Quote of the Week: All-You-Can-Eat

“You are paying for the caliber of the dining experience not to have a contest to see how expensive you can make it for the resturant to serve you.”
- I Foody, posted on a metafilter thread about all-you-can-eat restaurants.

Newswire: Farrah Fawcett's Coffin To Feature Erect Nipples

This just in from the New Yuk Times: Farrah Fawcett's Coffin To Feature Erect Nipples

The Poster Child For Interracial Marriage: Seal and Heidi Klum

I think, if there was a foundation for interracial marriages between African-Americans and Caucasians, Seal and Heidi Klum would be the spokescouple. Because I can’t think of a blacker man than Seal or a whiter woman than Heidi Klum. Unless you paired up Desmond Tutu and Paris Hilton. Okay, I can come up with a more mismatched couple, but really they’re unlikely to happen. Whenever I see a photo of Seal and Heidi Klum together, it’s like a Photoshopped picture for Mad Magazine or something. And it's awesome. I hesitate to call any celebrity marriage a good one, since we never know what goes on behind closed doors, but it's hard for me to read this article about them from the Daily Mail without thinking "Awww." I mean, Seal claims he became more in love with Heidi after he found out she was pregnant with another man's baby. And Heidi calls Seal "Schatzi," a German word similar to "sweetie." And Heidi openly admits she was first attracted to him because she saw him in tight shorts.

List of the Week: Action Heroes Named "John"

It's a tradition in movies to give action heroes the first name "John." Here are some of the most famous examples.

John McLane – Die Hard
John Rambo – First Blood
John Shaft – Shaft
John Connor – Terminator 3

News Nuggets

NATIONAL

The transition from analog to digital television was achieved successfully. However, more than two million households in the United States were unready for the transition to digital television. In other news, more than two million households in the United States are full of idiots.

INTERNATIONAL

An Air France jet crashed into the Atlantic. Experts believe the airplane crashed when it surrendered to the weather conditions.

In Pakistan, public opinion is starting to turn against the Taliban. For some reason, the stonings, car bombings, and burqas have been somewhat of a turn-off.

Venezuela banned Coke Zero, called it a "danger to health." Apparently, it's considered dangerous in Venezuela to sell a drink that has zero cocaine in it.

ENTERTAINMENT

Chastity Bono announced that she plans to get a sex change operation. One benefit? After the operation, she'll be able to sing a duet of "I've Got You, Babe" with herself.

The Anne Frank museum announced plans to display her actual diaries. The biggest surprise to visitors? They were written on pink notepaper with glitter ink.

SCIENCE

The next Space Shuttle crew is ready for launch, and includes a singer. The crew will be filming the first episode of "Intergalactic Idol." The crew's next order of business will be to find evidence of life in Paula Abdul's music career.

The World Health Organization officially upgraded Swine flu to a pandemic, the first in 41 years. In response, Congress tried to pass a law that would help prepare the country for a swine flu epidemic. However, some members of Congress blocked the bill, because it was full of pork.

Japan's first lunar probe has ended its mission. The mission is considered a success, despite the fact that they couldn't find any big-eyed, big-headed women with purple hair and cat ears. The lunar probe transformed into a giant robot and flew home.

See you next Tuesday.

Top 10 Monkey Migraine Posts for May 2009

I have a counter for this blog, and I thought it was interesting to see what the top ten posts are and what they mean. Let’s break it down.

1. Yellow Fever: Guys Who Like Asian Women: This is the most popular post on the blog, and has been for a few months now. I guess a lot of guys and gals are interested in the “Yellow Fever” phenomenon. I still think guys with yellow fever get a bad rap. Asian women are beautiful. What’s wrong with that? Although I thought the Onion’s article, “Asian Teen Has Sweaty, Middle-Aged Man Fetish” puts a nice spin on it.
2. Fat Old Man: Darth Vader Unleashed - Although I pride myself on my writing, there’s no denying from the statistics that the vast majority of my blog’s traffic comes from Google Images. For example, this one image of Darth Vader gets me tons of traffic. I think that is a pretty good post. And a good action figure.
3. Pussycat Dolls Are Strippers - From the keyword descriptions, it seems a lot of people stumble onto this post looking for information on whether the Pussycat Dolls were really strippers. I think that’s a sad sign of how far the fraud of the Pussycat Dolls has come. Let me spell it out. The Pussycat Dolls were literally a bunch of strippers (oh, sorry, “burlesque dancers”) that somebody decided to turn into a musical group. Only one (later two) of them could actually sing, but that was enough to get things started. They “remade” (I call it borderline theft) a song that was already a hit from another musician, stole their Girl Power attitude from the Spice Girls, shook their booties in cameras’ faces, and made it big. Anything else is just window dressing. To me, the Pussycat Dolls are the essence of everything that’s wrong with today’s image-obsessed MTV pop music culture. And right now, somewhere in the United States, a truly gifted group of singers and musicians who are only mildly attractive can’t even get a record executive to look twice at them.
4. Destroy Humanity: Pandemic Game - Honestly, I want to delete this post, because it’s the kind of post I hate – a post that just points somewhere else. People looking for the “Pandemic” game go here. And then they go to the link. Maybe I should see if I can embed the game on that post.
5. Heart Attack: Jarvik's Lipitor Ads - I still feel pretty strongly that that Lipitor ad is wrong. Using Jarvik to promote a medication when he’s not a doctor is like false advertising. I need to research and find out whatever happened to the investigation on the ethics of those ads.
6. Muscle Top: New Carrot Top - I’m glad this gets a lot of traffic, because this post is one of my favorites. It still freaks me out to see Carrot Top with muscles. The link has one of my favorite lines ever…but the website is gone! And so is the line. So I’ll re-create it.
7. The Problem With McDonald's - This post is not one of my favorites, to be honest. It ends my long-running feud with McDonald’s, but the sad part is that it’s as true four years later as it was then. And McDonald’s has become more health-conscious, but without following my advice. A lot of people stumble across the post with the keywords “Mcdonald’s problem.” Makes me wonder what problem they’re looking for.
8. Top Ten Alien Myths - Again, I don’t like my posts that just link somewhere else. But this is a good link that takes a lot of information and packs into a small space – why all the UFO enthusiasts are wrong.
9. Sexy Women vs. WNBA - Would it kill the WNBA to put their players in spandex? Seriously? Maybe loosen up the sports bras to add some jiggle? I know women are crying “sexist pig” to this post, but come on. If you’re marketing solely to women who like sports, you’ve got an inherently narrow market. If you market to guys who will watch women play sports, it gets even narrower. You got the lesbian market all sewn up already. If you get some eye candy on the court, you wouldn’t be able to sell tickets fast enough. Maybe some of those guys will actually get hooked. They come for the wiggle, but they stay for the sports. Besides, men’s football has gay and female followers who watch it for the tight pants. You don’t see the NFL putting their players in potato sacks to maintain their integrity. Or beach volleyball - very popular and very sexy.
10. Bear Riding a Unicycle: Circus vs. Wild - Still believe this. Circuses are fun, but they are not humane. Don’t say otherwise.
    

Runners-up: The following don’t fall into the top ten this month, but have in the past and deserve an honorable mention.

• A Beautiful Lie: The Truth Behind a Beautiful Mind - This is one of the blog posts that I worked hardest on, and I wish I could promote it more widely. I liked “A Beautiful Mind” and still do, but the more I saw what they changed, the more annoyed I got. Why can’t Hollywood just leave well-enough alone? Still a good movie, though.
• Flashback Friday: Herb - I like this one because it’s more informative. There’ s not a lot on the web about Herb. This is my homage.
• Every Episode of House in a Nutshell - Most of my more popular posts were written years ago. I’m glad this one is getting some traffic. I like it.
  

Adwatch: Freecreditreport.com

First of all, let me say that I like freecreditreport.com's commercials. They're funny and the music is catchy. But they make no sense. Let's review a couple.

In this one, the guy sings about how he should've checked his credit report before he went to the dealer to buy a car. Because he didn't know his credit was "whack", he was forced to buy a lousy car instead of the cool one he wanted. But knowing his credit score in advance wouldn't really have helped him. If there was a mistake, it would take weeks to correct. If it wasn't a mistake, it would take years to improve his credit score. And I don't see why he had to buy a lousy car. He could've just said "I need to go fix my credit" and left.

Let's also take a peek at the commercial where the guy sings about not knowing his wife's credit report beforehand forced him to move in with her parents. What kind of cold-blooded SOB breaks off an engagement because their potential mate's credit is bad? And he says that it was all because his wife defaulted on some credit cards. If he can't find an apartment that would rent to him because of that, he needs to move to a bigger city.

There are circumstances where knowing your credit report is helpful, but these commercials exaggerate the problem too much. They would've been better off using more realistic scenarios.