MeMo

February 08, 2010

Hey, why so angry?

Remember back when Super Bowls were terrible but the ads were great?

Given the happy events of yesterday, I'm not wishing for a return of those days, but jeez, I'm really taken aback by how awful the commercials really were.

As has been noted, there was enough misogyny afoot to make a girl nervous. Hey, guys, are you really that unhappy? Even the E-trade baby, whom I normally find irresistible, was revealed to be cheating on his baby-girlfriend.

And I guess I'm the only person on Earth who was disturbed to see Betty White ground into the turf.

Given the enormous number of women who watch the game, it seems bizarre how macho and violent the ads were (and this has been true for several years).

So I guess I repeat my question: Guys, are you really that mad?

Oh, and here's an antidote to awful ads, from BoingBoing:

Posted by Kyrie at 12:52 PM in | Comments (10)
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February 05, 2010

I love the demon sheep

Carly Fiorina's most recent campaign ad in California has gotten a lot of ink and air for being -- well, weird and dreadful.

It shows a field of sheep. Then one sheep rises on a Greek pedestal and as quickly tumbles off. Then comes the boring political part -- which you can totally skip -- interspersed with mug shots of sheep. Then -- ta dum! -- the red-eyed demon sheep peers out from behind a tree! Ooooh!

Here is the whole interminable thing:

The demon sheep is getting some flak, but it's also getting some double-reverse non-backlash from people like me, who are just so happy when something's not boring as heck.

And you've got to admit -- that demon sheep is pretty great.

Posted by Kyrie at 01:46 PM in Made for TV MeMo | Comments (10)
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Another pet peeve: critic-speak

I've long been annoyed by the twee language used by many restaurant critics, most especially the device I call the false intransitive.

You know what I mean -- those sentences that say something like "The vichyssoise does not disappoint." Or "the amuse bouche delights."

I found early evidence of it in this article about the history of restaurant criticism.

Check out the last sentence from Gael Greene:

While Greene inherited Claiborne's reviewing rubrics, her style of writing was strikingly different. She brought hyperbolic language to a medium that had once been merely informational. Describing André Surmain, the owner* Lutece, she observed, ". . . he is your host, a zany country squire with his fat lapels, the bluff blend of pinstripe, tattersall, stripe and Art Deco abstract. It is a highly aristocratic vulgarity, especially those crepe-soled rust suede Hush Puppies. It suits."

It delights whom? It does not disappoint whom? It is the reviewer. Why not say that? "I wasn't disappointed." "I was delighted."

Isn't that less twee, less pretentious, nicer?

Posted by Kyrie at 01:30 PM in language | Comments (6)
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February 04, 2010

Favorite story of the week: Dog 1, Man 0

I have unreasonable affection for this story, because it has everything I love: a hunter getting his comeuppance, a gun gone horribly wrong and, of course, a Labrador retriever.

Here is the tale:

The shotgun was loaded but the safety was on, according to authorities.

The victim was about 15 yards away, retrieving his decoys, when his female black Labrador retriever stepped on the gun.

This is why I love Labs so completely. There is no dog that would do this except a Lab. Of course it's a Lab! And there's no other dog that would be forgiven so readily.

As I may have told you, my late Lab Sparky, as a puppy, once locked my Saab with the key in, me out and the motor running -- at 6 a.m. at the post office.

Posted by Kyrie at 02:32 PM in | Comments (17)
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February 03, 2010

An octopus is smarter than your brother-in-law. Here's proof

I like to keep you up on the latest in octopus/squid news, as you know. You've seen the video of the octopus building with coconut shells, I know, but there is better stuff in this blog post. For one thing, they may well be about as smart as dogs. Please re-think that pulpo and calamari.

Here's a bit:

Not everybody agrees octopuses play, but Mather thinks they do. She, and colleague Roland Anderson, Ph.D., set up a study where they put an octopus in tank and, periodically, gave it a plastic bottle. The first few times the bottle appeared, the octopus would examine it, and then cast it aside. But, sometimes, the octopus would try something different.

Two of the eight octopuses in the study eventually began a repetitive game. First, they moved to the far end of the tank, away from the outlet that brought in fresh water. Then, they used their natural ability to shoot water jets to push the bottle toward the outlet, where the flow of fresh water would bring it back. Push, back. Push, back.

"When one of them did it more than 20 times in a row, Roland called me and said, 'She's bouncing the ball!'," Mather said.

Oh, and that apocryphal story, about the octopus that breaks out of its tank at night, crosses the room, gets into a neighboring tank and proceeds to treat itself to a buffet dinner, before slinking back home before the aquarium keepers arrive in the morning? It's true.

Truly amazing cephalopod video:

Posted by Kyrie at 03:00 PM in | Comments (6)
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Valentine FAIL!

In this season of romantic greed, our thoughts turn naturally (or perhaps fueled by press releases) to candy hearts, those cute little holiday confections with messages printed on them.

The hearts are produced by the New England Confectionery Co., the same company that -- get it? -- makes Necco wafers.

So yesterday when some of the little darlin's appeared on the office file cabinets, I was sort of happy, at least until I looked at the hearts themselves.

Major FAIL.

It wasn't a huge sample, to be sure -- maybe 20 hearts. But only a couple of them had legible messages stamped on them, and some were missing their messages altogether. here is a sample:

Hello, Necco? This is what you do. It's what you're known for. What if Just Born came out at Easter with deformed Peeps? What if Santa wore yellow and passed out artichokes? It's like that.

I don't know. Maybe it's really hard to get a couple of dopey words on a candy heart. Maybe the hearts wiggle a lot.

But in the future, you can save those press releases about how this is the year for "Tweet me" and "Text me" until you can actually get them on the candies. Capisce?

Posted by Kyrie at 01:06 PM in | Comments (10)
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February 02, 2010

Go ahead. Pronounce "Tyttebaer"

As the one-woman drum-beater for properly pronouncing et cetera --ettsetterah instead of ecksetterah -- to absolutely no effect, I doubt I'll have any more luck with pronouncing drink names correctly.

Here is an amusing piece on drink mispronunciations.

I'm thinking this particular mispronunciation totally flies in Houston:

So what are the most commonly mispronounced drinks? To find out, I surveyed bartenders from around the country. Here's what they said:

"Our most common one at Copper Gate is the Tyttebær, for obvious reasons. 'Tyttebær' [note: correctly pronounced with a long "i" in the first syllable and "bear" instead of "bar" in the third syllable] is the Norwegian word for 'lingonberry,' and that drink is basically lingonberry-flavored sparkling wine. About 90 percent of the crowd calls it the 'titty bar' (giggle, giggle).

I'm not going to snob it up because, frankly, I'm only about two-thirds sure on cachaca.

Meanwhile, here's a nice little piece on math. (The whole piece from the New York Times is here.)

A bit:

This dual aspect of numbers -- as part- heaven, and part- earth -- is perhaps the most paradoxical thing about them, and the feature that makes them so useful. It is what the physicist Eugene Wigner had in mind when he wrote of "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences."

Oh, just watch the Sesame Street vid at the Times link. because you never get enough Sesame Street.

Posted by Kyrie at 12:38 PM in | Comments (7)
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