Tag Archives: documentation

Everything Tracy Jordan Said Seasons 1-5

This year’s UW link collections

I did a bunch of posts this year that collected all the long reads about a specific topic I could find and thought you might want to see them again when you have less going on this week.

Some Ian MacKaye links

My favorite eclipse links

Bill Murray links

Tom Gabel comes out as transgender

Super long Tetris read

Appetite for Destruction at 25

Some bands covering Mother by Danzig

2012 election recap

How Michael Jackson's Thriller changed the world

15 Richard Pryor #longreads on his birthday

2012 election recap

I don't have it in me this week to do a full scale 2012 election compendium like I did in 2008, but just a few good links that cover the election well. Conventional wisdom heading into the campaign stated Dems would lose seats in the Senate and Obama, presiding over historically bad unemployment numbers and a weak economy, should be easier to defeat. That didn't happen. The GOP primary season was a clown car and Mitt Romney barely made it through. After the party conventions, Obama took a commanding lead in the national and state polling. The first presidential debate, in which Romney was widely seen to have destroyed Obama, reversed national polling trends and tightened many state races. ("Did Obama Just Throw the Entire Election Away?") This reversal was halted at around the time of the VP debate, and began to turn around shortly thereafter. It was at about this time the questioning of polls began (Unskewed!), and as election day got closer and closer, a backlash against Nate Silver began.

Now that the election is over, many in the GOP are blaming Hurricane Sandy and Chris Christie for thwarting Romney's momentum, though Romney's momentum started to thwart before the Hurricane, and if you're election can be derailed by someone in your party saying nice things about the other guy, you have bigger problems. Like the demographics of the electorate.

Leading to the Romney campaign's ultra-confidence, and the driver for distrusting the polls, was a misunderstanding of the election climate. They didn't think Obama could match his 2008 turnout, which lead them to believe the electorate would be far whiter than it was. Obama also beat Romney among unmarried women (who made up 23% of the electorate), by 38 points. More on women voters and how underreported rape and abortions may have doomed the GOP.

Lastly, it was a terrific night for LGBT rights as gay marriage was approved in Washington, Maine, and Maryland, and an anti-gay marriage ballot initiative was defeated in Minnesota. Wisconsin also elected the first openly gay senator.

Below are some more links worth looking at about the election.

Obama's speech after winning the election.

Romney's classy concession speech. In another classy move, they streamed Obama's speech on the campaign website.

After Fox News projected Obama as the winner of Ohio, and thus the election, there was some amazing theater live as Karl Rove pushed back on the projection. Reports of Rove melting down or freaking out were overstated, but the weird part was Megyn Kelly leaving the anchor desk and walking through the studio to the office where projections were being made. In any case, Rove is in hot water himself for spending lots of money raised from rich dudes with little to show for it. Questions persisted about possible reasons for Rove's outburst.

Was he acting as the man who oversaw the most expensive advertising assault on a sitting president in history, unable to face his own wounded pride? The fund-raiser who had persuaded wealthy conservatives to give hundreds of millions of dollars and now had a lot of explaining to do? Or the former political strategist for George W. Bush, who saw firsthand how a botched network call could alter the course of a presidential contest?

Round up of conservative commentary: Why Romney lost.

How Obama made his way back after the first debate.

Another look at how Republicans are reacting in the aftermath.

DKos election thoughts.

Why was Dick Morris wrong in his predictions? Because he's racist and stupid.

Romney's friends in the media then and now.

The conservative media lost to the MSM.

How many hours of Glenn Beck conspiracy theories did Fox News broadcast to its viewers? How many hours of transparently mindless Sean Hannity content is still broadcast daily? Why don't Americans trust Republicans on foreign policy as they once did? In part because conservatism hasn't grappled with the foreign-policy failures of George W. Bush. A conspiracy of silence surrounds the subject. Romney could neither run on the man's record nor repudiate it. The most damaging Romney gaffe of the campaign, where he talked about how the 47 percent of Americans who pay no income taxes are a lost cause for Republicans? Either he was unaware that many of those people are Republican voters, or was pandering to GOP donors who are misinformed. Either way, bad information within the conservative movement was to blame.

Unskewed founder realizes he unskewed the polls too much.

Florida took two days to finalize their vote, and many Americans stood in long lines to vote. Here's 5 ways this could be sped up, including the information Congress has broad powers to dictate how things should go. They just haven't historically used those powers.

Hippies Wander Into the Lions' Den, Maul Lions.

This map shows the US the states drawn to emphasize the number of electoral votes.

This is from the last speech Obama gave as a candidate.

NASA lands Curiosity Rover on Mars

NASA accomplished something amazing and exciting last night, landing a 6-wheeled nuclear powered mobile laboratory on the surface of Mars. Read that again. Here's a round up of Curiosity related internet.

The first picture beamed back by Curiosity.

First image sent back by Curiosity

The Mars Science Library's page is packed with info.

The landing, described as "7 Minutes of Terror", was accomplished by shooting the rover in a capsule through Mars' atmosphere, and then lowering it on a supersonic parachute. Then a shelf detached from the parachute used rockets to slow itself further, and lowered the rover down to the surface. Watch a video about it.

Another good description of the difficulty of the landing in The Independent.

You can watch the entire news conference about the landing.

Here's a video of the control room monitoring the landing. They were, understandably, excited. If you want to see the actual landing and celebration, check out 3:10. "Now let's see where Curiosity will take us."

Curiosity was a bit late.

The successful landing helps wash away the missionâ€™s troubled beginnings. Originally it was to cost $1.6 billion and was scheduled to launch in fall 2009, but it encountered a cascade of technical hurdles and cost overruns.

NASA officials faced a difficult choice: to rush to meet the launch date or miss it, waiting 26 months until the next time that Mars and Earth lined up in the proper positions.

They chose to wait, even though that added hundreds of millions of dollars to the price tag, bringing it to $2.5 billion.

It was NASA's "Mission of the Decade."

Described by top NASA officials as their â€œmission of the decade,â€ the just-delivered rover will search for the building blocks extraterrestrial life as well as investigate how and why Mars turned from a wet and warm planet into the dry and cold place it is now. The complex, precision landing and sophisticated instruments being used on the mission could hasten the day when humans fly to Mars as well.
...
â€œWeâ€™re about to do something that I think is just huge for humankind â€” put this chemistry lab on the surface of Mars that can rove, that can see, and thatâ€™s going to provide scientists on Earth a glimpse into the past history of Mars,â€ NASAâ€™s chief scientist John Grunsfeld concluded a few hours before the landing.

For a good time, you can follow Curiosity on Twitter. NASA wrote a pretty good robot program so the Tweets are informative and funny. Also you can follow "the mohawk scientist" Bobak Ferdowski, and the "rockabilly scientist" Adam Steltzner. Here's some art inspired by Ferdowski. And some art featuring both Ferdowski and Steltzner. From the LA Times a bunch of Curiosity related Tweets.

It is the summer of GIFs.

What it means.

Curiosity is expected to revolutionize deep-space science, not only searching for indications that Mars is or was habitable, but paving the way for the next critical steps in exploration â€” soil-sample returns, sending astronauts to Mars, even, perhaps, colonization.

Celebration we normally see from athletes from scientists and engineers.

It may have sounded a bit jingoist around JPL at times, but the truth is that only the United States has had the knowledge and moxie to successfully land a vehicle on Mars. We have now done it seven times, and no other nation has really come particularly close. And with the touchdown of the one-ton and highly sophisticated Curiosity, the U.S. has reached a whole new level of expertise.

An Inside Look at the Mars Curiosity Rover.

Mars Curiosity in pictures. And another. And one from NASA.

Just in case you wanted to see newspaper commenters destroy something beautiful. This actually wasn't as bad as I expected it to be.

Watch this in full screen, a different kind of Mars landing. Terraform.

Phillip Bump in Grist on how the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics was highly choreographed and still had error, while Curiosity did not.

For all of the tiny, myriad things that could have gone wrong, it didnâ€™t. Curiosity, a roving science station named by a kid from Kansas, was a flawless performance. A moment of triumph for humanity that the Olympics couldnâ€™t possibly match.

Despite the success of the program, the budget might be cut by 40%.

The success comes at a time when the US Mars exploration program is fighting for its life. The Obama administration sent a budget to Capitol Hill earlier this year that would cut funding for the program by 40 percent â€“ a level Scott Hubbard, the first director of the Mars exploration program and former head of NASA's Ames Research Laboratory, has called a "going out of business" budget.

Discovery.com's round up is pretty great. Boing Boing has a round up, as does i09 and Slashgear.

Everything Don Draper Said Season 4

Here's Season 4 of Everything Don Draper Said. That is, everything Don Draper Said on Season 4 of Mad Men. It's over a year past due, but thanks for being patient. Here's of Everything Don Draper Said (and Season 1, Season 2, and Season 3 (PLUS Everything Tracy Jordan Said Seasons 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.)) This is Don's most talkative year by far, up by about 25% over the Season 1 talkathon. As always, this is everything Don Draper said transcribed. It's completely out of context, but if you like Mad Men, you'll like this.

Episode 1
"Excuse me?"
"What do men say when you ask that?"
"I don't want to do that? In the third person?"
"Who told you that?"
"Well, as I said before, I'm from the midwest. We were taught that it's not polite to talk about yourself."
"I wanted it to be indistinguishable from the movies. I wanted people to be watching it and say, 'What's happening in the story right now? Oh, it's something else'. It's not an ad. At least not for the first 30 seconds of it."
"Oh, uh, you all should meet. This is Jack Hammond from Advertising Age. Roger Sterling. Pete Campbell."
"I look forward to the article."
"Alright. Where is this party? Sheraton?"
"Don."
"Next time just have one meeting."
"Do you want women who want bikinis to buy your two piece, or do you just want to make sure women who want a two piece don't suddenly buy a bikini?"
"Right now."
"Can you give me a minute?"
"Count to 100 and buzz me."
"I'm sorry. I didn't know he was coming and I don't know who that is."
"And we could have had a conference table."
"About why there is no table."
"Well, first of all, they're prudes. Second of all, Y&R was standing in the hall way when we left."
"When the competition was fair. Every hour of my time has to be accounted for in the growth of this company. Get me in a room where I have a chance."
"Y&R has 6 floors of creative. They can throw bodies at this account for weeks. We don't have that kind of firepower."
"You don't say that to the clients, do you?"
"Send him in?"
"What do you think?"
"According to this, I'm already a wealthy man."
"He already has."
'What about it?"
"Seemed so far away when we agreed to it."
"Start World War III."
"Leave it alone."
"Come on."
"What do you need?"
"I can't, Roger, I have plans."
"No."
"I could say the same thing."
"I've hardly been a monk."
"Roger."
"Hello, Celia."
"I look forward to it."
"Have you seen my shine kit?"
"No. You need to put things back where you found them!"
"So, how do you know Jane?"
"I don't have to ask you any questions."
"You sat down so fast, I didn't get a good look."
"It's hard to believe there are two girls that can wear that."
"First that Roger was involved in."
"And there are so many real problems in the world."
"I don't know if I can make you feel better about the world."
"What do you do?"
"And what is that?"
"Like the chorus."
"That is truly fascinating."
"I have, but only for business so I've never enjoyed it."
"They make you wear a bib."
"Two chicken kievs."
"The Barbazan. I bet that would make a great opera."
"OK."
"Goodnight."
"It's tempting, but, um, I have plans."
"Well, how about right now. I stopped the meter, but we can start it again. It'll be like I just picked you up."
"Let me walk you in."
"Waverly and 6th Avenue."
"Morning."
"For a guy from AdAge, he can really write."
"Jesus. He never asked me that. Did he check any facts?"
"My job is to write ads. Not go around talking about who I am."
"Why do you have so many copies?"
"It'll be lining birdcages by Friday."
"Well, it's done. I learned a valuable lesson: Stay away from one legged reporters."
"That is good news. Thank you."
"They raise you up and knock you down. I don't know what I could have done differently."
"I didn't mention anyone, that's the reporter's job."
"How much was left in Hoho anyway? We'll survive with jai-ali off our list."
"And what do I do differently? I told him the truth. Who gives a crap what I say anyway, my work speaks for me."
"You want a drink?"
"Oh, of course you do."
"No, it's fine."
"Wait a minute."
"So do it. Harder. Again."
"Why did you answer it?"
"Hello?"
"Happy Thanksgiving."
"What's wrong?"
"Where are you?"
"Spit it out, honey."
"I'm here."
"Call Pete."
"I ought to let you twist in the win."
"I'm not happy. And I don't think it's funny or cute. You run something like that by me first. I would have kept you looking like an idiot, or worse yet, making me look like one. Is that what you want? You want people to think we're idiots, Peggy?"
"Who are you?"
"Why'd you bring him up here if you didn't want him involved?"
"How much turkey did you eat?"
"Hello."
"Where's the baby?"
"I'd like to see him."
"Henry. Come on, let's go."
"I'll sew it on in the morning."
"I can do a button, I'll show you."
"I'll leave the light on in the bathroom so there won't be anymore problems."
"Goodnight, both of you."
"Do you have your key?"
"Hello?"
"For what?"
"It's almost 10."
"She didn't."
"Henry, do you mind?"
"When are you moving out?"
"Well, you were supposed to be out a month ago."
"Well, either do as we agreed, or I'm gonna need to collect rent."
"Or you could just buy it from me, if you want to."
"Believe me, Henry, everybody thinks this is temporary."
"Goodnight."
"Send her in."
"They could have just as easily fired us."
"Well, I'm not. I try and stay away from these kinds of shenanigans, but I guess you knew that or you would have told me."
"Thanks for the ham."
"Since when do you have a fiance."
"You brought him with you because you thought I wouldn't embarrass you."
"It doesn't always work, does it? You need to think a little bit more about the image of this agency."
"I won't need you in the Jansen presentation."
"No, I just think it would be better not to have a girl in the room."
"You go to the swimming pool, you go to the beach. Take off your robe you head into the cabana. There's no other way to slice it, you're getting undressed."
"What separates a bathing suit from underwear? The cut and the print of the cloth, and some sort of gentleman's agreement. So well built, we can't show you the second floor."
"Good. That's what I was going for. A wink, but it's not a leer."
"Modest want to be stimulated, too. This draws them in in a way that will make your competitors seem crude and obvious, plus they'll be dying to see the suit."
"You'll get them into the store. Isn't that the point?"
"I think I know what you're looking for. A couple of women bouncing a beach ball. A little girl in front of them building a sand castle. Your competitors are going to keep killing you because you're too scared of the skin your two piece was designed to show off."
"You need to decide to decide what kind of company you want to be. Comfortable and dead, or risky and possibly rich."
"Well, gentleman, you were wondering what a creative agency looks like, there you have it. Hope you enjoyed looking in the window."
"What? No. That's not the point."
"Out. Get out. Get your things and get out of my office, now. Come on! Let's go."
"Call Bert Cooper's man at the Wall Street Journal."
"Yes."
"Last year, our agency was being swallowed whole. I realized I had two choices: I could die of boredom, or holster up my guns."
"So I walked into Lane Pryce's office and I said, 'Fire us.' Two days later we were operating out of the Pierre Hotel. Within a year we had taken over the Time Life Building."
Continue reading →

Steve Jobs links

I don't often feel sad or feel sadness, but I do sometimes in times of collective sadness. I'm not sure why. Last night I was on an airplane when it was announced that Steve Jobs had died. When I saw 4 random posts about Jobs on Tumblr, I knew right away. Growing up, the first computer I remember using was a IIgs, but we had at least one model before that. We also had a Performa after that. My first computer at college was a black and white Mac laptop with a 500 MB HD. Etc etc.

I sometimes collect as much about a story in one place as I can, almost as a personal reference for the future. (The Comprehensive Election Reactions Round Up from Obama's election is a good example). I haven't done it recently, but figured now would be a good time. Here's most of what I looked at yesterday, loosely sorted. You've probably seen some of this stuff, but probably haven't seen all of it. The sources are Twitter, Stellar, and Tumblr, along with just clicking around.

RIP, Steve Jobs. Peace and strength to your family and loved ones.

Daring Fireball | Wired.com | NYTimes | BusinessWeek | Chicago Sun-Times | The A.V. Club | Wired.com memorial of quotations | Brian Lam | Walt Mossberg | Tim Carmody | Frank Chimero | Neven Mrgan | Mike Monteiro | John Siracusa | Marco Arment | Dan Dickinson | Michael Sippey | Anil Dash | Rick Webb | Pat Keirnan | Alexis Madrigal | Bill Gates | Tim Berners-Lee | Jim Dalrymple | Horace Deidu | Mike Davidson | New Yorkâ€™s Tech Community | Steven Frank | David Carr | Ken Auletta | Byrne Reese (Pixar intern) | Andy Ihnatko | Mindy Kaling

The 2005 Stanford Commencement Address, and the text.

â€œDoug, do you have 10 more ideas. Steveâ€

Different images/art/etc I saw you might want to see. This or this or this or this or this or this or this or this or this or this or this or Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish or this or this or this.

The Think Different ad text, narrated by Richard Dreyfus and Steve Jobs.

Other round ups and slide shows: Kottke | BuzzFeed | The Daily What | TPM Media | Longreads | Appleâ€™s Ads | CNET News | Steve Jobsâ€™s Patents

Apple User Acting Like His Dad Just Died | The Onion and Last American Who Knew What The Fuck He Was Doing Dies | The Onion

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Together: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11

Time stops the presses for the first time in 30 years and the NYTimes.com first mention of Steve Jobs in 1977.

Some contrarianism: here and here and here.

Some random articles What Steve Jobs Understood That Our Politicians Don't | Arabs embrace Steve Jobs and the Syrian connection | Pixar's Secret: Rewrite, Re-edit, Recut | Steve Jobs and Pixar changed animated movies forever | Steve Jobs and the idea of letting go

Tom Junod in Esquire: Steve Jobs Dying | Steve Jobs Obituary and a profile from 2008

Some videos: Wozniak Tearfully Remembers His Friend Steve | 1983 Apple Keynote-The "1984" Ad Introduction | The iMac Introduction | The iPod Introduction | Steve Jobs interviewed just before returning to Apple | Steve Jobs Presents to the Cupertino City Council

My other posts.

Feltron annual report 2010

This year about his dad. This might be my favorite thing on the internet every year. Great, as always.

2010 Year In Review

Continuing a tradition from 2008 and 2009, here's a look back at 2010 featuring some of my favorite posts on Unlikely Words and other stuff I did. Consider clicking through to see some things you might have missed.

This year, I had the incredible honor of guest editing Kottke.org (TWICE!), and that's about all I've ever wanted to do on the internet. With Scott, I created 815 Sentences About Lost, a project where I got 108 people (some of whom you've heard of), to write a total of 815 sentences about Lost. I made 2 Keep Calm posters: Fried Clam and Curry Prawn and Keep Calm and Fuck You ooo ooo oooo. Here's my offering to the Miracles meme: Fucking Beignets. Chris and I recapped Mad Men all season with original drawings and thoughts. Lastly, I stepped up my food game by producing and promoting some events like, Ice Cream Showdown!, the 2010 Boston Bacon & Beer Festival, and Guacaholics Anonymous. Here's an I Write Like Analysis I did before I Write Like fell off the face of the earth.

Even though it was 2009, I'd be remiss not to mention the Jersey Shore Nickname Generator, which continues to bring in a lot of visitors, and the success of which was a giant surprise. Thank you, Snooki. To celebrate the final season of Lost, I watched Season 5 and transcribed Everything Hurley Said, Everything Sawyer Said, and in my first piece for Esquire.com (WHAT?!), Everything Locke Said. Later in the year, I did Everything Tracy Jordan Said.

I loved this picture of a guy biking upside down, this infographic showing Mars' failure at the Olympics, this picture imagining an after-school brawl between Calvin & Hobbes vs Christopher Robin and Pooh, and this picture of Kermit and Jim Henson.

Remember: Donâ€™t Be Diculous, Kitten Thinks Of Nothing But Murder All Day, and
anything unrelated to elephants is irrelephant.

Someone took the time to calculate Charlie Brownâ€™s Baseball Statistics, while someone else compared Massachusetts voting data to Netflix rental patterns to find that Cities That Voted for Scott Brown Like Paul Blart.

I liked The Pig & The Butcher, a video of Vadim the butcher breaking down a pig. The Red Sox traded for Bill Hall in a salary move more often seen in the NBA. Remember how big curling was at the Olympics or the I Can Walk Like A Penguin commercial from when you were growing up? "No, wait, there's an invisible monkey" was my favorite commercial this year, even though I'm not sure it even aired.

You know who impressed me this year? Surprisingly, Jimmy Fallon. The History of Rap with Justin Timberlake, Jimmy Fallon, and the Roots was really well done, as was this trailer for an imagined movie where Boo Boo kills Yogi for the reward money.

The Humpty Dance turned 20, Matthew Wilder's Break My Stride is even older, and my street flooded again.

Peyton Manningâ€™s Interception Quote was great, and so was this Randy Moss Remix, this trailer for the fake Commando: The Musical, and this soccer save.

I liked, and posted, a lot of biking and skateboarding videos this year, this one of bikers jumping into a pond was fun, while this video of a 23 Year Old Guy Learning How To Ride A Bike was exactly what you would expect.

Manute Bol may or may not have had a hand in popularizing the phrase, "My bad", and 3 new new dinosaurs were discovered.

This video of the little kid from Back to the Future III is creepy, as is this death spiral of ants. This dad telling his son he wasn't a single lady was hilarious, and why Saturn has a ring is related. Did you know Mexican Coke might not actually be made with real sugar?

Here's a picture of Bears Riding Horses, an Investigative Look at the Nitrous Mafia (you should check this out), a picture of Danzig carrying kitty litter, a list you don't want to be on, and Bill Simmonsâ€™ List of Comedy MVPs Since 1975.

Happy New Year, everyone! What did you like?

I Write Like Analysis

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There's this nifty tool floating around the internet the last couple days called I Write Like. You put a couple paragraphs into a box, click submit, and get the name of a famous author that you write like. I was wondering how good it was, so I spent a couple hours putting in some paragraphs of famous authors to see what I Write Like would come up with.

The results were mixed. A lot of these writers write like David Foster Wallace even if David Foster Wallace writes like Ian Fleming. I found the Project Gutenberg website with the top 100 ebooks and I Write Like did pretty well with the first couple paragraphs with most of those authors. In any case, I Write Like nailed 14 of the 30 classic authors giving it a success rate of 47%. For what it's worth, Jersey Shore Nickname Generator is accurate 94% of the time. Note: The tool is fun. This isn't a fair test.

James Joyce - The Dubliners is like James Joyce.
Stephen King - The Gingerbread Girl is like Dan Brown or William Gibson depending how many paragraphs you take.
William Gibson - Neuromancer is like David Foster Wallace.
David Foster Wallace - Consider the Lobster is like Ian Fleming.
Mark Twain - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is like Mark Twain.
Ambrose Bierce - An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is like Robert Louis Stephenson. This is my favorite short story, by the way.
William Faulkner - A Rose for Emily is like Margaret Mitchell.
Ernest Hemingway - Hills Like White Elephants is like Ian Fleming. I was pretty sure this one would be right.
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Diamond as Big as the Ritz is like H.P. Lovecraft.
H. P. Lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness is like Edgar Allan Poe.
Edgar Allan Poe - The Angel of the Odd is like David Foster Wallace.
J.D. Salinger - For EsmÃ© - with Love and Squalor is like Arthur Conan Doyle.
Arthur Conan Doyle - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is like Arthur Conan Doyle.
Franz Kafka - Metamorphosis is like James Joyce.
Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson is like Robert Louis Stevenson.
William Shakespeare - Hamlet is like William Shakespeare.
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice is like Jane Austen.
Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is like Lewis Carroll.
Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo is like Charles Dickens.
Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities is like Charles Dickens.
Bram Stoker - Dracula is like Bram Stoker.
H. G. Wells - The War of the Worlds, by is like H.G. Wells.
Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights is like Daniel Defoe.
Agata Christie - The Secret Adversary is like Agatha Christie.
Beatrix Potter - Peter Rabbit is like Arthur Conan Doyle.
Herman Melville - Moby Dick; Or the Whale is like Robert Louis Stevenson.
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein is like Mary Shelley.
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy is like Leo Tolstoy.
Homer - The Iliad is like William Shakespeare.
Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle is like Kurt Vonnegut.

Then, in the interest of pandering, I thought I'd look up a few contemporary writers/websites I like:
Jason Kottke is like (this surprises no one) David Foster Wallace.
The Daily What is like Stephen King.
John Gruber / Daring Fireball is like Stephen King.
Andy Baio / Waxy.org is like James Joyce.
Michael Lewis is like David Foster Wallace.
Chuck Klosterman is like Kurt Vonegut.
Bill Simmons is like Stephen King.

Now some pop culture folks:
Tracy Jordan is like James Joyce.
Don Draper's slide projector monologue is like Margaret Atwood.
The Real Shaq on Twitter is like Dan Brown.
Britney Spears on Twitter is like Dan Brown. (Probably because he uses web addresses in his writing?)
Britney Spears - Oops...I Did it Again is like Stephanie Meyer.
Jawbreaker - Kiss the Bottle is like David Foster Wallace.
Anthony Bourdain is like Dan Brown.

For what it's worth, when you put this post through the tool, it's like H.P. Lovecraft. Who did we leave out? Post your finds in the comments.

Everything Tracy Jordan Said Season 4

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Last year,

I put together a transcript of Everything Tracy Jordan Said in Season 3 of 30 Rock. You guys liked it and I subsequently put together Everything Hurley Said, Everything Sawyer Said, Everything Locke Said, Everything Don Draper Said, and a the first two seasons of Everything Tracy Jordan Said. Here is Season 4. This season, Tracy Jordan had a few great lines, specifically in Episodes 18 and 21. As always, these are ALL of Tracy Jordan's lines from Season 4. If you're looking for a best of list or this isn't your thing, there's plenty of other internet out there for you. It's going to take a second to get through, so be careful if you have stuff to do today.

Episode 1
-I can't eat this, I'm a foodie.
-Well, before I made it in the stand up, I was a bucket drummer in the subway.
-Oh, yeah? Then how come I got sued for sexual harassment at it?
-You know how on St. Bart's people be eating their lobster like this? Nyoooom, nyoooom, nyoooom, nyoooom.
-Don't look at me in the eyes.
-Have I lost touch with my roots? I better talk to Rabbi Schmuli about this.
-I blame you and Dotcom. You have built a protective shell around me like a hermit crab or a mermaid booby. And now I've touch with the common man. Ehhhh. Who's that?
-Oh, hey, guy. Come on in. So Rolly, where you from?
-Right on, my brother. My dear friend Moby opened up a tea house in Park Slope. Does he know you?
-Hey, Rolly, you ever lose your remote control?
-And then your wife start getting all mad because the roof won't close and the bed that's in the shape of your face is getting rained on? Hahaha. I like you, Rolly. Can I feel the rough skin on your hands?
-What do you mean that was weird? You sheltered me too much! I'm going out on the street and I don't want nobody to follow me. Nobody. Uhmm. Which one is the elevator I'm not afraid of? RIGHT.
-Kenneth, how do I get out of this building?!
-Hello?
-Hello, is anyone there? I'm in a sort of tunnel and I see a man with a blue uniform. I think he's a friend. Oh, never mind, there's a door. Oh, it's sunny!
-Hello, fellow human being. Would you like to ask me what time it is?
-Are you a large child or a small adult?
-You look regular, could I get your name? Is it Pedro? Is it Creckford? Is it Swimming?
-Are you a pre-op transcentaur?
-Excuse me, do you have change for a $10,000 bill?
-I would like some chicken nuggets, a beer, and some of my wife's rice, to stay.
-Excuse me, sir, do you want to hold hands with a black millionaire?
-Does anyone want to be my friend?
-I'm normal!
-It's going super great, Dotcom. Meet my new friends, Nobody. And his wife Susan Walters Hyphen Nobody. I'm so far from my roots, I don't think I'll ever get back.
-What's that sound? Bucket drummers!
-These. These are my people. Bucket drummers, if you're striking, so am I. Two-four-six-eight-ten-twelve-fourteen-sixteen-eighteen.
-New what? If it's a blonde woman, I'm a kill myself!
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