What happens when you run the Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" through babelfish into Italian and back again?
(Many thanks to boing boing just for being them)
on
| § 2
The gang at Crooked Timber have cooked up a filthy little scheme designed to sap me of my will to live. In a matter of days I will be a slackjawed raster-tanned homunculus unable to rouse myself from my chair for long enough to excrete, eat, or socialize, eventually dooming me to a short and joyless death as I ponder continually upon this question:
For your tireless service on behalf of good, you have been given the power to replace the weak link in any band, past or present.You need not be bound by practical considerations; youre free to ignore the fact that (say) Peter Criss was the only one who could properly apply the KISS makeup. For example, you can replace Liz Phair (the singer) while keeping Liz Phair (the songwriter). How do you use this power, and why?
Oooooooh.
1) Replace talentless yet good-natured goofball Kirk Hammett of Metallica with someone who can actually play a lead guitar line. Really, any sixteen-year-old bedroom guitarist would constitute an improvement, but I'm inclined to throw a bone to Marty Friedman. He's a phenomenal guitarist and his unceremonious booting from Megadeth and subsequent hiring by Metallica would close the Great Mustaine Circle for all time.
2) Not that I care at all, but if the Godchauxes had never joined the Grateful Dead and Mama Cass and Keith Manzarek had done so in their place, the world would be a better place. Maybe Cass would have lived, the Dead would have sucked noticeably less, and best of all the Doors would be a stillborn memory instead of a lasting pants-crap embarrassment to the entire idea of rock music.
3) Replace Leonard Cohen's prostate with a golf ball. Perhaps then he will quit with the "hot backup singers doing all the work on my latest shitty album" thing he's been on.
4) Replace Elvis Costello (after 1993) with Elvis Costello (before 1993).
5) Replace Natalie Maines' hair with Laurie Anderson's. Girl needs a haircut!
6) Replace David Byrne's ego with Lou Reed's. The Talking Heads would still have broken up, but maybe Tina and David wouldn't hate each other quite so much.
7) Replace The Strokes with The Hives. Or was that the Vines? The Shins? Fuck it. Replace all of them with the Dolls like everybody knows they should.
8) Replace Franz Ferdinand with Gang of Four.
9) I see I'm veering off into pat ad hominem attacks here, so I'll bring it back home. Replace Robert Plant with Rod Stewart. I mean, GOD. The emperor has no clothes! I cannot believe that generations of rock critics and fans defend his off-key yelping and nasal whines as being influenced by Middle Eastern music. No, gentlemen, he just couldn't find the key. Extra points off for execrable lyrics that beat all the humor and fun out of the blues, leaving just "suck it baby, suck it! Suck! Suck! Ahhhhhhhhaaaaaa, SUCK!"
10) Replace Jimmy Page with Eric Clapton. See 9 above. Let Jimmy play rhythm.
on
| § 11
Somewhere in Florida, 25,000 disembodied rat neurons are thinking about flying an F-22.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are living in the future.
on
| § 3
In a stunning development, Xinhua accidently captures a story perfectly in its headline. Thanks to the ever-watchful loyal reader #0009 Mapgirl for the tip.
on
| § 0
Q: How many George Bushes does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: There's nothing wrong with the lightbulb, and the- and the American people agree with me on that. Why would it need changing?
Q: How many John Kerreys does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Five. Three! Three. Five. Vietnam?
Q: How many Bush diehards does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: You heard the man. Why do you hate our freedom?
Q: How many Kerry diehards does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Halliburton.
on
| § 6
Reader EDog, he of the Wildebeets, emails,
PS: Are you and the other evil geniuses at perfidy.org going to do NaNoWriMo this year? If you don't know what it is, visit www.nanowrimo.org. You all ought to do it, because there are novelists inside each of you screaming and clawing to get out. I dare you!
Yeesh, I dunno... Last time I took a dare I found myself running down Forbes Avenue in Pittsburgh clad only in my skivvies, fleeing for my life from an enraged mob of Steelers fans. Kinda makes me bearish on the whole dare thingy. But still.
on
| § 2
A Missouri man has been charged with selling his vote. He put his presidential vote up for sale on eBay, with a minimum bid of $25. When the men in black showed up at his door, he offered the excuse, "Hey, I didn't know it was illegal!" This guy will go far. If someone purchases his vote, it will pay for five minutes of his defense lawyer's time.
on
| § 1
In an effort to stave off the combined effects of Seasonal Affective Disorder (which hits me every autumn like a slaughterhouse mattock to the brainstem), Red Sox doomsaying, and sheer fatigue, I have taken up t'ai chi. Soon, I will be able to kick ass v e r y s l o w l y, which is cool, and it has the ancillary effect (some would argue this is the true benefit of the basic for-public-consumption art) of helping me achieve balance, serenity, and poise. After a cool five hours of sleep last night, my second lesson ever in is 25 minutes.
So I'll let you all know how that goes with the serenity and stuff.
[wik] Turns out it goes great. Right now I'm so mel-low. So mel-low. Mel-low, oh oh.
(a prize to whomever pegs the foregoing obscure indie-rock lyrical reference. It's a toughie, kids!)
on
| § 5
Until now, the unblinking perfidious eye has remained focused on the threat of armed, military robots. But now it turns to a new threat, the insidious and deceptively helpful commercial robots. A new report projects that the numbers of household robots will surge sevenfold in the next three years. We will be seven times closer to our doom as these robots invade our homes and lull us into complacency by performing such "useful" tasks as washing windows, cleaning pools and mowing lawns. Aside from the obvious danger - that we will be weakened as a species by losing essential skills and independence of thought - there is nothing that will stand in the way of a robot with cutting blades rotating at thousands of rpm once it decides to stop mowing lawns. And the report claims that lawn mowing robots will be a majority of all household robots! The traitors to humanity designing these instruments of autonomous destruction must be stopped, quickly and violently.
By the end of the decade, the study said, robots will "not only clean our floors, mow our lawns and guard our homes but also assist old and handicapped people with sophisticated interactive equipment, carry out surgery, inspect pipes and sites that are hazardous to people, fight fire and bombs."
These are the capabilities that will enable their takeover. "Entertainment" robots like the Aibo will be the eyes of the robot underground, recording our movements and cataloguing our weaknesses. Then, the lawn mowing and vaccuuming robots will kill the weak and the slow while home security and cowmilking robots hunt the rest of us. Those who fight back will fall victim to the huge array of giant fighting robots that we have described on these pages. It's not to late to stop armageddon. But it soon will be.
on
| § 4
