The Whore of Mensa

http://woodyallenitalia.tripod.com/short-uk.html

by gnosis • 17 years ago

85 37 17 years ago

woodyallenitalia.tripod.com

adam_feldman• 17 years ago

context?

seshagiric• 17 years ago

Writers are hackers too.

Adding because of the (-)ve votes. What I meant is the play of words is quite close to what I hacker would do with his code. At least I think so.

davidw3• 17 years ago

Yay, everyone's a hacker!

Except, they aren't. Writers may be clever people and smart, entertaining, and so on, but there are plenty of them that aren't really hackers by any definition that isn't so broad as to be completely meaningless.

davidw3• 17 years ago

(Reminder: I think seshagiric is wrong, as I state below/above, but not wrong in such a way as to merit lots of downvoting. Save that for the egregious abusers/flamers/other nasties)

dylanz2• 17 years ago

That was awesome. I wish I was understood half of those undertones, but the story was fresh and somehow sexy in a bizarre, sociopathic, way. Thank you for sharing that gnosis :)

jacobolus4• 17 years ago

It was mostly just name dropping “intellectual” people/books/periodicals for effect... the specific references didn’t really affect the story, or have any particular significance. (Still fun though.)

evilneanderthal• 17 years ago

I think the point was to be pretentious to the point of irony, which the namedropping achieved.

jobenjo• 17 years ago

Not sure why it's posted here, but this is one of my favorite stories by Woody Allen.

In high school, I used it as a Humorous Interp piece for my debate class and ended up winning state.

Even with his flops (I couldn't stand Whatever Works) Woody Allen is one of the few artists who's made an incredibly vast series of excellent works and managed to effectively move between different genres without sacrificing his own vision. Can't say that about many people, and it's certainly something I aim for myself.

dylanz2• 17 years ago

I didn't even realize this was Woody Allen. Awesome read.

diN0bot• 17 years ago

two columns of text is the bomb.

jacobolus4• 17 years ago

If it all fits on your screen, maybe. Otherwise, having half the visible content completely disconnected from the other half, separated by a few pages of scrolling, is absolutely pointless.

But I copy things into http://amarsagoo.info/tofu/ to read. That is “the bomb.”

metachris• 17 years ago

Tofu looks nice -- interesting idea to make text more easily readable by splitting it into many columns, each as high as your window is.

Someone really needs to make a web version out of that! Shouldn't take too long, and I bet many users don't want to download and install an extra piece of software for that.

boredguy8• 17 years ago

Why copy when you can bookmarklet: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

quizbiz• 17 years ago

Tripod hosting still exists?

lucumo2• 17 years ago

I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that the owner of that site doesn't have permission to have that story on his site.

Edit/Elaboration: This is pirated content. I don't think pirated content should be spread on a site like HN. It's very similar to blog-jacking, only now the original content is a book. If you want to read it, you can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Without-Feathers-Woody-Allen/dp/034533...

swombat4• 17 years ago

Assuming that there's more than one story in this book, chances are that those of us who do occasionally buy books are now that much more likely to purchase that book, if we liked this story.

The percentage of us who both a) buy books, and b) enjoy reading books on a computer screen, is so vanishingly small that it is unlikely to cause any financial damage to Mr Allen. In any case, Woody Allen is already filthy rich (deservedly), so I doubt he gives a toss.

azgolfer• 17 years ago

It's up to Mr. Allen to decide if he wants to give away his work for promotion and his wealth doesn't make stealing from him right.

unalone4• 17 years ago

That's a jackass line of thinking, Dan. I agree with what you're saying; it's why I release things online. But to make that decision for Woody is rude.

If Woody did want to release his older essays online, I'm sure he'd want them as nicely-formatted as they were in his original book, not vomited up on a shitty Tripod page. Formatting certainly chances our attitudes toward what we read. Furthermore, in a case like Without Feathers each separated story loses something of its context, which is a shame and makes it a less fulfilling read.

dkarl• 17 years ago

It's one small step better than blog-jacking in that he gives proper attribution to the legal publishers of the content and doesn't pretend to have any affiliation with the author.

sielskr• 17 years ago

Since I like smart women, the story got me a little excited :)

chrischen• 17 years ago

At first I was like , this looks long, better go watch some tv. But before I knew it I had already finished it 'cause it was so interesting.

That was so I intellectually stimulating my mind almost exploded!

blhack• 17 years ago

The story seems very similar in theme to this one: http://www.viruscomix.com/page473.html

The Whore of Mensa

Related Stories