Gallimaufry

Thank you, Webster's Thesaurus.

It's amazing what incredibly random things you find when (1) you're at work, (2) you're tired of work, and (3) you have internet access. Hence the gallimaufry (i.e., odd mixture) of news items in today's entry, so I can save you the time that I wasted on my various quests for useless (but interesting!) information.

Colbert in Space

Last month, faux right-wing crazy man Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central's Colbert Report was working on extending his influence beyond the confines of Earth's atmosphere. As Colbert so often has done in his three-and-a-half year existence, he incited a grassroots internet movement to throw some downright hilarious monkey wrenches into an otherwise normal -- and comparatively boring -- event. (Think the South Carolina presidential primaries in 2008.)

NASA recently held an online poll open to the public that would decide the name of a new module to be constructed on the International Space Station. However, they got backed into a bit of a corner when, on Colbert's order, 230,539 write-in votes were placed to name the new module "Colbert", beating out the top NASA-sponsored name, "Serenity", by over 40,000 votes. Colbert's plea to the public:



Unfortunately, last week NASA announced that it wasn't cool enough to follow through on this, ignoring the masses and opting for "Serenity". Which is a shame. It's not like if you all wrote in "Josh Allen" on the ballot for the 2012 election, the government would just disregard it, right? Hint, hint...

Interesting fact: 70s rock band Cheap Trick composed and performed the Colbert Report theme song.

We're Spoiled Brats

I came across an interesting article in Newsweek today that brought up a good point: we're all "ego-addled spoiled brats." OK, not all of us. But, from the 50,000-foot view, yes, we are. And even up close, it's not hard to find. Parallel to the ever-growing and expanding housing/banking bubble that ballooned to huge proportions earlier this decade, the sense of materialism and "I deserve everything" attitude, described in the article as a "sense of economic privilege", grew just as large. An excerpt:

"No matter how you were raised, the handiest cure for narcissism used to be life. Whether through fate, circumstances or moral imperative, our culture kept hubris in check. Now, we encourage it. Pastors preach of a Jesus that wants us to be rich. The famously egocentric wide receiver Terrell Owens declares at a press conference that being labeled selfish is fine with him. Donald Trump names everything he owns after himself and calls his detractors 'losers.' ... But last I checked, most of our lives don't require all that attitude."

One of the few good things about this recession, the author points out, might be the diminishing sense of self-entitlement and even laziness that has plagued this "narcissism epidemic."

And as a scathingly humorous corollary, see this interview on Conan O'Brien where comedian Louis CK describes how easily disappointed we all are. Speaking of, why won't YouTube let me embed certain content? Never mind that I'm sitting in front of a little box that can perform billions of calculations per second and a 37" TV that shows me exactly what's going on in a basketball arena right now 600 miles away, I wanna put videos on my blog! *whine*

But that subject is kind of a downer...why don't we finish with something that involves, oh I don't know, slapping. Which is hilarious.

Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk

Guess what movie is in pre-production, scheduled for a 2010 release? That's, right, THE THREE STOOGES. And the cast?

Moe: Benicio Del Toro
Larry: Sean Penn
Curly: Jim Carrey

Now that's one fantastic idea.

Happy Earth Day, everyone.