We’re big fans of the show ‘How It’s Made’ in our house. It’s like they took the best part Mr. Rogers Neighborhood (where he visits different factories and sees how things are put together) and made a whole show out of it. They even kept the soothing and slightly hypnotic style of narrative and music.

It’s pretty amazing to see the stories behind how everyday objects are made, even more amazing to see what jobs are done by machines and which ones are done by humans.

Sometimes there will be a complex part of the construction done by a machine yet something as simple as putting in a single screw on each individual object will be done by a person standing at a table.

I mean holy crap why do they have a person doing such a mind killingly tedious job for eight hours straight when it could easily be taken care of by a machine? Meanwhile in another part of the factory there’s a job that same person could be doing but it’s being done by a machine. What the hell man???

Anyways… … …despite my small rant there it is a great show and so when I seen a video called ‘How Things Are Made – CD’s’ pop up on YouTube I thought it might be similar so I clicked on it to watch. I was pretty surprised with what I saw…

Misheard lyrics videos are a new form of storytelling that’s popped up over the last few years thanks to the rise of YouTube and super easy to use video and picture editing programs.

These videos basically take songs with hard or impossible to understand vocals and visualize in a funny way what off-the-wall things the lyrics could be saying.

Ever wonder wtf Sean Paul is talking about in …well …pretty much any of his songs? But let’s say ‘Temperature’. Watch the misheard lyrics video for it and find out:

Angola!

I like this particular misheard video a lot. You can tell tons of work went into it because it’s so packed full of hilarious stuff that you have to watch the video a couple times just to catch it all.

Surely you’ve seen the epically amazing Trololo video by now, but did you ever wonder what the song was actually about?

Or maybe it didn’t even seem like the song could be about anything considering the lyrics are, well, there aren’t any really other than lololo and lalala type stuff.

But there is a story behind the song and here it is as explained by Edward Khil, the Trololo man himself:

“John on a mustang is riding across a prairie to his love Mary who is waiting for him and knitting him a woolen sock.”

There was one big problem though: the song was written in Soviet Russia and so a story about an American cowboy riding free on the range had no chance of making it past the censors back then.

It had to be changed. John and Mary were dropped and the officially sanctioned story of the song became “A man is merry he walks and sings for himself. He is glad and everyone around him is glad.” Talk about typical Soviet era censorship lol! We are all very happy and everyone is glad…lololo.

But the spirit of the song lived on in between the lines and the sound of the song was kept in the American style as much as was possible. You can hear a bit of this specifically in the ‘Aiieeee’ part that sounds a lot like it came from a cowboy song.

Another interesting Trololo related story is that Edward Khil had no clue that he was super famous on the internet until his grandson came home one day humming the Trololo song:

“I asked him what that was about. He answered that I am not keeping up to date and that in the internet all America is singing it while I am sleeping at home…”

I watched a video of an interview with him, turns out he’s a pretty awesome guy overall and even took all the Trololo parodies in stride. I can only hope to be that layed back about things when I’m seventy-five years old.

source: spb.kp.ru

But wait, there’s more! An otter also told me the misheard lyrics version is even funnier:

Even the few elements of nature around him were conspiring to be distracting, like the tree branches creeping over his forehead and birds having a squawking contest…

In My Language

The description for this video says:

The first part is in my “native language,” and then the second part provides a translation, or at least an explanation. This is not a look-at-the-autie gawking freakshow as much as it is a statement about what gets considered thought, intelligence, personhood, language, and communication, and what does not.

I think the part with flag is really interesting, I don’t know why but that one little part said a lot to me.

Re: Re: Disability Characteristics and Political Correctness

Because I spent all of three months in a regular high school. They did not know quite what to do with a kid like me which is to say a kid who did things like run under the desk screaming or didn’t seem to hear what the teacher was saying even though I wasn’t deaf or flopped on the floor and started flicking random objects in front of my eyes really fast…

Being an Unperson

It’s about being dehumanized…

I love this video for two reasons: First all the video is edited in time to the music and I am a sucker for videos that are done that way. And second, damn these guys are really good! Third, the setting is beautiful. Fourth, the storytelling is awesome. Fifth, the cinematography is right on target.

…okay so I never said I was great at math ;).

Watch as some really good editing changes the upbeat story of Mary Poppins into a tale of horror:

My favorite part is when Mary Poppins hovers ominously into view :D.

Saw a tweet by @tymberwolf yesterday that linked to an article about a freeze flash mob that happened at the Downtown Market. I was surprised that we had any flash mob activity here in Anchorage let alone something that would make a big enough splash to get in the news.

I did a search on YouTube hoping to find a video of the flash mob but…nothing. However I did find some other videos of different flash mobs that have happened around town. And the main Anchorage flash mob group has even started a YouTube page. Who knew?

Here’s a couple videos that tell stories of some of the local flash mobs:
 

 

Zombie Outbreak

A flash mob of people dressed up like zombies and dancing to Thriller in front of Northern Lights rush hour traffic.

United Way Flash Mob

The United Way doing a freeze flash mob downtown in hopes of the video going viral and getting donations. A nicely shot and edited video.

Flash Mob Reactions At Fred Meyer

This video done by the main Anchorage flash mob group shows people’s reactions to the first flash mob done by the group. It happened at a Fred Meyer and was basically a long line of people snaking through the aisles and singing Row Row Row Your Boat at the end.

Don’t know which Freddies it was (Abbott?) but I bet someone will tell me real soon after I post this lol. (Update 2:52pm Yup confirmed as Abbott by a couple of people, thanks guys.)

Right on, anything that spices up life in Anchorage is ok in my book :). What do you think?
 

The Julian Assange (from Wikileaks) Quotes page got linked to by @wikileaks yesterday. I have major respect for them so it was a very cool thing to see!

So the story behind the whole quotes page thing is:

While watching videos of talks by Julian Assange on YouTube I realized that some really enlightening things were being said and decided to type them up. The quotes gave some insight into the ideas of Wikileaks and also showed many of the deep revelations that leaked documents have provided.

I put them all into a quote generator because I’ve found that’s an effective way to revisit important info over time…then made the more static quotes page and txt download to go along with it.

Didn’t think many would stop by or be into either page much (but thought it would be a shame not to post it anyway)…so yeah was very surprised yesterday. Happily surprised.

The quotes pages are ongoing projects so more quotes will be added regularly. If you want to find out more about Julian Assange or about what Wikileaks is doing see Wikileaks.