September 8, 2012
Jody Christian (b. 1985), best known by his stage name RiFF RaFF, is an American rapper and performance artist from Houston. He is signed to the Mad Decent record label. He is best known for his initial associations with Soulja Boy, and being a member of the comedy super group Three Loco with Andy Milonakis and Simon Rex.
Riff Raff started his social media involvement as a rapper on Myspace, using the name ‘Kokayne Dawkinz.’ His first public appearance was not as a rapper, but as a contestant on the 2009 MTV reality show From ‘G’s to Gents’ (season 2). Though he was eliminated from series on the second episode, he used this exposure to publicize his career as a rapper. Two years later, he was said to be signed to the Soulja Boy’s Stacks on Deck Entertainment label in 2011, and added ‘SODMG’ to his name for a period. This was later said to be false in an interview by Soulja Boy.
Posted in Art, Humor, Money |
1 Comment »
August 29, 2012
A bubble pipe is a toy shaped like a tobacco pipe, intended to be used for blowing soap bubbles. Most bubble pipes are made of plastic and therefore cannot be used for actual smoking.
They are usually brightly colored, and sometimes feature fanciful designs including multiple bowls. Like candy cigarettes, bubble pipes allow children to imitate adult smokers. As concern over the harmful effects of tobacco smoke and the marketing of smoking products to children has risen, both have become considerably less popular.
Posted in Drugs, Games, Humor |
Leave a Comment »
August 27, 2012
Trash the dress, also known as ‘fearless bridal’ or ‘rock the frock,’ is a style of wedding photography that contrasts elegant clothing with an environment in which it is out of place. Usually brides decide to have pictures taken on a beach, but other locations include city streets, rooftops, garbage dumps, fields, and abandoned buildings.
Some sources claim that the trend was originally started in 2001 by Las Vegas wedding photographer John Michael Cooper. However, the idea of destroying a wedding dress has been used in Hollywood symbolically since at least 1998 when Meg Cummings of the show ‘Sunset Beach’ ran into the ocean in her wedding dress after her wedding was badly interrupted. It may be done as an additional shoot after the wedding, almost as a declaration that the wedding is done and the dress will not be used again. It is seen as an alternative to storing the dress away.
Posted in Art, Humor |
Leave a Comment »
August 23, 2012
The phrase, ‘proud member of the reality-based community‘ was first used in 2014 to suggest the commentator’s opinions are based more on observation than on faith, assumption, or ideology. Some commentators have gone as far as to suggest that there is an overarching conflict in society between the reality-based community and the ‘faith-based community’ as a whole. It can be seen as an example of political framing.
The source of the term is a quotation in ‘The New York Times Magazine’ by Ron Suskind, quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush (later attributed to Karl Rove): ‘The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ ‘…That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Posted in Humor, Language, Politics |
Leave a Comment »
August 23, 2012
Pocket dialing (also known as butt dialing) refers to the accidental placement of a phone call while a person’s mobile phone or cordless phone is in the owner’s pocket or handbag. If the caller remains unaware, the recipient will sometimes overhear whatever is happening in the caller’s vicinity. Typically, the call is caused by objects in a person’s pocket or bag poking buttons on the phone. Because of typical sequences of button presses, the accidentally dialed number is often one that has been recently called from that phone, or one near the beginning or end of the phone’s contact list; a consequence of this is that people whose names begin with letters near the beginning or the end of the alphabet sometimes receive more accidental calls.
The keypad lock feature found on most mobile phones is intended to help prevent accidental dialing. However, it is still possible to forget to activate this lock (if the phone does not automatically activate it after a timeout), or to deactivate it accidentally. Many phones allow the emergency number to be called even when the keylock is active. In addition to the inconvenience and embarrassment that may result from an erroneously dialed number, the phenomenon can have other consequences including using up a phone user’s airtime minutes. Apps to prevent pocket dialing exist for smartphones. Several are available for Android based phones such as Call Confirm.
Posted in Humor, Language, Technology |
1 Comment »
August 22, 2012
The Redneck Games are held in East Dublin, Georgia annually. The games were started by the general manager of WQZY, Mac Davis, in response to a comment made by the media; that when the 1996 Olympic Games went to Atlanta, it would be held by a group of rednecks. Taking offense to this, Davis and some locals set up the annual Redneck Games to reinforce the stereotype the media held. In 2001, Drew Scott of Wild Country 96.5 ‘borrowed’ the games to set up a fundraising event for the Franklin County NY Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Some events that are held during the Redneck Games include: The cigarette flip; Bobbing for pig’s trotters; Seed spitting; Toilet seat throwing; Mud pit belly flop; Big-hair contest; Wet T-shirt contest; Armpit serenade; Bug zapping by spitball; Dumpster diving; and Hubcap hurling. For each of the events, a trophy is awarded: a half crushed, empty mounted beer can. The Minto Canadian Redneck Games in Minto, Ontario started in 2006. Events include: Mud Pit Slip & Slide; Bobbin’ for Pig’s Feet; Mud Pit Tug-of-War; Mud Pit Belly Flop Contest; Redneck Horseshoes; Hubcap Hurl; and Mud Pit Volleyball.
Posted in Games, Humor, Money |
Leave a Comment »
August 22, 2012
Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is an American reality series that debuted on TLC in 2012. It is a spinoff of ‘Toddlers & Tiaras,’ based around T&T contestant Alana ‘Honey Boo Boo’ Thompson and her family, who reside in rural McIntyre, Georgia. The series follows the Thompsons, focusing on the daily interactions between the family members and mother June’s attempts to enter Alana into beauty pageants. Other focal points in the series are the teen pregnancy of eldest daughter Anna, Jessica’s attempts to lose weight, as well as visits to the Redneck Games and auctions.
The ‘A.V. Club’ called the first episodes a ‘horror story posing as a reality television program,’ with others worrying about potential child exploitation. A reviewer for ‘Forbes’ criticized TLC as trying to ‘portray Alana’s family as a horde of lice-picking, lard-eating, nose-thumbing hooligans south of the Mason-Dixon line,’ stating that ‘it falls flat, because there’s no true dysfunction here, save for the beauty pageant stuff.’ ‘The Guardian’ also criticized the attempt to portray the Thompsons as something to ‘point and snicker at,’ saying, ‘none of the women or girls who participate in the show seems to hate themselves for their poverty, their weight, their less-than-urbane lifestyle, or the ways in which they diverge from the socially-acceptable beauty standard.’
Posted in Games, Humor, Money |
Leave a Comment »
August 22, 2012
The Mindset List is an annual compilation of the values that shape the worldview (or ‘mindset’) of students about 18 years old and entering college and, to a lesser extent, adulthood. It is co-authored by Ron Nief, ‘Public Affairs’ Director Emeritus, and Tom McBride, Professor of English and Keefer Professor of Humanities, both at Beloit College in Wisconsin.
It originated in 1997 as an e-mail forward, without author credits, passed on by then College Statistician Richard Miller to Ron Nief, who passed it on to peers at other schools. The first Beloit-created Mindset List appeared in the fall of 1998 after requests from peers who mistook the forward as having originated with Nief. It now appears every August as American first-year students enter college.
Posted in Education, Humor, Language |
Leave a Comment »
August 10, 2012
Yoyodyne is a fictitious defense contractor introduced in Thomas Pynchon’s ‘V.’ (1963) and featured prominently in his novel ‘The Crying of Lot 49’ (1966). Described in the latter book as ‘a giant of the aerospace industry,’ Yoyodyne was founded by World War II veteran Clayton ‘Bloody’ Chiclitz. The company has a large manufacturing plant in the fictional town of San Narciso, California.
The name is reminiscent of several real high-tech companies, including Teledyne, Teradyne, which was founded a few years before Pynchon wrote ‘The Crying of Lot 49,’ and Rocketdyne, an aerospace company that manufactured, among other things, propulsion systems. The ‘dyne’ is the standard unit of force in the centimeter-gram-second system of units (largely obsolete but still widely recognized), derived from the Greek word dynamis meaning ‘power’ or ‘force.’
read more »
Posted in Humor, Money, War |
Leave a Comment »
August 10, 2012
Thomas Pynchon [pin-chuhn] (b. 1937) is an American novelist. A MacArthur Fellow, he is noted for his dense and complex novels. Both his fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, styles, and themes, including (but not limited to) the fields of history, science, and mathematics. For his most praised novel, ‘Gravity’s Rainbow,’ Pynchon won the 1974 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction (which he declined).
After publishing several short stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he began composing the novels for which he is best known: ‘V.’ (1963), ‘The Crying of Lot 49’ (1966), ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ (1973), and ‘Mason & Dixon’ (1997). Pynchon is also known for being very private; very few photographs of him have ever been published, and rumors about his location and identity have circulated since the 1960s.
read more »
Posted in Art, Humor, Language |
Leave a Comment »
August 10, 2012
Gravity’s Rainbow is a 1973 book written by Thomas Pynchon; it is his third and most celebrated novel. The narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military, and, in particular, the quest undertaken by several characters to uncover the secret of a mysterious device named the ‘Schwarzgerät’ (‘black device’) that is to be installed in a rocket with the serial number ‘00000.’
Gravity’s Rainbow is transgressive, as it questions and inverts social standards of deviance and disgust and transgresses boundaries of Western culture and reason.
read more »
Posted in Humor, Language, War |
1 Comment »
August 6, 2012
Survival Research Laboratories (SRL) is a machine performance art group credited for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine performance. After about 30 years in San Francisco, SRL spent most of 2008 moving 40 miles north to Petaluma. Since its inception in 1978 SRL has operated as an organization of creative technicians and technical creatives dedicated to redirecting the techniques, tools, and tenets of industry, science, and the military away from their typical manifestations in practicality, product or warfare.
Since 1979, SRL has staged over 45 mechanized presentations in the United States and Europe. Each performance consists of a unique set of ritualized interactions between machines, robots, and special-effects devices, employed in developing themes of socio-political satire. Humans are present only as audience or operators.
read more »
Posted in Art, Humor, Technology |
Leave a Comment »
The Daily Omnivore 