Author: Tim

An animator, video producer, Lego artist, and author—I am moderately skilled at a lot of different things.

This is an area I am unfamiliar with

Despite having a Tivo, I still manage to see more than my fair share of cheap, sleazy infomercials on late night TV. I thought all of them were either Girls Gone Wild ads or those selling fake pills coyly suggesting they make “that certain part of the male anatomy” bigger. (That would be the scrotum, of course.)

That was until I caught an infomercial on Oxygen I hadn’t seen before. A cheap, sleazy infomercial for women.

I know women can feel left out when guys talk, like when my friends and I tried to explain The Legend of Zelda to one of our girl friends: the game was notable because it came in a gold cart; in it you play a boy named Link (because Zelda is the princess), who must fight the pig-monster Ganon to rescue her and the Triforce. Makes sense so far, right?

She was completely lost in our nerd jargon, which was further exacerbated by our discussion of how the mutant hooker in Total Recall (guess which one? [NSFW]) was the pinnacle of evolution.

Utterly baffled — that’s how I felt watching this Oxygen infomercial and hearing the phrase:

pink bent graduate impulse silver bullet jackrabbit

To me that’s just a string of words, but I’m amazed there’s a large percentage of women out there who know exactly what this describes. Utterly baffling.

Also, I need to get out more.

I made an Ozmandias action figure

This isn’t the nerdiest thing I’ve done, but it’s definitely in the top ten…

Ozmandias action figure

I’ll let you know how the commercial shoot turns out.

Veidt Enterprises is looking for ads

I may be the last to learn about it, but Veidt Enterprises is looking for commercials for its new ad campaign due out in first quarter 2009. Deadline is June 2! This isn’t mine, but here’s an example of what they’re looking for:

It may be for a completely fictitious company, but at least it’s better than hawking ketchup. Hawking Ketchup — the smartest ketchup in the known universe!

I will choose a new song chart!

Just making new nerdy song charts gives me such a Rush…

Free Will

Brand Tag bon mots

Part of why I got into psychology was I love giving feedback. The more terse and dismissive the better, which is why I just spent an hour at www.brandtags.net, giving my summary of various brands. Guess which brands I associated with:

oil spills
keeping customers in debt
no other options
greed
relentless advertising
like AOL (not in a good way)
a sinister name for a clothing company
bullshit

Visit www.brandtags.net and submit your own curt bon mots! You’re helping advertisers, and what could be more noble than that?

Answers: Shell, Chase, Best Buy, Rolex, Nike, MSN, Banana Republic, American Idol.

Why would I want to do that?

I mean really.

It’s no surprise that MySpace has the most unbelievably retarded banner ads. At first they started off normally, tricking dumb fools into clicking on them by having a big red button that makes the ad look like a video game. Press the button to kick! Press the button to shoot the clown! Yeah, that makes sense, but then they became ungrounded, and banner ads were inviting rubes to click the button to roll, or drink, or sleep, or do a pull-up. How do I click a button to continue sleeping? The ‘games’ theme had become so abstract that the button no longer made sense.

the ads really are this dumb

Meanwhile another genus of ads began to appear, the ‘spooky’ ads, which warned you to NOT CLICK HERE if you were easily scared, accompanied by faces of creepy stock photo children. Then they began to focus on speculating on what date you’ll die — because what could be scarier, right? Then somehow, the two merged, and now there are ads inviting you into some kind of death game, all I have to do is sign up:

This is the worst ad ever

No chance to win an Xbox. No free ringtones. No products, no service. No company is being advertised. I’m not signing my soul away in exchange for some prize, I’m simply acknowledging that I’m dead. Unless this banner ad was placed by satan himself (which I can’t completely rule out), what could possibly be the appeal of this gigantic, full page ad?

As if an ad inviting me to kill myself wasn’t bad enough, there’s a catch:

subscription required

Subscription to what?!

You know, if it meant never having to see another incomprehensible flash ad, I would sign my own death certificate.

Ohhhh…. NOW I get it.

What do you want to see?

I recently went to the movie theater at the new recession-defiant Americana supermall in Glendale, and couldn’t decide which movie to see. It was a tough choice between:

Iron Man
Iron Man
Iron Man
Iron Man
Iron Man
Iron Man
Iron Man
Iron Man
Made of Honor
Made of Honor
Made of Honor
Made of Honor
Made of Honor
Made of Honor
Son of Rambow
Son of Rambow
The Visitor
Young@Heart

Choices!

I don’t want to imply that there’s still a paucity of choice even at these swanky upscale malls, but for those of you keeping track at home, that’s 18 screens showing a total of five movies. Which do you want to see, “Boys’ Movie” or “Girls’ Movie”?

Street names for arugula

What is arugula and why does its description on O Chef make it sound like a street drug?

Where were you in the 90s? That’s when arugula pretty much became our national salad green. Actually, it was popular in Italy and France for ages, but caught on in the US and Britain somewhat more recently. Perhaps you know if by some of its other names — rugola, rucola, roquette, garden rocket, Mediterranean rocket, salad rocket, Roman rocket, or Italian cress

Now my dealer knows what to get me when I’m jonesin’ for some garden rocket. (Don’t tell Fake Steve Jobs I had to look it up.)

Two-Fisted Tales of Evolutionary Biology!

On a whim, I decided to skim a few pages of Charles Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle, and if discovering evolution through the process of natural selection weren’t enough, the stories of his adventures on the HMS Beagle are rich with exotic detail and are an engrossing read. The story reads like a precursor to pulp tales of daring explorers visiting strange lands, encountering wild natives and speciating island finches.

In the course of an hour we arrived at Ribeira Grande, and were surprised at the sight of a large ruined fort and cathedral. This little town, before its harbour was filled up, was the principal place in the island: it now presents a melancholy, but very picturesque appearance. Having procured a black Padre for a guide, and a Spaniard who had served in the Peninsular war as an interpreter, we visited a collection of buildings, of which an ancient church formed the principal part. It is here the governors and captain-generals of the islands have been buried. Some of the tombstones recorded dates of the sixteenth century.

My head is swimming with all the possibilities of adventure awaiting our heros, the Spanish war veteran, the mysterious black priest, and Charles Darwin as they explore the picturesque but ominous “Fort of Ribeira Grande!”

But that isn’t the end of it. There are so many great passages, I can’t leave it at just one.

The inhabitants had sufficient notice to drive all the cattle and horses into the “corral” [1] which surrounded the house, and likewise to mount some small cannon. The Indians were Araucanians from the south of Chile; several hundreds in number, and highly disciplined. They first appeared in two bodies on a neighbouring hill; having there dismounted, and taken off their fur mantles, they advanced naked to the charge. The only weapon of an Indian is a very long bamboo or chuzo, ornamented with ostrich feathers, and pointed by a sharp spearhead. My informer seemed to remember with the greatest horror the quivering of these chuzos as they approached near.

And even a little topical humor:

In the evening we reached a comfortable farm-house, where there were several very pretty senoritas. They were much horrified at my having entered one of their churches out of mere curiosity. They asked me, “Why do you not become a Christian — for our religion
is certain?” I assured them I was a sort of Christian; but they would not hear of it…

A “sort of” Christian. Charlie knew how to tell a coy joke that only gets better with age.

I never thought I would miss calculus

Physicists

…but I can’t help feeling nostalgic looking at the nerd dream team of 1927. Wiki any of those names and you’ll find a person physics owes a debt of gratitude.

I can’t be certain which one is Heisenberg and which one is Schroedinger, but at least Pauli is making sure they aren’t taking up the same space.

[found via Reddit – tremendous nerdity ensues in the comments]