July 03, 2005
Every silver lining has a cloud
Perhaps the only reason for the blogosphere-at-large to be sad about Jenny's move to Pennsylvania is the fact that we will no longer be treated to the occasional missive from her "nabor," nor the poems that we turned them into.
Sigh. Those were the days...
Anyhow, in that spirit, I offer this link to Teresa Nielsen Hayden's page. Her mission? "...to come up with a poem so bad that the International Library of Poetry, to which I submitted it, neither declared it to be a semifinalist in one of their contests, nor offered to publish it in one of their pricey yet unreadable anthologies." And her solution? Taking a Miriam Abacha 419-scam letter and introducing line-breaks:
I salute you in the name of the most high God.
I was the former first lady Federal Republic of Nigeria, married to
late General Sani Abacha the late Nigerian military Head of State.
I am presently in distress and under house arrest while
my son Mohammed is undergoing trial in Oputa Panel Lagos
and Abuja, this Panel was set up by the present civilian regime.[and so on.]
You can read the entirety of "I am Mrs. Miriam Abacha a Widow" over at her site. Be sure to read the comments as well, which include all sorts of fun variations on this theme, like "I now salute you in the name of Ghod,/I who a piteous widow must complain./My son, my joy, arrested by a squad —/And in far Lagos he shall soon be slain."
Really. It's a hoot.
Posted by cgbrooke at 05:06 PM | Comments (2)
June 21, 2005
Our relentless storkist logic
I just liked the phrase, although TMW is always worth a read.
Posted by cgbrooke at 12:52 AM | Comments (0)
June 09, 2005
A Case of Spuriosities
I told Jenny that she had to repost this, but after that, I went looking to see if I still had it on my machine. A little more than a year ago, she sent me a link to a site called "A Case of Curiosities," which offers such "fine art taxidermy" services as you'll find on the "Grotesque Beauties" page. I still can't really type this without cringing.
Anyhow, if I remember correctly, Jenny was krushing on Manu Ginobli, whose Spurs face off tonight against the Pistons for the NBA Championship, and so, entirely unsolicited, I made Jenny this little picture combining her interests in Manu and Grotesque Beauties. It still makes me laugh, this:
And yes, this may very well be the single creepiest thing I've ever done with Photoshop. (Here's the original.)
Posted by cgbrooke at 08:22 PM | Comments (3)
May 30, 2005
Negative Intelligence Tracking Data, May 2005
Posted by cgbrooke at 11:33 PM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2005
It is poetry month, right?
(Tip: Alan)
You go to HTTP in tha House, give them a URL, and a couple of seconds later, their script "read[s] the page and shout[s] out some dope rhymes." Heh.
I must confess that "we might consider t whatever/me to offer rule of sever" actually stuck in my head for a couple of minutes.
a whole horde of
edu cgbvb archives dove
there learning about grokster please
fact that trapeze
we might consider t whatever
me to offer rule of sever
posts to
t feel an lu
exciting a html
travel a cell
trackbacks trackback
dc identifier http wrt flay
george rhinehart a
us forgetting the home runs yea
incoming students are held to
im plagiarists ward churchill etc woo
Posted by cgbrooke at 12:26 AM | Comments (4)
April 02, 2005
Tale as old as time
In the words (and diacritical marks) of Gawker, I present to you "Theory župeržtar Slavoj Žižek and his žexy new bride." There really is nothing I could add that would make the photo spread any more entertaining. Except perhaps to say that this doesn't appear to be an April 1 post. Oh, and the commenter at Every Morning... who asks for Z's email address--I always get a little chuckle out of those...
That is all.
Posted by cgbrooke at 01:43 AM | Comments (3)
March 25, 2005
Interpellation
Imagine, for a moment, that there is a net meme circulating. And as part of its replicatory power, the final question of this net meme is "Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons)? And Why?" Now, you have been named as one of the three people. The person listed before you is named "because his response will be funny." The person after you? Well, she's named "because she has excellent taste." And you? What's your justification for passing it along?
"for no particular reason"
No particular reason?!?! That's not exactly screaming with inspiration. Setting aside for the moment that you have just suffered the indignity of being deemed neither funny nor possessed of good taste, how can you not feel an overwhelming sense of betrayal? After all, while you hadn't planned on campaigning and running for CCCC Chair for a few years yet, you'd already started collecting your campaign materials. And there must be a mole, a spy in your camp--how else would this person hailing you know that you'd just received an order of 10,000 bumper stickers with that very slogan on them?
I mean, it can't be coincidence, right? And now your chief of staff is scrambling around, trying to decide between one of two strategies: either you're going to simply have to run for some office entirely unrelated to your discipline, or you're going to have to find a new slogan, one that makes you a stone-cold lock for election, one so inspiring that it will set the tone for campaigns in decades to come. But rather than keeping it top secret, and running the risk once more of having it divulged before its time, perhaps you should just generate it publicly, and hope that the voting public internalizes it to such a degree that when they read your name on the ballot, they can't help but fill in the slogan. And so...
- Collin Brooke, he's taller than average
- Collin Brooke, his (last) name starts with B
- Collin Brooke, he's never been to Belarus
- Collin Brooke, what choice have you got?
- Collin Brooke, because 2 L's are better than none
- Collin Brooke, his pen is writier than the sword
- Collin Brooke, aka Coconut Decaf Jesus
- Collin Brooke, get him off your back
- Collin Brooke, he's bigger than a breadbox
- Collin Brooke, master of the semi-colon
Suggestions?
Posted by cgbrooke at 12:10 AM | Comments (17)
February 28, 2005
hardy har har
Please allow me to express my sincerest thanks to whomever it was that subscribed me to the electronic mailing list for the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress. Say what you will about the AAETS, but I was equally thankful that they adhere to the principles of "Responsible Email Marketing."
For the record, though, I don't believe that my stress has quite reached the level of "traumatic." And if it had, chances are that I would have failed to see the joke.
Just so's we're clear.
Posted by cgbrooke at 06:46 PM | Comments (1)
February 17, 2005
Fight! Fight! Fight!
No surprises here. Thanks, Derek!
Posted by cgbrooke at 11:33 AM | Comments (3)
February 04, 2005
This is not my beautiful Onion
It's hard to believe, I know, but apparently this is a Real™ news story:
Melee Erupts at Ala. Girls Basketball Game
Let's see. How can we tell that these aren't people who spend their lives working with reporters?
"Initially, there were 30, then it started spreading like cockroaches," said another parent, J----- H---------.
Umm...okay. I've lived in Texas, so I can see, if only barely, how the first metaphor you might come up with for something spreading would be cockroaches. But then...
"People were screaming and running," Prattville cheerleader C------ C----- said. "Girls lost their cell phones. Keys got lost. It's something I will never forget."
Screaming and running, that's pretty bad I suppose. But the steps to arrive from there to "unforgettable" are girls losing their cell phones? And keys being lost? Oh. The horror. What about, oh, I don't know, the violence?!?! The fact that the parents joined in instead of trying to stop it? The fact that the police were zapping people with Tazers? Nope. Keys were lost.
Posted by cgbrooke at 04:17 PM | Comments (2)
January 16, 2005
Stacy's mom
So it's been another football weekend, with a little bit of SU basketball folded in. And so I'm watching today, and while I don't pay a whole lot of attention to the commercials (or rather, I try not to), I hear the Fountains of Wayne song "Stacy's Mom" come on, in an ad for Dr. Pepper.
Apparently, Stacy's mom "has got it going on" because she's got a cooler full of Dr. Pepper in the back of her minivan. Ahh. So that's why "I've waited for so long."
I can't even begin to unpack the layers of "ick" that this commercial inspires in me. Rest assured, though, that I won't be drinking Dr. Pepper anytime soon. That is all.
Posted by cgbrooke at 07:20 PM | Comments (5)
November 21, 2004
Farther-reaching and faster!
Like Joi, I found this just too funny to resist; to paraphrase, some columns are unintentionally unserious.
[via Joi Ito, "Poor Librarian Immerses Self in Irony"]
Posted by cgbrooke at 05:17 AM | Comments (0)
November 12, 2004
i was only three years dead
I'm confident that you'll join me in not thanking Derek for passing this along. Honestly, I haven't been earwormed that good by something on the web since I tracked down the spongmonkeys' moon song. At least with the llamas, I don't scrape the heck out of my throat...
In other news, I'm adding three more blogs to the 'roll. George Rhinehart is the technological wind beneath the Writing Program wings here at SU. Paul Bender is an asst. professor at Ohio Northern, having defended his dissertation in the nick of time this past summer. And finally, Sharon Boggon is a Ph.D. student at Australian National University who "examines personal sites as a hybrid genre linked to traditions of autobiography and self portraiture," and also participates in a group blog on new media, underthesun. Give em each a visit...
Posted by cgbrooke at 09:40 PM | Comments (2)
October 29, 2004
my daily lesson
Today I learned, courtesy of an anonymous person's Google search, that my site is #2 on Google if you search for "ways to be mean to Collin," although this person apparently left off the quote marks. And as a result, the #1 result came from Collin Peterson's appearance before the Health Subcommittee of the House Committee on Ways and Means.
According to Congressman Peterson,
While rural hospitals have a cost structure similar to their urban counterparts, they are paid 10-15% less for comparable services provided to Medicare beneficiaries. Not only are these facilities forced to pay higher wages in order to be competitive with other hospitals, but they also receive significantly lower reimbursement from Medicare for services provided to Medicare patients.
Just so's you know: here's how to be mean to me. Wait until I'm eligible for Medicare, and then orchestrate my injury in a rural area. You'll have a bit of a wait ahead of you, but it'll be worth it. Trust me.
Posted by cgbrooke at 01:48 PM | Comments (0)
October 01, 2004
These are not the Sinuses you're looking for
Just got back tonight from having not gone to see Mr. Sinus, but if I had gone there, then surely they must have spoofed upon Mac and Me. Goodness knows, with all the legal brouhaha they've recently been working through, that they wouldn't court controversy by choosing anything that hadn't been made a long time ago.
Finally caught a glimpse of Jodi, who's just now entering the second trimester. Me: "So how's it going?" She: "Three glorious days without nausea!!" (That was almost the title of this post.) She also updated us on the Scandal du Nom, and explained how she had had to go and claim a whole bunch of sinus-related domain names in anticipation of the big change. Or rather, all those things would have been part of the conversation, I'm certain, had that been where we'd actually gone tonight.
And it would have been hilarious, I'm sure, had we gone and seen them skewer Mac and Me. High-larious. The skit in the middle would have needed a little more rehearsing, I'm guessing, but it would have been great otherwise.
Posted by cgbrooke at 11:42 PM | Comments (2)
August 08, 2004
The Summer of Inappropriate Touching
It's funny how the mind really only needs a couple of small details to turn it into a pattern.
So I'm in the RiteAid 'round the corner from my apartment, looking to caffeinate myself. I walk over to the cooler, and all of a sudden, someone grabs my ass. I spin around, and it's some skanky looking guy, hasn't shaved in a while, shirt completely unbuttoned, cheap sunglasses, gold chain--never seen him before. As is apparently becoming a habit with me, I really have nothing to say. He mumbles some sort of half-apology about how I look just like his son, and I just stare.
Finally, he starts to back away, and I spring into action. In this case, action means grabbing a coke, and speedwalking to the cashier. On the one hand, I felt like I should have had something clever to say. On the other, though, I suppose I can just be thankful that I didn't do or say anything stupid. For future reference, though, if I feel someone's hand on my ass, the only way that's appropriate is if I know who it is before I turn around. In fact, that may qualify as one of my fundamental rules of the universe, somewhere in the neighborhood of Kant's categorical imperative.
Posted by cgbrooke at 06:21 PM | Comments (5)
August 07, 2004
divinictionary
I like my name for it better, but this is a seriously cool idea. Over at McSweeney's, they're accepting pre-orders for The Future Dictionary of America, which is
an imagining of what a dictionary might look like about thirty years hence, when all or most of the world's problems are solved and our current president is a distant memory. The book is by turns funny, outraged, utopian, and dyspeptic.
The list of writers who contributed is a serious who's who, and they've been running some of the entries on their main page, alongside a contest for the rest of us wee folk. From today's offerings:
Icelandic system [iys-lan'-dik sis'- tum] n. (also teen circulation plan) a practice, supposedly based on child-rearing methods in medieval Iceland, of sending teenagers to live with other families, in order to learn adult skills and behavior from grownups they have not yet learned to manipulate and despise. A version of the Icelandic system, the foreign-student exchange, had long been employed by frustrated parents, but the practice went native and exploded in popularity with the publication, in 2023, of Britney-Penelope Leach's bestselling advice manual, A Fresh Start: Why Other Parents Can Raise Your Impossible Teen—and Why You Should Let Them. Leach noted that, away from their parents, adolescents were typically friendly, polite, curious, and altruistic; it was only at home that they became resentful and histrionic "typical teenagers." She proposed placing teens with new families to give them a less-cathected but still affectionate and protective adult-child relationship focused on the gradual assumption of adulthood. The federally funded Domestic Youth Exchange now enrolls approximately 50 percent of high-school juniors and seniors and is credited with significantly lowering juvenile crime, drug use, pregnancy, depression, rudeness, and TV-watching. —KATHA POLLITT
As you might gather, I'm a huge fan of the original Devil's Dictionary and its many knockoffs, and so this sounds like a great deal of fun to me. I'm not supposed to be reading anything extra-manuscriptal right now, but I'm allowed to pre-order, right?
Posted by cgbrooke at 04:05 AM | Comments (0)
June 01, 2004
and Larry was like "no way!" and I was like "way!"
And the award for first giggle of June goes to Google to Enter Human Language Development...
Already slack-jawed at the company’s pace of innovation in recent months, the financial community was rocked once again by the news of yet another new market for Google. “I have no reason to believe that Googlish won’t become the dominant human language form within the next 12-15 years,” said Peter Weismuller, analyst at Sequoia Capital Partners, a leading Google investor. “Our projections show it overtaking Spanish by 2008 and trailing only Mandarin Chinese and Hindi by 2010.”
[via joho]
Posted by cgbrooke at 08:08 PM | Comments (0)
May 29, 2004
World's shortest post about the world's largest collection of the world's smallest versions of the world's largest things
Posted by cgbrooke at 10:35 PM | Comments (0)
May 20, 2004
robot protest
Ahh, to be in Madison, Wisconsin in the springtime...
My personal fave is the one where one of the robots is dancing on top of a cement block to Kraftwerk.
Posted by cgbrooke at 07:55 PM | Comments (0)
May 15, 2004
Caruso, Carradine, Hasselhoff
I feel like I've been way too serious here lately. And so: Ideal Roster of an American League Baseball Team Composed Only of Famous Davids Without Obvious Athletic Ability. There are probably precious few of my readers who follow baseball as avidly as I, but even so, McSweeney's Fantasy Baseball is worth a chuckle or three, every couple of weeks.
Posted by cgbrooke at 11:57 PM | Comments (0)
April 16, 2004
Peepology
It's not like I don't have plenty of other things to do.
A link to the classic Peep Research site came across Boing Boing a few days back. To that, I am compelled to add Eric's Peep Challenge (via Metafilter), whereupon his friend Kerry attempts to eat 100 Peeps in a single sitting.
Is it just me, or are Peeps one of those bizarre phenomena where there are literally millions of fans, all of whom are embarrassed to admit to anyone else that they actually are fans? Peeps belong in the gummi/jello/circus peanut food group, but it seems like everyone loves them. In private, at least...
Posted by cgbrooke at 12:25 AM | Comments (1)
April 03, 2004
il n'y a pas de hors-blog
Was there an article before the blog? Or was the article in some sense already blogged? Already blogging itself in the play of blogging and hyperlinks? Trying to get to a "before" of the blog, we find ourselves continually confronted with the primordiality of the blog.
If you're not already chuckling, then don't follow me over to Adam Kotsko's page for the most Derridean blog post I've ever seen.
[via Crooked Timber]
Posted by cgbrooke at 03:27 AM | Comments (0)
March 29, 2004
Rolling out the red carpet
Thought I'd use this, my 200th entry, to welcome Alyson to the blogosphere, not to mention my sidebar. Alyson is a friend of Lori's from grad school, and the three of us had lunch yesterday at Sparza's.
One thing that became increasingly clear over lunch was that Alyson needed to start her own blog, and start it she sort of has, since Lori and I set her up on Typepad last night. Her site is already generating posts at a breakneck pace, and it's clear to me that the DictionAly is going to make for entertaining reading.
Posted by cgbrooke at 10:57 AM | Comments (0)
March 13, 2004
The Singularity of Batman
Wasn't planning on posting today, but this is worth a pointer: Craig Shields, "Analysis of the Batman Theme Song." High-larious:
The chorus goes on, repeating the previous tonal cycle in descending order, once again illuminating the cyclical nature of the life of Batman. Repetition of this chorus merely reinforces the potential energies, both positive and negative, contained within Batman.
Posted by cgbrooke at 10:48 PM | Comments (1)
March 09, 2004
Other kids' games are all such a bore!
When I was in Iowa a couple of months ago, and packing up my car, I happened across a couple of my old Calvin & Hobbes collections. Trotted them back to NY with me, and picked up one last night. Every once in a while, I end up reminding myself how positively classic Watterson's work is.
For those without access to the books, the CHESS (Calvin & Hobbes Extensive Strip Search) came across MeFi a week or so ago. Martijn Reemst has all 3150 strips databased and indexed--wow. I'm sure that it's not legal, but it's a wonderful resource.
Cleveland Scene published a story about Bill Watterson last fall, about his withdrawal from public life and his attempts to resist the "cheapening" of his work (both in terms of shrinking canvas size and cross-market oversaturation). I'm not an especially nostalgic "last episode" kind of person, but I do remember reading the final C&H in 95, and it's stunning to me that Watterson's last public appearance was in 1990.
Finally, if you don't know how to play Calvinball, then (1) you actually do know how to play, and (2) you should visit The Official Rules of Calvinball and see what you're missing. Just wait until you touch the "pernicious poem place"!
Posted by cgbrooke at 03:16 PM | Comments (1)
March 08, 2004
To whom will you tribute the credit?
I know I'm a little late with this, but I almost fell out of my chair laughing this week, once I had a chance to see the final exam that Jim Harrick Jr. gave his students at the University of Georgia in his Coaching Principles and Strategies of Basketball. Among the questions?
5. How many halves are in a college basketball game?
A) 1; B) 2; C) 3; D) 4.
6. How many quarters are in a high school basketball game?
A) 1; B) 2; C) 3; D) 4.
8. How many points does a 3-point field goal account for in a Basketball Game?
A) 1; B) 2; C) 3; D) 4.
19. If you go on to become a huge coaching success, to whom will you tribute (sic) the credit?
A) Mike Krzyzewski; B) Bobby Knight; C) John Wooden; D) Jim Harrick Jr.
20. In your opinion, who is the best Division I assistant coach in the country?
A) Ron Jursa (sic); B) John Pelphrey; C) Jim Harrick Jr.; D) Steve Wojciechowski
Of course, that's only 1/4 of the exam. If you're scoring at home, the answers to 19 and 20 are supposed to be D and C respectively. And while you're scoring at home, you might count up all the students across the country, all of us who teach them, all of the family members who have helped those students get there, and then every person in the country whose tax money (rightfully) goes to support those students. Because that's the number of people that should be outraged and offended that bullshit like this still goes on. Wow. I'm sure that no school is perfect, but that's plain shameful.
I don't disagree with courses like those--as someone who's a dabbler, I'm fully aware that there are actual strategies and principles to basketball that could indeed be studied, and even challengingly so. But if you're going to give everyone an A, why mock the entire process with an exam with those kinds of dumbass questions? Is there anyone who would look at a question asking how many points a 3-point shot is worth, and be fooled into thinking that the course actually ever met (much less taught anything)? C'mon.
Posted by cgbrooke at 01:20 AM | Comments (0)