I once used a line printer that I swear was playing the bass line to the Smithereens’ “Blood and Roses,” but it is no match for BD594’s collection of instruments. Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg tees up this version of the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun.”
Category: Fun
Palette cleanser
Via DCist, The average color of the Washington D.C. sky, updated every 5 minutes.
I don’t remember any pirates
Via Leta, Rudbeckia Hirta summarizes Atlas Shrugged. If I’d had this precis to read back when I was in high school, I could have spent that week reading sexy science fiction instead.
People alternate between speechifying at each other with Tea Party rhetoric and then having sex because everyone would stop reading if it was just the Tea Party stuff.
Potustoronnost?
Via Bookslut, a story from the Onion with steak to go with the sizzle of the headline (and byline, in this case): “Hey, Man, I Totally Get It; I’d Watch A 2-Hour ‘Biggest Loser’ Special, Too,” by A Collection of Nabokov’s Short Stories. Guess who just added something to his book shopping list.
Touched to work with me in sincerity
RE: Your Cosmic Assistance Most Urgently Needed, by Zachary Martin.
I want you and I to make a fortune out of a situation that I am obviously left with no better option. The issue I am presenting is that my sun was recently destroyed in a supernova that obliterated most life on my planet…
Some quizzes: 2
With just a little guessing, I scored a semi-respectable 18 of 25 on the 10-minute drop-the-needle challenge to identify jazz classics. Which means I missed some really easy ones. But I’m not man enough to take the full 111-song challenge.
(Link, and a hint, via A Blog Supreme.)
Who is John Galt?
Eric Hague introduces Objectivism to the play lot.
By so much as allowing Johanna to share her toy with him, we’d be undermining her appreciation of one of life’s most important lessons: You should never feel guilty about your abilities. Including your ability to repeatedly peg a fellow toddler with your Elmo ball as he sobs for mercy.
Thanks a lot, Jessa
Via Bookslut: Yet one more reason that I should have learned to touch type in high school. Scrabble meets Tetris.
Dressed for success
Via Leta: my internship in New York came a little late (1978), but here I am at Sterling Cooper (standing in for W.R. Grace & Co.), ready to set the world on fire. (Actually, John Molloy would have been appalled by the short-sleeved shirt.)
The Vogons among us
Geoffrey K. Pullum reproduces a turd of plagiarized septic verse.
All My Sons: a coda
From the TMN archives: Kevin Guilfoyle’s “Surrey with the Syringe on Top,” concerning the scandal in the swirl of disclosures that Great American playwrights had been doping:
[Arthur] Miller is quick to point out that it wasn’t always this way, and when the conversation turns to his early days, he becomes nostalgic. You should have seen me when I was writing Death of a Salesman. I had pecs the size of Iroquois saddlebags and my glutes were so rock-hard I could have sat on Joe McCarthy’s head and popped it like a rotten beet.’
Treasure
Thomas Kinkade does a Tsukahara over the carcharhinid.
I followed you up until “cool”
A DIALOGUE WITH SARAH, AGED 3: IN WHICH IT IS SHOWN THAT IF YOUR DAD IS A CHEMISTRY PROFESSOR, ASKING “WHY” CAN BE DANGEROUS
(Link via The Morning News.)
Still won’t wash your cat
Introducing Pomegranate, an incredible all-on-one mobile device.
(Link via Language Log.)
Very slick, and you have to dig fairly deep to figure out what the real product is.
The reality train has left the station
Via Ira and Leta, possibly the strangest Barbie collectible to be offered: Barbie as Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) attacked by crows in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.
Dressed in a re-creation of the stylish green skirt-suit worn by the film’s ill-fated heroine in an iconic scene… Barbie® Doll celebrates the 45th anniversary of the acclaimed film. From the doll’s classic ensemble to the perfectly painted expression to the accompanying black birds, every aspect captures the film’s infamous appeal…. Doll cannot stand alone as shown. For the adult collector.
Although it must also be admitted that the two different Hello Kitty Barbies on offer come close, if only for their universe-mixing Spock-meets-Skywalker jumbledness.