Posts tagged “Simpsons”

Bart Imitates Life

I was quite amused to see two topics near to my heart appear on The Simpsons last weekend. This this episode, the Simpsons travel with Ned Flanders and other Springfieldians to Israel. Ned gets very fed up with Homer and explodes: “You come all the way to Jerusalem, the happiest place on earth, and all the photos in your camera are of funny soda pops!” Yes! My Museum of Foreign Groceries (including Israeli beverages)! Here’s Homer’s pictures:





The episode also hits on another favorite topic – bad surveys – when Marge is asked to evaluate her tour guide:

How glitz (so easily) becomes failure

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If Steve (sans glasses) was a Simpsons character

The blogosphere is abuzz today (in the post-iPhone, post-Ratatoullie, post-Transformers frenzy) with the launch of 7-11 stores converted into Kwik-E-Marts to promote the Simpsons Movie. The nearest Kwik-E-Mart is an hour away, but we walked to our local 7-11 to see if they were carrying the promised set of Simpsons-themed merch. We walked through the entire store and were just on our way out when we discovered the display. Yep, we’re enough off the grid here in Pacifica that what we get is just another messy shelf of crappy products. Perhaps life imitates the Simpsons, once again?

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Hindu! There are 700 million of us! (That’s super)

Sure, I’ve been getting spam for/from other continents for a long, long, long time, but still I was amused by spam I got today:

Subject: Wish You Very Happy Diwali

Dear Sir/ Madam,

Best wishes to you and your family for a Very Happy Diwali and a Pleasant,
Healthy and Prosperous New Year. May the festival of lights brighten up
your life in every possible way !!

We sincerely wish to extend our support for any of your corporate needs in
following areas. (products/services).

[snip]

Crack This!

Fast Company looks at marketing/research/culture proto-guru Clotaire Rapaille and observes “the conversation reinforces what I’d come to suspect: Rapaille is 25% substance and 75% shtick.”

It’s a good piece especially because it challenges the validity/myth/efficacy of a powerful and popular media figure er um I mean consultant. For those of us who aren’t clients, all we see is that 75%, and frankly, that shtick has made my skin crawl for a long time. I really like that simple analysis because it reminds me that one can be an intolerable asshole and still have something valid to say. In fact, for some people, your message carries more weight if you are intolerable when you deliver it. That’s not to my taste, but I guess it works for him.

Rapaille subscribes to the triune brain theory, which describes three distinct brains: the cortex, limbic, and reptilian. Beneath the cortex, the seat of logic and reason, is the limbic, which houses emotions. Camouflaged underneath those is Rapaille’s baby–the reptilian–the layer wired by our biological primal needs like sex, reproduction, and survival.

And gee, only yesterday the Simpsons (in an old-timey episode) had a character describing his reaction as going from “sanguine to bilious.” Humours, triune brain, whatever!

Space Shuttle Damaged on the Launch Pad

Who is handling safety/quality at NASA these days? This just brings to mind a painful-to-watch Simpsons episode involving ironic and painful crashing, cracking, breaking, and hurting.

full story

With the countdown for Discovery in its final hours, NASA was dealt a setback Tuesday when a window cover fell off the shuttle and damaged thermal tiles near the tail.

The plastic-and-foam cover on one of Discovery’s cockpit windows fell at the launch pad and struck a bulge in the fuselage that houses an orbital-maneuvering engine.

No workers were nearby when the window cover fell off and dropped about 60 feet, the space agency said. It was not immediately clear why the cover – which was held by tape – came loose.

‘Lord of Rings’ in Canada premiere

A much-anticipated stage musical based on ‘The Lord of the Rings’ will have its world premiere in Toronto next year. The Cdn$27 million (U.S. $22 million) show will open in March 2006 at the Princess of Wales Theatre with a largely Canadian cast…”We have not attempted to pull the novel towards the standard conventions of Musical Theatre, but rather to expand those conventions so that they will accommodate Tolkien’s material.”

Meh. The Simpsons did it with Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want To Get Off!

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