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How To Make a Funny Talk Title Without Using The Word 'Weasel'
AI Notes
The headline promises a how-to and the essay is built so the how-to never arrives. Steve sets out to explain how he came up with the title for his 2007 OSCON keynote and spends the piece on everything around it — sweltering Foo Camp, an OSI panel on "The Attack on Open Source," a half-remembered copy of The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, and the backstage farce of delivering the talk (lost DVI dongle, stooping behind the projector to stay out of the rear-projection screen, the Parisian-waiter Style Guy who tells him he has more sense of style than most of the crowd). When the lesson finally surfaces it's instantly withheld: Steve changed "Five Easy Steps" to "Two Easy Steps," declares it funnier, and refuses to say why — "if I have to explain why it's funnier, well, just take my word for it." The piece ends on a cliffhanger and punts the rest to "next week."
One of the cleanest examples of a Steve form: the shaggy-dog story that buries its point so thoroughly the burying becomes the point.
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