Random raves

For those who haven't come across it yet:

Old Spice Man, Feminist Hulk AND Judith Butler ... discourse, SMASH epistemological frameworks, and bake cake, in the bathroom.

Is it only me who finds that "epic" should always be suffixed with FAIL? I heard some young'uns today talking about how something was epic.... I kept waiting in vain for the other shoe to drop.

Oh, and while it's not exactly language-related, I am so sick of people going on about Freakonomics. It's well-and-truly jumped the shark (and did about 5 minutes after being published). Here's a precis for you:

Dubner: Oh HAI. I'm a journalist and I was desperate to get something more than 800 words published, so I tracked down this pointy headed intellekshul and basically wrote this book for him. But he's really really cool. Really. And comes up with cool provocative things that I will dumb down for the masses in a "folksy" kind of way.
Levitt: Yes, I am a pointy-headed intellekshul - actually, I am an economist. And also, I actually admit that economics is a social science, which is amazing because most economists try to pass it off as science-science. But anyway, enough about me, here's a provocative essay on abortion and how since we're killing off all the potential crims at birth, we have less crime! Yay abortion! Although boo, because, you know, those moral things that people keep talking about. And really, it's not about abortion, it's about crime. And those millions of poor aborted babies don't balance out the thousands of nasty crims we execute once they're grown up.
Dubner: Wasn't that cool? And provocative? Isn't Levitt so intellekshul? And provocative? And look at that insight.
Levitt: So now I'll state the frigging obvious about how real estate agents can do dodgy deals on their own behalf, and how lower-echelon drug dealers are poor. And that some teachers cheat with their students' exams. And see, look, I'm so radical because I'll borrow some research that shows that some student - not me, I don't know this kind of person - actually talked to drug dealers. See, they can talk!
Dubner: Wow. Isn't it amazing how he can explain these radical concepts to idiots like the general public and journalists. He really is cool.
Levitt: And here's some more stuff that sounds impressive, but is really a lot about demonstrating "correlation does not equal causation". Did you say the word abortion again? No? Oh well, but this stuff is just as valid, honest. Especially the part where I explain that employers are racist when they perceive someone's name is "black". Oh, right, perhaps that comes under stating the obvious again.
Dubner: Dude, did you know I love you? I really really love you. I just go the glasses and the cute side-parting.
Levitt: Um, yeah. Moving right along to the blog. I'm up with the modern technologies! Although I really only post when it's time to sell more books. That's what I have my blog-peons, sorry, co-contributors for, to keep up the content.

I use predictive text when composing messages on my phone, and here are the contents of my "custom words" (i.e. what wasn't included in my phone's dictionary):

Canberra
chortle
[name]
bollocks
arvo
deodorant
dokey
[name]
fuck
gidday
groovy
Lyneham
okey
pooches
stinky
[name]
tute
wallaby
yay
Wgtn

There you go, important words we should all have in our phone dictionaries (for the life of me, I don't know why I have "wallaby" in there. Nor "deodorant", for that matter.)

And extra bonus PunditKitchen LOL:

I'm not going to link to it, but here it is:

I would do favors ... for him while he was out, like letting his dogs out to use the bathroom...

Letting the dogs out to use the bathroom? I know we've talked about Americans' aversion to certain words before, but really.

Fart In The Duck. Yes, ok, I find "buffalaxed" non-English music videos hilarious (depending on how well it's done).

Apparently the chorus of this one actually is "There's a hole in the roof". But "fart in the duck" has its own particular charm.

ETA: In other news, the downstairs neighbours are having another partay. At least the music isn't too bad.

...Or anything else, really, but this was the first lolcat to make me LOL in ages.

There's been an amusing discussion in the Sydney Morning Herald about the horrors of Pachelbel's Canon in D... from the perspective of the cellists. It is apparently the most boring piece in the world for them to play, and for good reason, according to this hilarious rant on YouTube.

But I do think the violists have it worse (as usual), especially given this perspective from one poor suffering soul: "We pluck, yes, pluck the same two bars 28 times. I am at serious risk of RSI from that infernal Canon. Moreover, we are expected to bow the last note! Yes, we either have to play the entire Canon with bow in hand all for one note, or we must leave a sizeable gap before said note in order to retrieve our bow. I don't think Pachelbel knew that violists are people too. Then again not many people seem to know that these days."

Now, I learned to play (to a middling standard, for a teenager) a few wind instruments when I was at school, and while I really love the Greensleeves melody, dear god, is there anything that has been more thrashed to death on a flute? And don't talk to me about saxophone music - there doesn't actually appear to be any. It's all horrible arrangements of pop songs (and pop songs are boring to play on an instrument that can't do chords), or the fucking Darth Vader theme. (Henry Mancini and Stevie Wonder were the only decent bits, at least until I got good enough to learn some jazz pieces)

I have an ex-girlfriend whose siblings all did piano lessons, being nice middle-class minister's daughters. They all got so sick of Für Elise that they had races to see who could play it the fastest. Not the best way to learn phrasing and dynamics, one feels. Then there was Smoke on the Water, which was ruined for me when I had to listen to literally dozens of kids at school pluck it out on their crappy guitars using the two-fingered chords.

Anyone else have horror stories of musical clichés you dread ever hearing, much less playing, again?

This Graphjam demonstrates perfectly the relative advantages and disadvantages of the main operating system types.

( Read more... )

...but I maded this icon instead.

(Ok, it was a stupid programme, but I thought Herr Flick and Helga made a lovely couple.)