Reasons to be Fearful 2014 (+ lyrics)

For a lot of people, the TV highlight of the past year was satirist Charlie Brooker teaming up with legendary funk band The Blockheads, listing terrible things about 2014 and reasons to dread the approach of 2015.

The song is based on Ian Dury and The Blockheads’ hit “Reasons to be Cheerful – Part 3”. Brooker’s lyrics are below, transcribed mainly by user Moo Cow on Youtube.

Make your own couch fort

Make your living room fun for kids is surprisingly easy! It just takes pillows, blankets, lamp-stands, and a lot of imagination. Let Will show you how it’s done.

Via Tim & Eric

Where is duh bay-beeee?

TomSka’s “Where’s the baby?” takes a cute premise all the way to its dark, disturbing conclusion.

We Bought a Jail

The trailer for “We Bought a Zoo”, cut with shots from The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, makes a very different kind of film.

Clueless Secret Agent

From TomSka on YouTube: how are you going to infiltrate the bad guy’s poker game if you don’t know how to play poker?

Antibaw

When an internet image hits you right in the feels; when a wise aphorism brings a tear to your eye, that’s baw. A lot of effort on social networks goes into sharing touching, inspiring, baw-inducing captioned images. Then again for every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction, hence the phenomenon of antibaw.

Arguably the worst offender for manipulative, sickly, patronising baw posts is the JustGirlyThings channel on Instagram (don’t actually follow the link!). Some of my favourite antibaws take these images and tweak the context.

“i know this is odd but im looking for a hot ewok”

Comic conventions attract cosplayers in imaginative – and sometimes very sexy – costumes. Women in sexy costumes attract desperate men who are “iso women for a lot of good stuff (and things)”. Their Craigslist adverts are captivating arrangements of les mots justes, brought to life here by dramatic reading.

Every Nineties Commercial Ever

I would love this if it were just a parody advert, but it’s so, so much more. I won’t spoil it: have a watch.

Human drummers play the Aphex Twin

The Aphex Twin’s programmed drum beats are so complex, with variations in every bar, that it’s nearly impossible for human drummers to replicate them. It’s not totally impossible, as illustrated by some drum covers. My favourite example of this is Adam Byram covering “Rushup I Bank 12” – as joyful a viewing as a drum video can possibly be.

Next I should mention

All about that space, about that space, space travel

We’ve previously featured workers at CERN who performed a rap explaining the different experiments of the Large Hadron Collider. In the same vein, this parody song is from interns at NASA who have fun while showing us the Orion project they are working on.

Thanks Helen Purplefairy for the recommendation.