Everything is Interesting
Alex Pardee (b. 1976) is a freelance artist and writer born in California. He runs the website EyeSuck Ink. Through his art he has admitted to overcoming depression and anxiety disorders along with emotional struggles.
He uses pens, ink, watercolors, dye, acrylics, oils, and latex. Pardee’s influences include 1980s horror movies, pop art, graffiti and gangster rap.
Randy Marsh is a character on the US TV show, ‘South Park.’ His name is derived from series co-creator Trey Parker’s father, and Parker describes Randy as ‘the biggest dingbat in the entire show.’ Randy is voiced by Parker.
The show established Randy and his wife Sharon as being a couple as young adults during the flower power era. Their marriage has not been without its frequent arguments, which are usually instigated when Sharon is annoyed, ashamed, or disgusted by Randy’s eccentricities. The two even once went through a brief divorce. After quickly entering a new relationship, Sharon realized how much she was still in love with Randy, and the two promptly reconciled. Randy and Sharon tend to showcase liberal viewpoints, having protested the 2003 invasion of Iraq and supported Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential race.
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Creed Bratton (b. 1943) is an American actor and musician best known for playing a fictional version of himself on the American adaptation of ‘The Office.’ Born William Charles Schneider, he grew up in a small California town near Yosemite National Park.
His grandparents, mother, and father were musicians, and he took a liking to music at a very early age. He became a professional musician during his high school and college years. He decided to try life as a traveling musician and made his way on a global excursion, during which he changed his name to Creed Bratton. He traveled through Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Appearing with his group the ‘Young Californians,’ he played guitar at a large folk festival in Israel.
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Richard Frank Oznowicz (b. 1944) , better known as Frank Oz is an American film director and puppeteer who is known for creating and performing the characters Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, and Animal in ‘The Muppet Show’ and for directing films, including the 1986 ‘Little Shop Of Horrors’ remake and ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.’ He is also the operator and voice of Yoda in the Star Wars series, as well as Grover, Cookie Monster, Sam Eagle, and Bert on Sesame Street.
In addition to performing a variety of characters, Oz has been one of the primary collaborators responsible for the development of the Muppets over the last 30 years. His puppetry work spans from 1963 to the present, though he has retired from the Muppets. His Muppets were taken over by Eric Jacobson, though Oz still performs his characters on occasion. He also worked with the puppets on the movie Labyrinth, starring David Bowie.
A doodle is an unfocused drawing made while a person’s attention is otherwise occupied. They are simple drawings that can have concrete representational meaning or may just be abstract shapes.
Doodling can aid a person’s memory by expending just enough energy to keep one from daydreaming, which demands a lot of the brain’s processing power, as well as from not paying attention. Thus, it acts as a mediator between the spectrum of thinking too much or thinking too little and helps focus on the current situation.
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RTMark is an activist collective that attempts to subverts the ‘Corporate Shield’ protecting US corporations.
The name is derived from ‘Registered Trademark.’ RTMark claimed as its first prank the ‘Barbie Liberation Organization,’ in which the voiceboxes of talking Barbie and G.I. Joe toys were swapped, and the toys then returned to the store (1993).
An adult prom is a social event that is almost perfectly similar to a high school prom in terms of themes and attire, except that adult proms usually serve alcohol, and most require those attending to be at least 21 years of age to attend. They have become increasingly common, especially in the United States, and usually are hosted as fundraisers for charities.
A slightly different take on the adult prom is that of the disabilities prom, dedicated to providing a prom experience to disabled adults at no charge to the attendees. These events are most often organized by non-profit organizations focusing on the disabled, or large churches.
Wear Sunscreen is the common name of an essay titled ‘Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young’ written by Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich, and published in 1997, but often erroneously attributed to a commencement speech by author Kurt Vonnegut.
Both its subject and tone are similar to the 1927 poem ‘Desiderata.’ The most popular and well-known form of the essay is the music single ‘Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen),’ released in 1998, by Baz Luhrmann.
Malicious compliance is the behavior of a person who intentionally inflicts harm by strictly following the orders of management or following legal compulsions, knowing that compliance with the orders will cause a loss of some form resulting in damage to the manager’s business or reputation, or a loss to an employee or subordinate. In effect, it is a form of sabotage used to harm leadership or used by leadership to harm subordinates.
Work-to-rule is the expression of malicious compliance as an industrial action, in which rules are deliberately followed to the letter in an attempt to reduce employee productivity.
The chupacabra (literally ‘goat sucker’) is a legendary cryptid rumored to inhabit parts of the Americas. The name comes from the animal’s reported habit of attacking and drinking the blood of livestock, especially goats.
The most common description of chupacabras is a reptile-like being, appearing to have leathery or scaly greenish-gray skin and sharp spines or quills running down its back. Approximately 3 to 4 feet (1 to 1.2 m) high, it stands and hops in a similar fashion to a kangaroo.
Dan Hicks (b. 1941) is an American singer-songwriter working at the intersection of cowboy folk, jazz, country, swing, bluegrass, pop, and gypsy music. His songs are frequently infused with humor, as evidenced by the title of his tune, ‘How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away?’ Taking up the guitar in 1959, he became part of the San Francisco folk music scene, performing at local coffeehouses. Hicks joined the San Francisco band The Charlatans in 1965 as drummer.
In 1968, Hicks formed Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, whose fourth album, 1973’s Last Train to Hicksville, gained the group critical and popular acclaim. Thus, it was a great surprise to many when he chose that moment to disband the Hot Licks. Asked why in 1974, he said, ‘I’m basically a loner… I like singing and stuff, but I didn’t necessarily want to be a bandleader. The thing had turned into a collective sort of thing — democracy, vote on this, do that. I conceived the thing. They wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for me. My role as leader started diminishing, but it was my fault because I let it happen; I cared less as the thing went on.’
The Texas sharpshooter fallacy is a logical fallacy in which information that has no relationship is interpreted or manipulated until it appears to have meaning. The name comes from a joke about a Texan who fires some shots at the side of a barn, then paints a target centered on the biggest cluster of hits and claims to be a sharpshooter.
The fallacy does not apply if one had a prior expectation of the particular relationship in question before examining the data. It is related to the clustering illusion, which refers to the tendency in human cognition to interpret patterns in randomness where none actually exist.
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