Tell us more about Moby Dick!! :D
Ishmael is a fascinating little specimen let me tell you. He has a reputation for being a “boring narrator” but that’s complete bullshit. Right out the gate he’s like “hello this is my (fake) name, I’m poor, I’m depressed, but luckily when I can tell I’m about to kill myself I hop my ass on a boat because the water can cure whatever’s wrong with you, also we are all being controlled by the puppet strings of the divine and free will is an illusion. It is now Page Three.”
The entire first part of the book is his story of meeting, falling in love with, and marrying a hot tattooed Polynesian man in what may be the first recorded case of the “there was only one bed” trope and it only gets wilder from there. This really caught be off guard tbh, I had no idea that there was so much gay stuff in this book.
I honestly cannot even pick my favorite Ishmael moment. Could it be him being adamantly on the wrong side of the “are whales fish or mammals” debate? That he suggests narwhal’s horns would be good for turning the pages of small books? When he hides behind the mast and eats some spermaceti because he just has to know what it tastes like? When he tattooed himself with measurements of a beached whale but rounded all the numbers because he also needed room for the poem he was writing on his arm? The gay sperm squeezing chapter? When he made his drunk listeners fetch him a priest and a Bible so he could swear he was telling the truth? And then lied????
Ishmael’s musings range from beautiful, lyrical prose that makes you stop and reread the section because damn, and chapters about How Rope Works and encyclopedic writing about the whaling industry. There are lofty theological debates and accusations about the reader being a fish. You spend much of this book wildly seasick because Ishmael’s voice is manic, hilarious, and disorienting. Once you’ve finished this story, you, too, will feel like you’ve spent three years aboard a whaling ship.
Although the unhinged tangents are often amusing, many people complain because they probably account for 90% of the book with only the remaining 10% devoted to the plot. Surely if we just got rid of Ishmael’s Nonsense it would be better, correct? No. This is Ishmael’s memoir. He knows how it ends. These plot-delaying anecdotes are purposeful; he does not want to reach the end because it is The End. The death of his friends and his husband. The inevitable, unforgiving blade of fate that slices the lives of of the Pequod’s crew short and leaves him alone and adrift at sea. Enjoy his journey, because it may seem long now but it ends all too soon.
i think it would be funny if people occasionally arose from the dead. like if that was a real-life one-in-a-million but well-documented Thing That Sometimes Happens, and the entire legal system around death (laws on inheritance & marriage & murder etc) had to include caveats for the unlikely-but-scientifically-possible event that the dead person in question might spontaneously self-resurrect, even years or decades after death. it would raise so many inconvenient and absurd possibilities
i call my parents and say ‘yeah i can’t do family stuff tonight, i got too much stuff to do for school’ and i e-mail my professor and say ‘i can’t do my assignments tonight, work got crazy’ and i text my boss and say ‘sorry i can’t work late tonight, i gotta some family stuff’ and through this triangulation of deceitful excuses i at last will be free
MORE TRANSPARENT WONDERLABBERS
Apparently spez has said that the blackout is 'noise' and 'will pass'. Two days was never enough. I'm not using Reddit until pigboy backs off. This blackout needs to be indefinite.
And when you leave for good, make sure to delete your valuable content. Shitheel isnt making a cent of my posts.
The content of spez's internal memo:
Hi Snoos,
Starting last night, about a thousand subreddits have gone private. We do anticipate many of them will come back by Wednesday, as many have said as much. While we knew this was coming, it is a challenge nevertheless and we have our work cut out for us. A number of Snoos have been working around the clock, adapting to infrastructure strains, engaging with communities, and responding to the myriad of issues related to this blackout. Thank you, team.
We have not seen any significant revenue impact so far and we will continue to monitor.
There’s a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we’ve seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well. The most important things we can do right now are stay focused, adapt to challenges, and keep moving forward. We absolutely must ship what we said we would. The only long term solution is improving our product, and in the short term we have a few upcoming critical mod tool launches we need to nail.
While the two biggest third-party apps, Apollo and RIF, along with a couple others, have said they plan to shut down at the end of the month, we are still in conversation with some of the others. And as I mentioned in my post last week, we will exempt accessibility-focused apps and so far have agreements with RedReader and Dystopia.
I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustrations.
Again, we’ll get through it. Thank you to all of you for helping us do so.
all this talk about goncharov but i dont see anybody posting the soundtrack??? like how are you gonna talk about this movie without the music
GUYS? Martin Scorsese’s daughter Francesca told him about Goncharov and he said he made that film years ago I’m fucking crying.
I LOVE HER SO MUCH
Google doc is here
Discord is here
(If the google doc link doesn’t work for you, try joining the discord server; it should let you in from there, or otherwise let you know if the doc is temporarily down for maintenance.
If the discord link doesn’t work, feel free to hit me up and I’ll try to connect you.)