Her heart will go on... a lot of worst-ever lists

Boy, am I glad I've never heard that.

The brief story is worth reading if only because they did such a good job of picking the five best covers. I'd probably sub in Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" for the Muse thing - especially if I were the editor of a guitar magazine - but what are you gonna do?

British understatement

I must decrease "robust"

I just read the word "robust" for exactly the number of times I needed to complain about it. Here are the definitions of the word provided by Merriam-Webster Unabridged. If you don't mean one of them, and you probably don't, then use another word. If you do mean one of them, please choose a synonym, because this word is becoming untenably obnoxious.

Without further ado...

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1 a : having or exhibiting strength or vigorous health : POWERFUL, MUSCULAR, VIGOROUS
b : firm and assured in purpose, opinion, or outlook
c : exceptionally sound : FLOURISHING
d : strongly formed or constructed : STURDY>
2 : ROUGH, RUDE
3 : requiring strength or vigor
4 : FULL-BODIED, STRONG
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On the bright side, earlier this week I heard the circumstances leading to the impending spike in corn prices referred to as a "perfect storm." Since one of those circumstances was in fact a literal storm, I enjoyed the almost certainly unintentional wordplay. Good on ya, "Today Show."

Buffy the Leghorn Slayer

This story's lede hinges on the notion that it's surprising that an academic conference would center on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which it's not at all:



What is surprising is that they're having an academic conference in Arkansas. In a town called "Arkadelphia." About which Wikipedia says "The city's name Arkadelphia was likely formed by combining Ark- from the state's name Arkansas and adelphia as in Philadelphia." Which makes me wonder if those were the same visionaries who gave us Texarkana.

Seriously, good luck with that book-learnin', guys.

Nothing will be funnier today...

...than A statement from Detroit Pistons general manager Joe Dumars at New Republic. An excerpt:

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Yes, Boston has won four games and Detroit only two. But it's hard to imagine a more arbitrary and undemocratic way to determine this series’s outcome than "games won." It is, after all, a bedrock value of the game of basketball that all points must be counted. But how can that be the case when every point beyond the winning point is ignored? There are literally dozens of layups, jumpers, free throws, and (yes, even) dunks that our opponents want to say don't count for anything at all. We call on the NBA to do the right thing and fully count all of the baskets that were made throughout the course of this series.

Once you abandon the artificial four-games-to-two framework that the media has tried to impose on the series, a very different picture emerges, with the Celtics leading by a mere 549 points to 539. Yes that’s right, the margin between the two teams is less than one percent—a tie, for all intents and purposes. This is probably the closest Conference Finals in NBA history, though I will thank you not to check on that.

This will get me in trouble with old people

Bo Diddley was probably known for other things, but if you, like me, are approximately 29 years old, you need know only this:



Anyone who can talk like that to the best guy from Tecmo Bowl must be a badass. RIP, Bo.