Fake Steve’s scathing response to a tech panel:
Was at the EmTech conference at MIT today and suffered through a panel led by Robert Scoble with four geeks (Facebook, Six Apart, Plaxo, Twine) talking about the future of the Web. No prepared remarks, just totally random conversation. Basically they all just spewed whatever came into their heads, at top speed, interrupting each other and oblivious to the fact that an audience was sitting there, glazing over. A few people got up and asked questions and the geeks did manage to (sort of) address one or two but then they forgot about the questioners and just started rambling again, talking to each other and forgetting about the audience. It was like watching five college kids with ADHD and an eight-ball of coke trying to hold a conversation.
Accuracy of observation aside, it’s the last line that interests me. The individual pieces of the comparison aren’t that original — college kids, ADHD, eight-ball of coke — but together they draw a genuine guffaw. I think it’s the specificity of “eight-ball of coke” that really makes it work; it harkens to the “hampster on crack” cliché but freshens it.
Specifying the contents of the eight-ball is important, by the way, because in and of itself, “eight-ball” can be used to refer to an eighth of an ounce of any powdered psychoactive drug. Seriously. I looked it up.
(via Kottke)