i feel like the nobel prize committee website is mocking me for being so much stupider than the committee and its savvy team of stealthy ninja-like laureates (in truth the laureates are, communally, so obese, ancient, or generally feeble of body that they make a texas elks lodge meeting look like the romanian olympic gymnastics team).
i mean all i wanted to know was when they were going to award the ... umm ... awards.
okay so im no doris lessing, but fuck me, she wrote like a bazillion books, (and im willing to bet none of them included the word bazillion. suck on that doris lessing, you wrinkly old muppet! i have the capacity to use a word and you don't) and look at the woman, i think she might already be dead, she looks like a potato if you let it sit around too long and it starts growing buds, if we dont give her the award now, we may not get another chance. so, doris lessing, in honor of the fact that youve written like 6 books a year since the invention of the printed word (all of which have excellent names by the way, except one called Particularly Cats, written in 1967, which i can only assume was the year she realized her chances of getting her hands on some genuine human penis had finally reached zero, and it was gonna be all cats and canasta from here on out), you win by sheer volume of work.
but i digress here. where was i? oh... i wanted to know when the awards would take place (ok, so i only wanted to know this because i heard muse was going to play the ceremony. regardless...). as i stared at the 10,000 piece 3-D jig-saw puzzle that is the nobel committee web site, my eyes were drawn to the link for the nobel peace prize. the headline of said link promised to answer my most nagging question, what does the fattest bastard himself, al gore, making global warming a popular cause have anything to do with world peace? (and if that gets you a nobel prize, why isn't ed begley jr driving around in an electric car made completely out of nobel peace prizes?) so i clicked, and was greeted with a page which was essentially useless to me aside from a second link to a video which would answer my question...
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this video requires real player or windows. download now?
CANCEL
i have neither. but i do have a comment, i hope your not suprised: how can the smartest people in the world as of 2007 not format a video that also runs in quicktime? i also have a concern: does this mean that the most important discoveries, inventions, theories and philosophies of 2007 are being entrusted to the hands of vista? from my understanding you can't even trust iTunes in the hands of vista, let alone embryonic stem cell targeting, or mechanism design theory.
perhaps linux would be more to the laureates' liking? it does have that adorable penguin logo which would stay consistent with the you’re-not-as-smart-as-us-so-we'll-talk-to-you-like-a-six-year-old theme of their website. or should we just really make it al gore’s year and go back to ARPANet? did you know he invented that right after he invented the capacity to know about global warming? and isn’t a widely accepted sterotype (one which i dont embrace) that smart people don’t learn by watching, they learn by reading? so why couldn’t they simply write an article which would divulge the oh so desired facts to my salivating brain? after all they do have the worlds greatest writers at their disposal, or was doris lessing too busy finishing her latest novel, Possibly Geritol?
eventually i would find that articulate information, under a small print link called "information for the public" (.pdf file? why, you bastards? why?) which is included for each award. i found it under the award for physics, which is apparently being awarded to a sleazier version of andy garcia
and my high school biology teacher if he were homeless, for inventing magnetic technology for reading CDs. yes, in a world where we are fast making CDs obsolete, the prize for physics goes to some guys who reinvented the discman.
rife with enough ammo for a rave, i decided to explore further, and discovered in the right hand panel a bevy of wacky games and puzzles accompanied by hilarious and adorable clip art of a rubber ducky and a sloppily scribbled question mark indicating you may not understand the events which will ensue if you should be such a brave little slugger and click on this link. i also found a link to "the nobel prize on youtube", and when i was through watching that vid, i checked out the related video, "some chick awkwardly reads bertrand russel by the lake and then spirals into freaky antichristian raving about how we're all going to burn in hell, and now i’m going to turn on all the lights in the house", ok so that’s not what it was called, but its a pretty accurate description of what went down. yes this is all very distinguished and sophisticated. but more importantly were the site’s self proclaimed highlights. the schedule for the ceremonies (finally!), a slide show of alfred nobel signing his last will and testament, a "laser party challenge game" and a tasty tidbit about what happens when you put metal in an MRI scanner (a topic explained more thoroughly by an episode of mythbusters long ago, way to be on the cutting edge, nobel). after loading frankenstein into the MRI machine with comically tragic results i decided that i, yes i, dave newlands, was too sophisticated for the nobel committee website.
all in all i felt more intellectual pointing out the differences between seemingly identical cartoons and helping slylock fox solve the mystery of the missing toothbrush in the highlights magazine at my dentists office.
in conclusion, always try to tune in to the nobel prize ceremony, if only to watch sweden make a mockery of progress. and sweden, just because you can give an award in each category every year, doesn’t mean you have to.
and one more thing: hire someone from your distinguished list of laureates to upgrade your web site. i may be no gallant, but i'm certainly not that goofus.
excelsior!
