YouTube Scavenger Hunt, Volume 1

Well, this is a simple social experiment: taking on the contention that you can find anything on YouTube. That's certainly an exaggeration, but among the millions of videos on the website you're sure to find most of the things you're looking for. So I decided to launch this feature as a semi-regular look at the bizarre world of online multimedia, thinking up 10 random phrases or images, seeing if it's available in video form, and checking to see how many views and comments it has (reflected by whenever I got around to viewing the thing, given that it takes awhile to draft these entries). Some are fairly common, some are a little bizarre. Let's see what we can get.

A computer mouse used as a lasso



Incredibly enough, there actually is a video matching these terms. In this 30-second clip uploaded on Jan. 10 2010, animator and "unemployed/starving artist" someynguy depicts a battle between a cordless mouse and a mouse with a cord. The cord mouse's first trick is to use the cord like a lasso, and it later employs it like a whip.

Views: 148
Comments: 0

A hit for the phrase "dumbass kid" and the word "snake"

Apparently even dumbass kids know not to mess with snakes. The one video listed as a match for no apparent reason is this one, of a kid doing a front flip off a swing set into deep snow. It was uploaded by MrPATRIOT64 on Feb. 6 2010.



There's no mention of the word "snake" in the description of tags, so it's unclear how snakes are involved in this. Maybe the town name, who knows.

Views: 762
Comments: 2

A crab fishing clip that isn't from The Deadliest Catch

The hit Discovery Channel show The Deadliest Catch, following a handful of vessels on their hazardous journeys into the Bering Sea to hunt crab, has plenty of clips and candid shots of Sig Hansen, Phil Harris, and the rest of the affable guys that man these boats. The show also frequently uses home videos, though, and crab fishing has obviously been going on long before the show started airing. There are loads of amateur videos to reflect that.



In this three-minute video, described only as red king crab fishing on the Bering Sea, a deckhand takes a break to film the process of reeling in and sorting a pot. It all seems very quiet after what is aired on the show. It was posted on Dec. 5 2006 by dpcatala.

Views: 119,099
Comments: 63

A video showing someone's tongue being detached from a frozen flagpole

Well, it doesn't quite show the process, but apparently it's not something that happens too often after the cautionary tale of A Christmas Story. In this short Associated Press clip, a girl looks quite chipper despite the fact that her tongue seems to be bleeding, and some firefighters mill about as a reporter discusses how she got her tongue there in the first place and how rescuers got her detached.



Views: 107,351
Comments: 306

Someone scuba diving in a cave in the Caribbean

I thought of this one since a local theater had a talk by a diver who had been exploring underwater caves in the Caribbean. National Geographic was involved in this talk and several associated lecturers, so of course a search readily brings up a clip from a National Geographic show, Wild Chronicles. It looks at an exploration of an underwater cave in Cuba. The video was posted by oceancontent, an official channel with a ton of ocean videos, on September 10, 2008.



Views: 15,228
Comments: 0

A Frisbee hitting a camera



This short video was uploaded by kljacobson, an Oregon resident who has posted several videos of her dog, on July 10, 2010.

Views: 89
Comments: 2

A humpback whale breaching

Sorry for those of you who absolutely hate Coldplay, but hopefully you can stomach a 30-second clip of one of their songs for this rather amazing video from near Husavik, Iceland. As someone who went on a whale watch in elementary school and saw little more than a couple of blowholes spouting off, I imagine this was well worth the ticket price for passengers.



This was uploaded on Nov. 1 2008 by fdjunk, a Dutch guy whose videos include a BASE jump into a Norwegian fjord, a laughing baby, and a rather popular one of a marathon runner who has become completely exhausted in the final 200 meters of a marathon as dozens of people cruise past him.

Views: 16,870
Comments: 12

Elmo and some celebrity

Famous actors love them some Sesame Street, so I figured this one wouldn't be too hard. This video is actually geared more to celebrities in general, as Ricky Gervais sings Elmo a "celebrity lullaby." Elmo certainly doesn't seem overly bothered that Gervais is in his house for no apparent reason and that the letter N is watching him when he sleeps.



This video was uploaded by the official Sesame Street channel on YouTube on December 18, 2009.

Views: 2,252,616
Comments: 1,381

Some average Joe on top of Mt. Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania, is apparently the easiest continental high peak to summit since it's a more gradual climb. Here's a short video from a couple of guys who did the hike to raise money for the Make a Wish Foundation and Wounded Warrior Project.



This was put up by Joshua Goldstein (JoshuaGoldstein23) on July 24, 2008. In addition to an outtake video from the summit, he's uploaded his best man speech, a couple of concert videos, and a short video of the 2010 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Views: 1,382
Comments: 5

A chess set on fire

Well, right now no one has uploaded a video where they've set a chessboard on fire. However, there is this:



This is taken from Marostica, Italy, a city known for a human chess game that has taken place every other years since 1923. This is apparently how they start the festivities.

Views: 509
Comments: 0

The Apex of Crazy: Terry Jones and the Quran of Fire

There is blood on Pastor Terry Jones' hands.

The last time I did an Apex of Crazy post was also about book burning, and of the Bible no less, so it seems only right to weigh in on this while it's still a current topic. I'm not even sure whether I can give Jones credit for canceling his planned event, to burn copies of the Quran at his Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida on September 11. He's been weaseling around on the issue in recent days, calling it off when he claimed that he'd brokered a deal to stop the proposed Park51 Islamic community center a few blocks from Ground Zero in New York City. He's now waffled because the imam he spoke with said he doesn't have the authority to make such a deal, and merely offered to open a channel of communication on that issue. Jones, of course, has whined that he was lied to, but who is more believable: the man who said he single-handedly resolved one of the most controversial issues of the day or the Florida imam who said he can't influence New York politics?

So now the event is merely "suspended," with the less principled half of Jones' church (you know, the one that hasn't deserted him over this issue) apparently waiting on his e-mail to say whether it's a go or not.


Even if the event does not occur, the uproar over the planned burning of the Islamic holy book has resulted in at least one death. A riot broke out in Afghanistan today on the eve of the planned burning, and one man was shot as protesters burned an American flag and hurled rocks at a NATO base. Word of Jones' idea spread from the local area to the region to the nation to the world. His church has become a world outreach center all right, but it has resulted only in condemnation and hatred from all quarters of the globe. It would be improper to say the rioters had no responsibility in the casualties that occurred in Afghanistan, but Jones' threat was the root cause of their actions.

The issue has a number of different nuances. People have complained of a double standard, not just in this matter but in general, regarding jokes and swipes that can be taken at Christianity but not at Islam. There's the argument that it's an issue of free speech, and that Jones has the right to burn the Quran, or the Bible or Harry Potter or any book he sees fit to torch. Despite the fact that I thoroughly denounce Jones and disagree with him wholly, I also find it rather malicious that he's been made the subject of a rumor suggesting that he was arrested for child pornography. Several media reports have been defensive in light of accusations that coverage of the pastor is fanning the flames of hatred, saying social media is a key factor in the story's spread; indeed, word would likely get out even if every news agency decided not to report the story, and the old cliche about not shooting the messenger certainly applies to the media here. I can only hope that a proposal this rash will dull the anti-Muslim sentiment in this country and blunt its frightening increase in intensity.

In the end, Jones is just a full-blown hypocrite. He's an opponent of the Ground Zero community center, but he wants to commemorate the events of September 11, 2001 by an act of hatred rather than remembrance. Any act of book burning is an attempt to strangle free speech, so he can hardly argue that point. And finally, he doesn't even have a permit to stage the burning, so it becomes a legal rather than a constitutional issue if it proceeds.

One wonders if Jones, about 13 years younger and sprightlier than hatemonger Fred Phelps, is simply looking to usurp the title of King Douche.

"If chance may have me king, why chance may crown me. Er, I mean, God hates you! Fag!"

Let's imagine what might have happened if Jones hadn't staged this whole charade. He wouldn't have gotten his 15 minutes of fame, but he would at least have his whole flock. And a man in Afghanistan would still be alive.

He may have respectfully asked people to remember 9/11, the people who died, and given a little spiritual guidance on the events of that day and what people can do to make the world a better place. That, in the end, is what religion is all about. It is people like Jones, like Phelps, like the men who flew the planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, like anyone who squeezes the words of any religious text and makes poison drip out, that turn religion from a guide into a weapon.

The Apex of Crazy

I have a friend who probably never thought he'd have something in common with the fringe of the Christian right: Bible destruction. We were both on the cross-country ski team at our college, which took us on quite a few overnight trips to go racing. On one trip, he was feeling particularly sacrilegious and tore a page out of the motel's complimentary Bible. He may or may not have flushed it down the toilet afterward.

The point? To show that God wasn't going to destroy him for such an infraction.

While the motivation is different, the Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina, has decided to do something similar for Halloween. These seem to be the kind of folks who consider trick-or-treating, drunken costume parties, haunted houses, and perhaps even a pleasant church event with hot cider and games to be the devil's work, so they've opted for the old standby: a book burning. Which, in and of itself, wouldn't be too noteworthy except for the fact that they're going to be torching Bibles.

If the Bible hates gays so much, why is it so flaming?

OK. So apparently God wrote the King James Bible, and Satan wrote every other version? Or perhaps the translators of the King James version were all true believers and everyone else was an evil Unitarian? What it boils down to is a church believing that one translation of the Bible is so unimpeachable that they're destroying any and all other versions they can get their hands on, despite the fact that it's all pretty much the same message. Seriously, how far to the right do you have to go to think that the Bible is a book that needs to be destroyed? Political thought might well be a circle, because I think you can see the far left from that vantage point.

I wonder what this church thinks of a project by Conservapedia (a right-wing Wiki) to re-translate the Bible. The idea has gotten a lot of flak, considering how the site has an obvious slant with article subheadings such as "Liberal Hysterical Criticisms." So people have been having fun suggesting how the users will translate the Bible, with well-known passages being horribly misinterpreted to become little more than Republican screed.

They'll be lucky if the project even gets off the ground. Right now, users have only taken a few stabs at a couple of passages. Still, despite the bent of the site, the project at least seems to have the reasonable goal of producing a translation of the Bible based on user input. While it would be more accurate to do so under a site like Wikipedia, which is edited by people across the political spectrum, it's still a worthwhile project and one that will have an interesting outcome.

Even if it's totally satanic.

"Videotaping this crime spree is the best idea we've ever had!"

Yesterday, we posted this story on our breaking news section. For those of you who just can't muster the energy to move your mouse over to click that link, here's the gist: a bunch of teens and old-enough-to-be-charged-as-adults set off some Molotov cocktails in a vacant building. They weren't supposed to be in the building, and you're not supposed to make homemade explosives to set off in buildings you're not allowed in. That's what those in the law enforcement community call burglary and arson.

These Rhodes scholars were kind enough to not only record these felony crimes, but also to scroll a line of credits listing the names of all of those involved. Police subsequently charged seven people with crimes that could result in 40 years in prison if the judge throw the book. Note: that won't happen. Burglary charges are generally let off easily, and even arson charges seem to result in a matter of months in county; given the age of these kids, they'll probably get even less.

One of the first comments we got was a question of whether we can charge people with the crime of stupidity. On one level, it seems like a good idea. A misdemeanor, for sure, but a bit of a punishment for being so damn brainless as to make everyone wonder if humanity is looking for a jackhammer to get past rock bottom. Then again, stupidity might fall more along the lines of insanity: a way of getting one's sentence reduced because they simply didn't know better. At any rate, crimes of stupidity free up police time to tackle other crimes, so it might be difficult to argue that it's a bad thing.

I remember criminals having the urge to film themselves breaking the law since videotapes were in fashion, so it isn't surprising that YouTube idiocy seems to be on the rise. Here's a story on some drug dealers bragging about selling crack in a rap video; here's one on some people who threatened their neighbors with illegal weapons online; and here's one on police investigating a fatal gang beatdown that was posted on the site. And these are all from browsing through the past week of news that returned hits on "YouTube arrest."

You know what? Screw those jagoffs. Here's Chocolate Rain.