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The truly sad part is, I think I would buy this.

(I assume since they were being handed out it’s OK to post it here. If not, someone please let me know nicely.)

Bootie BRC 2009

Turns out [...]]]> I watched the Fishsticks episode of South Park today, and felt like maybe I was missing something. Is there some reason Kanye West wouldn’t understand a simple joke? I didn’t actually know anything about him except for the Hurricane Katrina thing. Is he notoriously stupid, notoriously bad with wordplay, or just a notorious douche?

Turns out it’s the douche one.

Not that that was easy to find out. His wikipedia entry is almost entirely biographical and lacking in information on Kanye’s douche status. That’s something that should be implemented in the celebrity statistics sidebar, right under birth date and profession: a “Douche Status” field, with options ranging from “surprisingly non-douchey” to “irreconcilable douchebag”. Fortunately googling “kanye west is a douche” returns over 2000 results.

It isn’t that he’s a singer who doesn’t seem to be particularly good at singing, but has a clothing line and a label and a restaurant anyway. That’s your typical faux-lebrity stuff and is society’s problem, not Kanye’s. But the man has actually said, out loud, and on camera that he thinks he’s “the voice of this generation”. I’m six years younger than him, so I’m pretty sure he’s talking about my generation too. Kanye, I’ve only been reading about you online for about 10 minutes, and already I sincerely hope that I never hear your voice in my life. It is not the voice of a generation, it’s the voice of a douche. As far as douchebags go, yours is so large that it could comfortably hold the contents of several other, previously thought to be large, douchebags. You should change your name to Ozydouchias, King of Douches.

And if that weren’t enough, when he lost a European music video award, he went on stage, seemingly for the sole purpose of making himself look shallow and insecure:

I mean, everyone’s a sore loser sometimes, but Kanye West has so much sand in his vagina that when he queefs it blows tuna-scented glass.

Fuck you, Kanye West.

I want to move to the UK, just so I can read their editorials. Seriously, this is what passes for an opinion piece over there. It’s more important, and a damn sight better written, than what passes for news on our side of the pond – even if I [...]]]> So I don’t have to thinky thinky.

I want to move to the UK, just so I can read their editorials. Seriously, this is what passes for an opinion piece over there. It’s more important, and a damn sight better written, than what passes for news on our side of the pond – even if I don’t get the references.

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | What porn is really for

And call me a Creep, but Hannah Montana, if you’re really so desperate to get publicly fucked over by an unkempt, pasty blond guy, come on over. You’re legal in Indiana.

Miley Cyrus Snubbed By Radiohead, Vows to “Ruin Them” : Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily

I watched Bolt tonight, which is an OK flick, especially for being made by Disney (damn, I’m just beating up on Eisner projects tonight) and starring Travolta. And even though it’s a blatant Animaniacs rip-off, I couldn’t help but LOL at this scene. Pigeons with New York accents are just hilarious. I literally cannot think of a funnier bird/accent combination. An Australian penguin might come close.

Anyway, they have a track called “We’re [...]]]> Yuri turned me on to this band Emanuel and The Fear. (Caution – MySpace link) Apparently his roommate Jeff plays with them, and I have to say they are unabashedly kick-ass. Sort of a Polyphonic Spree meets John Mayer thing, but then again what do I know about music?

Anyway, they have a track called “We’re All Alright Tonight”, which is the sort of thing that, even online, makes my eyes stop scanning across the page. I checked M-W, which is about as authoritative a source as there can be on (American) English, and they have this to say:

The one-word spelling alright appeared some 75 years after all right itself had reappeared from a 400-year-long absence. Since the early 20th century some critics have insisted alright is wrong, but it has its defenders and its users. It is less frequent than all right but remains in common use especially in journalistic and business publications. It is quite common in fictional dialogue, and is used occasionally in other writing.

… which I love, if only for the phrase “alright is wrong”. So they take the (probably sensible) position that if people use it, it’s a word, which is about all you can say for English. As opposed to, for example, French, where there’s a governing body that regulates the language and if they don’t call it a word, then it isn’t, no matter how often people use it. (Is it spelled “blog” or “blogue”? We don’t know yet.)

So this one is probably more or less harmless, but there is some downright terrible spelling floating around on the webotubes. A lot of it is the run-of-the-mill stuff that’s been bothering teachers (they don’t call it “grammar school” for nothing) for decades. Their/there/they’re, accept/except, affect/effect, that sort of thing. But now that almost everyone has a spellchecker running in the background (finally) there are some words that just plain get misused. Probably the one that bothers me the most, just because it’s so prevalent, is “defiantly” in place of¹ “definitely”. Misspellings of “definitely” are nothing new on the blagoblog; there’s even a website dedicated to it. No, this is the result of someone making a typo, accepting the spellchecker’s change, and then not realizing he’s used the wrong word. It is, in some ways, worse than a simple misspelling. The other one I’ve seen more than a few times is “acutely” where people mean “actually”. Come on, that isn’t even close.

So please people, when using your spellcheck (and again, thank you from the bottom of my heart for that), don’t blindly accept its revisions. Take a second to make sure it’s the word you actually meant to use. If you right-click on it, I bet you’ll find out you even have a dictionary to help. Better yet, you could stop using words you don’t know, but I know that’s a lot to ask.

Grammar Nazi out.

1. I had actually typed “instead of”, which is a good example of two words becoming one over time, and one of the reasons that “alright” doesn’t get my goat as much as it used to. But I realized that using “stead” in this context implies a replacement of function, which is clearly not the case – the words being used are simply incorrect. Hence “in place of”. I just thought you might like to know.

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=41654272&selectedItemId=41654270

If you don’t have iTunes, download it and then click the link.

Best. Matt Damon. Movie. Ever.

I’ve watched Eurotrip three times in the past week, and I can not get this song out of my head.

Enjoy.

I woke up this morning and it was fall. w00t.

It’s a beautiful Friday – in fact most of the past week [...]]]> I’m typing this at work because I don’t really have much else to do. Coming into the building this morning I was greeted by the discovery that my badge no longer works to open doors. Wal-Mart pulled the same trick on my last day.

It’s a beautiful Friday – in fact most of the past week has been absolutely beautiful, and to judge by the parking lot about half of the lab decided to take the day off, so I guess I’ll follow suit pretty soon.

Tomorrow I’m going to a wedding (with Samantha!) and then it’s back to St. Louis on Sunday – hit up the cell if you’ll be in town.

Don’t you hate it when you get home from a meet and greet and realize that you’re still wearing your name tag? No wonder the people at the grocery store looked at me like I was a re-re.

The song that’s absolutely destroying my ability to think about anything else at the moment is Such Great Heights by The Postal Service, another classic sent my way by Yuri. I highly encourage you to check it out.