Linkatharsis: If you can't be with the one you love, love the one in your pants

Ditty?

Isn't exactly stealing iPod Nano's thunder, is it?

Surely Dell can do better than that. Seriously. Ditty? I'm not sure who thought this was a good idea. Aren't they concerned that it sounds an awful lot like Diddy? (Eh, it looks like it's designed for people who like Puff's music) Or that Ditty rhymes with "shitty"? Because you know, that would be an apt description for its design.

I'm getting the sense that other companies aren't even trying to come up with "iPod Killers" but rather, settling for iPod Catcher-Uppers. Or something. And it seems Dell isn't that crazy about Ditty either, because they feel it's "the ideal product" for word of mouth advertising. Um. Okay.

A new set of Get Your War On has been out for a week and no one bothered to inform me?

Hey, remember that Orange Mobile commercial they were shooting on Broome Street way back when? I forgot about it too, but here's the finished product, though the video quality is so poor I couldn't make out any details without my super depixellating goggles: Orange - "Black Out".

I'm pretty sure the last overhead shot is in front of 88 Orchard and Barrio Chino though. Central Village has a couple of pics from the shoot in his Flickr account.

Oh, I previously mentioned that I liked the Honda commercial with the Grandaddy song. Not so sure about the one with "Galang". The oh-so-hip crowd the commercial's obviously target have heard M.I.A. over and over again, right? And they probably think the music is a transparent attempt to be down and whatnot. Maybe that's just me.

"It's just easier to market white artists. They're just more easily embraced... if you're the only black person on a hockey team and you're good then it's like 'Oh, shit!' People go for the oohs and ahs"

Definitely. It's all about breaking through the clutter being white while associating yourself with an established "brand" like Pharrell or Kanye. Or like that one girl who hangs out with the guys. Or something.

Now, what's the big deal with Miri Ben-Ari, other than that she's an Israeli girl who plays the violin on hip hop tracks? I mean, she was nice in "20 Minute Workout" but at the end of the day, she's not much more than a gimmick, is she?

"In case you care, and you probably don't, Lil' Kim's new album got 5 Mics in The Source, hopefully implying that there's an answer to what was once thought to be a rhetorical question: 'who do you gotta blow to get 5 Mics?'"

I've never felt so much empathy for those poor fiscal conservatives until now.

Nothing motivates German soccer fans like 10,000 liters of beer. German beer.

Let's give a little "Ole" to In Limbo for making Grant Wahl's starting XI of US soccer blogs. In addition to In Limbo, I occasionally visit We Call It Soccer and the other ones, less frequently. All quality though.

On a persona note, doing a soccer blog with a more global perspective is something I've thought about off and on - it'll be a matter of finding a fresh angle and a writing partner or two and figuring out my schedule.

BTW, Grant Wahl has a habit of watching soccer matches from random couches. Such is the soccer community in the US.

If you're like me, you're probably wondering what Ademola Okulaja and Dante Calabria are up to these days.

It ain't easy being Japanesey. A Chinese shopkeer puts up a sign banning "Japanese and dogs" while a weatherman (albeit a self-appointed "wacky" one) blames Japanese gangsters for Hurricane Katrina.

Meanwhile, there's some Rita-induced chaos in Texas.

If you didn't catch Asobi Seksu at Crash Mansion last week, see them at Rothko this Friday, says One Louder. Me? I'll be doing my culture poseur thing at the New Yorker Festival and drooling over hotties like Jeffrey Eugenides, Malcolm Gladwell and ?uestlove.

Poor Kate Moss. I mean, it's not a big secret that models do drugs, right? At least it's just coke - she could be doing heroin, y'know?

I do think H&M made a fairly shrewd move. They've milked more than could have ever hoped for out of their association with the waifish one, and then gets to look all responsible because they cut her off. Yeah, they'll have to reshuffle their fall promotion a bit but they'll manage.

This might turn out well for Kate Moss as well though, if she can turn herself into a sympathetic figure. People are such whores for redemption. I sense a reality show coming up, featuring Kate and Jude Law living in a house together, trying to avoid cocaine and infidelity.