The Past and Future of LOLcats

For some reason, LOLcats have been in the news lately. Well, at least they've been in the news that I read. Maybe that can tell you something about how informed I am.

First of all, the world's first LOLcat was recently discovered.

I found out about it from Language Log (although I don't know what it was doing there). This picture is from 1905 and predates our current versions of LOLcats by about 100 years.

Also, an off broadway musical is being made about LOLcats. What that could possibly involve I don't know. All I can say is

(Unofficial) Wiki of the Week: Wikitravel

I know Wiki of the Week normally isn't my thing, and it hasn't even been a week since the last one, but there's one wiki that I have to endorse, because it's been a lifesaver for me recently.

Wikitravel is what it describes itself as: a free travel guide. And it's actually a really good one. It contains tips for every country and every major city about what to see, where to stay, what to eat, how to stay safe, and how not to offend anyone, among other things. It's a really useful asset to have when you're traveling and your plans can change at any moment. Plus, it's also really great to consult if you're thinking about going somewhere and you want to know how safe it is, or what it would cost. You can't make reservations or anything through it, but it links to sites where you can, and it contains nearly all the information you'll need for any particular place. In fact, for very large cities like LA or Tokyo, wikitravel devotes entire pages to specific districts within those cities. 

Basically, wikitravel has made traveling way, way easier for me. If you're planning on doing any travel soon (Juje, Bobbicus), then you should definitely consult wikitravel for wherever you're going.

Hippie Yoga Farmers vs. Internet Video Archivists

Every once in a while, something happens on the internet so bizarre, so random, and so borderline terrifying that it really makes you think about all the strange people who live out there, and what a truly horrifying yet fascinating place the world is. This is a story about one of them.

Maybe about a week ago the blog Coilhouse did a post about the website Everything Is Terrible. I hadn't heard of Everything Is Terrible before I read this post, but I've been reading Coilhouse for a while, and if you don't read it then you should, it's a really great blog about art and pop culture. Anyway, as Coilhouse describes, Everything is Terrible is a website where people link to bizarre tape-recorded videos of random strange things they found on TV. The Coilhouse post didn't really do anything more than praise the website and link to a few of the videos on it, but it was one of these videos that got them into trouble. This video was one entitled "Weird Hippie Yoga Farmers."

I wish I could show you this video. I really, really wish I could. Suffice to say that involved a guy with bleached blond hair singing cheesy kids country songs about yoga with the help of "Rasta the Rooster," a stereotypically Jamaican rooster character, both of whom taught yoga to a bunch of kids in a slightly creepy, new-agey, touchy feely way. And just for your information, I'm trying to be as unbiased as possible in this description. The reason why I can't show you this video is because the person who owned the copyright to this video was a colossal douchebag. I mean, someone trying to protect her copyright. 

Apparently, this was an edited video of clips from a late 90s show called "Ei Ei Yoga." This show starred some dude named Max Thomas, a yoga teacher working in LA, apparently a very good one. The show went nowhere and was forgotten for a while, but some nerd taped it a while back and uploaded an edited clip of it to Everything is Terrible, where everyone proceeded to make fun of it. The clip lingered on that website for a while making almost no impact, until a writer for Coilhouse found out about the website and generated traffic for it, and especially for the yoga video, which she directly embedded in the blog post. When Robin Maxwell, the wife of the Ei Ei Yoga guru, found out as a result of this increased traffic about this video making fun of her husband, she immediately pulled it from youtube and Everything is Terrible, and shortly afterwards EIT had all of their videos pulled from youtube. 

Meanwhile, a yoga website, upon seeing this video, did a post where they encouraged everyone to "make fun of the hippy dippy Ei Ei Yoga farmer." Robin Maxwell was not too pleased, and wrote a comment on this post, which led to the website doing an update. In her comment, she essentially describes Max as a saint who has great wisdom and teaches yoga to sick children. She also paints the viewers of EIT as stupid idiots who did nothing but demonize a good person, and quotes youtube comments that use insults and racial slurs as evidence of this, which is kind of unfair, since there are comments for every video on youtube that have insults and racial slurs. There are lots of other problems with her comment as well.

For one thing, she says, "[Max] was one of the first yoga teachers to acknowledge that if children were taught yoga we would be living in a much saner world," as if this is something that has been scientifically proven, and as if this even has any grain of truth to it. First of all, I've worked with children before. It's hard to get them to sit still, let alone to master yoga positions. Plus, kids could seriously get hurt doing yoga. Maybe some kids would take well to learning yoga, but definitely not all of them. Second of all, yoga is not the key to living in a saner world. That idea displays so many levels of ignorance I don't know where to begin. Yoga can't change the way a person thinks. Yoga can't change the way society functions. And if yoga involves stereotypically Jamaican roosters, I don't see how it could lead to people living in a saner world. 

That's another major issue I have: Rasta the Rooster. While Max may be a hero who feeds the bodies of criminals to starving children, I still can't forgive him for allowing Rasta the Rooster to exist. That character is nothing more than a gigantic insult. First of all, Rastafari is a religion. It's one that I don't believe in, it's one that I have a lot of issues with, but it's still a religion, and it should be shown a certain level of respect. Naming a character "Rasta" is basically the equivalent of naming a character "Jew," especially if that character talked in a stereotypically Jewish voice and had curly hair and a beard (Rasta the rooster had a fake Jamaican accent and massive dreadlocks). The inclusion of Rasta the Rooster is representative of a problem many wannabe progressives have. They are fascinated by "exotic" cultures, such as India, China, and in this case Jamaica, and appropriate the aesthetics of these cultures without knowing anything about what they really mean. I recall one time when I went to a reggae concert on a college campus. I ran into someone I knew after the show. I said something casual to him along the lines of "Hey man, did you enjoy the show?" and he replied by saying "Yeah, Jah, Rastafari!" I immediately left, thinking to myself, "Wow, you have absolutely know idea what that actually means." Rastafari is a religion. A postcolonial, nationalistic, deeply spiritual, homophobic religion. Not an image.

I also take issue with Robin's decision to shut down EIT. Her decision to pull the hippy weirdo yoga video from youtube is kind of an ethical grey area for me. Basically, I think that videos generally shouldn't be put up for free if the creator of it hasn't made much money off of it already, but that if someone uses footage in a video, any footage, they should be able to put it up as long as they cite their sources. On one hand, this video was technically not an original, since it was chopped up, so according to my ethical code it was technically ok for whoever edited it to put it up. But on the other hand, it wasn't edited that much. It was just chopped up, I wouldn't go as far as calling it a remix. It was more of a montage. Also, on one hand the crazy yoga people probably hadn't made much money off the original video already. But on the other hand, there isn't any way they would have made any more money off of it than they already did. And on one hand, whoever edited it did so in a way to make fun of someone who was probably a decent guy. But on the other hand, the show seems really creepy to begin with.

Still, getting all of EIT shut down is just not ok. Robin did not hold a copyright on every video on the website, and there were probably some videos on there that did not violate copyright. And in addition, most of these videos were remixes, and the original copyright holders would not make any money off of them anyway. As with most instances of this happening, this whole ordeal was free publicity for Max Thomas. He could have turned it into good publicity, but instead he turned it into bad publicity. This is also an instance of what Sarinee Achavanuntaku talked about in the interview Bobbicus linked to; the whole idea copyright holders have that "I'm not going to use this product I own anymore, so that means no one can ever see it."

On the other hand, I do feel that I have to criticize EIT just a tiny bit, in a little bit of a hypocritical way. As I've said before, I love making fun of stuff, but sometimes I do feel bad about the people I make fun of. Despite all of Max's cultural insensitivity, creepiness, and douchebaggery, he seems like at least somewhat of a good person. I guess I have to criticize some of the viewers in this case. It was out of line for them to call him things like a pedophile. That said, criticizing youtube comments is one of the stupidest things anyone can ever do, and EIT is definitely far more in the right here.

The only completely innocent party in this story, however, is Coilhouse, and their role is without a doubt the most fascinating one to me, largely because I'm a blogger. It's amazing in this story to see the powerful role that a relatively small blog can have. Coilhouse linked to a website that they thought was funny, and as a result the website got shut down just two days later. It amazes me that a blog post can generate that much traffic and essentially slightly change the course of the internet in such a short amount of time. This makes me feel an incredible sense of power, and makes me want to be careful about what sites I link to, and who I make fun of. Coilhouse definitely gets more traffic than us, but they're still not an insanely popular blog by any means. And if one blog post by them can get an entire website shut down, think about what better power that can be used for. 

Anyway, feel free to chime in with who you think is in the right in this story. Also, EIT will probably be back up soon, so all is not lost.

Web Clips for 7/8/09

So did you hear about the Google Chrome OS?

And the soup of the day.

Yay, we can keep Pandora.

VLC (on of the best media players out there) finnaly hits 1.0!! Get it now.

Lulz of the Time

 

Be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting Decepticons.

Web Clips for 6/21/09

A project with the goal of making the internet less stupid.

That much forwarded double pic illusion. You know, the one that doesn't cite any sources. Still, it's a cool pic.

Some aggregated linux humor.

A little old but great article on why the airline industry is so fucked up. Sans Sienfeldian remarks (mostly).

Wiki of the Week: A million Penguins

This weeks wiki is an interesting perspective on the anyone-can-edit philosophy. "A Million Penguins" was a collaborative attempt by Penguin books to write a novel using a wiki.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be a really difficult task. There were major simultaneous issues with people making too many edits, and not enough people editing. Eventually the project stopped, with what was, at best, a novella. You can read it in a half hour or so, and it doesn't make much sense. Some view it as a sucess, most as a failure.

Either way, it certaintly changed the way a lot of people thought about collaboration and the internet.

A Million Penguins

and "A Million Penguins" from Wikipedia

It's Official, We're Official!

Hey all! Big milestone here at The Tartar Sauce. I finally got around to getting us a domain with email and everything! So if you go to www.thetartarsauce.com, it should bring you right to our home page!

Don't feel left out if you're already subscribed to our feed or already have us bookmarked though, within a few days (it can take up to 3 days to fully switch over), any link from thetartarsauce.blogspot.com will redirect to our new domain, and until then the blogspot address should still be fully functional.

All of our writers now have fancy "name@thetartarsauce.com" email addresses, and our new site address that you can use to email us tips, complains, suggestions, or whatever is tips@thetartarsauce.com! Of course, our old one still works, but as soon as I get our contact sidebar info up, why would you use it?

We also have a parent company now (since a company was required when I signed up the domain), Spreadable Media, which, at this point, is only exiting to me since it doesn't really exist yet or affect anything.

Thanks for your support in making this possible, you awesome readers you. Let's hope this is the beginning of something great. Domains are the fucking shit!

Lulz of the Time

 

Some classic Fail right here. I always get a kick out of this one. Click to enlarge.

Silly Impromptu Internet Uprisings. Also, Save Chuck!

It seems the fans of geeky, action-comedy series Chuck have taken to bombarding the "News From You" section of NBC (basically the editorial) with Chuck testimonials. NBC has been unclear as to whether or not there will be a third season of Chuck for some time now. The show has gathered a rather large cult following fairly quickly over its first two seasons, and, with the season finale recently released, well, just check out the recent posts:

There are hundreds of pages of this on the site, and I don't think it's going to end soon. If you haven't had a chance to see chuck, I highly reccomend you check it out. The show is really, really good. Very good dialog, funny, addictive (if not a little ridiculous) plot, good action, and quirky characters. If I had to compare it to something I'd say it's like a mix of Burn Notice (which I absolutely love) and The IT Crowd/ Big Bang Theory. If you're already a fan of chuck, why not post a testimonial? It certaintly couldn't hurt. You'll need a myNBC account to do it, but it's fairly straight forward. Anyways, good luck, Chuck!

Wiki of the Week: Wikirank

So this time it's not actually a wiki. But this is seriously cool. Like google trends for Wikipedia, Wikirank lets you see up to 90 days worth of page view history of wikipedia articles. Searching for something will give you its history, as well as an excerpt from the article, total views, and the ability to add other pages to your graph. There's also some nice, easy URL stuff you can do. For example, doing something like: http://wikirank.com/en/Superman,Batman will give you a graph of Superman and Batman hits. This is helpfull if you want to compare a bunch of different article's but don't want to have to manually put them in using the interface. In general the site is a really great jumping off point for browsing wikipedia, as thier front page contains information on what's being read now and what's getting popular. FWIW I'm also a fan of the site design.

I don't usually do this, but....

I've always been against wasting an entire post on a link to some stupid youtube video. But this is friggin' awesome. Just watch it.

http://thru-you.com/

Lulz of the Time

 

Try this in Firefox. It actually works, though it tailors the suggestions based on what you've searched before, so yours may be slightly different. Click. To....Enlarge.....

More Geeky/Random Web Clippings

I have a few (actually a lot) of my own to add:

 10 Video Games That Should Be Viewed As Modern Art

A History of Robot Vocals in Music

The Worst Song in the World

Weird Japanese Commercials Starring Oscar Nominees

One of the Weirdest, Most Fucked Up Extensions of Colonialism I've Ever Seen

A Synth on the Nintendo DS

Barack Obama Cursing

Did George W. Bush's Grandfather Steal Geronimo's Skull?

The Importance of Being Bilingual

One Reason I'm Nervous About Going to Japan

More Lulz of the Time

Substantive post coming soon. I promise. Click to enlarge (as if you're a fucking idiot. I don't know why, but I always have to let people know about thumbnails. I know it's 2009 and if you can't figure out how to enlarge a thumbnail then you probably don't deserve to see it, but I have this irattional fear that if I don't say, "click to enlarge" I'll get this huge flood of emails and people saying "OMG that pic is so small I can't see it" and I'll be arrested and if only I'd warned the public about thumbnails then none of this would have happened. Irrational I know, but I gotta do it, click to enlarge.)

Also on the picture, It doesn't make much sense, but I lol'd.

The Best of Songsmith

For those of you who don't know, Microsoft has recently released their own music production software, called Songsmith, in the hopes of competing with Apple's GarageBand. The thing is, Songsmith is really absolutely nothing like GarageBand. While GarageBand is your basic, standard music production software - very limited, but user-friendly and versatile enough for most people's purposes - Songsmith is way, way more limited than GarageBand and way, way less versatile. In fact, it really only does one thing. Granted, that one thing is something that GarageBand can't do. On GarageBand, I've recorded live performances, made mash-ups, constructed samples, remixed pop songs, and manipulated vocal tracks, but I haven't been able to sing into it and get it to automatically create a chord progression for me. That's exactly what Songsmith does. If you sing a melody into it, it automatically harmonizes it with software instruments for you. 

Now, you may be thinking to yourself, "Whoa! This software is really cool. I can't imagine anything wrong with it!" Well, you're wrong. As with all things that sound too good to be true, there's a catch. And the catch for Microsoft Songsmith is that all the backing tracks it generates are sickeningly cheesy. Like, something a little kid would want to listen to. Like, one of the demos from that $20 keyboard you had when you were 8 years old. Like, something that a pro wrestler who was trying to start a musical career recorded in the 1980s (or in some cases, the 1990s). Need proof? Just watch this ad for Songsmith. It might not make you want to buy the program, but it definitely will make you want to buy glow-in-the-dark towels.

Microsoft Songsmith Commercial

(Don't ask me why they're using a mac in the commercial. I was mislead into thinking this software was available for macs, but my hopes of creating horrible backing tracks to pop songs were crushed). 

As you can tell, this software is intended for people who have absolutely no experience with music performance, production, theory, or even listening. But pop culture junkies with too much time on their hands always recognize a good opportunity when they see one (just look at this blog for proof of that). A bunch of people have created videos on youtube where they put an acapella vocal track for a famous pop song into Songsmith and see what it generates for a backing track. The results are stunning, and here I present you with the cream of the crop:

1. Nirvana - In Bloom

Apparently, the music video for "In Bloom," the second song from Nirvana's famous album Nevermind, parodied old music shows from the 50s, and the backing track that Songsmith generated for "In Bloom" matches the 50s aesthetic perfectly. But it also does so much more. First of all, it had a hard time syncing the vocals to the backing track, so at times the vocals don't match the rhythm at all. Secondly, it shows you what a truly terrible singer Kurt Cobain was (Nirvana fans, don't pretend like you don't know it's true). With the wall of drums and distorted guitar stripped away, Kurt Cobain's voice is loud, clear, and painful.

2. Survivor - Eye Of The Tiger

This is one of the only instances in which the Songsmith backing track actually makes the vocals sound different. Songsmith generated a laid back, melancholy, Eagles-style backing track for "Eye of the Tiger," and it gives the lyrics entirely new meaning. When the lead singer declares, "Did my time, took my chances," and "Just a man and his will to survive," it sounds as if he's sitting somewhere, reminiscing about the days when he could have been great. Hmm... that sounds an awful lot like what the lead singer of Survivor is probably doing right now. Maybe Songsmith has the power to reveal hidden truths about songs... Let's watch another video to find out.

3. Oasis - Wonderwall

I take it back. Apparently, when Songsmith heard the angsty ballad "Wonderwall," it assumed that the vocals were meant to be played over happy hardcore. But is that really a bad thing? I'll just say that while I'm not a huge fan of Oasis, or angsty bands in general, if this version of "Wonderwall" came on at a rave, or while I was playing DDR, I'd probably dance to it.

If you liked that one, be sure to check out this ravealicious rendition of "Tom Sawyer" by Rush.

4. Ozzy Osbourne - Crazy Train

All aboard the polka train!!!!!! HAHAHAHA!!!!

Ever wonder what "Crazy Train" would sound like as a polka? Well now you can find out. Need I say more?

For a similar delight, listen to this bluegrass rendition of "White Wedding" by Billy Idol.

5. Marvin Gaye - I Heard It Through The Grapevine

Apparently, at one point Marvin Gaye was backed by a bunch of teenagers from the 90s.

6. The Police - Roxanne

Songsmith wisely chose to give "Roxanne" a Caribbean feel. Why wisely? Well, The Police became famous for shamelessly appropriating reggae, so calypso is just the next logical step, right?

Actually, I think that Songsmith butchered "Roxanne" more than any other one on here. Unlike all the other ones that I've mentioned (except for "Heard it Through the Grapevine"), "Roxanne" was a pretty good song to begin with, but that's only because Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland are both incredible musicians. When Songsmith took them away, they left us with the wannabe-Jamaican asshole Sting and what sounds like the house band for a Disney cruise ship.

7. Van Halen - Runnin' With The Devil

This is by far the best one on the list. Songsmith obviously hated David Lee Roth (rightly so), so they chose to have a lounge band back him. This rendition sounds like... well... David Lee Roth being backed by a lounge band. I really can't think of a funnier way to describe it. Just think of the loudest, most testosterone-filled lead singer in the entire genre of hair-metal being backed by a swingin' lounge band, and you have the idea. Or better yet, just watch the video. I promise you that by 0:45, you'll be on the floor with laughter.

So there you have it. I urge everyone who has Windows and loves destroying pop songs to immediately download the trial version of Songsmith and a bunch of acapella tracks and immediately post your creations to youtube.

You May Have Noticed, I am a Genius

As you may have noticed, I figured out how to create expandable post previews on selected posts (which Blogger does not allow and no current coding effort allows selectable previews). This is a feat others have only been able to dream of until now. I did it not through coding, I didn't find a tutorial, I didn't watch an instructional video, and I didn't douse myself in chemical X. I did it through simple ingenuity, creativity, and the immense power of my infinitely resourceful mind. Genius.

Actually I just used a different version of the the "about page" trick, same one I used for creating the about page at Brain Grains. Basically I created two posts, one post with the preview and link to the second post. The second post contains the actual article. You might notice once you go to the expanded article that it is dated September. I dated it back to keep it far from the front page, and arbitrarily chose September as the expanded page month. so actual full articles will all be dated September, which will be weird until the Blogger team gets off their googly asses and creates post previews for selected posts. In the meantime I can still keep track of the real post date by using the previews. So a little bit of strangeness in post dates, but whatever. It's simple, works well enough, looks good and I'm happy and will update the other posts with the new previews when I'm less lazy.

So there you go. Crisis averted. Genius. Well maybe not, but at least we have post previews now.

Lulz of the Time

WW2, the RTS. (lemme know if this .gif isn't working for you.)

Wiki of the Week: Galaxiki

Well, I''m going to ignore the fact that there hasn't been a "Wiki of the Week" in a few months now and go ahead and highlight a really creative use of a wiki, Galaxiki. Galaxiki is a fictional galaxy that anyone can add to or edit. You can get and create your own solar system, add planets and alien races. Network and have relations with other planets, and explore the galaxy with Google maps-like tools. There are so many things you can do. There's also some pretty robust social and community features to enhance collaboration between writers so that the galaxy can really have a thriving system and virtual economy. It's all pretty damn cool. Membership is free and you can get your own solar system and star to create your own races and history as you wish. It's like the most open rpg you'll ever play. Galaxiki on Wikipedia. Galaxiki Homepage.

Blogger Is A Piece Of Shit.

No really, it is. I promise. You might notice a few style changes happening around here. Most of them will be buggy. Some just plain won't work. Please excuse the shitty presentation while I sort things out. Why is blogger a piece of shit? Well among other things, what I've been trying to do for a bit is add post previews (aka "continue reading" links) to these wonderful, but longer posts we've been getting here lately. Unfortunately, blogger in all it's infinite wisdom, still doesn't have this simple feature, even though it's been requested over and over again for years now. If this were a wordpress blog it would be as simple as pressing a button, but nooooooo I had to mindlessly follow google and get a blogspot blog instead. So now I have to edit the template by hand and try to figure out what to do. My coding skills are mediocre at best, so bear with me during this construction time. In the meantime, if you're thinking of starting a blog of your own, might I suggest wordpress.com. It's got way more features than blogger. And the developers actually care about what features the bloggers want. Update: So as it turns out there is no way to add post previews in blogger without adding "continue reading" links to every single post, regardless of whether or not it actually has more content. Bull. Fucking. Shit. I may have to resort to more drastic measures and we're still doing some switch arounds with the interface, but just wanted to get that out there. Thanks again.