Stray Hawkeye

The Mountain Goats “This Year” from A Bruntel on Vimeo.

Unfortunately, from what I can tell, the idea of making the celebration pirate themed doesn’t seem to have caught on.

Per Stray Hawkeye blog tradition (2008, 2009), here’s your yearly dose of Imogen Heap’s “Just for Now”. I don’t really have anything new to say about it from the last two posts, aside from I still love this song, and think it’s perfect for the holidays.

Merry Christmas.

Ladies, I’d like to give you a brief moment of insight into the male psyche.  Have you ever been out at a bar / club, and there was a guy with you who refused to dance?  No matter how much you tried to encourage or bribe him, he just would not get on the dance floor, and instead insisted on staying firmly planted in a chair/booth with a beer in hand?  And when questioned as to why not, he simply answered, “I don’t dance.”?  Well, let me explain this phenomena for you if you haven’t pieced it together yet.  It’s not that he’s physically unable to dance.  In fact, it’s even possible he would in fact like to dance.  It’s just…. at some point in his life, he saw some other guy dancing, and realized what an absolute fool he looked like, and somewhere, deep in the back of his mind, there is an ingrained fear that that is exactly how he looks when he dances.  Maybe not even a fear that he does look like that, just that he could.  In short, every guy who refuses to dance is terrified he’ll fit in perfectly at a Penn State tailgate:

Well, sans the Confederate flag in the background anyway.

Video via Black Heart Gold Pants

Via Chief Happiness Officer

So cute, so ridiculous, so… must post:

Via Cute Overload and Chief Happiness Officer

Via BoingBoing

The Talking Carl app repeats back anything you say in a higher pitch.  What happens when you put two next to each other?

From the above, it would seem apparent that what you get is an astonishingly accurate reenactment of every political discussion that has occurred on any cable news channel in the past decade, summed up in a profoundly concise manner.

Video via Kottke

Makes you think, doesn’t it?  Or at least makes you want three go get intoxicnineed.

Via Kottke

A cool, bass-y Franken-instrument made by Diego Stocco, created by combining a piano, an electric bass, a guitar, a cabinet, a chimney (really), and, you know, whatever else was laying around that day:

Apparently it’s an original composition, but I couldn’t help but think of Personal Jesus by Depeche Mode.  I’m not the only one, someone else mentioned it in the comments on the video (on the Vimeo page, which unfortunately isn’t embed-able so you get youtube above) and Diego replies:

A friend of mine, fan of DM, told me the same.
I know some of their music, but I wasn’t thinking about that song. I was inspired by the hours of western music I’ve heard in films, it’s that kind of triplets “horse galloping” pattern you hear in the “bunch of bad-ass cowboys going to place x to fix the situation” kinda scene : )

Which I makes me sort of wish I knew how to do 3-d computer animations and such to be able to make the scene that goes with that.

For some reason it also makes me think a bit of the general vibe of Cowboy Bebop, though that admittedly usually has more horns – perhaps the general Western vibe.

Also, things like this are why I oscillate wildly between thinking I’d really like a really little place in the city with minimal stuff, and (where this comes in) a few acres of land next to a junk yard somewhere out in the country where I could hack together things like this without bothering people in the next apartment (a large reason why I don’t play my tuba more).

This makes me happy.  John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek slug out their opposing theories of macroeconomics in a rap dual (don’t worry, it’s not actually that long, the last minute or so is credits):

The full lyrics and a download-able version of the song are available on the video’s site.  Not only a great intro the two opposing theories, but one of the more fair juxtapositions I’ve seen on the topic.

Also, the comments on the video on youtube are both strangely civil and informed (for the most part), which I’m pretty sure means it broke the internet.  Though, at least currently, it still features an incendiary political ad and the top related video has a thumbnail featuring a woman bent over on her hands and knees from behind while clad in a suggestive outfit touting “tight buns”, so I suppose the internet is at least trying to reassert itself:

Ahhh, youtube

Via Boing Boing