Deeper Into Cartoons

After discovering wikiSimpsons, I was disappointed to see that the wikiRenandStimpy was pretty much empty. I usually am disappointed when I go back to watch cartoons from my childhood (Thundercats and He-Man were particularly devastatingly bad) but I think Ren and Stimpy still got it. The classic, Space Madness:

Ren and Stimpy - Space Madness

(Annoyed-Grunt!)

Today's featured article on WikiSimpsons:

D'oh (represented in the shows script as "annoyed-grunt") is Homer Simpson's famous catchphrase. It is used when Homer hurts himself, finds out something to his embarrassment or chagrin, is outsmarted, or undergoes or anticipates misfortune.

When Dan Castellaneta,Homer's voice actor, was first asked to voice the exclamation, he rendered it as a drawn out "doooh", inspired by Jimmy Finlayson, the moustached Scottish actor who appeared in many Laurel and Hardy films. Finlayson coined the term as a minced oath to stand for the word "Damn!" The show's creator Matt Groening felt that it would better suit the timing of animation if it were spoken faster so Castellaneta shortened it to "D'oh!"

It was first heard on a Tracey Ullman Show short entitled "Punching Bag", which aired on November 27, 1988. When Bart and Lisa try to hide a punching bag with his face on it, and it knocks him out. Homer's reaction is "D'oh!" The next occasion it was heard was in the first episodes of The Simpsons, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", airing on December 17, 1989.

And this year's Nominee for Most Awkward World Leader Group Photo

Awkward, yes, but in a totally different way from last year's winner in which everybody scurried away from George Bust as fast as they could (Sarkozy is like, 'oh, shit, how can I get past without him seeing me...'):


Correction: I referred to George Bush above as 'George Bust'; I should correct it. However, I like it when typos actually become freudian slips, so I am just going to leave it like that.

Twitter Understood

For those of us who have used Twitter on occasion, but aren't quite sure when or why to use it, and CERTAINLY can't explain to anybody else what the point of it is, Dan Kennedy at McSweeny's lets us in on his Groundbreaking Marketing Research:

Twitter seems to be, first and foremost, an online haven where teenagers making drugs can telegraph secret code words to arrange gang fights and orgies. It also functions as a vehicle for teasing peers until they commit suicide. In order to become a "follower" on Twitter, teens first must flash their high-beam headlights at an oncoming motorist on the highway. Then, if that motorist flashes his or her high-beam headlights back in reply, the teen must kill the motorist in order to be initiated into "following" the online gang.

Colbert + Beck =

Stephen Colbert is on the Glenn Beck bandwagon (finally!).
This guy (Beck) just gets better and better. I can't wait until they put him on south Park:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The 10/31 Project
comedycentral.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

Clip Art Bonanza

OK, really this time: You Can Rest Easy

All right, that last one was a joke, but this one is for real, apparently:


No, seriously. I think that in light of this most people would just support outright Obama dictatorship in order to avoid having these fools in charge of anything ever again.

We can all Rest Easy now

Well, in light of the global economic meltdown that we are in the midst of, its good to see that the Republican Party is not wasting our time with numbers and calculations, because that's about the last thing we need right now. I mean, that's probably the kind of stuff that got us into this mess in the first place: too much thinkin' and not enough randomly spouted vague plans about tax cuts.

A portion of their budget outline (via Nate Silver):

Because Every Day Should be Made

Despite how incredible "You Make My Day" is, Michael J. Lewis wishes he was John Tesh:


So he can do THAT. I know he hasn't created a horse-musical or anything, but he does have the answer to the financial meltdown we are in the midst of. Is there anything this guy doesn't know/can't do?




[John Tesh playing Black Sabbath on the keytar w Dweezil Zappa]

Consider Your Day Made

I like to imagine this blog as some sort of timecapsule, so that in the future, we can all remember what life was like way back when.....in the spirit of that, I would like to present what is, at this moment in time, the opening credits for the most popular TV show in the country: "You Make my Day". Ahhhhh, they don't make 'em like this anymore, do they, readers from 2050? (Thank you, Videogum. I don't know how you do it)



Oh, and don't forget the website.

Yes Funky

Via NoiseAddicts. A fairly obscure group. And by obscure, I mean funky.

Cymande came to being in 1971 in London, England, formed mainly by musicians from Jamaica and Guyana. In their 3 short years together they created some incredibly soulful music, and were one of the more sophisticated funk bands of the early 70’s.

That being said, to call them “just a funk band” is doing them a stellar disservice. They combined groove, funk, african music and percussion, calypso, reggae-type Rasta lyrics, Santana-esque rhythms and minimal arrangements into a superbly distinctive, complex and eclectic mix.

You can find some of their albums at Amazon (and I'm sure other places, too)

Passing Time

Noah K. has been taking pictures of himself everyday. This video comprises six years of photos.



You can stay up-to-date on what he looks like at his website, where he is still taking pictures of himself.

Sorry, I was asleep on the subway for the past few days...

I take pictures of strangers all the time, but I think this may just be cruel:
There's more where that came from.

Belt + Sword =

This is one of those things that speaks for itself. Go to www.beltswords.com for more videos and to order your own.

[Load RazorSword into BeltSword System]


[Deploy your BeltSword carefully]


[or deploy the BeltSword like a ninja]

Highlights from the NIT (seriously)

Usually, I am bored with the whole Dunk-as-Highlight-Footage thing, but this on the other hand:

No. People NEED sunlight.

A lot of crazy stories come out of Japan. Cramming people into trains. Vending machines with used panties. Hordes of Crows. Hordes of bee to attack the hordes of crows. Suicide Clubs.
And now this. Is Tokyo really so expensive that people will do this to themselves? Or are the crows really that bad? From Boing Boing:

The BBC reports on a cyber cafe outside Tokyo that has a dark room divided into tiny cubicles where 60 people "who rarely emerge" live. These folks are called cyber drifters and "they have just enough money to stay off the streets." It costs $500 a month to live in one of these "coffin-size booths," which have no natural light or fresh air. "In Tokyo it doesn't get any cheaper than that, or more claustrophobic." The owner of the cyber cafe is making a tidy sum off the rent: 60 X $500 = $30,000

“The whole world lives together in New York. And we use a lot of poly bags.”

[photo by Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times]

There is apparently a century-plus-old dispute between Japan and South Korea regarding the Dokdo Islands. Chang-Duck Jeon, president of the Korean Dry Cleaners Association, has been trying to raise awareness of it by having dry-cleaning bags printed with this image and slogan, selling them mostly to dry cleaning businesses in New York City.

“It was a way to speak out,” Mr. Jeon reasoned. “What’s ours is ours.”

The islands, known as Takeshima in Japan, are not as big of an issue for the Japanese-American community in the city. From the New York Times:

“The conflict doesn’t really come up,” he said. A spokeswoman for the Japanese Embassy in Washington said she was having a hard time finding someone to comment on the dispute, and she referred a reporter to the Web site of the Japanese Foreign Ministry. There, “Japan’s Inalterable Position on the Status of Takeshima” is spelled out in 10 languages.

Stupefacient Interdiction

An interesting newsletter is out there, called Microgram Bulletin,

a monthly newsletter published by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Office of Forensic Sciences, and is primarily intended to assist and serve forensic scientists concerned with the detection and analyses of suspected controlled substances for forensic/law enforcement purposes.

It basically gives an overview of how and what kinds of drugs are being smuggled. The image above is of cocaine smuggled in rum bottles, intercepted in Seville, Spain and analyzed by the 'Stupefacient Control Laboratory' there:

The Stupefacient Control Laboratory of the Health Department (Seville, southwestern Spain) recently received 12 bottles of Venezuelan Rum, each containing a yellow liquid suspected to contain dissolved cocaine (see Photo 1). The exhibits were seized by the Police/Anti-Narcotics Enforcement Department from a passenger arriving at the Seville airport on a flight from Venezuela. The bottles were labelled as containing 0.7 liter of liquid, but the actual volumes ranged between 623 and 687 milliliters. Analysis by color testing, GC/FID, and GC/MS confirmed cocaine base (range 17.6 to 27.7 percent, average 22.8 percent). The total amount of cocaine base in the 12 bottles was 1986.9 grams. This was the largest such submission to the laboratory.

[Thanks, Boing Boing]

On Glenn Beck: "I've got cookies..."

I've been meaning to put up something on how I think Glenn Beck is completely mad, but Jon Stewart basically beat me to it. I used to simply find him distasteful, but then recently (since moving over to Fox News) I have found his ramblings to be amusing, and his ability to almost instantly get out of his depth while having a discussion fairly impressive. His discussion here about pot legalization is pretty funny, partly because he acts so weird, but mostly because he eventually makes the case for legalization without really realizing it. And then he even manages to make Bill O'Reilly a little uncomfortable with his random assertions that 'political correctness' causes mass-killings:


All very amusing, but then I read this, which is more disturbing than amusing:

"I don’t believe Al Gore is trying to gas or round up Jews, I don’t believe the result is going to be the same thing. Just understand that the tactic used was a device used by the Nazis. For instance, we have him on tape during the convention or during the inauguration where he was talking to 12-, 13-, 14- and 15- year olds, and he said “Look there’s a lot of things you understand instinctively but your parents don’t understand those things because they’re just too trapped in old thinking.” Well, gosh, I mean, I know he’s not going to be rounding up Jews any time soon but that’s called the Hitler Youth where you turn the children against the parents."

Glenn Beck was in my dream last night, which is disturbing (well, I think I was watching him on TV and remarking to somebody- my father?- how popular and yet how crazy Glenn Beck is).

Presidential Madness

The tournament is here, and I wonder how many people are going to be copying President Obama's bracket:
A prudent bracket. Few upsets, and all major teams in the Final Four (UConn is clearly weak). He is obviously conflicted about his final choices however, and I think he should have followed his instincts on this one.

Chris Good provides too much analysis here.