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I came across two really neat videos from the Web2Expo.
The first one is by Clay Shirky and it’s about the “cognitive surplus” and how sitcoms are to the 20th century as gin was to the industrial revolution:
http://web2expo.blip.tv/file/855937/
The second is by the Fake Steve Jobs. While I don’t find his blog quite that funny the clip was hilarious:
http://web2expo.blip.tv/file/858285/
Check them out.
In the meantime I shall go back to revision.
Procrastination, oh sweet procrastination, thou shalst be my downfall.
Obviously revision time has always been the best time to indulge in the pleasures of procrastination. I’m sure the revisionistas will disagree but ’tis most important that one wastes significant portions of one’s day on the internets rather than squeezing obsolete knowledge on the mental hard drive. ’tis in this spirit that I bring you the first installment of this multipart-series – a best of procrastination, if you will.
Disclaimer: Procrastination should not be attempted by people who think it may interfere with them passing their exams.
Originally this was going to be a list of all the wonderful things you can find on the Internets with which to kill time and procrastinate like there’s no tomorrow, but the list was getting longer and longer and so I decided to have several installments, each for the categories under which I listed the links. Today you shall meet
Webcomics
We all know and love comics. Thanks to the web not only can we rss our favourite comics but we can stumble upon comics that are, in some cases, only published on the web, which is why we shall refer to them as webcomics.
Sinfest is my favourite webcomic. As much for the stories as for the drawing. I mean, how many comics feature god, the devil as well as talking cats and dogs? Obviously this comic and the next aren’t exactly politically correct. If you go to the archives and start with the very first episode you’ve got almost 3000 episodes to read through.
Jesus and Mo is most certainly blasphemous, politically incorrect and probably extremely evil. Don’t look at it if you’re easily offended, heck if you’re easily offended you should turn your computer off – don’t you know how dangerous the Internet is? Anyway, back to the comic. It isn’t drawn that well, but the concept is rather interesting; Jesus and Mohammed are roommates and they discuss various things, many of which are of a religious nature.
Diesel Sweeties is kinda weird and includes a girl with a robot boyfriend. The look of the comic reminds one of the computer games of the distant past when computer screens had a much lower resolution. Nevertheless it’s got its amusing moments. Obviously you shouldn’t read that kind of comic if robot sex offends you.
Cyanide and Happiness is alternating between offensive and just plain gross with the occasional silly moment thrown in for good measure.
Least I Could Do is hard to describe. Basically the main character Rayne is the most egocentric person ever and he does some outrageously silly things. Like using ninja stars to send invitations to a party.
Boy on a Stick and Slither and Count Your Sheep is what I’d call really cute stuff. And we all know that every once in a while what one needs is cute stuff.
xkcd describes itself as a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. I really like their disclaimer which reads:
Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).
If the classics are more what you’re after check out Comics.com which labels itself the home of comics on the web.
This should be enough to keep you busy for a while. The next installment will follow whenever it’s ready. In the meantime I have to cover a fair share of maths for the group project which started yesterday. I’ll tell you what it’s about once I figure it out.
Chain letters, those wonderful bits of writing void of any artistic merit, it was but a matter of time till they made it to facebook. I dare say my wall hasn’t been defaced with such rubbish yet but I’ve seen other walls defaced in such manner and I couldn’t stop but parody the last one I’ve seen:
First, I want you to know that you are amazing, and I love you to a semi-comatose state comparable to death. If I don’t get this back, I’ll sue your ass. But I have a game for you. Once you read this letter, you must send it to p many people that you really care about (where p is prime) including the person that sent it to you. If you receive at least 107 back, then you are either really loved or you know a really large prime number. Nobody knows what they have until they lose it and have to file a claim with their insurance company. You never leave the person whom you love for the one you like, because that’d be plain stupid. Tonight, right at 12am, your true love is going to realise that you emptied the fridge and they will be pissed off! Then something is going to happen to you between 1 and 2a.m. Tomorrow, be ready for the greatest shock of your life, I don’t want to give away too much but it will involve heavy kitchen appliances. If you break this chain a little girl will cry.
Feel free to break this chain. Seriously. Little girls cry all the time, it’s not like forwarding chain mail is going to make any difference to them. That is unless they sent you the chain letter, now that’d be different.
PS: I didn’t add the original chain letter, for I do not wish for superstitious people to perpetuate such silliness.
PPS: So far only one of my friends thought it was almost funny enough to forward.
PPPS: The others obviously have no sense of humour whatsoever.
Hard to believe that it could be possible to take maths too far but sometimes just sometimes one has to wonder.
Take for example The social norm of leaving the toilet seat down: A game theoretic analysis in which Hammad Siddiqi analysis the toilet seat problem (just because some couple argue over it doesn’t make it scientifically interesting). In the introduction he says
The issue of whether the toilet seat should be left up or down after use seemingly generates a lot of passion among the parties concerned, however, scientific inquiries into the matter are almost non-existent.
Yeah, I wonder why.
But it gave me something to blog about.
Mildly amusing, too.
I think the Colbert Report is a fantastic show and I obviously watch as much of it as I can on Comedy Central’s webpage.
But I think it’s also great to see Stephen in a slightly different environment and as such I can only recommend to watch his performance at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Some people have their random Fridays where they post 10 random songs to their blog or what have you, I instead shall have utterly non-random posts about music videos (and they shall not necessarily occur on Saturdays).
I’ll begin with Jarvis. That wasn’t the plan at all, but the video to don’t let him waste your time is simply hilarious. In terms of songs I would have preferred to give you running the world but the video is nowhere as funny, though I really like the lyrics (which is why I really gave you the links to both videos). The first time I’ve heard the song was when he played at fm4 = 12. What can I say, I still think fm4 is the best radio-station in the entire world (hey someone’s got to be number one).
Next, I’ll give you Mika with Grace Kelly. It’s a classic pop song. It’s so good millions of people will hate it by the time radio takes it off their A-playlist. One reason why I chose this song is this little interview nugget; this is what Mika said about the song: “It was a fuck-off song to the music company that I was working with at the time, it is where the line ’shall I bend over, shall I look older, just to be put on your shelf’ comes from. I was so angry. That company had every resource except a soul.” This reminded me of other artists who didn’t seem to make it until they decided to no longer create a product that should sell and instead focused on creating art that they cared about, in a sense telling the industry to fuck off. The most notorious example being Chuck Palahniuk who got rejected several times for earlier works of fiction as they were found to be too disturbing, even though he had held himself back. So eventually he decided to really give them a disturbing story, Fight Club, full well expecting it to be rejected. In a sense it was meant as his last fuck-off to the industry (though in a sense I’m just paraphrasing from an interview I can’t find anymore).
But I’m not going to give you the old do what you love and the money will follow speech. The one thing I believe played a more important role in these artists becoming successful as they created what they wanted to was specificity. When you create art as a product you’re inclined to make love to the entire world, simultaneously trying to please everybody while not offending anybody and Kurt Vonnegut already pointed out that is unlikely to work.
Anyway, I’d better get back to what this post was supposedly about and so I give you Pop Levi with Sugar Assault Me Now. This song rocks and it is no surprise it made it to 4th place in this week’s fm4 editorial charts.
I’ll end this post by giving you a link to Rote Raupe where you can find music videos by German and Austrian bands. I like their reason for uploading these videos; they point out that since MTV & co. prefer to broadcast ring-tone commercials and the like there should be another platform where people get to actually see music videos. They shall be thanked many times over.
Earlier this afternoon I watched Bill Hicks’ legendary one night stand. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it before on the one Bill Hicks DVD I own, nevertheless it’s brilliant comedy that deserves to be mentioned. I think Bill Hicks was a brilliant comedian, though he can come across as rather repetitive. I think there are about 4 different shows on the DVD I’ve got and the intersection of material common to all of them is pretty large. Let’s face it, hearing the same material over and over again is off-putting, no matter how brilliant the material was to start with. But I guess this is probably due to his premature death. He didn’t get to do more material so in order to give you value for money the industry sells you several shows which happen to be very similar (but hey surely as a fan you don’t care).
So while we’re on the subject of stand-up comedy I figured I’d mention (ie. plug) some of my favourites.
George Carlin is probably number one on my list. He’s been doing this for decades and like a good wine he gets better as he ages. Well, I’d definitely say this was the case up to back in town which might be his zenith. Though ultimately we’re talking about a comedian who has done numerous great shows, still keeps going and definitely has yet to ’suck’. A man who wouldn’t surprise me if he outdid himself with his next show.
Obviously most comedians on my list are not politically correct. But then again if you like your entertainment PC you should stick to Disney and don’t venture near any decent comedy.
Robin Williams is another great stand-up comedian, though he’s certainly better known for his acting. A Night at the Met is an absolutely fabulous record. An absolute classic, released in 1986. He started doing stand-up again in 2002. Though Live 2002 is definitely a good show I can’t say that it lived up to my hopes and/or expectations.
Steve Martin is another stand-up comedian who is better known for his acting, well technically he hasn’t been doing stand-up in a long time, still I like to think of his as a stand-up comedian. His stuff was quirky, weird and smart. I love his stand-up.
One thing that I’ve noticed about Robin Williams and Steve Martin is that their stand-up work was far more daring and unconventional than most of their movies. I have terrible memories of seeing them in Disney comedies. It’s painful to see such comic genius being wasted on one-dimensional kiddy-humour. Though there have been bright spots, for example I loved Steve Martin in Bowfinger (no wonder the movie rocked – he wrote it).
Another great comedian is Steven Wright. He’s weird, really weird, but really weird in a really good way.
On a related note, though technically not a stand-up comedian (but he’s drifting off in that direction), I totally dig Henry Rollins‘ talking shows. They’re smart, witty and often funny. He’s one of the few who has the skill to go from something utterly hilarious to a really depressing story and the transition is incredibly smooth. I believe he’s possibly one of the best storytellers alive right now. Furthermore his writing is incredibly intense. If you think he’s just a crazy, tattooed punk you’re missing out on one hell of an artists. He even has his own talk show, though I dare say it didn’t live up to my expectations.
I could probably go on for much longer talking about these great artists and add more names to the list, but in the spirit of blogging I shall strive to keep it short (OK, so I failed but I’ll stop now).
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