To be fair, Greg Nog, he does end up asking himself:
"Did I take steroids to write a book, or did I write a book as an excuse to take steroids? Often, all you want is to step off the path you've carved".
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 8:11 AM on May 19, 2008

Can you have a 'best' rickroll ever? Surely some other adjective might be better applied?
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 7:09 AM on April 3, 2008

One thing that particularly struck me when I heard Wainwright being interviewed on the radio this morning was that it is the BBC themselves, via their Timewatch programme (see third link), that have fronted the money for this excavation. I know that this is something that has become increasingly common over the previous decade and half or so, but something in this just seemed to be a new step along this road, although I don't know precisely what to put my finger on as a significant development.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 10:12 AM on April 1, 2008

I think that the award for In The Middle is extremely well deserved. Despite the apparent niche-nature of the subject matter, I've found it consistently thought-provoking and well-written. The more eyeballs it gets, the better.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 8:16 AM on January 8, 2008

Loren Coleman discussing the photo over at Cryptomundo.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 1:44 PM on December 3, 2007

As a further update, Josh Gates emails Cryptomundo with information about the circumstances surrounding the footprints' discovery.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 9:54 AM on December 4, 2007

Today Guardian's artsblog had a reply-type piece, commenting with a little surprise on Foden's assertion that Conrad's language can be somewhat hard going in places. I have to say that from personal experience Foden's piece nailed some of the issues I myself have had with Conrad's language: its elusiveness, opacity, density (especially since a failed attempt at Nostromo). Language apart, one of the things that really fascinates me about Conrad is the way... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 8:35 AM on December 4, 2007

Asparagirl, truly, honestly, there's no moment in that clip when 'Brits' blame the sub-prime crisis on poor African-American males living in Alabama, or suggest they are to be scapegoats. Not even in jest. That's quite simply not the joke here.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 8:57 AM on November 29, 2007

suckerpunch's link to the sketch on the Northern Rock crisis goes a bit screwy for me; here's another one to the same.
I don't want to generalise, but at the core of the George Parr sketches (of which there are very many) sits an idea. George Parr, the interviewee, will be a recognisable stereotype in (British) public life, and as the show is topical satirical comedy recorded only a few days before broadcast, he or she will have real-life approximate counterparts who will be the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 10:40 AM on November 29, 2007

Yeah, the rape joke also made me wince. Just ghastly. But this, on the other hand, never fails to make me laugh.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 4:00 AM on November 24, 2007

This was great. I'd forgotten just what a completely spaced-out experience the Montreal Metro can be. Abstract orange plastic panelling, and fantastic eerie lighting; a sixties vision of the future (but in a good way).
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 8:27 AM on November 22, 2007

Didn't Tycho Brahe die from an exploding bladder?
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 4:18 AM on November 20, 2007

One point that really stuck in my mind in Ellroy's article (and that Divine_Wino also makes above) is just how unlikeable the Op actually is: smart certainly, but also embodying a kind of lumbering, wheezing dullness. Coming to Red Harvest and the Op short stories after I'd read not only all of Chandler, but also The Maltese Falcon, probably the first thing that I noticed was how differently the main detective was written.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 9:29 AM on November 15, 2007

This is a brilliant, brilliant essay. The first time I read it, I was flicking through a collection of Orwell's essays, and it was one of those moments where you start to leaf through something completely casually, and you gradually get more and more absorbed, and without consciously realising it you're looking for somewhere to sit down, never taking your eyes off the page, and before you know it, you've reached the end. I come from a part of the world where coal mining was a big industry in... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 5:11 AM on August 19, 2007

A slightly less insanely hard baseball game over at Miniclip.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 2:48 AM on July 24, 2007

Back in 2001 the British paper The Daily Express was bought by the publisher Richard Desmond (who also published a wide variety of pornographic magazines); a senior journalist called Stephen Pollard decided to quit and leave for a job at the Times, and wrote his final leader article on some innocuous issues about farming. He constructed it in such a way that the first letter of each line, when read vertically as an acrostic, spelled out "Fuck You... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 7:00 AM on June 24, 2007

(Which itself reminded me of this)
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 7:01 AM on June 24, 2007

Tom Stoppard writing about the idiosyncratic classification system in the London Library:
John Wells of blessed memory once told me a story which gives the nub of the thing, the thing about the London Library. Arthur Koestler, John said, had been commissioned to report the Fischer-Spassky chess match for the world championship in Reykjavik. To prepare, Koestler went to the London Library to borrow books on chess and on Iceland. In the entrance hall he hesitated. Chess first or... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 1:35 AM on June 11, 2007

Vronsky: thanks for this. Konichiwa Bitches was a favourite song of the last year. This one passed me by. I watched the yootoob last night a few times, spent the day with the song stuck in my head. Actually genuinely decent pop. Though I wouldn't necessarily want to make the sexy with two backs with her.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 1:12 PM on June 5, 2007

Why does the site politely inform me I'm using IE when I'm not?
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 12:56 PM on May 24, 2007

You guys realize that I posted this because of the whole Pepsi Blue thing, don't you?
You guys do have a sense of humor, don't you?
You guys!!!!!!!

We're all trapped in an irony Hall of Mirrors.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 2:11 PM on May 24, 2007

Lame tags, dude.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 1:25 PM on May 24, 2007

Um, it's a bit of a spoiler, if you haven't seen Once Upon a Time in the West. That's a kick-ass tune. And a brilliant scene. Two great tastes, that taste great together.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 3:18 AM on May 20, 2007

Dhartung, your comment about Fonda's eyes is strange. He wears no contacts, as can be seen in the close-up during his 'introduction' moment at the McBain ranch. I have also heard an anecdote, told I think by Jane Fonda someplace, to the effect that Henry Fonda was uncertain whether to accept the role, and indeed, wasn't convinced of his own ability to play so far against type. He turned up for day one of filming wearing black contacts, in the hope they would make him look more mean. Leone was... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 12:36 PM on May 21, 2007

Some image galleries: Guardian; BBC.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 5:28 AM on May 21, 2007

I think it's now generally accepted that the Cerne Abbas Giant is a 17th c. creation, perhaps an attempt at some kind of post-Civil War political satire. As I understand, the debate as to the date of the Long Man of Wilmington is still ongoing, but there certainly exists the possibility that it too is much later than once thought.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 10:26 PM on May 20, 2007

D.C., I don't have a MeFi link, but if you're close to a research library, a reference for what you're discussing is:
Bryan-Wilson, J., 2003 "Building a marker of nuclear warning" in R. Nelson and M. Olin, edd. Monuments and memory, made and unmade (Chicago) pp. 183-204.
It's an amazing project: the idea that somehow information needs to imparted that the location is the site of extremely hazardous material, and that this needs to be read... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 10:30 PM on May 20, 2007

More amusing Glaswegian youtubery. [audio nsfw]
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 7:18 AM on May 18, 2007

'Diet Coke', visible printed on one of the soda cans at the end, is the name of a popular soft drink. It's a viral.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 7:26 AM on May 11, 2007

Likewise, From Bklyn, likewise. I guess we were a bit too, uh, ironical.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 9:37 AM on May 11, 2007

You keep using that song. I do not think it means what you think it means.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 12:44 PM on May 9, 2007

'Never Hide', visible finger-marked into the dirt on the side rear window of the mucky car at the end, in a new marketing slogan for Ray Bans. It's a viral.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 9:12 AM on May 9, 2007

I saw the Ray Ban billboard on the Metro on the way to work yesterday, and it stuck in my mind as an unusually sucky ad line. And then I couldn't decide whether the dude with shades on in the radio studio was supposed to be ripping off Eric Bogosian in Talk Radio or John Cusack from that bit in Grosse Pointe Blank.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 9:35 AM on May 9, 2007

Man, I knew that YouTube thing would turn out to be useful for something.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 7:19 AM on May 9, 2007

Excavation on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif has been controversial for some time. In 363, the Emperor Julian ordered that the foundations of the ruined temple be exposed and removed in order that the Temple might perhaps be rebuilt. In the construction trenches, however, there were reports of underground fireballs, which ultimately led to the abandonment of work at the site. Nothing new under the sun, as they say.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 12:23 AM on May 9, 2007

I clicked the first link, chuckled away for a good ten minutes going "yeah......yeah........christ yeah.......him too....hehehe", and now I come in here and find all the hate. Dammit, why does everyone have to always be so sensible, rational, and totally not filled with hatred-of-humanity? Pshaw!
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 3:56 PM on May 8, 2007

Yay zydeco!
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 12:51 PM on May 8, 2007

After all these PKD adaptations, I'm amazed no one's done The Man in the High Castle.

The thing with this one is that whilst it's his 'most literary' novel, it's not got the technological whizz-bangery, nor the drugged-out zaniness, that have featured in some of the other adaptations; thus is might not necessarily excite the studios. It's a slow-moving book, with lots that is internalised. In fact, I'd dread an adaptation which might focus too... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 8:08 AM on May 7, 2007

Yeah, nickyskye, I love that cartoon. It saw some renewed exposure a while ago with the New Yorkistan thing.

God, I love that cartoon. It was the first thing I thought of when I saw the xkcd cartoon. My old girlfriend used to have it printed on her damn shower curtain, of all things. And every single time I was in there, I would find a new thing to make me laugh.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 12:47 PM on May 2, 2007

Thanks for posting this. This is a seriously good blog.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 2:46 AM on April 22, 2007

For four grand a throw, you'd think they could come up with something that was a bit more sophisticated than what is effectively a Tickle-Me Elmo in a bird-shaped tin can.
And, fuck, the Robop? What are they paying their marketing people? What, for that matter, are they paying their web 'designers'?
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 5:59 AM on April 21, 2007

Yeah, I'm with miss lynster's last post: my first thought was those plastic models you see on the sidewalk outside hot dog places, usually enthusiastically slathering their own heads with ketchup and mustard. And licking their own lips at the thought of what: eating their own heads? What the fuck is that all about? I got extra-weirded once by a similar plastic anthropomorphic carton of french fries (like the one in that cartoon trailer that some-one linked to yesterday), pulling out a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 1:01 AM on April 19, 2007

I'll never, ever forget the first time I heard "Party Hard" on the radio; it stopped me dead, like being hit in the face with a brick, but, like, in a really good way.
As for the film in the second link; well, I watched the trailer, and, er, that has to be one of the oddest things I have seen in my life. They're, like, food, right?
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 10:32 PM on April 17, 2007

But.....but......these are corporate IT buzzwords. And they're made to sound ridiculous. The software on his hard-drive is hardcore! Fuck my hat! The man is a genius!
Sad but true: the five seconds I ever found George Carlin funny was when he was making Bill & Ted look bad.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 2:59 PM on April 15, 2007

dino valente, for those who don't know, also wrote "get together" which was a huge hit song for the youngbloods ... he also was a member of quicksilver messenger service, although due to legal problems he didn't actually play with them until 1970

He also wrote "Something on your mind", which Karen Dalton superbly covered to open her second album, "In your own time".
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 9:20 AM on April 13, 2007

Most of them don't raise much in the way of a chuckle, but this one, that I've seen reproduced lots of places on the web, always makes me smile.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 9:05 AM on April 13, 2007

[T]he answer isn't blaming libraries for attracting people who suffer from those things. That just amounts to shooting the messenger.

Whoa, Skygazer. I don't think anyone is explicitly blaming the libraries themselves (far from it), and nor did I get the sense that was the argument of the original article.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 4:47 PM on April 3, 2007

Uh, I've never watched 'Dora the Explorer' (or indeed heard of her before this post), but I thought it was pretty funny, spicynuts. I guess I'm familiar enough with general semi-educational kid's stuff on the tellybox to get the overall context, even if there's specifics that might be missed.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 7:30 AM on April 3, 2007

Thanks rom1. That linked image is really quite haunting.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 9:26 AM on March 19, 2007

I have to say that, the main site apart, the Pantherhouse blog (the oddly named "New Shelton Wet/Dry"), is absolutely amazing stuff.
posted to MetaFilter by hydatius at 2:27 PM on March 17, 2007