July 2008
June 2008
50 Animals With Day Jobs →
As seen on “Fwd: Fwd: FW: Funnay Animal Pics”
As Gas Prices Rise, Teenagers’ Cruising Declines -... →
perpetua:
therichgirlsareweeping:
FYI, everyone — this is why there is no definitive summer jam. You can quote me on this.
Yes, suddenly it all makes sense.
!
“It’s all part of the moral degradation of America because it’s all...”
– Kati—a practicing Mormon who spends 30 Days living in a household with a gay couple and their adopted children—on the problematic nature of churches that accept gay people in their congregation.
Facebook phases out singular "they" →
On Facebook, if you don’t specify a gender, your status updates automatically use the gender-neutral they, as in “Tristan added James to their favorite music” or “Tristan tagged themself in a photo.” Apparently, because Facebook is expanding its set of languages and because some of these languages lack gender-neutral pronouns, “Facebook will now be more...
“I cannot be what I am
so I become money, quarter by quarter,
and live as long...”
– Tony Barnstone, “Why I Play Video Games”. Requoted from Lucky Wander Boy.
In the world of videogame poetry—a world I admittedly know little about aside from this book—I suppose you could a lot of romantic self-identification with the player’s character, i.e. someone...
friendssharingmusic:
James - Sometimes...
"A noise a noise annoys annoys a noise."
The problem I’ve always had with the “Buffalo x 8” sentence is that until its structured is parsed (until you read what it’s supposed to say), it’s just a string of words. Indeed, the only real clue given (in the written form of the sentence) is that three of the words are capitalized and that these eight words somehow constitute a sentence. In an attempt to combine...
“Metal Gear Solid 4 is the rare effort of video game blues and tragedy. Gamers...”
– Stephen Totilo on how the latest Metal Gear has the unusual quality of being a tragedy and how games are usually not sad.
The last sad/borderline-tragic game I can remember would have to be Call of Duty Four, but even there the world was still saved.
"Has modern life killed the semicolon?" →
nostrich:
It seems strange that people can find so much to write about an item of punctuation (remember that NYC Transit employee and his sign?). Nonetheless, this is a pretty interesting article; lots of things you probably didn’t know about the semi-colon’s sordid past.
At least, the modern English curriculum covers the semicolon, though admittedly, its usage is often described incoherently...
ChessGames.com →
Judging by how I’ve recently committed “zugszwang” to my gaming vocabulary, I’ve been spending too much time watching replays of seminal chess games.
“Exactly why most teammates are polite, patient, and helpful in a game that is...”
– Mike Walbridge on the odd maturity shown by Team Fortress 2 players.
I love this quote because (a) popular online games are usually stigmatized as being a hotbed of juvenile shitheadedness and (b) it’s counterintuitive for violent games to foster cooperative behavior (then again, consider the...
Tumblr Resolutions
shutupinternet:
I’ve been using Tumblr for a good three months now and I’ve realized what I want to use it for. For a while I’ve been afraid of the word blog, about having a blog, about having a website. To me, blogging has always been whiny teens crying about their lives as they cut themselves. I didn’t really stop to think that a blog is what you make it. Yes, there are stigmas that come with...
“Count me among those who will not be at all sad to see the last of the Bushisms...”
– Linguist Mark Liberman on the eventually fizzling of the Bushism and the dubious cottage industry that capitalizes on Bushisms (via Language Log)
There's a word for what I want to study
nostrich:
Sociolinguistics.
This also happens to be the word for what I’m looking forward to studying later this year as part of my Linguistics BA!
Sociolinguistics is a lot of fun. My favorite part of my course was a particular study about the language practices employed by “Nerd Girls” to assert group identity and deny association with prevailing “Jock” practices.
Urban Dictionary: Baracknophobia →
The irrational fear of hope. Refers to Barack Obama. Usually refers not to policy differences with Barack Obama but to believing unproven Internet rumors (that he’s a Muslim, that he wants to enslave white people, etc.). “I don’t have Baracknophobia. He’s a Muslim!”—Anonymous Grandmother
But his middlename is Hussein!
“Weezer is a singles band. It doesn’t really matter if they put filler on...”
– Matthew Perpetua on Weezer (quote from 2005).
Dr. Mario Soundtrack - Chill
Even after playing...
“Measured in terms of output per worker, American farmers like Naylor are the...”
– Michael Pollan in The Omnivore’s Dilemma (via marykgo)
“The average U.S. citizen completely ignores the regularity with which the...”
– Time magazine, 1947 (via syntheticpubes)
Get A Stew Going Baby
Tobias Fünke: Do you see me more as the respected dramatic actor or more of the beloved comic actor?
Carl Weathers: Whoa, whoa, whoa. There's still plenty of meat on that bone. Now you take this home, throw it in a pot, add some broth, a potato. Baby, you've got a stew going.
Tobias Fünke: Yes, that's fine, but I would like to focus on my acting, Mr. Weathers. I did give you my last $1,100.
Carl Weathers: Let me tell you a little story about acting. I was doing this Showtime movie, Hot Ice with Anne Archer, never once touched my per diem. I'd go to Craft Service, get some raw veggies, bacon, Cup-A-Soup... baby, I got a stew going.
Tobias Fünke: ....I think I'd like my money back.
“Worry is a misuse of imagination.”
– Dan Zadra (via enquotations)
WatchFor my gamer friends on Tumblr….ScrewAttack present their picks for the top ten first-person shooters of all-time. Overall, it’s a very innocuous list, but their rule about one-game-per-series gets them in trouble: Wolfenstein 3D instead of Doom? No.
Aside from that, it’s interesting how much of the list is in debt to the work of John Romero and John Carmack (in particular,...
"Fallacy of the single cause"
jakoblodwick:
The fallacy of the single cause is a logical fallacy of causation that occurs when it is assumed that there is one, simple cause of an outcome when in reality it may have been caused by a number of only jointly sufficient causes. (Wikipedia)
Successful creative people deal with this all the time. An admirer asks a famous photographer, “What kind of camera do you use?”, as if a...
I'm in need of a grammar man.
m-o:
I’m currently learning about objects and subjects and the correct usage “whom” and “whomever”(objective pronouns) as opposed to “who” and “whoever”(subjective pronouns).
Now, what if the word is both an object and a subject? e.g. “I’m giving it to whoever/whomever wants it.” My guess is on whomever, but I’m not quite sure.
My money is on whoever. The best way to look at this is that the...
I've watched Goodfellas
vietkate:
[Goodfellas] has the three main components of every Lifetime movie:
1) Cheating on women.
2) Beating on women.
3) People getting very murderd.
I am a big fan of Kate’s occasionally whimsical way with words.
Starcade: TV's First Video Arcade Game Show →
Apparently, this was an 80’s gameshow where people would compete at arcade games. I’m watching some of episodes, and I’m feeling that same 80’s mesmerization that I get from watching King of Kong.
For The Record: The Top Ten Best Selling Games of...
Below are the top ten best-selling games of all time as tracked by the NPD group. Note that they are not restricted by platform.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - 9.4 million
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock - 8.2 million
Madden NFL 07 - 7.7 million
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - 7.3 million
Madden NFL 06 - 6.7 million
Halo 2 - 6.61 million
Madden NFL 08 - 6.6 million
Call of Duty 4:...
No Wave, a Brief, Noisy New York Moment That Still... →
roamin:
New York Times/ Books
“Of all the strange and short-lived periods in the history of experimental music in New York, no wave is perhaps the strangest and shortest-lived.
Centered on a handful of late-1970s downtown groups like Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, DNA and James Chance’s Contortions, it was a cacophonous, confrontational subgenre of punk rock, Dadaist in style and nihilistic in...
The 20 Hottest Possible Threesomes In TV History →
Buffy and Willow at number 11?! No way.
Facebook meet Tumblr
Of the two Facebook applications that integrate your Tumblr into your profile, I’ve found this one to be far superior.
“Hey reader, you see that play on words I just made? Yeah, well that wasn’t...”
– Maddox on “(pun intended)”.
The Videogame Revolution →
The website of a PBS series on the history and impact of videogames. The essays and interviews with industry pioneers make this worth bookmarking.
Political Melodies →
Mark Liberman at Language Log took snippets of the three candidates’ recent speeches, extracted the prosodic and tonal data and reconstructed them using synthesizers. The result are three Charlie Brown-voice audio files. Try your best to match the melody to the candidate. Originals are provided.
What To Do With My Life
For the past couple years, I was certain that I would wind up one of the following:
An attorney.
An academic linguist, specialized in phonology and phonetics.
A cognitive scientist, specialized in theoretical linguistics.
However, as I’ve explored what has really interested me, the following option has emerged as a serious contender:
An academic in comparative media studies and/or game...
“This seems to defy all logic.”
– Freakonomics author Steven D. Levitt on a $50 giftcard going for $55.71 on Ebay.