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Belated Book-tacular Questions

2008-04-21 · Q&A · John · 4:01 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Books & writing (also: Nerdfighteria) · mode: Q&A & conversation · tags: recurring series, punishment or challenge, community lore, self promotion

John admits he missed his Question Tuesday deadline and must be punished, argues Hank must be too (lost Peeps contest, over-four-minute video), asks viewers for punishment ideas, then belatedly answers a rapid round of book questions.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — 'I vote count' sticker joke; John will be punished for the missed Question Tuesday, Hank for the Peeps contest and a long video; asks for punishment suggestions

  • ★★ John voted early in Indiana and got an 'I vote count' sticker, which he notes isn't a sentence. (playful) — 00:00:00 · Indiana
  • ★★★ John admits he didn't do his Question Tuesday video last week (week of 14 April 2008), which means he will be punished. (playful) — 00:00:00 · Question Tuesday, Punishment
  • ★★★ John says Hank will be punished too: he lost the Peeps contest without participating and made a video over four minutes without a photo montage, which breaks the rule. (playful) — 00:00:00 · Peeps, Four-minute rule, Vlogbrothers
  • ★★★ John asks Nerdfighters to suggest in comments how the brothers should be punished, wondering about a shared or simultaneous punishment. (hedged) — 00:00:00 · Nerdfighteria, Punishment

00:00:53 — Belated Question Tuesday: rapid answers to book questions (Paper Towns, favorite books, authors, poets, last words, Looking for Alaska ban, Catcher, Hamlet)

  • ★★ Paper Towns is not dedicated to the Nerdfighters, but they are in the acknowledgements. — 00:00:53 · Paper Towns, Nerdfighteria
  • ★★ John's favorite reference book about Islam is No God But God by Reza Aslan. — 00:00:53
  • ★★ John probably won't write a sequel to one of his books, though he might write a sequel to a non-existent book. (playful, hedged) — 00:00:53
  • ★★ John's favorite German writer is Goethe, whose individual sentences, he says, outclass his entire body of work. (playful) — 00:01:22
  • ★ For the 'in your pants' game, John's favorite book title at the moment is Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Little Pea. (playful) — 00:01:22 · in your pants
  • ★★ John, who owns many books on conjoined twins, recommends One of Us by Alice Dreger (nonfiction) and God's Fool by Mark Slouka (fiction). — 00:01:22
  • ★★ The most interesting author John has met is Judy Blume. — 00:01:52
  • ★★ Paper Towns is 308 pages long if the acknowledgements are counted. — 00:01:52 · Paper Towns
  • ★★★ On the effort to ban Looking for Alaska: the school board of Depew, New York, which John calls made of awesome, voted unanimously to keep it in the curriculum. — 00:01:52 · Looking for Alaska (novel), made of awesome
  • ★ John says he and Hank would not survive as characters in Into Thin Air; he would die on the walk to Everest. (playful) — 00:01:52
  • ★★ John's website name sparksflyup.com comes from a line in the Book of Job: man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. — 00:01:52 · first in: 2007-12-04, December 4th: Question Tuesday!!!!
  • ★★ John's favorite personification of death in literature is in Andrew Marvell's poem To His Coy Mistress. — 00:02:30
  • ★★ Asked for favorite poets besides Walt Whitman, John recites unattributed lines from several poems, then can't find his Langston Hughes book in his cataloged home library. (playful) — 00:03:00
  • ★★ John recounts Emily Dickinson's last words ('I must go in, the fog is rising') and that Edna St. Vincent Millay died falling downstairs, her head on a poem ending 'Beautiful this day, no matter who has died'. — 00:03:00
  • ★★ John says Shakespeare would vlog about the poor quality of insults on YouTube. (playful) — 00:03:00 · YouTube
  • ★★ John thinks The Catcher in the Rye is excellent and that anyone who disagrees is, respectfully, wrong. — 00:03:45
  • ★★ John's favorite line in Hamlet is 'The rest is silence.' — 00:03:45

Humor (significant)

  • John's early-voting sticker reads 'I vote count', which isn't a sentence; maybe something was cut off. — 00:00:00

    “maybe what they meant to say was I vote count chocula.”

  • Asked who would win a fight between E. Lockhart and Libba Bray, John names a third author. — 00:00:53

    “Surprisingly, Maureen Johnson.”

  • After saying Goethe's sentences pwn his whole body of work, John adds one more difference. — 00:01:22

    “Plus, Goethe would have never said pwned.”

  • Asked whether he'd want the vampire Yeti to bite him, John claims he may already be a vampire. — 00:02:30

    “I mean, I'd be pretty fat for a vampire, but it's totally possible.”

  • After saying Shakespeare would vlog about bad YouTube insults, John insults Nerdfighters Shakespeare-style for punishing him. — 00:03:45

    “you're a bunch of fat-kidneyed gudgeons.”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Looking for Alaska (novel) · Question Tuesday

Also: People: E. E. Cummings · E. Lockhart · Edna St. Vincent Millay · Emily Dickinson · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · Judy Blume · Langston Hughes · Libba Bray · Maureen Johnson · Sarah Urist Green · Walt Whitman · William Shakespeare

Works: Book of Job · God's Fool · Hamlet (play) · Into Thin Air · Little Pea · No god but God · One of Us: Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal · Paper Towns · The Catcher in the Rye · To His Coy Mistress

Organizations: YouTube

Rituals: Four-minute rule · Punishment

Terms: in your pants · made of awesome

Concepts: book censorship · conjoined twins

Places: Depew, New York · Indiana · Mount Everest

Products: Count Chocula (“I vote count chocula”) · Peeps

Memes: pwned

Only in the description or credits: Alice Dreger · Amy Krouse Rosenthal · Andrew Marvell · Mark Slouka · Reza Aslan

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