January 2009
310 posts
2009 Will Be A "Year of Panic". →
“So 2009 will be a squalid year, a planetary hostage situation surpassing any mere financial crisis, where the invisible hand of the market, a good servant turned a homicidal master, periodically wanders through a miserable set of hand-tied, blindfolded, feebly struggling institutions, corporations, bureaucracies, professions, and academies, and briskly blows one’s brains out for no...
“I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my...”
– Opening lines from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground
Super Bowl tips for non-football fans →
Now, with these tips, you have no excuse not to enjoy the Super Bowl- fan or not. The tips include:
-Don’t sweat your lacking knowledge
-Be helpful (someone’s got to get more snacks and beer)
-Game time is not class time (the most watched football game of the year is not the time to learn about football…. that’s what wikipedia is for)
Game on.
Total Request Live →
Great article about the golden age of TRL, including a list of the 10 most influential videos played on TRL. I like that the article also talks about the pop aesthetic, and why it worked:
“The pop aesthetic was easy to parody—the participants even did so themselves sometimes—but this is just evidence of how powerful it was, how coherent and logical a style. It seemed to evoke a...
Kittens, kittens, and more kittens.
For some reason, people have an affinity for putting things on the interweb that are kitten-related. And I’m going to post them here all at once rather than stretching them out:
A video of kittens riding a Roomba. A kitten learning to jump. A cat taking on an electric toothbrush. And then, there’s a cat adopting a baby bunny (Awwww.) And finally, a kitten inside of a printer. (I...
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What day is it? →
Ever have trouble remembering what day it is? Well, wonder no longer!
Has all the simplicity and functionality as Is It Friday?
“Happy Madison Productions historically has been very reluctant to do...”
– Oh God, Oh God, please no.
I bless the rains down in Africa... →
Who doesn’t love Toto? Well, don’t answer that. But “Africa” is unquestionably a fantastic song (as is any song that uses the line “sure as Kilamanjaro rises in the night.)
I’ve already admitted my love for covers, so check out the above linked video of an instrumental cover of “Africa”- it’s actually very cool.
I bless the rains….
“You know, I’m not sure if the prospect of a grisly public death will...”
– The Onion’s American Voices section in response to the second monster-truck-rally death within a week.
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Arrested Development movie? Finally? →
The New York Daily News has this quote from Jeffrey Tambor: “The movie is going to happen this year, and Michael Cera is on board. Trust me.” And why shouldn’t we trust Tambor? How did it happen? The agonizingly brief item doesn’t say, but it does mention that Tambor’s quote comes from a performance at the Upright Citzens Brigade theater in L.A. Is our long national...
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Glowing cities under a nighttime sky →
This gorgeous video was made by improvising a camera-stabilizer on an empty plane seat and shooting timelapse of the squiggles made by the cities the plane flew over. The creator, Flickr user Ettubrute, says, “On my night time flight back to SF from Amsterdam, I noticed that the lights from cities were making the clouds glow. Really spectacular and ethereal - it was really seeing the impact...
Get your Super Bowl commercial party going early →
If you’re one of the many who aren’t that into football but stay glued to your TV on Super Bowl Sunday for the commercials, you can head on over to Adweek right now to catch several of this weekend’s big campaigns.
“I’m in a faraway place. But I’m all right because you’re...”
– Princess Peach, in a letter to Mario (I miss the classic Nintendo games)
The Pope said so! →
When the Pope says that we as a culture are Facebooking too much- we might be Facebooking too much:
“It would be sad if our desire to sustain and develop on-line friendships were to be at the cost of our availability to engage with our families, our neighbours and those we meet in the daily reality of our places of work, education and recreation. If the desire for virtual connectedness...
The break-up month? →
“Divorce attorneys have long acknowledged that January and February are among their most bountiful months for acquiring new clients. Yet it is not only married folks who need fear the January freeze-out; couples in dating or live-in relationships also tend to go their separate ways more often in January than in any other month.”
Hang on for 2 more days! You can do it!
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London at night →
I know we’ve mentioned The Big Picture before, but it’s a truly fantastic photo website. This week is a series of 24 aerial photos of London. They’re absolutely stunning. If I can make all my former English professors happy, I’ll use Samuel Johnson’s words:
“Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is...
John Mayer and Queen Latifah are doing what? →
Oh, that’s right. John Mayer and Queen Latifah will be on an upcoming episode of Sesame Street. Seriously.
And here’s the kicker- the topic of the episode is military families, and coping with return from war. I’m truly failing to make the connection here. But I’m sure one of them has spent 9-10 hours in jail for getting in a bar fight. And that’s sort of the same...
“The Illinois Senate voted 59-0 to kick Rod Blagojevich out of office. To put...”
– The Best Week Ever blog (We’ll miss you, Rod- it’s been…..something)
WatchA news story out of Austin, Texas involving road signs. And zombies? Also note: this was the “Top Story” of the night; they had reporters on site covering this prank. Slow news night, guys?
"128-year-old" woman found in Uzbekistan →
Officials in the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan have found a woman whose birth certificate records her birth in July of 1880. 1880! Seriously. Other important events of 1880: The first electric streetlight is installed in Wabash, Indiana; U.S. presidential election where James Garfield defeats Winfield S. Hancock; Mexican soldiers kill Victorio, one of the greatest Apache military...
The mystery of the yellow football line. Solved! →
A video explaining how that magical first-down marker line on the football field is generated. Yay, football! And football related posts! (Via)
Do you talk too much? →
In conversation, try to heed The Traffic Light rule of thumb:
During the first 30 seconds of an utterance, your light is green: your listener is probably paying attention. During the second 30 seconds, your light is yellow — your listener may be starting to wish you’d finish. After the one-minute mark, your light is red: Yes, there are rare times you should “run a red...
Morbid? Check. Clever? Check. Odds on the 100... →
This list is one man’s compilation on the most likely obituaries of this new year. For example:
14) Ted Kennedy
Cause: Cancer
Reason: He survived brothers JFK and RFK by more than forty years, but this hard-living, hard-drinking Senator doesn’t have much time left. Diagnosed with brain cancer and recently suffering a seizure, I hope the cameras are rolling in heaven when he gets...
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Island/Def Jam records to create pre-fabricated...
In an enormous victory for folks who like their music pre-fabricated and gloriously, almost surreally artificial, Island Def Jam has announced its intention to create an average-tween-by-day-pop-star-by night named Mackenzie “Zee” Blue to promote an upcoming line of young adult novels based on the character.
Island/Def Jam talent scouts will scour playgrounds, middle-school locker...
A guide to napping →
First of all, this is one topic I am very well versed on. But who doesn’t need a refresher course?
Also cool is the caffeine nap. You drink a coke, or coffee or any caffeinated beverage, and then take a 15-20 nap. The caffeine takes more than that long to kick in, and you get the benefit of a nap in the mean time. The best of both worlds!
Free music on Amazon! →
The great folks at Amazon have made hundreds of MP3s available for download…. for free!
No snarky remarks or editorial comments to add … it’s just music … for free.
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“I have my own taste, and I make stories to my taste.”
– Ira Glass
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For XLIII Years, the Big Game as Art Form →
A New York Times piece about the changing Super Bowl logos through the years and how they very well might reflect our values and emphases as an American people.
“The 43 Super Bowl logos illustrate more than an annual championship. They draw a line through the league’s growth, the trends of graphic design, even the vagaries of one nation’s popular culture. ‘Sports are such a mirror...
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“Is that the last of the jobs? I’m getting really tired of having to hear...”
– The Onion’s American Voices section, in response to a round of layoffs involving 55,000 people on Monday.
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Stevie Nicks applies for work at an ice skating... →
Look, the economy is tough these days, and in light of that, it shouldn’t be surprising that some formerly very high profile celebrities and musicians are applying for work outside of their normal practices. Here, courtesy of McSweeney’s, see what it’s like when former Fleetwood Mac star and cocaine aficionado Stevie Nicks tries to land a job at a skating venue.
“I need...
“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to...”
– E.B. White
Can't touch this (na na na na.....) →
Here’s a list of 10 monuments that people want or need to touch (for whatever reason). Among the list are statues that have “good luck” legends attached to them (rubbing the foot of the statue of Moses Maimonides in Cordova Spain is supposed to bring good luck).
And of course, the Blarney Stone.