loresjoberg
When all you have is a hammer, a nail, and 95 theses, everything looks like a church door.
February 6, 2010
Tweet of the day
Comments Off on Tweet of the day
February 2, 2010
There’s more than one 3:54 length clip in Downfall?
Elsewhere, the Guardian wonders why the Hitler-in-the-bunker scene from Downfall has become such a popular meme.
Comments Off on There’s more than one 3:54 length clip in Downfall?
February 1, 2010
Cookie Monster after visiting Room 101
L. Neil Smith looks at the sad remains of a once-great Muppet:
My only child turned twenty years of age early last month, so it has been some time since I kept daily track with her of the various comings and goings of the diverse and colorful inhabitants of Sesame Street.
Thus it was with considerable dismay that I recently learned that my favorite of these denizens had been abducted, tortured, brainwashed by the vile forces of political correctness, and returned to society a broken, pitiable shadow of his former self, rather like Winston Smith in 1984, after rats had been used to force him to scream “Do it to Julia!”
A product of merciless North Korean-style mind-conditioning, the great blue googly-eyed Cookie Monster now mouths mindless, robotic platitudes and slogans like “cookies are a sometimes snack”. He even eats broccoli — the Green Death — in public, like a circus geek consuming broken lightbulbs and handsful of worms. Gone is the joyous hedonist we knew who was a living exemplar of Robert Heinlein’s famous dicta, “Dum vivamus, vivamus!” and “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing!”
He has become just another “progressive” icon, different-looking on the outside, yes, but filled up on the inside with the same bland, gray, unappetizing pablum as Smokey the Bear, Bono, and Janeane Garofalo.
Comments Off on Cookie Monster after visiting Room 101
January 28, 2010
“It starts here, with a lack-lustre establishing shot . . .”
H/T to Victor for the link. Utterly brilliant.
Comments Off on “It starts here, with a lack-lustre establishing shot . . .”
January 27, 2010
Apple’s latest . . . marketing mis-step
AdRants has a bit of fun with Apple’s choice of name for its latest rapture-of-the-nerds tech device:
Apple Introduces New Feminine Protection Product: The iPad
According to an explosion of tweets following Steve Jobs’ announcement of the iPad, the device’s new name isn’t going over so well:
– For now the iPad’s really exciting, but wait until they release the iTampon
– iPad: You only need to plug it in once a month
– Wow – its the iPad. Wonder if it comes in 2 sizes (maxi and mini)
– I guess it’s Apple’s “time of the month”
– The Apple iPad: for all your heavy (work) flow days
– Our little iPod has hit womanhood
– To recap: the iPad will come with an iRag (to keep it clean) + some iBruprofen (to keep it working smoothly) + iWings (protection plan)
H/T to Virginia Postrel, who wrote “And so the jokes begin…Apple needs more female marketers”.
Update: Francis Turner sent a link to the official announcement photo.
More serious coverage of the new product from The Register.
Comments Off on Apple’s latest . . . marketing mis-step
Welcome to Canada . . . this is our variant of English
SherryGrammarian would like to extend a welcome to all the soon-to-be-arriving Winter Olympics visitors and offers some explanations about the variant of English spoken in (parts of) Canada:
Like the country itself, Canadian English suffers from a bit of an identity crisis: Do we speak the tongue of our British heritage? Or do we employ the vernacular of our closest geographical and cultural neighbour, the United States?
And in quintessentially Canadian fashion, we’ve come up with an offend-no-one resolution: a little deference, a little defiance. Canadian English is the bastard child of a queen and a cowboy.
We honour the monarchy by minding our p’s and q’s, and in using u’s in words like “labour” and “flavour.” In Canada, you enter the “centre” and catch a feature at the “theatre.”
The last letter of the alphabet retains its British pronunciation yet appears American in words like “organize” and “realize” — but we draw the line at calling the bearded Texas rock band “ZedZed Top,” and for that we will not apologize.
[. . .]
And (Americans, take note), “rout” is what my hockey team does to your hockey team. “Route” — pronounced root — is the path to the nearest donut shop.
Comments Off on Welcome to Canada . . . this is our variant of English
January 26, 2010
A message from Transport Canada
From the Rick Mercer Report.
Comments Off on A message from Transport Canada
January 23, 2010
Slate peeks at Barack Obama’s Facebook feed
I thought Facebook had fixed the privacy settings, but Slate manages to show President Obama’s Facebook feed:
Comments Off on Slate peeks at Barack Obama’s Facebook feed
January 21, 2010
Vikings scheme to handle Reggie Bush
Just in case you thought they’d forgotten how Reggie Bush made them look plain awful on special teams last year — giving up a pair of punt return touchdowns in the same game — here’s some strong evidence that they’ve got plans in place to deal with Bush in Sunday’s NFC championship game:
Punter Chris Kluwe drew a lot of media attention Wednesday regarding his game plan for Saints punt returner Reggie Bush, who returned two punts for touchdowns against the Vikings last season.
“Actually, we were planning on first pooping our pants and running screaming toward the sidelines, and then Reggie would be able to just pick up the ball and run toward the end zone,” Kluwe said. “In retrospect, though, that might not be the best plan, so I’m sure we’ll come up with something else.”
Coach Brad Childress and Kluwe had a heated conversation on the sideline last season after Bush’s second touchdown return. Asked about it, Kluwe said: “It happens. Emotions run high during games and you go from there. Me and Coach are much more heavily medicated now, so hopefully we’ll be OK on the sidelines.”
Comments Off on Vikings scheme to handle Reggie Bush
January 20, 2010
If you wonder why it’s nicknamed “The Grauniad” . . .
This is the sort of thing they were notorious for:
You wonder why those “Crotians” and the “Sebians” can’t get along . . .
Amusingly, they got the national names correct in the article’s URL.
Comments Off on If you wonder why it’s nicknamed “The Grauniad” . . .
Air New Zealand goes for free advertising by courting outrage
It’s been done often enough, but apparently still works every time. I’m talking about generating huge amounts of press coverage by creating a highly controversial ad (whether you ever intend to run it or not), and allowing the media to publicize it for you. This is Air New Zealand’s offering:
Here’s some of the free publicity, by way of The Economist and The Telegraph.
January 19, 2010
The evolution of music
In spite of the portentious title, this is just an excuse to post an old James Lileks quote from a few years back talking about the difference between popular music of the early 20th century with the worst excesses of the 60’s (the “60’s” being defined for convenience as running from about 1965-1974):
Every note is simple and obvious but it still seems remarkable that no one had thought to arrange them in that particular order. It’s the countertheme, to invent a musical term, that gives it spice, and the middle section has a lovely expansive quality that makes you think of Frank Sinatra peeing off a balcony in Vegas. And of course the beat: bum / bum / bum / bumbum bum / bum / bum / bum / bumbum bum.
The name of the show was a callback to an old song from the early part of the 20th century — “I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair.” I’ve only heard the first few bars, sung by Bugs Bunny with appropriate alterations: “I dream of Jeannie, she’s a light brown hare.” Old as the song was, audiences in the forties got the joke, just as people today recognize a reference to a song from the 60s.
The difference, of course, is that the 60s aren’t seen as The Past; the 60s are a Timeless Vault of Cultural Touchstones, the apotheosis of Western Civ. Sigh. Well. One of the future Diners will take place in the 60s — don’t ask why, it’ll be explained — and I will use many of the gutbustingly dreadful “psychedelic” records I have collected. It’s obvious from Note One that everyone involved in the effort had so much THC in their system you could dry-cure their phlegm and get a buzz off the resin, but instead of having the loose happy ho-di-hi-dee-ho cheer of a Cab Calloway reefer number, the songs are soaked with Art and Importance and Meaning. You can imagine the band members sitting down to hash out (sorry) the overarching themes of the album, how it should like start with Total Chaos man because those are the times in which we live with like war from the sky, okay, and then we’ll have flutes because flutes are peaceful like doves and my old lady can play that part because she like studied flute, man, in high school. The lyrics are all the same: AND THE KING OF QUEENS SAID TO THE EARTH THE HEIROPHANT SHALL NOW GIVE BIRTH / THE HOODED PRIESTS IN CHAMBERED LAIRS LEERED DOWN UPON THE LADIES FAIR / NEWWWW DAAAAY DAWNNNING!
Five years later it was obsolete. The Jeannie theme, however, will make toes tap in 2476 AD.
There’s more than enough evidence to support James in this notion . . . pick up a random 60’s Psychedelic album and this is what the lyrics are like.
Comments Off on The evolution of music
January 18, 2010
Nostalgia’s over-rated
John Scalzi looks at a few things folks tend to get all misty-eyed and nostalgic about. Here’s why he thinks you’re on crack:
1. Stupidly expensive long-distance charges. [. . .] When my sister briefly lived with me when I was in Fresno, between the two of us we could generate $600 phone bills on a monthly basis, at a time when I was paying $400 a month for an apartment. Yes! I was occasionally paying more for my phone bill than I was for having a place to eat and sleep. Naturally, this was madness.
[. . .]
2. Crappy old cars. Which cars qualify as crappy old cars? In my opinion, pretty much all of them. Pre-catalytic converter cars were shoddily-constructed, lead-spewing deathtraps, the first generation of cars running on unleaded were even more shoddily-constructed 70s defeat-mobiles, the 80s were the golden age of Detroit Doesn’t Give a Shit, and so on. You have to get to about 1997 before there’s a car I would willingly get into these days. As opposed to today, when even the cheap boxy cars meant for first-time buyers have decent mileage, will protect you if you’re hit by a semi, and have more gizmos and better living conditions than my first couple of apartments.
[. . .]
3. Physical media for music. Audiophiles like to wank on about the warmth of vinyl, and you know, maybe if you take your vinyl and put it into special static free sleeves and then store those sleeves in a purpose-built room filled with inert gases, to be retrieved only when you play that vinyl on your $10,000 turntable which could play a record without skipping through a 7.5 earthquake, ported through your vacuum tube amplifier that sucks down more energy than Philadelphia at night, maybe it is warm. Good for you and your warm vinyl.
[. . .]
4. Smoking allowed everywhere. You know what? It did suck to have smokers at the table next to you at a restaurant. It did suck to have a movie theater haze up. It did suck to be walking in the mall and have some wildly gesticulating smoker randomly and accidentally jam the lit end of his cancer stick into your face.
Comments Off on Nostalgia’s over-rated
January 15, 2010
QotD: I am ANCHORMAN!
For the last 30 years, I’ve devoted the better part of my life to frightening you, trying my best to make you believe that you are weak, vulnerable, dependent and at risk. I know what’s good for you. You don’t. I’ve tried hard for three decades to defy the laws of nature and return you to infancy, cradled in your mommy’s arm, suckling at her breast, all warm and cozy, not a care in the world. I am the tip of the spear of the liberal nanny state. I am ANCHORMAN!
An Anonymous Anchorman, “Secrets of TV news: Confessions of an anchorman”, The Daily Call, 2010-01-15
Comments Off on QotD: I am ANCHORMAN!
