Tag Archives: WeirdAl

Links: Y2K10, Reading on the Rise, Bogus Forwards & Nature Trail to Hell

  • SpamAssassin has been marking mail from 2010 as “grossly in the future.” It’s been fixed in the beta for months, but they issued an emergency update over the holiday. Of course, if they’d done the test by using math instead of pattern matching, it wouldn’t have been an issue in the first place. (via @pobox)
  • Droid Week highlights Twidroid Pro. I’ll second the recommendation — I’ve tried lots of Twitter clients for Android, and I keep coming back.
  • Uh oh.  I thought this hiking trail was supposed to be safe. on Twitpic“Weird Al” Yankovic finds a disturbing sign on a hiking trail.
  • It turns out that in the digital age, the average American reads three times as many words today as thirty years ago. (via This Is True)
  • Medal of Honor recipient Ed Freeman has been co-opted by a political disinformation campaign. Remember: any time you receive a political email that asks you to forward it to everyone you know, check the facts first!

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Starting the Week with Weird Al

My iPod ran down its charge over the weekend, and I had to plug in the car charger this morning and start over at the beginning of a playlist. I usually leave it on shuffle on a reaaaaaally long list so I get lots of different songs.

AlapaloozaIt started up with “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Bohemian Polka,” which was a fun, off-kilter start to the week. When it followed up with “Jurassic Park,” I didn’t think much of it. Twofers by artist, and even by album, aren’t that uncommon.

When “Living in the Fridge” started up, I got a little suspicious.

Sure enough, when I stopped the car and checked, shuffle was set to “off.” I figure the playlist must have been sorted by album the last time I synced, with Alapalooza the first on the list.

I’m still not sure whether it switched off shuffle when the battery ran down, or I just had it off before and didn’t notice because the last playlist I was listening to was pre-shuffled. Still, it was — appropriately — weird.

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Download? Don’t Download?

How appropriate! You can download “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Don’t Download This Song” for free. (via @amazonmp3) #

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The Thirteenth

  • It’s not off to a great start, but heres hoping today is less frustrating than yesterday. #
  • Was hoping for more than 30% chance of rain, esp. the way TV news was going on last night w/LIVE DOPPLER 2000! Where’s that “Weird Al” Yankovic vid? #
  • Appropriate. Today’s Word of the Day is triskaidekaphobia. #
  • Slowest Patch Tuesday update ever. Of course that’s partly because Norton decided to run a full scan DURING the update. #
  • Patches did eventually finish, but it took >1.5 hours to install them. Usually if I start it before lunch, it’s done when I get back. #
  • Someone searching for “old photos of shoreline village long beach” hit this photo…taken last week. Oops. #

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Twidroid Update & Skipper Dan

"Weird Al" Yankovic: Internet Leaks

Woo Hoo! Twidroid’s tweet button is back! #

“Weird Al” Yankovic’s song “Skipper Dan” has been stuck in my head on-and-off all weekend. Living near Disneyland makes it that much more funny. # And did I mention there’s a video?

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Open Video, Watch Spam, Weird Al

  • @openvideo requests:

    Help open video spread at SXSW— check out our proposals, vote for them, and tell your open video amigos #

  • Via @lol_spam:

    Spam subject: “With our watches precious minutes will go slower.” So it’s a selling point that they don’t keep time correctly? #

  • Aha! My $6 of Amazon MP3 Store credit lines up perfectly w/ Weird Al Yankovic’s $5.99 “Internet Leaks” EP! #

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Follow Friday: Weird, Space and Funny

It’s #FollowFriday! For science/astronomy news: @BadAstronomer. For weird news in general: @ThisIsTrue. For Weird: @AlYankovic. #

Also, I’ve spun my funny spam quotes off into @lol_spam. #

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Deep Fried WHAT???? A Night at the Fair with Al’s Brain, Melissa Etheridge and a Ferris Wheel

We went to the Orange County Fair on Saturday afternoon. Most years we end up going to at least one of the Pacific Amphitheater’s summer concert series, which includes fair admission, so we just combine it into one trip. This year it was Melissa Etheridge, and we also had another goal: Al’s Brain.

We started by grabbing some water and (in my case) a chocolate milkshake (because I wanted some ice cream, dangit! and drinkable made it easier), then wandered through the arts and crafts displays, where they showed prize-winning jewelry, crochet, display models, dresses, origami, etc.

Al’s Brain

Then we made our way to the back of the fair, where they had set up a portable theater for Al’s Brain (in 3-D!). There was a huge sand sculpture out front of “Weird Al” Yankovic holding out a brain in his hand. An animated question mark and exclamation point would occasionally pop out the top of his head, and smoke would pour from his ears.

“Weird Al” has actually had a long association with the Orange County Fair, often doing free concerts on multiple nights during the run. We’ve seen him there at least twice, possibly three times. One year there was a “Weird Al” museum of sorts. This year, he got involved in a short 3-D educational film (comedic, of course) about the brain.

Continue reading

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iPod on Random

Caught “Weird Al” Yankovic’s song, “She Drives Like Crazy” — appropriately enough, while on the freeway. I never used to understand why he did the funny voices in the song, until I remembered the Muppets music video of the original song (“She Drives Me Crazy”), with Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog…and suddenly the voices clicked into place.

It’s odd that the intro on the title track to “The Phantom of the Opera” (the Andrew Lloyd Webber show) sounds so much like the MIDI file I found in the mid-1990s. I don’t know if that’s a comment on the quality of my old sound card, or a comment on how many synthesizers were used in the original recording. Either way, whoever sequenced that MIDI file got the timing exactly right.

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Best random song pairing ever

The following two “Weird Al” Yankovic songs popped up sequentially on the iPod the other day:

  • “I Love Rocky Road” (based on Joan Jett’s version of “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll,” and all about ice cream.)
  • “Cavity Search” (it’s about going to the dentist—U2′s “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” is turned into “Numb me, drill me, floss me, bill me.”)

Sometimes random shuffle makes you wonder whether the software knows more about the songs than what’s in the ID3 tag.

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