Perhaps the best description of a self-published book I have run across (so far)

In addition to loving the ads for self-pubbed oddities in the New York Times Book Review, I'm also fascinated by the free downloads on Amazon.

This description for something called Shades of Gray (no relation to, ugh, Fifty Shades of Grey--just a happy accident, I'm sure) made me laugh out loud:

(Combine "Breaking Bad" and "Cops" with a disturbing, dark remake of "The Love Boat" and you have all the flavors of SHADES OF GRAY)

Here's hoping Charo stars in the inevitable TV movie.

Wacky high jinks ensue, no doubt.

Chicken update

In northwestern Montana, as in much of the country, more people are keeping chickens. And bears of all kinds are developing a taste for poultry that lures them into populated areas, presenting a dangerous situation for both people and, especially, for bears. --The New York Times

Really? Especially dangerous for the bears? Try telling that to the chickens.

Postcard of the day

Aug. 26, 1910

Would not this be an ideal place to spend a honeymoon? We are trying to arrange it. M.E.G.

The Velvet Blog has won the Nobel Prize for Blogging, but it cannot sell you the Brooklyn Bridge

Story one:

Criminalizing speech is a tricky business, but Congress seemed to think it had found the right balance in 2006 when it overwhelmingly enacted the Stolen Valor Act, which made it a crime simply to lie about having received a military medal or service badge.

But the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit begs to differ. In a decision released on Tuesday, the three-judge panel, based in San Francisco, declared the law unconstitutional because it infringed on the defendant’s freedom of speech, even if it was false. That defendant, Xavier Alvarez, had claimed to be a Marine and a winner of the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award. He was neither. ...

The majority also found that there was no malice intended or harm done, since Mr. Alvarez uttered his fabrication during introductory remarks before the Three Valley Water District board of directors in California, of which he was a new member. (Mr. Alvarez, the judges noted, had also at various times claimed to have played hockey for the Detroit Red Wings and to have rescued the American ambassador during the Iranian hostage crisis.)

“We have no doubt that society would be better off if Mr. Alvarez would stop spreading worthless, ridiculous and offensive untruths,” the ruling said. “But, given our historical skepticism of permitting the government to police the line between truth and falsity, and between valuable speech and drivel, we presumptively protect all speech, including false statements.” --The New York Times

Story two:

The offer was extraordinary: A baseball mitt once owned by Babe Ruth was being offered by a memorabilia broker in Nevada. But the mitt had an even richer history, its owner wrote; in 1944, the Babe had given the glove to his close friend Robert Young, the Hollywood star, who had kept it in his private collection for more than 68 years.

Ruth told the actor that he so prized the glove that “he slept with it under his pillow at the orphanage,” St. Mary’s, where he had been placed as a child, the mitt’s owner said.

The broker was offering the mitt for sale on behalf of the owner — the husband of a granddaughter of Mr. Young, the complaint says.

And that, the document suggests, was the only part of the story that was true.

The husband, Irving Scheib, 50, of Bonsall, Calif., appeared on Thursday in Federal District Court in Manhattan and pleaded guilty to a wire fraud charge for what prosecutors say was his scheme to sell the glove for $200,000 as a genuine Ruth artifact. In fact he had bought the mitt on eBay in January for about $750.

“I sold a baseball glove falsely claiming it was a Babe Ruth glove, and it was not, your honor,” Mr. Scheib told Judge Robert P. Patterson Jr. “I feel horrible about it, but those are the facts.” --The New York Times

I'm curious where allowable lies leave off and where fraud kicks in. If you lie about your background in order to get elected to public office, is that fraud or free speech?

Seven pictures that will restore your faith in chimps sitting at typewriters

This Slate piece by Farhad Manjoo on creating a viral hit has inspired me to do make my own lazy viral hit.

I have stolen seven pictures of chimps sitting at typewriters, because really, everyone likes pictures of chimps sitting at typewriters. Just to make sure I've put in the minimum of effort, I'm not resizing, or bothering to credit.

Enjoy!

It would be funny if, during the middle of the show, she suddenly started doing a Nixon impression

Rather odd editorial lapse in The New York Times the other day, in an article about actress Debra Jo Rupp and her portrayal of Dr. Ruth in a new play:

But Ms. Rupp was also wary of getting hemmed in by the famous voice. “At first I was worried that people would just want me to do a rich little imitation,” she said. “I can’t live and breathe the person then. It has to come from me and my heart and who I think she is.”

I suspect it would be tough to do a Rich Little imitation. Who the hell know what he sounds like anyway?
I sent a note to the Times. Perhaps I'll spur a correction. Won't that be exciting?

No? Oh.

UPDATE: The Times has appended a correction, which features another mistake:

Correction: June 25, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the actress Debra Jo Rupp’s trepidation in doing Dr. Ruth’s voice. She said she was afraid that people would want her to do “a Rich Little imitation,” referring to the comic impressionist, not “a rich little limitation.”

The original said "rich little imitation," not "limitation."

Death at a funeral

In honor of The Velvet Blog's eighth year, a rerun of my farewell blog post, when I killed TVB on March 25, 2010. (OK, it recovered. The blog was dark for about six months.)

So, the gag is, I appropriated the story of the classic "Chuckles Bites the Dust" episode of Mary Tyler Moore and presented it as if it had actually happened to me. As I had posted a YouTube video of the entire Chuckles episode not long before, and linked to both a clip of the farewell MTM episode's goodbye hug and a copy of David Lloyd's Chuckles script in the post itself, I thought the joke wasn't exactly obscure. Still, a few people took it literally, and one stranger accused me of plagiarism, pointing out the parallels to an MTM episode. You know--the one I explicitly referenced and linked to. Sigh. Anyway, I've always thought this was a great post to go out on, even if it turned out to be a premature burial.


It all started after a really bad breakup. I moved to Minneapolis to get away and clear my head and, by a total fluke, got a job as an associate news producer at a local TV station. My boss was a lovable lug and the anchorman a blowhard and my upstairs neighbor a weight-obsessed Brooklynite and ... well, here I am blathering on and getting away from my point.

So, there was this clown, Knuckles, who hosted a children's show at the station, and, during a public appearance at a circus while dressed as a peanut, a rogue elephant tried to shell him. I know, crazy, right? Anyway, he was totally killed, and it was really sad, and I got mad at my co-workers when they started giggling at the absurdity of it. It was super inappropriate.

Then, at the funeral, the strangest thing happened--during the eulogy, I couldn't stop laughing. Uncontrollably. Seriously, I was shaking. And when the minister pointed out that Knuckles would have wanted it that way, well, then I couldn't stop sobbing, because Knuckles was dead, struck down by an elephant who thought that poor clown was a huge, mutant legume, and, man, that's just so sad.

And speaking of dead, it's been kind of creeping up on me that, after going on six years, The Velvet Blog is dressed as a peanut and there's a rogue elephant here. Oh, it could be worse. The blog could be dressed as a banana and be peeled by a gorilla--that would be worse. Still, though, this blog is dead. And I'd like to think that somewhere up there tonight, behind those pearly gates ... in the Great Beyond, where someday all must go ... somewhere up there tonight, in honor of The Velvet Blog, a celestial choir of angels is sitting on whoopie cushions.

Now, won't you join me in a chorus of "It's a Long Way to Tipperary"?


cf.

Popularity contest

Blogger started giving page-view stats, I noticed a couple of months ago, though I didn't really look at them till recently. In honor of The Velvet Blog's eighth blogoversary, here are the Top 10 TVB Posts of All Time, or at Least Since Blogger Started Tracking, Whenever That Was (and, brace yourselves, it's a VERY monkey-centric list):

It's Baby Monkey Monday! (4,515 page views)

Creative headline writing at the NY Post (2,261)

I've decided what the blog needs (2,063)

Cute baby monkey (1,531)

How much does that gorilla weigh, anyway? (1,439)

Activia: Yogurt that makes you poop (1,135)

Happy Mole Day (952)

What's on your mind, America? (882)

A handy visual guide for distinguishing among The Partridge Family's Susan Dey, secretive religious group Opus Dei, and bandleader Otis Day (803)

Smackdown: Lidsville vs. The Bugaloos (613)

As you can see, monkeys are popular, especially cute baby monkeys. Let this be a lesson for unpopular bloggers everywhere. (Also: Poop.)

Obviously, 99.9% of these hits came from random Google users--except I really can't account for the high showing of that New York Post post. That's just a mystery.

Head spinning

You know, I think I'm pretty Web-savvy, but every once in a while something comes along that's just so freaking crazy that I have trouble believing it's true, and then I find out that it's not only true but that it's been around for ages.

Such is the case for "spinning." No, not the exercise kind of spinning, but online spinning.

Jeremy Duns, a novelist--someone I follow on Twitter, a professional who's made it a priority to root out plagiarists--posted a link to something called The Best Spinner. I'll pause for a moment to let you look at that.

So, spinning lets you take language and tweak it just enough so that you can repost it and not get easily busted for copying. This is an actual practice. I'll now point out this Wikipedia article on the subject. An excerpt (and this is a quote, not a spin):

If the original articles are plagiarized from other websites or if the original article was used without the copyright owner's permission, such copyright infringements may result in the writer facing a legal challenge, while writers producing multiple versions of their own original writing need not worry about such things. ...

Article spinning requires "spintax." Spintax (or spin syntax) is the list of text, sentences, or synonyms that are embedded into an article. The spinning software then substitutes your synonym choices into the article to create new, unique variations of the base article.

Now, you might think that people would be sheepish about admitting they use such software. And you might be right when it comes to the general population, but wrong when it comes to a certain class of online quote-unquote writer. Scroll down the Best Spinner page, and get these recommendations from real (?) users:

I've been using this for the past week and it has saved me both time and money. Before, I had 2 choices; either spend hours writing my own articles or pay someone around $30 to write a single mediocre one for me.

Oh, well, boo hoo hoo. Here's a thought, Paul Fletcher, who appears to be a real person: How about you do something useful with your life instead of being proud of your bullshit?

It has so many great features that I just haven't found elsewhere. I particularly like the 'auto rewrite' feature - it's saved me days of writing copy!

You know what feature I like, Rob Hensen? The Ignore Rob Hensen And Everything He's Ever Written feature. It's built in to my life.

What a time saver - my staff love this tool

Hey, Lou Garcia, did you spin that sentence? Because it really sounds like a euphemism for how your genitals love your genitals but want to cut down on the time spent handling them.

I am a professional writer, specializing in SEO articles. This program has sped up the process so much, that it almost doesn't seem right taking money for the jobs, now.

That's Dr. Joel C. Brothers. SEO stands for search engine optimization--that is, picking words that will stand out to Google and the like. To put it another way (hey, I'm spinning free hand!), Dr. Joel C. Brothers writes words that no one actually wants to read but exist in the netherworld of search engine circle jerks.

And, indeed, that's the common link between everyone quoted on that page--they're all involved in an online reach-around while making the Internet a little less pleasant and useful for the rest of us.

So, spin that, fellas.

Guida visiva pratica per la distinzione fra la pancetta affumicata, la pancetta affumicata canadese, ed il prosciutto canadese

A rerun from May 9, 2006, which was itself a rerun of a post from April 29, 2005, only in Italian. The original was, of course, rerun yesterday. Am I blowing your mind? Happy blogoversary, folks. I take no credit or blame for the Italian, BTW, which was translated by Google.

Pancetta affumicata


Pancetta affumicata canadese


Prosciutto canadese

A handy visual guide for distinguishing between bacon, Canadian bacon, and Canadian ham

A rerun from April 29, 2005--part of The Velvet Blog's eighth anniversary blogstravaganza. Honestly, I wanted to do a book based on this concept, but after doing about a dozen of them, I ran out of ideas. But, c'mon, this is funnier than Poop My Dad Says, and that got turned into a sitcom with you-know-who. Life is unfair.

Bacon


Canadian bacon


Canadian ham