so I'd never really seen a Strokes video before, but this one is pretty funny. I won't ruin it:

so I've really been liking this jam recently. It's "Hearts on Fire" by Cut Copy. Kind of a lame song name, but it's a good one. An 80s-early 90s sounding electro rock song, it's got a lot of Me Decade touches, like sax blasts, space keyboard breakdowns, and New Order high-tuned bass, and it has a great beat.

Cut Copy are Australian and do a lot of good similar stuff. This is a single off an upcoming disc. I can't find a video for it, but the song is on the Myspace.

They have an official blog too.

so I just read that Mattel apologized to China for giving them bad publicity. Are you kidding me? Chinese companies made tons of toys with high lead levels, forcing Mattel to recall them, and Mattel apologizes? That's ludicrous. Here's the apology.

"Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologizes personally to you, the Chinese people and all of our customers who received the toys."

Obviously the Chinese got angry at Mattel, and Mattel caved. What a bunch of babies. A Chinese official added this.

"You cannot recall 10,000 products just because one is substandard. This is unacceptable," he said.

I'm glad they take a lot of precautions there. Mattel said the flaws were their fault, which I believe about as much as when somebody in a scandal resigns from a job to be with their family.

I thought this was pretty lame of Mattel to do, and I emailed them about it. You should do the same! corporate.communications(at)mattel.com

so I got interviewed for an article about Wikipedia in the GW student paper, which is pretty funny.

My interests are rap music and drinking games. But unfortunately the writer didn't mention my proudest contribution to Wikipedia, which was creating the article for "Disorderlies," that movie starring the Fat Boys.

so cricket has so many weird terms. For some reason, Gmail puts cricket headlines on my main page occasionally, and I like to click on them to read news that makes no sense to me. For example:

The Bangladeshis were struggling at 103 for three after 16 overs when Lee came on for his second spell. Aftab Ahmed hit a boundary followed by a single but Lee then had Shakib al Hasan caught behind for 16.

New batsman Mashrafe Mortaza predictably stepped away to try to slog the next ball but was deceived and bowled by a slow yorker. Alok Kapali was trapped on his crease and was out leg before wicket first ball.

Lee finished with three for 27.

Yeah, you said it! I guess baseball and other sports have lots of terms too, but it's interesting to see big news that is completely nonsensical to me, but is still in English.

Plus that guy looks like he has a potbelly and one arm is way bigger than the other, which is not something you see on most athletes.

so I'm a big fan of this video.



WOW NICE DINO!!!

There are Parts One and Two also, but no part three apparently.

so maybe I'm getting older, or maybe I just don't care, but it seems like I'm getting further removed from pop culture. I keep hearing about TV shows, music, movies, and people who are all over the news, but I have no idea who they are. Eventually I learn what they are, but I've still never seen them or heard them or what have you.

Going back a little while, I'd never heard that band Hinder. Apparently some show called "The Hills" is big on TV, no clue, never seen it or knew it was on. Rihanna (who I hear is a big star but whom I wouldn't be able to pick out of a police lineup) has some huge hit song called "Umbrella." "High School Musical" is really successful? I dunno. There's some show called "Ice Road Truckers"? Etc etc.

I'm not sure what it is. Is it just that I'm out of touch, or not the target audience for this stuff? Or maybe pop culture has accelerated so that things become "huge" overnight, then fade away just as fast - or along those lines, maybe all these things are being hyped as huge hits when really they aren't.

But in any case, I'm not really worried to be missing this stuff. My feeling is if I was meant to see it, I would.

so i wish there were more commercials like this

so this video has been super popular at work ever since Appalachian State beat Michigan in football. It's ridiculous and terrible.



You can just tell it was created by some committee of dumb administrators, and lo and behold, it was. The school newspaper reports on the video, saying it was made for a state tour by, you guessed it, a committee. It was on VH1 and elsewhere, and got even more hits after the big win.

A university spokesman is trying to distance the school from the video, saying the video was created for a tour through the state by the university, and that "somebody probably picked the video up from the Internet when it was linked to the Appalachian Family Caravan Web site and is now using it for purposes other than for what it was created." The spokesman thinks "the video will not directly hurt the way Appalachian is viewed and hopes people who know the university understand the video was taken out of context."

Good luck with that, considering how much we've been laughing at it, and one alum said "I sincerely hope this is some kind of joke video. If not, ASU will never again see a dime of my money."

For those unfamiliar, ASU is in Boone, NC, and is kind of a hippie school.

so Japan is a completely wacked country. I'm amazed they get anything useful done at all.