Category Archives: Chuckles

Blacksburgia: It’s time for someone to make it a show

Posted by Caleb Coy on

Calling all videography, drama and media students at Virginia Tech, I have a task for you:

In the tradition of Armisen and Brownstein, it is time to create the show Blacksburgia, and make it a YouTube series.  I would pledge a sum of money (and help raise some) to finance such a project.  The show will revolve around the adventures of two characters (for now let’s call them Frankie and Bridgette) who both are on the Blacksburg City Council and taking graduate courses at VT while investing in various small businesses.  Or something.  Whatever gives them a reason to survey they town with their quirky characters.  The show would present less a satire of the community, but rather a fun house mirror reflection of Blacksburg and all other college towns like it in Virginia.  The main theme song can be written and recorded by Wild Nothing.
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Education, The War on Dirty Jobs, and the Worst Advice in the World

Posted by Caleb Coy on

“Opportunity Is Missed Because It Is Dressed in Overalls and Looks Like Work”—anon.

Peripeteia: A reversal of circumstances
Anagnorisis: A critical discovery

Want to hear the worst advice in the world?  Let Mike Rowe present it to you.

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When It’s OK to Cover a Song

Posted by Caleb Coy on

Let’s settle it for all time.  When considering whether you should record a cover of another artist’s song for your new single or album, there is a list of principles to follow.

The criteria for when to cover a song:

  1. Your version is going to be nearly as good, if not as good or better than, the original.
  2. Your version will differ significantly enough to be a cover and not a discount replica.
  3. Your version is one the original artist would be proud to have heard.
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“Bourgeois” by Lorde (Marxist parody)

Posted by Caleb Coy on

And we’ll never be bourgeois
(bourgeois)
We don’t own no Capital
Owning property and controlling the means of production in a loop of privatized investment and
……………..unevenly distributed accumulation just ain’t for us
We crave a rise of the proletariat
Let me be your comrade
(Comrade)
You can call me Trotsky
And we’ll labor, labor, labor, labor
Let us share commodity.

Part the only of my review of _Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug_

Posted by Caleb Coy on

“Benedict Cumberbatch sounds like a jaguar purring into a cello.” –anonymous

Smaug.  Smaug.  Smaug.

That’s what we’ve been anticipating.  In short, he desolated.  And so did Peter Jackson.  In a few ways.  Not all of them good.

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To Re-Gift or Not to Re-Gift

Posted by Caleb Coy on

I hate the title of my post.  I think we’ve outworn all references to Hamlet’s speech.  But I couldn’t come up with any better.

We sometimes run into what seems like a hard decision: I have a gift someone gave me.  Should I re-gift it?  Or is that tacky?  Lazy?  Untactful?  Unappreciative?  Selfish?  Stingy?  Inconsiderate?
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Whitman and Twain-quoted in color

Posted by Caleb Coy on

Recently, famous photographs in black and white have been colorized using computer technology.  Now some of our favorite historical figures can be seen in “true color” for the first time.  In honor of that, I decided to create color posters of two of my favorite writers, quotes included.  They now cover my desk, covering up the hole where a previous teacher or student must have kicked the desk in anger.

Twain
twain blush

Whitman

whitman yawp

Twain looks about like you’d expect him to.  Whitman looks like a cross between Tom Bombadil and Santa Clause.