Rorty Bomb

This is kind of a quirky not-really-musical follow-up to the recently posted "Africa" and "Total Eclipse of the Heart" entries. But basically, I like serious blogs with non-serious entries.//Rorty Bomb is a finance/personal blog written by Mike, "a financial engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area. Originally from Chicago, he enjoys economics, sociology, critical theory, tacos, whiskey and center-left politics on the side." 

Mike uses a sparse, words-and-white-background minimalist prefab theme for the blog, which he decorates with a smattering of silly pictures for comic effect.  The blog is named after a difficult-to-pronounce philosopher. Rorty Bomb features timely heavy-duty subjects like the financial crisis (proposing his own gloomy Do-It-Yourself stress tests!) and the impending Iranian Twitter Revolution.

But better yet,  Rorty Bomb includes this gem, which was linked to by the New York Time's Opinionator:

"Good Hangovers

There are too many negative 'I don’t remember last night' hangover stories that involve a tiger in the bathroom and people missing. I want to share a positive one. One night after finals weeks concluded in graduate school, me and my roommate were overserved by the local bar.

I woke up the next morning not sure how the night concluded. I went to check my email and saw 4 emails I didn’t expect from Ebay. Are you familiar with Ebay’s 'Buy it Now' feature? I had received two emails at 3 in the morning saying that I had won two 'Buy it Now' auctions, and two additional emails saying my payment via paypal had been received and my product would be shipping in the morning.

I was quite scared to open those emails, but it turned out I had purchased Toto’s Toto IV (featuring the hit songs 'Africa' and 'Rosanna') on vinyl, as well as a 7″ single for Bonnie Tyler’s 'Total Eclipse of the Heart.' With shipping, this was a total of about $11, perhaps the best $11 I’ve spent in my life.

We pieced together that this purchase was made to settle an argument over me playing Rosanna on the dive bar’s internet jukebox, when Africa was available. My stance, that you should switch up the Toto, was taken as me endorsing Rosanna as a better song than Africa, which is nonsense, though I may have said something akin to 'we really need to hear this on vinyl before we can make a judgement call.' "

Pretty ace.(From mjg)

The Cougar Reference Manual

The Cougar Reference Manual is an infochart by MadAtoms explaining the different levels of Cougar-dom. Feel free to classify all your girlfriends according to this chart. Click through for the highest level of cougar-dom: the snapping turtle!

Also, apparently I'm a chick with puma tastes. Sweet.

(From Buzzfeed)

Twisted Baloon Dresses

Twisted Baloon Dresses are pictures of a fashion show of some kind, featuring models wearing dresses made of tons of twisted balloons. They've been going around in email format, and a lazy search through the interwebs didn't yield much context... So if anyone knows anything else about these, please enlighten us in the comments section.

Ms. X sent them to me via email, so they are technically on the interwebs, and they are pretty great.

Meanwhile, enjoy the baloons. I think the giant dinosaur one, while technically not a dress, is my favorite.


















(From Ms. Wong and Bryna)

Total Eclipse of the Heart: Literal Video Version

Total Eclipse of the Heart: Literal Video Version is a follow-up literal music video in the style of that AHA Literal Music Video. Basically, instead of the orginal song, the video images are set to replaced lyrics which describe what is going on in the video.

If you can bear through the singing, it's fun.  And by fun I mean kidn of painful. The lyrics are great and the singing and talking is not. Still. I like getting confirmation that everyone else thinks these videos are as looney as I do. 

(From LL )

Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha is a science-y search engine with lofty goals. According to them:

"Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries."

(From Guy)

Kermit Bale

Kermit Bale is a Livejournal entry that Ferd (handle: ferdalump) wrote in Ohnotheydidnt.

It posts pictures of Christian Bale side by side with analogous pictures of Kermit the Frog. Clearly, we have a Superman-and-Clark-Kent situation here.

Enjoy the samples!



(From Kottke)

In Remembrance

No TOTI today.

In remembrance of my grandmother, who passed this morning. May she rest in peace.

30 Awesomely Bad Unicorn Tattoos: A Gallery

30 Awesomely Bad Unicorn Tattoos: A Gallery is a self-explanatory article on holytaco.com. Less of an article really, and more just a string of pictures of awful tattoos.

I'm not sure which one is worse, white-power-corn or taz-corn. Tossup!

(From TJ)

The California Banana Republic

The California Banana Republic is a Slate.com editorial short by cartoonist Mark Fiore about California's failing finances. Well-drawn, well-voiced.

At first I was disappointed that the video wasn't about fashion or one of my favorite British-safari-look clothing retailers (though they do allude to it). But then I wasn't. It's a delight!  (Save that nasty reality part.)

(From TJ, Slate)

GOTHS IN HOT WEATHER

GOTHS IN HOT WEATHER is a website devoted to pictures of angsty pale people dressed in unwieldy black clothing suffering through happy, oppresive sunshine. The tone is best described as 25% mockery and 75% celebration. Judge for yourself:

"what to do they do in summer? All that makeup, long black leather and rubber must get very sticky. I think we should show our respect for these poor unfortunates, struggling to stand out from the vanilla crowd despite blazing temperatures and sunshine that puts the rest of us in shorts and vest tops. Join me in celebrating the majesty of the Goth, who, eschewing any practicality whatever, still has the commitment to don a full length leather trenchcoat, stupid New Rock boots, and half a Superdrug counter of makeup. All hail the Hot Goth!"

(From MJG)