Fun Stuff

Why “Handlebars” is the best song

/ Shane / 2 Comments

I know this is an old song. So sue me.

Handlebars sounds like vintage Eminem, except instead of racism and spousal abuse, it has SCIENCE!

Aside from being catchy, the thing I like about the song is the story it tells without actually telling the story. In the beginning, achievement is met with childlike wonder. He’s proud of his ability to ride a bike with no handlebars, or take apart a remote control. His ambition is to make a comic book with his friends. Everything is so simple, but he’s happy.

However, as he goes along, the pride kind of changes into something else. Rather than being proud of what he’s accomplished, each new advance leads into a hunger for more; more mountains to climb, more feats to accomplish, more power and privilege, and more people to subjugate. The more he can do, the more his ambition grows.

As the song intensifies, it drives us forward along with him, and we see how it evolves, one tiny step at a time. He consistently describes himself as happy, but the tone towards the end betrays him. Science lets us make a vaccine that can save millions, but human nature allows us withhold that vaccine. Science lets us split a molecule for power, but human nature turns it into a bomb.

Technology is great, but if we use all that power to guide a missile by satellite, then what use is it? Is that really what the boy riding his bike with no handlebars aspired to? Though it was a journey of a thousand steps, is he really happy with where he ended up?

Despite nothing in the song being futuristic, I think this is a science fictional writer’s song. It struggles with the same things science fiction struggles with: technology and how it causes a sensawunda, how it changes people, how it shapes the human race, and how it can be used for both good and evil.

I highly recommend you give it a listen.

Welcome to Night Vale

/ Shane / 3 Comments

I listen to a lot of audio fiction, and there is no podcast bigger right now than Welcome to Night Vale. Clearly the rest of the world doesn’t need me to tell them about Night Vale (since they’re, yanno, more downloaded than This American Life). But too bad, I’m going to tell you about them anyway.

Welcome to Night Vale is the greatest thing of all time, ever. FACT.

I actually learned about Night Vale first by following them on twitter. They would just send these random, awesomely strange tweets, such as:

or

Most of the fiction podcasts I listen to follow the same formula: host intro, short story, host outtro. Night Vale is…something different. It’s more like an old radio show, where each episode builds into the next one. The writing is stellar. Anything mentioned in an episode is highly likely to show up again and again in subsequent episodes.

Night Vale is an interesting place. It’s sort of like every episode of the X-Files were true, and everybody knew it, so it wasn’t even worth remarking upon. It’s Orwell meets Lovecraft, and your host Cecil just reports on the daily ins and outs, traffic reports, weather reports, and community calendar. There are Vague, Yet Menacing, Government Agencies, secret police, Lovecraftian hooded figures on the city council, angels, a literal five headed dragon running for mayor, and sentient glowing clouds.

In their own words:

WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE is a twice-monthly podcast in the style of community updates for the small desert town of Night Vale, featuring local weather, news, announcements from the Sheriff’s Secret Police, mysterious lights in the night sky, dark hooded figures with unknowable powers, and cultural events.

Turn on your radio and hide.

Thank god for Night Vale community radio. How else would we know the dangers of the summer reading program? Who else would inform us on the awful goings on in Desert Bluffs? Remind us not to go to (or think about) the dog park?  How would we know where to hide on street cleaning day?

My favorite parts are the ads. Just to give you a taste:

You cannot see.
You grope around wildly as your footing is also unstable.
You feel a thin liquid filling in your shoes.
It is not water, you can tell.
A pungent smell of brine or anxiety. Your hand strikes something solid – a wall, you think. It is soft, leathery, but also wet. You keep your hands to the surface and it’s moving in and out, like it is breathing. No. More like spasms.
You hear a dull rumble from above, a gurgle from below, you still see nothing. The walls jerk back quickly, you lose your balance and slide down to the floor which is the same surface, but now the liquid is sloshing past you, something grabs your leg. Something is grabbing your leg, you are being pulled down you cannot see which way madness. Which way madness. You scream but no sound comes from your stubborn lips, your impudent throat. You reach. For what, you do not know, only that you reach. A blinding flash. A moment of understanding. You are in an empty store room, tied to a chair.
There are others, but they are hooded and limp. You recall this living nightmare, you take comfort in its familiar pain. You smell fermentation and can hear a dull unending beeping. Someone shouts in a language you do not know.You love your family. You. Love. Them.
Welcome to Red Lobster.
Come see what’s fresh today!

And, one for Subway:

A thousand ways in, no way out. Eat fresh. Eat so terribly, terribly fresh. Terribly, awesomely, gruesomely, terrifyingly fresh.

And finally:

Got a home improvement project? Need help?
Incomplete?
Having feelings? Strange feelings? Feelings you’ve never felt?
Incomplete?
Is your body filled with hot blood, waving curves of sinew, and skin? Can you feel all that blood? Is it even your blood? How can you be sure?
Incomplete?
Are you dizzy from it all, all of this? What are your hands doing?
Incomplete?
Where are your hands now? Where have they been? Where are they going? Where are you going?
Have you ever broken the surface of something with a hammer? Ever channeled sublime thought into sandpaper? Ever wanted to touch something because you feel things, because touch is the only sense you trust?
Incomplete?
What is trust? Is making a thing proof that you exist? Is fixing a thing proof that you have transcended mortality? History?
Incomplete?
Feel things? Feel things?
You can do it. We can help. The Home Depot.

The Internet has literally gotten out of control

/ Shane / 1 Comment

You know how literally everybody on the Internet literally misuses the word literally? Well, no worries, this will soon be a thing of the past. Someone has written an app you install directly in your browser so you literally never have to be bothered with this again.

…a free browser plug-in called Literally, which replaces the word “literally” with “figuratively” in all online text. As the website explains, that’s literally all it does.

Of course, the plug-in is not smart enough to differentiate when people actually use literally correctly, but let’s be honest; on the Internet that’s literally never going to happen. So I wouldn’t lose too much sleep over it.

Link via Sara.

(By the way, a quick google turns up lots of news outlets having fun titling their articles, from “Browser Plug-in Figuratively Kills the Word Literally” to “New Browser Plug-in Would Literally Annihilate this Headline“.)

Jesus Christ Muppetstar

/ Shane / Leave a comment

What do you get when you combine two of the greatest things ever, Jesus Christ Superstar and the Muppets? Well, I’ll just let you go ahead and answer that question for yourself.

It should be noted that this is an unauthorized adaptation, but they do a pretty good job. Kermit is the obvious choice as Jesus, ditto Miss Piggy as Mary Magdalene, and Gonzo makes an excellent Judas (who else to play the outsider?), but it’s the other little roles that make it.

Pepe the King Prawn as Pilot? Genius. Gonzo’s chickens singing (clucking?) backup? Electric Mayhem as the disciples? And when Beaker came in I about lost my $#it.

Seriously, this is so well done. I love it. There are so many little nods to the source material, like Piggy singing “It’s cool and the oink-ment’s sweet!” that even once you understand the central conceit it’s still enjoyable.

“And now I understand you’re a frog…at least that’s what you said.”

Give it a listen. Highly recommended.

So what’s going to be our “look”?

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I was talking with my sister the other day about how seeing a picture from the ’70’s or ’80’s just immediately tells you the time period based on the hairstyles or the clothing. This is not really news, but it’s just interesting to me that every single guy in the ’70’s simultaneously decided, “You know what looks good? A moustache.” In the ’80’s, not a single person looked around and went, “You guys, we’re all dressed like buffoons.” How did the flannel industry keep up with demand in the ’90s?

It stands to reason that 20 years from now, people will look back on our pictures with the same mixture of hilarity and revulsion as I do when I look back on old pictures. I assume there will be certain hairstyles or clothing that will just scream “2000”, and schools will have “aught” day where everybody will dress appropriately. But what will that look like?

I think I’m probably too close to it to see what the patterns are.  I mean, I mostly wear jeans and a tee shirt. Will the people of the future look back and go, “Ha ha, jeans and a tee shirt, they didn’t even wear shiny metallic clothes back then! Losers!” People just dress…regular, you know? On the other hand, just like the people with teased hair and leotards in the ’80’s, I’m probably not the one who gets to decide what is going to look ridiculous. It’s like how everybody locks in on whatever music was popular when they were in high school, and then just continues to think all the music that comes after for the next 60 years is crap.

So what is the “look” of the aughts? Rachael and I came up with a few ideas:

The Barbwire Bicep Tattoo

I feel like the barbwire tattoo was the immediate successor to the famed “tramp stamp” period in the late ’90s. There are probably millions of these things out there, which certainly makes for a trend.

Nouveau Goth

I think this is the closest we come to a hairstyle of the aughts, but remember when suddenly every band was like a glittery hair band throwback?

Skinny Jeans

Is there any question that these are the modern day equivalent of bell bottoms?

Sagging

I don’t know exactly when this started, but I know it still continues today, so it’s outlasted quite a few other trends. How this continues to be a thing is beyond me, but so are all the rest of these.

Hipsters

I’m talking about the evolution of grunge combined with old timey moustaches. The big, thick nerd glasses, and the hair like you just woke up. And maybe a scarf (you know, for irony).

My sister pointed out that you know this is an epidemic when school teachers are using “I moustache you a question” on bulletin boards at school.

The Guido

Or “dudebro” if you prefer. That special combination of hair, tan, and muscle shirts brought to the forefront by the Jersey Shore. Sad but true, we may be judged by those idiots. I suspect there is strong overlap between this group and the bicep tattoo group.

Duckface

Really a subset of the above group, but referring more to the actual pose of picture taking. There are so many “duckface” pictures floating around on the Internet, that it’s a virtual certainty that future generations are going to think this is just what people looked like back then.

So, what did I miss? Hairstyles? Shoes? Anything else?