My Lottery Garage: Adding awesomeness

OK, so I’ve been avoiding the Lottery Garage lately due to my work situation (or lack thereof) rendering the concept either quixotically optimistic or maybe just pathetic and sad, but I just can’t resist Jalopnik’s writeup of a gathering of knockoffs based on the immortal Lotus Seven (mostly by Caterham, but a few others as well).

Taking Lotus founder Colin Chapman’s mantra of “adding lightness” to its logical (albeit ridiculous) conclusion, the Seven weighs about half as much as a Miata, and generally has an engine at least as big (Miata engines are actually quite a popular option). And yes, mine will be in the traditional Lotus livery of British Racing Green and yellow.

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Overthinking lulz

I guess Web humor is over now, since the NYT is doing a story about it being a trend and all. Or maybe it’s just “Taking Web Humor Seriously, Sort Of” that’s over.

But I have to say I’m intrigued by the notion (at the very, very end of the article) that groups like 4Chan are modern-day incarnations of the trickster gods found in many mythologies, who engage in transgressive behavior that sometimes “reveals the hypocrisy of the game he just cheated.”

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Too-rah-loo-Cool-J

Knock Out Eileen is a fantastic mashup of LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out” and Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ eternally awesome “Come On Eileen.” I think I might like this (the first 1:45, at least) almost as much as the Girl Talk treatment of DMR (at the 2:55 mark below). BTW, am I the only one who didn’t realize until years later just how much “Come On Eileen” owes to Motown? The chorus sounds like a Four Tops song, and the bridge (where it slows down and then picks up speed) sounds like the Supremes’ “I Hear A Symphony” or “Where Did Our Love Go.”

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A little help

At last! Joe Cocker with subtitles reveals what he was REALLY singing at Woodstock!  And it was nice of him to try not to sing on a Kia (I didn’t even know they had those in 1969!). (via Miss C.)

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Cover me

I guess I’ll stop worrying about my standard job-app cover letter being badly written:

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

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Acts as exes

Bands as ex-romances in tweet format has some nice gems, though I admit I’ve never heard of about half the bands on the list.

Probably my favorites (bands as well as snarky remarks) are “The Decemberists are that group of drama kids who never talk to anyone outside their clique and have tons of inside jokes you don’t get” and “Vampire Weekend is a rich kid in a polo shirt OH WAIT”.

(Vampire Weekend pic via theloveisgone)

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First World Problem

Modern world bringing you down? The king of Nerdcore‘s here to remind you things could be worse. A sample of the lyrics:

Your GPS run out of battery (first world problem)
Got to wake up Saturday (first world problem)
You just delayed a honeymoon (first world problem)
Pledge season’s coming soon (first world problem)
Half your friend list is spam accounts (first world problem)
And your center channel speaker’s out (first world problem)

UPDATE: I love it when I beat Boing Boing to something.

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Doing it wrong

Ask MetaFilter has an epic thread on things you were doing wrong. There’s a good chance you’ll learn about something you’ve been doing wrong (or at least suboptimally). For some reason, a disproportionate number of people seem to have spent most of their lives mispronouncing “segue” (it’s pronounced like the Segway). For me, it was that you can eat a kiwi by slicing it in half and spooning it out like a grapefruit, or lopping off the top and digging in like a soft-boiled egg. No need to peel it.

(pic via eBaum’s World)

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Missed opportunity

Time.com misses a golden opportunity with its Best Blogs of 2010 list.

At least they didn’t use some godawful slideshow layout, designed solely to drive up the pageview count — they’ve got every blog on the list right on the same page. But the links don’t go to the blogs, they go to Time’s blurbs about the blogs.

What they should do is create a permanent page, with direct links to all the blogs, all on the same screen (no scrolling needed), and put a few other navigation elements (e.g. a link back to Time.com, maybe a link to other lists), and of course a couple ads.

Let people bookmark that page, and go back to it again and again as a quick ‘n’ easy reference to a bunch of cool blogs. Over time, they could rack up a massive amount of pageviews (and ad views).

(pic via B&P)

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Time travails

This video from SMBC Theater got me thinking about time travel recently.  It occurred to me that the one discussion that isn’t automatically Godwinized by mentioning Hitler is a discussion of time travel.

In fact, when the question is “will time travel ever be possible,” the definitive, settle-it-once-and-for-all answer is “no, because Hitler.” I mean, if you invent a time machine, the very first thing you do with it is go back in time and kill Hitler. That’s just what you do, right?

Just like when you get a new copy machine, the first thing you do is make a copy of your butt — that’s just what you do.

So if Hitler’s still in the history books, it means nobody in all of the tesseracts of the space-time continuum will ever travel back in time to kill Hitler, which means nobody will ever figure out how to do it. Q.E.D.

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