The Fab Short “Pixels” – NYC terrorized by retro 80′s 8-bit creatures

I was doing my usual blog rounds and came upon this really fantastic short by Patrick Jean.

Space invaders. Donkey Kong. Pac Man. Tetris. Pong.

Pong? Yes…Pong!

Plundering iconic Big Apple like a hurd of inebriated Vikings.

This baby is fresh. In the Freshy-Fresh-Fresh sort of way.

So very clever. So charming. You’d be straight off the bus from Hateration (and you know Mary J. Blige won’t like that) if you don’t crack a smile.

Enjoy. Tell your friends. Pass it on.

And spread the love…

Oh, and have a happy Friday.

PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.
Uploaded by onemoreprod. – Arts and animation videos.

Greatest Complaint Letter Ever. Ever. Ever.

It’s long. Yes.

One man’s misery put to paper. Or email. Whatever.

It’s also hysterically funny.

A letter to Richard Branson, complaining about his flight from Mubai to London. From food to video he was not amused. Pictures included.

I guess Sir Richard made the call to follow up and personally thank him for his comments. He should. He’s taken complaining to a new art form.

Probably the only one Sir Richard ever read.

(Many thanks to the original poster- Enty from CrazyDaysandNights.)

Dear Mr Branson,

REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008

I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit.

Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at the hands of your corporation.

Look at this Richard. Just look at it:

I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the desert?

You don’t get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left. Yes, it’s next to the sponge shaft without the green paste. That’s got to be the clue hasn’t it. No sane person would serve a desert with a tomato would they. Well answer me this Richard, what sort of animal would serve a desert with peas in:

I know it looks like a baaji but it’s in custard Richard, custard. It must be the pudding. Well you’ll be fascinated to hear that it wasn’t custard. It was a sour gel with a clear oil on top. It’s only redeeming feature was that it managed to be so alien to my palette that it took away the taste of the curry emanating from our miscellaneous central cuboid of beige matter. Perhaps the meal on the left might be the desert after all.

Anyway, this is all irrelevant at the moment. I was raised strictly but neatly by my parents and if they knew I had started desert before the main course, a sponge shaft would be the least of my worries. So lets peel back the tin-foil on the main dish and see what’s on offer.

I’ll try and explain how this felt. Imagine being a twelve year old boy Richard. Now imagine it’s Christmas morning and you’re sat their with your final present to open. It’s a big one, and you know what it is. It’s that Goodmans stereo you picked out the catalogue and wrote to Santa about.

Only you open the present and it’s not in there. It’s your hamster Richard. It’s your hamster in the box and it’s not breathing. That’s how I felt when I peeled back the foil and saw this:

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it’s more of that Baaji custard. I admit I thought the same too, but no. It’s mustard Richard. MUSTARD. More mustard than any man could consume in a month. On the left we have a piece of broccoli and some peppers in a brown glue-like oil and on the right the chef had prepared some mashed potato. The potato masher had obviously broken and so it was decided the next best thing would be to pass the potatoes through the digestive tract of a bird.

Once it was regurgitated it was clearly then blended and mixed with a bit of mustard. Everybody likes a bit of mustard Richard.

By now I was actually starting to feel a little hypoglycaemic. I needed a sugar hit. Luckily there was a small cookie provided. It had caught my eye earlier due to it’s baffling presentation:

It appears to be in an evidence bag from the scene of a crime. A CRIME AGAINST BLOODY COOKING. Either that or some sort of back-street underground cookie, purchased off a gun-toting maniac high on his own supply of yeast. You certainly wouldn’t want to be caught carrying one of these through customs. Imagine biting into a piece of brass Richard. That would be softer on the teeth than the specimen above.

I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was relax but obviously I had to sit with that mess in front of me for half an hour. I swear the sponge shafts moved at one point.

Once cleared, I decided to relax with a bit of your world-famous onboard entertainment. I switched it on:

I apologise for the quality of the photo, it’s just it was incredibly hard to capture Boris Johnson’s face through the flickering white lines running up and down the screen.

Perhaps it would be better on another channel:

Is that Ray Liotta? A question I found myself asking over and over again throughout the gruelling half-hour I attempted to watch the film like this. After that I switched off. I’d had enough. I was the hungriest I’d been in my adult life and I had a splitting headache from squinting at a crackling screen.

My only option was to simply stare at the seat in front and wait for either food, or sleep. Neither came for an incredibly long time. But when it did it surpassed my wildest expectations:

Yes! It’s another crime-scene cookie. Only this time you dunk it in the white stuff.

Richard…. What is that white stuff? It looked like it was going to be yoghurt. It finally dawned on me what it was after staring at it. It was a mixture between the Baaji custard and the Mustard sauce. It reminded me of my first week at university. I had overheard that you could make a drink by mixing vodka and refreshers. I lied to my new friends and told them I’d done it loads of times. When I attempted to make the drink in a big bowl it formed a cheese Richard, a cheese. That cheese looked a lot like your baaji-mustard.

So that was that Richard. I didn’t eat a bloody thing. My only question is: How can you live like this? I can’t imagine what dinner round your house is like, it must be like something out of a nature documentary.

As I said at the start I love your brand, I really do. It’s just a shame such a simple thing could bring it crashing to it’s knees and begging for sustenance.

Yours Sincererly

XXXX

Best of the FAIL (video)

I saw this gem at one of my fave posters (and poseurs) Enty from CrazyDaysAndNights. And had to post.

Compilation of all the best FAILS, these are Darwin awards nominees in the making and sure to earn a snicker. If not by you, then by the person looking over your shoulder (and there always is one isn’t there? Face, you’re a trend-setting taste maker. Go ahead and embrace the coolness that is you.)

And enjoy. LYAO my friends, LYAO.

My treat.

Chatroulette: Ben Folds Ode to Merton (Great Social Media)

Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare… oh my!

So many social media choices and now there’s Chatroulette. For those that don’t know Chatroulette, it’s basically what the name implies. Created by a 17 year old Russian kid, Chatroulette puts the random spin into social media interaction by literally randomly (the Roulette part) hooking you to another member to … well chat (the Chat part.) Hence Chat- Roulette. You can read more about it here.

It’s gotten huge in Europe and developed a wee bit of a skeevy rep because it enables video/audio/text interaction, drawing a large voyeur, often sextasticly-inclined (I know it’s not a word folks but it works for this sentence) crowd. It also draws the usual: the teenage, the college, the bored and the curious. An interesting mix. There’ve been rumors of several celebs, couples even, hopping on to … um… get their SM on.

It’s not hard to see why Chatroulette is getting busy… (and why the quality of my post is going down hill.)

I’ve yet to try it, mostly because I need the Hawaii 5-O backup from the hubby- lord knows what I’m going to find on it and I’d feel better if I’m not alone.

Silly perhaps, but that’s how I roll.

So Chatroullette. It draws an interesting crowd.

Ben Folds is Merton the Chatroulette Guy?

Enter Ben Folds. The singer. Pianist.

Seems Mr. Folds had taken a shine to Chatroulette, and taken it mainstream with his “Ode to Merton.” Merton is the YouTube Chatroulette star. In a good way.

Hoodied up, Merton “piano man’s” his stream of conscious Chatroulette chats to his surprised, random chat partners. Sometimes it’s to a happy reaction, sometimes not but the end result is always charmingly hysterical. You can see some of Merton’s exploits on his YouTube channel here.

So Ben Folds seems to love Merton. Some even think Ben F. IS the elusive Merton- check out the Mashable interview. Ben’s even incorporated the act into his tour. And it’s great. Simply great.

Check random people having their screen open up to 6,000+ screaming fans and and Ben, hoodied up like the original Merton. With his piano. For a little musical multi-media conversation Merton-style.

Sometimes clothing optional. Ben was nice enough to edit out the naughty, jiggly bits.