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Saturday, December 17, 2016

The Way We Speak

note: I came across an old post and it struck me that is describes a game that captures modern ways of talking in public, on TV, on the radio, and - most importantly - it sounds like the speech of politicians and people who run for president.

This game is the second game described - not the first game which I thought was a terrific hoot, but no one seemed to understand! - and involves finding posts with comment sections and just mixing up the two sets of comments.
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Truth or Comment
published 05/30/2015















The Last Of The Mohicans 
Russel Means and Wes Studi


New game.
Brilliant. Just made it up.

I hope it does better than my last one, which was based on guessing an individual and a movie, all based upon (1) a vague description of the individual and a (2) correlated something from a movie which had a connection, no matter how tenuous, to the individual.
 I do not think I even got so far as to have a name for it.

For example, I had a friend who did contract work in Kentucky for a while, so the clue was "guy who worked in Ken-tuck-eee".

Now all the syllables in "Ken-tuck-eee" had the same flat accent on them, and if we were really doing well, it would be delivered in the voice of Daniel Day Lewis. Then it is obvious that the film is The Last Of The Mohicans. (Many of the native American languages do not have the same type of accentuation that we may be used to.)
Assuming we guessed the guy who did the contract work, we got everything at that point.

The only problem was I tried this game out on the guy who himself did the contract work in Ken-tuck-eee, and who had seen the film The Last Of The Mohicans, and he drew a total blank. I mean, he did not have a clue.
I mean, he said he did not know anyone who did any work in Kentucky for a week, then came home for the weekend, then returned Mondays. Since this is what he himself had done, it was perplexing. I think the movie section frightened him.

I don't know exactly what his mental processes were, but apparently they were something like:

"These are not the way of the Huron. Magwa does not understand this nonsense."


**

This new game is much simpler.

Truth or Comment?

RULES
Just open up two or three different stories in newsie sites that let the readers comment.
Then take the comments and mix them up.

1)CNBC
West Coast drought: Why California water is so cheap
Jane Wells Thursday, 28 May 2015 | 11:29 AM ET
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102714268


2)CNBC
When it can be illegal to withdraw your own money
Zack Guzman 19 Hours Ago
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102717680


Thus, we have drought, water, rivers, blah-blah-blah, and money, banks, government, IRS, FBI, yadda-yadda-yadda...


This results in

Comments:
a) I seldom use my credit card unless I am buying something online or large like appliances, furnace, air conditioner. I usually pull out a $1000 to $5000 at the beginning of the month depending on what I intend to spend money on that month. Based on this article looks like I am going to have to keep records of how I spend every dime.
b)  Start by drinking your own pee..
c)  That's what your tax forms are for...

d)  bad idea.. pee is full of toxins that your body is excreting. urea is one. now if you had access to a still you could probably distill your pee and extract pure water from it....

e)  This is not freedom. It is close monitoring by a government who wants to know who you call, email, text, and how much money you have and where you spend it.
This is slavery, but the slaves don't know they are slaves.

f)  Hillbillies have a leg up on the competition....

The only problem with this game is that it begins to sound strangely like cable TV and radio talk shows.
Instead of being some sort of "Mad-libs" craziness, it reminds us of our TV shows and Government officials.

Scarey.

We weren't going for scarey, but it'll work.


You see? It is just like what passes for civil discourse in Oceania and Airstrip One.
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