…in a made for tv movie.
Media
21
Nov 05
McRib Challenge Video
Jeff posted his video from the McRib challenge to Google video. He did a great job with it: added a soundtrack, edited it up real nice, and added a McRib progress bar as well as cool opening and closing animations. Be sure to watch it. I’m even in it for a few short seconds clowning around.
Coincidentally, my friend (who apparently doesn’t read this site) emailed me this weekend to tell me the McRib was back for a limited time and looked to be talking about another shot at eating ten McRibs. He is obviously non compos mentis since when he last polished off eight of them he suffered big time.
Related: The McRib has claimed another victim November 11, 2005
15
Nov 05
“Women are still a closed book to men”
I found this article interesting, although not surprising. Any guesses at the reasons why men don’t read novels by females?
But a gender gap remains in what people choose to read, at least among the cultural elite. Four out of five men said the last novel they read was by a man, whereas women were almost as likely to have read a book by a male author as a female. When asked what novel by a woman they had read most recently, a majority of men found it hard to recall or could not answer. Women, however, often gave several titles. The report said: ‘Men who read fiction tend to read fiction by men, while women read fiction by both women and men.
Out of the recent eighteen or so books I have mentioned here on my site (not even including audiobooks), only three have been by women, and two of the books were by the same woman, Margaret Atwood.
15
Nov 05
Weird McRib Promotion
On the way home from work yesterday I heard a bizarre McRib promotion on the local hip hop radio station. It was a man with a stereotypically black accent who went on about how even though the McRib is always only available for a limited time, this time it was going on a farewell tour because McDonald’s was thinking about shelving it forever, and if you wanted to save the McRib be sure to sign the petition at McRib.com. There are a couple things wrong with this:
- It’s obviously a McDonald’s advertisement. Why would McDonald’s ask people to sign a petition to fight their own decision to 86 the McRib? They don’t expect their customers to be very sophisticated.
- The idea of a farewell tour for the McRib is retarded. If you go to the website, you’ll see young people with tattoos and McRib t-shirts partying up at the McD’s with boneless pork sandwiches, showing off their saucy fingers and edgy tattoos.
- Oh, wait, the petition is on behalf of the Boneless Pig Farmers Association of America. McRib is not made of mechanically separated pork like other pork products. No way. McRib comes from “Grade A” Sus Domesticus Nobonius, otherwise known as the boneless pig.
Totally weird. On the other hand, I noticed so maybe it was effective, although I am attuned to all things McRib. They also provide several t-shirt designs for the prospective McRib supporter: no bones logo (a bone with a line through it), McRib farewell tour, and a diagram of how a McRib is composed.
11
Sep 05
Get board monkeys to write your book
I was at Border’s today and investigated this book, “The Real Meaning of Life”, and I was surprised to discover that the content of the book was entirely created by respondents to a post on a message board inquiring into the meaning of life. Since everyone has their own view on this the book wrote itself. Could this be a cheap way to produce a light read?
31
May 05
Funny World of Warcraft video: Leeeeeroy!
There’s a funny video that’s been going around that shows a group of World of Warcraft players about to go on a guild-organized dungeon crawl. Check it out here.
Edit: See the comments for more information. The original file was removed from the server for bandwidth reasons, but there is now a bittorrent available here.
12
May 05
The Military Changes Their Sales Pitch
As has been widely reported, the military is having trouble meeting its recruitment and retention goals since launching offensive action in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is to be expected in our media-savvy and highly educated society. As people gain access to more information and a resistance to marketing-speak it becomes tougher to sell what amounts to, in the simplest of terms, an opportunity to get yourself killed. The message is that joining the military is an act of service to your country and that it’s the most patriotic thing you could do, but if you look around you realize it is much more complicated than that. When the most influential people in this country (even the past two presidents) avoid military service the impression is formed that it is far from desirable or wise.
07
May 05
Shhhh… The Blogging Business Model
Blogging is becoming a business for a select few, but how long can it last before the business world catches a whiff and susses out the simple mechanism for generating ad-driven revenues? Many for-profit blogs like, Boing Boing, simply repackage actual content allowing them to make money off the teeming masses of individuals that publish original material to the web. As a business model, it’s rather uninspired: grab a bunch of junk from RSS feeds, technorati pings, and credit-link-whoring tipsters tied to their computers and post it before the plebes see it anywhere else first. Anyone can do this, and they will.
21
Mar 05
Trendy
If you’re attuned to what people wear and do you’ll notice fads. Why do people follow the lead of other people? What are you thinking when you wear certain clothes or buy certain products? How do you decide what has value? Here are a few things I’ve noticed: