Category Archives: media

culture, media, video, Well Thank God for THAT

Well Thank God for THAT: Bacon Cologne

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So, previously I wrote about a cologne based on the conservative torture-porn television franchise 24. Here we have another fragrance for men that seems either unlikely or inevitable, depending on you outlook on life: bacon-flavored cologne.

It’s called Bacōn.

Just like 24: the fragrance, Bacōn contains notes of bergamot, and just like Kiefer Sutherland, Bacōn is Canadian Ham, or something like that.

The website features a 360-degree view of the box, allowing you access to life tips such as “Avoid spraying in eyes,” as well as the enigmatic “Flammable.”

Catchphrase: Scent by the gods.

Darwin Eats Cake, media, science

Simon Winchester and Ronald Reagan: New Darwin Eats Cake

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So, this particular academic controversy falls well outside my area of expertise, but if I only wrote about things that I really understood well, my blog would be pretty empty.

URL for sharing: http://www.darwineatscake.com/?id=15
URL for hotlinking or embedding: http://www.darwineatscake.com/img/comic/15.jpg

If you’re interested in reading more about Winchester’s fear-mongering claims and the earthquakologists’ reaction to them, check these out.

Life’s Little Mysteries
Scientific American
Paleocave

More comics at Darwin Eats Cake

culture, media, Well Thank God for THAT

Well Thank God for THAT: Bill & Ted 3

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So, if you were worried that Hollywood was going to just close up shop after they finished making movies based on comic-book characters, rest easy. Keanu has informed the world that there will be a sequel that will answer all of the questions that were left unanswered at the end of the second movie.

Says Keanu, “I believe the writers are six weeks away from a draft.”

I take this to mean that the writers will be starting on the project in about four weeks.

“[T]here’s an element of time, and they have to go back,” he added.

Story and video at MTV News.

Darwin Eats Cake, media, Politics

Ann Coulter, Radiation, and Hormesis

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So, you probably already know about the Ann Coulter column and interview, where she says a large number of Coulter-esque things about radiation. For a thorough takedown of her argument, check out this Pharyngula post.

For a takedown that is based on ad hominem attacks rather than evidence, but contains pictures, keep reading.

Original image at Darwin Eats Cake.

URL for sharing: http://www.darwineatscake.com/?id=9
URL for hotlinking or embedding: http://www.darwineatscake.com/img/comic/9.jpg

Calabrese, E., & Baldwin, L. (2003). Hormesis: The Dose-Response Revolution
Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology, 43 (1), 175-197 DOI: 10.1146/annurev.pharmtox.43.100901.140223

Update: Wow. In the original post, I spelled “radiation” wrong. Now corrected.

Books, culture, media, poetry

Grass und Gaga – Im Ei

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So, here’s something you probably already know, but wish you didn’t. Lady Gaga showed up at the Grammy Awards last night in an outfit that, in evolutionary terms, represents a sort of neoteny relative to the meat dress she was sporting at the MTV Video Music Awards. Here she is arriving. She’s the one you can’t see, because she is inside the egg.

Lady Gaga is carried inside an egg by four of her muscular servants, who are so poorly paid that two of them can not even afford shirts. Later, the slave-mistress would mount the egg and let out guttural screams until the singer emerged, soaked in amniotic fluid. At least, I am assuming that is what happened. Image via CBS News.

But really, I just wanted to use this as an excuse to share a poem that I love. It is by Günter Grass, and is probably a reasonable approximation of what Lady Gaga was muttering to herself in a Gollum-like rasp while contemplating which of her servants she would consume first. The difference is that she would no doubt be muttering in the original German, whereas I am presenting you with an English translation, taken here from the 1977 bilingual edition of In the Egg and Other Poems. The English translation of this poem was done by Michael Hamburger.

Enjoy!

In The Egg

We live in the egg.
We have covered the inside wall
of the shell with dirty drawings
and the Christian names of our enemies.
We are being hatched.

Whoever is hatching us
is hatching our pencils as well.
Set free from the egg one day
at once we shall make an image
of whoever is hatching us.

We assume that we’re being hatched.
We imagine some good-natured fowl
and write school essays
about the colour and breed
of the hen that is hatching us.

When shall we break the shell?
Our prophets inside the egg
for a middling salary argue
about the period of incubation.
They posit a day called X.

Out of boredom and genuine need
we have invented incubators.
We are much concerned with our offspring inside the egg.
We should be glad to recommend our patent
to her who looks after us.

But we have a roof over our heads.
Senile chicks,
polyglot embryos
chatter all day
and even discuss their dreams.

And what if we’re not being hatched?
If this shell will never break?
If our horizon is only that
of our scribbles, and always will be?
We hope that we’re being hatched.

Even if we only talk of hatching
there remains the fear that someone
outside our shell will feel hungry
and crack us into the frying pan with a pinch of salt.
What shall we do then, my brethren inside the egg?

culture, media, Politics

Dissent among Philippine separatist MILFs

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So, here is a story that proves the old adage that everything is funny in translation.

Apparently, the government of the Philippines has entered into talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which has been fighting to establish an independent Islamic state for nearly thirty years, since it split from the less-insurgency-minded Moro National Liberation Front. But now, some of the more militant MILFs are splitting from that group.

It’s the same moral that we’ve seen in every other installment of the Real Housewives franchise: some MILFs don’t even want to get along.

culture, media, Well Thank God for THAT

Well Thank God for THAT: 24 The Fragrance

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So, remember how just the other day you were saying that you wished you could smell like a blend of gunpowder, blood, and moral relativism? Well, you’re in luck! Park Fragrance has introduced a new fragrance just for you: 24.

If you’re a big fan of torture porn, you’ve probably seen the TV show 24. For the rest of you, it’s the one where Kiefer Sutherland assembles an action-packed argument justifying the abandonment of all principles when dealing with one’s enemies.

24™ toilet water.  Not just for waterboarding!

There are two “24” eaux de toilette: Classic and Gold. Classic has a “blend of bergamot, lemon, mandarin, and orange.” It is “masculine and self assured,” just like you were that time you were working over Earl Grey with a pair of pliers in a citrus grove. It is “quickly [sic] underpinned by a spicy oriental core.” Just like a North Korean nuclear facility!

Gold is for both men and women and “opens with emotions of vibrancy created by notes of jasmine, sandalwood, amber, and vanilla.” Gold is “precious and captivating,” recapitulating the show’s characters and most overused plot device, respectively.

Egypt Week, media

Egypt Week – Pro-Mubarak Thugs Damage National Treasure

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So, there have been some reports this week of looters damaging some of Egypt’s national treasures, including the decapitation of two mummies (although we should probably not discount the Highlander scenario there). There have also been reports of civilians organizing to protect treasures from looters. Most disturbingly (but, sadly, most plausibly, in my view), there have been reports that much of the looting was actually by Mubarak’s security forces, in an effort to cast the protesters as an unruly mob, thereby justifying a violent crackdown.

So, are Mubarak’s thugs deliberately destroying Egypt’s national treasures? We don’t know right now, and we may never know for sure. What we do know is that they have deliberately damaged one of America’s national treasures, blue-eyed, silver-maned Anderson Cooper.

Somewhere in America, Kathy Griffin is weeping.

Peace be upon you.

culture, media, poetry, science, Well Thank God for THAT

Well Thank God for THAT: Mr. Peabody and Sherman headed to the big screen

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So, what do you do with the two guys who wrote the screenplay for Yogi Bear, which was filmed in approximately three too many dimensions and made as much money as sense? Well, if you’re Dreamworks, you pay them to make another fifty-year-old cartoon into a movie. Or rather, a cartoon that was part of another cartoon. And then you cast Robert Downey Jr. as a dog. Presumably because his complete lack of talent complements the complete lack of creativity at the studio.

Following similar logic, I assume that the soundtrack will be composed by feeding beans to a room full of monkeys.

The movie will be based on Peabody’s Improbable History, which was a regular feature on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. In it, Mr. Peabody, a bespectacled dog-genius, and his sidekick, Sherman, a bespectacled boy-not-genius, use the WABAC machine to travel back in time and visit famous historical events.

The historical events in question unfold in humorous ways.

To be fair, this was the second best segment on the show, after Bullwinkle reading poetry. But still, why would Dreamworks do this? With real money that could have been better spent feeding the poor, or, if we’re honest, teaching the poor Esperanto?

Here’s the good news. Director Rob Minkoff says,

Mr. Peabody is this genetic anomaly. He does have brothers and sisters, all of them non-speaking, no[n] super-smart dogs. He’s an outcast, but has overcome it by being so great at so many things.

So yay, genetics, presumably in the form of a mutation at FOXP2, or that X-Men locus. And overcoming the adversity of being a genius – through the “being so great at so many things.”

The other good news? At the time of this writing, at least, Ed isn’t in it.

Books, culture, media, Well Thank God for THAT

Well Thank God for THAT: Novelization of Gulliver’s Travels

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So, this week at Lost in Transcription we’ll be rolling out a few new features. The first of these is Well Thank God for THAT, which will cover some of those “current” “events.”

If you haven’t been to your local bookstore recently, you may have missed the fact that Simon Spotlight has published a novelization of Gulliver’s Travels. Now a generation will not be deprived of this Jack Black classic during a power outage that is long enough for their laptops to run out of juice, but not so long that their kindles run out of juice.

If you’ve never read it, Gulliver’s Travels offers an almost swiftian satire of human nature. It focuses particularly on two of our most enduring foibles: (1) being fat, and (2) saying “awesome” a lot.