Archive for 2009
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Did You Take The Red Pill Or The Blue Pill?
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on July 24, 2009 by admin in Politics
Friday, July 24th, 2009Shirts or skins? Red or blue? Republican or Democrat? Liberal Or conservative? Is life really that simple? Maybe an online quiz can help.
I’m confused. I wish the words liberal and conservative would rediscover their meaning and stop consorting with scoundrels like the Democratic and Republican parties. And I wish we could de-politicize colors. Although it was pretty easy to choose a color in the great red and blue contest of 2008, I think I’m really something more like purple, given what red and blue have come to mean. And purple just seems a little indecisive somehow. But who – if they’re paying attention - wouldn’t be a little undecided, in a time when both near-socialists like myself and a rabid neo-con like Free Republic’s Jim Robinson joke about the need for revolution, rather than voting. I think I’d fall into the liberal category simply because I don’t want some demented, rapture-driven Ayn Rand capitalist deciding who we can have sex with, or racist nutjobs like the GOP base deciding anything for us. But I can’t say I’m ecstatic with the current administration either. I know that campaigns are poll-driven marketing machines designed to appeal to nebulous but emotional voter values (like mine), but I have to admit I still feel a little suckered by the “Hope & Change” pitch. I see the former fading in a lot of people, and very little of the latter. So rather than continue thinking for myself, which has never done me any good, I decided to submit my indecision to science, and took the Pew Research Typology Test. Give it a try, the results were surprising. So surprising in fact (it pegged me as a Conservative Democrat) that now I’ve given up on science as well. I found this Democratic Loyalty Test much more informative, with questions and choices like: Read the rest of this entry »
80′s One Hit Wonders
[ 5 Comments ]Posted on July 23, 2009 by admin in Music
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009Was the music & fashion so bad because we did so many drugs, or did we do so many drugs because the music and fashion was so bad?
At last, the “Official” video for 88 Lines About 44 Women. Rather peculiar, and NGSFW* |
I’d completely forgotten about the 80′s song “88 Lines About 44 Women” by The Nails until the other day when the “Official” video (also at left, NGSFW*) appeared on YouTube. I guess it isn’t so odd I’d forget about it; as much as I loved the song back then, I now remember clearly the drug-addled morning that I first heard it. I had just awakened in the San Francisco apartment of some woman I’d met the night before and she thought it really funny to play it under the circumstances. Honestly, I sometimes wonder if there were so many one-hit wonders in the 80′s simply because people were doing so many drugs that they couldn’t remember the bands’ names from release to release. I know that I, for one, remember very little of lasting value from the years 1983-1990, and given our hairstyles, clothing, and musical preferences, probably prefer it this way! But I thought it would be fun to try to recall – without using the Internet or VH-1 as a memory aid – a list of these tunes. By the way, compiling this list made me realize that there’s a previously un-named micro-genre in here somewhere that’s epitomized by tunes like Trio’s Da Da Da, The Flying Lizards’ Money (That’s What I Want), and The Nails’ song featured above. I hereby christen this genre “Clock Rock”. Remember me if that catches on. The list is below, feel free to share your own in the comments…
Dick Butkus Was Joe King When He Said Ben Dover & Stan Still
[ Comments Off ]Posted on July 22, 2009 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009What’s in a name? A lot, if your parents named you something like Barb Dwyer or Barry Cade, or if the web guys at Experts Exchange buy the domain ExpertSexChange.com.
 Meet Doctor Fear |
When I was a kid, I and a friend of mine spent hours thinking up strange names that might actually exist, looking them up in the phone book, and then prank calling them. The best ones we ever came up with in our town were “Otto Graf” and “Iona Appl”. When I had my wisdom teeth extracted, I went to Dr. Fear (I highly recommend him!), who shares an office with Dr. Hitchcock (there are apparently lots of others with awkward names for their profession). Later in life, when I thought about what I would name my kids, I thought that with the last name Gray it might be fun to name them after paint chits. I decided on “Gun Metal” for a boy, and “Ash” for a girl. I’d never do this of course, but I’ve always wondered whether it was cruelty or obliviousness that leads people to give their kids the kinds of names discussed in this BBC News article, or collected in lists like this. And then there are business names and web addresses. I wonder if the web person over at the non-profit “Childrens Laughter” was laughing himself as he bought ChildrenSlaughter.com? This kind of thing is a little less surprising when there’s a language barrier, but this list of brand launch mistakes in other countries is still kind of amusing. Have any amusing name stories of your own to share?
You May Already Be A Wiener
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on July 21, 2009 by admin in Holidays
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009It’s National Hot Dog Month, but frankly, I think PETA’s winning the PR battle with their suggestion to put something different between your buns
 Lettuce pause for a moment to ponder PETA’s tofu tube steak suggestions |
Whenever someone asks me if there are any foods I don’t eat, I always forget to mention hot dogs, because, er, frankly, I don’t think of them as food. Although I’ll eat one once in awhile, I put them in the same category as Twinkies or a McMeal Deal: a thing I will chew and taste and swallow if there’s no actual organic matter around. But ignore my foodie pretensions. This is America, and it’s National Hot Dog Month, for cryin’ out loud. So grab a white bread bun, some French’s mustard, and stick a wiener in your mouth. To make sure you’re doing it up right, download a copy of the 2009 Hot Dog Month Planning Guide (6.1MB PDF), and to satisfy your appetite for tube steak knowledge, grab a copy of Frank Facts About Hot Dogs while you’re at it. They use appetizing phrases like “meat trimmings”, “stainless steel choppers blend the meat”, and “processed intestines” to further seduce you. And did you know that Americans will eat about 2 billion hot dogs this month? If we did our math correctly, those hot dogs laid end-to-end would reach 189,393 miles, which is about 4/5 of the way to the moon. So, while July 22 is National Hot Dog Day, I think the National Hot Dog & Sausage Council needs to hire a new PR firm. Although they had enough savvy to create a Facebook Fan Page and a YouTube channel PETA already seems to have stolen their thunder by protesting on Capitol Hill July 16. And since we’ve given so much time to wieners and dogs today, let’s give equal time to breasts and monkeys with the Breasts Not Animal Tests game. I scored 33,375 points, but the breasts just came too fast at the end. Got any interesting hot dog or sausage links to share?
Getting A New Angle On Things Is Easy When You’re From The Fourth Dimension
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on July 20, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Monday, July 20th, 2009A kid from A-Square confronts his spheres and talks about hypercubes to help give your otherwise two-dimensional morning a new perspective.
A Three-Dimensional Representation Of A Four-Dimensional Object |
Although we originally started our Monday Demotivators to add a little dimension to your Monday morning, we’ve fallen a little flat this week; all we have is this simple game in which you guess the shape of a three-dimensional object as it passes through your two-dimensional field of view. This game will be familiar to anyone who’s familiar with the book Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions