Snark

[First, a quick apology for the late posting. No excuse.]

Hope. Languishing. Divorce. Injustice. 

Enough with the earnestness!! Enough with the issues, with the caring! ENOUGH ALREADY!

Merriam-Webster defines snark as “an attitude or expression of mocking irreverence and sarcasm” and says that it’s a “back-formation from SNARKY”. I first learned what a back-formation is when working with some computational linguists at NYU back before Storytown was yet a faint sympathetic vibration in my Gibson ES-335-TDC:

And now that you’ve asked, you can go deep on back-formations here.

My father was really good at sarcasm — he could make you feel pretty bad with a quick, cutting comment. I try to avoid sarcasm because it seems like a cheap shot, and I don’t want to model that for our kids. But it’s SO easy, a cheap, though ultimately unconstructive, thrill.

This week’s song and video have no redeeming social value. I thought I’d write something about being, uh, gratuitously oppositional, so to speak. It’s from the point of view of somebody who is smugly dismissive, a jerk, really. The song is just for fun. Because too much earnestness can be too much. 

Like it or lump it.

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Hit me at guy@storytownband.com.

Until next week….