LMNOP

I have been super-bleh with some sort of throat/sinus nastiness this week, but as usual the good old Internet was there like a neti pot for the soul to distract me, entertain me, and (above all else) force me to sit up for at least a portion of the day.  Bravo, Internet.

We'll start off with two linguistics links today; first up is a BBC News bit on the oldest words in the English language.  They are actually kind of boring (I!  We!  Two!  Three!), but what I did find interesting in the article was this sentence: "The team says it can predict which words are likely to become extinct - citing 'squeeze', 'guts', 'stick' and 'bad' as probable first casualties."  Really?  Why them?

Second, here are two guys who race around the world trying to document endangered languages before their last living speakers die out.  Apparently "of the world's 7,000 languages, 40 percent are on their way to extinction, with the last fluent speaker of a language dying once every two weeks."  That's kind of nuts.

Moving on--did you know Tropicana changed its packaging?  And then changed it back because everyone hated the new carton?  Yep.  That happened.

If you are even a little bit interested in fonts, you will love this game.

Headline of the week = Store to balsamic vinegar thief: 'We will get you'

I have mixed feelings about workplaces where everyone has really cool, well-decorated cubicles.  It just rings dead inside to me.

Divorce = Marriage/2, and other new math.

OMG, if you work for Lego you get the most amazing business 'card' EVER.

Finally, The 10 Most Embarrassing Oscar Speeches.  Ohhh, Gwyneth.  It is so fun to hate you.

That's it for this week, link-wise.  Oh, thank you for your spectacular Mad Libs participation.  That was awesome.

IMPROMPTU MAD LIB TIME!   Jot down answers for the following blanks, and then click to continue.  (I want to see finished Mad Libs in the comments, so I am counting on you to really do this.)

Noun: ____________
A Sexual Preference (gay, straight, attracted to cats, etc.): ____________
D-List Celebrity: ____________
Profession: ____________
Geographic Location: ____________
Verb ending in -ing: ____________
Another verb ending in -ing:____________
Sport:____________
Type of liquid: ____________

OK, ready?

I gotta say it: some of the outfits at the Oscars last night were very good.  Obviously, those were of no interest to me.  Fortunately, there were some bad ones as well.  Let us now discuss them.

When Melissa Leo showed up on my screen with the Best Actress nominees last night, I thought, "Hmm, I have no idea who she is."  I am guessing a lot of people were thinking the same thing.  I also thought, "Hmmm, her dress is doo-doo brown . . . and so is her hair."  I am guessing a lot of people were thinking that as well.

The only thing less surprising than the Slumdog sweep was Angelina's dress.  Ooh, something black and flowy that shows off her tattoos and bony clavicle?  How original.

Bridget Fonda is not really important enough for anyone to have asked her the "What are you wearing?" question last night, which is a shame.  I would have really liked to hear her answer, "a dress inspired by a Yikes pencil from 1991."

On TV, Miley's alter ego is Hannah Montana.  On the red carpet, her alter ego must be a 45-year-old woman; that seems to be the only justification for why her gowns always appear to have been chosen for someone three times her age.

On another note, this dress looks like what would happen if you put a figure skating outfit in a giant petri dish and let it grow uncontrollably.

Something about this dress makes me uncomfortable.  That thing is the awkward cleavage.

I can relate to Jessica Biel's thinking here; when I wear white, I like to tuck a napkin into my top as well.  Still, for the Academy Awards?  Maybe not the best idea. 

My main problem with Tilda Swinton is that her outfits all seem to fall into the category of "Things That Would Not Shock a Time-Traveling Pilgrim At All."  What's frightening, though, is that this dress is about a thousand times better than what she wore last year.  (Actually, what's frightening is Tilda Swinton in general.)

Yikes.

Moving on.

In addition to the above commentary, I'd like to point out a few trends I noticed last night.

TREND: Kooky but Boring Red Dresses

Heidi Klum, Amanda Seyfried, and Virginia Madsen all wore shiny red dresses with exaggerated details, and, viewed individually, all of them looked OK; not the best dresses of the night, but not the worst.  Jointly, though, they look like a study in Things to Do with Red Fabric When You're Not That Exciting of a Person.  It's a shame, because I love Le Klum and I think Amanda Seyfried is pretty. 

I am so. over. mermaid silhouette. dresses.  Time to publicly shame the ladies who wore them last night.

Offender: Beyonce

Beyonce, if I had a dime for every time you wore a dress of this shape, I could reupholster every piece of furniture in my house with that hideous print you are wearing.  So thank God nobody gave me all those dimes.  But really, get a new thing going.

A small area of this dress is hogging an absurd percentage of its fabric.  Not unlike the distribution of global wealth, this dress is lopsided and painful to consider for too long.

Offender: Vanessa Hudgens

This dress is ugly AND it looks like a bird flew into it.

TREND: That Shade of Purple I Hate

Dear sweet God, do I hate lilac.  I just do.  I am aware that some people like it, and I am certain this world is big enough for all of us.  I can't sign off on these two dresses though, despite them both featuring that fancy drapy look I liked on all of Rami Kashou's Project Runway designs.

OK--your thoughts, please.  Who/what did I miss?

Taken before I wrapped up the awesome guitar I got for my nephew's first birthday.

The first time Pancake heard my cell phone ring (back in his puppy days) he ran away scared, then came back and sniffed it tentatively, like "WHAT DEVIL OBJECT IS THIS, AND HOW HAS IT COME TO LIFE?!"  Nowadays, he pretty much has things figured out.  In fact, if I am in a different room and my phone rings, he will run and find me, then lead me back to the ringing phone.  If I could only train him to just bring me the thing, life would be awesome.

• Fascinating basketball article by Michael Lewis about statistics and the nature of bball.  

• Oregon Trail is coming to the iPhone.
• Extremely well-made and hilariously pointless lobster sweater
• Awesome aerial tramways of the world
• If I was going to fraudulently purchase $37,000 worth of something, it would definitely be lollipops.
• Nine real-life mad scientists
• Get out the pink gorilla cigars.
• This is pretty rad.
• Who is Russia's hottest nuclear industry worker?  We will know soon enough.

• Fascinating basketball article by Michael Lewis about statistics and the nature of bball.  

• Oregon Trail is coming to the iPhone.
• Extremely well-made and hilariously pointless lobster sweater
• Awesome aerial tramways of the world
• If I was going to fraudulently purchase $37,000 worth of something, it would definitely be lollipops.
• Nine real-life mad scientists
• Get out the pink gorilla cigars.
• This is pretty rad.
• Who is Russia's hottest nuclear industry worker?  We will know soon enough.

We humans like to think we are so much smarter than animals, but lately I have been thinking that is not really the case.  And the thing that got me thinking this is reality TV.

Take the Jalapeno Effect, for example.  When you have two dogs living together, a natural instinct of competition and self-preservation kicks in.  If you offer a dog a food he doesn't like, one that he would never eat while alone (such as a jalapeno), he will often eat it anyway if he is in the presence of a fellow dog, to prevent the other one from getting it.  I never really thought about this as something humans do too, until one day it dawned on me that the Jalapeno Effect is basically the premise of every dating show ever.

Think about it: let's look at VH1's Rock of Love.  In this gem of a show, we see a gaggle of human females at the height of cattiness and personal humiliation--and over what?  This man:

 

That, my friends, is just a jalapeno with hair extensions.

There is no reason for these women to go crazy over this man, except that they feel the need to be the one who wins.  And this is not just something that females do; let us not forget the groups of men who have competed for the affections of this woman on I Love New York (also a VH1 program):

Jalapeno.

Flavor Flav?

Jalapeno.

Every tool-faced Bachelor in history?
  

Jalapeno.  Jalapeno.  Jalapeno.

The Jalapeno Effect explains why the contestants on these shows always seem to be more involved in the competition aspect than with actually creating a relationship with Bret or Flav or Generic Bachelor Man No. 5.  And it also partially explains why none of the relationships ever seem to last outside the show--once the competitive element is removed, the winner realizes that jalapenos are actually disgusting.

Of course, there are other reasons why people act the way they do on these shows--attention-whoring, gold-digging, and drama-queening are not insignificant factors.  But I am beginning to think that the Jalapeno Effect is the most significant of all.  Which puts most human reality show contestants on the same intellectual level as Pebbles and Pancake fighting over an old bone.

Source: Geekologie
Previously: The Burger Bed