The year goes pop

Normally I’d be linking to DJ Earworm’s wrapup of the year in pop, but this parody of Azealia Banks’ “212″ is just brilliant.

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Best. Proposal. Ever.

This is either the greatest proposal ever, or a guy who’s really, REALLY afraid she’s gonna say no. (via Boing Boing)

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Much Ado About Snuffing

I think I’d rather have a Royale with Cheese than a Hachis Parmentier, but this is a really nicely done adaptation of “Pulp Fiction” in quasi-Shakespearean language and setting. I like to think I could have written it better (but I could easily be wrong), and I’m pretty sure it could have been acted better, but it’s still great.

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World Go Boom

With Christmas over and done with, let the year-end wrapups begin! DJ Earworm has chimed in with his yearly mashup of the top pops of the year, “World Go Boom.” Unfortunately, it looks like Rex won’t be doing his annual List of Lists this year (sniff).

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Christmastime in Hollis, Queens, Mom’s cooking chicken and collard greens …

I’ve always loved this song, but I’ve never seen this live video before. It’s pretty great. (via The Awl)

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Sit on Santa

I’ve been neglecting this blog lately, busy with job and leaves and holidays and such, but I pretty much always have to blog about Improv Everywhere ‘s spontaneous musicals, like their latest, the Mall Santa Musical. I don’t know if it’s their best work (OK, I’m pretty sure it’s not), but it’s still nifty.

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Mad Photoshop skillz

If you’d asked me 10 minutes ago, I would have said “yeah, I’m pretty good with Photoshop.” Now, not so much

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A GUI love story

Macintosh Stories  is one of those sites (like TV Tropes) that you can just get lost in, surfing from story to story, or section to section, randomly learning and/;or being entertained by practically everything you run into. Lots of great stories about the computer that changed everything.

BTW, speaking of insanely great Apple products, I really love my iPod Touch (with a 3G/WiFi hotspot as a holder), but if you ever decide to get around to reading “Infinite Jest,” I strongly recommend not reading it in the form of a pirated e-book translated via Calibre to Stanza so that you can’t access the endnotes and lots of words are misspelled or weirdly punctuated and you’re not quite sure if the weirdness is coming from Calibre/Stanza or from the author. I’m just sayin’ …

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Grieve for Steve

The first computer I ever used was the Apple IIe my parents bought for us (and for them). The first computers I ever used in a job were a Mac SE (for writing and editing) and a Mac IIci (for page layout). The first computer I ever bought was a Mac SE/30. The second computer I bought was another Mac, and the first 2 laptops I bought were PowerBooks. The first mp3 player I ever bought was an iPod (and so were the second, and third, as well as the fourth, an iPod touch that I don’t use for music but just carry with me as my “Internet in a pocket” device).

Steve Jobs influenced me without even knowing it — consider this quote from 1985, a good 7 or 8 years before I tumbled to the same realization: “The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it to a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people––as remarkable as the telephone.”

That’s the reality that changed my life, and changed my career, and even paved the way for the career change I was forced to make after I got thrown out of journalism nearly 3 years ago (arguably brought about by the same changes Jobs foresaw 26 years ago). (pic via Jonathan Mak)

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The company you keep

In pretty much every election, there’s a theme — sometimes organic, sometimes overlaid by the media and popular perceptions (both of them feeding and feeding off each other). Sometimes the theme has a catchy title like “Hope” or “It’s the economy, stupid,” and other times it’s more of a general, hard-to-describe-exactly feeling.

I’m beginning to wonder if the theme for the upcoming presidential election might be that it’s a referendum not on the candidates, but on their supporters. Rather than people asking themselves and each other if they want to vote FOR a Republican or a Democrat, perhaps they’ll be asking if they want to vote WITH the GOP or the Dems.

I’m thinking of the recent GOP debates, in which the crowd itself has been a big part of the story every time. So far, Republican crowds have cheered for executions, booed a soldier (above), and yelled “let him die!” and “yes!” when asked if someone without health insurance should be refused medical treatment.

Is it too much to hope that voters might ask themselves not only “do I want to vote for Republicans,” but “do I want to vote WITH Republicans”?

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