Reading Digest: Charts & Graphs Edition

xkcd #523

“Visual aids help so much, thank you.” – C.M. Burns

This week we’ve got a graph about The Simpsons Movie and what must be one of the earliest examples of flow chart humor from none other than Matt Groening.  There’s also the rare case of double excellent usage, some very poor usage, some merchandise, and a security company that sucks at the internet. 

Enjoy.

Living in an abbr. world – Paraphrase or not, this is poor usage:

Now I must admit that I grew up in the 1980s as part of the MTV generation so my attention span is pretty limited. Even Lisa Simpson, in an episode of The Simpsons, commented that (and I’m paraphrasing here) “we grew up in the MTV generation so we have an attention span of less than a minute.”

That is just stunningly poor usage.  It mixes up two quotes, misidentifies the speaker as Lisa instead of Bart, and makes up the rest.  What’s worse the actual quote about the “MTV generation” is about experiencing neither highs nor lows, not having a short attention span.  Bart can’t remember what happened eight minutes ago, but that’s just because of television in general.

City’s biggest ‘Simpsons’ fan lives in Queens – Attention reporters, headline writers, or anyone who does anything approximating reporting or headline writing: Buying a lot of shit does not a Simpsons fan make.  That said . . .

PINK SIMPSONS TSHIRT – MAGGIE SIMPSON – GIRLS SIZE 2 – This is an eBay item out of Australia.  I stole the picture because I think it’s a good example of what decent crappy merchandise looks like.  It’s a shirt for babies (assumedly female but in my experience kids that young don’t give a shit) with Maggie on it.  She’s fallen down (as she often does) and she’s thinking about Bobo (whom we know she adores).  In other words this shirt has something to do with the character we love.  It’s not Lisa surfing or Patty & Selma on the prowl for young men. 

Useless stuff that you don’t need but want anyway – Apparently you could buy the soundtrack to the movie in a plastic donut case:

When I first saw this delicious CD case I thought it was a cute idea. Then after reading the description a little further I realized that it is more of a collector’s item than a cutesy practical product. This doughnut case isn’t a frosted pouch that holds many discs in it’s adorable pinkness. No, it stores just one CD – the Simpson’s Movie Soundtrack. Really?? I think a doughnut case for numerous CDs would have gone over a lot better than a one-seater 3D pastry for a crappy soundtrack to a stupid movie.

Ah, but the merchandising was half the point of doing the movie.  I will say that if they had released a pink donut CD case fifteen years ago (when I still carried around CDs) I might have wanted one. 

The Good, The Bad, & The Summary – The Cleveland Cavaliers are having a good season.  John Hnat cannot decide which superlative Simpsons quote applies better:

I am not sure which Simpsons exchange applies more to the current Cavs. Either this one:

Lawyer: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: Who do you find more attractive? Tom Cruise or Mel Gibson?

Judge: What is the point of all this?

Lawyer: I feel so confident of Marge Simpson’s guilt, I can waste this court’s time by ranking the super-hunks.

Or this one:

Homer (referring to "Reader’s Digest"): My favorite section is "How to Increase Your Word Power." That thing is really, really, really … good.

In other words, I’ve run out of superlatives. After watching a season and a half of the Cavs playing ball at a roughly .800 clip, I don’t know how else to praise them.

There are a couple of minor misquotes there (the magazine is technically Reading Digest not Reader’s Digest, the second line from the Lawyer is missing a few words), but they’re piffling.  Double excellent usage. 

My Top Five Favorite TV Mustaches … Ever: – Flanders is #1!  Hooray. 

Toys I live with… Kang and Kodos – Remember those Kang & Kodos dolls we noted months ago?  If you click on the link you can see what they actually look like out of the box.

The Bart Simpson Syyndrome – This is a blog post.  The blog is the official blog of a company that sells “security” gizmos.  It has been in operation for six months, it has eight total posts.  In addition to misspelling the word “syndrome” in the title it badly misquotes Bart:

"It wasn’t me man you can’t prove a thing".

Wow, that’s bad.  It’s one thing to get a quote wrong, it’s quite another to screw up a catchphrase and do it so poorly as to completely leave out the most famous part, “I didn’t do it.” 

The rest of the post goes on to tout the company’s surveillance cameras that allow you to feel like James Bond as you secretly spy on your employees, baby sitters, spouses, pets, houseplants and furniture.  As you can see from the image I grabbed at right, this half hearted stab at an on-line marketing trend that was all the rage five years ago has not yet attracted any followers.  Shocking. 

What People Remember From "The Simpsons Movie" – I find this amusing and basically accurate.  If anything the “SpiderPig” percentage should be larger:

Found on amiable_hacker’s cheezburger page via A Friday Night Spent Alone.

Sidekicks Who Rock – It’s a list of four sidekicks, two of them are animated, three of them are fictional and one of them is Milhouse. 

Event: Nancy Cartwright Talks Trash – This is a little too thin for one of our Alumni Update posts, but Nancy Cartwright will be playing in a charity poker tournament. 

Nelson Totally Looks Like Barney – I’d vote against this one (any two characters drawn Simpsons-style kinda look alike), but that’s just me. 

List ‘Em Carefully – The Top Ten Songs from The Simpsons – The bottom two spots are from Zombie Simpsons.  Everything in the top eight is from Season 7 or earlier.  I can easily think of two other songs to cleanse this of Zombie Simpsons (nothing from Shary Bobbins?), but it’s pretty good as it is.  (via Finicky Ears)

Your Guide to Modern Love!!! – Click the link for a chart Groening drew in 1982 for “Life in Hell”.  For all I know this has been kicking around the internet forever, but it’s new to me and it’s both cynical and funny as hell.  I particularly like the various endpoints (“Ahh—So what?”, “Whew—That was a close one.”, “Live [un]happily ever after”) and the fact that “Night of Passion and Romance” has three possible outcomes, “Ecstasy”, “Limited or no satisfaction due to ineptitude, flagging desire, or ickiness”, and “Weird dysfunction of some sort that’s never happened before.”  Found via Twisted Cultural Wreckage.