Stop Forwarding That Crap To Me

September 16, 2011 5:46 PM

Stop Forwarding That Crap To Me
posted by hippybear (101 comments total)

Dedicated to C., who actually stopped being my friend when I told him to Stop Forwarding That Crap To Me. I hope your life is going well.
posted by hippybear at 5:47 PM on September 16, 2011 [25 favorites]

Man I'm really tempted to forward this to my Aunt that always forwards the dumbest crap...so hard to decide.
posted by Chekhovian at 5:48 PM on September 16, 2011

I AM SENDING THIS TO EVERYONE.
posted by louche mustachio at 5:50 PM on September 16, 2011 [13 favorites]

wait... am I doing it wrong again?
posted by louche mustachio at 5:51 PM on September 16, 2011 [12 favorites]

I'd do anything for love, but I wont click that.
posted by The Whelk at 5:52 PM on September 16, 2011 [20 favorites]

I'm so going to forward this to my mom.


.....because she hates that crap too, actually, and will find this funny.
posted by Diablevert at 5:55 PM on September 16, 2011 [3 favorites]

My dad stopped forwarding crap to me when I replied, with reply-all including everyone he'd sent it to, to stop it. It embarrassed him into stopping. Douche move, but seriously.
posted by DU at 5:57 PM on September 16, 2011 [5 favorites]

yes, there is an odd irony that I'm gonna forward this to everyone.... as will everyone I forward it to..

Al has destroyed the interwebs!

Al and hippybear...
posted by tomswift at 6:02 PM on September 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

I do think that they missed a golden opportunity by not including an angelic choir of Bonsai kittens, marzipan babies, Patricia Piccinini sculptures and a cast of the other spurious creatures that tend to inhabit forwarded emails.


All "We Are the World" style. Yes.
posted by louche mustachio at 6:02 PM on September 16, 2011 [6 favorites]

Dear god,

Thank you for Weird Al. He knows what the Neiman Marcus Cookie Recipe letter is. He knows what the Bill Gates chain letter is. He wrote a catchy tune that I can send to my mother.

Signed: Me.
posted by thanotopsis at 6:04 PM on September 16, 2011 [3 favorites]

There is at least one person who I want to handcuff to a chair in a basement and force to listen to this for 48 hours on repeat.
posted by Grimgrin at 6:05 PM on September 16, 2011 [2 favorites]

*memails louche mustachio*
posted by Catch at 6:05 PM on September 16, 2011

It's pretty amazing how funny and relevant Weird Al has remained.
posted by Wyatt at 6:08 PM on September 16, 2011 [26 favorites]

Thank to Facebook, nobody has to e-mail that crap to anybody anymore, they just post it once and annoy everyone on their friends list simultaneously.
posted by briank at 6:08 PM on September 16, 2011 [5 favorites]

The chorus continues to repeat itself in my head, waving a lighter.

Oh, Weird Al, I heart you. Guy's lasted longer than half of the artists he's poked fun at, and he's still on his game.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:08 PM on September 16, 2011 [9 favorites]

Today at the dentist, my son saw a picture of "Weird" Al, promoting his Al-pocalypse tour. My son commented "He looks like an evil Doc Brown [Christopher Lloyd from Back to the Future]".

I clearly need to expose him to more "Weird" Al.
posted by BurnChao at 6:08 PM on September 16, 2011 [2 favorites]

The Whelk, I was about to come in and ask if this sounded like vintage Meat Loaf to anyone else, and clearly, clearly it did.

Thank-you for brightening my eve.
posted by Imperfect at 6:09 PM on September 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

I liked the song, but did anyone think it went about 3 minutes longer than it had to? I kept thinking, "Surely, it must be over now, but no...there are still 2 1/2 minutes remaining..."
posted by Deathalicious at 6:10 PM on September 16, 2011 [5 favorites]

Yeah, it was two minutes too long, but that, perhaps, was intentional....

The best thing that happened to Al was the internet..it fueled a career that would have died long ago otherwise.
posted by tomswift at 6:14 PM on September 16, 2011

It's a Jim Steinman parody, length was definitely intentional.
posted by gubo at 6:18 PM on September 16, 2011 [9 favorites]

Soooo... if anyone wants to send me pictures of unicorns, that would be cool - forward that crap to me.
posted by muddgirl at 6:20 PM on September 16, 2011

Guy's definitely still got it.
posted by pts at 6:22 PM on September 16, 2011

"Your quotes from George Carlin aren't really George Carlin" -- Best line in the song!
posted by dhens at 6:24 PM on September 16, 2011 [8 favorites]

The BCC: thing is what really gets me. My son's school always sends out stuff with every single address in the To: field and half the parents reply to all. Makes me kind of stabby.
posted by bondcliff at 6:28 PM on September 16, 2011 [3 favorites]

Bondcliff...call the school, tell them they are in violation of the telecommunication law of 1996 in sharing your personal e/mail address with other parents, and in the Department of Education regulations regarding releasing confidential student information and cite Johnson vs. the Leeburg Board of Education law suit. Let them know your attorney will be in touch with them if the address is shared again...

That's all BS, of course, but I bet it will stop the practice....
posted by tomswift at 6:33 PM on September 16, 2011 [18 favorites]

cc: [e-mail]
posted by BitterOldPunk at 6:36 PM on September 16, 2011 [2 favorites]

I liked the part where he said stop forwarding that crap to me
posted by George_Spiggott at 6:38 PM on September 16, 2011

Is this a parody of a specific song, or just a style? Either way, I love it.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 6:40 PM on September 16, 2011

Love the song, but I'm a bit disturbed about the pixelation on the cat picture in the video.
posted by demiurge at 6:45 PM on September 16, 2011 [4 favorites]

I had a girlfriend once forward me the Bill Gates chain letter, which was a serious WTF moment of dark introspection worse than the worst bad acid trip.
posted by neuromodulator at 6:46 PM on September 16, 2011 [11 favorites]

I ought to cringe at using this word, but Weird Al does have a kind of integrity. He never, when his popularity peaked or fell, succumbed to the temptation to either try to shake off or diminish the adolescent geek tone and try to be cool on the one hand, or blow it all the way out like some ghastly PeeWee Herman-equivalent on the other. He also sets the bounds of his parodies -- the places he'll go and the places he won't -- really well, so well you don't notice that they're there. There may be something about him I don't know (I don't actually follow him or anything) but from here he actually looks like a class act.

Or maybe it says something about the culture of 2011 that at this point he looks like a class act.
posted by George_Spiggott at 6:51 PM on September 16, 2011 [30 favorites]

The music was so insipidly bad it made my girlfriend retch.
posted by dunkadunc at 6:52 PM on September 16, 2011

I guess he missed the part where Snopes was itself part of the evil librul conspiracy.

Thankfully, my family has all blocked me on FB and never emails, so I'm free of their stupid forwards/posts. For now.
posted by emjaybee at 6:53 PM on September 16, 2011 [3 favorites]

emjaybee... are you one of my kids?
posted by tomswift at 6:59 PM on September 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

Is this a parody of a specific song, or just a style?

It's a pastiche on Jim Steinman's style. He wrote a lot of Meat Loaf's material.
posted by hippybear at 7:00 PM on September 16, 2011

*memails louche mustachio*

Checks inbox.... not a sausage.



Love the song, but I'm a bit disturbed about the pixelation on the cat picture in the video.

Not everyone wants to see... you know... harblz.
posted by louche mustachio at 7:05 PM on September 16, 2011 [4 favorites]

Wait...so, you're actually telling me that everybody hates my daily emails that feature actual news stories of little children being saved by men with bird wings?
posted by NoMich at 7:13 PM on September 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeforward!

Like Ricola.
posted by SillyShepherd at 7:14 PM on September 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

In addition to my given name, I answer to RE:.
posted by SillyShepherd at 7:16 PM on September 16, 2011

re: a drop of golden sun
posted by hippybear at 7:17 PM on September 16, 2011 [9 favorites]

I guess he missed the part where Snopes was itself part of the evil librul conspiracy.

Well of course it is. Anything that debunks bullshit chain letters, fake amber alerts, scaremongering warnings about gang initiations from five years ago, and stupid untrue feelgood glurge must be a liberal conspiracy to keep real patriotic redblooded Americans from annoying the living shit out of their relatives, acquaintances, and that one guy that bought a sweater from them on eBay that one time.

Head.

Desk.


Repeat.

occasional screaming
posted by louche mustachio at 7:17 PM on September 16, 2011 [8 favorites]

The best way to deal with excessive forwarders is to simple respond with a single "unsubscribe". Such a colossally dick move, but so fuckin satisfying.
posted by nathancaswell at 7:25 PM on September 16, 2011 [9 favorites]

The Devil Tesla, this is one of his "style parodies," in this case of Jim Steinman, who writes the same kind of big, bombastic ballads. Other tracks on the album are also style parodies (cf. "Skipper Dan," a play on Weezer's style). Typically half of his songs are straight-up parodies (ie the same melody), and a little less than half are parodies of a certain kind of music or artist(s).
posted by dhens at 7:34 PM on September 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

I have a friend who used to forward all sorts of weird conservative conspiracy theories (very nice person otherwise) without even so much as a BCC. I started replying to all, and that made it stop pretty quickly. Kinda shitty, I know, but they should have known better than to share my e-mail with their entire network of family and friends.
posted by Gilbert at 7:37 PM on September 16, 2011 [3 favorites]

I saw Weird Al live last night at the Puyallup Fair. He's remarkably talented and did a fabulous concert. At the end, I noticed that he hung on the stage for a few seconds longer than he could have, with a big smile on his face, enjoying the applause. You could tell that he loves what he is doing, and he loves that people love what he is doing.
posted by Xoc at 7:38 PM on September 16, 2011 [5 favorites]

Yeah, he played the Spokane Fair on Tuesday. If my stupid work schedule didn't have my alarm going off at 3:30am (and me going to bed around 8:30 or 9 most nights because of that) I totally would have been there.

He's definitely someone to see in concert, at least once, preferably repeatedly across many years.
posted by hippybear at 7:43 PM on September 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

I can't believe I actually had to set up ten fake departmental mailboxes for chain letters when mail forwarding became a firing offence at a past employer. No-one else knew they all piped straight into /dev/null
(and curiously, everyone who worked in that office has since died in bizarre stapler-related accidents - except me ...)
posted by scruss at 7:48 PM on September 16, 2011

I was going to point out the amazingness of Jim Steinman, but it's kind of turning into a whole post on it's own.
posted by louche mustachio at 8:03 PM on September 16, 2011

When people send me stupid urban legend crap, I ALWAYS reply all along with the relevant snopes link. After one or two or ten times, they get the hint...
posted by 1000monkeys at 8:08 PM on September 16, 2011

(cf. "Skipper Dan yt ," a play on Weezer's style)

I've been ignoring Weezer for a number of years now but that sure sounds like Fountains of Wayne to me.
posted by jeffen at 8:18 PM on September 16, 2011

He also sets the bounds of his parodies -- the places he'll go and the places he won't -- really well, so well you don't notice that they're there.

I don't know, it seems like he's become more mordant and cruel as he's gotten older, which personally I'm all in favor of. For instance, I think a Miley Cyrus parody about torture and political assassination crosses a lot of lines that '80s Weird Al wouldn't.
posted by strangely stunted trees at 8:23 PM on September 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

Weird Al's Style Parodies are usually far better then his straight up parodies, Dare To Be Stupid, so over Devo-ed Devo that Mark Mothersbruagh has said that, after hearing it, he felt like he should stop cause he just totally out-ran them.
posted by The Whelk at 8:44 PM on September 16, 2011 [3 favorites]

It's pretty amazing how funny and relevant Weird Al has remained.

One of my favorite recent tweets of his
posted by Greg Nog at 8:47 PM on September 16, 2011 [9 favorites]

I have a friend who used to forward all sorts of weird conservative conspiracy theories (very nice person otherwise) without even so much as a BCC. I started replying to all...

*snickers*

How to REALLY piss off the Crazy Right: Get stupid false email denouncing the ACLU from formerly sensible Republican friend that has been forwarded at least ten times with every damn email address in America attached. The email states on the bottom something to the effect that they'll forward this a million times to make sure the truth gets out.

Hit reply all, then copy/paste every other damn address in the email into TO:. Copy/paste the Snopes rebuttal, then follow with rebuttal quotes and site address of aclu.org, as well as linking a few .gov and .mil sites declaring the information to be a fraud. This additional info comes from, you know, the kind of sites the fundies should actually read and believe? Close with a statement daring them to forward THE TRUTH a million times, or just the correction at least once.

Hit post, wait for the sound of heads asploding all over the U.S. and 200 screaming emails responses say you're an asshole.

Friend is pissed, never talks to you again, let alone forwards you another crap email.

Success!
posted by BlueHorse at 9:06 PM on September 16, 2011 [3 favorites]

I finally have an illustration to send along with my regulaly ignored pleas to "please use bcc" and he even explains _why_ clearly in fewer words.
posted by hank at 9:20 PM on September 16, 2011

I have made quite a few internet friends out of friends-of-friends due to non-use of Bcc. I've also had zero increase in spam, zero increase in death threats, zero increase in stalkers, and zero increase in being scammed out of $$$.

People whinging about non-use of Bcc is like IT support dweebs at work whinging about 5Mb email attachments. What, EXACTLY is your problem?

I've had PAINFUL friends / relatives who forwarded EVERYTHING. Here's a tip: they burn out, folks. From 15 stupid emails a day to an acceptable 2 quality emails per week. Especially if you don't encourage them by replying. Why send a Reply All telling them to STFU?

Yes, even serial political email pests. "The war in Iraq is illegal!" x 100. Well that's just dandy, thanks for the heads-up. "All illegal immigrants should be set freeeee!" x 100. Whatever floats your boat, lady.

I've had moron friends come back with a bee in their bonnet, fresh from an "emails in the workplace" seminar and received an angry template email "please stop distributing random crap" only to have them "aww, how come you never email me any more?" four weeks later.

Serial forwarders have never wasted my time. It's just too easy to delete / ignore emails. Most serial forwarders are nice people who are just going thru a phase.

You're all just a bunch of intolerant pricks, as far as I'm concerned.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 9:47 PM on September 16, 2011

Well, however you handle it, be careful about hitting reply to all.
posted by desjardins at 9:51 PM on September 16, 2011 [2 favorites]

You know, I'm so, so glad that every few months or so I'm given reason to stop what I'm doing and thank the gods - thank the lucky stars above - that I get to live in a world where Weird Al also exists. It's a better rock we inhabit with Al around at the same time, doing what he does, and here's hoping against hope that he'll be doing what he does for a long, long time. If I'm ever full of enough dumb luck to happen upon one dose of immortality potion, I won't even begin to hesitate to force it down his throat.

(ok so how exactly was I supposed to know that that wasn't really immortality potion? Who the hell peeled the label off a completely full handle of Canadian Club and writes "IMMORTALITY POTION, ONE DOSE" on it instead? What kind of sick world IS this? Man, fuck this place.)
posted by item at 10:09 PM on September 16, 2011 [3 favorites]

Isn't this song around ten or fifteen years late?

Weird Al is cool, but the Neiman Marcus Cookie Recipe? Bill Gates chain letter? That crap went down in the 90s.
posted by fartknocker at 10:19 PM on September 16, 2011

Great song, but the scrolling-text videos are getting old.
posted by ropeladder at 10:19 PM on September 16, 2011

uncanny hengeman writes "I've had PAINFUL friends / relatives who forwarded EVERYTHING. Here's a tip: they burn out, folks. "

My father has been at the forwarding crap thing for 20 odd years now; when does the burn out occur?
posted by Mitheral at 10:20 PM on September 16, 2011 [2 favorites]

emjaybee writes "I guess he missed the part where Snopes was itself part of the evil librul conspiracy."

From the link:

But for several years, people tried to find out who exactly was behind snopes.com .. Only recently did Wikipedia get to the bottom of it - kind of makes you
wonder what they were hiding.

Huh? Were the Mikkelsons ever a secret? 'cause I don't recall that even back in the USENet days.
posted by Mitheral at 10:27 PM on September 16, 2011 [2 favorites]

Crikey! I take that all back.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 10:27 PM on September 16, 2011

Was one of the top ten lists in the video clip 10 worst shoes to wear and step in dog shit?

I'm still laughing!
posted by uncanny hengeman at 10:34 PM on September 16, 2011

I ought to cringe at using this word, but Weird Al does have a kind of integrity.

Abso-fucking-lutely. Weird Al could be making probably the same amount of money or more pumping out an album a year of crappy one-word change parody songs, but he throws out a lot of material and it shows. Increasingly, he also does originals like this that are as funny or funnier than his parody songs. Top it all off with an ambitious touring schedule with a ton of costume changes, and his flat-out refusal to do "next Weird Al" type competition shows on VH1 (he talked about that on the Nerdist podcast, maybe?) and you have the makings of a real class act.
posted by Apropos of Something at 11:01 PM on September 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

Huh? Were the Mikkelsons ever a secret?

I don't think so. Like you, I remember them from when I was reading alt.folklore.urban back in the 90s. At the time Snopes was pretty much an archive of AFU threads.

I saw Weird Al live last night at the Puyallup Fair.

What! I didn't know he was in this neck of the woods. I probably couldn't have made it to hear him, but still...
posted by hattifattener at 11:14 PM on September 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

Huh? Were the Mikkelsons ever a secret?

I have no doubt it took the brain trust at that link 15 years to figure out to click the "about Snopes.com" link on the front page.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 12:25 AM on September 17, 2011 [8 favorites]

This is just some stupid crap on YouTube I already saw.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 12:35 AM on September 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Beautiful typography animation. I've added it to my collection along with this because... well, because it's in the same league.
posted by bz at 1:42 AM on September 17, 2011 [3 favorites]

Weird Al is making his third-or-fourth return to his alma mater, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to perform at its excellent on-campus theater in November. I've already seen him there once and it was one of the three best concerts I ever attended, honest! It also reminds me that one of my worst life decisions was to not go to college at Cal Poly. It would have gotten me away from L.A. for a while, reduced my need for college loans, AND I would've been a classmate with Weird Al and hung out with him at the college radio station for sure.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:16 AM on September 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

"And your 2,000,000 loser friends all have my address now, 'cos you never figured out the way to BCC..."

THIS, goddammit. I actually cut a former friend out of my life for continuing to do that after numerous warnings, threats and imprecations. Yes, it matters that much, you thoughtless idiots.
posted by Decani at 3:33 AM on September 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

"You're all just a bunch of intolerant pricks, as far as I'm concerned."

You can't see me sticking out my tongue, putting my thumbs in my ears and wriggling my fingers, or hear me saying "na.na.na.na.na"

but I am.
posted by tomswift at 3:56 AM on September 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

Great song, but the scrolling-text videos are getting old.


The dynamic text is nicely done, but seems a little half-assed when the person one is parodying does everything with his whole entire ass, and needs annexes added to his ass to complete the project.
posted by louche mustachio at 4:14 AM on September 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

I watched half of it before I realized that it wasn't going to be a Tom Petty parody.
posted by fuse theorem at 6:00 AM on September 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

I almost made it through two minutes.

(Yeah I know I already posted this.)
posted by bukvich at 6:26 AM on September 17, 2011

Weird Al will outlast anything or anyone he parodies. He hasn't yet outlasted Madonna, but mark my words, he will.
posted by jonp72 at 6:32 AM on September 17, 2011

Finally I can update my standard reply to those annoying forwards, which used to be this. It has actually been pretty effective; I rarely get those things anymore (well, that and the fact the the worst offender died).
posted by TedW at 7:02 AM on September 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

I felt so sad that Weird Al canceled in Yakima for the fair...:(.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 7:17 AM on September 17, 2011

Yeah, apparently his management agency double-booked that date and Yakima got the short end of the fried-food-on-a-stick. He says he'll be back soon, however, so look for him in 2012 or 2013.
posted by hippybear at 7:48 AM on September 17, 2011

hey animator, ease your keyframes son, you're giving me whiplash
posted by nathancaswell at 8:40 AM on September 17, 2011

ARGH!

This thread made me look up Weird Al's touring schedule... Only to discover that he was in the area two nights ago and I missed it. Excuse me now; I'm going to have to go sulk for a while.
posted by meese at 8:59 AM on September 17, 2011

(well, that and the fact the the worst offender died).
He must've forgotten to forward one of those emails that say you'll die in seven days if you don't.
posted by dabitch at 9:49 AM on September 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Yes!

I've had to tell two of my four sisters to stop! Please! Chain letters are not valid on paper or email. Urban legends and conspiracy theories spread at the speed of light ...

I've never been enough of a fan to go see him, but do acknowledge that Weird Al is one of the hardest working musicians. He's prolific and relentless as ever. I like most of his original stuff better than his parodies. One of these days I'll catch a show. There's plenty of time ... He'll be touring until he keels over- I'm sure of that much.

He put it so beautifully ... although as briank mentioned people do the same on Facebook now, which is rapidly replacing email, especially for annoying forward-type messages. I admit to posting music videos from YT on my Facebook page more than anything about myself, but only if they're good or relevant. For instance I posted some of the Muppet music videos, some great live material not available elsewhere, Willie Nelson's official stuff, etc. I'm sure it gets annoying to some people, but damn it I'm just not interested in putting up a scrapbook of my life or playing those dumb viral Farmville-type games. FB is my jukebox. This video will be posted ...
posted by krinklyfig at 9:51 AM on September 17, 2011

You're all just a bunch of intolerant pricks, as far as I'm concerned.

You bet!

My inbox is not your soapbox. I'm comfortable with who I am and what is tolerable to me, and I protect my boundaries. Life is better for it.

Just a couple days ago I de-friended a friend on Facebook who was posting bigoted anti-Muslim rants on his wall - he recently became a Rabbi of a very isolated Christian sect, you know, the "no true Scotsman" type of Christianity where almost nobody knows the truth except a select few like him. I asked him politely a couple times through messaging to stop, that he was alienating his friends by doing it. I finally cut the cord when he posted that people who elected a secret Muslim (Obama) to the presidency should know better, and that people who didn't were ignorant, or worse if they didn't believe it should be ashamed of themselves (caps on "ashamed"). Fuck that with a red-hot poker. I don't need people like that in my life. He's a pretty nice guy otherwise, but his religion is turning him into a hateful, intolerant asshole. I am not a member of his church, nor do I have no time for his shitty preaching and definitely don't feel the obligation to tolerate it.
posted by krinklyfig at 10:15 AM on September 17, 2011

I love Weird Al. I've had a crush on Weird Al since ...well, for as long as I can remember.

I admit it; I'm white and nerdy, and I have deep, abiding, decades-long, passionate lust for Al. Some things you can't explain. Some things just are.
posted by dejah420 at 11:29 AM on September 17, 2011

he recently became a Rabbi of a very isolated Christian sect

What?
posted by andoatnp at 11:48 AM on September 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

That just shows exactly how isolated they are!
posted by hippybear at 11:50 AM on September 17, 2011 [4 favorites]

What?

I can't explain it, really. It's not something I follow. He has the certificate on his wall at work. He considers himself to be a member of the true followers of Christ, but his title is Rabbi.
posted by krinklyfig at 12:18 PM on September 17, 2011

jeez that was painful and unwatchable. and as others have said seems a bit late coming. Noone forwards that stuff any more. Email even seems to be dying off itself for a lot of this stuff.
posted by mary8nne at 2:19 PM on September 17, 2011

DU: "My dad stopped forwarding crap to me when I replied, with reply-all including everyone he'd sent it to, to stop it. It embarrassed him into stopping. Douche move, but seriously."

Some times you have to nuke it from orbit. Its the only way to be sure.
posted by MrLint at 5:06 PM on September 17, 2011

"hey animator, ease your keyframes son, you're giving me whiplash"

I think it is the very "almost spilling over out of control" quality that makes this animation so very good. It's ebullient and unbridled in a incredibly disciplined way.
posted by bz at 7:53 PM on September 17, 2011

I don't know, it seems like he's become more mordant and cruel as he's gotten older, which personally I'm all in favor of. For instance, I think a Miley Cyrus parody about torture and political assassination crosses a lot of lines that '80s Weird Al wouldn't.

"Happy Birthday" and "Mr. Frump in the Iron Lung" were on his very first album. "Christmas at Ground Zero" came along a little later. Al has always been darker than people remember.
posted by Etrigan at 8:49 PM on September 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

There goes my raging Yang again. Making an argument black and white and then chucking in a half a cup of GRAR.

Probably because I'm not rich and I'm not famous and I rarely give out my work email addy... I don't care if Joe Q. Brotherofafriendofafriend finds out my email details. Serial forwarders have never bothered me. I don't understand why it's such a big deal.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 9:10 PM on September 17, 2011

Serial forwarders have never bothered me. I don't understand why it's such a big deal.

If it's never bothered you, then it's never bothered you. It's enough of a bother to many many other people to make this song pretty hilarious and fun for many many other people. If it doesn't connect with you, then it doesn't. I bet there's another thread which you will connect on the front page right now!
posted by hippybear at 9:14 PM on September 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Fair enough, hippybear. But don't confuse my post with "your fave band sucks" threadshitting. The sentiment here is "So much THIS!" And I'm more "Huh? So much not THIS. Please explain."

Maybe mary8nne has it? When's the last time you got a crazy email with cheesy animated gifs and Hallmark poem quotes? Other commenters here have pointed out that some of his gripes are very dated.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 9:33 PM on September 17, 2011

uncanny hengeman writes "When's the last time you got a crazy email with cheesy animated gifs and Hallmark poem quotes? Other commenters here have pointed out that some of his gripes are very dated."

Oh god if only that was the case.

Really in my case it the flood of annoying emails isn't the problem; after all I have a delete button. The problem is my dad insists on quizzing me on the content. And then I've got to explain to him yet again that I haven't had timne to sit through his friend's 30 minute power point presentation of funny cat pictures, most of which I first encountered back when everyone was still using gifs but that was OK because I only had an 8 bit XGA video adapter.

TL;DR Ya, it's still a problem for some people.
posted by Mitheral at 9:51 PM on September 17, 2011

Anyone want to set up an exchange where I'll send it to your parents and you send it to mine?
posted by chairface at 6:27 PM on September 18, 2011

Still a problem for people with insane racist relatives.
posted by Mid at 7:16 PM on September 18, 2011

You know what would be an awesome album?

If artists who had their styles pastiched by Weird Al got together for a tribute album when them all recording the songs he wrote in their style. Imagine Meat Loaf actually recording this song. The B-52s recording Mister Popeil. Devo actually doing Dare To Be Stupid. Etc etc.

That's an album I'd buy a copy of for myself and several other copies to give to people I know.

Seriously. How can we make this happen?
posted by hippybear at 7:48 PM on September 18, 2011 [9 favorites]

> Neiman Marcus Cookie Recipe?

Got that one within the last year from a distant relative, fartknocker.

(is it actually possible to respond to your posts respectfully? No matter what's said, it comes out wrong: “Great idea, fartknocker!”, “fartknocker makes an excellent point”, “This, fartknocker.”)
posted by scruss at 8:35 AM on September 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

(is it actually possible to respond to your posts respectfully? No matter what's said, it comes out wrong: “Great idea, fartknocker!”, “fartknocker makes an excellent point”, “This, fartknocker.”)

The only reason I don't have a "screw you and the horse you rode in on" sockpuppet.
posted by Mitheral at 1:28 PM on September 20, 2011