The useless web (thanks, A).

Behind the scenes filming The Shining (thanks, V):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsKKwPXCjpc&feature=player_embedded

…and a slightly different version of that:

Apple designs that never came to be.

Jamie Oliver’s ‘Cookin’ With’ sleevenotes (thanks, R).

George Lucas responds to the Death Star construction question (thanks, G):

It’s incredible what snake venom does to blood:

Jimmy Savile megamix (thanks, J).

Let’s kill the hater:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1tqWLKMN1Mk#!

Amazing original film posters.

Equally amazing shots of tulip fields (thanks, J).

Man dresses up as Facebook pictures and tries to friend the people (thanks, G).

Nigerian men tattoo their lips pink:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trqdYTtx6XI

I think it joins that small group of McDonald’s ads that is much more powerful for slipping the golden arches in at the end of a well-observed slice of British life.

Lots of people across the country will recognise the situation, so it has to be played perfectly to make it work.

I’d say they’ve got it pretty much spot-on.

(thanks, G.)

(Thanks, D.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sillEgUHGC4

Alas, it’s a massive rip-off.

It’s not ‘inspired by’ or taking a bit of something here and adding it to a bit of something there.

It’s exactly what the Arkansas Farm Bureau did, only with a massive car brand stuck on the end.

Wankers.

Here’s Godaddy’s Superbowl 2013 ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGJX6t3IAlk

That’s funny, because I was thinking about this very trope just yesterday. Back in the early 2000s you couldn’t move for ‘this person represents this (usually abstract) aspect of our product’ ads. Here’s the best:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdyC5prcsrI

I think they sparked the analogy craze that we’re currently either at the end of or just taking a break from as we enjoy five score years of manifestos.

I’ve just spent the weekend in Florence.

When I wasn’t eating ice cream I was looking at the inside of churches. One such place of worship (Santa Maria Novella), unsurprisingly, has lots of pictures of Jesus on the walls. It was as I was staring at the nails in the feet and hands in one of these (The Holy Trinity by Masaccio) that it really hit home how violent this whole Jesus thing really is.

Imagine if someone appeared today who peacefully went up against the ruling power, gradually turning millions of people to believe in love and tolerance for thousands of years. But then millions of other people took those teachings on and used them to justify killing millions of other people. How did that happen? How did loads of people turn a (supposed) root belief in being nice to one another into the exact opposite?

This would be down to the Bible and its openness to various interpretations. Christian fundamentalism is the practise of defending the ‘fundamentals’ of a literal reading of the Bible, sometimes with violence. Does that conflict with what Jesus supposedly taught? Looks like it, but then there’s so much in the Bible that sends people off in another direction. How do you deal with heretics and those who would threaten Christianity when the Sermon on the Mount preaches loving your enemies?

So here we are with lots of nice Christians and lots of violent ones, all coming from the same teachings. So either they don’t believe the teachings or they think, somewhat ironically, that it’s justifiable to ignore them for the greater good of defending them:

If (and I’ll say for the record that I’m an atheist, so I find this quite a sizeable ‘if’) there was some big plan of a creator to make us all nicer people by sending his son down here to tell us how to behave, then he really ballsed it right up. I guess people who defend God would say that it’s our free will that made it all go wrong, but then the creator supposedly created us, too, including this ‘free will’ that seems to mess up his plans so many times. Then he gets annoyed at how naughty we are. Well, he (very supposedly) created us. If he didn’t want all this bad behaviour then he should have made us less prone to faults, or at least accept his part in those mistakes and started again, or given us a little running adjustment, like an OS update. Surely that would be a piece of piss for someone who is omnipotent.

So a guy whose life ended with nails in his feet and hands inspired millions of people to kill millions of other people, despite his express intention to do the exact opposite.

How strange…

Gilmour and Bowie doing Comfortably Numb live (thanks, G):

And then a one man bad performing Brain Damage/Eclipse (thanks, G):

Bad lip reading inauguration (thanks, S):

Man glues dildo to his girlfriend’s head:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ4GXb-AMpU&feature=player_embedded

Bill Gates jumping over a chair (thanks, G):

Awesome video, and you could do worse than spend a day flicking through the director’s other stuff (thanks, J):

Incredible macro pictures of human eyes (thanks, L).

Frank in the studio (thanks, L):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=L8WEvrfOJ94#!

Ass pennies (thanks, G):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPNr0_6MnDo&feature=share

If we skip past the fact that some guys just made an ad for (I’d guess) $10,000,000 this is OK. At least Mercedes backed the idea properly. It makes sense and has a decent logic (if we skip past the fact that the guy will only have the car, not the greater prizes on offer).

And not a single member of the KKK in sight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H0xPWAtaa8

There’s a bunch of debate on YouTube as to whether or not this is racist.

Well, it stereotypes Jamaicans as being happy-go-lucky fellows who don’t sweat the small stuff and have a great big smile all day. Although it’s not offensive to say that an entire nation is happy, in this case it’s complete bullshit (particularly if you’re a homosexual; it’s illegal over there). So is it wrong to make a massive generalisation about a country, or is it OK so long as that generalisation is positive?

I’d say either generalising is wrong or it isn’t. What if he covered himself in brown shoe polish? There’s nothing wrong with having brown skin, is there? Would you find that offensive? What if he made a joke about having a big penis? Nothing wrong with that, eh? So would that inspire angry missives to VW’s HQ?

I had a good chat about this with my dad last year. He does stand-up comedy and was wondering why it’s OK for black people to say ‘nigger’ but not white people? Why would a Jewish person take offence at being called a ‘bloody Jew’, whereas a Zoroastrian would be more likely to just brush ‘bloody Zoroastrian’ aside?

We came to the conclusion that it’s down to historical oppression: there are certain races that have historically been given a raw deal. That seems to have resulted in the feeling that any further insulting of those races is offensive. The countries and races that have done the oppressing (which, not-very-coincidentally, are also the states with the strongest economies and most power) get much less offended at someone calling them out for the country they come from. Overall, Caucasian people rule the world (for the time being. Hello China!), so telling someone they’re part of the group that’s in charge is not going to be a problem.

An American in a German car ad pretending to be a Jamaican? Definitely iffy.

Oh, and besides that, the ad is not at all funny. It’s toe-curlingly embarrassing to watch those pisspoor clichés being worked over in such a bovine fashion.

Borderline racism I can take, but lazy, unamusing borderline racism? Why bother?

UPDATE: Here’s the making of: ‘You want to be doing a brilliant job to make people just love Volkswagen’. Good luck with that.