ROTFL

I may be the last person to see this as apparently it's been getting some heavy media coverage.. but just in case I wanted to make sure you all get in on the action.

We're not dead: megapost

Guys, thanks for being patient. I started a new job as an executive recruiter and have spent a lot of time going in early and staying late trying to learn the business. Those who know me probably know that I can't stand not to have a reasonable depth of knowledge for things and accordingly I always work my ass off for months trying to learn everything there is to know about a job. So, I think I'll need to spend some weekend nights blogging, because I have a whole page or two of blog topics (including "fallacies", "circumcision", "sam harris pt. 3", "Chomsky", "Liberalism vs. Anarchism vs. Patton vs. Achohol", "federer", and "On nakedness, sex, vaginas and other keywords that make a blog post immediately fascinating even though everyone might like to pretend otherwise")

Without further ado, let's pretend you forgot about this blog for the last month and are catching up on everything you've missed:

The creepiest Myspace page of all time, hands down, noone else even comes close. Kajina Ray This is a page dedicated to a miscarried baby discussing heaven and "loving their mommy and daddy." Yes it's true that despite lines that should be sad like "I'm dancing and playing with the angels in heaven" it winds up 100% grade a fucking creepy. And that's because there are fucking pictures of the miscarried fetus dressed up in baby clothes in the "pics" section. You have been warned but holy shit.




From a list of things that high-level executives, salesmen and bosses around the world say that are (the things they say) philosophically unsound, compiled by me:

"Perception is reality." This is extremely common and is just absolute drivel. I first year philosophy student should be able to decimate this canard, so why do supposedly intelligent people use it? I think it's appealingly geared toward business-style nihilism with a marketing bent, or something. You know "if we can make you think it then it's true." But it's just nonsense- put a pencil into the water and have a look:



Is it actually bent simply because you perceive it as bent? Okay, then please shut the fuck up.

From a list of things that high-level executives, salesmen and bosses around the world say that are (the things they say) philosophically sound, compiled by me:

"It is what it is." This is a highly defensible statement, known as a tautology or truism. David Hume called these "Analytic A Priori Truths" which is to say things that could never not be true, and don't need to be verified by experiment, experience, etc. I actually like using this, as a sort of less pretentious "c'est la vie" that says "well what are can you do? (nothing.)"

Words/phrases that don't mean what you think they mean, including one I just used incorrectly above (only so I could educate you.)
1. Decimate: means to kill or remove every tenth thing. Does not mean to "utterly destroy" as is commonly thought and said.
2. Penultimate: means "second to last" not just a fancier word for "ultimate."
3. Irregardless: No, this is not a fucking word. DO NOT use it. If other people do, feel free to laugh derisively.
4. "As best as you can." It chills my bones when people say that, though it's somewhat rare. Obviously the correct form is "as best you can."
5. "I could care less" This is an almost meaningless thing to say: "I care about this thing to some degree." (rough translation. PS I'm guilty of this one at times, gulp.)


A homemade youtube video for Daft Punk's "Harder Better Faster Stronger" that is amazing. Leah who does not like Daft Punk loved this, and based on that I would simply recommend that everyone watch this. The fact that it's almost retardedly uneventful for the first minute makes the top-notch last 3 minutes THAT MUCH awesomer. (sorry for the dumb/offensive slang in this post.)


Zach Galifianakis being Zach Galiafinakis on Kanye's West's new video for "Can't tell me nuthin'" This is an official video (you can find a high quality version on Kanye's site) which makes me impressed with Mr. West:


You'll almost be disappointed with yourself for finding this video so goddamn funny, but for some reason it is. "Yeah har har har yellow ledbetter is hard to understand, har har", and yet it's got a certain je ne sais quoi that makes it both appealing and funny. This song still rules by the way- proving the theory I'll later develop in a blog post that the mark of a great band at the top it's game is a great B-side. Pearl Jam- Yellow Ledbetter.


If wrestling was still like this I would watch it for sure. This is a fued between the big boss- WAIT! Don't stop reading! This passed the Leah test too and it's incredible how over the top it is! One guy "The Big Boss Man" makes fun of the other guy's dad dying (imitating him whining "my daddy, my daddy!") so the other guy stands in the middle of the wrestling ring and says (I shit you not) "How would you feel if a family heirloom; a watch from your grandfather was taken from you and destroyed?" As he smashes a gold watch over an anvil (apparently taken from a road runner cartoon, the only place in which anvils have ever existed.) But here's the thing: that happens about 20 seconds when they're just getting started. You haven't seen the attempted assassinations, the grave theft, the bullhorn-featuring funeral interruption (with poetry) etc. In fact, they don't even show you the wrestling match in this clip, because who the hell cares?


Wikipedia is making me sad. It's so obvious that this would've happened that I'm shocked I never considered it, but the site is basically over-run with corporate spin control. I love this site, but it's hard to see how they can control this while staying true to the truly inspiring wikipedia mission. To explain: when the GAP wants to paint over their nasty sweatshop history, they can hire people to effectively sabotage the wiki page by continue to delete and remove and move and alter the GAP page, defending the decision on the Talk pages and so on. Given how great a benefit that is to GAP, and how they're only up against a few volunteers who don't have time to argue everything one can see how the truth can be twisted, shaped, and manipulated according to those how have an interest and the money to try and affect things. What happened is, someone has used a directory of IP addresses and cross-checked them against edits in the wikipedia pages and found some scary and serious patterns of malfeasance. This project is just getting started but is already way-beyond disturbing. The wikipedia staff is implicated in some of it too... It's up at Wired (though to wikipedia's credit, it's nice that they are transparent enough for a project like this to be possible.) Nevertheless, Matt=Sad.


Thanks for reading, and please never give up on us. I promise that we have much, much more to say.

Proof that reincarnation is real

Hit and Run

Seriously impressive mental resilience on behalf of the troops- it's taken them 4 years plus of horrifying conditions and daily mutual terror to develop the same levels of callousness and disregard for human life that guys like O'Reilly and those in the Bush administration has had all along. "A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi... You know, so what?"

My neighbor has heroically bad taste in music; heroically bad. A few weeks back he held a very loud all night coke party for Widespread Panic (i.e. Phish for republicans) and had a friend over who thought it just hilarious to yell down from the balcony to people passing by that they were "faggots" (this was at 8 a.m. on the saturday after the first "Panic" show- they were pulling an all-nighter and a half.) A few days later I'm at the computer and he's listening to a 12 minute live version of "Runaround" (complete with several extended harmonica jams) from a Blues Traveler bootleg. Bad so far, but not "blog post bad." But what's he listening to right now, as I type this? A live version of Will Smith's "Gettin Jiggy wit it." I could not make that up if I tried. The questions are too numerous to really even scratch the surface: Will Smith has played a live show? Somebody bootlegged it? Somebody owns and listens to said bootleg in two thousand and seven?

Seriously, it's like:

or something.

This is the most bizarre news story you may ever read, and there's no right tone to take when discussing it (though this guy didn't seem to care.) I will say this though- if someone else is around make sure both your hands are on the keyboard.

The Onion and Justin Timberlake

I don't link the Onion here because everyone who reads this checks it already (I know our audience has grown substantially as of late, but I'm still pretty confident in that assessment.) Suffice it to say, if you haven't checked it yet- this issue is on of the best I've seen in awhile. Anyway, I'm going to talk about the Onion "AV club" today, which is different. "Why", you ask? Because I used to never check it (and I probably still wouldn't have if I didn't get the issues in print) and it's awesome, and I was reading it today and saw something funny.

The lead singer of Bloc Party, Kele Okereke (whom I like) is commenting on the tracks that randomly come up on his Ipod when it's set to shuffle. For those unfamiliar- this is a monthly feature for the AV club and it's usually less cool than it sounds but I always check it anyway. So a song by Prince comes up and Kele starts talking about how nobody can do what Prince does and he says "certainly not Justin Timberlake" and then laughs. So what comes up on his Ipod next (remember it's on shuffle)? None other than JT himself performing sexyback.



The easy way to spin this is "People are embarrassed to like JT because it's not cool, but we all secretly listen to him non stop." Who knows whether that's true, but if it is it shouldn't be. And I'm not saying this in one of "c'mon bro-dude just like what you like who cares what people think?" bullshit things people do when they want to make a big deal out how independent they are and how little they care about what other people think (catch them listening to the Bravery though and see how they are). Newsflash: people who don't really care also don't care that you know that and so don't make a big deal out of it. No, it's because it's actually cool to like Timberlake; really cool even. Check this link if you don't believe me (the tastemaker website gave him 5/5). So what's going on?

First let's establish a few things. One, Justin Timberlake is not a good-looking dude, naturally. Feel free to scroll up for the corn-rows again, too.



However, Justin Timberlake can be done up to look pretty damn good (just sayin'.)



I just wanted to put those there to make sure people were still reading. But so Justin Timberlake has taken on this strange cultural cachet in which liking him is the ultimate "I don't care what people think" statement. It's so ultimate, in fact, that it's become actually cool to say you like the guy and vice versa. Talk to a hipster (hell talk to the guy above who said "Bro-dude") and just say you don't like JT and it'll go like this:

Me: Yeah, apart from one song I'm not really a fan of Justin Timberlake.

P4KR (eyes lighting up as he realizes it's his big opportunity to show just how much he doesn't care about other people think of him and his taste in music): Dude-bro, it's just good music you know? Good pop music right? I mean sure I know it's not "cool" to like him, but that's not what...

ugh.



Notice: Cliff's notes of this post.
Read this sentence and if you understand it (and good luck), then you've got 81% of this post. I'm saying that JT is Music you don't like but you also know that everyone else thinks that it's actually music you like but that you only say you hate because you think you're supposed to think it's horrible. Which winds up meaning it's music you're supposed to (say you) like.

Now there are guys who genuinely, truly like Timberlake, and I'm totally cool with them. In fact they should be pissed too because their actual appreciation is getting hijacked. If you're one of those people, scroll up and click the hyperlink for "apart from one song" (i.e. denoting the song of his that I really like) because it's the remix of "What goes around" featuring Rick Ross and Pitbull and it's badass. I couldn't find it on a single CD, either!



By the way, I realize I'm probably giving him way too much credit by referring to these songs as "Justin Timberlake's songs" when in reality they're probably "Timbaland's songs that Justin Timberlake contributed one line to so he could squeak out a co-writing credit." I do this by convention only- one reason why Timberlake isn't the next Prince is that Prince was a great songwriter on top of everything else. We can't say that about JT.

So...
At this point there're two different meanings of "I like Justin Timberlake", only one of which refers to the actual aesthetic appreciation of Timberlake's 85% shitty music. The other one -as far as i can tell- refers to this new method of publicly declaring how you aren't affected by hip-culture telling you what you should or shouldn't like (the irony is so obvious it's barely worth mentioning.) It's enough to make your goddamn head spin.

Anyway, as someone who realizes that if there was ever a time in our cultural milieu to like Justin Timberlake without shame it's now: Justin Timberlake sucks.

Pass it on

Any Blog worth its salt has recurring features; we all know this. In the coming days we'll introduce at least two and it's a safe bet that at least one of them will actually wind up being a recurring feature. This one's called "Pass it on."

Katherine Heigl, 29, used her real vagina for the birthing scenes in Knocked Up, stating "I'm the type of person who does my own stunts. I think this sends a message to people that birthing is not something to be ashamed of." Judd Apatow's film, which debuted at #1, has been criticized for its shocking depiction of a realistic birth. However, Malosi Leonard the stunt coordinator for the film disagrees, saying "Katherine's brave decision to insert a watermelon-sized fake baby head into her vagina and then push it out on camera is a tribute to mothers across the globe." (Quarterly Might, July 2007 Interview)

Hmmm... I didn't hear the press raving when Tom Cruise (who always does his own stunts) used his real vagina for the Gatling gun scene in "The Last Samurai" but I guess that's a typical double standard. Rim shot.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Top bad puns for a hair salon I will never start, thought of today (with some serious assistance):

• Bloods and Clips
• Perms of En-shear-ment
• Total E-clips of the Part (online salon)
• Raising Hairizona
• Kiddie Shorn (kidz cuts!)
• The Brother's Trimme Hairy Tales (doubles as gonzo niche porn title)
• Trim and Crop-her
• His Curl Friday
• Bosnia-Hairzegovina
• 'Fro Momma from the Mane
• Last Tangle in Hair-is
• Thou Shalt not Commit Adulthairy
• The face that launched 1,000 clips
• Take me down to the Hairadise city where the 'stache is clean and the curls are pretty
  

I hope they all make you groan. I'll probably think of 5 worse ones tomorrow morning and edit this. Perhaps some suggestions as well...

In other news:

Pentagon confirms it sought to build a "gay bomb" (real.)

Small funny Gif of Conan dancing like a maniac with Andrew WK.

Chomsky to Dennett: suck it. (this isn't hard-core tech reading, but you might want to know something about science history or the philosophy of the mind before jumping in.)