Friday Link Dump - Canadian Underwear Edition

"Free and easy Lis, ahh.  There's nothing like an unfurnished basement for pure comfort." - Bart Simpson

Mentioning unmentionables - It's meandering, it's about underwear, and he flubs the quote slightly; still, that's pretty good usage.

The Simpsons Sundays 8PM - Mmmm, that's some top notch synergy from Fox's Toledo, OH affiliate.  

ER Ends Its 15-year Run on TV.  Good Riddance - It's always pleasing when shows that haven't been relevant for a long time finally turn out the lights.  Plus he mentions Zombie Simpsons.  

Humane Society of the United States presents 23rd Genesis Awards - Zombie Simpsons won for what must be that "cow" episode I said I was glad I'd never seen.  Hey, isn't the Humane Society good at putting things long past their prime out of their misery?  Just saying.  

"Wedding For Disaster"/"Not All Dogs Go To Heaven"/"Wife Insurance" - Steve Heisler of A.V. Club has failed.  In complaining that Zombie Simpsons had to spend too much time on backstory he writes:

But because the show has to spend a bunch of time explaining why they are allowed to do what they are about to do—presumably to appease message board fans—they've wasted time they could be spending on the episode proper.

Bzzzt.  I'm sorry, that's incorrect.  A.V. Club may reward knowledge, but here at Dead Homer Society we punish ignorance and that is a profoundly ignorant statement.  It has been amply demonstrated that Zombie Simpsons doesn't give two shits about "message board fans", they never have and never will.  (Whether or not they should is a separate question.)  And they certainly weren't eating up all that clock to make internet fanboys happy (killing time is precisely what makes us unhappy).  They eat clock because each episode only contains about three decent jokes and that just doesn't cut it for a 22-minute show.  

Comic book writer Mark Millar is giving up 'The Simpsons' for Lent! - He's doing it for a charity instead of some phony baloney deity, but it still strikes me as stupid.  Though he seems an agreeable enough fellow:

He said: I always try to give up beer for Lent and fail two weeks in.

So the family and I are all doing something a little different this year and will give up The Simpsons, which is our favourite television programme.

Im pleased about this because it means I can still go to the pub.

To be fair, two (or three) whole weeks with only wine is enough to make anyone go crazy.  

April Fools': Best of the Net - Homer Simpson's voice was used on the PA system of Parisian train stations.  It's not Castellaneta's voice, presumably it's whoever does the French dubbed dialogue.  I find the YouTube video oddly interesting, though of course it doesn't hurt that it's only twenty-eight seconds long:

The good oil: BMW 7 series to stop 'Homer Simpson syndrome' - I don't see what talking on a cellphone while driving really has to do with Homer, but I'm not from New Zealand.

MICA survey to assist city leader decisions - Remember when I said the statistics quote is the one I see screwed up more often than any other?  Here it is again.  Forfty!

LBS Startups to Keep on Your Map - This is about cellphones, but the Marge reference is excellent usage.

Fashion Police - I don't generally approve of fashion columns or Ohio State, but this I can get on board with:

Ah the Simpsons. An all-time classic television show that's been on for about as long as I've been alive and that's actually been funny for about half of it.

Indeed.  

Friday Link Dump - Obscure Guest Voice Edition

"That guy cheapens our whole profession." - Bruce Baum

T.O. funnyman Bruce Baum soars into cyberspace - Remember the guy pictured above?  He's got a comedy website, TheOuterNet.com (careful, video plays when you click), that The Ventura County Star wrote an article about and, in typical newspaper fashion, neglected to link.  Whatever, barbecue armpit deodorant sounds good to me.  

Channeling Homer Simpson on the Deficit Numbers - MIT economist Jonathan Gruber gets a gold star for excellent usage.  

Are The Best Days Of 'The Simpsons' Over? - The basic premise here is right on, though it's written for a website called Starpulse so there's a distinct whiff of Valley Girl crazy about the whole thing.  (From Starpulse's about page: "Starpulse.com offers celebrity enthusiasts like you . . ", uh, count me out, thanks.)  There is one little thing that deserves special attention though, the misspelling of 'Jebus'.  I see this all over the place, 'Jeebus' instead of 'Jebus'.  For fuck's sake people, it's pronounced exactly like the original but with a "b" in place of an "s".  There is no need for an extra "e".  Wow, that got off topic fast.

Great minds think differently - It's a list of thinkers, and I used the term loosely, who might have opinions about the current recession, including Homer Simpson, Sun Tzu, Epicurus, and Tony Soprano.  This guy is padding his list just a bit, methinks.

Triceratops Was A Social Animal, Group of Dinosaur Fossils Suggests - A site in Montana has fossils from a bunch of different Triceratops skeletons.  It's called the Homer Site because the guy who found it, Helmuth Redschlag, is a Simpsons fan.  Well done.  

Lottery win like a joke, trucker says - This guy won almost two million dollars from a lottery machine that said "Woo hoo!" when he scanned his ticket.  

Transit Spotting - Mr. Matt Smith isn't very happy with a new San Francisco transit project.  I couldn't tell you anything about the merits of the project, but the man's got his Simpsons straight and that's good enough for us.  

The 20 Hottest Movie Mums (via)- Internet lists are always pointless and stupid, but Marge is #1.    

Despite the sunshine, it rained on my parade - Damn right.  Even the Irish thought that episode was a piece of shit.

Barack Obama's Top 5 Bart Simpson Moments - Just one of the hundreds of radical right wing messages inserted into every post by co-creator Charlie Sweatpants.  

Friday Link Dump - Barney and Ecstasy Edition

"I can see why this is so popular." - Homer Simpson

Meet Zaky, the purple bear with a message of tolerance - Zaky is a Barney clone, only he's a bear instead of a dinosaur and his original target audience was Australian Muslims.  Now he's going global:

Zaky's creator, Sydney film producer Subhi Alshaik, describes the mild-mannered cartoon character as "the opposite of Bart Simpson" who teaches "good, ethical, moral messages".

I would not have guessed that the opposite of Bart Simpson was a purple bear, but what do I know?

Lunch Break: Jon Stewart's 1994 Interview With Conan O'Brien - This is O'Brien, about a year after he left The Simpsons, on Jon Stewart's short lived MTV talk show.  It's mildly amusing.  Oh, and Brother Bently from CollegeOTR, George Bush Sr. was not president in 1994.  Kids these days.

Kids in Texas Are Getting "High" on Bart Simpson & Ninja Turtles - We're back on the Bart Simpson Ecstasy pills.  I know this is from a local television station so if I'm expecting anything above a fourth grade level discussion I'm going to be disappointed, but c'mon.  They've got the word "high" in scare quotes like it's a new fangled drug term to which "squares" are not yet "hip".  

Candy-Shaped Drug Worries Local Cops - In Washington state they aren't even waiting for the pills to arrive before moving straight into the moral panic:

Mansfield says they haven’t yet seen the pills shaped like cartoons

Now this is the perfect story for AM radio.  The station gets a story by doing nothing more than talking to a cop, and the cop gets to be on the radio for doing nothing more than being a cop.  It's a perfect, news free circle jerk.  

Daily Jolt: Baseball Without Borders - Very poor usage, Andrew Johnson of FanHouse, very poor.  "Radical" is not what comes out of Bart Simpson's mouth, it's Milhouse's thing, that's his thing that he says.  

VH1 resuscitates "Behind the Music" - Behind the Music is coming back.  That's how long Zombie Simpsons has been on the air, a show that was enough of a cliche to parody nine years ago has had time to get cancelled and be brought back.  

Homer Simpson goes to Middle East? - Oh yeah, this sounds like a great idea for an episode.  

F1 change won't alter supermodel quotient - F1 cars are getting bubble domes?

Presumably the brains behind the world's top motor sport felt they hadn't already thrown enough curveballs at drivers, who this year will pilot cars so dramatically reshaped from last season that they look more than a little like the one Homer Simpson famously designed for his brother. That car sent Danny DeVito broke; formula one isn't quite there yet but the signs aren't trending in a positive fashion.

Hmmm, probably not.  It would be cool though.  

Plans underway for MacGyver movie - "No Selma, this is lying.  That was a well plotted piece of non-claptrap that never made me want to retch."  Also, MacGyver did a guest voice in 2006?  Whew, dodged a bullet there.

Scratchy has not yet been sighted - Morgan State played in the NCAA tournament last night and they've got a point guard named Itchy.  He got the nickname from his brother . . . who was killed "in an argument" a few years ago.  Jebus, Baltimore is a fucked up place.  Still, awesome name.  

Susy Schultz - New WTF column is about helping you - In this lady's alternate reality, WTF stands for "What's the Fix?".  The callous stupidity on display here is pretty astonishing:

A few people -- and when I say a few, I mean only two -- called or wrote to tell me that there is another meaning to the first three letters of the name of our new column, WTF: What's the Fix?

My sons might answer that by quoting Homer Simpson, "Du-oh."

I simply would say, "Yes, I know."

But we want nothing to do with THAT word. We are very clear that we mean, What's the Fix?

We are taking back those three simple letters. And we are reinventing them into a column that will help readers. I don't think that those initials are that far gone yet.

Where to begin?  Well, first of all, yes those three letters are gone and no you can't change their meaning even, as she writes at the very end, "in The Daily Journal's readership area."  (That appears to be just south of Chicago.)  "What the fuck" is a useful, multi-purpose phrase that works just fine; you cannot "fix" what is not currently "fucked".  And, "Du-oh"?  Does this woman have some kind of neurological impairment, like Rain Man or Awakenings?  I mean, what the hell is she doing here?  

Friday Link Dump - Math and Science Edition

"Lisa, your father needs your help.  Do you know anything about Germany?" - Homer Simpson

"Well, it's a country in Europe." - Lisa Simpson

"Good good, I'm learning." - Homer Simpson

I found two different Periodic Tables on-line this week that use Homer Simpson to represent Element 108, Hassium.  It doesn't exist in nature, has a half life of 0.002 seconds and was discovered/created in 1984 by some Germans.  

Cartoon Character Periodic Table - Cobra Commander as Cobalt is good, but having The Tick as Titanium is better.  Also, Flanders is Neodymium; unlike Homer he's stable and exists outside of a laboratory.  (Via Digg)

Video Game Character Periodic Table - There are some cartoon characters sprinkled around this one on the grounds that Homer and Iron Man have been in video games even if they were originally created elsewhere.  My personal favorite here is John Madden, the father of video game football, as Mendelevium which was named after Dimtri Mendeleev the father of the periodic table.  Little known fact, Mendeleev went to grade school with Brett Favre and loves Turducken.  (Via Kombo)

Sexy maths: A number-munching celebration - Don't forget, tomorrow is Pi Day!  On Pi Day for every circle that has its area calculated an angel gets its wings . . . or was it circumference?  I forget which.  On a related note, I'm glad I've never seen the piece of shit episode that makes this link a Simpsons reference, though this is entertaining:

If we had evolved with a different anatomy, say with eight fingers like Homer Simpson, pi would still be the same expression of the unchanging ratio between the circumference and diameter of a circle but using powers of eight rather than powers of ten as our natural base would mean pi began 3.110375...

I miss my base-6 math textbook.  

Old flag's just fine - It seems that there's a debate in Manitoba about changing the provincial flag.  Our author, the awesomely named Ace Burpee, is against it:  

I read one quote online that supporters of a new flag would "like it to be easier for kids to draw". Then change the Canadian flag as well because every drawing of a maple leaf by a child looks like a hybrid between Lisa Simpson's hair and a marijuana leaf.

Because marijuana leaves are so much easier to draw than maple leaves.  

Teaching humanities in a culture of business - A couple of sisters in Buffalo are taking the 'dolt' out of A-dolt education by teaching Shakespeare and other humanities to people who didn't learn them in school.  One of the sisters, Deepa Govindaraj, endears herself to us by saying, "I think 'The Simpsons' is high culture."  

Italy Upsets Canada at World Baseball Classic - The New York Times laughs at the World Baseball Classic's loose eligibility rules and likens them to Mr. Burns bringing in professional baseballers.

Lions even get dissed in animation - The Detroit Free-Press takes a little umbrage at Zombie Simpsons' portrayal last week of evil Flanders as a Lions fan.  Speaking as a Lions fan I'd agree, but speaking as a Simpsons fan I know it's far too much to ask Zombie Simpsons to put thought into things.  "Detroit Lions GM" would've been funnier and more apt that "Detroit Lions Fan".  

TV star dubs cllr "Homer Simpson of Culture" - I know these words but this story makes no sense. 

TV Recap: 24 - Episode 13 8:00-9:00 PM - Jebus I'm glad I don't watch 24.  If a critic can compare the actions of your fictional president to Herb Powell it might be time to watch a different program.  

Craft Village UK revamps Simpsons gift range - "Sounded large when I ordered it.  Ahh, I can't make hide nor hair of these metric booby traps."

A little housekeeping - Wow, NPR is really vacuous and stupid.  This podcast does reference The Simpsons at about the 11 minute mark, but I wouldn't recommend it.  

Bedford police seize drugs that look like kids' vitamins - This is very simple and I'm only going to say it once, DO NOT PUT ILLEGAL DRUGS UNDER YOUR SEAT.  Put them in the glove box or the trunk and if the officer asks to open it you say "No".  I know this, you know this, Jay-Z knows this.  Also, I find it amusing that while the Bart Simpson and Superman ecstasy pills are right side up, the cops have the Autobot symbol upside down.  

Bart or a Flanders kid -- who would you rather raise? - SF Chronicle baby blog, we've praised you before, but this is dumb even by internet standards.

'Simpsons' in stone Hollywood on hold - So you want to make a statue of the family sitting on the couch?  Fine.  I don't think that makes this true: 

the statue would replicate the five-member family sitting on a couch watching TV, a scene in the 2007 "The Simpsons Movie."

You know, they've been sitting on that couch for a long time; it isn't exactly from the movie. 

Detectives identify injured woman - A missing woman is identified by her Marge Simpson key chain.  

Reagan Library Honored for Exhibit - Nothing is more prestigious than an award from the Themed Entertainment Association.  It's so prestigious that the Simpsons ride and the Beijing Olympics also won something.  Enh, it's still better than a Grammy.  

Celebrity sighting: Cy Young Winner CC Sabathia meets Homer Simpson at Universal Orlando Resort - Morbidly obese, past his prime pitcher, recently signed to a bloated contract that he'll never live up to, meets morbidly obese, past his prime cartoon character, recently signed to a bloated contract that he'll never live up to.  

Friday Link Dump

"Look boy, either Michael Jackson is some guy working in a recording studio in L.A., or he's here with you willing to work on this song." - Leon Kompowski 

Will posting links to random things that mention The Simpsons become a Friday tradition?  Do you care?  I sure don't.  

Michael Jackson in 1992: 'I think I had a crush on him' - Looking back on it, Michael Jackson's association with Bart Simpson is one of those pop culture coincidences that just makes the mind reel.  Watch the 'Do the Bartman' video, especially the pelvic thrusting, and tell me it isn't weirder than the Super Bowl XXVII halftime show.  (Also, there are more and better visual gags in that video than in all of Season 20 so far.)  

The world's funniest orgasm - Sex advice columns are proof that our culture is capable of working at hilarious cross purposes.  This has almost nothing to do with The Simpsons, but invoking an animated, ten-year-old child to describe an orgasm laugh is too good to pass up.  

It's hard work being an ant - I have no idea what this is about (there are several others if you click on the author link), whether or not the survey being referenced is real, or what the other choices besides "Homer Simpson" were.  Let's move on.  

Grand Funk Railroad - Everyone knows rock attained perfection in 1974, it's a scientific fact.  I would also submit this as further proof of why Homer and Marge are out of place in 2009.  

Laura Yeager: "Tips for the Bipolar Marriage" - I suppose someone with diagnosed bipolar disorder gets a pass on glaringly poor usage like this:

Hold a weekly family meeting to discuss your issues. Ours were called the “Eat My Shorts” sessions, in homage to Homer Simpson.

That done, there is an entire magazine dedicated to bipolar people and the website is www.bphope.com?  That's a terrible business model; if you show people how to live comfortably with their disorder then they won't need your magazine.  

10th-Grader's Site nocussing.com Inspires No Cussing Week in L.A. - Hey, kid: fuck you.  Also, "the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors issued a proclomation [sic] that the first week of March will be "No Cussing Weak.""  You know what, they're right, cussing is week.

Profile: Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land is in the driver's seat - If I hadn't had such positive recent experience with the Michigan DMV, and I'm serious about that, I'd be pissed about this photo: 

Press File PhotoTerri Lynn Land wearing a Marge Simpson wig at this year's Coffee Dunker's breakfast.

Doin it and doin it and doin it in public - People worry that the internet is going to destroy libraries as we know them, but can you fuck inside the internet?  I think not.  Nit pick time:

Even Homer and Marge Simpson rekindle their sex life by doing the deed at a miniature golf course.

They were interrupted when they were trying to rekindle their sex life; it was when they were young and unmarried (like most of the kids in the article) that they actually joined the castle club.  

Marge's Lesbian Fantasies. - I really don't think (and most of the commenters agree) that this was a pro-feminist image.  The whole episode sucked anyway.  

411 Fact or Fiction Movies/TV 03.06.09 - #6 = Teh Stupid.  Fucking Zombie Simpsons.