CUZ BABY YOU’RE A FIREWORK
WANT SOME BIG BOOMS?
YOU KNOW YOU DO!
AND THEY’RE SERVED WITH A SIDE OF CAPS LOCK IN THESE TRYING TIMES!
Kortal Mombat
This year has been a big ol’ bag of farts, yes?
Have a magician to make it at least a little bit better.
This guy really reminds me of my old friend Jacob from high school. Super cool dude. I wonder how he’s doing nowadays.
This is like the TA version of Myers-Briggs
As someone who’s been a TA and is now a prof, this is super relatable. I think I was closest to the “Needs to Give a ‘Short’ Lecture Every Lab” but every once and a while I was the “Basically, It’s Like.”
The “Never Comes Prepared” one is pretty great.
THE BIG YELLOW ONE IS THE SUN
So hey, I found a Brian Regan routine on YouTube that I’ve never heard before!
Not as good as his old stuff, but still pretty good. That fireworks noise at 6:19 and when he messes up the horse racing joke at 33:13 had me really laughing like crazy.
As someone who’s still obsessed with this game that came out in 1998, I enjoyed this immensely.
The ominous music makes this even more distressing. I love it.
Shostakovich, what the fuck?
This is why I’m anosmic. Because my nose is off doing this kind of stuff.
But yes, this is from Shostakovich’s first opera, “The Nose,” which is based off of a short story by Nikolai Gogol. Basically, dude’s nose develops sentience, jumps off the dude’s face, and quickly attains a higher social rank than the dude.
Yeah.
I don’t know.
It’s pretty great, though.
WOW
This song is an experience. I really like it.
Sorry, that’s all for today.
The Magic House
So it’s like 5 AM and I can’t remember exactly what brought this topic up several hours ago (was it the St. Louis Arch? Maybe.), but I was telling Nate about this place in Missouri called The Magic House. My grandparents used to live in Missouri when I was young (< 8 or so), my mom and I would fly down there once or twice a year and do stuff with them. The Magic House was (is) basically a big children’s museum full of a bunch of interactive stuff, a lot of them having to do with science in some form or another.
It has obviously upgraded since I was last there, but it’s still there and some features are exactly the same as I remember.
I remember the bubble room, that big Van de Graaff generator (my short hair would REALLY frizz out), a wall where you could use pulleys to hoist yourself to the ceiling, colored circles on the floor in one room that made different tones when you stepped on them, a place where you could test if you were colorblind, a place where you could draw silhouettes, and a big wall that you could dance in front of and your image would be displayed on the wall with all sorts of psychedelic effects applied to it. I really liked going there.
Edit: I’ve also been to the top of the St. Louis Arch (again, when I was very young). I remember those weird elevators and being able to lean out over those little windows. I’d like to go back and see that again!
Pantsylvania
Have I mentioned this game on here before? I’m not sure and I’m too lazy to check (pro blogging, yo), so I’mma mention it now.
Among the funky computer games I played as a kid was this one called Pantsylvania. I remember playing this with my friend GE in Troy a lot. It was basically this game where you could explore the town of Pantsylvania through several different buildings and with the guidance of different characters that had you do different things in the buildings. It was super point-and-click fun for young kids and I remember really enjoying it.
The frog gets a lot of hate, apparently. He was my fave.
Edit: here it is if you want to play it yourself!
My SOUL
I’ve been in some sort of “Handle With Extreme Care” mode as far as my emotions go due to this whole COVID thing. I don’t know if that’s why I was bawling uncontrollably throughout this whole song or if that is a completely natural reaction to how beautiful this is.
Edit: I love how some of the singers were signing. That’s awesome.
HEY YOU PEOPLE WHO WERE CHILDREN IN THE MID-NINETIES:
Do you remember those nights when you got to stay up late after your parents went to bed? Do you remember when Cartoon Network went off the air (prior to Adult Swim being a thing) and having to find something else on TV to entertain yourself with?
If so, I’m sure you remember this:
This immediately brought me back to Saturday nights at my dad’s old condo. It was infomercials, Early Edition, or Baywatch once my dad went to bed.
Hark! A Pointless Blog!
So this song came up on shuffle today:
I hadn’t heard it in a while and I forgot what a tremendous feeling of anxiety that opening gives me.
Why, you ask?
(Shut up, just pretend you asked.)
Well, we were going to play this in band in 7th grade. We didn’t have any oboe players to play that opening solo thingy at 2:18, so being the nerdiest band nerd that ever nerded, I said, “hey Mr. Garrett, I’ll learn oboe, an instrument I’ve never even touched!” So I got my hands on an oboe and had about three weeks to learn how to play it (and play it well enough to do the solo thingy). I remember being so incredibly anxious about it every single time we practiced and, of course, when we performed it. I can’t remember how badly I botched it, but I’m sure I botched it quite nicely.
Anyway.
Also, cannons have nothing on the MAHLER HAMMER!
Quaker
This is super interesting.
I was one year old when this happened, so I obviously don’t remember it, and I don’t think I’ve ever read or heard too much of the details, either. I think the most fascinating part of this is how calm everyone seemed to be in the stadium. Maybe Californians have a different response to earthquakes than most people because of where they’re located, but it seems like if this had happened anywhere else, it would have been chaos.
Chief Chef
“Claudia, why do you make dinner at 4 AM when no one is around?”
Because this is essentially how every evening cooking endeavor goes, including the despair, lack of cooking skills, and having something entirely different from what I set out to make.
Y’all.
If I was an eccentric billionaire, this thing would be my ride.
Like, just the cab. I wouldn’t attach a trailer to it or anything; I’d just zooma-zoom around town in that cab. I mean, look at it:
Doesn’t that just look like something I’d drive around in? That freaking windshield wiper propeller is so totally me.
Edit: if I was an eccentric billionaire, I’d actually probably still walk everywhere. I’d drive this to go get groceries every week or something.
Edit 2: I could attach a trailer, fill the trailer with groceries, and then drop off the groceries to like homeless shelters and stuff.
I think I found my theme song
So remember a few days ago when I posted that FloriDada song and I mentioned that I couldn’t decide if I liked it or was deeply disturbed by it?
Well, I found a lyric video to it and now that I know the lyrics, I absolutely love this freaking song.
Here is said lyric video, which is substantially less seizure-inducing than the actual music video, so if you were a feared of this song because of the music video, fear no longer!
“I don’t even know where to begin
Or how I should start these days.
The green mountain south or
The Clay of the westerns”
“I wanna discover the key
And open the everywhere place
A mix of sky from Montana
Dipped in FloriDada”
“Oh let’s go get lost in the image
I made of the everywhere place”
I freaking love these lyrics, oh my g o d
This might just be a five-star.
FloriDADA
I can’t decide if I kinda like this or if I’m deeply disturbed.
Also warning for INSANE FLASHING between 2:30 and 3:17
Edit: the comments are great:
- its as strange as the state of florida itself
- DEAR GOD HOW MANY DRUGS WERE INVOLVED IN THIS
- imagine this being the first time you found out you had epilepsy
- I like the fact that this isn’t even the weirdest thing these guys have done.
- i love how both art styles have equal amounts of time and complement eachothe- 2:31 OK I DIDN’T MEAN THAT MUCH OH GOD MY MOUTH IS FOAMIIGHUH
- I’m going to have a wonderful death
Edit again: I CAN’T GET THIS SONG OUT OF MY HEAD AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
HAPPY LEIBNIZ DAY 2020, FOOLS!
So 2020 might suck in general, but July 1, 2020 does not suck.
Why?
Because it is the birthday of our savior Gottfried Leibniz, that’s why.
ALSO, today is the official start of my tenure-track position, so that’s coolio. Now I need to not screw up for the next three to four years and get some of that sweet, sweet tenure nectar.
So it’s a good day amidst all the madness I guess.
Edit: Oh my god, this remix.
WHAT THE HELL IS THIS SONG?
AND WHAT THE HELL IS THIS MUSIC VIDEO??
And why have I been physically incapable of listening to any other song all afternoon after hearing this?
It’d be funny if there weren’t PEOPLE DYING
Edit from December: *sobbing noises*
Slow Cats
Here is Jazzy murdering a toy mouse in slow motion. She loves when we throw them at her like that and she can pounce like a big wild cat.
What Song Did COVID Ruin for You?
For me it’s The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights.
Do I still love it? Absolutely. It’s a five-star (and the first five-star since my Decade of Music project ended).
But I discovered it right at the end of March of this year, which was when COVID was starting to really hit Canada. The U of C had moved to online classes and I spent a lot of my free time watching the news (bad idea, I know) and seeing the daily cases climb, not knowing how bad it would get.
And now whenever I hear this song (especially the first few bars, for some reason), I get that little twinge of anxiety that I associate with the start of the pandemic in Canada.
So that’s great.
Did COVID ruin a song (or songs) for you?
