Don’t some work

I dare say. Let us put a sharp end to these shenanigans. After the end of a long day, I quite prefer my humor in little boxes rather than displayed here and about with reckless abandon, unnecessary meta humor, and faux postmodernism. Surely, the target of our humor is those other people, and not ourselves, for if we ourselves are the butt of our own jokes, how are we to tell if we are in fact joking? and if we cannot in fact tell, if we are joking or not, hold on now, I seem to have lost my train of thought here...

If there's one thing that routinely pisses me off here it's that most people actually work on articles. Most of the folks who are running around this website are doing the equivalent of a Human Resources Director - they put a lot of work and dedication into their articles, standardizing their humor before they can move on, removing all references to gender inequality or sexual harassment, and letting the blackies have jobs. Too many people are painting entire subway cars , and making murals under bridges

So unless you want me to berate your absurd, misplaced sense of ambition, Don’t some work.

If you're still confused:

Work is not

Adding a template to an article.

Adding a quote to an article.

Adding an image to an article.

Adding a joke to an article.

Adding a comment to a talk page.

Adding a forum post.

Adding mindless banter on user talk pages.

Adding an article and forgetting to put a period at the end of one of the sentences.

Drinking yourself into a stupor, wondering why you're still lonely at the age of 45 and nobody seems to find your vandalism very funny.

Putting together a macaroni painting for your favorite admin only to have it spurned because the admin is allergic to macaroni and he's too busy chiding you anyway about your lack of article writing to notice that the gift came from the deepest part of your heart.

Masturbating

These are all things that normal sane people who just want to hang out and spend a little free time do.

Work is

Researching a subject in detail on the internet, wikipedia, an encyclopedia, etc.

Crafting an article from that research, using appropriate formatting, spelling, grammar, tone, etc.

Creating/finding images which support your written page, adding useful/witty captions, and properly spacing them so that they add to the look of the article, rather than make it hard to read.

Reading and re-reading your article, to make sure it makes sense, flows, emphasizes the important bits.

Polishing your article so that it shines.

If you are doing this, then you should be getting a paycheck. Otherwise, why the fuck are you doing it? Who do you think you are, Jesus or something?

When I don't work

To be fair, I do work fairly often, because I'm saddled with the crap job of trying to convince people that working is pointless and absurd, and the best way to communicate with these people is through an obnoxiously intricate, painstakingly over the top article. But on occasion, when I have the time, or I feel obliged to not work in order to make those who do work look foolish, I don't work. Now, I don't know exactly how much any of you know about how I or anyone else not works, so I've decided to give you an example, which shouldn't be hard to follow because it's just an example of not doing anything.

The Beginning (A trip down ego lane)

I saved Accordion from VFD because I thought it had promise. At this moment, it looks like this. Over the next few hours/days, I'm going to transform it into a useful article, keeping the same premise as it currently has. And I'll walk you through the steps, you miserable tools. What would you do without me?

The Idea (That I’m going to make better because I have a Monopoly on humor)

Aha! Claiming the accordion is a book of the Bible! A quite elaborate jest. My colleagues over at my winery will have quite a story on their hands indeed! This is indeed far better sport than that vile, amoral, exclusive type of humor. What man in their right mind would not want people to get their jokes? Surely, humor is about proving our superiority over others! Harumph! And may I add another thing. This pipe is not real. It merely blows bubbles.

The premise of this article is that "The Accordion is a book in the Bible located in the Old Testament, just after Job but before Deuteronomy. It is the third longest book of the Bible, after Psalms and Finnegan's Wake."

Is this a funny idea? Well, it has at least some chuckle-value. Psalms are actually in the bible, and many have been sung for the last 3000 years or so. Finnegan's Wake is a traditional Irish song. However, while used somewhat in Irish music, the Accordion is more well-known for Polka, but also used in some traditional Jewish music.

That being said, I think I can spin "The Accordion" as a book in the Old Testament. After all, I have to, or else the whole goddamn neighborhood is going to fall apart, with homeless people killing and eating the whores.

The Starting Research

To do this, I'm going to need some research. I need to know the following things:

1. The history of the Accordion. (4 hrs work)
2. Some famous Polka songs which feature it. (2 more hours)
3. Books of the Old Testament which have themes which would fit re-labeling them "The Book of Accordion". (Reading the entire bible cover to cover, 6 days)
4. More about the Book of Psalms (re-reading psalms 4 hours)
5. The use of the accordion in traditional Jewish music, as Judaism strongly intersects with the Old Testament. (Converting to Judaism and studying the Torah, 3 years)

Rather than use authoritative sources, I'm going to just skim off Wikipedia, because if I’m going to do some work, I’m going to be lazy about it.

The History of the Accordion

Good show, Collins. Good show. I fully support you in your endeavors to silence the vocal and underhanded minority. If anything, these ruffians have no class or belief systems of their own. It is as though they are nihilistic little humor vampires sucking on the vapors of our creativity, the creativity which, for years we have built on our own backs. Why, years ago, my family migrated here from Napster and then Wikipedia, and well, I'll be damned if I am uprooted by a bunch of young upstarts with no manners or taste in basic humor standards. Dare I say, if I had my hand of things, I would have such inflitrators of reason drawn and quartered.

(From Wikipedia:Accordion)

The accordion's basic form was invented in Berlin in 1822 by Friedrich Buschmann. The accordion is one of several European inventions of the early 19th century that used free reeds driven by a bellows...

This does not necessarily help me.

An accordion is a musical instrument of the handheld bellows-driven free reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as squeezeboxes. The accordion is played by compression and expansion of a bellows, which generates air flow across reeds; a keyboard or buttons control which reeds receive air flow and therefore the tones produced.

Aaaah, this is more promising. I'd bet you $20 that The Book Of Accordion was first written on a sheet of "free reed aerophone" by a Jewish scribe in....well, when was the book of Psalms written? Get it? REEDS ARE PAPER! Glad I did my research.

The Biblical Research

(From Wikipedia:Psalms)

Jewish tradition maintains that the Psalms are the work of David (seventy-three Psalms are with David's name)...

This places the Psalms being written around 1000 BCE. For our book, how about a bit later...945 BCE. Obviously they were written by F. Buschmann, a Jewish scholar in the ..... Klezmer tradition, it seems.

I also probably need a few sample Psalms to mess with...born-again Christian websites, here I come....

Kickass. I can totally replace this with lame accordion jokes:

Help Lord, for the godly man ceases to be, For the faithful disappear from among the sons of men.

They speak falsehood to one another; With flattering lips and with a double heart they speak

May the LORD cut off all flattering lips, The tongue that speaks great things.

Who have said, With our tongue we will prevail; Our lips are our own; who is lord over us?

Jewish Music

Father? Are you and your friends snubbing the irrationals again?

Since I'm a culturally illiterate hick, I need some quick info. (From Wikipedia:Klezmer)

כּלי־זמיר, etymologically from Hebrew k'li zemer כלי זמר, "musical instrument") is a musical tradition which parallels Hasidic and Ashkenazic Judaism. Around the 15th century, a tradition of secular (non-liturgical) Jewish music was developed by musicians called kleyzmorim or kleyzmerim. They draw on devotional traditions extending back into Biblical times, and their musical legacy of klezmer continues to evolve today. The repertoire is largely dance songs for weddings and other celebrations. Due to the Ashkenazi lineage of this music, the lyrics, terminology and song titles are typically in Yiddish...

• The hora or zhok is a Moldavian (Romanian) -style dance in a hobbling 3/8 time with beats on 1 and 3, and is even more embellished. The Israeli hora derives its roots from the Moldavian or Bessarabian hora.
• The mazurka and polka, Polish and Czech dances, respectively, were often played for both Jews and Gentiles.

Aaah, that's good stuff. I bet the Book of Accordion is used to celebrate The Hora in the Klezmer tradition. Man, these jokes totally aren’t going to alienate my audience.

Now I need a "false idol" in the form of a Jewish pop-star. Google: jewish pop star. Result: Ofra Haza. Wikipedia says:

Ofra Haza (Hebrew: עפרה חזה, IPA [ʕofrɑːh ħazzɑːh]) November 19, 1957 – February 23, 2000) was a popular Israeli singer, actress and international recording artist who died of organ failure or pneumonia, arising from AIDS.

Looks like she was struck down by god for seducing the chosen people away from the teachings of Famine. That will do nicely.

Go back to bed, Virginia.

Non-English is always good

...gotta find an english to yiddish translation website. Humm...after 5 minutes of poking around, I don't see one that has the translation in it. Will go to Hebrew instead....that was easy apparently Accordion = אכורדיון

Good to know. I like this hobby.

Something to work with

Ok, time to put the first bits of this in. Here's what it looks like:

first bits added

What is it missing?

Looking at the above version, I see that it's lacking all the templates smeared over the Wikipedia articles about the Old Testament books. I'll add some...hey - {{scripture}} works well here. I'd add {{jew}} but it is too long and messes up the page.

We also need some more plot...and an ending of sorts. Let me add some.

I think I need a happy Psalm to end this...born-again websites, back I come for Psalms of Thanks.

Now, once again, looking at the Wikipedia articles, they have "Interpretations" and "Trivia" sections. I probably need those.

Interpretations: Well, this is just going to be lame. I think i need to quit after this.

Ok, done for now. Oops. I forgot to tell a joke.

Christ, Collins! Look out! It's a dadaist!

Time So far

Looks like I managed to hack that out in about 3 hours of difficult, labor intensive work. Work that is difficult and sweaty. But it is necessary work if I want to make you all look bad. It still needs more work, but it's passable now. Now I need to go and link to it from things like Bible and Old Testament.

Update

Since I started writing about a subject which I was completely ignorant about, I decided to ask someone with some knowledge of the Jewry whether or not I was making any sense. His view was that I was making a moderate amount of sense.

So there you have it, boy and girls. It is possible to write something sarcastic and misinformative about something you are completely ignorant of, provided you have the ambition to waste a little time researching what you're writing about. And if you don’t, well then FUCK OFF.

That's right - it's not easy, it's not like a blow-job, it's like work. Every day I wake up at 5, shit and shave, put on my suit and tie, eat breakfast, punch in on my time-clock, sip my coffee, and then I work like this nonstop, and that's what you need to do. So stop dicking around with templates, and start doing some useful work. Damn lazy kids with their rock music.