The Meme Generation

Why is Obama on the cover of the Japanese Goodnight Moon?

rafitorres:

Over here in Latin America, our last name is made up of both the father and mother surnames. This is why we often hyphenate them when we’re in the States, to avoid confusion between middle and last names; for instance, I’d be Rafael Torres-Delgado to make clear that Torres is not my middle name, which happens a lot.

Now, what if you keep going? This would be my full name up to the great-grandfather level.

This was a huge thing for people to get used at a local college where I worked. Most of the Latin American students had several names, and they put all of them on the application. As they went through the system, auditions, acceptance, etc, they’d finally get to my department, and we’d send their records through the email account creator. Addresses were in the format of first-initial, last-name.

You would be rtorresdelgadodiazdejesuslebrondejesusguadalupedejesus@berklee.edu.

This happened more than a few times.

(Higher-ed being what it is, several departments played hot potato with the issue for years.  When I left, this was still happening.)

Jason Fried (via friedisms)

If you’re familiar with Jason Fried of 37 Signals and have read this piece in Inc, then this new tumblr is good for a laugh. We’ll see if they can keep it going.

TheGreg on Maine’s victory of bigotry (via marco)

How To Use An Apostrophe - The Oatmeal

Study up, kid’s.

Dirty Three - Sue’s Last Ride live 1998 (full video of the live performance here)

Fantastic live performance of the song I posted yesterday.  It has one of Warren’s trademark pre-song monologues, though it isn’t as long as most others are (like for Last Horse On The Sand):

“This is a song, ladies and gentlemen, from the bedroom, put into your lounge room, because we love you that much. This is a love song, for anyone in love; grab their hand and squeeze it tight, cos tomorrow they might not be there. This is called..’I’ve been walkin around a long time, and my shoes are worn out, and my pants have fallen down, and I’ve got holes in my britches..but you are the last horse on..my..sand’”

When there are no lyrics to songs, it can be tough to figure out what a song is about. Sometimes that can make the song that much more powerful because you invent a meaning. I think, however, Warren Ellis’s answer to this question in a 2006 interview seals it:

Is “Horse” from Horse Stories a kind of a love song?
They are all love songs.

And what better meaning could there be?

cnnwtf:

Coyotes have left Canada and made it to Washington!?!? While the commotion is understandable, and serenading them doesn’t work, doesn’t chasing them down with AK-47s seem a bit extreme? What happened to shooing them away with broomsticks?

(via dascola)

You’re following and submitting your own, right?

Dirty Three - Sue’s Last Ride

This review of Dirty Three’s breakout album Horse Stories is absolutely dead-on:

It’s hard to imagine anyone releasing another album this year that captures the musical and emotional breadth of Dirty Three’s stunning new Horse Stories. With only a violin, a guitar and drums, the Australian band creates some of the most evocative, unpredictable, searing and beautiful music being made today. Last year, Dirty Three released its critical breakthrough, an eponymously titled album that won the band richly deserved accolades for its from-the-gut mixture of hypnotic intensity and wracked beauty. The nine-song, hour-long Horse Stories is even better: Whether the band is exploding into cacophony (“I Remember a Time When Once You Used to Love Me”), breathlessly swooning (“Hope,” “Warren’s Lament,” “I Knew It Would Come To This”), or doing both within a single mesmerizing song (“Sue’s Last Ride”), it all fits together damn near perfectly. It’s the kind of record that makes you want to stay up until 4 a.m., just so you can listen to it at 4 a.m. It’s one of the rare albums that draws in anyone who happens to be walking by while it’s playing. And it chokes you up without relying on short cuts like lyrics.

I know people don’t listen to audio posts on Tumblr much, but I beg you to listen to this one. Almost every nuance of this song seems random, but it is so perfectly measured, placed, and constructed that it is obviously the work of masters.

While I like music I can move to, I live for music that moves me. This is among the top 5 songs that exemplify that idea for me.

Portland man gets probation after stabbing ex-girlfriend’s pet fish

What. The. Fuck.

The fish attack. Was a low point. Of his life.

There are 3 more paragraphs before they explain how he beat his ex-girlfriend. You know, before he stabbed the fish. The fish-stabbing being the event about which he is REALLY upset. Not like that beating he administered.

I’m having a low point in my life right now where my mind has been flattened trying to figure out in what world an attack on a fish is more shocking news and cause for more alarm than an attack on a person and then realizing I’m in it right now.

Well, as long as they don’t do something stupid like give him 2 years probationOH FUCK.