Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

Abe Sauer on the North Dakota Fighting Sioux.

Via the Globe’s Brainiac blog (via the literary magazine the Believer), a forensic artist does sketches of famous literary bad guys. The main piece, unfortunately, isn’t online at this point. I was looking forward to seeing Humbert Humbert.

This brings me back to those lazy summer days when I’d put a GI Joe in the middle of the street, sit in the driveway with a tall, cold glass of lemonade, and watch cars driving by smash them to pieces. Hours of good fun.

H/t to Gorillamask

So the blogosphere is abuzz (well, not abuzz, but I’ve seen more than three different posts in the past two weeks) with stories about the North Pacific Gyre, and the attendant environmental crisis. The interest has been spurred along by this piece in the New York Times, and this photo essay of garbage-stuffed bird carcasses. It’s really dreadful stuff.

My first reaction upon reading these posts and looking at these pictures was obviously disgust and self-loathing. That should be self-evident. My second reaction, though, was “Old news.” Why? Because I read Cracked.

I’m specifically referring to the June 6, 2009 list “6 Real Islands Way More Terrifying Than The One On ‘Lost‘” (scroll down to #2). The Pacific Gyre has been haunting my nightmares since June! Welcome to my world.

Those of you who are familiar with Cracked know about all the dick-and-fart jokes and user-submitted Photoshop parodies, but their bread and butter is the daily list, like “The 9 Most Racist Disney Characters,” “6 Insane Discoveries that Science Can’t Explain,” and “7 Secrets Only Two Living People Know (For Some Reason).” If you’re not familiar with Cracked, get familiar! I’m willing to say that I learn more from reading a week’s worth of Cracked than I did in college. Sorry, Mom.

My buddy Reeves said it a few months ago: songs need to be longer. He gives a few examples of songs that he wishes had another verse or four, but here’s the textbook example: “Mr. Grieves,” by the Pixies.

Clocking in at a spartan two minutes and six seconds, “Mr. Grieves” has at least five distinct elements that could stand to be 45 seconds longer. That would put it at shade shy of six minutes. That’s a good length! Of course, the Pixies are who they are, and the Dolittle album is 15 tracks long and only lasts like, 20 minutes. Oh well.

Thankfully, we’ve got the guys from TV on the Radio, for some weird reason, doing an a cappella cover that runs longer than four minutes. Not the route I would go down, but good nevertheless.

W/r/t TV on the Radio, should I be into these guys? You all read this blog and listen to these dopey music posts. Are they up my alley?

I use Google Analytics to track various aspects of my site’s traffic. One of the things that Google can tell me is which search terms are bringing people to Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun. Would you like to know the most common term that brings people to DD&U from a Google search?

OMGBSE.

That’s right. OMGBSE.

I was wicked confused when I saw this, until I realized that I used the abbreviation “OMGBSE” in this Gossip Girl recap. But why were people typing in “OMGBSE”?

Because no one knew what it meant! Another top search term was “what does omgbse mean.” So, as a service not only to my precious readers, but to the unwashed Internet masses, here you go: OMGBSE means “Oh my God, best sleepover ever.” A Constance cretin uttered it when B invited those high school girls up to her apartment because she was dissatisfied with how Jenny was running C-B. So, there you go.