May 30, 2012

"Epic Mitt Romney App Gaffe Goes Viral Online" is maybe the worst sentence I've ever read. It is fiendishly efficient in its horribleness, like every word was specially crafted in a laboratory by a sadistic linguistic scientist for the express purpose of irritating me in as few characters as possible. I thought I'd try to take it apart word by word and explore just why I find it so heinous.

Epic - "Epic" is just this meaningless overused superlative that seriously irritates the hell out of me to the point that I cringe even when it's used correctly (that is, as a noun)

Mitt Romney - Look, I don't like the guy, but just seeing his name in a certain context conjures up an image of some super-smug guy with a "FAUX NEWS" coffee mug forwarding this dumb article about some low-level intern misspelling "America" to his like-minded friends as further evidence that Mitt Romney is a hopelessly uncool square who just doesn't "get" things like Twitter and iPhone the way Obama does

App - As a non-smartphone-haver I find most anything having to do with apps (like that Siri tumblr) kind of obnoxious and insular

Mitt Romney App - An abhorrent phrase in its own right. The realization candidates for office now have to make their own meme-generating apps, that on some infinitesimal level among a hopefully small minority of voters the election will be decided by Which Side Has The Better Memes, is horrifying

Gaffe - I think on some level the word "gaffe" is more insidious than "FAIL" because it has the veneer of classiness. You would never see "Epic Fail" on the front page of the New York Times, but you might see "gaffe," even though an article about how a politician said a word wrong is just as worthless as an I Can Has Cheezburger? slideshow of Massive Fails

Goes Viral - In other words some hack journalist saw a hashtag on Twitter and quickly whipped up a non-story to cash in on the virility

Online - Isn't this just kind of superfluous? It's almost always used as a kind of distancing qualifier, like "ha ha look what those goofballs in cyberspace did this time," a cynical wink to let the audience know the writer knows that this stuff is all utterly meaningless, but that's not going to stop them from writing a bunch of paragraphs about it and wasting everybody's time.

Yeah I know I'm overthinking these things but I don't care

May 29, 2012

ANIMEJIHAD

AnimeJihad is now on Tumblr, which in retrospect is where it always should have been...

May 28, 2012

I had this vague memory of a Doug episode about drugs from the ABC One Saturday Morning version of the show, and amazingly it was on YouTube (but probably not for long). I feel weirdly compelled to review it, so please enjoy this "liveblog" of this cartoon from fifteen years ago:Scrupulous Mr. Dink

00:12: OK I guess they're not really drugs per se, just not for minors, my bad

00:55: Zombat is a cool fake name

02:30: The plot point of the kids not being interested in Nic Nacs until they're explicitly told they're not for kids is actually kinda clever

02:46: WHY IS DOUG WEARING A WIG oh it's some other guy

04:18: I don't remember Mr. Dink being such an upstanding role model in the Nickelodeon version of the show... I thought his whole deal was that he gave Doug bad advice most of the time? Also please note here that the Nic Nac Yak hasn't actually been introduced to the public yet...

05:40: Skunky Beaumont is one of the few things that dates the show. Why was/is the Stoner-ish Cool Kid such a prevalent archetype in kids' cartoons?

07:16: Candygate/MAYOR TOOK CANDY FROM BABIES is a great gag

07:39: Years later I can finally appreciate the Watergate and Ted Koppel allusions

08:16: Damn that liberal media and their "gotcha" questions

10:25: The Nic Nac Yak appears in Doug's fantasy even though he hasn't actually appeared in any ads yet. I SURE HOPE SOMEONE GOT FIRED FOR THAT BLUNDER.

10:35: There was rarely if ever a scene without Doug in it in the Nickelodeon version, which is why this scene at the Dink household feels off to me

00:49 (part 2): Note this roller coaster isn't part of a fantasy. They were expecting people to ask about nicoglutinous monopexterate. (By the way, according to Google and Bing this is the first time "nicoglutinous monopexterate" has ever been written on the internet. Welcome, future search engine users!)

01:47: I like this "Sally" character. Forget Patti, I'm a Doug X Sally shipper now <3

01:52: For the most part I don't think the guy they got to replace Billy West as the voice of Doug is doing a bad job, EXCEPT for when he says "angle"

02:05: There's a restaurant called MUNCHEES in an anti-drug episode. Way to stick it to the man, background artist

02:11: "World Wide Web terminal" is another thing that dates the show

02:30: I dig this abstract GUI

04:08: PATTI NO :^O

04:25: In the suspiciously few scenes he was in at the beginning, Skeeter was just as anti-Nic Nacs as Doug was (plus there was that episode where he went to college and complained about how everybody smoked), but apparently Doug has such a low opinion of his best friend that he has no problem imagining him as an addict. Et tu, Doug?

05:56: In this scene, Mr. Dink comes up with the idea for Twitter a decade before Jack Dorsey

06:20: Mr. Dink pretends not to know Porkchop's name because he's a huge jerk

06:30: I literally thought he was going to say Bluffington Post

07:25: All Doug had to do was look up the definition of a word and suddenly he's Bob Woodward

08:48: Seriously where did Skeeter go???

May 25, 2012

Adweek: NBCU Exploring Buyback of MSNBC.com

At some point in the future the "MS" in "MSNBC" could be 100% completely meaningless way cool

May 19, 2012
Johnny Carson on YouTube

Apparently the official Johnny Carson channel on YouTube, which is run by Carson Entertainment Group, couldn't upload a video because the footage is owned by Carson Entertainment Group???

May 18, 2012

TELEVISION ADVISORY

America's worst pundit Thomas L. Friedman is going to be on Jeopardy! tonight... I will take great pleasure if he repeats Wolf Blitzer's performance, but who knows, maybe he's a big trivia buff...

May 16, 2012

National Journal: House Burglaries Baffle Staff, Police

In each case, items stolen were high in street value. Computer monitors, cameras, and cash were taken most frequently; other items included blazers, personal iPods, and in three cases, alcohol. Lewis's office reportedly lost four signed baseballs, six bottles of wine, and a $200 set of presidential Easter eggs.
What kind of monster steals Easter eggs???
May 14, 2012

TECH NEWS RUMOR INSIDER

Hey, I finally got around to fixing all the tags and stuff on Tech News Rumor Insider... as a reminder, the homepage has been preserved indefinitely, so be sure to check out the latest page or follow one of its many social network off-shoots for all the latest stories...

May 11, 2012
mention machine

What the heck is the point of this? Is Twitter going to decide the election? Does that mean our next president is Justin Bieber???

May 9, 2012

INT. DAYCARE - DAY

A BABY is playing with some wooden blocks. A COOL TODDLER waddles up to him.

COOL TODDLER

Pfft, you're still playing with blocks?

The baby looks ashamed.

COOL TODDLER

You gotta get yourself some Legos, dog...

He reveals a box full of LEGO® brand bricks. The baby reaches out and takes one, eyeing it curiously.

COOL TODDLER

They're like Blocks Platinum...

May 7, 2012

I like that none of the female characters in B.C. have names or identities

May 4, 2012

I researched Mr. Pibb - did you know it's a product of the Coca-Cola company? - and discovered there's a Mr. Pibb fansite called pibbthug.com, which is the best possible name for a Mr. Pibb fansite.

May 1, 2012

DFWAfter re-reading David Foster Wallace's "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" in preparation for this article - well, actually, finished reading after a long hiatus - I've come to the the conclusion that of all his eccentricities - the footnotes, his dictionary obsession, the stupid bandana, his memorization of shark fatalities - by far his weirdest quirk was his preference for Mr. Pibb over Dr Pepper:

And now as I'm getting ready to go down to lunch I'm mentally drafting a really mordant footnote on my single biggest peeve about the Nadir: soda-pop is not free, not even at dinner: you have to order a Mr. Pibb from the 5☆CR.'s maddeningly E.S.L.-hampered cocktail waitress just like it was a fucking Slippery Nipple, and then you have to sign for it right there at the table, and they charge -- and they don't even have Mr. Pibb; they foist Dr Pepper on you with a maddeningly unapologetic shrug when any fool knows Dr Pepper is no substitute for Mr. Pibb, and it's an absolute goddamned travery, or at any rate extremely dissatisfying indeed.89

Come on dude. Everyone knows Mr. Pibb is a cheap knock off of Dr Pepper. That's like preferring whatever the generic Wal-Mart brand of cola is called (Sam's Choice?) over the Big Three (Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and RC Cola). Not to say that Mr. Pibb and Wal-Mart Cola don't have their appeal, but claiming they're equal to or even superior to the real thing is madness.