Can't Stand It, I Know You Planned It

RIP MCA

"Adam Yauch, one-third of the pioneering hip-hop group the Beastie Boys, has died at the age of 48, Rolling Stone has learned. Yauch, also known as MCA, had been in treatment for cancer since 2009. The rapper was diagnosed in 2009 after discovering a tumor in his salivary gland."

Beastie Boys Co-Founder Adam Yauch Dead at 48 - Rolling Stone

The Philosophy of Commercials

I do not remember if I have written about Douglas Industrial's commercial before but I know that the above ending to the spot bothered me. The line "When we save the Earth and kill our own, we are doomed" pulls up nothing when put into Google and I am wondering what it means. Is it a subtle (or not so subtle) anti-Choice sentiment or is it a statement about the futility of maintaining biodiversity when we are unable to feed everyone?

Regardless of the message, what is it doing at the end of a television spot? What point are they trying to make by using this?

Anyone know what it means, why it is there, or why Douglas Industrial is running it? Any information would be appreciated.

Edit at 11:44: Encouraged by FAU, I called Douglas Industrial where I was informed that it was an anti-abortion statement.

Like a meat sandwich

Feeling the Smiths

Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body? I don't know.

Damn you catchy pop songs from the 80s, especially when I felt it necessary to respond to a "How are you feeling?" with a "Still Ill" and there it went. I will have the Smiths stuck in my head for the rest of the morning. This is not a badness but I is also not a goodness. Hopefully, I am rallying (at least I feel like I am) and I will be able to spend time with the people I care about this weekend. I already cancelled my plans for this evening for fear of infecting others with my colossal ick.

Free Comic Book Day
Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day. If you have heard of Free Comic Book Day, you do not need me to understand it. If you do not know what it is, I do not think that I can explain it to you better than the title of FREE COMIC BOOK DAY, you know?

Star Wars Day
Today is also Star Wars Day because of the pun...

Which Pun?

May the Fourth Be With You.

I know it is awful. I take no responsibly for it. The movies are pretty shi**y too.

International Firefighters' Day
I have some friends who like firemen. Today is the day to honor them.

To that end, I present to you a scene from the greatest movie about firefighters ever, Roxanne.

Loving Campaign Commercials

As long term readers may remember, I love campaign commercials. They are more awesome than a combination of Whole Foods* and the Fear Segment of the local news**.

This is my new favorite bad campaign commercial of the 2012 Election Season.

I am going to make a television ad about me engaging in public debate with my elected leaders by sitting in a park and getting involved in a drum circle. Is that mean?

Via Mediaite & sal gentile

* Yes, Albany is getting a Whole Foods. Yay. I want a QFC or HEB now. Just to be contrary. Honestly, I do not really care about grocery stores all that much and about brand loyalty to grocery stores even less.

** Did you see this on WTEN the other day? About the epidemic of child pornography in the area? Except that they provided one example and they did not explain how it was an epidemic. This is not to say that I am fan or supporter of child pornography, however, I think that in the search for ratings, these talking heads are becoming less journalists and more hacks that are trying to scare the grandparents of the world. The Fox 23 segment of Facebook likes was awesome too in terms of "Fear".

Let me include this "Oh! And..." about television news sites? Do you have to make them such gaudy nightmares of EVERY PIECE OF CONTENT THAT YOU CAN THINK OF? The sites are as awful as the ties of most of the local talking heads. I know that timea are tough and you are trying to make money, but pop up ads in addition to the home page of doom is just as awesome as having the Meebo bar pop up. It does not make for a good user experience and makes aggregation all the more valuable.

I always assumed this was given information

"Atheists and agnostics are more driven by compassion to help others than are highly religious people, a new study finds."

Atheists More Motivated by Compassion than the Faithful | LiveScience

The article made me think of the above speech that Joss Whedon gave a couple of years ago about secular humanism. This is not to say that I do not know a good number of people of faith that are caring, but then again, I do not know a lot of "Good Christians" that are evil, venal, and awful.

Humanists are driven to help others because we know that all we have is each other.

Songs about happiness murmured in dreams

I knew I would leave you with babies and everything

On this date, in 1989, the Cure released Disintegration. I love this album.

Pictures of You

Lovesong

Fascination Street

If it is accurate to say that I love this album, and as I wrote that I love this album above, it is accurate, it is safe to say that I adore this song.

Watching these videos, I was struck by a couple of things. The first being that these are great rock songs. Fascination Street is sublime in brilliance.

And then we get to the title track...

Disintegration

This is another a great rock song and it has one of my favorite lyrics of all time...

I never said that I would stay 'til the end, I knew I would leave you with babies and everything...

One of the other things that I observed is that they were great in spite of the shtick. Rollins makes a joke about Robert Smith saying that he is a "Hell of a songwriter" but why did he make that "choice".

I am just glad that this album was made and fifteen year old me loved this album nearly as much as thirty seven year old me does.

Bloggers of the World Unite!

The Dark Knight Rises
Did you see the new trailer?

How cool (and dark) does this look? Who is seeing it with me?

Snarking on All Over Albany

So, there was an odd link on All Over Albany about the use of a "Comfort Box". I, for one, fully embrace the use of a comfort box in every day life. Think about the possibilities of this. What situation would you want to use the "Comfort Box"?

Don't Be An A**hole
A number of people, apparently, thought of me yesterday with this comic from Xkcd.

The Alt Tag:I had a hard time with Ayn Rand because I found myself enthusiastically agreeing with the first 90% of every sentence, but getting lost at "therefore, be a huge asshole to everyone"

For some reason, I see Fish sending me this framed as a birthday gift.

Oh, and it is May Day
It is International Workers' Day.

Enjoy your general strike. *shakes head*

Eddie Money Monday

Because it was National Pretzel Day

The pretzels at the Recovery Sports Grill were okay but the Bavarian Cheese Sauce was something really interesting. (NB: Interesting does not always mean good and YMMV.) It was like a cheddar cheese soup that you would like to eat. The flavors included in this sauce were: cheddar cheese, beer, mustard, horseradish, black pepper, onions, shallots and they worked well together.

Of course, with every pretzel, there needs to be beer.

I really like that in more and more places you can get really good craft beers like the above Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA.

Life Lessons from Henry Rollins
Did you see this over the weekend?

I love Henry Rollins, for so very many reasons but this is just great in a "oh yeah, I am still bitter and angry, but please learn from my life" way and Rollins does that well.

Via Gawker

Grocery Store Challenge
Another thing that you should have seen but probably did not...
The article is entitled "Is Whole Foods Really That Much More Expensive?"

I have been overly concerned about other people's love of their grocery stores as of late, and I do not have a rational reason for why I am taking this so personally. It is a f***ing conveyance and why should I care about your choices. Anyway, this piece does go through the price discrepancy between the "Premium" grocery store and the pedestrian "Everyday" store.

Writing about your mentor's mentor
This excerpt in New York Magazine about the lesson from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance as well as Ben Bradlee and Bob Woodward is awesome, in a geeky way. Well, it may just be great for me as when I was describing it to a friend, they did not think it was nearly as cool.

Just like Ronny says...

There is no reason for this to be in my head, but it has been since about 6:30. Nice, no?

Superb Sunday Morning

At a certain age, the best part of waking up is waking up...
One of the best things about reaching a certain age is that after a great, and busy, day spent with people that you love, it is more than acceptable to fall asleep on your couch, beer slowly transferring heat into your hand, while watching baseball. Now there are other things that I would have preferred to be doing, but it was all-in-all an exceptional evening and the Mets won! Bonus!

This did mean that I was wide awake before the weekend alarm went off (7 am for those that are following along at home) and because I am not feeling one hundred percent, I turned on the news and had tea and toast. (More on the toast later.)

A quick note on the #NerdProm and the coverage of the #NerdProm. The jokes were neither shocking nor were they particularly funny. The coverage this morning was fairly banal too. I mean, what Colbert did a couple of years ago was transgressive but, Jimmy Kimmel? For the record, BHO is not funny. Please, do not try to make him funny. The Sunday Morning shows were more irksome than usual.

And I cook...
I cooked on Thursday! (I also forgot to take a picture.) Flash frozen ahi which was coated in white sesame and pan seared, angel hair pasta with a sauce made from fresh baby portabella mushrooms, baby spinach, roma tomatoes, red onion, and crushed garlic. It was okay. The tuna was overcooked because my dining companion preferred their tuna well done. The pasta was good and because I measured incorrectly, I have had a lot of leftovers. The best part was the bread which was still warm when I grabbed it from the bakery section of my supermarket of choice*. With a butter substitute that I was introduced to by HJ77, it was one of the most delicious things ever. The rest of the loaf has also made wonderful toast in the morning for me. See, I told you that there would be more about the bread later.

I feel like J-LO
My father is in town for the weekend, and has a Fiat 500. It is adorable. Even though I am really not of fan of the internal combustion engine vehicle, this is really cute. So cute that even I look good in it.

Well, maybe not good...

Baseball has been very very good to TEA

TEA pitched yesterday and he did well. He was happy with his performance. Upon seeing one of the pictures that was posted to Facebook, Teacher Dave offered to give TEA some pitching lessons. We are going to take him up on this offer. It does make me happy that my son is really getting into baseball. It is more than a little awesome.

For the game, my brother and father decided to watch TEA play. It was great of them to come out and it made TEA very happy.

And after the game, the four of us headed to the Fountain for pizza!

It was an amazing day. Seriously so... it was the capstone on an awesome couple of days. Remember when I wrote the other day that I was about to spend a series of days seeing my favorite people in the world? Yes, that happened and it was great!

An Odd Movie Question
Do you have a movie that you are embarrassed about not loving even though your friends love it and you are supposed to love it?

I do.

Yeah, I hate The Shawshank Redemption.

What's yours?

The App That You Need
You need to download and install justWink. Trust me.

Finally...

It is okay to admit that you do it. I know that I do...for some people. Most aren't worth it with their banality equaling my own.

*Continuing Rant about people and supermarkets and brand affiliation and more asshatedness about this at All Over Albany.