Fake Money

Forbes lists the richest fictional characters. Shouldn't Goto Dengo be on here as well?

(Via MetaFilter)

Jackson Dropped from Hobbit

In another brilliant move demonstrating Hollywood's winning strategy of driving away the core audience from the limited amount of quality product it has to offer, Peter Jackson has been removed from the film adaptation of The Hobbit. Read on.

Busy

Band practice, work, eating and all other extraneous activities are cancelled for the next month. I just got a Wii!

See you in Portland, dudes, baby in hand.

Oh man.

Against the Day

My copy of the new Pynchon tome "Against the Day" is en route, and while reading reviews I found the following list of names of minor characters: Ruperta Chirpingdon-Groin, Ellmore Disco, Stilton Gaspereaux, Chevrolette McAdoo, Ewball Oust, Lord and Lady Overlunch, and Eusapia Palladino. The following organizations are also involved: I.G.L.O.O. (Inter-Group Laboratory for Opticomagnetic Observation, "a radiational clearing-house"), I.M.R.O (the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization), L.A.H.D.I.D.A. (Las Animas-Huerfano Delegation of the Individual Defense Alliance), and T.W.I.T. (the True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys). Also, it is 1120 pages long.

Big Machine

Gargantuan mining machine eats bulldozers. I wonder what kind of horn system this thing is toting?

(Via MetaFilter)

We Live in a Weird Time

A thought I just had: who's going to be the first kid who learns that there's no Santa Claus from Wikipedia? How many such casualties have there already been?

Accent Quiz

All you LearnedLeague message board readers have probably already seen this, but for the rest of you:

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The West   Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.
The Midland
Boston
North Central
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
The Northeast
What American accent do you have?

You Know, Pitchfork Really Isn't So Bad

After giving 4 stars to Weezer's 'Make Believe'—which is literally the worst album I've ever heard—and then giving 5 stars to YET ANOTHER Bob Dylan record, I thought Rolling Stone had really completely sold the last of the few journalistic credentials it had left, and cemented its position as a transparent arm of the Recording Industry, in all of its most frightfully conservative capitalist baby-boomer aspects. Its job now seems to consist in giving rave reviews—seemingly without going to the trouble of listening to the material first—to established moneymakers, and ignoring altogether everyone below, say, the level of fame associated with performing on Saturday Night Live. If nothing else, the LAST thing they seemed capable of doing, under any circumstances, was publishing a negative review.

Well I stand corrected. It turns out they do sometimes give out bad reviews, but only to masterpieces.

Just when I thought there wasn't any deeper for them to dive in the waters of irrelevance.

Lynch Gone Wild

Apparently David Lynch has taken to 'promoting' his new movie, Inland Empire, by "sitting on the corner of Hollywood and La Brea with a cow on a leash". Anyone out there still think he hasn't lost his marbles?

(via Defamer)

Gravity

I though you guys would enjoy this blast from the past

Movies Really Can Make a Difference

Scary children's evangelical church featured in Jesus Camp to shut down.

(Jesus Camp on IMDB)

More on Borat Reality

VH1 on what's real and not in the Borat movie. Caution: contains spoilers.

First-order selection bias

If I didn't know better, I'd have to say that the internet consists almost exclusively of
1) Half-baked political stuff
2) Porn
3) Math-related resources
4) Amazon.com

(Also, this word verification obstacle for posting on a team blog, when I'm on the team, is still weirding me out.)

50 Worst Video Game Names

50 Worst Video Game Names:

50. Frogger: Helmet Chaos
40. Um Jammer Lammy
39. PenPen TriIcelon
37. Cacoma Knight in Bizyland

How'd the get people to be in the Borat movie?

This Slate explainer answers the question that a bunch of us walked out of the movie asking. Turns out that they do it through incredibly shady pseudo-legal consent agreements that purposefully mask their real project. I think this puts a pretty fat thumb on one side of the scale in the balancing of the ethical issues involved. . .

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick

So, some time ago, Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) came down with Spasmodic Dysphonia, a voice disorder that prevents speaking in certain situations. He lost the ability to speak outside of certain bizzarre contexts (public speaking, singing, etc.). It's supposed to be permanent. Well, apparently,
just last week he cured himself of it with nursery rhymes.