YouTubing, atheist sermon edition

Happy Carl Sagan Day!

RIP Claude Levi-Strauss

What a full life!

I always liked his work on art the best. What's the quote about art and the tools to appreciate it being made in the same shop? Something like that. I swear, I've seen that line quoted in a billion different ethnology papers.

Happy Halloween!

From my sparkly Fairy Princess.

Welcome to my bloodstream, H1N1

I didn't want to get left out of this pandemic. By the way, swine flu sucks. Don't catch it.

Although Tamiflu apparently kicks the swine flu's ass. Abbie was better after one dose. Gotta love modern medicine.

Stay klassy, guv.

Governor Schwarzenegger asks if you seek Amy.

His office swears (pun intended) that it's unintentional. But reading down the lines, it sure looks like California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dropped an F-bomb on his critics in the California State Assembly.

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross show how, in a veto message, the guvernator's words line up so that if you read down the left side it spells out ... well, we can't write what it spells out. Let's just say it's a pretty common two-word combination in which the first word is four letters long and begins with "F" and the second word is three letters long and begins with "Y".

I'm still waiting for him to go all "Thulsa Doom, you killed my father!" on someone.

Look what we did!

The porch of awesomeness is open for business.

New Glasses

Eh? Too 1995?

Best. Lawyer. Ever.

So the people behind the satirical website GlennBeckRapedAndMurderedAYoungGirlIn1990.com are, shockingly, being sued by Glenn Beck. Putting aside, for the moment, the tediousness of yet another rape=hilarious joke (not!) issue, which, honestly, in this situation I could kind of see myself arguing both sides of (but, you know, with the whole Roman Polanski thing going on at the same time, don't even fucking get me started), the dude's lawyer in this case is full of sheer win.

Quoted from the NPR article:

"Only an abject imbecile could believe that the domain name would have any connection to the Complainant [Beck]," Randazza writes, taking issue with both Beck's legal argument, as well as his politics. "We are not here because the domain name could cause confusion. We do not have a declaration from the president of the international association of imbeciles that his members are blankly staring at the Respondent's website wondering 'where did all the race baiting content go?'"

Snerk. Love it!

Also from the same article, my second favorite of those "Hitler yells" clips from the movie Downfall (which is actually a really excellent movie and if half the people who see these clips actually see the movie than it would be awesome).



My favorite is still the one where he finds out about the giant space squid getting taken out of The Watchmen. Hee!

Which, to go completely off on a tangent, makes me think of Inglourious Basterds, which I finally got to see. Awesome movie, perhaps even the best Tarantino movie since Pulp Fiction, if not so far. The only thing that really, really bugged me was that the best (and arguably the main) character was left out of the ad campaign entirely. I'm guessing they were going for the same demographic that makes the tedious rapes jokes (i.e., the young male internet set) that they figured wouldn't particularly identify with Shoshanna the vengeful female. Which is stupid, because that character is archetypal to a lot of things that demographic likes, and because it would have been cool to have a realistically badass woman feature strongly in pop culture for a change.



See, isn't she awesome?

Consider my ears wormed.

Pro: Exposure to They Might Be Giants seems to have cured Abbie of her Kraftwerk addiction. Con: Abbie is now addicted to They Might Be Giants.

Sigh. Someday I will be again allowed to listen to a song, once, and them move on to another, different one.

Three year olds are loud

But cute.

Awesome

Kanye West is a jackass, Mr. President. No slack needed.

USA! USA! USA!

**added** But wait, there's more!


Very Country Joe and the Fish, no?


And here's the official website for Paul Hipp.

Youtubing, Youth Indoctrination Version

Via daddytypes, videos from the new They Might Be Giants album, "Here Comes Science."

"Science is Real." Can I get a woo hoo?


"Electric Car"


And my personal favorite: "I am a Paleontologist."


Hooray for Pachycephalosaurus! (Song starts at 0:55.)

Obama-doctrination Day!

So right wingers are in a tizzy over the President's speech to schoolkids tomorrow. And it's not like I don't understand. Would I like it if George W. Bush made a speech to my kid about, oh, I dunno, how awesome preemptive war is, or how tax cuts for the rich totally worked? No.

Would I *read* said speech to make sure it actually contained such content before having a hissy fit and making a damned fool of myself on camera? Yes. But that's just me. I'm rational like that.

(Also, I don't think the mere idea of my child just being exposed to differing political beliefs would make me burst into tears. Cheesus, people, get a grip! Do you really have such little faith in your own parenting skills that your kids can't even *hear* a different point of view?)

Obama's speech tomorrow has a perfectly acceptable, bi-partisan message about working hard and staying in school. But that's beside the point.

It has nothing to do with what Obama says. It's the fact that he exists, that a bi-racial president with a funny name exists, that bothers these people. That's what they don't want their children to see. That's what's making princess blondie burst into tears. Her racism.

Someone in my Facebook feed made the point, in today's Shamwow hard-sell advertising culture, why do they even bother pretending? Why just not come right out with it? Birthers, Deathers, people preaching the coming doom of "Obamunism," just say what you really mean. Black men scare you.

The President follows internet memes!

I am amused to note that President Obama's Facebook status now reads: "No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day."

Now if only he were in the position to do something about it.