How to submit a bug to Microsoft

An amusing take on how to try and notify a billion dollar corporation that their software is buggy.

Great desktop background sources

Some desktop backgrounds and sources I enjoyed

• Fantasy
• Dragons
• Nature

Some more amusing items:

• Nick Cage in that machine 
• Fun with David Tennant 

Other Source: hdwallpapersos.com

How dubstep was discovered

Just in case you haven't already seen it.

The Elaine Stritch interruption incident

I love this old Letterman bit.  I was always impressed by her work on 30 Rock but I found her performance wonderfully unexpected and strange.

The Donald Drumpf

John Oliver's majestic, probably overdue teardown of the current phenomenon that is (what looks like) the US Republican nominee for President.  Having followed many of the topics covered over the course of the last few months, it's nice to see them packaged as a broad counter-argument to the candidacy.

Alternatively, there is a synopsis in case you don't feel like watching the whole video.

The related website is also amusing.

Related: Conservatism in this decade

Job hunt tips (sort of)

Having done a lot of interviews, I really enjoyed these helpful suggestions.

Comedy both big and small

Two of my favorite moments from two of the greats

• One of my favorite interviews with LouisCK
• The best thing I've seen come from Jerry Seinfield

... and a lesser known but beloved writer/performer on Conan: Brian McCann

• Audience kayaking 
• Eyeballs O'shaughnessy 
• A bunch of mess ups on the Conan show (some involving Brian)

Conan: blues songs with kids

A rather simple idea yields some of the best work I've seen from late night in a while.

"Protect" Internet Freedom

An anti-net neutrality video packed with suggestions that once the government starts regulating the Internet, there's no end to it.  When really it's just Comcast who wants to charge extra for high bandwidth services.

Just look at the number of dislikes and the fact that the comments are disabled.  Or (at least at the time of this posting) check out all the people who signed the petition (scroll way down).

More on this.

Great bits from Conan

• Tig Notaro
• Conan hangs out with his interns

My 3rd and favorite (I was waiting on a minimum of 3 to post about it) unfortunately got zapped :-(

Ride the snake

One of my all time favorite SNL bits meant to poke fun at the weight loss industry, and one of the few things me and my friends have quoted now for years.

Oddly, there are two versions out there: one with a brief unfunny gag that got cut and this one, which works a whole lot better.

One of the best Mr. Show bits

Some hilarious social commentary from an amazing show back in the 90s that nobody seems to know about.

Why Star Trek - Into Darkness blows

I hated this movie. Spoilers!

• Flashing lights, loud noises, and things exploding!  Oh dear me!
• Chris Pine exudes authority like a scrappy dog: didn't feel he cared about anything even when he pulled a muscle trying to act like he did.  I think the two dimensions I got were "sad" and "risk taker".
• At no point did I feel the villain was anything but a tool.  Spock was boring.
• Everyone's flying out of the destroyed ship into space and nobody seems to give a f--k.  The Enterprise used to be the center of the show and now its something we can smash up like it's made of legos.
• Only person I cared about in the whole move was Captain Pike, who they killed off pretty quick.  The only person I really liked was Simon Pegg (Scotty).

Worst moments:

• After the ship get tossed and turned and everyone's flying around like confetti, 10 seconds later everything's normal again and looks at Spock like "what's he in a hurry about?"
  
• No efforts or energy put into plugging these massive leaks that should kill everyone.  No efforts to triage or even address the hordes of more-or-less dead people.  Oh except that pretty blonde girl?  Let's heal her up!
  
• They surgically removed a sequence from the first movie and inserted it this movie (radiation leak, main character sacrifices life to save the ship).  The first JJ Abrams movie just made a horde of references to the previous series, but ultimately went it's own way.  This one recycled and entire plot sequence.  I'm not sure it it was *exactly* the same because I walked out.

Anyway, this was all a big, stupid lark built from a whole bunch of other scripts, some from movies that had already been made.  I didn't care about the characters and didn't feel like anything took place anywhere other than a soundstage in Burbank.  In that sense, the painfully low-end budget old series beat them out here.  I really thought they were in space or on some other planet once in a while.

Now my personal message to JJ Abrams: For god's sake, hire a script supervisor or someone to work on continuity.  I get that Gore Verbinski can smash up a pirate ship and not really go back and address anything, but the assumption there is that pirates are disposable and these guys can take a knife or two in the gut.  I don't expect you to tie up all the loose ends, but pick 3 or 4.  Also, while we're on the topic, you should apologize for the final season of Lost.

The cat tells u what's up

Thanks cat.

(Note, this is a "GIF sound," which traditionally tends to fail after a few months.)

Romney's Zombie advocacy

At first I thought "no way" and then Joss Whedon of all people said "way."

Gillian Anderson is a good actress

... because you can only deliver the same line so many times and (as far as I remember from the series) give it the same gravity each time.  Well done, Gillian.  Of course, when you watch them strung together, it looks pretty silly:

If I ran one of the late night talk shows I'd invite her on, play this, and ask her to make some more creative recitations of surprise, such as:

• Zounds!
  
• Mi sangre es baile! (Spanish for "my blood is dancing").
  
• Holy poundcake, batman.
  
• Oopsy daisy!
• This turn of events is also unexpected

Pretty vs. Cute

Today, an analysis of the various terms around attractiveness.  While I'm not a huge fan of the show this came from, I've referenced this conversation in some way on too many occasions over the years.

Also entertaining: mistakes from the show.

Bad support experience

So a few weeks ago I was really loving the great Rhapsody service which allows you to listen to entire songs before you buy (awesome!) when I had an issue: I pressed pause and got up.  When I sat back down and pressed play I was hit with white noise at FULL VOLUME.  It was deafening.  Whoa.

I thought this was scary enough that I should send something about it to support.  My response was one of those generic ones followed by another message 3 days later:

While we typically respond in less than a day, its taken us much longer to get to your issue.

Due to this delay, we believe you may have already contacted Rhapsody support again by either phone or chat and had your issue resolved.

If you did not reach out again to Rhapsody support and still need help, please reply to this email and we'll make sure you get the help you need.

My response:

LOL

This reminds me of a "wait for it and maybe they'll go away" method of issue resolution.

Waiter: Hey I know you didn't like your food.  Did someone else come out and bring you different food yet?

Airline: Hey I know we didn't take you to your destination.  Did you already get a flight somewhere else or would you like us to take you where you initially wanted to go?

My cat: Hey I know I peed on your stuff.  Did you want me to keep doing that or did you put litter all over the house yet?

Making fun of Dubstep

Although I really like many entries to the genre, I definitely acknowledge its faux-hardcore edge:

• Dubstep Kitty (initial bit is a little repetative so you might skip ahead 10 seconds)
  
• What Dubstep sounds like to your parents (link died, sorry)

Unhelpful Highschool Teacher

Ordinarily I don't think of memes as really valuable, but there are SO many in this series that I've seen in real life.  Upbeat, optimistic, and yet really terrible teachers must be a lot more common than I thought.