Kai introduced me to Bloodhound Gang some years ago, sometime after their success with “Fire Water Burn” but before their success with “Bad Touch.” I thought they had a neat blend of punk-pop and silly rap, but I felt a little awkward listening to them when I realized just how juvenile and/or misogynistic their lyrics can be. I popped in one of their CDs the other day for the first time in years, though, and I did really appreciate one track: “10 Coolest Things About New Jersey.” Somehow I never noticed before that there was no audio on that track.

Isaac Hayes, who sang the theme song to Shaft and voiced the ladykiller chef in South Park, has quit his role on the cartoon because they finally got around to insulting scientology.

He’s a complicated man, and no one understands him but his thetan.

Bono is awesome. This is his homily at the National Prayer Breakfast.

This video is awesome. It features artwork inspired by lowbrow artist Jeff Soto.

This picture is awesome. It is my desktop picture in my office. (I felt I needed a third link to round out this post.)

UPDATE: Man, I totally forgot. Dr. McNinja is awesome.

UPDATE—THE SEQUEL: I don’t think I can write a post about awesome things without mentioning this. Chuck Norris is awesome. Awesomely deadly.

Ladytron’s first album, 604, is what I thought music was supposed to sound like in the future back when I was growing up in the ’80s. Their second album, Light and Magic, is decent, but I found it kind of disappointing—a little too much “electronica/dance” and not enough “electroclash,” as far as I was concerned. Their newest album, The Witching Hour, has neat cover art and makes me appreciate the band more. Some of the reviews on Amazon feel that Ladytron is trying to hard to sound like other bands, even that the new album is “less electroclash and more punky which is certainly a bad thing.” That reviewer complains that the new album isn’t an evolution in new wave revival, but “a change in style.” I don’t know how to characterize the new album, exactly—it’s got a little more of a rock sound to it than it did before, less of a dance sound, anyway—but I’m glad the band decided to try something new, because we don’t need another new wave revival album. I’m thinking that this album sounds like what I thought music was supposed to sound like in the future after hearing 604.

Have you seen “Lazy Sunday,” the music video with a couple guys rapping about Narnia that played on Saturday Night Live ? Depending on your tastes, that might sound either exceptionally stupid, absolutely brilliant, or just nonsensical. (My friends and I laughed ourselves silly. Tony especially enjoyed the line “You can call us Aaron Burr from the way we’re droppin’ Hamiltons.”)

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Here are some links that should appeal to gamers and normal, well-adjusted folks alike:

Most nerd-oriented: Some guy redid the soundtrack to Super Mario World with a bunch of different instruments, and it sounds pretty crazy and fun. He’s also offering it up for free, along with a CD cover. (Link ganked from Joystiq.)

Most bizarre: Archie’s obsession with “the new ‘V’ Box game sysem” drives sweet, good-natured Betty to go goth. (Link ganked from The Morning News.)

Most disturbing: Did you know that you can play XBox games online, and communicate with other players through a microphone on a headset? This helps foster realistic team-oriented combat action, or at least gives you the chance to see a hardened assassin swearing at his mom and demanding chocolate milk. If you watch this in your office, make sure to use headphones. I also recommend skipping the first three quarters or so, as I found it to be mostly unintelligible screaming. (Link via our good buddy Josh, who certainly didn’t see any parallels with our good buddy Evan, who allegedly was seen by four or five of us calling his mom a wench during a game of Goldeneye, or something. No sir.)

Sleater-Kinney’s latest album, “The Woods,” is quite good. It is rock music that makes me want to pay attention. You can stream the whole album in the Downloads section of their web site. In my opinion, it’s worth buying for the liner notes and CD sleeve alone, which have a really neat indie/silk screen aesthetic. I really appreciate when people take the time to create a nice package for an album, seeing as how it’s a lot easier to just download the thing than to leave the house and stop by an ATM on the way to the record store, like some sort of primitive savage.

did·dly Pronunciation: ‘di-d&l-E, ‘did-lE Function: noun slang : DIDDLY-SQUAT Etymology: probably alteration of doodly-squat slang : the least amount : anything at all (“didn’t know diddly-squat about sports”—Sam Toperoff)

ditty

Pronunciation: ‘di-tE

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English ditee, from Middle French ditié poem, from past participle of ditier to compose, from Latin dictare to dictate, compose

an especially simple and unaffected song

Diddy

Pronunciation: ‘di-dE

Function: proper noun

Etymology: probably alteration of daddy, as in Puff Daddy, P. Diddy

New stage moniker of rapper/fashion mogul Sean “Puffy” Combs, who is totally insane (“It’s five letters, one word. The name is changed. We made it simpler. We removed the P. The P was getting in between us. We’re entering the age of Diddy.”—Sean Combs)

(Thanks to Dan for the link. I’m now cannibalizing off my own co-blogger for posts. This blog is going places. “You gonna see how I’m gonna navigate you through the journey.”)

The new album by Gorillaz, Demon Days, is pretty darn good. I listen to it a bunch. I enjoy the DVD bonus material. But my impression is that this album is more where fans of Blur’s Parklife were hoping Damon Albarn would be going by now rather than where fans of the last Gorillaz album were hoping the next Gorillaz album would go. Dan “the Automator” Nakamura is gone on this album (and along with him, anybody he brought to the first album, such as Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Kid Koala, Miho Hattori, et al.), the rap occasionally sounds like it’s just been dumped into a pop song that didn’t need rap, and one character’s voice has been changed from sounding like a pre-teen Japanese girl to sounding like a breathy British woman. That last point is kind of like catching an Inspector Gadget reunion episode and finding that Don Adams has been replaced by Gilbert Gottfried.

Gen just acquired a new pair of Onitsuka Tiger sneakers by Asics, and they are pretty fly. I was curious about what kind of sneakers they have for guys, so I popped over to their web site. I tend to hate flash sites and sites with audio, but I like the design of this site in general, and Audio Track 2 just doesn’t seem to get old for me. I left the window open on my desktop so the music would just keep looping and and make my filthy, undecorated room feel one step closer to the swanky lounge it aspires to be. I am strongly considering recording about 20 minutes of the looping music with WireTap so that I can stick it on my iPod and get the lounge effect going when I study on campus. (Bonus review: I also tend not to download desktop wallpaper that is basically just an ad for a product, but I kind of like their Tiger desktop wallpaper too, and it can easily be Photoshopped so you feel like it’s for Mac enthusiasts).