Savors the Sun While She Shines

Have you seen or, more importantly, heard the new Old Navy commercials for the holiday season? The ads use the tagline "Gifts that warm/pamper/play" and all three feature a woman singing a song that I really couldn't understand. In fact, I wasn't even sure if she was singing in English for most of the song. After a few thousand times of seeing the commercial and not knowing what was being said other than "all it takes is a little faith...", I finally decided to look online for information on the song used in the campaign. First, I was able to find videos of the ads. Here are two of them.






After finding the videos, I found the lyrics and was shocked to discover that she was singing in English. I couldn't believe it. Watching the ads, I could hear a couple of lines in English, but the rest just simply didn't make any sense. Finally, it all made sense when I learned who the artist performing the song was^*:






^*Ok, fine. It's not really the Swedish Chef. The song is called "Stars" and it's performed by The Weepies.

Everyday Should Be Caturday

Today I am once again drawing not from my imagination, but from internet phenomena. This time, it's a website mashup. College football blog, Every Day Should Be Saturday meet lolcats and the meme of putting poorly spelled, grammatically incorrect captions on pictures.

With that, I give you Everyday Should Be Caturday, a brief recap of the 2007 college football season told through poorly captioned pictures.^*



Division I-AA Appalachian State upsets #5 Michigan, setting the stage for one of the strangest college football seasons in memory.



Duke breaks 22 game losing streak.



Heavily favored USC loses at home to Stanford, disrupting the race for the national title.

Nebraska loses to Kansas, giving up a record 76 points.

Alabama's $4 million dollar man can't keep his team from falling to Louisiana-Monroe.

Kansas maintains a perfect record until losing the final game of the regular season to Missouri, knocking them out of the national title hunt and the Big XII Championship Game.

McFadden wins Walter Camp award and becomes the first player to finish as the runner-up for the Heisman in consecutive years.

Florida quarterback Tim Tebow becomes the first player to rush and throw for 20+ touchdowns in a season, sets record for most rushing touchdowns by a quarterback in a single season, outruns speeding bullet, becomes first underclassman to win Heisman.

In a season where no win is certain, Ohio State regains the #1 ranking and a spot in the BCS Championship by taking a month off.

...and nothing more. While others fell throughout the season, Hawaii stands as the only undefeated team after the regular season, but is left out of the BCS Championship.

^*Pictures taken from wherever a google image search led me. Captions added using the lolcat generator from icanhascheezburger.com

The Fount of Useless Information Overanalyzes Lyrics

"Baby, It's Cold Outside" is an Academy Award winning song written by Frank Loesser and often played around Christmas time. I think the time has come to examine these lyrics a little closer and see just what we can find.

For those of you not familiar with the song, it is a duet sung by a woman who wants to go home and a man, who is trying to convince her that she should stay.

As the song progresses, she continues to say that she should leave:

"I really can't stay
I've got to go away
This evening has been
So very nice
My mother will start to worry
My father will be pacing the floor
So really I'd better scurry"

With each of her lines, the man answers imploring that she stay. But look at the tactics he uses. A few of his better lines:

"Baby it's cold outside"

"Beautiful, please don't hurry"

"No cabs to be had out there"

"What's the sense in hurting my pride
Baby don't hold out"

Sensing that she was not amenable to fear of weather, flattery or inability to travel, he progresses to pity.

"How can you do this thing to me
Making my life long sorrow
If you caught pneumonia and died"

Finally, realizing that pity is not working, he shifts to using guilt to get his way.

But the real kicker is in these two lines (this time written with both parts).

"The neighbors might think - Baby, it's bad out there
Say, what's in this drink - No cabs to be had out there"

Umm...yeah. It's called Rohypnol or, in popular parlance, a Roofie.

That's right, it may be played at Christmas time, but it's not so much a Christmas song as it is a date rape song. And with that I will leave you to never hear the song the same way again.

Well Played, Amazon.com

I was completely out of ideas for Christmas presents for Melissa this year, so I started browsing Amazon in the hopes that something would give me an idea. It turns out that Amazon has created all sorts of gift guides for different personalities and relationships. Everything from "The Dude" which, not surprisingly, suggests a copy of The Big Lebowski to "Grandpa" who based on these suggestions spends all his time shaving, checking his tire pressure and wondering what time it is.

While I knew that it was highly unlikely that I would find something appropriate in the "Girlfriend/Wife" section, I decided to go ahead while hoping that something would at least point me in a new direction. While I was amused by some of the suggestions that would have made for an awfully awkward gift opening on Christmas morning if a man gave them to his wife in front of her entire family, the one that really caught my eye was this entire section. Yes, that's right, Amazon suggests that if you need help finding a gift for your girlfriend/wife, you should try giving her an elliptical trainer. I'm not sure if this was supposed to be a suggestion for what to give your wife if you already happen to have a girlfriend, but I can't come up with a way that it would be a good idea to give a woman a gift that says "You could really use to lose a few pounds. Let's see if using this thing will help out the size of your butt. It's really looking big recently." While I was trying to figure out how this could have ended up as a suggestion, it finally hit me. If any man actually followed that suggestion, he would not only have purchased a fairly expensive elliptical trainer, but after the gift had been given, he would also be scrambling for a new gift that was not only suitable, but also was nice (read: expensive) enough to express just how sorry he really is about that whole misunderstanding. All in all, I think it's a very clever plan by Amazon, but I have to wonder how many people would actually fall into that trap.

Fortunately for me, Melissa came along to put me out of my misery and just told me what to get her.

An Open Letter and Request for Moratorium

Dear People of Everywhere,

We all seem to like thinking that we are vastly different than everyone else. We put ourselves into smaller and smaller groups and think that these groups are nothing like any other groups. We find ways to identify ourselves based on location and come up with clever things to show how different we are than everyone else. I'm not going to request that we stop this altogether and try to make the world a better place, but I have to draw the line somewhere.

I have lived in several places in various parts of the country, and I have yet to live in a single place where people do not say "That's (place) weather for you. If you don't like it, just wait five minutes." Just stop, people. That's all weather for you. Weather changes. That's what is does. I humbly request on behalf of all mankind that no one ever use this phrase again.

Sincerely (and also kind of grumpily),

Craig



There, I've done my part, now you go and do something to make the world a better place.