Talk:Northeastern United States

Invitation

If possible, could you help flesh out this article with more about the history, culture, economy, politics, etc.? I feel you did a really good job fleshing out the Southern United States article in 2013, but my Northeast article is kinda skimpy and I'm low on ideas.--HolUp (talk) 22:02, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment; I'll take a look. Spıke 🎙️22:25 29-Mar-21

Presidents from the Northeast

I've added back the President list, but in a pared-down form. I feel the "lucky 13" number adds to the comedy theme of the Northeast being crappy, and the South article also has a similar sampling of its Presidents (added by you in 2013).--HolUp (talk) 22:10, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Please point me to where I added something this turgid to an article. Spıke 🎙️22:17 31-Mar-21

https://uncyclopedia.ca/w/index.php?title=Southern_United_States&diff=next&oldid=5729458 --HolUp (talk) 22:19, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

The final sentence of that could come out too; the only thing I like about it now is that it humped my Barack Obama's birth (which it no longer does). Your re-added paragraph is totally in the service of deciding between thirteen and fifteen. Spıke 🎙️22:32,22:36 31-Mar-21

I can take out the 15 part. As I've said before I feel the rest of the section should stay because the lucky 13 number adds to the comedy strategy of the Northeast's crappiness.--HolUp (talk) 22:39, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

No, you feel it should stay coz it cost you two hours' research on Wikipedia! "Thirteen" is not a joke! Spıke 🎙️22:45 31-Mar-21

Everything should feed the comedy strategy

This is a comedy website. Writing here should be simple, as there is a single goal: to amuse the reader. I think we say somewhere in HTBFANJS or CoW: Every sentence of your article should have that goal in mind. So some of your writing in this article goes about it backwards. The first draft of the History section had no humor at all. Perhaps you dropped that in planning to attach humor as you go along. The problem is that you are spending too much time ensuring that the history is complete and concise. There is no reason for this! The article, and even a section entitled History, is not obliged to cover any period of history at all, and should not, unless there is a comedy hook!

When I started adding to this article, I chose a comedy strategy: gallows humor. The article writer is going to prove to the reader that the Northeast is a region with crappy weather, crappy culture, and crappy people. It's my favorite one, as in David Souter: Poppa Bush had something in mind and it went horribly wrong. I botched the facts (Souter didn't write the Kelo decision, though he was reviled at home for supporting it), but it's all to feed this comedy strategy.

At the end of the Northeast article, you have a list of Presidents. Apart from the fact that Trump doesn't have any sort of Northeast accent, it's an impressive piece of schoolwork, but a tedious read, for the sole purpose of getting to the end and finding that, after adjustment, the answer is an "unlucky 13." And? I don't see any way to make this exercise work, particularly as the article's finale.

On a separate note, I don't like Chris Berman. Not because he is mostly repeating schtick he became famous for two decades ago, but because these plays on people's names are a gimmick not a joke. I did something similar in Pepé Le Pew with "pen and ink" but it hit in two places (Cockney for "stink" plus cartoon illustration). However, in my opinion, the start of an Uncyclopedia article is to lull the reader into thinking he's reading Wikipedia, while hinting of a comedy strategy to induce him to keep reading. Inserting a pun into the subject's name (or worse, the Uncyclopedians who cram a list of aliases/epithets into the first sentence of an article) detract from this as much as having nonsense numbers for his birth and death. Yeah, David Hackett Souter -> Buddy Hackett. Only, we're on line 1, and you had the reader thinking about Buddy Hackett, which was a digression. Spıke 🎙️08:28 30-Mar-21

One paragraph or two?

No problem with combining those paragraphs, but your Edit Summary suggests it was based on number of sentences in each. This isn't my criterion; if I had done a better job of packing these sentences with humor, a paragraph on moisture in the air might want to stand apart from a paragraph on local pests. But these are slow to develop and maybe joining them will produce critical mass of humor. Spıke 🎙️01:57 1-Apr-21