The Little Mermaid is like Transformers for girls. Right? She wanted to transform into a human. That’s the only way I can explain the motivation behind this mashup.
Via 22 Words.
Author: Nathan Campbell
Nathan runs St Eutychus. He loves Jesus. His wife. His daughter. His son. His other daughter. His dog. Coffee. And the Internet. He is the pastor of City South Presbyterian Church, a church in Brisbane, a graduate of Queensland Theological College (M. Div) and the Queensland University of Technology (B. Journ). He spent a significant portion of his pre-ministry-as-a-full-time-job life working in Public Relations, and now loves promoting Jesus in Brisbane and online. He can't believe how great it is that people pay him to talk and think about Jesus. If you'd like to support his writing financially you can do that by giving to his church.
Transformers 3: More than meets the eye?
This week. Hopefully. Amongst a fairly packed schedule. I’ll watch Transformers 3.
Now, I’ve geeked out a bit over Transformers in the past, and some people have suggested that the movies are some sort of artistic nadir. Some have suggested that a third movie is scrapping the bottom of some well plumbed depths, to mix a metaphor. But not me. Because I realise that unlike Cars 2, this isn’t an automotive movie created to shift more merchandise. This is an automotive movie (featuring battling alien robots no less) that is created from the merchandise. Inspired by toys. It’s completely different. It’s not selling out to the corporate masses – it’s the natural conclusion of a market predicated on convergence of revenue streams.
Not to mention the artistic merit, and Michael Bay’s status as the maestro in his particular field. Not convinced. Watch.
Tumblrweed: Accidental Chinese Hipsters
In the same stream as Dads are the original hipsters comes Accidental Chinese Hipsters – a celebration of the monkeys and typewriters principle of fashion – namely, that when billions of people have a finite number of clothing choices eventually some will incidentally, or accidentally, become hipsters.
My friend Mika tipped me off on this one.
Tumblrweed: When the What
Chronological visualisations on graph paper. Need I say more? Possibly. But seeing it will make things much clearer. When the What.
The alarming Christian precursor to Dorothy the Dinosaur
It’s hard to know when this sort of children’s television (EdI placed the apostrophe there after some deliberation, I assume only one child ever watched this, but then I had a further dilemma because children is plural. So I was going to suggest two childs = a children. And two children watched this. And then I realised that because children is a collective noun the apostrophe belongs there anyway) was actually appealing.
You have to do a little bit of source criticism on this to figure out how much of the craziness is attributable to the original, and not to the editors, but if anybody knows anything about the origins of this ‘ere show, I’d love to hear about it.
Oxford’s internal style guide outlaws the Oxford Comma
What!? (that should be understood as an interrobang).
Long-term, or even observent, readers will know that I have a soft spot for the Oxford, or serial, comma.
When I’ve been questioned on such usage in the past I’ve simply appealed to the authority of Oxford. But now. It seems. Oxford isn’t so into the Oxford comma, this from a style guide for marketing the university:
“As a general rule, do not use the serial/Oxford comma: so write ‘a, b and c’ not ‘a, b, and c’. But when a comma would assist in the meaning of the sentence or helps to resolve ambiguity, it can be used – especially where one of the items in the list is already joined by ‘and’”
Talk about going off message – the brand guardians of the Oxford comma have lost the plot.
Via Kottke.
Mithridatism: The art of not being allergic to poison
File this in the category of things that are cool and contain slight references to plot elements from the Princess Bride.
Mithridatism is the practice of protecting oneself against a poison by gradually self-administering non-lethal amounts. The word derives from Mithridates VI, the King of Pontus, who so feared being poisoned that he regularly ingested small doses, aiming to develop immunity. Having been defeated by Pompey, legend has it that Mithridates tried to commit suicide using poison but failed because of his immunity and so had to resort to having a mercenary run him through with his sword.
Science says confronting marauding, potion imbibing Gauls leads to brain damage
Yeah. That’s right. Scientific studies of the world of Asterix and his gallic drug addicts has demonstrated that more than 700 traumatic brain injuries occurred within the pages of the popular comic. Helmets apparently don’t really help.
More information about the study can be found here (all the proper peer reviewed stuff is here)
“Seven hundred and four TBIs were identified. The majority of persons involved were adult and male. The major cause of trauma was assault (98.8%). Traumata were classified to be severe in over 50% (GCS 3-8). Different neurological deficits and signs of basal skull fractures were identified. Although over half of head-injury victims had a severe initial impairment of consciousness, no case of death or permanent neurological deficit was found. The largest group of head-injured characters was constituted by Romans (63.9%), while Gauls caused nearly 90% of the TBIs. A helmet had been worn by 70.5% of victims but had been lost in the vast majority of cases (87.7%). In 83% of cases, TBIs were caused under the influence of a doping agent called “the magic potion”.”
Hopefully that’s some valuable tax payer funded research. Because this is important and groundbreaking stuff that will help tourists in Europe no end.
Awkward Family Photos: It is what it says it is
This should totally be a tumblog. But it’s not. It’s just your run of the mill blog. Oh well. In our family awkward family photos involved bad hair. Big hair. Big bad hair. I don’t have any to share. But check out some of these family moments. Captured for posterity through the wonders of photography.
Get Lamp: A documentary about text based adventure games
Like many people of my vintage who were introduced to computer games in their very early stages, I played quite a few text adventure games in my youth. Back in my day games didn’t even have pictures. You had to use your imagination. And type relatively specific commands to achieve even the simplest of functions.
I haven’t watched Get Lamp, this 2 hour doco yet, because I’m on my in-laws’ farm, and doing so would wipe out their mobile internet quota. Somewhat ironically. Given it is about text. But I’m filing this in the “watch later” pile. Get lamp gets its name from the first command one would type when finding themselves in the eponymous dark room at the start of just about every text based game known to man.
Did you play any text based adventure games? Get nostalgic in the comments.
True Enlightenment: The awesome benefits of Caffeine
Missing the regular coffee posts? Don’t forget thebeanstalker.com – where you’ll also see this video posted. Amongst other coffee related gems.
The video claims, rightly or not, that the Enlightenment was fuelled by caffeine. Don’t believe it? Check out this further video.
Fireworks Boxing
Chess Boxing looks tough, but it’s too cerebral. What real men want when they turn to pugilistic pursuits is fireworks. Literally.
People were tougher in the past.
Here’s the reworking of a classic old poem for the occasion.
The boy stood in the burning ring
Amidst the flames and flickers.
He ducked and dived, but did not stress,
For he wore asbestos knickers.
Jackson v Bean: a stop motion dance off
This is a pretty impressive toy-dance-off-stop-motion-video-featuring-Michael-Jackson-and-Mr-Bean, I can say, almost without hesitation, that it’s the best toy-dance-off-stop-motion-video-featuring-Michael-Jackson-and-Mr-Bean on the internet.
Michael Jackson vs Mr. Bean from Pascal Blais Animation Studio on Vimeo.
8 Bit Friday: Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse
Celebrations about Rebecca Black’s decision to remove her phenomenal smash hit from YouTube citing some sort of “copyright dispute” (we all know she just realised it was awful) will be short lived. Why? Well. Watch. The question “can this song possibly sound worse” has been answered in the affirmative.
Paranoid Android(s): A YouTube MashUp
Paranoid Android is one of those iconic song covers that everybody who is anybody has in their repertoire. Or so it seems. This is a very cool pastiche of extant YouTube covers of Radiohead’s hit.
Apparently Radiohead loves it. Which isn’t surprising.