Saturday, January 22, 2011

Anti-winter attack ad

In the spirit of political campaign attack ads, summer has launched a campaign against winter. It's pretty convincing, I mean how could anyone vote for winter after seeing this?

I'm not SURE that winter is a socialist muslin terrorist, but I'm not sure that it isn't either.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Marc Maron, WTF: the podcast of podcasts


One of the best podcasts out there is WTF, a show about comedians and comedy hosted by Marc Maron. Actually the show is about Marc Maron and his issues, and either you enjoy his neurotic, angry, jealous, addictive, antic, bitter, probing, obsessive, self-loathing persona and love the podcast, or else it totally isn't for you.

The New York Times did a piece on WTF, and Maron will be on Conan next week. WTF just made headlines as director Kevin Smith went off on Bruce Willis on his recent appearance. The podcast is becoming popular and influential, so as Maron starts becoming more famous after decades in the alternative comedy business, people are wondering: will this success ruin Marc Maron? Answer: no, because he's already ruined. At least that's how his comedy persona would respond.

A good description from the NYT piece: "Mr. Maron, a stand-up comic by trade, has cast himself as an unlikely celebrity interviewer — one who is angry, probing, neurotic and a vulnerable recovering addict. And somehow he’s able to elicit from his guests, mostly other comedians like Sarah Silverman and Ben Stiller, the same level of vulnerability."

WTF is available for free on iTunes, and averages about 230,000 downloads a week, meaning that Maron is regularly reaching a lot of people with the conversations he records in his garage-- far more than an alternative comedian could regularly reach.

The must-hear WTF episodes are the ones where Carlos Mencia talks about dealing with the accusations that he is an a-hole who steals material from other comedians, which is the third rail of comedy that must never be touched. Most other comedians hate Mencia, but Maron gives him a fair chance to be himself, and just observes and gently prods as Mencia spins out his own unique version of reality. Must listening.

Twitter Warning

The Surgeon General's warning on Twitter:

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

The Year in Pitchfork album reviews


Here are the albums that Pitchfork reviewed in 2010, organized by their ratings.

Apparently three were 6 perfect albums in 2010, which seems like a lot to me, but what do I know, I am not a pitchfork. Since there were six perfect albums but only only one horrible album last year, it must have been an awesome year in music.

Unemployed crank gets hired to apply for jobs he'll never get



Unemployed crank Steve Madonna got a bit of internet fame (which is obviously the BEST fame) last year when his profane rant on an employment application got passed around the web. So the brilliant someecards.com site has now hired him to do a regular feature where he rants on job applications. Thanks Steve Madonna (or whatever your real name is) for doing it so we don't have to.

Whisky in cans!


Whisky comes in cans now! So no reason not to carry it with you to the beach or on a boat or in your coat pocket everywhere you go every day! Now when you fall to the ground in a drunken stupor, you won't shatter your whisky bottle and cut yourself to ribbons.

What a marvelous age we live in!

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Worst job interview questions


"If you were shrunk to the size of a pencil and put in a blender, how would you get out?"
“Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 how weird you are.”
“An apple costs 20 cents, an orange costs 40 cents, and a grapefruit costs 60 cents, how much is a pear?”

Questions like these are how corporate America selects the best and the brightest. No wonder everyone who has a job is so smart, efficient and successful!

Here is a list of the Top 25 Weirdest Job Interview questions.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Detroit or Chernobyl?


The Guardian has a great photo series on Detroit and its former grandeur, now ruined.

See the photos here.

Photographer Yves Marchand explains: "It seems like Detroit has just been left to die," says Marchand, "Many times we would enter huge art deco buildings with once-beautiful chandeliers, ornate columns and extraordinary frescoes, and everything was crumbling and covered in dust, and the sense that you had entered a lost world was almost overwhelming. In a very real way, Detroit is a lost world – or at least a lost city where the magnificence of its past is everywhere evident."

When did the nuclear bomb go off in Detroit? As Moe the bartender says in the Simpsons, "they're living in Mad Max times up there."



From the article: "This sense of loss is what Marchand and Meffre have captured in image after image, whether of vast downtown vistas where every tower block is boarded-up or ravaged interior landscapes where the baroque stonework, often made from marble imported from Europe, is slowly crumbling and collapsing. The pair have photographed once-grand hotels that were built in a carefree mix of gothic, art deco, Moorish and medieval styles, as well as countless baroque theatres, movie houses and ballrooms – the Vanity, where big band giants such as Duke Ellington and Tommy Dorsey played in the 1930s; the Eastown theatre, where pioneering hard rock groups like Iggy and the Stooges and the MC5 held court in the 1960s."


"The abandoned factories, the eerily vacant schools, the rotting houses, and gutted skyscrapers that Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre chronicle are the artefacts of Detroit's astonishing rise as a global capital of capitalism and its even more extraordinary descent into ruin, a place where the boundaries between the American dream and the American nightmare, between prosperity and poverty, between the permanent and the ephemeral are powerfully and painfully visible. No place epitomises the creative and destructive forces of modernity more than Detroit, past and present."

Henry Horenstein Honkytonk



Check out Henry Horenstein's cool photos of country music legends.

Friday, December 31, 2010

Banished words


A self-styled defender of the Queen's English, Lake Superior State College annually releases a list of words to be banished from the English language. Here's this year's list.

Unfortunately, checking their archived lists, it looks like most of the terms and words that have been banished have not actually vanished.

We'll have to see if this list goes viral. If the American people appreciate its wow factor, then soon everyone will man up and be googling it and Facebooking it to their BFFs. But if there is no a-ha moment, then it will be an epic fail, and mama grizzlies will refudiate it. I'm just sayin'.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Obama: Either Doing His Best In One of The Most Difficult Times In American History, Or Hitler



Is he a president who is doing his best in one of the most difficult times in American history, or is he Hitler?

Which is it? America isn't sure. But is leaning toward the Hitler thing: Obama is literally Hitler.

"He is either a president who passed a comprehensive health care measure despite staunch opposition from powerful private interests, or a radical-Islamist sympathizer bent on systematically dismantling American democracy and eradicating all human liberty. He either lowered taxes for most Americans while failing to communicate that effectively, or he is pure evil. Whichever."

Snowstorm dangerous for nation's idiots


It snowed in the north in winter, shocking us all and catching everyone off guard.


Snowy Conditions Proving Hazardous For Nation's Idiots

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Salad is murder!


Al Queda is trying to poison salad bars! That would be a really effective tactic if America was a place where people actually eat salad. If they poisoned McDonalds or Dennys, a lot more Americans would be in trouble.

Still, the only safe course of action is to never eat vegetables again.

Monday, December 20, 2010

The Map of Metal

The Map of Metal will help you navigate the leather and denim waters of heavy metal and its many complicated subgenres. Not clear on the difference between Depressive Black Metal and Blackened Crust? What's the difference between Melodic Death and Deathcore? The Map of Metal will solve these important issues for you.

The best part is that the site plays streaming tunes from whatever flavor of the vast metal spectrum that you choose, from Black Sabbath all the way to Judas Priest to Motorhead and back again.

Friday, December 17, 2010

America's Joyous Future

Another great Fox News pie chart

What are 193% of Americans thinking today?



As the above EVIDENCE PROVES, 70% of 193% of Americans Back Palin. Back, Huckabee! Get back Romney, get back to where you once belonged. Literally billions of Americans can't wait to Back Palin. Also, it is 47 degrees everywhere.

What could be fairer or more unbalanced? Mmm, pie!

This all seems completely explicable when you see that science has shown that Fox News viewers are the most uninformed people on earth.

Here are just a few things that Fox News viewers actually believe are true:

Most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (12 points more likely)

Most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit (31 points)

The economy is getting worse (26 points)

Most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (30 points)

The stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (14 points)

Their own income taxes have gone up (14 points)

The auto bailout only occurred under Obama (13 points)

When TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it (12 points)

And that it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States (31 points)

Guess what, morans, none of that is true. You are wrong about pretty much everything that you yell about on talk radio.

On the other hand, since lots of people like to watch news that tells them what they wish was true instead of what actually is true, foreinger Rupert Murdoch and the Saudi guy who own Fox News just keep get richer and richer from the American morans, and now their taxes will be lower too!


Fox news reports that 120% of scientists agree!

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Monday, December 6, 2010

Best photos from the Oklahoma State Fair

Which photo best summarizes the whole state fair experience, especially in Oklahoma?

Is it the Rascal scooter couple?



Is it the ten-year-old ready to swill some Coors lite?


Or one of many others?

Ridiculous bootleg DVD covers

Pop hangover has cover pics from 10 ridiculous bootleg DVD covers.

These are quite helpful and informative covers.

What is this movie about? Simple: PEPE LIKES TACOS.



What do critics say about this film? "You feel yourself trying too hard to make the film work." Sounds terrific! I want to buy many copies of this DVD!

Monday, November 22, 2010

Ads that would never be allowed today

This website has a gallery of 48 advertisements of the past that would never be allowed today. They're all just too sexist, too racist, too violent, too French, or just plain too weird for today's world.








Not so long ago, companies thought that these ads would give them a positive image and would actually appeal to people. The patient must not vomit! Buy Thorazine today!

Monday, November 15, 2010

America the Banana Republic

So America's a banana republic now, with 1 in 7 Americans living in poverty and the top 1% ultra-wealthiest taking home 24% of all money, which is only 2 and a half times as much as they got in the 1970s.

But who cares? At least we're not SOCIALIST! Anyway, here's your choice America: slash taxes for the Super-Rich by $61,000 a year, or by a more realistic $370,000 a year.

"The richest 0.1 percent of taxpayers would get a tax cut of $61,000 from President Obama. They would get $370,000 from Republicans, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. And that provides only a modest economic stimulus, because the rich are less likely to spend their tax savings."

How much of a pile will the billionaires get? This is an important issue, because Wall Street just handed out the most bonuses ever of all time, so the poor workers there need to find out SOON how many new yachts they can buy, only one, like some chump, or 5, which all the cool people will be doing.

So it's no surprise that poor people who can't pay their own bills and are losing money quickly are so willing to fight for a bigger tax cut for the ultra-wealthy. Because taxes are bad and socialist and once I win the lottery, that will be MY rightful tax cut, and I don't want to be stuck with only a mere $61,000 more than I would have now, because taxes are theft.

"C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent."

But that math is all boring so who cares? Taxes = bad so cut taxes for everyone. It's just a coincidence that the economy was humming and we had a federal surplus until the taxes for the wealthiest were cut. So what if taxes are already lower than they were under Reagan, much lower than they were under Nixon and incredibly amazingly lower than they were under Eisenhower. All those guys were socialist tax and spenders anyway.

We will get the government and tax structure that we deserve. Unfortunately for 99.9% of Americans.

Another article from the lying lamestream liberal NY Times asks Who Will Stand Up to the Super Rich? We all know the answer: Nobody.
"“How can hedge-fund managers who are pulling down billions sometimes pay a lower tax rate than do their secretaries?” ask the political scientists Jacob S. Hacker (of Yale) and Paul Pierson (University of California, Berkeley) in their deservedly lauded new book, “Winner-Take-All Politics.” If you want to cry real tears about the American dream — as opposed to the self-canonizing tears of John Boehner — read this book and weep. The authors’ answer to that question and others amounts to a devastating indictment of both parties."

Friday, November 12, 2010

Hating the Miami Heat

What should I do? Should I hate the Miami Heat?

Monday, November 8, 2010

Awesome trick play from middle school football game

Someone who goes around videotaping middle school football games actually recorded something worthwhile. Just a great play, and convincing acting work from the QB. That kid had to be really confident to sell the play like that, and make it work.




And it did.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

RIP Billy Ruane


Beloved Boston rock fan/impresario Billy Ruane passed away the other day. Of the many tributes to Ruane to be found online, one of the best and most heartfelt comes from local frontman Al Janik, reprinted here by permission:

"they say the day you die your name is written in the clouds
billy ruane died last night ... the sky is gray with clouds and the rain is falling here in boston ...

nothing in the world is any good unless you can share it
i don't think it is possible to describe to folk outside of boston what people like mikey dee and billy ruane meant to the local rock scene here ... everyone has their stories and they will be told ... but the thing these two guys had in spades was a FANatical compulsion to share what they thought was good and fun with everyone they met ...

you're like a leaf that the wind blows from one gutter to another
i had moved here from chicago in the early 80s, got a job in a harvard library, and took my time stumbling into the boston music scene ... eventually, i began to head out to the middle east upstairs once a week or so with my buddies ronnie and dave ... we didn't even care who was playing ... we knew one band would be crap, one band okay, one band fun, and another band revelatory ... and you would never know what order on the bill they would fall ... but it didn't take too long to notice a certain lunatic squealing and whirling and "dancing" and wildly applauding randomly up in front of the stage ... one day, someone took me aside and told me that was billy ruane and he worked at widener library at harvard ... i was never so proud of my "profession" as i was that day ... anyway, as ronnie and i expanded our musical adventures across boston to other clubs, we never ceased to be flabbergasted by the presence of billy ruane wherever we went ... there were nights we would even hit two or three clubs a night to hear certain favorite bands and inevitably bump into billy at each one ... he became the no-doubt-about-it "we ARE in the right place" signal any night out on the town ... and he was never just making the scene ... he WAS the scene ... he WAS what rock and roll was supposed to be--wild and out of control ... sometimes the bands had no idea who the hell he was and why he was jumping around on stage with (or ON!) them ... he was a one man mosh pit before there was such a thing ... sockless with sport jacket sprayed open over a mostly unbuttoned white shirt ... drinks were spilled and stuff was knocked over and all of it was good ... it was billy man, it was cool ...

let's go down to the bar. we can cool off while we try to impress each other
so i had a band called rattle heatre that had a good run in a somerville joint in boston called studleys ... or the kirkland cafe if you will ... or club bohemia if you insist ... anyway, the people that came to hear us seemed to have a great time but most folk did not really ever "get" us or what we were doing ... two major local scenesters did ... mikey dee who even brought us in to WMFO's "On the town" for a live set ... and billy ruane, who called me up and asked if we wanted to open for minneSOHta's the honeydogs at green street ... now neither of these gigs were real BIG time, but they were both FAR more than i ever dreamed of and i'll always be grateful for the breaks ... one more thing ... when these guys believed in something, when they caught something they loved, some times, they understood it even better than the band--billy ruane called me once after hearing one of my first silly polka shows celebrating saint stanislaus day at the kirkland cafe ... it had been one of those bizarre nights of entertainment that joe hernon and mickey bliss let bands like ours and slide get away with on a regular basis at that venue ... billy wanted to book the polka show as a month long residency at the middle east bakery ... now i guess i should not have been surprised since belly dancing was/is a regular feature of that corner ... but i was equally parts astounded to be invited, and scared shitless of performing polkas in the hippest club in town ... i did not bite ... and i was SO wrong to not do so ... since then, my polka show has become an annual event that brings musicians, hipsters, polka fans and children together in a communal celebration that would do billy (AND mikey) proud ... and billy KNEW it was gonna be cool before anyone else (including me!)

"oh, jeff, I don't want to die!"
"neither do i, baby, but if i have to i'm gonna die last"

another thing billy ruane held in common with mikey dee was a love of movies ... the quotes for this reflection are all inspired by a facebook quote from billy lifted from the film "out of the past" ... he (and i) were regulars at film noir mondays at the brattle (in many ways, billy WAS a black and white film if you think about it) ... but while others mumbled their complaints as billy stumbled into the brattle street theatre balcony five minutes after a movie started, i just wanted to whisper "it's billy man, it's cool" ... he hollered comments and hooted loudly at scenes no one else thought hilarious and it never bothered me one bit ... billy was in the house and i KNEW i was no-doubt-about-it-in-the-right-place ...

"that's not the way to win"
"is there a way to win?"
"there's a way to lose more slowly"

and so first mikey dee left us, and now billy ruane exits stage left ... we all wait our own turn and shake our heads sadly in the meantime ... i weep for our loss yet the tears fall harder when i remember the joys of seeing either of them any time any where ... they saw what was good ... they saw what was fun ... and they shared it with everyone they met ... and that sure is a damn good way to lose more slowly ...

that's al folks

Glenn Beck vs. Dinosaur Comics

Awesome webcomic vs. not-in-any-way-awesome, possibly one of the worst people in the world, crybaby right-wing Fox News pundit: who is better?



Ryan North, the guy who writes the great Dinosaur Comics, has collaborated on a new book of short stories and illustrations about people who find out in advance from a machine how they are going to die. The book sounds cool and it is called "The Machine of Death."

The book debuted at #1 on amazon.com the other day. Which apparently hosed-off the humongous ego of crybaby Beck, who then humorlessly, paranoically and cluelessly used his TV show for morons to attack Machine of Death, and also Keith Richards, for daring to outsell him on his rightful day of being the #1 ranked author for stupid people.

From qwantz.com, the home of Dinosaur Comics:
"The Machine of Death story keeps getting weirder / more awesome. American conservative talky guy Glenn Beck called us out on his show yesterday because it turned out that his book also had its official release date on October 26th, and he was upset that it was in third place to Keith Richard's new autobio "Life" and our little book. He told his listeners that he'd worked on his book for over a year, and that his books always debut at #1, and that we (along with Keith) were part of a left-wing "culture of death" that "celebrates the things that have destroyed us" and that everyone should support life by buying his book instead of ours?
It's basically amazing."

Friday, October 22, 2010

Web Comic: I Was An Olive Garden Host

Can you make an interesting webcomic about being a host at Olive Garden?

This guy can, and did.


26 short comic strips that capture the despair that comes from jobs like that, but offers a unique point of view and even some insight and humor.


IT IS CAPS LOCK DAY!



Today is CAPS LOCK DAY! Press CAPS LOCK on your computer keyboard and YELL AT EVERYONE ON THE INTERNET! BECAUSE TODAY IS TODAY!



CAPS LOCK DAY!

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Headlines? Schmedlines.

Schmedlines is a contest. Schmedlines is a site that collects ridiculous tabloid stories. Schmedlines is a site that allows you to mock ridiculous tabloid stories. Schmedlines is a site that allows you to vote for the best mockage of these stories. Schmedlines is many things to many people.

Example: a story about Mark Cuban acting dumb. A reader posts his suggested headline: "Cuban Imbicile Crisis." Other readers vte it the best, and it wins the daily contest.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

How many Justin Beibers could you take in a fight?

How many Justin Biebers could you take in a fight?

1 Beiber = 1.3 Jonas Brothers = 0.7 Hanson brothers

"Rich Whitey" is actually Green

A typo on the computer ballot in Illinois means that in some districts (including some heavily African-American ones) Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney's name will appear as "Rich Whitey."




Weird that while so very many politicians could accurately be labeled "Rich Whitey," the one who actually has his name appear that way on the ballot is in the Green Party, the only party that isn't all about protecting the interests of rich whiteys.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Top 10 signs there's something wrong at Fox News


Letterman mocks Faux News for picking up a story from the "Weekly World News." LA spent a billion dollars on jetpacks for their cops? Yeah, that could have happened. Those DUMB-ocrats are at it again!

"Number 7: been criticizing Obama for not doing enough to prevent World War I."

Since the Weekly World News has the same amount of credibility as Fox News. So what's the problem?

Everyone hates Iceland?

Finally, we can see negative national stereotypes expressed cartographically, on the Mapping Stereotypes site.



The maps broadly show what some people in one part of the world think of other people in other places-- handy if you're wondering such things.

Monday, October 4, 2010

Brief Interviews with Great Authors


The Paris Review has an online archive of 50-something years worth of their interviews with the greatest writers of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The list from the 1950s alone includes interviews with Hemingway, Capote, T.S. Eliot, Faulkner, Ellison, E.M. Forster, Dorothy Parker and James Thurber, among others. The free online archive is a goldmine of insight into modern literature and literary history.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

good time-waster of a video

Watching this video is a good way to kill four minutes.

The template for any science news article

In the Guardian, Martin Robbins "The Lay Scientist" offers the template that journalists use to write any article about anything scientific.

Keep in mind that this is the British template. In the US version, the article is much shorter, and the headlines much scarier. On some websites, there will be a few paragraphs of political spin added to the template, blaming The Other Side for the problem.

This picture has been optimised by SEO experts to appeal to our key target demographics:

Monday, September 27, 2010

Imagine a Jump

Imagine David Lee Roth singing "Jump" to John Lennon's piano playing "Imagine."

Imagine it, it's easy if you try:



The mixmaster who produced the mashup is known as Mighty Mike, and in various mashups he's also combined such disparate elements as Madonna with Paul Rodgers and Free, and Rihanna vs. Bjork.
But the champion Bjork remix-mashup is still the Beastie Boys vs. "Army of Me," by Metadonaboy:


But for Beastie Boys mashups, there's always the Intergalactic Safety Dance:


Or the Beasties vs. ELO disco mashup:


Trust me, youtube can go on like this all day!

Teabagger Comix

What if Teabaggers took over the funny pages, in addition to Fox News, AM radio and tabloid newspapers? Apparently they would become full of shrill, unfunny lies, just like Fox News, AM radio and tabloid newspapers.



In other words, it'd be like if the troll who draws Mallard Fillmore invaded all the other comics to get their made-up WMDs.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Poor little rich babies

Super rich people are angry and whining.

Boo-hoo, let's pass the hat for them. One in seven Americans is now below the poverty line, there are more poor people in the country than EVER before, but let's all have a pity party for the luckiest people in the history of humanity.

Of course the GOP is battling hard to protect the wealthy. Mitch McConnell announced that people who make more than a quarter million dollars a year are the ones who've been hit hardest by the recession.

Taxes on the wealthy are lower than they were under Reagan and FAR lower than they were in the 1950s under Eisenhower. Far lower taxes, far more poor people, yet it's the millionaires and billionaires who are bitching?

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Sarah Palin doesn't hate Muslins enough!

Check out the Poorly spelled Facebook posts from people ticked off at Sarah Palin for not hating Muslins enough to cheer on the book- burning mustache guy.



Don't retreat, Sarah, RELOAD! Wait, no, these nutjobs are your base. Also they are probably heavily armed. What a dilemma! What would a mama grizzly do? Hibernate till spring, actually.

Cool Material's Facebook throughout History

From the webiste Cool Material: