Geek Love and Postcard Confessions
Tuesday, October 16, 2007 at 11:05AM I recently stumbled upon two really great ways to waste my time- the webcomic site XKCD and the blogspot site Postsecret.
XKCD (Randall Monroe says "It's not actually an acronym. It's just a word with no phonetic pronunciation") is an online comic website started by Randall Monroe compiled from the margins of his old physics and math notebooks. It's for anyone who has taken an advance math class, gotten their heart broken, or appreciates sarcasm, or has an uncanny fear of velociraptor attacks. There is a comic featuring these stick figures for almost every situation.
Some of the comics are a little above my head, talking about physicists and mathematicians such as Turing and
Others are totally hilarious and capture the little moments of college life perfectly
After going through withdrawal from Katamari Damacy- one of my favorite PS2 games of all time (Katamari Damacy is a game where you roll up objects on Earth that are bigger than you are into balls in order to make stars.), a friend of mine sent me this one:
Do you get it?
This website also has jokes that are made for the science-nerd or math-geek in all of us:
Finally, there are the three or four panel comics that simply and uniquely encapsulate human emotion:
and
I spend way too much time laughing at this website, and I encourage you to do the same.
Postsecret is a community art website run by Frank Warren that receives postcards from all over the world with peoples' secrets written on them. He posts a new card with a secret on it every Sunday. The cards range from sweet to hilarious to heartbreaking. There are also a few books compiling the postsecrets that they have received.They've gained so much popularity (they even have a book tour!) because the postcards are so easy to relate to and they make you want to send in postsecrets of your own.
Here is this past Sunday's:
Cows and whales are arguably the two worst animals you can have on an album cover. This is because neither affiliates with any form of music, or, at least, any viable form of music. Somehow, Michigan's Ugly Beauty managed to fit 10 cows and 2 whales on their cover (plus another lone cow on the back). The band also has an annoying penchant for oxymoronic phrases. This is to be expected, i guess. They ARE called Ugly Beauty, afterall. And check out the album title. Deep stuff man. It seems that everything cancels itself out in the Ugly Beauty idiom. You can be ugly, but still win a beauty pageant. You can be unqiue, but still be another face in the crowd. And whales? Well, they can fucking FLYYYY.
But enough discussion about the laser-printed flap. The music is a fusion of 80s glam metal riffs, and hardcore-lite (oxymoronic!) vocals. Perhaps the most annoying thing is that it's not as funny as the album cover suggests. It's only bad. And merely being bad, as opposed to being holy-fuck-hide-the-children-bad, might be the worst kind of bad there is.
Rabid "Skull"
What is it with this trend? So we get a CD and there's some arbitrary animal on it- lets say, an emu, a bald eagle, or, in this case, a rabbit, and although we know it's going to be 12 tracks of pure awfulness, we still have high hopes for something strange or satanic. But once we pop the disc in, it's just a regurgitation of the worst glam metal cliches: scale shredding, toms and more toms, etc.
And has anyone ever read "Bunnicula"? Cause the album cover is totally reminiscent of that.
DLo "I Dare You To Love Me" (single)
There's bit of a mystery with this single. If you look close enough, you'll notice that the front and inside cover features the exact same head! So who is DLo? And why did the people at MTM Entertainment need to place his cropped-off cabasa on two seperate bodies? And who do those bodies belong to? These questions are undoubtedly far more intriguing than the song itself.
"Dare You To Love Me" is your standard R&B fare that longs for the days of Boys II Men. If you can't get enough of it, the second track adds saxomophone to the mix, and the third is all instrumental (just in case you want to play it over your Fergie acapella cuts). We're not touching this stuff, even if DLo (if he even exists) names it "Double Dog Dare Ya." 
Honestly, were they unable to see that Noah Lennox, (AKA: Panda Bear) clearly does not possess any estrogen? Perhaps the captioner lacked his sense of sight, and had to rely upon his sense of hearing to communicate to those with the former and without the latter.
All joking aside, though, Animal Collective’s appearance on national television not only makes great strides in the world of independent music, but for the band themselves.
Strawberry Jam, the title of New York City-based band Animal Collective’s newest release, seems somewhat of a contradiction, for the sugary-sweet artificiality conjured up by the album’s name clashes horribly against characteristics of the group’s previous releases. Known for its revolutionary delves into uncharted areas of electronic psych-rock, Animal Collective—which consists of members David Portner, Noah Lennox, Josh Dibb, and Brian Weitz operating under the clever monikers of Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Deakin, and Geologist, respectively—push, often, into unsettling, confusing territory; sugar-coated and generic it is not.
However, despite the inherent contrasts which arise through the album’s name, Strawberry Jam, upon first listen, seems more of a delightfully fitting name than misguided misnomer. In fact, the album emerges as a collection of songs as accessible and easy to love as, well, strawberry jam.
Blending together their traditional high-register harmonies with intensely developed and intricately executed electronic instrumentation, Animal Collective seems to abandon their previous musical style—vaguely ethnic songs strongly influenced by experimental folk structures—on Strawberry Jam. The result emerges as an oddly fantastic one. Unexpectedly, the characters of Animal Collective jump from upbeat trip-pop—seen on track such as “Peacebone� and “Chores�—to mellow, reflective numbers, such as “Fireworks� at the drop of a hat. These constant shifts, however, work together perfectly, with each track building off their predecessor.
Performing on Conan may have been a public jumping point for Animal Collective, but Strawberry Jam should be seen as their long-deserved bridge between a discriminating audience and those who appreciate well-crafted music. So, pull out that white bread and peanut butter, and spread a liberal amount of Strawberry Jam onto your next afternoon snack.
Watch Animal Collective's national television debut