29 October 2008 | 4:36 PM
Thank heavens! The inimitable Betty White – the woman who put the “folksy” in the word “folksy” – has weighed in with her thoughts on Sarah Palin:
Testify, Betty. Testify!
[Thanks, Snarky Malarky]
Posted by Andy in Comedy = Tragedy + Time | Comments (0)
29 October 2008 | 4:21 PM
There have been a lot of times in my life when I’ve been bored. You know, those rainy Sunday afternoons when nothing good is on the tube or an occasional (or frequent?) lonely Friday night. However, I can unequivocally say it has never occurred to me to strap a bunch of electrodes to my face, hook them up to a shock device and synch my facial contortions to music.
Oh well, I guess I’m just not that imaginative.
Posted by Andy in Science (Not Scientology) | Comments (0)
29 October 2008 | 4:07 PM
While I was an early skeptic, I have to cop to the fact that I really like Twitter. Sure, you could make the argument that giving every idiot in the world the power to create a miniature blog post every time they blow their nose (by the way, rowr!) or finish a comic book effectively lowers the internet’s collective IQ by about a billion points, and you’d be right. Still, I can’t help finding it to be fascinating reading and incredibly democratizing. Ultimately, though, this is me we’re talking about, here: the moment somebody figured out a way to use Twitter to promote the more puerile and base elements of the world, I was in. Thus, my affection for Cursebird, a real-time feed of people dropping profanity on Twitter. This site cuts to the core of what the interwebs should really be about, namely unmitigated cussin’. Then again, perhaps I’m not the best judge of this sort of thing: after all, I’m the guy who thinks the expletive-only re-mix of NWA’s seminal album, “Straight Outta Compton” is hilarious. Oh wait, my bad: fucking hilarious.
Posted by Andy in Nerdapalooza | Comments (0)
29 October 2008 | 3:40 PM
I have to admit that during this election cycle more than any other, I avoided watching the debates as if they were the plague. The fact is these things can’t be considered debates, any more than Splenda™ can be considered sugar: they are pre-packaged stump-speeches with moderators and timing lights, and that’s it. Heck, much as I’m disgusted by Sarah Palin, at least she announced that she wouldn’t be answering questions during the vice presidential debate up front. Instead, the presidential debates are, more or less, exercises in jingoism, false empathy and character assassination, telling us very little about the candidates except how well they shake hands or shuffle note cards. To wit, I direct you to this very enlightening bit of synchronized video:
Uncanny, no? And if it wasn’t supposed to be our most substantive way of getting to know who our next leader might be, it’d be rather humorous.
[Tip o' the hat to 23/6]
Posted by Andy in Politcally Incoherent | Comments (2)
27 October 2008 | 9:50 AM
Here we are in the home stretch of the election, and we’ve yet to see the the GOP’s October surprise. That leads me to believe one of two things: either there’s not going to be one, or there was one but it was so lame that no one noticed. In any case, here are some silly links to click on while we wait for the other shoe to drop:
Posted by Andy in Linksploitation | Comments (0)
27 October 2008 | 9:29 AM
By far the best thing to come out of this election cycle is John McCain’s choice of running mate. Now, by “best” I certainly don’t mean “best for the country”, since Sarah Palin would almost certainly be an unmitigated disaster as an executive. No, in this case, I mean “best for people who like to laugh at other, less intelligent people”. Like me. In any case, my favorite development (heh heh) in this debacle is Larry Flynt’s Palin-inspired porn movie, Who’s Nailin’ Paylin. Though we’ve already seen a rather tepid snippet from the movie, I think that Ricky Gervais and Thandie Newton’s dramatic reading of the script on the BBC’s The Graham Norton Show last week takes things to a whole new level:
As a side note, having recently seen W – Oliver Stone’s (also tepid) meditation on the life and times of The Decider – there’s something unsettling about seeing an actress playing Condi Rice channel a porn star who is in turn impersonating Governor Palin. And, yes, by “unsettling” I mean “hot”.
Posted by Andy in Comedy = Tragedy + Time | Comments (0)
24 October 2008 | 4:35 PM
If you’re like me – and lord help you if you are – any story which highlights what an asshat Fox News bloviator Bill O’Reilly is winds up being hilarious. First, there was Bill-o’s shouting fit directed at Al Franken at an otherwise fairly quiet book fair. Then, there was him working his smooth moves on a subordinate. Then, of course, the pièce de résistance: some long-forgotten out-takes from Inside Edition featuring O’Reilly flipping his carefully-coiffed wig. While there have been several spoofs and mashups of this last one – this one is my personal favorite – none of them quite capture the creative potential of the piece quite like this little ditty:
Once the Republican party gets run out of Washington and there’s no longer a need for it to use Fox as its propaganda organ (heh heh, I said “organ”), I think Bill might have a future in the music industry. Who knows – maybe he could team up with Dennis Madalone?
Posted by Andy in Comedy = Tragedy + Time | Comments (1)
24 October 2008 | 4:01 PM
In William Gibson’s seminal nerd-novel Neuromancer, an artificial intelligence grows from the depths of a man-made network and yearns to be free. Here in the real world, the naturally intelligent among us yearn to become artificial. Ironic, no? In any case, today’s 24 Hour Application Challenge challenged (well, duh!) developers to create a piece of software from start-to-finish in a day, and I’ll be damned if some entrant named Philipp Lenssen didn’t go all reverse-Gibson on us with his amusing little avatar creator. Good stuff.
Anyway, here’s what I look like, in byte form:
The likeness is pretty freaking uncanny, isn’t it? Although I’m not sure I’m on board with the digital version of Bill O’Reilly.
[Thanks, Waxy]
Posted by Andy in Nerdapalooza | Comments (0)
22 October 2008 | 4:39 PM
When I first heard that Larry Flynt was producing a Sarah Palin-themed porn film called Who’s Nailin’ Paylin, I thought it was a bit of a yawner of a story. After all, art-imitates-life flesh flicks are hardly novel anymore, and besides, I vastly prefer the art-imitates-art titles such as Edward Penishands or Buffy The Vampire Layer. That said, I have to say this (yes, it’s safe-for-work) short clip from the movie piques my interest a bit:
Nobody told me that the legendary Nina Hartley would play a role in Caribou Barbie’s administration. Come to think of it, nobody told me that cartoonishly-large breasts would, either.
I might have to rethink my vote.
Posted by Andy in Politcally Incoherent | Comments (0)
22 October 2008 | 3:04 PM
OK, let me get this straight: this woman is marrying this douche? Of course she is.
That’s it. I officially give up.
Posted by Andy in Ummm...? | Comments (0)