July 23, 2014

  • because I'm tacky

    You could have looked up the lyrics yourself.  I saved you the trouble.

    (I had to replace the original video, which got copyright-blocked.  Too bad, because there were cameos by Aisha Tyler, Margaret Cho, Kristen Schaal, and Eric Stonestreet.)
     

    It might seem crazy, wearing stripes and plaid
    I instagram every meal I've had
    All my used liquor bottles are on display
    We can go to see a show but I'll make you pay

    (because I'm tacky) Wear my belt with suspenders and sandals with my socks
    (because I'm tacky) Got some new glitter Uggs and lovely pink sequined crocs
    (because I'm tacky) Never let you forget some favor I did for you
    (because I'm tacky) If you're okay with that, then, you might just be tacky, too

    I meet some chick, ask her this and that
    Like 'Are you pregnant girl, or just really fat?' (what?)
    Well, now I'm dropping names almost constantly
    That's what Kanye West keeps telling me, here's why

    (because I'm tacky) Wear my Ed Hardy shirt with fluorescent orange pants
    (because I'm tacky) Got my new resume it's printed in Comic Sans
    (because I'm tacky) Think it's fun threatening waiters with a bad Yelp review
    (because I'm tacky) If you think that's just fine, then, you're probably tacky, too

    Bring me shame, can't nothing
    Bring me shame, I never know why
    Bring me shame, can't nothing
    Bring me shame, I said
    Bring me shame, can't nothing
    Bring me shame, it's pointless to try
    Bring me shame, can't nothing
    Bring me shame, I said

    (because I'm tacky) 43 Bumper Stickers and a YOLO license plate
    (because I'm tacky) Bring along my coupon book whenever I'm on a date
    (because I'm tacky) Practice my twerking moves in line at the DMV
    (because I'm tacky) Took the whole bowl of restaurant mints. Hey, it said they're free
    (because I'm tacky) I get drunk at the bank And take off my shirt, at least
    (because I'm tacky) I would live-tweet a funeral, take selfies with the deceased
    (because I'm tacky) If I'm bitten by a zombie, I'm probably not telling you
    (because I'm tacky) If you don't think that's bad, guess what, then you're tacky, too

     

     

July 20, 2014

  • Telegenically-dead Palestinians

    Netanyahu lost his mind in a CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer.  He will never be able to un-say what he said.  Poor, sad Bibi.

    Wolf Blitzer, 20 July 2014:

      "You see these painful pictures though of these Palestinian children and these refugees, thousands of them, fleeing their homes.  It’s a horrendous sight right now– if you look at the images, heart-wrenching. What goes through your mind when you see that?"

    Netanyahu:

      "I’m very sad. When I see that I’m very sad. We’re sad for every civilian casualty.  They’re not intended.  This is the difference between us.  The Hamas deliberately targets civilians and deliberately hides behind civilians.  They imbed their rocketeers, their rocket caches, their other weaponry, which they use to fire on us in civilian areas…  What choice do we have?…

      "All civilian casualties are unintended by us but actually intended by Hamas.  They want to pile up as many civilian dead as they can because somebody said, and I mean, it’s gruesome, but they use telegenically-dead Palestinians for their cause.  They want– the more dead the better."

     

     
    “Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.”
    Clearly this man is a psychopath.  His "we are the victim" line is just no longer possible to sell, with hundreds of dead Palestinian civilians, a quarter of them children, and with fewer than 20 Israeli casualties, almost all of them soldiers.

     

July 15, 2014

  • So Adam, hurled from the moon,

    So Adam, hurled from the moon, is inspired by his dream girl Eloy to become a universally acclaimed concert pianist.

    I better back up a little.  On the moon, Adam had been grabbed and hurled down to earth by the bus driver's goons.  The autocratic bus driver, played by Bill Murray, needs to keep the passengers, mainly elderly shoppers, along with the crooner Eddie Fisher, busy with shopping.

    I better back up a little.  Adam had been advised by Father Knickerbocker that love and peace had been spread everywhere in the world by homeless bums, but only he (Adam) was capable of spreading love to the moon.

    I better back up a little.  The movie is called Nothing Lasts Forever.

    http://youtu.be/Y2bXpNJSNaY

    The movie was made in 1984 at about the same time as Ghostbusters, but it was never released.  It shows up sporadically in film festivals.  You can watch it on youtube.

    Is it dystopian?  Surely.  A surrealist vision?  Philosophical voyage?  Stoner entertainment?  Yes.  Yes and no and yes.  It shares themes with Metropolis, Wizard of Oz, The Matrix, 1984, and Twelve monkeys. I am sure you will find parallels of your own.

    At the outset, a worldwide recession causes a rationing of essential services in the Port Authority, which engenders a gestapo-like regimentation.  Adam gets shuffled from office to office in an endless bureaucratic loop.  To prove that he has an occupation, Adam is given an art test, which is nude figure drawing in three minutes or less.  Adam's sketch turns out to be nothing but a dark triangle, and he fails.

    MMnothing03
    Adam's three-minute art test

    truelove
    Adam and Eloy find True Love on the moon.

    nothing-lasts-forever-11
    Elderly moon shoppers

    MMnothing08
    Those lovely lunar welcoming girls

     

    Have fun!  By way of explanation, the theme song offers, "It's a Barnum & Bailey world, just as phony as it could be, but it wouldn't be make believe if you believed in me!"

     

July 9, 2014

June 26, 2014

  • Ain't mine, it's y'alls

    Our friend @Mzkeekz found a language web site http://languagesoftheworld.info/ which turns out to be fun.  It is about English dialects, among other things.  There are also articles about Romance languages, Latvian, Russian, Sanskrit -- the gamut.

    Maps: The Harvard Dialect Survey, conducted by Bert Vaux and Scott Golder, is a compilation of regional American differences.  Researcher Joshua Katz of NC State University used it to construct maps.  [ link ]  Do you say soda or pop?  grosery or groshery (grocery)?  reely or rilly (really)?  law-yer or loy-er?  ant or ahnt (aunt)?  Katz explores these questions.

    yall-map

    you guys 42.53% of respondents
    you 24.82%
    y’all 13.99%, chiefly in the South
    you all 12.63%
    yous or youse 0.67%
    yins 0.37%, chiefly in Appalachia
    you ‘uns 0.20%, also chiefly in Appalachia
    you lot 0.18%
    some other term 4.62%

     

    The deepest divide
    Among the regional differences, the use of y'all is the deepest and most obvious linguistic divide in America.  It separates Southerners from non-Southerners.  I have a gut revulsion when I hear the word y'all.  I can't help it.  I grit my teeth and anticipate something flagrantly anti-science or misogynistic or racist.

    Y'all know Obama is a communist muslim foreigner.

    Y'all know climate change is just a liberal hoax.

    Y'all know homosexuality is a sin.

    I apologize if you belong to the y'all persuasion.  There is nothing stupid or illiterate in the word y'all.  I know that it is a fully grammatical element of language.  But my experience has been reinforced many times.

     

    Take This Quiz
    It is a brief language survey of your regionalisms, grosery or groshery, reely or rilly, and at the end, it will produce a map (poorly designed as the colors red and blue are indistinguishable by one man in twelve) -- a map of everyone in the USA who talks like you.  In my case, it located me exactly:

    speech-map

     

    Again, if you feel offended by my views, sod off.
     

June 20, 2014

  • mas que nada

    To cure depression, listen to this samba.  Listen to it all day.  It will make you feel better.

    Mas que nada literally means "but that nothing."  In Brazilian slang this means "come on" or "no way" or "yeah, right!"

    Let's think back to 1966.  Bossa nova was the new fad.  The bossa nova was a whitebread attempt to make the samba palatable to Americans, and it was at this point that Sergio Mendez realized that palatable was not good enough.  Brazil had its own rich tradition of European, African, and indigenous music, blended upon the vibrant polyrhythms of Africa.  In the great diaspora of the 18th century, most Africans had been relocated not to the Caribbean, not to North America, but to Brazil.

    So Brazil had its own native rhythms, driving rhythms.  And Brazil had its native melodies too, that were layered over idiosyncratic ninth chords, seventh chords, and augmented sevenths.  Think of "The Girl From Ipanema," which ought to be dissonant, as it is built from a melange of awkward chords, yet conveys a plaintive lyricism.  (I am summarizing an interview with Sergio Mendez I heard on Q with Jian Ghomeshi)

    Sergio Mendez brought the Brazilian melodies back to the samba.  Fifty years later, Brazil is in the news.  And the samba is exploding everywhere.

     

     

June 14, 2014

  • fútbol

    ball-fifa-official

    Etymology
    Some Latins are defensive about the word "football."  They claim that we Americans are using it wrong.  Guess what, Jorge, it's not even a Spanish word.  You stole fútbol from the Brits, didn't you.  And you didn't even spell it right.

     

    danish fodbold     ukrainian futbol
    dutch voetbal vietnamese bóng đá
    german Fußball welsh pêl-droed
    portuguese futebol xhosa isoka
    romanian fotbal yoruba bọọlu afẹsẹgba
    spanish fútbol zulu lezinyawo

    This table proves that foreigners are all ignorant about football.

     
    Viewing the games
    The World Cup is available on ESPN in the USA.  I do not get ESPN.  Do you?  If you live in Canada, you can use the CBC.  If not, you can use the Spanish-language network Univision:

    http://deportesenvivo.univision.com/

    If you’re fluent in Spanish, you’re all set.  And if not, well, the action tends to be pretty self-explanatory, and the word “goooooooaal!” sounds the same in English and Spanish.  Right now I am watching Costa Rica vs Uruguay.  The Uruguay guys are larger, the Costa Ricans faster, so it's an interesting game.  Uruguay is leading 1-0.

    You can see replays of the finished games in the following link  (to see them live, you're asked to install some kind of media player, which I do not trust very much).

    http://www.tsmplug.com/category/football/

    Here is the schedule and results of world cup games:

    http://sports.yahoo.com/soccer/world-cup/scoreboard/

    The object of the game
    Headdd
    ... is to eat the entire soccer ball while running at full speed down the field.

    World class flops
    Everybody agrees that Brazil was awarded an undeserved penalty free-shot after staging this fake injury (GIF):
    penalty-gif

    FIFA: John Oliver gets it right

    "Sepp Blatter?  Even his name should have been red flag.  If your name is Sepp, at the bare minimum, you've strangled someone in a bar fight.  That's just a fact."

     

     

June 6, 2014

  • Poutine in Normandy

     
    In a 2007 survey on the greatest Canadian inventions of all time, Poutine was ranked No. 10, ahead of the electron microscope, the BlackBerry, and the paint roller.  Poutine is a dish of homemade french fries topped with white cheddar cheese curds and gravy.  Ughhh.  To denizens of the civilized world, it sounds unsavory.

    poutine-quebec

    In France, coincidentally, Poutine means Putin (Путин), as in Vladimir Putin.  I find this fascinating.  There is a perverse logic in it, since и represents a long E sound.  Putin rhymes with "keen" not "vin."

    POUTINE-2b

    POUTINE-0b
     
    From Le Figaro:
    2000 kilometers from a real civil war, with real people dying and vertiginous geopolitical issues, a FEMEN media puppet with bare breasts attacks a wax statue in the sight of horrified Japanese tourists and the placid gaze of a plastic François Hollande.

    POUTINE-3c

     

June 4, 2014

  • Tiananmen

     
    Tiananmen

     
    So I met this Chinese fellow in Friendster in 2011.  Li Yi has lived in China all his life -- not in Hong Kong, not in Taiwan, but in official authentic China.  He lives in the city of Nanning, site of Guangxi University, which is on the southern tip of China.  And yet he speaks English quite naturally.

     

    Hello John
    How are you? Thank you for emailing me. Do you plan to come here? Yes Guangxi university is a very famous university here in China. Do you have anything you want to know about me?
    liyi

     

    Li Yi,
    Okay, yes. Why do you speak English so fluently?
    Also, (answer optional) does the government block news about Tiananmen or Ai Weiwei? I don't want to make trouble for you.
    -john

     

    Hello John
    I studied english at Guangxi University. English is a popular subject in China now. Parents pay a lot of money to put their kids in english classes do you want to teach english here?

    It doenst matter you can talk about news here no one can see what you write. Maybe in public can cause trouble. Some news is blocked because there are a billion people here and if we have a panic maybe many people can get killed for no reason. I hope to hear from you soon. Do play games on friendster? I play Flower House. Also facebook and youtube is blocked here for reasons that i dont know
    liyi

     

    There will always be propaganda.  There will always be patiotic reasons for suppressing the truth and lying about Tiananmen.  Still, I don't understand how a billion people can tolerate having the wool pulled over their eyes.

    According to Netizen Report,

      in China, days before the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, the government has blocked access to all of Google’s encrypted and unencrypted services in the country and announced a new front in its war against 'online rumors': Internet messaging apps.  Censorship monitor GreatFire.org has called this the 'strictest censorship ever deployed.'

      The Chinese government prohibits all forms of offline and online discussion on the Tiananmen protests, one of the bloodiest events in Beijing's modern history.  Estimates of the death toll range from June 4, 1989, range from a few hundred to the thousands.

     

     

     

May 26, 2014

  • kimye?

     

    Back in the days of Xanga 1.0, you could attract a lot of visitors simply by asking one lame question.  That is what thetheologianscafe always did.  Nowadays of course it is not possible to track the number of visits.  The clipping is from The New York Post.

    kimye-new-york-post

    Question:  Do you believe Kim Kardashian and Kanye West were married?  Or do you believe they weren't?