so, the way a Christian believes in Christ, one must believe Juvenile knew what he was doing in the face of evidence he did not, or else redefine what hip hop is. I think that's what most people do.

In perceiving Back Dat Azz Up's failure I got a sense of how I might be the caricature, not the song; after all, I was listening to it. So in an ironic way, Back Dat Azz Up really redefines the genre. Its critique of the listener delivers the reminder that hip hop doesn't belong to or represent me. I might be a fan, but after Back Dat Azz Up I became a bit more conscientious of my role as a consumer and their roles as artists. What a sobering aural flip-off.

Drake's new album is good. In one of his songs he pays homage to how successful Juvenile's satire was. It feels less like "fuck you" and more like "ooh yeah." Both, somehow, are hip hop. Have a listen:

Redress = get dressed again what?!

One ongoing theme at Satire?blog is the difficulty distinguishing between stupidity and mockery. If someone fails sufficiently enough it can be impossible to tell if that person did so deliberately to make you laugh or make a point. Depending on the (1)source and your own (2)personal level of skepticism, you will make an informed guess as to the person's (3)intentions, and thusly decide (4)is it satire?

If I were to look at the democratic body of the US, I would see an astounding demonstration of confidence in lieu of actual expertise. Occupy Wall Street protesters provide a particularly wounding example: "It's unfair how investment banks can print money and use it for what they want." But a failure to understand how the government manages the national economy is not unique to park dwellers. These groups, literally demonstrating they can articulate neither the problem nor the solution, provide fertile grounds for asking are you fucking kidding me?

If I were responsible for solving the nation's problems and this was the feedback I got I might be inclined to react negatively. So it is understandable that on September 22nd the White House rolled out this petition mechanism on whitehouse.gov, no doubt as a means to more effectively discard with the risible sentiments of the hoi polloi. It allows you to petition the government for redress of grievances, which sounds a little-old fashioned.

It's also weird to think about. How is the government, the perpetual faceless bureaucracy, supposed to respond to millions of citizens? It's not God. Smaller, more local components of government lack the authority needed to address many grievances, and the institutions at the top certainly don't have time to address any which are not backed by a PAC. The idea of individuals talking to government is sweet, but indistinguishable from prayer.

Of course, that vague, dreamlike feeling you get from reading "petition the government for redress" is the fading memory of the first amendment. Oh high school civics! The way you made the structure and purpose of government so sensible. Much is lost by the time people become actual voters and start agitating for the 1% to pay their school loans or for the 47% to sink into the income gap with their bootstraps pulled up to their grimace.

Petitioning the government via the internet seems like a real solution which does not involve shitting in a park or posting photos of handwriting on the internet. Finally. But it's so plainly not a solution due to the much larger influence of campaign contributions, lobbying efforts, and grassroots movements funded by billionaires (the influence of physical protests belongs here in this parenthetical afterthought), that we have wonder if it is satire. Make a petition. Email your friends. Then go play in the kiddie pool.

A satire test I like to use for political issues is to ask if it could be featured as a joke on the Onion News Network. A system where 5,000 25,000 people need to electronically sign a petition to get a government essay in response? What good is a response? Is the response essay, written by the intern who "consulted relevant experts" going to a vote in the Congress? And if it did, would it get to go ahead of political bullshit that our legislators are currently involved with?

Many people are frustrated by what they view as a lack of responsive government and paradoxically, its intrinsic devotion to public relations. To those people this petition mechanism is a joke. So they use the joke to make a joke: We demand a vapid, condescending, meaningless, politically safe response to this petition. Hey yo dawg I heard you like satire so we put some satire in your satire so you can shake a fist and laugh while you humorously criticize a system of fist shaking.

The public's relationship to governance is as fascinating as it is depressing. The public mistrusts the government because the public does not believe it governs in their interests, but the public at all times will criticize the government for being influenced by the public. Through these simple rules we get a rich myriad of interactions which fill our TV boxes and news sheets daily; OWS & Tea etc. It's like a goddamn Mandelbrot sequence:

Can We Enhance It?

Behold, the technology magic show!



Look on as the helpless writer heaps math and science words on top of a steamy scene excreted from the script-o-matic. "Maybe we can use the Pradeep Sen method in order to see into the windows." The script-o-matic, a dehumanizing machine which turns once-inspired writers into prisoners churning out the same pre-digested copy week-after-week, makes for great formula television. I imagine the typical writing conditions to be somewhere between a porn shoot and the cellar where naked people are kept in the dark and amputated limb by limb by cannibals in The Road. This is not hyperbole.

The flurry of animations and keyboard clattering helps the terminology babble to dazzle the viewers until they are too disoriented to think about the scene.* A slight tingly feeling around the temple is normal. That's confusion. Don't worry, there's always a dumb guy in the scene who doesn't get what's happening so the writer can slap you in the face with his diction. No viewer left behind. If you do, somehow, start to fall behind you can use the musical tempo cues to know when something exciting is happening and start breathing out of your mouth.

These shows fall into the genre of drama, sometimes the sub-genre crime drama, but I think more apt terms might be procedural porn, or forensics fantasy. Were it actually dramatic, the emotional needs of the multi-dimensional characters would be fascinating enough. Viewers would never need be laid down to watch the mobile spin in each episode's obligatory laboratory scene. Unfortunately in order for the plot driven "drama" to be easily digested the characters need to be flat, and that precludes having emotional needs. The absence of need leaves a gap which is, apparently, filled by characters staring at computer screens going "blah blah blah enhance blah." Procedural porn continues to fascinate viewers and annoy me, particularly the quirky lab worker who exists to please the leads with her offbeat fashion and uncanny skillz with the com poo tah. Wait...quirky and smart? I stand corrected. Some characters have two dimensions!

This jargon-spitting speed-typing is the low budget equivalent to Michael Bay's incoherent spatial assault in the Transformer films. Or if you prefer, it's the high budget version of youtube jump cutting. It's the opposite of art and degrading to anyone who hasn't mentally checked out. If you're a regular viewer of Numb3ers, CSI:Doesn't Matter, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit or the show under some other title, I should break it down. You are watching a show where you are being fed formulaic shit, hit over the head, then powdered and put in a crib. You are the special victim. Somewhere a writer is having his passion buried under your stupidity. It is my hope he's able to configure each episode's permutations while wondering, is this Satire?


This is:


*like this sentence

God I Love Awkward

This is a perfect example of kids who are probably too studious to belong to the meta-narrative of "I Love College."



This video is clearly a project for school and unless that project was to record a 4 minute music video during a 10 minute break, someone's GPA is taking a hit. Protip: reshoot until at least one person is lip syncing.

I'm not sure how to take this. On one hand it looks like a response to "I Love College," highlighting how far-fetched or unrealistic that lifestyle is for them. Unrealistic because for various ethno-economic reasons, they go to a school that wears uniforms. They probably have parents who require good grades. They may even live at home. They also scatter when girls appear, whereas Asher Roth makes out with them. "I Love College" excludes them because they know that at one dollar(s) a slice they will exhaust their allowance, and that imprudent spending begets debt.

In a sentence, their video says "look at how stupid 'I Love College' looks from prep school." "I wished we taped it because then I would have documentary evidence of being at said party." One of them even brandishes a condom at 2:00. Hah hah son, put the condom away, you'll need that for masturbating. Given that at least 100% more people in this video will graduate college than in Asher Roth's video, it reveals "I Love Collage" to be a juvenile, short-sighted creedo. And they are correct.

On the other hand, this analysis assumes their awkwardness and failure to deliver on even the most pizza-based lyrics is intentional, which is hard to accept. To think any of these kids danced their asses off last night and had this one girl completely naked you would have to be blind. One conspicuous student is wearing a helmet in their school's hallway and that is likely the craziest thing he's ever done; hopefully his parents won't find out.

They seem to be having fun, so maybe they like "I Love College." Bros stick around for their bros to come down the slide, ya know? Given that there's not a single head-bob in sync during the 4 minute video they need the "I Love College" ethic more than anyone. If they do indeed wish they could get the equally awkward girls at their school drunk, then this is not satire, it is an homage. It's a dress-up. It says "hey, look, we could be cool guys, just get drunk and smoke some weed first, please." It says, "I love college, not for it's rigorous engineering program but it's opportunities to play a dexterity based drinking game called beer pong," or "I love drinking debauchery because it has reliable rules like don't pass out with your shoes on and don't have sex if she's too gone. And ladies, I follow such rules."

Who knows, maybe when they go to college they'll uninstall Minecraft and wear sunglasses to house parties. Or perhaps their parents instilled work ethics instead of entitlement. I prefer to imagine they're celebrating not fitting the meta-narrative mold, because that means passing out at 3 will be in the library, and doing it again at 10 will help change the world. We can't be sure. The semiological meaning of various scenes leave me baffled.

Their idea of hazing a freshman (denoted by glasses, which is what nerds look like to kids wearing uniforms) is running up to him and repeatedly patting him down. What are they searching for, weed? Pogs?

There's a scene where they coolly open a locker, and proceed to stomp the living shit out of the notebooks that fall out. What is the object of your hate? Is it the nearness of the locker to the floor and the propensity of books to fall out of it? Or is it the books themselves? If that isn't a strong epistemological vote for "I Love College" then I don't know what is.

I also noticed the hilarious scene on the playground where Asher Roth says "you know what's going down," and visually before us is a slide. Is it satire?

I Love Party by Asher Roth

Pretty sure this is what Plato envisioned when he started the academy:



Asher Roth has never been out of the G8. "I Love College" is a catchy tune we can all relate to, having been induced to debauch our college experience by songs like, "I Love College." Is it just a party anthem, or also a satire of that inescapable cultural narrative therein?

Why D. Willz be actin' silly

If I were to try and attack contemporary popular hip hop it would be for the the gayness with which it celebrates materialism, the brash presentation of male sexuality, the audacious facade of self-esteem with the paradoxical lack of self-reflection, and the complete absence of effort linguistically or poetically.

So if I wrote a parody it might:
1)Show poor conditions from which no one is thinking about yachts, like a farm of (possibly) migrant workers.
2)Make it contain absurd references to sex, although making them any more absurd than they already are would be challenging. Comparisons to food and animals maybe?
3)Show no attempt to use real words or rhyme scheme. Like every line should end in "ey" or "ly."
4)And I'd probably make it about watermelon, because I'm a racist.

Behold:

I did not make this video. But undoubtedly it's everything that's wrong with hip hop rolled into a 3 minute video package. It's catchy, but is it also satire?

What is Satire?blog

Satire makes us think while making us laugh. It is both a form of criticism and a form of humor. It is a time-honored rhetorical device which disarms a person long enough to conceive of a thing in a new way. It's like reverse psychology, where the desired thought process is achieved via negation, e.g., “This blog is awesome.” Lets take a stroll through satire as it applies to Satire?blog, shall we?

Satire is distinguished by the attempt to appear serious. A clown makes no attempt to be serious, and therefore is not satire (nor trusted). The less sincere the attempt, the more satire skews into lampoon. This sexual harassment short exploits sensitivity training hilariously. But it only superficially requires us to examine our attitudes towards sensitivity training because the docile responses from employees belie its seriousness. If they reacted more realistically the short would probably function better as a critique of overwrought sensitivity training videos. And it probably would be less funny.



Contrast this with Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal. Swift's attempt to appear serious is more genuine. His proposition to alleviate the burden of poverty by eating children is as severely inappropriate as suggesting to rub huge cocks together at the water cooler, but instead of letting the shock diminish he continues to press, developing his argument and leaving few traces that he is anything but sincere. Understanding on face value that Swift cannot be right, readers are forced to read closely in order to counter that, no, babies should not be eaten to alleviate poverty, at which point Swift has achieved his desired effect. Every reader will have a better conception of the dire poverty the Irish face and how greatly that desperation contrasts their own lives. A Modest Proposal is not that funny.

My amateur analysis* so far is suggesting that the satire spectrum is anchored by lampoon like the sexual harassment short on one end, and criticism like A Modest Proposal on the other, with the former being funnier and less persuasive than the later. But the The Onion News Network shows this dichotomy to be false since it is consistently funnier than sexual harassment and lays it's subjects even more bare than did Swift the privileged classes.

In any case, we are not interested in identifying deliberate satire because unbridled self-awareness, running roughshod over the last vestiges of innocence and authenticity, rend almost every portrayal a satire these days. I mean, can you even say freedom without a smirk or scare quotes anymore? Thanks media.

On this blog satire takes on a different dimension of meaning. When we ask “is it satire?” we seek not to classify yes or no, but just to genuinely wonder aloud. What the fuck is this? Is it satire? It sure looks like satire. In message board terminology, this would be the situation where you're unsure whether someone is sincere or trolling. Not sure if serious.... It's the disbelief when you detect a fart shortly after someone has left the room. At Satire?blog we will thrive in those moments.

Ask yourself, “if this is not satire of [some thing], then what would a satire of [that thing] look like?” If the answer is [still that thing] then you have an clear case of ambiguity. For example:



What the fuck is this? Is it real? Did they really write a song about Taco Bell and Pizza Hut? Is it supposed to be a satire of hip hop? If someone did satirize the mindless, weed-addled stupidity sloth of contemporary hip hop acts and/or their fans, wouldn't this be the song he produced?

In a cynical, meta, post-modern world, speculating on intent is the last means with which we can enjoy artistic creation. It's a head cocked-sideways. It's the ineffable feeling of “...quoi?” Won't you celebrate the ineffable with me?



P.S. I had to write that entire post without using the word irony. Its reclamation by hipsters caused a recession in the meaning market worse than the 1995 crash/release of Jagged Little Pill.

*reverse psychology