By: Nercya Kalino, Staff Writer
- Explain Marshall McLuhan’s phrase, “The medium is the message.”
Is there supposed to be a double meaning to this? Nothing is as clear as day, as bright as the sun, as clean as the . . . I’ve lost my train of thought. The medium! Ah yes, the middle, mid, and such. How else am I supposed to explain what we all understand as the medium? Why, here’s an example! If we were only to speak through telepathy, like the very real Martians, then we would not need a medium because talking would be needless. Just contemplate my concise answer. Even I still have not conjured the answer, that is the simplicity and sheer brilliance of my wisdom. I’m certainly not trying to talk about something I don’t understand. But what does it matter? After all, the medium is nowhere to be found when you need one. Like those mediums that pretend to read your worries with cheap tricks.
2. If you record a sound and pitch it up by three octaves, how will it sound when placed in a large room with minimal secondary reverb?
Like when a choir sings, but it’s the tenor that chases your ears? Er, no, that’s a tone. Maybe close to an echo, then? I believe it was Nicki Minaj who said that a minimal secondary reverb is like when you rap then comes the reverb. Some people call it a chorus. For example . . . actually, I don’t have an example, just take my word for it.
3. When should you use an em dash, an en dash, and a hyphen?
Hear me out, in my whole academic career I’ve always avoided these three sins of nature. I call them the three musketeers. Nothing about them makes sense. When you need to use one of them, they confuse you. The best way to go about it is to wing it and hope for the best.
Just romanticize them. Em dash is the dashing knight on the white horse, and he comes riding at dawn to rescue you from his enemies — in no time, you are in love with this mysterious saviour. En dash is his shorter and stronger older brother who is definitely a flirt. You might catch feelings fast, I’m talking 0–100 fast but it won’t last. Hyphen is the mister know-it-all of the group, and always has to be right and precise about everything. You should use either one based on what you are looking for. But academically speaking, use autocorrect.
Hoo, is it getting (grammatically) hot in here?
4. What does spaghettification mean?
This seems like a space language. It is when two stars meet and fall in love. The next thing we know they have a baby star and so it starts to grow and one day it goes to mama star and asks for a bowl of spaghetti. But the mama star with sadness tells the baby star: “You know we can’t afford pasta and your dad hasn’t sent us any money since he last left to crash land on earth.” Spaghettification is when baby stars find out that spaghetti is not so cheap in space.
