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February 29, 2008
The Void Stares Into You
Work work work. Meeting meeting. Work some more.
Pretty much the story of my week.
But since I eat lunch (usually) at my desk, alone (I know), and since my work is usually typing-related, I can't be expected to work while eating my lunch. So I read stuff. And today I found this experiment, via GU Comics, who got it from Penny Arcade (at the very bottom of the page), which means you may have already seen it.
Nevertheless, it's brilliant. And disturbing:
Garfield Without Garfield digitally removes the title cat from Jim Davis' cartoons, and the results are, as promised, "an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life."
Crazy. And profound. Who knew Jon Arbuckle had it in him to be an existentialist everyman in crisis?
Posted by reparent at 2:09 PM | Comments (0)
February 28, 2008
Pickle You, Kumquat!
I don't remember anything about the first Orbit gum ad I saw on TV except that every time the perky British lady said "fabulous!" I nearly wet myself laughing. That lasted for weeks.
Since then, not much new on the gum commercial scene. Until this:
While I was looking for the ad on YouTube, I found something interesting -- 2 different versions of the same ad, each featuring changes in tone and both featuring slight changes in content from the aired version I'd been seeing on TV. Here's the first one I found:
And here's the second:
I love these because I find the word-play to be quite clever. And I'm tickled by the addition of "You hoboken!" at the end. If we assume that the "cleaned-up" words are simple euphemistic replacements, we might guess the secretary is calling the wife a whore. Except that whore doesn't really fit the situation. (That's not to say she might not use the term, just that it doesn't really fit the extremely tight economization constraints a 30-second spot faces. Which means that these words could be anything, and suddenly I'm free to really engage my profane imagination.
Fabulous!
Posted by reparent at 9:11 AM | Comments (0)
February 23, 2008
Even a Child Could Do It... NOT
Some projects are quick. Some are simple. Some are longer, but straight-forward and uncomplicated.
And then there's the stuff I'm working on now.
Right now I'm finishing the coding for the faculty union's web site and drafting my book's prospectus. Both are incredibly detailed, complex, recursive (oh yeah, since I did this I need to go back and add a whole lot of that), and they make my eyes cross.
Which is to say that posts will resume when I manage to extricate myself from this box of pieces, parts, words, and tags.
Posted by reparent at 7:40 PM | Comments (0)
February 19, 2008
Sing Out, Louise!
I've been posting a fair amount about Barack Obama and John McCain lately. It's time to give the other major candidate, Hillary Clinton, some time in the sun.
As you may recall, Obama's supporters put together a touching, thrilling music video set to one of his speeches. Well, it seems that Clinton's supporters have put together their own video. Only instead of hyping their candidate's words, they're just hyping the awesomeness that is... Hillary.
You probably need a unicorn chaser after that. Here's a slice of patriotism that's guaranteed to warm the cockles of your heart.
(Oh, and bonus points for anyone who can identify the reference in the title.)
Posted by reparent at 6:08 PM | Comments (1)
February 18, 2008
Busted
One of the great things for researchers about the Internet is that it makes information and recordings easily and quickly available to a huge number of people.
That's not always a great thing for the people being researched, however.
It would have been so easy for Obama to preface this part of his speech with "As Deval Patrick noted when this same, baseless complaint was levied against him: 'Don't tell me that words don't matter'..." But he didn't. And it may be that Obama was reaching for something to say and latched onto this eloquent, forceful rhetorical bit.
But I don't believe that Senator Obama gives many extemporaneous speeches these days, so this possible explanation feels quite flat to me.
Yes, Senator, words do matter. So please don't try to pass off someone else's words as your own. The Internet has a loooong memory.
UPDATE: TPM has an update on Obama's plagiarism-gate. Here's the Senator:
"I was on the stump, and, you know, he had suggested that we use these lines," Obama said at a news conference a few minutes ago. "I thought they were good lines. I'm sure I should have [given him credit], didn't this time."
Which is nice, really. We've become far too used to politicians who can do (or at least, who can admit doing) no wrong.
UPDATE REDUX! Deval Patrick himself weighs in on the subject in a NYT article:
Mr. Patrick said he did not believe Mr. Obama should give him credit.
"Who knows who I am? The point is more important than whose argument it is," said Mr. Patrick, who telephoned The New York Times at the request of the Obama campaign. "It's a transcendent argument."
Which is nice, really. We've become far too used to politicians for whom everything really is about them. A little humility goes a long way.
On the other hand, citation is about respect and truth. It shows respect for the originator of the passage, and a commitment to the accurate representation of the past. In the age of Google, why not just do the right thing from the start?
Posted by reparent at 4:47 PM | Comments (0)
February 15, 2008
LOLRacoons
If you read this blog, you know that I am crazy about LOLCats. Here's something you just don't see everyday. I call it:
I CAN HAS KIBBLE? KTHXBAI.
Posted by reparent at 10:14 AM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2008
ObaMacain... In Music
You may have seen this video before. It's from Will.I.Am, one of the members of the Black Eyed Peas, and it's getting lots and lots of exposure. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out. (You can see a clearer, larger version of the video here, along with Will.I.Am's thoughts on what drove him to put this together. It's worth checking out.)
It's well done, the music pulls you along, the celebrities are an interesting mix of famous and not-quite-so-famous, and many of them are quite attractive. I find it especially notable that I bounce back and forth between wanting to hear more of the singing, and hearing more of Obama. Sometimes it feels like Obama is screwing up the song, and sometimes it's the song that's screwing up the speech. I imagine this has something to do with the cadences and rhythms of the speech. Sometimes Obama is on, and sometimes not so much.
But there are other videos out there, with a less uplifting message. While Obama's rhetoric may feel naive at times, John McCain's 2007/2008 version of "straight-talking" is truly shocking.
And the strongest points of the Obama video are the twin refrains "We Want Change" and "Yes We Can." Both sentiments that feel sadly anachronistic today, given the corruption in our government and the overwhelming feeling that what happens in Washington and what happens where you live are two very different things that have no relation to each other, or impact on each other.
And so we have the McCain version of Obama's refrains. And while these feel (to jaded, cynical old me) more realistic, more truthful, they're also shocking when stated so baldly.
Posted by reparent at 3:14 PM | Comments (2)
Silly Web Quiz Thursday - Superpower Edition
In honor of my book club reading Perry Moore's novel Hero (it's about a kid who discovers that he's gay and has superpowers, and his father -- a disgraced former superhero -- doesn't like either), here's today's Silly Web Quiz: What Should Your Superpower Be?
| Your Superpower Should Be Mind Reading |
 You are brilliant, insightful, and intuitive. |
So, what should your superpower be?
Posted by reparent at 7:52 AM | Comments (1)
February 11, 2008
Every Teacher's Dream
I'm on research leave this semester, working on my book. But sometimes an idea is just too perfect not to hold on to. Not to cherish.
Not to figure out whether you could actually get away with it.
Below is a cell from today's Ph.D. comic. Click the link or the image to read the whole thing.
Posted by reparent at 2:55 PM | Comments (0)
February 10, 2008
What We Need More Of...
A short break from working on the book.
I was talking with a graduate student about computer-generated voices, and the subject of MC Hawking came up. I mentioned that my favorite track from the nerd-core artist was "What We Need More of Is Science," which got me thinking about the track, and its retro-animated video.
So, to externalize the cognitive loop I've been stuck in for days, here's MC Hawking:
Enjoy.
[Hums to himself: "Upon blind faith they place reliance/ What we need more of is science."]
Posted by reparent at 6:26 PM | Comments (1)
February 6, 2008
It's Nothing Special Wednesday!
Well, we've survived Super-Duper Tuesday, and it's now Nothing Special Wednesday. Looking at the latest delegates count, the GOP race seems to be widening, and the Dems are still too close for anyone to call.
In his latest pop-ed (it's an op-ed on pop culture) for Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King notes:
One possibly good sign: Hip TV watchers have grown increasingly foxy about the polling process. The age of innocence is over; voters once willing to come clean and say they voted for Mike Huckabee because [Ted] Nugent's "Cat Scratch Fever" loincloth is still the high point of their rock lives are harder and harder to find.
Can I be blunt? I think a lot of voters right now lie right through their teeth when talking to pollsters. And that might be the most optimistic trend in an election year where the coverage has never been dumber or more dubious.
King sees this as a good sign, that voters are starting to think for themselves when they vote rather than listening to the incessant din of worthless blather force-fed them by the media. I'm not so sure.
I firmly believe that athletes are to be seen and never heard. (This isn't a digression, really.) When they open their mouths, if anything intelligible comes out, it's always the same pablum. "Well, we just have to play this game like it's any other game. We really need to come together as a team. We need to give it all we've got." Blah blah blah blah freaking blah. They do this because they know that if they said what they were really thinking, they'd become the next John Rocker and lose their lucrative endorsement deals. So they say what they're expected to say. It's easier, and it keeps everyone happy.
I see the same thing happening in exit-polling interviews. Voters say what they're expected to say, regardless of what they think, and especially regardless of what they did.
So, if you wanted to vote for Obama but you just can't get over that whole race thing, why not strike a blow for color-blindness and tell the nice pollster that you did? When you're walking out of the polling place with your church-going neighbor, what's wrong with telling the pollster that you voted for Mike Huckabee, even though you actually pulled the lever for Mitt Romney because... well, he is kinda handsome? After all, no one will ever know.
And it's not like the government hasn't been lying to us for years about much more important things...
(For more about Cthulhu, click on the image.)
Posted by reparent at 9:08 AM | Comments (0)