Comments on: Until this is fixed, I'm afraid I won't be checking in on Your creation.

Until this is fixed, I'm afraid I won't be checking in on Your creation.

NoraReed — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 16:59:23 -0800

Comments on God's blog

By: i_cola

i_cola — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:06:20 -0800

Seeing a wildebeest bossed around by a baby duck just made my bucket list

By: vibrotronica

vibrotronica — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:14:58 -0800

This reminds me of the awesome short film Genesis On Demand.

By: dersins

dersins — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:16:33 -0800

I don't get it. On what day did God create douchebag internet commenters?

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:17:06 -0800

Caturday

By: localhuman

localhuman — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:18:44 -0800

You sure chose to use a lot of green around here. Making the leaves white would've given it all a nice professional background

By: troll

troll — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:26:24 -0800

Observational humor reveals the asymmetry of the creation narrative and reality. Me likey. Me laughy.

By: danny the boy

danny the boy — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:27:28 -0800

Wherein someone at the New Yorker stumbled on McSweeney's over the weekend.

By: kozad

kozad — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:28:49 -0800

I usually wait until I get the hard copy of the New Yorker in the mail before reading links to their articles, but I read this, and I have to say that this is really the first time that this antiquated (and wonderful) magazine actually published something in Internet-speak, which is kind of a milestone. Better late than never.

By: Clyde Mnestra

Clyde Mnestra — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:32:50 -0800

Watching these comments on that piece reminds me of that filmstrip on mitosis in high school biology.

By: tumid dahlia

tumid dahlia — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:38:09 -0800

I lol'd.

By: nevercalm

nevercalm — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:38:40 -0800

I kinda liked it. It made me feel like I was home. I mean here. I mean.....

By: everichon

everichon — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:38:42 -0800

It caused me to laugh aloud.

By: Nomyte

Nomyte — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:41:53 -0800

In the same vein: If adults were subjected to the same indignities as children.

By: FelliniBlank

FelliniBlank — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:42:19 -0800

Pretty amusing. The only thing lacking is "Christ, what an asshole." It'd be the ultimate in-joke.

By: NoMich

NoMich — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:42:36 -0800

Aside: "God's blog" reminded me of Tad's God's Balls album. That is all.

By: Navelgazer

Navelgazer — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:44:31 -0800

As a single ecosystem, I question it's long-term sustainability. Walls don't keep out wind and rain, you know! And how weird to give man dominion over creatures (like the aforementioned penguins) who can't thrive withing the garden proper? Are those creatures supposed to be beta? Am I correct in reading this as a rush-to-launch? Because it feels a hell of a lot like you're going to need to release a few patches once the humans outgrow their little cradle hear and venture out into the hinterlands. Maybe a flood or something, but oh! right! Those penguins. Guess you're stuck with them. B-

By: Lovecraft In Brooklyn

Lovecraft In Brooklyn — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:54:35 -0800

They've got our number. but seriously we should start over

By: GenjiandProust

GenjiandProust — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:59:55 -0800

Seeing a wildebeest bossed around by a baby duck just made my bucket list No wildebeest, but here is a dog getting bossed around by a baby duck. Perhaps the ducks could work their way up.

By: mccarty.tim

mccarty.tim — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 18:05:45 -0800

FIRST

-Adam

By: [expletive deleted]

[expletive deleted] — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 18:10:49 -0800

Metafilter: Not sure who this is for. Seems like a fix for a problem that didn't exist. Liked it better when the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep.

By: pompomtom

pompomtom — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 18:13:41 -0800

You know who else set up one group of beings to have dominion over all the others?

By: elizardbits

elizardbits — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 18:17:30 -0800

the sysadmin at work?

By: codacorolla

codacorolla — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 18:22:53 -0800

Creators gon' create. eh... _{A world in which the fowl have dominion over all? Crazy...}

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 19:00:52 -0800

And lo the duck was given dominion over the fishes and was a kind and gentle ruler

By: weapons-grade pandemonium

weapons-grade pandemonium — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 19:04:56 -0800

The hunting gathering thing is a pain in the ass. You either get too many seeds and animals or not enough. How about tokens to buy all this shit?

By: vidur

vidur — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 19:19:02 -0800

What is the energy efficiency rating on this fancy system of billions of galaxies of stars? Virtually all the stars have no life-supporting planets in orbit. Seems like a waste of energy to keep them switched on to me. And who is paying for all this anyway?

By: maryr

maryr — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 19:23:42 -0800

"The creeping things that creepeth over the earth are ~~gross~~ creepy. FTFY.

By: benito.strauss

benito.strauss — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 19:53:34 -0800

I've yet to see a New Yorker bit I like better than this: "Did you see the politics? It made me angry."

By: homunculus

homunculus — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:33:15 -0800

No wildebeest, but here is a dog getting bossed around by a baby duck yt . Perhaps the ducks could work their way up. And here is a puppy reasserting dominance.

By: Marisa Stole the Precious Thing

Marisa Stole the Precious Thing — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:38:58 -0800

The vas deferens in front of the pubic bone? Seriously?

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:54:48 -0800

I have now seen this sentence in the New Yorker: "I liek to eat teh fishes." I have mixed feelings about it. But mostly I laughed.

By: Ghostride The Whip

Ghostride The Whip — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 21:11:16 -0800

I was just grinning a bit until the shoe spam, that was when I lost it.

By: bleep

bleep — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 21:27:45 -0800

This documentation is a mess. It reads like it was written by hundreds of people over hundreds of years. How is anyone supposed to make sense of it?

By: NoraReed

NoraReed — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 21:34:54 -0800

We lost the documentation on quantum mechanics. You'll have to decode the regexes yourself.

By: madcaptenor

madcaptenor — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 21:43:26 -0800

There's documentation? I hadn't been able to find it so I'd just been asking questions on this support forum.

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 21:53:46 -0800

I liek to eat teh fishes SQUAWK SQUAWK!!!!!

By: freebird

freebird — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 22:07:49 -0800

Needed more spam comments.

By: XhaustedProphet

XhaustedProphet — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 23:11:08 -0800

I was just grinning a bit until the shoe spam, that was when I lost it. Wow, I had to go back to re-read it to get the joke, because my brain instantly skipped over it.

By: happyroach

happyroach — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 23:14:30 -0800

Amazingly funny for the New Yorker...as in it's amazing it's funny.

By: arcticseal

arcticseal — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 23:20:04 -0800

Creation sucked until ~~The Messiah~~ Steve Jobs made it all shiny.

By: clavdivs

clavdivs — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 00:42:59 -0800

Mark of the deadline Mr. Simms, it's a sign.

By: clavdivs

clavdivs — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 00:48:57 -0800

Note to self: "Send Mr. Simms some laughing gas and a new pocket comb in hopes that inane lines like "Putting boobs on the woman is sexist." shall be met with ridicule and severe writers cramp.

By: clavdivs

clavdivs — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 00:49:16 -0800

By: Lovecraft In Brooklyn

Lovecraft In Brooklyn — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 00:55:46 -0800

Note to self: "Send Mr. Simms some laughing gas and a new pocket comb in hopes that inane lines like "Putting boobs on the woman is sexist." shall be met with ridicule and severe writers cramp. Its a perfect parody of the sort of thing we'd say (and rightly so, I suppose).

By: Elmore

Elmore — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 01:01:08 -0800

OMG

By: zarq

zarq — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 03:45:34 -0800

This is hilarious. :)

By: srboisvert

srboisvert — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 03:49:29 -0800

Seeing a wildebeest bossed around by a baby duck just made my bucket list I believe this is the reasoning behind the selection of the UK's current Chancellor of the Exchequer.

By: humanfont

humanfont — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 05:45:42 -0800

It all makes sense, creation is just some abandoned project on Github. Lots of potential, zero documentation and the developer vanished after version 0.6 to take a break.

By: IndigoJones

IndigoJones — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 05:57:06 -0800

Cute idea, writes itself

By: datter

datter — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 06:23:34 -0800

This is great, and the sort of thing that makes me wish I had written it myself. Thanks for posting.

By: that's candlepin

that's candlepin — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 09:18:50 -0800

Disappointed that the New Yorker doesn't allow comments. The meta would be delicious. Or, rather, utterly predictable. And delicious.

By: Decani

Decani — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 11:39:01 -0800

I was not expecting to find that funny. I found it funny. Result.

By: TangerineGurl

TangerineGurl — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 13:02:18 -0800

Someone has been watching Mr. Deity. Good for you, Paul!

By: krinklyfig

krinklyfig — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 18:25:02 -0800

Someone on Metafilter wrote this. Right? Yeah, pretty spot-on for a magazine which doesn't try to ride the cutting edge. The dodo should just have a sign on him that says, "Please kill me." Ridiculous.

By: codacorolla

codacorolla — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 19:41:57 -0800

Hi there God. Let me say two things before I begin: 1) this is longer than Roger asked us to write for group responses, and I apologize, but I figure we all came to this workshop to learn and grow, and part of that might being a little bit long winded. 2) Regardless of what I'm about to say about your creation, there's one thing it has going for it – it's interesting. Definitely has a lot more in terms of ideas than a lot of dreck we've review so far (don't tell the other members I said that, please). Ok, so I looked through your piece a few times. That's a lie. Many times. More than any other piece we've reviewed so far, and let me be completely honest, more than I looked over my own creation when we workshopped it a few aeons back. Like I said, it is compelling. Where to begin. Ok, let's start at the beginning. So we have the beginning, and from the rational sciencey point of view you have null and void, zippo, or should I say everything compacted into a tight little ball. That was an immediate draw. I really wanted to find out what happened, and you did a good job building tension for the observer. Nice work there. But you also have the human perspective (and I'll talk – at length – about what I think about these "human" fellows being your protagonists, but, yeah, later) which has you being the head honcho, being "the word" and all that jazz. And you just speak and, blammo, same result either way, everything shoots out at all sides and becomes stuff. Pretty universal across all the different types of humans that you introduce as time goes on too. Nice touch there. At first I really liked this dichotomy. Have the humans think it one way, but have it actually be another. But then the humans started changing their minds SO much, and there were always so many of them, and with so many different conflicting thoughts (where the differences didn't even really seem to matter to me – but whatever, characterization, I guess). And then, part-way through, the humans start to get wise to the whole thing, and it left me wondering "why even have this marty-sue God self insert? Why even bother?" ANYWAY, the beginning. Not bad. In terms of world-building I've seen worse. Probably my major complaint about this section is that, once life gets rolling, you just kill stuff off without much regard to the observer. It's like, "hey that's a pretty cool trilobite" and then the darned thing's ecosystem gets three degrees cooler and I'm all "well, won't be seeing HIM again." I guess that's like the style now-a-days? Get the observer all ramped up, show them something they get invested in, and then, boom, apocalypse. And I 'get' that, I guess. It's edgey or whatever, right? But you just did it SO much. Apocalypse after disaster after calamity. Is this a statement? If it was I didn't get it. By the dinosaurs I was pretty much like "hey something interesting – guess that's dead." The exception to this is always the most frustrating too (another statement?) Humans being the main example. Can't say I ever felt sympathetic from the start. Two limbs, mostly symmetrical, big brain, conflicted nature, making them in your image is handy because it's less to keep consistent, but not terribly exciting. Eh, pass. But then, improbably they're your main characters for most of the darned creation. Ok, whatever, moving on. Let me just say; some really great vistas. Big open expanses of vegetation, dense varied ecosystems, vast sweeping deserts. Nice touches all around. And even with everything dying every couple hundred thousand years, I'm getting into the groove of it. Yeah baby, harsh mistress, he giveth and he taketh away. I can dig that. I can dig that God. But then... ugh, makes me roll my eyes just thinking about it (no offense)... humans. Ok, let me start with the good parts, and luckily that won't take long so I can move on to the bad. Kids are cute, farts are funny, sex is convincing, and their culture has its bright spots (rap music – nice!). Not hitting it out of the ballpark, but whatever. But then you get to the free will. Oh my. So let me get this straight, because I didn't quite hash it out before the (big surprise) denouement, which seemed to make the whole thing moot: so they've got free will, but they don't? They've got these big powerful brains that let them do all sorts of terrific and terrifying things, but also they're sort of mostly controlled by their circumstances and their bodies and the chemicals in their brains? Which one is it? Pick one!! It reminds me of the weird sub-plot towards the end with quantum physics. I mean, yeah, that's a cool concept but it felt like you were out of your depth and didn't really know what was happening – and if the creator doesn't know what's happening then sure as shootin' the observer doesn't either! And then these creatures that show dominion over the Earth are easily wiped out by creatures they can't even see with their naked eye. Really shoddy consistency there. Take Carol's story from last workshop – yeah, sort of silly with the intelligent plantlife that based its society around the ability to astral project as cosmic whales, but at least it had a point. It went somewhere! The flowers did things, and the things mattered, and in the end they all formed that giant super-whale. That's an ending. That's character motivation. Half of the humans I observed didn't even know what they wanted, and the other half weren't sure that they wanted what they knew they wanted and thought they wanted completely the opposite thing. So you get this constant bickering, and fighting, and murdering, and torturing. Really just irritating – and then it goes on for another couple million years! Give me the intelligent daisies and pink space fish any day of the week! Oh boy, and don't even get me started on your weird self-insertion. Hmm, ok, very "Meta". I get it – you've read King. I guess one cool part of that is all of the different ways that your human types communicate with you, but then they start fighting over you, and glorifying you, and cursing you, and disbelieving in you – picking up a common word in that sentence... "you". You seem like a nice guy God, I like chatting with you over Martinis and brunch. But this whole thing comes off as... well, sometimes it seems like you're creating with one hand, if you get the picture. Alright, so you've got this whole dichotomy thing. Is man born as a demon or as a saint (nice touch, I guess, in only ever alluding to those things without actually putting them into the universe). I guess the struggle is convincing, at least for a bit, but after a while I'm like, "Good, evil, these creatures are just irritating dicks, plain and simple". By the time they wiped themselves out with that sentient computer dealie (now THERE'S a compelling protagonist, maybe more room for that in the revision?) I'm just like, FINALLY, a character that isn't just a whiny sad-sack all tied up in their mortality. So let me just boil it down: less humans, more dinosaurs, more killer computers, less angst. Anyway, looking forward to looking at what you come up with at the end of the class. Best, -Sentient Energy Cloud