Patrick Valentine’s Day Vimeo “wiping away the tears” Field Notes

A VIDEO

To be honest, I don’t really feel confident in talking about Valentine’s Day. When I was single, I pretended not to care, and then was properly steam-coming-out-of-my-ears furious when no-one sent me a card. Of course, I didn’t send any myself - I will not pander to the demands of Hallmark, Disney, or even Adobe. Instead I shall drink this entire bottle of red wine and watch Lost In Translation again. Oh yes I will. I’ll just have to wipe away the tears myself (not a euphemism).

Of course, since I entered a stable relationship, things have changed. I still don’t send cards - he’s lucky enough to have THIS jelly - but at least I can now observe things with a more critical eye.

Because no matter what you say, Valentine’s Day DOES matter. It DOES matter that someone loves you. It DOES matter that you didn’t send any cards. You are keeping those proud, proud people at Hallmark in a job. That said, I’m still going to watch Lost In Translation with a bottle of red wine, but at least I get someone to wipe away the tears after it has finished (sounds like a euphemism, but it’s not).

So is there a video clip that you can watch about Valentine’s Day that you haven’t already seen? Yes. This. Field Notes are the uber-trendy American notebook brand, beloved of the hipster techbloggers. And to celebrate their latest design, “Red Blooded”, they created this. I don’t mind saying that If *I* got one of these in the post on Valentine’s Day, I would TOTALLY wipe someone’s tears away during Lost In Translation. That’s a euphemism, by the way.

Rocío Flickr GERBILS in HATS Denmark

A TEXT POST

Not A YouTube Post

 Us Danes regularly top surveys as the happiest knitwear-wearing people in the the world. Even our gritty thrillers have a low body count. Take the country’s most popular recent export The Killing, which has its body count right there in the name and still managed to stretch the story into 20 episodes by turning The Killing into A Red Herring Smorgasbord (No that was not you treading on a Lego piece - painful puns are painful). Denmark, incidentally, also figures regularly in lists of countries with high suicide rates. So whoever answers these surveys (seriously I have never been approached) is not pining for the fjords and is therefore by default quite content. It’s true, we’re generally a very laid back tribe with a good sense of humour, which you have to have with those tax rates.

But it’s Monday, it’s February and Monocle will never feature your city in their annual Continental fanfictionfest. And it’s too early for a beer. How to brighten up your day? (please note that in winter this expression is only used in a strictly metaphorical sense in Denmark). I prescribe GERBILS in HATS. This is why I gave up my Monocle subscription - its lacking coverage of micro-millinery amongst the rodent population. So I suggest that you concentrate your attention on the GERBILS in HATS instead of trying to work out the logical link between Danes and tiny top hats. There isn’t one. My brain is constantly stuck in non-sequitur mode.

Karate Rocío The 80s This Belongs in a Museum YouTube The Mind Is Boggled

A VIDEO

Remember the 80s? Of course you do. Or at least the parts that have been carefully curated by American Apparel and filtered through an Instagram lens to become a synthtastic vision exclusively populated by Debbie Harry. I’m personally still waiting for Vogue to address this historical imbalance and let Chris de Burgh guest edit a Lady in Red issue with Valentino. I was born in the 80s and all that’s left of this decade are overpriced pongy polyester dresses in Dalston vintage boutiques. Thank God for YouTube then, finest provider of kittens and a premium destination for trolls since 2005, which has now also become a repository for our collective memory and a proud pioneer in the WTF branch of history. Like the following video, a glittery ball of lycra lunacy that combines disco dancing, rudimentary rap and karate. Obviously excited by the discovery that teenage turtles can do karate (and eat pizza) this video takes it to its illogical literal conclusion. This video is not so much jumping the shark as creating the whole new discipline of shark parkour. You’ve been warned.

YouTube Table Tennis Cute baby I wish I’d at least moved around a bit when I was little I got fat by playing computer games I always like chocolate more than moving

A VIDEO

On The Twitter, there’s a hashtag “trending”* at the moment called ##Dear14yrOldSelf. The premise is simple - you tweet something that you would tell your 14 year old self. As I was huffing and puffing on the cross-trainer at my gym today, I suddenly thought to myself “#Dear14yearOldSelf Exercise more before you leave school”. Well, that’s not quite right - if you try to imagine yourself saying a hashtag, you go a bit cross-eyed and it comes out a bit wrong, like you’re sending a telegram. More precisely, I thought - “this surely would have been easier if I’d spent more time actually running, rather than mashing the keys on “Daley Thompson’s Decathlon”.

Anyway, peeling myself off the floor after a particularly vigorous lunge, I returned home to see the other extreme - a baby sat on a table-tennis table, while his over-bearing father FORCES him to take up sport. Honestly. Some people, living out their failed sporting dreams. But this? Really. He should be ASHAMED.

YouTube Finland Rocío

A VIDEO

You think of Finland, you think of the 3 Ms: Moomins, moose and mobiles. Now you can add a fourth M to this fine collection: Memes! In 2006, Armi and Danny’s 1978 ode to steaks “I Wanna Love You Tender” became an internet sensation. It has all the right ingredients: a Doctor Who set created by Blue Peter, backup dancers with the mojo of Daleks, and a flying space convertible, which admit it, is almost as good as a Tardis. Smooth Danny is trying to woo the ladies with his perfectly coiffed He-Man barnet as he croons ‘Ooooooh you’re absolutely fine’. What next Danny? ‘You’re entirely satisfactory’? ‘You’re well above average’? ‘You’re utterly tolerable’? Also notice how the lovebirds serenading each other AT NO POINT establish eye contact. That’s too much invasion of personal space on a first date. In Finland, second base is taking your outer jumper off.

Rocio YouTube Cinnamon Challenge

A VIDEO

Here at …WTI!!! we are great fans of people doing really stupid stuff and filming it for our entertainment. Because together with surprised kittens, Darwin nominees are one of the other great meme pillars that supports YouTube.

Particular recipients of our undying admiration are those true innovators, followers of the Dirty Sanchez school of science, who will not only perform a particularly harebrained experiment but do it bigger and better. Why stick a finger up to evolution when you can give it a wedgie? Take the cinnamon challenge, a meme that has been doing the rounds in halls/dorms for a few years now. The premise is simple - take a teaspoon of cinnamon and try to swallow it within 60 seconds without any water. Watch the hilarity unfold as the victim’s throat goes into full-on WTF mode.

This is all really well you say, but has anybody tried it with a LADDLE? Well, I’m glad you asked because glamorous internet raconteur GloZell is here to show you why the original challenge is done with a teaspoon.

sunday supplement images mary lamb slaughtered

A TEXT POST

The Sunday Supplement - 5 February

Sundays are the days of quality photo-journalism, and in the proud tradition of that, (did you know the venerable Sunday Times Magazine is 50 this year) we present “The Sunday Supplement”, images that you might have missed from The Internet.

Picture the scene: you’re hungover. You’re needing a fry-up, tea (the UK) or coffee (the US) mainlined, and a slanket. It could be worse though, you could be Mary.

Here at …WTI!!! Towers*, we’ve carefully assessed each and every single-serving internet meme image on the whole of The Internet to bring you a carefully curated selection of the best. Why? Because we love you a little bit. No, a little bit more than that. No, not that much, don’t be rude. Yes, that much.

Like every quality magazine, or Heat, we’ve come up with a unique scoring system for these images. We call it the “Squee” Factor. Each image is carefully assesed for ROFLs, AWWW!s and ZOMG!s. Gareth then fictionally puts this into his giant imaginary spreadsheet, which will probably have a punning acronym name when we can think of one, resulting in a score out of ten. This will be your “Squee” Factor. AND THEY SAY THAT UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE CAN’T BE USEFUL MEMBERS OF SOCIETY. You’re welcome.

*Don’t you just hate it when magazine do that? Hate. HATE.

Heidi the cross-eyed possum

The image: Here’s Heidi The Cross-eyed Possum, so named because she is a possum. 

Why we should care: check her out! She’s cross-eyed!

Suggestions for deployment: if one of your mates makes a non-sequiter Facebook comment, why not respond with this? It’s the pictoral equivalent of “o_O”!

“Squee” factor: it’s good, but there’s something a bit creepy about it too. So 6/10

The image: a mournful monkey from the Sony World Photography Awards

Why should we care: he looks so…I dunno…sorry…I’m feeling a bit…not myself today…

Suggestions for deployment: this is pretty much the embodiment of “*sadface*”, so we’d suggest as a Twitter reply to upsetting news, such as cancellation of a BBC Three show, or a death on Downton Abbey.

“Squee” Factor: Difficult. So very cute, but also…I dunno…*sadface* 5/10

gareth america politics self-parody

A LINK

Janet Howell sticks it up them.

Sometimes The Onion writes itself, so kudos to Janet Howell for her awesomely stupid/clever stapling onto a “look at the ultrasound of the baby before you terminate it” bill demanding that men who want viagra need a basic health check including a digital rectal exam.

Digital you say? That’s not a camera. And even if it was, that would be one photo you didn’t want on Photostream. Try explaining why that just popped up while your AppleTV was playing some bland middle-of-the-road country.

On second thoughts…

YouTube Two girls singing in the stairwell of a school

A VIDEO

When it comes to Winning The Internet, YouTube is the anabolic steroid to the clip’s doped up cyclist. In this case, YouTube assists the Winner of The Internet for the fourth day in a row.

Anyone who hasn’t heard the honeyed Country Neue tones of Neko Case should go and check her out now (now, do it now. We’ll wait). This *marvellous* cover version of “Star Witness” was recorded in the stairwell of the Peterborough Collegiate and Vocational School. Case herself posted on Twitter that she was moved to tears. A stone-cold Internet Winning classic.

2 Bears Tune YouTube Patrick

A VIDEO

“April is the cruelest month”, poeticised cat-lover T.S. Elliott in “The Waste Land”. For music fans, the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party award for “Cruelest Month in Music” goes to January - witness the fact that “for real” lifeless toilet-brush headed grinning pop muppet Ed Sheeran has reached number one with sales of two copies.

But - BUT! - the 2 Bears are here to save us and if you haven’t bought their new LP - which came out on Monday - you must do. And if you haven’t seen the amazing video for “Bear Hug” you ABSOLUTELY must do. Must.

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