The Internet Killed My Research
I was going to have Kami reading Star, the National Enquirer, and–best of all–World Weekly News to get her take on modern life. Now my favorite part of her reading material is dead according to Salon; go to the “How The World Works” section and page down to find:
ACACEMIC REPUTATION, ALIEN NEWS SERVICE, SLAIN BY WORLD WIDE WEB.
Shed a tear for the soon-to-be-shuttered Weekly World News, a victim, said its publisher, American Media, of “the challenges in the retail and wholesale magazine marketplace that have impacted the newsstand.”
In other words: EVIL INTERNET VAMPIRES SUCKED THE BLOOD FROM MY TABLOID BABY!
Yeah, well it sucked the blood from one of my fave D&G jokes, too. Not to mention I’m now the proud owner of at least a dozen copies of that rag for no reason at all.
It’s probably psychic payback because I won’t let Lani use the Jonestown joke.
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Oh, I am so sad to hear this. Those WWNews guys and gals had such wild imaginations, and I’m sure they were the fertilizer to the kind of quirky fiction I like to read best.
Is Kami computer-literate? I’m sure there’s *tons* of sites out there to feed her frenzy and paranoia.
Sigh. No matter how you figure it, there’s no way you can make a bunch of electrons line a bird cage or wrap fish guts. Training your puppy on “Elvis Sighted in Poughkeepsie Microbrewery” just won’t happen anymore. Sad loss of old-fashioned fictional devices . . . .
Perhaps Kami could come across a mother-lode of back issues kept in the janitor’s closet in the temple?
Either that, or it’s a sign that you’ll have to let Lani use the Jonestown joke. KOOL-AID SWILLING AUTHOR CONSPIRES TO CLOSE WORLD WEEKLY NEWS TO SAVE HER PET JOKE!
Not that Lani would ever do that. Of course.
And for the record, I think the Jonestown joke should go in. But that’s just me. (Ducking as rotten cherries are thrown from the direction of Ohio.)
No Jonestown jokes, please. I remember living through the horror of the news of that tragedy. Hundreds (I think) of adults drinking cyanide-laced koolaid (I think). The children being given the same stuff. A field (I think) of dead people when the rescue helicopter landed.
And there you have it.
Mollie and I went to the Whitney on Sunday to see the Summer of Love exhibit. There were two kinds of people there: Parents and adult children. The parents like me all had a kind of glazed expression on their faces; it was like a time warp. I saw those posters and heard that music, I was there. For the kids, most of them in their thirties, it was just really brightly colored history. I was doing okay until I hit the lithograph of one of the Kent State victims with “Ohio” playing on the headphones and the kid next to me bopping up and down to the music. it is good music, but Jesus, people DIED there, it could have been me since our jackass mayor called out the National Guard the next night when the Kent State kids came to Bowling Green.
So the Jonestown joke is funny, but it’s not going in. Making some people laugh is not enough if you’re also making people cringe at really bad memories.
I agree it’s not a funny joke, but you can’t ignore it, either. I didn’t hear about it when it happened, but have heard enough about it afterwards, especially during Waco, Texas and the Y2K craze, that it would be in my head whether you mention it or not. Perhaps a highly snarky black-humor comment would defuse the reference.
I lived in LA and worked in Hollywood during the Rodney King riots. Riots are bad. Cult-murder/suicide is bad.
I’m a funny gal. I can’t make humor out of either of these things.
Y2K was not a “craze.” Comics, who had no clue, thought that since the nations computers didn’t crash, the whole thing was a big joke. Fact is, a great many old programmers came out of retirement to fix Y2K before it could cause a real mess.
I’m all for the morbid jokes, but I know that’s not normal of me. I lived in LA and worked at King/Drew Medical Center in the heart of the LA riots. Riots are definitely bad. But if we hadn’t been able to joke over dealing with wounded before and after things actually went up, we wouldn’t have made it through. Doesn’t mean that works in a book (’cuz who the hell really wants the context?).
Miki must have the most literate pets with such entertaining cage lining for them
On the Jonestown thing, I’m on the side of “It’s in my head whether your mention it or not.” While I love that you call the drink Kool-aid, the instant I saw it, I thought “remember Jonesdown - they’d have to be crazy to take Kook-aid from a stranger”. I’m the kind of person who can overlook a hideous deformity that is right next to someone’s eye, but ONLY once it has been mentioned. Otherwise I just sit there and obsesss about it.
So while I’d prefer that at least one character says something about Jonestown, it doesn’t have to be a joke. And it could just be a vague reference or a “hell no, I’m not drinking that, you must be crazy” (in Selma Hayak’s voice, for some reason) with no mention of Jonestown, but these women will all have heard about it and at least one has to think about the dangers of taking Kool-aid from a stranger or it won’t ring true for me. I didn’t go back to re-read the scene to see if you did that already. But if you use the word Kool-aid, I will be thinking “Jonestown” until that reference is acknowledged, then I can let it go.
The company that makes the actual Kool-Aid is probably warming up its lawyers even now, so the Kool-Aid jokes are probably a little premature.
Hey, Inkgrrl. There should be a support group, “I lived in LA and survived. We should have our own T-Shirts. Leave off the “we’re doomed,” though. I think that’s implied.
The Animaniacs have a song about LA:
“A quake, a quake, the earth begins to shake/…/we had riots, and forest fires, a flood, and a recession/but we don’t let it get us down/We’re Californians!”
–
Maybe Kool-Aid will pay you for the product placement.
My cousin, who lives in LA and whom I adore, keeps telling me to move out there. I said, “Uh, earthquakes.” He said, “We haven’t had an earthquake since the last riot.”
I must introduce him to Lani.
(-: Earthquakes rate about the same as tornados as far as disasters go. Sudden, intense destruction is possible in a limited area, and people do die.
But if you combined earthquakes AND riots — OK, there’s a point. Then again, if you had tornadoes AND riots, that’d be pretty beastly, too.
BTW, I agree with Cranky Otter. Mention Kool-Aid, and I’m squicked out — until you drop the other shoe and say Jonestown. Then it’s catharsis.
I recently saw a fiction writer handle the Weekly World News by giving it some other name, such as Wide World News. There’s so many nice things about fictional products — they don’t go out of business, they don’t sue, and if you’re doing your job right, they will still have impact into the next century. AND, you can start marketing the product if you get a weird enough fan base. I’m pretty sure I’d buy a Strawberry Wobbler if it ever came to my supermarket — at least once.
I’ve never had a Krispy Kreme, but I know exactly what Min is tasting — the uber-donut — because you describe it so well and don’t just rely on product associations to get your point across.
BTW, I don’t want to cast the impression that I take disasters lightly — I just feel you have to smile about them, rather than cry. I grew up in Nebraska, and now I live on shaky-breaky Hokkaido. The news yesterday almost sent me back to bed — earthquake, multiple tsunamis and a typhoon coming from the south. But, hey, I’m not dead yet, and at least it wasn’t barbarians coming out of the north at 12 miles per hour.
When I first read koolaid, and you all weren’t settled for sure on what the drink would be, I remember disliking the idea very much. Didn’t know why. Now I do. Old repressed memories. I recommended Hawaiian Punch. Hmm. Why didn’t I recommend GatorAde?
The Kool-Aid was my idea, based on the “He drank the Kool-Aid” term for people who have bought into an entirely bogus state of reality. I knew it was a Jonestown reference, but to me, it was once removed because of the trope that had grown out of it. Now I’m not so sure. But Hawaiian punch or Gatorade have no meaning beyond “popular drinks,” so that won’t work, either.
We’ll think of something.
Oh, that’s why it’s Kool-Aid.
Had no idea. Never heard of that particular trope.
Jump the shark, check.
Jump the couch, check.
Drink the Kool-Aid, nothing for me.
But at least now I get it. I’m always thrilled to “get it.”
Well I feel a bit lame. None of the possible Kool-Ade references occurred to me when I first read that scene. Then again, I’ve always been rather oblivious when it comes to popular culture or similar sorts of things.
The book takes place in Ohio, right? What about just calling it pop.
I know, I know. I am 0% helpful.
Kool-Aid, even without the arsenic, is not good stuff, heathwise.
How about a non-fat, sugar-free, decaf soy latte?
Pomegranate wine spritzer?
Turkish coffee?
Milk of Human Kindness
Jump the shark? Jump the couch?
The only thing that comes to mind is “jump the broomstick,” but that means get married.
(-: Educate me, please. What do those phrases mean to you, Louisa?
Jump the shark is when a series or a story is so desperate for new ideas that it does something stupid that destroys it. The term comes from a Happy Days episode in which Fonzie jumped a shark on water skis, and people said, “Okay, this show is now officially over even if they keep making more episodes.”
Jump the couch? I have no idea.
Oh! I know this one (mostly). Jumping the couch refers to a particular brand of crazy that Tom Cruise displayed when he jumped on Oprah’s couch while declaring his love for Katie Holmes. For me, this was the day he lost all credibility. I mean, seriously, jumping on Oprah’s freaking couch? On national television?? Please.