ProfessorTom! Congratulations!

Here’s the picture and his winning caption:

“When the regular Physics instructor failed to appear, “Professor-in-a-Box” automatically inflated and took over the lecture.”

This was a great contest. You guys all had awesome submissions. They were so good. Round of applause for you!

There were a lot of great captions this time around. Pick your favorite now! Winner announcement happens after voting!

Here’s the picture:

Winner Chosen

VOTE.

Let’s go again! Caption this picture. Funniest caption wins (after voting, of course).

Do your best. I’m looking forward to seeing what you guys think!

Could it be? I think it just might need some kind of honorary title.

To The Writers of Songs:

Hey. I’d just like to start off saying, congratulations. You do for a living what high school students everywhere fill whole notebooks with in hopes that their “deep” and “inspired” lyrics will one day make them rich, or at least cool. This, as you probably know, never works, but to be quite honest…your work isn’t much better these days. I’ve compiled a list of suggestions to help you up your game.

1. Rhymes. You should get some new ones.

Invest in one of these things maybe?

Here are a few rhymes that could use a few decade’s vacation:
“Friend” and “End.” Yeah, yeah, friends to the end. It’s bad. Stop now.
“Pain” and “Rain.” There is absolutely nothing you can add to this rhyme.
“Alone” and “My own.” It’s a rhyme that relies on redundancy. You’re better than that.
“Ever” and “Never.” Jeeeeez.
“Love” and “Above.”
“Right” and “Night.”
“Night” and “Sight.”
Let’s just leave night out of it.
“Air” and “Care” (thanks Freelanceguru for the reminder there)
“Joy” and “Boy”
“Said,” “Dead,” “Head.” Any “-ed” rhyme. They’re all washed up. Plus the English Language is pretty much cheating in your favor, what with the entire past tense ending that way.

I’m sure there are others, but I’m sure you can pick out the rest. That’s a good running start. Also, stop using assonances. You don’t do it well, you need practice. It just sounds reeeallly lazy and bad. “Girl” does not rhyme with “World” under any circumstances (thanks for that one, Kelly, can’t believe I forgot it).

Stop tacking extra words and filler phrases onto lines so that you can half-butt a rhyme. That “that’s right” or “oh yeah” or whatever…they’re all just fluff to fill up syllables and set up bad rhymes. Heck, I wouldn’t mind if you did the artsy thing and just gave up on rhyming altogether, it works for Coldplay. And please stop using the phrase “you know what I mean.” There’s no guaranteeing that. Stop stop stop. It’s cheap filler, we can tell.

2. Take a breath. You can always write another song later.

Your song should not be this crammed full of concepts.

Nowadays the fashionable song length is between three and five minutes. Any longer and the popular culture starts to get a little antsy and their minds start to wander off into green pastures and candy forests. And we understand that it’s a little hard for an artist to get the messages they need across in such a short time.

So don’t try. Pick one or two concepts. Pick one or two key phrases. Write them. The end. Nowadays songs are so wordy and full of themselves it’s hard to bear. Stay cool. Just pick a couple key messages and save the rest for other songs. I’m tired of having a thousand different cliche’s packed into one song. I mean, come on.

3. Grammar exists. Stop ignoring it.

I think this might be a pun.

Stop killing grammar. Stop it. I’m tired of those songs that uses the phrase “myself from me” just for the sake of a rhyme (in one of these songs, that rhyme is “me” and “street.” See number 1). Nothing “be” anything. I don’t be hungry. I am hungry. That lipstick does not be poppin’. It is poppin’. I don’t even know what that means. It pops? You could just say it pops, Lil’ Mama! My point is, “is” and “be” have the same number of syllables, come on!

Double negatives. Stop. Hanging prepositions. Stop them.

Hope these tips help, there are more where those came from if you ever need them (these three are free).

Sincerely Yours.

Karen at Saynotocrack.com

So I’m thinking about getting a haircut, and am looking for a good place to get it done.

I know you don’t care but who’s driving this boat? That’s right. Mr. Stevenson. I’ll go up and ask him to slow down and in the mean time you can look at this. This is where I won’t be going for my haircut.

I know that hairstylists take hair very seriously and heck, it’s their job to do so. They go to school, they work hard, they study. And it must be frustrating when a client argues with them over their work. But shooting someone?

Shooting someone in the back? Over hair? Hair?

WAIT! I THINK I LOVE IT NOW THAT I SEE IT MORE AND YOUR GUN. DON’T SHOOT.

A woman is getting her hair cut, dislikes it, argues with the hairstylist. The hairstylist goes and fetches a gun, fires a warning shot, then shoots the woman in the back as she quickly tries to exit!

“You don’t like my styling, huh?! WELL HOW DO YOU LIKE MY STYLE NOW?? Kind of dumb to think about your hair with HOLES IN YOUR BACK! MUAHAHAHA! HAAIIR.”

The woman, by the way, is being treated for “non-fatal” injuries sustained so that’s good. So. My advice to everyone is to go ahead and learn to cut your own hair. That way if you get into an argument with your stylist and shoot yourself…well…it’ll be a little less…completely terrifying.

Since, you know. You’d be crazy, but by yourself in your house. Not in public. Providing a service. Oh man I don’t want to get a bad haircut, and now I might get a bad haircut and a hole in my spine.

I know it’s been a slim week for quality updates, and to distract you let me throw a lolcats video at your face:

I promise Quality, Words, and Not Videos will be here very soon. It’s been a rough midterms season.

Chad does!

Once again, I have about seven projects I should be working on but am instead focused on the internet.

Don’t ask me what’s so addictive about this game, but I don’t foresee myself getting any work done tonight. Thanks, internet!

I’ve done a number (4 I think) of these Breakin’ it Down articles, and I’ve consistently been harangued for one thing (though granted, less and less): I keep picking on “nice” bands and “nice” songs.

Of course, when a person picks on a nice song, it must mean they listen only to evil songs according to internet logic. But, the fact it makes me sad when the music on the stations I listen to is horrible, horrible quality; regardless of family-friendliness.

Plus it would hardly do to break apart a very obscene song for a clean humor site, now would it?

But, I do recognize variety as the spice of life, and decided that I would break down a Mainstream Song just for you! So I cranked up that old “radio” and hit the “seek” button and decided I would break to bits the first random song to hit “my ears.

It was “Carry on My Wayward Son” and I don’t know what kind of evil soulless witch you think I am, but needless to say, I hit “seek” again to find something more breakable. It’ll be a clever day with Paris Hilton when I raise my hand against art.

Anyway! I listened through about five hours of commercials and was just about to give up on my will to live when a song came on! Aha!

3-and-a-half soul-beatingly dreadful minutes later, and I was forced to ask myself a very difficult question. Did I just listen to an entire song…a rap song no less…about dang lip gloss?

“Lip Gloss.” By…oh jeez…”Lil’ Mama”

Its poppin (4)

They say my lip gloss is cool
My lip gloss be poppin
I’m standing at my locker
and all the boys keep stoppin

Well…it starts out…vivaciously. No music, just a strong rhythm and a bunch of lyrics. About…lip gloss.

Mac Mac, Loreal yep cause I’m worth it
Love the way I puts it on so perfect
Wipe the corners of my mouth so I work it
When I walk down the hallway they cant say nothin
Oh oh oh my lips so luscious
The way I spice it up with the Mac Mac brushes
Loreal got them most watermelon crushes
That’s probably the reason all these boys got crushes

Can’t say nothin. Rhyming crushes with crushes. At one point she rhymes “virtue” with “universal.” Got them most watermelon. What you know bout me. It be poppin’. It is not popping. It is be poppin’.

Okay, okay. I’m stopping.

I’m stopping! NO!

There is NO REASON why anybody should have a hard time figuring out why I don’t do these kinds of songs. Lip gloss? This whole song is about why LIP GLOSS made this girl popular. LIP GLOSS.

LIP GLOSS PEOPLE LIP GLOSS.

Why do I even feel the need to say this is stupid garbage? Why? It should be inherently obvious! And I’m not going to do it! Just…listening to that song made me want to swallow razor wire, and I’ll be darned if I let my blood pressure rise any more by thinking about it. There are other verses, find them for yourselves. If you can’t figure out why this song is unfetteredly terrible and make your OWN witty jokes about the real reason the boyz prolly keep on jockin and chasin after school, then my pointing it out here really would not make any difference.

It’s a lip gloss commercial, people. A L’oreal lipgloss commercial. Why does this girl make money. It’s the saddest story in the world.