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Where we come from this is small talk

My sister sent me this link to the ten best Muppet Christmas moments and it was conspicuously missing my all-time favorite Muppet moment from A Muppet Family Christmas. All the Muppets turn up at Fozzie’s mom’s house for Christmas even though Doc (from Fraggle Rock) was renting it as a quiet escape. As Bert and Ernie come in this conversation happens between the three of them:

Ernie: Oh, hi there, we’re Ernie and Bert.
Doc: Well, hi there yourself, I’m Doc.
Bert: Oh, did you know that Doc starts with the letter D?
Doc: Why, yes.
Ernie: Yes! Yes, starts with the letter Y.
Doc: True.
Ernie: And true starts with the letter T.
Doc: What is this?
Bert: Where we come from this is small talk.

That line gets me every time.

ChristmasjokemuppetsDecember 19, 2012

Hi, I'm Noah. I am the co-founder of Percolate. I like writing on, thinking about and making stuff for the internet. I'm responsible for a few internet experiments like Brand Tags, likemind and My First Tweet. On this site I write about media, marketing, culture, technology and randomness. I like it when people email me.

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The drip denotes a post from Percolate.

Q: What is this site all about?
A: I think Michael Bierut explained it nicely a few years ago in response to people asking him why he didn't write more about design on Design Observer: "But the great thing about graphic design is that it is almost always about something else. Corporate law. Professional football. Art. Politics. Robert Wilson. And if I can't get excited about whatever that something else is, I really have trouble doing good work as a designer. To me, the conclusion is inescapable: the more things you're interested in, the better your work will be." Replace "graphic design" with "media/marketing/technology" (or whatever you'd like to call my field) and you've got my deal.

Q: Okay, but why do you still have a blog? Aren't they dead?
A: Well no, they're not dead. And I still have one because it's my place to think. I like the way Aaron Swartz described blogging: "So that’s what this blog is. I write here about thoughts I have, things I’m working on, stuff I’ve read, experiences I’ve had, and so on. Whenever a thought crystalizes in my head, I type it up and post it here. I don’t read over it, I don’t show it to anyone, and I don’t edit it — I just post it. ... I don’t consider this writing, I consider this thinking."

Q: Where else do you live?
A: Good question. All over the place as a matter of fact. On Tumblr for more randomness, Twitter for short bursts, Dopplr for places I'm going, Delicious for things I'm reading, last.fm for music I'm listening to, Flickr for photos I'm taking and Facebook because I don't really have a choice. (Oh, and Amazon for stuff I want people to buy me.)

Q: I meant that literally. Where do you live?
A: Oh, sorry, Brooklyn, New York is where I call home at the moment.

Q: Any other side projects you'd like to tell us about?
A: As a matter of fact, yes. There's How Much Does it Buy?, a calculator for the rest of us. Holy Crap! Facts (and accompanying Twitter feed) which is pretty much exactly what you'd expect. Da' Bears Blog is, in my opinion, the best Chicago Bears blog on the web (I don't write it, I just helped it get off the ground) and Tweemail is a little PHP script I wrote for getting Twitter updates by email. I'm also always working on a few other things and will let you know when they're ready for public consumption.

Q: Um okay.
A: Yeah, that's a fake question mostly so I can throw in this one other quote I like that I think sums up some of what I try to do here. This one comes from Albert Einstein (or at least the internet says so) and goes something like, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." Words to live by.

Q: What sites do you like?
A: Well that changes all the time. At the moment I've been digging Grantland, Beyond the Beyond, Barking up the wrong tree and The Awl.