The best day of Adrien Brody's life

I will now take a break from personal posts to present the following to amuse you on a Monday morning. The two are not related, save their inherent weirdness.



And now this:

CYOB: Time to get spooky!

This post is part of NPW's Choose Your Own Blogventure, Spooktacular edition! If you got here from Definitely RA, keep reading. If not, visit NPW for the beginning and hopefully you'll get here eventually.

(Eds note: If you read this post between the hours of 9 and 11 a.m., I had the links screwed up, so read again!)
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I looked at Julie. Her gaze was fixated on the trunk, and she didn’t appear to have noticed the book sitting on a table next to one of the armchairs. I knew I had to grab the book. If I couldn’t watch the rest of Haunted Happenings, I could at least read the rest. Plus, it would be so much less scary without the images of the trunk that seemed to be torturing Julie.

I yanked Julie’s hand and pulled her toward the entrance of the library set up. She followed me, still distracted by the sight of the trunk up ahead. I began to hear the sound of a thumping heart. It grew louder with every step we took. I looked toward the gramophone as we approached it and saw two glowing red spots just beyond it.

“CA-CAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWW!”

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Julie and I screamed in unison as we were met face-to-face with a black object with glowing red eyes that had lunged from behind the gramophone.

We collected our wits in about 30 seconds and realized the thing that was staring us in the eyes was a fake but realistic looking raven perched on the end of a long stick. Holding the other end of the stick was a man with shaggy eyebrows, a shaggy moustache and wavy hair. He was wearing a long black coat and gazing upon us with an amused look.

“Ohmygod, he looks JUST LIKE THE PROFESSOR!” Julie said in the loudest whisper I’ve ever heard.

“You half-wit scaredy cat burglar! He’s supposed to be Edgar Allen Poe!”

Julie shot me The Look as I grabbed her arm and pulled her further into the library.

As we passed the armchairs, I grabbed the Haunted Happenings book. It felt hollow and made a rattling sound. I couldn’t look inside yet, as we were still encountering characters. Along the way, Dante popped out from the center of the fireplace, and Lovecraft’s Cthulhu had been hiding near the chess set.

Finally we made it to the door. I opened the book to see what was causing the rattle. It was an ancient iron key, just like the one Annelise had held in her hand in the movie. The glow of the porch light made the key sparkle, which pulled Julie’s gaze away from the trunk.

“What’s that?”

“It’s ... it’s ... it’s a key,” I responded.

“Ohhhh, no, no, no, NO!,” Julie said. “Let’s just knock on the door, get our candy and get the flip OUTTA HERE! ... Wait, no. I changed my mind. Let’s just run. I don’t need the candy. I’m too old for this shit anyway.”

“No way, I’m not leaving here without my candy at the very least. Besides, I want to see if there’s more haunting inside the house. And, I’m still curious about the trunk.”

If you think Kate and Julie should try to open the trunk, click here.
If you think Kate and Julie should knock on the door to get candy, click here.

Happy, happy, joy, joy

Modern Friends, I am happy today and I want you to be happy too. So here you go ...

Real Simple has a list of 10 ways to make your life happier. I'm not usually a fan of these kind of lists, but this one actually has some decent suggestions to apply to your life that you possibly hadn't thought of. Even if it doesn't make your life happier, persay, it might help lower your stress levels.

For a more short-term approach to happiness, please watch this very short clip:


There you have it.

There's a lot of useful information out there

Do you ever get amused by some of the stupid questions/answers on Yahoo! Answers? (C'mon, we've all at one point or another gone searching on Yahoo! Answers for the answer to our own stupid question that we hope someone else has already asked).

Anyway, this is your new favorite blog: Fun with Yahoo! Answers. (The guy behind the blog is making up the questions.)

You're welcome.

'80s music thrown way back

Ok, 1. I love '80s music. 2. I love watching a guy play an instrument well.

Well hello, Scott Bradlee doing his ragtime interpretation of songs from the '80s:



His hands. Seriously.

There's even a Rickroll in there.

Nom nom nom your way to wasting time

It's been a while since we've had a time waster. Let's change that, shall we?

I'm going to assume you're all familiar with those silly LOLcats at I Can Has Cheezburger (whose LOLspeak is responsible for the many ridiculous words, phrases and bad syntax that's worked its way into our grammar in the past few years. Still, I love it.)

Well, there's a game now:

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Stop. Collaborate and watch

I went to half-priced wine night, so my thinking juices are completely sapped for the evening. Please accept these really awesome videos in their place.

Remember the stop-motion video for Her Morning Elegance? This is kinda like that, except that all the photos used to create the stop-motion are shredded. The song is "Everytime" by Oi Va Voi.


Oi Va Voi "Everytime" from Katarzyna Kijek on Vimeo.

Modern Max showed me this stop-motion video. It's a little weird at first, but it's worth it to stick with it.

The MG, now in superhero form

I gather quite a few of you had a long weekend and probably need a little time waster to get through your Monday. Try the Hero Factory, where you can make yourself into a superhero. Here's The Modern Gal (by the way, I could have given her a shopping bag as her weapon, and I seriously thought about it.) I did not pick out the name, however.


(Cheers to The Park Bencher)

Anatomy of an Obama sentence

To say that the Modern Gal is a grammar nerd would be an understatement. I love proper grammar. I adore it.

I squealed out loud when I saw a diagram of one of President Obama's sentences on the Grammar Vandal's website. I seriously dug diagramming sentences in school, though I'm not sure I could do it anymore if I tried.

The sentence:

“My view is also that nobody’s above the law, and, if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen, but that, generally speaking, I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards.”

The diagram:


That's one of the most intense diagrams I think I've ever seen.

(Cheers to Kate @ the Grammar Vandal)

UPDATE: Just reiterating what I said in a comment below: Welcome Instapundit readers. Glad you're here, but please know that The Modern Gal is a politically neutral and friendly place. This post is about grammar, not politics. Please treat it as such and save your political discussion for Instapundit or another blog. Thanks, and welcome again.

Let's Dance

So I think my unintentional blogcation is finally over, although I think I'm going to be slowly tiptoeing back into the waters of the blogworld rather than diving head first. My blogreader's unread posts lists has reached epic proportions. It's going to take weeks to recover, I fear. The good news, at least for The Modern Gal, is have plenty of stuff to write about. I have a wonderfully happy story to share too! We'll get to that soon.

But first, you have to watch some of these videos that my boss of all people shared. The BBC hosted a dance competition for British celebrities to raise money for charity. The celebs performed iconic dances from Hollywood movies. See for yourself:

This was the one that won ...



This one is my favorite ...



You can find more on the sidebar of the YouTube pages.

For the Office fans

There's a musical:



Also, there's a dude tracking all the tweets on Twitter that prompt a 'That's what she said' comeback. Check them out. Click 'popular' for the best ones. Some of them are just too much.

Ahem ...

Movie-a-minute

Modern Friends, this, my day off, is not exactly going as planned. First I discovered water to be trickling ever so slowly out of the bottom of my hot-water tank and onto the floor. Then I learn my boy Albert Haynesworth has struck a deal with the Washington Redskins. THE WASHINGTON REDSKINS. They are not the Tennessee Titans.

So I'm trying to distract myself with more time wasters and found a good one today: movies in ultra-condensed form. This really boils them down to the basics, really all you need to know.

Take, for example, an old favorite of mine, Casablanca:

Ingrid Bergman: Oh, Rick.
Humphrey Bogart: Oh, Ilsa.
Paul Henreid: Oh, nuts.
Conrad Veidt: Oh, (dies).

Yep, that's pretty much all you need to know.

There's also the 30-second version done by the Angry Alien bunnies. Here's the whole list of bunny movie re-enactments.

Word math

I was never too good at math, but I still kind of liked studying it because there was always a definitive answer to whatever problem you were solving. The math discipline I excelled the most at was geometry because it was so visually oriented and it actually involved some words (does anyone remember postulates and theorems? Words and math blended together!)

New Math by Craig Damrauer really excited the supernerd within the Modern Gal by doing word math out of concepts. They're like mindbenders.

For example: Sanity = Everyone else's crazy / Mine

And don't forget Indexed, an old favorite with a similar concept.

A new way to Rickroll

I think a few of you have already stumbled upon Cornify, the website that allows you to cornify just about anything. Like The Modern Gal ...


Try it. I dare you.

Let me also introduce you to the Lolinator which allows you to apply a laugh track to any You Tube video.

Try this Lolinated video on for size. (Make sure you hit 'Play' when you get there.)

If you're a really big nerd, you can also Benny Hillify your You Tube videos with the Benny Hillifier by adding the Yakety Sax track (and by speeding the video up really, really fast). If you don't know Benny Hill, don't worry about this one.

Ascellation: I has it

It has been a spectacularly crappy week at work for me, and to keep from totally losing it, I've spent some quality time every night with my TV and How I Met Your Mother. If there's anyone who can cheer me up, it's Barney and the gang.

Did everyone see this week's episode? With the part about Barney's made-up words? (They're supposed to help you get hired for a job). Here's a clip.

Well, Barney -- who's also a fan of the motivational posters -- would love the Inspiratomatic, a motivational poster generator. Every click of the button generates a new poster with a new made-up word.

Here's mine:


Yes, there are definitely times I feel like a loser in disguise.

Barack, paper, scissors

Apparently I've become a huge slacker because I keep stumbling upon more time wasters. Here's an interactive presidential version of a classic:



To participate, click on one of the three prompts that appears toward the end of the video to choose Barack, paper or scissors. And here's a hint: don't go with the obvious choice.

Maybe politics would be better if they just rock, paper, scissored all their differences.

Build your own Garfield comic strip

You've all heard of Garfield Minus Garfield.

Now you can build your own Garfield comic strip with this fancy schmancy Garfield Comic Creator (with or without Garfield). You can set up a three-panel or one-panel comic and insert any combination of Garfield, Jon, Odie, Nermal and Arlene with props and text. There's lots of little buttons to help you manipulate what the characters are doing.

Great way to waste time on a Monday if you can't be in bed, if you ask me.

Super Mario Hunt

This is kind of awesome.



Now if they could only work the World Class Track Meet with Power Pad into this somehow.

Freaky Friday

This video of a demon robot is probably the most disturbing thing I've ever seen on You Tube. You have to watch it all the way through for the full disturbance.



I guess Chucky has found new life.

Have a mug on The Modern Gal

I'm a little late in getting to this, but I've got two fabulous Starbucks coffee mugs to give away to two of my wonderful Modern Friends as a thank you for reading The Modern Gal.

Ok, that's slightly false pretenses -- I obtained the mugs as part of our Dirty Santa gift exchange at work a month ago. My initial pick from the gift pool turned out to be two bags of Starbucks ground coffee, which was a jackpot find for me, but my dear co-worker and fellow coffee snob stole it from me. So my consolation gift was these two mugs with a small package of medium roast Starbucks coffee. The coffee I'm keeping. I'm not a huge fan of Starbucks coffee, but coffee is coffee is coffee.


The mugs are cute, but I have a gazillion coffee mugs anyway, and I prefer my mugs to be shorter and stouter. I tend to lose control of the flow with the tall skinny mugs resulting in me wearing more coffee than I've drunk.

So to enter, leave a comment below and in it tell me your favorite corny joke. You can cheat and look one up on the internet if you don't have one. They don't have to be clean or coffee-specific. I will do a random drawing on Wednesday, Jan. 21 and post two winners, one for each mug.

I'll go first with a joke (I admit, I found this one on the internetz, but it happened to be coffee specific, so there you go)

A man and his wife were having an argument about who should brew the coffee each morning.

The wife said, "You should do it, because you get up first, and then we don't have to wait as long to get our coffee".

The husband said, " You are in charge of the cooking around here and you should do it, because that is your job, and I can just wait for my coffee."

Wife replies, "No you should do it, and besides it is in the Bible that the man should do the coffee."

Husband replies, " I can't believe that, show me."

So she fetched the Bible, and opened the New Testament and shows him at the top of several pages, that it indeed says:

"HEBREWS"