Oh yeah! Tang!

Until yesterday I would have told you that the best Kool-Aid Man joke would be this classic from the pilot episode of Family Guy:



Until today, when I found out that Robot Chicken trumped it:

How old are you?

So, I turned 26 the other week. Up until now it's felt like 25, only more so. Until I read this article from the Wall Street Journal:

Facebook, with a stripped-down aesthetic well-attuned to grown-up sensibilities, is graying. The company won't be precise about the average age of its users, but it will say that the oldest age-group it tracks -- users 25 and older -- is also its fastest-growing.

...

I'm in the oldest demographic that Facebook cares about.

Holy shit that makes me feel old.

Hey, I still have a blog

[Crawls out from under a mountain of work]

Whoa, there's still light up here.

Seems like everyone needs some laughs these days, so have some random videos from Robot Chicken:

Like this 300 parody:



Or maybe this immensely funny Final Fantasy VII spoof that had me rolling on the floor, but I can't embed it for some reason.

And, finally, how to deal with impending death:

Oh, and since you can't top reality, did you know that James Lipton was an I-swear-I'm-not-making-this-up French pimp:



Words fail me on that one.

Phew. See you all in a month or so.

It's not a semester unless I'm terrorizing campus somehow

With apologies to AJ Daulerio, I present my latest student newspaper column: upcoming fake celebrity feuds to watch out for:

Clickety here to go to the article. [via The Tartan]

OK, light post, but if you haven't seen this yet, it's probably the funniest internet video in a long time (NSFW if you can't have naughty language blaring from the speakers):

The iPod paradox of choice; or Waaaaah which pointless luxury good will make me happier??

I'm behind on my work since I spent all afternoon drooling over the new iPods.

Well, not the new Ipod Nano. I imagine it feels good in the hand but seems to have lost the very nice proportions of the old ones be hideously ugly. And are you really going to watch video on that tiny screen? Gimme the old ones any day.

But cripes, Apple, you had to make things difficult, didn'tcha? I own a current 60GB iPod. Come upgrade time, do I a) buy a 160GB iPod Classic and take care of my music storage needs for, say, the next 5-10 years but without any cool new features; or b) Go with the drool-worthy, internet-connected iPod Touch but have to settle for only 16gb of storage at a time?

I mean, it's a stunning interface but I don't know if I could take the portable storage hit. I love having all my music available at all times. And "iPod Touch" is such a lazy name; was "WiFiPod" taken? That's what I'm going to call it anyway.

Tough choices. I don't think I could say "No" to either of them. But I'll take my WiFiPod without the Macy Gray:



Much better.

Facebook begins to unravel

When VH1's "I Love the 00s" rolls around, a bunch of C-list comedians will attempt to pinpoint when, exactly, Facebook lost it. Today, Facebook's shark-jumping moment popped up in my News Feed:



I think it's time for Facebook to really think long and hard about letting just anyone write a program for the site, or it's on its way to MySpace flashing lights and blaring-background-muzak-from-shitty-basement-'punk'-bands hell.

A lesson in concision for the CIA

So I saw on the Washington Post today that the CIA released a 19-page redacted executive summary of a report about the Agency's failures leading up to 9/11.

19 pages?! For just the executive summary?! You've got to be kidding me. If you're calling it an "executive summary" it damn well better be less than a page or 2--especially considering who our chief executive is.

Here's a hint for the CIA (and, really, anyone): if you want people to read your reports and enact change, make the executive summary shorter than the latest Harry Potter book.

From what I can surmise from the article, this would have done nicely:



I think it nicely hits all the talking points.

What do Vince Vaughn and Peru have in common?

Your wholly insensitive moment of the day:

From a slideshow of the Peruvian earthquake from the BBC:


Refugees took what they could carry from the rubble of their homes, as did this man in Chincha, 155 miles (250km) south of Lima.

Is it wrong that the first thing I thought of was this?


"That painting was a gift. I'm taking it with me."

Yes, for equating a terrible tragedy with Wedding Crashers, I'm a terrible person. But you knew that already.

The Skittles Touch

Because nothing sells candy quite like the magical negro stock character taken to its ludicrous extreme:



I love the part about the man on the bus.

And I swear some day I'll have some real content to share. Not just YouTube videos. Really.

Friday morning time waster - Be Kind Rewind trailer

There's a new trailer out for the next Michel Gondry movie called Be Kind Rewind. Gondry was the man behind--yeah, I'll say it--the best movie of this decade, so I was already nigh giddy as the trailer was loading. My school-girl giddiness was fast replaced by pure joy as the trailer served up a steaming ladle of ohmygodawesome:



You saw that right. Jack Black and Mos Def recreating famous movies with a camcorder. I saw Ghostbusters, Rocky, Driving Miss Daisy, RoboCop, Rush Hour 2, 2001, and Boyz in the Hood. It's turning Rushmore's 'films-remade-as-plays' aesthetic up to 11 for the YouTube age. I'm pumped. You should be too.

Oh, and here's a link to some higher-def versions if you care about that kind of thing.

Fake Steve Jobs is Daniel Lyons ... and still awesome

Awww, man. The New York Times has discovered the true identity of the blogger known as Fake Steve Jobs (Tagline: Dude, I invented the friggin' iPhone. Have you heard of it?).

Here's the short story:

1) Anonymous blogger adopts persona of Steve Jobs, founder of Apple

2) Fake Steve does not hold back. Writes hilarious, bitter posts mocking, well, everyone.

3) Remainder of bloggers split two ways: a) The true identity of Fake Steve is our Holy Grail! We must find it and share its bounty! or b) Don't unmask him! You'll ruin the fun!

4) Almost a year later, Times reporter Brad Stone takes a week or so to figure it out. Here's the evidence, a combination of writing tics, location, and other slips that led to the unmasking.

5) Fake Steve owns up to being Daniel Lyons, an editor at Forbes magazine. Of course, he takes a stab at the blogosphere while he's at it:

One bright side is that at least I was busted by the Times and not Valleywag. I really, really enjoyed seeing those guys keep guessing wrong. For six months Dr. Evil and Mr. Bigglesworth put their big brains together and couldn't come up with the answer. Guy from the Times did it in a week. So much for the trope about smarty-pants bloggers disrupting old media.

I'm kind of sad, but it gives me an excuse to dump all the links I've been hoarding of Fake Steve's best posts since I started reading a few months ago:

There's the one where he shows how the iPhone can charm even the Amish.

There's the one where he explains why Apple is cutting back on iPhone production; it's to make you feel special:

[This is] a product that makes you smarter and, well, better than other people. Can't do that if everyone has one, right?

We figured we could keep things under control using our usual overpricing strategy. Who in their right mind was going to shell out 600 bucks for a friggin phone, right? Especially if it lacks all sorts of features that people really want. Just to be doubly sure we put it on the AT&T network and gave it an unbearably slow wireless connection so that Web browsing is practically impossible. Well, much to our amazement, it turns out there are just loads and loads of people willing to spend 600 bucks on a feature-lite phone as long as it has one crucial feature, which is our Apple logo on the outside. Who knew?

My personal favorite, there's the one where he tears the music industry a new one after they whined about iTunes dominating the MP3 market:

Here's the thing. These guys could have done what we did. In the early days of the Internet, everyone figured the majors would build digital distribution arms. But they didn't do it, because they didn't understand technology, and they didn't want to invest in building this expertise, and they were freaked out about piracy and paralyzed with fear. So we stepped in. We made the big investment. We hired programmers. We developed software that's easy to use and works flawlessly. (If you think that's trivial, think again. It's huge.) We ran the system. We promoted it, we marketed it, we haggled with all the majors and struck deals. We took all the risk, which was considerable. Now we're reaping the reward. And the majors want a bigger slice. Um, for what? We did all the work. Ain't gonna happen, slick.

Here's the back story. The music companies are in a dying business, and they know it. Sure, they act all cool because they hang around with rock stars. But beneath all the glamour these guys are actually operating two very low-tech businesses. One is a form of loan-sharking: they put up money to make records, then force recording artists to pay the money back with exorbitant interest. The other business is distribution. They’ve got big warehouses and they control the shipment of little plastic boxes that happen to have music in them.

The guys running the labels are pretty stupid -- most are just dirtbags who started out as band managers or promoters -- but now at long last they are kinda sorta finally vaguely getting clued in to the fact that both parts of their business model are fucked. Their loan-sharking business is being eliminated by low-cost digital recording technology that lets people make an album for very little money. And by letting us build the online music store they've taken themselves out of the distribution business. In the days of vinyl and then CDs, the labels managed to control the value chain by having loads of retailers in a highly fragmented market, and playing them off each other. In the digital world they've got us. And that's it.

Pretty brilliant, if you ask me. I hope Mr. Lyons stays this insightful post-unmasking.

Mock Draft: Albums that never get old!

After today's relatively disappointing Kissing Suzy Kolber commenter draft (Topic: Restaurants where you would like to eat your last meal), Scott (who posts under Hats for Bats on his group baseball blog) and I decided to start our own diversion:

Mock Draft: Albums that never, ever get old

Rules: Not a lot to explain here. One album per round. No repeats of artists.

Round 1

BiweeklyBrilliance: Who's up first?

HatsForBats: I'll give you first pick since I proposed the topic.

BwB: I would stick it to you and take The Verve: Urban Hymns, but I'm not that cruel. (Yes, he is--ed.)

H4B: I wondered if you would try that. I was going to take it with a lower pick since it's too obvious for me.

BwB: I figured. OK, I'll start with Ted Leo and the Pharmacists: "Hearts of Oak".

H4B: Good one. I'll go with Counting Crows: "Across a Wire Live in New York City".

BwB: Ooh, a fine choice. I could listen to the 10-minute version of "Round Here" forever.

H4B: I love both discs separately.

BwB: Related: you should pick up the live Wilco double album, "Kicking Television: Live in Chicago". It's like a greatest hits, but they added this wicked awesome 3rd guitar player (Nels Cline) who really adds some bite to a lot of tracks.

H4B: Nice. I'll check it out. You're still on the clock, by the way :-P

BwB: Sue me.

Round 2

BwB: AC[lightning bolt]DC: "Back in Black".

H4B: Good one. All right, I'm hitting you where you live: Smashing Pumpkins: "Siamese Dream".

BwB: Ass. But for the record I would have taken "Adore" before "Siamese Dream."

H4B: I knew you would. ... we know each other way too well in this regard.

Round 3

BwB: Led Zeppelin: Houses of the Holy.

H4B: Hmm. All right, I'll swing it back newer. Postal Service: "Give Up".

Round 4

BwB: Hmm, I'll go a little out there. Eminem: "Marshall Mathers LP".

H4B: Interesting choice.

BwB: It still amuses me to this day. I never expect it either.

H4B: Okay, I should have taken this one earlier. The Refreshments: "Fizzy Fuzzy Big and Buzzy".

Round 5

BwB: You're going to hate me: Jeff Buckley: "Grace".

H4B: Oh, that's so good, it should have been mine. ALl right, The Verve: Urban Hymns. I gotta protect now.

BwB: Yeah I knew Jeff Buckley would get you sweating.

H4B: Big oversight on my part.

Round 6

BwB: Nirvana: "MTV Unplugged in New York".

H4B: Radiohead: "The Bends".

BwB: Wow. Monster pick. Lot of upside potential. Big wingspan... etc.

H4B: I had to recover from Grace.

Round 7

BwB: Ozomatli: "Ozomatli".

H4B: Damn. OK, you hit me where I live now.

BwB: Know what? I stole album from you. Call the RIAA. (He did not steal. Please do not call the RIAA--ed.)

H4B: Miles Davis: "Kind of Blue".

BwB: Nice. By the way, I think my favorite part of "Kind of Blue" is how every single "best albums of all time" lists always places it at, like, #6.

H4B: "We need some jazz on there, but it doesn't need to be first."

BwB: There's always a pissing war between "Pet Sounds" and "Revolver" and "Sgt. Peppers" and "Blood on the Tracks"... but there's "Kind of Blue" at #6 every single time. I think that qualifies it for #1 ever.

H4B: By the way, I'll just say it: I was happy for that Thriller video this morning, because I had the Beatles in my head, and I didn't want them there. Stupid deli radio. "Let it Be." Ugh.

BwB: That's how I respond to "Are you a Beatles or a Stones guy" questions. I say I'm in MJ's court :-P (Hopefully not in his bed!--ed.)

Round 8

BwB: Oh, you're going to want to reach through the series of tubes and murder me: Over the Rhine: "Ohio".

H4B: Ahh! I knew it was out there.

BwB: I admit that's a mean-spirited pick. Thanks for turning me on to Over the Rhine, by the way.

H4B: Grrr, and you've already got Ted Leo off the board. Okay, fine, you wanna play that? Sufjan Stevens: "Illinois"

BwB: Oooooooooooooooooh! You MONSTER. It cuts like a knife!

H4B: You brought this upon yourself!

BwB: Damn you for taking away one of my favorite songs, "Casimir Pulaski Day."

H4B: Ditto, "Suitcase."

Round 9. Final round!

BwB: Drive-By Truckers: "Decoration Day"

H4B: Now you're just doing this out of spite. I commend that. My last pick: Arcade Fire: "Funeral"

BwB: I hadn't considered that. Nicely done.


OK folks, let's hear what yours would be in the comments.

What if my buddy David ended up in a Chilean prison?

Here's an idea for what you can do if you end up owning a Chilean prison: reenact "Thriller"--with full choreography and a guy in drag, natch--with 1500 prisoners:



Hat tip to Scott, who sent it along with this note, referring to a mutual friend that memorized the Thriller dance:

Seriously, in my head, the backstory is that there was a mix-up at Chilean customs, and David ended up in prison. and a week later, this.

Sorry, sad emo kid: blood is not blue. Your veins are not blue.

Mythbusting time! Colour Lovers settles the "veins are blue" mystery.

Would you believe the answer is pretty similar to why the sky is blue? It's the light, stupid:

Why Are My Blood Veins Blue?


Well, they’re not. They’re a dirty red. Of course, the darker blood won’t be as dark outside of the body because it will oxidize when hitting air, but it still contains waste from cells. Seeing a vein as blue through the skin is because of the layer just below the epidermis and dermis, the two outer layers of skin. Because our skin’s “job” is to protect our bodies from the sun, this provides an interference for how light penetrates the skin by allowing only lower frequency light through, and color is light bounced off of an object, after all. The wavelengths that do make it through to the veins are high-energy blue.

What about the "it's just blue until it hits the air and absorbs oxygen" idea?

Even some of my science teachers have previously said that blood from veins is blue before it hits air… where instantly it’s changed to bright red.

Seen under vacuum conditions, this has been disproved.

Wait, who's cutting people open in vacuums?

This makes the English Major in me happy: Spelling and Grammar trip up phishers

Think spelling and grammar don't matter? Try taking this quiz about Phishing schemes. The Amazon.com one was hardest for me.

I got 10/10. Beat that! Oh, right. You can't.

The most important part of the quiz is they tell you how to identify fake websites out to get your information. While the secret to some of them is the fake URL, for most of the sites the giveaways are that gawdawful Nigerian grammar, phrasing, and inconsistencies.



End lesson: If you're writing emails or websites, quadruple check that your writing sounds like a human being and you're doing stuff consistently. If not, you might have dipped instantly from 'trustworthy' to 'potentially trying to rip me off.'

[via Lifehacker]

Yahoo! Most Viewed photos provides penetrating insight into the American psyche

Check out the "Most Viewed" photos today on Yahoo! Most Popular:



Yup. Lindsay Lohan x8, subtly overtly sexual yoga, and the planet Mercury a galactically fat man.

Bravo, America. I haven't questioned your taste this much since Wild Hogs hit #1 at the box office. Bravo.

Slate was really on top of their game today

Wow, Slate was really kicking ass on the Alps today.

First, they unearthed the fax that Chimpy McFlightsuit used to cede power to Cheneytron while he was in surgery. Yes, a fax. The same official, super secure document transmission method I use to order Chipotle burritos. You'd think he'd at least call!

If you're interested in some Harry Potter discussion, they have a nice series of letters about their predictions and feelings after it's over. Spoilers, obviously. Will Leitch, busybody editor of Deadspin gets in on the action.

Finally, they had not one but two killer slideshows. First up are examples of the video game clichés that let us instantly pick up new games, like medpacks and The Konami Code.

I guess Medpacks are preferable to eating cute fairies (picture link goes nowhere):



Second up is an exploration of the 12 major types of advertisements. They've put together some pretty good examples, and Seth Stevenson totally digs up one of my favorite ads ever, Nike's "Awake:"



Man, now I'm pumped. Might as well clear out some of my other Slate links here:

Did you catch their Action Movie one-liner contest? I would say my favorite was "Myspace friend add … denied!" but screw Myspace! "Dénouement-ized, man-kisser!" takes the cake. One blogger really took it to another level though with "Spoiler Alert! You die." and "You’re Tony Soprano and I’m an artsy fade to black." or "Subway: Eat death."

They launched a new video service, SlateV, with some very excellent video versions of their articles. Frankly, they're the best I've ever seen for internet videos. They certainly know when to let ridiculous material speak for itself. It also has a blog that tracks 'net videos that nicely complements the AV Club's "Videocracy" column as places to find fun videos without getting your fingers dirty by actually going to YouTube, land of daxflames and lonelygirls. Yeck.

Last but not least, a classic article by Hua Hsu about inexplicable hit "My Humps:"

Irony and camp have recast taste as an ethical shell game and we feel no guilt celebrating things that are, in the parlance of VH1, Awesomely Bad. But are there still songs that qualify as "bad"? Consider the Los Angeles hip-hop quartet the Black Eyed Peas. Their current single, "My Humps," is one of the most popular hit singles in history. It is also proof that a song can be so bad as to veer toward evil.

At least "My Humps" gave us this, which almost makes up for "You Oughta Know:"

Harry Potter and Poetry

So I've finished Harry Potter. My only comment that I'll share on a blog right now is... has JK Rowling always used so many ellipses? I counted like 20 on one page. Use a period, lady!

Now for something completely different: Famous Poems as Limericks! Here's my favorite:

There was a man who, at low tide
Would walk with the Lord by his side
Jesus said "Now look back;
You'll see one set of tracks.
That's when you got a piggy-back ride."

And you thought there wasn't a way to make "Footprints In The Sand" any more ridiculous, did you?

"The Raven" as a limerick is quite good as well.

[Via BoingBoing]

I deal with the soul-crushing disappointment of cheese every day

[Left-Handed Toons (by right-handed people)] via The Consumerist

Processing priority Potter pilfering, post-haste!

Disclaimer: Stealing is bad.

But maybe you'd be interested in seeing photos of every page of the last Harry Potter book. It's not as great as you think: it's very difficult to read since it's at a pretty fair distance. But it looks legit and it's apparently all there.

If you use BitTorrent, you could know who lives and who dies right now. Just sayin.' [Tip and Photo via Boing Boing]

PS: No, I haven't read it. Yet.

PPS: While you're waiting, here's a profane wish list of things that the final book should answer (via Cracked).

PPPS: Anyone seen the fifth movie yet? I thought it had a lot of nice moments but still wasn't as good as the third and fourth ones. Still way better than the unremittingly painful first two. I'm 25 years old, by the way.

CRIPPLE FIGHT!

OK, so I'm cheaping out again, but here's a side-by-side comparison of the divine cripple fight scene from South Park and the scene that inspired it frame-by-frame from the movie "They Live:" (umm, probably not safe for work if you couldn't gather from the words "South Park")



The original is almost as funny as the South Park version, outlandishly enough. [via Cracked]

The music is "Souvenirs" by Architecture in Helsinki if you were wondering

While I don't usually like to cheap out by just posting YouTube videos, this one is just so charming that I couldn't help myself. What's it advertising? Who cares! Pretty lights!

Maybe they should use a Mac...

Airport Security ftw!, originally uploaded by sirbrett84.

I've written about airport security before, but this takes the cake. If you want to hack into an airport's computer system, they're kind enough to advertise that it'd be pretty easy.

UPDATE: And, since I'm kind of a photoshop expert, allow me to go for the easy joke:

So long, morning

Ever played some video games? Check out this Commenter Draft on Kissing Suzy Kolber.

The question: which video game would you play against alien invaders for the fate of the world? This is one of the few places on the internet where you need to follow the comments.

This cost me my entire morning. I got into the commenting, but good buddy Hats for Bats really stole the show.

I ended up taking:

1. Legend of Zelda
2. Resident Evil
3. Upside-down spelling words on a calculator. That's a game, right? 1134. 58008. Tee hee.
4. Ducktales on NES

And that's when I called it a day.

But Hats for Bats... wow:

1. Major League Baseball 1991 for Game Gear
2. Super Mario 3 ("Finally living out my 'the Wizard' fantasy")
3. Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge
4. Turbo TextTwist (java game)
5. Drug War on a TI-83
6. Erotic Photo Hunt

At which point commenter John S pointed us to the Tetris theme music. When Hats wanted to run that over the office intercom, John S said,

If you could, it would be kind of like Andy Dufrense in Shawshank.

"It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free. "

And that, my friends, is how to win a comment thread.

Link roundup: holiday weekend edition

Time for another round of link vomiting, wherein I try to make sense of a big pile of stuff that I want to share with yinz. Here we goooooooooooooo...

Last time I left you with my new favorite blog, Passive Agressive Notes. Well they have a nice rundown of a household post-it war that escalates nicely.

Speaking of escalating nicely, you might get a kick out of this short take on invasive advertising, particularly the kind that's popping up all over video games.

Video games can make stuff funnier! You might have seen the clip of a breakdancer kicking a baby. Well, it's funnier when you add in sound effects from Street Fighter II. Is it wrong that I love watching children get injured? Is it even more wrong that I created a 'kidsgettinghurt' folder on my del.icio.us account, a decision that implies I intend to find more movies of injury to children?

Speaking of kids, if you think kids these days just don't play outside enough, you may be right, as that article highlights how the distance parents let their kids wander has shrunk from miles to backyards.

That's such a drastic loss that I almost wish there was an easy tool to make ridiculous unit conversions. Oh, wait, there is. It can tell you that I weigh roughly .15 whale testicles and I am .222 (repeating, of course) Oscar Mayer Weinermobiles tall.

Men have weiners, and any man in the audience can probably appreciate Big Daddy Drew's Father's Day plans. Yeah, this is late, but the cologne that smells like gunpowder kills me every time. Badass.

Speaking of badass, the new Die Hard movie is pretty good. But I don't think it'll be as good as Ben Stiller's classic parody of the franchise. Remember when he was funny? Before he did crappy cartoons?

Speaking of cartoons, go see Ratatouille now. I can't say enough nice things about it. I would rate it as just as good as Incredibles but not quite as good as Finding Nemo or Monsters, Inc., one of my favorite movies ever, as I've illustrated with this graph:



That looks harsh, until you realize it's out of scale compared to all other children's movies:



While I'm at it, Slate also had a nice slideshow about the excellence that is Brad Bird. It takes a special director to make soup preparation utterly thrilling -- by a rat, no less! If I had my way, Remy the Rat would take Mickey's place as the icon of Disney. Though I don't think that would work out. Walt Disney was a sexist asshole. But we already knew that. Remy the Rat is too nice to be such a dick.

Speaking of things that can carry disease, you all should also go see Sicko. It's easily Moore's best since Roger & Me and he blessedly stays the hell out of the way, letting other people who have been screwed by the insurance industry do the talking. It's brilliant, tragic, hilarious, and infuriating, and you can watch it (the whole thing!) for free (legally, even!) right here. So you have no excuse. Only people who hate Michael Moore on principle can hate this movie. While his proposed solution is far from perfect and doesn't hit on everything, goddamn is the movie powerful.

Speaking of powerful, if you're a GMail convert (If you aren't on Gmail and want an invite, leave a comment and I'll fix you up), you can consolidate all your disparate emails into Gmail (including having Gmail send outgoing replies "from" the address that received it) to have all your email in one place. This is especially handy if you have to use a bunch of different addresses and mail clients for pleasure, school, and work emails and want them all in one place. Saucy.

Speaking of saucy, I want an iPhone really bad... as soon as it holds as much music as full-size iPods and isn't on the tin-cans-and-string cellular network. Those commercials lie!, but I admit they make me chuckle (and the girls in those spots are pretty hawt ... man I'm pathetic).

Speaking of pathetic, have you ever stumbled on a car taking up more than their fair share of the parking lot? Well, Youparklikeanasshole is the most fun way to rat them out. It even has notices you can print out and leave on offending cars. Probably don't want to do it if the driver can see you. Caveat emptor.

Speaking of cars, this blog post runs down some incredible car commercials, including the infamous Honda "Cog" spot, the grocery parking lot defense, and this incredible Honda spot that I hadn't seen before.

Still on cars, Consumerist posted a very thorough essay that explains why gas is so expensive. Summary: it's not the gas station's fault; it's every other step in the process that is actively out to screw you. Maybe it's time to go back to walking or public transport.

Speaking of traveling, if you're heading home for the holiday, you might want to look into this tutorial and this one about how to get your parents' computer free of ad-, mal-, and spy-ware. If your parents are like mine, their compys will need it. Badly. Stop using Internet Explorer for heaven's sake!

If you must drive on your trip back home, you should fire up some Pearl Jam on the iPod and try to figure out the lyrics to "Yellow Ledbetter".

You should also pack some maps, and you can find a ton of insane ones on this blog. Be sure you have a lot of time to waste, since there's tons of cool stuff on there, including a clever visual of online communities and a very compelling reason to study the cartography of Hannover.

While we're talking about graphical abstractions and wastes of time, you can lose hours in the "Stick Figures in Peril" photostream. Lots of funny ones, although I have yet to see the infamous "Beware Flying Bats and Balls" sign that has a stick figure getting whacked with a baseball... but this one is close. (It might have been caused by Jedi Baseball.)

Speaking of safety, if you're listing something to sell on Craigslist and don't want to put your phone number on the greater Intertubes, use this service to create a free forwarding number to keep your real number private. I also found a nifty way to keep your laptop private with a relatively inconspicuous FedEx envelope.

While you're on Craigslist, if you need to airbrush your picture for your personal ad (and you have Photoshop, natch), this tutorial can show you how in a ridiculous amount of detail. This should also show you how to never trust any picture you find online ever. You might find yourself with someone like this toothless harpy and end up on FOX reality television programming.

Speaking of things the cat wouldn't drag in -- I know... I'm reaching -- well, I don't want to spoil it, so just watch the video. If you get anything from this post, make it this:



And while we're on the joys of youth, remember as a parting word of advice that if you must show a "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner at a school function, the Supreme Court says you're better off with something like this.

I'm not going to get to be an editor

This summer I have been working to redesign the website for a local newspaper. In the process, I've been putting together mock-ups of the new design. While the standard procedure is to fill these models with Greek text, I've mostly stuck with filling in some recent news stories to make it look more realistic.

Naturally, this means I get to be Editor For A Day and write my own headlines:



Perhaps I won't be sharing these with the boss...

Any other scathing recent headlines I should sneak in?

How Delta should deal with the coming PR crisis of someone videotaping their 7-hour delayed flight

Watch this entertaining video (courtesy The Consumerist) about a man that was smart enough to videotape being stuck on the runway for almost 7 hours in a plane:



I now present 1-act play that I call...

Delta Crisis Response Squad

[Scene: Delta CEO's office]

DELTA CEO: "I feel like going for a plane ride today." [Picks up phone.] "Yes, I'd like 2 tickets... one for me and one for that suspicious-looking guy that works in IT... yeah, yeah, the one with the beard and the crazy eyes. ... tell him it's a business lunch."

[Scene: Airplane interior. Delta CEO and Suspicious IT Employee are sitting next to one another in coach]

CEO: "Thanks for joining me on this not-at-all-strange midair business lunch."

SITE: "Oh, no problem. It's nice to get out sometimes. And with the CEO, no less!"

CEO: "Of course. Would you mind taking a picture of me?"

SITE: "Sure thing, boss!"

[CEO hands camera to employee]

CEO: "HELP! This suspicious-looking man with a beard and crazy eyes is trying to learn the secrets of air travel! Homeland Security! Batman! George W. Bush! Any properly diligent citizen! Stop him!"

[A puff of smoke appears. Dick Cheney emerges from the blackness]

CHENEY: "We have underestimated terror. Clearly it wishes to expose the foibles of modern air travel through the black magic of 'film' and 'moving pictures.' I banish thee to Gitmo, Guillermo del Terror!"

[Lightning flies from his fingers and strikes Employee, who disappears.]

CHENEY: "Furthermore I ban all cameras, camcorders, and camera phones from planes! Or else terror will win!"

CEO: "Hooray!"

CHENEY: "May I have some of those peanuts?"

CEO: "No, they weren't budgeted for this flight."

CHENEY: "Awww..."

[Fin!]

Some website housekeeping

Please forgive the following wankery about the site's minor redesign:

Blogger has been kind enough to finally allow easier and more extensive customization to their templates, so you'll be seeing some changes around here.

I've already added a customized site banner to spruce things up and differentiate this site from all the countless others using this template.

I'm still tweaking the color scheme overall, so don't think you're going nuts if links and headers and such change colors suddenly. Blogger keeps suggesting ugly ass orange for some things and I can't have too much of that.

The sidebar is totally revamped. I've added a set of images showing some of the books, DVDs and CDs I've had in rotation that I think you should check out. The images don't link to anything intuitive like Amazon; they link to my Flickr account where they're tagged as "inrotation" with notes about what they are (in case you don't immediately recognize that I want you to listen to Wilco's latest album). Until I get a dedicated host for my stolen images (thanks, Amazon!) it'll have to do.

I've also greatly expanded my link list to include lots more of my sources of joy and strange news. If you read this and have a web site and you feel you have been unjustly left off, let me know and I'll fix it ASAP.

There's also a link roll from my del.icio.us account. I'm new to this social bookmarking thing; at the moment I mainly use it as a dump for tutorials and guides (particularly for Mac, web, and interface design stuff) that I don't want to lose track of. But I'll also save cool stuff like a searchable database of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons (try searching for "snowflake", "f-14", "snowman" and "raccoon" for some of my favorites) or funny t-shirts, or awesome articles about action movie one-liners. I also know that my tagging system is haphazard at best... I'm going to work out a better, more consistent way to keep them all straight.

Oh, and if you wanted to check my profile now, I use the word 'cock.' You'll just have to look and see how.

And now for something even more pointless:



Always funny.

Robot Chicken and Star Wars: joygasm!

Update! There's a better version of this available direct from Adult Swim. It's in 4 parts but it has nifty little pop-up video elements (look for the TV icon in the lower right corner). Courtesy of Pajiba.

If, like me, you've ever thought, "I love all those Star Wars parodies on Robot Chicken, but I hate having to track them all down individually on YouTube. Also, I wish there were more."

Well, look what I found:



You're welcome. The "Empire on Ice" musical at the 3:00 minutes left mark is not to be missed.

My half-completed to-do lists

Here's another pile of links and recommendations presented in the form of works-in-progress.

I make a lot of lists...

Reading List
1. The Sandman by Neil Gaiman
2. Bone: One Volume Edition by Jeff Smith
3. Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug
4. The World is Flat by Tom Friedman
5. The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
6. The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Normand

Video Games to Beat (as represented by links to video game comics and YouTube videos)
1. Metal Gear Solid 3
2. God of War 2
3. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
4. Guitar Hero 2 (on Expert) (If you've every played the game, you really need to witness the utter insanity of that video)
5. Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (yes, still...)

Music To Enjoy
1. Wilco - "Sky Blue Sky" (People hold fierce Wilco positions, so the comments get a little crazy by hipster rock standards. Just skip to the wonderful comment titled "Better than Revolver and Dark Side of the Moon")
2. Ted Leo & The Pharmacists - "Living with the Living"
3. Penguin Café Orchestra - "Preludes, Airs, and Yodels"

Action Movies I know were or will be retarded but enjoy anyway
1. XXX
2. Crank
3. The Protector (Argue with me that this 4-minute uncut battle isn't one of the coolest ever)
4. Unleashed
5. Live Free or Die Hard

Childhood Heroes To Mourn
1. Mr. Rogers (If you read any one link, read that one.)
2. Captain Kangaroo
3. Mr. Wizard
4. Optimus Prime
5. Darkwing Duck

Excessive Home Office Equipment to Purchase
1. 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor
2. Ridiculous ergonomic keyboard
3. Ridiculous ergonomic mouse
4. 30" Apple Cinema Display
5. Two of #4
6. A personal tank (Ok, for this one you must read the first few user reviews.)

Events to Witness
1. Pretty White Girl dies under tragically ridiculous circumstances. EVERYBODY PANIC! BAN EVERYTHING!
2. Someone recreates the LOTR Battle of Helm's Deep with candy
3. Olympic Committee unveils logo that looks like Lisa Simpson blowing a slot machine. . .
4. . . . that gives people seizures

5. Paris Hilton realizes her lack of worth
6. A baby buffalo survives an attack by a pack of lions. . . and an alligator.
7. The greatest day of a courtroom reporter's life
8. Ragnarok

Jobs To Have
1. "Can You Hear Me Now" guy a.k.a. Network Technician
2. Drone a.k.a. Corporate Insurance Underwriter
3. Hater of all humanity a.k.a. Waiter
4. Staffwriter a.k.a. very bad journalist
5. Asshole a.k.a. Web Designer
6. Hero a.k.a. The Daily Show or The Onion Writer
7. Hero a.k.a. X-Man

Very funny, Google Maps

So I was messing around with Google Maps the other day, when I found out that it now does driving directions in Europe.

But does it do driving directions to Europe?

Here's a map from Pittsburgh to Paris:



Hmm, interesting. What's that big line in the middle?



Har har. Very funny, Google.

Fill in the blanks

While I wasn't working this afternoon, I saw an interesting use of ellipses in a USA Today article about Michael Jordan praising LeBron James:

James was thrilled to learn of Jordan's approval. "It's great any time you get praise from the guy who basically laid down all the stones for you to get here," James said. "I grew up idolizing his game and how he played . . . basketball."

Huh? What got cut out in those ellipses at the end?

I have some theories:

". . . how he played and by the way, I think I'm much better than him at basketball."

". . . how he played. If you were wondering about how I'm celebrating, well, I've been vegging out at Starbucks and using the Poincaré Conjecture to evaluate the Ricci folds and three-dimensional manifolds of a basketball."

". . . how he played. If you're from Cleveland, I'm the feel-good story of the year. I'm just like Omar Epps' NBA superstar character in that movie Love & Basketball."

". . . how he played. And on a personal note, after game 5 against Detroit I'd like to see more in the news about how the combined weight of my balls is roughly that of a basketball."

". . . how he played with unsuspecting little boys. Oh, wait. I wasn't talking about the MJ that played basketball."

All of those seem pretty reasonable to me.

The Link Roundup

Since I've been doing anything but work this past week, I thought I might share the love and give you all some reading material this weekend.


First, it's not a blog post around here unless someone is mocking Star Wars. This link also mocks stamp collectors at the same time. Double bonus!

If you're think websites could look more interesting, well, you're right. Here are sixty website designs that really show the kind of visual pizazz and refinement that a graphic designer can bring to even the plainest or most poorly designed websites. (Those last two were courtesy the gang at The Big Noob.)

Speaking of design, did you know the Helvetica typeface is 50 years old this year? Let us celebrate in a clean, efficient manner.

Google continues their campaign to spy on your every moment. Or at least take pictures of your cat. Or leaving a strip club. Eeep. Since the big story involves a cat, you could expect the LOLCatters to jump in.

Speaking of cats, I found another LOLCat that's worth a chuckle if quantum theory is your thing.

In NY Times Most Emailed Town, the Gray Lady is kind enough to justify slacking off at work (thank God!), loves the crap out of Knocked Up, takes a moment to describe me, and provides a stunning example of how a picture can make a story. You can also have some fun calculating your economic class and prestige; the relative prestige levels are the most fun. Apparently writers are prestigious. Could have fooled me.

Speaking of the New York Times, The Onion really nailed it with this summary of the 'Most E-Mailed' list. They've also been ruthless in their mockery -- both indirect and slightly more blatant -- of Barry Bonds.

Speaking of sports, if you're not reading Deadspin, you're missing out on some of the most fun on the interbang. Just today they were kind enough to point out that LeBron James is not of this world, that there's a good reason to get interested in pole vaulting (who knew?? Here's some more on Miss Stokke. I know, and you're welcome.) And, self-aware to the bloody end, they even tear themselves and all other sports blogs a new one. AJ Daulerio truly is the balls. And I haven't even touched on the fun you can have if you follow the comments. Deadspin is the only one of two (the other is a FARK Photoshop contest) places on the interweb that I encourage people to follow the comments. As their editor says, the commenters provide about 76% of the entertainment on any given day.

Let me just get this out there: if Rupert Murdoch buys my precious Wall Street Journal, there's a good chance I'll never read it again. Like hell is he going to get my 9.95 a month.

While I'm on Slate, they continue being the masters of miscellany with wonderful slide show of church signs. The also explain the high suicide rate in Japan. Expect a follow up about the high suicide rate in Cleveland if the Cavs can't bring in one more win this weekend.

Did you see that you can buy tracks without copy protection on iTunes as of this week? Well, you might want to hold off on that. Also, if you've wanted an excuse to brush your teeth with milkshakes, you can thank China for the excuse.

Dan Carlson cracked me up quite a bit with his strategy to take down Ken Jennings (who also has a blog, if you were curious), recounts his first trip to a gay nightclub, thanks me for humoring him, and receives a harsh but deserved letter from HR.

If you use Gmail and Firefox, do yourself a favor and pick up the Greasemonkey extension and Lifehacker's Better Gmail tool to really take advantage of it. Lots of nifty little options and hacks, including new Gmail skins (I'm partial to Airstream), extra keyboard shortcuts, built-in TinyURL support, attachment icons, and a handy tool that reminds you to actually attach files if you typed "See attached" in your email. Priceless!

Finally, my favorite new blog catches some workplace smartasses in action. As a frequent author of passive aggressive notes in the workplace, I approve this message.

I'd like to think this will bring the lolcats phenomenon to its logical conclusion

The LOLCats must be stopped.

Have no idea what I'm talking about? Slate has an informative slide-show about the phenomenon.

I didn't really laugh at them at all until one of my favorite Pajiba writers submitted a list of phrases that don't hold up to lolcat pidgin.

With that inspiration and the power of the creative commons license (Thank you, Flickr), I present to you my one and only entry into image macros, proof that not all things can be made cuter with poor grammar and kitties:



Phrase courtesy of Dan Carlson and original image courtesy of Homingpigen, via Creative Commons license, on Flickr.

o hai i iz photoshop mastah.

You finally made a monkey out of me

What a twist!



If you simultaneously need to a) spoil movies for people; and b) wear a shirt, then Threadless has just the shirt for you:



In case you're wondering, it spoils: Star Wars; Planet of the Apes; The Usual Suspects; The Wicker Man; The Crying Game; The Sixth Sense; Harry Potter 6; Dallas "Who Shot J.R.?"; The Matrix; Fight Club; 300; Citizen Kane; The Others; Psycho; Soylent Green; The Village; A Beautiful Mind; Donnie Darko.

So if you haven't seen/read any of those, you probably shouldn't have read any of this.

... crap.

Spoilt by Oliver Moss [Threadless]

Post Office, 1; Amateur personal financiers, 0

As I'm sure you've heard by now, the Post Office has come out with a non-value first class stamp called the "Forever" stamp. 41 cents per stamp now will send a first-class letter for life with that baby.

Better stock up, right?

Wrong. Read this tersely worded write-up from Slate:

Should we all be stocking up?

Absolutely not. Since 1971, postal rates have increased more slowly than the actual inflation rate, as measured by the U.S. Consumer Price Index. So, despite the numerous rate hikes over the last 36 years, stamps have actually been getting cheaper. ... Should this historical pattern hold, you'd be paying more for today's forever stamps than you would for any stamp in the future, no matter how high the rate goes.

In fact, this pattern must hold—as a matter of law. In December, President Bush signed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which ensures that future price increases will be kept below an inflation-based ceiling. In other words, postage hikes will never surpass inflation—and the forever stamp will never become a good investment.

Cue the Debbie Downer waaah-waaaah sound effect.

Related: can we please call a moratorium on complaining about the cost of postage? Last time I checked, the ability to send a letter anywhere in the country and have it get there in a few days (even Saturday!) for only 41 cents is a miracle. You can't even get a soda for that price anymore.

Side note: anyone catch The Office finale? 1) I've never been happier with the writers' decision to make Ryan a douchebag. 2) Dear NBC: Give Creed a blog. For real. 3) I guess something big happened between Jim and Pam as well.

Look at my category! It's... big

So, I was scanning the article on Wikipedia about Alia Shawkat because, like George Michael, I have an inappropriate crush on Maeby Fünke, and I noticed this in the list of article categories at the bottom:



... ... really? Must be a big collection. Like, 6 billion articles. Well, according to the collection's front page, it's got 127,000. Sounds like a new way to waste time at work.