Ask Me Anything
(c)Melanie Parish, 2013
You can ask me anything, don’t be shy. I may choose not to answer it, but as my teachers used to say, “There are no dumb questions.” Now if you have ever been in an adult course, you know this is just not true because I have heard some really dumb questions in my day. But they’re usually asked by the guy who has been checking his email all day on his smart phone instead of paying attention. So I am absolutely sure you won’t be asking dumb questions.
I’ll answer the questions I think are most helpful to Crucible Members. By being willing to ask questions, you help create the story on the Crucible. Thanks for participating.
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I was never very keen on Mrs. Kindt, but I also have to admit I wasn’t a particularly good history student. However, she said something one time that really stuck with me. She was discussing two political principles that are commonly presented as polar opposites. (I’ve forgotten the exact topic, unfortunately.) She argued that while the two were, indeed, opposing viewpoints, one could actually become the other if taken to a far enough extreme. Rather than thinking of the two things as a bar magnet, she suggested a clock instead. I thought that was a fascinating idea.
Let’s say, for example, we wanted to use the clock model to describe whether something is good or bad. Assume that 12:00 PM represents the absolute best. 3:00 PM would be good, but not great. Things that are perfectly mediocre would be plotted at 6:00 PM. 9:00 PM would be crappy, while things that are horrifically terrible would be found at 11:59 PM.
Bad, of course, is diametrically opposed to good, but viewed through the clock model, something could be so bad that is becomes good. (The clock would roll over to 12:01 AM and suddenly fall into good territory.) That bizarre area would be a counter-intuitive subversion of good and bad: gad-bood.
I’ve thought quite a lot about this, and I’m sure people can come up with many examples of gad-boodness.
This clip, in my opinion, is a wonderful example of gad-boodness: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9i6x6uGm2k. It’s a promotional video for a neti pot. I’m disappointed to report that it has been edited; the original ended with the creepy non-blinking robot doing stretches exercises to ensure that all of the snot gets out of her head. True story.
The video is so bad it is actually good.
Importantly, gad-boodness has to be created by accident. Satire, for example, can’t be gad-bood. Satire intentionally amplifies and exaggerates, but that is very different than organically grown gad-boodness.
After that lengthy preamble, here is my question: can you give me some examples of gad-boodness? (Any subject is fine: songs, books, movies, art, etc.)
P.S. – Some clever person with too much time on his hands made an “insane edition” of the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVSBBNUtTGA.