The sheer profundity of dancing awkwardly to generic music has struck the world so hard that one cretinous fool at the BBC has described it as "unique in the speed of its spread".
It went viral. There are
Clearly, that guy doesn't use the internet much!
This might not be funny, but i feel obligated to nudge you at it, as the best application of the Harlem Shake meme that i've seen:
'Worst Harlem Shake ever!'
http://youtu.be/n4lYXDVx6x4
For the first 15 seconds, you have the usual scene - one person moving, the others not (there are only two others in the room). At this time, you're thinking "OMG - this is so shit that it's funny".
Then, instead of the others joining in, the guy in the middle collapses.
It's at this point that you realise it's not a Harlem Shake video - it's part of a Parkinson's Disease awareness campaign.
Bang! Right between the eyes.
While you're still chuckling at the guy's awful dancing, the reality that he's not actually dancing at all, suddenly hits you.
Brilliant marketing. Brilliant utilisation of a meme.
I commend you, Parkinson Vereniging (Parkinson's Association)
In other news, the old Pope's gone... but hasn't. He will continue to be Pope Emeritus, so that he can meddle in his successor's doings, but without the grueling work-hours that the position of 'World's Chief Bigot' requires.
Unlike cynics that i've heard, i do believe him to have stepped down due to ill health. I can't see why he would spend decades working his way to the top, and then suddenly decide he didn't want to do it, after all.
This is the man who spent more than 20 years as head of the Congregation For The Doctrine Of The Faith (the modern brand name for the Spanish Inquisition) in which he was responsible for the systemisation of the tens of thousands of cases of child abuse (much of it sexual) which were perpetrated by hundreds of clergy-members, under his control.
The policies to condemn the children to silence, and to move the criminals around, so the guardians and secular policing forces couldn't enact justice, all existed under his watch.
Not happy with accommodating and building on the terrorising of children around the world, he used his Papal 'moral infallibility' to wage genocide on the peoples of the world, through his condemnation of condom use.
In the 'grand' traditions' of Religion, this has a misogynistic element to it - 14.4% of women in the world (almost 1 in 6) die of AIDS, but only 10.7% of men. And how do they get this pestilence? The standard scape-goats are: Atheists, Jews, Gays. That's right, folks - women have AIDS because Gay men keep shagging them! Or so we're expected to cognitive-dissonantly believe.
The only way the next Pope can fail to seem liberal, in comparison, is if he starts WWIII and thereby a nuclear holocaust!
But unfortunately, the old one hasn't really gone. Like i said - he is Pope Emeritus - which means he still has 'soft' power (not official, but still very real).
What do you do with a bloke who's Pope, when the bloke ain't Pope no more? - Mitch Benn ♫
More frivolously, this week - and what could be less frivolous? - i heard about the Court Case in which the jury were rejected for being too dumb:
"Can a juror come to a verdict based on a reason that was not presented in court and has no facts or evidence to support it either from the prosecution or defence?"
Umm... NO!!! You're not allowed to base your decision on shit you made up.
These kinds of moronics are not unprecedented, however. From the same article:
"In 1993, a man was jailed for life for murdering Harry and Nicola Fuller, in East Sussex. [His] conviction was thrown out after it emerged that four jurors had consulted a ouija board to contact the dead. He was convicted again after a retrial."
Gah!
The best things i discovered this week are people: Marcel Lucont and Sarah-Louise Young.
One, a stand-up comedian; the other, a cabaret performer. You'll find more of them in the non-contemporary section, further down the page...
------------------------------------------------------ contemporary stuff
'Funny Place Names' albums 7 and 8:
http://tapejarascience.tumblr.com/post/44449192679/hartburn-in-stockton-on-tees-tyne-and-wear
http://tapejarascience.tumblr.com/post/44449197980/golly-in-wales-splott-in-cardiff-wales
All albums:
http://tapejarascience.tumblr.com/tagged/funny-place-names
'Earth: Our Hauntingly Beautiful Spinning Home in the Cosmos' - Thunderf00t
http://youtu.be/Vv_Q5fZmj1Y
{There's some awesome photography in this video. Simply amazing}
Body Crash art by Emma Hack, for the Motor Accident Commission of South Australia
http://www.ripleys.com/weird/uncategorized/body-crash/
30 brilliant pictures from the Trick Art Museum, in Soeul, Korea
http://www.fullpunch.com/random/30-brilliant-pictures-of-trick-art-museum.html/
Video compilation, here:
http://youtu.be/n587MXIzgCc
And more on Tumblr:
http://blog-senirupa.tumblr.com/post/43567905189/22-karya-senirupa-trick-art
'15 Bizarre News Stories Of The Month' - fullpunch.com
http://www.fullpunch.com/random/15-bizarre-news-stories-of-the-month.html/
{They're funny whether true or not}
I wasn't expecting this from Greg's Kitchen!
'HOW TO MAKE PLAYDOUGH'
http://youtu.be/7OQyR7biMBw
"This is Greg's Kitchen, where the food is finger lickin'"
{Not in this case!}
------------------------------------------------------ of the weeks
Un-quotes Of The Week:
Albert Einstein: "Well, Oprah, it was while i was working on General Relativity that i realised my true passion - working in an office, pushing paper around. Y'know - nothing too taxing. And that's what i've done for the last 40 years"
Graeme Norton: "You don't think these trousers are too loud, do you?"
Neil Armstrong: "I wonder what this button does..."
Queen Victoria: "ROFLCOPTERS!"
Word Of The Week: "quixotic" -- exceedingly idealistic; unrealistic and impractical
Expression Of The Week: "l'enfant terrible" -- a child who says terribly embarrassing things
Quote Of The Week: "Chemistry is like a mosquito in a nudist community, you never know where to start." - anonymous Chemistry professor
------------------------------------------------------ non-contemporary stuff
I happened to spy these, advertised on a shopping channel (my mum was watching it). They were called 'booty boosters' and they're sold to ladies, to make their bums look bigger! I had to LOL.
http://gb.ioffer.com/si/butt+enhancer
"Honey - does my bum look big in this?... What do you mean, "no"? I spent £20 on this butt enhancer!"
A euphemistic poem, via Lizzy the Lezzy :o)
http://tapejarascience.tumblr.com/post/44451273794/via-lizzy-the-lezzys-facebook
Seagull!
http://tapejarascience.tumblr.com/post/44442105199/a-seagull-stands-on-galata-tower-istanbul
"You wanna hang out tomorrow?"
http://daddys-girl-13.tumblr.com/post/44433905179/crosszealot-fuckyeahcomicsbaby-when-the
'Daniel Sloss on Russell Howard's Good News Week'
http://youtu.be/WWTv4ZQdg8g
'Lori Bell Andy and the Gay'
http://youtu.be/goVU9Z5bgGY
{Lori Bell is the real woman behind Granny Flaps, of whom you might have heard}
'Marcel Lucont At The NZ Comedy Gala 2011'
http://youtu.be/c_8KGSMBnE4
'Fifteen Love' - Marcel Lucont on Sound Cloud
https://soundcloud.com/marcellucont/fifteen-love
'Marcel Lucont & La Poule Plombée - You Put The 'No' In Noël'
http://youtu.be/DIMSuz06FBk
{I know it's not seasonal, at the moment, but hey}
'La Poule Plombée sings "What Has The English?"'
http://youtu.be/ah2mEBNeoMM
'The iPad Widow' - Sarah-Louise Young
http://youtu.be/6XiQYy6sA3I
You can listen to and buy proper-quality studio recordings of Sarah-Louise's songs, here:
http://cabaretwhore.bandcamp.com/album/cabaret-whore-encore
An old favourite:
'Cannibal Corpse Lounge Music' - Andrew Hansen and the Dominic Knight Orchestra
http://youtu.be/fc-V3NYckOI
Feedback excerpts:
READERS new to Feedback may be unaware of our attempts over the years to expand humanity's understanding of nominative determinism - the phenomenon, first identified in this column, in which people's names appear to have determined their choice of work. The pig researcher named Alex Hogg is an example (bit.ly/AlexHogg), as is the paper on incontinence in the British Journal of Urology by A. J. Splatt and D. Weedon, which started the whole thing off (bit.ly/nomdetwiki)
So many examples have been reported by readers over the years, that we have frequently banned the topic, only to rescind the ban when a particularly interesting example arrived.
And here we go again, by way of welcoming 2013, and spurred on by the discovery that nominative determinism among scientists is not limited to the English language. We refer to an article in PLOS One about the work of Claire Loiseau and colleagues on diseases in Alaskan bird populations - l'oiseau being French for a bird, of course. Vive la déterminisme nominative.
This, in turn, makes it impossible for us not to give in to Marc Smith-Evans's request that we mention The Guardian newspaper's report on the wonderful underwater photographs of siphonophores taken by, among others, S. Haddock.
And, oh dear, here's another one we can't resist. John Ponsonby sends us a flier from the Manchester Cruising Association trailing its annual general meeting, to be followed at 8 pm by a lecture on the Manchester Ship Canal by Sue Grimditch.
"The canal is indeed a grim ditch," John asserts.
Meanwhile, Daniel Berwick writes apologetically to tell us that according to the BBC online news, Christopher Spray is "chair of water science and policy at the UNESCO Centre".
Lastly - and we really do mean it - Phil Adams notes that World Bank consultant Cheryl Cashin was prominently involved in an OECD study of public health financing.
5 Jan
SINCE Anglo-Saxons, especially the English ones, are famous for their inability, or refusal, to learn other languages, it ill-behoves us to mock the efforts of non-English speakers to learn our tongue. Despite this, we can't help sympathising with Richard Green and his party on their holiday in the Dordogne area of France.
They ate in a restaurant in the town of Bergerac where the first item on the "English" version of the menu was "Salad of Gizzards and His Chestnuts".
Richard said that none of the party felt brave enough to order this, "so what it really was remains a mystery".
5 Jan
FOLLOWING the recipe for baking sweet cinnamon biscuits in the Grandma's Kitchen collection of "treasured desserts", Charles Croll made a 15-inch long roll and, as directed, cut the roll into one-and-a-half-inch slices. The recipe then told him to "arrange the slices, cut side up, in a prepared baking pan".
All of the cut sides? Charles wonders how this is physically possible. So does Feedback. Any ideas, readers?
5 Jan
TRYING to start work after an overnight software upgrade, Feedback found Adobe's InCopy software inexplicably trying to retrieve a draft of a two-month-old document. It failed, and offered us a button to click to cancel the operation.
So we did, and the program naturally produced a message informing us that it was cancelling the retrieval - and offered us a button to click to cancel the cancellation. So we clicked that, out of idle curiosity... and the program crashed, which may be as well for the integrity of the space-time continuum.
12 Jan
AIRSOFT MEGASTORE is advertising that its prices are "125 per cent lower than any other airsoft retailer", with a money-back guarantee. We are as puzzled as reader George Malone over what this may mean.
Our hopes of gaining endless free money, by not buying products related to a sport resembling paintball, were squashed by the even more confusing statement that the company "will MATCH the lower price, then discount an ADDITIONAL 25 per cent of the difference".
12 Jan
TELEPHONE company Vodafone recently ran an expensive series of UK adverts saying: "After being voted the best, there's only one way to go."
Feedback cannot help treating this as a problem in measurement theory and suggests the answer must be "down". The company's answer was "better", which is illogical and doesn't answer the question.
Still, when you've painted yourself into a logical corner, there's only one way you can go. Um, hold on...
12 Jan
IN THE beauty section of Velvet, a magazine sold in Cambridge, UK, Richard Parkins came across an advert by a firm called Dermaplicity. It promised readers: "Replenish, awaken, and regenerate your skin this winter with the help of impressive 3D Stem Cell products."
"Evidently, ordinary 2D stem cells won't do," Richard observes. "But will you need the special glasses?"
12 Jan
WE MENTIONED recently that the New Mexico Museum of Natural History has devoted a whole issue of its Bulletin to the subject of coprolites - aka fossilised faeces (8 December 2012). This reminded Michael Ghirelli of the time he spent studying the geology around Shillington, a small village in Bedfordshire, UK.
Michael informs us - and we must warn you that things get scatological here - that: "Shillington was one of the foremost centres of the coprolite mining industry in England from the 18th century onwards. The word coprolite is Greek for 'stony turd', or fossilised poo, so it is not surprising that coprolites had been found to be a valuable source of phosphate for spreading on arable fields. In the mid-19th century, Shillington's population nearly doubled as scores of local men, women, and children were employed working the coprolite seams.
"It was pure coincidence," Michael continues, "that the older name for the village at that time was actually Shitlingon, providing a nice example of topographic nominative determinism.
"In the 1881 census, however, the population surveyors decided that perhaps Shitlington might be a little shocking to Queen Victoria's delicate ears should she suddenly on a whim decide to enquire of the modes of employment of her subjects in Bedfordshire. So the village had its name changed from a word meaning faeces to the word for a small silver coin of the realm - the now defunct shilling."
You can read more about this charming village and its coprolite industry at shillington-history.org.uk. The change of name is referred to in the section "The Village and its Past".
19 Jan
IN AN email titled "Confusing railway notice", Robin Stevens sends us a photo of a notice beside a platform entrance at Reading station, UK. The display indicates that: "The next train is not scheduled to stop at this platform".
Robin's photo makes it clear, however, that this is a bay platform so, as he points out: "Failure to stop would result in the train ploughing through the buffers and a brick wall before careering across the station concourse. Given that this seems highly undesirable, I am confused as to the meaning of the sign."
19 Jan
{This is not the same picture, but it does have the same baffling message:
http://humancyclist.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/a-reminder-of-why-i-hate-commuting-by.html}
Strolling round Rundle Mall shopping centre in Adelaide, South Australia, Christine Linton was disconcerted to see a sign offering "Organic Water for Sale"
19 Jan
{Why are they so glad to say that it's infected??}
FINALLY, when he was creating a new password at Nike.com, Terence Kuch was advised to include "At least 1 mixed case letter". He says he would like to, but "I can't find any in the alphabet".
19 Jan
{It's political correctness gone mad, i tell you! Mad!!! Cases shouldn't be mixed, and that's that... <s>}
No comments:
Post a Comment