Heh, I got "quirky," "fun," "genXer," and "stable" from my picture, the internet is kinder than I'd expected! Even so, I wish there were a way to customise the stats at least a little - for myself, I wouldn't expect much variation on things like "ethnicity" so I'm not really interested in that, but I would love to know how random internet strangers perceived me in terms of stuff like "sexual orientation" or... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by zeph at 7:34 AM on May 9, 2008

I was hoping for a big squid.

Yes, well, maybe we can all compromise and have a giant wave of squid. Or else a squid riding a giant wave. Or perhaps Keanu rising from the deep, riding a giant squid while trying to start The Wave.

Everybody happy now?
posted to MetaFilter by zeph at 12:08 PM on April 23, 2008

Oh, pffft to that, if God had meant for us to walk around barefoot all the time we would've been born with no shoes on our - uh ...

That is to say, we'd all be born baref-

... well ...

Shoot.
posted to MetaFilter by zeph at 9:10 PM on April 22, 2008

Aww, wow - I was completely expecting the comments in this thread to be full of the usual snark and churlishness, but instead people are talking about much they liked this delightfully cheerful and silly commercial. Fond though I am of Metafilter, I never expected it to renew my faith in humanity ;)

Boom-de-yadda, boom-de-yadda!
posted to MetaFilter by zeph at 6:51 AM on April 19, 2008

Also, holy cow, I LOVE that they got Stephen Hawking in there ...
posted to MetaFilter by zeph at 6:53 AM on April 19, 2008

I wish I could favorite that lyrics transcription twice, I've been ambling around all morning stuck on the same 3-4 lines, but now - oooh, now I can belt out the full production, huzzah!

If I've not been shot by the more curmudgeonly of my friends by nightfall it'll be quite the miracle =)
posted to MetaFilter by zeph at 10:35 AM on April 19, 2008

I remember these being one of my favorite aspects of my tour of Bath. I love how very mundane and petty most of them are. Before encountering them I'd mostly just thought of things like aqueducts and chariots and coliseums and the Aeneid (and, of course, Life of Brian) when I thought of the Romans; to see in their own writing that they got jealous or angry or vengeful over the same petty, ridiculous little things we do today, to see them entreating their gods to go thump... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by zeph at 6:23 AM on April 12, 2008

It truly depresses me to see how often "nice" and "doormat" are misunderstood to be one and the same. The few genuinely nice people I've ever known - and would love to emulate myself - have been anything BUT people-pleasing pushovers. Genuine niceness takes far more strength and sense of self than any petty, small-minded "me, me, me!" approach I've ever seen; I wish there were more books on that ...
posted to MetaFilter by zeph at 9:05 PM on March 15, 2008

It's amazing how much poignancy and poetry the average person has inside of him/her, I was half-expecting this site to read like so much tedious angst but there are some really touching and beautiful gems here. Stuff like this makes me want to take a hard look at the people around me, it's so easy to accept everyone at face value sometimes but I suppose we all have these lost places inside of us.

Bookmarking this one for sure; thanks for posting.
posted to MetaFilter by zeph at 6:18 AM on March 6, 2008

Nice find, thanks for posting it. Rigid boxes, labels, and categories feel so woefully inadequate when it comes to understanding human behavior of any sort. I love the idea of gender, attraction, and "orientation" being viewed as fluid rather than static and baked-in; it's nice to hear there's research out there that could actually support this line of thought and help demonstrate it might have grounding in something other than pure ideology ...
posted to MetaFilter by zeph at 7:48 PM on March 5, 2008

Otherwise, every religious construct, ever , would have to be inaccurate.

Hehe, oh, most definitely! We all know that couldn't possibly be the case, right?
posted to MetaFilter by zeph at 8:09 PM on March 5, 2008

Heh, one of the signs being carried past said "Out of Legos" ... if being out of Legos isn't protest-worthy I don't know what is ...
posted to MetaFilter by zeph at 3:41 AM on January 27, 2008

Dane Cook or no, I love the phrase "liar crevasse" (from #3) so, so very much ...
posted to MetaFilter by zeph at 11:02 AM on January 26, 2008

Why should we need to take pictures and post/send them? Surely we can just hold up our "Stop Watching Us!" signs and rely on the government's handy spycams to spot them for us?

(nevertheless, I -love- the dog pic)...
posted to MetaFilter by zeph at 3:51 AM on January 25, 2008

11. While there are some truly incredible American beers, Budweiser tastes like drinking a fart through a garden hose.

That is truly the most fabulous description I've read in a long time. Fabulous, I tell you! Allow me to apologize in advance (from the bottom of my beer-snobby soul) for all the times I'll be plagiarizing that in future conversations ...
posted to MetaFilter by zeph at 6:27 PM on January 12, 2008

Retailmenot is deliciously useful, I got a few bucks off a Threadless t-shirt thanks to them just the other day. A lot of those other links look pretty neat, too, can't wait to give 'em a try.

It's hard to resist the urge to offer additions to their list, though - e.g., I'd have added absurdlycool.com to it just 'coz I loves me some freebies ...
posted to MetaFilter by zeph at 2:33 PM on September 6, 2007