Die Hard by GuyzNite

Feel good song of the year. Hands down.

Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!

UPDATE: J.p. said...

For the love of god, if you're going to post music that awful you should put up some kind of warning.

Hey, J.p., I believe my blockquote of "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!" should've been sufficient warning. It's POPULAR culture, it's not Jenufa.

You're probably the same J.p. that didn't appreciate Armageddon for all it's popcorny goodness. Yet another Bruce Willis saves the world film. Don't be hating on my boy Bruce. Seriously, Die Hard is in my all time top 10 alongside Last Year at Marienbad and Groundhog Day. And all three of those examples are in for very very different reasons.

Next, I bet you'll tell me that Transformers sucks...

:)

Italo disco...was there a scarier music scene in the 80s?

I may have posted about the hilarity of Silicon Dream's "Andromeda" earlier. Here's Wish Key's "Orient Express", one of the biggest Italo Disco hits of the 80s. I'm not quite sure what's with this video- it looks like they shot it in the guy's basement with the idea that adding a disco ball would automatically make things look cool. Catchy synth hooks though.

Wretched Hives of Scum and Villainy, part 4

For Part 3 of Wretched Hives of Scum and Villainy, click here.

Last night, I was the only person in the high-limit slots section of the casino resort I'm staying at. I overheard a pair of employees talking quietly at the far entrance to the high-limit area.

"Is that kid supposed to be in here?"
"I dunno, but he just put a shitload of money into that machine."


For the first time in my life, I'm part of the target demographic, the one that gets all the privileges. This is the complete opposite of college admissions, where I am in what's probably the most fucked-over demographic. It's about time us paintbrush-heads got some love.

Big casinos love young Asian males. Said demographic is usually associated with large disposable income, an addiction to gambling, and a willingness to make all sorts of stupid bets.

I started play at the resort on Sunday night. By last night, I had already qualified for the top tier(out of 4) of their Player's Club. This led to the following conversation:

Kyle: You qualify for airport limo service. You should get that next time.
Me: But seeing how I'd have to rent a car anyways, it means I'd have to go right back.
Kyle: Oh. Well, you should do it anyways.
Me: Hmmm. I'd have to dress for the part.

At this point, Kyle reacts along the lines of "Why the fuck would you want to be dressy, etc."

Me: No, no, you don't understand. It means I have to wear the rattiest clothes I have.
Kyle: *LOL*
Me: Dude, it's me we're talking about here. Wtf were you thinking?

For Part 5 of Wretched Hives of Scum and Villainy, click here.

Wretched Hives of Scum and Villainy, part 3.

For Part Deux of Wretched Hives of Scum and Villainy, click here.

The surreality continues. A few days ago, I drove south to Tahoe by way of Carson City. On the way, I passed a strip mall with the following signs in sequential order: "GUNS", "SLOTS", and "BUNNIES". Across the street was a liquor store and a "Payday Cash Advance" store. A few blocks down is a restaurant which serves a peanut-butter topped cheeseburger. I remain convinced that someone needs to stage an intervention for the entire state.

Later that evening, I was sitting in a hotel room with Kyle. Kyle had turned on the air conditioner, but it was making an annoying rattling noise because of a loose panel. Kyle goes "Hey, give me something heavy to put on the panel." In response, I toss him the inch-thick roll of C-bills that I had left the casino with.

Yeah. Before we used the Gideon bible instead(about the only use I've found for those things), we were using $11,500 to quiet a noisy AC unit.

Did you know that casinos will cash paychecks? In fact, they advertise this as being community-friendly. Yup, welcome to Reno, The Biggest Shitty Little City in the World.

For Part 4 of Wretched Hives of Scum and Villainy, click here.

Hurra Torpedo rokks my nano thinking world

http://www.hurratorpedo.org/
Hurra Torpedo is the world's leading kitchen appliance rock group. Since 1993 they have played for full houses all over their native Norway with their eclectic mixture of cover tunes and original material. Now, thanks to the wonders of the internet, their heartbreaking version of Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart is known all over the world .

We've All Got Cellphones, C'mon Let's Get Real

Saw Weird Al Yankovic over the weekend and although I'm just a semi-casual fan of his, I was blown away. Very very good show. A music and comedy multimedia extravaganza. Fo shizzle. The guy must've changed costumes at least a dozen times.

The title of this post is a song he co wrote with Michael Stipe of REM.
Here are the lyrics:

We all have cell phones.
So, c'mon, Let's get real.

Boycotting the news media and sponsors for appalling behavior

Please check out this News Boycott blog which is lambasting the news media organizations for repeatedly airing the Virginia Tech mass murderer's photos and videos. It has a petition to sign asking NBC news to stop it and apologize for their reckless behavior.

Being the cashier would've been cool.

Take a look at this commercial. Takeru Kobayashi, the world's #1 ranked competitive eater, buys a drink at a convenience store. Also buying a drink is Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas, the world's #3.

Hilarity ensues.

Odilon Redon

Symbolist painter Odilon Redon

This charcoal is Guardian Spirit of the Waters (1878) and can be found at the The Art Institute of Chicago

A first for 'Jeopardy!': What is a three-way tie for first place?

Let's disregard the fact that three way ties HAVE happened before on Jeopardy! (Think, everybody bets the farm and misses FJ, and they all go home losers.) This was simply the first three way tie of winners.



This quote caught my eye:
AP article

The show contacted a mathematician who calculated the odds of such a three-way tie happening - one in 25 million.

Hmmmm. I wonder how he came up with those odds? A frequentist maximum likelihood approach would go something like this: Observed ties for first place / Total Number of Episodes.
1 / 4000 or so? The ML odds would then be 1 in 4000.

1 in 25 million ? Then (1-1/25000000)^4000 gives 99.98% chance it won't happen after 4000 independent trials.

Jeopardy is clearly non-random and the people aren't dice thrown in the air. Ties happen a lot and it's definitely not a 1 in 25 million chance.

We could devise models of average contestant behavior, look at frequency of two way ties, etc. but that would be way beyond the scope of this blog post.

Innovative Juggler, Greg Kennedy

This guy, Greg Kennedy, is an IJ, innovative juggler:


Juggling without gravity - Click Here for more great videos and pictures!