January 16, 2013

Whips, whiskey, women, work, weapons, cars and cadence. But no hockey.

Jump steady, Black Betty! Bam-A-Lam!
Yeah, Black Betty! Bam-A-Lam!
Looky yonder Black Betty! Bam-A-Lam!
Whoa Black Betty! Bam-A-Lam!
Yeah, Black Betty! Bam-A-Lam!
She's so rock steady! Bam-A-Lam!
She's always ready! Bam-A-Lam!
Whoa, Black Betty! Bam-A-Lam! [more inside]
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 10:59 PM PST - 53 comments

Cello Fortress By Joost van Dongen

Cello Fortress is a unique combination of a game and a live music performance. A cellist defends a fortress by improvising on his cello. Melodies control the guns, dissonant notes activate the flamethrowers. Players from the audience use game controllers to steer their tanks and attack the fortress. The cellist plays live music, while at the same time controlling the game to be a fun challenge for the players. Cello Fortress is an innovative experiment that blends concert and game.
posted by boo_radley at 10:55 PM PST - 5 comments

Death or plumbing

A young Eddie Izzard contemplates Daleks. (slyt) A famous Scottish cow makes a cameo. Surprisingly funny youtube comments ensue. Related: This Dr. Who themed cookbook is available (as of this posting) as a free download on Kindle. Contains equal parts amusing episode commentary and gross food imagery.
posted by tllaya at 10:36 PM PST - 30 comments

A bomb, H bomb, Minutemen, the names get more attractive

In 1961 US president John F Kennedy started the Community Fallout Shelter Program, advising the use of communal and home-based fallout shelters in case relations with the Soviet Union took a turn for the worse. One brave toy company took up the call and released a dolls' house with its own fallout shelter to keep dolly safe. [more inside]
posted by Mezentian at 8:47 PM PST - 28 comments

How Much Will Your Taxes Jump?

The Wall Street Journal put together this helpful infographic showing how recent tax changes will affect the typical American tax payer.
posted by j03 at 8:47 PM PST - 127 comments

Subspecies Extinction Alert

DNA analysis has confirmed the death, by poaching, of the last Javan rhino in Vietnam. This marks the official extinction of the Vietnamese subspecies of Javan rhinoceros. The entire species is now represented by just 35 individuals from the Indonesian subspecies, all of whom reside in Ujung Kulon National Park in Indonesia.
posted by Scientist at 8:47 PM PST - 52 comments

We are never, ever, ever, getting back together, you lying, cheating ...

Somewhere between his earlier rendition of Go the F**k to Sleep (again on YouTube, NSFW) and Radiohead's cover of Wonderwall comes Samuel L. Jackson covering Taylor Swift.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:42 PM PST - 17 comments

Vintage Fire

Tumblr user Kium found her grandfather's matchbook collection, and has uploaded pictures of their beautiful designs. Part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4.
posted by codacorolla at 7:14 PM PST - 7 comments

Moonrise Kingdom

An interactive script for the movie, Moonrise Kingdom. Also worth a look is a set of photos by the movie's still photographer, which he posted in a set on Flickr.
posted by blaneyphoto at 6:26 PM PST - 26 comments

A pelican that looks like a urinal

Go home, evolution, you're drunk. A photo of a pelican that looks like a urinal. Brought to you by WTF, Evolution?
posted by escabeche at 6:04 PM PST - 55 comments

Don't sing along at work

My Dick's Double Full​-​Length Release is an album of modified covers, with hits from the 70s-90s. Includes songs like Dancing In My Dick, Fields of Dick, Do They Know It's My Dick?, Baker Dick, and (my favourite) Orinoco Dick. Interview with the band. (possibly NSFW)
posted by rollick at 5:59 PM PST - 37 comments

6 Greatest Guest Star Appearances Of All Time On The Simpsons

Policymic has compiled a list of the 6 greatest guest star appearances of all time on the t.v. shoe The Simpsons. Trying to pick the best cameos from a pool of 500+ episodes is a daunting task, so for the purpose of the following list, one criteria is that the cameo needs to be more than just a celebrity drop-in to the Simpsons' world. Instead the cameo role needs to be central to the episode's storyline; the other criteria is that the appearance has to be funny. [more inside]
posted by Sailormom at 5:40 PM PST - 68 comments

Live Mail Art.

Delivery for Mr. Assange. [more inside]
posted by azarbayejani at 5:37 PM PST - 19 comments

No, we can only take on clients who know how to drive the cars we stock

If cars were rented like we hire programmers.
posted by curious nu at 5:25 PM PST - 49 comments

How do you like your penguin?

'The Southern Ocean Beach Club' is the photo-blog of a chef working at a research station in the Antarctic. The photos are rather beautiful.
posted by secretdark at 4:42 PM PST - 5 comments

A wanton wenche vppon a colde daye With Snowe balles prouoked me to play

Who knew so many awesome snowball fights were immortalized in medieval paintings? [more inside]
posted by Dr. Fetish at 4:05 PM PST - 23 comments

Passing

An Open Letter to the Girl I Pretended To Have a Crush On in Eighth Grade
posted by kenko at 2:42 PM PST - 69 comments

Faking a moon landing is hard

"Did people go to the Moon in 1969? I'm not totally sure. I wasn't on the Moon then. Did they fake going to the Moon? No, I'm pretty sure they didn't, because they couldn't." -- Amsterdam based movie maker S. G. Collins explains why the movie, tv and video technology of 1969 make the moon landing having been faked highly unlikely (slyt).
posted by MartinWisse at 2:24 PM PST - 57 comments

Manti Te'o Girlfriend Hoax

Fans of college football know the inspirational story of Manti Te'o - a Mormon Samoan linebacker from Hawaii, Te'o led Notre Dame to an undefeated regular season this year. A Heisman trophy finalist, Te'o overcame great adversity during the season, playing through the deaths of both his grandmother and his girlfriend. Well, except that, according to Deadspin, the whole girlfriend dying thing was actually just a big hoax. She never existed.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 1:41 PM PST - 372 comments

The Huge Lights in North Dakota

The "Mysterious patch of light in North Dakota" is not so mysterious. Near the edge of the empty western plains there is a massive light source. On some nights North Dakota is almost as bright as the Aurora Borealis.
posted by edgeways at 1:12 PM PST - 39 comments

Life in Inuvik, Northwest Territories

Life in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, lying at the end of the Dempster Highway [more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:56 PM PST - 17 comments

Unstoppable

Conner and Cayden Long, 9 and 7 year old triathletes from White House, TN, are Sports Illustrated's 2012 SportsKids of the Year.. They are Team Long Brothers.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:03 PM PST - 11 comments

Love in the Time of Neuroinformatics

"The models we discuss belong to the class of two-variable systems with one delay for which appropriate delay stabilizes an unstable steady state. We formulate a theorem and prove that stabilization takes place in our case. We conclude that considerable (meaning large enough, but not too large) values of time delay involved in the model can stabilize love affairs dynamics." [more inside]
posted by bluefly at 11:02 AM PST - 12 comments

Struggle is the enemy, Weed is the remedy: Marijuana in North Korea

You might be surprised by what we’re about to say: the most tight-lipped, conservative and controlling country in the world is also a weed-smoker’s paradise
posted by PeterMcDermott at 10:54 AM PST - 74 comments

Freedom from....

The New York Times asks seven 'experts': Does makeup ultimately damage a woman’s self-esteem, or elevate it? [more inside]
posted by zarq at 8:41 AM PST - 261 comments

But not browsing MetaFilter

(BBC) A security check on a US company has reportedly revealed one of its staff was outsourcing his work to China. [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 8:30 AM PST - 86 comments

"If you can skate, you can play"

The You Can Play project was created by GForce sports, former Toronto Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke, and his son Patrick Burke to ensure that LGBT athletes have equal opportunity in professional hockey. [more inside]
posted by jessamyn at 8:27 AM PST - 11 comments

I'll be your mirror

Pug imitates owner. For a bit.
posted by griphus at 8:13 AM PST - 18 comments

For Amusement Only: The life and death of the American arcade.

But the golden age was destined to be a very short one. Walter Day told writer Tristan Donovan, author of the book Replay: The History of Video Games, that the industry was "off the rails by" 1981, opening more arcades and ordering more machines than its players could ever support. By early 1982, cracks were already starting to show in the newly flourishing industry: that $400 a day machine, Time Magazine reported, was often "sucker bait, dangled to obscure the dreary truths that markets are becoming saturated and that dud games... bring in no money at all."
posted by Horace Rumpole at 8:03 AM PST - 42 comments

Next up: Kido shills to fleece a mark.

Kido the Kitty playing (and winning) the shell game [slyt]
posted by quin at 7:20 AM PST - 16 comments

Shall I compare poop to a summer's day?

shakespoope.com
posted by cthuljew at 7:09 AM PST - 35 comments

My Little Pony Wood Automaton

My Little Pony Wood Automaton
posted by ennui.bz at 7:02 AM PST - 22 comments

"Six little tiny shoes, all at one time!"

CHIKARA Pro Wrestling is notable, in the wrestling world, for taking the position that intergender tag matches should just happen whenever men and women want to fake-fight one another - but perhaps this is just part of CHIKARA's particular worldview, which is one that includes a time-traveling knight from medieval times who came to the present day and then formed a tag team with another version of himself from three weeks later who also traveled in time to the present day and the Super Smash Bros., who are very defensive of the original Nintendo Entertainment System. At this year's King of Trios three-day super-event, two all-female teams competed, including the Sendai Girls from Sendai Girls' Pro Wrestling. The Sendai Girls made it to the semifinals where they competed against Team Ring of Honor in what was subsequently deemed by many wrestling fans to be the best intergender match yet wrestled in North America. This week, Chikara put the match up free on Youtube.
posted by mightygodking at 5:47 AM PST - 17 comments

Welcome to the world where Sandy Hook didn’t really happen.

On Dec 14th, Gene Rosen found six kids "sitting in a neat semicircle at the end of his driveway. He ran upstairs and grabbed an armful of stuffed animals. He gave those to the children, along with some fruit juice, and sat with them as the two boys described seeing their teacher being shot." Now he's getting phone calls and emails from Sandy Hook Truthers who think that the shooting in Newtown was a government sponsored hoax. [more inside]
posted by dubold at 5:17 AM PST - 356 comments

Cunning Punts

In the English-speaking world, punning is viewed as more of a tic than a trick, a pathological condition whose sufferers are classed as "compulsive", "inveterate" and "unable to help themselves". The BBC on Punning.
posted by marienbad at 4:23 AM PST - 99 comments

"once aroused, it seeks out its object, as hatred does, in its entire"

The Delights Of Disgust
I confess I am disgusted by a great many things about people (and about myself, but let's put that aside). I do not believe it is particularly urgent for me to overcome my disgust, even if I recognize that this emotion must remain entirely separate from my thinking about which laws would be most just. I am disgusted by other people's dandruff, facial moles, food stuck in their beards, yet I do not accept that in feeling this way I am judging those people to be subhuman. I take it rather that humanity, while endearing, is also capable of appearing disgusting.
[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:56 AM PST - 23 comments

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