Home space ball is blue, and there’s nothing I can do

May 27, 2015 6:57 AM

Space Weird Thing Space Oddity redone, Up Goer Five style
posted by Jeanne (32 comments total)

This is just very fun.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:09 AM on May 27, 2015

Possibly marketing? If so that is fine by me! This is almost certainly worthy of anything that sells it, intentionally or not.
posted by TreeRooster at 7:18 AM on May 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

That is just too great.
posted by Captain_Science at 7:23 AM on May 27, 2015

That was lovely and silly - thanks!
posted by rtha at 7:47 AM on May 27, 2015

I was thinking this was pretty funny and then I got to the kazoo solo and pretty much lost it.
posted by Nelson at 7:55 AM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Marian Call and Molly Lewis could do anything together, or even individually, and it will be wonderful.

I loved the countdown, which ended with "Up go!"
posted by bondcliff at 7:55 AM on May 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Context: Randall Munroe of the webcomic XKCD made a comic and recently a book describing stuff using only the 1000 most commonly used English words. OP's video is inspired by the Up Goer Five strip and uses the same corpus, as noted in the video description and the creators' website, but was made by a media firm/arts collaboration not connected to XKCD. Alaska Robotics is the banner under which media firm Lucid Reverie keeps personal work (mostly short films and comics) separate from their for-hire client work.

I think "lunchbox" might be cheating but hey, it does scan
posted by Wretch729 at 8:00 AM on May 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Another thing that is a bad problem is if you're flying toward space and the parts start to fall off your space car in the wrong order. If that happens, it means you won't go to space today, or maybe ever.

Possibly the best image title ever.
posted by The Bellman at 8:08 AM on May 27, 2015

Up-Goer 5 is almost the perfect 60s/70s science fiction alien name. You know, the one that chirrucks quietly to itself and is assigned as translator/companion to the human explorer, and whose motivations and loyalties are tested at the end when the secret bad thing the alien society has planned for human explorer are revealed. (but in the better SF, turns out to be a shapeshifting parasitic brain-slug which has been running the human in a hallucinogenic haze for long enough to plan the attack on Earth.)

Song's pretty good too, and I like the idea very much of Thing Explainer.
posted by Devonian at 8:14 AM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

that was quite excellent
posted by numaner at 8:20 AM on May 27, 2015

Anyone else surprised that apparently "eight" and "nine" aren't in the top thousand words?
posted by Navelgazer at 8:26 AM on May 27, 2015 [6 favorites]

Via the description, I watched Flight of the Conchords - Bowie's In Space for the very first time. That was also quite excellent, I can't believe I didn't know it existed.
posted by numaner at 8:27 AM on May 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Anyone else surprised that apparently "eight" and "nine" aren't in the top thousand words?

As neglected as the 9 button on the microwave.
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:32 AM on May 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Navelgazer, I was very surprised about "ten less one" and "ten less two", especially followed by just "seven". It reminded me of this image I just saw on Facebook.
posted by cardioid at 8:35 AM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

As neglected as the 9 button on the microwave.

It doesn't have to be that way!
posted by Shmuel510 at 8:37 AM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

So is this going to usher in a whole bunch of Thing Explainer covers?

There's a lady who knows
All that light flashes from is a rock that goes for a lot of money
And she's buying a thing you climb to get to where God lives
posted by bondcliff at 8:37 AM on May 27, 2015 [7 favorites]

I make sure to always heat my lunch at 2:59 or 2:58 to make those feel less neglected
posted by numaner at 8:48 AM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Life hack for microwaving: 99 seconds is close enough to a minute and a half and way faster to key in.
posted by Nelson at 9:02 AM on May 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

88 seconds is even closer!
posted by straight at 9:07 AM on May 27, 2015 [3 favorites]

I've never seen the original video, so taking in that, plus the sweded version, PLUS the simplified lyrics is... it's a lot to take in at once, Morty.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 9:15 AM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also, this needs a kazoo tag.
posted by numaner at 9:41 AM on May 27, 2015

88 seconds is even closer!

And once you wire your flux capacitor in series with the coil, you can heat up your lunch last week.
posted by stevis23 at 9:45 AM on May 27, 2015 [4 favorites]

I've never seen the original video, so taking in that, plus the sweded version, PLUS the simplified lyrics is... it's a lot to take in at once, Morty.

Don't forget the genderbending, Rick.

(How have I never seen the original?)
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:18 AM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Don't forget the genderbending, Rick.

Try not too -- urp -- try not to be so parochial, Morty.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 11:31 AM on May 27, 2015

Relevant to my interests.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:04 PM on May 27, 2015

Anyone else surprised that apparently "eight" and "nine" aren't in the top thousand words?

It's not so surprising given that the most commonly seen numbers probably have very few digits (i.e., one).
posted by axiom at 12:06 PM on May 27, 2015

According to this "eight" and "nine" are both on the list, but "relax" isn't.
posted by Navelgazer at 2:51 PM on May 27, 2015

Apparently Randall Munroe originally used the Wiktionary frequency list for contemporary fiction [source], and by that list "eight" and "nine" are out of bounds. Why he chose to use that list rather than a different one, I do not know! Although I suspect that a contemporary fiction word lists is a little better at simple words than a more general corpus, which tilts toward more abstract words ("apparent," "committee," "scheme").
posted by Jeanne at 3:53 PM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

now sing 'Völlig Losgelöst' using only the 1000 most common German words...
(difficulty: reduce number of useful words by multiplying stupid case- and gender- marker particles)
posted by dorian at 7:25 PM on May 27, 2015

Why he chose to use that list rather than a different one, I do not know!

I suspect the idea was that a list of words used primarily to define other words would be best suited for his project.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:58 PM on May 27, 2015

That was great. Thank you!
posted by Lexica at 9:34 PM on May 27, 2015

From Jeanne's link i found The Up-Goer Five text editor and pushing the random button a couple times gave me this:

This story is about a man who goes around inside dreams to make people think things that they do not really think. This is a bad idea because people don't like being told what to think, so many people are angry with the man. One day, someone with a lot of money asks the man to make another man have an idea. This is very hard, so the man has to get the best team together to help him. He picks a girl who is good at making up houses. He picks a man who is good at making sleep drinks. He picks a man who is good at being other people. He picks the man with a lot of money. And he picks his very best friend, which was a nice thing to do. Then they all get in a room with the other man and give him a drink that makes him go to sleep and have a strange dream. Everyone is in the dream! When you are in a dream, you have to look out, because the person might have bad things in their head that will GET YOU. Remember the first man? He has a crazy lady in his head, and if she gets you, she will make you stay in the dream all the time! Anyway. They find the man inside the dream, and make him have another dream. I KNOW! And then, inside THAT dream, they have ANOTHER dream! This all happens very fast, because time goes faster inside dreams, so in the real world it's only a short time, but inside all the dreams they have time for fights and running and chasing and fires. But LOOK OUT! It is the crazy lady! She wants the man to stay with her inside the dream, but the girl stops her. They get what they want inside the dream, but the money man has a bad problem, so the dream man stays inside the dream to help him. They both get REALLY OLD, but in the end, everyone wakes up and only a little time has passed. They are still in the room with the other man, but now the other man has the idea they wanted him to have. The man with the money makes it so the first man can go home and see his children! EXCEPT! Maybe this was all a dream as well? WHO KNOWS?

posted by straight at 12:24 PM on May 28, 2015 [3 favorites]