Blog: OPTIMUSCRIME.COM

My friend C-Mac on the Palin nod: "It's amazing that the VP isn't selected by a 16-week reality TV program" I need to arrange a pitch session with Fox, pronto.

Favourite moment: Triumph talking to the local Fox affiliate. "Fox News.... do you skew the local news too? Like, 'This water-skiing squirrel has benefitted from having his taxes cut!'"

Shad - The Old Prince Still Lives At Home London Ontario's MC Shad is playing the Ale House on September 15th.

"I can't find the quote but somewhere Graham Greene wrote approximately this: Americans have taken the noble idea that anyone could become president and contorted it into the alarming idea that anyone should become president." Body Check for a Hockey Mom, Globe and Mail, 6 September 2008

Yacht's new video is an almost cut-for-cut remake of the 'Cube Squared' (Devo) video for Baby Doll in Tapeheads. Predictably, it is amazing. YACHT - Summer Song from Jona Bechtolt on Vimeo .

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Biggie Smalls is alive and well and living on Twitter . An except from the interview: "Have you talked to Puff about his rapping? Or his dancing, for that matter? Look, Puffy concentrating on other things. He got that raisin TV show, his clothing line for white people, some vodka bullshit, and threatening to kill people if they don't vote. And on top of all that, he tryin' to marry a 14 year old. So he ain't got time for you triflin' reporters talkin bout 'he [...]

An amazing new(ish) video from the Mountain Goats. The anthemic "Sax Rhomer #13, as translated to handdrawn typography an captured in (practically) one shot. Perfection.

Fine, the iPhone has GPS and an accelerometer. But does it come pre-loaded with 22 Journey songs and a paint job like an '82 Firebird?

Slayer! Slayer! Slayer!

The Columbia Journalism Review on rappers' aliases : "At the Times, the penalty for being a rapper is twofold: you are routinely called out on your birth name (no matter how nerdy and ironic it might be), and you rarely are addressed as "Mr." This nominal double standard surfaces from time to time in hip-hop articles throughout the mainstream press, but due to the Times's extensive urban-music coverage and its eternal struggle with honorific conformity, rap handles seem to inspire more copy dilemmas there."

From The Stencil : In collaboration with Komar and Melamid, composer Dave Soldier extended the project to the musical realm in 1997. Soldier polled over 500 people to determine the characteristics of the "most unwanted music." His findings: The most unwanted music is over 25 minutes long, veers wildly between loud and quiet sections, between fast and slow tempos, and features timbres of extremely high and low pitch, with each dichotomy presented in abrupt transition. The most unwanted orchestra was determined to be large, and features the accordion and [...]

Crocs, the garden clogs that somehow were mistaken for acceptable non-garden-related footwear, will no longer be made in Quebec, leaving 600 out of work : Production from the Quebec City plant will move to plants in Mexico, Brazil, China and Romania, while about 100 sales and marketing jobs will remain in the city, a company spokeswoman told Bloomberg. Photo: Sumlin

From the Whig-Standard, a very strange report of an RMC engineering prof's Sopranos-style shakedown of his graduate students: A Royal Military College professor has lost his engineering licence and his job after demanding four-figure loans from students he supervised at the college. Mohamed Farooq, a senior engineering professor who specialized in target tracking and who held a Level II "Secret" security clearance, had his engineering licence suspended last week for two years by Professional Engineers Ontario, the professional licensing body, following a series of disciplinary hearings. The panel of fellow [...]

Ironic Sans teases us with the following : I've noticed lately that there seem to be four distinct ways that people push up their glasses, and yet not a single study has been done about this. "10 Things You Can Tell About Your Man By How He Pushes Up His Glasses" seems like a perfect headline for a women's magazine in the supermarket checkout line, and yet nobody is doing this important research. So here's an overview. But, alas, provides only a taxonomy of pushing-up styles, not the promised psychological insight [...]

JTL: You know, it's not often in this world that one single person can truly affect change. But I'd like to think that, in my own small way, I kicked a little bit of ass.

Rather hilarious article in the Globe and Mail today outlining how b-schools are trying to promote ethical conduct in their students. One professor here at Queen's brings his students for a trip to a local prison . I'm not convinced that fear of consequences is an appropriate substitute for morality, but his approach shines in comparison to Western's: Rather than take students to prison, Richard Ivey School of Business professor Gerard Seijts instead plans to bring a reformed criminal to the students. And who better to lecture to the graduating MBA class [...]

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - The owner of a famous cheesesteak shop did not discriminate when he posted signs asking customers to speak English, a city panel ruled Wednesday. In a 2-1 vote, a Commission on Human Relations panel found that two signs at Geno's Steaks telling customers, "This is America: WHEN ORDERING 'PLEASE SPEAK ENGLISH,'" do not violate the city's Fair Practices Ordinance. Shop owner Joe Vento has said he posted the signs in October 2005 because of concerns over immigration reform and an increasing number of people in the area who could not order in English. [...]

More than thirty years ago, Herzberg wrote a short article in the Harvard Business Review trying to dispel dominant myths about how to motivate employees: "Let us consider motivation. If I say to you, "Do this for me or the company, and in return I will give you a reward, an incentive, more status, a promotion, all the quid pro quos that exist in the industrial organization", am I motivating you? The overwhelming opinion I receive from management people is, "Yes, this is motivation." I have a year-old Schnauzer. [...]