Everyone’s got an opinion

Bleak: The AV Club’s 36 best songs to play while you kill yourself. More bleak: There are already over 600 comments at this writing, and I’ll be they break a thousand, easily. A word of warning: If you care enough about how you’ll be remembered to elaborately plan and stage your suicide, you may be missing the point of wanting to no longer exist.

Just wait ‘til Poland calls its lawyers

Let me tell you a joke. My mother-in-law is so fa-- hang on a second. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea; apparently, a comedian is being sued for making fun of her in-laws:

In-law jokes are a pretty standard staple of the standup comedy business. They can be pretty funny too... even if the concept is a bit dated. But, apparently, they're not so funny to the in-laws of comedian Sunda Croonquist. ChurchHatesTucker alerts us to the news that Croonquist's mother-in-law and sister-in-law are suing the comedian for cracking rather typical "in-law" jokes, which, apparently the in-laws didn't find to be all that funny.

I had no idea that the butts of jokes could sue for defamation. There’s a lot of former 1st-grade classmates of mine who’ve got a surprise in store.

Unforeseen externalities

Who keeps blowing up iPhones and iPod Touches? Well, don’t blame the manufacturer, apparently! Some, however, take issue with Apple’s position on this. From Slashdot:

The Inquirer runs a piece that blames Apple for blaming its customers. 'This mysterious force is not God, or a rival religion, nor does it require any metaphysics to understand. An "external force" is just Apple's term for the black shirted people who believe that everything that Apple makes is wonderful. It is what other companies call their "customers," writes Nick Farrell.’

Well, of course Apple couldn’t refer to these events as “acts of God”, because it’s just not good business to blame your own CEO for possible product defects.

Butterfly in the skyyyyy!

After 26 years, and who knows how many books, Reading Rainbow will be coming to an end.

The show's run is ending, Grant explains, because no one — not the station [WNED Buffalo], not PBS, not the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — will put up the several hundred thousand dollars needed to renew the show's broadcast rights.

Got, it hurts to see yet another venue for book reviewers closing up shop.

Seriously though, I’m sad that the show is over for Reading Rainbow. It was an invaluable tool for me when I was a kid, and had no idea what to get from those Scholastic book sales they used to do. (Anybody else remember those things? That was my favorite part of the school year!)

Link via The Millions

Console Beauty Contest

Lately, I’ve been off-loading my video gaming related posts to my 1up blog. Yes, it’s yet another website for me to neglect. However, I am embarking on a project to examine the industrial design of video game consoles that, if everything goes well, will run for a good, long time.

Set phasers to outrage

Due to the equal-time requirements of the Whiny-Fandom Act of 1980, John Scalzi is obligated to make fun of Star Trek’s design choices.

The Borg
Featured in First Contact, these are the most fearsome aliens in the galaxy, and look like the Tin Man on Goth Night at the local leather bar. You don't know whether to fear the Borg or to ask them if they think that upcoming AFI album will be, like, awesome.

Anger is sure to result – and not just from Star Trek fans. He also quotes some BASIC in the article, which must inevitably draw out the angry programmer crowd!

LARF!

Oh that Joe Queenan; never afraid to take on difficult targets. Here he considers what it would be like if Amazon reviewers were unleashed upon a few classic books:

It is always fun to go back in time and speculate on what might have happened had Anne Boleyn been on Facebook, or had Pharaoh's army included amphibious equipment. This is why I cannot help wondering what a typical Amazon.com review might have looked like had the Internet existed centuries ago:

• "King Lear"—Average reader rating: Two stars. The author tells us: "As like flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport." Oh, right, like I didn't know that? Like I didn't know that to be or not to be is the question? Like I didn't know that the fault lies not in us but in the stars? Tell me something I don't know, Mr. Bard of Whatever.

Oh ho! Hi-hi-hi-larious! Of course, it’s not quite right, seeing as how Queenan’s examples contain few spelling errors, fair grammar, and a respect for placing capital letters on the first words of each sentence. Still, Queenan’s piece is still a well-formed humor analog, so we’ll let it slide.

Link via Bookninja

RIP: Edward Kennedy

Very sad.

All in all...

If you, like me, enjoy starting your working week by diving into singular works of pop culture, then you might be interested in a website called The Wall Analysis. I was absolutely devoted to Pink Floyd’s The Wall album when I was thirteen, but I never really had much to say about it. (Now I can’t even listen to it.) Still, it’s a fine thing to read someone else’s critical take on an old favorite.

Link provided by a commenter on this AV Club thread.

Beggaring satire

Sometimes, something comes along that defies all funny people to just try and take the piss out of it:

Meet the KFC "double down." Although no mention of it is made on KFC.com and we have never seen an ad for it ourselves, we are being lead to believe that it is real by Foodgeekery.com. They have crappy cell phone camera footage of a commercial (from Omaha, apparently) for the mysterious beast, as well as photographic evidence of it in the wild.

I hope to Christ this is all a hoax. Because if it’s real, there’s nothing we can do to defend ourselves. Jokes? This thing is friggin’ made of jokes.

Software mascots

The real (imaginary) story of Mavis Beacon, at last.

When you’re feelin’ bad

... video games might pick you up. From the Washington Post:

Nichols said she discovered the mental health benefits of video games some years ago during a particularly bad spell of depression.

Yeeeaaaah! Oh, wait:

In a preliminary study that [video game maker] PopCap commissioned and funded, researchers found that volunteers who played Bejeweled displayed improved mood and heart rhythms compared with volunteers who weren't playing. [Emphasis ours.]

Oooohhh nooooooooo. Never miiiiiiiiiind.

Link via Fark

The greatest post ever

I’m going to do something that I almost never do: I’m going to link to a ... slideshow. It’s called Press Releases of the Damned:

In the land of the press release, all news isn’t good news–it’s fantastic news. Every product is revolutionary. Each corporate merger is historic. Even layoffs are masterstrokes that will turn around troubled companies. When the stuff announced in press releases hits the real world, the results can be surprising, disappointing, and occasionally catastrophic. Yet the releases remain available in online archives, remorselessly documenting the initial irrational exuberance.

I like this sort of thing because I am a fan of that old book, The Experts Speak. It’s a good reminder of the fact that confidence is no indicator of accuracy.

Link via Slashdot

The really strict constructionist

Did you know that it’s illegal to hunt camels in Arizona? Or that you can’t pick up seaweed from a beach in New Hampshire? Or, that it may not be unconstitutional to execute a person who was convicted of a crime, who later turned out to be innocent? Just ask Justice Scalia:

This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is “actually” innocent.  Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged “actual innocence” is constitutionally cognizable.

While it may be technically true that this is not yet a matter of “settled law”, it should also be equally obvious that there’s no justification for indemnifying the government in any future case where an innocent person may wind up getting executed for a crime he/she didn’t commit.

The culture amongst D. A.’s and prosecuting attorneys is already a highly competitive,  “convict first, ask questions later,” sort of thing. It’s probably not a good idea to rule out anything that might possibly deter prosecutors from going for the death penalty in any case they’re not absolutely certain they’ve got right.

Link via Fark

Bad water

The Awl links to this disturbing piece from Mother Jones, about Fiji Water:

Despite news reports showing that Fiji wouldn’t cooperate with journalists who went there independently, I chose to do so and visited the factory on a public tour. I had planned to speak to Fiji Water’s local representatives, and to visit the surrounding villages, afterward. But it was at that point that I was arrested by Fijian police, interrogated about my plans to write about Fiji Water, and threatened with imprisonment and rape. After that incident, personnel at the US embassy strongly encouraged me not to visit the villages.

What the fuck? I mean, you expect this kind of stuff when it comes to products like cocaine, coffee, or textiles, but water? What the fuck?

I wish I knew why newspapers were having so much trouble

Damn, it’s completely baffling! Unrelated: a newspaper fired a consumer advocacy columnist for writing about an advertiser who is under investigation by the Attorney General:

Consumer affairs columnist George Gombossy has worked for the Hartford Courant since 1969—longer than most Consumerist readers have been alive. Yesterday was his last day at the paper, but he wasn't caught up in one of the rounds of buyouts and layoffs hitting the newspaper industry. Gombossy claims that he was "was fired for doing [his] job," after his last column exposed the bedbug-infested mattresses sold by a major Courant advertiser.

Not that blogging (or anything else) is free of conflicts of interest, but damn.

Don’t try this at home

No, seriously, don’t do what this one guy did: “My wife found out I named our daughter after a porn game”:

“I tried to talk my way out of it at first, but my wife’s decided that I got the name from this game, and it’s pretty much the truth anyway, so I couldn’t. I tried to emphasize how nice a girl Kana is, but that didn’t work either. I’ve got both my and the wife’s parents coming to a family conference after I get home today.”

Holy shit. In other news, I’d like you to meet my daughter, Sasha.

@VincentVanGogh

Van Gogh finally hits Web 2.0. Ka-ching!

Shorter Jonathan Yardley

“Blah blah, the book version of Pride and Prejudice is more book-like than the non-book adaptations of it, you know, tat tat tat.”

[We kid! We kid because we love! –ed]

Twitter is very useful!

You can use it to stay up to date with friends and family; or to broadcast your witty bon mots to your millions of followers; or to remotely control thousands of zombified, virus-laden computers, forcing them to do your bidding:

Hackers are now using Twitter to send coded update messages to computers they’ve previously infected with rogue code, according to a report from net monitoring firm Arbor Networks.

Okay, so it’s maybe a little more complicated than that. Isn’t it always?

Here’s a scary thought...

... the only thing keeping us from becoming the subjects of an evil, totalitarian regime during the Bush administration was George W. Bush, himself:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney felt that the Bush Administration didn’t go far enough in the policies it pursued and that had it not been saddled with a weak commander-in-chief, the policies could have been pushed much further.

“If he’d been equipped with a group of people as ideologically rigorous as he was, they’d have been able to push further,” according to an unnamed associate who told the Washington Post that the Vice President expressed these sentiments during talks over a memoir he plans to publish in 2011.

Ohhhhh, fuuuuuck.

RIP: Les Paul

The LA Times is reporting that world-famous guitarist Les Paul has died. The man is gone, but the sound lives on.

Structural infidelity

See, whenever people claim that being rich ain’t all its cracked up to be, I tend not to believe them. Because rich people can buy the house behind their own and snottily refurbish it in ways they might not attempt in their other houses. Then they can joke about how their affection for what is novel is a little like adultery! Vis, Douglas Copeland:

Mr. Coupland has been sneaking over to the new house, reveling in its open spaces, its “almost Scandinavian sense of social transparency,” as he put it.

Mr. Coupland was asked if he feels a little guilty spending so much time in the new house, considering his longtime home is just a few steps down the hill.

“Do I feel like I’m cheating on my main house?” he said. “A little bit.”

Oh, you cad.

The spandex barometer

From the SF Bay Guardian:

Jan. 20, 1984: during the height of the Cold War, President Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State Charles Shultz designates Iran as a sponsor of international terrorism. Three days later, Hulk Hogan beats the Iron Sheik in Madison Square Garden to claim his first WWF world title. This was no coincidence. In fact it was destiny.

Well, it’s just nice to see non-politicians make hay from exploiting current events.

The Internet Can Teach You

... how to use your feminine wiles. What?

The object of feminine wiles is pretty straightforward: to get your way. So first of all, you have to be willing to not get your way, or it ruins future chances to be wily. You want to leave people liking and respecting you, no matter the outcome. Goodwill and respect are cards in your hand to play at a future date.

This is one of those things I am unable to figure out: Joke or not? If it is a joke, how funny is it, really? If not, should I consider moving to a planet without gender?

Spotted during this exchange at Penny Arcade

Oh man, it’s like looking into a mirror

XKCD wins again.

So, it’s come to this

 

From the comments on this Fark thread:

SchlingFocker: This is probably one of the best articles I've read on Fark in a long time.

Agreed. The investigators were thorough and tenacious.

Joystk: tl;dr

Thanks for the Twitter. Now, tell us what you're making for supper.

Hmm... this could be the new “Get a blog” for the Twitter generation. (I don’t know if there’s a way to link to specific Fark comments. Anyway, the person who posted this, Bob_Laublaw is a funny person.)

Critics tend to get “off-message”

The sad state of film, from the AV Club:

Professional film critics have never wielded less power. Their numbers are declining steadily and studios are growing ever bolder in their bid them to remove them from the equation completely. Why screen Transformers 2: Check Out Megan Fox's Ass for some Poindexter killjoy who will harp upon its faults when the film’s advertising is happy to inform ticket buyers that it’s the non-stop thrill ride of the summer? Who needs a cultural conversation about a film’s merits when you can have a massive one-sided publicity blitz?

Not screening movies for critics has become so commonplace it hardly seems newsworthy but this article about Paramount’s decision not to screen G.I Joe for critics is especially sad and revealing.

As ever, money and unmitigated gall wins the day.

Rich news-media owners, rich staff, may be biased

From The Awl:

Were you aware that the term “class warfare” could just as easily describe attacks directed by the rich against the poor as those made by the poor against the rich? Not if you get your news from the mainstream media, according to Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR).

No no no, you silly people: Attacks by the rich against the poor is a sign of well-operating capitalism, not class warfare!

Look, see? It never happened!

From CJR:

When The Washington Post started drawing heat for its latest “Mouthpiece Theater” video, in which Post staffers Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza suggested it would be appropriate for Hillary Clinton to drink “Mad Bitch” beer, the paper made the problem go away—literally. As a Post spokesperson noted via email to several outlets, including CJR, the video was removed from the Post Web site Friday evening.

Remember when so-called “legitimate journalists” decried the tendency for some bloggers to redact their own histories?

No. That never happened either.