active_apathy

I'm talking about stuff on the Internet! Look! LJ can be a real blog!

Today, I discovered Wikipedia's Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense pages. And they were funny, which recent indicators suggest some folk might take as a trustworthy endorsement.

Firstly, I draw your attention to what's been preserved as the best of the Popatine entries. I particularly love the way all the photos have been changed to the most beautifully fitting of screencaps and promotional stills. Oddly, it's an educational joke. I didn't know until today that the Catholics have a patron saint of HIV. Next thing you know, Darth Eggs is going to beatify a patron saint of anorexia, complete with a feast day.

Perhaps more fitting is this piece on Cookie Monster:

C is for Cookie can be regarded as a case study in persuasive oratory, emphasizing the emotional aspect of public speaking. Cookie Monster builds excitement by answering his opening rhetorical question, "Now what starts with the letter C?" with the obvious reply, "Cookie starts with C!" He then challenges the audience, "Let's think of other things that starts with C," before quickly replying, "Oh, who cares about the other things?" casually dismissing a whole range of other possibilities as irrelevant. Thus, having ostensibly come for the purpose of covering the letter C in its entirety, Cookie Monster has already focused his agenda exclusively on cookies, employing the classic bait and switch tactic. Several times in his presentation, Cookie Monster emphasizes what appears to be the central thesis of his remarks: "C is for cookie, that's good enough for me!" The appealing rhythm of this slogan appears designed to entrance listeners, swaying their emotions and making them instinctively want to chant along with him. After rousing the crowd, Cookie Monster systematically lays out the logical underpinnings of his pro-cookie ideology, comparing cookies to round donuts with one bite out of them and to the moon during its crescent phase, in essence using a straw man argument that implies his opponents would advocate the superiority of these competitors over cookies. In this sense, Cookie Monster may be proposing a false dichotomy representing cookies as the only viable choice to a group of obviously inferior alternatives. But before the audience has a chance to catch on, Cookie Monster launches into another round of repetitive chanting, "C is for cookie, that's good enough for me, yeah!" as young children sing along. Here, Cookie Monster uses a propaganda technique strikingly similar to that employed in George Orwell's Animal Farm by the pig Napoleon, who trained the farm's sheep to bleat, "Four legs good, two legs bad" on his cue. Cookie Monster then adds visual stimulation to his discourse by chomping into a large cookie, concluding his remarks with "Umm-umm-umm-umm-umm" and other chewing sounds.

This is relevant. No, really. And it's relevant because today, while busily solving a crisis in which my home was devoid of food, I happened to stumble across a half-baked *cough* idea for a comm - which, knowing my uninspiring luck, someone else has probably invented and made famous years ago. In a move inspired by a blend of the biscuit aisle and Lore Sjöberg's Oral Sex List, I found myself imagining a comm where the near-ubiquitous awards of cookies could be compiled and presented in list format; a

cookielist, if you will. It could even have an appropirate little prize graphic for the recipient of the most cookies for a given week. On this subject, I have a few questions to pose to the collected readership of my journal. These are:

Would it be better for people to submit their own awards of cookies, or for them to report cookie awards seen in others' posts and comments, or to allow both?
Should amusing citations be included? (yes/no/all)
is for cookie, that's good enough for me.
Do you think anyone would actually join it?
Is this the most ridiculous idea you've seen all day? (yes/no/um...)