Reading Digest: Future Canadian Prime Minister Edition

Google didn’t turn up the usual amount of stuff and WordPress had one of its occasional hiccups where it didn’t correctly index the Simpsons tags for a couple of days, so this week’s Reading Digest is shorter than usual.  Despite the abnormal length we’ve still got a hallucinatory pepper, a real Duff beer advertising campaign, my new favorite cover band, ancient chess pieces, and the greatest MP in the history of Canada. 

Enjoy.

Bad Rooster – Rolling in the Deep, featuring Marge Simpson – It’s a five piece bad whose lead singer is wearing a Marge Simpson costume while she cover’s Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep”.  It’s awesome:

NDP MP doesn’t delete Twitter F-bomb, won’t apologize – I love Canada:

New Democrat MP Pat Martin is standing by an expletive-laced expression of anger and frustration on Twitter Wednesday night, saying even politicians are allowed to vent.

Martin lost his cool on Twitter while the Conservative-dominated House of Commons voted to shut down debate on the federal budget bill.

"This is a f—— disgrace…closure again. And on the Budget! There’s not a democracy in the world that would tolerate this jackboot sh–," Martin tweeted.

[…]

But the initial Tweet wasn’t all, he said. Martin went on to tell off followers who criticized his post, telling one person to "F— off" and directing the Bart Simpson-coined expression "Eat my shorts" at another.

I want this man to be the Prime Minister of Canada right now.  And while the delicate sensibilities of CTV Calgary require petty, hyphenated censorship, the internet feels no such bounds.  Here’s the original, in all its glory:

And here’s his Bart impression:

Vote Pat Martin! 

Homer Simpson’s Thankgiving by David Penso – Papercraft Homer, with papercraft ax, menacing a papercraft turkey.  Sweet. 

DOWN WITH LITERACY! – Yeah, that Herman Cain/President Schwarzenegger thing was funny.  Shame his fifteen minutes are almost up. 

Wow. And you thought YOUR job was crappy… – An NPR reporter in North Carolina tried a merciless pepper grown deep in the Piedmont primeval by an insane local crank who believes he has the world’s hottest chili pepper.  Whether or not that’s true, the NPR guy doesn’t handle it well, and the YouTube video of him is shockingly similar to the one of Homer at the chili cook-off (which is also at the link).  That guy was lucky there wasn’t a golf course nearby. 

Cerveja Duff finalmente no Brasil minha gente! – This is in Portuguese, but apparently there is now an advertising campaign for Duff in Brazil that comes with appropriately gorgeous photos.  The one at the top of the Duff on ice is particularly “mmm, beer”. 

THE 1% – Money fight! 

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim…In 10 Words – I’m not sharing with Kaitlin! 

Cartoons and Advertising – An ad for some kind of hair cream with Marge.  I don’t recall seeing this before, but the picture resolution is too low for me to tell if the copyright is new or old. 

Bart Simpson Cufflinks – Cute Christmas present – For those of you in Australia, used cufflinks of a mooning Bart can be yours for $10. 

‘The Game of Kings – Medieval Ivory Chessmen From the Isle of Lewis,’ at the Cloisters – The Metropolitan Museum of Art has some apparently very famous (they were used in Harry Potter 1) eight hundred year old chess pieces on loan from the British Museum.  This prompted The New York Times to write them up, and include this:

If, by some typically improbable turn of events, Homer Simpson were to unearth from his backyard an old chest containing a chess set from medieval times, what would the pieces look like? Chances are they would resemble the lovable little contestants beautifully carved from walrus tusks by anonymous artisans in the famous cache known as the Lewis Chessmen.

Except for the pawns, which are shaped like tombstones and dome-topped, octagonal towers, each king, queen, bishop, knight and warder, as rooks used to be called, has the bug-eyed, stupefied expression of a Simpson. They could be Homer’s ancestors.

Normally I’d say that was a bit of newspaper reader bait, but I grabbed this still from the accompanying video:

There is certainly a resemblance there, especially around the eyes and the lack of chin.  But please ignore the cutesy conclusion:

Meanwhile, a word to “The Simpsons” producers: How about an episode starring Bart as Harry in “Harry Potter and the Lewis Chessmen”?

How about not? 

What cars are pure fiction? – A list of famous fictional cars that leads with this:

Powell ”Homer”. An everyman’s car designed by Homer Simpson, following the discovery that his lost half-brother, Herb Powell, owned his own major automobile company.

Homer let his design muse run free, giving his car twin dome cockpits, three horns, tailfins and an exhaust note that sounds like ”the world is coming to an end”. Homer’s handiwork sent Powell Motors broke but Bart thought it was cool.

Excellent usage.

Fun for the whole family – And finally, this isn’t quite someone who agrees with us (though the quotes are from Seasons 2 and 4), but it’s too great not to end with:

I’m sure the Parents Television Council will call me to the carpet for this one, but the strongest bond between me and my daughter Allyson is the one we forged by watching The Simpsons together. I am thankful I married a woman who—while she doesn’t actually love the series the same way I do—at least finds it funny, and our holiday gatherings rarely expand beyond ourselves and our respective parents, who also tolerate the show. Mind you, as it’s obviously not intended for kids, we’d debated how we would handle the show’s occasional obscenities, but in the end, we decided we’d just keep watching it around Ally until she repeated something inappropriate, at which point we’d take it off the table for family viewing. When she finally committed this sin at age 2, however, we were hard-pressed to punish her, as she used the word in the right context. (“Daddy, I want to tell you a story about a monster. A monster… from HELL!”) Instead, we took a different tactic, underlining that some words were “TV words,” i.e. only to be spoken by people on TV, and that if we heard her repeating any such words, she’d get one warning for clarification purposes, but anything after that would mean the end of The Simpsons for Ally. She’s now 6 years old, and not only are we still watching The Simpsons together—who says threats don’t work?—but she’s absorbed so much of the show that when I say the words “Lisa needs braces,” she immediately responds, “Dental plan!” True story. You’re welcome, next generation!

Awww.