ninja kick-assery

In the interest of posting *something*, here goes:



I dare you to not get that song stuck in your head.

makeout song of the day

"Dilaudid" by The Mountain Goats

It just came up on shuffle in my itunes and ... damn.

Just listen to--don't watch--this video (it's okay up until the very end where the driver/videographer turns the camera on himself, killing the mood of the song):



This video from their live performance at Seattle's Triple Door doesn't do it justice (no cello, no sense of urgency in the vocals like in the album version), but it's interesting to hear/see the live approach:



The lyrics are good, too.

The Typo Eradication Advancement League (TEAL)

A rag-tag team of punctuation-loving vigilantes known as TEAL is roaming the country, cleaning up the mistakes they find on menus, signs and the like.

They just blazed through Seattle, Tacoma and Spokane (with Ellensburg in-between) this past weekend and found that we're all a bunch of illiterates.

(It appears that TEAL founder Jeff Deck is spoken for in the romance department, but I'm still in luff with him.)

The Unmarrying Kind

Russia's Pravda.ru helpfully details the types of women men won't marry in the article, "Men do not marry women like these."

My favorite:

A woman who does not want to get married at all

As a matter of fact, she does. But she keeps on repeating that she does not. For some reason that she cannot explain herself, this type of woman is certain that marriage is a form of legalised prostitution. In addition, she thinks that dropping a pair of men’s socks in a washing machine is backbreaking work for a woman. Is it for feminists?

Here are the other undesirable types of women:

• A woman who understands everything (too spineless!)
• A woman who does want to get married badly (too desperate!)
• A compassionate woman (too nurturing!)
  

Haha. Women are so stupid and desperate and fickle.

And then the disclaimer at the end kills me:

Naturally, the above-mentioned types of women do not include all kinds of women who are unlucky in their personal life. We do not take into consideration mama’s darlings, unlucky wives and sluts. But any of these can change if they follow the help-yourself principle, because first of all, they are women and everything is in their hands.

Nice.

Fuck you, Russia.

In other Russian news, Vladimir Putin left his wife for the most flexible chick in Russia:

Oh, Ayn

Stranger editor Christopher Frizzelle asks Slog readers what he should do with this portrait of ayn rand hanging in the Stranger offices:



You'll find a full explanation at the Slog post, but here are the four proposed options for the future of Ayn Rand's portrait:

(A) We auction her off in next year’s Strangercrombie and give the proceeds to a worthy charitable cause, which would make Rand (who despised altruism) roll over in her grave.

(B) We hang it over Paul Constant’s desk, after all he’s the one who wrote in The Stranger: “If you’re over 25 and you still think her books are great, you’re (a) white and (b) an asshole.”

(C) Cut holes where her eyes are and put it over a urinal. (Paul’s idea—which really kinda makes you want to tack her up on his wall, doesn’t it?)

(D) We hold an essay contest in Slog comments under the subject: “Why This Portrait Is Rightfully Mine and No One Else’s.” No word limit.

I'm in favor of option D, although I'm in total agreement with Paul Constant's snarky assertion in option B.

Full disclosure:
I loved "The Fountainhead" when I read it in high school for my honors English class. Then I read "Atlas Shrugged" in college and was still into her shtick (probably because I wasn't thinking about objectivism so much as how John Galt seemed like he'd be hot). But by the time I read "Anthem" post-college, thanks to a boyfriend who was way too into Rand's whole "looking out for #1" philosophy, I really, really wanted to tell Ayn Rand (not to mention the narcissistic BF) to shut the hell up.

So, yeah. If you're over 25 and still into Ayn Rand, you're an asshole. Or a Republican.

can i get a napkin, please?

improv everywhere's latest public prank was a spontaneous food court musical at a mall in LA. it's pretty amazing and features "the most singingest janitor" you've ever seen. watch it here.

plus, the hotdog on a stick uniform and spontaneous singing remind me a whole lot of this:



and this:

lady writes like a dude

This just in: I WRITE LIKE A DUDE.

I plugged in some old reviews I wrote to the Gender Guesser, this algorithmic carnival trick that guesses your gender (but not your age or weight) based on your writing style. It's probably total BS, but it's entertaining.

The best (?) part is that it judges your writing for both formal and informal styles. My writing is almost always informal and the samples I plugged in all fell into that style, but for one review I wrote, which came out 60.44% male on the informal scale, these were the results for the formal scale:

Genre: Formal
Female = 542
Male = 487
Difference = -55; 47.32%
Verdict: Weak FEMALE

Weak emphasis could indicate European.

Ha! Awesome.

I should probably be offended by this "tool," but it's just too ridiculous to take seriously. (I'm sure if I used writing samples from my current day job, the results would lean quite heavily toward the girly side. Because I have to use words like "chic" and "gorgeous" a lot. meh.)

So step right up and give it a whirl! See if you write like a boy or a girl!