Free Music from Cloud Cult

Well whadya know. If you haven’t already heard, the folksy/blue-grass/Irish song playing in the latest Esurance animated ads is actually by a band named Sugar Cloud Cult, based right here in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Their Wiki entry shows them as an “experimental indie rock band” but sounds more folk to me. If you’re into that stuff, feel free to go to Esurance’s music download page. This page appears to be seasonal so don’t expect the tunes to hang around forever.

Tracks available for FREE download from the above listed page:

1. Lucky Today
2. Journey of the Featherless
3. Everybody Here is a Cloud

The animation is pretty whacky and weird but here you go:

WRC loses Subaru

You know things aren’t going the greatest when companies like Microsoft and Google put on hiring freezes, Yahoo! goes on a firing spree, electronics giant Best Buy making moves to reduce staff, folks out at Target Corp getting the chop, and every other person is out there job hunting because of this economic downturn. To make matters worse, credit card companies like American Express began lowering or freezing borrowing from their valued customers making matters worse for those looking to invest. Even my favorite blog site, The Consumerist, has fallen under hard times and is up for sale. You can tell times are bad cuz their ads are so big, they cover blog post titles.

And thereby, we can claim that the economy is just as miserable as the weather is right here in Minnesota.

Unfortunately, this trickle down effect has now hit the world of auto sports breaking the seemingly life-long bond between Subaru and the World Rally Championship. Without going into details, a statement from the parent company Fuji Heavy Industries (owned by Toyota) revealed that (Subaru) has officially pulled out of the 2009 WRC campaign. The economy could be one of the bigger reasons behind this decision but irrespective of the cause, it’s a sad day to see an icon like Subaru divest itself off of the rally championships. This from a company that made a name for itself by designing passenger vehicles from all of their testing and experience in the World Rally Championships. Truly a shocker!

All we have are memories…

Have you been Rick Rolled?

I’d forgotten all about Rick Astley and his 1987 hit “Never Gonna Give You Up” until they started playing that song after ever other track at “First Ave” club in Minneapolis last night for the Halloween party special.

Thought it was strange that his song was getting inserted between the different techno tracks like a pitbull among hockey moms. Some of the people I was with had no clue as to who the singer was and then Rick Astley himself sprang up on the stage bopping around with a youthful demeanor akin to his music videos. The crowd went wild. All of a sudden, fond memories of “rickrolling” flooded back to me.

Alright enough of that sentimental crap. Here’s the link if you want to know about rickroll and have a Happy Halloween Weekend!!! Also, remember to pass on your knowledge about rickrolling to your uninformed peers and after they’ve seen the stuff, annouce to them – “You just got rickrolled!”

UPDATE: I just found a Rick Astley video on this cool website. It’s SFW (Safe For Work) unless there’s something badly wrong with you.

Gizmodo bans our Ninja

It’s not sure who @ Gizmodo banned “ninjatales” or why but it happened within the next 5-10 minutes after posting this line in a controversial “PS3 Ad” blog post. Ironically enough, I was in support of Brian Lam (blogger @ Gizmodo) for laying the smack down on some irrational posters. You’d think a supporter would be given a helping hand.

Was our ninja backstabbed or was it simply a case of “casualties of war” during his banning spree? I guess all we can do for now, other than my one-time email post to reinstate my commenting status, is to stare at this ninjafied Steve Ballmer screaming on my behalf.

EDIT: 1PM CST 5/14/2008 – They even took down my emailing privileges meaning I can’t contact the moderator team at Gizmodo. All this silent hate directed towards me and I still don’t know why I was banned. Was it Jason Chen or Brian Lam or some other shadowy conspirator? Whoever it is, can I please get a response? I sent out 2 emails with my email address listed.

The Apple iPhone is a star but can I smell your …

It seems like every few months, there’s something really gross making the rounds out on YouTube. The last big viral video was the 2 GIRLS 1 CUP crap literally. The video was pulled faster than you could say KAZAAM but recordings of the reactions of viewers proved to be equally as popular.

So this time, it’s by “Riskay – The Drama Queen” who shops around for a catchy R&B/Hip-Hop tune which goes something like …

… can I smell your yo dick?

Seriously who says that but the song is definitely catchy. The rather strange request to sniff her boyfriend’s (or boo or whatever) d*ck to see if he’s messing around with some other chick is downright gross. The best thing in the video is the iPhone doing some Joey Grecko (host of Cheaters TV) stuff to aide our “Riskay” and confirm her fears. The poor iPhone gets thrown but survives the fall.

Also, quite a few spoofs are already out on the internet. Check them all out, YO!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruef7aYCEbc

EDIT: 2008-11-01 Fixed broken video link. Apparently you can’t embed it anymore.

Losers carry empty gun holsters

Saw some chubby looking college kid walking around with an empty gun holster on his right hip today. From the way he was walking around, I bet he felt he was the coolest kid in town. He had his arms curled over on his sides like a gunslinger from the 1800s, walking all slow with a heavy step, and moving his shoulders from side to side gangsta-style. LMAO!

Hats off to the dumbest-looking fuck I’ve seen in months. I’m also assuming that he’s the kind who stuffs his boxers/briefs with socks and watches Fox News for information.

Sorry. Just had to get that out. Made my day.

Silencio

They say, silence is golden. It lets people peer into their own hearts and soul when the moment is given. Just like in the movie Mulholland Drive when Naomi Watts and Laura Harring go to Club Silencio, nothing you hear is real.

In the real world, business people talk to confuse the listener from obtaining real information because when you talk, the focus of the talkee (is that a word?) or listener will be on the overall message or the literal words. It doesn’t give them time to think about WHY the talker is trying to launch a verbal assault. Maybe the talker is trying to hide certain emotions and dispel doubts about the person’s fragile self. Jokes are one way of attempting to do just that.

In the political arena, when those big cats use rhetoric in their speeches, most of them usually pause after they unleash a strong statement. This pause allows the message to soak into the listeners who at this time are subconsciously fighting their own inner consciousness with the new almost hypnotic suggestions thrown at them. Some like President Bush aren’t known for their speech pause timings. Sometimes he waits too long pondering on the right words to come out of his mouth and other times, he just flat out fails to pause. The latter actions help him a lot because the audience would not have the time to think about what he just said and are left focusing on the stark naked words and what he’s going to say next. Hey. It works!

But for the most part, silence is an important tool. If used correctly, it is an efficient and devastating weapon (weapon of mass destruction if you have a mic and/or loudspeakers) and hope you are able to use the silence I present you when I’m not posting on the blog.

OHM and NAMASTE!

Nabaztag <3 bedtime childrens books

As most senseless gadget geeks, I’ve always wanted the Nabaztag. Half of it’s functions borders on the useless but the cute little cuddly French wifi (802.xx) rabbit has a strong personality. Now there’s even more reason to love it and it comes in the form of being able to read books with RFID tags. That is if you get the rabbit with the “/tag” suffix.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags were originally used in WWII. Allied aircrafts had giant transistory units weighing hundreds of pounds and helped ground forces identify friendlies. Nowadays, credit cards, passports, proxy cards, etc carry them the RFID chips. In the case of the Nabaztag, it just reads books with those tags. Then there’s also the RFID stickers you can purchase to have your Nabaztag read news, weather, etc.

Oh and it’ll set you back by $165 + taxes. The first gen bunny goes for a very hot price of $95.

With Easter coming up, this is almost a “must-have” item for families with little ones.

Click here for the online store if you’re interested.

EDIT: Forgot to cite Engadget for the reporting.

A Total Eclipse of the Red Moon

The news has been buzzing lately about the total lunar eclipse visible from North America other than the standard political fanfare. During the time of a total lunar eclipse, the color of the moon will turn into a dull red reminiscent of our friendly and dead red neighbor, Mars. The reason for this is when the moon gets completely enveloped by the earth’s shadow (umbra), the sunlight passing by are bent and deflected off our atmosphere thereby dimly lighting up the moon. The earth’s atmosphere then bends out the light coming back towards us only allowing us to see the red hue. An important part of all this is that this can only occur at a full moon.

Here’s a picture I took of the moon when it had turned red. The other pictures looked like the moon was going through it’s usual phases.

… and here’s a close-up of the moon. My 5MP point and shoot camera sucks so I had to blow up the image. It all began around 7:45pm central and around 9pm was when it was completely covered and turned red. You notice 2 bodies of light around it. Could be distant stars?

So if you have clear skies, hope you saw the red moon because your next chance will be sometime in December 2010, weather permitting.

In China, CCTV owns joo!

According to Reuters, a CCTV (closed circuit tv – security camera) operator in Shanghai China called his buddies over for a LIVE video of a couple making out at a subway station. Somehow, it was recorded and leaked out to the internet in the form of the ever so reliable YouTube and some other video sharing websites. The couple are now looking at legal options against the operator.

China is well known for spying on their own citizens through all means. They started out in the electronic age with the CCTV and strangely enough, even their most popular tv station goes by the same name (but it probably stands for “Closed China Television”). So you walk on the streets, there’s CCTV, you go home and turn on the TV and there’s CCTV again. So in conclusion, we can admit that in China, CCTV owns joo (pronounced YOU)!