“Long Live the Riders of Roosevelt!”

This is why teddy bears are awesome:

Big GIF = slow loading

(h/t pokoshoko on Imgur)

I couldn’t find the video this comes from, but I found an animated short about a teddy bear who fights monsters, and a short about a boy with a monster under his bed (based on perhaps the scariest two-sentence short story ever.) (Videos are embedded below.) Continue reading

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I’ve Been Misquoting “The Wire,” and I’m Sorry

I don’t know how long this has been going on, but I have been attributing the line “This shit’s chess, it ain’t checkers” to Stringer Bell on the HBO show The Wire.

stringer-bell-drinks-tea

I was wrong, it’s actually a line delivered by Alonso Harris in the movie Training Day:

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Long Break from Regular Blogging

I had to go AFK for a bit because of hand and elbow surgery, but that was now more than two months ago, and I’ve been back at my regular writing job for a while. My lack of regular blog updates might have upset my reader(s), so I am committing to [trying to] do better.

In the meantime, I found this GIF of Olivia Munn saying “boobs” in an Imgur folder:

That’s in honor of the series finale of The Newsroom, where she played Sloan Sabbith and was awesome.

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Bribery in a post-Citizens United World

If money is “speech” in an electoral context, what about during the course of governance?

Could direct payment of cash, or some other thing of value, to an official in exchange for some official action, or forbearance from some official action, be construed as a very convincing argument that is protected by the First Amendment?

To give an example, suppose two people have separate meetings with an official regarding a pending application for, say, a building permit. The first person is a resident of a neighborhood that adjoins the property on which the proposed project will be built. That person explains to the official that the project will cause substantial noise pollution at all hours of the day and night, will depress property values to a significant degree, and will cause all of the residents of the neighborhood to develop a non-fatal condition that causes them to grow additional heads that emit flatulence from their mouths, which will cause unemployment problems.

Like this, but I guess with more farts.

The second person meets with the official and explains that the briefcase in his hand has $1 million in cash that will belong to the official if the permit is issued. Continue reading

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The ’80s Sitcom Parody (or Whatever This Is) We Didn’t Even Know We Needed Until We Saw It

You’ve probably already seen Adult Swim’s “Too Many Cooks” informercial (whatever that means), but in case you haven’t, it’s worth eleven minutes of your time. Stop asking questions and watch it:

The overwrought ’80s sitcom intro was ripe for surreal parody, when you think about it, but you probably never did before because why would you? Somewhere along the line, between the still-lengthy intro to Friends, the abbreviated intros to shows like Scrubs (did you know that’s actually an entire song?), and the just-get-in-with-it show openings of today, I mostly forgot that goofy sitcom intros ever existed (except for the songs—I’ll never forget classics like Diff’rent Strokes and their like). Only HBO shows (and their imitators) seem to have extended intros anymore, and except maybe for Game of Thrones—which you need to watch for any changes to the map—I suspect most people fast-forward through them.

Anyway, this seems like an important moment in our cultural history that we will have forgotten about by next week, so enjoy it while you can.

Also, I learned about “Too Many Cooks” thanks to this GIF on Imgur, which seems to capture the most truly WTF moment: Continue reading

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My Thoughts on the Election After One Week, in GIFs

Quite a few people are angry. Some might even be looking for payback. Sure, the Republicans will talk a good game, like they’re all sunshine and sweetness. But really, we won’t be sure whom to trust. Continue reading

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This Week in WTF, October 10, 2014

– On the plus side, she’s sure to sell the movie rights: A woman in Spain may be having marital problems, but I’m sure her story will make a profitable—if not actually good—movie.

Some nine months ago, a bride-to-be had sex with a dwarf stripper after a bachelorette party, and this week she introduced a new member of the family to her husband who is likely not the father. Or so the newborn infant’s attributes would suggest.

Inside a hospital in Valencia, Spain, the mother confessed to her tryst with the stripper when doctors recognized the newborn possessed traits related to dwarfism.

Actually, George R.R. Martin may have already thought of a somewhat similar storyline…

This isn’t the storyline I had in mind. It’s just awesome.

– Not quite to Phase 3 yet: The FDA is saying that caffeine-infused underpants probably won’t help you lose weight (h/t Ragen). Continue reading

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No Otisburg…….Yet……..

The “Six Californias” initiative will not be on the ballot in 2016, after the California Secretary of State disqualified the petition for having too few legitimate signatures. I see two lessons here:

1. As karoli at Crooks and Liars says, “professional petition gatherers [are] terrible at what they do,” charging “Six Californias” mastermind Tim Draper around $1.5 million for signatures rejected by the state.

2. Trying to carve your own personal fiefdom out of the nation’s most-populous state never seems to work: Continue reading

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