Things have been depressing lately so I thought everybody might need a little pick me up with Scatman John! That’s right he’s the Scatman be-de-bo-do-do, and he’s here to scat! I defy you not to feel better after listening to Scat.
Here is a PSA from Winnie the Pooh and his show Pooh’s corner that featured actors in costume’s against a green screen and looks like it cost $5 per season. It’s really creepy to watch them talk about kids being touched because the costumes are smiling the whole time so it looks like they’re really into it. Considering neither one of them is wearing pants either is it really appropriate for them to be talking to kids like that?
Who says that nerds won’t make good parents? Oh, no one said that? My bad. I guess I misheard, but here is a list anyway. Oh, and I am too lazy to prioritize these, so they are in no particular order.
1. Who has cooler toys and gadgets than nerds do? I can tell you my husband has three little man armies downstairs that he built from models, a million dolls-oh, I mean action figures- all over the place, card games, board games, you name it. As far as gadgets, how about good computers, video games consoles, large televisions and home theater systems? And let’s not forget about the plethora of DVDs or Blue Ray or whatever you happen to own. The child of a nerd will want for no awesome toys, as the nerdy parents will have already bought them all for themselves.
2. The children of nerds will not be left to watch TV alone for hours on end while the parents ignore their children. Oh no. And I can guarantee you that these children will not be watching The Doodlebops, either. These kids will be watching DVDs of G.I. Joe, Transformers, Thundercats, Sesame Street, Voltron, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and many more of our childhood favorites. And we will be sitting right beside them reliving our childhoods.
3. A Surplus of old comic books to read. Your nerd child is years behind on the X Men Series so you had better start reading him/her in the womb. Think about it, if you had the comics you had now as a child (all of them at once, I mean) you may have never left your room. Nerd children will be able to read by the time they are in kindergarten and they will have already read the entire Phoenix Saga. (more…)
Corner Gas
On WGN Superstation in the United States:
In a Nutshell: (Clerks+Seinfeld/It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) + Northern Exposure
I’m absolutely tickled by what Canada has been serving up on the box lately. Sure, they gave us SCTV, The Kids In The Hall and The Red Green Show, but it’s been an awfully long time inbetween those and their latest offerings: Trailer Park Boys (2001-2006), Corner Gas (2001-present) and Little Mosque on the Prairie (2006-present). While TBP didn’t get much of a showing in the US, and Little Mosque on the Prairie might not ever have a chance here (it totally should), America is finally getting a full taste of Saskatchewan’s answer to Seinfeld - Corner Gas. WGN, which has been a part of most basic cable packages for years, picked up Canada’s favorite show (now in its 5th season in Canada) and put it in heavy rotation.
You really don’t want to miss this one, folks.
The premise is very simple - it’s about a small town in Saskatchewan called Dog River (population ~500). The town center is a gas station run by Brent LeRoy (Brent Butt) that he has taken over from his retired father, Oscar (Eric Peterson). The station is connected (think “truck stop”) to a small diner called Ruby’s, which is now run by a displaced Torontonian named Lacey (Gabrielle Miller). Brent’s unemployed but forever-scheming friend Hank (Fred Ewanuick) hangs out at the gas station, as does the rest of the town. Brent’s sole employee Wanda, his mom Emma and the two town cops round out the cast. Plot lines revolve around little schemes and happenings in the town.
As I said - extremely simple. However, the writing, acting and even the editing makes this show extremely compelling and even - dare I say it - laugh-out-loud funny! I know this makes me sound like TV Guide but honestly people, I try not to steer you wrong here (please ignore my previous attempts at liking Studio 60. We all make mistakes.) I was ready to not believe the hype, but the first scene of the first show caught me off guard and made me let out a huge guffaw. Yes, I guffawed out loud. It’s that good.
You’ll note in the In A Nutshell description, I liken the show to Clerks (about goofy characters who hang out all day at the convenience store), Seinfeld (a show about nothing, with terrific acting), It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (today’s Seinfeld) and Northern Exposure (fish out of water in a sleepy northern town).
Corner Gas is more like Northern Exposure and less like Seinfeld in that it has sympathetic characters. On the flip side, it’s a little more edgy than Northern Exposure and zero drama. Fast camera breaks to illustrate stories and the geekiness of some of the characters’ conversations bring it back into Clerks and …Philadelphia territory. And, the amazingly deadpan dry humor of writer/star Brent Butt rounds out the perfectness to make it a show entirely worth watching. I guarantee you’ll like the freshness of it and at the same time find it to be a style you feel comfortable with. Extremely dry sarcasm and unapologetic Canadian-ness makes it hard to look away. And don’t worry if you miss a few episodes - they’re completely self-contained.
This show has made all of Canada go ga-ga for Gas for the past 4 years, receiving numerous awards, breaking new ground (first show to have Canadian Prime Minister guest star, first show to release a previous season on DVD before a new season is out, etc) and I’m guessing it’s second only to Hockey Night In Canada. This could very well be Canada’s The Office or The IT Crowd, so be sure to jump on the bandwagon early before America turns it to shit.
My wife surprised me with an iPhone. Huge surprise. I like my Treo 650, except for one major flaw - it periodically freezes up and requires a reset. This was frustrating for me, but even more frustrating for her - if she called and I didn’t answer, she had no way to know if I would get the message in a little while or hours and hours later, when I finally realized my phone was dead.
So she surprises me with an iPhone. I check to make sure I have the latest version of iTunes and plug it in. Then, nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. Windows tries to “add new hardware” but it can’t find the drivers for the iPhone. I try manually looking for them under iTunes’ folder, but no *.inf files are to be found.
Apple is well known for their focus on eas of use, so why am I having problems? My iPhone will work quite happily with my PC, once I pay Microsoft $100 or so.
Oh, and it makes them live longer. Today’s headline article on Yahoo states that hard working scientists over there at lifescience.com are boasting that old men should be marrying and having children with younger women. They say that it would be beneficial for the entire species! I have a hypothesis of my own: the researchers are old men, wondering how to get beautiful young girls to sleep with them since they were not stinking rich like Hugh Hefner. Because, let’s face it, non of those bleach blond airheads are at the playboy ranch because they find Hugh attractive. If you disagree, you are a man above the age of 55. Maybe one of these researchers?
Either way, the article goes on to say something about Darwin, I really don’t think that they know much about Darwin, they just mention him in passing. And then, folks, it advocates killing women genetically after menopause. Oh, so old guys are soooooooo much better? Oh, yes, cause as a young woman I would totally love to be getting it from someone my grandpa’s age? No. That is gross. I know I will be that old eventually. I will wait till I get there. I don’t want to be arm candy just so like a hundred years from now our overpopulation problem will suck even more because there will be people who live into their 100’s more often. Anyway, if you don’t believe me that the people over at lifescience.com don’t want to kill women after menopause, let me just quote them here as saying:
women who can no longer reproduce are non-players, and since “it takes two,” men partnered with menopausal women are also irrelevant.Following that idea, natural selection should select for harmful mutations that impact women after menopause. Over time, the discriminating genes would accumulate in the population causing what evolutionary biologist William Hamilton called the “wall of death,” in which mortality of women spikes at the onset of menopause. (more…)
Here is video of Kanye West losing his shit after being shut out at the VMA’s for the second year in a row. Seriosuly dude it’s not like it’s a real award or anything, I mean it’s a moonman its a joke. But whatever I guess Kanye has to throw a temper tantrum.
And who can forget Kanye’s famous rant on George Bush post Katrina
So, in breaking Yahoo news today a couple has lived in Travelodges for 22 years. At a Travelodge. For 22 years. I don’t know about you but I stay at a Travelodge because they are cheap. Not too cheap like a Knights Inn or anything, I learned my lesson there, but really cheap to stay in where ever you go. Not comfy cheap. Just cheap. And 22 years? From what the article says it’s only really been 10 years at this one. Here is what I don’t get. They keep paying for the flat they own wherever it is as well. They just go there to get the mail. So, they pay for, what? A house they keep and a summer hotel room? A house no one stays in? Seriously, if you are going to be this lazy, you may as well just sell your freaking house and get a P O Box at the post office. It’s like a senior citizens center but they aren’t ninety and sitting diapered in their own waste. Or are they?
Please just kill me if I ever get this way.
Just something fun for you today, some a Capella songs that I think were done very well. Got better? Post it in the comments.
First up is Bohemian Rhapsody done by the University of California a Capella group.
Had to rebuild my desktop at work this morning, which meant re-installing the RAW Viewer. Why Microsoft never saw fit to natively support RAW files in XP is beyond me. Then there’s the whole “Windows Genuine Advantage” validation routine they make you go through to actually download the viewer. But that’s another post for another day. I found something interesting while downloading the viewer from Microsoft’s website:
See it? No? How about a closer look:
Lookie there - the Firefox logo on the Downloads pane. So whoever wrote up the downloads page didn’t check their browser before grabbing their screenshots.
At one point, I followed the statistics of how many people used first Netscape Navigator, then later Mozilla, then Firefox. At one point, I watched closely what market share they had versus Internet Explorer. Lately, it seems all those figures are up for debate and scritinizing. But it sure says a lot when Microsoft’s own employees prefer the competition’s browser.
Well yesterday were the the MTV Video Music Awards which featured a bunch of rich and famous celebrities partying and having more fun then you ever will. The big news was Britney Spears comeback at the beginning of the show. Of course in traditional crazy Britney fashion she totally bombed. First off she lip synced to her new song which apparently she didn’t even know the words too, performed a horrible routine that looked like she was going to topple over several times and also featured sexy paunch.
A lot of people are saying its unfair to criticize her for her appearance because she has had to kids, but considering 99.9% of Britney’s success was do to her looks and not musical talent I think it’s a fair criticism. Also nobody told her to have two kids with a wanna be rapper back up dancer.
According to BusinessWeek, the Lunesta ad is one of the least-skipped commercials on TV. This is an important metric for advertisers. Ever since TiVo and other DVRs have made it easy for people to jump past commercials, advertisers have tried to find ways to get them to watch.
If you look at the rest of the the list, it’s hard to see what makes a commercial less skipworthy. I have a theory in the case of Lunesta. I think people don’t skip because they are mesmerized by the soul-eating Lunesta butterfly. Watch the video:
…And now you tell me: doesn’t it look like the butterfly brought that woman the sweet gift of a quiet death? Every time that commercial comes on, I point to the screen and yell to my wife, “That butterfly is going to steal her breath!”
Apparently I’m not the only one creeped out…
So, what would you do if you were put into one of those classic situations where you find money that isn’t yours? I will give you three different scenarios.
Scenario 1: You find twenty dollars on the sidewalk. No one is around.
-Basically the answer to this seems pretty easy. It is impossible to determine who the $20 belongs to, so the money is now yours. If you feel guilty about it, then feel free to donate it to the Children’s Hospital or the Humane Society or whatever your choice of charity would happen to be. If no guilty, spend it on a special whatever for yourself for being so lucky. I guarantee that the person who lost it will be kicking themselves but oh well, that’s just how things go I’m told.
So, that was easy, let’s move on to scenario 2: You find a wallet. It has money in it, also some cards and a state ID. So, this time you still found money, but now you know to whom the money belongs. So, basically you have three options. A: take the money, leave the wallet where you found it, maybe the person who lost it will come back and find it and anyway, it’s finders keepers, right? B: Try to contact the person to give the wallet back unmolested by your filthy money grubbing hands or give it over to the proper authorities and hope they do the right thing as well. C: Take the entire wallet and do what you will with it. (more…)
You probably got to this article by Googling “how to be a hipster” or “learn to be a hipster.” If that’s the case, it’s too late, don’t even bother, you’ll never be a hipster - the fact that you want to be one enough to type it into a web browser means you are already trying too hard.
Besides, are you really still using Google? Or the word “googling”? What is this, 2002?
So enjoy this video, it’s funny enough to make you feel better but it’s a shallow enough commentary that you’ll remain plainly not a hipster.
When most airlines are having technical troubles, they call a mechanic or get out the manual or something to that matter. I am assuming. I have never worked for an airline but this is what I figure happens. It is logical, it makes sense.
Not if you work for Nepal Air. An article today on MSNBC is headlined “Airline sacrifices goats to appease sky god“. I thought that this headline might possibly be, you know, something to catch my attention and that the “sacrificial goats” were like, you know, taking away the in flight pretzels or beverages, some type of budget cut. Not actual goats. And not to an actual “sky god”.
These sacrificial goats, who’s names were Mindy and Max, were sacrificed in the name of Akash Bhairab, who is the renowned Hindu Sky God. Akash Bhairab has long been in control of all flying aircraft in and out of Nepal and surrounding areas and of course, if there is technical troubles, there must be sacrifices. Max and Mindy are not the first of their kind to be sacrificed for the greater good of on time departure and arrival times. It has been rumored that the Boeing 757 in question had offended Mr. Bhairab by having “technical troubles” possibly dealing with the “electrical wiring”, two things which the ancient and all powerful sky god is not familiar with. Thus, the sacrifice had to be made.
The highlight of this entire article from our good friends at MSNBC was this little snippet:
“The snag in the plane has now been fixed and the aircraft has resumed its flights,” said Raju K.C., a senior airline official, without explaining what the problem had been.
Without explaining what the problem had been? Obviously the problem was that the 757 had offended Mr. Bhairab and measures had to be taken. There will be a funeral held for Max and Mindy in the proper manner later this week. There is no comment from Max or Mindy’s surviving family as they are goats and do not speak.
It has been rumored that Delta plans on converting all of their staff to the Hindu religion later this year to gain Mr Bhairab’s favor over their current budget crisis.
