MicroPhenom

If I’m going to post a YouTube video these days as a “phenom”, I’d post that funny-lookin’ Scottish lady, Susan Boyle singing on the British Idol show – but you’ve probably seen that. It’s a full blown, look-at-the-goofy-lady-impress-those-pompous-assuming-people phenom.

Instead, I’m writing about (or really, just sharing) this MICROphenom of a video. It’s cleverly done in the almost-way-too-overly-done 50’s educational style (almost as overly done as a long string of words hyphenated together to create a single silly adjective), but it points out, and makes light of, some things we’ve probably all seen scroll down our Facebook wall at some point or another.

It’s cute. It’s clever. I chuckled. And it’s gotten over 200,000 views…

I credit Pulse2.com for this one.  http://pulse2.com/2009/03/20/baaa-studs-put-led-lights-on-their-sheep-used-them-for-pong/

These guys put LED blankets over their sheep and pull this awesome coordination of vision, direction, dogs, and sheep.

This is fun stuff. If it’s real, and I have to assume it is, these guys are geniuses. If I roamed a Welsh country side herding sheep for a living, I hope I can come up with something half as cool…

I found it on Pulse2.com, and sent it to a friend. He saw it yesterday. 24 hours later makes me question what sort of “pulse” they’re watching, but still – they brought it to my attention, so I give them credit.

Apparently, A) a couple guys “invented” this thing they called the “Bacon Explosion”, and then B) People are becoming fans of this thing. Here’s the picture as it’s being passed around:

And the proud inventors – who have never seen so much traffic at their site – can be found at http://www.bbqaddicts.com/blog/recipes/bacon-explosion/.

Take a look at that page. Ok, some dude wanted a bacon bbq recipe. Fine. This is what they come up with. Admittedly, they did say, “ but the longer I thought about it, the more I wanted to step it up a notch and clog a few arteries for those guys“. Step it up: sure. Kick em in the over-porked nuts? Maybe a little much.

Reading on , this thing consists of 2 pounds of bacon, and 2 pounds Italian sausage. Seriously? ok, so 4 pounds of meat isn’t going to be consumed by one person, but who at YOUR party is going to help you eat this? Oh, it also has a rub and some bbq sauce – just in case fat on fat with a little meaty fat isn’t going to be rich and flavorful enough.

Then we make it. First thing is to create a “5×5 bacon weave”. Really? A bacon weave? OK, health, fat, dripping bad stuff aside, if I can make something called a bacon weave, I’m getting interested. It’s literally a weave consisting of 25 pieces of bacon…woven together. Now, if we can substitute salmon, perhaps, in here at this point, maybe with some onions and herbs, we might be reaching a compromise in gluttony vs suicide. But no. We’ll be using sausage filling.

You spread the rub all over the weave, and then the 2 pounds of Italian sausage go right on that – all 2 pounds, right there in a giant lump of Northern Mediterranean processed porkness. Then this: “Take the remaining bacon slices and fry them up the same way you would for breakfast (or lunch, or dinner, or a midnight snack).”
“Oh, riiiight. Like I would for my midnight snack. I get it.” I’m sure that was tongue and cheek, but seriously, that’s a fucked-up good example of why this is one fat-ass country. People do relate to a bacon-for-midnight-snack reference.

So the fried bacon goes on top of the pork – because what else would you put there? And then the whole thing gets rolled into this … this… I want to come up with an entertaining metaphor here, but good lord, look at the picture. I really don’t have to SAY anything…

Interestingly, this picture was taken for (and by, and probably for the sole use of) the New York Times article that spawned this whole Microphenom. Anyway, there you go. It’s in the smoker for a couple hours, and then you glaze it with the BBQ sauce, and slice it up. They even suggest a couple slices on a Pillsbury’s Grands Biscuit if you want a sandwich – probably another midnight snack.

So, how big a phenom is this? These guys posted the above blog on December 23. The New York Times article published 1/27 – two days ago. Today, people are actually Googling “Bacon Explosion” enough to put it as a top search today. The Kansas City masochists responsible for this abomination created a Facebook Page for it, and as of 5:00 pm 1/29, it has 350 fans – which isn’t earth shattering but on one hand, it was 15 yesterday, and on the other hand, this isn’t superhugephenomthateveryonehasheardof.com.

Come to think of it, the one day a year on which it might be totally acceptable to include this in the menu is three days away. Enjoy…

And now, for a timely entry…

This might help further the notion of what a microphenom is. I said in my last post that they will likely come to my attention from sources like Facebook, and other avenues with which people alert their friends of cool new stuff, like email and IM. Being Internet-based tools, that which gets passed around is thus most likely a link, right? So I got a link Friday. But it wasn’t the site that is or will be a microphenom – It was the content; the announcement.

Meet the new Palm Pre (apparently pronounced “Pree”).

This is the link I got and it was from a developer, so this Engadget article is actually about the new operating system, WebOS – which is very cool too, but here are a few more links with info about the phone itself.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/08/the-palm-pre/
http://now.sprint.com/pre/?id9=SEM_Google_C_Sprint_Pre
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo3SZ_20kZI

Perhaps this is just simply my own manufactured perception of a could-be microphenom. I own a Palm Treo, and do not want an iPhone because it’s too inflexible. I don’t hold onto my Treo because I think it’s better than the iPhone. In fact, I have feelings of inadequacy when using my Treo. But again, I don’t want an iPhone, so I’ve been holding out for something as good or better than a “this is all you need because we say so” Apple device. And you know what? From what I’ve seen so far, this one’s the shit. I was psyched about Android, and the HTC G1, but let’s face it, it isn’t as pretty – oh and it’s only on T-Mobile. I’m not big on from factor, but I’m not stupid either. I know the iPhone is hugely popular not just because Uncle Steve told us to like it, and in a lot of ways, it is a great device, but a significant part of its success comes from the fact that it looks very cool. It’s shiny. The HTC isn’t, but the Pre sure is…and it’s rounded and soft, and whatever other design thingies make objects look appealing.

I haven’t played with the Pre. I’m not at CES, but from the sound of it, it’s the talk of Vegas right now, and from the demos and articles I’ve seen, here are a few features that I think will help move this puppy from microphenom to iPhone-level phenom as soon as it’s available.
My first PDA was a Palm Pilot. I had it for a year or two, then I got a iPaq which ran Windows CE. When it was time to buy a Smart Phone, back in 2001 or 2002, I went with the Kyocera 7somethingerother hundred. It was a clam phone running color Palm. It was awesome, and man, it was huge. But the reason I wanted the Palm over a Windows device was because I really liked the way Palm addressed switching from app to app. You don’t close anything. You simply switch to a new app and when you return to the first, it’s right where you left it. That same concept is in the Treo, and it seems to be Palm’s philosophy still, and god bless ‘em for it. The coolest thing I’ve seen so far about this unit is the way you switch from app to app. Imagine opening the iPhone’s “Home” page as a transparent layer over the Email app you’re working on and switching to the Contacts app. Then, here’s the “duh”, you switch back to the Email app exactly where you were with a couple simple finger gestures – not re-launching the Email app, but basically switching back to that window – which is what Apple originally brought to the GUI for fuck sake – why did they move away from that here?

Secondly, the one thing about the iPhone that I really like, and what makes me most envious of iPhone users is the browser. As it is, the Treo’s Blazer browser is basically useless. It’s ok for getting a score to a game, or checking on something simple. But it’s no browser. You can’t “browse”. It’s slow, and it makes a mess of real web pages. And that isn’t much different on other touch screen devices available – save for the iPhone and G1.

The Pre’s browser, on the other hand, is a not just a browser, it’s integrated. From one of the demos from CES, it looks like I can just start typing something, “Blue Man Group” in the example, and the system will first start look at stuff on the phone like apps or contacts, (by the way, the contact it started looking at when he typed “B” “l” was “Michael Bluth”, who I hope you understand is from Arrested Development. THAT is a great example of a microphenom. It’s a brilliant show, and it’s small but devoted fan base loved it, but everything between Sacramento and Washington DC is too stupid to understand brilliance when they see it, and it never got the popularity it rightfully deserved, and now it’s gone.) and then offer to look up your keyword on Google, Google Maps, or something else.  Very cool. Oh, and when you do look it up on Google, you’re looking at Google.com. And it appears that the interaction is very similar to that of the iPhone – which is good – zooming, panning, etc. There might be, however, a double tap to select a link, and that might be a flaw. We’ll see.

So that’s just a couple features, but I’m not a phone reviewer. I’m a consumer looking for a replacement for my Treo, and it looks today like I might stick with Palm. The biggest problem however, I forgot to mention, is that first launch it will only be available on Sprint. It’s a lot better than T-Mobile, but why the hell can’t someone release the iPhone Killer on a real fucking network? Is Verizon retarded or is it Palm? I just don’t get that.

But more importantly, the Palm Pre is what everyone is talking about at CES, and while touch screen phones in general are a real phenomenon, and while the Android-running G1is a pretender, since it won’t be available for a couple or few months, right now the Palm Pre is the microphenom.

I think I will discover new microphenoms through a relatively limited number of sources. Since the initial inspiration came from friends’ posts in Facebook, I suspect that will be among the most common sources. Frankly, I look forward to observing the sources, and hope that I can pay attention to enough avenues of input that I’ll be surprised by how many places these things come from. But for now, I suspect Facebook, a vehicle for people to publicly share stuff, will be a biggie.

By the way, to help further develop the definition of what a microphenom is, Facebook is not. I think anyone reading this would agree, Facebook is a full-blown, mature, even-dad-has-heard-of-it phenom. It probably WAS a microphenom – for like a month before it graduated into full phenom status. MySpace, on the other hand, shot its wad already, as far as I’m concerned, sold to Satan, and while not in its “twilight” years, per se, it is so a-few-years-ago. Now it’s just a tool that a ton of people rely on. But that isn’t a phenom. A phenom is something people are excited about and enjoy. MySpace is something more akin to iTunes. It’s an overgrown hemorrhoid that too many people have to push past while performing other “must do” tasks.

Back to where I was…
The initial Facebook status update, or comment, or wall post, or whatever it was that inspired the whole microphenom notion was first from my friend “G”, and later that day my wife, and that night a friend of hers, and then the next day another friend of mine. Even if there was a single linear chain one could trace back to G, and elsewhere before her, the fact is each person enjoyed it enough to post again, and share with their network of friends. And when 4 people in my small network do it in 2 days, it’s a microphenom.

The site is http://fuckyoupenguin.blogspot.com/

It was back in mid-December, so if you visit the site now in hopes of recreating the hilarity of that day, go back a few pages – because since then, and frankly not too long before then too, it just isn’t as funny. Maybe it was the initial discovery of the concept that the animals are so damn cute that they piss this blogger off that made it funny. Maybe it was that the first posts I saw were the raccoon and beaver and they were actually very funny posts. Or maybe it was the natural effect of the unexpected and perhaps awkward process of reading exaggeratedly aggressive language in reference to cute pictures of animals that will make this week’s post just as funny to you if you haven’t read any prior. Actually, I’m leaning toward that third option – which is probably why I made that the most complicated to read sentence. It’s also probably why after reading a couple or few, they just aren’t as funny anymore. But the first time you read a guy blasting a raccoon, or baby chimp, or furry bunny for being cute, it’s funny.

Apparently, this guy has a number of fans, and has been doing this for long enough and well enough that he’s up for a 2008 Weblog Award, so good for him. And honestly, I think it’s brilliant. I enjoyed it, and some friends passed around the links and shared it with one another in an effort to share the laughter, etc. So it was great.

So there you go. Was it a phenom? No, it’s a microphenom. And judging by the number of comments to his posts then and now, I’d say its popularity hasn’t dissipated quite yet. Of course, I’m likely going to write about stuff that appears to be a microphenom to me, in my narrow world. I’m sure these links to this blog are still making their way into status updates and wall posts today in networks of people that aren’t me. So maybe after some amount of time microphenoms have to be graduated to phenom – but this doesn’t yet.

Congratulations to fuckyoupneguin for being my first microphenom.

Welcome to Microphenom. 

While trading Instant Messages with my personal IT support and would-be business partner, I mentioned a link to a blog which I had seen referenced no fewer than 4 times from various Facebook friends over the last two days. I said something along the lines of “these little microphenoms are really interesting to me. I see one person reference something, and blah blah blah observation blah blah opinion…” Then I read my message again after sending it, and repeated to him, “microphenom. I like it. I should buy the .com.” And before he could respond with, “Just set it up on Blogger. It’s easier and free”, or at least before I bothered reading his response, I shelled out the $14, added microphenom.com to my small collection of domain names that I don’t know what the hell I’ll ever do with, and asked him to be much faster with his suggestions next time. He made up for it by providing an address for my DNS setting and set me up with my first WordPress account all in about 28 seconds. I repeat, my own, personal IT support.  Thank you, D. A few weeks later, I am finally writing my first post.

We can discuss for hours or days or lifetimes all the possible reasons why some blogs, sites, people, games, gadgets, apps, markets, or whatever catch momentum and might eventually be classified as “phenoms”, butI don’t want to.

On the other hand, just about anything can be a “microphenom”. Not everything WILL be, but considering some of the stuff that does get passed around as an “email forward”, as Michael Scott would call it, anything CAN be. Suffice it to say, my thoughts, discoveries and observations of stuff I heretofore consider “microphenoms” are what I intend to share here for the foreseeable future.

Enjoy. 

Oh yeah, Blog posts are displayed in reverse chronological order so you’ve probably already either enjoyed or clicked away long before getting to this “Enjoy”. Makes sense, but I’ll have to get used to that.