I can’t take any credit for this; I found it on Digg yesterday, but a coworker and I were absolutely cracking up over some of these.
Games Radar was the source of the laughs.
We enjoyed most of their comments, but the best had to be the caption under the box art for Petz Catz 2 (the name alone is worthy of some serious ridicule), because it also references the “lolcats” phenomenon which somehow manages to still be moderately funny.
“O HAI U CATCHED US SECKSING LOL.”
Apparently, Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek has suffered a heart attack.
And how does E! Online choose to convey this serious news to its readers? Let’s try Alex Trebek Jeopardized by Heart Attack. Brilliant.
I admit it: I watch American Idol. And it was always pretty clear that Kellie Pickler was perhaps less than a genius, but her charity appearance on Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? is still shocking. At least it answers the question. Decisively.
Let’s see:
Did I miss anything?
It doesn’t really help that Jeff Foxworthy repeatedly calls Hungary “hungry,” but I have a hunch that he did at least know it existed, even without the assistance of his notecards. Is our educational system really this bad?
I’ve already made my opinion of the RIAA known, but this latest development is truly unbelievable.
Apparently, the RIAA now feels that CDs you’ve ripped for your own personal use are unauthorized. What ever happened to the long-standing clause in copyright law that allows the holder of content to make up to five copies for personal use? What of the fact that it’s built right into the stupid DRM that the RIAA has forced Apple to implement on iTunes that you can put purchased music on up to five computers (and, implicitly at least, an unlimited number of iPods synced to those computers)?
It is patently absurd that any kind of legal case to this effect could be made in the current technological climate. According to the RIAA, just about everyone who owns an iPod (or a similar device) is a thief, even if they’ve paid for every single song on the device.
Well guess what: fuck you, RIAA. We are not thieves, we are your customers. But maybe we shouldn’t be.
Endure it if you dare.
Things were just different back in 1971. And if you don’t believe me, consider this: a very successful rock album from that year was Fragile by Yes.
This album contained not only three tracks near or longer than eight minutes each, but five brief tracks that were the individual creations of each member of the band. Some members were not so enthusiastic about this approach, most notably drummer Bill Bruford, whose contribution was an awkward, 37-second noodlefest for drums, guitar, bass, and organ entitled “Five Per Cent for Nothing” [sic, although apparently that’s how they spell it in Britain].
Only 37 seconds, you say? Or more to the point, only five percent, you say? I have now attempted to rectify that shortcoming.
The piece as it originally appears consists of a complex rhythmic pattern, played through twice by the band. Well, if twice through constitutes five percent, simple arithmetic tells us that 40 times through will yield the full 100%. (It also clocks in at a pleasing 11:11.)
So here you go…
[audio:http://blog.room34.com/wp-content/uploads/underdog/100pct.mp3]If you like/can tolerate this, I encourage you to consider purchasing the full album. (For what it’s worth, I myself have purchased it in one form or another no less than seven times.) It features some outstanding playing and great songs, including my favorite piece of music in the history of human civilization, “Heart of the Sunrise.”
But if you’re in the market for something a little more current… a little more seasonally-appropriate… a little more ridiculously titled, then I would steer you no further than to Chris Squire’s Swiss Choir, a drunken joke new Christmas album featuring Yes bassist Chris Squire, drummer Jeremy Stacey (formerly of Sheryl Crow’s touring band and more recently of the briefly-reformed-and-now-once-again-defunct lineup of Squire’s pre-Yes band, The Syn), and ’70s-era Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett.
Normally I would look at something like this and think, “Mannheim Steamroller, but somehow, incomprehensibly worse.” And yet, from the samples I checked out online, it’s surprisingly not complete shit! “Complete” being the operative word. When I emailed a friend about this album, with the subject line “Holy crap,” he replied “I think you have just come up with the perfect two word review for this album.”
If by any chance you do choose to purchase it, I would implore you to consider doing so via this link to the iTunes store, so they’ll know who recommended it! (OK, they won’t. But at least I’ll get a tiny piece of the action.)