Crave

(Credit: MAD Magazine)

MAD Magazine is getting the last laugh now that Circuit City has issued a mea culpa for telling employees to destroy issues of MAD that contain a parody of the retailer's advertising.

The Consumerist pointed us to a copy of a letter of it received from a Circuit City corporate communicator after the site wrote about the alleged search-and-destroy mission. In the letter, Circuit City apologizes for its "knee-jerk reaction," and says its has issued a retraction order and directed affected stores to put the magazines back on sale.

The magazine's August issue contains a (pretty darn amusing) four-page "Sucker City" circular with announcements like: "Believe it or not, $3,599.99 is the sale price," and "Wii Gaming System Guaranteed In Stock...if you're friends with an employee who hid it in the back for you. Otherwise, oh, sorry, all sold out." Sucker City also sells products including a self-editing Web cam that "stops embarrassing YouTube videos before they're made."

The good news is that at least one member of Circuit City's PR team appears to appreciate the value of a good ribbing--or at least appreciate the value of pretending to have a sense of humor. This is the letter:

Rick Astley and Mr. Met: A match made in heaven?

(Credit: Sarah Harbin/CNET Networks)

The title of this post was inspired by Deadspin commenter BlastItBiggs.

After April Fool's Day, it got horribly gauche to practice the art of "Rickrolling"--tricking people into watching the video for Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up," or surprising someone by playing the corny pop song. The goofy Internet fad was so utterly overblown on 4/1/08 that the Web seemed to collectively agree that nobody should ever subject anybody to it again.

The New York Mets, however might have to deal with it for a little while longer.

Innocently enough, the baseball team decided to hold an online contest to determine the tune for its traditional eighth-inning sing-along. Despite the fact that the "Stephen Colbert Bridge" debacle should've taught the world a lesson about the perils of online polls, the contest included a write-in option. Prank-friendly geek hubs Digg and Fark linked to the poll, and sure enough, "Never Gonna Give You Up" came out on top.

MetsBlog.com reported that the song played at 4:03 p.m. EDT during the Mets' season opener against the Philadelphia Phillies, who ended up beating the Mets 5-2.

But this might be the only Mets game to get Rickrolled. Gawker Media sports blog Deadspin reported that when the Digging and Farking masses flooded the contest with votes for "Never Gonna Give You Up," the powers-that-be at Shea Stadium decided to issue a mulligan, sort of.

"Rather than commit to that as the new eighth-inning tune since it probably doesn't reflect the fan base's wishes, the Mets will play the top six selections once apiece during the first six games of their home stand," a New York Daily News article linked on Deadspin read. "The one that draws the largest crowd response will stick." Hey, Rick's still got a chance.

And considering the Mets haven't won a World Series since Rick Astley was popular the first time around, "Never Gonna Give You Up" might be a good choice regardless.

CNET News.com's Tom Krazit contributed to this report by noticing the Rickroll mention as he obsessively hit "reload" on MetsBlog.com all afternoon hoping to learn that his beloved Kings of Queens had actually won a game. Sorry, dude.

Update 7:40 p.m. PST January 6: Thanks to alert reader OneGB for supplying the origin of the clock. The central design may look like a bungled biohazard symbol, but it in fact is another three-nine reference, the "hurricane" symbol of a high-IQ organization called the Triple Nine Society. The group also sells Triple Nine aprons, mugs, bibs, underwear, and other whatnot at CafePress.com.

(Credit: Dean Hunt, StreetLessons)

Math enthusiasts who don't want to move totally into the digital realm might appreciate this analog clock.

Each number is expressed as a calculation involving three instances of the number 9.

For example, 5 o'clock is the square root of nine (3), factorial (3x2x1 = 6), minus 9/9 (6-1 = 5).

The trickiest time is 7 o'clock, whose calculation works out to 6.99999..., with an infinite number of nines. Wikipedia assures us that 0.99999... really does equal 1, so no worries that the clock is cheating there.

While we're on the subject of archaic clock technology, how come clocks and watches with Roman numerals represent 4 o'clock with IIII rather than the traditional IV? A friend told me it was because it was easier for illiterate people to comprehend, but I'd love to see some history about this.

(Via Bad Astronomy Blog.)

Click To Play

It's not Friday, but we'd like to pretend it is. So here you go: left over from last week's E3 Business and Media Summit, two representatives from Gamecock Media learning how to ride a Segway Human Transporter while wearing makeshift chicken outfits.

It's just really kind of awesome.

Click To Play

WOOHOOOOO! Rich DeMuro and Wilson Tang got iPhones and brought them back to the office and I got to play with...the box. I now present to you the ultra-exclusive, behind-the-scenes, iPhone Pre-Unboxing Video from CNET.

(Credit: Karmic Butterfly Costumes)

A San Francisco Craigslist posting is offering to supply "diversions" that will allow buyers to cut in line for the iPhone, and sadly, we're afraid he might not be joking.

"Why pay someone else big $$$ to wait in line if the only thing between you and the front of the line is a good diversion?" the post asks, claiming to come from a trademarked company called "Over Here, Jerks." "Our tactics are guaranteed to be safe, effective and even humorous!"

Photos accompanying the posting include a giant clown bicycle, a scary-looking bear, a two-headed snake and a piece of poop.

The advertisement goes on to stress that "services are not limited to lines! Want to kidnap your neighbor's obnoxious dog? Glue your boss' furniture to the ceiling? Enjoy our bulk discounts on tranquilizer darts and industrial-strength adhesives."

Looks like somebody watches The Office too much.

We know the next few days are just going to be iPhone, iPhone, iPhone. That's why we're bringing something completely different to you: the Dramatic Chipmunk (who is really a prairie dog, but you knew that already) is back. Except, thanks to a little bit of low-grade video editing, he (she?) is now the Darthmatic Chipmunk. Thanks, CollegeHumor!

Earlier today, Will Greenwald outlined for all of you the sorts of electronics you could buy for the same price as an iPhone--iPods, gaming consoles, etc. But he missed a lot of really cool stuff, unfortunately. So, esteemed readers, here's what you can really buy for the price of an iPhone.

Would Jim buy an iPhone, or would he waste the cash on dumb cubicle gadgets?

(Credit: NBC Television)

-- One USB rocket launcher ($40); 20 packs of chocolate covered espresso beans ($200); one pair of Reef flip-flops with built-in bottle openers ($42); 72 packs of strawberry Jell-O for the purpose of encasing your co-workers' office supplies ($90); 8 large meat-lovers' pizzas (~$100); two Marshmallow Shooter guns (~$50); and the rest left over to pay the barber's bill when you ask for "the Jim Halpert haircut."

-- Two seven-foot-tall suits of armor from KingOfSwords.com.

-- 240 9.5-ounce bags of Cheetos.

(Credit: Jose Cuervo)

-- One one-way JetBlue ticket from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport to the Mexican spring break hub of Cancun, Mexico ($399); five handles of Jose Cuervo Especial (~$100); one case of Corona Extra (~$60); one tube of Neutrogena SPF 55 sunscreen for that 'computer science white' skin tone ($12); a straw cowboy hat from Target ($13); and $25 worth of salt and limes.

-- One pair of Christian Louboutin 'Kelly Strass' pumps from Bluefly.com, and $16 to cover express shipping so you can wear them out this weekend.

(Credit: sweetfactory.com)

-- 30 pounds of Sweet Factory jelly beans (~$180); 200 Giant Pixy Stix (~$200); 20 pounds of Blue Raspberry Gummy Rings ($160); a motion-activated talking pinata (~$30), and $30 to go toward your dental bill.

-- One 1992 Volvo 740 thanks to Craigslist: Apparently, it has two dents but "runs great."

It's a well-documented phenomenon: the rise of Web video has fueled a trend of 'bite-size entertainment.' Wired magazine devoted an entire cover story (actually, a set of mini cover stories) to it in its March '07 issue. The attention-deficient Web's appetite for small clips and short blog entries has gotten to the point where MySpace.com has actually condensed classic TV episodes into "minisodes" for its members.

But the latest viral video craze makes those three- to five-minute minisodes seem like Titanic. This is the "Dramatic Chipmunk," a 5-second clip of a chubby rodent making a foreboding face at the camera accompanied by a Snidely Whiplash-worthy musical interlude. (Bonus points if you know who Snidely Whiplash is.) The video proliferated, thanks to YouTube, as well as frat boy hub CollegeHumor, which put a link to the clip on its front page and touted it as "the best 5-second video on the Internet."

You can already tell that, after only a few days (the video was originally uploaded earlier this week), it's reached the gold-medal level of viral videos--somebody made a dance remix.

Here at CNET, we had a little bit of a debate about whether the "Dramatic Chipmunk" footage was actually real. Was it doctored in one way or another to make the chipmunk look more Hitchcock-esque? If it proved real, we wanted to know who the heck managed to capture the moment on video.

An e-mail to CollegeHumor Managing Editor Jeff Rubin answered our question: yup, it's real. The clip comes from a Japanese TV show in which the rodent was put on display for some reason. The priceless 5 seconds appear to have been the result of a very, very lucky camera angle.

CollegeHumor has uploaded the original footage and named it "Undramatic Chipmunk." You can see it here. And the full video also reveals, as zoology buffs had suspected, that the "Dramatic Chipmunk" isn't actually a chipmunk but rather a prairie dog.

UPDATE @ 1 PM PST: Never one to miss a marketing opportunity, CollegeHumor's in-house T-shirt retailer, BustedTees, is now selling a Dramatic Chipmunk t-shirt.