He's lacking business acumen
May 13, 2012 10:29 AM   Subscribe

 
Wonderful Sunday afternoon post. Thanks.
posted by Aizkolari at 10:34 AM on May 13, 2012


Argh! Ambushed by Parry Gripp earworm! Argh!

Wiener Dog! Wiener Dog on a Minimoog!
posted by BitterOldPunk at 10:42 AM on May 13, 2012 [4 favorites]


IT'S SO FLUFFYYYY!
posted by Gator at 10:45 AM on May 13, 2012 [2 favorites]


And he still gets the ladies.
posted by graventy at 11:01 AM on May 13, 2012 [1 favorite]


Lazy harp seal is oh so fluffy. Lazy harp seal is oh so lovely. And even without a jacket, he's living the life because he's happy! Lazy harp seal.
posted by livinglearning at 11:11 AM on May 13, 2012


Uh.

Ok.
posted by clvrmnky at 11:12 AM on May 13, 2012


ALL of the ladies!
posted by MyMind at 11:17 AM on May 13, 2012


Well duh. It's because there aren't any self-described job creators out on the ice floes. So I suggest we start rectifying that.
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:20 AM on May 13, 2012 [12 favorites]


Qualifications: Being Adorable.
posted by TwelveTwo at 11:26 AM on May 13, 2012 [1 favorite]


Wonderful!
posted by LarryC at 11:33 AM on May 13, 2012 [1 favorite]


Ouate de phoque !!
posted by seawallrunner at 11:34 AM on May 13, 2012 [5 favorites]


I -♣ ♥ lazy harp seal.
posted by 445supermag at 11:34 AM on May 13, 2012 [8 favorites]


You know, if Parry Gripp hadn't come along, I think it would have been necessary for the internet to create him. Like, is there any proof that he isn't actually skynet or something? He's so perfectly perfect at his own strange, small niche. And, as always when a Parry Gripp post comes along, I've just spent 20 minutes listening to various Parry Gripp insanity/inanity and I'm so, so happy, which makes me think it's got to be some kind of plot.

Also, Baby Monkey Riding on a Pig! Backwards on a pig, baby monkey! I still can't figure out why the universe didn't just end from spontaneous glee when that one came out.
posted by mygothlaundry at 11:40 AM on May 13, 2012 [6 favorites]


You have to watch the whole thing to really get it.
posted by mikeand1 at 11:40 AM on May 13, 2012


.....Am I the only one really dislikes this video? Firs t it insinuates that people without jobs are lazy, then it acts incredulous that he can be happy without consumerist material possessions. Right.

That one about the Pegasus? That was awesome. Sent to the people on my twitter feed who keep going on about My Little Pony.
posted by Canageek at 11:47 AM on May 13, 2012


Yeah, how dare he judge that harp seal! He may be disabled and thus unable to work.
posted by Justinian at 11:51 AM on May 13, 2012 [3 favorites]


.....Am I the only one really dislikes this video? Firs t it insinuates that people without jobs are lazy, then it acts incredulous that he can be happy without consumerist material possessions. Right.

you are right that those are bad things but this video is not sincerely espousing those things it is satirical in nature the viewer is likely to find the character of the camera-and-jacket-possessing fellow to be mistaken in his critique of the harp seal
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:57 AM on May 13, 2012 [33 favorites]


just reading the words Parry Gripp gets BABY MONKEY RIDIN' ON A PIG stuck in my head for the next six hours.
posted by The Whelk at 12:02 PM on May 13, 2012 [5 favorites]


"Lazy Harp Seal is a conveniently sized nutritious blubber container for the sunless Arctic season."

-- Busy Polar Bear
posted by Iosephus at 12:02 PM on May 13, 2012 [6 favorites]


It's good, but, I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's no Chimpanzee Riding On A Segway.
posted by briank at 12:07 PM on May 13, 2012 [3 favorites]


This is just another story to add to the plight of unemployed sea creatures.
posted by chambers at 12:07 PM on May 13, 2012 [2 favorites]


So... Parry Gripp is the Internet Randy Newman?
posted by ryoshu at 12:26 PM on May 13, 2012 [4 favorites]


.....Am I the only one really dislikes this video? Firs t it insinuates that people without jobs are lazy, then it acts incredulous that he can be happy without consumerist material possessions. Right.

Perhaps try watching it with the sound off or drowned out by, eg., Leonard Cohen playing in the sushi internet cafe in which you are sitting on a Sunday afternoon (yes, there are some perks to my life:P)? All I got was photos of adorably cute and fuzzy baby seals.

(I can just imagine the accompanying Leonard Cohen song, though: a mournful tune about a seal's destiny either being to turn into a not-so-attractive or fuzzy adult seal viciously hunting among the desolate, frozen ocean; or to be hunted and clubbed while still young, yet finally achieving notoriety and preserving one's youthful beauty by ending up around the shoulders of some attractive and fashionable lady.)
posted by eviemath at 12:33 PM on May 13, 2012 [2 favorites]


Baby Harp Seal takes you dooooown
to the place by the iiiice floooow
posted by The Whelk at 12:41 PM on May 13, 2012 [5 favorites]


Suzanne takes you down to her place near the icehole
You can hear the charr go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she's a harp seal
But that's why you want to be there.
And she feeds you eels and herrings
That came all the way from Anchorage
And just when you mean to tell her
That she doesn't have a camera
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the salmon answer
That you've always been her lover
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you've touched her perfect blubber with your mind

posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:47 PM on May 13, 2012 [36 favorites]


coke plz
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:48 PM on May 13, 2012


So... Parry Gripp is the Internet Randy Newman?

gah... [head explodes]
posted by DarkForest at 12:53 PM on May 13, 2012 [1 favorite]


Parry Gripp is actually the codename of a Chinese semiotics algorithm that has been running since 2004. It was programmed to make English-language concept associations, analyze their rhythmic structure and set them to simple, computer generated tunes. In its present form, it can generate 20-30 of these "songs" per day. These are broken down into meaningless subphrases and then outsourced for vocalization via Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing. The reassembled tunes are pitch-corrected, digitized, and run through a crude neural network floating in a saline bath. Those that stimulate abnormal activity in the net's pseudo-hippocampal region are extracted and turned over to a team of North Korean animators and video editors for visual augmentation, uploaded to YouTube and then pumped through social networks like Digg and Reddit. When one hits MetaFilter, HuffPo, or CNN, its pattern is fed back into the original algorithm for optimization.

The Chinese military estimates that this operation has resulted in a net $2.5 trillion reduction in American laborforce efficiency so far. The "baby monkey backward on a pig" creation alone was responsible for delaying the economic recovery in the US by a full 6 months.
posted by R. Schlock at 12:56 PM on May 13, 2012 [34 favorites]


So Neon Pegasus is at least the second song Parry Gripp has written with a refrain of "never again?" Does this mean that Sammy Hagar is the Gummy King?
posted by "Elbows" O'Donoghue at 1:08 PM on May 13, 2012


Will that be a new club favorite?
posted by Chuffy at 1:21 PM on May 13, 2012 [1 favorite]


Shit throwing monkeys will be shit throwing monkeys.
posted by Meatafoecure at 1:22 PM on May 13, 2012


The tundra is a dangerous place.

And I suppose, the upside of this is that jobless humans don't get clubbed to death by Canadians.
posted by Harry at 1:36 PM on May 13, 2012


East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94

wow. I think you can add 'artic troubadour' to your list of accomplishments.
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 1:38 PM on May 13, 2012 [3 favorites]


R. Schlock - if you want to build that, I'm in.
posted by mr.ersatz at 1:42 PM on May 13, 2012


That is just perfect. Had no idea what to expect when I clicked the linky and just wow.
posted by localroger at 1:48 PM on May 13, 2012


This is just what I needed today.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 1:48 PM on May 13, 2012


You people just showed that you're willing to turn a blind eye when it is to your benefit. How does that make you any different from the harp seals you rail against?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:54 PM on May 13, 2012


East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94, that is beautiful. It warms my heart that the anglophone world now has their version of this, believe me or not ...
posted by maudlin at 1:55 PM on May 13, 2012 [2 favorites]


Quite a followup to your metal documentary post, I must say.
posted by vanar sena at 2:05 PM on May 13, 2012


This harp seal is only 3-15 days old; even if that were enough time write up a proper CV, he wouldn't have anything to put on it yet. And even assuming he managed to send it out with a few cover letters, it's hard to imagine polar HR departments would have gotten around to scheduling a job interview yet.

And you can't go into a job interview wearing fluffy white baby fur and expect to get hired. Give the pup a break. At least give him another week to shed and put on some adult fur before calling him lazy.

Also, he's busy trying not to get eaten 1,500 pound polar bears* and pods of killer whales made of teeth. That's got to count for something. Show me a human newborn could do a better job not getting eaten or take it all back!

* N.B. polar bears aren't even afraid of a Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine armed with nuclear weapons!
posted by Davenhill at 2:06 PM on May 13, 2012 [4 favorites]


Not sure why people are being so flippant about these dangerous wild animals, btw. Let your guard down and baby seals will gang up and crush you.
posted by vanar sena at 2:23 PM on May 13, 2012 [8 favorites]


It's completely formulaic but I still love when he does That Voice in the middle of the song to say ""YEAH, when I first saw you $ANIMAL_IN_TITLE, I thought..." etc.
posted by DU at 2:28 PM on May 13, 2012 [1 favorite]


Wasn't there already a music video like this, instead of a seal it was about a cat? I remember it actually being funny.
posted by Arthur Phillips Jones Jr at 2:48 PM on May 13, 2012


just reading the words Parry Gripp gets BABY MONKEY RIDIN' ON A PIG stuck in my head for the next six hours.

I was introduced to the dubstep version first, so that's the one that gets stuck in my head. It hurts.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 3:05 PM on May 13, 2012


Smile!
posted by homunculus at 3:12 PM on May 13, 2012


You people just showed that you're willing to turn a blind eye when it is to your benefit. How does that make you any different from the harp seals you rail against?

We have cameras.
posted by shmup at 3:14 PM on May 13, 2012 [4 favorites]


R. Schlock: "Parry Gripp is actually the codename of a Chinese semiotics algorithm that has been running since 2004. ..."

Typical noob design, solving the problem backwards. You just need to seed the Markov lyric generator with the results of a an input agreement game from existing Youtube video. From there it should be fairly easy to generate a maximum likelihood arrangement of the resulting phrases. Then you run the result through the Mechanical Turk sing-song sausage factory.
posted by pwnguin at 3:22 PM on May 13, 2012


Nah, Parry Gripp is just the footage from Pattern Recognition. Gibson got the underlying idea right, just not what it would output.
posted by Evilspork at 3:26 PM on May 13, 2012 [1 favorite]




The moral of this video is that, while a nice camera and a handsome jacket won't get you ladies, a catchy theme song just might. Well, along with being fluffy, adorable, and not terribly likely to bite unless you are a mackerel or a penguin.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:48 PM on May 13, 2012


Baby harp seal has no mom.

Dick photographers have no respect.
posted by Sys Rq at 3:52 PM on May 13, 2012


If you liked that, you'll love this: Stupid Fucking Cat. Done by the same guy that made the Cleveland tourism commercials, Mike Polk.
posted by modelenoir at 4:15 PM on May 13, 2012 [2 favorites]


That lazy harp seal needs to be hit in the face with a soccer ball.
posted by Decani at 4:31 PM on May 13, 2012


well that was a thing
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:24 PM on May 13, 2012


If you count Nerf Herder when you talk about Parry Gripp, I have to say Van Halen and Video Game Girl are pretty great.
posted by Daddy-O at 6:01 PM on May 13, 2012


My daughter, upon watching the monkey/pig video: "Is that real? Dad, is that for real? Can monkeys really ride on pigs? Wait, that's not a pig. I think that's a hog. No, I don't think that's a hog. Does it like carrying that monkey? Are they best friends or something?"
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 6:55 PM on May 13, 2012 [2 favorites]


Chambers and sourwookiee, thank you for linking that manatee clip. It has haunted my memory for years.
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:06 PM on May 13, 2012


Sir, if you were elected President, what would you do to create jobs in the harp seal community?
posted by Difference Engine at 11:56 PM on May 13, 2012 [1 favorite]


So... Parry Gripp is the Internet Randy Newman?

More like Joel Veitch for the Tumblr generation.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:49 AM on May 14, 2012


Boogie woogie hedgehog, munchin' on a carrot ...
posted by kcds at 5:04 AM on May 14, 2012


When you have babies, you sing to them. A lot of the time you sing made-up stuff or change the words to other songs to have your baby's name in them. Sometime in a sleepless haze during my son's first month, "Baby Monkey" became "Baby Paulo" and after singing it twelve thousand million times...

... in one glorious moment, my Mother in Law held the baby (about 5 weeks old) on the cat just to be able to sing "Baby Paulo, riding on a cat, Baby Paulo." Perhaps the weirdest part of this story is that the cat didn't really seem to mind. Or notice.

He's a year old now, but "Baby Paulo, riding on a cat, Baby Paulo" is still one of the top ten songs sung in on our house.
posted by sonika at 5:53 AM on May 14, 2012 [1 favorite]


He's a cat! Flushing a toilet!
posted by Mavri at 6:59 AM on May 14, 2012


Um, yeahhhhh.....
posted by Not The Stig at 4:41 AM on May 15, 2012


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