Science Addiction

In the past, I’ve written about snowclones- those great sentences which have a popular skeleton and just require you to fill in the blanks to seem witty and smart. And sometimes like an anchor for Entertainment Tonight.

Sentences like “Have goatee, will travel” and “In space, no one can hear you burp” or “All your pageviews are belong to us”. Replace ‘goatee’, ‘burp’ and ‘pageviews’ as you please, and you have yourself infinite snowclones.

Well, today I will introduce you to my friend, the eggcorn. Eggcorns are words that sound and feel just like the word it’s used in place of. But they’re wrong. Like saying eggcorn instead of acorn- it sounds sort of right, an egg-shaped corn, but it’s the wrong word.

People unintentionally use eggcorns all the time—“old-timers disease” instead of Alzheimer’s disease, “on the spurt of the moment” instead of “spur” or a “mute point” instead of “moot”. (No, Joey’s “moo point” doesn’t count. It’s a cows opinion.)

Check out the excellent Eggcorn database for more. And remember, just like snowclones, the term eggcorn was introduced on the brilliant Language Log blog.

The question for a 70s era comedy group is not so much “how do we squash all these kids pirating our work”. It’s more along the lines of “how do we remain relevant in the modern media culture”.

There are many that choose to go the route of “sue our fans” so that they buy our DVDs, CDs and nifty merchandise. Thankfully, Monty Python are not one of them. They have launched the Monty Python YouTube Channel. With all the clips from their shows and films already freely available on YouTube, they only had two alternatives.

They could either try to sue every video off the Internet, which is a losing battle against your own fans. Or they could choose to become the first result on every search page any time anyone ever searches for their clips—thereby taking control of the path their fans take on the Internet. If the content is going to be out there anyways, why not put it up yourself, at high quality, stay relevant and make a buck by reminding people of who you were (and selling CDs, DVDs and nifty merchandise). Read the rest of this entry »

A funny way to position the words, via CNN’s Political Ticker-

Oh noes!

So, what’s hot this summer, asks AllPosters.com?

I walked by a Brookstone the other day and saw this:

Now this may seem like a totally random and totally acceptable clock to many people. These people are clearly not fans of the funniest cartoon on the Internet, a.k.a. Weebl and Bob about the wobbling, oval shaped Weebl and sometimes his friend Bob. Now tell me the Brookstone folks thought up the name Bob Wobble Clock without ever having seen Weebl & Bob!

To prove I am not crazy, or at least my form of madness is common, here’s another blogger who had the same idea.

A brilliant comic from xkcd for a Friday morning:

Take a look at this video my parents took in Florida: Read the rest of this entry »

Just got a piece of spam with the following text (in addition to a .gif that was pushing some penny stock):

See – I think that “Happy Feet” would just never work as a film without its penguin predecessor “March of the Penguins. , but not enough for our upcoming foreign trip. James Bond is a Whovian!
I still insist on a live tree, but we did not have one shipped from Maine this year. Pelosi Pelosi Pelosi!
I, for example, mentioned to several girlfriends that they should see the new Bond flick using just three words: “Daniel Craig. Reaching for his own cola, Eagleburger continued: “He was a little loaded.
75Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott – 3.

Also, even though James Bond is probably not Whovian I am going to try to be one pretty soon.

Oh yeah, and Happy Feet doesn’t work in spite of its predecessor.

aka What is this * of which you speak?

For many months or years or decades- I am not sure- I have used to the phrase “What is this * you speak of?” to great humorous (my opinion) effect. It has usually been greeted with chuckles and makes me feel all warm and superior on the inside.

Maybe you don’t understand the context in which you would use this phrase; let me illustrate. Let us say people are talking about the NSA wiretaps. Someone says that they think it might be legal to which someone else replies that it is not in-keeping with the constitution. At this point, I will interject with the classic line, “Constitution? What is this constitution you speak of?” and will be treated by chuckles all around. If you don’t get the joke- and I’m sure it loses some luster in written text- it means that people at the NSA or in government seem to not be aware of the existence of the constitution. Ha ha, funny, right?

Maybe not. I like to make myself laugh more than I do others, so I succeed. It is a low bar I set for myself.

The trouble, however, is that I do not like to use lines without knowing their roots. Where does this phrase come from? Surely, it is not my own creation- though I may admit as much in lesser company- so where does it come from? I hate using quotes or phrases that are in common use without knowing the source- you know those people who spout lines from Monty Python or SNL or Abe Lincoln without knowing where they came from? They irritate me. So what are the origins of my pet line? Off to the all-knowing search engines for that answer… Read the rest of this entry »

This is one of the great videos in the history of Internet viral videos- the fountains of Bellagio recreated using Diet Coke and Mentos mints (required Quicktime).

Newsday has a fantastic animated cartoon song on the NSA wiretaps set to Stevie Wonder’s I Just Called to Say I Love You. This one goes, You Just Called and We Were Listening. Good stuff.

Including cab drivers. Watch how the BBC mistakenly pulled in a cab driver to comment on the latest issues with Internet piracy, digital downloads and iTunes. He actually had some interesting things to say: Read the rest of this entry »

You know what they say about beans- they make you… how should I say… flatulent. Well, a few smart scientists in Venezuela have figured out how to make beans ferment more before they’re cooked removing their undesirable qualitites. Nice.