A joke for Halloween

I heard this one on the Colbert Report (hands down the silliest show on television):

What does Karl Marx put on his pasta?

Communist Mani-pesto.

Happy Halloween!

Lovely insult

Heard this one from John (you know who you are):

You've completely met my expectations.

What kind of genius are you?

A great story by Daniel Pink in Wired about two type of creatives.

What Kind of Genius Are You?
A new theory suggests that creativity comes in two distinct types – quick and dramatic, or careful and quiet.
By Daniel H. Pink

In the fall of 1972, when David Galenson was a senior economics major at Harvard, he took what he describes as a “gut” course in 17th-century Dutch art. On the first day of class, the professor displayed a stunning image of a Renaissance Madonna and child. “Pablo Picasso did this copy of a Raphael drawing when he was 17 years old,” the professor told the students. “What have you people done lately?” It’s a question we all ask ourselves. What have we done lately? It rattles us each birthday. It surfaces whenever an upstart twentysomething pens a game-changing novel or a 30-year-old tech entrepreneur becomes a billionaire. The question nagged at Galenson for years...

...Now, however, Galenson might have done something at last, something that could provide hope for legions of late bloomers everywhere. Beavering away in his sunny second-floor office on campus, he has scoured the records of art auctions, counted entries in poetry anthologies, tallied images in art history textbooks – and then sliced and diced the numbers with his econometric ginsu knife. Applying the fiercely analytic, quantitative tools of modern economics, he has reverse engineered ingenuity to reveal the source code of the creative mind. More.

Via Accidental Creative -- one of the best sites on the Web.

The ad awards are coming! The ad awards are coming!

The British Advertising Awards are at the Walker in December. Hooray! I gladly pay to watch advertising that's original and clever. My favorite from last year was for PG Tips. I've called my nieces and nephews 'monkey chums' ever since.

HDTV transition made easy

This woman reminds me of my Grammy who thought PCs were like Ouiji boards.

Music treat: Murs -- Everything

I'm not one for rap but I heard Everything by Murs on The Current* and loved it immediately. Beat, background vocals, message. Yep.



*A bit of a dangerous listen unless you like impulse shopping on iTunes.

Found Footage Festival

I'm quite cross that I missed hearing about the Found Footage Festival until it was too late. MPR had a story about it this week. It springs from a couple of guys who comb thrift stores and garage sales for old videos. They then piece them together to create new. They have two criteria for videos they use:

• They have to be unintentionally funny
• A lot of ambition and questionable talent.

It started when one of the filmmakers found "Inside and Outside Custodial Duties" training video in a McDonald's break room. They fell in love with the horrible video and they were off and running.

One of the videos they created took 17 sexual harrassment awareness training videos and pieced together the what-not-to-do segments into one three-minute treat.

17 sexual harrassment training videos pieced together -- just 3 minutes of the what not to do.

Listen to the interview; check out their MySpace page.

Found Footage Festival 2008 Trailer

Very true

The heart has eyes that the brain knows nothing of.
--Charles H. Parkhurst

Lio, one sick pup

I love the cartoon Lio. He's a strange and twisted little boy. Highly hilarious, too.

LED wall -- well done Norwegians!

This is just grand. A LED wall in Norway that turns shadows into light. Coolest thing ever. (From Inhabit via Gizmodo.)

Cuil is pretty cool

Downside: The search engine cuil.com (pronounced cool) doesn't give you as many results as Google. (Case in point, I was looking for a recipe and found it via Google but it didn't show up in cuil.)

Upside: You get more info about the link and the info in context. And it's delivered in a more readable format. I'm able to make a better decision on what is really what I'm looking for. You can also add a cuil option in your Firefox search bar.

Listen up kidlets

From Reuters:

Father takes son to court for idleness

LAGOS (Reuters) - A father took his 20-year old son to an Islamic court in northern Nigeria for idleness, asking that he be sent to prison for refusing to engage in productive activities, state news agency NAN said Friday.

"He is not listening to words and he is bringing shame to my family. I am tired of his nefarious deeds. Please put this boy in prison so that I can be free," Sama'ila Tahir, a market trader in the northeastern town of Bauchi, was quoted as saying. More.

Powell says Yes to Obama

Gen. Colin Powell, a Republican, endorsed Barack Obama yesterday. In the interview he comes out against those who keep calling Obama a Muslim. One of the best lines in the interview, addressing the claims that Obama is a Muslim (he's not), "What if he is [a Muslim]? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?"





See also Maureen Dowd's column in the New York Times.

5 things -- fall

Five things I like about Fall:

1. No more humidity!
2. The smell, especially burning leaves
3. Wearing more orange clothing (not the hunting kind though)
4. The brilliant colors -- a photographer's dream landscape
5. Sleeping with the windows open and using lots of covers
   

My horoscope

My horoscope from today's edition of The Onion. The best horoscope ever.

Libra: The bullet will miss your heart by several inches, which only makes sense, as it will be fired at your head.

What do the stars tell you? Find out here. RSS feed available!

Word of the day

This word of the day comes via my colleague Kelsey. Usually used in a satricial way.

Craptastic

On a completely different note, our cafeteria is serving tuna noodle casserole today. And for dinner, one of the options is Jerked Tofu.

Thursday favorite word

I've been using the word kerfuffle a lot lately. I like that it sounds like what it is: disorder, commotion.

As best as I can tell, das Brimborium would be a good German translation. Or maybe die Umstaende.

Makes me think of rugby and a couple of meetings I've been in recently.

ETAG

A couple of my friends have horrible mothers in law. Both of said friends are the nicest people you'd ever meet. A couple of work friends came up with the moniker, TAG (troll at the gate) to refer to these harridans. I prefer ETAG (evil troll at the gate).

Naming nasty people is so cathartic. At right, Viola Swamp from the children's book Miss Nelson Is Missing. The epitome of harridan.

Goodbye summer

I was entranced by these flowers in my Mom's garden. The purple leaves in the background look kind of like origami.

That's just mental

"Are storage lockers the new dude hangout?" From Iconoculture.

As a society we have way too much crap. Off-site storage is one of the fastest growing businesses in the country. The idea of hanging out at the place where I store all my extra crap -- if I was a guy that is -- I don't get that.

Caramel rolls

My Mom makes the best caramel rolls in the world. This photo makes them look like a big intestine or something. They taste much better.

Candy that I won't eat

I found this candy blood in the Halloween aisle at Walgreens. So very disgusting. My niece and nephew will love it.

The Bugle-ism. Again.

I've been catching up on The Bugle podcasts. I was listening to a Feb. 2007 episode on the way to work yesterday. Andy offered some chat-up/pick-up-line ideas to woo that special someone on Valentine's Day.

You must be a witch because I'm under your spell and I'm boiling to death in your cauldron.

Disgusting. Frightening. Hilarious

Glueckliche Fuesse!

I don't think it would be possible to not have happy feet while listening to Dove C'e Musica by Eros Ramazzotti. I don't know if 'happy feet' is translatable to German. I translated it glueckliche Fuesse but that might get me the 'what's wrong with you' look from a German speaker.

I have no idea what he's saying. He could be calling the west blue-eyed devils for all I know.

Oh ye of faint of heart, ignore this post

This is so very good. And bad. Mr. Deity is brilliant. And very, very silly.



Via Fun Size Bytes. You can subscribe to the Mr. Deity channel on YouTube.Save Now