i’m running for president to get away from all this shit

How the debate went in a much cooler alternative universe.  Link stolen from Suspect Device.

Clinton: i went to Bosnia and it was a war zone and every word i said was true except for the lies but Wes Clark wore battle gear when he met with me
 
Gibson: well don’t we all

 

 

http://moonshinepatriot.blogspot.com/2008/04/democratic-debate-abc-april-16-2008.html

 

The hair test

There are various tests for winning US presidential elections: the economy; likeability; double letters.  But a key factor seems to be having an unnaturally full head of hair.  Americans just don’t like bald presidents, if they have a choice.

Kennedy, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton all had spectacular manes.  Nixon looked better than Humphrey.  Johnson/Goldwater and Eisenhower/Stevenson were tossups.

In recent years the Democrats obviously overestimated the hair factor.  Dukakis’ and Kerry’s big hair did them little good.  Just to be safe, though, Obama had better ease off on the razor, just enough to overshadow McCain’s combover.

 

Common People

Another crib from jwz, I’m afraid.  But this (from Chris Sims) is made out of win.

Original Jarvis Cocker video here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=F39RS3I0D0Y

 Surprisingly good William Shatner / Joe Jackson cover here.

 

Give him a ten for snarky

One Paul Ford listened to 763 songs appearing at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, and wrote six-word reviews of each.

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/reviews/sixword_reviews_of_763_sxsw_mp3s.php

No idea if he’s a good reviewer, but he’s an amusing one.  Some favorites:

• Not bad from 2:28 to 3:16
• Corn syrup and carbonated goat jism.
• (on song 9999 (Ways to Hate Us)) - I just found one more way.
• All of Britain issues synthesizers, apparently.
• They took on songwriting… and lost.
• Treacle.  I want to stab dolphins.
• 30 seconds of limp, torpid moaning.
• Finally, a definitive robot pony song.
• Wants to be weird; just quirky.
• You can have too much cowbell.

 

Brewing up a mess o’ cartoons

I’ve always loved animation.  There’s a great blog, Cartoon Brew, that seems to thoroughly cover whatever’s new in animation, plus tidbits about the classics: http://www.cartoonbrew.com/

 One of their finds: Usavich, a series created by MTV Japan, featuring two prisoners in the USSR, a striking visual style, and a very strange sense of humor.

 

 Watch episodes 1-7 and 14-21 on the official site http://www.usavich.tv/movie.htmland the rest here: http://www.usavich.org/cartoon/

 Another fun video is Lollipop, created by Bonzom for Mika: http://www.passion-paris.com/flash.html#myreel=v548&page=myreel  Mika manages to sound a lot like the Beatles with reversed lyrics (e.g. instead of All you need is love this one is Love’s gonna get you down).

 Finally, John Kricfalusi of Ren & Stimpy fame has a blog: http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/  I can’t say Ren or Stimpy blew me away, but I love the blog; it’s an advanced course in animation, copiously illustrated.

 

Harry Potter

An interesting page by Greg Prindle on how the Harry Potter books are translated into Chinese (mainland and Taiwanese), Japanese, and Vietnamese: http://www.cjvlang.com/Hpotter/index.html

• Most of the names are translated phonetically, even when they have transparent derivations in English.  Harry is 哈利波特 Hālì Bōtè in the PRC, ハリー・ポッター Harii Pottā in Japan; Hogwarts is 霍格沃茨 Huògéwòcí.
• Cho Chang is pseudo-Chinese and has been turned into real Chinese: 张秋 Zhāng Qiū , using the common surname Zhang (same as Fushia’s); qiū means ‘autumn’.  This must contrast strangely with concoctions like Fúléidé Wéisīlái for Fred Weasley.
• The spell names were translated from pseudo-Latin to Chinese (I don’t know if they have a wényán feel).  E.g. Incendio becomes火焰熊熊 huǒyàn xióngxióng ‘fire-flame-bear-bear’.
• In Japanese, Dumbledore is given a ‘venerable old codger’ dialect similar to other eccentric old men in manga.
• There’s a section on how the wordplay was translated… in general, pretty badly.

 

Maybe we can set them up with Mars

Apparently Mao offered Henry Kissinger women… a few thousands, even a few million.  China was poor, he explained, and women were just increasing the population.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/14/chinese.women.ap/index.html

 And Kissinger, the fool, didn’t take him up on it. 

 

Most transparent Nigerian scam letter yet

Found this in my junk folder…

…We have been having a meeting for the passed 7 months which ended 2 days ago with the former  secretary to the UNITED NATIONS.

This email is to all the people that have been scammed in any part of the world, the UNITED NATIONS have agreed to compensate them with the sum of US$ 500,000,00 This includes every foriegn contractors that may have not received their contract sum, and people that have had an unfinished transaction or international businesses that failed due to Government problems etc.  …

You are advised to contact Mr. Jim Ovia of ZENITH BANK NIGERIA PLC, as he is our representative in Nigeria, contact him immediately for your Cheque/ International Bank Draft of USD$ 500,000,00 This funds are in a Bank Draft for security purpose ok? 

 The letter is signed Kofi Anan, who apparently can’t spell his own name.

Nigerian scam letters are usually pretty entertaining, with elaborate tales of woe…  but this one just spits on credibility.  The UN is sending out half-million-dollar checks to “all the people that have been scammed”?  The UN?  And the former secretary is in charge?  And for some reason Annan, who is Ghanaian, is working from Nigeria?  

I’m also entertained, somehow, by that final “ok?”  This is a really official letter that’s totally from the former secretary (UNITED NATIONS) ok?

(I wish, by the way, that WordPress could handle simple carriage returns.  It seems random whether it’ll remember a paragraph break or not.)