To quote Jon Gruber: “The intersection of horrifying and wonderful.” This is a massively high resolution image of an ant that you can zoom in on to an extraordinary degree—positively awe-inspiring.
Well, I would really rather be developing a new iPod touch app, but Xcode won’t quit quitting on me and the Apple Developer Connection is away for lunch (or site updating)—probably something to do with this rumored iPhone OS copy and paste I’ve been hearing about. At any rate, since the development train is pulled into the station for a moment, allow me to instead share with you this gorgeous collection of posters that I found at Poster Cabaret. Pretty.
A recent study by the American Media Institute suggests that reality television shows are setting a standard of skankiness that may not be able to be achieved by America’s skanks. More on American skank’s difficulties with this informative roundtable from ONN.
Like a lot of Daily Show watchers, I tend to go out and look at the books that John touts. I generally check them at the library first though, because now and then it seems like a literary agent calls in a favor on the show. That’s how I felt about Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat.” I checked it out, started reading it and couldn’t get past the third chapter. It’s not just silly writing, it’s unsubstantiated by nearly any facts other than anecdote; which just doesn’t constitute an economic treatise in my opinion. It was really just a long editorial at that and one I was fairly determined to write a criticism of here. But, alas, now I know that will never happen because I have read this criticism of Thomas Freidman by Matt Taibbi and I could never ever write one as well he has. His commentary is deadly sharp, accurate, and almost excruciating to read. I almost, almost feel bad for Mr. Friedman. Not to mention, this criticism produced brilliant charts like the one below. How could you not want to read an article that has this chart in it?
Now how could you not want to read an article about this?
I think SNL had a pretty serious break-through last night (and no, I’m not talking about Poehler’s return, though I adore her). I am talking about the Blue-Note-riff that SNL did on President-elect Obama.
As a comedy writer, you really don’t have to work that hard when your President says things like “I didn’t grow up in the ocean—as a matter of fact—near the ocean—I grew up in the desert. Therefore, it was a pleasant contrast to see the ocean. And I particularly like it when I’m fishing.” And he says things like this so frequently that “Bushism,” has made its way in to common usage in English.
It’s tough to pick on someone who is seriously calculating about what he says and does and good evidence that SNL writers understand that—so make fun of the calculating! Maybe not everyone watching is familiar with the graphics reference in the video, but it’s a direct quote from Blue Note Records and the covers of albums by jazz musicians like Miles Davis. You want to talk about cool?—jazz is where the very word’s origins lie.
Fred Armisen’s imitation of Barrack Obama has been steadily improving. And while this sketch doesn’t top the 3 o’clock in the morning call when “President” Obama loses his cool, you have to give SNL credit.1 They figured out an angle of comedy here that no other comedy writers had thought of—in two years—it shows real creative talent whatever their critics say.
Ironically, this sketch talks about Obama calling Hillary instead of his Secretary of State. ↩
