> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
Have You Ever Wondered...?
...why we humans use only about 10% of our massively supercharged brains?
...why idiot-savants can somehow access parts of the remaining 90%
...why we humans have a gene pool with over 4000 genetic defects?
...why our closest genetic relatives, chimps and gorillas, have very few?
...why we humans have genes that are only 200,000 to 250,000 years old?
...why anthropologists insist that we descend from creatures 4,000,000 years old?
...why we humans in no way resemble those ancient so-calle d?
...why we humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes for a grand total of 46?
...why our closest genetic relatives (sharing 98% - 99% of our DNA) total 48?
...how we humans could lose 2 whole chromosomes in only 250,000 years?
...why our skin is so poorly adapted to the amount of sunlight striking Earth?
...why we are so physically weak compared to our closest genetic relatives?
...why Earth is minus a huge part of its crust, the part where the oceans are?
...why Earth is the only planet or moon with moveable tectonic plates?
...why Earth'moon is so extraordinarily outsized relative to other moons?
...why megalithic structures like the Pyramids cannot be duplicated today?
...why stones in those structures would buckle today's largest moveable cranes?
...how the ancient Sumerians knew all about Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto?
...why we found Uranus only in 1781, Neptune in 1846, and Pluto in 1930?
...how and why the Sumerians kept cosmic time in units of almost 26,000 years?
...if these questions will ever end?
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.bigfang.com/leisure/msg00032.html
I think that what I meant about rethinking everything really grows from
a feeling that everything we think is part of a very extensive and
interconnected system of thought ( a gestalt?), and that questioning the
parts leads to questioning the whole. This makes the task of rethinking
anything very difficult, because the thought-system tends to subtly
guide you back to where you first started, without you noticing it. I'm
not sure that this goes down to the very origins and structure of our
language. If this was so, it would be surely be impossible to coherently
articulate objections to competition, free markets, and so on, because
to do so would be self-contradictory.
I'm not sure that economic "laws" are merely cultural prejudice, but
they certainly aren't scientific, as hard as economic theorists try to
pretend that they are. Science - by which I mean physics - has never
attempted to extend itself into economics. There seems to be an
unwritten rule that science stays off the economists' "turf", and vice
versa. Scientists say that science is about what is the case, not what
ought to be the case. That it's about facts, not values. This
fact-value dichotomy is used to justify leaving economics to the
economists.
My view is that science could say a great deal about economics and other
value-laden studies, if scientists could summon up the nerve to invade
the economists' turf. Science remains a minority activity, restricted
to relatively trivial problems. In all other matters, we may as well
still be living in ancient Rome. Most people know next to nothing about
science, and don't need to, because it has got nothing to do with their
lives. I don't accept that because we can figure out how to put men on
the moon, build computers and so on, that we're living in a Scientific Age.
I also don't see science as a matter of soulless rote calculation. I see
it as requiring fantastic imagination, the ability to see the world
through new eyes. For Copernicus to conceive of the earth going round
the sun rather than vice versa required him to transform the world.
After all, it certainly looks like the sun goes round the earth, on the
face of it. And also that the earth is quite obviously flat.
"We are men, and our lot is to learn, and be hurled into inconceivable
new worlds." Don Juan
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.interbiznet.com/custint/context7.html
Everything You Know Is Wrong
Higher Quality IS Less Expensive
Brochures Don't Work On The Web
Repurposed Material Doesn't Work
Broadcasting Doesn't Work
Tight Feedback Loops Work
Mass Customization Works
Knowing Customers Personally Works
Databases Are The Beginnings of Intimacy
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.icann.org/comments-mail/comment-mac/msg00030.html
To Eric Weisberg from Mikael Pawlo
> Assume that AT&T has 400,000+/- employees. 1,000 of them join ICANN.
> Should AT&T be able to monitor how those employees vote? What about the
> employees of its vendors or customers? What about BWG-n-friends and
> all the other "parties" and interest groups? Should they know how
> their "members" vote?
Just one simple question: do you think that AT&T manipulates the
election of the President of the USA? Do you think that employees of
AT&T silently would follow such orders to vote in a specific manner
given by the executives?
I mean - that is a far more important election than anything related to
ICANN, so why shouldn't they? The same process applies.
In a world of conspiracy everything you know is wrong, isn't it?
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.mich.com/~mje/everything.html
A Child's Garden of Misconceptions
last updated 3/20/98
This page is devoted to bits and pieces of common, everyday, totally
accepted truths that are completely wrong. Not urban legends- those have
plenty of other home sites. These are the "facts" that pour blithly from
the mouths of newscasters, teachers, and everyday folks that are
completely and utterly....wrong.
Science And Technology
"There's no gravity in space." Sure there is; lots of it. there's
certainly enough to hold the solar system together, and galaxies
together. Astronauts are regularly described as being far enough from
earth so that they're experiencing zero gravity. In fact, the pull of
gravity at those altitudes is only slightly less than on the surface of
the earth. The reason the astronauts experience zero gravity (or more
precisely, microgravity) is that they're in orbit, and hence in
free-fall.
"Thomas Edison invented the Lightbulb." He didn't even invent a
particularly useful one. Edison's lightbulb used carbonized bamboo for a
filament; such bulbs were expensive and had a very short life. Practical
bulbs used tungsten, the contribution of a French scientist. Yet I just
saw a popular television science show (on PBS, no less!) state that
Edison invented the tungsten lightbulb.
"Henry Ford invented the automobile." This is still believed by many. He
also didn't invent mass production, interchangeable parts or inexpensive
automobiles. And his company was not a one-man operation; he was
financed by others, after having worked a number of years in the early
auto industry.
"Galileo was persecuted by the Church for his scientific theories." This
is the popular version, and it's absolutely incorrect. Here's an
excellent summary of the real story as posted to sci.astro.amateur by
Will Milan:
> Some academics did fear to look through Galileo's telescopes, but his
> discoveries were not the reason he got in trouble. In fact the Catholic
> Church was quite supportive of Galileo, and the Jesuit Roman College
> even once held a day of ceremonies to honor his work and his
> astronomical discoveries. In 1614 when a Dominican monk criticized
> Galileo in a sermon, the Preacher General of the Dominican order not
> only admonished the monk but apologized publicly to Galileo.
> What *did* get Galileo in trouble was his habit of belittling and
> insulting people. By his extreme arrogance Galileo had a lifelong habit
> of turning friends into enemies. In 1613 Galileo received letters
> praising his astronomical discoveries from several Catholic cardinals --
> including Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, a self-confessed science buff who,
> in 1623, became Pope Urban VIII. Galileo could not have hoped for a more
> friendly ear in the Vatican. But within a few years he had viciously
> insulted the Pope as a dolt and finally got hauled to Rome. The charge
> was heresy, but his real crime was insulting the Pope, and in that time
> and place that was beyond the pale. His telescopic discoveries didn't
> have much to do with it, and in fact science was not the real issue at
> all.
Economics And Finance
"The US Workforce is increasingly part-time." There's an oft-cited
statistic, intended to show that corporations are turning increasingly
to part-timers, that asserts that the percentage of part-time workers
has grown tremendously between 1968 and 1996. True, but nearly all the
increase occured prior to 1975! An excellent example of lying with
statistics.
"The tax cuts of the 1980s resulted in massive deficits." Actually, it was
the huge spending increases of the 80s that created the deficits.
Following the tax cuts, government revenues increased sharply, and there
was a huge net flow of capital into the USA. Even with the massive
increases in spending, GDP was still growing faster than the debt; in
that dynamic sense, the budget was actually balanced in 1988.
"If we eliminate capital gains taxes, the rich won't pay any tax." Here's
something that's not only wrong, it's grossly counterproductive. Here's
why: Say your grandfather invested in Ford Motor Company back when Henry
was a pup, and now you own 10% of Ford stock. Ford declares a dividend
one year, and you get $10Million is dividends, and you only pay $3
Million in capital gains taxes, right? Wrong. That $10 Million was a
distribution from post-tax profits. You own 10% of FMC stock- that means
you are a part owner of FMC. Should be obvious enough so far ;-). When
FMC declares a profit, the federal government gets first crack at it- a
50% corporate tax- before the owners get to distribute it to themselves.
So you're not really paying $3 Million on $10 Million in income; you're
paying $13 Million on $20 Million in income- a 65% tax. Eliminating
capital gains taxes puts you back in the 50% tax bracket.
"Junk bonds were responsible for the S&L crisis." This claim has gotten a
lot of play, mainly from politicians anxious to absolve themselves from
blame for ignoring the growing crisis through the 70s and 80s. In fact,
so-called "junk" bonds had a positive rate of return overall throughout
the 80s, and were responsible for financing (among other things) the
telecommunications revolution and the cable TV revolution. Junk bonds,
which are simply unsecured high-rate bonds, were created by Wall Street
in response to the traditional banking community's excessive
conservatism. When many S&Ls were forced to sell off their junk bond
holdings in the early 90s, investors jumped at purchasing these bonds at
very attractive rates. While politicians and the more ignorant writers
in the media still like to blame people like Michael Miliken for the S&L
debacle, it was the politicians who created the S&L disaster- and
financial innovators like Miliken who financed the new technologies of
the 1980s that helped fuel our current economic boom.
"Deregulation caused the S&L crisis." According to a study done in the
late 80s, solvent S&Ls benifitted greatly from deregulation, with overal
high rates of growth and increased solvency. It was only the insolvent
S&Ls that did worse, as they tried to gamble their way back to solvency.
It has been argued that the real culprit was the FSLIC insurance that
allowed insolvent S&Ls to gamble with no risk, together with
politicization of the congressional oversight comittees and with both
major political parties, who saw the crisi coming but ignored it to
avoid bringing up difficult numbers during elections. The business press
(Wall Street Journal, etc) was writing about the coming crisis back in
the 70s, when it was only a matter of tens of millions of dollars.
"Social Security is a solvent government pension plan." Actually, it's
neither. The money you pay into SS does not go into an account waiting
for your retirement; it's paid to current retirees. When you retire, you
will be paid by people working and paying into the system. While there
is currently a cash surplus in the SS funds, it's shrinking. Overall
cash flow is in deficit, and the first of the SS fund will probably
become insolvent by about 2010-2030, depending on how conservative your
estimates are. This is according to the actual published figures of the
Social Security Administration.
Media and The Arts
"TV Investigative Journalism ....isn't what you think it is." All those
great TV newsmagazine shows, where they've dug up some great story?
Wrong. They dug up nothing. Most of those stories are in fact pending
lawsuits brought to the show's producers by the tort lawyers handing the
suit. The "independant research labs" that perform the tests are hired
guns, paid for by the lawyers, to act as expert witnesses in the
lawsuits.
Government and Politics
"If we had government finance political campaigns it would more fair." But
would it really? To do so you need to ban all private spending on ads
promoting a candidate or issues associated witha candidate, and that
certainly sounds like a first amendment issue to me. Worse, you have
just handed over to the government the authority to determine who gets
funding and therefore who gets to run for office. That doesn't sound too
good.
Many people complain the the wealthy get to use their financial power to
run for office- but it didn't do Ross Perot much good, did it? People
still saw him as a dangerous clown. And it didn't win Steve Forbes the
nomination, or a fraction of the media attention other candidates got.
In fact, the biggest single spender on the 1996 Presidential election
was probably the UAW, who took advantage of the so-called soft money
exemption to run many millions of dollars worth of ads for Clinton and
attacking Dole.
The current system allows anyone to spend their own money, or to raise
money, to run for office. If you have an idea that excites people enough
to contribute, you can run for any office in the country. But if the
government decided who was a legitimate candidate and thus who would get
funded, the decision would be made not by the voting public but by a
government whose own interest is in protecting incumbents and members of
the current ruling party. Doesn't sound too good in those terms, does
it? But that's where the current proposals are heading.
"The FDA prevented the US from suffering the horrors of Thalidomide that
many European countries experienced." Actually, the FDA was getting ready
to approve Thalidomide for general use when the data started to come in
from Europe. In fact, it wasn't Thalidomide itself that caused the
defects, but an isomer that wasn't properly seperated in the
manufacture.
"The Flat Tax is a new, untested idea." The first Federal income tax was a
flat tax- and it wasn't under Taft, as many think, but under Lincoln. It
was enacted to pay for the Civil War.
"A Flat Tax is Unfair." I'm always puzzled by this one. If I pay 17% of
$50,000, and some rich guy pays 17% of $50,000,000, he's still paying a
thousand times more in tax than I am, and he doesn't get a thousand
times more service- even though he's probably employing a great many
people. So much of people's opinions sees to be based on some notion of
dragging everyone down to the same level. What's a better public policy:
To make everyone as poor as the poorest, or as wealthy as the
wealthiest? Sure, neither is realistic, but what's a better point to aim
for?
"Without farm subsidies, the US agricultural system would collapse." Since
WWII the Agriculture Department has spent enough money on subsidies to
purchase outright every single farm in the US. Farm policy in the US
seems to consist, many have said, of talking about poor farmers while
paying out millions to wealthy ones. One case in point in the system of
allocating peanut production in this country.
Long ago, permits were given out allowing a certain number of growers to
market a limited amount of peanuts domestically, which they must do at a
fixed price. Any excess they may sell overseas. The result is that US
peanut prices are the highest in the world. It's obvious that such price
supports aren't needed to survive in the peanut business, since many
peanut farmers do quite well growing only for export. The only
beneficiaries are the wealthy permit holders, like ex-President Carter,
who have a government granted monopoly on domestic production.
The political influence of this small group is tremendous, as evidenced
by the absence of any reference to the peanut marketing support program
in the farm reform bill passed by Congress in early 1996. The biggest
effect of this program on consumers is the high prices paid for peanuts
and peanut products, like peanut oil and peanut butter. Recent inroads
to US markets have been made by foreign peanut butter producers, and the
high cost of US grown peanuts may eventually mean that the bulk of
peanut butter sold in this country will be produced overseas.
"The US Government is the smallest it's been in 20 years." Not even close.
It's actually larger than it's ever been. What has shrunk is the
military. Government non-military spending is at an all-time high,
even in relative terms. In absolute numbers total government spending is
at record levels. A great deal of our current prosperity and good budget
numbers is due to the fact that we won the cold war and were able to
drastically cut military spending.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.herring.com/mag/issue36/pop.html
EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG
Forget programming; teach your kid to cut hair.
By Mark Williams
The Red Herring magazine
October 1996
Folk as diverse as Ross Perot, Lester Thurow, John Major, and you and I
may not agree on much. But we do all know that today's global economy
demands that countries be competitive in the same way corporations have
been. If a nation's workers are insufficiently trained for high-value
sectors where future jobs will be concentrated, the resulting lack of
international competitiveness will mean that workers will be driven into
lower-paying service positions, thus driving up wage inequality and
forcing down the standard of living.
This, according to Paul Krugman, is nonsense.
Krugman is a relatively young economic theorist who, in the last decade,
has published widely, from academic papers filled with graphs to books
for the general public like Peddling Prosperity. His column, The Dismal
Economist, is posted on Slate, and a recent issue of The Economist has
three pages by Krugman on monetary policy. If you have not already
encountered him, Krugman's latest collection of essays, Pop
Internationalism, is a good introduction.
Snake oil salesmen
Krugman argues that conventional discourse about international trade has
become dominated by pundits--"pop internationalists"--who are
deliberately misleading and, in most cases, entirely ignorant of the
basic principles of the world economy. Because economic circumstances
are not often amenable to easy understanding or solutions, a version of
Gresham's Law (whereby bad currency drives out good currency) comes into
play as a "punditocracy" substitutes tribal rhetoric for the stern facts
of the dismal science.
Accordingly, Krugman wrote these essays to present the basic tenets of
the intellectual tradition of trade theory derived from Hume and Ricardo
in a jargon-free style that a reader without an economics background can
understand. For instance, the real figures for international trade are
too small to have much effect on American wages: Even if, as Lester
Thurow asserts, a million manufacturing jobs have been lost to
deficit-induced deindustrialization (dubious), the annual wage loss
would still be only roughly equal to what America spends on health care
every weekend. But, as Krugman says, Thurow's 1992 best-seller Head to
Head would hardly have sold as many copies if its subtitle had been "The
coming struggle in which each big economy will succeed or fail based on
its own efforts, pretty much independent of how well the others do."
Countries are not corporations (90 percent of the US economy produces
goods and services for domestic use); countries trade because, as
classic trade theory has always had it, each country has a comparative
advantage in producing certain goods cheaply.
The academy vs. the world
Businesspeople may ask, If the views of economics professors are
persistently at variance with those of almost everyone else, shouldn't
that give the professors pause?
In fact, the professors are probably right. Classical economic theory,
developed largely by 19th-century English economists, derives from a
period in which countries were much more dependent on international
trade than the US is today: In the 1850s Britain exported 40 percent of
its gross domestic product. The key enabling technologies for the global
marketplace were the steam engine and the telegraph, Krugman says. In
1894 more than half of Chicago's workers were hog butchers,
steelworkers, and suchlike; steel and pork were the distinctive wares
that old Chicago sold the world. In 1996 less than a quarter of Los
Angeles's workers are in that city's specialized export industries--the
rest are essentially service workers. Because it is the precise nature
of high-productivity, technologically innovative industries to require
fewer workers, Krugman argues, in the future more and more people will
probably have localized, service jobs.
Krugman concedes it may be possible for technological progress to harm
large numbers of people. Economic historians confirm what Charles
Dickens already knew: The Industrial Revolution encouraged the
propertied classes to use less labor and invest more capital to produce
more--the resulting fall in demand for labor kept real wages stagnant,
even as the propertied classes' income soared. Today the benefits of
technological change flow not to capital, but to the highly skilled.
Yet one of automation's main effects is reduction of the special skills
required for tasks. The time may come, Krugman proposes, when
professionals like programmers may become the modern counterpart of
early-19th-century weavers, whose incomes soared after the mechanization
of spinning, only to crash when the technological revolution reached
their own craft. However, human beings will still be needed for such
truly difficult tasks as haircutting, housecleaning, and thousands of
other services that a computer or robot cannot do and that, Krugman
speculates, may receive an ever-larger share of our expenditure as mere
consumer goods grow steadily cheaper.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
Not sure why this showed up in the hits...
http://www.emsphone.com/Yankovic/WeirdAl/j_Running_With_Scissors/albuquerque.html
Albuquerque
by "Weird Al" Yankovic
Way back when I was just a little bitty boy living in a box under the
stairs in the corner of the basement of the house half a block down the
street from Jerry's Bait Shop... You know the place... Well anyway, back
then life was going swell and everything was juuuuust peachy!!! Except
of course for the undeniable fact that every single morning my mother
would make me a big ol' bowl of sauerkraut for breakfast.
Dawww!! Big bowl of sauerkraut!
Every single mornin'! It was driving me crazy.
I said to my mom, I said, "Hey, mom, what's up with all the sauerkraut?"
And my dear, sweet mother, she just looked at me like a cow looks at an
oncoming train. And she leaned right down next to me, and she said,
"IT'S GOOD FOR YOU!" And then she tied me to the wall and stuck a funnel
in my mouth and force fed me nothing but sauerkraut until I was 26 and a
half years old.
That's when I swore that someday, someday I would get outta that
basement and travel to a magical, far away place, where the sun is
always shining and the air smells like warm root beer, and the towels
are oh so fluffy! Where the shriners and the lepers play their ukuleles
all day long, and anyone on the street will gladly shave your back for a
nickel!
Wacka wacka, doo doo, yeah!
Well, let me tell you, people, it wasn't long at all before my dream
came true. Because the very next day, a local radio station had this
contest to see who could correctly guess the number of molecules in
Leonard Nimoy's butt. I was off by three, but I still won the grand
prize. That's right, a first class, one-way ticket...
to Albuquerque!
Albuquerque!
Oh yeah. You know, I'd never been on a real airplane before, and I gotta
tell ya, it was really great... except that I had to sit between two
large Albanian women with excruciatingly severe body odor. And the
little kid in back of me kept throwin' up the whole time. The flight
attendants ran out of Dr. Pepper and salted peanuts, and the in-flight
movie was Bio-Dome with Pauly Shore...and, oh yeah, three of the
airplane engines burned out, and we went into a tailspin and crashed
into a hillside and the plane exploded in a giant fireball and everybody
died. Except for me. You know why?
'Cause I had my tray table up
And my seat back in the full upright position
Had my tray table up
And my seat back in the full upright position
Had my tray table up
And my seat back in the full upright position
Ah-ha-ha-ha. Ah-ha-ha. Aahhh. So I crawled from the twisted, burnin'
wreckage, I crawled on my hands and knees for three full days, draggin'
along my big leather suitcase and my garment bag and my tenor saxophone
and my 12-pound bowlin' ball and my lucky, lucky autographed
glow-in-the-dark snorkel. But finally I arrived at the world famous
Albuquerque Holiday Inn where the towels are oh so fluffy! And you can
eat your soup right out of the ashtrays if you wanna. It's OK, they're
clean.
Well, I checked into my room, and I turned down the A/C, and I turned on
the SpectraVision, and I'm just about to eat that little chocolate mint
on my pillow that I love so very, very much, when suddenly there's a
knock on the door. Well, now, who could that be?
I say, "Who is it?" No answer.
"Who is it?" There's no answer.
"WHO IS IT!?" They're not sayin' anything.
So finally, I go over and I open the door, and just as I suspected, it's
some big, fat hermaphrodite with a Flock of Seagulls haircut, and only
one nostril. Oh, man, I hate it when I'm right. So, anyway, he bursts
into my room, and he grabs my lucky snorkel, and I'm like, "Hey, you
can't have that! That snorkel's been just like a snorkel to me."
And he's like, "Tough!"
And I'm like, "Give it!"
And he's like, "Make me!"
And I'm like, "'kay!"
So I grabbed his leg and he grabbed my esophagus, and I bit off his ear
and he chewed off my eyebrows, and I took out his appendix and he gave
me a colonic irrigation, yes indeed, you better believe it. And somehow
in the middle of it all, the phone got knocked off the hook. And twenty
seconds later, I heard a familiar voice. And you know what it said? I'll
tell ya what it said!
It said, "If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again.
If you need help, hang up and then dial your operator.
If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again.
If you need help, hang up and then dial your operator."
In Albuquerque!
Albuquerque!
Well, to cut a long story short, he got away with my snorkel. But I made
a solemn vow right then and there that I would not rest, I would not
sleep for an instant, until the one-nostrilled man was brought to
justice. But first, I decided to buy some donuts. So I got in my car,
and I drove over to the donut shop, and I walked on up to the guy behind
the counter and he says, "Yeah, whaddaya want??"
I said, "You got any glazed donuts?"
He said, "Nah, we're outta glazed donuts."
I say, "Well, you got any jelly donuts?"
He said, "No, we're outta jelly donuts."
I said, "You got any Bavarian cream-filled donuts?"
He said, "No, we're outta Bavarian cream-filled donuts."
I said, "You got any cinnamon rolls?"
He said, "No, we're outta cinnamon rolls!"
I said, "You got any apple fritters?"
He said, "No, we're outta apple fritters!"
I said, "You got any bear claws?"
He said, "Wait a minute, I'll go check."
"No, we're outta bear claws!"
I said, "Well, in that case... in that case, what do you have?"
He says, "All I got right now is this box of one dozen starving crazed
weasels."
I said, "OK, I'll take that."
So he hands me the box, and I open up the lid, and the weasels jump out
and they immediately latch onto my face and start bitin' me all over.
Oh, man, they were just goin' nuts! They were tearin' me apart! You
know, I think it was just about that time that a little ditty started
goin' through my head. I believe it went a little somethin' like this:
DOH! Get 'em off me! Get 'em off me! Ohhh! No, get 'em off, get 'em off!
Oh, oh God, oh God! Oh, get 'em off me! Oh, oh God! Ah,
AaaaaaahhhhhhhhhOhhhhhhhhhh!
I ran out into the street with these flesh-eating weasels all over my
face, wavin' my arms all around and just runnin', runnin', runnin' like
a constipated wiener dog. And as luck would have it, that's exactly when
I ran into the girl of my dreams. Her name was Zelda. She was a
calligraphy enthusiast, with a slight overbite, and hair the color of
strained peaches. I'll never forget the very first thing she said to me.
She said, "Hey, you've got weasels on your face."
That's when I knew it was true love. We were inseparable after that. Aw,
we ate together, we bathed together, we even shared the same piece of
mint-flavored dental floss. The world was our burrito. So we got
married, and we bought us a house and had two beautiful children,
Nathaniel and Superfly. Oh we were so very, very, very happy, aw yeah.
But then, one fateful night, Zelda said to me, she said, "Sweetie
pumpkin? Do you wanna join the Columbia Record Club?" I said, "Woah!
Hold on now, baby! I'm just not ready for that kind of a commitment!"
So we broke up, and I never saw her again, but that's just the way
things go...
in Albuquerque!
Albuquerque!
Anyway, things really started lookin' up for me, because about a week
later, I finally achieved my lifelong dream. That's right, I got me a
part-time job at the Sizzler! I even made employee of the month after I
put out that grease fire with my face. Aw yeah, everybody was pretty
jealous of me after that. I was gettin' a lot of attitude.
OK, like one time, I was out in the parkin' lot, tryin' to remove my
excess earwax with a golf pencil, when I see this guy Marty tryin' to
carry a big ol' sofa up the stairs all by himself. So I-I say to him, I
say, "Hey, you want me to help you with that?" And Marty, he just rolls
his eyes, and goes, "No, I want you to cut off my arms and legs with a
chainsaw!" So I did.
And then he gets all indignant on me. He's like, "Hey, man, I was just
being sarcastic!" Well, that's just great. How was I supposed to know
that? I'm not a mind reader, for cryin' out loud. Besides, now he's got
a really cute nickname - Torso-Boy! So what's he complaining about?
Say, that reminds me of another amusing anecdote. This guy comes up to
me on the street and he tells me he hasn't had a bite in three days.
Well, I knew what he meant, but just to be funny, I took a big bite out
of his jugular vein. And he's yelling and screaming and bleeding all
over, and I'm like, "Hey, come on, don'tcha get it?" But he just keeps
rolling around on the sidewalk, bleeding and screaming, "Aaaahhhh!
AaaaahhhhOhhhhh! Aaaaahhhh!" You know, completely missing the irony of
the whole situation. Man, some people just can't take a joke, you know?
Anyway, um...um...where was I? Kinda lost my train of thought.
Uh, well, uh, OK, anyway, I-I know it's kind of a roundabout way of
saying it, but, I guess the whole point I'm tryin' to make here is...
I HATE SAUERKRAUT!
That's all I'm really tryin' to say. And, by the way, if one day you
happen to wake up and find yourself in an existential quandry, full of
loathing and self-doubt and wracked with the pain and isolation of your
pitiful meaningless existence, at least you can take a small bit of
comfort in knowing that somewhere out there in this crazy ol' mixed-up
universe of ours, there's still a little place
called Albuquerque!
Albuquerque!
Albuquerque! (Albuquerque!)
Albuquerque! (Albuquerque!)
Albuquerque! (Albuquerque!)
Albuquerque! (Albuquerque!)
I said A! (A!)
L! (L!)
B! (B!)
U! (U!)
querque! (querque!)
(Albuquerque, Albuquerque, Albuquerque, Albuquerque)
(Albuquerque, Albuquerque, Albuquerque, Albuquerque)
(Albuquerque, Albuquerque, Albuquerque, Albuquerque)
(Albuquerque, Albuquerque, Albuquerque, Albuquerque)
Al...buquerque!
*burp*
heh heh heh heh
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
Must have been the Weird Al Yankovic reference. Here's the coup de grace...
http://www.lyricshq.com/Lyrics/badhair.shtml
Everything You Know is Wrong
by Weird Al Yankovic
I was driving on the freeway in the fast lane
With a rabid wolverine in my underwear
When suddenly a guy behind me in the back seat
Popped right up and cupped his hands across my eyes
I guessed, "Is it Uncle Frank or Cousin Louie?
Is it Bob or Joe or Walter?
Could it be Bill or Jim or Ed or Bernie or Steve?"
I probably would have kept on guessing
But about that time we crashed into the truck
And as I'm laying bleeding there on the asphalt
Finally I recognize the face of my hibachi dealer
Who takes off his prosthetic lips and tells me
Everything you know is wrong
Black is white, up is down and short is long
And everything you thought was just so important doesn't matter
Everything you know is wrong
Just forget the words and sing along
All you need to understand is
Everything you know is wrong
I was walkin' to the kitchen for some Golden Grahams
When I accidentally stepped into a alternate dimension
And soon I was abducted by some aliens from space
Who kinda looked like Jamie Farr
They sucked out my internal organs
And they took some polaroids and said I was a darn good sport
And as a way of saying thank you
They offered to transport me back to any point in history that I would
care to go
And so I had them send me back to last Thursday night
So I could pay my phone bill on time
Just then the disembodied head of Colonel Sanders started yelling
Everything you know is wrong
Black is white, up is down and short is long
And everything you thought was just so important doesn't matter
Everything you know is wrong
Just forget the words and sing along
All you need to understand is
Everything you know is wrong
I was just about to mail a letter to my evil twin
When I got a nasty paper cut
And, well, to make a long story short
It got infected and I died
So now I'm up in heaven with St. Peter by the pearly gates
And it's obvious he doesn't like the Nehru jacket that I'm wearing
He tells me that they've got a dress code
Well, he lets me into heaven anyway
But I get the room next to the noisy ice machine for all eternity
And every day he runs by screaming
Everything you know is wrong
Black is white, up is down and short is long
And everything you thought was just so important doesn't matter
Everything you know is wrong
Just forget the words and sing along
All you need to understand is
Everything you know is wrong
"It's All About The Pentiums," the second video to be released from
"Weird Al" Yankovic's latest album Running With Scissors, was shot on
June 30 and July 2, 1999. The first day of shooting took place on a
soundstage in North Hollywood, California, and the second day was shot
inside an actual office building (the Department of Public Works in
Alhambra).
Two of Al's long-time friends make cameo appearances in this video. Drew
Carey shows up as Al's Mase-like counterpart, and Emo Philips is
featured in several short vignettes as the clueless newbie.
The song is, of course, a parody of Puff Daddy's "It's All About The
Benjamins." The video borrows elements from several Puff Daddy videos,
and pokes fun at hip-hop video cliches in general.
Al naturally got Puff Daddy's permission and blessing to do the parody.
Al spoke to Puffy personally over the phone, just to make sure that
there wouldn't be any "miscommunication," as there had been with at
least one other rapper in the past.
"It's All About The Pentiums" was directed by Al Yankovic.
Executive Producer: Beth LaMure
Producer: Craig Armstrong
Director of Photography: Clyde Smith
Other interesting factoids:
White pigeons were used instead of doves (this is common practice for
music videos). There were people hidden under the car and in the
floorboards waiting to release the birds. 50 "doves" were used so that
production would have enough for all the takes. The last 10 were
released as a sign of peace and good will on Earth. (Actually, everybody
just wanted to throw birds in the air.)
Immediately after shooting his video for "The Saga Begins," Al began
growing facial hair for "Pentiums" so that he could look more
Puffy-esque. He also donned the traditional Puffy sunglasses - but
decided against copying the hair. (Al opted to have his own hair pulled
back into a ponytail rather than "confuse" fans with another
short-haired wig.)
The Nash Metropolitan was courtesy of the president of the Metropolitan
Club of Southern California.
80 kinoflow tubes were used to light the Drew Carey set, as well as the
ring light.
The clock on the Emo set shows the time the scene was actually shot,
about 3:30 in the morning.
The Bill Gates look-alike was flown in from Seattle.
Can you figure out which extra was featured in both the "Saga Begins"
and "Pentiums" video?
-- http://www.thepentiums.com/behind.html