Q: In the future, will everyone be a robot in a keg-discotheque for 15 minutes?

A: If you are part of the somewhere between 4% and 60% of my demographic that is related to me, you are going to love this video.

If you're not related to me, you are going to love this video anyway, because my family is adorable, and appearing as robots, for some reason, in a dream Kraftwerk had about the Heineken draught keg. Also it's short!


If you do not find my family adorable, or are terrified of us in man-machine form, I encourage you instead to focus on the lyrics, which are pure poetry.

You too can make a humorously unsettling video!!! of your family, friends, or especially I recommend exes. All you need¹ is a photo or four, and you'll have everyone born before 1976 believing you're a uniquely talented computer animator.

On a related note, remember never to buy Heineken. It's not very good.

PREVIOUSLY: I got Simpsonized and it was eerie.

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¹ FYI, I couldn't get this working in Firefox, only IE7. The Internet is such an idiot.

Q: Is former astronaut Lisa Nowak living the hundreds of miles High Life?

A: You can call Lisa Nowak a lot of things — crazy; a diaper-clad homicidal astronaut; a disgrace to NASA — but you CANNOT call her drunk in space. Or so says the man paid to lie on her behalf.

• EXCLUSIVE: Lisa Nowak Not Drunk in Space, Lawyer Says [ABC News]

Congratulations, ABC News, for boldly going where no other news network had cared to go before, or ever should have.

ABC News: What was you [sic] reaction when you first heard the reports of drunken astronauts in space? [Hmmm, me wonder if this exclusive interview was conducted by special correspondent Cookie Monster. -- ed.]

Attorney Don Lykkebak: Well, what bothered me about the reports is simply this: All of the news stories that I saw and even the one on ABC News linked my client Lisa Nowak with the reports of the astronauts flying impaired in space. What bothers me about that linkage is it's totally untrue. ... It's unfair and inaccurate as to Lisa Nowak.

To be fair to the previous news stories, I don't think they specifically accused Nowak of being drunk in space. I think it was more along the lines of, "Having already been disgraced by crazy diaper-clad homicidal astronaut Lisa Nowak, NASA is now drunk and crying alone on the moon."

BACKSTORY: Houston, We Have a Drinking Problem

Q: What eats, doesn't shoot, and leaves?

A: A Capitol Hill mugger! The wine-and-cheese-gunman story is getting picked up everywhere, but if you haven't seen it yet, it's worth a read.

Q: Is Starbucks' triple-grande Dulce de Leche Latté the new Starbucks' triple-grande Pumpkin Spice Latté?

A: Yes.

That is all.

Q: Does someone still love you, Boris Yeltsin?

Yeah, I know Russians don't drink Absolut. Just go with it.

A: I sort of hate this band (sorry, greater blogging community), but what the hell. It's a special occasion.

Someone Still Loves You
Boris Yeltsin
"Oregon Girl"
Broom, 2006

"Oregon Girl" once appeared on The O.C. It is perhaps the least distasteful song on the band's much bloggihooed debut album, Broom, which you can buy here, or whatever.

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So hey, former president of Russia Boris Yeltsin is dead at 76. My condolences go out to anybody who still loved him.

Yeltsin will go down in history as Russia's first democratically elected leader evs, and the country's most politically progressive and least dictatorial since, oh, the guy who came immediately before him. He drank a lot of vodka, he killed a lot of Chechnyans, he drank a lot more vodka, he fixed a bunch of things, he fucked up a bunch of things, he resigned when everyone was distracted by Y2K terror, he drank a lot of vodka and he generally left Americans confused as to whether they were supposed to like him.

We thought he seemed like a swell guy — he never threatened to crush us, and he was always smiling and waving friendly hand signals.


At least, I think they were friendly hand signals. It's a fine line between the peace sign and "I'll take two vodkas."

One thing we can never take away from Mr. Yeltsin is his proving to the Western world that Russians named Boris aren't all bumbling caricatures who hang out with women named Natasha.


Some of them, we learned, hang out with women named Naina.

Ah, but Boris, comrade — I keed, I keed. I'm sure it couldn't have been easy, the whole trying to build a newly de-Commied nation of 140 million from the ground up thing. Your administration may have been riddled with corruption and confusion, but old Soviet habits die hard, I'm sure. Hell, just look at the dude running things now.

POSTSCRIPT: Further reading...

• Yeltsin Factoids [Reuters]
• Comments on his passing from world leaders [Guardian]
• Comments on his passing from crazy CNN viewers [CNN]
• "Yeltsin known for gaffes, off-colour jokes" [Reuters/ABC]

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PREVIOUSLY IN OBITS: Don Ho, shocker of monkeys.

Q: Will we ever be able to make peace with Iran and the Arab World?

A: No. It's a hopeless cause. We're different cultures with different philosophies, torn apart by centuries of conflict and hatred. Axis of Evil, etc. There is no possible way we could ever become allies with these, our most bitter and dangerous enemies. Diplomacy is meaningless. The apocalypse is guaranteed. Duck and cover.

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Oh, by the way, Russia is opening up ten Starbucks this summer. Totally unrelated. I don't even know why I'm mentioning it.

Welcome to Moscow Starbucks: Your barista today is Nikita.

Q: Are you there, God? It's me, and I'd love a margarita.

A tangy sip of new Andrew Bird.

A: Do you ever feel like God takes requests? Two days ago, I was thinking to myself how it'd been nearly two years since Andrew Bird's fabulously excellent The Mysterious Production of Eggs dropped into our lives; and how exciting it was that we might be due for follow-up.

Last night, the follow-up magically appeared, like so much mana from the sky. It's called Armchair Apocrypha, and You Ain't No Picasso has a preview; I'll try to get another sample up later today (along with a cut from the new Bright Eyes EP).

One of the best things about the modern era of music is the fact that new albums can appear completely out of the blue. It's not like Michael Jackson could have released a new LP in 1986 without telling anyone in advance. It's very exciting. I'm excited. Get excited, people.

Q: Was that the weirdest, most eerily pornographic ad of the morning?

A: Of course not. We haven't even received a submission from Japan.

Here's the commercial for Manga Milk. I'm not really sure if it's safe for work, but let's go with "no."



See? That was way weirder. [via table of malcontents]

Lucky for you, you live in America, where milk ads are never creepy.

EARLIER: Q: Can good ads save sucky products?