Misunderstood Genius

Greta “The Fallopian” Webcastico was ahead of her time. Not only was she the finest beach accordionist in the tri-state area, Greta was the first composer to create music designed to be played in counterpoint to the dulcet tones of molting seagulls eager to eat your French Fries.

The truth was, Greta was the ONLY beach accordionist in the tri-state area. That said, Arnold Schoenberg was intrigued by her ideas and incorporated them into his 12-tone masterpiece, “Variations on the Key of Bleeding Ears.”

Time her of ahead

Jenny Buxom was also a forward-thinking beach babe. Nobody was sure if her claims that she had been to the Land of the Future was eccentric whimsy, or if her radioactive bikini (which she’d picked up for a song at the Atoll-must-go sale) was causing a her synapses to misfire.

Whimsy or not, she was serious about any prospective beaux putting on “the suit” before hanky-panky.

She called it safe sex.

Dieter called it delectable. Particularly when she stood on his air hose.

Humor-blogs.com and alltop are both ahead of their time. Thanks to Foxtongue for finding these pics.

[From the Toulouse Le Grandfig Necrobiblia collection]

This edition has it all — fractured fairy tales, musical numbers, and zombies! Say, did you want brains with that?

Apparently, The Skwib has been skewing State-side, so Ann Winter at Mythshifter has put together this brilliant Folkrap, remix: Mollie Whuppie as Tony Blair to help get more UK in our yuks.

It is winter. Some of us are doing our taxes. And Madeleine Begun Kane wonders if only the peons have to pay them. On this topic, Super Saver has some great ideas for How President Obama Can Help Pay for the Stimulus Plan.

Hmm. Perhaps Mythshifter is correct, and The Skwib is a little too biased to US news. Here is an important PSA from Canadian Fermentation explaining the Canadian hockey fight (using amoebas to demonstrate.)

In tech news, Beth has this important development: Toilet Paper goes digital .

You may have missed the recent zombie-related happenings. Tim Abbott presents That is So Wrong!, in which he reinvents several classics with zombies.

David Aulick explains that Chris Brown Thought Rihanna Was A Zombie..

In US politics — there’s that Yankee bias again — Alexander Woods presents Barack Obama: Hopeless, Reckless, and Jacketless, and DWSUWF presents State of the Union – The Musical! “Chicago” Edition.

Christopher Khawand brings this note of concern to our attention: Mounting Dish Crisis Causes a Stink.

Joshua Payne has more worrying news about the Wiki-pocalypse! .

And in our non-satire slot, Heather B Jones tells all about Las Vegas in the Dance Of The Table Vulture.

And that’s it for the 111th edition. Thanks to these fine folks for helping us with webby-stuff: the Blog Carnival for their form; and the listings at the Ubercarnival, Ferdy’s permanent floating ping festival, and for the listings at the Blog Carnival too. Also, you may find some satire here if you poke around a bit. Here too. Thanks to Nickel Media for the fast food zombie and to Darth Abraham for the instructional poster.

Though they outsold the proto-fascist jazz stylings of The Pillage People four-to-one, the Über-Musik Boys never quite managed to make the big time. Even though they started the whole Lederhosen Thrash scene, most of them had to take on menial jobs milking goats and persecuting small animals to make ends meet.

Young Adolf, in particular, was embittered.

Some members of Alltop and humor-blogs.com are also bitter about their standings. Thanks to Foxtongue for finding this pic.

[From the Toulouse Le Grandfig Necrobiblia collection.]

You may not be aware that Fancy (born Manfred Alois Perilano), was a popular Euro-dance, Synth-Dance artiste in the mid-to-late 80s. You may not be aware that Euro-dance, Synth-Dance were once popular forms of musical expression. I certainly wasn’t until my eyes were assaulted by this cover and I just had to know if it was a hoax or not.

Not. This is from Fancy’s 1987 single, “Raving Queen”. (This is the ‘turbo dancer remix”, which caused at least a dozen pelvic explosions at the 1987 Euro-Dance and Eyeliner Expo, held in the UK for the first time, at Tightee-on-Whity, Kent.)

By all accounts, Fancy had a very successful music career in the 80s, topping the dance billboard charts with such hits as “Slice Me Nice”, “China Blue”, and of course, “Raving Queen” (not to be confused with his 1986 single, “Mincing Pansy.”)

This all came to a screeching halt when he tried to export his trademark rhythms and sound to the NFL in a stupendously misjudged cross-promotion he organized with the Detroit Lions. (Which were 1-6 in the mid-point of the season, and desperate for any kind of boost in fan interest.) Fancy played as a wide receiver for an astonishing 25 seconds in the first quarter. (Vegas bookies were giving 5-1 odds that he would be killed in his first play.)

In his second play, he managed to get open, and catch the ball. Unfortunately, he could not hold onto it when safety Bill Bates tackled him, breaking Fancy into several pieces. The fans were electrified! And the Detroit Lions went on to win the game 27-17.

Fancy pieces were surgically reattached, but alas, the equipment never worked the same; he did, however, recover his muse late in 1988, leading him to write “Fools Cry”, “All My Loving/Running Man” and “Limp Noodle.”

You may find more Excruciating Album Cover Art here. Alltop and humor-blogs.com are also somewhat painful. Fancy’s website here, and the more factual wiki entry is here.

This is one that has been festering for some time, so please forgive the Phrase Freak if he goes “off the Bale” a bit. Like many changes to the English language, the meaning of this word has become twisted. Once, it defined something that was done without a method or choice, something determined by chance.

It did not mean something unexpected, strange, improvised, capricious, absurd, and cheese-eating monkeys flying out of my butt. (See that last one was absurd, a non sequitur for sure, but it was not random, even if it might have seemed that way to you.)

Now the Great Beast (Facebook) has slouched its way into the Bethlehem of my daily routine with an epidemic of lists (which by their nature tend to be the opposite of random) giving me supposedly “random” facts about the people I love and admire. Many of these people are incredibly literate. Way smarter than me. Yet they have fallen under the sway of the googly-eyed siren that spawned the phrase, “that’s, like, so totally random.”

It is easy to mistake great complexity or subtlety for randomness. I’d be willing to bet that most of those lists are:

• carefully chosen
• written to achieve a specific effect
• tomato paste.

I’m afraid this usage gets eight gobsmacks out of ten. We’re on full alert now people!

Other freakish phrases:

Shovel Ready | specific timetable | full patch | IED | on the ground

You can check the definition of random yourself. Yardsitck! Alltop and humor-blogs.com lack of coherence should not be considered random either.

Few scientists have done as much as Professor Trevor Cox, University of Salford (Manchester, UK) in helping us understand which sounds are really, really bad. So, his work is key to bringing you another Full-on, Aural Assault Wednesday.

Several years ago, he did some groundbreaking work in a study he called, “The search for the worst sound in the world.”

Topping the list were:
1. Vomiting
2. Microphone feedback
3. Multiple babies crying
4. Scraping of train wheels
5. Seesaw squeaking
6. Violin (played badly)
7. Flatulence
8. One baby crying
9. Soap opera argument
10. Electricity hum

Somewhere on the list was the sound of a Tasmanian Devil. I would definitely put it in the top five, probably just below multiple babies crying and above the train wheels squeaking. Lest you think I am making this up, here is a sample [mp3]:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Yeah? Yeah?

Now you have a chance to help Professor Cox with his latest experiment — to see which whoopee cushion noise is most amusing. You can go to his Sounds Funny site to give it a go (and you can donate to Red Nose Day, for Comic Relief). Before doing this, you may want to check out this video which will give you some important scientific background in understanding the critical whoopee cushion equations [YouTube]:

Read more on the painful sounds study at ABC. Alltop and humor-blogs.com are music to anyone’s ears. Thanks to Boonie for the Tasmanian Devil pic.

Karl Wangsness had decided to honor his Norwegian heritage by having his own version of a Viking Funeral.

The car was an admirable substitution for a longship, and he was able to fit enough food in there to see him through the journey to Valhalla. He’d also managed to procure a canister of Bovril and a large can of mead, so he was covered for drinks.

Naturally, he wanted to take his wife with him, but she refused to be buried alive.

That made the two gallons of lubricant kind of superfluous, so he just left it on the sidewalk.

Happy Family Day Ontario! Alltop and humor-blogs.com are a form of social web lubricant.

[From the Toulouse Le Grandfig Necrobiblia collection.]

The year is 1952.

After discovering the patent for Michael Flannigan’s infamous “Mammary Sympathizer” in a back issue of 19th Century Inventions That Could Have Been Less Offensive, early Emily Chesley enthusiasts Barry Tickson and Orson Flatbread (both citizens of Wetting-the-Bed-on-Surrey) decided to recreate this invention to celebrate their love for their long-suffering wives. It will be a Valentine’s Day gift to remember.

Because they both love their wives so much, they decide to increase the scale a hundred-fold, producing a Mammary Sympathizer ten times the size of that originally imagined by its inventor.

On the day of the test trials, high winds precluded a successful assessment, though Barry Tickson did achieve a new record for highest elevation in gas-bag-human flight.

Not that he ever got to collect the prize.

[From the Toulouse Le Grandfig Necrobiblia Collection]

Alltop and humor-blogs.com also love their spouses.

Feeling low? Not enough hair on your face? Well, get hirsute and happy by de-evolving!

Yes, Charles Darwin [wiki] was born 200 years ago today, and though it took him a few years to make waves, we’re celebrating his birth by getting in touch with our inner ape.

You can too! Or perhaps you’d rather check out Darwin’s Lost Powerpoint Slides.

*Hair may be more “blond”.

Alltop and humor-blogs.com are also damned dirty apes.

I’ve noticed that quite a few bloggers do this “Wordless Wednesday” thing, in which you get a picture to caption, or a video of a mime reenacting the night that Madame Curie discovered she could make her sex toys glow. Not to be outdone, The Skwib is instituting “Full-on Aural Assault” Wednesdays.

This first entry is from composers Vitaly Komar, Alex Melamid and David Soldier, who decided to create the worst song ever. You got it, they did extensive research, and composed a tune that includes all the things we hate when it comes to music. What do we hate? Such musical bête noires as:

• ferocious banjo playing
• Chinese children’s choruses
• harp glissandos
• thundering pipe organ solos
• oompah-ing tubas
• screaming bagpipes.

I’m a little upset about that last one. If you’re about to charge into battle with a claymore, wearing nothing but a dodgy skirt and woad-painted nipples, screaming bagpipes are just the trick. However, if you’ve just enjoyed an evening of fine single malt whiskey and haggis, the last thing you want to hear is a selection of reels and jigs played on a bagpipe. Especially in an enclosed room. Bagpipes are best heard at a distance. (The minimum I’d suggest is 100 yards.)

That said, the composers have done a remarkable job of trying to offend everyone with their creation. They claim that ” fewer than 200 individuals of the world’s total population will enjoy” their music.

So, for our first “Full-on Aural Assault Wednesday” I can think of no better noise than The Most Unwanted Song.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

You can read more about the demented composers at Wired, or their own website. Alltop is a ferocious banjo, and humor-blogs.com is an angry tuba.