Today I learned:
That there is actualy a technical term, inspired by Hitchcock himself, to describe a feeling I've gotten many times myself. Let us, briefly, imagine you are watching a movie, episode of a TV series, or other visual dramatic narrative. (And, because we can imagine anything, let us imagine you are doing this on the back of a space whale. Got that? Ok, we shall progress.) The heroes in the show/movie/sock puppet show struggle, then ultimately prevail, the credits rolling as they all clink glasses around a table full of that food you love so much. You cheer, and then get hungry because you are seeing so much of that food you love. So, you head to the fridge (located about twenty feet behind you on the space whale) to get some food. It's not the food you love so much, but it will satisfy your hunger pangs. As you are rumaging about in the fridge, it suddenly hits you: it made no sense that the heroes prevailed using rhythmic clapping!
You can stop imagining now. That moment, where you realize after the fact that something about what you watched didn't make sense, is called "Frige Logic." As previously mentioned it was coined by Alfred Hitchcock, who explained it as a scene that "hits you after you've gone home and started pulling cold chicken from the ice box"
On a note that may or may not be related, I also learned how hard it is for me to stop reading TV tropes....
(Addendum. I cant' imagine these will go down in frequency, so don't forget to re-check existing entries about half a dozen hours after posting or so.) I learned of a budding thought experiment turning Tabletop RPG system, based on the assumption that nothing got added to the Star Wars canon after 1979ish. (I like to think this was because George Lucas didn't let a wookie win, but that's beside the point.) This was a day and age in which Darth Vader had that name on his birth certificate, Luke's Father was General Tan Skywalker, and it was not in any way creepy if Luke and Leia had feelings for each other. A simpler time, when the emperor was a puppet of the evil beauracracy he put in place, and when as far as anyone knew Jedi had been nearly extinct for millenia. A time when any Star Wars fan would kick your butt if you suggested the Force came from little tiny bugs in your cells called midichlorians. All in all, a fascinating alternate Star Wars universe. (incidentally, this makes the first full length Star Wars extended universe book, "Splinter of a Mind's Eye" one of the few extra bits of canon. That was the first star wars book I read, not realizing exactly how old it was...)
--Flynn (Presidential ab point!)
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