I like every meme that has ever existed

*cue Enya music*

One Site to rule them all,
One Site to find them,
One Site to bring them all
And in the darkness bind them.

I have found the One Site. It is powerful beyond all belief. (sentence completed at approx. 1:15 am)

(sentence begun at approx. 2:33 am) Okay, it’s so powerful that it just sidetracked me from writing this for a little over an hour. It’s late now and I should be sleeping. Here’s what I’ve got for you: a timeline of all (okay, most) of the internet memes from the beginning of the internet up until pretty recently. It’s amazing. I’m not going to spend much time telling you about it because I’m tired and I still have to take out my contacts.

Here’s the link: Internet Memes Timeline

And here are just two of the hundreds of videos on this timeline. I chose them because I love spaghetti cat.

Spaghetti Cat: The Original

Spaghetti Cat (I Weep For You)

See you tomorrow.

I like following rabbit trails on Wikipedia

There is almost nothing more satisfying to me than knowing a little bit about a lot of things. People always use the phrase “inch deep and a mile wide” as if it’s a bad thing. Pffff. Does anyone (who’s cool) really care if you can explain the evolution of Greek theater? The answer is no. But all the cool kids will like you if you throw out the fact that Aeschylus, a Greek playwright, died when an eagle dropped a live tortoise on his head. Do you know anything else about Aeschylus? No. But nobody cares because they all think you’re cool and intellectual now.

With that result in mind, I spend hours of my life following rabbit trails on Wikipedia, arguably the most powerful tool for making yourself seem intelligent since the invention of glasses. Did you know that Eskimos don’t actually have a ton of different words for snow like everyone always says they do? I did. Is that true? Wikipedia says it is. Did you know that one of Nightcrawler’s (from X-Men) powers is to almost disappear when he’s in the shadows? I did. But I wouldn’t have if I didn’t devote time to storing up this mass of random facts.

So how does one get started in the art of random fact retention? Well, here’s a nice little list of great jumping-off points for you to learn all sorts of random things in the wonderful world of Wikipedia. The key here is to find something you’re sort of interested in and then just keep clicking the links you find on that page until you feel like you’ve got enough random facts stored up to sound learned. Also, if you just pronounced the last word in the previous sentence as “lurnd,” then you probably shouldn’t waste your time on Wikipedia; no one will ever think you’re smart.

• The List of Unusual Deaths
• The List of Common Misconceptions
• The List of Inventors Killed by Their Own Inventions
• Drug Urban Legends
• The List of Misquotations
• The List of X-Men Members

Godspeed and good hunting.

I like kinetic typography

Good type is a beauty to look at. To be able to use letters and words as imagery to convey a message through not only the words themselves but the artist’s arrangement of the words on the page is a skill few have. The problem is that because of my overexposure to TV and internet, if something doesn’t move spastically or cut to a different scene every two seconds or less, I’ll fall asleep faster than…well, even faster than I normally do when I’m not being entertained by seizure-inducing Japanese commercials. So words on a page tend to be a problem. But what other option is there for seeing beautifully arranged type?

Enter kinetic typography. Kinetic typography is a kind of animation and graphic design in which a speech or clip from a movie is portrayed using mainly the words being spoken. It’s hard to explain. But it’s fun to watch, and with that in mind I’ve gathered together my “Top 10 Best Examples of Kinetic Typography” *trumpet flourish*.

Here they are, in no particular order (except that these first five are my favorites):

Who’s on First by Jimmy073

Fight Club – Chemical Burn by gordoteins

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger by lance15100

Dumb and Dumber by ufnc

Pulp Fiction by chuwichuwi

For the sake of space, I’m just going to link to the last five. Be warned, some of these are a tiny bit vulgar:

– Tenacious D: Inward Singing by asivins

– Wedding Crashers: The Perfect Girl by daftcain

– Dwight’s Speech by RojamNairassoy

– Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels by varic

– McDonald’s Prayer by TheCrookedGremlins

So there you have it. My top 10 list of best examples of kinetic typography. If you find one you like better, link it in the comments.

I like end-of-the-year music lists

I love music. I like to listen to it alone. I like to dance to it in groups. It keeps me awake when I’m driving, and it’s nice to fall asleep to when it’s nap time. I try to keep up with new music throughout the year, but even the most addicted web-head can miss a few days or even weeks of new-music reviews. That’s why the end of the year (or in this case, the beginning of it) is so exciting: everyone on the interwebs is posting their ideas of the best albums of the year. It’s wonderful. Now, if only there was a way to put together all of those lists and come up with an “All Internet Top 50” list . . .

Enter The Hype Machine. This website scans a bunch of MP3 blogs and automatically posts little blurbs about the most popular songs on the web. You can listen to the songs on their front page or explore further by going to the blog entries themselves. Now, the website is amazing simply in its day-to-day operation, but what they’ve done with their end-of-the-year list is even better. They’ve analyzed a bunch of bloggers’ year-end lists and come up with the top 50 albums of 2008 according to the top music blogs. The best part is: you can listen to full albums on the site to see if you’d like to purchase them. It’s wonderful. So go check it out. You won’t regret the time.

The Hype Machine: Top 50 Albums of 2008