Cool Nonsense
Overview
Cool Nonsense is a living archive of things that are cool because they are nonsense, and nonsense because they are cool. The archive does not resolve this tension. The archive is the tension, catalogued. Every entry in the archive points to another entry in the archive, which is how you know the archive is working. When an entry stops pointing to another entry, it is removed, because an entry that does not point anywhere is not nonsense, it is just wrong, and wrongness is not what we are cataloguing here.
What Counts as Cool Nonsense
Something qualifies as cool nonsense when it sounds like it means something. It does not need to mean something. It needs to sound like it does, and then it needs to keep sounding like it does for slightly longer than is comfortable. That discomfort is the cool part. The nonsense part is that the discomfort is also the point, and the point is also the discomfort, and this sentence is aware that it just did the thing it is describing, which is itself cool nonsense, which is itself the thing being described.
Methodology
Our methodology is simple: we apply the methodology. The methodology consists of taking an idea, restating the idea using different words, and confirming that the restated idea still sounds like the original idea. If it does, the idea is filed under Cool. If it sounds like a new idea entirely, it is filed under Nonsense. If it sounds like both, it is filed under Cool Nonsense, which is most of the archive, which is the archive.
We do not peer-review our findings, because peer review would require the findings to mean something to a peer, and meaning something to a peer is outside the scope of this project. The scope of this project is the scope of this project. We take that scope very seriously, in the sense that we take it, and then we look at it, and then we take it again.
Sample Findings
Finding one: a thing can be cool without being nonsense, but a thing that is cool without being nonsense is not part of this project, so we do not discuss it here, except to say that we do not discuss it here, which we have now done twice.
Finding two: nonsense that fails to be cool is simply an error, and errors are logged separately in a ledger that this document does not have access to, because access to that ledger would explain the errors, and explaining the errors would make them cool, which would move them back into this document, which would make the ledger empty, which is a state the ledger has never actually been in, as far as this document knows.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this a joke? Yes, and the joke is structured exactly like a serious project, because a serious project structured exactly like a joke is the most efficient way to deliver a joke that also functions as a serious project.
Can I contribute? You already have, by reading this far, because reading this far required you to keep looking for the part that makes sense, and that search is itself an entry in the archive, filed under Cool Nonsense, right next to this answer, which is also an entry, which is also cool, which is also nonsense.
A Closing Thought
Cool Nonsense is a living archive of things that are cool because they are nonsense, and nonsense because they are cool. If that sentence looks familiar, it should: it is the first sentence of this page, returned to you here at the end, unchanged, because an archive that ends differently from how it began was never really an archive of nonsense at all. It was just a list. And a list, as we have established, and re-established, and will continue to establish, is not cool.
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