"blogs that cover bird flu … news and activity along U.S. borders … drug trafficking and cybercrime"
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And now to get 2log on this exclusive watchlist and LITERALLY land us dozens of new readers, I present you a short play.
Drug Trafficking, Cybercrime, Borders & Bird Flu A tragedy in one act
Brandywine: Hey pencilneck, do you want to do some drugs? Billy: Here? While I'm driving my new Chrysler 200 Touring? Not in this deathtrap! Don't you know that one in eight Americans die in a Chrysler? Brandywine: Don't be such a blattering mancy. Billy: OK, you convinced me. Let me just get my paraphernalia. I bought it with credit cards I stole from the internet. Brandywine: You're not special for using the internet, pickleface. We all "log in" to the informed commentary of Brian Ross on the ABC news blog, "The Blotter" Billy: Uh oh! To do this many drugs, we need to go someplace empty. Brandywine: How about that Borders bookstore that recently closed?
Billy and Brandywine have a drug montage.
Billy: Yummers! HORK!
Billy caught bird, swine, and Spanish flu from smoking tainted potpourri and died at the age of 11. Brandywine dropped out of school to become substitute auctioneer in the backroom of a Dairy Queen. She retired at the age of 98 and died two years earlier. They are survived by their daughters, Oskarita, Jalapeno, and Broccolisaurus 2.0.
THE END
Now that I have your attention, Homeland Security, there seems to be a terrorist risk in chamber 2730.
Merry X-mas to all! In honor of the day, I made you a very special Xword puzzle. I couldn't find an easy way to let it be played online, so instead I offer a printable PDF version here.
For the first person to complete it successfully, I'll set a future X-word puzzle in your honor.
EDIT:
Because I can't distinguish an uppercase I from a lowercase l, please change
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. We all hear the few who are desperately loud. A stunning number of otherwise talentless people have realized they can jumpstart their career simply by yelling all the time.
With this in mind, 2log celebrates our ranking of the 10 Loudest People, who have kickstarted their career by making themselves heard.
10. Lil' Jon
The world has seen its share of musicians who lack musical talent. But only Lil' Jon was able to become a household name and win awards simply by screaming atonally and arhythmically with other musicians in the same room.
He places lowest on the list because his star has fallen presumably as his voice got hoarse. His most recent work is being a D-List celebrity on a reality show chaired by the third place screamer (see below.)
9. Will Farrell
If you're looking to get alcohol poisoning, watch any Will Ferrell movie and take a shot every time Ferrell screams. Chart his career crescendo:
2005: The impending din is foreshadowed in his star vehicle "Kicking & Screaming"
2009: Instead of writing a script for "Land of the Lost", they instead just let Ferrell and a pack of CGI dinosaurs roar back and forth for an hour and a half.
2011: Will Ferrell is brought in to shout some life into the rapidly crumbling Office.
Ferrell only places at #9, because he's also somewhat funny when using his indoor voice, and he could have possibly cut a successful career in a parallel and more civilized universe.
8. Jim Cramer
If your job was to peddle financial advice, but your financial advice caused people to lose money, you might contemplate a new career path. Cramer instead opted to shout his financial advice louder. Cramer has reduced the discourse surrounding complex financial transactions to that of an episode of Pee Wee's Fun House.
Our heart goes out to you if you lost your life savings betting on Bear Sterns the day before it collapsed because Cramer's screaming bullied you into it. If ratings drop, I fear Cramer will start pressuring you to buy General Electric or he'll sacrifice a kitten on camera.
7. Regis Philbin
Regis Philbin manages to toe the thin line between screaming excitedly at all times in his life and yet somehow not doing it at eardrum-shattering levels. As the world record holder for most time in front of a camera, he's probably calculated the exact maximum volume he can hit without causing audio equipment to spike.
In his record-setting time in front of the camera, he's kept up a consistent frenzied pitch of astonishment the entire time. After a quarter decade hosting a talk show, he still manages to shout in excited disbelief every time a celebrity chef demonstrates a new way to mix a vinaigrette. Mr. Philbin hits the #7 mark not solely for volume, but duration.
6. Oprah Winfrey
The only lady to crack the list knows how to excite a crowd. Here's 25 years of her screaming celebrity guests.
5. R. Lee Ermey
Ermey served 11 years in the army and never rose past the rank of Staff Sergeant. I'm not disparaging his military service, but merely commenting that we may never have heard of the foot soldier in his previously unremarkable career path.
Fortunately, he got a lucky break when he screamed his way onto the set of Full Metal Jacket. He's since transformed himself into a successful Hollywood character actor as screaming military guy. After twenty five years of screaming, he was eventually promoted to Gunnery Sergeant, to match the rank of his fictitious Kubrick persona.
4. Chris Matthews
Want to start a career as a political commentator, but lack any interesting political insight or interviewing talent? Chris Matthews faced this dilemma some years back. He overcame this by pitching the network execs on a show where he just yelled at his guests.
I expect the only way we can see him displaced from the airwaves is if Gwen Ifill decides to cold clock one guest per show.
3. Donald Trump
Mr. Trump once styled himself a businessman, but failed stunningly at every one of his ventures. I don't even know how it's possible to lose money running a casino, but Mr. Trump found a way. So why do people listen to him? Probably because he's always yelling.
In addition to being loud in speech, his entire personality is needlessly loud. As a real estate developer, he's fond of using an unusual amount of gold to make his buildings stand out. He spends much of his wealth frivolously suing people for pointing out he's not as rich as he pretends. In an example of his outsized ego, he's named his multiple businesses and properties after his surname, i.e. Trump Towers, Trump Magazine, Trump Vodka. And for consistency sake, how does he self-brand himself? Curiously, he chooses "The Donald" over the ubiquitous "Trump."
2. Gilbert Gottfried
"Jafar, help, I'm molting!" Did you know that the voice you just read that in is not actually Gilbert's real voice. So committed is he to the voice that made him famous, that few people actually know this fact. I wonder if he talks normally around his wife, or if he read his wedding vows like the Aflac duck.
You must give him credit for his foresight, though. Imagine a younger silver-tongued Gottfried choosing to start talking like a bird being strangled. His friends surely called him crazy and asked him to knock it off. Gilbert clearly got the last annoying laugh, as his commitment to this voice is clearly all he has going for himself.
As a shouter, he's edged only slightly by the documentarian who recorded his telling of the Aristocrats joke...
1. Penn Jillette
If you average out Penn and Teller, the two speak at a reasonable conversational tone. It's telling that the only person Mr. Jillette can work with can't get a word in edgewise.
It's clear, and even admitted by Mr. Jillette, that he is loud, overbearing and obnoxious. But if you've seen any of his D-list cameos, it's clear that his pathological problem goes well beyond this. It's not just that he steamrolls over everybody else in the room. It's that he's quick to anger, and manages to set himself off over the course of his own monologue. Once he opens his mouth, he'll quickly decay into an angry shouting monologue for previous little reason, as seen here.
This is more dangerous because it seems that his mouth simply never closes. I wouldn't be surprised if his wife routinely finds he's unable to come to bed because he's stuck in a midnight shouting match with the refrigerator.
A few years back he apparently realized nobody pays much attention to a magic act, no matter how loud the magician. Fortunately for Penn, it coincided with a time when fundamentalist atheists were lavished with media attention to bellow anti-religious opinions. The likes of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens are an incredibly loudmouthed bunch to start with, but Mr. Jillette still managed to scream his way into the club. It helped his convictions that the only thing he worships is the words that come from his mouth.
Most people wouldn't give the time of day to a magician's opinions on life, the universe, or anything. Even shouting wouldn't be enough to get a David Copperfield or GOB Bluth attention. Jillette's voice is indeed an unrelenting force, earning him top spot on the list.
The hirsute month of November is a great time to test your Hobo Q. In the following quiz, you're given ten photographs and asked to determine whether each is a rail ridin' hobo or a distinguished professor:
If you need a study guide, the Jurisprudent Mr. John Hodgman penned the definitive census.
What secrets lie within the Hilbert Hotel? Mayhem, danger, and intrigue await the hero who dares stay the night.
DJ Biology game studios, brainchild of 2loggers Mark and myself, is proud to announce the launch of Hilbert Hotel, a new text adventure game. We welcome your thoughts, questions, and comments as we aim to fill the hotel's countless rooms with an endless amount of fun.
Tragic news, everyone. In retaliation for the #OccupyWallStreet movement, the rich are striking back! Below is a live photograph from Main Street, USA.
This past summer, 2log sponsored its first "Hack Day", during which we brought laptops to a Brooklyn rooftop one sunny afternoon. Mark, Syd, Dana, Candice, and myself sipped ice-cold beverages and attempted to code the next smash web phenomenon.
Unfortunately, it was tough to make progress without the biggest hacker of all of us, Sam. We're all awed by Sam "Digerati" Dingman's glamorous techie lifestyle. A true bon vivant geek, he spends his days building the world's greatest search engines, and his nights LOL-lin' and tumblin'. Without his web 3.0 insight, our Hack Day was doomed. So we did what anybody in this situation would do, we built a replacement Sam:
We present to you "Dinglish", the world's first English-to-Sam speech translator.
