Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Paul

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The general welcome post
Hi! Welcome to my LiveJournal. Please note that:

* Most of my posts are friends-locked. Some of what I write is personal, some of it isn't, but I just like knowing who my potential readers are, unless the topic is *very* general and impersonal. If you're a friend of mine who's reading, and you don't have an LJ account, *get* one already. :-)

* I use LiveJournal mostly (1) as a journal to myself and (2) as a way to keep in touch with people I already know. I don't really use LJ as a way to meet *new* people, so please don't be offended if we've never met, you add me to your friendslist, and I don't friend you back.

* I have a terrible memory for RealName / LJ name pairings, and I don't really like trying to puzzle out new ones. So, if you friend me, please leave a reply to this post, telling me who you are. Or else send me email at HAPPYFUNPAUL AT LIVEJOURNAL DOT COM.
Thanks!

[links] Sherman & Mr. Peabody: the origin story!
This video is the very first "episode" of "Peabody's Improbably History" (from the old "Bullwinkle" show), featuring Mr. Peabody's background, how he adopted Sherman, and why he built the ~~Wayback~~ WABAC Machine.

This was a surprising find from, of all things, a football statistics site, specifically this article in the N.Y. Times.

[links] articles: Anyone is guilty, Jung book, Racial discrimination starts young
Boston Phoenix interview with Harvey Silverglate on his book "Three Felonies A Day," in which he explains how federal justice has become sufficiently perverted in this nation that federal prosecutors, if they put their minds to it, could find a way to indict almost any one of us for almost anything. [h/t:

madfilkentist]

Carl Jung wrote and illustrated a book about his own internal psychic journeys, and for decades his family has kept it closely guarded. It's just been published with translation. Here's the New York Times article about it. [h/t:

sunspiral]

Interesting article in Newsweek regarding when and how kids start discriminating based on race. [h/t:

ultimatepsi]

[links] videos: V8 blender, Ghost Busters (1954), Canadian Please
h/t to

xiphias, who comments, The folks at Top Gear invent a blender that is, by my calculation, approximately two hundred times as powerful as a "Will It Blend?" Blendtec.

"Ghost Busters" (1954) [h/t:

lhn]

"Canadian, Please" [h/t:

autographedcat]

[links] Cat vs...
I love cats. Really. But sometimes, the schadenfruede, so funny. I think it's the combination "tail twitch + anticipatory butt wiggle" that does it.

Cat vs. aquarium! [h/t: thnidu]

Cat vs. mirror! [h/t: larksdream]

[links] videos: "I Gotta Feeling", "An Awful Lot of Running"
Two song videos for which the song is good but the video, made by someone else, is even more impressive:

"I Gotta Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas, incredibly well-choreographed video by 172 communications students at l'Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), filmed as one continuous five-minute shot! [hat tip to

filkertom]

"An Awful Lot of Running" by Chameleon Circuit, excellent video by Ed Stockham AKA smilinglimpet (done in less than a week for a contest). [hat tip to

orawnzva]

Podcast about Trock or "Time Lord rock" (featuring an impressively annoying amount of ignorance, IMHO, especially in the first 30 minutes or so, but better thereafter) and a short article about Trock by Annalee Newitz, who ought to know better than to stereotype filk.

Songs whose titles are not included in the actual lyrics of the song
"For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield

from Wikipedia:
While the song has come to symbolize worldwide turbulence and confrontational feelings arising from events during the 1960s (particularly the Vietnam War), (Stephen) Stills reportedly wrote the song in reaction to escalating unrest between law enforcement and young club-goers related to the closing of Pandora's Box, a club on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, California. The song's title appears nowhere in its lyrics; it is more easily remembered by the first line of chorus: "Stop, children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down."

Stills said in an interview that the name of the song came about when he presented it to the record company executive Ahmet Ertegun who signed the Buffalo Springfield to the Atlantic Records owned ATCO label. He said: "I have this song here, for what it's worth, if you want it." Later they decided that should be its name.

In 2006, when interviewed on Tom Kent's radio show "Into the '70s", Stephen Stills pointed out that many people think "For What It's Worth" is about the Kent State Shootings (1970), despite having been actually recorded four years before that event.

What are some other songs whose titles appear nowhere in their lyrics?

"Fluorine Atom" links
My music web site is back online, so here's a link to my songs page, including a link to the best recording I have of "Fluorine Atom", recorded by Barney Evans at my Interfilk Guest Concert at ConChord last year.

Pegasus nomination! *squee*
For those who haven't heard yet:

My song "Fluorine Atom" was nominated for a Pegasus Award (the annual awards for filk music) in the floating category "A Little Bit Rock and Roll". (I'd known of the nomination over two weeks ago but the nominees weren't made public until yesterday.) Thank you to everyone who voted for my song in the brainstorming and/or nomination phases!

It's an honor just to be nominated. Yeah, I know, people always say that, but really, check out who the other nominees in my category are! Jeff Bohnhoff ("Come to Mordor"), Rand Bellavia and Adam English of Ookla the Mok ("Das Über Tuber"), Tim & Annie Walker ("Howl at the Moon") and Vixy & Tony ("Six-String Love")-- not only are those BIG names in filk, but those are really good songs!

Congratulations to my fellow category nominees and to the nominees in other categories, especially fellow MASSFILC officer Gary McGath for "Mad Scientist's Love Song" in the "Best Classic Filk" category and fellow northeasterner Batya Wittenberg for "Gabriel Gray's Song" in the "Best Filk Song" category. Other nominees whom I consider friends include Kathleen Sloan, Brooke Lunderville, Kathy Mar, Heather Dale and Ben Deschamps, Amy McNally, Dr. Mary Crowell, and Steve Savitsky.

The 2009 Pegasus final ballot is here. Please feel free to vote if you consider yourself a filker! If you don't know anyone on the list except me, however, please refrain from voting. Thanks!

[Edit: Now that my site is back up from maintenance, I have added a link to my songs page, including a link to the best recording of "Fluorine Atom", from my Interfilk Guest Concert at ConChord last year.]
(I would also like to make a new recording that is, er, a little MORE rock and roll, but I'm not sure when I'll get time for that! Also, I either need to find a drummer or else figure out how to use GarageBand or some other program.)

[links] Lie-Down Comedy with Colin and Brad
(Last of the tab-clearing links posts! At least for now. :-)

11 minutes long, but worth it. Two guys from "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" provide an alternative to "stand up" comedy. :-)

[hat tip:

filkertom]

[links] The Homeopathic Emergency Room (and more on knowledge)
Funny but pointed!

Hat tip to

hsifyppah. Discussion here, including a link to the following "beat poem" by Tim Minchin:

...which in turn reminds me of a favorite quote of mine, one I recently reread:

I have a friend who's an artist, and he sometimes takes a view which I don't agree with. He’ll hold up a flower and say, “Look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. But then he’ll say, “I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is. But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull.” I think he’s kind of nutty.

First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people-- and to me, too, I believe. Although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is, I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. But at the same time, I see much more in the flower than he sees. I can imagine the cells inside, which also have a beauty. There's beauty not just at the dimension of one centimeter; there's also beauty at a smaller dimension.

There are the complicated actions of the cells, and other processes. The fact that the colors in the flower have evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; that means insects can see the colors. That adds a question: does this aesthetic sense we have also exist in lower forms of life? There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.

- Richard Feynmann, What Do You Care What Other People Think?, p. 11.

[links] If Just One Person
Warning: Have a handkerchief ready. Especially if you loved what Jim Henson created as much as I do.

[links] RoboGeisha!
[hat tip to

filkertom, who correctly warned, "Not safe for work. Or anyone, really."]

(And yes, frighteningly, it's real.)

[links] We Didn't Start the Flame War

[thanks to

filkertom]
Well done! There's something inherently funny about rhyming, no-class comments sung in Billy Joel's voice (the impersonator does a good job), but it's the way the webpage-come-to-life video synchs up with the audio that really makes it all work.

[links] Fun with Post-it Notes (2 videos)

EepyBird's Sticky Note experiment from Eepybird on Vimeo.

[The second video comes from the same guys who brought you the "Diet Coke & Mentos experiments". Hat tip to

ruthling for the link.]

[links] JoCo ASL (plus more Judi Miller)
So, lately

ultimatepsi and I have gotten increasingly interested in Sign Language. At Concertino, we learned many fun (though not necessarily useful) signs from

hsifyppah, so that we could sign such phrases as "Jesus is not a squid" and "The lobster eats me". At Confluence, UltimatePsi (in particular) picked up a bunch more, including the signs for "pirate", "elephant", "freedom", "soldier", "lie", and "prison", plus some actually-useful ones like "all", "in", and "day". It was also the first time

judifilksign signed any of my songs ("Happy Song Virus"), but I quickly discovered that I can't watch her while I sing or else I get totally thrown off! (UltimatePsi watched some and picked up signs for "alien" and "prison"/"cell". Alas, there's no video.)

The thing that fascinates me most about ASL translation is the grammar and rephrasing, so I've included literal translations when available.

( The second and third videos are NSFW! )

[links] Fred Astaire + Michael Jackson
A rather ingenious mash-up synching up Fred Astaire movie clips to "Smooth Criminal":