Category: stardate

MARIE: That bunny island link was very cute
MARIE: does Japan have an island per animal?
MARIE: there is the cat island also
BRAIN: I think it’s where they exile all the shapeshifters
BRAIN: for reasons of national security

MARIE: hah
MARIE: Is there a fox island?
BRAIN: no way
BRAIN: those guys you gotta kill on sight
BRAIN: before they get elected to the Diet

The Miyazaki movie Pom Poko is about shapeshifting tanuki and the plight of wildlife in Japan (all the forests are being cut down due to urbanization).

In one short segment the foxes show up, and apparently they have totally integrated into the Japanese economy, to the extent they own hostess bars (implying they have a Yakuza presence).

BRAIN: So I’ve dreamt of making a sequel
BRAIN: where we get a glimpse of the insanity of the Fox society…
MARIE: nice
BRAIN: I’m thinking it would be like “Wolf of Wall Street meets Takeshi Miike”… with furries basically
MARIE: yikes

I keep listening to Richard Harris version (the original) of MacArthur’s [sic] Park (off his album “A Tramp Shining“).

This song is so ridiculous it makes me giggle every time I hear it.

I remember hearing this song on AM radio in the late 1970s. It boggled me even then – what the hell is he talking about?

Highlights (according to me):

• he uses the word “stri – ped” which cracks me up
• the proto-disco interlude at around 5 min
• the fact he keeps calling it “MacArthur’s Park”
• read the lyrics!
• It’s Richard Harris! of the very serious and intense King Arthur depiction.

If you can survive that… the rest of Dave Barry’s list of worst songs is “cake” (ho ho ho)

BRAIN: Meggie can’t find authentic jews for her seder party
BRAIN: it’s like the plot of a sitcom
MARIE: Meggie’s life is pretty sitcommy
BRAIN: it’s a good quality

BRAIN: I think that was true of my life for quite a while…
MARIE: hmm

BRAIN: actually this morning I bought a iPod shuffle
BRAIN: from a Little Person who used to be a jockey
BRAIN: (who was awesome by the way)
BRAIN: so never mind
MARIE: hahaha
BRAIN: more of a cartoon than a sitcom maybe

SYSOPS DIRECTOR: hey does anyone want to go to CloudSlam ’14?
SYSOPS DIRECTOR: it’s in june.
SYSOPS DIRECTOR: HA HA obviously i’m kidding
SYSOPS DIRECTOR: but that’s an actual conference name.
BRAIN: hopefully it’s in SF
SYSOPS DIRECTOR: it is. folsom st.

BRAIN: thank goodness you delivered the punchline on that one
SYSOPS DIRECTOR: what punchline?
SYSOPS DIRECTOR: it’s called cloudslam you prurient… prurient.
SYSOPS DIRECTOR: and it’s the most engaging conference about clouds ever to slam into a leather palace.

BRAIN: I hate helping doing set up and no one closes the deal
SYSOPS DIRECTOR: lol

Background: Being mature Cloud Professionals, we have all installed Cloud to Butt Plus, which translates every instance of “Cloud” on a web page into “Butt”… every instance of “the cloud” becomes “my butt.”

Therefore something like “Store your photos in the cloud!!” becomes “Store your photos in my butt!!”

Does the pattern in back of this man’s head look familiar?

In the video for “On Top of the World” by Imagine Dragons, a stylized 1960s family goes from an art gallery home to watch the moon landing. In the music video (directed by Matt Eastin and Corey Fox), the moon landing on TV is actually fake, and we see a harried director producing the action.

So: the patterned canvas behind the man’s head is a reference. But to what?

It’s actually the pattern on the carpet of the hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece of horror/weirdness The Shining. So what does it have to do with the moon landing?

As detailed in the documentary Room 237, there are many theories about “hidden messages” of The Shining, and one of the popular conspiracy theories is that it’s Kubrick’s hidden confessional about faking the footage of the moon landing as part of a secret government project.

So, in the video, there he is, Stanley Kubrick, bearded and in fur-lined hoodie, begrudgingly sitting next to not-yet-disgraced President Richard M Nixon.

The painting is not the only sneaky reference:

• the red security camera watching the astronauts is labelled 0009 LAH, referring to the red-lensed character HAL 9000 in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey
• the monitors in Mission Control are branded “Monolith” (like the monolith in 2001)
• The children in the family are twins, like the ghost girls in The Shining (themselves a reference to Diane Arbus)
• The Station slate pans up to show a Native American in headdress – a reference to another theory detailed in Room 237, which is that The Shining is about the genocide of the Native Americans at the hands of the white man

Gabriel Angelo (“trumpet kid”) stations himself outside my office window most of the week, and he constantly sings the “Hey Soul Sister” song, on loop, 8 hours a day.

It’s a terrible and stupid song, and him singing it has gotten it stuck in my head to the degree where if I even think of his face I start hearing the song. He’s been not at his post the past few days but I’m hearing that song even now…

ALICE, SHOW RUNNER: This script is a mess, plus it doesn’t make any sense.
BOB, LEAD WRITER: It makes perfect sense!
ALICE: We pitched it as a buddy cop show –
BOB: it IS!
ALICE: – except one cop is a vampire and the other is a dog –
BOB: No no no, come on –
ALICE: Oh thank god, because I thought –
BOB: they are BOTH dogs. One is a vampire dog, and the other is an inflatable dog.
ALICE: I’m so angry right now I’m firing myself.

HALVEEB – the traditional Mediterranean cheese that Velveeta was patterned after

JILLIAN: “Using syntax that looks like Java and acts like database stored procedures”
JILLIAN: why would you ever describe something with that sentence when attempting to say it is good
MARIE: if you did not understand how good worked

WILL: “it’s like driving a stick shift, but with none of the control!”
WILL: “it’s like the taste of booze with none of the intoxicating effects!”
WILL: “tastes like tofu, fucks up your insides like beef!”
SCOTT: that second one…
SCOTT: non-alcoholic beer. why?
WILL: yeah or decaf for that matter
SCOTT: yeah decaf coffee, wtf

BROWN: “Like a non-alcoholic vodka!”
BROWN: “Smells like bleach, cleans like vegetable oil.”
MARIE: Brown, how did you know my new start-up idea?
BROWN: I saw the hacker news article.
MARIE: dammit

ADMIN_SCOTT: What’s the password for SERVERNAME?
ADMIN_SCOTT: Trying to puppet up here
ADMIN_ROSS: “bootytime”
ADMIN_ROSS: (I don’t know)
ADMIN_SCOTT: oh.. about to try that
ADMIN_SCOTT: for the record it’s not bootytime
ADMIN_ROSS: wait do you mean that’s not the password
ADMIN_ROSS: or that’s not what time it is?