Shit Girls Say - Episode 2



Louis CK Live at the Bacon Theater



Louis C.K. is selling a show he did at the Bacon Theater
for $5 off of his website rather than on a DVD so that
he can sell it to fans for a cheaper price and so he
could give people a DRM-free file of his show.
Pretty cool.

Sergio Garcia = Happy Gilmore



(dweebist)

The Oxford Comma

I'm an oxford comma supporter. Always have been.

The above graphic is one of the reason's why.

(Cognitive Dissonance)

A Hard Opening Chord



Wow. The first chord of A Hard Day's Night is pretty damn complicated...

(hitRECordJoe)

The Dictator

 

Want to see Sacha Baron Cohen's newest movie "The Dictator".

Stop SOPA

Tiffiniy from American Censorship says, "Tomorrow, the US government will vote to have broad

 powers to block any site. SOPA would not only hurt free speech, it will choke off the internet

workforce and its readers by taking down entire websites. Today is the only day we have left to have

 our voices heard. It's time to pull all stops - please make a call right now to protest censorship. Your

call matters. If you don't call, SOPA will pass. If there is one call per minute into every one of our

representatives, we have a chance of stalling SOPA enough so it dies for quite some time. Please call

 Congress now and tell them you oppose internet censorship and stifling the internet. If you own a

site, you're in the best position to spread the word. Please post this call widget. If we're really going

 to stop SOPA, we need you to get involved. If you write emails or have a blog, or if you post to

Facebook, twitter, tumblr, tell everyone by blacking out your text here. It's super easy. SOPA kills

 jobs that we need right now and blocks sites to Americans for the purpose of serving copyright in

vague and overbroad ways, in ways that are not even well-agreed on by academics in the field. Please

 help us stop SOPA now."

(Boing Boing)

Blessed Are The Poor In Spirit

(Cognitive Dissonance)

Shit Girls Say

Preach.

Rick Perry is a Dinosaur

This Rick Perry video is pretty entertaining.
It currently has 10,780 likes and 440,598 dislikes.
You would think a former male cheerleader would
sympathize with the gay community a bit more....
a

Good stuff.

Fast Jimmy Fights Cancer

Check out Dudewater's Fast Jimmy in his newest project

Fast Jimmy Shits on Hodgkins.

Ok, I took some liberties with the actual name but you get the gist.

Even if you amputated his limbs, it still wouldn't stop this

dude from "whacking chromers" (super secret underground fisherspeak

for catching a chrome-colored fish), so I have no doubt he'll come

out on top of this battle. Be sure to follow along and send the dude some support!

Happy Friday

Happy Friday. The snow is coming...

(Thanks to Marisa for the goofy gif)

(Fail Blog)

One-Second Film Competition

This is cool.

(Boing Boing)

The Occupy Movement Explained

I can't really say I'm "for" or "against" the Occupy Movement.

I'm happy to see people voicing opinions and having a sense of civic duty.

At the same time, the Occupy Movement doesn't have any specific demands.

Their purpose is to raise awareness.

What I have heard is a lot of people say something along the lines of

"I don't even know what they stand for" or "They don't know what they want".

I think this video helps to explain the movement.

(CNN)

The Flaming Lips' 24 Hour Song

The Flaming Lips made a 24 Hour long song called "7 Skies H3".

The skull above is how they are physically selling the file.

You can listen to it here.

Happy Friday.

(Flaming Lips Twenty Four Hour Song)

My First 9GAG Post

I took the picture of my friend in the top-right and immediately noticed that

it looks EXACTLY like the Aww Yeah Guy. So, I made my first 9GAG post.

If you aren't familiar with 9GAG or Meme's, get with the program.

Hip Hop Turkey

Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

(Exploding Dog)

A Thought on the UC Davis Incident

On Nov. 18 students at UC Davis were pepper sprayed for not moving

while protesting school policies. I read Bob Ostertag's article in the

Huffington Post and wanted to share it.

Bob Ostertag - Professor at UC Davis
Militarization of Campus Police from the Huffington Post

Yesterday, police at UC Davis attacked seated students with a chemical gas.

I teach at UC Davis and I personally know many of the students who were the victims of this brutal and unprovoked assault. They are top students. In fact, I can report that among the students I know, the higher a student's grade point average, the more likely it is that they are centrally involved in the protests.

This is not surprising, since what is at issue is the dismantling of public education in California. Just six years ago, tuition at the University of California was $5357. Tuition is currently $12,192. According to current proposals, it will be $22,068 by 2015-2016. We have discussed this in my classes, and about one third of my students report that their families would likely have to pull them out of school at the new tuition. It is not a happy moment when the students look around the room and see who it is that will disappear from campus. These are young people who, like college students everywhere and at all times, form some of the deepest friendships they will have in their lives.

This is what motivates students who have never taken part in any sort of social protest to "occupy" the campus quad. And indeed, there were students who were attacked with chemical agents by robocops who were engaging in their first civic protest.

Since the video of the assault has gone viral, I will assume that most of you have seen the shocking footage. Let's take a look at the equally outrageous explanations and justifications that have come from UC Davis authorities.

UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi sent a letter to the university last night. Chancellor Katehi tells us that:

The group was informed in writing... that if they did not dismantle the encampment, it would have to be removed... However a number of protestors refused our warning, offering us no option but to ask the police to assist in their removal.

No other options? The list of options is endless. To begin with, the chancellor could have thanked them for their sense of civic duty. The occupation could have been turned into a teach-in on the role of public education in this country. There could have been a call for professors to hold classes on the quad. The list of "other options" is endless.

Chancellor Katehi asserts that "the encampment raised serious health and safety concerns." Really? Twenty tents on the quad "raised serious health and safety concerns?" Has the chancellor been to a frat party lately? Or a football game? Talk about "serious health and safety concerns."

How about this for another option: three years ago there was a very similar occupation of the quad at Columbia University in New York City by students protesting the way the expansion of the university was displacing residents in the neighborhood. There was a core group of twenty or thirty students there around the clock. At the high points there were 200-300. The administration met with the students and held serious discussions about their concerns. And after a couple of weeks the protest had run its course and the students took the tents down. The most severe action that was even contemplated on the part of the university was to expel students who were hunger striking, under a rule that allows the school to expel students who are considered a threat to themselves. But no one was actually expelled.

Remember when universities used to expel students instead of spray them with chemical agents?
We should also note that at Columbia, a private university, the campus police carry no arms and no pepper spray. This is what Columbia University police look like when arresting students:

 

This is what the police at Davis, a public university, looked like yesterday:

 

It is worth noting that in the Columbia photo, the one without helmets, guns, or chemical assault weapons, the student is being arrested for selling cocaine. In the Davis photo the students were defending public education.

Could Chancellor Katehi please explain what "serious health and safety concerns" were posed at Davis that were absent at Columbia? The only thing that involved a "serious health and safety concern" at Davis yesterday was the pepper spray. I just spoke with a doctor who works for the California Department of Corrections, who participated in a recent review of the medical literature on pepper spray for the CDC. They concluded that the medical consequences of pepper spray are poorly understood but involve serious health risk. As with chili peppers, some people tolerate pepper spray well, while others have extreme reactions. It is not known why this is the case. As a result, if a doctor sees pepper spray used in a prison, he or she is required to file a written report. And regulations prohibit the use of pepper spray on inmates in all circumstances other than the immediate threat of violence. If a prisoner is seated, by definition the use of pepper spray is prohibited. Any prison guard who used pepper spray on a seated prisoner would face immediate disciplinary review for the use of excessive force. Even in the case of a prison riot in which inmates use extreme violence, once a prisoner sits down he or she is not considered to be an imminent threat. And if prison guards go into a situation where the use of pepper spray is considered likely, they are required to have medical personnel nearby to treat the victims of the chemical agent.

Apparently, in the state of California felons incarcerated for violent crimes have rights that students at public universities do not.

Amazingly, UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza attempted to justify this crime.

If you look at the video you are going to see that there were 200 people in that quad. Hindsight is 20-20 and based on the situation we were sitting in, ultimately that was the decision that was made.

Yes, there were about 200 people in the quad. It is a piece of grass that was placed by the designers of the campus to be an open, central meeting place for the university community. But somehow, 200 students in the quad has become a problem. A huge problem. A problem so big that, well, yeah it was too bad those kids got pepper sprayed, but hey, there were 200 people in the quad.

Like the chancellor, Chief Spicuzza justified the assault by saying that the protest was "not safe for multiple reasons," none of which she specified.

How is it that non-violent student protest has suddenly become "unsafe" in the United States?

Just to jolt us back to reality for a moment, remember Amy Carter, daughter of former President Jimmy Carter. In 1985 she was arrested in an anti-apartheid demonstration at the South African Embassy in Washington. Like the Davis students, she was arrested when she refused an order to disperse. But she wasn't sprayed with a chemical weapon, or bodyslammed to the ground. She was handcuffed and led to a police car, telling reporters, ''I'm proud to be my father's daughter.'' The following year she was arrested again, this time at the University of Massachusetts protesting CIA recruitment there.

In short, Amy was just the sort of student that the administration of the UC is panicked about. She moved from place to place. She was arrested multiple times. She was not a student at UM at the time of her arrest there. She was a sophomore at Brown. This is the big fear the UC leadership keeps raising about today's campus protests: the protests can't be allowed because they might involve "outside agitators" who are not students. Well, the former president's daughter was just such an outside agitator. She even brought Abbie Hoffman to get arrested with her at a university where she was not a student! The sky didn't fall. No one was injured. No weapons were used. And Amy was acquitted of all charges, successfully arguing in court that CIA involvement in Central America and elsewhere was equivalent to trespassing in a burning building.

Now fast forward to today. Last week, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau issued a statement justifying the brutal use of police batons on student protesters like this:

It is unfortunate that some protesters chose to obstruct the police by linking arms and forming a human chain to prevent the police from gaining access to the tents. This is not non-violent civil disobedience... the police were forced to use their batons.

Perhaps the Chancellors of Davis and Berkeley have never seen this photo of people with linked arms. It is an iconic image of non-violent civil disobedience in this country.

Chancellor Robert Birgeneau thus joins the likes of Bull Connor, the notorious segregationist and architect of the violent repression of the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Alabama, as some of the very few people who view the non-violent tactics of Martin Luther King as violent.

Most people disagree, which is why King was given the Nobel Peace Prize.

Throughout my life I have seen, and sometimes participated in, peaceful civil disobedience in which sitting and linking arms was understood by citizens as a posture that indicates, in the clearest possible way available, protestors' intent to be non-violent. If example, if you look through training materials from groups like the Quakers, the various pacifist organization and centers, and Christian organizations, it is universally taught that sitting and linking arms is the best way to de-escalate any confrontation between police and people exercising their first amendment right to public speech.

Likewise, for over 30 years I have seen police universally understand this gesture. Many many times I have seen police treat protestors who sat and linked arms when told they must disperse or face arrest as a very routine matter: the police then approach the protestors individually and ask them if, upon arrest, they are going to walk of their own accord or not the police will have to carry them. In fact, this has become so routine that I have often wondered if this form of protest had become so scripted as to have lost most of its meaning.

No more.

What we have seen in the last two weeks around the country, and now at Davis, is a radical departure from the way police have handled protest in this country for half a century. Two days ago an 84-year-old woman was sprayed with a chemical assault agent in Seattle in the same manner our students at Davis were maced. A Hispanic New York City Councilman was brutally thrown to the ground, arrested, and held cuffed in a police van for two hours for no reason at all, and was never even told why he was arrested. And I am sure you all know about former Marine Lance Cpl. Scott Olsen, who suffered a fractured skull after police hit him with a tear gas canister, then rolled a flash bomb into the group of citizens trying to give him emergency medical care.

Last week, former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper published an essay arguing that the current epidemic of police brutality is a reflection of the militarization (his word, not mine) of our urban police forces, the result of years of the "war on drugs" and the "war on terror. Stamper was chief of police during the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999, and is not a voice that can be easily dismissed.

Yesterday, the militarization of policing in the U.S. arrived on my own campus.

These issues go to the core of what democracy means. We have a major economic crisis in this country that was brought on by the greedy and irresponsible behavior of big banks. No banker has been arrested, and certainly none have been pepper sprayed. Arrests and chemical assault is for those trying to defend their homes, their jobs, and their schools.

These are not trivial matters. This is a moment to stand up and be counted. I am proud to teach at a university where students have done so.

(Huffington Post, hitRECordJoe)

Off The Grid - RA Beattie

My friends over at Dudewater are featured in the Ohio Steelhead portion of
RA Beattie's new film Off The Grid. RA's films are impressive from what
I've seen, AND he's a cool dude to boot. So head over to
www.offthegridfilm.com and support the dude by buying his film.

Help To Stop the Government from Censoring the Internet

Click here and stop the government from censoring the internet.

LeBron Dunking on Helpless Children

I'll Believe It When I See It

Cleveland has had many failed plans to develop the lakefront. For years people have been

 hoping for someone to create a plan that can be successfully funded. Mayor Frank Jackson

 unveiled the most recent plan on Monday, which looks pretty exciting conceptually/visually

(as they always do). Unfortunately I'll bet on history, which involves lots of politics and

corruption and ultimately a few more years of dirt and bulldozers. I'll believe it when I see it.

I hope I'm wrong.

Click here to see the detailed plan.

(Cleveland.com)

Christmas Part Shark

(Exploding Dog)

Depressing Graphs of the Day

(Mandel on Innovation and Growth)

Members of Congress Make Gigantic Bank

Now that doesn't seem fair...

(Boing Boing)

Biggie Biggie Biggie Baby

Happy Friday.

This Coffee Is Fantastic

(Exploding Dog)

Religion. You're Doing It Wrong.

My thoughts exactly

(9GAG)

She & Him - The Christmas Waltz

 

New She & Him Christmas Album coming out on my birthday - Oct. 24th!

Happy Friday.

Most Expensive Bun You'll Ever Put In The Oven

from Boing Boing:

"According to the US Dept of Agriculture, the cost of raising a child in a middle-income family

has increased by 40 percent over the past ten years. Every major category of child-rearing expense

has seen steep increase: day-care, education, food, gas, medical insurance, and so on. At this rate,

childrearing may become a luxury item for America's increasingly wealthy super-rich."

Nope. It's Chuck Testa.

There is no way that girl smiles with Chuck Testa and a dead bear in her bed.

Halloween Value Shoppers!!!

Look at how creepy this Halloween "Goth" mask is. Only $7.99!

(Halloween 31)

The Grey

Want to see The Grey.

The New Girl Premieres Tonight

I think I'd watch 30 minutes of Zooey Deschanel reading Union Contracts.

The Great Pop vs. Soda vs. Coke Debate

"Hey, can you grab me a _______?" What do you call it? We've all had the conversation before.

If you click on the map, you'll go to an interactive map that is insanely detailed

and tells you how people answered by county. Check it out!

What I find most interesting about this map is the random

group of counties in the middle of the country (Missouri/Illinois)

 that say Soda.The map of Ohio is pretty accurate being as dark blue as it is.

Also, I wonder what the weirdos in the green counties call soft drinks. Bubbly?

(Boing Boing)

Jack White/ICP Cover Mozart... Yeah.

Well that's interesting.
Goes together like lamb and tuna fish...
 

 

(Pitchfork)

R.I.P. Amy Winehouse

 

 

I've never been a big Amy Winehouse fan, 

but her passing has made me very aware that

music lost an incredible voice when she left.

The Rum Diary

 

Want to see The Rum Diary.

Based on the novel by Hunter S. Thompson.

Teddy Broosevelt

(HARD OUT HERE FOR A BLOGGER)

Miami University's Jersey Shore Almost Exposed

                                                    

                                                                           

Miami has avoided what surely would have been the end of any good reputation that the college 

has enjoyed. They recently rejected a proposal from James Franco's production company to film

a reality show about the "life of undergraduate students" this fall. It would have taken this company

all of about 2 seconds to find one of the many kids straight out of Jersey Shore that go there to follow around

and film. Fortunately someone in Oxford still cares about the degrees coming out of there meaning anything.

Graduates are breathing a sigh of relief...

(Thanks to Miami Grad Marisa -who would have destroyed Miami's good name- for the story)

 

For the Miami haters:

Dog Owners Can Appreciate This

(Thanks to Lauren for the find) 

 (9GAG)

Unexpected Hiatus

I took a hiatus with no explanation. Now I'm feeling guilty. I apologize to

ALL OF MY FOLLOWERS (my girlfriend and her cat) that I have 
left in the dark. I'll get back into the swing of things shortly. 

It's been a busy couple of months and is showing no signs

of slowing down. I'll be moving downtown in 
September and becoming a real Cleveland resident 

(unlike the faker on the east side that I've been for 24 years).
I'll show you the place once I get moved in.
In the meantime, go outside or something.
It's like 80°.

Our Video from the Flaming Lips at DMB Caravan Chicago

This was the video my sister took standing right next to me

as Wayne Coyne rolled out in his ball. Incredible.

(Video thanks to Lauren)

 

(ok)

Happy Sunday

 

Hope you had a good weekend

Holy Shit

 

This is not photoshopped, by the way. I'm Serious.

(9GAG)

Bad Lip Readers - Haven't Met You Yet

 

I feel like an idiot when these videos make me laugh so hard.

Glenn Beck Left TV

 

Glenn Beck aired his final show recently.

This is what we'll all be missing.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Dicks

 

(9GAG)

Dave Matthews Band Caravan

Headed to this concert after work. The hours are going by very slow...

Americuhhhhhhhhh F*&$ YEAH !!!!!!!

Hope everyone had a great July 4th weekend.

(Today's Big Thing)

Hour of the Wolf

 

Want to see Hour of the Wolf.

This is how horror movie trailers should be.

Fear and Loathing in Mario World

 

Eating mushrooms/plants that make you grow/morph. This makes perfect sense.

(9GAG)

(Me Against Them)

Look At How Creepy This Charlie Sheen Mask Is

I Could Watch Jon Do This All Day

Get Drunk Not Fat

Saw this interesting chart at Getdrunknotfat.com.
I'm glad I like Maker's Mark so much, and also skeptical that they made this chart
 

(9GAG)

ESPN Gets Soccer Correct

 

 
This commercial is hilarious. Did anyone see the US make the Gold Cup Final yesterday?

(You Might Find Yourself)

Insane Southwest Deal - ENDS TODAY

If you have somewhere you want to go between Aug. 23-Nov. 16, I suggest you book TODAY.

The Curse of the White Lighter

Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Kurt Cobain were all left-handed, all died at the age of 27, and autopsies reported each having a white bic lighter in their pockets. This is why it is said that white lighters are unlucky.

(You Might Find Yourself)

San Francisco Mega Post

I went to San Francisco and a couple other places with Lauren and took a lot of photos.
Rather than just dump them all on Brad Video, I thought I’d take a minute and tell the story
(which is pretty much dumping them somewhere else and throwing in a few comments,
but that’s all the effort you’re gonna get out of me, so deal with it). Now that it’s all
documented, take a look through our trip out West and let me know what you think:

Brad Photo

Our Idiot Brother

 

Want to see Our Idiot Brother.