July 2, 2009
Colt 45: Works Every Time - Thanks Billy Dee Williams! (Also, it’s good to know that he still is getting paid.)
Related: It’s national 40 oz. week at The Fifty/50.

Colt 45: Works Every Time - Thanks Billy Dee Williams! (Also, it’s good to know that he still is getting paid.)

Related: It’s national 40 oz. week at The Fifty/50.

fishy:

Jeff Goldblum Addresses Rumors of His Death on The Colbert Report (Comedy Central Insider Blog via RedEye Chicago)

Oh, Jeff Goldblum. I love you.

(for some reason, this won’t play on the dashboard; click through. and does anyone know how to fix this?)

For the video’s embed code, you need to strip out all the code before and after the “embed” tags. For some reason Tumblr doesn’t like all of this extra code when it’s put into the dashboard interface. I should also note that you need to do this for DailyMotion, MTVMusic.com and Cartoon Network videos.

July 1, 2009
Gizmodo: Disgusting Sewer Creature Update: IT’S F#$%ING REAL! - Apparently, these are some kind of worms called “Tubifex,” which typically would be only found “in soil and sediment, especially at the bottom and edges of polluted streams.” Well, so much for that! I only have one suggestion: “Nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
Billy Idol “Dancing With Myself” - He fights zombies! Also, does anyone know if that tattoo on his left arm depicts Wonder Woman?

Shepard Fairey’s work process - If you’ve ever wondered how he creates his originals, then this video’s worth watching. (If you don’t know who Fairey is, he’s the guy that created that Obama poster all the kids thought was really hip.) Via OMG Posters!
Jennifer 8. Lee hunts for General Tso - I had no idea how diverse and evolutionary the concept of “Chinese food” actually was throughout the world. And fortune cookies aren’t even Chinese! (They’re Japanese.)
Giving up my iPod for a Walkman - A 13-year-old test drives the cassette-tape player for a week. The observations he makes are pretty amusing, such as this:

Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn’t is “shuffle”, where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down “rewind” and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured.
I told my dad about my clever idea. His words of warning brought home the difference between the portable music players of today, which don’t have moving parts, and the mechanical playback of old. In his words, “Walkmans eat tapes”.

It’s amazing to think that kids these days never experienced (or owned) a Walkman. I remember the days of cassettes and carefully crafting a mixtape. Not to mention being blown away by the introduction of CDs and eventually the first few mp3 players. I remember being so stoked to have my 64 MB Samsung Yepp player.
The kid does recognize the Walkman’s significance though for its time, saying that he can imagine how excited people were at the idea of having portable music:
Perhaps that kind of anticipation and excitement has been somewhat lost in the flood of new products which now hit our shelves on a regular basis.
He’s got a point there. While there’s certainly buzz over each new version of the iPod/iPhone, it’s not the huge technological leap mentally to think that it’s going to significantly shift our way of life. Instead, the first thing we do when we hear about the new gadget is we quickly tear it apart and complain about features it doesn’t have included.

Giving up my iPod for a Walkman - A 13-year-old test drives the cassette-tape player for a week. The observations he makes are pretty amusing, such as this:

Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn’t is “shuffle”, where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down “rewind” and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured.

I told my dad about my clever idea. His words of warning brought home the difference between the portable music players of today, which don’t have moving parts, and the mechanical playback of old. In his words, “Walkmans eat tapes”.

It’s amazing to think that kids these days never experienced (or owned) a Walkman. I remember the days of cassettes and carefully crafting a mixtape. Not to mention being blown away by the introduction of CDs and eventually the first few mp3 players. I remember being so stoked to have my 64 MB Samsung Yepp player.

The kid does recognize the Walkman’s significance though for its time, saying that he can imagine how excited people were at the idea of having portable music:

Perhaps that kind of anticipation and excitement has been somewhat lost in the flood of new products which now hit our shelves on a regular basis.

He’s got a point there. While there’s certainly buzz over each new version of the iPod/iPhone, it’s not the huge technological leap mentally to think that it’s going to significantly shift our way of life. Instead, the first thing we do when we hear about the new gadget is we quickly tear it apart and complain about features it doesn’t have included.

Sarah Palin says she can outrun Obama - In a marathon, that is. From her interview with Runner’s World:

Could you beat the president?
I betcha I’d have more endurance. My one claim to fame in my own little internal running circle is a sub-four marathon. It wasn’t necessarily a good running time, but it proves I have the endurance within me to at least gut it out and that is something. If you ever talk to my old coaches, they’d tell you, too. What I lacked in physical strength or skill I made up for in determination and endurance. So if it were a long race that required a lot of endurance, I’d win.

And there’s also this bit about her and running in Alaska:

What’s the funniest thing that happened on a run?
In Anchorage on the coastal trail there have been many times where I’ve had to stop right in my tracks and turn around because there’s been either a moose standing there staring at me or a moose’s butt plopping on over into the trail. I have to turn around and leave, or I’m going to get clobbered.

And, no, I haven’t had time to read the Vanity Fair profile of Sarah Palin yet.

Sarah Palin says she can outrun Obama - In a marathon, that is. From her interview with Runner’s World:

Could you beat the president?

I betcha I’d have more endurance. My one claim to fame in my own little internal running circle is a sub-four marathon. It wasn’t necessarily a good running time, but it proves I have the endurance within me to at least gut it out and that is something. If you ever talk to my old coaches, they’d tell you, too. What I lacked in physical strength or skill I made up for in determination and endurance. So if it were a long race that required a lot of endurance, I’d win.

And there’s also this bit about her and running in Alaska:

What’s the funniest thing that happened on a run?

In Anchorage on the coastal trail there have been many times where I’ve had to stop right in my tracks and turn around because there’s been either a moose standing there staring at me or a moose’s butt plopping on over into the trail. I have to turn around and leave, or I’m going to get clobbered.

And, no, I haven’t had time to read the Vanity Fair profile of Sarah Palin yet.
“The Informant!” Trailer - This looks pretty funny and they actually shot some of it in Decatur, Ill., too.

Worthless

anniehinton:

My company’s website has these calendars that employees can print off that have a bunch of special dates and “holidays” on them. On June’s calendar, at the top, it says “Potty Training Awareness Month”. We’re all clear here that potty training is necessary right?

Thought so.

This is the funniest thing I’ve read all week. After reading it, I literally LOLed.

June 29, 2009

An idea from Warren Ellis:

ubergrid:

I think that if I were launching a new longform comics series today, if at all possible I’d do a 10-page(ish) prequel piece and release it free on the net as a .cbz file, with backmatter and as detailed a set of ordering information as I could compile

That’d make me more likely to buy a new comic book. I don’t download comics, but it’s mainly guesswork and gut instinct on whether or not I should pick up a first issue. And if I don’t quite get what’s going on in issue one (because it’s one of those stories that takes several issues of serialized narrative to get into), then a preview would make me more likely to stick with it.