Internet meme: Geddan May 27, 2011

What do you get when you combine a half-inserted N64 cartridge and spastic late-nineties J-pop?

I stumbled upon it while watching Kampfer Abridged, when the song “Promise” by Hirose Kohmi was used in the stinger after the credits. I immediately fell in love and went in search of other videos about it.

This is the evolution as I understand it:

1.  Original.  It began with a glitch in the N64 game GoldenEye 007, called “half-inserted cartridge syndrome”. As the name suggests, when the cartridge wasn’t pushed in all the way, characters and planes and helicopters would randomly spaz out.  It was only a matter of time before someone put it to music.   “Promise” was bouncy and frenetic enough to do the job.

2. Animated dance: I think this is the video by Lamaze P that solidified Geddan into a dance, but, seeing as I can’t read Japanese, I’m probably wrong.

"This budding meme needs more pelvic thrust!"

2. Nitori gets down:  Nitori Kawashiro is a character from the 11th Touhou Project game. For some reason, someone decided to animate her getting down. I’m glad they did.

3. It. gets. good.

(I’m sorry I don’t know how to just put videos on my page yet)

Siphonophores May 25, 2011

Thank you WTF Japan Seriously (don’t judge me) for introducing me to my new favorite animal, the Siphonophore

.

Deep-sea colonial badassery.

There I was, bingeing on animated flocks of flying panties, when I came across this video.

At first I thought it was fake; an elaborate puppet festooned with pink balloons and streamers set to trippy music to delight my stupid American brain.

But no, it’s totally real. Wikipedia says so.

But come on! I have never seen such a cool-looking animal.  It’s pink, all jelly-like, has a thousand little curly tentacles, and a tail of christmas tree lights.  Does James Cameron know this exists? Obviously not, because it would have starred in Avatar, not the Na’Vi.

Okay, fine, the Na’Vi were freaking awesome, but this thing should have at least made an appearance.

Oh man, the more I read about these things, the cooler they get.  Let’s see, the Portuguese man-o-war is a type of siphonophore-I didn’t know that.

Some species can grow to be the longest animals in the world: up to 130 feet long: A stinging jelly longer than a blue whale. Oh my god.

Also, they’re colonial animals, which means they’re made up of thousands of individual animals called zooids, kind of like coral

(Dunn, Casey: http://siphonophores.org/5/25/11) .

Oh hey look I just used APA in real life. I’m sure it’s in the wrong format, but I’m not about to open that book again if I have to.

"Just cite the damn source correctly, woman!"

WAUGH!!  (and no.)

Quentin Tarantino and squash casserole May 18, 2011

I work with several older women who have been cooking for the better part of a century, and occasionally they bring things in to share.  To say that I partake enthusiastically would be an understatement, but I feel left out when the old girls sit back and swap recipes and stories. My repertoire consists of “I LIEK FORZEN PIZZAS”, so my contributions are few and very often have nothing to do with cooking and everything to do with how sexy Jeremy Wade is (whoever has the remote to the breakroom always leaves it on Animal Planet. I don’t complain.)

Yesterday, Martha brought in something called zucchini cake, and at first I didn’t believe that there were squash in it.  This alien confection was one one of the best things I’ve ever put in my mouth; round, with toasted pecans and some sort of glaze on top, and only one or two tiny specks of green to betray the vegetable hidden within.

I thought of my aunt’s squash casserole, which was my favorite dish at thanksgiving and christmas (next to turkey-gravy pancakes the next morning OH MY GOD) and which I never have anymore.  There was an epic Shakespearean feud several years ago over the matriarch’s house, and the aunts and uncles are still pretty Montague and Capulet about it.  No more squash casserole, no more giant family get-togethers.

😦

Wait just a damn minute.  I have an oven. I can read.  I’ll make my own.

I looked up a Paula Deen recipe and off to WalMart I went, during which time my brother and I played “Boy or Girl?”, lost, and forgot the paper towels.  Oh well.

I had trouble finding some music to listen to while I cooked.  REM made me feel like I was  on a roadtrip, Beatles were too tame, and Fever Ray made me think of that one time I watched a pirated video of my brain being repeatedly defecated upon.

The mood’s gotta be right.  If you’ve every been on the interstate listening to the radio, looked down and realized you were going 105 in a sixty, then I have three words for you:

Kill. Bill. Soundtrack.

I don’t care who you are, or what mundane, everyday task you are doing, if you put on the soundtrack to Kill Bill, you will fold all your laundry in thirty seconds and then axe kick it into the closet.   I wasn’t  pounding Ritz crackers in a bag with my fist, I was one-inch-punching my way out of a buried coffin.

The crackers were the dirt.

The casserole is pretty good, if a little oily (thanks, Paula!), but I would say it’s a success, mostly because I felt like a freaking ninja while I was doing it.