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Success poster

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Market street

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You know what getting Rickrolled is, right? It’s a bait and switch tactic, where people believe they are clicking on a legitimate link that someone sent them, but instead you see the video for Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up“.

In essence, geting Rickrolled is a mix of great expectations and utter disappointment. And, of course, a really cheesy 80s song. 

For those new to Rickrolling, I beseech you to read the Wikipedia entry because it has some fun factoids (18 million people have been Rickrolled so far!), and other examples of real life Rick Rolls. (For example, the New York Mets held an online contest to vote on the new song for 7th inning stretch, and of course, Rick Astley’s song came up the winner)

Anyway, how I came to Rickroll myself.

I was playing around with the Ocarina, a flute-like instrument on my iPhone. In order to play it, you have to blow into the iPhone mic and use the touch screen to open and close “holes” to play notes. It’s relatively easy to play, but since I’m just a music amateur, I decided to visit the company’s forums in order to find some new songs to play.

Since the forums are a community, most songs are transcribed by regular Ocarina users. So far, I’ve found gems like the Star Wars theme, Moon River, and El Condor Pasa, an old Andean song. The forums are busy and it’s all user-generated songs, so you have to rely on the generosity of others

So I found a song to play. And I’m not proud of the song choice. It was “My Heart Will Go On“, the song from the movie Titanic. Ok, I realize it’s not the greatest song in the world, but I was really interested in playing the intro to the song, since the original was a flute solo.

I settled in front of computer, grabbed my iPhone Ocarina and started to play the song. Very quickly, I was stymied. The notes I was playing didn’t sound like the flute intro. But I kept on hitting the notes as transcribed.

As I was about halfway into the song, I finally was able to put together what song it really was.

It was “Never Gonna Give You Up”. I was Rickrolled! Worse, I Rickrolled myself! Argh!

Although I stopped to laugh at myself, and this new way to RIckRoll, I finished playing the song, really got into it and am now trying to learn how to play it from memory. So there!

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Leftovers

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Little hill

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Baby alligator purse

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Alligator purse

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Break down the boxes

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Snake

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The Wall Street bailout has brought upon our national obsession with $700 billion.

That’s $700,000,000,000.

According to Forbes, the Treasury Department admitted that they just picked a really large number. So essentially, they chose the now famous $700 billion number, out of thin air.

But what does $700,000,000,000 buy?

According to CJR, $700 billion is $140 billion more than has been spent on the Iraq war. It is $120 billion more than spent on social security benefits. It is also 9 times the amount spent on education in 2007.

And even more interestingly:

It could pay for 2,000 McDonald’s apple pies for every single American.

I could use 1 apple pie, maybe 2. But I’d start getting sick of McDonald’s apple pies after about 5. Besides, they’re really hot and burn the roof of your mouth.

Other facts I found around the web:

- It could prevent over 200 million foreclosures

- It equals nearly 520 times the amount of Amtrak’s current operating budget

- Roughly 538 Yankee Stadiums could be built

- The government could rebuild Katrina-ravished New Orleans and Gulf Coast … three and a half times

- 5.4 million students could be sent to a public university

Pretty sobering stuff.

$700 billion.

Just wanted to throw it out there again.

I did calculations as well. The U.S. Census shows that there are 305,305,058 people living in America. So if we take that $700 billion and give it to every person in the U.S., we would receive $2,292.79. That’s almost $2,300 for every single person. Doesn’t seem like much.

However, what if every U.S. household got the money instead. Again, the U.S. Census says there are 105,480,101 households in the U.S. (as of 2000). So if every household in America got a share of that $700 billion, they would receive $6,636.32.

Not a bad deal, overall. It’s better than any stimulus package, or tax rebate scheme.

Where do we sign up?

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