Stand and Deliver!

"I went to Reading Gaol and all I got was this lousy haircut."

*Thanks to Sarah for locating the image.

I couldn't understand why the UK's The Independent would publish Christopher Hooten's rickroll story - about the student whose quantum physics essay included the lyrics to Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up' as the first word of every line. This must be old news; I blogged about this the first time it hit social media, back in October 2010. Gizmodo reported it then.

But I went back and checked, and it turns out - as you'll see below - to be an entirely different paper. Apart from the first word of every line.

So, as long as there are nerds who can string sentences together and remember the lyrics to an overplayed '80s track, there'll be teachers rickrolled. And online 'news' sources reporting it.

See you here again in another three and a half years.

The US gets some cash-flow easing the economic crisis with Black Friday. And Australia… doesn't….

And so, as Chris North rightly points out, the Downfall meme regarding Australia's continued inability to get the Interwebs right is inevitable:

But there's also this contribution - an episode of the daily dose of excellent satire know as The Roast.

So has it made you wanna go back into a physical shop? Or just back to the online retailers you always go to?

I know people are upset that they paid too much to see a seeming one-hit wonder (yes, yes, six albums in his native Korea but you'd need a couple of North Korean ships allegedly full of heroin to sit through them, I bet) perform his one song and then nick off from a nightclub. Still, I can't help myself. Along with the Oppa Gangnam Heil meme, may I present:

Long, long ago, in a Gangnamcy far, far away…

It had to happen. After the multitude of Downfall parody clips, and PSY's excellent 'Gangnam Style' becoming a YouTube hit, someone had to bring Hitler into it. That someone is Nearly Yuan. Enjoy PSY's original and Nearly Yuan's parody. (Thanks Northy and Snitch for bringing the latter to my attention.)

Mick Meredith's response to Daniel Townes's 'Shit Comedians Say' clip.

If you've got any comedian friends, you'll frequently wish you could actually stop them if you've heard any of these ones. Because you will have. Ad infinitem.

Daniel Townes has strung them together brilliantly as his hilarious contribution to the 'shit people say' meme. It's good stuff.

He has a DVD out soon, too.

Rich Lam, Getty Images.

Blah blah blah Vancouver loses hockey tournament blah blah blah riot ensues, blah blah blah photograph of kiss blah blah blah Aussie blah blah blah meme blah blah blah my contribution.

The download of Radiohead’s latest album, The King Of Limbs, was made available today, and with it, a clip from the first single, ‘Lotus Flower’. Notice how it features Thom Yorke – looking like a strange cross between Bono and The Edge of U2, as filmed by Anton Corbijn – dancing on his own.

That’s made it really easy for the rise of a new meme: making Thom Yorke dance to other songs.

Here’s Clem Bastow’s masterpiece: ‘Thom Yorke Dances Alone To Pony’.

Another goody is ‘Benny Hill of Limbs’, also known, after the music’s proper name of ‘Yakkety Sax’, as ‘Yorkety Sax’.

I’m also quite fond of ‘Thom Yorke gets down to Single Ladies (Lotus Flower Dub):

But what about this gem: Thom dancing to the Trashmen’s ‘Surfin’ Bird’, as ‘Lotus Flower (Dance)’?

It’s inspired, no doubt, from this earlier version:

Thom dancing to Shakira’s ‘Loca’ isn’t quite as good:

And now a Venga Boys remix!

But I’m sure there’ll be more. Let me know so I can add them.

Once upon a time there was a geek prank frequently perpetrated in chatrooms and messageboards known as 'duckrolling'. It involved offering a link to something really cool, that when followed, proved to be nothing more than an image of a toy duck on wheels. For example, check out this awesome image of a vintage Cherry SG Les Paul with blah blah blah, or this intense photograph of an anaconda trying to swallow a cow.

This practice evolved into 'rickrolling', where you’d link to promised footage of something rather cool but ended up merely being a clip of Rick Astley performing his breakthrough single ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’. Like the footage of the pelican trying to swallow a pigeon. (Okay, if I was a proper geek, I'd have uploaded the Rick Astley clip with a different title so that you wouldn’t realise until it was far too late.)

Now, Gizmodo reports, computer science student Mayniac182 has raised the bar, turning an assignment entitled The Disadvantages and Advantages of Networks into a giant acrostic featuring the lyrics to ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’.

Impressive. It took eight hours to format, apparently. And it had to be that song for it to be a proper, glorified rickroll. It had to be a rickroll for it to be recognised by fellow geeks, like the one marking it (if indeed the marker managed to spot it).

But I think it would have been more impressive to include the lyrics to something a bit more challenging. Bob Dylan's ‘Jokerman’, for example, for a bit of Christianrockrolling:

Standing on the water casting your bread
While the eyes of the idol with the iron head
Are glowing.
Distant ships sail into the mist.
You were born with a snake in both of your fists
While a hurricane was blowing.

Or Frank Zappa’s ‘Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch’:

There's a ship arriving too late
To save a drowning witch
She was swimmin' along
Tryin’ to keep a date
With a Merchant Marine
Who told her he was really rich
But it doesn't matter no more . . .
She's on the ocean floor
'N the water's all green down there
'N it's not very clean down there
'N water snakes
'N rusty wrecks
Is all that she can see
As the light goes dim
And she's tryin’ to swim
Will she make it?
(Boy, we sure hope so…)

I look forward to that paradigm shift. Or one better: where the geek’s gotta cheerleader there, gonna help with the paper, let her do all the work and maybe later you’ll get this reference if you’re a Zappa fan.

Meanwhile, here’s the paper (click to enlarge so you can actually read it!):

 FYI: The actual clip of a pelican trying to swallow a pigeon: