Important If True 50: 4468, Y'all

[Jake]

Important If True 50:

4468, Y'all
On this podcast we explain the unexplainable. We solve the unsolvable. Our method is simple: We take the tiniest problem you might have, the grain of sand scratching at the back of your mind, and we roll it down a hill to see what it might pick up along the way, until that grain of sand has picked up dirt and sticks, until it's grown and grown, until it's the size of the Earth itself. Does that mean that any question, any problem, no matter how small or dumb, when properly spun out past its breaking point, can explain the important truths of life itself, of our existence on this planet? Probably not, but we'll keep trying for some reason. So ask away! Just don't ask us to explain this podcast. Fifty episodes in, it's abundantly clear that's one question we'll never answer.

Discussed: Valentine's Day, Valentine's Boxing Day, what this podcast is, David Lynch, a Mythbuster, busting, Thimbleweed Park, real-life hint system, staying on the phone, Albert Brooks, the quantum physics of the universe, y'all, the Google/Facebook mega-matrix, Alexa, J.J. Abrams, 4468 Cloverfield, the incomprehensible infinitude of data we have at our disposal, trading hint futures on Wall St., real-life save system, Edge of Tomorrow, Live Die Repeat, respawning to prevent organ failure, Silicon Valley anti-toxin tech bro Peter Thiel, the most useful life (to benefit Peter Thiel), Lore Lord Bean, Important If True 35: "Hammacher, Schlemmer, and You", the death of tragic goose Thomas, the mixing up of Flemish words, too much clam in the beverage, Clamato, massively popular Canadian drink the Caesar, weathered old bromides

Thank you all so much for listening to 50 episodes of Important If True! Send us your questions at questions@importantiftrue.com. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Nick's Endorsement: Blue Planet II (Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Netflix)

Jake's Endorsement: Slow Burn, a Slate podcast about the Watergate scandal

Chris' Endorsement: A Very Fatal Murder, an Onion podcast satirizing true crime podcasts

Chris' Secondary Endorsement: Extra long-handled shoehorn

Sponsored By: Quip electric toothbrushes (your first brush head refill free), Tracy Carlson

 

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[Kyir]

I can't help but hear Lore Lord Bean as "Warlord Bean," who I think has a very different backstory.

[bestmmaren]

I'm sure the expression "Too much clam in the beverage" had been uttered on an earlier episode but can't figure out when! Anyone else have this feeling? It just sounded too familiar. 

[RubixsQube]

Lore Lord Cool J

[thenexus6]

As soon as my Sister told me this was a late night recording I had to watch this week instead of listen to witness the madness with my own eyes. 

[Problem Machine]

I'm like 20 minutes in and how was there an entire conversation about the spiritual dissolution of a Mythbuster without the phrase "Bustin' made me feel bad"?

 

Also I want to see every version of this hint line movie you all describe. I think a Very Good throughline of the cast in general has been spinning outlandish premises into different hypothetical movies, so next time you're struggling to describe the cast maybe you can mention that.

 

Okay now I'm going to listen to the rest of the pod.

[Deadpan]

I listened to all of A Very Fatal Murder last night based on Chris' recommendation and it really is very good.

 

I also wanted to add a little more context in response to Anya's email. Verb pairings like learn/teach, give/take, borrow/lend or buy/sell are some of the most frequently cited examples of the linguistic theory of verb valency. We intuitively tend to think of nouns as the basic "content" words of language because that's how we are usually introduced to language in our childhood: somebody points to a tree and says "tree", somebody points to a car and says "car". By contrast, this theory suggests that it is actually verbs that are at the center of language. The verb forms the core of a sentence and then fills a certain amount of slots around it with arguments like subject and object to add context to the basic activity it describes.

 

There's a variety of arguments for why it makes sense to think of language like this, and verb pairings like these are one of them. Under conventional models, which assume that nouns carry the bulk of communicative meaning and most other verb classes simply put these nouns into relation with each other, it's surprising how frequently and easily people use the "wrong" verb out of these pairings (as all of you have noted). This phenomenon is easy to describe with verb valency theory, however, because all of these pairings describe the same basic activity, the only difference being whether you make the recipient the subject or the object of the sentence. In other words, the sentence isn't really wrong, you just messed up the word order, which is a much easier mistake for your brain to make.

[Jake]

11 hours ago, Problem Machine said:

I'm like 20 minutes in and how was there an entire conversation about the spiritual dissolution of a Mythbuster without the phrase "Bustin' made me feel bad"?

I felt like saying that phrase would make the whole thing collapse so it remained unsaid. I got the feeling everyone felt that way. You don’t want to pull out the keystone. 

[Problem Machine]

17 hours ago, Jake said:

I felt like saying that phrase would make the whole thing collapse so it remained unsaid. I got the feeling everyone felt that way. You don’t want to pull out the keystone. 

It just feels cruel to tease everyone this way though. I guess it's an audience retention trick, because now we have to tune in to all future pods to see if you say the thing. Saying "Bustin' made me feel bad" would make me feel good, and then the bustin' cycle would finally be complete.

[posh_somme]

I lost it in public at lore lord bean

[TychoCelchuuu]

On 2/17/2018 at 3:58 AM, Deadpan said:

I listened to all of A Very Fatal Murder last night based on Chris' recommendation and it really is very good.

Ditto (except the last night part). A very good podcast.

[SecretAsianMan]

Backing up Chris' endorsement of an extra long shoehorn.  I own the same model and it is legitimately nice to have.  It came in especially handy when my wife was pregnant and bending over became more and more of a challenge.

 

On the topic of messing up verbs, there is a similar thing I do in Chinese all the time.  In English, everything on your person is "worn", be it clothing or accessories, unless you are physically holding it in your hand.  In Chinese, only certain articles of clothing are "worn", others are "brought/carried".  For example, you would "wear" a shirt but "bring/carry" a watch.  I constantly fuck this up.

[Professor Video Games]

Did I miss the explanation for why "y'all" is bad?

[dium]

I don't know if there's a more specific reason, but I suspect since "y'all" isn't usually a part of Chris or Nick's dialectal vocabulary it could sound unnatural/grating/forced coming out of their mouths.

[Chris]

8 hours ago, Professor Video Games said:

Did I miss the explanation for why "y'all" is bad?

 

I think Jake has an almost violent instinctual reaction to other people trying to introduce phraseology that he perceives as being affected or foreign to the speaker. It's somewhat ironic because I think out of anyone I know, Jake is the most likely to adopt a new speech pattern or phrase that he will subconsciously spread to everyone around him.

[infamous space turtle]

As much as I snigger at shoe horns I currently have a rough calloused patch on the top of my index finger from trying to get shoes on. 

[cooljammer00]

16 hours ago, Chris said:

 

I think Jake has an almost violent instinctual reaction to other people trying to introduce phraseology that he perceives as being affected or foreign to the speaker. It's somewhat ironic because I think out of anyone I know, Jake is the most likely to adopt a new speech pattern or phrase that he will subconsciously spread to everyone around him.

 

I would say that's hella silly, y'all.

 

(But in all honesty, I've listened to enough hours of people from Northern California podcasting over the years for some NorCal slang to get into my vocab. Similarly, I dated a girl from Texas for several years so I heard "y'all" quite a bit, though I only started using it fairly recently as it's gotten popular as the preferred non-gendered term for a group of people.

[Gormongous]

30 minutes ago, cooljammer00 said:

But in all honesty, I've listened to enough hours of people from Northern California podcasting over the years for some NorCal slang to get into my vocab. Similarly, I dated a girl from Texas for several years so I heard "y'all" quite a bit, though I only started using it fairly recently as it's gotten popular as the preferred non-gendered term for a group of people.

 

Honestly, as a native Texan, it's been really interesting over the last couple of decades to watch "y'all" transition from a humiliating signifier of my lower-class upbringing in a cultural backwater to the preferred second-person plural pronoun for a sizable minority of English speakers. Now if I can just live to see people appreciate the distinction between "y'all" and "y'aw," a matter of specific vs. general address like "nous" and "on" in French...

[Jake]

18 hours ago, Chris said:

 

I think Jake has an almost violent instinctual reaction to other people trying to introduce phraseology that he perceives as being affected or foreign to the speaker. It's somewhat ironic because I think out of anyone I know, Jake is the most likely to adopt a new speech pattern or phrase that he will subconsciously spread to everyone around him.

It’s more specifically that you sometimes try to seed a bit and then troll us with it by revealing far later what you’re up to. It smelled strongly of that!

[cooljammer00]

11 minutes ago, Jake said:

It’s more specifically that you sometimes try to seed a bit and then troll us with it by revealing far later what you’re up to. It smelled strongly of that!

 

Remember when he tried to get "Sly Boots" over on you? Oddly enough, I've seen it pop up a few times lately. Maybe it's coming back into vogue?

[cooljammer00]

1 hour ago, Gormongous said:

 

Honestly, as a native Texan, it's been really interesting over the last couple of decades to watch "y'all" transition from a humiliating signifier of my lower-class upbringing in a cultural backwater to the preferred second-person plural pronoun for a sizable minority of English speakers. Now if I can just live to see people appreciate the distinction between "y'all" and "y'aw," a matter of specific vs. general address like "nous" and "on" in French...

 

I'll be dead in the ground before I recognize the Pittsburghian "yinz" for a 2nd person plural pronoun.

[Jake]

58 minutes ago, cooljammer00 said:

 

Remember when he tried to get "Sly Boots" over on you? Oddly enough, I've seen it pop up a few times lately. Maybe it's coming back into vogue?

YES I was worried I was being Sly Bootsed. 

[Jake]

Also re: my blanching at "Y'all" possibly being injected into the podcast by Chris as a deliberate attempt to start some phrase.... he tried to do that with TOO MUCH CLAM IN THE BEVERAGE in this very episode!!

[Chris]

32 minutes ago, Jake said:

Also re: my blanching at "Y'all" possibly being injected into the podcast by Chris as a deliberate attempt to start some phrase.... he tried to do that with TOO MUCH CLAM IN THE BEVERAGE in this very episode!!

 

Yeah but I didn’t even do that with y’all! It was Nick, and he was totally blatant about it!

[Jake]

2 hours ago, Chris said:

 

Yeah but I didn’t even do that with y’all! It was Nick, and he was totally blatant about it!

My initial outburst at the very top of the episode was because I suspected (incorrectly) that you were trying a Slyboots with Y’all... and then Nick caught on and did it himself. I realize that by drawing attention to it, I created it.

 

Meanwhile though, that was all a distraction: While we were all y’alling, you sprang your real trap, “clam in the beverage.”