linky monday!

Types of Bitches. I know this has travelled all around the Internet by now and I can't imagine it's new to anyone. But it's just so amazing that I had to re-post it. I loved seeing how many of these categories I fit into (the answer: a lot, but especially "pajamas outside bitch". (And one day I aspire to be an "instigating bitch," although I can't really say I consider myself one now.) James and I have been adapting this to everyday use. For example, a WoW application: look out for that coming-up-behind-you bitch.

I know I've seen them before, but I kind of forgot about the Home Inspection Nightmares galleries on the This Old House website. Here is the handy MeFi link that led me back to them. Some of them are amazing. The MeFi thread is aptly named "Yes, that potato is being used as a cap for an active gas line." Every safety-oriented bone in my body quivers at these.

This has also been making the rounds: a trailer for every Academy Award winning movie [cracked.com]. So funny. Catchphrase! [I used to be really into the Oscars, but I got to the point where all they did was make me mad. Now I'm almost at the point where I can ignore them completely. I live in my own little world in many ways. It's great over here! We have brownies!]

Last: The Book Seer. This site just retrieves LibraryThing and Amazon recommendations for a title, as in, you just finished (and enjoyed) this, try that. It's handy. I like testing these things with my own wanton reading habits.

Plus it kind of looks like you're getting a book recommendation from Freud or Nietzsche or something, which is cool! The idea appeals to me-- possibly mostly because I think neither Freud nor Nietzsche had any interest whatsoever in women's reading, so it seems a bit revisionist. Revisionist IN MY FAVOUR.

Linky Monday, Recently Awesome Edition

Television Tropes & Idioms. I discovered this website after some Wikipedia spelunking and I'm sad that I had never seen it before. Are you looking for information on such familiar tropes and characters as the Asian Babymama, the villain's Cool Chair, or Medieval Statis? Illustrated with MANY examples as well as helpful quotes, many of them from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Nothing is better.

I really appreciated the counter-protest signage from this article on asylum.com: Westboro Baptist Church Protests, Gets Protested Outside Twitter.


ALSO! Just so you are aware, it is now February. Update your brain accordingly.

I read about this in the Edmonton Journal, of all places, so you know it's not exactly on the trending list on twitter but still-- Three Wolf Moon Shirt on amazon. The shirt itself is unexceptional. It's the extraordinary, crowdsourced comments meme that makes the link. I feel sorry for people who lived in the past.

Round up one: links

I have so many tasty tasty links for you today, Internet.

Where the Wild Things Aren't - a photographic tour of an abandoned zoo in Detroit.

Яolcats - English Translations of Eastern Bloc Lolcats. It's pretty hard for me to express how much I love this. At right: The men I’ve sent to death weigh heavily on my mind; but this burden is but a fist of straw compared to the strain of the republic. I can has post-Soviet irony in meme format?

Sorry I Missed Your Party - Another one of these surreal found photo blogs, this one featuring photos of other people's parties from flickr.

Linky Mondays, Tuesday Edition

Yeah, I had the day off yesterday so Tuesday is the new Monday. I think Wednesday is still the old Wednesday though. There's no getting around that middle-of-the-week crap.

holy moley, do i ever have a tag management problem on delicious. That's not a tag cloud, that's tag smog.

tonight i'm going to get orientated at the women's prison in edmonton--i'm on a committee that's working on the library there. i can't wear expensive jewelry (editor's note: like i would, anyway) and i'm carrying around a photocopy of my driver's license (editor's note: i don't have a driver's license. i'm carrying around a photocopy of my government-issued id.) anyway it's pretty trippy--i was thinking about it last night while doing dishes and i realized the one thing i COULD NOT HANDLE about being in prison is that they get no internet. NONE. no negotiation. even dial-up feels kind of like prison, to me.

so i guess i have to keep on the straight and narrow.

links:

Engrish funny--so I guess it's not hard to find this stuff online, but that doesn't mean it cracks me up any less.

Room with a Screw--an amateur scambaiter with a poetic soul tries to con a would-be conner--into writing a poem. It's long, but worth a skim.

That was epic--an art project turning de-contextualized youtube comments into poetry. i'm obsessed with comments, and commenters, lately. this kind of mainlined into my brain. (I should say: this kind of mainlined into my brain, noob.)

And a couple more links that have made me smile in the past week:

graphjam--the song chart meme finally gets its own website.

LEGO tableaus re-create famous photographs [from Wired]

Where is Bob? Tales of an absentee manager. Kind of reminds me of David from The Office. Hard to believe it's real, it's so ludicrous.

Linky Monday, day off edition

Cake Wrecks--a blog of disastrous cakes. This is a more entertaining premise than you might think at first blush, although I find some of these cakes awesome rather than snark-worthy. For example, this one. I would be honoured if someone gave me that cake. And "Happy Birthday Dickhead" is awesome, not lame.

The Five Dollar Comparison--what can you get for $5? I'm obsessed with this question, actually.

Tomes and Talismans--BoingBoing linked to this PSA, circa 1985, which is designed to teach children how to use libraries- AFTER THE EVACUATION OF HUMANITY FROM EARTH! Lucky we have card catalogues to help us find anything we could possibly want. I cannot emphasize strongly enough how much you should watch this dumb movie. (The rest of the series is on YouTube.) (PS: Why do the library staff have to keep explaining to each other how to use the library? How did they even GET THOSE JOBS?) (Also: it's on Wikipedia! And not in microfiche!)

Lifetime, Wow!--This is another blog I just discovered. It's hilarious. The author evaluates Lifetime TV movies on the basis of "Actual awesomeness," "Ironic awesomeness," The presence of actual celebrities, and "Lifetimeness." Helpful.

It's been awhile since we had a linky Monday, so:

Six degrees of Wikipedia. Just what its name would suggest.

Sad/wacky news: Wayward Alzheimer's patients foiled by fake bus stop. I'm not sure if this seems funny, mean, compassionate, or all 3. Plus it reminds me of Ghost World.

A friend sent me this link to an extremely cool card catalogue quilt.

A couple recent ones from McSweeney's: The Opening Act from the Original, Unused Teleplay of LOST's Pilot Episode and Borges teaches self-defence.

I got my iPod, sweet Josephine, back from James. I also have to take the bus for quite a long time (almost an hour) to get to and from my new job. Serendipitous circumstances for podcasts! I know that podcasts have been around for a long time, it's not like I just discovered them, but it suddenly makes sense for me to listen to them when it didn't before. So I've just subscribed to the New Yorker fiction podcast which I am really liking so far. Contemporary fiction writers choose a story from the New Yorker archives, read it, and then there's a short discussion with the magazine's fiction editor. The one I listened to on the way to work this morning was Mary Gaitskill on Nabokov. It's not released that often (monthly I think) so I'll have to make my way through the archives.

The Glorious Return of Linky Mondays

I took this great warcraft screenshot yesterday. I don't know where the Furious Mr. Pinchy came from (his name is displayed in the bottom right corner), but it's awesome. I kind of want to make him a nice risotto. [Edited to add: James sent me this link to Mr. Pinchy on wowwiki]

I'm enjoying this A-Z list of obsolete skills, which I saw linked from boingboing. (I recently removed my typing speed from my resume, with the suspicion that only people who are preparing their first resume ever, in high school, include this detail. It's sad because my typing speed is pretty impressive--80 words a minute or more, when I get going. I imagine many of the skills on this list have similar status, and should be removed from resumes, no matter how proud we may be of them.)

I want to make one of these doily racerback tanks. Awesome! People who come up with great craft projects and post tutorials give me hope for all of humankind.

It's the election today. I'm going to go home, make Conservative Victory Shepherd's Pie, and see if I can get my TV to pick up any hot hot CBC.

I think someone's got a case of the Mondays

I haven't had a linky Monday in awhile so we'll see how rusty I am...

netgranny is a service whereby you select a grandmother from this website, and she will knit you a pair of socks, sort of like mail-order brides only considerably more wholesome. Oh, and the website is in German (?) so I could be completely lying about its purpose and you would have no way of knowing. Although the English version would suggest that I am telling the truth.

[Note: this would be a fun internet game. Find a foreign-language website and create a funny/strange service for it to provide that matches whatever contextual information you can find.]

Even if you're not crafty, I suggest Craftster's best of 2007 list just to admire the sheer ingenuity and effort that went into these projects. Crafty people are the best people, as these awesome crocheted sushi rolls, knitted wigs, hoodies with giraffe ears, decoupaged tennis shoes, and Nintendo quilts will attest.

Also in the DIY vein, I like these Wikipedia-style [citation needed] stickers that can be used to express disbelief/desire for better bibliographic evidence on almost any flat surface.

Last week the Morale-o-meter got linked from BoingBoing and, as such, the server has been up and down ever since. However, keeping track of your morale every day is fun. Since I set up my account, I have been saying, "This is going to be very good for my morale." Or, alternately, "I'm experiencing a downturn in morale." I like the concept of "morale"--it seems like an abstract concept, as if my own mood is something I have no control over. I suggest you adopt this practice as well. It's very freeing/irresponsible. Here's my graph:

As you can see, morale has taken a downturn recently around deletia HQ, mainly because of (a) stupid IKEA assembly and related hammer injuries and (b) the usual Sunday-afternoon blues. However, Meghan lent me season 3 of Veronica Mars, so I think things are looking up. We'll see what the morale future brings!

Wired has a slideshow of tiny modular dwellings, a particular point of fascination for me. (Anything modular. See Lego, my love/hate relationship with IKEA, armadillos, etc.)

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle inspired me to want to cook more, eat organic free-range meat, eat more vegetables, learn to can and make bread, and above all to EAT LOCAL. Or at least to do some of those things, some of the time. Unfortunately, in Edmonton, eating local more or less means eating bits of dead shrubbery you found beside the freeway. So in this space would appear a link to a great resource for local Alberta eating, if such a resource existed. Damn.

Linky monday, wacky news edition

Fark.com is trying to trademark the phrase "not safe for work".

Heh. The US House of Representatives is banned from editing certain Wikipedia articles.

Some nerd got Neil Gaiman to propose to his girlfriend for him.

I don't like Mondays

I have links a-plenty for you today, internets.

As I mentioned, I finished the last Harry Potter book, and in its honour, I have funny Asian Harry Potter franchise knock-offs including Harry Potter and the Leopard-Walk-Up-To-Dragon and Harry Potter and the Filler of Big.

Inmates of a Philippines prison perform the Michael Jackson "Thriller" dance. I am so baffled by this. What happened to the classic "Jailhouse Rock"? There is also a LEGO version on youtube, but it's pretty boring--it doesn't have the same appeal.

From Bad Gods: Famous Poems Rewritten as Limericks.

Another conceptual map of the web, this one modeled on the Tokyo subway system. (Earlier related links: A periodic table of the internet, map of online communities)

And finally: if you live with lazy roommates/spouses/boyfriends/girlfriends who also happen to be gamers, perhaps you can trick them into helping out more with chore wars, a website that uses RPG-style characters and XP for housework. I joined, but since I live alone, there is really no question: around Jocelyn Manor, I get ALL the XP, finish all the dish-washing quests, and do all the decorative-wall-decal-buying-contemplation.

I finished my capping exercise! All I have to do is pass this class I'm enrolled in, and I'm gonna gradumacate! I'm gonna make it after all!

Also proponents of the Guns for Brains program.

The Zombie Food Pyramid.
From The Futility Closet: an optical illusion.

Another one of those weekends which seemed barely weekendy, at all. I woke up this morning feeling oddly disoriented and hungry from having tossed and turned all night. (Note: Why the cliche "tossed and turned"? It's not a particularly good description of bad sleeping, although it does have alliteration. I should say I rolled and woke up, intermittently.) I hate those nights were time seems interminable, incomprehensible, and you wake up feeling like you've lived an extra year during the night.

I did get to see the Transformers movie, so I guess not the whole weekend was lost. The movie was kind of good, by the way. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. There is something inherently hilarious about trucks and cars that turn into giant, fighting robots--especially since the robots seem to contain a huge amount of metal, more than would fit in the cars and trucks. It's a mystery of mass, and filmmaking. Perhaps this is only funny because Transformers were not a part of my childhood, so I am a latecomer to their innate meanings and metaphors. Also, why do the Decepticons get to transform into much tougher, more useful vehicles than the Autobots, like tanks and fighter planes? That hardly seems fair. [James and I had a discussion about the idea of "transforming," and whether the Transformers' natural state is actually robot or vehicle. We decided that since, on their home planet, they presumably remain in robot form, they must be said to transform into vehicles, even though this may seem counter-intuitive within our human paradigm.]

I am taking a summer term class that starts tonight, the last of my degree. I am still working full-time, although "working" is not always the most accurate description of what I do while at work. I think the next six weeks are going to be exhausting, Internet. This morning, writ large. I may later wax philosophical about the last class of my graduate degree, but I already wrote a paragraph about Transformers that contained the phrase "counter-intuitive within our human paradigm," so I think I'm all pretentioused up for today.

Sometimes I get the feeling Facebook is surreptitiously using me for market research.

I tried to make a title for this post, but Blogger won't let me. So I shall informally name it, Untitled No. 2: A Sonata in B-.

Linky Mondays--On Tuesday?!?

Earlier I mentioned that 7-Elevens are being converted to Kwik-E-Marts as advertising for the Simpsons movie. This Flickr photoset shows one of the converted stores. I'm sad because it is more obviously Simpsons-y than I had hoped it would be, and less cinema verite. I wanted to walk into one of these 7-Elevens and think, "Whoa, this is like being in a real-life Kwik-E-Mart," not, "Wow, this is like being in a giant commercial for the upcoming Simpsons movie." Simpsons movie: I'm watching you. And I'm wearing my "Worst Episode Ever" shirt.

A sad article about the state of Romanian zoos. Romania's entry into the EU has meant tougher regulations for zoos. My favourite part is the allegation that "less valuable zoo animals had been killed as food for more expensive reptiles." Stupid expensive reptiles! God loves all the animals, even the smaller lemurs and muskrats!

Joss Whedon, aka Jocelyn's TV Hero, is auctioning off a number of items for charity, including a dinner with him in San Diego during ComciCon. Described as "Three hours of intimate conversation, hilarious anecdotes and dark, awkwardly personal secrets." Hot. (Although, I'm not convinced that dinner with Joss Whedon would be that great an experience. I have never had any desire to meet celebrities, even the ones I really admire. I don't want them to sign things, or pose for pictures with me, or anything. Mainly, I want to watch the films and television shows they make in the comfort of my air-conditioned living room. Maybe I'm just not that kind of fan.) (The auctions support Equality Now, which advocates for women's rights. Again, hot.)

Today is Tuesday, but it's like an honourary Monday, because it was a long weekend. I like Canada Day. It reminds me of Canada. I also like July, because it is a three-paycheque month. However, I do not like Tuesday. It makes me uncomfortably hot. Also, I am engrossed in the third season of Arrested Development and the first season of Lost. Did I mention how air-conditioned my apartment is? Le sigh.

How the bottles get broken

A nostalgaic version of Oregon Trail that uses a firefox plug-in to play in your browser. Pretty hot. YOUR WHOLE PARTY HAS DIED OF DYSENTRY, dumbass!
The Great Canadian Wishlist is a CBC initiative (on Facebook! Weird), asking Canadians to vote for their most important wishes for the country. The pro-life and pro-choice wishes are neck and neck, since that's apparently the only political issue we can get out of our desk chairs for.

My neighbourhood is full of broken glass, and I always wonder where it comes from (as I cautiously cut a wide swath around it in my flipflops). Last night I solved the mystery. At around three in the morning, aimless youth have bottle fights in front of the convenience store, and throw bottles at each other. They insult each other in inordinately loud voices, and wake me up. The bottles shatter, and little bits of glass enter their skulls, impeding their brain activity and thus making it even more likely that in the future they will throw bottles at each other.

Mmmmmmonday. Like Mmmmmmcookies.

It's Monday, so that means it's link time, although the pickins are a little slim today:

the comic book economy-- a set of scans of old comic book ads. Fascinating and compelling. Hosted on flickr.
pacman's skull, a paleontological miracle as envisioned by an artist. Whose name I don't know because je ne comprends pas le website en francais.
Two crafty sites: burdastyle, an open-source sewing site; and u-handblog, a blog all about sewing handbags. That might sound a little too specific, but believe me, to the obsessed (including me) it makes perfect sense.

My Tylenol/Coke cure totally worked, I feel 80% better today. I should totally be, like, a doctor or something. And I get paid tomorrow so I am totally going to be ordering some things from Etsy. Like cute cards, and an emo wallet. (I'm not posting the links because then someone will buy them right out from under me, you bastards! I know you would!)

deletia loves Finland!

1. From MAKE: Tent camping for the city dweller.
2. If Fox News had existed throughout history-- "King George: 'They hate America'"
3. From Stay Free! Magazine: a crazy news story about Finland's sliding scale for traffic tickets, which resulted in one man getting a fine of $71,000.

Monday link brigade

Much as its name implies, weird converter.com converts things from a normal unit--say, a centimetre--to a weird unit. Or from a weird unit to a weird unit. Like for example an american cockroach, a Shaquille O'Neill, or a placenta. For example, there is .55 Tom Cruises (in weight) to 1 Jennifer Aniston. The height comparison would be more like 1.1:1, probably. Wait, did I get that backwards? Fractions have never been my strength, or my calling.

Knowledge Navigation: this video explains Apple's vision for the future. Nothing that exciting about that. But it's from the 80s, which makes it funny.

Useful household tips: this video shows how to fold over a chip bag to preserve freshness and avoid chip-spilling embarrassment. Without any kind of external technology! Impress your friends, and strike fear into the hearts of your enemies.

Three sites related to strange geography: strange maps, a blog that collects the titular items; blind atlas, which discusses the geography of invisible places; and VirtualAni, about the deserted Armenian city.

Bonus link: Brazilian artist Icaro Doria uses flags as graphs that show statistics about their countries.

I am feeling extra web 2.0 today.

Online etch a sketch-- replicate the rude drawings from your childhood. See random sketches by other people, and partake in the nostalgia.

I just love this: A moment on earth. In one minute, cameras captured events happening in countries all over the world. For a documentary! How nerdy is that?

Apologies-- a community art project to collect apologies. Your apology (if it is the most poignant, the most apologetic) may end up in an exhibition.

M and M's combat. Just the sort of nonsense the Internet was built for.

Say it with me: LINK BRIGAAAAADE!

Is it just me, or is the interweb getting boringer and boringer? And what's with adding "2.0" to everything? I'm sorry, but I don't think you can make a logo itself "Web 2.0." Anyway, onnnn to the links:

I am going to see the movie Sharkwater tonight, and I really thought I had invented the term "sharkumentary." No such luck.

A blog of photos not taken: unphotographable. I see things all the time that I am too scared or negligent to take pictures of. But to document them... sublime.

9:22 AM and already being productive.

Nigerian scam email generator. Doesn't have quite the customizability I would appreciate, but still useful, if you get tired of working. As Homer would say, "I can't take HIS money. I can't print my OWN money. I have to WORK for money." Well, not anymore!

Slate asks: Will corporate ownership ruin Television Without Pity? As much as I love TWOP, I think I can answer the titular question in a single word: inevitably. Still, let us not depair. As one internet superpower falls, a new one rises to take its place. Think of it as the recap equivalent to the end of World War II.

What's really in a chicken nugget? I am not sure why I feel compelled to include this page, other than the fact that, like the previous link, the question can be answered in a single word. In this case, "toxins."