Moxy Früvous

I first heard of these guys on The Acapodcast, great A Cappella Podcast (If you're into that kinda thing). They sang The Gulf War Song, a protest song that was written over ten years ago, yet is equally applicable today. Extending my many-pronged-internet-searching tentacles, I found their 1993 CD Bargainville (I also found this page with some random tracks. I recommend Michigan Militia. Stay away from The Ballad Of The Shit-Faced Lobsters. It's terrible). I assume you want me to tell you what the best songs are. I haven't heard them all yet, but I really like The Drinking Song. Enjoy.

Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner (And TMBG)

Again I find myself posting three entirely unrelated artists side-by-side, simply because of their chronological proximity to each other. Today I found They Might Be Giants' newest children's album (Here Come The 123s) and, more importantly, some old Leonard Nimoy/William Shatner album. If you've never heard of Nimoy's/Shatner's musical career, count yourself among the luckiest people on God's green earth. I think a good place to start would be to listen to William Shatner's rendition of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, arguably his best known work. I found it on Spaced Out - The Best Of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner. I also found Has Been, Shatner's solo album.

EDIT: Upon perusing some of the Leonard Nimoy tracks, I came across a gem titled The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins. The sound triggered a 'Nam-style flashback to a video I thought I had forever erased from my memory. 'Twas not meant to be:

Why, Spock? Why?

Neutral Milk Hotel

Neutral Milk Hotel have only released two albums, so be a part of history and pick up their final CD here. They're indie-ish folk rock, and there is no reason for you not to like their music. None. It's kinda lo-fi, but the lyrical content and fancy instrumentals more than make up for it. If you're only gonna listen to one track, make it "King of Carrot Flowers Part 1". Good stuff.

Wowio

Being overseas, I can't get access to a lot of new movies, books, or comics. Of course, the movies eventually make their way to theaters here, and there are a couple English bookstores here (OK, just one). Of course, I could just order comics on Amazon, but I like to be able to peruse them at my leisure and make up my mind about whether or not I want to shell out ridiculous sums of money to own them. Enter Wowio. It's a free service that provides hundreds of comics' first couple issues absolutely free. I have found it an invaluable tool on deciding whether or not to purchase a certain book. Here's the kicker (especially for those not interested in comics (I'm betting... most of you)). They also have books. And lots of books. I'm halfway through Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, a book I should have read a while ago. It's really good. Seriously. I'm not sure how they're doing it, but I'm totally down with free legal reading material. Check it out here. You need an account, but it's, you know, free.

Barenaked Ladies & POTUSA

Though the the bands Barenaked Ladies and The Presidents of The United States of America have nothing in common, I found them both on the same server, so I'll group 'em. The first is a Canadian folk-rock group notable for their bizzare lyrics and tunes, and the other is a dare-I-say grunge band from Seattle (I believe. Let me check Wikipedia... Yep). Enjoy their albums Maybe You Should Drive and Presidents of the United States of America, respectively.

OK Computer

Are you ready for some Radiohead? You better be, because I got not one, not two, but three Radiohead albums. Well, not really. Just one album, OK Computer. It happens to be my favorite Radiohead CD, their new stuff lacks. Here's the awesome news. I have two cover albums. Yeah! Two cover albums, going track by track through the awesomeness that is OK Computer. First up, we have the original album from Radiohead, the LP that started it all. Then, we move on to a string quartet cover album, equally impressive. Third and perhaps most surprising of all, The Easy Star All-Stars, with their CD Radiodread. That's right. A reggae cover album. All is right with the world. Can't nobody say I ain't done nothing for the internet.

Now for some reason, the string quartet album is missing "Exit Music (For A Film)", which is track four. I'll try and find it somewhere else. Now, our staff* recommends "Karma Police", string quartet "Karma Police", and reggae "Karma Police". I cannot stress the excellence of this song enough. Happy listening.

*Me. Our staff is just me.

The Wilhelm Scream

You've probably never heard of Ben Burtt, but trust me when I say you've heard some of his work. He's a sound designer, best known for his work on the Star Wars movies. R2-D2's voice? That was his idea. The sound of a lightsaber? He made that. Perhaps his greatest triumph, however was his discovery of The Wilhelm Scream. The original sound was used in the 1951 film Distant Drums (possibly by actor Sheb Wooley, who would later record "Purple People Eater"), when a character was dragged underwater by an alligator. When a young Ben Burtt found this reel, labeled "Man being eaten by alligator", he remembered the sound having been used several times in movies from his childhood. Many people credit him for bringing it back to light, as it can be seen in most movies nowadays. It was named after Wilhelm, a character in the 1953 movie Charge at Feather River, who screams after being shot by an arrow. WARNING: After watching this, I was unable to see a single movie without hearing this scream. It's totally in most movies you see nowadays.

You can find a full history of the scream here. Sadly, after Ben Burtt left Lucasfilms for Pixar, he stated he would no longer be using the scream. But he is doing the sound for Pixar's new film, and its eponymous robot, Wall-E (Look up the trailer. Looks so cute).

Also, check out this picture of a origami Cthulhu I found.

Jeff de Boer

I can't remember if I've talked about this guy before, and I'm too lazy to search the archives, so here you are: Jeff de Boer. I don't use the word "genius" all willy-nilly; I like to conserve my "genius"s. That said, de Boer is a genius. He is an artist, and although I'm sure he does other (equally impressive) works, what has endeared me to him so greatly is the fact that he makes suits of armor. For animals. The previous sentence can only be improved by repetition, so I say again: For animals. Just cats and mice, really, but still, who could pass up a 15th century Maximilian knight's armor designed and built for something that could fit in the palm of my hand?

As great as that was, try to contain yourself when you witness the majesty of a piece he calls his "Samurai Siamese".

Whoa. You can check out his website here. Also, here's a set of rather steampunkish atomic dueling pistols, so there's that.

The Weakerthans

I found this Canadian indie-folk-something-or-other-rock band by complete luck; by serendipity. So I haven't even listened to all the tracks on their 2000 album, Left & Leaving. Get it all at the link, but the page isn't lined up correctly. The tracks are listed in some random order. But that's not important. What IS important is that I saw Vanilla Sky last night. WATCH IT.

EDIT: I also found their 1997 album, Fallow. These guys are kinda gloomy, but it's free music, so who are you to complain?

Crayon Physics

This was apparently shown at some game conference and is now one of the worst kept secrets of the video game industry. Enjoy.

Self-Referential Sentences

Upon the third repeat reading of Douglas R. Hofstadter's Metamagical Themas, I stumbled upon my favorite section, the one dealing with self-reference in language. Self-reference is used frequently in philosophy and programming, but I find the simplest, most interesting and certainly funniest examples occur when only language is considered (which many would argue is philosophy, but that's neither here nor there.)

Case in point:

A ceux qui ne comprennent pas l'anglais, la phrase citeé ci-dessous ne dit rien: "For those who know no French, the French sentence that introduced this quoted sentence has no meaning."

It actually works better if you only know English (Or French, but if you can't read English, what are you doing here?). The entire concept circles around the idea of a sentence that is somehow self-aware. Of course, this leads to some first-person pronoun confusion with sentences like

I am the subject of this sentence.

And

I am simultaneously writing and being written.

Or my favorite,

This inert sentence is my body, but my soul is alive, dancing in the sparks of your brain.

The first two raise questions regarding the nature of "I". What is "I"? The sentence? The English language? Me, the writer? The screen you're reading right now? On the other hand, the third sentence makes explicit the fact that "I" is the meaning of the sentence, and draws attention to the fact that the words on the screen are not necessarily the "sentence". After all, what is the sentence? The inert letters, or the idea you have when you read it? I will leave this as an exercise to the reader.

Of course, as with any medium, language has a fourth wall that is rarely breached.

Hey you there. Yeah you. Are you reading me or writing me?

And

Thit sentence is not self-referential, because "thit" is not a word.

I'll just go ahead and copy the other good ones. One of them is mine.

because I didn't think of a good beginning for it.

This sentence, though not interrogative, nevertheless ends in a question mark?

Sentence fragment.

This sentence no verb.

This sentence would be seven words long if it were six words shorter.

I'll leave you with a lovely short story written by David Moser, titled This Is The Title Of The Story, Which Is Also Found Several Times In The Story Itself.

Parno Graszt

I was extremely perturbed to discover a few days ago that Lily Allen is, in point of fact, very popular. Having such a blow to my credibility is something I can not stand for. So I delved in to the deepest, most unreachable realms of my iTunes library, where my eyes greeted a welcome sight: Parno Graszt. My mom bought their first CD on a trip to Hungary a few years back, and for it, I salute her. The story behind this particular group is almost as good as their music. In northeast Hungary, near the Tisza river, you'll find Paszab, a legitimate Gypsy village. What I particularly love about the band is that their numbers aren't necessarily written in stone. Besides the seven core members, who I assume, write the music; the entire village contributes in one way or another. They often tour with another dozen or so dancers who just dance their spritely dances. The other thing I love is that they're real gypsies. They still live in the same village they did when they started out five or six years ago, a place where little barefoot children run around and everyone meets in the town square to jam. I'm probably profiling, but I'll prefer my distorted worldview to the real thing nine times out of ten.

On to the music. Good luck finding a US-based distributor. I can only find one $40 CD on Amazon, so I'd advise seeking alternate importers. Anyway, I think a great introduction to their particular brand of musical merry-making is this song: as far as I can tell, a self-titled track. For those seeking some more songs, I'm forced to link to their MySpace, as loath as I may be (if you're clever, you can download those songs. I'll leave this as an exercise to the reader).

EDIT: I'm now seriously angry, as I just found out that last year these guys performed live in a town that is about a 20-minute walk from where I'm sitting right now. I can only imagine how awesome these guys must be live.

Trigger-Happy Pandas: Never Boring

A few years back, I ran across a little book called "Eats, Shoots and Leaves", which was titled after the old joke that goes a little something like this:

A panda walks into a restaurant, sits down and enjoys a meal. After picking up the check, he stands up, pulls out a gun, fires a round into the ceiling, and walks out. The patrons are understandably upset, but the staff attempt to calm everyone down. "That's normal panda behavior," a waiter says. "He eats, shoots and leaves."

HAHA! Oh, that's good! The entire premise of the book is, of course, about punctuation. The punchline depends on the fact that if the comma is removed from the waiter's comment, an undeniable fact becomes apparent. A panda's diet is composed mostly of the shoots and leaves of the bamboo plant (cue mute trumpet: "wanh-wanh-wannnnnh").

I do so love wordplay of this nature, and I'll share with you my personal favorite sentence in this form, "Hide the cows outside." In this form, it's a demand to hide the bovine animals in a location exterior to where you are currently located. However, the simple addition of a comma, an apostrophe and an exclamation point yields: "Hide, the cow's outside!" a sentence that conjures up a terrifying image of a cow possessed, an animal who has had enough and intends to do something about it (and of course, the petrified inhabitants of the house, equally funny). There are many sentences that share two definitions based on punctuation placement, but this one is my favorite, for there is a third meaning to it: "Hide: the cow's outside." Indeed, the outside of a cow is called "hide".

After doing some searching online, I came across this BBC article/contest that asks the reader to draft a whole letter that has two entirely different meanings. This is much harder than you think (I like the last one best).

P.S.: I was watching Predator last night, and about halfway through I realized it was actually Beowulf (the poem, not the film). Think about it.

How It Should Have Ended

Ever see a movie and wish the characters acted a little more... real? For example, they acted like actual human beings would in a given circumstance? Here's a perfect example: That is totally how it should have ended. For more, you can check out the website here.

Lily Allen

Alrighty, a new artist today. Lily Allen was pretty big in the UK last year, and is starting to claim some airtime in the US, so I thought I'd get on the bandwagon and say I knew her before any of you suckers did (I caught "Littlest Things" on the radio about a week ago. I saw her first). Here's her 2006 debut album Alright, Still.

Unintentionally Hilarious Comics

I found this great little gem the other day. It outlines unintentional hilarity in comics that we all remember (newspaper comics, not the other kind). Who remembers Mark Trail? What was up with that? Mary Worth? Rex Morgan, M.D.? I feel we should just keep soap operas on the screen, thank you. Enough trees have died for your sins. Check it out here.

I got the name of this post from this Cracked article, who chose the five top comics to make fun of. It shows you panels like this to back up their testimony:

(Sadly, gone are the days of BIFF! and POW!)

As long as I'm on a comics kick, I might as well direct you to Comics I Don't Understand, a site where the confused proprietor uploads comics (sometimes newspaper, sometimes webcomics) he doesn't understand or just finds plain unfunny, often with that same unintentional comedy going on.

African or European?

If I were to ask you what the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow was, you might give me a variety of answers, the correct one of which is, of course: "African or European?" I also would have accepted "What? I don't know that!" followed by a lingering scream. Thanks to these guys, I now have to memorize the actual answer for future reference. I don't understand the math, so I'll assume it's correct. They also tell you what the capital of Assyria is.

For those of you who are confused, go rent Monty Python and the Holy Grail. You won't be disappointed.

For those who loved the show, you can find complete transcripts of every episode here. Handy!

P.S.: In a complete coincidence, I realized the above domain is owned by the guy who did the Recobbled edit of The Thief and the Cobbler I mentioned not too long ago. Spooky.

Jack Handey

I first stumbled across Jack Handey's words of wisdom in a New Yorker article a few years back. He was writing about various ideas for paintings that the reader was free to use, with the disclaimer "All I ask is that when you have completed a painting, as a courtesy to me you sign it 'Jack Handey and [your name or initials].' And, if the painting is sold, I get approximately all the money." Since then I hadn't heard of him, but after I found the same article last night, I decided to look him up. Apparently, he worked as a writer for Saturday Night Live, with a little gag known as "Jack Handey's Deep Thoughts". These thoughts were brief hypothetical scenarios that often invoked deep, hearty laughs with their surreality. Example:

One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh, no," I said. "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late.

Or perhaps:

Anytime I see something screech across a room and latch onto someones neck, and the guy screams and tries to get it off, I have to laugh, because what is that thing?

(I think I like this one the best, but you only think so after reading a whole bunch)

If you ever crawl inside an old hollow log and go to sleep, and while you're in there some guys come and seal up both ends and then put it on a truck and take it to another city, boy, I don't know what to tell you.

You COULD buy his book here, like some common sucker, or you could read all of his Deep Thoughts free here.

Of course, his full length articles are filled with the same kind of spectacular oddity. Check them out:
My First Day In Hell
My Nature Documentary
This Is No Game*
What I'd Say To The Martians*

The starred ones are A-W-E-S-O-M-E.

P22 Mail Art Project

Although I've had an idea for a mail art project kicking around in my head for over a year, I find it unlikely that anything will come of it, mostly because I live in a place where everything, including postage, is prohibitively expensive. Maybe next year. Anyway, when I talk about mail art, I mean doing something like what these guys do. Billed as "A correspondence between Daniel Farrell and Richard Kegler", the P22 Mail Art Project was a seven-year art project designed partly to test the postal system, and partly to see what would happen.

I'm not sure how many pieces they sent through, but there was some interesting stuff to be sure. For example, my favorite is The Dilemma Box. It was a transparent box with a sliding top. The stamps, however, were on the inside, clearly visible. The question is, would the post office open the box (illegally opening mail not addressed to them) to cancel the stamps (required by law)? According to the site, they did. Convincing federal workers to break laws? Good times! Other works include a fragile paper cast of a human head (with postage and addresses printed right on), a disposable camera (with instructions to postal workers to take some pictures before delivering), and a paint stirrer (usually just a flat piece of wood or metal) with the words "The Unabomber killed mail art." That one didn't go through. Its whereabouts are unknown. Check out the website here.

Elliott Smith Tribute Album

I didn't even know one of these existed. Even happier because I know some of the bands. Get the whole thing here.

Some Signs

This is quite possibly the best thing I've ever seen.

A negative ten dollar sale. Those are some serious savings.

It's an American company, this tag was on some shorts sold in France. Find an online translator or something; it's worth it.

This says "Emergency Exit".

Click to enlarge.

I found these all on Dark Roasted Blend. It's chock full of goodness (I tried my best to weed out the Photoshop'd ones, but these days, it's getting hard to tell).

Ariana Page Russell

Hey everyone. I got a new computer. Whoo-hoo!

Ms. Russell is an artist who utilizes a fairly common (in this day and age) medium, namely, skin. What is unique regarding her approach to the subject is that she has dermatographia, where the skin is extremely sensitive to even the subtlest touch. It becomes inflamed at the touch of even really dull objects. Usually the symptoms only persist for 30 minutes or so, which is more than enough time to take a couple photos:

You can see some more photos at her website here.

Beck

Who likes Beck? Ha ha! Naw, just messing. More like, who DOESN'T like Beck? Am I right? Yeah, I am. Have some Beck.

P.S.: Best tracks are "E-Pro", "Hell Yes", "Rental Car" and "Emergency Exit".

The Thief And The Cobbler

When I was, say, five or six, I was watching some movie (I forget what it was), when I saw, in the previews, a movie I simply had to see. It was filled with insanely bright colors and crazy backgrounds, and sure enough I got it for Christmas the next year. Not too long ago, I wondered about that movie. I wondered if I could find it, or at least some mention of this obscure cartoon, again. What I found blew my mind.

So gather round and hear a tale of woe. It is truly the saddest story I've ever heard (of all the stories I've heard surrounding a feature length animated film).

Picture this. You've worked on something your entire life, something you designed with the sole purpose of being your masterpiece. After 20 years of working alone without major support, you finally gain the money and resources necessary to finish this magnum opus. Alas, your backers get tired of waiting and decide to recoup their losses by taking creative control of the work, putting someone else in control, editing and mangling it beyond your vision and selling it off as fast as possible before Aladdin comes out.

Well, that may be slightly specific. Richard Williams, a Canadian animator and director, best known for his artistic direction on Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, began his pet project, The Thief And The Cobbler, in 1964. He was forced to take on smaller directing jobs to fund his project, and so, before he got Warner Bros. funding in 1990, many people had worked with Williams or seen his storyboards and sketches. Many of these people went on to work at Disney, where Aladdin (a movie with similar themes, motifs, settings and art direction) was beginning production. Long story short, Warner backed out and the film was passed from low-budget studio to low-budget studio before finally being picked up by Completion Bond Company, a studio that no one has ever heard of, EVER. They hired Thai animators to fill in sequences that were never in the original workprint (many of them musical scenes, to compete with Aladdin), and hired voice actors to fill in voices for the two eponymous characters, who were originally silent, their roles being originally displayed mostly through facial expressions and body language. Post-Williams scenes in the final cut are often compared to Saturday morning cartoons from Korea. A sad and ignoble end for a movie.

I couldn't find Richard Williams' response to all this, but I did find that in 1984 (before it was puked upon), he referenced the film as his "reason for living." Moreover, the original art and sketches he had kept were sent to Thailand for reference, and were likely thrown out. It's all just... heartbreaking, just plain heartbreaking. There is a moderately happy ending, however. There have been many fan edits of this film, the most recent and famous of which is the "Recobbled" edit, found freely here on Google Video. Keep in mind, it has been patched together from many different editions, so don't expect top-shelf quality here.

Watching it for the first time in over a decade, the movie itself was kinda... disappointing. It's definitely the best looking animated movie I've ever seen, but I was let down a little, probably because the nostalgia of it vastly outweighed how good it actually was. By far, the best scene is at the end, when a single cobbler's tack brings down a city-sized war machine in a series of unlikely but visually enthralling events. And so, I leave you with the knowledge that The Thief And The Cobbler has the record for production time, being in active production from 1964 to 1993. I'll also leave you with a M.C. Escher-inspired chase scene from the beginning of the film.

Amazon Oddities

I feel really bad about that post yesterday. I was in a slump or something. So to redeem myself, I decided to stick with Amazon.com, but review some more interesting items. Sure, a $40,000 book is neat, but not as cool as the JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank. Only about half as expensive as the aforementioned book, The Badonkadonk comes equipped with armor plating, room for five (either inside or on the roof), a 40-MPH engine, rubber skirting to protect the wheels up to an inch from the ground, fully carpeted interior and more. The real fun begins with the Customer Reviews, however. My favorite?

Buyer Beware: This product does not come equipped with a weapon.

What good is a tank without an attached gun? I was forced to hang my arm out the window with my index finger and thumb extended in the "Pantomime Gun" gesture while squeaking out "Pyew! Pyew!" in a shrill falsetto.

This did little to instill fear in my enemies.

Next up we have some Uranium Ore. Yes, it is legal to purchase this stuff on Amazon. According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, online stores can freely sell and ship low-level radioactive materials. It's usually used to test Geiger counters and the like. Once again, I find the Customer Reviews to be invaluable:

This product will not generate super powers!

My wife and I purchased this product for the expressed purpose of breeding an atomic superman. After a daily regimen of ingesting a tablespoon of this powder mixed with green tea along with her prenatal vitamins, my wife developed serious morning sickness and perished during childbirth.

After clawing his way out of my wife's dead body, young Yog-Sothoth was promptly hacked to death by a scalpel-happy OB/GYN. That's HMO care for you!

Please avoid this product if you, like us, are seeking to defy God's natural order by creating a demonic superhuman demigod.

OK, I also just found this review for Duncan Hines Yellow Cake Mix:

Disappointed

Obviously, the price is right -- so that's 1 star right there. And the convenience of super-saver delivery spares me I don't even know how many trips to Niger. That's another star.

However, try as I might, I could never get this stuff to enrich to fully weapons-grade. If it worked half as well in my ballistic missiles as it does in my research reactor, it'd be 5 stars. Maybe you'll have better luck. It's possible that my centrifuge is hinky.

Get it? Yellowcake?

Moving right along, we find our final product. It's my favorite, because it has over 900 Customer Reviews. Quite simply, it's Tuscan Whole Milk. Plain old milk, sold online. I can't find a single honest review, because I really think no one's bought it. Let's take a look at some reviews.

The Best Gift I've Ever Received

It was my birthday, and I was afraid that no one remembered, what with the hustle and bustle and comedown of the post Christmas rush. A knock at my door. I glanced through the eyehole, and there it was - sitting on the ground, a 1 gallon (128 fl oz) jug of Tuscan Whole Milk, jauntily adorned with only a silver bow. The card read "I care enough to help you prevent osteoporosis." It was unsigned. I brought the astonishing gift into my kitchen, noting the cold firmness of the plastic container as I held it to my chest. To the kind stranger so concerned for my bone health, I drank to you, glass after glass. Perhaps someday I will be able to enrich someone's life in the same way.

I beseech of thee, just read some of these wonderful reviews. Your day will be all the better for it.

Also, here are some items that were just too great to pass up.

Real live Pimpjuice.

I'm actually thinking about buying this. It's a brownie pan that ensures every piece has that chewy edge goodness. Mmmmm.

Yes, that's Fidel Castro. Yes, it's also a belt buckle.

Superbowl XL Opus MVP Edition

I was just looking around today for a copy of a play I saw a year or two ago. Just a paperback book. I COULD NOT find a copy of this play that was selling for less than $100. It's ridiculous, but it got me wondering what the most expensive book is. Deciding to discount rarities like Gutenberg Bibles, I searched Amazon Books, sorting by price. Among over ten pages of bizarre financial tomes with names like "Worldwide Application Development & Deployment and System Infrastructure Software Market Forecaster: 2004-2008 Forecast Update", I found the SUPERBOWL XL OPUS MVP EDITION (Leather Bound)!

Alright. This 80-pound book (heaviest sports book ever, apparently) has a page of signatures from every (living) MVP in Superbowl history. While I don't deny that's impressive, allow me to continue. It has pictures and play-by-play descriptions of every single Superbowl (and all their players). Also pretty impressive. It has 850 20-inch-square pages. Yes, lovely, but who's going to pay $40,000 dollars for a book?

That's FORTY THOUSAND AMERICAN DOLLARS.

Honestly. I'm a little disappointed. I expected the most expensive book ever to be the world's most comprehensive medical text or something. Instead, it's about a bunch of guys who run into each other for a living. It has a website and everything.

Now I feel a little bad about posting this. This post is just weak. Forget I ever mentioned it. While you're here, though, take a look at this Gene Simmons bass guitar I found on eBay. It's shaped like an axe.

It's autographed and everything.

Grow Cube

I normally won't link to Flash games, but this one really caught my eye. It's pretty self-explanatory, and will keep you hooked for a good hour or two. Check it out here.

P.S.: The first two are: Man, Water. Have fun.

Me First & The Gimme Gimmes

Firsthand, allow me to state that this band has the best name ever.

Now. Me First & The Gimme Gimmes are a punk band who do only covers. Covers of songs that were never designed for punk, like Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl" and Judy Garland's "Somewhere Over The Rainbow". So here you go.

I Believe I Can Fly

I'll Be There

Where Do Broken Hearts Go (originally by Whitney Houston, I believe)

Leaving On A Jet Plane

My Boyfriend's Back

So there. These guys were just gonna be a tiny part of something else, but I thought they deserved their own post.

Nerdcore

I don't like rap, but I do like novelty music. This leaves me in something of a quandary when it comes to Nerdcore hip-hop or Geeksta rap. From those two names, I'm quite sure you can extrapolate the particulars of this genre. If not, Wikipedia defines it as: "a subgenre of hiphop characterized by themes and subject matter considered to be of general interest to nerds." Ah. Wikipedia. A Geek's Opinion, Presented As Fact.

At any rate, a fair number of nerdcore songs are available free, so here's my personal picks (I thought that this blog, for all its claims of "oddio," has been lacking music-wise). First off, YTCracker (pronounced "whitey cracker") holds a special place in my heart. He was the first geeksta artist I ever heard. Here's his free CD: "Nerdrap Entertainment System" (or NES. Heh). I can only link to the whole CD, even though the only good track is the first, "Meganerd."

Next up, we have probably the most famous geeksta, mc chris. And here's his first CD "Life's a Bitch and I'm Her Pimp".

And sure, I'll give you some MC Frontalot. Fresh Dog, where he raps about his dog, Dog E. Fresh (somewhere, one other person is laughing at that. The rest of you will have to Google it and pretend you've known all along).

Mystery Science Theatre 3000

It surprised me to find out that not a lot of people are aware of this show. Many have heard of it, but like most cult shows, few have seen it. or seen, you know, more than an episode or two. Just search Google Video for "MST3K" with a parameter of over 20 minutes. You'll end up with dozens of episodes. Here's my favorite, Space Mutiny:

The graphics don't seem too bad until you learn that every single graphic was stolen from Battlestar Galactica. Be sure to skip all host segments (any scene not taking place in the theatre). They're all pretty much terrible.

Science Jokes

This Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic apparently inspired some guy to start up a wiki documenting the best science jokes with detailed explanations and sources. I've only been on there a couple of hours, but I've seen some good stuff. And learned a whole bunch too. Check it out here. Also, here you go:

C++ programmers do it with class.
Classical geometers do it on a plane.
Commutative algebraists do it regularly.
Complex analysts do it between the sheets.
Computer scientists do it by brute force.
Cryptographers do it with zero-knowledge.
Linear programmers do it with nearest neighbors.
(Logicians do it) or [not (logicians do it)].
Mathematical physicists understand the theory of how to do it, but have difficulty obtaining practical results.
Mathematicians have to prove they did it.
Statisticians probably do it.
Statisticians would like to do it with the entire population, but can only get a small sample.

Good Day

One of the best and most original music videos I've seen in a long time. It's by Tally Hall: