Thirty Three Jones | Desktop Site

You don't need a G.E.D. to read this blog:

Over the weekend, I came across this site, which analyzes web pages and gives you "a rough measure of how many years of schooling it would take someone to understand the content [on the website]." I spent some time putting in a bunch of hip hop sites and blogs. Wouldn't you know it, your boy came up with the highest score of the sites I put in. 33Jones.com requires an 11th grade reading level for full comprehension, which according to that site is the equivalent of the Wall Street Journal. This is apparently a bad thing, as the site suggests the goal is to get a significantly lower score so that anyone with a 7th grade education can comprehend the writing. Damn.

Of the other sites I put in, SOHH came in dead last (or came in first, depending on your perspective), with a 4th grade comprehension ranking. AllHipHop.com and XXL had similar scores, around an 8th grade level, which was also a pretty common score among the other blogs I put in.

You could probably make the argument that some of the sites with the lower scores don't have much respect for their readers' intelligence, or maybe you could argue that I ramble on too much and make use of the thesaurus too much. I suspect some (or most) of you are just downloading the mp3s and not even reading what I write anyway, so I'm not going to put away the Roget's anytime soon. All I know is, I'm like the Ras Kass of this blog game compared to those other Dipsets.

Based on these rankings, I feel confident that at least some of you can appreciate the multisyllabic lyricism of nerdcore rappers. And no, I'm not talking about Def Jux artists when I say nerdcore, I'm referring to the genre of internet-based mcs who rap about computers, Star Wars and everything else nerds love.

Nerdcore was "invented" a few years ago by MC frontalot, with his debut single Nerdcore HipHop. These days, the most famous nerdcore rapper is MC (Stephen) Hawking, a gangsta rapper dropping some thermodynamic knowledge on the mic.

There's a pretty good chance I am the only one that finds humor in this. If none of you reading this appreciate the track I'm putting up today -- and after using a slide ruler and a compass, I've calculated that there is a 99% chance of that -- well, my excuse is that my day job as a computer programmer has left me with an appreciation of all things geeky. Its a character flaw, I admit. Give it a listen, its MC Frontalot's track about pirating music. If you like it, maybe I'll let you join my D&D club.

MC Frontalot's Charity Case (mp3)

While we're on the subject of nerds, check out this article about a Nerd Fight Club in California:

Kicking, punching and swinging every household object imaginable -- from frying pans and tennis rackets to pillowcases stuffed with soda cans -- they beat each other mercilessly in a garage in this bedroom community south of San Francisco.

5/30/2006 7:49:27 AM posted by Fresh