Do You Like Fishsticks?

Slideshow of the Death of Newspapers

Sigh

Good News

A silver lining to our deathscape economy, pirate attacks (and attacks on naked pirates), auto industry collapse and so on and so forth....

HBO's Eastbound and Down has been renewed!

"The premium cable network announced Wednesday (April 8th) that production on a new run of “Eastbound & Down” will begin later this year and will premiere in 2010"

I wonder if Kenny Powers will chime in on the news.

Pirates! No, Not Those Ones

The University of Maryland was to show the porno titled Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge at its student union last week. BUT, Maryland State Senator and total buzzkill, Andrew Harris (arrrrR-MD), wasn't too keen on the idea of a public university airing porn so he threatened to withhold school funding.

University of Maryland, home to incessant Israel versus Palestine sidewalk chalk wars, riots, and library masturbators, is not one to shy away from controversy. So some administrators, lawyers, ACLU members and students held a "rebel screening" to air pornographic footage and teach all sorts of "Full House" lessons about copulation and the responsibility of caring for Comet.

The stuffy TIME version of the events are here
The fun Gawker versions are here and here
And the Diamondback student newspaper piece here

Roid Ball

Addicting Games decided to steal the idea my friend Jaiah and I had in college to create a video game where the protagonist uses steroids.

Our game would start out with this nerdy kid who gets picked on by all the bigger guys at school, including the most roided-up, bacne'd linebacker. In the each level, the hero has to fight increasingly big kids from school and steal their creatine, HGH, and so on until he's huge enough to beat up the guys who have the good stuff like Winstrol or Danabol on their person. Once he's jacked and raging out of control, Roid Man takes on the linebacker to win the heart of the slutty cheerleader.

Unfortunately, neither of us knew anything about Flash, programing or basically anything that would have let us realize our dream of creating "Roid Man". So here is the next best thing, I guess. Compete in home run derby as Josie Conswaco, Berry Bombs, Marky McWeird (among others) and choose whether or not he's training on the juice. You might hit more home runs, but watch out for random drug tests!

(credit: deadspin)

This is What You Want Your $100 Million Player Doing

Near decapitation. I love Ovechkin.

The Facebook Revolt

NY Mag's 4,000 word feature on Facebook:

"This is a crucial moment for Facebook, and a delicate one, because We, the users, are what Facebook is selling. “Facebook is walking a fine line of keeping the trust of its members, and wanting to exploit them for profit,” says Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch. “It’s having a tough time balancing the two.” In 2007, the company was valued at $15 billion, after Microsoft bought a 1.6 percent stake for $240 million, but profit has been elusive. If they can solve this problem, come up with a viable business model—one might note that if they charged $1 a month for the service and even half its users stuck around, it would take in $100 million each month—it could go public and even become the first big IPO to reinvigorate the market; if Facebook doesn’t, Zuckerberg & Co. will struggle to resist a takeover by a very rich tech company (well, Microsoft) for a fire-sale price of a billion or two. After CFO Gideon Yu announced his exit last week, the company claimed that it was looking for a replacement with public-company experience, but the way forward is far from clear. The history of social networks is an absurd one of missed opportunities, from Tripod to Geocities to AOL, though Facebook thus far has avoided their pitfalls. It’s been unaffected by Friendster’s technical glitches and its taint of uncoolness; Facebook’s antiseptic design clears away the lascivious, spam-ified, knife-wielding clutter of MySpace, a site that was double Facebook’s size in the U.S. eight months ago but whose technological innovation has been stymied by News Corp until recently."

Ovechkin's Hole-In-One

"I swear God. I swear my mom"

Inside North Korea

In honor of the test launch this morning (night?), here is a rare look inside North Korea. Shane Smith, founder of VBS.tv, was one of 16 journalists granted permission to visit the country through a bizarre visa process. Things only got weirder as you'll see. Below is one of 14 clips touching on different aspects of North Korea including: The DMZ, Pyongyang, Schoolchildren, Memorials an Gifts, and Karaoke! I recommend watching them all. The whole thing is insane.

UNC Hate

Not my words, but they might as well be:

I hate this fucking UNC team. I hate them more than hitting my funny bone, more than Coke Zero commercials, more than when my roommate blasts TV at 4 AM right outside my door, more than philosophically wrong Pitchfork Media reviews, more than using scripture as a basis for human thought, more than war, more than hippies, more than Don Delillo's "literary" books, more than the flex offense, more than college football's bowl system, more than the college loan system, more than the fact that banks charge you thirty dollars when you have negative money already, more than failure, more than condoms, more than hangovers, more than jovial greeters at chain bookstores, more than the word "intense," more than when people use "u" instead of you on the internet or text messages, more than people who say the NCAA tourney is "boring" when good teams win against smaller seeds no matter how good the games were, more than people who constantly claim thaty classic rock is underrated despite the fact that it has entire radio stations, more than people who voted against gay marriage and hate being married themselves, more than slavery, more than radio rap, more than white Jesus, more than the horror film genre, more than bad pizza, more than teams that jack up threes when they get panicked, more than bad announcing, more than Van Halen, more than David Spade now that he is old, more than reality television's vast expanse of anti-knowledge, more than life itself, more than the crippling loneliness and depression that haunts me for long periods of time, more than work, more than the word "diva," more than passive-aggressiveness, more than spam emails, more than the shakes after a binge, more than my boss, more than freedom fries, more than rhyming dictionaries, more than people who say "whoa, you must be really smart" whenever someone mentions a book over the level of "Chasing Harry Winston" et al, people who get mad when bands change their sound a bit, more than the its-it's rule, more than referees allowing big guys to get calls thye don't deserve way too early in games, more than the mess I clean after parties at my house, more than hemorrhoids, more than animal rights, more than the smell of hand sanitizer, more than people that bring up politics no matter the surrounding, more than assholes who walk slower than the crowd, more than all the petty grievances I have had, will have, or have presently, more than all of it-- all.

My New Favorite Site

Material Bitch

Top Stories

Here are some of the top stories around the country

NYT: Europeans Offer Few New Troops to Afghanistan
WaPo: Celebrity Adoptions Scrutinized
LA Times: Extra Extra Coming Out of the Woodwork
Sun-Times: Obama Makes Pitch for 2016 Olympics
SF Chronicle: 25 Years of Wrestlemania
Miami Herald: Obama Set to Ease Cuban Ban on Travel, Money
Detroit Free Press: It's Loud, Busy, and Packed at the Final Four
Dallas-Morning News: Plano, Area Cities Looking to Video Game Industry for jobs
Atlanta-Journal Constitution: Sign AT&T Contract, Get a 50$ Laptop

Links

8 scientists who were their own guinea pigs

Blame whitey, says Brazil's prez

Newsweek profiles Amy Poehler

Early NYC in black and white

You Tube bleeding Google dry

And don't let this guy coach your daughter's soccer team (and not because he's a molester, for once)

Bruno Trailer

The Cost of Beauty

Newsweek has a graphic on how much women spend on beauty products throughout a lifetime.

For example, Teens thru 20s:

Hair: $15,761
Face: $32,684
Body: $10,586
Hands: $6,834
-------------------
Total: $65,865


And the accompanying article on the beautification of tweens