Lazy Monday...for Kids!

I know I'm not the first one to have discovered this video.

It could seriously screw up my dreams for quite some time:
Lazy Monday

Two 11-year-olds on MLK weekend took advantage of their Monday off from school to bring you this horrifying re-creation.

Great Moments in Headlines

This is probably just a coincidence. But then again...




Nah, what was I thinking? Cheney would never associate with the likes of the "liberal Hollywood elite".

Source: CNN.com

Sticking It To The Oxford English Dictionary

Very often, when it's a slow day in the office, workers tend to run down the same mundane to-do list:

1. Check CNN.com for Breaking News
2. Check GMail
3. Instant message co-worker asking if they have any snacks
4. Check CNN.com for Breaking News, end up reading about Gilmore Girls
5. Get some water
6. Submit hours
7. Play with staple remover
8. Read Wall Street Journal Online
9. Doodle
10. Get some water
11. Check Slate.com, read Explainer article about 4-hour+ erections
12. CNN.com
13. Debate international politics with Pakistani co-worker
14. Get some water
15. Go to the bathroom and ask yourself why've you drank so much water today
16. CNN.com

OR

You could do what I did and set a new world record. My first choice for a world record was already snagged up by this guy, so I decided to collaborate with a co-worker to develop the longest word in the English language. To our knowledge (an 8 combined years of Ivy League educations), the two longest English words in existence were:

• Floccinaucinihilipilification (29 letters) and
• Antidisestablishmentarianism (28 letters)

Obviously, our goal was to crack 30 letters. After a surprisingly short amount of time -- oh, 15 minutes -- we hit the 31 letter mark:

Hyperglycemisesquipedaliaphobic

If one were so inclined, one could simply extract the various prefixes and suffixes to get a general sense of this incredible word's meaning. Since I can only assume that you have more to do than just read this crap all day, I'll happily provide the official defintion:

Hyperglycemisesquipedaliaphobic: Someone suffering from
Hyperglycemisesquipedaliaphobia

And I think we all know what that means!

Okay fine, we actually came up with two words, and the official creation is actually:

Hyperglycemisesquipedaliaphobia: The fear of over-using multisyllabic words as a result of a high blood-to-sugar ratio.

Someone get me a flight suit, because it's "Mission Accomplished"!

Or so we thought. As it happens, Oxford Dictionaries is quick to point out that "most of the words which are given as 'the longest word' are merely inventions, and when they occur it is almost always as examples of long words, rather than as genuine examples of use." Well, Oxford, put this in your loquacious pipe and conflagrate it:

Chris, a life-long victim of hyperglycemisesquipedaliaphobia, was meticulous in destroying all of his brother's dictionaries and thesauruses before sitting down for his ice cream sundae. "Gosh," Chris exclaimed, "I sure do like hot fudge!"

I expect a call from the OED any day now.

VH1's I Love The 20's

I know what you're thinking. "I Love the 20's" is not a real show...yet. But if you're like me, you probably devote a good 2-3 hours a day pontificating on how amazing a show like this could prove to be.

Let's face it: The 20's rocked last century hard.

What other decade can match the badassness of the 20's? Perhaps those posers in the 30's, with their Dust Bowl and Jewish persecution in Germany? No. Sure, the Empire State Building opened in 1931, but when was most of it built? The 20's.

The 20's could have been its own century: Speakeasies, flappers, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Scopes trial, the stock market crash, the Yankees, George Gershwin, and Freud. And really, wouldn't you just love to hear Michael Ian Black do 45 seconds on the discovery of Insulin?

Blizzard 2006

More...

Confuscious This Isn't

I get the sense that my local Chinese place is getting lazy in the fortune cookie department. They've ditched the prediction and have settled on bite-size pieces of common sense:

When you squeeze an orange, orange juice comes out-- because that's what's inside

This is really disappointing...

Getting High and Seeing Double

Recently the former Full House star Jodie Sweetin announced that she was a recovering methamphetamine addict.

I think I speak for everyone when I say that this doesn't affect our feelings about Jodie one bit. She was the quintessential middle child of early 90's television: As Stephanie Tanner, she lacked the maturity to be a role model, yet wasn't cute enough to be precocious. She was just...annoying. She didn't have the famous brother that DJ/Candice Cameron had in Kirk (please click this link, it's incredible). She didn't have the flowing hair of Jesse/John Stamos (who incidentally is showing signs of life with Jake in Progress-- and who would have thought there was life after F.H.?), and she didn't have the creepiness of the Olsen Twins®.

Speaking of which, here's my favorite part of the "Jodie as Meth Head" saga:

After a three-day "lost" weekend, reportedly followed by an intervention staged by her former Full House costars Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, John Stamos and Bob Saget, Sweetin checked herself in to the Promises rehab facility for six weeks of intense treatment.

How far gone do you need to be for MK&A to stage an intervention??? More importantly, ask yourself this brain-bender:

If MK&A were part of my intervention, I'd...
(a) Seriously consider staying on drugs to see how many times they visit
(b) Seriously consider whether I was still high at the time
(c) Vomit a little
(d) All of the above

And don't tell Jodie, but she looks better now! People are talking about her again, and writing articles about her life! What kind of lesson does any girl learn when meth's been so good to a childhood star? Without meth, Jodie was just a washed-up has-been, married to a cop on the LAPD, 24 years old and bored. She couldn't even get an E! True Hollywood Story.

The Olsens got an A&E Biography special.

Jodie Sweetin did crank for fun.

Role Repetition

Why is every under-30 love interest now played by Jake Gyllenhaal?
Every over-30 love interest played by Matthew McConaughey?
Every fiancé played by Dermot Mulroney?
And why does every crazy cameo feature Christopher Walken?

Carson Daly is Not Remotely Funny

Who said it was acceptable to let Carson Daly, that no-talent ass clown, tell jokes?? I don't care that it's his show! He has ZERO comedic background!

Just because NBC foolishly gave you the timeslot after Conan O'Brien doesn't mean you're given a Friar's Club membership and a free pass to be the least funny person awake at 1:40am.

Carson, your laugh track is more entertaining then you are. Go home.

Happy Halloween...Sort Of

Before getting down to business, I'd like to instruct anyone reading to check out "Song for You" by Alexi Murdoch. This is the guy who did "Orange Sky" on The OC soundtrack for those of you who are missing The Office, one of the better comedies on TV these days. Anyway, download the song, it's pretty fantastic. It won't change your life, but it might help on a mellow day.

*******

I had made a promise to a friend that I would post a few pictures of a bunch of us from Halloween. Better late then never I suppose. Plus, she discussed NYDenizen by name in her law school paper, so it's the least I could do. Hi Jess.

I was Dr. Harry Fingerman, Proctologist, for those interested.

One of the highlights of the night was meeting this dude at a West Village bar at 3am, also dressed as a doctor. There was an awkward "two-girls-at-a-party-wearing-the-same-dress" moment, until I caught a glance at his labcoat: Urologist. Between the two of us, we had the front and back covered! We instantly became friends.

Now I'm tired, so without further ado, I shall fulfill my promise:

I discovered a lab coat was a terrific hands-free alternative when drinking a Heineken. Yes, Heineken: It's all about the beer. And what a quality beer. Beer perfect for any occasion. Oh I don't know, perhaps an occasion where a guy expounds the beverage's merits in exchange for free cases of said beer? Perhaps that sort of occasion? Hmm? I don't know, just throwing that out there.


The actual rock star was the one in the tie... go figure.

Letterman: King of the Understatement

I'd have said 85-90%

"I have the feeling about 60 percent of what you say is crap."

-- David Letterman to Bill O'Reilly

Link

Thanksgiving Day Parade Balloons

Okay, these are posted a bit late, but post-processing took a whole lot longer than expected...

For those who don't know, the city of New York inflates the Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons the night before the parade. So in 30 degree weather, I trekked up to 81st & Columbus to check out the grand event that precedes the grand event.

Link to full gallery

Link to another guy's gallery whose pictures are so similar to mine it's scary...

Time to Make the Donuts

Recently Dunkin' Dounts has begun to re-run their old commercials from the 1980's with Michael Vale, the "Time to make the donuts" guy. Vale died December 24th, 2005 of diabetes.

Now while his death is sad, I can't help but wax nostalgic every time these old 80's commercials pop up on TV now. It's like my own personal 15-second version of "I Love the 80's", just without Michael Ian Black trying to be funny.

Commercials were just so much better back then...

Something To Keep You Up At Night

Thanks to the wonders of modern nuclear physicists and Google Maps, HYDESim provides us with the opportunity to simulate the destruction zone of a nuclear bomb explosion.

As if New Yorkers didn't have enough to be paranoid about.

Before I dashed underneath my sheets and began whimpering like a maimed puppy dog, I had enough energy to simulate the destruction radius of a 50 kiloton bomb detonating in Times Square. For those keeping track, our ancient Hiroshima nuke was 22 kilotons. By default, the website loads a 100 KT bomb, with a central blast located somewhere in mid-SoHo. I thought 50 KT was a reasonable modern-day, modern-made bomb.

Call me curious. Call me stupid. Call me masochistic.

The bad news is that most of the New York City we know and love (namely Manhattan) would suffer immediate and complete destruction. Even if many of the large buildings absorbed fractions of the blast, all of Midtown and almost all of Downtown and Uptown would suffer moderate to severe damage. Even Hoboken would feel the effects. The good news is that I would probably die so quickly that my brain couldn't process what was happening.

And thanks to a 2002 New York Times Magazine article by now-executive editor Bill Keller (p.22), I know that even if the pressure of the blast didn't kill me and destroy my home, anyone exposed to the quarter-mile fireball "would die a gruesome death from radiation sickness within a day -- anyone, that is, who survived the third-degree burns." So I've got that going for me, which is nice. But get this: Keller's hypothetical explosion only discusses a one-kiloton explosion! The wimp!

Granted, the likelihood of any of scenarios coming to fruition is quite slim. But I still can't help but feel a knot in the pit of my stomach when I hear the deep rumble of a subway passing under the street at night, and I wonder if that's just the noise of successive buildings collapsing, getting nearer, and nearer, and nearer...

****************************************

My prediction is that I will continue to grow up within a peer group who remain perpetually in an elevated state of alert. Historians will begin to refer to us as the Code Orange Generation. We were a generation of kids who didn't have the historic significance of our parents. We didn't have moon landings or Woodstocks. We didn't have Kennedy assassinations or Vietnams or Koreas. Until September 11th, 2001, we were a complacent, sheltered generation who watched a televised war the way we watched a Spielberg or Coppola movie, only with less emotional connection. We didn't have a massively significant event to call our historical milestone. We lacked definition.

19 men with 4 airplanes changed that in a matter of minutes.

Now sociologists will have something to write about. We are the first group of modern voters whose first presidential vote could have hinged solely on the need to feel safe at home. This is a veritable party of Linuses who just need their security blanket. These are children who allow this search for safety to trump all other beliefs, even if that means voting for the other party's candidate. But just looking at 2004 or 2008 is too myopic to be conclusive. Only time will tell.

Ultimately, the source of our fear can be summed up quite well by the cover of that NYT Magazine from 2002: The worst reason why we won't suffer a nuclear attack in a major U.S. city is because it hasn't happened yet.

Scared yet? Shouldn't we be?

A Brave New World of Recreation

I am officially scared.

We have just spiralled head-first into the future. I'm talking Back to the Future Part II (2015) [1.21 gigawatts!!], Blade Runner (2019), Total Recall (2084), and even 12 Monkeys. Well, not 12 Monkeys because that takes place in a much less tech-savvy future that looks too much like the present day. So let's go with...Minority Report. Yep, that works better, and that takes place in 2054 which should be a good year.

So where was I?

Oh right: I am completely freaked out.

Interactive Productline has invented a game where people are on opposite ends of a court, and each end of the court has a goal. The purpose of the game is to roll the ball into the opponent's goal, think foosball without the spinning poles. Only here's the kicker:

You roll the ball using your mind.

There is no way you have misinterpretted what I have just written. There's no trick and no catch:

Mindball® is an experience product, a game where two players control a ball with their brain waves. The player being most relaxed wins the game. The brain waves are detected by sensors attached to the headbands...

It is beyond me why this game hasn't received more press. But this is a clear sign that 2006 will inevitably bring with it flying cars, meals in a pill, and a harvesting field full of unconscious embryos linked to a collective virtual reality controlled by machines.

Right?

Dude, Is That Your Genetic Substance On The Wall?

dna 11 has come up with one of the great additions to modern home decoration. Their art is to genetic aesthetics what the Chia Pet was to grass-covered ceramics-- it defines a new, untapped, and unknown market to the masses.

Now all I need is $490 and a Q-tip to swab my cheek...

By the way, this image is NOT what dna 11's product looks like...

Slipping My Camera Some Roofies

I took my new camera up to the roof, and stole its virginity.

You're The Apple Store Of My Eye

Did I really shower, dress, and do my hair just to go shopping at the Apple Store in SoHo?

As turns out, there wasn't anyone even remotely appealing there tonight, just a bunch of normal people inevitably picking up last minute presents.

I suppose I just came on a bad night:

SoHo Apple Store As Single's Scene

Babes In Toyland

Sarcasm, Nightly News-Style

Brian Williams: #1 in news, #1 in sarcastic political banter --

Williams: And how is [your father, Bush 41]?
President Bush: Still married to mom.
Williams: That's good. Glad to hear it, because we were worried that it wouldn't work out.

Link

Highlights:

1. When asked if Bush thought he was incorrect to assume that U.S. troops would be welcomed as liberators in Iraq, Bush's reply began, "I think we are welcomed. But it was not a peaceful welcome." WHAT?! Does he hear himself speak?? Do you think he even buys what he's selling? President Bush, philosopher king you are not.
2. Count the number of times Bush begins a sentence with "I think..." and catches himself, quickly re-phrasing to "I know...". Has he been coached to display unwavering confidence in EVERY spoken word?

More Gangsta Than You Think

Actually, less. Significantly less gangsta than you think. Exponentially less gangsta. I can't even say the word "gangsta" with any credibility, or "cred" as it were.

So in spite of that, the Gangsta Name Generator delivers fun for all ages and gangster levels, from just a little shorty up to what Ja Rule thinks he is but isn't.

I gotta say, I'm pretty proud of my result:

How'd they know my childhood nickname?

Arite, time to peace.

Sincerely yours,
SDTJ