3E approves

My friends, gin and tonic season is upon us.

Mazel tov!

Matzohball, the flash basketball game.

tip over and capsize

Surely this is a prank for April 1.



No, apparently not.

Claymation Evil Dead in 60 Seconds

Evil Dead done in 60 seconds with CLAY - 2010

a little sean ass.

you're welcome!

Is that Mark Mangino back there?

Every single person in this video would be funny on their own. I particularly like the guitar player.


Double time.

Michael Buble Being Stalked by a Velociraptor

Who is Michael Buble?

Smells like Nirvana

I like it when people splice the original music videos into videos for the Weird Al polkas.

Tuesdays with Ted

Ted rolled lazily across the bear skin rug, not quite awake but no longer asleep. Despite the roaring wind outside, he was warm -- hot, even. A sheen of sweat covered his bare chest. The stove burned hot and bright. Ted was alone in the tent.

He picked up one of the heavy blankets from the wooden basket and wrapped it haphazardly around his shoulders. Stepping out of the tent flap, the wind bit through it, pouring ice cold air against his skin.

But he didn't notice. Arghun sat on the log where they had cooked last night, her back to the tent. Despite the cold, she wore only her thin wool undershirt. Ted couldn't see her face, but he knew something was wrong.

"Günaydin, my love," he said, putting his left hand on her shoulder while pulling his blanket tighter with the right. "Aren't you cold?"

Arghun ignored his question. "Oh, Batachikhan," she barely whispered in an Uyghur dialect. "It's coming now. Can't you feel it?"

Ted didn't answer. He only pressed closer against Arghun's back, both looking out over the steppes. For the first time since he was awake, Ted noticed the cold, and shivered.

heavy doobies

so many questions.

I'm leaving, you mother fudger

So many questions.

You can tell this guy is classy because his name has two umlauts in it. Also because it's prog.

Scurvy

Now, I had been taught in school that scurvy had been conquered in 1747, when the Scottish physician James Lind proved in one of the first controlled medical experiments that citrus fruits were an effective cure for the disease. From that point on, we were told, the Royal Navy had required a daily dose of lime juice to be mixed in with sailors’ grog, and scurvy ceased to be a problem on long ocean voyages.

But here was a Royal Navy surgeon in 1911 apparently ignorant of what caused the disease, or how to cure it. Somehow a highly-trained group of scientists at the start of the 20th century knew less about scurvy than the average sea captain in Napoleonic times. Scott left a base abundantly stocked with fresh meat, fruits, apples, and lime juice, and headed out on the ice for five months with no protection against scurvy, all the while confident he was not at risk. What happened?

Scott and Scurvy

Dog attacks police car

Two links

Obsolete jobs. Lector sounds like a cool job.

Holy smokes, Batman.

Ideological rankings of occupations

Ideological rankings of occupational categories

our truest ally against the orca menace

As the killer whales moved in, the plucky pinniped leapt on to the vast ribbed belly of a humpback, and nestled in the animal's armpit. Not only that, but when a wave threatened to return the seal to danger, the humpback used its massive flipper (at five metres, the longest in the animal kingdom) to nudge it back on.

Whales save seal from orcas

You drop your drink, then they bring you more

this just in

Ben Folds on the internet

The original he is oding to:

Lessons from Doom

On why Doom and its progeny still feel so playable compared to modern first-person shooters; the point about agility and maneuverability as defense is key, I think.

Flash Game to Start the Week

Blosics 2, awesome.

rebirthz

"And after the rains... peppers!"
-Dr. Pepper

3E Presents: Drug Song Saturday

Congressional representation

Imagine a chamber in which senators were elected by different income brackets -- with two senators representing the poorest 2 percent of the electorate, two senators representing the richest 2 percent and so on.

Based on Census Bureau data, five senators would represent Americans earning between $100,000 and $1 million individually per year, with a single senator working on behalf of the millionaires (technically, it would be two-tenths of a senator). Eight senators would represent Americans with no income. Sixteen would represent Americans who make less than $10,000 a year, an amount well below the federal poverty line for families. The bulk of the senators would work on behalf of the middle class, with 34 representing Americans making $30,000 to $80,000 per year.

Imagine trying to convince someone -- Michael Bloomberg, perhaps? -- to be the lonely senator representing the richest percentile. And what if the senators were apportioned according to jobs figures? This year, the unemployed would have gained two seats. Think of the deals that would be made to attract that bloc!

Or how about if senators represented particular demographic groups, based on gender and race? White women would elect the biggest group of senators -- 37 of them, though only 38 women have ever served in the Senate, with 17 currently in office. White men would have 36 seats. Black women, Hispanic women and Hispanic men would have six each; black men five; and Asian women and men two each.

What if senators represented people by income or race, not state?

Did anyone else get their census form yet?

I did!

Jogging, bursting into deafening roars every 5 seconds.

Finished a 6 course dinner in under 10 minutes. How's that to start the morning.

-the rarely updated, but still fun, Fake Michael Bay on Twitter

this would have been a good cartoon

She was practiced at the art of deception

puppies!

Hipster Puppies

Too Many Puppies!

MST3K Haikus

more

I told him not to have the fish

RIP

3E Presents: Foreigner Week

3E Presents: Foreigner Week

Jonathan "Jon" Cold (Steven Seagal) is a former "foreigner," or deep cover operative, who now works as a freelance agent who is frequently commissioned to deliver high-risk packages.

As Jon prepares for his father's funeral, Alexander Marquet (Philip Dunbar) asks him to take on an assignment. Jon is keen to leave the business, but he reluctantly accepts the job.

His task is to take a mysterious package from France to a wealthy man in Germany. But Jon will soon find that there are a lot of people who are determined to prevent him from doing so. Jon is accompanied by Dunoir (Max Ryan) to a farmhouse to pick up the package, and they are attacked by assassins.

Jon fights them off and decides to continue with the assignment. Leaving Dunoir behind in France, Jon heads for his father Jackson's memorial service in Warsaw, Poland, and Jon meets up with his brother Sean (Jeffrey Pierce) before continuing on to Germany.

The package turns out to contain a black box flight recorder from an aircraft that had been suspiciously downed, and the recipient -- sinister industrialist Jerome Van Aken (Harry Van Gorkum) -- has a vested interest in.

Once he arrives in Germany, Jon discovers that he is being pursued by various agents and assassins, while Van Aken's wife Meredith (Anna-Louise Plowman) and CIA spook Jared Olyphant (Gary Raymond) also seem to want to get hold of the package.

The Foreigner (2003)

3E Presents: Foreigner Week

3E Presents: Foreigner Week

I asked nine different people (mainly young) what the word meant, and although their answers were not identical, the following conclusions can be drawn: firstly, laowai carries no particular negative or positive connotations, and secondly, the word is only a noun and not a form of address. That means that saying "Hello laowai" is akin to saying "Hello foreigner" in English (would you ever say that to a tourist?), not "Hello sir/madam".

What my informants couldn't reliably tell me was why the word begins with "old". After pausing to think, several of them pointed out that this word is used in some dialects (particularly the Beijing dialect) as a familiar form of address. For example, a man with the surname Wang might be called "Old Wang" by his friends. But even if there is some connection between this usage and the word laowai, it is clearly not a direct link since laowai is neither a form of address nor an indicator of familiarity. There are in fact numerous colloquial terms beginning with lao that have negative meanings (such as laotouzi in the story above), and some people believe that laowai had a derogatory meaning when it was first coined. But this sort of speculation is hard to verify, and doesn't have much impact on the modern meaning and usage of the word.

Seven Ways to Say 'Foreigner'

3E Presents: Foreigner Week

3E Presents: Foreigner Week

Finding a partner. If you are someone who is really interested in marrying someone of a totally different culture and country of citizenship, then you may want to venture on a trip to a foreign land. Although you could probably meet someone in your own country who came from a different country or culture, it is highly likely that there would still be some form of traveling involved. This is because there may be some situations or laws and ordinances--depending on the country of origin of your partner--that can only permit marriage if you travel to the foreign land. Also, if you are marrying someone with strict family and cultural upbringing, it may be necessary to ask for the parents' blessings in person.

How to Marry a Foreigner

3E Presents: Foreigner Week

If someone had told me that in August of 1981, I'd state that a Foreigner song with a scorching Junior Walker sax break might be the best damned car-radio single of the summer, I'd have advised him to ease up on the black beauties. But "Urgent" is terrific. (Considering these guys' pallid output over the years, how'd they ever convince Walker to get involved?) I'm not trying to be nasty, yet I've always thought that Foreigner was a group worth ignoring rather than criticizing. Their earlier hits, "Cold as Ice," "Dirty White Boy" and "Double Vision," hold up as reasonably good rockers in the Bad Company-Van Halen vein, but they're not nearly as neat as the quality stuff on Bad Company's first two albums. And all of the above bands pale in comparison to those they struggle to imitate: Free and vintage Led Zeppelin.

Lou Gramm is no Paul Rodgers or Robert Plant (which might be just as well these days), yet he sings the hell out of "Urgent," a metallic, predatory confessional about sexual obsession, steeped in steamy nocturnal cravings. The instrumentation is crisp and spare, and Walker punctuates the cynical seductive frenzy like the master that he is, cutting loose at the moment the sap is spurting with a rippling solo that ranks with his finest work.

How Foreigner managed to crank out such a marvelous backseat anthem and then sink into utter mediocrity on the rest of 4 is mildly intriguing, but – shrug – what are you gonna do? I mean, without Gramm's vocals, there's nothing to distinguish the group's sound from that of a dozen other middling-to-hard rock acts. Indeed, "Break It Up" sounds like a bar band imitating Queen, 10cc and, only incidentally, Foreigner.

From Rolling Stone's review of 4

3E Presents: Foreigner Week

3E Presents: Foreigner Week

3E Presents: Foreigner Week

3E Presents: Foreigner Week

The Foreigner's Guide to Slovakia

3E Presents: Foreigner Week

3E presents: Foreigner Week

3E Presents: Foreigner Week

3E Presents: Foreigner Week

3E Presents: Foreigner Week

Such undisguised bitterness pervades Double Vision, and the record's only good moments arise from spurts of tight ensemble playing. But that's the least we could expect from such grizzled veterans. And songs like "Blue Morning, Blue Day" and "You're All I Am" do gratify in pleasantly odd ways. The surprise influence in this respect is the Beatles: Gramm's McCartney-like coo on "Blue Morning, Blue Day" is charming, while "Love Has Taken Its Toll" surges with a Revolver-era chorus--all snap and cleverness--as the guitars of Jones and Ed Gagliardi toss off a kinetic George Harrison/Paul McCartney blend.

But ultimately the group's skill is as mechanical as Mick Jones' paranoid misogyny. An instrumental is normally intended to show off a band's chops and smarts, yet the one provided here, "Tramontane," is puffy, quasi-ominous fluff, relying too heavily on Ian McDonald's spook-house organ effects. The tune's tense chords build and build but never break, and the accumulated suspense simply fades away.

What is most dispiriting about Foreigner is its patent lack of creative ambition. Not for an instant do we sense that these musicians are pushing themselves or trying to use their expertise to concoct something they find exciting. The emotions and motives asserted in their music are, when not just plain unbelievable, turgid and tawdry. Right now, the group's rhythms and Lou Gramm's singing tickle the ears of a lot of record buyers, but it's difficult to believe that this band will be able to keep its vast audience with more junk like this. We are not as dumb as Foreigner thinks we are.

Rolling Stone's review of Foreigner's second album, Double Vision.

3E Presents: Foreigner Week

3E Presents: Foreigner Week

About Foreigner:

Without question, the story of Foreigner begins and will presumably end someday with Mick Jones, the band's one constant during its ongoing, 30-year history. Long before the band he's known for was remotely conceived, Jones was a veteran in the British rock scene in the '60s and '70s, having worked with Gary Wright in Spooky Tooth and serving as a member of the Leslie West Band. Before that he had kept busy as a songwriter and session musician, packing his resume with the kind of experience that would help him lead Foreigner with a steady, visionary hand during the band's late-'70s and early-'80s peak.

[...]

Even though the brilliant No. 1 hit "I Want to Know What Love Is" appeared on Foreigner's next album, 1984's Agent Provocateur, the band had clearly begun its decline immediately following the release of 4. Much of this probably had to do with the double-edged nature of Jones' decision to guide the band down an increasingly pop path that was squeezing out the group's rock inclinations. After all, the only two songs anyone remembers from Foreigner's uneven fifth album are synth-based tunes almost entirely lacking in Jones' previous guitar heroics. "That Was Yesterday" was also excellent, but little else measured up.

3E Presents: Foreigner Week

"We forgot all about your needs. We were too busy fulfilling our own."

Cause I am what I am, and what will be will be

Covers

The Covers Project has a covers chain.

From the delightful Covered in Folk ("Folk covers of familiar songs. Reimagined versions of folk songs. Because in the folk tradition, music belongs to the community."), an entire list of covers of Ring of Fire. Also, here's an awesome cover of Psycho Killer.

And, speaking of Talking Heads covers: Tom Jones and The Cardigans do "Burning Down the House."

this just in

My mistake: four coffins.

I don't think it's nice, you laughin'. You see, my mule don't like people laughin'. Gets the crazy idea you're laughin' at him. Now if you apologize like I know you're going to, I might convince him that you really didn't mean it.

Finnish Sniper

Simo Häyhä (December 17, 1905 – April 1, 2002), nicknamed "White Death" (Russian: Белая смерть, Belaya Smert; Finnish: Valkoinen Kuolema; Swedish: den Vita Döden) by the Red Army, was a Finnish sharpshooter. Using a standard iron-sighted, bolt action rifle in the Winter War, he has the highest recorded number (505) of confirmed kills in any major war.

Häyhä used a Finnish variant, M/28, of the Soviet Mosin-Nagant rifle (known as "Pystykorva" rifle, meaning "spitz"), because it suited his small frame (5 ft 3 in/1.60 m). He preferred to use iron sights rather than telescopic sights to present a smaller target (the sniper must raise his head higher when using a telescopic sight), to prevent visibility risks (a telescopic sight's glass can fog up easily), and aid concealment (sunlight glare in telescopic sight lenses can reveal a sniper's position). Another tactic used by Häyhä was to compact the snow in front of him so that the shot wouldn't disturb the snow, thus revealing his position. He also kept snow in his mouth so that when breathing he wouldn't reveal his position.

Simo Häyhä

How to fight

The screenshot kind of gives it away (way to go, YouTube), but still pretty funny.

Four chords, 36 songs

3E Blog statistics

For February, 2010:

Page views: 638 million

Unique visitors: 960,000

Average visit duration: 12 hr 3 min

Adsense clicks: 25.5 million

Biggest referral: google.com/search...

snap.

your morning wasn't so bad.

Piano covers

Those are some of my favorites, but that Youtuber has got a bunch.

human sex is so lame.

Nails

Nails' life

Foxy Friday

"Door to Hell"

According local residents, geologists were digging in the area for gas deposits and stumbled upon a huge underground cavern. The geologists apparently concluded the cavern was filled with poisonous gas, and decided (as any sane rational scientist might do) that they should light the cavern on fire to burn off the excess. The hole has been burning for more than 35 years since.

Turkmenistan's "Door to Hell"

that's a paddlin'

Pop culture sites links

1. Videogum

2. Overthinking It

take that, hippies.

nice title.

Buddy's real talent was beating people up

The closest I'll get to recognizing the Winter Olympics.

Black hole simulator

Space is crazy.

Metal Monday

Search and Destroy Saturday

3e endorsed

By former president George W. Bush.

More endorsements.

Movie thoughts from a screenwriter

Website. I like it because he accurately explained why I liked but was mostly impressively confused by Inglourious Basterds, and it's always a sign of good analysis when it puts into words and explains something you just kind of felt.

Dock Ellis' LSD no-hitter

Great video.



Dock Ellis is also famous for getting maced by a security guard who didn't recognize him and for trying to hit every batter in a game against the Cincinnati Reds.

Why are Europeans white?

A good question with surprisingly no good answer.

If you are in a movie, avoid mirrors

Putting weird things in coffee

Exactly what it sounds like. The only thing that sounds particularly good so far is peanut butter.

Ocean depths to scale

heah.

Electoral reform

Here. I disagree with many of these places names.

A better idea: 50 states is too few, so we should split some of the big ones. Some of these would be easy and obvious (for example: Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, California and Florida all have obvious divisions based on geography and distribution of major metro areas). I think 60 states would be a big improvement; 80 or more would be even better. This is entirely possible -- you could divide California into seven states with each having a larger population than Louisiana (currently the 25th largest state).

Funnier than the movie they're promoting

Tyler looks so silly

Hover animals?

Hover animals!

3E Presents: Thursdizzle

1.

2.

Difficult languages

You tell “a” lie but “the” truth in many languages, partly because many lies exist but truth is rather more definite. It may be natural to think that your own tongue is complex and mysterious. But English is pretty simple: verbs hardly conjugate; nouns pluralise easily (just add “s”, mostly) and there are no genders to remember.

English-speakers appreciate this when they try to learn other languages. A Spanish verb has six present-tense forms, and six each in the preterite, imperfect, future, conditional, subjunctive and two different past subjunctives, for a total of 48 forms. German has three genders, seemingly so random that Mark Twain wondered why “a young lady has no sex, but a turnip has”.

Tongue Twisters: In Search of the World's Hardest Language

Super Mario Land Rap

Internet chatting

1. Chatroullete!

2. Coffee Talk with Cobra Commander.

this should be our new commenting this

via

Richard Cory

Profiles in Being Black: That guy in Happy Gilmore who awkwardly says "The gold jacket's yours, Happy. Shooter's gonna choke!" or something like that.

I couldn't find a video of him, so here's this one instead.

gat gat gat

"Is a bird not safe in its nest?"

-Birdman

Super Bowl?

No, America Bowl.

go mammals

Before Adult Swim was Adult Swim, there was Sifl and Olly

I apologize

I owe you an apology big-time. Last summer, on the # 4 bus, the hooked handle of my umbrella caught the edge of your shirt and lifted it partway up. Being a woman myeslf, I felt awful for you. But I didn't want to make a fuss apologizing and in that way draw any more attention to you than you had in the first place.

But, belatedly, I AM sorry. VERY sorry.

Irina

The Public Apology

B -

You knew S was cheatig on me and you didn't tell me?! What kind of a friend are you?! I want an apology - now - and I want you to MEAN IT.

If you ever want to talk to me again....

N

This is a question I consider constantly:

You’re 6 miles up. You’re alone. You’re falling.

Things are bad. But now’s the time to focus on the good news. (Yes, it goes beyond surviving the destruction of your aircraft.) Although gravity is against you, another force is working in your favor: time. Believe it or not, you’re better off up here than if you’d slipped from the balcony of your high-rise hotel room after one too many drinks last night.

Or at least you will be. Oxygen is scarce at these heights. By now, hypoxia is starting to set in. You’ll be unconscious soon, and you’ll cannonball at least a mile before waking up again. When that happens, remember what you are about to read. The ground, after all, is your next destination.

Granted, the odds of surviving a 6-mile plummet are extra­ordinarily slim, but at this point you’ve got nothing to lose by understanding your situation. There are two ways to fall out of a plane. The first is to free-fall, or drop from the sky with absolutely no protection or means of slowing your descent. The second is to become a wreckage rider, a term coined by Massachusetts-based amateur historian Jim Hamilton, who developed the Free Fall Research Page—an online database of nearly every imaginable human plummet. That classification means you have the advantage of being attached to a chunk of the plane. In 1972, Serbian flight attendant Vesna Vulovic was traveling in a DC-9 over Czechoslovakia when it blew up. She fell 33,000 feet, wedged between her seat, a catering trolley, a section of aircraft and the body of another crew member, landing on—then sliding down—a snowy incline before coming to a stop, severely injured but alive.

Next, I would like them to have a similar feature for a sinking ocean liner.

happy groundhog day

Descriptive title

Related clever comment.



Meta-comment.

The Shining

The Shining is surely Stanley Kubrick's most misunderstood masterpiece.

I use the word 'masterpiece' guardedly because I have never really thought that The Shining was a very good film.

At the time, in 1980 when I first saw it, I didn't like it at all. The way that Kubrick threw out so much of Stephen King's great source material and replaced it with a lot of things that just didn't seem to make any sense, really bothered me.

Hopefully, before I am finished with this essay, the reader will see it is only when Kubrick dramatically alters the script from Stephen King's novel that we can begin to understand what Stanley Kubrick is trying to tell us in his version of The Shining.

It should be understood from the beginning that The Shining is Stanley Kubrick's most personal film (outside of, possibly, Eyes Wide Shut). Before we are done here it will be easy to see that Kubrick was only using Stephen King's novel as a launching pad (excuse the pun) to be able to tell a completely different story under the guise of making a film based on a best-selling novel. He did this for a very important reason - mainly to save his life.

[...]

The Overlook Hotel itself is America.

Like America, the Overlook Hotel is new and shiny. It is ostentatious, corny and architecturally boring. As the Manager tells Wendy "All of the best people stayed here".

But there is something very deep happening. Kubrick brushed shoulders with the elite of the world. He knows what is going on.

Secrets of The Shining: Or How Faking the Moon Landings Nearly Cost Stanley Kubrick his Marriage and his Life