A [excluded] work of [excluded] genius
I like Penny Arcade. Remember when you lived in a geeky apartment full of computers and gaming systems, and you played Need For Speed with your best friend every day? Penny Arcade is all that and more, and if you don’t read it at least once in a while you are sorely missing out.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php3?date=2003-9-29
In what starts out as a madcap romp of a post, Tycho takes us down the Oregon Trail of youthful romance that leads to a sensation of poignant loss. I’m commenting on it simply because I can.
Tycho posits that he often excludes 50% of his vocabulary when he talks to people. I think that we all know that the percentage of discarded vocabulary more closely approximates 99% rather than 50%. People don’t got words, so you gotta talk with small ones so they get you.
From what I have seen, this is Tycho’s best work.
“Just as the man who is gutshot is made instantaneously aware of previously unknown internal geographies, it became suddenly clear that there was a vast expanse in me, a region, a continent, perhaps even a universe that could contain a truly stunning volume of pure pain.”
I’m afraid that I have thrown away the words to properly describe the genius of this sentence, so I will use the small ones that I have left: fucking awesome. On the sixth word I was instantly feeling every crush I’ve ever had over again - every woman for whom I’d ever pined - every crazed obsession that forced me to walk past a girl’s house on the way home from junior high (or out of my way) - all of that in one elaborate unraveling of emotion.
Okay, some of this is just hyperbole because I’m inspired, but hell, Penny Arcade deserves it. Thanks for the wang jokes, guys!
Also, Tycho inadvertantly introduced me to Built to Spill, which was a real act of kindness indeed.
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