Blue Harvest

Blue Harvest, the hour-long Family Guy retelling of Star Wars: A New Hope, was apparently the highest rated episode since the show came back on the air in 2005. And rightfully so. This episode was as good as the show was back in seasons two and three when Family Guy was at the height of its comedic deftness.

For some reason I couldn't find the episode's opening crawl text (which is pretty funny) anywhere online so I felt it was my duty as a blogger to jot it down and post it here:

A long time ago, but somehow in the future...

FAMILY
GUY

Episode IV

A NEW HOPE

It is a time of civil war, and renegade paragraphs floating through space.

There's cool space battles, and the bad guy is the good guy's dad, but you don't find that out 'til the next episode.

And the hot chick is really the sister of the good guy, but they don't know it, and they kiss. Which is kind of messed up. I mean, what if they had done it instead of just kissed?

Angelina Jolie kissed her brother. Yeah, she did. You know it, I know it,and her dad knows it. That's why they hardly ever talk anymore. You can run away to Africa, but you can't run away from the truth.

Oh, by the way, here's a tip for you: when this is over, go out and rent the movie "Gia." She's way naked in it, and makes out with another chick and everything. It's awesome. I stumbled across it late night on HBO after I had just got back from hockey, and I almost fainted. But I digest...

Princess Leia was coming back from buying space groceries when this happened...

Yeah. I just did that.

Clearly Creepy

I'm surprised I haven't heard about this until now. Clear, a subsidiary of Verified Identity Pass, is a service that pre-screens members and gives them line bypass at various designated airport security checkpoints in the United States for about $100 a year. Apparently you fill out an application form and then show up for an in-person interview of sorts where I assume they check you out, and you provide them with two pieces of government ID. Then, they take your picture, your fingerprints and images of your irises. No biggie.

IM Funny

This is the best idea for a niche blog ever: I'm Blog posts screen shots of user-submitted instant messaging conversations. I just read them all. Hi-larious. The end.

Who Art Thou, Carrie Chau?

I can't find much information about (not even a dedicated website) but I'm loving me some Carrie Chau. Looks like she's a painter and makes designer toys and she had an exhibit in Hong Kong last week called Black Sheep. Here is the pièce de résistance:


Cute! Here are some pictures of the exhibit on Flickr and a bit more info from the Artoyz blog (en Français).

Ørestad College

Boy is it good to be a kid in Denmark today. Well Copenhagen anyway. Well I don't know about all the kids in Copenhagen but the ones who attend Ørestad College sure seem to have it good. Opened in Spring of 2007, the high school (yeah, high school) was built to account for a 50% deficiency in "study space" caused by a recent glut in the Danish teenage demographic.


Designed by the Danish architecture firm 3xn, the framework of the building consists of "four boomerang shaped story decks" that "rotate in relation to each other like the shutter of a camera" and the school features various lounge-like study spaces. With particular emphasis placed on open space and light, it seems to me that the structure remains true to progressive Scandinavian design principles of beauty and style within function. Wireless internet access is also widely available throughout the school and laptops are provided for each student.



I don't know about you but my high school looked nothing like this. There were actually no windows in any of the classrooms. In fact I seem to remember some rumor about it being part of a study to see if a lack of windows would reduce distractions and help students to focus in class. Can anyone I went to high school with (that reads my blog) corroborate this story? I mean, it's not impossible that I made that up but I'm pretty sure that someone told me that once. Either way it certainly looked nothing like Ørestad College.


I wonder how the high school experience of someone who attends Ørestad College would vary from that of someone who attended a school with a more traditional (North American or European) structure. Do you think the educational and social experiences would be heightened or somehow improved or positively influenced by this sort of space or would the novelty eventually wear off quickly giving way to the standard ebb and flow of high school life?

Lots of pictures on the 3xn website - certainly worth a click.

Via The Coolhunter.

The Very Rev Hon Maj Gen Col Dr Baroness

The ridiculously comprehensive list of titles you can select for yourself when registering in the British Airways website:


(click for bigness)

Wow that's politically correct. That said, I now aspire to be a Jonkheer. What do you want to be when you grow up?

Via Tech Bee (via 37 Signals)

This is New York City

NYC & Company, New York City's official marketing and tourism agency (not to be confused with the New York State Tourism Department of "I [heart] NY" fame, dontcha know) has recently launched a new full scale advertising campaign in a effort to renew interest in the city I didn't really think interest was ever down) both domestically and internationally (the ads will run in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy and Spain as well as Boston, Philadelphia, Miami and San Antonio). Their goal is to "attract 50 million visitors annually by 2015."




The "This is New York City™"campaign designed by UK ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty (Best. Name. Ever. I mean, that just screams Harry Potter.), includes print, outdoor, online and television ads. The ads are highly stylized and the TV spots mix live action and animation (reminiscent of the Yellow Submarine style in my opinion) and have a very enjoyable whimsical feel to them (reinforced by the Ella Fitzgerald soundtrack the the muppet cameo).

Here's the New York Times article covering the campaign. Also I've noticed that I've used far too many parentheses in this post (seven including this one, in fact).

Baggu

As a self-proclaimed plastic bag hater I always try my darndest to avoid the suckers when I go shopping, even if if means stuffing my purse full of groceries (pocket cheese!) or carrying everything by hand. I try to reuse plastic bags by leaving them in my purse but I never remember to put them back in after I've used them and those reusable bags you get at the grocery store are far too bulky. All that to say I'm pretty excited about the Baggu.


These reusable shopping bags are made from extremely tear-resistant rip-stop nylon, they're super light, they can hold up to 25 lbs of weight and they come in a handy dandy little pouch which means I'm likely to have one on me at all times. I just ordered some. And for some reason I think I'm far more excited than I should be for someone who just paid for bags. Waste of money? Maybe, but I think that money could have been wasted on far worse things, right?


Via Notcot.

Scrabulicious

Here are some moves I tried playing in Scrabulous and was pleasantly surprised to find were actual word. And their definitions.


Cadge [kaj] - verb: 1. To ask, expect, or encourage another person to pay for or provide one's drinks, meals, etc. 2. To beg.

Fohn [feyn] - noun: A warm dry wind coming off the lee slopes of a mountain range, especially off the northern slopes of the Alps.

Frig [frig] - verb: 1. To copulate. 2. To masturbate.

Ju•gum [joo-guhm] - noun: The posterior basal area or lobe in the forewing of certain insects, sometimes serving to couple the forewings and hind wings in flight.

Kip [kip] - noun: 1. The hide of a young or small beast. 2. A bundle or set of such hides. 3. A unit of weight equal to 1000 pounds (453.6 kilograms). 4. A paper money and monetary unit of Laos. 5. A place to sleep; bed.

Squill [skwil] - noun: 1. The bulb of the sea onion, Urginea maritima, of the lily family, cut into thin slices and dried, and used in medicine chiefly as an expectorant. 2. The plant itself. 3. Any related plant of the genus Scilla.

Ze•in [zee-in] - noun: 1. A soft, yellow powder of simple proteins obtained from corn, used chiefly in the manufacture of textile fibers, plastics, and paper coatings. 2. A synthetic fiber produced from this protein.

P.S. Please no "OMG I can't believe you didn't know was a word, you're so stupid!" comments. I've already fessed up to my ignorance, thank you very much.

Stark Sculpture

I find Jen Stark's paper sculptures quite spellbinding. They are absolutely gorgeous and I can't seem to look away. Definitely much nicer than anything I (or you) have ever made with construction paper.




Via Taylor McKnight.

ETA: According to this article in the October 2007 edition of Wired Magazine, Stark "draws her inspiration from fractals, wormholes, and MRI scans." Also here's her blog.

Tricks Are For Dragons

The Dancing Girl optical illusion that appeared in the Herald Sun has been making the blogrounds™ lately (see kottke.org and Taylor McKnight). I usually see her turning clockwise which means I use the right side of my brain more, but every once in a while she switches directions on me!

I was showing her off to some coworkers when Roy (hi Roy!) pointed me in the direction of the Dragon Illusion. Download and print off the PDF and “simply cut it out and stick it together, and stand it on a table or window ledge. When you move around, the dragon's head seems to follow you around the room…the dragon gives us the wrong clues, because we misinterpret what its shape is. We assume that the nose of the dragon is pointing out towards us, but in fact the dragon's head is concave.”


The illusion is difficult to describe but this video captures it perfectly:

Roy even made one for me. I named him Norman. Thanks Roy!

Think Different

I stumbled across the the Wikipedia entry for Apple's late 90s Think Different ad campaign today and I thought I'd share it with you. The campaign was commissioned by Steve Jobs after his return to Apple in 1997 and was created by the ad agency TBWA\Chiat\Day.


The ads, print and television, never actually showed any Apple product but instead featured black and white images and footage of the following historically significant people:

• Albert Einstein
• Bob Dylan
• Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Richard Branson
• John Lennon
• R. Buckminster Fuller
• Thomas Edison
• Muhammad Ali
• Ted Turner
• Maria Callas
• Mahatma Gandhi
• Amelia Earhart
• Alfred Hitchcock
• Martha Graham
• Jim Henson (with Kermit the Frog)
• Frank Lloyd Wright
• Pablo Picasso

The television spots also featured the following text written by a TBWA\Chiat\Day copy writer:

Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some see them as the crazy ones,
We see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world,
Are the ones who do.

I feel like this commercial is a perfect example of how well advertising can reach a consumer. The black and white images, the quiet, evocative music, the footage of significant individuals and the simple and poignant voice-over (narrated by Richard Dreyfus) all work in tandem to move the viewer. Well, it worked for me at least. Gave me goosebumps.

Super Doom 2007

This


can't be


legal.


Groomers and their poor doggy subjects at Super Groom 2007. I mean, I'm not a member of PETA or anything but I find this really disturbing. Thoughts?

"lITERALLY"

When I tell people I have a blog and they ask me what it’s about I usually come up with something like “I kind of post about all the neat and awesome stuff I find on the internet. Especially if it has pretty pictures.” Needless to say I don’t really have a terse and concise way of describing exactly what it is I blog about. This however is certainly not the case for the next few blogs I want to tell you about. These are extremely niche blogs whose writers have an almost rabid, rather remarkable obsession with their specific subject (more like pet peeves than subjects, really), rarely, if ever, shifting their focus. They all deal with some sort of linguistic faux pas (be it punctuation, capitalization or misuse), instances of which they systematically catalogue and ridicule. My kind of people! Let’s have an in depth look:

Blog: The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks
Tagline: Making fun of bad punctuation since 2005
Blogger: “Bethany”
Examples:

• Home made “soup”
• Danger, “men working” above
• This is America, when ordering we "speak English"

Blog: lowercase L
Tagline: Ever notice hand-written signs with letters in all-caps, except for the letter L? It looks like an uppercase i ... WHY DO PEOPlE WRITE lIKE THIS?
Blogger: William Levin
Examples:

• PlEASE ClOSE THE DOOR.
• FREE DElIVERY.
• THE PHARMACY IS OUT OF PlAN B.

Blog: Literally, A Web Log
Tagline: An English language grammar blog tracking abuse of the word “literally”
Blogger: Fitz
Examples:

• "…and they thought we were literally two peas in a pod."
• "It’s literally raining cats in the Puget Sound area, as local shelters are overrun with felines."
• "Villanova basketball star Allan Ray had his eyeball literally poked out of its socket by an opposing player in a recent game."

THOSE BlOGS ARE lITERALLY THE MOST “AWESOME” THINGS I HAVE “EVER” SEEN.

Threadful

I just purchased this Threadless t-shirt. It's called Away From Home. It does not contain any potty humour. It glows in the dark. I love it.

Justice Jimmy

Anyone else catch Justice "performing" on Jimmy Kimmel last night? I use the term lightly because they really just played an mp3 of the track off their laptop. Really they didn't even need to be there looking all bored and French and stuff.

It would be pretty awesome if the whole world (and by "whole world" I mean "everyone who watched Jimmy Kimmel last night and doesn't really know/care who Justice is") now thinks that Justice is a lame lip syncing band made up of Michael, Rod, Rick, Stevie and Prince look-alikes.

Everything I Want In a Widget

Hello dear readers. I have a blog design dilemma that has been plaguing me as of late (oh the life of a blogger), and I thought I'd consult you since you're the ones for which I am writing. And you're also the ones that ultimately have to stare at the page. As you all know (obvs), widgets are all the rage in bloggerland. So I have recently added a widgetized version of the RSS feed of my tumblog in the sidebar of this blog (whoa that was some major geeking out on my part, sorry). Anyway you can see it right there --->

I have two options for the widget but I can't decide which I like best. There's the one from SpringWidgets (left) which looks pretty good and allows me set the length parameter (which I like to be long). Problem is it doesn't automatically resize the pictures so they look all gigantor like.

The one from Widgetbox (right) automatically resizes the pictures and has the slick iPhone-like scroll but doesn't look as nice and doesn't let me select the length (which is pretty short).


So now that I have displayed my geekiness to the maximus, please let me know which you like better (and why) or better yet, let me know where I can get a widget that gives me everything I want.

P.S. I'm so sure that not one person will read this post in its entirety. In fact I'm pretty sure I lost most people at "widgets". Or maybe "Hello".

Kanye Kan

First Kanye's house now Kanye's blog. Oh yeah he's got a blog just like you and me. Well, me at least. And also like you and me he posts things like pictures of himself with other celebrities at fashion shows in Paris, shout outs to Daft Punk, videos of himself free styling with Mos Def (sorry Kanye but Mos Def is mos def better than you), super expensive tech toys he buys for himself and interview with himself from various publications. So he pretty much just reads my blog and copies it. Actually I find his posts about himself rather endearing. Somehow I detect an undertone of childlike wonder at his own celebrity status. Not sure why but there's definitely "look at me, ma!" quality about his posts.


And when he's not busy writing about his awesome hip hop self, his main interests seem to lie in fashion, design and Japanese pop art. He also likes to back up his notoriously eclectic music interests by posting videos by Feist, Mark Ronson and Bat For Lashes (!!!). And then there's this gem:

God bless you Kanye.