Monthly Archives: July 2009

The 11 Best Hipster Bathroom Graffiti Moments

Collected by buzzfeed

1. I’ll Be Right Back – Godot

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2. You Have To Draw The Line…

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3. I Have A Window Seat

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4. Gone To Work

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5. Toy Story 2 Was Okay

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6. I Just Wrote On The Wall…

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7. I Feel Like This Is The Only Real Mark…

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8. Everything You Do Matters

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9. I’m Feeling Pretty Good About Myself Tonight

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10. My Teeth Are Better Than Your Teeth

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11. Never Forget (Dinosuars)

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How to Get Arrested in 8 Easy Steps

Written by dailyrft

Anybody can do it! Follow these instructions:

(Editor’s Note: This actually happened last weekend; check out the story at Lake News Online)

1) Grab two other dudes and steal a Kawasaki Mule (kind of like a golf cart on steroids)

2) Vroom-vroom your way into a resort parking lot.

3) Try to run over a security guard (don’t worry, he’ll jump out of the way – whoa CRAZY!)

4) Ditch the Mule and gambol off, giddy that you’ve outwitted The Man!

5) CRUCIAL STEP: LEAVE YOUR WALLET IN THE STOLEN VEHICLE.

6) Allow enough time for somebody to find it and hand it over to the police department.

7) Show up at the police department to claim your lost wallet.

8) Presto! You’re in handcuffs. Unreal is so proud you reached your gaol goal. Unreal will NOT be bailing you out.

10 Great Bands That Don’t Actually Exist, but Should

Written by Eric Alt

On July 28th, This is Spinal Tap arrives on Blu-Ray and, well, that’s all the excuse we need to revisit some of our favorite fictional bands. We say “some” to save you the hassle of rushing feverishly to the “Comments” section with helpful suggestions like “you assholes forgot…” Trust us, we didn’t forget. We just left them out to piss you off. Haven’t you figured out how this works by now?

Without further ado…some of our favorite bands that don’t actually exist, but should.

Steel Dragon (Rock Star, 2001)
The thinly-veiled Judas Priest put Ronnie James Dio’s voice in Mark Walhberg’s body. Which begs the question: Is going from 4’10” to 5’6″ really that much of an improvement?

The Swanky Modes (Tapeheads, 1988)
The inspiration for Josh Tager and Ivan Alexeev’s entire life, the Modes’s live show is something special to behold-unless you paid to see Menudo.

Ellen Aim and the Attackers (Streets of Fire, 1984)
Their music may be Meatloaf-lite, but who’s complaining when they are fronted by Diane Lane at her absolute hottest?

Dead Mike (CB4, 1993)
First rule of great rap: Keep it simple.

Barry Jive and the Uptown Five (High Fidelity, 2000)
C’mon-Tenacious D would have been too obvious. Here’s a more soulful side of Jack Black.

Cherry Bomb (Howard the Duck, 1986)
A song written about a girl’s forbidden love for a mutant duck? Genius. And any band that features 80s-era Lea Thompson and Holly Robinson can count us as groupies.

Ford Fairlane and Kyle Troy’s Studio Band (The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, 1990)
The Rock ‘N Roll dick commandeers some studio players for an impromptu rock number that is as cheesy as, well, have you seen this fucking movie? But it beats the hell out of Kyle Troy, and how many lists have the opportunity to include Dice singing?

Grivo (The Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy, 1996)
The best Danzig this side of Danzig. Now pass the horse tranquilizers.

Crucial Taunt (Wayne’s World, 1992)
Why this band didn’t spark a wave of rock bands fronted by Asian models is just one of the mysteries surrounding Wayne’s World. Sigh. Missed chance, people.

Dethklok (Metalocalypse, 2006)
The world’s most brutal band. You think Metallica ever rocked hard enough to summon a troll from the depths of hell? Not a chance.

Top 5 Funniest Fake Facebook Pages

Written by Pete Cashmore

facebookWith over 250 million users, Facebook is a social networking behemoth. The site is host to thousands of celebrity fan pages and has been taking steps to make these more appealing to self-promoters.

On Saturday Bill Gates revealed that he’s not a Facebook user, and many other famous names are notably absent from the site. Which leads us to wonder…what might those pages look like? Fortunately, some of the web’s most creative minds had the exact same thought, and below we bring you the very best fake Facebook pages.

Click through to the sites to see the pages in full size and quality.


1. Barack Obama’s News Feed: First 100 Days (Slate)


In April, Slate came up with a highly original way to recap Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office: a parody Facebook feed marking the key events. For those who remember that far back, the creation offers a light-hearted take on the course of the Administration.

obama100daysinfacebook

2. Hitler’s Facebook (Banterist)


This one goes way back…to a posting on a satire blog in December 2007. Banterist (aka humorist Brian Sack) imagined what it might have been like if Hitler had a news feed. Bizarrely, the concept of Hitler posting funny videos and playing Scrabulous is more amusing that the parody of real world events.

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3. Steve Jobs’ Facebook (PC World)


From a taunt directed at Bill Gates to his friendship with “Every Celebrity in Hollywood”, PC World took a friendly poke at Apple’s Steve Jobs, with plenty of zingers thrown in.

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4. The Facebook of Genesis (College Humor)


Back in November 2008, comedy site College Humor turned Genesis into a Facebook feed, with hilarious results. The re-telling of the creation story is good-naturedly irreverent and is sure to serve up a few chuckles.

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5. Satan’s Facebook (PC World)


From a provocative friend’s list to the subtle use of “the number of the beast”, PC World outdid themselves with this fictional Facebook page for the Antichrist himself.

satanfacebook

Recommended Facebook Fakers


Still not gotten your fill of Facebook fakes? There are many more great Facebook page parodies that didn’t make the list:

1. PC World’s “Facebook Pages We’d Like to See – You’ll notice two of the above images are from PC World. That’s because, as we discovered today, PC World created a set of 9 hilarious “fake Facebooks” for April Fools Day 2009. Those not highlighted here include Elvis, William Shakespeare and Andy Warhol.

2. Jesus’ Facebook Page – What if Jesus used Facebook? This irreverent parody – of unknown origin – attempts to imagine what might have been.

3. Facebook Passover – We’re unsure what to make of this, a retelling of the story of the Jews’ Exodus from Egypt….all in Facebook updates. Alas, we don’t know this creation’s origin either.

Are there any other faux Facebook pages we might have missed? Let us know in the comments!

Top 15 Web Hoaxes of All Time

Written by Josh Catone

crop circle imageSometimes it’s hard to tell what to believe when you read it on the web. The recent “Unknown Lifeform” in North Carolina? Turns out, not a hoax, but also not a monster. But all those rumors about Jeff Goldblum falling to his death in New Zealand? Well, those were a hoax, and a rather tasteless one at that.

For hundreds of years, humans have been playing elaborate tricks on each other, but the advent of social tools – from Usenet and email right on up to YouTube and Twitter – means that hoaxes are much more easily spread, and it can be difficult to separate the misinformation from the truth. Here’s a collection of the top 15 most unforgettable web hoaxes.


1. The Montauk Monster (2008)


montauk-monster

Actually, the hoax status of this one still seems somewhat up-in-the-air. It started with a newspaper article from a local paper in Montauk, New York in July 2008. A creature had washed up on the beach; it was dead, and it was really strange – no one knew what it was. Thus, the “Montauk Monster” was born.

Even today, no one really seems to know what it is. A raccoon? A rodent? A capybara? A boxer dog? A sea turtle without its shell? Whatever it is, the Montauk Monster was an instant Internet sensation, and it has sparked an almost unending debate over whether this is just another hoax or something that Mulder and Scully need to investigate.


2. How to Charge an iPod with an Onion (2007)


The mostly-joke how-to site Household Hacker hit the big time with their viral video that purportedly demonstrated how to charge an iPod using nothing but an onion and a glass of Gatorade. The video was full of pseudo science that made it seem plausible, and it got a ton of press and frustrated a lot of people who plugged their electronics into vegetables. But as the Mythbusters would later say about this one: Busted!

Related: How To Make Moutain Dew Glow


3. The Derbyshire Fairy (2006)


dead-fairy

As part of an elaborate April Fools Day prank, prop-maker Dan Baines of Derbyshire, England created what he told people was the corpse of a “fairy,” and put it up for sale on eBay and on his web site. His prop was perhaps a little too well made, and resulted in his site getting over 20,000 visits in one day. Even after he revealed the whole thing was a hoax, Baines still received emails from fairy believers accusing him of covering up the truth with his hoax story.

“I’ve had all sorts of comments including people who say they’ve seen exactly the same things and one person who told me to return the remains to the grave site as soon as possible or face the consequences,” he told the BBC.


4. Lonelygirl15 (2006)


Lonelygirl15 appeared to be just an average, innocent video blog of a run-of-the-mill American teenager when it first appeared on YouTube in June 2006, but very quickly the vlog’s storyline shifted. Suddenly, rather than a girl complaining about normal teenage problems, Lonelygirl15 started giving out details of the bizarre cult that her family was involved in. A couple of months later it was apparent that the videos were scripted.

By mid-September, the name of the actress was revealed. Yet even though Lonelygirl15 wasn’t the victim of some strange cult that kept her locked in her house, and even though the entire thing was just a hoax, the web series remained popular until it ended in 2008.


5. GoogleTV (2007)


Rumors of GoogleTV have been around for years. So it’s not surprising that when clever YouTuber Mark Erickson created a very well done how-to video demonstrating how to gain access to the service’s hidden beta, people bought it hook line and sinker.

Of course, there is no GoogleTV – but we do now have Hulu, which is surprisingly similar to what Erickson was describing.

Related: “Leaked” Google Chrome OS screenshots


6. Bill Gates Wants to Give You Money (1997)


gates-bill

It’s true that Bill Gates does want to give some people money via his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. But it’s not true that you’ll ever get any money by forwarding a chain letter as part of the beta test for a new Microsoft-powered email tracking program. This persistent hoax has been circulating since 1997 in one form or another, and is still making the rounds today.

The basic come on is that Microsoft or AOL (or both) is testing a new email forward tracking system, and if you forward the email, you’ll be paid based on how many times your email gets resent by your friends (their new software will keep track of it all, of course). Another variation of this hoax is that every forwarded email will raise money for some charitable cause.

Image via: Freaking News


7. Giant Camel Spiders in Iraq (2004)


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An email started making the rounds in 2004 asking people to be sympathetic to troops in Iraq, not because they have to be away from their families or because war zones are dangerous, but because they have to deal with absolutely prehistoric spiders. The email repeated claims from the first Gulf War in 1993, that the spiders could run 25 miles per hour, could jump several feet in the air, and could grow 8-10 inches in length.

These claims were made more believable because the email included a photo of US servicemen holding a spider that appears to be about a foot in length. However, even though camel spiders are pretty big and quite fast, they’re nowhere near as large as the photo makes it seem nor as fast as the email claims. The photo itself was just taken from an angle that makes the spider seem bigger than it really is.


8. Kidney Thieves in New Orleans (1997)


Shortly before Mardi Gras in 1997, a hoax email started making the rounds warning travelers that a ring of organ thieves was operating in the city, and revelers were likely to get their kidneys stolen.

The organ harvesting urban legend had been spread in the past, but this particular email chain became so popular that it even prompted the New Orleans police to issue an official statement denying the hoax’s validity so that the city wouldn’t lose revenue from scared travelers canceling Mardi Gras plans.


9. Hercules the Dog (2007)


hercules-dog

An email with what was purported to be a photo of the world’s largest dog started popping up in inboxes in 2007. Hercules, was supposedly a 282 pound English Mastiff who stood almost as tall as a horse, and the photo seemed to back it up.

However, even though a dog named Hercules was once recognized as the world’s largest, it’s not the one in the photo, and the photo is almost definitely a fake.


10. Bigfoot’s Body (2008)


bigfoot-body

Last year, a pair of hoaxers (or con artists) pulled a fast one on the American media when they claimed to have found the body of Bigfoot. They held an elaborate press conference and even got coverage from mainstream news outlets like CNN. Due to how fast the photos of the Bigfoot body spread on the web, the hoax got massive coverage.

But it turned out to be just that – a hoax. A California Bigfoot enthusiast actually paid the two Georgia men $50,000 for the body, and later found that it was just a costume packed in ice. One of the men, who was a police officer, was fired as a result of perpetrating the hoax, and they both face legal action.


11. Kremvax (1984)


In what might be one of the earliest Internet hoaxes, a member of Usenet in 1984 created quite a stir when he announced that the Soviet Union would be joining the network. The message, which appeared to be posted from Konstantin Chernenko (with the address [email protected]), was shocking because most people assumed Cold War security issues and hostility between the USSR and the USA would prevent the Soviet Union from joining Usenet.

Of course, security concerns and hostilities really would prevent such a link-up from happening, and a couple of weeks later, after hundreds of responses had been posted, the message was revealed as a hoax.


12. The Blair Witch Project (1999)


blair-witch

Of course, everyone knows now that The Blair Witch Project was a piece of fiction. But when the movie came out in 1999, a lot of people weren’t so sure. Due to a very clever Internet marketing campaign, in which the movie’s creators developed a network of background web sites about the movie’s mythology, many people believed that the film was actually a documentary created from found footage of kids who had disappeared in the woods.

The film’s marketing was designed to trick people into thinking it was a legit documentary. In addition to an elaborate web campaign, the distributors also put out a second fake documentary about the made up Blair Witch legend on the Sci-Fi channel in the run-up to the film’s release.


13. Hurricane Lili Waterspouts (2002)


waterspout

This photo, which flew around email inboxes in 2002, supposedly showed a trio of menacing water spouts approaching a container ship as Hurricane Lili rolled in. Of course, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. The National Weather Service of the US quickly debunked the photo and revealed it as the work of a Photoshop whiz.

Meteorologists were suspicious of the photo almost at once because it is very rare to see two waterspouts of that size so close together, let alone three. The original, undoctored photo actually shows a single impressive waterspout and was published in a shipping trade magazine called “Supply Lines” in 2001.


14. Steorn Free Energy (2006 / 2007)


steorn-orbo

In 2006, Irish company called Steorn Ltd announced that it had developed “free, clean, and constant energy,” in violation of known laws of physics (conservation of energy). Steorn said their technology was based on “time variant magnetic interactions,” and would revolutionize the world. They even invited a jury of scientists to test their claims.

The company’s credibility took a major blow in 2007, however, when at a well attended and well publicized press demonstration, their machine failed to work – they later blamed the heat from stage lights and a “greenhouse effect” within the plastic box that housed their contraption. But the damage was done. Their initial claims of finding a way to violate physical laws had already been met with skepticism, but after the botched demonstration, calls of “hoax” flew around the web.

In June 2009, the appointed jury of their scientific peers decided that Steorn’s technology just didn’t work, leading many to believe what they’d suspected all along: this is simply an elaborate hoax.


15. The Internet Drunk Surfing Bill (1994)


no-beer

It began as an April Fools Day prank in PC Computing magazine by columnist John Dvorak, but it ended up causing quite a stir. Dvorak wrote in his hoax piece that the US Congress was considering a bill (numbered 040194 – as in, 04/01/94) that would make it illegal to surf the web while drunk, or to discuss sexual matters over a public network.

Of course the bill would be passed, wrote Dvorak, because, “Who wants to come out and support drunkenness and computer sex?” The hoax worked a bit too well, though, and it generated so many angry calls to congress that Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts had to issue a statement denying rumors that he was a sponsor of the phony bill.

Still, maybe it’s not such a bad idea…

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, pojbic

A brief and accurate description of World War II

Written by Urban Dictionary

Germany invades Czechoslovakia.
Britain & France tell them to stop that bullshit.
Germany invades Poland.
(Russia also invades Poland from the other side: everybody forgets this.)
Britain & France declare war. This is the ‘official’ kick-off.
Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary, & Romania all join the German side. (Everybody forgets the last three.)
Axis forces go through Europe like vindaloo through a colostomy.
Nazis exterminate Jews, gays, gypsies, & the disabled. (everybody remembers the jews but forgets the rest.)
UK holds out.
Russia & the USA don’t do shit.
Entire divisions of Danish, Belgian, Dutch, Norwegian, French & Serbian volunteers join the Axis armies & SS. (everybody forgets this & to listen to them now, they were all in the fucking resistance, which must have been MASSIVE.)
Axis forces invade Russia. Suddenly the Russians don’t think it’s funny any more.
Japan joins the Axis & bombs Pearl Harbor.
Suddenly the US doesn’t think it’s funny any more.
The USA tools up the world, ’cause it’s got more factories than everybody else put together, & they’re out of bomber range.
Axis runs out of steam in Russia, cause Russia’s enormous & bloody freezing.
Allies invade on D-Day… 5 landings: 2 British, 2 American, 1 Canadian. (everybody forgets the Canadians.)
Hitler ends up smouldering in a ditch. Russians find the body & confirm he only had one ball. Seriously.
The US decides invading stuff is a pain in the ass and invents the atom bomb instead. Drops two buckets ‘o sunshine on Japan.
Russians steal half of Europe.
UK’s spent almost every penny it had.
US starts telling everybody how it was all about them, & 64 years later is still doing so.

“Some of the World War II guys in ‘Call of Duty’ have, like, foreign accents… what’s up with that?”

A 950 Calorie Drink, Seriously? Avoid These 7 Beverages

Written by Brie Cadman

Liquid calories slip by so easily, it’s almost hard to take them seriously. But alas, all those super-sized beverages and high fructose corn syrup concoctions have contributed, quite stealthily, to our obesity epidemic. Our adults have the beer bellies and our children the Big Gulp guts to prove it. Although some cities have started to ban sales of soda in schools, we adults are free to roam in the world of heavily sauced drinks, sometimes adding a meal-sized amount of calories from a tiny little straw. Here are some obvious and not-so-obvious ways to bulk up without ever having to chew.

Burger King Chocolate Ice Cream Shake
950 calories, 29 grams fat (19 saturated), 640 milligrams sodium, 146 grams sugar

Hmmm … a milkshake, or an entire meal? You could have a burger (290 calories), small fries (230 calories), and a small soda (140 calories) for fewer calories (660) than this drink. I’d rather chew.

A better bet: Small chocolate milk.

Starbucks White Chocolate Mocha Frappuccino:
410 calories, 16 grams fat (10 saturated), 270 milligrams sodium, 54 grams sugar

Is it a coffee, or is it a milkshake? Although the CEO of Starbucks recently made the decision to stop selling sandwiches in their stores, I’m guessing they’ll keep selling these espresso-flavored milkshakes as long as we keep buying them. Darn, they’re good.

A better bet: Iced skim milk latte.

Jamba Juice Peanut Butter Moo’d Shake Original Size
840 calories, 21 grams fat ( 4.5 saturated), 122 grams sugar, 15 milligrams cholesterol

Jamba Juice’s logo contains a lot of colorful fruit, but there’s little of it in this shake. Instead, it has frozen yogurt, chocolate moo’d base (what is that?), soy milk, bananas, and peanut butter. With 122 grams of sugar (very few of them from the banana), it’s the equivalent of drinking five Cokes (a can has about 40 grams of sugar). Even their less obviously bad Strawberries Wild has 83 grams of sugar.

A better bet: 16-ounce Bright Eyed and Blueberry shake; it has 220 calories, and 38 grams sugar

Orange Julius’ Strawberry Banana Shake (32-ounce)
600 calories, 14 grams fat (11 saturated), 87 grams sugar, 130 milligrams sodium

It must be a first: a shake made with lowfat frozen yogurt, bananas, and strawberries that contains 11 grams of saturated fat. Truly amazing. I’d rather eat a Snicker’s bar, which has half the calories (280), less saturated fat (5 grams), and less sugar (30 grams).

A better bet: A 20-ounce Orange Julius has only 160 calories and 5 grams fat, none of them saturated

7-Eleven Double Gulp Soda
600 calories

I drank sixty-four ounces of soda on a cross-country road trip once, and it was a bad scene. My stomach didn’t feel quite right for at least a day, and my friend, who also imbibed, was so hopped up on caffeine she started giving lip to the Texas highway patrol who pulled her over for doing ninety in a fifty zone. I think there’s still a warrant out for her arrest.

Soda isn’t that bad every once in a while; unfortunately, it’s hard to find anything smaller than a 16-ouncer and really easy to get things much larger. Cans of soda seem to be obsolete. The Food and Drug Administration’s official serving size is 8 ounces (100 calories), not eight times that amount. Bigger isn’t better.

A better bet: Can of soda (150 calories) or a diet soda.

Bottled Juice
300-400 calories for 20 ounces

True, juice isn’t inherently bad for you, and can sometimes provide vitamins and nutrients. However, you’d be much better off eating the fruit from which it came rather than drinking mostly empty calories. Many store-bought juices have added sugars, and most come in a 2.5 serving or larger container, making that breakfast accompaniment as many calories as the meal itself.

A better bet: Stick to 8-ounce containers or kid’s containers; look for 100 percent juices; juice your own.

Pina Colada:
644 calories (approximately)

If you really like Pina Coladas, you may not only get caught in the rain, but in the fat farm. At around seven hundred calories, this drink, made with rum, coconut milk, and pineapples has more calories than a Big Mac. Other calorically heavy-hitting cocktails are Long Island Iced Teas, Margaritas, and White Russians. Damn, I love those.

A better bet: Vodka and soda with lime; glass of red wine; a beer

While it’s hard to think about drinks as anything but additions to a meal, the sizes and sugar-laden drinks we’re faced with today make them more like an entire meal. Unfortunately, rarely are they as satisfying or as filling. So when I find myself having more pints of beer than slices of pizza, I get rid of them the only way I know how: by drinking water while I exercise.