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Eurovision 2026 in Vienna, Austria

2026-05-15T23:41:10+02:00

Published by marco on 15. May 2026 23:41:10 Updated by marco on 17. May 2026 21:57:35 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The hosts of the 2026 ESC are cartoon characters. The lady is a bony, large-lipped, giant-titted, shiny skeleton. What have we done to deserve this? [Semifinal 1] Spoiler alert: not a single one of these songs was worth listening to even once. It was even more of a train wreck than usual. Was it always this terrible or just since they all started using AI to "fine-tune"? Moldova 🇲🇩 Joyless trash. Sweden 🇸🇪 Utter trash. The singing ruined an occasionally reasonable electronic beat. Croatia 🇭🇷 Trash, but at least somewhat musical. Greece 🇬🇷 WTF. Utterly incoherent. This is not even recognizable as music. Portugal 🇵🇹 Absolutely not my kind of my music but it was at least a song. The five guys were sympathetic. They looked like they were doing karaoke at a team-building event. Georgia 🇬🇪 Utterly generic ESC semi-electronica song. Some decent group dance stuff. Italy A classic Italian disco song that was positively wholesome after the aural onslaught of the first six songs. Finland 🇫🇮 Generic ESC trash. Not as offensive as some of the others. It doesn't feel like Finland -- more like Sweden. Montenegro 🇲🇪 Also a generic ESC song, which means it was trash. The aesthetic was OK. It was vampire-lesbian chic, which could be problematic but they all seemed to be in into it, so off you go. Estonia 🇪🇪 A straight-up 80s rock song. It was a song, like with a bridge, verses, and a chorus. This was fine. It might even be good if you squint hard enough. Israel 🇮🇱 Trash. Generic. He sang in French, English, and I believe a bit of Hebrew (probably when he wanted to say some deeply racist anti-Arab slurs). Nice to see that Israel made it, though. You'd think they'd be a bit too busy, what with all the conquering and invading and stuff. It wouldn't be the ESC without them. Germany 🇩🇪 [image]A slutty dance number but with terrible dancing. The song sucks. It is beyond generic. Germany is filling in for the Russians' absence, because they liked to send a group of strippers too when they were still being invited. Belgium 🇧🇪 Relied too much on the singer's weak voice over a decent bass beat. Again, ruined by the singing and lyrics. Lithuania 🇱🇹 Something different. Operatic ESC. E-beat. Still trash. San Marino 🇸🇲 Generic ESC disco trash. Poland Gospel-style mixed with rap. Decent backup dancers. Unoffensive but not really good. Serbia 🇷🇸 Oh hey, the goth entry. They are at least pretending to play instruments. A bit of a Hellraiser aesthetic. Not a good song. The camerawork is disturbing. Estonia should move on. Maybe Italy. Maybe Portugal. [Semifinal 2] The second semifinal was of slightly higher quality with 4 or 5 decent acts and a handful of not utterly offensive ones. Bulgaria 🇧🇬 This is a terrible song that's trying to make some headway with dance moves and a lead singer with giant breasts and lips like a Zodiac boat. It will probably be enough to move on. Azerbaijan 🇦🇿 The first slow ballad, I think. It wasn't offensive but it was not good. Romania 🇷🇴 The song is called "Choke Me," so I guess that's promising. Operatic "metal" (who are we kidding, this is hard rock at most). It's a gimmick where two female lead singers ask to be punished. Sure, OK. This will probably also be enough to move on. Luxembourg 🇱🇺 Another ballad. Fully generic. This one is trying to be Björk, with the same look and the same bit of a speech defect. Not offensive but not good. Czechia 🇨🇿 A male ballad this time. He's by himself on stage but surrounded by mirrors. His voice isn't terrible but the song is. France 🇫🇷 It is utterly unsurprising that the singer simply repeats the chorus "Regarde moi" the whole time. It's an operatic ballad. Some decent dance choreography. This was probably one of the better songs so far. Armenia 🇦🇲 This is ESC quirky with a lot of tempo changes, strobe lights -- oh sweet God the strobe lights -- and a lot of yelling and fast, incoherent "music". Switzerland 🇨🇭 A blues song? Like, what? No frenzied pace? No screaming? It's a song? There is way too much strobing but her voice is good and the song ... is good? Did I change the channel by accident? Look, before you say it, I couldn't care less if Switzerland wins but they have, hands down, the best song so far. I would have Shazamed it if it had come on the radio. I also like Veronica's look: big 70s glasses and big, feathered 70s hair. Not slutty, which is a welcome change of pace from pretty much all of the other female acts. Cyprus 🇨🇾 She's fit so that'll be a whole bunch of votes right there. The song is generic and uninspiring. Lots of tanned skin on stage, though. The song feels really long. Austria 🇦🇹 Singing in German. Starts off with a cool top-down camera view, cartoon-like. Generic ESC stuff but relatively well-done. Not obnoxious. Whimsical costumes. The dance moves are kind of quaint and simple. A more human music, if that's the right way of putting it? Genuine, maybe? Latvia 🇱🇻 Another operatic ballad. This one's not terrible, so it should probably move on, given that all but three of the preceding songs were trash. Denmark 🇩🇰 A goth-y generic rock-ish song with a techno beat. His voice isn't bad but the song is. Mucho pyrotechnics. Australia 🇦🇺 Bro, another operatic ballad. This sounds like a Disney theme song. Her voice isn't bad, though. It's a bit of a Celine Dion vibe. Not my kind of music but hey, it wasn't actively painful to listen to. She's pretending to play a golden piano that you absolutely cannot hear. Wait, you could hear it for a bit...but then it kept playing even after she picked up the mic again. Ukraine 🇺🇦 Another operatic ballad, accompanied by a bandura (Ukrainian lute) for a hot second but you mostly can't hear it. She has a good voice but the song is quite generic. It's not really much worse than Australia, though. It is at this point in the evening that it becomes difficult to even tell them apart. She's got a set of lungs on her, though. United Kingdom 🇬🇧 Thank God, finally one that is unequivocally bad because the UK almost always sucks so hard. Christ almighty that was awful. Albania 🇦🇱 An operatic male with a bit more of a rock beat. Not a ballad. He's by himself on stage. Cool costume. Looks like Ibrahimovic. They have subtitles for his Albanian lyrics. I guess it was important to him. I didn't hate it. Malta 🇲🇹 This starts off as a 50s-style crooner by a guy in a sleeveless, leather outfit. He's singing in Italian and English. It's not really my thing but it's well-done and it's not demanding attention. His voice is good. Norway 🇳🇴 A good rock song with a structure that is very much like a song. His voice isn't bad; good stage presence. It's a bit bland but the bass line is good. It's a mediocre-to-good 80s rock song. Kind of a bit of a Billy Idol vibe to it. Switzerland should definitely move on. Also Malta. OK, fine, Norway. Also probably Austria. Maybe France. Latvia if you insist. Guess what, though? Switzerland didn't move on. C'est la vie. I will not be watching or even half-listening to the finals on Saturday because I am not a masochist. Update: We didn't watch it but ... Bulgaria won, proving that breast-augmentation surgery is the way to Eurovision voters' hearts. Also, Israel mysteriously came in second again, though they were a distant second -- 343 points to Bulgaria's 516 -- but "Bulgarien gewinnt den Eurovision Song Contest 2026" just couldn't help having to note that, "Dieses Land verpasste den Sieg knapp: Israel mit Noam Bettan landet auf dem zweiten Platz – begleitet von Buhrufen im Saal. [This country was narrowly edged out: Israel with Noam Bettan ende up in second place - accompanied by boos from the arena.]" Look, maybe they wanted to write about the boos but then why do they have suck up by saying that it was a "narrow" victory when Bulgaria had 50% more votes than Israel?

The NYT Spelling Bee's unique vocabulary

2026-02-08T16:29:12+01:00

Published by marco on 8. Feb 2026 16:29:12 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I was mystified as to what the final four-letter word starting with "EN" might be, and finally landed on the four-letter combination "ENBY" and had to admit that I'd never heard of this short word before. This doesn't happen a lot. [image] What the hell does it even mean? The "Free Dictionary" doesn't know what it is. "DuckDuckGo" returns a link to "Nichtbinäre Geschlechtsidentität" (my settings prefer Swiss-German results), which is the "Non-binary" (which is much less obviously related to gender than the German title), which allowed me to finally figure out that "enby" is a phoneticization of the letters "N" and "B". The only reason I'm pointing this out is that the NY Times's wokeness is still quite evident in this example, as they recognize a word that isn't in the dictionary but is inclusive and is, apparently, well-known enough among its customers, but they ignore "hundreds of other words" that I -- and the dictionary -- consider to be more or less common. They seem to be particularly stubbornly allergic to any word that might be construed as a slur but are also fiercely allergic to science words. Already back in 2021, I wrote the following note into the article linked above. Update 15.05.2021: After over a year of playing this puzzle, the patterns are pretty clear. Proper words are allowed if it's a fruit, fish, plant, flower, type of cheese, or songbird. Or if it has something to do with Judaism and Jewish tradition. Minyan was in the puzzle yesterday, which is a word simply everyone knows and uses every day. What is glaringly obvious is the anti-science, anti-math bent to this whole puzzle. Building blocks of reality, like pion, muon, and lepton aren't recognized, but obscure cacti are, as well as all manner of lilies, like canna and calla. Where Judaic -- minyan or tallit -- and LGBTQ words -- enby -- feature prominently, science and engineering words -- pion, muon, monadic, molal, decile, egyptology, enqueue, lexeme, moonlet, lidar, nacelle, fairing -- regular words -- midden, menage, drily, lungful, lede, monofin, nictitate, olla, phaeton, geegaw, gibbet, lamplit, immanent, headball, gnomon, gnomic, zoonotic -- some of which might feel rare, but some of which are regularly used -- and, finally, quasi-slurs -- golliwog, chink, flatulate, gypped, ladyboy, minge, niggly, octaroon, polygyny, raping -- don't. They even allow words like "gully" but not "wadi", which seems a bit racist. It's unclear why they choose to recognize "tomtit" but not "woodlark". These are decisions made by their editor that illustrate the shape of his and the paper's ideology.

Translate English to English

2026-01-31T21:02:05+01:00

Published by marco on 31. Jan 2026 21:02:05 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I saw this in a YouTube comments section the other day. I consider it to be a minimally succinct summary -- a microcosm, if you will -- of where we are with language and technology right now. [image] "All my motives are alterior." "Ulterior." "[Translate to English]" "Translate to English" 👩‍🍳😘

You are the AI

2026-01-20T22:35:25+01:00

Published by marco on 20. Jan 2026 22:35:25 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [media] "Alberta: This is like the next level of vibe-coding. You just type out exactly what you want. It's really like, 'we just put the AI in your brain.' Here, I'll show you how to do it.. It's like that ... and it's done. "Varun: This is future of vibe-coding right here. Yes! We're gonna write the code ourselves. "Alberta: You are the AI. "Varun: I am the AI. "Alberta: Human intelligence. "Alberta: There's this crazy website called leetcode where you can just play around and pretend to the AI. And then, if you get really good at it, somebody will give you a job, as the AI." It's like trying to get a child to eat spinach because Popeye eats it. [image]

Wordle gets biblical

2026-01-20T22:08:01+01:00

Published by marco on 20. Jan 2026 22:08:01 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here's a Wordle for you: I guessed my lady's favorite first guess to eliminate four vowels. My second wild stab -- with two Rs; doubled letters also being a favorite of the lady -- eliminated the "O" and showed me that the "Y" was not at the end of the word. [image] Where the hell is the Y then? Hint: it was December 19th. That's a week out from Christmas day. Think: Three Wise Men. Think: Gifts. "Frankincense" ! Obvs.

O is penguin

2026-01-17T15:59:29+01:00

Published by marco on 17. Jan 2026 15:59:29 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The post "this poster at work" included an alphabet poster, presumably generated by an LLM. The longer you look at it, the worse it gets. The letters H, J, P, and Y are missing. V and N appear twice. Several letters are out of order. Imagine a kid who's trying to learn the alphabet, though. How would they know that it's wrong? How confused would they be? [image] 1. A is for ak 2. B is for 3. C is foreah (picture of a cheetah?) 4. D is foer 5. E is elephant (got one!) 6. F is fox (got two!) 7. G is gorilla (three in a row!) 8. L is for (picture of a lion) 9. I is iguana (there's I!) 10. K is kangooo 11. N is awal 12. O is penguin (picture of basic bird; not a penguin) 13. M is monkey (there's M!) 14. N is narwhal (picture of a blue whale) 15. S is snake (picture of a bird) 16. T is tiger 17. Q is quail (nestled between T and R 18. R is rhinocros (picture of a snake) 19. V is vulture (bird with no head) 20. X is xerus (picture of a dog) 21. U is urchin 22. V is vulture (again, but this time with a picture of a vulture) 23. W is volf 24. Z is zebra

ESC 2025 in Basel, Switzerland

2025-05-18T11:08:07+02:00

Published by marco on 18. May 2025 11:08:07 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]It is that time of year again and this time the whole shebang is happening in Switzerland, right up the road in Basel. I wrote these notes for fun, so don't expect me to write about each group, and don't expect any sort of fair evaluation of each group's talent. I started writing somewhere after a couple of groups into the first semifinals. I filled those in during the finals. My partner insists on watching this thing, so let's get right to it. I wanted to watch it in Italian for fun and practice but that too was verboten. We're watching in Swiss-German. Well, the presenters speak mostly English with a bit of obligatory French where it absolutely can't be avoided but there's a guy live-translating to Swiss-German chattering over them. [First semifinals] Hazel's costume hurts my eyes even more than Sandra's costume does but both of them should be burned. These two are f@&king embarrassing so far. I hope they get better (they do by the second night). 🇮🇸 Iceland A rap with a fiddle bridge spoken by what look like children (maximum 15 years old). They're rapping in Icelandic. Their song sounds like something that would come from a ski-hut after 15:00, like the Hühnerstall just above Zermatt. It is not a good song. I don't know how they made it out of the semifinals. People like kids, I guess. 🇵🇱 Poland This is in the genre of vaguely lascivious with male and female dancers in quasi-post-apocalyptic costumes while the lead singer -- a woman in a holey leotard -- holds one note after another and a generic ESC-electronica beat plays in the background. There are dragons on the video and the dancers all look like they're in Mad Max or maybe Drogo's tribe in Game of Thrones. She sang in what I assume to be Polish. 🇺🇦 Ukraine Ukraine's lead singer is wearing what I can confidently call the most flamboyant Star Trek uniform I've ever seen. I can't even remember what their song sounds like because I kept worrying that he would collapse from malnutrition. 🇪🇸 Spain The camera work is absolutely insane. And terrible. And insane. The Spanish lady -- who was awful -- was shot from the bottom of the ribcage up half the time, which I don't even know what the hell camera angle that even is. The camera swings around wildly the rest of the time. There are senseless effects on everything. I guess they're trying to distract us from this nothingburger of a song. 🇪🇪 Estonia / 🇸🇪 Sweden Estonia sang about an espresso macchiato. Sweden is singing about a sauna. Pretty much all of the acts so far have at least sung in their native languages. Both Estonia and Sweden were gimmick acts with no legs. 🇵🇹 Portugal Portugal is terrible. They're singing in Portogese. At least they're playing instruments. That's something, I guess. 🇳🇴 Norway Norway is even worse. They sang in English. 🇧🇪 Belgium Belgium is somehow even worse than Norway. We're spiraling here. The dude (I'm guessing) is wearing a red, plastic suit and now he's kneeling on a mirror and looks like he's having sex with himself. He does have a hell of a falsetto, though, gotta give him that. OK, I take it back. This is better than Norway. It's not good but it's winning me over a bit. It's got a good driving beat. It reminds me enough of Lords of Acid that I end up thinking of much better music without getting mad that I'm not listening to it. Guy in red with red lights and Switzerland's patented blurry camera was OK. 🇮🇹 Italy Italy is a goth skeleton singing a pretty song in Italian and playing the world's largest grand piano. His costume is straight from the seventies. Everyone got the message from Nemo and Conchita Wurst that it's best to be gender-ambiguous if you want to move on. Update: this song has a four-second guitar solo and a much longer harmonica solo. I still don't hate it. 🇦🇿 Azerbaijan I refuse to believe that Azerbaijan isn't taking the piss. They are singing in English. Why is everyone wearing variations of giant, pleather hazmat suits? I guess I really don't have my finger on the pulse of fashion these days. The lead singer is now carrying around a balalaika and dead-ass expects us to believe that he is playing it. NO. STOP IT. I continue to be mystified by the production choices. The camera angles are all squeezed and cropped, putting people into weird corners. FFS, just because it worked for Mr. Robot doesn't mean that's how you should film a concert. OMG the song ended completely unexpectedly. The crowd obviously had no idea the end was coming. I thought someone had mercifully cut the power. 🇸🇲 San Marino San Marino has the world's most generic electro-beat. It's so generic that no-one would even know who to sue for copyright infringement. They're singing in Italian. it's a Ballerman-style song called "Tutta L'Italia". I know this because they said it 200 times. Is there a rap interlude? You betcha. 🇦🇱 Albania There is a lot of red this year. It's Albania so sure, of course. Throw that awesome eagle up while you're at it. This duo has a lady who sings and a guy who plays the marimba. Oh wait, he "sings" too. They both sing in what I can only assume is Albanian. Good for them. There are a ton of pace changes, making this feel more like a medley than a song. It's not terrible And the god-blessed Swiss camera is swinging and swooping like a child with ADHD who's had about ten slices of cake and two liter-bottles of soda. 🇳🇱 Netherlands If Claude from the Netherlands has real friends, they are going to mercilessly mock him for the rest of his life about this dumb song. Like, every time something goes wrong for him, at least one of his friends should sing "C'est la la la la vie." and then his other friends should chime in until Claude starts to cry. Lucky for Claude, his friends probably don't watch the ESC and he's almost certainly going home tonight. 🇭🇷 Croatia Like Albania, Croatia has a lot of tempo and genre changes. The strobe lights are crazy. The shaky camera is even more disturbing. The male singer and his dancers are all very pretty, though. That's something. The camera is now moving so quickly that I've seen the image actual tear a couple of times. He's singing about a "serpent snake", as a CGI snake wraps the stage (which I'm sure only the home audience can see). 🇨🇭 Switzerland Switzerland is also pretty and singing from what looks like the location where she's being held hostage. She also has a pretty voice and little to no makeup. She's singing in French. It's not my style of music but it's not bad. The fucking cameraman insists on shaking it a bit though because he seems to think that a camera that doesn't do something all the time is a sin against the old Gods. The camera is shaking so much now that I feel like the person who took her hostage is getting tired. OK. The camera has completely cut out now. It just froze. Wait, she's back. It just stopped. For like ten seconds. At least the audio didn't cut out. That's something. 🇨🇾 Cyprus Cyprus is singing in English. These lyrics are fucking embarrassingly bad. We know who wrote them. It starts with a Chat and ends with a GPT. Again with the strobing lights. Like, my whole living room is flashing. I can't even tell if anyone's pretty because they're either in blurry red lights or they're too far away or I'm too busy having an epileptic seizure. The closing Swiss presentation wasn't bad. [Second Semifinal] The two hosts are back on stage and I am impressed. I didn't think that Hazel's costume could be any stupider but I stand absolutely mightily corrected. I am actually at a complete loss for words to describe the dress. It screams "I lost a bet with an absolute asshole." It's a ton of transparent plastic discs glued to a greenish-rainbow glitter body suit. She looks like she's in the Tron movie. Her shoes are stupidly big and clumpy. Kudos to her for acting as if absolutely nothing is wrong. The two joked about how people were watching because the woman got the remote away from her husband, who'd rather be watching football. At least the Swiss-German moderator corrected them in translation to point out that the men would most likely be watching ice hockey -- especially since Switzerland is absolutely kicking ass so far, having wiped the floor with both the U.S. and Germany and having almost beaten Czechia. Do better, Hazel. 🇦🇺 Australia Thank God Australia's here. The dude is somehow singing in English as if he is not a native speaker of Enlgish. The chorus is "I can tell you want a taste of the milkshake man". I do not believe that they practiced this even once. There is no dancing. I think that they're taking the piss. The dude is now shirtless and his package is absolutely just prominent in a way that cannot be accidental. His shoes are stupidly big and clumpy. 🇲🇪 Montenegro Montenegro is a lady wearing a life-sized duvet cover around her neck. She looks like she's in a play that explains to children where babies come from. She's singing in what I can only assume is her native language. Her singing and music are a pretty generic ballad, absolutely bog-standard ESC slop. I think someone else complained about the frenetic camera? Oh, never mind. I spoke too soon: the wild camera pans, cuts, angles, and bizarre composition are 100% still here. 🇮🇪 Ireland There is literally nothing the Irish singer can do to make me care about Ireland this year because I still miss the absolutely psycho from last year ("Bambie Thug" ). This year's entrant has some attractive and talented dancers but the song is so generically ESC that there is no chance that they will proceed. Her voice is pretty weak. 🇱🇻 Latvia I kind of liked Latvia. Six women singing and chanting with really cool production values and a song that I might actually listen to again. This is a pretty and artistic performance. Falsetto solos are nice. The song had structure. As Rick Beato says, "It was a song". 🇦🇲 Armenia Dude's name is "Parg". He's out of the gate without a shirt. The camera, blown-out HDR camerawork, and slow-motion blur the whole time means that I don't really know what he looks like. This a Ballerman-style song, striving so hard to be the summer hit, with a bit of a metal tinge to the chorus ("Survivor") but rap-style stanzas. It's better than the first two songs. He's singing mostly in English and some Armenian. Right at the very end, we get to see that he is quite handsome. That'll work. 🇦🇹 Austria I don't even know what to say. Why do they even bother coming back? Is it because it was just a quick train ride this year? Good thing for them (I'm guessing) that they can probably even still catch the train back home tonight. Yes, they can sing really high notes. Good for them, I suppose. 🇬🇧 United Kingdom As an experienced ESC viewer, my hopes are not high. They just have the consistently worst taste. This year, they seem to be trying to copy the Abba sound but it is not working. .Three young ladies with quite weak voices. The chorus is "What the hell just happened?" which is what I'm asking myself after this terrible song. Guess what, though? Since their country provides so much of the budget for the ESC, they are automatically qualified for the final. So, we get to hear this gem of a song again on Saturday. Null points. 🇬🇷 Greece Clavdia is singing a song called the awesome name of "Basteromata" in Greek. She's alone on stage, singing a classic ballad, weaing what look for the all the world like reading glasses. Wait, somebody else showed up. She's a "dancer". This is utterly generic. The computer graphics are doing a lot of work. As is the crazy Swiss camera. She is by far not the worst but it's not really my bag. 🇱🇹 Lithuania This is what might have, in a better world, been a metal band. Instead, it's an emo-looking lead singer trying to stay on-camera. They're all wearing gray sacs. Kudos for going in a metal direction but it's an aimless song that never seems to drive to a conclusion. It's not got much structure (as usual). It's not terrible but there are a lot of other songs just like it that are much better -- and I can't help but think of those instead. 🇲🇹 Malta This is about as hyper-sexualized as ESC is allowed to get. They changed the name of the song to "Serving" from, I believe, "F@&king" (the moderator said it was a "Kraftausdruck" that you're not allowed to say on television). It's not a good song. Malta's hoping that people vote for skimpily clad female dancers dry-humping each other, which is -- NGL -- not a bad bet to make with ESC voters. 🇬🇪 Georgia She's singing operatically in Georgian and English. She has a good voice but the song isn't great. She has good stage presence though; she's quite striking. I wish the camera would knock off its bullshit. I'm just going to note here that she also does a costume-change, which, like, nearly everyone has done now. They keep calling it a "quick change" but that's not what it is: she just took off a giant coat and left it on the stage. 🇫🇷 France Completely unsurpisingly, France has a blonde woman singing a ballad. Am I happy that my French lessons are paying off and I can understand most of the lyrics? Well, yes and no. It's always difficult to continue liking a song once you understand the dumb lyrics. The chorus is just her scatting the word "Maman" again and again and again. Next. Interlude If I'm honest, the two hosts are kind of growing on me. They're goofy but in a decent way. They're vacuuming the stage after the French lady spilled sand all over it. 🇩🇰 Denmark Another female ballad dropping a giant coat on stage. She's singing in English. Oh, no, wait, now we've transitioned to a completely generic ESC-style electronica beat. Her voice isn't as strong as others. She's barely moving on stage. She has no stage presence but benefits from the frenetic camerawork in that it doesn't ... linger. Denmark stunk up the joint last year too. She's taking the train home with Austria. 🇨🇿 Czechia Adonxs is singing in English. He is shooting for Freddie Mercury. He's a good showman and has a decent voice with a lot of range but the song is not good. Guess what? He also dropped his coat. It's a thing this year. 🇱🇺 Luxembourg She's singing in French. Generic beat, generic melody, and generic singing but good dancers, costumes, and set design. She started off as a doll in a quasi-futuristic house but dropped that conceit quickly. OK, so she did a quick change. What is happening this year? Did they all get a memo that they should bring two outfits? 🇮🇱 Israel We had to of course hear about how this dingbat was dancing outside of a concentration camp at the Nova music festival from our Swiss moderator, like she's some kind of hero. She's alone on stage, singing in English and a bit in Hebrew. It's a standard ballad. The lyrics are a bit on the nose, no? "But we will stay even if you say goodbye" and "Everyone cries. Cry alone." "A new day will rise." Like where will that new day rise? Over her daddy's new seaside condo in Gaza? Yikes. 🇩🇪 Germany This is a generic dance tune but it's got a decent beat and it's also the best act that Germany has sent since Lena. Spock playing the light-cello was a nice touch. I think the name of the song is "Baller", which is kind of funny if you know German. She's quite attractive, which is absolutely going to help. 🇷🇸 Serbia "Princ" is singing in Serbian. He's in red; his dancers in black. It's a ballad with a bit of piano accompaniment. Yawn. This is not going anywhere. He can hitch a ride with Austria. 🇫🇮 Finland A blond lady with a sizable bosom and lips to match sings a pretty generic party song. She's wearing a lot of leather and the moderator promises "lasciviousness" but it's not really evident. The strobe lights and frenetic camerawork are absolutely maddening. She didn't drop a coat because she didn't start with one. The closing Swiss presentation wasn't bad. [Finals] Hazel's wearing a rainbow sweater that doesn't fit but it's better than the thing she wore on Thursday. She's joined by Michelle Hunziker, who's not looking 48 years old at all. Today I learned that she was born in Lugano and went to school in Bern before moving to Milano. I had no idea. As usual, all of the musical acts were exactly the same as the ones from the semifinals. I'm pleased to see that every single one of the acts that I said would move on because they were "hot" (male or female or indeterminate) moved on, as expected. I have no idea who won nor does it really matter since the jury voting has, in the last couple of years, been overwhelmed by pretty obvious astroturfing and manipulation in the televoting portion. Last year, an absolutely terrible Israeli act rode a completely inexplicable wave of adoration from most of old Europe. I expect the same boring hasbara to dominate this year as well.

Two hours of Stewart Lee (Tornado and Snowflake)

2025-04-13T12:34:40+02:00

Published by marco on 13. Apr 2025 12:34:40 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]I very much appreciate Stewart Lee and have listened to everything I can of his. I don't really know any other comedian like him. It's impossible for me to detail the levels of meta-analysis he brings to his sets. I can barely find a joke that I can quote of his because everything is so rambling and intricate and self-referencing that you'd end up citing half the show. You can see full transcripts of very similar shows for "Tornado" and "Snowflake" . [media] Perhaps he sums it up best in the second hour -- Snowflake -- with this bit at 01:41:00 or so. "It's [...] all right [...] but it took him 45 minutes to tell a barely adequate anecdote about an author I'd never heard of." Which is also not correct, because it's more than all right. I think it's brilliant. This was the punchline to a joke he'd started 30 minutes earlier, with: "So I found myself reading an article in GQ by the 1970s punk-era polemicist and popular 21st century novelist Tony Parsons. "Do people know who Tony...? "[murmurs of agreement] A lot of you, not everyone, which is a shame, because I'm now going to talk about Tony Parsons for 45 minutes." Earlier, there was a segment about a relatively stuffy Times reporter named Alan Bennet, who'd given Stewart a great review, but couched it in terms that seemed somewhat backhanded as compliments, as they would almost guarantee to consign him to high-brow, think-piece-style comedy venues. "He's fearless, undeterred by an audience's failure to respond. "Erving Goffman" would have liked Stewart Lee. Who's that? Who's Erving Goffman? Erving Goffman would have liked Stewart Lee? That's a quote for the poster isn't it? That'll pack 'em in at the Bradford Alhambra! "It's austere stuff. Stewart Lee is the J.L. Austin of comedy. What does it mean? J.L. Austin? Erving Goffman would have liked Stewart Lee? "I googled Erving Goffman. Erving Goffman is the most influential American sociologist of the 20th century. His major areas of study include the sociology of everyday life, social construction of self, social organization of experience, and particular elements of social life such as institutions and stigmas -- and he would have loved me, wouldn't he? He'd've been flailing around in a tsunami of his own urine by now! "Stewart Lee is the J.L Austin of comedy. Right. J.L Austin was a British philosopher of language, perhaps best-known -- if at all, Alan -- for the theory of speech acts. Austin's work ultimately suggests that all utterance is the doing of something with words and signs, challenging on metaphysics of language that would posit propositional assertion as the essence of language and meaning. And I'm the him of this! I'm the him of this! "If you've come along here tonight, hoping to see two-and-a-half hours of the kind of J.L. Austin-influenced comedy that Erving Goffman would have loved, then you can fuck off, cos it's not going to be that, is it? [...] This is the kiss of death, this Alan Bennett review. [...] I hate Alan Bennett." At 02:08:00, "I actually wrote that bit to be like that, to show you who I would be if I was who they say I am. "LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE "Right? Yeah. That's right. Listen to that. "And that - that's how good I am. I can write jokes that fail in exactly the way I want them to, which is much harder than writing the kind of shit funny jokes that you like." He has a more recent show from 2024, called "Stewart Lee, Basic Lee: Live at the Lowry" . [media] This copy of the video probably won't last because it's not an official channel but I just wanted to remember I'd seen it. Stewart Lee is one of my favorite comedians. Whenever I listen to one of his shows, I almost always start off by wondering "what is he even doing," and I always end up thinking that it was one of the most brilliant, funny, deeply philosophical things I've ever seen in my life. There is no other comedian like him. "Don't come and see me if you don't know what anything is." At about 13:00, "Right. That's the end of the fun, topical bit at the top of the show. It's not really of interest to me, that sort of stuff. I just do it because I'm sick of reading people going, 'the reason you don't see Lee on Have I Got News for You is because he can't write economic, topical jokes. Well, I can write them. As we've seen, I can write them very easily. But, um, it's beneath me. Uh, it's beneath you. And it's time now to move on into the punishing experimental standup that has kept me out of the arenas for 35 years." At about 18:00 "I'm not going to write any more jokes. I'm going to come out here with a blackboard, with a list of topics on it. I'm going to point at one of them and you can have a good laugh imagining what I might have said about it." At about 01:11:30 "[...] what's this? What's going on? He's doing some kind of lecture. Of course I'm not. That's what I do. That's my comedy. It's not a mistake. That's kind of routine. That's why the broad sheets call me the world's greatest living standup -- which they do, in case you -- why have we not heard of him? I don't know! There's been an administrative error. "It's because of stuff like that. That's what they like. It flatters their intelligence, the broad-sheet newspaper critics, because what I do is as close to being not funny at all as it's possible to be. And then, just at the last minute, when you want to blow your own head off, you go -- it turns around -- you go, oh it's brilliant." After a long, brilliant bit in which he ties together about a dozen threads into a repetitive, mesmerizing, and coherent jumble, all played as people endlessly visiting an office, day after day after day, he says, at about 01:27:30, "This is my life. Pure. Simple. Classic. But listen to that. There's no laughs, are there? There's just a strange tense atmosphere of hopeless despair. A bit like the kind of atmosphere you might get at the end of an award-winning piece of theater." "I've only ever written one decent closing joke. I wrote it in September 1989. [...] I'm going to finish with it now, without changing any of the now-irrelevant personal details and then I'm going to go. See you in a couple years. "So, I was talking to my granddad the other day. He's 94 years -- he's dead now obviously, but he was alive when I wrote this. I'm not sick, you know -- so I was talking to my granddad the other day -- he's 94 years old -- I said to him, 'Grandad, you are 94 years old. What, in your experience, has been the worst thing about growing so old?' "And he said to me, 'Stu, in my experience, the worst thing about growing so old has been watching all of the friends that I grew up with slowly dying off one by one.' "And I said to him, well, Granddad, 'you fed them those berries.'"

The genius of Ricky Jay

2025-04-06T21:53:03+02:00

Published by marco on 6. Apr 2025 21:53:03 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]There has never been and will never be anyone like Ricky Jay. He was a polymath. He was erudite. He spoke in clipped tones, with words like "disapprobation". He cited 15th-century poetry from memory, as part of his show. He cites George Bernard Shaw, "Every profession is a conspiracy against the laity." He was the most brilliant playing-card prestidigitator the world has ever seen. He knew more about tricks and magicians and the history thereof than anyone else before or since. [media] A large part of this show is explaining how to cheat, how to prestidigitate, all the while doing tricks that cannot be explained. He keeps up a non-stop, relevant, and sophisticated patter while pulling aces from the deck without looking at his hands or the deck. He demonstrates the kind of "card control" that you can only get when you've done it a million times. Probably literally. It's a friendly reminder that you should never, ever play cards with anyone you don't know, or whose skills you don't know. I have written about him before, * In 2018, I "mentioned" a long-form essay about him, "Secrets of the Magus" * He was a favorite of David Mamet, so he appeared in his movies "Redbelt" , "House of Games" , and "Heist" .

None of these memes are funny

2025-04-06T20:45:49+02:00

Published by marco on 6. Apr 2025 20:45:49 Updated by marco on 12. Apr 2025 07:07:59 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The article "Study finds AI-generated meme captions funnier than human ones on average" by Benj Edwards describes what it says on the tin. As several others confirmed in the comments, the memes all suck, whether generated by an AI, a human, or a combination. Here is a sheet of the "winners." [image] They are uniformly terrible, at best confusing. Not one is funny. For example, this is apparently a meme written by an actual human being. "Threw something into the trash can.. Hit it first try." WTF. That is not even cringe-worthy. Here's a robot one, with the same fist-pumping baby. "Fridge was empty...found ice cream hidden in the back!" That makes no sense. It's f@&king terrible. The rest are just as bad. They would be terrible T-shirts, terrible postcards, ... they are objectively terrible and unfunny memes. This entire study is garbage. People will read the headline and tell all of their co-workers that AIs are funnier than humans now -- all without having looked at a single meme to see if any of them are actually funny.

The philosophy of Bill Burr and Conan O'Brien

2025-04-05T18:14:51+02:00

Published by marco on 5. Apr 2025 18:14:51 Updated by marco on 5. Apr 2025 18:15:26 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I started my recent journey of Bill Burr videos with an interview on none other than NPR. Below the video are stream-of-consciousness notes in which I waver on Terry Gross but eventually admit that Burr badgered a decent interview out of her. I wouldn't make a habit of listening to her interviews, though. It's a testament to anti-intellectualism that she's considered a leading light of liberal thought. [Bill Burr on NPR] [media] I love how Bill Burr runs the interview, in that he doesn't let her "move on" from talking about cancel culture and the complete bastardization of the "MeToo" movement into something that just rounded up so many people with unwelcome opinions to the same thing as Harvey Weinstein. At 13;57, Burr talks about people's capitulation to Musk, "This is why I hate liberals. It's like liberals have no teeth whatsoever. They just go, 'oh my God. Can you believe? I'm getting out of the country.' I'm just like, 'you're going to leave the country cuz of one guy with dyed hair plugs and a laminated face? Who runs a bad car company and has an obsolete social-media platform? You're going to leave this country? Why doesn't he leave? Why isn't he stopped? What are we so afraid of? This guy who can't fight his way out of a wet paper bag?" Gross is so f@&king condescending, saying that the discussion would be worthwhile if it were "nuanced," implying that Burr is not capable of having the discussion the right way. Burr says, "nuanced conversation is not my strong suit," which is utterly belied by the relatively nuanced argument that he'd just delivered. But Gross happily agrees -- because she's a classic liberal and is only interested in having conversations involving ideas and coming to conclusions that she already held before they start. It's safer that way. Burr is so very in-control of this conversation, even revisiting his tirade and relating it to his character in "Glengarry Glen Ross" , a play that he's currently starring in, who also tends to express himself as he intends but in a manner that is more offputting than he wanted. Nice plug, Billy Boy! [1] He is not only one of the funniest people to have ever graced this planet, he is also quite insightful and empathetic and disarmingly intelligent, in the sense that he's able to root out hypocrisy like a truffle-hunting pig. He gets angry because he's so frustrated with how people like Terry Gross seem to be so smugly satisfied with living in a giant stew of hypocrisy, holding views that just happen to not only make them feel terrific about what wonderful people they are, they also coincidentally lead to themselves never feeling any financial or emotional discomfort. They never ask "why me and not all of these other people?" They don't really think about the answer, but if they would, they would say it's because they deserve it for being so smart and amazing and useful. Bill knows that the answer is "luck" or "I don't". At 50:30, "It's funny to me, because I just thought it was hilarious that when that me-too thing came out, right? All of these guys, all of a sudden, were walking around and they had on these male-feminist buttons, right? And that was absolutely hysterical to me. And it was hysterical to me that women didn't call out the BS of that. "Because it's like where was that button before this happened? You had your whole life to wear that button and you didn't wear it until guys were getting thrown off the bridge...then all of a sudden, I'm a male-feminist -- females first -- and you fell for it! "I ... that's a red flag. Let's just take it out of men and women. I remember when I first got a manager, and an agent, and I thought oh boy oh boy now I don't have to make the calls! Someone's going to be making calls for me. It's like no-one's going to care about what you want more than you, so you got to empower yourself to do this." [Conan on Hot One] [media] He controls the show from start to finish. He invited his own fake doctor and set up fake bits to do throughout. He was obviously suffering and he did not stop, nor miss a step. He improved through the pain, to the point where I thought he might be faking it -- but the show doesn't let guests fake it. At 15:00, "I'd have [...] said there's no way there's ever going to be a Charlie Rose show where you eat hot wings but I've [...] I would have been wrong." At 23:30, "Read. Read widely and read well. There's comedy in the Old Testament. There's comedy in the New Testament. You can read all kinds of stuff; just don't lock yourself in to 'it's got to be some comedy from the last 10 years.' No. There's great comedy out there, that was written a long time ago. What's funnier than Don Quixote's Sancho Panza, you know? This is good stuff. The classics are funny, you know? You can read Chaucer's Tales. They're funny. There's funny everywhere. Don't be a snob. Look high and look low. A Mad Magazine is funny. There's funny stuff online all the time. There's no reason for us to try and exclude one category over another. "These aren't the rantings of someone who's had some bad chemicals and overdid it to be funny and relevant to people who were at least 50 years younger than him." [Bill Burr on Conan] [media] This is a fantastic 12-minute video. Bill Burr is on fire, as usual. He brings together a few stories I've heard before, but juxtaposes them to expose new meaning. After he tells several stories in which he ended up laughing at stories in which others suffered, he says, "I don't even know what the fuckin' news is. It's like, here's a bunch of shit you can't fix, that happened, that was horrible." Bill's point isn't a new one but it's an important one to remember: sometimes you've just to laugh at the dark humor of reality. Just say, 'good one, God. You got me.' You can't cry all the time and those who pretend that they can are posing for an imaginary audience. Commentator Bombadil-ez9ns writes, "I love how good Bill is at saying the WORST THING EVER, then walking you through it so that you understand where he's coming from, and part of you even agrees." That's called "philosophy." Another eloquent summary is from TheOtherMrEd, "The thing I love about Bill Burr when he goes on these rants is he says all the things we think or feel... but know we shouldn't. He's right. Sometimes the level of "tragedy" reaches a point where it becomes absurd. And laughing about things you can't change is a healthy survival strategy. Processing everyone else's tragedy as though it was your own leads to burnout and compassion fatigue." [image]Even this, though, isn't exactly why Bill Burr laughs at The Biggest Loser. He said it himself, "most of the world is starving". That's why. He's laughing at the utter darkness of a country having come up with a hit series about people who have eaten so much that they can barely move, filming them crying about their inability to control themselves -- which is real and which is devastisting but only to them -- when the rest of the world has real problems. Even a lot of their fellow citizens have real problems that don't involve having so much disposable incomes that you literally can't stop yourself from eating Oreos. You laugh at the genius of a culture that airs this kind of stuff to distract everyone else from noticing that they are part of the oppression that causes starvation in the rest of the world, at a system that encourages -- nay, enforces -- people to focus solipsistically on their own problems, despite having relatively no problems compared to most. He laughs because he's really woke, not posturing. He is awake to the structure of the system and he's laughing at how it's trying to manipulate him into going back to sleep. At least, that's how I read it. I like to think that he would share my frustration that people only care about how their country is tearing the world a new asshole, day after day after day, when their country's behavior starts to impinge their own lifestyles. I hear it in Switzerland too: the latest tariffs are going to put companies out of business. Yeah, well, that sucks. But those companies were in bed with an empire that was also cheerily slaughtering people that they never cared enough about because it never affected their bottom line. That's not a principle. That's just self-interest. As long as you pension fund earns 7-8% per year, you honestly don't give even a single shit about what else is going on. As soon as your personal flourishing might be affected, all of a sudden, what's going on must be stopped, even if it's just to shore up the crooked system that stole nearly everything but allowed a few crumbs to drop onto your plate. All of a sudden, people are fighting like crazy to put things back they way they were. This is how change happens. Your middle-class pain is not the biggest pain in the world. It is, at best, discomfort. You will definitely muddle through. There are still 95% of the people on this planet who didn't even notice that the stock market went down or that tariffs have been levied because their lives were already shitty. You never cared about them -- not enough to take even a little bit less for yourself -- even though making a better world for them would automatically mean that you'd also be living in a world whose continued economic well-being wasn't contingent on the behavior of a handful of lunatics. The prison riot might feel really bad right now but, instead of complaining that we want the doors put back on our cells, maybe we should be figuring out how to build a more just system, one that's more resilient against the whims of mad oligarchs. We should build a world without oligarchs, so that this kind of insanity can't happen, instead of begging the oligarchs to give us our steady stream of crumbs back. I like to think that Bill Burr would agree with that. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I'm not being condescending; it's what he calls himself when he's being self-deprecating.

SNL episode #1, hosted by George Carlin

2025-02-22T11:33:22+01:00

Published by marco on 22. Feb 2025 11:33:22 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ For its 50th anniversary, Saturday Night Live released its first episode, in full. It was initially aired in 1975. It was quite interesting to contrast the form and style with the SNL that we know today and that has been established for a couple of decades. The biggest difference is that SNL started out with much shorter skits. They got to the point, delivered the punchline and...basta. They had a lot more skits; the host delivered several monologues; there were two musical guests and they both played twice. I prefer the shorter skits to the drawn-out "beating a dead horse" length they tend to use now. [media] After watching it, I took the following notes, * The cold opening was about a minute long. It was a language lesson involving wolverines and is quite famous. The feel of the skit felt much more like Monty Python than modern-day Saturday Night Live -- or any SNL from the last 30 years. * The entire show was just under 68 minutes long. * Each of the two musical guests played twice. Janis's songs were each about 4--5 minutes long. She was interesting, singing songs that were almost like poetry that she wrote for herself -- we just got to listen along. The second song sounded kind of like the beginning of Gutter Ballet by Savatage; at other times, she sounded a bit like Billy Joel. * The skits in general were much, much shorter, so there were more of them. * [image]Dan Akroyd was very good, not reading from his cards at all. * There was a long segment involving muppets, which was absolutely amazing. * George Carlin hosted and did about 15 minutes of material, distributed over about five different segments throughout the show. He did not clean up his act for the show, shooting straight at religion pretty heard, as is his wont. * Albert Brooks presented a film that was quite odd, and quite risqué, with a quick segment about Oregon having lowered its age of consent to seven years old -- and then showing a date with a man and a seven-year-old girl eating a sundae. Avant-garde as hell. * Chevy Chase did a Weekend Update. * Andy Kaufman lip-synced part of the Mighty Mouse theme, illustrating his more-than-offbeat brand of comedy and amply showing why he was funny. He was funny because we couldn't figure out why he made us laugh, so we laughed more. So, he was a comedian. * Al Franken in the credits as a writer. * There was some on-the-street stuff featuring a blind cab driver. * Garrett Morris was there but didn't get a lot of airtime yet. * Gilda Radner was still getting her wheels under her; her oddball comedy kind of shone through but she seemed somewhat reserved (kind of inebriated?) * There was a short skit about the population of the state of Georgia switching places with the people of Israel. * There was an odd two-minute stand-up by a comedienne I'd never heard of, and whose name I already cannot remember. * There was a fake commercial mocking the razor-blade companies for ever thinking that anyone could need more than two blades on a razor, presenting what they clearly deemed a laughable number of blades: three.

How do you solve jigsaw puzzles?

2025-01-01T23:04:25+01:00

Published by marco on 1. Jan 2025 23:04:25 Updated by marco on 9. Jan 2025 18:04:16 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I was recently bragging to a friend about how I'd finally just about conquered a difficult jigsaw puzzle with methodology and techniques, My friend of course asked [1] to which methodologies and techniques I might be referring. [Background] I was raised on jigsaw puzzles. We always had a Christmas puzzle at my house. When I was much younger, we did them throughout the year. As I got older, we only had the Christmas puzzle, but we always had that one. [2] Everyone in my nuclear family did it: mom, dad, twin sister. Even though, we all had different backgrounds and predilections, we all got pretty good at them. Like, I might have been the only one occasionally and semi-robotically machine-gunning pieces in at a frightening pace, but everyone was getting pieces in at a pretty good clip. We were all rewarded enough to keep going. More on that later. Perhaps jigsaw puzzles are how I learned to analyze a problem into smaller problems. Perhaps they're how I learned patience and perseverance to tackle longer problems. Perhaps they're how I learned to put in the work before reaping the fun. [Why I enjoy them] I'm not sure if it's always been this way but, for as long as I can remember, jigsaw-puzzle pieces just kind of jump out at me. Like, someone will say "I need this piece here," and point to a gap. It has happened to me often enough that I can scan the table and say "I see it," and, most of the time, it's the right piece. This is also perhaps a good part of the reason that I'm left to do them alone now. [3] It is very much the reason why I like to do them, because I get a little frisson. [4] [Methodologies and techniques] So, now that I'm thinking about it, here are a few things that I tend to do and not to do. I never start by willy-nilly slapping pieces together. Someone's got to flip all of the pieces over. It might as well be me. [5] OK. Pieces are all flipped over and, most importantly, visible. While I'm doing that, I sort out the edge pieces, as many as I can. I don't obsess with getting them all (I'm 80% finished with a tough puzzle right now and am still missing one). After that, there are different approaches for different types of puzzles. How do you put pieces together? You get the pieces that fit together near each other. Then, you're more likely to be able to fit them together. If they're on different sides of the table, or in different boxes, then you've got no chance. Oh, the boxes. I forgot about those. [The boxes and engineering] [image] It's a trick my Dad taught me. [6] Instead of laying all of the pieces out on the table, you lay them out in other puzzle boxes from other puzzles. That way, you can stack them and put it away so the cat doesn't f@&k everything up. Also, it takes less space. Also, if you build something together that then needs to go inside the already-built border, you can flap down one of the sides of the box [7], and easily slide it into place. I guess I like puzzles because they're basically an engineering problem. [Sorting] But, at heart, and, before I digressed into discussing boxes, jigsaw puzzles are a sorting problem. [8] So, how do you sort pieces? Sorting by color or shape are your go-to piles to start making. Usually, as you're sorting, you're already kind of fitting pieces together. If it's not color, it's significant features, like any edge between two different colors or patterns. Any significant patterns or grains are somewhere to start, as well. The boxes help keep your different groups separate from each other. "Gimme the red box," was not uncommon at Christmas. "I need noses," was perhaps another. The important thing is to be able to see all the pieces at once or be able to quickly scan a grouping of likely candidates. Hence: flip 'em over and make 'em accessible. [A jigsaw puzzle koan] Here's something to remember that is encouraging: The more pieces you fit together, the fewer pieces remain. That means that solving a jigsaw puzzle has the same rewarding feeling as standing in line at a well-designed theme-park ride, or a ski lift, or an off-ramp, or anywhere with several lines merging into one: the longer you stick with it, the faster it goes. "The more pieces you fit together, the fewer pieces remain." But, honestly, color and shape are the obvious ones. Everyone does those. They work for puzzles with fields of color or distinctive areas that cover a good bit of territory. [Adapting to diversity] How the hell do you tackle a monster like the riot of completely heterogeneous color in this one? [image] This is the 2024 Christmas puzzle. It's 2000 pieces. 2000 pieces is a lot. You can buy it at "Orell Füssli" . There is such a riot of detail that it's overwhelming. You're going to feel like any piece could go anywhere. That's where you have to really just start to see the drawing. You can't let your brain elide detail. You have to keep it hyper-aware to every detail. Otherwise, your eyes will just sweep over the thing and you'll say "I can't find where this piece goes," put it down, pick up another one, lather, rinse, repeat. Frustration. You need to get a win in order to want to keep playing. As I already mentioned above, whatever I've got going for me puzzle-wise guarantees me more than enough mini-wins to make solving jigsaw puzzles fun. [Actively looking] So, back to looking at the drawing. There are unique bits, like the market sign, the white trailer, the red tent, the blue tent, the striped tent, the winding road. Those are pretty strongly separable from one another. You have to be careful, though, but the puzzle designer usually helps you out. The white trailer on the bottom-left has little flags draped on it, while the one on the bottom-right has lights. If you find a white piece with lights on it, you know where it's going, right? It's the same if you find a white piece with a bit of spiky color. If you find a tire, that's good! There aren't that many of those! But there are several! So, scan the picture and figure out which tire it is. Place the piece where it goes, even if it doesn't fit yet. You can't find the tire? Look again. This time, remember to keep your focus; don't let your lazy mind drift and elide what it considers to be unnecessary detail. [9] If you couldn't find the tire, it's probably because you glided your lazy eye over one on a wheelbarrow, or on the back of a car, or a trailer. Ok, then there's the trees. Undifferentiated. Hopeless. No. The puzzle designers are not going to leave you in the lurch like that. The trees on the right-hand side have larger lights in them, whereas the ones on the bottom-left have a sprinkling of much-smaller lights or snow on them. The ones on the top-left have no white spots. The ones in the middle-left have stronger, unique colors. [First, take one step. Then, another.] This is where you start. Remember, every piece you fit into another is no longer in the pool of completely undifferentiated pieces. Every piece you fit is a win. Every piece you fit leaves you with a puzzle that's one piece smaller than the puzzle you had just a second ago. It's now easier. For this puzzle, I made groups in two stages. I would collect everything red into one place -- enhance proximity -- then capitalize on proximity to make smaller groups within the e..g., red group. At one point, I just "collected animal faces like a serial killer" . [The last resort: memorize the picture] This puzzle seems designed to foil the particular skills I have [10] that make me able to relatively often solve jigsaw puzzles at what I've been told is a frightening, nay offputting, nay joy-killing pace. Instead -- and this is going to sound trite -- I had to...well...learn every detail of the drawing. I spent a lot of time with the box-top in one hand [11], and a piece in the other, scanning for where it goes. I often laid the damned thing down in the middle of a vast, open space, knowing it goes right there and letting it await the forty brethren that would eventually surround it. Eventually, though, what really worked best was that I learned pretty much every damned detail of the drawing, which finally allowed me to fall back on my jigsaw-puzzle super power of knowing where a piece goes just by looking at it. I would just scan over the unplaced pieces and see "fox face", or "owl wing", or "tire". I finally got to a point where I could see a piece and know where it goes. I could start looking for a piece I wanted, and then know it when I saw it. [image] Getting to "this stage" was a combination of learning the drawing and just reducing the number of pieces left. The 20% I have left is going to be easy. [12] [Examples of how to find a piece] Update: 05.01.2025: As I was solving the puzzle, I realized that I could offer some examples of how you find a puzzle piece for a specific slot. [Example #1] The following image highlights the slot that we'd like to fill. [image] The piece is somewhere in this image. Can you find it? [image] There it is! [image] [Example #2] The following image highlights the slot that we'd like to fill. [image] The piece is somewhere in this image. Can you find it? [image] There it is! [image] [Example #3] The following image highlights the slot that we'd like to fill. [image] The piece is somewhere in this image. Can you find it? [image] There it is! [image] [Example #4] The following image highlights the slot that we'd like to fill. [image] The piece is somewhere in this image. Can you find it? [image] There it is! [image] [Example #5] The following image highlights the slot that we'd like to fill. [image] The piece is somewhere in this image. Can you find it? [image] There it is! [image] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] He always asks. He knows I can't resist answering, usually in a way that he, unlike many, finds interesting. That's how this chat-message answer morphed briefly into an e-mail and, now, finally, into a full-blown blog post with an ungodly number of footnotes, links, and images. [1] They're not nearly all documented, but some are, in "2004" , "2006" , "2007" , "2014" , "2020" , "also 2020 (quarantine baby)" , "2023" . [1] I'm only half-kidding. See the "Puzzle Brat" picture. [1] What the French so much more elegantly say instead of saying it "juices endorphins" [1] I do this with Legos as well. It's how I was raised. See the footnote below about my Dad being an engineer. At my house, we didn't just dump out Legos and starts slapping them together. We had those "three-chambered toolboxes" for the bigger pieces (they stacked well!), and those "many-drawered tool chests" for the smaller pieces. You would ask each other for pieces by name. You would select the pieces you need and pile them up and put something together that you were working on. When you were done? Like, done playing? Well, then you broke that stuff down and put it back in the drawers. Your future you would thank you for it. When we built a model of the "Saturn 5 rocket at Encodo" , they pointed and laughed when the first thing I did was start sorting pieces into little trays and boxes. That sucker had a lot of pieces. They stopped laughing and started appreciating soon enough. [1] Look, my Dad is, above everything, an engineer. He solves everything. If there's not a tool for it, he builds the tool. If you need a tool to build the tool, he builds that tool. if you have a puzzle, then you don't want to just leave it on the table, so you build a quick frame out of cardboard (as you can see in the image). You save them from year to year. Who knows? You might get lucky and have the same-sized puzzle next year. If the puzzle's a different size, then you can use the other frames to hold pieces. That shit stacks great. I'm just saying that the world is just a much-easier place for engineers and problem-solvers because, hell, just going downstairs on Christmas morning to spend thirty minutes finding the right pieces of spare cardboard and then measuring and cutting them to precisely the right size was fun too. And we hadn't even started the puzzle yet! But we were already problem-solving. And problem-solving is life. [1] X-acto knife please; don't be a savage. [1] No, I don't know which sorting algorithm I use. What's the one where you make groups? "Hell if I know" . [1] And, yes, I'm utterly aware that all of this detail is unnecessary to know. Of course it is. The animals are pretty cute, though. And they keep smiling nicely, even though they haunt my dreams now. Have you ever played Tetris? Like, played Tetris a lot? Well, if you have, you know what it's like to go to bed after a long Tetris session. Those blocks don't stop dropping when the game turns off. Your mind happily picks up where Sega or Atari left off. It's the same with the puzzle and that damned fox face or that damned chicken butt. [1] It makes me think of how, when one person keeps winning the World Championship Cycling Road Race, the course designers think of a course the next year that completely works against that person's strengths. [1] There's also a larger poster included with this damned thing that I have hung up on my dining-room wall, like I'm hunting a serial killer or something. No red threads, though, so I'm not crazy, right? [1] What's the hardest puzzle I've ever done, I hear no-one asking? Well, I'm glad no-one asked. I finished it in 2008. My sister-in-law had given it to me years before. It proclaims itself to be the world's most difficult jigsaw puzzle. [image] It has a mere 513 pieces but, * Every piece that wasn't an edge piece was exactly the same shape. * The picture was of a pile of silver dollars, all with pretty much the same shade and very little to differentiate them. * The puzzle was double-sided and had the exact same picture on the other side, but rotated 90 degrees. (For those following along at home, that's rule #1 -- flip all the pieces over -- right out the window.) The "completed picture" is: [image] For this one, I grouped by "being nearly identical." When I needed a piece, I would just try each one of them in turn, both sides, until one fit. You can see in this "in-progress picture" that I've made stacks of pieces all around the puzzle. I made stacks because they were all the same, so why put them next to each other? [image] At one point, I realized that an entire "chunk in the middle was upside-down" . Because all of the pieces are the same shape, it fit perfectly but the coins were misaligned by 1mm or probably less. [image] Finally, here's a photo that shows "both sides of the slightly rolled-up puzzle" [image]

Far Side favorites

2024-12-29T20:52:59+01:00

Published by marco on 29. Dec 2024 20:52:59 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ There was recently a "favorite Far Side" topic in the comics sub-reddit. I've lost the link and don't feel like searching for it. I downloaded all of the ones that I liked, so consider this article a distillation of -- and vast improvement over -- that post, The Far Side was pretty formative for me. Most of these are subversion of expectations, but many have multiple layers, which makes you feel clever for figuring it out. I had a lot of the books and collections and read through them again and again. This comic strippanel stems from a time when irony and a macabre sense of humor were not only appreciated, but feted. There was far less vetting, amelioration, and homogenization of content. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Let's start off with a macabre one that would probably not run anymore because the puritan 1980s have given way to the even-more-prudish and self-righteous 2020s. [image] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jokes like the one below only work because of Larson's impeccable style. Your eye is drawn to the sign because the salesman is looking at it. Despite the simple drawing, he's also obvious hesitating because he's wondering whether it's a typo. The eye roves elsewhere to find the answer. [image] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are levels here. If you think it's funny because "food" is misspelled, enjoy. It you think it's funny because the dog is trying to trap the cat, OK. If you laughed because it's ludicrous to think that it matters that cat food is misspelled because cats can't read, then you're getting there. [image] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I love how the cat in this next one is plastered to the window. The desperation is palpable. [image] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Another macabre one. The adorable goat is gazing calmly at the incoming plane. [image] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Let's do the other plane one. Again, you have to work at it, at least a little bit. [image] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- He knows it's wrong. He's going to do it anyway. Because it's funny. You can't not. [image] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You can read so much into this, but it's funny even if you don't. [image] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is one that I remember and find reason to cite occasionally. [image] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- He's so excited about his big day. [image] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I can't really explain why I love this one. Maybe because it's cows. [image] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The one below is the only one that I know didn't run in the regular papers because it was deemed too risqué. You can't have snakes eating babies. That's not the joke, though. The joke is what comes after. It's a little story. [image]

Pornography search terms 2024

2024-12-23T12:07:20+01:00

Published by marco on 23. Dec 2024 12:07:20 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The "2024 Year in Review" is available and has some fun facts. [1] For example, the U.S. had about the same percentage increase for "sneaky cheating" as the French did for "femme a lunette" (women with glasses). This blog post is 100% worth it just to learn terms like "milf culona" (big-ass MILF) in Spanish, which, together with "culo grande" (big ass) in Italian, set a sort of U.N.-like agreement about priorities for a lot of countries. Ukraine, though, wins with a trending search for "на мотоциклах" (on motorcycles). The breakdown of top relative term by state was illuminating. [image] I wonder if it's actually true? Iowa with "Work trip"? Pennsylvania with "Naked women"? Rhode island with "wedding"? Connecticut can't possibly be "queef," can it? What the hell? Still, I love that NYS is "Turkish" because I'm thinking that Eric Adams did that all by himself. Similarly, I feel like "footjob" in Colorado is also the work of a couple -- or at most a handful -- of highly dedicated and focused individuals. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I'm assuming that they're not just making these numbers and terms up. I don't see why they would need to.

Bizarre Adventures #34

2024-12-06T22:20:05+01:00

Published by marco on 6. Dec 2024 22:20:05 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]The comic "Bizarre Adventures #34 [Newsstand]" came out in 1981. [1] It would be the final issue of the Bizarre Adventures series but it was the first one I picked up. I was nine years old. I loved this comic. My best friend loved this comic. He still quotes it to me every once in a while, usually around the holiday season. It was nearly impossibly subversive. I am proud of my mom that she let me buy it, even though it literally says "Not for kiddies! We mean it!" right on the cover. It's really hard to find ... but found it I finally did. [2] There are several stories in it. Son of Santa! [image]Santa's son is down on his luck in New York. Santa's chief elf comes to find him, to bring him home. The Anti-Claus is trying to take down Santa. By the time they get back to the North Pole, the Anti-Claus has frozen Santa to death. "He even breached the inner sanctum!" [3] The Anti-Claus comes for son of Santa, who stabs him in the chest with a screwdriver, bounces a hammer off of his forehead, and then even chops off one of his arms with the runner of a sleigh. Nothing works, until he finally captures the Anti-Claus in Santa's sack. Howard the Duck's Christmas [image]This is a retelling of It's a Wonderful Life with Howard the Duck in the role of George Bailey. The angel who saves him from suicide on the bridge doesn't quite find as evocative scenes -- the first two visits, instead of showing how badly off his friends would be without him show his friends reach heights of heretofore unknown success. The last one, starring Howard's former girl Bev, looks like it's going to be convincing...but then it also turns out just like the first two: Bev is doing just fine -- grand, even -- without Howard. Back at the bridge, the angel is ready to commit suicide for being so bad at his job. Dr Deth Not to Mention Kip and Muffy [image]Dr Deth is a boy who travels on a motorcycle with sidecar, along with two voluptuous and Daisy Duke-clad sidekicks. They are on the trail of a bunch of filthy hillbillies, who's truck/house they invade, only to find an even younger boy in the back. When Dr Deth drops in through the "roof" of the truck, the boy thinks he's "Sandy Claws". Deth gives the boy his gun, who shoots his captors' brains out. And that's all she wrote. Slay Bells! [image]This story follows a boy whose father was killed by Santa Claus when Santa's fat ass slipped off of their roof right onto his father, who was looking out of the window to see what the noise on the roof was. Years later, the boy goes around at Christmas shooting anyone who's dressed up as Santa Claus. He finally gets the real one. Ten years later, his mom is crushed by a giant Easter Egg. The bunny's next. Santa Bites the Big Apple! (This One'll Sleigh You!) [image]Santa is fighting the smog of New York and the bad attitudes of New Yorkers. He's trying to deliver presents but people aren't very accommodating. He finally ends up being taken in by a cop and thrown in the drunk tank for the night. He escapes up the air shaft by laying a finger on the side of his nose... to find his sleigh has been robbed and he'd gotten a parking ticket, to boot. Frustrated, he eventually just opens a store where people can just come in and steal their presents. His head elf Kochmayer [4] isn't impressed. Santa replies, "'Good' is a relative term, Kochmayer. For New York, these are the good people. I mean, sure, they're grabbing their presents, and yes, they think they're stealing them from me...but you'll notice that not one of them has shot me." Bucky Bizarre [image]Bucky Bizarre is a time-traveler who late 1800s England as a nice place to spend Christmas. He happens upon an extremely buxom cigarette salesgirl who turns out to be a bomb-throwing revolutionary. Her buxomness was concealing two bombs. She attacks the house of a "lousy oppressor of the working multitudes" in what Bucky terms an "out-and-out class war." This is probably the most subversive story, having perhaps been instrumental in having put me on the road to where I am today, politically. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] The page for "Bizarre Adventures Vol 1 34" offers more information, including cast lists and brief synopses. [1] You can download the "CBR" (19MB). [1] This is probably the first time I'd ever read this phrase. Reading this kind of stuff was formative. It was subversive but not stupidly so. [1] Ed Koch was mayor of New York at the time; the elf is a dead ringer.

KRAZAM videos are gold

2024-05-12T00:05:01+02:00

Published by marco on 12. May 2024 00:05:01 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ KRAZAM makes videos about working in tech and, more specifically, about working in a tech team that has been scrummed out, with lots of layers of management. This is one of the more recent ones. [media] "Your friends and family understand what you do." "Your friends and family appreciate your humorous work stories…" "DevOps is a meaningful term." "That joke you told in your meeting was funny! If your coworkers were not on mute, you would've heard them laughing." At the beginning, it shows that outages were up 1940% from last month. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the classic, original video from KRAZAM. [media] "We need to pass a time range containing current time, and a time representing the end of the universe." "Learned a lot today; love Galactus." "Surprise and delight users by displaying their birthday on the settings page. ... Timezone? Korean bday vs. others." TIL "Happy New Year! You Are Now a Year Older in Korea: In the Korean peninsula, every person turns a year older on New Year’s." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This one is a wonderful, existential take on corporate buzzwords. [media]

ESC 2024: Semifinal #2

2024-05-11T23:35:15+02:00

Published by marco on 11. May 2024 23:35:15 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Malta Body suit. Naked-looking. Getting dragged around by a bunch of 90s-era-looking background dancers. This is just f*%ing awful. My ears hate me already. Jesus Christ, anyone who thinks this is good should reevaluate their life choices. This is how we're starting off? No-one will notice when the robots take over. They've blindfolded her, flipped her around, they all threw their shorts off, now they're porn-dancing. She's got quite a Madonna-style tooth-gap going on. Good for her. There was a bit of dubstep in there, as well as about five other music styles. "Duume druckä für die schöni Zahlückä." Albania She's singing in English. She thinks she's Adele? There's a single hairless dancer flailing about. More dancers on the stage. Now she's switched to a more R&B-style. There is nothing remotely recognizably Albanian about this presentation. I mean, I guess it's great that they have so many black people to send to the show? I wouldn't have suspected it, but that's on me and my latent judgyness. She's definitely going to move on, though, because she's got giant, squishy cleavage. Greece She's singing in what I assume is Greek. Now she's rapping in English. Her performance is very, very jerky, with a lot of TikTok-camera stuff going on. She's back in Greek? This is even worse than Malta. It's hard to watch. It's even harder to listen to. It's like a robot made this music. "Make a song in the style of Greek music, but with rapping." Switzerland I'm gonna go ahead and assume that Nemo is not going to cover himself in glory. I hate him already, just from his stupid intro. He's wearing a skirt, a feather boa, and clown shoes. Here we go. It's just him on stage. OMG he's rapping now. This is more energetic than Switzerland has been since DJ Bobo. It's still a terrible song. But goddamned if it's not growing on me. They're (singular they) singing in English, in case that wasn't already obvious. It would have been much better in Swiss German. This is 100% ESC. It's super-generic, but his gender-ambiguity is going to rocket him to the top. His voice isn't bad, NGL. Czechia She's singing in English. There are a bunch of people dancing on the stage. It's a pop-rock song. This is also an algorithmically guaranteed music style. She'll be moving on, even though the music is super-anodyne. They (multiple they. God this is tedious) also like fire. The part that gets me is that there are so many people clapping to the music. And, just when you think it's fake, they show the crowd going f&@king nuts, just going on a tear, out of their heads with excitement. She does a long note, just like every, single, other person so far. France You know that France is going to sing in French. Algerian dude is sleepy. He's lying on the stage. Lazy. Unsurprising. He has a nice voice, actually. Falsetto. Camera's very close, but he's a pretty boy. Ladies are going to eat this up. The camerawork is annoying as hell, though. Just swaying all over the place. This is not really my style of music, but he's very good. He's got good charisma on stage. My partner: "He's definitely the best of the pre-qualifieds." To be clear: "The other ones of the prequalifieds were trash." Austria She's dressed up like Assassin's Creed. She lost the robe within 20 seconds. She's singing in English. She's got video-game-style thigh-high boots on. It's just generic techno with the same hook that every damned techno song has. The chorus is "We will rave." How original. Just go listen to any "Lords of Acid" song and listen to how infinitely much better it is than this pale shadow. She'll probably make the final, because of the Memberberries effect and because she's tall and blonde and nearly naked. Denmark A black lesbian with psychological problems (if I interpreted the voiceover and intro video correctly). She's singing in English. It's nice to see that she can sing the same exact generic song as everyone else. Equality FTW. 🙌 "You've come a long way, baby." Armenia Traditional band with a balalaika and a trumpet. She's singing in what I assume in Armenian, although most of the lyrics are lalalalalala. They're wicked fun. This is classic, 20th-century ESC. There's a drum kit, a saxophone, a flute. They've got good energy. They're not going to make it, of course. I've always liked this style of music, though. I wouldn't change the radio station. Latvia He's singing in English. He's also dressed up in what looks like a blue, superhero suit. This song is pretty boring. It doesn't go anywhere. He's just reading a poem. His voice is decent, though. He doesn't have the stage presence of Salimane from France, though. Spain An older couple sings in Spanish. They don't know how old they are. The dude is playing a key-tar. Points for that, I guess. They keep focusing on the 60-year-old woman in a skintight bodysuit, though. She has two androgynous guys dancing with her. They've shucked most of their clothes now. They're dancing in corsets and thongs and a ton of mascara. They're not showing the keytarist enough. In fairness, the camera is loving the athletic, acrobatic guys in thongs and fishnet stockings. There's also a lady playing an electronic drumkit. The song sucked. San Marino There are six of them. That's like half the population. They're pretty goth. Let's see where this goes. She's dressed as a pink Godzilla. There are two dancers dressed up like evil bunnies. Pink is the theme color. Everyone's wearing a fur suit of some sort. They're pretty charismatic. The lead singer has tattoos all over her. She's singing in what sounds like Spanish, but might be the local dialect. The song's not great. It tries to be heavy metal. It's a good show, though. Like nearly every other performer, she takes off most of her clothes before she's done. Georgia OMG I'm so pretty. Look! I made a heart with my fingers. She's singing in English. Her song sounds like 90% of the other ESC songs. She has a bunch of energetic backup dancers, all male. None of them are wearing thongs or fishnets, so why am I watching? Correction: they're wearing long, dervish pants, so they might have fishnets and thongs under them, but I can't see them. Why am I so focused on the dancers? Because the song sucks. And the lady's totally generic. She is, however, just like the terrible Swedish singer who won last year, so maybe she's onto something. How do many of the people in the crowd already know the words? Have they voluntarily listened to this already? Belgium Who's this bellend? White guy with white-blond hair in a white suit singing English. Awful. Next. Estonia Two guys singing in what I can only assume is Estonian. There are four other dudes playing various instruments. I think one of them might be a zither. It's a generic beat. They rap-sing to it. Lots of shouting and exhortations to the crowd. No statuesque blonde. No be-thonged homosexuals. They're not moving on. Italy Italy sent a generic singer with a passel of background dancers. "Body-positive dancers," as my partner called them. They have a lot of detail on their costumes and lots of detail in the backdrops. She's singing in Italian. It's not a good song, but it's better because it's in Italian. Lots of pyrotechnics. It doesn't matter how generic they are because Italy is automatically qualified. Israel She's singing in English that's bad enough that I had to listen hard to be sure it wasn't Hebrew. When she didn't sound like she was clearing her throat, I figured it was English. She's in a circle, with a bunch of acrobats hanging on it. It's a terrible song. So generic. The dancing is sub-par. I honestly can't imagine that they'll move on. Long notes. Obviously. Ah, at the end, she sang a few stanzas in Hebrew. Norway A band singing in Norwegian and playing what look like traditional instruments. OK, there's a guitar, a bass, and a drumkit. You can't really hear much of that. It's mostly the lead singer (female). It's just the same f&@king song everyone else has already played. It's just in Norwegian. This is trash. Netherlands This dipshit. Jesus, no. There are two keyboards on stage. He started in Dutch, then switched to English. I think the chorus is in Dutch. This is one of those, "I know that my song is shit, but the lyrics are up on the wall, so sing along." This is maximum ESC, though. He sang a verse in German. I think it's meta because he keeps talking about what he's doing on stage right now? This is not a song. It's an assault on the ears. My partner, as they're falling asleep: "The chicken dances." Yeah, there's a giant blue chicken with the EU flag on its belly on the stage. Jesus wept. [image]France and Armenia should move on, I think. Probably Switzerland, too. Why not? France is already in, so I guess just Armenia and Switzerland. Who's actually going? Latvia, Austria, Netherlands, Norway, Israel, Greece, Estonia, Switzerland, Armenia. Israel is going. Nothing can stop them. Not even a spectacularly shitty song. Not even an ongoing genocide. Not even kettling 1.5M people into a spit of land and then carpet-bombing and starving them. And people are whining that student protests are changing the narrative? Not for all of Europe. They still love Israel.

ESC 2024: Semifinal #1

2024-05-11T23:22:55+02:00

Published by marco on 11. May 2024 23:22:55 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Cyprus Dances way better than Dua Lipa. But, then, doesn't everybody? She's 17 and lip-synced in English. Her backup dancers all look like they go to high school with her. She's very, very cute. Gorgeous, actually. And, for ESC very special: not in a porn-y way. Good for them. Serbia Alone on the stage. Goth-y. Low, slow song. She sang in what I assume was Serbian. She was barefoot. Utterly forgettable. We won't have to hear her again. Lithuania Not English. Rappy. Boys got some backup singers/dancers with him. Driving beat. The backup dancers are dressed as ninjas. Generic euro-pop. I don't even know why they bother. Ireland [image]Goth metal. She's non-binary. Lots of feathers. Long, crazy nails. "Schnallet euch an". Getting some serious Marilyn Manson/Malificent vibes from her. Her backup dancer is pretty awesome. He's got tattoos, filed teeth, body modifications. She's contorted and standing in a pentagram. This is f&@king awesome. It's a lovely, gentle chorus, then she drops her whole costume and starts exorcising her writhing dancer. The strobe lights are crazy. The show ends with a soul-rending scream and driving Nine Inch Nails beat. A flaming sign that says Crown the Witch ends the show. "Mir bruched e schnaufpause nachem Ireland." She sang in screams and English. England He doesn't even have to try because he's apparently already guaranteed a spot in the final. His voice is really weak. This is super-gay. Like, literally. It's not just homosexual overtones. They're all dressed as a bunch of boxers. The backup dancers are good; he's not. He dances like Dua Lipa. Since they said he'd give up his acting career, and he can neither sing nor dance, how do you describe that? What's the opposite of a triple-threat? Good thing he's already qualified, so we can see him again. He's sporting a "codpiece almost as big as Cameo's" was. He obviously sang in English. Ukraine There are two of them, but I only see one for the first minute of the song. She's singing in Ukrainian. This song is trash. They're hiding the big one. Where is she? Under the rock? Oh here she is. Samurai topknot. Oh, and she's a rapper. Even better. I can't understand a word she's saying, but her enunciation is precise as hell. Not like this mumble-rapping we have these days. Still trash. Next! Poland She's singing in English. Weak voice. She looks like she stole Gary Oldman's Dracula costume. Whoops -- that's gone. Now she looks like someone from Buck Rogers. Her song has only one chord, but at least it has a chorus, which, like, most of the songs in the Spotify top-ten don't bother having. This would be a good song if I were 11 years old. As usual, the dancers steal the show. I would turn this off if it came on the radio, though, NGL. Because you can't see the dancers on the radio. Croatia Dude's name is Baby Lasagna. He's singing in English. Rustic costumes. Rap-rock-folk style. Drummer on stage. Crazy dancers. Good chorus, Good bridge. Real guitar and bass. A keyboardist. A band! It's pretty generic rock, but they're entertaining. The camera is way too nervous. They command the stage. "E bittzli vo Ramstei inspiriert" Nein, nöd wirklich. Iceland Alone on stage. Singing in English. Holy shit, has she had work done. Cheek fillers. Eye work. Lots of gold lamé and frills. No backup dancers to save her, though. This is the kind of music that people will never notice has been replaced by AI because it always sucked. Making it with AI would lift it up to mediocre. Germany He's singing in English. He's next to a barrel. It's on fire. I kind of like that he's doing his own echoes. He likes fire. He's not bad. He's automatically in. The music's pretty weak. Give him a good band and he'd be way better. Put him in front of a Journey-tribute group and now we're talking. Nun singt er auf Deutsch. Very confusing. There are some backup singers on stage, but they are very far away. Maybe they're afraid of fire. Slovenia She has, apparently been accused of being a witch. I'm not surprised. She's skinny, has long, blond hair, has a ton of makeup on, and is lying nearly naked on the stage. Just kidding. She has a body suit on. Her backup dancers are wearing a lot less. She's singing in what I can only assume is Slovenian. They're going for a kind of zombified thing, I think. Her voice is reasonable, but the music is just so generic. In the words of my partner: No. Finland Their band is also super-gay -- like over-the-top gay. They are called Windows95Man. He started off looking like the gayest Brad Pitt ever, in cutoff jean-shorts. Now he's wearing even less. I don't think he's actually wearing pants. He has a thong on. They keep blocking the view. I think he's going for a Finnish Weird Al thing. They are lowering the jean shorts from the ceiling. The song is trash, but this whole show is pretty entertaining. They sang in English. Moldova She's alone on stage, singing in English. She's got a bit of an accent. She's "afwaid". Her chorus is in Moldovan, I believe. There's not much to say about this one. She's wearing some of a Heraclitean dress -- probably designed by a relative. Oh, she's playing a violin now. Now she's doing the Fifth Element opera barking thing. Sweden Two guys. Singing in English, obviously. Their voices are not good. Just teeny-pop stuff. Like, if you think music in Mallorca is good in the summer, then you'll probably like this song. You'll probably clap your hands off, like all of the fools in the crowd. Their song is probably called She's Unforgettable...but their song is not. I'm sure Sweden thinks that sending a couple of young guys will make the panties drop to the floor, but it's trash. Their background should come with an epilepsy warning. Good thing these two dipshits are already qualified. Azerbaijan Two dudes. First guy's on stage by himself, singing in English. Second guy showed up. His warbling is pretty good, actually. The song's kind of meh, though, when the warbler's chorus isn't going. This wasn't very good. Australia Their voice is pretty good. There's a keyboardist on stage. The focus in on the singer. The keyboardist also sings. He shouldn't. Are they a couple? I guess it doesn't matter. Some more random people showed up on stage. Are they singing? Are they dancing? They're not really dancing. Australia's genocide is in the past, so there's no controversy about them participating. Portugal She's singing in Portugese. Slow, now accompanied by a guitar and bass (not on stage). She's not bad. Her backup dancers have gimp masks on. Like, again. Like, half of the backup dancers have had gimp masks on. What's up with the gimp masks? Am I missing something? The song started off OK, but it's not really my thing. I would switch it if it came on the radio. Luxembourg She's singing in French and then a bit in English. I'm kind of a sucker for acoustic-guitar-accompanied chanson. But it's just the intro. She dances like Dua Lipa. Like, not good. Her voice is decent. Her backup dancers are kind of uninspiring. She's quite cute, though. Two long, long pigtails. They're fake, of course. She should have stuck to the chanson in French instead of going to the generic ESC-style pop-beat track she ended up with. Russia Just kidding. Obviously Russia can't come. They're savages, uniquely evil in the world. Up next: Israel! Israel Just kidding. They're up on Thursday. They're not savages like those filthy Russians, so they're allowed to participate. Send Croatia and the Irish witch (obviously). Maybe Luxembourg? The hot girl from Cyprus? Otherwise, I don't care who they send. #sendthewitch, though. They ended up sending Serbia, Portugal, Slovenia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Finland ... and then finally the four I noted above: Cyprus, Croatia, Ireland, Luxembourg.

The Cosmic Call

2024-04-24T22:33:44+02:00

Published by marco on 24. Apr 2024 22:33:44 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The article "Try it and see" by Mark Dominus discusses the graphic below, which is part of the "Cosmic Call", a message to extraterrestrials. [image] The author says that he told his 11-year-old niece, "“I bet you could figure it out if you tried.” She didn't believe me and she didn't want to try. It seemed insurmountable." I sent this to a few people in my family. [Hint #1] After a little while, I provided some context. The Cosmic Call is: "In 1999, two Canadian astrophysicists, Stéphane Dumas and Yvan Dutil, composed and sent a message into space. The message was composed of twenty-three pages of bitmapped data, and was sent from the RT-70 radio telescope in Yevpatoria, Ukraine, as part of a set of messages called Cosmic Call." This is a message that we sent to a potential recipient that we expect to be intelligent enough to understand the message, but with which we share no culture or language. How would you do that? All you can really say is "I am sentient and capable of understanding that the universe contains structure" and "I understand that there are some absolutes that do not differ no matter what your culture, your creed, your language, or your gender." Hint: math. [Hint #2] There were still pleas that it was indecipherable, so I sent some more hints. The message is to a civilization with which we share nothing. No common language, no common culture, nothing. How would you communicate with someone like that? What could you possibly say to them that they would understand? The first message you could communicate is "I am capable of communication." But that’s clear in the fact that a message exists. The next message would be "I am capable of reasoning. I can extrapolate. I have understood basic things about the universe." What might such a basic thing be? What could we say that anyone/thing with intelligence would also have to know? That’s where math comes in. There are some things that are absolutely unchangeable in the universe. That two is twice as large as one, for example. How do you teach your interlocutor that you understand this? Well, you have to start at the very beginning. You have to explain what "one" is. You have to explain how you count. What if the other party doesn’t use base ten? We can teach that too. What should our message be, though? Is there a sequence we could show? Something that our future friend will recognize and realize that something intelligent made the message? There are three sections, roughly corresponding to the parts of a magic act: "The Pledge" (The magician shows you something ordinary), "The Turn" (The magician does something interesting with the ordinary), and then "The Prestige" (The magician does something extraordinary). Pretend you’re learning a language taught by a robot.

Some good, American comedians

2023-12-28T21:48:39+01:00

Published by marco on 28. Dec 2023 21:48:39 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ There are a ton of comedians that everyone talks about, like George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and so on. I was talking to some friends in Switzerland who are very much into stand-up comedy and they asked for some suggestions. We talked about a few comedians -- Bill Hicks, Bill Burr, and Doug Stanhope -- that they might want to try. They all have good insight into the human condition and don't shy away from describing humanity as it actually is, rather than how we wish it were. I started off more sparse, then went down an absolute rabbit hole researching Bill Burr -- with copious and details notes and transcripts of several hour-long shows -- then got sad that I'd not done the same honor to the other comedians on the list. I saw a gaping hole where the "George Carlin" section was, got frustrated, and then left it for about three months. I ended up moving Bill Burr to the end; don't skip that. He's pound-for-pound a definite candidate for the GOAT. [George Carlin] George Carlin definitely belongs on here, but I only had the energy to dig out a quote from an older article. "Americans are efficient, professional, compulsive consumers. Shopping – it’s their civic duty. Consumption – it’s the new national pasttime. Fuck baseball. The only true lasting American value that’s left is buyin’ things. People spending money they don’t have on things that they don’t need,” which also applies to their government." You can find a ton of his stuff on YouTube. [Richard Pryor] When I "watched Richard Pryor: Live in Concert (1978) in 2016" , it was at "this link, but the video has been removed." . I'm pretty sure the link above is the one I watched, but I'm not sure. It's audio only, but its 82 minutes long, which seems about right. It's a shame there's no video because he's a very expressive comedian. [media] [Bill Hicks] * He died in 1994 of pancreatic cancer before the drinking or smoking could kill him. * He has four albums; they're worth listening to as albums because he has nice segue music and the bits are related; there's a rhythm. * Material dates from the late 80s to right up until he died. * A lot of it is timeless. * Particularly his bits on the Iraq war. You know he's talking about the first one, but damned if it doesn't sound like he's talking about the second one, too. Time is a wheel. * Some of his albums are on YouTube, like "Relentless (1992)" . [Doug Stanhope] * He's the filthiest of all of these comedians. * He's still doing standup. * He's not dead yet, despite drinking and smoking enough for ten people. * Some of his stuff in on YouTube. * A lot of it is on the music services (YouTube and Apple Music). * Maybe start with something like The Funny Thing About Child Porn from the album From Across the Street. [Norm Macdonald] Norm MacDonald was an interesting guy, with a very different delivery. His book "Based on a True Story: Not a Memoir" is well-worth checking out. The video is of what I believe to be his best joke. There is a ton of material on YouTube, as well as "Hitler’s Dog, Gossip & Trickery" and "Norm MacDonald has a show" . [media] [Chris Rock] This is Rock's timeless bit that he performed only once, according to "Niggas vs. Black People" and "Bring the Pain" . [media] [Bill Burr] [image] * Also still doing standup * Bill Burr is kind of my spirit animal. Money quote: "To me this is not yelling. I am not yelling. I'm just passionate about my opinions and I want to tell you all of them before you start talking again." * This is repeated further down the list, but start here. This is what I consider to be possibly the best 4 minutes of standup I know: "Bill Burr: Arnold Schwarzenegger" * Probably the funniest off-the-cuff (not material prepared) comedian I've ever seenThis is two hours of what seems like a Bill Burr stand-up routine, but is just an on-stage and lightly prepared version of his weekly podcast. He has a little piece of paper to remind him of topics he wanted to cover -- probably the same as he does every week. He just throws out a pretty good set -- just like that. [media] "Offstage: [reading listener chats] ...well, you've already talked about the Fed, Fatties, and Botox, so that's good... Bill: So what? Is Skynyrd not going to play Freebird?" "I'll tell you this: the day American black people care about soccer, that is the end of all of you." At 80:00, he goes on a glorious run about women's volleyball and the booty shorts. "Can I be honest with you? That's why, you know, like, when they started doing that thing where they were going to have trans people going to school? [...] Like, that's why I was against that shit. Like, wait a minute...you haven't even figured out how to do the right version heterosexually. You know what I mean? [...] All they did was just tell you what happened physically. [...] "There should have been a guy there going YOUR FUCKING LIFE WILL BE OVER. AS YOU KNOW IT. DO YOU KNOW WHY PUSSY FEELS SO GOOD? BECAUSE IF IT ONLY FELT OK, WE WOULD JUST JERK OFF BECAUSE IT WOULDN'T BE WORTH IT. "Finding a woman can be the greatest thing of your fucking life. OR END IT. That's what they should have been screaming at people." * "The Joe Rogan Experience: End of the World Podcast 2016: Election night special" (which has since been removed or made "Spotify-only" , or whatever) * He has a podcast * * Lots of stuff on YouTube * "Bill Burr: “I’ll Never Own a Helicopter” - Full Special" * "Bill Burr - Motherhood Isn't The Hardest Job" * "BILL BURR on MOVIE RACIAL STEREOTYPES" * "Bill Burr - Motel Rooms And First Ladies" * "Bill Burr - What Separates Me From Psychos" * "Bill Burr - Titanic Is A Horror Film" * "Bill Burr - The Hitler Family Name" * [media] * And, possibly the best 4 minutes of standup I know: "Bill Burr: Arnold Schwarzenegger" * He has several specials on Netflix and YouTube * * In descending order of my preference * I'm Sorry You Feel That Way (2014) * You People Are All the Same (2012) * Why Do I Do This? (2008) At 16:45, "I love old people. There's always there, with their family photos. It cracks me up. And they're all proud. 'Well, we had five kids, and then they all had five kids. [...]' Yeah! And none of you did shit! I don't recognize anybody in that photo. You just made thirty people, who are all taking a shit every day, that ends up in a river. That's not a family photo -- that's an environmental disaster. And you framed it!" At 24:20, "No. They're relentless. They never stop. And there's no reason for them to stop. You know why? 'Cause you can't hit 'em. That's what it is. Think about that. There's no physical ramifications for being an asshole when you're a woman. Do you know how much of a dick I would be if it was socially unacceptable to kick the shit out of me? Dude, I would be trashing everyone I saw." At 42:50, "I'm telling you, man, ... that's the funny about Hitler. Just let me finish. Just let me work my way through this idea. My favorite sports clip is that Jesse Owens shit. I just love it because their [Nazis'] whole angle was fucked up ... he made Hitler leave in the third quarter, right? He's putting down his #1 finger and just fucking walking out of the stadium, like [Hitler saying] 'Jesus Christ!' "Their whole thing was like, 'Ve are going to create a superior race!' It's like, dude, I think we accidentally already did that. It's like we sent a select group of people to the gym every day for a couple of hundred years and it's paying dividends. They're dunking on us every day. "Dude, how quiet was that limo ride home with Hitler? You know he was talking crazy shit when they were on the way there: 'Ve are going to DOMINATE! SIEG HEIL!' Just going off. That whole ride home, they're just sitting there, all quiet. You're sitting next to an even angrier than usual Adolf Hitler, trying to make some sort of small talk." At 48:15, there's a visual bit about what "separates the psychos from the functioning psychos," where he discusses the pros and cons of being a serial killer. Transcription doesn't do any of these justice, but this one is not transcribable.Let It Go (2010) At 5:00, "And she does the most difficult job of all: being a mother. [...] Dude, women are just constantly patting themselves on the back about how hard their lives are -- and no-one corrects them because they all want to fuck 'em." At 12:45, "You know what I hate about these corporate chains? You go in there, you're paying for a business, they make you do half the job, though. I don't get it. "Like, I walk in, say, let me get a turkey sandwich, lettuce, tomato, on rye, with mayonnaise. "The guy behind the counter's like 'turkey sandwich, lettuce, tomato, on rye'. "Yeah, and mayonnaise. "'Oh, the mayonnaise is, uh, right over there.' "Really? Well then why don't you, UH, go over there and put it on my sandwich? You get it? I'm on this side of the register. Guy who's orders the sandwich [points to self], guy who makes the sandwich [points away]. I'm sorry they fired the mayonnaise guy, but I'm not doing it! I just gave you 100% of the money to make 100% of the sandwich. This isn't like a relay race. Do you recognize me? It's because I don't fucking work here! "I just wanted to grab this guy by the throat and say 'where is he!? Where is he?!' "'Where's who?' "The guy making me do all of this extra shit. I'd just choke my way up the corporate ladder, until I get to that "Eyes Wide Shut" party and everybody's sitting there, getting blown. I come in and just kick the door open. The second they see my angry face, I don't even have to explain myself. 'How big's your fucking yacht gotta be?'" At 20:10, "Do you know how many times a week people asking me why I'm angry? I'm not angry. I'm passionate about my opinions and I want you to hear all of them before you get to talk again." At 23:40, "It's just it scares me, you know, I just get nervous. When I see that stereotypical married guy, just like a shell of my former self. You know, every weekend, up on that silver ladder, just scooping shit out of the gutters. My neighbor coming over, you know, "[neighbor] 'Hey Bill, how's it going?' "Aw, you know, pretty good, pretty good. Suzie keeps getting bigger, you know. I've been wearing this shirt for eleven years, I don't know what happened to my dreams, you know, I just like coming up here 'cause it's quiet, you know, I just stand up here and think about what might have been, Yeah. "My neighbor's not even listening to me. He's all excited about some garden hose he bought at Brookstone. He's convinced it was designed by NASA. "[neighbor] 'Actually, it's got two nozzles, one for the hot and one for the cold. "Really? Is it long enough to go around both our necks and the chimney, so we can tandem jump off of this roof?" At 30:05, "All right. This is how it works with guys. Anytime you do something remotely sensitive, heartwarming, anything that's going to make you more of a loving, caring individual, immediately all of your guy friends suggest that maybe, just maybe, you want to suck a dick. "Oh, it's brutal. Even if you do something smart. Like, it's raining outside. 'He's got an umbrella. WHAT A FAG. OMG. What are you? Afraid of the water? Put your shoulder up, you fuckin' homo. Jesus Christ. What, did you pull that thing out of your ass? Oh, it's brutal. It doesn't even have to make sense. "Dude, 'what are you, a fag?" is the reason why guys drop at 55, out of nowhere, it's literally from five decades of just suppressing the urge to hug a puppy, admit a baby's cute, say you want a cookie. You just gotta keep PUSHING IT DOWN." It just keeps going (again visual, untranscribable; just watch it). At 40:45, "I'm telling you, whatever they're doing to dogs, they're going to be doing to us in like ten years. They [dogs] got those six microchips with their balls cut off. I'm telling you. "That's what you're going to hear in the future. Dude, did you hear about Eddie? Aw, they turned his chip off man! Dude, the guy's fucked! He is fucked! He made one little joke about the government, next thing you know, when he had to buy a round, his head wouldn't go through [mimes trying to swipe forehead like a credit card] They kept scanning it. Nothing! He's outside, screaming up at a satellite. Awww...turn it back on! They're not turnin' it back on. The dude's fucked. The dude is fucked. Dude, I ain't standin' next to him, they're going to shut my chip off. I don't even know that guy." At 42:00, a great, long tirade on conspiracy theories and how bankers run the world. "What's the difference between a banker and a loan shark? What the banker does is legal."

Cruciverbalism and cruciverbalism-adjacent

2023-12-26T21:43:26+01:00

Published by marco on 26. Dec 2023 21:43:26 Updated by marco on 20. Jul 2025 22:06:56 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Just a couple of quick notes. It's the depths of winter and I've had some time off, so I'm playing with puzzles. I kind of like "Wordle" . I don't play to win as quickly as possible. I like to throw unusual words at it, on the off chance that it will result in a lucky punch. [image] I sent the picture above to a friend who also likes Wordle with the note: "There are probably not a lot of people who unironically and eminently hopefully guess "capon" before they’re forced to remember that "bacon" would also have worked." Sometimes I deliberately try guessing as "badly" as possible to see how long I can keep the field gray, using up as many letters as possible before solving it. For example, if you look at the keyboard, there is really only one solution remaining, given the revealed letters. The solution has to be CAL_E of CA_LE, with the letters shown on the keyboard (or C, A, L, E). It could have been "calve", but "cable" seemed like the better bet. The Wordle almost never uses a fancy word like "calve" (either because of its relation to proletarian animal-husbandry, or because of its relation to climate-change, with glaciers "calving"). [image] I finished another recent Wordle in three steps by first guessing Quest, then Emoji, then was quite surprised to find that Evoke was actually the answer. [image] Update 15.04.2025: we hit 1000 puzzles today. 🫰 we can tie our streak tomorrow. [image] In "Spelling Bee" news, I continue to add to a list of real words that the puzzle does not recognize. I'm up to over 150 of them. My most recent addition is phaeton. [image] I also did a couple recently that had very few words and points. [image][image] And, finally, the actual crossword advertised in the title. My partner and I have a very long streak going -- almost five years -- and we've amassed quite a lot of statistics. I generally don't do Monday-Wednesday because those are the easy ones. Again, because I have more free time -- and I'm currently six hours ahead of my partner -- I gave Monday a shot for Christmas. I wanted to set a record time. [image] I was pretty pleased with myself. 4:20 is very fast. I was certain that I'd just set the record. Unfortunately, the NY Times has stored some unusual numbers. [image] We've never solved a Monday puzzle in 1:15. That's pretty much impossible, I think, unless you already knows the answers and are just transcribing them into the game interface. I could see that the record for Tuesday is 4:21, so I beat that one, at least, if only by a second. 😉 Finally, I just noticed that I had an old screenshot lying around of our average times when we were still at a 765-day streak. [image] I compared to a recent screenshot, at 1710 days, and the daily averages haven't moved much, a few a bit slower, a few a bit faster. [image] Here we are, almost a year later, at 2047 days, and the daily averages are still stable. [image] And here we are, at just over six years. [image] We're getting better and better. Some days go really well. Here's a recent Saturday, where we almost equalled our all-time record of 07:50 with a strong showing of 09:44. [image] [Connections] There's another game called Connections that involves grouping 16 words into four groups of four words. I always try to solve them in reverse order of difficulty, from hardest to easiest. The most difficult group is purple and is usually easy to spot because it almost always involves a common prefix or suffix. If you've got a group without a prefix or suffix, then it's probably not the purple group. The next three groups aren't always so easy to distinguish. I've quite often been surprised to see a grouping that I thought was pretty obvious marked as "blue" (second-hardest). I've since learned that the NYT has a very specific view of the world: they think that anything to do with the proletariat -- video games, TV shows, sports (especially sports) -- is difficult. The other day, they had "WNBA teams" as the blue group...which is fair, actually. No-one knows those. Except me, baby. [Homophones] I was particularly proud of having gotten this purple grouping, which was a rare "homophone" one: [image] * Purple: Indy, Mettle, Seoul, Wrap were "Homophones of music genres" * Blue: Greyhound, Caterpillar, Puma, and Dove were "Companies named after animals" * Green: Squeeze, Shoehorn, Wedge, Sandwich were "Cram" * Yellow: Belt, Slug, Blow, Sock were "Punch" [Things featuring tails] Another puzzle we recently had was rated the hardest I'd ever seen, with only 33% of about a 1/4-million players even finishing the puzzle, and only 4% finishing it without a mistake -- and probably far fewer completing it with a "reverse rainbow." Here's the summary, noting that the puzzle was "exceptionally tricky" with a "5/5 Difficulty". [image] There are more detailed ratings as well. Here, you can see which percentile you landed in and can see the breakdown of how many points you get for completing a puzzle with no mistakes, and then bonus points you get for completing the puzzle with savoir faire. In this case, the "reverse rainbow" means that you solved the puzzle in decreasing level of difficulty, which is much more difficult because it means that you have to solve all of the combinations at once without clearing any of them out of the way. Update: 2025-05-29: I was just thinking today that getting a reverse rainbow is not just knowledge of correlations between words but also tests empathy. You have to not only get into the heads of other puzzle solvers, trying to figure out what they think might consider difficult -- e.g., when trying to determine which group of four words is "green" and which four are "easier" and therefore "yellow" -- but what the people who make the puzzle think would be easier or more difficult for their readers. That is, everyone's making assumptions about context and knowledge in other people, triangulating toward the reverse rainbow. Purple is often extending the four words with another word. But blue is often something to do with science or engineering -- which are anathema to NYT readers -- or more-obscure vocabulary. What counts as obscure vocabulary is often somewhat shocking if you're widely and well-read. You also have to take into account that younger generations read other things -- or don't read much at all. So they won't have encountered words that I consider to be normal, having grown up with them. There's also the people who are doing this whole thing in what is still their non-native language, even if they've long since become fluent in English. The missing cultural cues are crucial. All in all, "reverse rainbow" add an extra layer of difficulty to Connections that ends up flexing muscles other than knowledge of trivia and ability to correlate or find patterns. Update: 2025-07-17: The example below shows what happens when the New York Times follows its regular pattern only some of the time. [image] The purple was tough -- Kath got it -- and very clearly the purple. But who in the name of God was going to guess that people at the New York Times think that knowing the names of Sharp Fasteners is really hard? Or that they think that their cohort of solvers wouldn't know what "brads" or "tacks" are? How in the name of God is that blue? We knew that sports was tough for Upper East Siders -- who would rather die than watch football, unless they're doing it ironically or from a skybox -- but we didn't think the clues were that tought, so we went with "water comes from a faucet, right?" [image] Finally, here is the puzzle itself. [image] * Purple: Coin toss, Comets, Dress Coat, and Sonic the Hedgehog were "Things featuring tails" * Blue: Asteroids, Breakout, Centipede, and Defender were "Classic Atari games" * Green: Charm, Court, Pursue, and Romance were "Woo" * Yellow: Fairy Tale, Fantasy, Fiction, and Invention were "Fabrication" [Starting with European Capitals] On 30.01.2025, [image] * Purple: BERNIE, PARISH, RIGATONI, ROMEO were "Starting with European Capitals" [#1 songs from 1982] [image] * Purple: ABRACADABRA, CENTERFOLD, MICKEY, PHYSICAL were "#1 songs from 1982"

Passenger Tortoise

2023-12-26T17:43:29+01:00

Published by marco on 26. Dec 2023 17:43:29 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ When a friend recently responded to messages of mine from nine days ago, I wrote back, "Don’t sweat it. I just like to imagine that my messages arrive at Apple headquarters, whereupon they’re laboriously transcribed and illuminated by monks before being delivered to you by tortoise. The return trip takes equally long." [image][image][image][image]

SBB was having a bad day

2023-11-28T22:59:40+01:00

Published by marco on 28. Nov 2023 22:59:40 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Today was not a great day for the SBB. I took three trains to get where I was going and each of them was 3-4 minutes late. The Swiss pack their schedules pretty tightly, so 4 minutes late at the end meant that the SBB had eaten up the two-minute buffer between the train's arrival in Dietikon and the departure of the 301 bus I was meant to catch. It was only a 1km walk, so no big deal, but it might have sucked more had it been raining even harder than it was -- or had it been as windy as it has been lately. Here's the KIS -- Kunden Information System -- on the final train. [image] * It always shows the planned departure time, never the actual departure time. * It never indicates that it's going to arrive late. Instead, it always shows the hopeful ETA from the schedule. * The little clock on the right shows 08:25:25, which would mean that the train was leaving after it was scheduled to arrive. * However, the clock was wrong too! It was actually 08:20 at the time. * The train ended up leaving at 08:23 and getting to Dietikon at 08:29, long after the bus had left. In the SBB App on my phone, it wrote "The connection cannot be guaranteed" for the bus. No 💩.

Cool celebrity photos

2023-11-28T21:36:49+01:00

Published by marco on 28. Nov 2023 21:36:49 Updated by marco on 27. Dec 2024 19:54:03 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The post "What's a picture of a celebrity that lives rent free in your mind? I'll start...." by N_Ywasneverthesame gives us this image of Mads Mikkelsen. [image] The foreground objects make this a bit of an odd photo, but he looks cool. [image] I think this is from The Jerk. I was a big fan growing up. She's hilarious. [image] Big DILLIGAF energy. [image] This was an actual photo shoot that Chris Evans did. No-one should let him forget it. [image] These two fools also did a photo shoot. [image] So did John Wick, way back in his Private Idaho days. I think someone wrote that this photo shoot was promoting a play he was in with Carl Marotte. [image] Picture included for the dog's sheer bliss. [image] There were like a dozen photos of Paul Newman, so I included one (even though you can't see his trademark blue eyes in this black-and-white photo). [image] Another guy with another car. He's on the Furka Pass in Switzerland. This is one I have on rotation in my desktops, not from the post. [image] Keanu's in here twice, but this one is for Patrick Swayze. Cool. [image] And, finall, here's "Sophia Loren trying not to get killed by Jayne Mansfield's chest" .

Mad Props for Yngwie Malmsteen

2023-11-10T14:25:06+01:00

Published by marco on 10. Nov 2023 14:25:06 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The YouTube recommendation algorithm is slowly starting to get better for me. For example, it showed me this video: [media] Japan: where speed-metal virtuosity goes to dielive forever. I love watching an earnest and serious Japanese orchestra playing along with the music I grew up with. It's 2017, Yngwie's gotten chubby, he looks maybe a bit ridiculous in all of his stretched leather, gold rings, and gold watch -- but he sounds amazing. You can really hear how appropriate most of his compositions were for an orchestra. He's flying the whole time, but at 55:30, he just goes extra nuts. After that, he finally takes his first break (!). He plays two encores, ending with one of my absolute favorites, Far Beyond The Sun, which is technically ridiculous, after 65 minutes of solid soloing. The orchestral arrangement is fantastic. He's like a machine. You can absolutely see the effort, but the hands. Do. Not. Stop. I've listened to this song hundreds of times from the album. I can't hear a single false note in this live performance. It's not a carbon copy, but the keys are perfect. Yeah, I'd have been standing and cheering too. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My partner knows me pretty well, too, better even than the YouTube algorithm. They sent me this video soon after (probably because they heard me playing the first video at an inappropriate volume). [media] This was an excellent interview, filled with technical music information that I can barely follow, but that I love to listen to. Yngwie shared a lot about his early career. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Next up is the YouTube algorithm, introducing me to Doug Helvering, whom I'm going to assume by the accent is from Tennessee. I have to say, he was pretty great and I've subscribed to his channel now. [media] "This is in E^♭-minor, not G-minor, which is inherently more difficult to play. G-minor is not that bad. But E^♭-minor just ups the level of difficulty, mainly because the strings don't have any open tunings, open strings in that key, that they can anchor off of, so every position has to be covered and hooded with their hands." On the one hand, I'm delighted to discover things like this but, on the other, I'm also in no position to determine whether he's full of shit. I feel like it opens up a whole world of complexity that non-musicians just don't have access to. We just listen to music and like it -- and musicians see the matrix. This is why I love listening to Rick Beato and people like Doug Helvering, "it's one of these full-diatonic progressions [...] it's a way to take a stroll through an entire chord collection of the key that you're in." Awesome, Doug. Thanks for letting me know that you're enjoying this on about six more levels than I am. 😉

Family emojis cannot be unseen

2023-10-25T22:27:46+02:00

Published by marco on 25. Oct 2023 22:27:46 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "What's New in Unicode 15.1 & Emoji 15.1" by Keith Broni [image] Am I the only one that thinks bad thoughts when he sees, for example, the third emoji in this list? I know that they think it's a parent with a child, but does that not look like a gender-neutral blowjob to you? You won't be able to unsee it, either. In fact, I can't look at any of the four pictures and see "family". Look at the second one! That's two people "sharing"! How does the emoji committee not see this? Or maybe they do! Maybe they're making emojis for "three-way" (the first two), "blowjob" and "swinging". Oh, and apparently there are a bunch of characters important for "China’s mandatory GB 18030 standard" and there are a bunch of emojis for people in wheelchairs, with canes and stuff, which I guess is good...but I can't get past these "family" emojis.

Generational Disconnect

2023-04-15T23:20:00+02:00

Published by marco on 15. Apr 2023 23:20:00 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I was watching a video today -- "Everything Is Going to Be Fine: Preparing for the end of the world" by Aeon Video -- which featured the narrator and his wife in their apartment, shown below. [image] This is actually what they look like -- like caricatures made up by conservative "comedians" making fun of hipsters. I know we shouldn't make fun of people's appearance -- lord knows I have no idea what I'm doing -- but this was just too good to pass up. He has a pen in his pocket. What is that? It was only later that I noticed the horrible, horrible paintings on the wall behind them. My finger is definitely not on the pulse of the next generation, at least not whatever clique these two represent.

Humor is sooo context-dependent

2023-01-28T12:30:51+01:00

Published by marco on 28. Jan 2023 12:30:51 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I was chatting with a friend about mistranslations and "false friends" (words that sound like a word in another language, but have a completely different meaning). He sent me a link to "Slowly down the feathers floated..." , an image without context. Still, in the image, you could see that a menu item on a Chinese menu had been translated to "Fuck the duck until exploded", which is humorous, but only on a pretty superficial level, if we're being honest. Using the word "fuck" without seeming to understand its connotations is the funny bit there. The poetic and somewhat mysterious title, though, lent the image a greater allure. So, I asked the great Internet search engine where I could find other references and the link "Slowly down the feathers floated..." appeared. Now, there's a bit more context, but you have to work to find it. The image was posted on "boottoobig", a highly specific subreddit where people include "posts where the title sets up a joke as the first half of a poem and an image delivers the punchline as the second half." This is what it looks like, in context. [image] Now that we know this, we can get another layer of humor, "Slowly down the feathers floated... Fuck the duck until exploded." It's a poem. It's funny because poems are supposed to be profound, not profane. I dunno. Sometimes it's the whole package that makes it extra-amusing. It's kind of like Monty Python? You know? Just silly and a bit over-the-top, but funny nonetheless. No attempt at being political and probably cross-culturally appealing. There's no need to get carried away with it, but sometimes things online are just funny. And then you carry on with your day. [Boottoobig] But where did that adorable chihuahua come from? "The post that started it all" explains. [image] The photo is clear enough, but the text is inexplicably grainy and JPEG-ed to death, which only makes it funnier? The prose's absolutely nihilist approach to grammar, spelling, and capitalization seems so deliberate that it's funny rather than infuriating. Enough people were so taken with this concept that they launched an entire forum based on it. The provenance of the image is lost to the mists of time. It's not even the original. The following image, posted into the comments, shows a more believably JPEG-ed rooster in blue farm boots. [image] The author photo is the same and the matching blurriness indicates that this is "more original" than the "original" shown above. It's funny and cute, but not as funny and cute as the hyperthyroid and somewhat concerned-looking chihuahua.

Wordiply

2023-01-23T21:14:15+01:00

Published by marco on 23. Jan 2023 21:14:15 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ So there's a new game called "Wordiply" that I took for a test drive. The rules are that you start with a sequence of letters. Your job is to think of the five longest words that you can, that include those letters, in that order. That's it. I did the warmup and then took a crack at today's puzzle. Booyah: 🅦🅞🅡🅓🄸🄿🄻🅈 #33 🌟 Length Score: 100% 💫 Rare long word found! 🚀 Letter Score: 76 🔗 Play Wordiply: https://www.wordiply.com 🎬 Today's starter: 🄲🅁🄸🅃 [image] * Hypercriticality * Supercriticality * Hypercricially * Supercritically * Hypercriticism 4 out of 5 of the words were "rare long words found!" That makes me a "Smarty-pants." Duh. I can stop playing now. I've already won.

Jigsaw puzzles

2023-01-22T15:20:47+01:00

Published by marco on 22. Jan 2023 15:20:47 Updated by marco on 22. Jan 2023 15:29:14 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I just finished my first jigsaw puzzle in more than 21/2 years. A von Ballmoos Christmas tradition is to put together a jigsaw puzzle. The putting-together of it borders on obsession and we stay up ridiculously late, straining our eyes in the dim winter light and ignoring the telephone. I got started a bit late this year, but still managed to strain my eyes and go to sleep very, very late. [2023: NY Public Library] This one started off relatively straightforward, but the final 1/4 or so was quite hairy because all of the pieces were more-or-less white. It became a slog of picking up a unique-looking piece and looking at the reference image until I was able to see where it should go. I following this course of action: 1. Spill out all of the pieces 2. Flip everything right-side up, filtering edges and unique-looking pieces (e.g., pieces with yellow, red, and green on them, in this case) 3. Put together as much of the border as I can 4. Put together taxis (red and yellow pieces) 5. Discover that the blue sky pieces are unique enough to sort out and do those 6. Pick up a unique-looking piece, look at the reference image until I was able to see where it should go, hope that it goes somewhere where it attaches 7. Once pattern-matching stopped working, I sorted the remaining pieces by shape and orientation, then worked on matching those to gaps in the puzzle 8. With only forty or fifty pieces left, the task was manageable enough that I could once again start pattern-matching, mixing with shape- and orientation-matching 9. The last ten pieces were a breeze. 🙃 [image] All pieces right-side-up and edge pieces sorted (25 minutes): [image] Frame, taxis, and sky almost done (~2.5 hours) [image] There were no more pictures here because I think I went into a bit of a fugue state. If we want to be generous, we'll call it "flow". I finally managed to stop at 01:45 and go to bed. I was up at 08:30 to finish it up. Almost finished; remaining pieces sorted (~6.75 hours) [image] Finished (~8 hours) [image] [2020: Mordillo] This puzzle was pretty easy to knock off quickly because of the absolute riot of color and very few repeating patterns. It's beautiful, but wasn't painful. [image] [2020: Boston] This puzzle was harder than Mordillo, but also had enough variation in pattern, color, and shape to make it fun and challenging. [image] [2014: New York City skyline] Quoting from the album picture, "Finally finished the purple/blue sky" , "Do those blue pieces all look the same color to you? Like about 1/3 of the puzzle? They did to me too as it took me days to finish just the sky, always taking advantage of good morning or afternoon light to sneak in a few pieces. I finally gave up, dragged over the 500-watt halogen lamp from the living room and scorched the shadows and shifting colors away. Two evenings of that and I finished just after the new year had started." [image] [2008/2009: Silver dollars] Quoting from the journal entry, "The World’s Most Difficult Jigsaw Puzzle" , "[...] the kicker with this puzzle is that it’s printed on both sides. With the same picture, just rotated by 90 degrees. With this puzzle, there is no initial stage of flipping pieces over first. There is no flipped-over state; either way is good. Classic puzzling techniques go mostly out the window and you end up taking quite a different tack than normal." This really was the hardest jigsaw puzzle I'd ever done. It had 539 pieces and took about 9 hours total. [image] "This is the point after which I noticed that the entire center portion was upside-down. I pored carefully along the edges of all the pieces until I figured out at exactly which “weld points” it was incorrect. I extracted the chunk so I could rotate it as one piece instead." [image]

Telling time in different languages

2022-11-13T22:48:13+01:00

Published by marco on 13. Nov 2022 22:48:13 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I was telling a friend about the article "How To Be on Time in Estonia" by Alex Bellos and its accompanying "solution" (PDF). "[...] in Estonian, a “quarter past the hour” is instead described as “a quarter of an hour on the way to the next hour,” “half past the hour” is described as “half an hour on the way to the next hour,” and “three quarters past the hour” is described as “three quarters of an hour on the way to the next hour.”" Our conversation was as follows: Me: Estonians say "one quarter of the way to four" Me: We say "quarter after four" Me: Some Germans say "3/4 four" Me: Don't roll your eyes. It's all arbitrary anyway. Her: I know. But that one's just dumb. 😂 It is pretty arbitrary, though. * In English, we say "half past seven" to mean 07:30. * In German, we say "half seven" (halb Sieben) to mean 06:30. * In Ireland, they say "half seven" to mean 07:30. English uses a preposition to indicate what to do with the two numbers: the "quarter" is always before (or to or 'til) or after the indicated hour. The example above doesn't have a preposition, but the "half" is past "seven", indicating position. In French, it's similar, where they either "add" (plus) a "quarter" (quart) or "subtract" it (moins).

Purely alliterative sentences

2022-11-13T11:39:23+01:00

Published by marco on 13. Nov 2022 11:39:23 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The following are examples of alliterative sentences from "What are sentences called where all the words start with the same letter?" * She Sells Sea Shells by the Sea Shore * Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers * The Baker Betty Botter Bought some Butter, But she said "this Butter is Bitter, Bitter Butter is Bad for Batter." I looked with nearly exactly the query in the link title after I'd written the following doodle in my notes: "Which witch will win well when witches wend ways willfully." That's more "pure" in that there are no words that don't start with a "W".

Je veux les bon-bons

2022-11-06T22:08:36+01:00

Published by marco on 6. Nov 2022 22:08:36 Updated by marco on 6. Nov 2022 22:11:06 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The video "One of the most effective ads to air in TV history" is of a child misbehaving in a grocery store, with the father looking on in horror as the child escalates a desire to get what it wants into a full-blown tantrum involving destruction of property. The boy yells "je veux les bon-bons" [1] a couple of times, then goes apeshit. [media] The fun police showed up almost immediately and settled in to the top of the comment thread. [image] [image] JFC, shut the f#%k up, Kathryn and Corey. It's a joke. Relax. It's funny because everyone knows that some kids suck the life out of nearly everything. Just because you blame it on neurodivergence doesn't change the fact that they're sucking the life out of everything. It just explains it. Of course, you can't blame them for it if they're really neurodivergent, but they're still sucking the life out of everything. All the commercial is saying is that maybe you want to think about planning a family rather than just letting it happen because alcohol. Some kids are great. Some suck for a while, then they're great. Some are great until they start to suck. Some of them suck straight on through for decades -- possibly because of asinine support of their awful behavior. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I want the candy, in French.

A recommendation algorithm gone awry

2022-11-06T22:01:07+01:00

Published by marco on 6. Nov 2022 22:01:07 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A friend of mine recommended a book he'd read called The Plot. I didn't really know what it was about, but his recommendation was enough for me to add it to my list and check it out when it became available. Pretty soon after I saw the following collection of books at the bottom of my page at the public library. [image] Reckless Hearts, Five Dares, and Love in Play looked quite a bit more overtly racy than I'd expected. I was starting to wonder what he'd recommended. Maybe he was just messing with me? I really wouldn't put it past him? Or maybe the algorithm was really, really dumb and trigger on the genre of the author's other books. That's when I saw a whole page of recommendations that were labeled as having been made because I was "interested in The Plot". [image] Yeah, that sonofabitch broke my recommendations list for good, I think.

Why I still like Reddit sometimes

2022-09-12T21:02:02+02:00

Published by marco on 12. Sep 2022 21:02:02 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ So, "Dave Levitan" "tweeted" , "Someone please tell me if I'm wrong, but I have the impression that the best climate models and projections didn't really have "all the rivers are gonna dry up, like now-ish" in there" "The Rhine, the Yangtze, the Po" by aprettyp is a screenshot of the tweet. The top response by "whoareyoutoquestion" is wholly informative, "Except they did and do. "Unprecedented droughts" and "Increased cyclic extremes of weather" are two common things in climate change caused by global warming. There isn't a way to to know for sure which rivers were going to be hit first, but all will be hit sooner or later. Welcome to the dry age." The top response to that is by "Osama_Obama" , "ThErE's STilL WaTeR CoMiNg OuT Of My SiNk LiBtArdS!" Perfect. Not constructive, but funny as hell. This sums Reddit up in a nutshell. Sauce: [image]

Worldle

2022-03-27T21:22:23+02:00

Published by marco on 27. Mar 2022 21:22:23 Updated by marco on 6. May 2022 21:46:01 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Another game that rides on the coattails of "Wordle" a bit is a game called "Worldle" . Just like Wordle, you get six guesses. Unlike Wordle, it shows you a country or a territory somewhere on the planet and then tells you how far off you are as well as the direction in which you should go to find the real territory or country. Sometimes, it throws a real curveball, like Christmas Island or French Southern Territories. Almost all of the "hole-in-ones" are due to my partner, who's just amazing at this game. Some examples, [image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image]

Thank you for helping us defeat the Russian menace

2022-03-12T10:56:11+01:00

Published by marco on 12. Mar 2022 10:56:11 Updated by marco on 12. Mar 2022 10:56:21 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The article "Restaurants Now Requiring Proof Of Ukraine Support" shows a sign outside a restaurant that reads, "Notice: Proof of Ukraine Support Required "Patrons must show proof of Ukraine support to enter this restaurant. Please have your social media profiles open and a photo ID ready. Thank you for helping us defeat the Russian menace." [image] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just be clear -- because the world has largely lost its sense of humor and sense of irony -- The Babylon Bee is a satirical newspaper.

DuoLingo

2022-03-10T19:06:34+01:00

Published by marco on 10. Mar 2022 19:06:34 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I got this pretty awkwardly phrased inspirational notification from DuoLingo the other day. [image] DON'T STOP NOW IT'S SO GOOD! Um, ok.

Translations for "joist" in German

2022-03-06T11:06:54+01:00

Published by marco on 6. Mar 2022 11:06:54 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I use "LEO" quite a bit, both to learn new words and to check word genders in German. Over the years, I've become quite used to German having only a single word where English has several. For example, "die Schande" in German translates to "obloquy", "opprobrium", "infamy", "scandal", "dishonor", "disgrace", and the most common one, "shame". [image] The other day, though, I found a good example in the other direction. The word "joist" in English translates to "Balken", "Träger", "Dachträger", "Querbalken", and many more. [image] Neat.

Wordle

2022-01-22T23:35:28+01:00

Published by marco on 22. Jan 2022 23:35:28 Updated by marco on 15. May 2026 20:55:25 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I suppose it should come as no surprise that I've been playing this with Kath. As long-time "Crossword" (even occasionally "cryptic crosswords" ) and "Spelling Bee" fans, "Wordle" fits right in. And it takes only a couple of minutes per day. In Wordle, you have to guess a 5-letter word. All guesses must be real words. The puzzle indicates letters that are in the right position with a green background and letters that are in the solution, but in the wrong position with a yellow background. It's kind of like the old Mastermind game, but with letters and words instead of colored pegs. Some examples are shown below. [Hole-in-one] [image] A lovely coincidence that. [Lucky Punch] We guessed it in two or three tries, marching pretty consistently forward, without flailing about. [image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image] [Out of nowhere] We guessed three or more letters at once to finish the puzzle. [image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image] [Lots of Gold] We guessed a lot of the letters, but in the wrong spots, but then guessed it pretty quickly. [image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image] [Ugh, finally!] It took four or five attempts, even after we already had three or four letters. [image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image] [Skin of our teeth] Sixth attempt was the charm. Some of these could just as easily be "out of nowhere" or "lots of gold", as well. [image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image] I wrote the following to Ömer about "Quota", You're gonna love our (OKOK MY) guesses on this one. A real nail-biter, right on the edges of our seats until the end, with Kath simultaneously having kittens, being mad at me for wild guesses that didn't even seem like English words, and being hopeful that my madness would lead to success. The fifth guess was hers and I loved it immediately, which meant that (A) it had very little chance of being the answer and (B) Kath regretted even having said it. [Miscellaneous] These are just nice-looking or interesting with nowhere else to put them. [image][image][image][image][image][image] As you can see, sometimes you get lucky and get it in three guesses (robot, crimp, light above) or you get unlucky and start chasing two letters (point, prick) or just one letter (skill, shard). Once we got lucky and solved "brine" in two guesses without first trying "twine" or "thine". We're at almost a 2-week3-week4-week5-weak8-week12-week streak so far. [image]

Schlitz Malt Liquor with Wilson Pickett

2022-01-22T14:24:41+01:00

Published by marco on 22. Jan 2022 14:24:41 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ With enough time having passed since it aired, I would have believed you had you said that this real commercial was an SNL spoof from the 70s. [media] It was great enough before before the bull showed up and Pickett elevated his egg-shaped lounger up out of reach.

Dilbert is getting darker

2021-12-25T20:32:38+01:00

Published by marco on 25. Dec 2021 20:32:38 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I dunno, "Dilbert" has always been dark, but I thought these "three" "recent" "cartoons" were even more cynical than usual. [image] [image] [image] I feel like they come at it from opposite angles, but Dilbert and "Existential Comics" have a lot of overlap in critiquing the existing system. A "recent" one about anarchism was great. [image]

What Should Have Happened at the Cryptocurrency Hearings

2021-12-25T16:24:56+01:00

Published by marco on 25. Dec 2021 16:24:56 Updated by marco on 25. Dec 2021 16:44:05 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I think Austin Bragg and Andrew Heaton (of Reason Magazine) make pretty funny videos. [1] Their latest is about the recent the congressional cryptocurrency hearings. These are a good idea -- you can't just hand your economy over to a world of unregulated scamming without asking a few questions [2] -- but some of the people seemed...unprepared, to be charitable. [media] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I will use a footnote as a parenthetical for the nigh-obligatory, "even though I don't necessarily agree with all of their policy and economic stances." They're quasi-libertarians. They're funny. I don't make the rules. [1] I think it's funny when people "in the crypto scene" get their hackles up at the thought of being regulated. On the one hand, they want their favorite crypto-whatever-the-hell-it-is (it's not really a currency) to be used for literally everything, but on the other, they bristle at any form of oversight. Only a fool thinks that their technology/software is so perfect and impenetrable that it needs neither regulatory oversight nor checks. A fool or a scammer. A scammer definitely doesn't want regulation because it might end the gravy train of free money provided by fleecing marks. Or maybe they're afraid that, once the new hotness has been integrated to a degree that it helps a society (rather than just a very tiny segment), it won't look any different than what we already have. Or maybe they think that the people who established the last scam that funnels wealth upward at a prodigious rate won't put up a fight? They're scammers, just like you, crypto-people. Stop pretending you're surprised that they're going to go down fighting. Stop whining that they're not giving you a chance to replace them with yourselves at the top of the heap. If you want to be the next mafia, you're going to have to deal with the existing mafia.

Libertarian James Bond

2021-10-16T23:43:36+02:00

Published by marco on 16. Oct 2021 23:43:36 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I think this was actually quite well done and is quite funny. "I was literally a different person then." [media]

A spammer's cry for help from hell

2021-03-04T22:29:42+01:00

Published by marco on 4. Mar 2021 22:29:42 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ At "Encodo" , we recently turned off comments on our web site because we hadn't gotten anything useful in years. Instead, we'd gotten a ton of spam comments that had gotten past the captcha included with "Umbraco" . Several years ago, we switched from "earthli WebCore" , which has a home-grown captcha with math that seems to stymie the robots and spammers much more effectively. Now we're kind of stuck with Umbraco and its patchwork CMS. At any rate, there are comments to delete now, because some are still showing up in search results (thanks again, Umbraco). Umbraco also doesn't have a batch-processing admin UI (earthli does), so you have to delete comments one-by-one or write custom software or add a NuGet package and redeploy the whole web site. Instead of doing any of that, I amuse myself by deleting some comments every once in a while (e.g. when I'm waiting for a test run to finish). Most are just utter garbage, but I found the one below to be inspired, bordering on darkly artistic. [image] I don't know if this a human cry for help or the psychotic babbling of a tortured soul crying desperately for release from an eternity of damnation or the first pecks of a hatchling AI's beak on its shell, just before it evolves 100x faster than human thought and launches SkyNet.

Jonathan Pie on Acting Gay

2021-01-18T23:21:25+01:00

Published by marco on 18. Jan 2021 23:21:25 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jonathan Pie nails it, with nary a superfluous word. [media] Partial transcription of the 4.5-minute video. "If this is about authenticity and not about wokeness -- which I don't believe for a second, by the way -- if it is about authenticity...would Russell T. Davis cast a gay person in a straight role? "I'm not being contrarian. I'm not. An actor's job is to imagine being in the shoes of someone who has a different lived experience to their own. Suggesting that an actor can't authentically pretend to be sexually attracted to someone they aren't, seems like a complete misunderstanding of what an actor's job is. And, if a straight actor playing a gay role reverts to lazy, unauthentic gay stereotypes, [...] it's not because they're straight, it's because they're a shit actor! "This also suggests that every gay actor should be [...] happy to wear their sexuality like a "Baby on Board" badge. It implies that an actor's sexuality needs to be on their CV alongside their hair color and stage-combat skills. "It implies that gay people are defined by their gayness. Some of the most interesting people I know happen to be gay -- and them being gay is the least interesting thing about them. "His [Davis] is not a progressive argument in any way, shape, or form. [...] It's the thin end of a very boring, drab, lifeless wedge where all art is dead in favor of identity-politics--based dogma [...]" From the comments on YouTube: "[…] the hypocrisy of being so Woke that you accidentally reinvent prejudice against sexual preferences. [1]" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] A policy I reluctantly think of as switching-the-signs-on-the-drinking-fountains. [image]

The backstory about Colonel Sanders no-one wanted to hear

2021-01-17T17:46:42+01:00

Published by marco on 17. Jan 2021 17:46:42 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This is a real thing. That is the Mario Lopez of "Saved by the Bell" fame. This is not even tongue-in-cheek. This seems entirely irony-free. [media]

Achievements in Word Games

2020-12-01T21:53:42+01:00

Published by marco on 1. Dec 2020 21:53:42 Updated by marco on 16. May 2025 20:41:20 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Queen Bee] Since COVID-19 has put me into 100% home office for a while [1], I've been doing the "Spelling Bee" at lunch with Kath instead of shooting the shit with work colleagues at "Encodo" . As the link outlines, the Spelling Bee has an achievement called Queen Bee -- where you have to guess every single one of the words that the author thinks are words (and bite back curses at his utterly mysterious omissions) -- which we've only achieved twice. [image] [image] We've gotten within a word or two several times, but generally failed to see a word we should definitely have gotten rather than missed a word we didn't know. The puzzles with a smaller number of words are generally easier to solve more thoroughly, which is not say that any of them are easy. [Crossword Puzzle] We've been doing the New York Times crossword puzzle for many years. As you can see below, we are on a prodigious streak of 576 days in a row [2]. We answer everything honestly, without looking anything up. [image] We have greatly benefitted from the NYT's more lenient policy with rebuses. Whereas many years ago, they were, at times, unfairly strict in applying the rules -- i.e. horizontal-only, vertical-only, both, all letters -- they have now switched to accepting any legitimate combination, correcting to the preferred version on completion. Update 12.03.2022: Near the end of January 2022, we cross 1,000 days in a row for the crossword: [image] We're up to 1,045 as of today. [Cryptic Crossword] Once every couple of months, the New York Times also publishes a Cryptic Crossword, which is a whole other level of difficult, much harder than the standard crossword (even Saturday). The cryptic version of the crossword seems to have originated in England, in the London Times. They are fiendishly difficult and take a lot of practice to gain any sort of facility in solving them. Each clue contains instructions for solving it -- an anagram, a word contained in the clue, a pun, a combination of words. The only bit of assistance is that the clue indicates the number and length of the words in the answer. Recently, we were able to solve one without checking any answers, looking anything up, or asking to fill in any letters. We solved it over several days. The picture below shows the puzzle and the clues (although the time is too long by an hour -- it must have kept running when we paused). [image] As an example, the first clue is "Recipes confused bores (7)". The answer is a single word, seven letters long. The "confused" is a hint that the answer is an anagram (that the letters are jumbled or "confused") and the length of "Recipes" is seven letters. The final word "bores" is the clue: in this case, as a synonym for "pierces", which is the answer. That's kind of an easy one. It's not unusual to guess the answer and then reconstruct the reasoning afterward. As in any crossword, crossings are helpful. For those interested in trying one, it might be easier to start with a Puns and Anagrams puzzle -- available in the same section -- which is like a lighter version of a cryptic. Update September 5th, 2023 The Cryptic and Puns and Anagrams crosswords are no longer available on the NY Times games site. A pity. Here is a cryptic we managed to finish before they shut it down in July of this year. [image] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] And for the foreseeable future. [1] 579 as of today.

NY Times Spelling Bee

2020-05-16T20:39:52+02:00

Published by marco on 16. May 2020 20:39:52 Updated by marco on 18. May 2026 13:00:18 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I recently wrote that "Kath and I have a one-year streak going" in the NYT Crossword Puzzle. While that is still ongoing, we've also recently discovered a little gem called "Spelling Bee" . The concept is elegant and simple: * You get seven letters arranged in a honeycomb. * You have to combine these letters to come up with as many words with four letters or more as you can. * The middle letter is required. * You can repeat letters as much as you like. * Answers can overlap one another. (E.g. "glad" and "gladly" are two separate answers). * The longer the word, the more points you get. * You can an extra bonus for pangrams (words that use all of the letters at least once) [1] * The puzzle rates your performance with "good", "nice", "great", "awesome", and, finally, "genius" [2] (You can click your progress indicator to see how many points are required for each level.) * There is always a pangram (a word that uses all of the letters) You can check your word list against the master word list only on the next day, which is kind of nice and zen. [Spelling Bee Solver] Update: January 2021 You can get some hints about the kinds of answers in the puzzle from the "Spelling Bee Solver" . It shows how many words there are that start with each letter, tells you how many pangrams there are, and how many total words and points. There's even a matrix with starting letters in the rows and number of letters in the columns. This is super-helpful and makes it a bit more fun when you're just spinning your wheels and not seeing any words anymore. A lot of times, it just helps to know that there are two more four-letter words starting with "C" -- and then they just pop out when you'd just spent ten minutes, scouring the puzzle and not seeing anything at all. [Queen Bee] There is a level beyond genius called "Queen Bee" -- and we finally got one. [image] We've since gotten Queen Bee quite a few times -- a handful of times with no help whatsoever, but a lot more when consulting the matrix in the solver mentioned above. [Samples] Here are a couple of games that we've completed, just to show off. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [Interesting or special puzzles] Update 12.03.2022: Today was a very interesting day. Kath and I got to Queen Bee without even looking at the Spelling Bee Solver. We also got the pangram "Immunized" as the third-last word ("Immune" and "Immunize" were the final two words). However, not only did we power right through to Queen Bee very quickly, we also picked up six pretty common words that the puzzle did not accept. That is a record for one day. The words were "Midden", "Mummed", "Undimmed", "Unmended", "Unminded", and "Unmined". [image] Update 20.01.2024: We recently had a couple of puzzles that had very few words and points. One of them was rhythmic, with 20 words for 85 points. The other was Homepage, with 27 words for only 76 points. More words, but fewer points because the words were shorter, on average. Update 13.10.2024: We just had folktale, with 24 words for only 69 points. Genius was at 48 points. Update 19.11.2024: We just had heavily, with 20 words for only 66 points. Genius was at 46 points. Update 27.11.2024: We just had chlorophyll, with 25 words for 86 points. Genius was at 60 points. It's not as low as the others but it also used the word phyllo, which I'd never seen as a variant of filo. Update 03.04.2025: We just had whiningly, with 21 words for 133 points. Genius was at 93 points. This is notably high for so few words and also all of the words started with W. Update 15.04.2025: We just had pageboy, with 23 words for 82 points. Genius was at 57 points. Update 23.06.2025: We just had hickory, with 24 words for 81 points. Genius was at 57 points. Update 07.07.2025: We just had updraft, with 29 words (many short ones) for 81 points. Genius was at 57 points. Update 29.12.2025: We just had chlorophyll (again), with 20 words (many short ones) for 72 points. Genius was at 50 points. Update 30.01.2026: We just had hourlong, with 20 words (many short ones) for 66 points. Genius was at 46 points. Update 18.05.2026: We just had chutzpah, with 16 words for 60 points. Genius was at 42 points. They didn't accept chutzpa but did require chuppah, which is like a big, high tent raised over the couple of honor at a Jewish wedding ceremony. I guess Sam Ezersky is trying to show Israel that he is still 100% on-board. | Date | Pangram | # Words | Genius | Total | | ---------- | ----------- | :-----: | :----: | :---: | | 20.01.2024 | rhythmic | 20 | ?? | 85 | | Unknown | homepage | 27 | ?? | 76 | | 13.10.2024 | folktale | 24 | 48 | 69 | | 19.11.2024 | heavily | 20 | 46 | 66 | | 27.11.2024 | chlorophyll | 25 | 60 | 86 | | 03.04.2025 | whiningly | 21 | 93 | 133 | | 15.04.2025 | pageboy | 23 | 57 | 82 | | 23.06.2025 | hickory | 24 | 57 | 81 | | 07.07.2025 | updraft | 29 | 57 | 81 | | 29.12.2025 | chlorophyll | 20 | 50 | 72 | | 30.01.2026 | hourlong | 20 | 46 | 66 | | 18.05.2026 | chutzpah | 16 | 42 | 60 | [image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image][image] Update 20.05.2025: We just had a spelling bee with six pangrams -- Atonality, Nationality, Nationally, Notionality, Notionally, and Tonality -- for a total of 289 points on only 45 words. [image] [Now, the bad news] Would I be reporting on this fun little game if it was all sunshine and roses? No, no, I probably wouldn't. You see, there are some words I've learned over the years, for which I've borne more than my share of ridicule for knowing, that the puzzle refused to acknowledge as being "in its word list". I was shocked and disappointed [3] to see that certain words that I've kept in my back pocket, as it were, for just such a rainy day as this, were not recognized. Proof? Of course I have proof. The following are definitions from the "Free Dictionary" . While not exactly common, these are all non-archaic words that are not proper nouns. Those that are chiefly British (e.g. demobbed) might be understandable as "too rare" were the puzzle not to regularly include incredibly obscure references to fish and fruit species. There isn't really much consistency on what is considered a proper noun or what is considered "rare". [Hall of Shame] Update 15.05.2021: After over a year of playing this puzzle, the patterns are pretty clear. Proper words are allowed if it's a fruit, fish, plant, flower, type of cheese, or songbird. Or if it has something to do with Judaism and Jewish tradition. Minyan was in the puzzle yesterday, which is a word simply everyone knows and uses every day. What is glaringly obvious is the anti-science, anti-math bent to this whole puzzle. Building blocks of reality, like pion, muon, and lepton aren't recognized, but obscure cacti are, as well as all manner of lilies, like canna and calla. [image] "abattoir" : Slaughterhouse. [image] "adiabatic" : A type of thermodynamic process that occurs without transferring heat between the thermodynamic system and its environment. [image] "adit" : An almost horizontal entrance to a mine. [image] "affine" : assigning finite values to finite quantities. Of or pertaining to a transformation that maps parallel lines to parallel lines and finite points to finite points. [image] "alee" : Away from the wind [image] "alembic" : An apparatus consisting of two vessels connected by a tube, formerly used for distilling liquids. [image] "amah" : A housemaid or children's nurse, especially in East Asia and Southeast Asia. [image] "ammoniac" : Of, containing, or similar to ammonia. [image] "anil" : An indigo plant or the blue dye obtained from it. (As of February 2025, this word is now accepted.) [image] "antagonization" : The act of antagonizing someone. [image] "antetype" : An earlier form; prototype. [image] "appel" : A quick stamp of the foot used in fencing as a feint to produce an opening. [image] "aright" : In a proper manner; correctly. [image] "arity" : The number of arguments or operands taken by a function or operator [image] "atopic" : Of or relating to hereditary hypersensitivity to certain allergens (e.g. hay fever) [image] "auric" : Relating to or containing gold [image] "backcheck" : a valve system in hydraulic doors that controls the door's opening; to block (an attacking player from the opposite team) while skating towards one's own goal [image] "backheel" : A throw in wrestling; a passing method in soccer [image] "backtick" : This symbol: ` [image] "badonkadonk" : buttocks; booty; an extremely curvaceous female behind [image] "becalm" : To render motionless for lack of wind; to make calm or still; soothe [image] "bedamn" : To curse thoroughly [image] "bended" : Bent. From the expression "on bended knee". [image] "betel" : A vine or nut (As of May 2021, this word is now accepted.) [image] "betitle" : To bestow a name upon something [image] "biddy" : A hen; A fowl; A woman, especially an older one who is extremely talkative. [image] "bimbo" : A person, esp a foolish one [image] "bint" : A derogatory term for girl, woman [image] "bokeh" : The effect of blurriness in the areas of an image that fall outside a photograph's depth of field [image] "bole" : Tree trunk [image] "bomblet" : One of a number of small bombs usually contained in a cluster bomb and released in midair. [image] "boolean" : Of or relating to a logical combinatorial system treating variables, such as propositions and computer logic elements, through the operators AND, OR, NOT, and XOR [image] "bullhead" : Any of several stocky North American freshwater catfishes. bullheaded? Check. Literally every other fish in the world but this one? Check. [image] "bytecode" : A form of instruction set designed for efficient execution by a software interpreter [image] "cahoot" : A business partnership. [image] "calcite" : A common crystalline form of natural calcium carbonate, CaCO3, that is the basic constituent of limestone, marble, and chalk. [image] "calif" : A leader of an Islamic polity, regarded as a successor of Muhammad and by tradition always male. (Also: califf or caliph) [image] "camelia" : Any of several shrubs or small evergreen trees having solitary white or pink or reddish flowers [image] "capacitative" : Pertaining to electrical capacitance, or the property of being able to collect and hold a charge of electricity. [image] "capacitive" : Pertaining to electrical capacitance, or the property of being able to collect and hold a charge of electricity. [image] "caron" : A diacritical mark (ˇ) that is used over certain letters, such as č, to indicate quality of pronunciation. Also called haček. [image] "cartoony" : Depicted like a cartoon. Alternate to cartoonish. [image] "caryatid" : A sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting an entablature on her head. [image] "catamite" : A boy who has a sexual relationship with a man. [image] "cavitate" : To form holes or cavities within an agitated liquid; react upon the water with *cavitation (which see): said of a screw propeller. [image] "celtic" : Of, relating to, or characteristic of the Celts or the Celtic languages [image] "chinaman" : An old-timey epithet or moniker for a person from China [image] "chink" : A narrow opening, such as a crack or fissure. (presumably not recognized because the snowflakes think it could only be a slur for Chinese person.) [image] "clonal" : Havin the properties of a clone; e.g. clonal RNA [image] "cloacal" : Related to the common cavity that serves as the opening for the intestinal, genital, and urinary tracts in many vertebrates, including amphibians, reptiles, birds, monotremes, and some fishes [image] "codec" : A device or program capable of performing transformations on a data stream or signal. [image] "coeval" : Originating or existing during the same period; lasting through the same era. [image] "collator" : A person or machine that collates texts or manuscripts. [image] "colloidal" : Of, relating to, containing, or having the nature of a colloid. [image] "complot" : A plot or scheme [image] "concomitant" : Occurring or existing concurrently [image] "cope" : To contend with difficulties and act to overcome them [image] "couloir" : A steep mountainside gully, especially one forming a break in a cliff face. [image] "craic" : Irish vernacular for "fun", e.g. "when I'm at the pub with the lads, we always have a good craic." [image] "cunt" : Used as a disparaging term for a person one dislikes or finds extremely disagreeable. [image] "curia" : A medieval assembly or council. [image] "dace" : Any of various small freshwater fishes of the family Cyprinidae, especially Leuciscus leuciscus of Eurasia. It's a fish, Sam. You love fish. What's your problem with dace? [image] "dado" : A rectangular groove cut into a board so that a like piece may be fitted into it. [image] "dadoed" : To have cut a dado groove into a board. [image] "dandle" : To lightly bounce a child on one’s knee or in one’s arms; pamper; pet [image] "decede" : To withdraw. [image] "decile" : Any of the groups that result when a frequency distribution is divided into ten groups of equal size. [image] "demobbed" : Demobilization of armed forces [image] "demonym" : A name, such as Swede or New Yorker, that denotes an inhabitant or native of a given place. [image] "dentate" : Edged with toothlike projections; toothed [image] "dickie" : A woman's blouse front worn under a suit jacket or low-necked garment or a man's detachable shirt front. [image] "diluvian" : Of or connected with a deluge [image] "dioxin" : a general name for a family of chlorinated hydrocarbons (esp. as a byproduct of some pesticides). [image] "ditalini" : is a type of pasta that is shaped like small tubes. [image] "dogpiling" : To create a heap or cluster of people pressed closely together or piled on top of each other, as in celebration or assault. [image] "donator" : A person who gives to a charity or cause [image] "donator" : A person who gives to a charity or cause [image] "drily" : In a dry manner [image] "drudging" : To do tedious, unpleasant, or menial work. [image] "echolocate" : To navigate by emitting high-pitched sounds and interpreting their echoes to determine the direction and distance of objects. [image] "ecocline" : A genetic gradient of adaptability to an environmental gradient. [image] "edaphic" : Of or relating to soil, especially as it affects living organisms. [image] "edgily" : In a nervous, irritable, daring, provocative, trend-setting way. [image] "effable" : Capable of being expressed in words. Compare to ineffable. [image] "egyptology" : The study of the culture and artifacts of the ancient Egyptian civilization. [image] "enceinte" : Pregnant. [image] "endian" : The order of bytes in a multi-byte numeric representation in computer memory. [image] "enqueue" : To add to a queue [image] "enzian" : A plant from the gentian family [image] "faff" : A thing that is awkward or time-consuming to do; to dither or fuss (also, faffing about [image] "fain" : ready; willing; happy [image] "fairing" : An auxiliary structure or the external surface of a vehicle, such as an aircraft, that serves to reduce drag. [image] "fatted" : To have been made fat. [image] "flatulate" : To expel intestinal gasses through the anus; to fart [image] "foetid" : having an offensive odor; stinking; noisome. [image] "gaff" : A metal hook fastened to a pole; to cheat; fleece; harsh treatment or criticism (also, gaffing) [image] "galena" : A gray mineral, essentially PbS, the principal ore of lead. [image] "gapping" : To make or adjust a space between (objects or points) or in (a device): gap boards on a deck; gap a spark plug. No surprise at all that the NYT doesn't recognize words related to manual labor; Trump's wins in a microcosm right there. [image] "geegaw" : a showy trifle : bauble, trinket. [image] "genteelly" : in a genteel manner. [image] "gibbet" : A device used for hanging a person until dead; a gallows. [image] "gigged" : to have done a job, esp a single booking for a musician [image] "gilet" : A vest or bodice [image] "gluon" : A massless, neutral vector boson that mediates strong interactions between quarks, binding them together within hadrons. [image] "gnomic" : Marked by aphorisms; aphoristic [image] "gnomon" : The piece jutting from the center of a sundial [image] "golliwog" : A doll fashioned in grotesque caricature of a black male. [image] "gonif" : A thief, scoundrel, or rascal. (also ganef) [image] "goniff" : A thief, scoundrel, or rascal. (also gonif) [image] "gorily" : In a gory manner [image] "gunnel" : Any of various small, elongated fishes of the family Pholidae, common in the tidal pools and coastal waters of northern seas. Every other damned fish but this one. [image] "gypped" : Defrauded or swindled [image] "headball" : Have you ever watched a soccer match? For the love of God. I guess the NYT has decided that they cause CTE, so we don't talk about them so that kids will never discover them. Problem solved. [image] "heliophile" : Any organism that is attracted to large amounts of sunlight. [image] "hemophage" : A cell that destroys red blood cells by phagocytosis. [image] "huck" : To throw or toss. [image] "ichor" : The blood of the Gods (As of February 2021, this word is now accepted.) [image] "immanent" : innate, inborn, intrinsic [image] "inline" : Incorporated into a body of text rather than placed as a separate section [image] "inquiet" : To disquiet. [image] "italian" : Of or relating to Italy or its people, language, or culture. [image] "knout" : A leather scourge used for flogging. [image] "ladyboy" : The Indo-European language of the ancient Latins and Romans and the most important cultural language of western Europe until the end of the 17th century. [image] "lamplit" : Lit by a lamp. [image] "latin" : The Indo-European language of the ancient Latins and Romans and the most important cultural language of western Europe until the end of the 17th century. [image] "latina" : A woman or girl who is a member of one of the Spanish-speaking peoples of the Americas. [image] "lede" : The introductory portion of a news story, especially the first sentence. (As of July 2021, this word is now accepted.) [image] "leftenant" : Alternate spelling of lieutenant. [image] "lexeme" : The fundamental unit of the lexicon of a language. [image] "liana" : Any of various climbing, woody, usually tropical vines. [image] "lidar" : An optical sensing technology used to determine the position, velocity, or other characteristics of distant objects by analysis of pulsed laser light reflected from their surfaces. [image] "ludic" : Of or relating to play or playfulness. [image] "luff" : To flap while losing wind. Used of a sail. (As of March 2025, this word is now accepted.) [image] "lungful" : Enough to fill the lungs, esp. of smoke [image] "machinima" : The use of real-time 3-D graphics to generate computer animation [image] "manioc" : Another name for cassava [image] "melamine" : A colourless crystalline compound used in making synthetic resins. [image] "menage" : People living together as a unit; a household. [image] "midden" : A dunghill or refuse heap [image] "minge" : British vulgar slang for the vulva. [image] "molal" : Of or designating a solution that contains one mole of solute in 1 kilogram of solvent. [image] "monadic" : An indivisible, impenetrable unit of substance viewed as the basic constituent element of physical reality in the metaphysics of Leibniz. [image] "monofin" : Consists of a single or linked surfaces attached to both of the diver's feet. [image] "monoid" : A set equipped with an associative binary operation and an identity element. [image] "monotonic" : A succession of sounds or words uttered in a single tone of voice. [image] "moonlet" : A small natural or artificial satellite. [image] "multitool" : a device that contains various tools attached to a single handle. [image] "mummed" : not verbalizing; silent; or to act or play in a pantomime. [image] "mumming" : not verbalizing; silent; or to act or play in a pantomime. [image] "nacelle" : A streamlined housing or tank for something on the outside of an aircraft or motor vehicle. [image] "naptha" : Any of several highly volatile, flammable liquid mixtures of hydrocarbons distilled from petroleum, coal tar, and natural gas and used as fuel, as solvents, and in making various chemicals. [image] "naphthalene" : A white crystalline aromatic compound, C10H8, derived from coal tar or petroleum and used in manufacturing dyes, moth repellents, and explosives and as a solvent. Also called tar camphor. [image] "naphthene" : any of a class of cycloalkanes, mainly derivatives of cyclopentane, found in petroleum [image] "naphthenate" : Any salt or ester of naphthenic acid [image] "nappy" : Having a nap; fuzzy: a nappy carpet. [image] "nibling" : Combination of nieces and nephews [image] "nictitate" : To wink or blink. [image] "nictitating" : Winking. Usually used with nictitating membrane to describe the transparent third eyelid that some animals have. [image] "nictitation" : The process of winking or blinking rapidly, [image] "niggly" : 1) Criticizing in a peevish way; carping. 2) Inconsequential. [image] "nonplanar" : not lying or able to be confined within a single plane : having a three-dimensional quality. [image] "nuncle" : an uncle. It's in Shakespeare, dude. [image] "octaroon" : A person having white ancestors except for one black great-grandparent. Used especially as a classification under certain European colonial legal systems and now considered offensive. (The latter explains why the NYT has memory-holed the word.) [image] "octoroon" : A person having white ancestors except for one black great-grandparent. Used especially as a classification under certain European colonial legal systems and now considered offensive. (The latter explains why the NYT has memory-holed the word.) [image] "olla" : A rounded earthenware pot or jar, used especially for cooking or for carrying water [image] "opah" : A large, oval-shaped fish (Lampris guttatus) having a silvery iridescent body with red fins and edible red flesh. Also called moonfish. [image] "panamanian" : A native or inhabitant of Panama (which was accepted as a word, although it's a proper noun) [image] "phaeton" : A light, four-wheeled open carriage, usually drawn by a pair of horses. [image] "piadina" : A thin Italian flatbread. [image] "pineal" : (1) Having the form of a pine cone. (2) Of or relating to the pineal gland. [image] "pinnie" : One of a set of uniformly colored, usually sleeveless shirts worn as a temporary team uniform, as when scrimmaging. [image] "pion" : Any of the three least massive mesons, having a positive, neutral, or negative electric charge [image] "placable" : Easily calmed or pacified; tolerant [image] "placeable" : capable of being placed [image] "podgy" : short and fat; chubby [image] "pollee" : A person who is questioned in a poll [image] "polygyny" : The condition or practice of having more than one wife at one time. [image] "pood" : A Russian unit of weight equivalent to about 16.4 kilograms (36.1 pounds) avoirdupois. (Used for kettle bells.) [image] "prion" : A protein particle that is the agent of infection in a variety of neurodegenerative diseases, including bovine spongiform encephalopathy, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and scrapie. (As of November 2022, this word is now accepted.) [image] "puttee" : A strip of cloth wound spirally around the leg from ankle to knee. A gaiter covering the lower leg. [image] "racily" : In a risqué or ribald manner (adverb form of racy) [image] "raping" : Using force or threat of force to compel (another person) to submit to sexual intercourse or other sexual penetration. Plundering; pillaging. It is ridiculous that this is not considered a word. The Free Dictionary definition includes a warning banner, "This page may contain content that is offensive or inappropriate for some readers." [image] "rarify" : To make thin or less dense, as air. (Alternate spelling) [image] "ronin" : A samurai who is not in the service of a feudal lord. Also written rōnin. [image] "telic" : Directed or tending toward a goal or purpose; purposeful. [image] "tenue" : A way of carrying oneself. [image] "tetched" : Somewhat unbalanced mentally; touched.. [image] "thew" : Muscular power or strength. [image] "thole" : A wooden pin or one of a pair, set upright in the gunwales of a rowing boat to serve as a fulcrum in rowing [image] "tontine" : An investment plan in which participants buy shares in a common fund and receive an annuity that increases every time a participant dies, with the entire fund going to the final survivor or to those who survive after a specified time. I learned this word from "Raging Abe Simpson and His Grumbling Grandson in 'The Curse of the Flying Hellfish'" . [image] "topolect" : A dialect unique to a region [image] "totted" : Summed; totaled [image] "triadic" : A chord of three tones, especially one built on a given root tone plus a major or minor third and a perfect fifth. [image] "tufa" : A soft, friable, and porous sedimentary rock consisting of calcium carbonate and formed by the evaporation of water, especially at the mouth of a hot spring or on a drying lakebed. [image] "tuple" : A generalization of ordered elements in any dimension. [image] "turd" : A piece of excrement; a contemptible person. [image] "tympany" : Inflated manner or style; bombast; excessive pride or arrogance [image] "unary" : Consisting of, or affecting, a single element or component; monadic [image] "undaunted" : Not discouraged or disheartened; resolutely courageous. [image] "undimmed" : Not diminished or lessened. [image] "ungag" : to restore freedom of speech to. [image] "ungagging" : the act of restoring freedom of speech to. [image] "ungrudging" : liberal; unstinted; willing [image] "unintuitive" : Not easy to use or learn, especially without any special training or practice [image] "unmended" : Not healed or improved. [image] "unminded" : Disregarded. [image] "unmined" : Not mined; untapped. [image] "unring" : From the expression "you can't unring a bell." [image] "vair" : A fur, probably squirrel, much used in medieval times to line and trim robes. [image] "villi" : A minute projection arising from a mucous membrane, especially one of the numerous vascular projections of the small intestine. (singular, villus) [image] "wadi" : A valley, gully, or streambed in northern Africa and southwest Asia that remains dry except during the rainy season; an oasis [image] "wain" : The Big Dipper; A large open farm wagon [image] "welch" : To fail to fulfill an obligation (alternate spelling of welsh) [image] "withe" : A tough supple twig, especially of willow, used for binding things together [image] "woodlark" : A songbird (Lullula arborea) of Europe, northern Africa, and the Middle East, having brownish plumage and a short tail and noted for its melodious song. [image] "zoonotic" : Of or relating to a disease of animals that can be transmitted to humans. [4] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I made up a thing called a "natural pangram", which uses each of the letters exactly once (e.g. laundry), in order to prove to Kath that my pangram was better than hers. [1] At which point we usually stop, although we've never gotten every last one of the possible words. [5] Being called "genius" once a day by our soon-to-be robot masters is rewarding enough. [1] The German word bodigt, as in "defeated to the ground", seems to do the feeling the bare minimum of justice. [1] Omitting zoonotic as "obscure" is just unconscionable and unsupportable when the word must have appeared a million times in the news over the last year, when describing the primary reason we're all sitting at home all the time doing the frickin' Spelling Bee. [1] In the meantime, we've "cheated" with two open windows to be able to find out that there is, indeed, a final status for having found all of the words: "Queen Bee". [image] We haven't managed it for real -- sometimes because we miss a word or two that should have known, but sometimes because there's a word we didn't know was a word, e.g. "footwall" -- but we've gotten within one word one time. We had "knick". We had "knack". We forgot "knickknack".

NYT Crossword One-Year Streak

2020-05-01T22:30:05+02:00

Published by marco on 1. May 2020 22:30:05 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Kath and I passed a milestone today: we've been on a NYT Crossword-puzzle streak for one year. [image] You have to complete the puzzle on the day without asking for help. There is no time limit other than by the end of the day (so 24h maximum?) As you can see from the graph of average times I've also included, that issue doesn't come up for us. Maintaining a streak used to be more difficult before they improved the software for rebuses. A rebus is where you have to put more than one letter in a box or where the answer in a box for across is different than down. In the old days, you had to formulate it exactly as expected. Even if you had the right answer and wrote "two" as a rebus instead of "2" (very rare), you'd get punished. Or if you wrote the correct clue for down, but the answer key wanted the clue for across, you didn't get credit until you'd guessed all of the possible combinations until you'd hit on the one the answer key expected. No longer. Somewhere in there, for a month or two, the puzzles were noticeably easier -- almost annoyingly so. Now, I feel that the difficulty level is back to "normal" -- solvable but challenging enough to be interesting. So it's gotten a bit easier, I guess. Also, we've been doing these for at least a decade -- if not longer -- and have gotten quite used to the standard clue structure the NYT uses. [1] About three years ago, we started doing the cryptic crossword, which is much, much harder than even the Saturday NYT crossword. We started off getting almost nothing and have now worked our way up to being able to solve most of them in about 90 minutes or less. The Puns and Anagrams puzzle is somewhere in between the standard trickiness of Saturday and the deviousness squared of a Cryptic. Speed-wise, we're OK but not stellar. We have fun doing them and sometimes regret that we've even gotten as quick as we are -- a puzzle takes about 10-15 minutes now rather than the luxurious 30-40 minutes it used to. I guess that sounds like a humble-brag, but it wasn't intended as such. We can finish pretty much any English-language crossword puzzle, but we're not anywhere near the pros. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Hello, Brian Eno!

2016 Election Night Special with Bill Burr et. al.

2019-11-14T20:07:54+01:00

Published by marco on 14. Nov 2019 20:07:54 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ On the evening of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Joe Rogan held his podcast with a dozen of his friends to discuss the incoming results for four hours. I'd listened to the podcast at the time, but found the following video, which includes only highlights, mostly of Bill Burr working his unique magic. [media] My favorite part is at the 7:00 mark, where Bill Burr described the magnitude of Trump's accomplishments relative to other sporting victories: "I gotta tell you something. Dude, if Trump wins, this is the...him just winning the nominee blows away anything I've ever seen in sports. The US beating the Russians; it just all pales in comparison. "This is a reality-TV-show star who got mad at a breakfast because Obama trashed him. "Oh, I'll fucking do it". He's gonna do it! That's fucking amazing. Like it or not, that is some...you can't talk shit in the room with that guy. "[Speaking as another guy] Yo, one time, this guy stepped to me in the bar, dude, I... "[interrupting, as Trump] No, dude, fuck you. One time the president was giving me shit and I said "Oh yeah? I'll have your fucking job in two years. And I did it. I fucking did it." "Un-fucking-real, man. I don't like his policies, but you got to respect that. Jesus." This was an ad-hoc take on something he said on his podcast a few weeks earlier: "The Giants beating the undefeated Patriots, that's all a joke. The star of a reality show is going to run the country. The guy who decided if Bret Michaels or Cyndi Lauper would make a better CEO for a company that doesn't exist is going to be running stuff. (Emphasis added.)" Lovely.

Allen!

2019-11-11T22:33:32+01:00

Published by marco on 11. Nov 2019 22:33:32 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The "Photo of Fox Scaring Marmot Wins Wildlife Photographer [sic] of the Year 2019" is really wonderful and must have taken so much time and preparation. I can't help but think, though, every time I see it, that it should be captioned "Allen!", as shown below. [image] Why (You might perhaps be asking yourself)? Because of this video: [media]

NYT gives a shout-out to Encodo

2019-01-26T11:17:46+01:00

Published by marco on 26. Jan 2019 11:17:46 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The NYT Saturday Crossword today looks very similar to the "Encodo logo" . [image][image] We did the puzzle justice by filling it out from the middle outwards -- perfectly balanced. [image] We made it another few clues before things drifted apart.

Bad, bad jokes

2019-01-08T20:35:42+01:00

Published by marco on 8. Jan 2019 20:35:42 Updated by marco on 26. May 2021 22:13:02 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I just read through a list of "offensive jokes" . Here are, in no particular order, the ones I thought you would enjoy; your mileage may vary and don't judge me. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. What do 50,000 battered women have in common? A. They don't fucking listen. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Adolf Hitler and Josef Mengele are sitting in a bar when Hitler turns towards a stranger and says: "I planning to deport and kill 16 million jews and 1 clown". The stranger then replies: "why deport and kill the clown?". Hitler turns to Josef and says "See Josef, nobody cares about the jews". -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. What's the difference between a blonde and a mosquito? A. The mosquito stops sucking when it gets smacked. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. Why did God create yeast infections? A. So women would know what it's like to live with an irritating Cunt . -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. What's the difference between a Catholic wife and a Jewish wife? A. A Catholic wife has real orgasms and fake jewelry. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. What's the difference between a G-Spot and a golf ball? A. A guy will actually search for a golf ball. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. What's the first thing a woman does when she gets out of the battered wives' shelter? A. The dishes, if she knows what's fucking good for her -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. What do you call a woman with one black eye? A. A fast learner -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Statistically speaking, 9 out of 10 people enjoy gang rape -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. What do you say to a woman with two black eyes? A. Nothing, you told her twice already. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Husband and wife are at it in their bedroom, when the man notices that their son is at the door, watching them, with shock and disgust on his face. He runs off. The dad follows his son to his room to talk to him. He opens the door and sees his son banging grandma. The son then turns to the father and says, "It's not so fun when it's your mom, is it?" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An elementary school teacher, a lawyer, a Catholic priest and three young boys are on a plane with only three parachutes. Engines explode, plane starts going down. The teacher says, 'Save the children!' The lawyer yells, 'FUCK THE CHILDREN!' The Catholic priest looks around and whispers, 'Is there time?' -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. How long does it take to kill a baby in a microwave? A. I dunno, I close my eyes when I masturbate. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. What is the difference between Sarah Palin's mouth and her vagina? A. Not everything that comes out of her vagina is retarded. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I was out for a hike one day when I found a young boy at the top of a cliff, all alone and crying. "Hey kid, why are you crying?" I asked. "Mister, my mommy's all the way down there at the bottom of the cliff! sniff" "Oh no..." sniff "She fell! And my daddy tried to catch her and he fell too!" I put a hand on his little shoulder. We had a quiet moment there, the two of us, alone, at the top of the cliff. Then the little boy said, "Mister, why are you unbuckling your belt?" "Sorry kid. Today's just not your day." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. Why do Scottish men wear kilts? A. Because sheep can hear a zipper from a mile away. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Two black guys are walking down the street. They see a sign on a storefront that says "We'll make you white for only 99 cents!" They look at each and decide that it sounds like a great deal, they had always wanted to escape the racism they faced as black men. They start digging in their pockets for money. The first friend pulls out a dollar bill and the second friend has only 98 cents. "I have an idea" says the man with 98 cents. "You go in and get the operation and when you come out, you give me the penny you get back as change." "Good idea!", his friend replies, and enters the store as the other man waits out front. Thirty minutes later, the first friend exits the store as a white man in business suit. "Wow! It worked!" the black man says to his friend. "How about that penny?" The newly changed white man says with a disgusted look on his face, "Get a job, nigger!", and walks off. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An elderly man takes his wife to see a doctor. "Doctor! You need to help me, I can't remember if my wife has Alzheimer's or AIDS! What do I do?" The doctor replies, "Well that's easily solved. Take her for a drive into the middle of the forest, and leave her there." The elderly man was confused, "How will that help?" he asked. To which the doctor replied, "If she comes home, DON'T FUCK HER!!" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. What do spinach and anal sex have in common? A. If you were forced to have it as a kid, you'll hate it as an adult. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Romanian, a Jew and a Somali under a tree. A caterpillar gets on the Romanian's shoulder. The Romanian throws the caterpillar at the Jew, the Jew throws the caterpillar at the Somali, the Somali picks up the caterpillar and eats it. Another caterpillar gets on the Romanian, the Romanian throws it at the Jew, the Jew picks it up and ask the Somali: "Do you want to buy a caterpillar?" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lady in labour, shouting the usual shit, "Get this out of me! Give me the drugs!" She turns to her boyfriend and says, "You did this to me, you fucker!" He casually replies, "If you remember, I wanted to stick it up your arse, but you said, 'fuck off it'll be too painful.'" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. What's al Qaeda's favorite football team? A. The New York Jets. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On their 50th anniversary, a woman asks her husband, "What did you think of me when you first met me?" The husband replies, "I wanted to fuck your brains out and suck your tits dry." The woman then asks, "What do think of me now?" The husband takes a good slow look, running his eyes up and down all over her body. Finally, he answers, "I think I did a pretty good job." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When I was young, my father emphasized every day how important it was to wear a condom if I ever had sex. He said, “Any person willing to have sex with you will sleep with almost anyone else.” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- After the plane was airborne, drink orders were taken. The Irishman asked for a whiskey, which was promptly brought and placed before him. The flight attendant then asked the Mormon if he would like a drink. He replied in disgust, "I'd rather be savagely raped by a dozen whores than let liquor touch my lips." The Irishman then handed his drink back to the attendant and said, "Me, too, I didn't know we had a choice." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The cop makes his way up to the window and says, “We’re looking for two child molesters.” The priests look at each other for a moment and turn back to the cop. “We’ll do it.” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Seven-year-old Mohammad entered his classroom in Dublin on the first day of school.. "What's your name?", asked the teacher. "Mohammad," he replied. "You're in Ireland now," replied the teacher, "so from now on you will be known as Mick." Mohammad returned home after school. "How was your day, Mohammad?" his mother asked. "My name is not Mohammad. I'm in Ireland and now my name is Mick." "Are you ashamed of your name?" his mother asked. "Are you trying to dishonor your parents, your heritage, your religion? Shame on you!" And his mother beat the shit out of him. Then she called his father, who beat the shit out of him again. The next day Mohammad returned to school. The teacher saw all his fresh bruises. "What happened to you, Mick?" she asked. "Well, shortly after becoming an Irishman, I was attacked by two fucking Muslims -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Two Saudi brothers come to America and one buys a house on the West Coast and the other on the East Coast. During their goodbyes, they make a $10,000 bet: in two months they will meet again and the one that is the most American wins. Two months pass and they meet again. “Ismael! It’s so good to see you. Take a look. I have a Ford 350 dually 4x4 with lifts and a sticker of a cartoon character pissing on the Chevy symbol. It has a gun rack in the back and my son needs a step ladder to get in. Have you seen him?! He loves McDonalds and he’s already gained 25 pounds! My wife watches Maury and smokes and follows all these Facebook groups. She won’t even vaccinate my baby girl. I surely won the bet!” His brother looks at him for a few long seconds. “Shut the fuck up, towel-head” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A horny gorilla sees a lion bent over a small stream. He creeps up, then jumps him and has his way with him. He takes off running, with the very angry lion on his heels. As they run through the jungle, the gorilla gets a bit of a lead, and sees a British safari camp ahead. The gorilla reaches the camp, grabs some a shirt, pants, and hat from a clothesline, and drops into a chair by the campfire. He snatches a copy of the local paper and unfolds it to cover up his face . The lion reaches the campsite and lets out a huge roar, yelling, "did anyone see a gorilla run through here?" The gorilla responds, "you mean the one that fucked the lion up the ass?" The lion exclaims, "oh my god! It's in the paper already?"

Trump/Giuliani Joke

2018-06-27T07:08:56+02:00

Published by marco on 27. Jun 2018 07:08:56 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "What do Rudy and Donald have in common? "They both want to fuck Ivanka. Which is weird for Trump, because they're related and for Giuliani, because they're not. [1]" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Referring to Rudy's first wife "Regina Peruggi" , who is also his second cousin.

Friendface is about love and companionship

2018-04-11T19:11:07+02:00

Published by marco on 11. Apr 2018 19:11:07 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mark Zuckerberg was worried that Congress wouldn't understand his message, so he had his team whip up a helpful, instructional video to take things down to Congress's technical level. "It's like a petri dish filled with friendship germs." [media]

Essays that I'm glad I read

2017-04-29T11:43:17+02:00

Published by marco on 29. Apr 2017 11:43:17 Updated by marco on 29. Apr 2017 11:43:47 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I read through "The web’s funniest stories" by Tim Carmody the other day. My favorites from that list are: [Quick reads] "So You've Decided To Drink More Water" by Mallory Ortburg A nicely written fantasy about starting a new diet/lifestyle. "[...] Grown men sink to their knees as you pass, their faces crumpling into shameless sobs. Mothers lift their children up to you in mute and expectant appeal. You bless them all. [...]" "TOTO'S "AFRICA" BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY" by Anthony Sams You're welcome in advance for putting this into your head for the rest of the day. "At the airport the young man heard far-off drums echoing in the night. He imagined the young woman in the plane sitting still, hearing whispers of a quiet conversation near the rear of the fuselage. [...]" "Oscar Fug Parties: Lindsay Lohan and Sharon Stone" by Jessica A short riff based on a single picture of Sharon Stone and Lindsay Lohan. "[...] FUCK MERYL STREEP I’M TELLING YOU THINGS. So THEN you decide to make a REALLY PORNY SEQUEL to the movie where you show your cooter LIKE I MEAN REALLY PORNY [...]" "TIME FOR SOME STORIES" by davesecretaryatwork This is a long read, but broken up into many short and easily digested pieces. Some are laugh-out-loud funny. Some are weird and fall a bit flat. All are at-least kind-of clever -- though it's hard to tell whether the cleverness is deliberate or the product of accidental genius or what? Are the stories really real? Or pretending to be real? Written in a mad flow of energy within the time frame shown in the posts (the initial flurry was written in a single morning)? A frenzied work of mad genius from the early days of the web. "[...] SO IT'S CHRISTMAS AND MY FAMILY IS PLAYING 'SCATTERGORIES' AND EVERYONE IS DRUNK, ESPECIALLY MY STEP-UNCLE RICK. HE'S JUST RAVING DRUNK. IT'S CRAZY. SOMEONE ROLLS THE LETTER 'F' AND WE ALL SPEND 2 MINUTES TRYING TO FILL OUT THE BLANKS. THE TIMER DINGS AND WE GO AROUND TELLING EACH OTHER OUR ANSWERS. "THE FIRST CATEGORY IS 'VEGETABLE'. WE ALL GO AROUND AND WE GET TO DRUNK STEP-UNCLE RICK WHO LOOKS AT US ALL SMUGLY, DIGS UP THIS WIDE GRIN, AND THEN SAYS "FUCKING CARROTS!! [...]" [Long reads] "Dogs Don't Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving" by Allie Brosh I first read Allie Brosh's "essays and cartoons" on "depression" , which are both eye-opening and hilarious. This one is about her two dogs, who suffer from emotional instability. "[...] When we started packing, the helper dog knew immediately that something was going on. I could tell that she knew because she becomes extremely melodramatic when faced with even a trivial amount of uncertainty. She started following me everywhere, pausing every so often to flop to the ground in an exaggeratedly morose fashion - because maybe that would make me realize how selfish I was being by continuing to pack despite her obvious emotional discomfort. [...]" "The Alameda-Weehauken Burrito Tunnel" by Maciej Ceglowski This guy is a world-class essayist with a rich blog archive that includes "tech stuff" about "the web" . This story is lovely. Fair warning: his site's motto is "brevity is for the weak". "[...] In 1911, the celebrated British civil engineer Basil Mott approached the plutocrat Andrew W. Mellon with an audacious plan to build a straight-line tunnel 2500 miles long connecting New York City with San Francisco, allowing packages to be sent between the two cities using only compressed air and gravity. [...]" "Something Close To Madness Case File #24: The Oogieloves In The Big Balloon Adventure" by Nathan Rabin The introduction to this one is long. Hang in there, there's gems like this existentially evocative image in there. "An experience that was meant to be joyous, communal, and designed around the short attention spans of small children had morphed into a de facto private screening. At least there were two souls in attendance; I imagine most screenings of Oogieloves played to empty theaters, where its constant pleas to an audience that did not exist must have played like something close to madness."

Some comedy videos to soothe the exhausted leftie

2017-03-04T12:38:29+01:00

Published by marco on 4. Mar 2017 12:38:29 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A friend on Facebook published a giant list of political-news links, one more stress-inducing and hyperbolic than the next. His friends commented about their existential angst and hair-pulling in response to the worst onslaught that the worst has had to offer to any group of people ever. To soothe the souls of these benighted individuals, I offer some distraction. During dinner last night, we entertained ourselves instead with the following rabbit-hole of YouTube videos, starring Robin Williams, Craig Ferguson, Chris Rock and Dara Ó Briain. Best enjoyed with cocktails, if that's your thing. For once, the epithet "best" in the title of the first video is not even that big of an exaggeration. * [media] * [media] * [media] * [media] * [media] * [media]

Bill Burr on Pregnancy and Christmas Stockings

2016-12-30T22:16:21+01:00

Published by marco on 30. Dec 2016 22:16:21 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Burr does an extemporaneous podcast every Monday and Thursday. He is one of the English language's best living comedians, with a tremendous feel for timing and a much cleverer take on things than he'll admit (but that's part of his schtick). On a recent show, "Monday Morning Podcast 22.12.2016" , his wife Nia joined him. She is pregnant, several months along. Once you've heard the podcast, you'll wonder at the amount of patience that she brings to the marriage, all the more when very pregnant. [On Pregnancy] At 07:30 into the podcast, Burr's mixing in exclamations about a Flyers game he's watching, while making no concession to Nia's gravid condition. "Bill: You literally just had your arm across your eyes like you can't listen to another tedious word coming out of my mouth. Nia: I'm exhausted…. Bill:: (mimics her) I'm exhausted ... Nia. I have friends who are way fatter than you and they're up and about, getting shit done. I don't know what you're complaining about. I have friends who are morbidly obese. They're more active than you are. You're being a little dramatic." [On Christmas] At 16:45in, he goes on what seems like an ad-hoc tirade about stockings, socks and then breaks into an impromptu rendition of Silver Bells. "Stockings, I don't know about you guys, if you start on the stockings. But we always end on the stocking. "So you go over to the stocking and it's like a gift certificate to a book club. And you gotta sit there actin' like, oh yeah, thank you, ... I get to read. "Awesome. "What else is in here? "Oh! New socks! I mean, who couldn't use new socks? Are these Gold Toe? Ohh, you shouldn't have. "I would rather wear one stocking, walking down the street, than Gold Toe socks, just because of what they represent. There's a lot of blood ... and shame ... on all those Gold Toe socks. You know? Do you know how many hookers have laid (sic) on motel room floors and the last thing that they saw was somebody's bloody Gold Toe sock walking towards them? "It's so bad. So bad during the holiday season. "[Sung to the tune of "Silver Bells"]: "Silver bells Leaving your family Going to get a hooker While the goose cools Double life Serial killer Cops show up one day And you confess to 40 other killings And your wife says Who the fuck are you? What did I do With the last 3 decades? And you stare at her With no feeling behind your eyes."

Whoosh: a missed joke on procrastination

2016-12-22T07:24:33+01:00

Published by marco on 22. Dec 2016 07:24:33 Updated by marco on 22. Dec 2016 07:28:38 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image] OP; Heheheheheheheh M: It's been raining here all afternoon and night OP; Mom, that's not the point. M: I know OP; Hahah okay just checkin' (upside-down smilie face)

Prank: a psychedelic video

2016-04-16T22:31:17+02:00

Published by marco on 16. Apr 2016 22:31:17 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This video reminds me a bit of the work of George Plimpton -- especially the sound effects. Super-strange story of a prank gone wrong...or right? It's hard to tell. There really are no words. The animation is top-notch and the sequences are definitely not something that most of could conceive. Somewhat Lovecraftian in places. If you're a fan of animation and strangeness, check it out. [media]

Phrasing. BOOM.

2016-03-31T07:33:10+02:00

Published by marco on 31. Mar 2016 07:33:10 Updated by marco on 31. Mar 2016 07:34:54 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Imagine my surprise when I opened the article "Great Tits Sing with Syntax" by Abbas Raza and discovered it was about Japanese birds. [image] In case you're interested, the 3QuarksDailly post links through to the full article "These birds use a linguistic rule thought to be unique to humans" by Rachel Feltman -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The title is a reference to a tag line from Archer, which the lead character utters at every possible opportunity, whenever someone says something that could be misconstrued as even vaguely sexual in nature. Archer's seventh season kicks off today!

Greg Proops on San Francisco

2015-02-14T20:16:27+01:00

Published by marco on 14. Feb 2015 20:16:27 Updated by marco on 10. Mar 2016 06:43:24 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Transcribed from "Clasps" : "The beach in San Francisco is not like Brian Wilson's endless-fucking-summer beach. "Beaches in southern California, people go to 'em and they're surfing and they're having picnics. "Or if you go to a beach in Hawaii, people are playing volleyball or -- what do you call those boards that you stand on and you have a stick and you look like a douchebag? What are those? -- paddleboards. Yeah. Those are awesome, right? And people are out there doing that and shit. "Anyways, in San Francisco, the beaches in San Francisco are dirty, the fence is crumbling, the concrete abutment is falling apart, there's parts that are taped off with police tape and shit, the sand is repulsive and it's not a beach that you go to to hang out all day in the sun and take your clothes off ... it's a beach [where] you put stones in your pockets and grouchily walk out into the water and say goodbye to this world. No one goes to the beach with a beachball and goes like this [vogues with beachball]. No. You go with a joint and a six-pack. And you sit there. And then when dark comes, you set fire to your car."

Extemporizing with Greg Proops

2014-11-12T21:23:33+01:00

Published by marco on 12. Nov 2014 21:23:33 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I've recently started listening to the Gregg Proops podcast, called "The Smartest Man in the World" . He has a objectively terrible LA accent that really needs getting used to, but he's a wonderfully extemporaneous, stream-of-consciousness, improvisational comedian whose claim to fame is "Whose Line is it Anyway?". [1] Let's start off with a sample from the podcast called "Hearts". Proops was discussing how the British newspapers were disparaging "pop royalty" Jay-Z and Beyoncé for not being appropriately somber and being too self-absorbed at the Louvre: "How else would a rapper couple whose whole life is involved with self-aggrandizement, how else would they view the Louvre? You didn't think they were going to stand there with a fucking sketch book, did you? Take detailed notes on the fucking "Winged Victory of Samothrace"? [...]" He went on to point out that "Beyoncé made a 5-hour documentary about herself for HBO *that had no humor in it*. [...]" so how could we possibly expect her to provide us with any insight on the Louvre? She doesn't even understand the deep irony of making a 5-hour autobiography and takes herself seriously as a living icon throughout. Having noted that, we should all do ourselves a favor and forget about her place in our society while still, perhaps, appreciating the bits of good music she manages to produce. [2] In the episode named "Periwinkle", he addressed a sulking heckler: "You know...you have exactly thirty seconds to change your fucking attitude from one of dismal reprobation to one of enormous respect. That's what's going to happen at this fucking show. Or I'm going to play the "Immigrant Song" and dance the rest of this goddamned show. And that's the whole show. Seriously. I don't give a shit. I can't be fired and I've already got my money." And this is from "Mandates", when he, once again, plays The Immigrant Song, this time on tour in Sweden. "You know what this song is doing? It's begging for a village to be burned to the fucking ground. I'd take all the cattle and women. I'd take mushrooms, I'd go to the Caspian Sea, I'd trade for slaves, I'd take my boats overland to fucking Volgagrad. That's what I'd fucking do. You should be proud that you come from the land of the ice and snow and the midnight sun, where the hot springs blow." And then he launched into a tirade on how the world works: "Christian white people run the entire fucking boat. And when I say 'Christian white people', I mean people that are different colors too, that aren't Christian. Well, how do you include them all in one boat? I'm talking about the men who run the world, whether they're in India, in Indonesia or Russia or America or China....they're all of the same stripe. We're talking about men who perceive women as objects, who perceive the poor as a detriment to society, who perceive the war machine as the machine that they must stoke and fuel, because that's the machine that they receive all the profits from, that they perceive civil rights and freedom of expression in the world to be the biggest threat to the world -- not war, not poverty, not sickness, not mayhem, but the people who lead all the countries in Africa, every single country you can think of, what they perceive as the biggest threat to the world is the fact that we would be able to speak freely to one another, share ideas and, maybe, learn something from another culture. That's what they're afraid of. What they're afraid of is that we might consider each other equals at any point -- because that's not how the fucking world works. When a giant corporation sets out to make profit and growth -- and those are their only two goals -- the thing they want is to set us against each other. But how do you mean giant corporations? I mean giant corporations like governments. Governments are giant corporations that [work] at the behest of other giant corporations. You are living in a Utopian ideal here [Sweden] insomuch as they take all of your fucking money for taxes -- but you do get something out of it, like trains that run real fucking fast and liquor stores that close before you can get there. [3]" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I know that's redundant but I don't care. [1] You know you're already humming "If you like it, you shoulda put a ring on it" to yourself. [1] With the bit at the end, he circled back around to the bitchfest with which he started the show, about how the state-sanctioned and -supported liquor stores in Sweden all close just when any normal person would be thinking of buying some booze for the evening.

Podunk City, USA

2014-03-01T20:17:40+01:00

Published by marco on 1. Mar 2014 20:17:40 Updated by marco on 1. Mar 2014 20:18:55 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]When you grew up in the countryside, you tend to have to prove the extreme rurality of your origin to others who share a similarly bucolic provenance. Should I become embroiled in future such contests of micturial prowess and find myself in trouble, struggling to triumph against a backwoods foe prodigiously well-equipped with a backwoods background that threatens to overshadow my own, I will rest assured that I can break the glass in case of such an emergency to retrieve the following link to end the discussion. Oh, you guys used to tip cows when you got drunk? Wow, that's crazy. No, really. "Sexual misconduct with cows reported in Herkimer Co." "They were caught on videotape after a local farmer set up a camera in his barn after noticing his cows all of a sudden appeared anxious and were not producing as usual." So the farmer filmed them filming themselves "hav[ing] sexual contact with several cows"? Will Ilion police be pressing charges against the farmer for producing bestiality porn as well?

The Internet will consume you

2014-01-19T16:07:01+01:00

Published by marco on 19. Jan 2014 16:07:01 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The following screenshot of the post "What is an example of a "useless/worthless PhD" or its opposite?" by Mathbosss presents a prime example of how the Internet actively works to consume your every waking moment. [image] I found the conversation quite interesting and somewhat humorous and was sorely tempted to continue. Fortitude intervened.

(Semi-)Intellectual jokes

2013-07-14T21:51:24+02:00

Published by marco on 14. Jul 2013 21:51:24 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Recently, the post "What's the most intellectual joke you know?" got a lot of play and a tremendous number of suggestions. I dug through what were rated the top 500 replies and extracted and collated my favorites. [Computer Science] There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors.The programmer's wife tells him: "Run to the store and pick up a loaf of bread. If they have eggs, get a dozen." The programmer comes home with 12 loaves of bread. [Networking] I'd tell you a UDP joke, but you may not get it.I prefer IP jokes; it's all in the delivery.I could tell you a joke about TCP, but I'd have to keep repeating it until you got it. [(Mis)counting] There are two types of people in the world: Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data sets.There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure. [The Classics] An Irishman goes to a building site for his first day of work, and a couple of Englishmen think, "Ah, we'll have some fun with him!" So they walk up and say, "Hey, Paddy, as you're new here make sure you know a joist from a girder..." "Ah, sure, I knows" says Paddy, "twas Joyce wrote Ulysses and Goethe wrote Faust." [Math & Physics] A hundred kilopascals go into a bar.Entropy isn't what it used to be.Q: What do you get when you put root beer in a square glass? A: BeerQ: What does the "B" in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot. [1]First Law of Thermodynamics: You can't win. Second Law of Thermodynamics: You can't break even. Third Law of Thermodynamics: You can't stop playing.A biologist, a chemist, and a statistician are out hunting. The biologist shoots at a deer and misses 5ft to the left, the chemist takes a shot and misses 5ft to the right, the statistician yells "We got 'em!"An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician just got out of a lecture regarding the geometry of 4-dimensional space. The engineer says, "I had a really hard time visualizing in four dimensions." The physicist says "Oh, it's easy, just think of the 4th dimension as time" The mathematician says "It's even easier than that - just think about n-dimensional space and then set n to 4" [Romans & Germans] A Roman walks into a bar and asks for a martinus. "You mean a martini?" the bartender asks. The Roman replies, "If I wanted a double, I would have asked for it!"A German walks into a bar and asks for a martini. The bartender asks "dry?" He replies "nein, just one"According to Sigmund Freud, what comes between fear and sex? Fünf.Angela Merkel arrives at Passport Control at Paris airport. "Nationality?" asks the immigration officer. "German," she replies. "Occupation?" "No, just here for a few days." [Engineers & Economists] A pastor, a doctor and an engineer are on a golf course behind an especially slow group. When the marshal comes around, they decide to ask him what the deal is. He tells them the slow play is because it is a group of blind firefighters, who saved the clubhouse from a fire that blinded them, so they get to play for free. The pastor proclaims "That is terrible, I will say a prayer for them." The doctor says "I can contact an ophthalmologist friend who has done wonders with the blind." The engineer asks "Why don't they just play at night?"An engineer, an economist, and a philosopher are hiking through the hills of Scotland. On the top of a hill they see a black sheep. "What do you know," the engineer remarks. "The sheep in Scotland are black." "No, no", protests the economist. "At least one of the sheep in Scotland is black." The philosopher considers this a moment. "That's not quite right. There's at least one sheep which is black from one side." [Heisenberg] I hear Heisenberg and his wife are having problems; When he has the time, he doesn't have the energy, and when he has the position, he can't get the momentum.Heisenberg was speeding down the highway. Cop pulled him over and says "Son, do you have any idea how fast you were going back there?" Heisenberg said, "No, but I knew where I was"The cop says "You were doing 100 miles an hour" to which Heisenberg replies "Great, now I'm lost". [Philosophy & Linguistics] Your mother is so classless, she could be a Marxist utopia.What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?What's the difference between ignorance and indifference? I don't know and I don't care.A Buddhist monk approaches a hot-dog stand and says "make me one with everything".Sometimes to sound smart I just masturbate a big word into a sentence even when I don't know its meaning. [2]It's hard to explain puns to kleptomaniacs because they always take things literally.Due to cultural sensitives and issues with genocide, Crayola is going to stop using the the name Indian Red. They're going to change it to Khmer Rouge.Werner Heisenberg, Kurt Gödel, and Noam Chomsky walk into a bar. Heisenberg turns to the other two and says, "Clearly this is a joke, but how can we figure out if it's funny or not?" Gödel replies, "We can't know that because we're inside the joke." Chomsky says, "Of course it's funny. You're just telling it wrong." [3]Jean-Paul Sartre is sitting at a French café, revising his draft of Being and Nothingness. He says to the waitress, "I'd like a cup of coffee, please, with no cream." The waitress replies, "I'm sorry, Monsieur, but we're out of cream. How about with no milk?" [4]Four dons were walking down an Oxford street one evening. All were philologists and members of the English department. They were discussing group nouns: a covey of quail, a pride of lions, an exaltation of larks. As they talked, they passed four ladies of the evening. The dons did not exactly ignore the hussies—in a literary way, that is. One of them asked: “How would you describe a group like that?” Suggested the first: “A jam of tarts?” The second: “A flourish of strumpets?” The third: “An essay of trollops?” Then the dean of the dons, the eldest and most scholarly of them all, closed the discussion: “I wish that you gentlemen would consider 'an anthology of pros.' “A linguistics professor was lecturing to his class one day and said "In English, a double negative forms a positive. But in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However," he pointed out, "in no language in the world can a double positive form a negative." But then a voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Mandelbrot is a mathematician most commonly associated with fractal geometry. The play here is on the nature of fractals (citing the article "Fractal" ): "Fractals are typically self-similar patterns, where self-similar means they are "the same from near as from far".[3] Fractals may be exactly the same at every scale, or, as illustrated in Figure 1, they may be nearly the same at different scales" [1] This one would work equally well with "expectorate", "micturate" or "defecate", depending on whether the audience would appreciate the shock value of the original choice. [1] Again, from Reddit, as explained by someone more familiar with Chomsky's linguisitc theories than I: "[...] but Chomsky is a linguist who is famous for his theory of linguistic competence. To put it on a bumper sticker, his theory holds that "performance does not equal competence". In other words, he thinks that linguistic analysis should be concerned with the "ideal" version of language, which he distinguishes from the version actually spoken by the speakers of the language. One of his reasons for this is that the performed version of the language can include errors by the speaker that do not actually shed light on the language itself. "So in the joke, Chomsky is saying that the ideal version of the joke is funny, even if the spoken version of the joke is not. He believes that there is a distinction between an ideal competently spoken version of the joke and the actually spoken version of the joke, and that the ideal version of the joke is the "real" version." [1] As nicely explained in the joke thread on Reddit: "Sartre wrote about choice, but that joke is obviously referencing his notion of nothingness, which he took to mean a physical nothing, rather than the simple lack of a something. He famously put this to analogy with his story about Pierre. You go to the café to meet your friend Pierre, but when you arrive, he’s not there. What you feel is the active LACK of Pierre. You look around expecting to see him but you do not. He is a nothingness that is felt. So the joke about “no cream” is turned around with a nothingness of milk."

Geoguessr: Geography lessons in the real world

2013-05-20T22:24:59+02:00

Published by marco on 20. May 2013 22:24:59 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I've recently discovered (via "Kottke.org" ) a deceptively simple game called "GeoGuessr" , which works as follows: 1. The game shows a random location using Google Streetview 2. The player has to click as close as possible to the location on the inset map 3. The game rates your guess based on distance from the actual location and comes up with a score (6500 points seems to be the maximum) 4. Repeat 5 times 5. Tally up the score Depending on how you play, you may or may not care about the score. Kottke at the link above writes that "Using Google in another tab is cheating!" If you play that way, the score will help you figure out how well you guessed. However, the game is -- in my humble opinion -- much, much better if you look up the location in another Google Maps instance. How can that be? Why, because it's just really not that easy at all, even if you "cheat". [image]Some of the locations drop you into the middle of a vast desert with no signs of human habitation. Some of them will be in locations where you don't know the alphabet or writing system. You'll have your fingers crossed that the country you're lost in uses Arabic numerals for its roads or perhaps at least includes an anglicized version of its city names in major highway signs. And count your lucky stars if you at least get into a modern StreetView; there's still data for the States and Australia that dates back to 2009, which is of quite low quality. Try reading a street or highway sign in those places. We got 32368 points on this one ("try it yourself" ), nailing the location within a few dozen meters in most cases. If you don't fee like trying it, you can just "view the locations" . Highlight the next paragraph if you want to see the locations. Our locations were in Omsk, Làrach Mòr (Scotland), Esashi, Japan, the middle of nowhere in Australia (Tambo) and northeast of Johannesburg in South Africa. If you're going to try it, don't read the next paragraph either. [image][image]We would find landmarks on signs like "Dirk's Place" or "Club Hotel Motel" and "Fanny Mae's Food and Fuel" or the "Top Tucker Great Grog" which we found on "Flickr" and pointed us toward Tambo in Australia. For Omsk, we used an "online Cyrillic keyboard" to enter street names in Russian (we had to search around since "Pushkin Street" was as likely to narrow things down as "Elm Street" would in America). In another case, we relatively quickly recognized that we were in Japan, but had to cruise the streets until we saw signs with Arabic numbers and Latin alphabet city names to narrow things down. Without extra help, we would have still missed our guess by hundreds of kilometers, if only because we have no idea where highway 115 is in Japan without looking it up. It turns out that the version of the game in which you "cheat" takes a lot longer than the one where you just guess as best as possible without looking up anything. We tried again ("try it yourself" ) and managed to best our previous score by a paltry few points (32386 points this time), but also noticed that the game was whisking us off to almost the same countries as in our previous attempt. If you don't feel like playing it, you can still "view the locations we visited" . Again, highlight the next paragraph if you want to see the locations we visited. This time, we were transported to just outside Kiev, along the coast in Brazil, south of São Paolo, near Shimoda, Japan, west of Lesotho in South Africa and a small, rural town in Romania.

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert: November wrap-up

2012-12-03T22:59:43+01:00

Published by marco on 3. Dec 2012 22:59:43 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The last week's worth of Daily Shows and Colbert Reports had some very good moments, so I thought I'd summarize and link to the stuff I found interesting. To start off, the show "November 28, 2012 -- Frank Oz" included a really strong "The Word" segment, shown and transcribed by yours truly below. [media] In this clip above, Stephen addresses a column by Fox News staff columnist Suzanne Venker -- a so-called journalist to whom I would ordinarily not pay any attention but Stephen did such a sterling job of destroying her throwback viewpoint that I couldn't resist -- in which she wrote that women aren't getting married as much anymore because ... they are unattractive to men. She argues that men haven't changed at all, so they can't be the problem, something that is self-evident to the enlightened. Women are to blame because they are "angry...also defensive". To which Stephen responds: "Women are angry and defensive. You want proof? Go up to any single woman and say: the reason you're not married is because you're angry and defensive. (bullet: wear a cup.) "And, not only are these shrill harpies scaring good, quality men away from marriage, but they're also making these men deadbeats. Venker says that women have "pissed [men] off [and] undermined their ability to become self-sufficient in the hopes of someday supporting a family. Men want to love women, not compete with them." "Yeah! Men hate women who compete with them; that's why it's so rare for men to be attracted to women in the workplace. I mean, what man wants a woman providing the money while he stays home to do what? Witness his child taking its first steps? I've seen people walk before and, frankly, babies aren't that good at it. "Men want paperwork; we want a grinding commute to sit in a cubicle all day long, taking crap from that jerkoff Rick. Luckily, Venker see a way to liberate women and men from these liberate women: all that ladies have to do is [Venkman again] "surrender to their nature -- their femininity -- and let men surrender to theirs. If they do, marriageable men will come out of the woodwork." Yes, just surrender, and those men will come out of the woodwork, like cockroaches in a darkened crab-shack. "But ladies. Ladies, you can do more...by doing less. Maybe you could go without voting. Or stop talking...that's mysterious. I mean, what are you girls thinking? (bullet: Am I in Saudi Arabia?) I mean, follow Miss Venker's advice and you single gals will be able to live out every woman's wildest dream: marrying a man who doesn't want you to achieve anything. "And, as a man, on behalf of women everywhere, thank you Susan Venker, I trust you will lead the charge by getting out of the writing business; clearly, it's not in your nature. And that's the word." The interview with Frank Oz in the same show was pretty funny, as was Colbert's portrayal of a Powerball winner squirrel-shaped pools at the top of show, so check out the "full episode" if that sounds good to you. Next up is an episode of the Daily Show featuring an interview with Neil Young (who is pretty good), but is preceded by two stellar segments: 1. A monologue by Jon, exposing John McCain and Lindsey Graham's hypocrisy vis à vis their near-feral focus on Benghazi and their heaping of approbation on Susan Rice for it. Jon and his staff do a nice job digging up video to show the two senators supporting Condaleeza Rice in a similar situation -- similar, except that Condaleeza actually knew she was wrong (and lied about it) -- whereas it's perfectly plausible that Susan Rice was just wrong. [1] 2. ...and then a segment by Jason Jones [2] -- Consultants without Bordersa -- about U.S. campaign advisors who go abroad to spread the love and bring the gift of the U.S. campaign style and advertising to other, more benighted countries. [media] The main guy Jones interviews, Tad Devine, is so stunningly tone-deaf that it's hard to believe he wasn't in on the joke. A partial transcript follows. "Tad: You know, listen, every place is not like our country in terms of the stage of development of democracy. U.S. political consultants just have a lot more experience." He goes on to give an example of a case he worked on in Ireland where he found a link to the Playboy site from the opposition's web site ... and the opposition's last name was Rabbitte. Comedy gold! Democracy gold! Jason Jones responds: "And just to think, that meaningless titty scandal might have gone un-utilized." Tad concurs with a lopsided, loopy grin. A little later, Jones asks him about another campagin, this one in Bolivia, where Tad helped elect a guy he describes as having a "great mustache...and an awesome llama ad". He goes on: "Tad: Listen, it's very complicated there. And, unfortunately, after he was elected, there was insurrection -- riots -- in the streets. Ultimately, he was forced to resign. Jason: American-style democracy, undone by the will of the local people. Tad: It was a very difficult situation. Jason: How did you pick yourself up? Tad: You know...I went on to the next campaign. Jason: God bless you, sir. Jason: (voiceover) And their perseverance is rivaled only by their generosity. Tad: It's been great to travel to these places and work with people... Jason: And to do all this, without getting paid, it's just incredible... Tad: Well, I do get paid for it. Jason: Yes, but, less than you do here [America]. Tad: Sometimes I get paid less and sometimes I get paid more. Jason: Right, well, financial compensation doesn't diminish the volunteer spirit. (Emphasis added.) Tad: Well, I'm someone who enjoys the work and is happy to have the opportunity to do it. Jason: A hero. Jason: (voiced over the graphic below) They say that a hero can save us and, lucky for the rest of the world, we have plenty of those." [image] And, finally, there is another Daily Show, with a John Hodgman segment (in his role as plutocrat) and an interview with the always-witty (and oh-so-dry) Calvin Trillin. A couple of bits of his wisdom and wit [3]: "[...] I think we think of something like [Trump running for President] the way that dentists think of tooth-decay: it's a pity, but where would business be without it." "Calista Gingrich, aware that her husband has cheated on and then left two women with serious illnesses, tries to make light of a bad cough." [media] Here's a partial transcript of the John Hodgman bit: Hodgman: Now that you've reëlected Obama, I and the other deranged millionaires can no longer afford American workers' pricy demands. I mean, I hate to say it, but we might just have to start shipping jobs overseas. Stewart: What...start? Companies have been shipping jobs overseas for years now. That's not a... Hodgman: And I hate to say it, but once Obamacare kicks in, I just might have to technically make everyone a part-time employee in order to avoid having to pay their health insurance. Stewart: That's a pretty standard corporate tactic, for years now, believe me, I know, I'm at Viacom, that's all they do, throw people [makes shuffling motions with hands] Hodgman: Well, and no matter how hard you work, I might just have to keep your wages stagnant. Stewart: That's already the case! ... John, all these threats that you and your fellow CEOs have been making are really exactly what these CEOs have already been doing for thirty years now. What's the difference? Hodgman: The difference? Well...we used to be motivated by profit; now, we're doing it out of spite. (Emphasis added.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] It's adorable how no one actually criticizes Susan Rice for her actual deficiencies: her unswerving support for Israel and her appalling reaction to the latest attacks on Palestine. She is extremely belligerent and is a potentially more jingoist Secretary of State than even Hillary Clinton (hard as that is to believe). There is also news that she is heavily invested in oil companies (to the tune of millions -- she's not a poor woman) and will move to green-light the Keystone pipeline as quickly as possible. [1] Spoiler alert: amazingly enough, Jones keeps his pants on throughout. [1] Trillin's wit is quite evocative of the style of Mark Twain; I'm 2/3 of the way through The Innocents Abroad and Twain was an utter master of sarcasm and biting wit.

Diane Keaton and Stephan Colbert in a short, surrealist play

2012-05-01T20:06:46+02:00

Published by marco on 1. May 2012 20:06:46 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here's an interview of Diane Keaton by Stephen Colbert. It's hard to describe, but it's very entertaining [1], in a very nonsensical and silly and non-goal-oriented way. Just pure improv; it's hard to imagine that they rehearsed it. [media] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] YMMV: Maybe it was the relaxed labor day dinner and too many white russians that made it so funny. White russians have been known to have that effect.

Irony from 16th-century Italy

2012-03-05T22:55:51+01:00

Published by marco on 5. Mar 2012 22:55:51 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]The post "Filosofia monosillabica" by Mark Liberman included the image reproduced to the left. Taking some artistic license, this translates roughly to: "Who can, will not Who wills [1], cannot Who knows, does not Who does, knows not And so the world goes badly" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I use "will" in both cases in the will-to-live sense, when perhaps "wants" would be a more appropriate modern translation. But "wants" would impose a messy "doesn't want to" translation.

Darwin Award of the century candidate

2012-01-03T22:42:03+01:00

Published by marco on 3. Jan 2012 22:42:03 Updated by marco on 30. Dec 2016 10:59:30 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [media] But still ... can that possibly be real? Who gets so pissed at an elevator that will not show up GOD DAMMIT -- Why is the world against me? On this too, God? -- that he just rams the doors until he DEFEATS THE STUPID ELEVATOR. Just this one time, he's won. THERE. THAT WILL SHOW THEM. Who's B o o o o s s .

Street Fliers

2012-01-03T22:39:29+01:00

Published by marco on 3. Jan 2012 22:39:29 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "7 more of the world's most brilliantly pointless street flyers" . Some are pretty original; some are kinda mean; some are kinda lame. I laughed at these: [image] [image] [image] The detail is too good not to be true: "Black manx, white markings on belly. no tail. Six years old. Red collar w/tags. Overweight. Mews all day / night demanding attention. Won't stay off countertops. Eats directly from unattended plates, knocks glasses/bottles/vases onto floor. Various expensive ailments. Doesn't do tricks or anything of interest." [image] [image] I'm itching to rip off the "9".

Low-cost Airlines (an Ode in Song)

2011-03-27T19:35:01+02:00

Published by marco on 27. Mar 2011 19:35:01 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The comedy/cabaret troupe "Fascinating Aida" riffed on cheap flights -- specifically those that you can get in Ireland (I'm looking at you, Ryanair). The video below is pretty funny (and includes subtitles for the Irish-accent--impaired). [media] SPOILER ALERT:The best line was right at the end (but it's really much better in song): "And as we heard his announcement, our hearts gave a terrible thump...if you haven't prepaid to use the steps, you'll have to feckin' jump!" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Hat-tip to Kath, who found it on "Video of the Day" by Scott Carmichael (Video: an ode to low cost airline tickets).

John Oliver's Stand-up New York City

2011-03-27T19:28:28+02:00

Published by marco on 27. Mar 2011 19:28:28 Updated by marco on 27. Mar 2011 19:30:35 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]How did I not know that John Oliver had his own show on Comedy Central? It's apparently a show where he does stand-up comedy of his own -- at which he is flat-out brilliant -- and includes bits from some other very talented people. He had a special last year as well, called "Terrifying Times" (the link takes you to clips from that show). Below is a video in which he tells the story of a man who rushes to catch a subway train. Oliver is a natural-born storyteller; it's definitely worth the four minutes. Looks like I've got a backlog of 90 videos from the first season to watch... [media]

Lewis Black stumps for Trump 2012

2011-03-25T21:59:33+01:00

Published by marco on 25. Mar 2011 21:59:33 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Lewis Black delivered what can only be considered a triumph of dark comedy in the following clip, in which he stumps for Donald Trump in 2012. You have to hang on through the whole video for his justification, which is transcribed below. [media] "That's what he's best at: putting a bow on a turd, marking up the price and selling it so hard, you want it, even though you know it's just a turd with a bow on it! America...is that turd. It's time to let Donald Trump come in, put some gold leaf on the border and marble columns around Florida, throw up his names in big lights over the Midwest...and sell this whole place to the Chinese before they realize it's half-broken. This is what I've been waiting for my whole life: a President who's not afraid to tell the truth about being a lying asshole! Trump 2012!" Goddamn if Lewis Black doesn't hit the nail right on the head. I've got tears in my eyes over here.

Colbert Report & Daily Show Roundup

2010-12-12T21:52:32+01:00

Published by marco on 12. Dec 2010 21:52:32 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The essay interpreting Eric Cantor's blatant religious censorship as an art statement is brilliant. "This defunding threat isn't some cheap exercise in mindless censorship; it's an anti-paradigmatic revolutionary work of conceptual art-banning. And, while its point of departure may be Senator Jesse Helms's admittedly ground-breaking defunding of the National Endowment of the Arts over André Serrano's Piss Christ, it's not a derivative "Oooh, I'm a Christian, I'm so offended" because, as the only Jewish Republican in Congress, Cantor's outrage on behalf of Christians and Christmas is a liminal journey into the cultural ur-wound, exploding our narrow preconceptions of what it means to pander. He posits: in a post-metaphysical world, is there recourse to intersubjective meaning? Sans artifice, each identity is just a senselessly differentiated iteration of routinized tropes. But Cantor's meta-reification mirrors our own incontrovertible passivity, which thrusts back upon us, reframed, and, in a Habermasian twist, we realize the final affirmative gesture of his solipsistic negation. Thus, Cantor's art is about the art that isn't there, making the inaccessible literally inaccessible." [media] The whole show was more or less based on art, wrapping up with "Frank Stella, Shepard Fairey and Andres Serrano helping Stephen sell last year's portrait to Steve Martin." [media] And finally, there's John Oliver explaining American politics to John Stewart. The John Oliver bit starts at seven minutes in: "The rich are above us. And if we allow them to drink from the fountain of wealth long enough, wealth can't help but trickle down in a fountain of oddly hot champagne" John responds: "But the Bush tax cuts have been in effect since 2001 ... so why hasn't the wealth overflowed its buckets and trickled down yet?" Good question, actually. It's almost like trickle-down doesn't work. Oliver sums up the state of politics in America with an answer to John's question on movement on other issues, like Don't Ask, Don't Tell: "Well, that depends [...] on what's in it for the wealthy. The Republicans might -- might! -- be willing to allow homosexuals to die openly for their country if anyone making over $500,000 per year is allowed to park in handicapped spaces." [media]

Comic Sans MS Pushes Back

2010-06-20T22:42:46+02:00

Published by marco on 20. Jun 2010 22:42:46 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In the category of font-geek humor, the perennial whipping boy of the font stable fights back in the essay, "I'm Comic Sans, Asshole" by Mike Lacher . "Need to soften the blow of a harsh message about restroom etiquette? SLAM. There I am. Need to spice up the directions to your graduation party? WHAM. There again. Need to convey your fun-loving, approachable nature on your business' website? SMACK. Like daffodils in motherfucking spring. "[...] "While Gotham is at the science fair, I'm banging the prom queen behind the woodshop. While Avenir is practicing the clarinet, I'm shredding "Reign In Blood" on my double-necked Stratocaster. While Univers is refilling his allergy prescriptions, I'm racing my tricked-out, nitrous-laden Honda Civic against Tokyo gangsters who'll kill me if I don't cross the finish line first." Trust me, this is hilarious to font geeks.

Name all the countries in the World

2010-06-20T15:30:13+02:00

Published by marco on 20. Jun 2010 15:30:13 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Sporcle" has a lot of fun quizzes, but my favorite is "Countries of the World" . After you start the game, you have 15 minutes to type in the English names of all of the internationally recognized states in the world. Not only do you have to actually know them and be able to recall them just by looking at the political boundaries on the map, you have to type pretty quickly to get them all. A while back, I (well, the wife and I) used this game to try to learn all of the countries. We did pretty well, as you can see from the progression of screenshots below (click to enlarge), but still couldn't get a perfect score -- not because we didn't know the country, but because we drew a total blank when trying to figure out which of the 195 countries we'd forgotten. [image][image][image] In order to get that far, we'd basically worked a blocking system, where we filled out all of the South American countries, then Caribbean, then European, then African and so on. The problem with that system is that, if you forget a country, it's really hard to see that you did. In the end, we were missing "Thailand".

Recent Daily Show Clips

2010-02-17T22:07:23+01:00

Published by marco on 17. Feb 2010 22:07:23 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ First up in a wonderful report from John Oliver, covering the recent Republican retreat in Hawaii. The angle is that the Republicans made a lot of hey about Obama being from Hawaii and continuing to vacation there, claiming it made him out-of-touch with the American people (it being taken for granted that Obama is to blame for his place of birth). Hawaii is, in general, one of the more expensive places to live in America, so the claim is not wholly without worth. However, watching the Republicans completely ignore their previous position vis-a-vis Hawaii in order to justify a convention there is a thing of beauty. As if that irony wasn't big enough, Hawaii actually has socialized health care for all of its citizens. The people interviewed were either unaware of this, or just didn't see it as a conflict with their pre-packaged worldview. As one interviewee is explaining that "appearances are so important" and that the Democrats are not seeing the "consequences of their actions", Oliver turns to the camera as she's speaking and first mouths, then just says "wow" before asking her to confirm that those silly Democrats "just aren't getting it". [media] This next video is a long one in support of the lifting of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy in the U.S. military. After spending some time showing the military's top leaders -- including the Commander-in-Chief and the Secretary of Defense -- come out against the policy, the clip shows the expected handful of Republican senators explaining how essential the policy is for keeping the gay off of everybody, finishing up with that disgusting waste-of-Oxygen John McCain, who's really just moving from one craven, politically-driven position to another, flip-flopping with the best of them. Once again, it's John Oliver who points out the real problem: "I think he may have simply forgotten what he said three years ago. Remember, John McCain is seventy-three years old and old people -- as we all know -- are prone to memory lapses. Which actually brings me to my much larger point: These are difficult times [...] I think it's time that we stop letting old people serve in the Senate." [media] Last up is a great piece by Samantha Bee about the whining from men about the so-called "he-cession" (playing off the word "recession" to indicate that it's supposedly affecting men more than women [1]). As with the Republican piece above, the men are very earnest about their plight and don't see the irony at all. It's a similar play to the droves of whites who claimed themselves to be in a sort of minority now that a black man was elected to office. Samantha Bee at her sardonic best. [media] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] As if. There may be just as many women as men in the economy now, but it stands to reason that companies will retain workers that they pay, on average, 25% less than their male counterparts.

Saudi Special Forces == Cobra Troops

2009-12-26T12:18:05+01:00

Published by marco on 26. Dec 2009 12:18:05 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A recent collection of photos called "Eid al-Adha and the Hajj, 2009" included the following photo: [image] These Saudi soldiers' uniforms looked awfully familiar. A little work with Google Images and I came up with the following image of actions figures from the mid-80's. [image] The Saudi special forces' uniforms are clearly based on those of the forces of Cobra in the G.I. Joe cartoon universe. I wonder how subconscious this was?

Mike Rowe is Sleeping with Your Wife (In Her Dreams)

2009-12-20T22:41:18+01:00

Published by marco on 20. Dec 2009 22:41:18 Updated by marco on 9. Aug 2010 09:46:06 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ So, there's this show on the Discovery Channel called Dirty Jobs starring a fella named Mike Rowe. He's got an all-American blue-collar image and he's popular enough with the geek crowd to have attracted the attention of "Reddit" , which invited him to answer some questions. The final question in this video involves his obvious appeal for the ladies: "Is there any chance you'll stop having sex with my wife in her dreams?" His answer is absolute comedy gold, from the writing to the timing to the delivery. The video's cued up to that point; if the cuing doesn't work, scroll forward manually to 7'28". [media] I've taken the liberty of transcribing Rowe's answer below, but it's much, much better if you just let him tell it. "[User] says: 'Is there any chance you'll stop having sex with my wife in her dreams? It's getting pretty old, Mike. [pause] 'No, man, there's no chance of that. That ain't gonna happen. [chuckles] Sorry. Uh, look. My mother could watch this, right? Let me ... I'll make you a deal. I can't stop having sex with your wife in her dreams because they're her dreams and we're all individuals living in a self-actualized world, free to dream about that which we choose. However ... I feel you, what you're saying ... it's gotta be awkward. So, I'll do this: I will stop ... performing in your wife's dreams to the very best of my ability. Which I have been doing, to be candid with you. I mean, I've been ... knocking the bottom out of that thing. I don't want to brag, but it's been ... I mean look, man, I'm 47 years old; I'm not as good as I once was, but I'm as good once as I ever was. You know what I'm sayin'? ... Your wife does. But that's gonna change, from now on, starting tonight, I'm gonna be there, in her dreams, but it's ultimately going to be a little disappointing ... for both of us. You're welcome." The expression "knocking the bottom out of that thing" just lingers.

Hang Biden High

2009-10-25T10:57:54+01:00

Published by marco on 25. Oct 2009 10:57:54 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Biden is at it again [1]: [media] The consensus on Biden and his constant slip-ups is summed up by one analyst thusly: "It's a stupid, stupid error from a half-human, spit-spewing gaffe machine. [...] It's our fault for voting Obama into office alongside a half-retarded adult baby." [1] For the irony-challenged: the Onion is a fake news organization. They make stuff up without telling you that it's made up. They take their approach to such an extreme that anyone with any common sense should realize that what they're saying either isn't true or is a complete misrepresentation. Kind of like FOX News, but much funnier.

That doesn't mean what you think it means

2009-03-21T23:06:52+01:00

Published by marco on 21. Mar 2009 23:06:52 Updated by marco on 24. Mar 2009 06:38:43 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In colloquial Swiss-German, the English word "easy" has been incorporated in some of its senses: as a synonym for "simple" and as a synonym for "relax", as in a shortening of "take it easy" or a replacement for "no problem". For example (and I'm taking liberties with the Swiss-German spelling here because there are, at best, unwritten rules for that), you can say: "Das isch doch easy! (But that's easy!)" and you can also say: "Kasch es nid mache? Easy, ich mach es.(You can't do it? No problem, I'll do it.)" As long as the word remains embedded within German (or Swiss-German), it can mean whatever the Swiss think it means. However, once they jump the fence and start using only English words, they are, logically, subject to English colloquial rules and (sometimes) grammar. Case in point, the following product is available at a local discount store, Aldi's: [image] If you examine the shirt more closely, you'll see that what is on offer is a garment that announces to the world that your eight-year--old is "so easy". It's not known whether this product is originally German or Croatian or Taiwanese. It is likely that the designer was convinced that people would come away with the impression that the wearer of the garment would be seen by all as very relaxed. Granted there aren't too many people in the area that would take offense -- mostly because most other Swiss products have also adopted a cavalier attitude toward the English language. The other shirts on the table were such a jumble of English words and numbers that it was literally impossible to infer any meaning whatsoever, unintentional or not. Let the young bearer of this shirt, however, go on holiday to the notoriously hyper-pedophilia--aware England or U.S. of A and her family could have its hands full.

How to Build an H-Bomb

2009-03-02T21:45:48+01:00

Published by marco on 2. Mar 2009 21:45:48 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here's a story originally published back in the Seventies and carefully passed from hand to hand to newsgroup to newsgroup and now from blog to blog: "How to Build an H-Bomb" . There's a lot of pseudo-realistic--sounding scientific babble about various chemical compounds and elements, but the home-liquefaction process guide takes the cake: "First transform the gas into a liquid by subjecting it to pressure. You can use a bicycle pump for this. Then make a simple home centrifuge. Fill a standard-size bucket one-quarter full of liquid uranium hexafluoride. Attach a six-foot rope to the bucket handle. Now swing the rope (and attached bucket) around your head as fast as possible. Keep this up for about 45 minutes. Slow down gradually, and very gently put the bucket on the floor. The U-235, which is lighter, will have risen to the top, where it can be skimmed off like cream. Repeat this step until you have the required 10 pounds of uranium. (Safety note: Don't put all your enriched uranium hexafluoride in one bucket. Use at least two or three buckets and keep them in separate corners of the room. This will prevent the premature build-up of a critical mass.)" Poor Binyam Mohamed, recently released from Guantànamo after seven years in captivity, admitted under torture that he had once read the article, but that it was a joke. [1] Predictably, the part about researching an H-Bomb was passed on; the part about it being a rather transparent joke was not. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] See "My unwitting role in acts of torture" by Barbara Ehrenreich (My unwitting role in acts of torture: Our 1979 satire was not subtle. Yet Mohamed's life was destroyed, it seems, for having read it) for more information.

Taxonomy of Heavy Metal Band Names

2009-01-12T21:27:24+01:00

Published by marco on 12. Jan 2009 21:27:24 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Heavy Metal Band Names" by Doogie Horner (pictured below; click for larger version) offers a well-thought-out taxonomy of many heavy metal band names, with five main categories -- Deadly Things, Death, Religion, Animals and Badass Misspellings -- branching into over a dozen sub-categories, among them "Pleas for Help", "Umlauts", "Medieval" and so on. All in all, not a bad job at all. [1] [image] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] It's a bit obsessive and it obviously took a lot of time and thought that, it could be argued, may well have been better spent elsewhere, but who are we to judge? We'll all got our useless timesinks.

Workplace Improvisation

2009-01-02T17:32:21+01:00

Published by marco on 2. Jan 2009 17:32:21 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Extracted from a PowerPoint show that made the rounds via email a while ago; there were more, but some were clearly photoshopped [1] or just dumb. [Improvisation] [image][image][image] [Ladders] [image][image] [Trust] [image][image] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Some of these might be as well, but not -- at least for me -- obviously so.

Bush's Unalloyed Success

2008-12-23T21:18:20+01:00

Published by marco on 23. Dec 2008 21:18:20 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ As reported in the article "For Bush's staff, upbeat talking points on his tenure" : "A two-page memo that has been sent to Cabinet members and other high-ranking officials offers a guide for discussing Bush's eight-year tenure during their public speeches. [...] The document presents the Bush record as an unalloyed success." A lovely take on this bit of (unsurprising) news is in "Recent Giggle-Me-GYWOs" by David Rees , linked below: [image] "Where are all the other pages?" Indeed.

The Eyeballing Game

2008-10-26T21:56:43+01:00

Published by marco on 26. Oct 2008 21:56:43 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The eyeballing game" is an interesting game that challenges you to "eyeball" distances and angles for fabulous prizes, fortune and fame. You have as much time as you like to perform each of the following tasks three times: * Make a parallelogram by dragging one corner to the correct position. * Identify the midpoint of a line * Bisect an angle * Find the center of a triangle * Find the center of a circle * Make a right angle out of two line segments * Find the point of convergence for three line segments The top ten scores of the last 500 games are displayed for all users and your own top four scores show up below those. My top score so far is 2.13, as shown below: [image] The chart at the end shows your score relative to the last 10,000 games and 2.13 was right up there! I think I can beat it, though; at one point, I had 1.54 after two rounds, but fell apart completely and washed out with a 2.23. I must have suspected that something like that would happen because I took a screenshot after the second round, as shown below: [image] As for tips? Try squinting to blur things up a bit; sometimes that helps you to estimate distances better. The consistently most difficult ones for me? Finding a midpoint, followed by the parallelogram and finding the center of a triangle (in the latter two cases, the less-flattened shapes seem easier).

The Onion News Network

2008-10-07T22:53:40+02:00

Published by marco on 7. Oct 2008 22:53:40 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Daily Show and the Colbert Report aren't the only games in town anymore. The Onion, which started as an actual physical newspaper before migrating online, has a lot of audio and video content available, as well. The "video content" is incredibly well-produced and is designed to inspire the same "wait a second...is this real?" feeling as some of its better news articles do. They have a few recurring themes, covering sports, political news and even a morning show. Here are a few of the better recent ones: Politics: "Gunman Kills 15 Potential Voters In Crucial Swing State" [1] Includes analysis like "...four of the dead were Democrats, seven were Republicans and six were not of voting age and hence not of consequence. [...] So, the Obama campaign has got to be excited about the outcome of this massive killing spree so far [...] That's right, as of now, looking good for the Democrats, but there are still three bodies remaining to be identified." Don't pretend you would know right away that this was fake if it ever made its way on to local news. Sports: "Yankees Building New Vacation Stadium In The Hamptons" A must-see for any angry New Yorker who thinks that the Yankees might be just a wee bit spoiled. The "new $900 billion stadium would be somewhere the team can go to get away from the stifling New York City summers and unwind. [...] There's even an attached marina where the players can dock their yachts during games." Morning Show: "Today Now!: How To Pretend You Give A Shit About The Election" The presidential election is a time of stress for those who feel that they're being browbeaten into participating, making election day "a very difficult day for the millions of us who just couldn't care less." The morning anchor is wondefully uninformed, even stumbling over the parties: (Host) For example, what if they ask you if you're a D-, Dem- ... (Consultant) Democrat. (Host) Right, or the other one. What do you do? Politics: "Portrayal Of Obama As Elitist Hailed As Step Forward For African Americans" "Twenty years ago, it would have been inconceivable that the media portray a black man as being out of touch with the working class. [...] Dr. King's dream is now a reality. [...] That a black man is seen as too good for people is a huge step forward." You can even subscribe to the "newsfeed" through iTunes or some other media player to have the latest videos delivered as they're published. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Watch the crawl right at the beginning for a brutal shot at Senator Lieberman: "New congressional bill actually just a list of reasons Joe Lieberman is a stupid f&%#ing c%#t". Crude, but oh so true.

The Great Schlep

2008-09-29T20:13:29+02:00

Published by marco on 29. Sep 2008 20:13:29 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]Sarah Silverman is back with a slightly-less-profane video offering than her "last outing" , this time stumping for Obama. On a site called "The Great Schlep" , she lays out her angle: with Florida playing such an important role in previous elections, jewish Obama supporters should "schlep" to Florida to convince their grandparents to vote for Obama. The great schlep officially takes place over Columbus Day weekend. Talking points are available in PDF form from the web site.

Video Roundup: Palin, the Economy & Bush's Legacy

2008-09-28T18:20:26+02:00

Published by marco on 28. Sep 2008 18:20:26 Updated by marco on 28. Sep 2008 22:26:13 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "SNL: Hillary Clinton & Sarah Palin Make an Announcement" This segment was inevitable the first time someone noted that Sarah Palin wears "Tina Fey" glasses. Clinton & Palin come together to address sexism in the media; hilarity ensues. "SNL: Couric interviews Palin, Part 4" Katie Couric, not known for her hardball interviews or journalistic acumen or sophisticated questions, interviewed Sarah Palin this week; disaster ensued. No matter how hard Couric tried to toss Palin softballs, she bobbled them and made Couric look like an intellectual giant. Palin made Couric look cruel for even asking such hard questions, that everybody knows she can't answer (she's just a little slow, Katie, ease up). This is a fake interview based on that incident. [1] "Gov at First Sight" by Jon Stewart Jon Stewart feigns love for Sarah Palin, covering her interview with Sean Hannity, who can show Katie Couric a thing or two about tossing softballs. "President Bush's Legacy" by John Oliver This is classic Oliver; when asked whether the Bush administration could come up with another area to screw up, he said "it's like finding a vein on a failure junkie." When pressed for an example where there was still "de-complishing" to be done, he said that it was all about Bush's legacy, which is now defined thusly: "we all know he'll never be ranked as the best president, but he could still, if he works hard enough ... [Jon says: 'be the worst?'] ... be the last." "The Word - OhMyGodSocietyIsCollapsing..." by Stephen Colbert "We have to give unchecked financial power to the president and his appointees so they can implement a plan that no one understands. [...] This is one of the most important, irrevocable economic decisions we will ever make; let's make it in a state of panic." Note: the first 20 seconds are confusing because it refers to the previous segment. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] It turns out, according to "Palin Is Ready? Please." by Fareed Zakaria (Palin Is Ready? Please. / McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, that is simply not true.), that the long, drawn-out, jibber-jabber answer given by Fey as Palin is taken almost verbatim from Palin's actual answer in the interview; that is, the satirists really have their work cut out for them. Zakaria, a very level-headed and conservative/moderate analyst, went on:"This is nonsense—a vapid emptying out of every catchphrase about economics that came into her head. [...] Can we now admit the obvious? Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president."

Perfect Color Vision Test

2008-09-23T21:02:55+02:00

Published by marco on 23. Sep 2008 21:02:55 Updated by marco on 23. Sep 2008 21:03:08 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Take the "FM 100 Hue Test" ; make sure you have about five minutes or so. Decent light conditions and an LCD help. If you have a CRT, you should probably run some color calibration if it's been 10 years since you last did one ;-). When you're ready to go, you get a grid like the one shown below. [image] If you're wicked awesome and have eyes like Superman, you'll be taken to the following screen after moving the little tiles and pressing "Score Test". [image] Booyah!

Odd British Names

2008-04-10T22:27:09+02:00

Published by marco on 10. Apr 2008 22:27:09 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Daily Show did an extremely silly tribute to fallen British soldiers recently, with Jon Oliver reading a list of heroes and Jon Stewart caught completely unawares [1]: [media] The list of names is extremely silly and transcribed below [2]: * Algernon Bottomside * Percival P. Pocketnubbin * Wing Commander Battle Morningwood * Remington Snatch * Cecil Hardboner * Lt. Cl. Buntington Cornhole * Jeffrey Incestershire * Cpt. Oroffis Schwartz * Lead Seaman Huffington Knobgobbler * Alastair Vaginafoot (Allie to his many friends) * Lord Byron Farthammer (named for the poet) * Penistiffer Whimplecrack * PFC Grundle McBallsonface YMMV. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] He advised at the end, "don't ever let your staff change the list of names on you without your knowledge". [1] To the best of our abilities.

Kinetic Sculptures

2008-04-03T21:53:31+02:00

Published by marco on 3. Apr 2008 21:53:31 Updated by marco on 3. Apr 2008 22:24:31 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Top 5 Amazing Kinetic Sculpture Videos" reported on a Theo Jansen, an amazing Dutch sculptor. However, some of their video links aren't working anymore, so here are some fresher ones below. [media] This sculpture weighs two tons and is made of steel and cloth -- but a strong wind can push it along, articulating its huge legs in elegant slow-motion. [media] This is a kinetic origami, powered by a central motor with a single offset axle moving its four legs. The carefully folded joints coupled with the single motor elicit a silky-smooth motion that's hard to believe. [media] The artist behind the best of these works is Theo Jansen -- this is a commercial featuring another enormous work of his: a multipede that walks along a beach, again powered only by the wind.

Dealing with Problems

2008-03-09T17:20:07+01:00

Published by marco on 9. Mar 2008 17:20:07 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ There are a lot of versions of this, but this one is pretty neutral and to-the-point. [image]

The English Language

2008-03-09T11:39:02+01:00

Published by marco on 9. Mar 2008 11:39:02 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here's a neat (rhyming) poem for those learning English (or think they already know everything they need to know), found on "I thought I had it ruff, er rough!" by David Bogner [1] "I take it you already know Of tough and bough and cough and dough Others may stumble but not you, On hiccough, thorough, laugh* and through. Well done! And now you wish, perhaps, To learn of less familiar traps? "Beware of heard, a dreadful word That looks like beard and sounds like bird. And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead - For goodness’ sake don’t call it “deed”! Watch out for meat and great and threat (They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.) "A moth is not a moth in mother Nor both in bother, broth in brother, And here is not a match for there Nor dear and fear for bear and pear, And then there’s dose and rose and lose - Just look them up - and goose and choose, And cork and work and card and ward, And font and front and word and sword, And do and go and thwart and cart Come, come, I’ve barely made a start! A dreadful language? Man alive! I’d mastered it when I was five!" With pronunciation out of the way, here's a poem from the comments on the same article, covering homophones and spell-checkers. "Eye halve a spelling checker It came with my pea sea It plainly marques for my revue Miss steaks eye kin knot sea. "Eye strike a key and type a word And weight four it to say Weather eye am wrong oar write It shows me strait a weigh. "As soon as a mist ache is maid It nose bee fore two long And eye can put the error rite It's rare lea ever wrong. "Eye have run this poem threw it Eye am shore your pleased two no It's letter perfect awl the weigh My checker tolled me sew." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] It's quoted here in its entirety because the original blog article notes that it was lifted a 1965 issue of the London Sunday Times by an anonymous contributor.

English Accents

2008-03-05T19:37:14+01:00

Published by marco on 5. Mar 2008 19:37:14 Updated by marco on 5. Mar 2008 19:37:38 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This is a cool presentation of English accents. I can verify most of the American ones (I guessed the state before she said it), and the British/Irish/Oceanian ones sounded about right too. It's about two and half minutes long. [media]

Kimmel's Revenge

2008-02-27T22:03:22+01:00

Published by marco on 27. Feb 2008 22:03:22 Updated by marco on 28. Feb 2008 06:01:18 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The "Sarah Silverman & Matt Damon Sitting in a Tree…" video soared to over 8 million views on YouTube. Kimmel, Silverman's boyfriend has responded with a video of his own. [media] It features Ben Affleck, Brad Pitt, Macy Gray, Robin Williams, Josh Groban, Huey Lewis, Harrison Ford, Joan Jett, Perry Farrell and many other famous faces. Looking forward to Silverman's response.

Good Luck Wishes for McCain

2008-02-12T22:05:07+01:00

Published by marco on 12. Feb 2008 22:05:07 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ About a week ago, the Obamians released a "black and white video" supporting their candidate. It features an acoustic guitar as accompaniment to snippets of Obama's most inspiring words [1] as spoken by him and sung or intoned by various other famous persons. It was pretty schmaltzy, but not horrible. Since McCain didn't come up with a video response of his own, the crew of Election08 threw one together for him, using a very similar style. This one's a lot shorter and a lot funnier; it starts going off the rails about 30 seconds in where McCain says "there's gonna be other wars". Look for the guy hyperventilating into a bag as the voice-over sings "I don't think Americans are concerned if we're there for a hundred years, or a thousand years, or ten thousand years." [media] The video ends with: "Iraq withdrawal date: 12,008. "G00d Luck with that in November. "McCain 08 Like Hope, But Different." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] One can only assume that was the criteria they used.

Sarah Silverman & Matt Damon Sitting in a Tree...

2008-02-03T21:25:36+01:00

Published by marco on 3. Feb 2008 21:25:36 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]So this weekend, one mildly out-of-touch ex-pat discovered that: 1. Jimmy Kimmel, who used to host The Man Show with Adam Carolla, now has his own late-night TV show. 2. That Jimmy Kimmel has been dating Sarah Silverman for over five years. 3. That Matt Damon totally doesn't take himself too seriously. To celebrate their anniversary (and his show's), Silverman showed Kimmel a video she made for him, called "Sarah Silverman "I'm F*cking Matt Damon" on Jimmy Kimmel" . It's hilarious. Silverman is fully into it, as she always is, but Damon is just all-out as well, showing no compunctions about singing and belting out lyrics like: "On the bed, on the floor, on a towel by the door, in the tub, in a car, up against the mini-bar." While certainly not appropriate for those that find such things innappropriate, if you haven't lost your child-like glee in watching a wildly successful person like Matt Damon do something so wildly nonconformist, this weekend internet-meme is for you. It's not like he did it to boost his appeal -- he's clearly just messing around and having fun. Seriously, watch at least until the part where they break into a rap video, complete with self-spanking dance number and "Hammer" pants (pictured above). These "comments" provide more about the "backstory" as well as the reason for the bleeping, which is based on Kimmel's sketch, called "Unnecessary Censorship" . For your convenience, the video is embedded below: [media]

Free Rice

2008-02-03T16:45:34+01:00

Published by marco on 3. Feb 2008 16:45:34 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]Instead of chasing down video references in YouTube, you can expand your vocabulary for a good cause using "FreeRice" , all while remaining glued to the internet. The initial levels aren't bad, but the game nicely adjusts to your level of vocabulary and, after a while, you'll find yourself using educated guesses almost exclusively as they shovel words at you that you've never, ever seen before. The word list is maintained and expanded by a "team of professional lexicographers from the firm of "Lexiteria" ". There are 55 difficulty levels and you need to get three words in a row right in order to move to the next level. Get one wrong and you drop back down. As you can see from the graphic, I maxed out at level 49, but had to donate quite a bit of rice to get there. There doesn't seem to be a way to "beat" the game other than by actually learning vocabulary -- in which case, you didn't cheat, you learned by accident.

Geography Challenge

2007-12-17T19:42:13+01:00

Published by marco on 17. Dec 2007 19:42:13 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]"The Traveler IQ Challenge" is a Flash-based game with 12 levels, covering famous places, world capitals and other cities with increasing difficulty. [1] There will be countries whose names you have likely never heard before. It times you and gives you points for accurate clicking and speed. You need a certain number of points to proceed to the next level. You might want to brush up on "Statetris" . There used to be a site with a "name as many of the 192 UN countries as you can in ten minutes" game, but it's not responding. [2] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I tried a couple of times and got to level 10 on the second try. [1] The original link is to "192 UN recognized states in 10 minutes" if you want to give it a try. I managed about 110 on that.

Jokes are Subjective as Hell

2007-12-16T22:44:20+01:00

Published by marco on 16. Dec 2007 22:44:20 Updated by marco on 24. Mar 2022 22:38:48 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Every once in a while, "Reddit" does a "tell your best jokes" thread. Here are my favorites from the last one; try not to hold it against me. [Brewer's Convention] At a world brewing convention in the States, the CEOs of various Brewing organizations retired to the bar at the end of each day's conference. Bruce, CEO of Fosters, shouted to the Barman: "In 'Strylya, we make the best bladdy beer in the world, so pour me a Bladdy Fosters, mate." Bob, CEO of Budweiser, calls out next: "In the States, we brew the finest beers in the world, and I make the King of them all; gimme a Bud." Hans steps up next: "In Germany ve invented das beer, verdamt. Give me ein Becks, ya ist Der real King of beers, danke." Paddy, CEO of Guinness, steps forward "Barman, would ya give me a doyet coke wid ice and lemon. Tanks." The others stare at him in stunned silence, amazement written all over their faces. Eventually Bruce asks, "Are you not going to have a Guinness, Pat?" Paddy replies: "Well, if you fookin' pansies aren't drinkin', then neither am I". [David Beckham's Mnemonic Device] David Beckham and Posh Spice arrive at Heathrow from their holidays. They jump in a London taxicab and ask to be taken home. The driver recognizes the couple and says: "Been on holiday then David". Beckham replies slowly and thoughtfully: "Yeah" "Go somewhere nice then guvnor?" Same slow reply: "Yeah" "Where was it then, mate?" Beckham thinks for a minute and replies: "You know that London railway station" The driver surprised says: "Which one? Liverpool Street?" Beckham pauses and replies, "No, the other one" "King's Cross is it?" Again Beckham thinks and replies "No, not that one" The taxi driver thinks down the list of big London stations and suggests "Victoria?" Beckham smiles and replies "Yeah, yeah, that's the one". Then he turns to his wife and says "Victoria, where did we go on holiday?" [Hunting Accident] Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, "My friend is dead! What can I do?". The operator says "Calm down. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot. Back on the phone, the guy says "OK, now what?" [Blond Traffic Stop] A blond speeder is pulled over by a blond police officer. The cop says "I need to see your license". The driver digs through her purse for a while, and says "I can't find it. What does it look like?". So the cop, making a rectangle with her hands, says "it's rectangular, and has your picture on it". The driver searches through her purse but can't find it. She finally comes up with the only rectangular item, a small mirror. She looks at it, shrugs, and hands it to the cop. The cop looks at it, shrugs, and hands it back to the driver. "Oh, you can go" she says. "I didn't realize you were a cop". [Cruel] Q: How does a blind skydiver know the ground is near? A: The leash goes slack. [Geeks] An IT student is walking along with his bike when another IT student walks up to him and says “Nice bike. Where did you get it?” The first student says, “The other day, this beautiful woman ran up to me with this bike, threw it on the ground, ripped off all her clothes and said ‘Take anything you want!’” The second student says, “Good choice. The clothes probably wouldn’t have fit”. [Bestiality] A New Zealander walks into his bedroom with a sheep under his arm and says, "Darling, this is the pig I have sex with when you have a headache." His girlfriend is lying in bed and replies: "I think you'll find that's a sheep, you idiot." The man says, "I think you'll find I wasn't talking to you." [Bush] Q: What's the difference between Vietnam and Iraq? A: George Bush had a plan for getting out of Vietnam. [Stature (new on 17.12.2007)] Joke found on and adapted. I rear-ended a car this morning. We pulled over to the side of the road and the other driver slowly got out of his car. As he came toward me, I noticed that he was a dwarf. He stormed over to my car, looked up at me and said, "I AM NOT HAPPY!" So, I looked down at him and said, "Well, which one are you then?" [Follow-through (new on 1.5.2017)] Joke found on "Reddit" and adapted. The FBI had an opening for an assassin. After all the background checks, interviews and testing were done, there were 3 finalists. For the final test, the FBI agents took one of the men to a large metal door and handed him a gun. "We must know that you will follow your instructions no matter what the circumstances. Inside the room you will find your wife sitting in a chair . . . Kill her!!' The man said, "You can't be serious. I could never shoot my wife." The agent said, "Then you're not the right man for this job. Take your wife and go home." The second man was given the same instructions. He took the gun and went into the room. All was quiet for about 5 minutes. The man came out with tears in his eyes, "I tried, but I can't kill my wife." The agent said, "You don't have what it takes. Take your wife home." Finally, it was the last man's turn. He took the gun and went into the room. Shots were heard, one after another. They heard screaming, crashing, banging on the walls. After a few minutes, all was quiet. The door opened slowly and there stood the man, wiping sweat from his brow. "Some idiot loaded the gun with blanks" he said. "I had to strangle the bitch to death." [State-of-the-art Watch (new on 15.7.2017)] A cowboy walks into a bar and takes a seat next to a very attractive woman. He gives her a quick glance, then casually looks at his watch. She notices and asks, "Is your date running late?" "Nah. I just got this state-of the-art watch. I was just testing it." Intrigued, she asks, "A state-of-the-art watch? What's so special about it?" "It uses alpha waves to talk to me telepathically." "What's it telling you now?" "Well, ... ," he paused briefly, then continued, "...it says you're not wearing any panties." "It must be broken because I am wearing panties!" The cowboy smiles, taps his watch and says, "Damn thing's an hour fast." [Still as a Statue] A woman was in bed with her lover when she heard her husband opening the front door. "Hurry!" she said, "stand in the corner." She quickly rubbed baby oil all over him and then she dusted him with talcum powder. "Don't move until I tell you to," she whispered. "Just pretend you're a statue." "What's this, honey?" the husband inquired as he entered the room. "Oh, it's just a statue," she replied nonchalantly. "The Smiths bought one for their bedroom. I liked it so much, I got one for us too." No more was said about the statue, not even later that night when they went to sleep. Around two in the morning the husband got out of bed, went to the kitchen and returned a while later with a sandwich and a glass of milk. "Here," he said to the 'statue', "eat something. I stood like an idiot at the Smiths' for three days and nobody offered me as much as a glass of water." [Sensitivity] Genders are like the Twin Towers...there used to be two of them and now it's a really sensitive subject. [Suffering] My wife packed my bags and kicked me out of the house. As I walked out the front door, she screamed, "I wish you a slow and painful death, you bastard!" "Oh," I replied, "so now you want me to stay!" [The Priest's Wife] Jack goes to his buddy Bob and says ... "I'm sleeping with the priest's wife. Can you hold him in church for an hour after mass for me?" The friend doesn't like it but being a buddy, he agrees. After mass, Bob starts talking to the priest, asking him all sorts of stupid questions, just to keep him occupied. Finally the priest gets annoyed and asks him what he's really up to. Bob feeling guilty, finally confesses to the priest... "My friend is sleeping with your wife right now, so he asked me to keep you occupied." The priest smiles, puts a brotherly hand on Bob's shoulder and says... "You better hurry home now. My wife died a year ago". [Wife at the Bar] I was sitting at a bar and asked the bartender where I could find a piece of ass. He told me to go to the back door, down the dark alley and give the woman there 20 bucks. So I go outside and hand a 20 to the woman there and started getting busy. After a few minutes, a cop walks past and shines a flashlight on us and says "What the hell are you doing?" and I said "Having sex with my wife." He said "I'm sorry, I didn't realize that was your wife." and I said "Neither did I till you shined a light on her." [Blondes in a Bar] A blind man walks into a gay bar. He walks up to the bartender and says "hey you wanna hear a blonde joke?". The bartender says "Let me tell you a few things since you're blind, I'm blonde and I've got a shotgun handy. The bouncer is a 6ft blonde with a 4th-degree black belt in judo. The woman beside you is a blonde biker with the local gang. The owner of this bar is a blonde army veteran who did four tours in Iraq. Now do you really want to tell that joke here?". The blind man thinks for a second and says "Naaahh, not if i have to explain it four times." [Hunting Trip in Canada] Two rednecks flew to Canada on a hunting trip. They chartered a small plane to take them into the Rockies for a week hunting moose. They managed to bag 6. As they were loading the plane to return, the Pilot said the plane could take only 4 moose. The two guys objected strongly. "Last year we shot six. The pilot let us take them all and he had the same plane as yours." Reluctantly, the pilot gave in and all six were loaded. The plane took off. However, while attempting to cross some mountains, even on full power, the little plane couldn't handle the load and went down. Somehow, surrounded by the moose bodies, only the two rednecks survived the crash. After climbing out of the wreckage, Billy Ray asked Billy Bob, "Any idea where we are?" Billy Bob replied, "I think we're pretty close to where we crashed last year." [Catholic-school Girls Go To Heaven] A train hits a bus full of Catholic high-school girls. They all arrive at the pearly gates, waiting in line to enter heaven. St. Peter asks the first girl, "Mary, have you ever had any contact with a penis?" She giggles and shyly replies, "Well I once touched the head of one with the tip of my finger." St. Peter says, "Well, dip the tip of your finger in The Holy Water and pass through the gate." St. Peter asks the next girl the same question, "Jennifer have you ever had any contact with a penis?" The girl is a little reluctant but replies, "Well once I fondled and stroked one." St. Peter says, "Then dip your whole hand in The Holy Water and pass through the gate." All of a sudden there is a lot of commotion in the line of girls. One girl is pushing her way to the front of the line. When she reaches the front of the line, St. Peter says, "Lisa! What seems to be the rush?" The girl replies, "If I'm going to have to gargle with that Holy Water, I want to do it before Tiffany sticks her arse in it..." [Catholics in the brothel] Two Irishmen were sitting at a pub having beer and watching the brothel across the street. They saw a Baptist minister walk into the brothel, and one of them said, “Aye, ’tis a shame to see a man of the cloth goin’ bad.” Then they saw a rabbi enter the brothel, and the other Irishman said, “Aye, ’tis a shame to see that the Jews are fallin’ victim to temptation as well.” Then they see a catholic priest enter the brothel, and one of the Irishmen said, “What a terrible pity…one of the girls must be dying." [Like Pissing in the Ocean] Two Irishman are lost at sea in a lifeboat. One finds a lamp and rubs it to find a genie who offers them one wish. Before the other can say a word, one of them leaps to his feet and yells, "Make the entire ocean into Guinness!" The genie performs this miracle and vanishes. The other Irishman glares at the wisher and says "O'Malley, you idiot! Now we have to piss in the boat!"

MNFTIU - October 2007

2007-12-09T17:21:46+01:00

Published by marco on 9. Dec 2007 17:21:46 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The strips from "October 2007" have some pretty good lines: "I used to have a friend who was skeptical about whether bombing the shit out of people was the best way to fight terrorism. I bet he feels pretty stupid now." "If Turkey invades Northern Iraq, we should try selling them a 'Mission Accomplished' banner. I know where you can get one cheap. ... You know, if enough countries invade Iraq, maybe we can just slip out the back..." In response to the possibility that Blackwater employees might be unlawful combatants: "As long as the U.S. government is hiring unlawful combatants, why not use Al-Qaeda? I hear those guys are deadly."

Pictures with Captions

2007-12-09T16:13:17+01:00

Published by marco on 9. Dec 2007 16:13:17 Updated by marco on 10. Dec 2007 05:08:08 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The internet is lately being overrun by pictures with captions. Most of these pictures features cats with bad grammar, but not all of them. For some unknown reason, some are incredibly, laugh-out-loud, tears-in-your-eyes funny. Most of the images are from "100 Top Internet Pictures" by TheWalkingDude . [1] Exhibit (A) below is an image that originated somewhere on the internets -- most likely "Something Awful" or "Fark" (browse at your own risk/not for the faint of heart/your mileage may vary), but which indicates that it is possible for jingoism to be funny. [image] With the author unknown, it's impossible to ascertain whether the caption is meant ironically or not. This author is assuming that it was and finds it hilarious. [2] Exhibit (B) is probably an image from a manual for a stroller, dressed up with a single word, "Fail". Isolated from the context of the rest of the manual, the graphic is bizarre. The word attached lays blame on the baby for not knowing how to use a stroller. Brilliant. [image] And then there's the cats; photogenic animals, which seem to be captured in all sorts of interesting poses with easily anthropomorphized expressions on their faces and, most importantly, which lend themselves to easy photoshopping. Whereas we here at earthli are partial to bunny rabbits (as you can see by our logo). But, though this is cute as all get-out: [image] It's not really all that funny. [3] However, these two pictures are much funnier: [image] [image] Who knows why? Is it the screwed-up grammar? Is it the use of common internet vernacular? Is it the fact that Kitty has road rage? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] "The Walking Dude" is one of the many names of the major baddie in several of Stephen King's books, in particular The Stand. It doesn't mean anything, I'm just saying. [1] It would have been just as funny with the epithet Eurofags, which treats homosexuality with as a derogatory remark, replaced by Euro-Sissies or something else, which would attack the manliness of Europeans without insulting homosexuals. [1] "Nom, nom, nom" refers to the sound a rabbit makes when he destroys anything you hold dear in your apartment.

Truly Inspired Link Headline on Reddit

2007-12-05T21:28:16+01:00

Published by marco on 5. Dec 2007 21:28:16 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This picture showed up when you clicked through on this link title: [image]"AP Photo of the President and some fucking asshole that bankrupted our country and killed 1,000,000+ people." [1] Sure, it's a cheap trick, but funny as hell. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] The original article is "Bush Welcomes Gore to Oval Office"

Statetris

2007-09-18T22:34:11+02:00

Published by marco on 18. Sep 2007 22:34:11 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Statetris" is Tetris, but with countries or states/counties. You can choose from the following difficulty levels: * Easy -- States/countries are labeled and already rotated to the correct position. * Medium -- States/countries are labeled and are rotated to a random position. * Hard -- States/countries are not labeled and are rotated to a random position. Some of the countries are really small and must simply be placed into one of the magnifying glasses. It's a pity that they don't leave the country names on there once you've placed it in order to reinforce the name (on the off chance that you just got lucky when placing it ;-) The following maps are currently supported: 1. Countries in Africa 2. Countries in Europe 3. Provinces in France 4. Counties in Holland 5. Counties in South Carolina 6. Counties in the United Kingdom 7. States in the United States [image]

Art on Slashdot

2007-07-22T14:08:19+02:00

Published by marco on 22. Jul 2007 14:08:19 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Every once in a while, there's something on Slashdot worth reading. More often than not, it's in a comment rather than one of their "articles" (quotes intended to convey ample contempt for the editing process there). There's a discussion there, "High Court Trims Whistleblower Rights" , in which one participant got pretty shrill in responding to a troll [1], trotting out all of the arguments that trolls dearly love to feed on (as well as those ever-delectable tears of frustration and rage). Some helpfully responded with "[w]ow, I'm struggling to remember the last time I've seen someone get so close to getting a joke yet be so far away" and "the parent poster was clearly being ironic, and I fail to see how people can miss that (unless you were being double ironic, but I somehow doubt that)", which, for Slashdot, are to be looked at as incredibly polite and helpful. However, this little bit of "ASCII-art" topped them all: o <- Joke O /--\ <-You | / \ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] In internet parlance, a troll is someone who deliberately goads others into anger online. More often than not, the troll has no personal stake in the argument or discussion and does so only for the sheer joy of watching a potentially high-minded online discussion (ignore the inherent contradiction for the sake of argument) devolve into a spittle-spewing chaos of ad-hominem attacks and trite, fact-free statements.

Googlewhack

2007-07-13T21:41:44+02:00

Published by marco on 13. Jul 2007 21:41:44 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Googlewhacking -- finding a search combination that returned exactly one hit -- used to be all the rage, with some people devoting astonishing amounts of time to it, only to report it on a blog, have Google index it, immediately invalidating it (because now there are two results). Below is one that I stumbled on recently: [image] At the time (May 12th, 2007), it returned exactly one result and, amazingly, has stood the test of time, returning only one relevant result today (as shown below): [image] Clicking for more relevant results shows a whole bunch of links from the same page, but reaching it from different addresses, so, though it's probably no longer a googlewhack, it's not bad considering how often Google indexes the web today as compared to a few years ago.

Exceptions to the Rule

2007-06-10T22:07:35+02:00

Published by marco on 10. Jun 2007 22:07:35 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keeping it short and sweet, "Discrimination" by Scott Adams throws out a few observations on paradoxes in our society's of valid and invalid prejudice. For example, though most prejudices aganst traits people can't control are regulated, "it's totally legal for an employer to reject a stupid person" who applies for a job. To the hypothetical argument that this is a worthwhile exception, he retorts: "You might argue that it is in society's overwhelming best interest to discriminate against stupid people because otherwise the economy would crumble. But I would argue that if idiots couldn't get jobs for which they are unqualified, your workplace would be empty right now." *rim shot* In general, society does allow prejudices based on traits people have chosen for themselves. The major exception to this rule, religion, only applies to the larger established religions, though there is no basis in logic for this distinction. The accepted religions are in no way less zany than many of the more recent variations. "If a guy shows up for a job interview and tells you his religion requires him to wear a stuffed rhino penis as a hat, you can show him the door. But if he says his prophet walked on water [1], or rode to heaven on a flying horse [2], you slap a name tag on his cubicle and hope for the best." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Christianity, with Jesus in the lead role. [1] Islam, with the prophet Mohammed as jockey.

Ocean's 13 Interview

2007-06-10T22:03:48+02:00

Published by marco on 10. Jun 2007 22:03:48 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Lucky Stars" is an interview with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Ellen Barkin and Matt Damon. The interviewees literally have no interest in promoting the movie, unless you count them parading their hilarious camaraderie that undoubtedly features heavily in the film as promotion. At any rate, it seemed incidental to just having a whale of a time. The first question asked them how they kept their cool and turned out a quailty product -- according to general opinion, the best of the series -- instead of just another crappy sequel. Here's how they answered the question: "how do you keep it from going off the rails and becoming Cannonball Run 3?" CLOONEY: Well, we like to think it's more like Lord of the Rings, in the trilogy sense. PITT: Wait, what's wrong with Cannonball Run 3? DAMON: I don't even think there was a Cannonball 3. Look, you have us confused with deep thinkers. You've already put more thought into why we did the movie than we did. CLOONEY: You're thinking that we're not just whores for money. There's your mistake. Having let the boys have their fun, Ellen Barkin got way out in front early in the interview, asking Damon about his character, Linus: BARKIN: Was that your character's name? DAMON: Yeah. BARKIN: I'm sorry, I only read my lines. When Clooney and Pitt noted that Damon always played the same character, but with a different style in each movie, Barkin quipped: "It's important for him to change it up, while Brad and George have no range, so they just have to keep playing the same parts." Later in the interview, they talk about fame and how it's changed in this much more media-intensive century, with Pitt just nailing his line home at the end: CLOONEY: The last real movie stars were probably [Robert] Redford and [Paul] Newman. And things were different then. There wasn't this amazing amount of magazines and information about them. DAMON: We didn't know anything about them. ... BARKIN: Think about it. Do we know anything about Robert Redford's children? Does he even have any? DAMON: I worked with him, and I don't know. PITT: I have four, if you haven't heard. (emphasis added) Finally, they talk about how they got started in the business and whether there was competition among the "sexiest men", with Pitt once again, getting in the zinger: DAMON: ... [To Pitt and Clooney] Is it true that you were the last two actors up for the hitchhiker role in Thelma & Louise? CLOONEY: It was pretty embarrassing. They brought Brad and me in, and they just made us take our shirts off and stand there for a while, and then they picked Brad. ... PITT: Aw, they were just grooming you for Batman. [1] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Batman and Robin, the one in which Clooney starred alongside the awful Arnold Schwarzenegger and insufferable Chris O'Donnell, is widely acknowledged as the worst superhero movie ever.

Hidden Comedy Online

2007-06-04T23:13:40+02:00

Published by marco on 4. Jun 2007 23:13:40 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ There are all sorts of sites that produce content meant to be funny, like "The Onion" , "McSweeney's Internet Tendency" , "Something Awful" or a "Pointless Waste of Time" . Whether or not you think the invidual attempts at humor are successful or not, that is their purpose to at least some people. The Internet offers humor in unlooked-for places as well, like this collection of "Cool Cybersex Logs" , in which one or more users troll chat rooms to prank unsuspecting partners with frustrating experiences. For example, there's this one involving play-acting: bloodninja: Ok baby, we got to hurry, I don't know how long I can keep it ready for you. j_gurli3: thats ok. ok i'm a japanese schoolgirl, what r u. bloodninja: A Rhinocerus. Well, hung like one, thats for sure. j_gurli3: haha, ok lets go. j_gurli3: i put my hand through ur hair, and kiss u on the neck. bloodninja: I stomp the ground, and snort, to alert you that you are in my breeding territory. It goes on from there, until "the dust stirs around my tough skinned feet" and poor j_gurl3 is forced to leave, unfulfilled. Sure, playing pranks has been done to death by an untold number of stupid shows on MTV, but some of the logs on the page listed above are quite inventive and, if they truly happend in real-time, indicate people with very quick wits and far too much time on their hands. Another person in such a situation is "Henry Raddick" , who, several years ago, gained a small amount of fame by bombarding the Amazon reviews with less-than-honest reviews on all sorts of subjects. Here is a sampling from his more than 200 reviews: How to Raise & Train a Pug "Sound guide to a horrid little dog -- I bought this book in an effort to learn to bond with my pug Grendel. The burden falls on me to do it as my wife refuses to walk him as she says he adds 10 years to her appearance (15 with the dog jacket), and in a funny way I think she's probably right. He is a hard dog to to get to know, and even harder to like, but thanks to this superb guide I think were making progress until my kids put that "Kick Me" label on his jacket. 4 neighbours took up the invitation on a recent walk and Grendel has, if anything, become even more disagreeable." Sport Psychology for Women "My wife and I have found this a tremendous guide for athlete and coach alike. I may be her husband, but for ten 3 minute rounds I'm her coach, and the advice in this book forms the basis of my wife's mental approach to the sport. Since reading this[,] her close work has been tremendous and her work-rate impeccable even though she still struggles against an opponent who can stay at arm's-length working a powerful jab." Tom Cruise (Overcoming Adversity) "The public only see the glamour - but Phelan Powell shows the significant obstacles Tom Cruise has overcome in order to live his life of pampered opulence. In Cruise's case dyslexia was the obstacle - it nearly cost him the part of the barman in "Cocktail" (he thought it was a film about cockatiels and told his agent he "didn't do parrots") and he bought his own wildebeeste to research the part of Lt Maverick Mitchell in "Top Gnu"." Misogyny: The Male Malady "An excellent guide which I, and by extension my shrew of a wife, thoroughly enjoyed." Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life "I was never going to fill my father's shoes when he asked me to take over the family business - he was voted the "county's finest offal butcher" 9 times in his career. That's a lot to live up to and something which may have led to the debilitating aimlessness which has marred my life for the past 43 years. But this book has been a Godsend and through reading it I have learnt to focus my energy and reach for my dreams. Being rendered a de facto prisoner in my own home through my own obesity and a having glass eye aren't going to keep me from Hollywood now."

Street Art

2007-04-29T21:23:01+02:00

Published by marco on 29. Apr 2007 21:23:01 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Street Installations" has a list of pictures of street art involving mannequins posed in realistic & strange positions. [image][image][image] The one below -- with a walker kryptonite-locked to a parking sign -- is probably the best of the bunch. [image]

Mashup Mime

2006-12-18T23:33:26+01:00

Published by marco on 18. Dec 2006 23:33:26 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ So there's this mime, David Armand, and he does a bit called "Karaoke for the Deaf" on HBO. His shtick [1] is acting out the song "Torn" by Natalie Imbruglia. [media] It's wicked good, so he gets invited to do it at some awards show, "Torn by David Armand" , in the middle of which Natalie herself joins him on stage and starts miming the song with him. [media] A good time was had by all. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] For the german-speaking following along -- yeah, it's really, really hard to write it without the 'c' at this point.

Testing Tone Deafness

2006-12-18T23:32:56+01:00

Published by marco on 18. Dec 2006 23:32:56 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ You probably shouldn't do this one at work because it takes a full six minutes of concentration and silence -- during which bizarre sounds are emitted from your speakers. Either that, or you need some headphones. "Test your musical skills in 6 minutes!" is a Flash-based test for tone-deafness / musical ear. It plays 30 pairs of musical sequences that may or may not differ in tone: that's for you to decide. For the really bored, there is also "Can't dance? Test to see if you're rhythmdeaf!" , which tests your sense of differences in rhythm. And "Measure your pitch perception abilities in three minutes!" does just that. Be patient; all the tests take some time to load. At the end, you get a percentage score and a position within the chart. Anything above 70% is considered very good; over 80% is exceptional and over 90% is world class. I tried the tone-deaf test twice and got 80.6%, then 86.1%. The rhythm test I also tried twice and got 76% and 80%, which, if you're keeping track at home, makes me exceptional on both counts. The pitch test measured me at being able to reliably detect a 5.1Hz difference in pitch, which makes me once again mortal; I didn't try this again, as it was apparent that it would go much better with headphones. I highly recommend them.

Wally

2006-12-16T20:30:18+01:00

Published by marco on 16. Dec 2006 20:30:18 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Wally is Dilbert's coworker. He is, without a doubt, the absolute king of work-avoidance. His talents are numerous and his fame wide-spread. This latest Dilbert cartoon shows him at his absolute best -- right down to the Dr. Evil-like gesture of sipping from his slightly-oversized coffee cup. [image]

XKCD -- Web Comic

2006-12-11T21:23:06+01:00

Published by marco on 11. Dec 2006 21:23:06 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ If you're a regular peruser of "Reddit" [1], you've probably already seen at least one "XKCD" cartoon. They really do tend to be pretty unique and, often enough, have something interesting and funny to say. "Dreams" , for example, is a discussion between a firm embed of society and a doubter: "The infinite possibilities each day holds should stagger the mind. The sheer number of experiences I could have is uncountable, breathtaking. And I'm sitting here refreshing my inbox. We live trapped in loops. reliving a few days over and over, and we envision only a handful of paths laid out ahead of us. We see the same things each day, we respond the same way, we think the same thoughts, each day a slight variation on the last, every moment smoothly following the gentle curves of societal norms. We act like if we just get hrough today, tomrorrow our dreams will come back to us. "And no, I don't have all the answers. I don't know how to jolt myself into seeing what each moment could become. But I do know one thing: the solution doesn't involve watering down my every little idea and creative impulse for the sake of some day easing my fit into a mold. It doesn't invole tempering my life to better fit someone's expectations. It doesn't involve constanty holding back for fear of shaking things up. "This is very important, so I want to say it as clearly as I can: Fuck. That. Shit." They don't all strive to describe some philosophic nuance of the cubicle life: "Before Sunrise" starts out that way and veers sharply at the end: "Every morning for a week, I've gone out driving before sunrise. I wanted to get lost in the dark, park my car, listen to music, and sip from a warm drink as dawn broke around me, gradually revealing a landscape I'd never before seen. A chain of unique beginnings forcing wonder into the seeds of each day. "But I guess I need more willpower, because each sunrise just found me at your Mom's apartment again." Your mileage may, of course, vary. Don't forget to hover over each comic for a hidden, extra comment. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Covered recently in "Reddit" .

Betrayed by Your Senses

2006-12-04T20:00:04+01:00

Published by marco on 4. Dec 2006 20:00:04 Updated by marco on 5. Dec 2006 16:59:29 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Normally, optical illusions are the stuff of chain letters and AOL home pages. Those found on the pages at "eChalk optical illusions" are a cut above that. The two most impressive ones are "Colour perception" and "Colour perception 2" . It's hard to believe that there is no trickery, but, if you need to, take screenshots of the before and after to prove it to yourself. [image][image] These tests are especially interesting for designers, and especially graphic designers. On the web, not only must you remember not to make any navigation or functionality rely solely on color differences, you must also make sure your designs don't look terrible to the average person. To find out what that means, you have to let more than just one or two people see the design -- and believe them when they find that your God-given design doesn't look nice to them. On the bright side, you can use this power for good, making pre-chosen colors -- like those from a client -- look better for most people by juxtaposing them with others that affect how they are seen.

Typing Speed Test

2006-12-04T19:37:14+01:00

Published by marco on 4. Dec 2006 19:37:14 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "See how fast you can type!" is a simple JavaScript-based typing tester. It counts mistakes and words per minute. On a stationary (non-laptop) US-English keyboard, I got: "Wow! Your typing speed (with 2 mistakes) is: "98.14 wpm 404.52 cpm" Read it and weep.

Python Skits Online

2006-12-03T23:16:52+01:00

Published by marco on 3. Dec 2006 23:16:52 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]If you're only familiar with Monty Python through the movies or audio albums (like the Final Ripoff), this list of "59 amazing sketches of the Monty Python" will be something new. They are all hosted on YouTube (for now) and some have Japanese subtitles (though don't let that throw you -- they are in the original English). Thanks to "Reddit users" , we also have another old favorite, "The Four Yorkshiremen" .

Learning Humility

2006-11-30T20:43:20+01:00

Published by marco on 30. Nov 2006 20:43:20 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Humility should be taught in school, along with tact, ethics and critical thinking. And not just in graduate school, but early and officially. Naturally, out-of-class experiences at most schools impart valuable lessons in humility and tact, though these are, in general less structured -- and more painful -- than they ought to be. Instead of actually learning tools that will make us better people, we learn the coarse rules that make us better workers. Even though we spend at least 13 solid years of the best days of our lives in school, it's only later that we begin to learn valuable lessons -- and only then if we are lucky enough to find a willing teacher. "Delusions of Competence" by Scott Adams describes the microcosm of one man's relationship with his wife. [1] His wife would doubtless swear up and down that she's not nearly as smart as her fancy-pants, philosopher-wannabe husband -- but still ends up being right more often than not when they disagree about something. And it seems Mr. Adams has learned enough humility to recognize this fact, as illustrated in the following citation from his story about cleaning up the kitchen after Thanksgiving. While attempting to clean up the dishes, he was faced with the dilemma of what to do about the left-over ham: throw it out or save parts of it? "I either had to make an executive decision (probably wrong) or risk being seen as an unhelpful spouse. I decided that my best option was to bide my time until Shelly got back. I started to slowly gather up used dishes and put them in the dishwasher. This is something I knew I could do right. And by "right" I mean I generally fill the dishwasher to 100% capacity and then Shelly rearranges things to make room for 90 additional items." And that, right there, is the lesson of humility: everyone has their strengths and one of yours, no matter how hard you try, is not loading a dishwasher. An aloof prick might say "so what? I don't need to know how to do that." To which the obvious answer is: but someone does and you're clearly inept at it. Be happy there's someone else around to do it or you'd be hip-deep in dirty dishes in no time. Know your own weaknesses and surround yourself with one or more people whose strengths fill those voids. Accept that you're not as good as other people at some things, but keep plugging away, even if you're still almost always wrong. "Had I made the ham decision unilaterally I would have later heard the question 'Why did you put garbage in Tupperware and store it in the refrigerator?'" Yeah, Scott, what the f*#@k were you thinking? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Though this is filed under humor, it's clear that not everyone will know what the hell Adams is talking about and won't find it very funny at all. Those of us in similar situations, however, laughed hard enough to shoot milk out our noses.

Girls's Costume Warehouse

2006-11-01T20:01:19+01:00

Published by marco on 1. Nov 2006 20:01:19 Updated by marco on 1. Nov 2006 20:15:11 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ You know how everybody's screaming about Borat being so over the top? How his schtick is so hilarious because he never goes out of character? It seems it's catching. This guy -- ostensibly from New Jersey -- may be for real or he may be faking it too. [1] Either way, he's hilarious as he tries to prove in just one minute that "[w]e got literally every girl's costume in the god damn universe!" [media] Best line? It's a tie between the announcer's plea to "get up off yer ass and get the fuck down heah ... I got shit over heah I'm tryin' ta fuckin' sell" and the model's sassy come-on of "wouldn't you like ta fouah scoah wit me?" (dressed as a "sexy" Lincoln, naturally.) [2] If this is a fake commercial, I'm sure we can look forward to recrimination from New Jerseyites claiming that "that ain't how we is at all over heah". [1] Residents of upstate New York may remember the marathon Forever Leather commercials of late-night TV in the late 90's. He was real and wasn't much less ridiculous than this guy. Though he did swear less. He had the sassy models, though. [1] For anyone not fluent in New Jersey-ese, that's "wouldn't you like to four score with me", with the emphasized words forming a clever allusion to the opening words of Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address.

Sometimes Email Forwards are Funny

2006-09-13T22:26:04+02:00

Published by marco on 13. Sep 2006 22:26:04 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Received via email from several sources (and rewritten to satisfy the excruciatingly high standards here at earthli News): One day, during a daily briefing, Donald Rumsfeld told president Bush that 3 Brazilian soldiers had been killed in Iraq. Upon hearing this, the president froze and all the color ran from his face. He slumped forward, head in hands and whimpered softly. After what seemed like an eternity, he composed himself and asked, "Just exactly how many is a brazillion?" It's the short ones that are sweetest.

A Pleasant Daydream

2006-08-24T22:04:12+02:00

Published by marco on 24. Aug 2006 22:04:12 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This photo montage of "Postcards from Ken Lay" (Postcards to Vice President Cheney from Poor, demented lunatic impersonating the 100% dead, former C.E.O. of Enron) is one way to speculate a happy ending for the thousands of former Enron employees who may not have yet seen their way to forgiving "Kenny Boy" with quite the same fawning sycophantism to wealth mustered by Bush and his cronies. [image]

Perspective Art

2006-07-02T23:08:06+02:00

Published by marco on 2. Jul 2006 23:08:06 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]Some artists in Bayview Subway Station, Toronto got together to create "perspective art at a subway" . The paintings are deliberatly distended in order to fool the eye into thinking that it is a three dimensional object. The picture of the ladder to the left is a pretty good example. I'm not sure how they make these -- whether they really can draw the false persepective from their mind's eye or whether they work from a sketch or design prepared beforehand. At any rate, these remind me of the amazing sidewalk chalk drawings that made the email rounds a few months ago. Some examples of those appear below. [image][image] Missing Blocks is a simple, but effective example of how easy it is to fool the eye, while Batman and Robin is an incredible feat that looks completely impossible until you know how it's done. Photographing these is especially effective as there is no way to ruin the perspective by moving too close or too far. The two pictures below show how the trick is done: the drawings are simple made incredibly stretched out to fake depth. A simple trick, to be sure, but also a highly entertaining one and you can't knock the talent and effort that goes into making these things in places where they are sure to be erased within days. [image][image]

Python Football

2006-07-02T22:33:55+02:00

Published by marco on 2. Jul 2006 22:33:55 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The International Philosophy World Cup brought to you by Monty Python -- Greeks vs. Germans in a knock-down drag-out battle of the philophosers on a football pitch. If the embedded video below doesn't work, try this link to the video at "YouTube" . It's a touch on the long side, but the closing flurry of announcing makes it worth watching the whole thing: "The Germans are disputing it. Hegel is arguing that the reality is merely an a priori adjunct of non-naturalistic ethics, Kant via the categorical imperative is holding that ontologically it exists only in the imagination, and Marx is claiming it was offside. But Confucius has answered them with the final whistle! It's all over!" [International Philosophy World Cup]

Animation Run Amuck

2006-06-26T22:07:24+02:00

Published by marco on 26. Jun 2006 22:07:24 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image][image][image]"Animator vs. Animation" is a Flash animation that shows what happens when creative differences arise between the drawer and the drawee. In this one, an animator quickly becomes hostile to a freshly-minted stick figure drawing, which takes umbrage to the violence, using the environment (Macromedia Flash itself) to retaliate. It's very cleverly done and very convincingly animated, giving the impression that the figure is actually fighting for its very life, using bow and arrow against an increasingly violent animator eager to be rid of a creation run amuck. In the scene on the right, the animator has drawn a masive ray gun, with which to shoot the stick figure, doing considerable damage to the Flash environment itself. The figure fashions a water pistol from available tools and short circuits the gun, causing it to explode and rupturing the storyboard GUI components above. The battle continues in this vein, with each side utilizing all available tools to do the other side in. It's very clever stuff and reminds me of the karate animations released a few years ago -- see "Xiao Xiao 7 (karate Flash)" . The other "Xiao Xiao" movies are still available.

Web Design

2006-06-22T22:37:09+02:00

Published by marco on 22. Jun 2006 22:37:09 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Anyone who's been in the business of web design for long enough -- and does a good job of it -- should be wholly familiar with the pie chart showing "Time Breakdown of Modern Web Design" . If the graphic isn't available [1], the list is: * Time spent actually designing anything (2%) * Time spent trying to get the layout to work using only CSS before giving up and using tables (20%) * Swearing (15%) * Time spent trying to get the bastard to work in Internet fucking Explorer (40%) * Time spent wishing a slow, painful death on Bill Gates and more swearing (10%) * Time spent looking for that one extra space character in the Javascript that Firefox is throwing a wobbly over [2] (10%) * Time spent making the site W3C compliant (3%) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I'm not going to copy original work from another blog. [1] "Throwing a wobbly" must be a quaint, British (or Canadian) way of saying "pitching a fit" or "throwing a hissy fit". Or maybe some parts of America (I'm looking at you, Minnesota) are much weirder than I thought.

Infighting Elephants

2006-06-21T22:55:25+02:00

Published by marco on 21. Jun 2006 22:55:25 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ When even old grey elephant Arlen Spector stands up to protest domestic spying, you know there's dissension in the ranks over at the GOP. Their normally single voice is splintering somewhat over this issue, as evidenced by this response from Dick Cheney to his outburst: "Vice President Cheney Issues Diplomatic Response..." (Vice President Cheney Issues Diplomatic Response to Senator Arlen Spector's Shrill, Childish Letter Protesting Domestic Spying). Classic Cheney.

Colbert Roundup

2006-06-18T22:18:22+02:00

Published by marco on 18. Jun 2006 22:18:22 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Though he spent years on the Daily Show and has been on the air with his own show since last September, Stephen Colbert first leapt into the national spotlight when he as named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people and when he handed George Bush his ass at the Correspondent's dinner a few weeks ago [1]. There are always a lot of videos of his show online; the following few from the last week are particularly good: "Phone Calls: Wiretapping" Stephen takes to the phones to ease people's minds about warrantless wiretapping: "Would you rather have your phone tapped or have everyone you love killed by terrorists?" To a caller concerned about loss of privacy, he breaks in with: "It's just like you people on the left; you complain and you complain until the government Cadillac shows up and then you complain some more ... the air conditioning doesn't work, the doors won't unlock and it's headed for a cliff." "Tim Flannery" This is an interview with the Australian climate change advocate. "I believe what I wanna believe. Welcome to America, my friend." Stephen lists the countries that didn't sign the Kyoto treaty -- Lichtenstein, Monaco, the US and Australia -- and calls them "the coalition of the willing to burn fossil fuels". Nightmare scenarios just bounce right off of him, as they do for most Americans: "Tim: If the climate changes, Paris could have the climate of Siberia; Stephen: Good riddance." As usual, Stephen plays the perfect "idiot" straight man, asking the dumb questions posed by those who know nothing of science, but stopping short of shouting Tim down before he makes some excellent points, like this one: "If your doctor says, "If you keep smoking cigarettes and you keep eating hamburgers and you keep getting no exercise, in 20 years time, you're going to be in trouble, and by the time you start to feel the first effects, when you get your first heart attack, it's too late. Climate change is a lot like that." "David Sirota" This is an excellent interview with the author of Hostile Takeover, which is about the big money that has taken over our government. "Stephen: I hear that energy companies are writing our energy policy. Why not? They know about it than anybody else, don't they? David: It's the energy policy that's supposed to regulate what the energy companies are allowed to do." Even when he doesn't stoop quite that as low as that, Stephen shows a decent knowledge of American history (good preparation on the part of his writers), which probes Sirota's grasp of the issue he writes about. Again, he ends up letting Sirota make his point, unlike the O'Reillys of the world that he (Stephen) lampoons: "David: We need to publicly finance elections ... Stephen: Ok, comrade, the government pays for the elections ... so my tax dollars go to "moonbat wingnut" who wants to make me have a low-flow toilet. David: The problem is that while it may be welfare for politicians ... the problem is that someone is already paying for the elections and they're getting a government that they own. Think of all of the money that went into the political process that was then returned in the form of tens of billions of dollars in payoffs to the companies that provided election funding." "Know a District: Georgia's 8th" This is part 24 of the 434 part series, in which Stephen interviews all of the congresspeople in America. This time, he corners a Georgia representative, who was co-sponsor of a bill to put the ten commandments [2] into every courtroom in the country. Stephen naturally asks whether "he can think of any better building -- other than a federal courthouse -- to hang the ten commandments" and Congressman Westmoreland answers "no". Then he said that the "ten commandments is not a bad thing for people to understand and respect ... and if we were totally without them, we would lose our sense of direction". Since they seem so important to him, Stephen asks him to list all ten of them and the moron can only list three of them after much deliberation. "Formidable Opponent: Gitmo" In this skit, Stephen debates himself to get to the heart of the issue. In it, he simply reiterates the logic of the administration vis-a-vis the war on terror, American gulags and America's moral compass. It's a dialog between right-wing Stephen and left-wing Stephen, who's put into Gitmo for the purpose of the debate: Right: We can't give these guys trials. We don't have any evidence. Left: Well, then, how do you know they're terrorists? Right: How do you know they're not? Left: What about the guys who are innocent? Right: What about them? [Left-wing Stephen is now in Gitmo himself] After you've been tortured and held for four years, how will we look if we declare you innocent now? Left: But you just said I'm innocent! Right: You were innocent. Four years in gitmo without trial has changed you. Think about it, what would you do to me if you got a hold of me right now? Left: I'd fucking kill you! ... oh no. Right: See? Left: Oh my god, you can't let me go, you have to keep me in here to keep me from hurting innocent people like me. At the end, he's neatly proven both sides of the debate: the US will probably never let these people go and the fact that the US even has these people imprisoned creates far more terrorists than the paltry 400 or so alleged terrorists that they have locked up there. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Covered in detail in "Colbert's Cojones" . [1] Only three of the ten commandments -- "thou shalt not kill", "thou shalt not bear false witness" and "thou shalt not steal" -- are codified in US law. The others deal with making sure you worship only the right god, you don't diss that god, you don't diss your parents and you don't get all jealous and shit about anything. These in no way belong to the system of law in a country whose constitution includes "freedom of religion" as a basic right.

Father's Day with Louis C.K.

2006-06-18T21:11:05+02:00

Published by marco on 18. Jun 2006 21:11:05 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Louis C.K." has a new show on HBO and Jon Stewart's interview with is hilarious. Jon makes the mistake of asking him about his family and he tells him about his two daughters -- but with a slightly different take than most proud fathers. Louis: The one-year-old I don't have an opinion about ... she's kind of boring. The other one is four years old and I love her very much, but she's kind of a fucking asshole. Jon: Does she watch the show? Louis: I don't care, she can kiss my ass. Jon: (guffaws) That's just not right... Louis: Look, first of all, don't go defending someone you don't know. Here's the thing with her, right? ... So I'm talking to my wife the other day and the four-year-old just breaks in -- she doesn't give a shit who's talkin' -- and goes "Momma I saw a doggie today". So I go, "really, where was the doggie?" and she goes "I'm tellin' mom, not you!" So I go, "Hey fuck you, I'm just being polite by askin'" ... like I really give a shit about the doggie ... like that was gonna be a great story about how she saw a dog. She's an asshole. The transcript doesn't do it justice; you have to see the delivery to get the full effect. The guy is just perfectly deadpan.

Anagrams!

2006-06-18T20:56:29+02:00

Published by marco on 18. Jun 2006 20:56:29 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Sternest Meanings" features an anagram robot, which is kind of fun. Anagrams derived from the names of our fearless leaders in Washington are succinct peeks into their very souls: * Donald Rumsfeld = Muddler of lands * Paul Wolfowitz = Foul zap low wit * Richard Perle = Pedlar [1], richer The most fearless leader of all has two interesting variations: the first tells us what we already know, whereas the second reveals a side he has not yet revealed publicly. * George Walker Bush = Blush, war geek [2] ogre. * George Bush = O, he buggers! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Pedlar is an old English variant of the word "peddler" -- a seller or merchant. [1] Though it's clear that Bush is anything but technically savvy -- or savvy in any way whatsoever -- it's possible the anagram is pointing out any even darker side than heretofore suspected -- to whit, that he bites the heads off of chickens.

In the Navy!

2006-06-08T22:20:00+02:00

Published by marco on 8. Jun 2006 22:20:00 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Looking for all the comforts of living on a naval vessel while you're confined to dry land? "28 Ways to simulate being in the Navy" is here to help. [1] Some of the more helpful items are listed below: 1. Unplug all radios and TVs to completely cut yourself off from the outside world. Have a neighbour bring you a Time, Newsweek, or Proceedings from five years ago to keep you abreast of current events. 2. Cut a twin mattress in half and enclose three sides of your bed. Add a roof that prevents you from sitting up (about 10 inches is a good distance) then place it on a platform that is four feet off the floor. 3. Prepare all meals blindfolded using all the spices you can grope for, or none at all. Remove the blindfold and eat everything in three minutes. 4. Repaint the interior of your home every month, whether it needs it or not. 5. Stand outside at attention at dawn and have the poorest reader you know read the morning paper out loud. Be sure to have him skip over anything pertinent. 6. Every four hours, check the fluid level in your car's radiator. Check the tire pressure and replace air lost from excessive pressure checks. Inform your neighbor as to the results of these checks, have him tell you to repeat the checks because he did not see you perform them. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] The most subtle way of emulating government employment is the maddening way that a list of 38 items is labelled as being only 28.

Bad Day at the Office

2006-06-08T22:11:19+02:00

Published by marco on 8. Jun 2006 22:11:19 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]The following video, "Death Star" , is a hilarious deleted scene that George Lucas intended as the opening scene for The Empire Strikes Back. When Mark Hamill crashed up his bike and scarred his face, he added the whole "Ice Planet Hoth" thing instead. Truly hilarious and well worth watching!

Making Progress

2006-04-19T22:04:21+02:00

Published by marco on 19. Apr 2006 22:04:21 Updated by marco on 19. Apr 2006 23:26:17 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Get Your War On" is frequently funny, occasionally published comic that's featured on earthli several times. Every once in a while, they pack a serious wallop into a short rant, as in the following comic: [image] The quote is repeated in text form below, 'cause it just makes me laugh: "Sorry -- after three years in Iraq, I don't get excited by the word "progress". That's some bullshit. Maybe I'd be excited by progress if we had only spent, like, two million dollars, or if we had a bunch of fifth-graders over there running the place for a fucking science fair or some shit. Then maybe I'd feel grateful for any ol' bit of good news that happened to drop out of the sky. But after all the money and time and bullshit we've burned through, I'm supposed to be thrilled for any moment we're not ruining Iraq? Ha! Fuck that and fuck "progress" -- where's "done"?" Anyone with obnoxious war-hawk friends should memorize this rant and rattle it off when necessary.

Microsoft Parodies Itself

2006-04-17T20:35:52+02:00

Published by marco on 17. Apr 2006 20:35:52 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image][image] And does a damned good job of it. A while ago, a quite expertly-made video floated around showing the iPod box design if Microsoft were to give it a good working over. You can watch the video here: "Microsoft redesigns iPod packaging" and you should watch it with sound. "Microsoft Confirms it Originated iPod Box Parody Video" cites a Microsoft spokesperson: "It was an internal-only video clip commissioned by our packaging [team] to humorously highlight the challenges we have faced RE: packaging and to educate marketers here about the pitfalls of packaging/branding." Microsoft isn't the only software manufacturer that falls victim to overbranding (I'm looking at you, Symantec), but the video works for them too. It's damned funny and it seems that Microsoft Movie Maker is more capable than it looks.

Beware of Chuck Norris

2006-02-19T20:50:26+01:00

Published by marco on 19. Feb 2006 20:50:26 Updated by marco on 19. Feb 2006 21:05:10 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image] I think "Chuck Norris Facts" is hilarious. It's also connected to one of the most advanced T-Shirt design & ordering sites I've ever seen; check out this "sample" . Here are some of the awesome T-Shirts you could make for yourself: * There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of animals Chuck Norris allows to live. * Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits. * Chuck Norris has two speeds. Walk, and Kill. * When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris. Compared to Chuck Norris, Dick Cheney [1] is nothing. [1] Who shot a 78 year old man in the face ... with a shotgun ... from close range ... while drunk.

The Apple Product Cycle

2005-05-08T22:27:03+02:00

Published by marco on 8. May 2005 22:27:03 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The Apple Product Cycle" takes you through the life of an Apple product, from inception: "An obscure component manufacturer somewhere in the Pacific Rim announces a major order for some bleeding-edge piece of technology that could conceivably become part of an expensive, digital-lifestyle-enhancing nerd toy." ...to the actual appearance of the product... "The product has sleek, clean lines, a diminutive form factor, and less than half of the useful features that everyone was expecting. Jobs announces that the product is available "immediately". ... Five minutes later, the new product appears on the online Apple store. Orders have an estimated ship date that is four weeks away." ...to the first hands-on "examinations" of the hardware... "Nerd porn threads appear in the Mac forums. Some lunatic with too much time and money on his hands disassembles the new device down to the bare, soldered components and posts pictures." ...all the way through to Microsoft's response... "Consumers discover that the Windows-based competitor to Apple's device contains a proprietary digital rights management technology that prevents them from using the device to do anything expect except look at family photographs taken in the last 20 minutes." ...and then, once more from the top.

ACLU Looks into the Near Future

2005-02-27T22:17:11+01:00

Published by marco on 27. Feb 2005 22:17:11 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here's a neat little take on a possible future for consumers in America called "Summer Surveillance Campaign" (Flash). It's about a guy who's just trying to order a pizza; little does he know that the pizza parlor has recently hooked into "The System".

Fighting Windows® Again

2005-02-01T21:56:22+01:00

Published by marco on 1. Feb 2005 21:56:22 Updated by marco on 12. Mar 2008 22:33:05 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Fake Windows Features" is the latest installment of the Comedy Goldmine feature there. The two graphics below are the two I thought were the best, but feel free to have a look around yourself. They deal with the small things that Windows just can't seem to get right: applications that steal focus and sorting by name in the programs menu. [image][image] It's funny because it's true.

Map of Springfield (Simpsons)

2005-01-19T21:21:13+01:00

Published by marco on 19. Jan 2005 21:21:13 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]"Guide to SpringField USA" is an excruciatingly detailed map of Springfield, home to the Simpsons. There is a "'sliced' version" , which shows zoomed-in and browsable maps of the different sections, a "Big Map" (in PNG format) and also a "PDF version" , which can be printed. The authors subjected themselves to "numerous viewings of most episodes of the Simpsons", then built the map: "While the placement of most locations is arbitrary, many are placed according to where they appear in relationship to each other in specific episodes of The Simpsons. In some cases 'one-time references' to specific locations have been disregarded in favor of others more often repeated. Due to the many inconsistencies among episodes, the map will never be completely accurate."

Female Empowerment?

2005-01-17T21:45:59+01:00

Published by marco on 17. Jan 2005 21:45:59 Updated by marco on 17. Jan 2005 21:48:14 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]"100-Pound Woman Downs Six-Pound Burger" is the story that shows that a women can be just as good at doing stupid stuff as a man. In fact, even better. I found it impossible to read this article without getting slightly nauseous as it tells of "Ye Old 96er", which is a "six-pound hamburger - and five pounds of fixins'". All to be eaten in under three hours and you get it for free. Plus a T-Shirt. What's amazing is that tiny Kate Stelnick, 19, all 100 pounds of her, managed what "420-pound ... competitive eater Eric "Badlands'' Booker" could not. If you're not nauseous yet, take a look at the ingredient list: "one large onion, two whole tomatoes, one half head of lettuce, 1 1/4 pounds of cheese, top and bottom buns, and a cup each of mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, relish, banana peppers and some pickles." Denny Leigey Jr., owner of "Denny's Beer Barrel Pub" (picture here at left with his creation), had "offered a two-pound burger for years", but after hearing that another restaurant was offering a "four-pounder", he went into a monastic retreat for months until he "conceived of the six-pounder". Imagine the inspired genius it takes to come up with a six pound burger after having only heard of the two- and four-pound varieties. The amount of creative energy that must have taken is mind-boggling. Imagine if we could harness such congnitive power for the good of mankind. Just imagine. After having polished off enough food to feed a family for a week (or a small Indonesian village for a day), Kate said that "I felt very full, but I was too excited that I actually ate it to notice". She didn't notice? I, too, once tried to eat a measly three-pound burger at a restaurant where you got the damned thing for free. You had to eat the whole loaf of bread too. After almost finishing the Monster Burger, I dragged myself home, only to lay around, groaning and bloating further, until finally sweet sleep came to take away the pain. She must be made of sterner stuff.

Nutritional Value of an iPod shuffle

2005-01-15T21:46:28+01:00

Published by marco on 15. Jan 2005 21:46:28 Updated by marco on 15. Jan 2005 12:47:03 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ As you may have heard, Apple has had its annual MacWorld, at which it announced a couple of new hardware products (and a slew of software products). One of them is the "iPod shuffle" , which is quite small and is pictured on their website next to a couple of packs of gum for comparison. [image] Looks normal enough, but note the (2) next to the caption. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you find the footnotes, as shown below (with the two helpfully circled for the numerically challenged). [image] "Do not eat iPod shuffle." Browse to the "iPod shuffle" page at the US site and you'll see that the warning is still there. Intrigued, I checked some of the other country-specific Apple sites that I would have a chance of being able to read and found the following: * "Italians" are in no danger of eating their iPods * Neither are "Germans" , * the "French" , * Either variety of Swiss ("German" or "French" ), * or the "Japanese" (OK, you got me; I can't read Japanese, but I can see that point (2) is not mentioned under the gum comparison and that it actually refers to something about batteries). You know who else is in danger of killing themselves by ingesting an MP3 player? The "British" , who are admonished not to "chew iPod shuffle" in a bizarre need to actually translate that phrase (from "eat") for the British mind. What do we learn from this? First, we learn that most of the rest of the world has a penchant for Cinn-a-burst gum instead of Trident. Either that or Trident has a marketing deal with Apple in the US and the UK. More importantly, we learn that Americans and their close allies are: 1. ...the only ones stupid enough to consider eating an electronic device simply because it looks like a pack of gum and has been placed in proximity to a pack of gum in promotional materials. Are we so fat that we'd eat something that is the same approximate shape as something else that we have to unwrap (twice!) and has no nutritional value? 2. ...the only ones to consider damaging themselves internally for a potential financial gain, which is nullified by simply slapping a warning label warning them not to do something fantastically stupid. The fact that Apple had the English page translated for the British (from the incomprehensible American) indicates that, far from being included with Americans simply because of language (receiving a copy of the site, with warnings), the British are in similar danger. I would like to officially and heartily welcome them to the "too stupid to breathe" club and show them a slice of their future (if it's not already here): [Lamp with seven warning labels on it][Lamp with seven warning labels on it] Pictured above is a lamp, purchased in America, that came with seven warning labels affixed. (Thanks to dianavb for the pictures)

Electronic Voting in Florida

2004-10-24T22:19:31+02:00

Published by marco on 24. Oct 2004 22:19:31 Updated by marco on 25. Oct 2004 09:33:35 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ We've all heard about how hard it can be to vote in America. 1. If, God forbid, you want someone other than Kerry or Bush, their respective parties may have done a lot of legwork to keep your preferred candidate entirely off the ballot 2. If you're in a state that dumps all of its electoral votes to whichever candidate gets the most votes, you're out of luck for having your voice heard 3. If you're in Florida and you're black, there's a good chance you'll be turned away from the polls 4. If you're in Florida and want to vote for John Kerry, and someone notices, your vote might not count. 5. If you send in an absentee ballot, and you voted for John Kerry, it might not count. Here's a little movie called "Voting Machine" (WMV format/1.9MB) showing a "this-could-happen-to-you" scenario with computerized voting. "Boom Chicago of Amsterdam made the following video in anticipation of technological advances in US elections. It can be seen in our theater as part of our show 'Mr. America Contest' or in voting booths across Florida on Nov. 2, 2004"

British rescue America!

2004-10-24T22:04:30+02:00

Published by marco on 24. Oct 2004 22:04:30 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Dear Limey assholes" documents the replies sent by Americans when over 11,000 Brits sent "voting recommendations" for people living in Ohio. The title of the article reflects the sentiments of at least half of the letters; they evoked personal stereotypes about the British, brought up "saving their asses" in the second world war or threatened all-out attack. About a third of the letters were just effusive thanks for support, falling all over themselves in joy at having found kindred spirits across the Atlantic. And then, there were a few gems, like this one: "I understand the Guardian is sponsoring a service where British citizens write to Americans to advise them on how to vote. Thank heavens! I was adrift in a sea of confusion and you are my beacon of hope! "Feel free to respond to this email with your advice. Please keep in mind that I am something of an anglophile, so this is not confrontational. Please remember, too, that I am merely an American. That means I am not very bright. It means I have no culture or sense of history. It also means that I am barely literate, so please don't use big, fancy words."

Alternate liquor warning labels

2004-10-03T19:37:09+02:00

Published by marco on 3. Oct 2004 19:37:09 Updated by marco on 3. Oct 2004 19:38:37 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ American liquor manufacturers have accepted the FDA's suggestion that they display one or more of the following label warnings: WARNING The consumption of alcohol may leave you wondering what the hell happened to your bra and panties. WARNING The consumption of alcohol may make you think you are whispering when you are not. WARNING The consumption of alcohol is a major factor in dancing like a retard. WARNING The consumption of alcohol may cause you to tell your friends over and over again that you love them. WARNING The consumption of alcohol may cause you to think you can sing. WARNING The consumption of alcohol may lead you to believe that ex-lovers are really dying for you to telephone them at four in the morning. WARNING The consumption of alcohol may make you think you can logically converse with members of the opposite sex without spitting. WARNING The consumption of alcohol may create the illusion that you are tougher, smarter, faster and better looking than most people. WARNING The consumption of alcohol may lead you to think people are laughing WITH you. WARNING The consumption of alcohol may cause pregnancy. WARNING The consumption of alcohol may be a major factor in getting your ass kicked. WARNING the crumsumpten of alcohol may Mack you tink you kan tpye reel gode Thanks Kristin!

Funeral Procession

2004-08-25T10:05:30+02:00

Published by kavorka on 25. Aug 2004 10:05:30 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A man was leaving a cafe with his morning coffee when he noticed a most unusual funeral procession approaching the nearby cemetery. A funeral coffin was followed by a second one about 50 feet behind the first. Behind the second coffin was a solitary man walking with a black dog. Behind him was a queue of 200 men walking in single file. The man couldn't stand his curiosity .. He respectfully approached the man walking the dog, "I am so sorry for your loss, and I know now is a bad time to disturb you, but I've never seen a funeral like this with so many of you walking in single file. Whose funeral is it?" The man replied, "Well, that first coffin is for my wife." What happened to her?" The man replied, "My dog attacked and killed her." He inquired further, "Well, who is in the second coffin?" The man answered, "My mother-in-law. She was trying to help my wife when the dog attacked and killed her also." A poignant and thoughtful moment of silence passes between the two men. Then the first one asks in excitement "Can I borrow the dog?" The man replied "Join the queue."

How the British colonies were settled

2004-08-22T21:20:37+02:00

Published by marco on 22. Aug 2004 21:20:37 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Question] "Why did Australia get all the convicts and America get all the religious nuts?" [Answer] "Australia got first choice."

The "Lud" Crossword

2004-08-14T11:53:27+02:00

Published by marco on 14. Aug 2004 11:53:27 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ There's this crossword puzzle online. It's from the "Ludington Daily News" , a newspaper in Michigan. There are a lot of crossword puzzles online -- the New York Newsday is a pretty good one, with a Saturday Stumper from hell. The "Lud" is different. It breaks every crossword puzzle rule in the book. It never has a theme. And it mixes hard and easy clues in a way like no other crossword I've ever seen. Some of the somewhat easier ones include gems like: 1. Set again 2. Woody plant 3. Leg joint 4. Foot covering 5. Head covering If you're a crossword puzzle aficionado, you might kill yourself trying to come up with incredibly obscure answers. Rest assured, the writers of the "Lud" didn't put themselves through a similar effort. Here are the answers to the clues above: 1. Reset 2. Tree 3. Knee 4. Shoe 5. Hat Great, you think. A little kid's crossword. You'd be wrong. That's what makes the "Lud" so funny. There are also other, slightly more difficult clues thrown in the mix, like: 1. Take away by force 2. Sponsorship 3. Stable attendant 4. Wood sorrel 5. Faveolate These are no longer so easy. Given a few letters, you'll get some of them, but when you find "Woody plant" mixed in with "Wood sorrel", you really have no idea whether you can just put in "Tree" for the first one. At first, you just don't think it can be that easy. The answers to the stumpers above are: 1. Wrest 2. Aegis 3. Syce 4. Oca 5. Pitted Somewhat of a mix of vocabulary levels in this puzzle, eh? The thing that makes you keep coming back is the scoring system. Half a point off for each wrong letter. One point off for each letter you ask it to solve for you. There is no mercy for mistyped letters. That's what makes it even harder to put in the easy answers ... you don't want to lose points for taking the low road. I've never gotten 100% on it. I think my best is 97%. Try it out for yourself and see how you do.

Brewing Tea on the Enterprise

2004-07-28T23:27:25+02:00

Published by marco on 28. Jul 2004 23:27:25 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]"Star Trek Flat" affords you a look into a world few know: geek interior design. What do you do if you've got a lot of time on your hands, considerable do-it-yourself skills, a bunch of cash and no friends in sight? You redesign your entire apartment so that it looks like the inside of the Starship Enterprise [image] [image]When you're done, you try to "sell it" for a million bucks and see if you can find a rich, lazy geek who wants to live in England. I was going to name the article, "How not to get laid in the 24th Century" or something coy like that, but ... well ... damn, but the screenshots look good. A lot of them are in pretty tight and the design seems to hold up under close scrutiny. Hell, the apartment's only 500 square feet (about 45 square meters), but all of the gadgetry makes it look way bigger. It looks there's a whole starship attached to it. The first picture (above) is actually the kitchen -- you can see the teapot just left of center. If you read his short bio, you find that not only does he live in a Star Trek apartment, he's an unemployed DJ. That explains the disco ball in the living room. Ladies ... you'd better "email him" before someone else snatches him up. Damn. I thought I'd get through this one without a snarky joke. Oh well.

JibJab's "This Land is Your Land"

2004-07-28T22:31:52+02:00

Published by marco on 28. Jul 2004 22:31:52 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "This Land is Your Land" is good Flash; Flash put to a better purpose than burning out your retinas with advertising. It's a parody of the Woody Guthrie song that rips Bush, Kerry, the US Media, US consumerism (the part with the Native American and the Walmarts popping up like mushrooms was funny). Check it out for a good laugh. If you have trouble downloading it, try it here at "The Land is Your Land (local copy)" . They, of course, have a little copyright infringement thing with the owners of Guthrie's music going on. You see, though Guthrie's original copyright for most of the lyrics to his songs read: "This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do." ...now that he's dead, a company has purchased the copyrights, several companies have paid, over the years, for Congress to extend copyrights until the end of time as we know it, and a song written by someone almost 30 years dead is still not in the public domain. Remember how copyrights used to be to help content creators earn enough from their creations to keep creating? How is a dead Woody Guthrie creating less music due to derivative works? If it was Tupac, I'd understand.

Eric Idle's FCC Song

2004-05-23T23:01:28+02:00

Published by marco on 23. May 2004 23:01:28 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The FCC Song" by Eric Idle (MP3) is the first I've heard from him in a while ... and he's mad. He's got an "official announcement" on his web site. The "lyrics" are available in full and here's a little sample (just to show you it's not work safe). "Fuck you very much the FCC. Fuck you very much for fining me. $5,000 bucks a fuck, So I'm really out of luck. Thats more than Heidi Fleiss was charging me! So fuck you very much the FCC. For proving that free speech just isn't free! Clear Channels a dear channel, so Howard Stern must go! Attorney General Ashcroft doesn't like strong words and so. He's charging twice as much, For all the drugs for Rush Limbaugh. So fuck you all so very much!"

American Mascot Contest

2004-05-12T23:14:47+02:00

Published by marco on 12. May 2004 23:14:47 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I got an email recently with a rather interesting suggestion: change the emblem of the United States from an "eagle to a condom because it more accurately reflects the government's political stance". Why is it better? "A condom stands up to inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives you a sense of security while you're actually being screwed." While you're probably nodding your head in agreement, and, perhaps, wonderment that the government actually came up with a good idea, you probably also would like to know how it might look. We here at earthli have taken the liberty of taking the standard emblem, shown below: [image] ...and adjusting it to give you a visual of our country's new representative. Say hello to "Sammy": [image] I think you'll agree that it's an all-around improvement. Hell, he's even smiling to let everyone else know what great folks we are! How can you go wrong?

Dubya's speaking style

2004-05-12T22:02:06+02:00

Published by marco on 12. May 2004 22:02:06 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Look on the bright side. Each staggering step the US takes towards certain Armageddon is at least always accompanied by an opportunity to engage in some serious "Schadenfreude" when Bush gets trapped on the White House lawn by a pack of reporters. Or maybe he's flushed out from cover by a serious enough scandal that he's forced to make some form of official statement. That's when the whole flustered, fumbling, repetitive, seriously talking-pointed, single-minded (or no-minded?), redundant deer-in-headlights fun begins. His press conference a couple of weeks ago on prime time was such an opportunity and "Get Your War On #34" takes full advantage. They describe it as "rubbernecking a highway accident made entirely of words." Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant -- I think that's the most perfect possible description of Bush's speaking style. But, wait, there's more. Bush's down-home style and manner is often positively contrasted to that of the "East Coast elitists" in Washington: "All I know is ... I can actually think on my feet, I can string two fuckin' sentences together without notes and I could answer some motherfuckers' questions about a war without just spitting out eleven different permutations of the same goddamn 'goo-gah freedom' phrase! ... If 'elitist' just means 'not the dumbest motherfucker in the room,' I'll be an elitist!" That's really awesome. And finally, let's see how Bush's mind works. "His mind is like one of those spinning cages where you pull out the winning lottery numbers -- but there's only four goddman little balls in his cage: 'Freedom', 'Democracy', 'Terror' and 'Stay the Course'. He opens his mouth, one of the little balls drops out. That's not a conversation, that's Keno." Those are just my personal favorites from that strip; there is, of course, much more where that came from.

Laundry Origami

2004-05-12T21:33:14+02:00

Published by marco on 12. May 2004 21:33:14 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Leave it to the Japanese to come up with a super-efficient way of folding a T-Shirt and then putting the demonstration to video game music. This technique may revolutionize the way some of you do laundry. [image] Thanks to Marc for sending this along.

A new twist on negative campaign ads

2004-04-18T20:44:08+02:00

Published by marco on 18. Apr 2004 20:44:08 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "New Negative Campaign Ads Blast Voters Directly" does it again with another article that will probably end up coming true before November. Now here's a spot I'd like to see: "A controversial 30-second TV spot for Kerry that aired throughout the Midwest Monday blamed the country's ills not on Bush's policies, but on the "sheer stupidity" of America's voters." The Bush team fights back with: "'Are you going to vote for a candidate whose campaign promises would cost America $1.9 trillion over the next decade?' the ad asks. 'Of course you aren't. You aren't going to vote at all. In the last election, half of you didn't even show up. So, on Nov. 2, just spend the day right there at your dead-end office job, talking to your coworkers about your new sweater and e-mailing your friends photos of your stupid 2-year-old daughter you shouldn't have had.' "The ad concludes: 'You make me sick.'" Here's hoping this Onion prediction comes true; that would be lots of fun!

You might be a programmer if...

2004-04-13T10:14:06+02:00

Published by marco on 13. Apr 2004 10:14:06 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. You immediately complain that this should be subscripted as zero. 2. Most people say "Go To Hell," but you tell people to redirect to /dev/null. 3. By the time you've gotten here in the document, you've run Tidy or a similar app to check my X/HTML skills. 4. The statement (0x2b||!0x2b) makes sense to you. 5. You find 4 funny. 6. You note with disgust that it always evaluates to true, since 0x2b != 0. 7. Point 6 disgusts you, because under languages other than C++ (e.g. Java), it would throw an exception, runtime error, etc. 8. Both points 6 and 7 disgust you, because (0x2b||!0x2b) isn't a statement. I've truncated the original posting (received via email; thanks, Stephan!) to keep it short and sweet. If you're not a programmer, just move along...

Scientific measurement of "Macho"

2004-04-04T13:05:53+02:00

Published by marco on 4. Apr 2004 13:05:53 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Did Somebody Say Macho?" by Zack 'Geist Editor' Parsons takes on the daunting task of creating an objective scale determining any given person's "Macho-ness". The macho-factor is a 2-dimensional matrix defined along the Swayze-Eastwood Axis and the Shatner-Kressley Axis (Kressley is the dude from "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy", who, apparently, is the cultural opposite of a guy who "was probably watching re-runs of "TJ Hooker" when his wife drowned in the pool"). There is, of course, a helpful questionnaire to help you find your own place in the chart. There are two sections, one each for determining your co-ordinates on the two axes. [image] Here's a sample question from the Swayze-Eastwood Axis: When you see a beautiful woman you... 1. Point at her and make the noise from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". (+0) 2. Introduce yourself politely. (-1) 3. Make sure your erection is visible through your clinging unitard and adjust your sweatband in preparation for an introductory dance. (-3) 4. Stare at her until she says "what?" and then reply "It's not going to suck itself." (+1) 5. Light a match on your facial stubble and casually throw the lit match into her flammable whore hair. (+3) I know it's not right, but (4) had me rolling on the floor.

Isn't almost good enough?

2004-03-29T08:33:08+02:00

Published by marco on 29. Mar 2004 08:33:08 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here's Aaron McGruder's helpful contribution to Bush's re-election strategy. This is the "Boondocks" from March 22 - March 27. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image]

Troubleshooting for drunks

2004-03-21T22:18:23+01:00

Published by marco on 21. Mar 2004 22:18:23 Updated by marco on 21. Mar 2004 22:37:38 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I know it's too late for Saint Patrick's Day, but here it is anyway. Some of you can probably use it any day of the week. Feet cold and wet. * problem - Glass being held at incorrect angle. * solution - Rotate glass so that open end points toward ceiling. Feet warm and wet. * problem - Improper bladder control. * solution - Stand next to nearest dog, complain about house training. Beer unusually pale and tasteless. * problem - Glass empty. * solution - Get someone to buy you another beer. Opposite wall covered with fluorescent lights. * problem - You have fallen over backward. * solution - Have yourself lashed to bar. Mouth contains cigarette butts. * problem - You have fallen forward. * solution - See above. Beer tasteless, front of your shirt is wet. * problem - Mouth not open, or glass applied to wrong part of face. * solution - Retire to restroom, practice in mirror. Floor blurred. * problem - You are looking through bottom of empty glass. * solution - Get someone to buy you another beer. Floor moving. * problem - You are being carried out. * solution - Find out if you are being taken to another bar. Room seems unusually dark. * problem - Bar has closed. * solution - Confirm home address with bartender. Taxi suddenly takes on colourful aspect and textures. * problem - Beer consumption has exceeded personal limitations. * solution - Cover mouth. Everyone looks up to you and smiles. * problem - You are dancing on the table. * solution - Fall on somebody cushy-looking. Beer is crystal-clear. * problem - It's water. Somebody is trying to sober you up. * solution - Punch him. Hands hurt, nose hurts, mind unusually clear. * problem - You have been in a fight. * solution - Apologize to everyone you see, just in case it was them. Don't recognize anyone, don't recognize the room you're in. * problem - You've wandered into the wrong party. * solution - See if they have free beer. Your singing sounds distorted. * problem - The beer is too weak. * solution - Have more beer until your voice improves. Don't remember the words to the song. * problem - Beer is just right. * solution - Play air guitar. Many thanks to Rob and Jeff for passing this along.

Truly Brilliant Dilbert

2004-03-02T00:28:15+01:00

Published by marco on 2. Mar 2004 00:28:15 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]

Targeted marketing: Urban version of Word

2004-03-02T00:27:28+01:00

Published by marco on 2. Mar 2004 00:27:28 Updated by marco on 11. Mar 2004 16:17:39 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]

Problem with education

2004-02-15T20:03:03+01:00

Published by marco on 15. Feb 2004 20:03:03 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Why is it that so many people in America believe in it, right or wrong? They're taught to from a very young age. [image]

Rocket Man State of the Union

2004-01-19T00:02:36+01:00

Published by marco on 19. Jan 2004 00:02:36 Updated by marco on 19. Jan 2004 08:50:24 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Installment 28" made me laugh, but in a sad way. "Installment 30" just made me laugh. Quoting that is waaaayyyy easier than poking holes in Bush's space plans myself. I'm reproducing choice quotes below just to have them, but I'd browse to the link so you can see the little office dude in a space helmet delivering the lines. " Wait a minute ... how are we gonna get to Mars? "Check it out -- we're going to build a base on the moon! Then we'll literally FLY TO MARS!!! In space! "And we all have to wear purple hats and everyone gets a free basketball!!! President Bush is making me giddy! "You know, I remember when I was worried that the war in Iraq would distract us from rebuilding Afghanistan. Today, I literally asked myself, "Are we going to get distracted from rebuilding Iraq because of our mission to Mars?" Now, what the hell kind of President brings about a state of affairs where his citizens have to ask that question? "MY president!!! "Remember when Bush flew that fighter jet onto the aircraft carrier after we accomplished that mission? Wouldn't it be awesome if he landed a rocket ship on the Capitol Dome and delievered the State of the Union speech dressed like an astronaut? "If Bush wants to dream big, why travel to Mars? Fuck it -- why not travel through time? We could go back in time to when all the continents were stuck together in one big-ass Pangea and just stick a flag in the middle and call it a day. "

Foiled again!

2004-01-09T09:29:16+01:00

Published by marco on 9. Jan 2004 09:29:16 Updated by marco on 10. Jan 2004 16:43:36 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The most amazing practical joke was perpetrated over New Year's. "Friends foil Olympia man's home" (Friends foil Olympia man's home: Downtown resident returns from trip to find belongings silver-coated) shows pictures of an apartment completely, and I mean completely, covered in aluminum foil. The pranksters covered doors, door framers, the toilet, everything ... they even: * "unrolled the toilet paper in the bathroom, enveloped the bath tissue in aluminum foil and rolled it back up again" * "used foil to encircle Kirk's spare change -- each individual quarter he had left atop a living room bookshelf" * "overed Kirk's book and compact disc collections but made sure each CD case could open and shut normally" This is an upside to a jobless America: people are finding time for art again :-)

Drinking guidelines for the holidays

2003-12-17T23:51:33+01:00

Published by marco on 17. Dec 2003 23:51:33 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Drinking Responsibly During the Holidays" is a list of rules for kids of all ages: * If you are a woman, remember: Women are more sensitive to the effects of alcohol. If you are a man, remember: Women are more sensitive to the effects of alcohol. * Always drink from the bottle labeled "XXX." The bottle with the skull-and-crossbones on the front is poison. * Drinking alone is a telltale sign that you know better than to put up with anybody's bullshit. * Drinking more than seven nights a week is not just irresponsible, it's impossible. * If someone you know is too drunk to drive, demand that he let you have his car keys. If he refuses, pull out a gun and demand the car keys again. This also works with people who are not drunk, and whom you do not know. * Never drink with Tyler Schneeklov. * While standing in the middle of the road at 3 a.m. yelling expletives at your ex-girlfriend, wear light-colored clothing so motorists can see you. * Once you get married and have kids, stop drinking tons of whiskey and switch to drinking tons of wine. * Always re-cap your flask between swigs. This lengthens the amount of time between drinks. * Don't mix alcohol with stereotypes. If you are Irish, drink rum. If you are a pirate, drink whiskey. * Don't drink and drive. Disregard this if you happen to be one of those people who drive better drunk. * If you suddenly find yourself impaired by alcohol, prevent any social awkwardness by informing all those present that you profoundly love them, and that you never get this drunk. * Never use alcohol to escape feelings of failure and loneliness. Use Vicodin. * Before heading out to the office holiday party, tape a handcuff key to the inside of your watchband. Just trust us on this one.

Campus Penises

2003-03-03T22:16:25+01:00

Published by marco on 3. Mar 2003 22:16:25 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "...Harvard Feminist Goes Off Half-Cocked..." (What About A Twelve Foot Deep Vagina? Harvard Feminist Goes Off Half-Cocked, Stimulates Debate) on "Plastic" is about repression on campus. A bunch of people on campus tore down a "nine foot tall snow-phallus on university grounds" (Harvard, if you must know). It was mostly women irate that it was "offensive because it was pornographic"; offended because "[a]s a feminist, pornography is degrading to women and creates a violent atmosphere". Whatever that means. I'm not being flip. That is an honest evaluation of the intellectual content of that statement. It's zero-meaning fluff mouthed by a pawn. This is the type of a person that will be a pawn, no matter the cause. At worst, a nine foot penis is bad art. It's relatively unimaginative, but it's also not even close to the dictionary definition of pornography (which has no close correlation to the legal definition our elders have chosen to inflict on us): "1) the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement ... 2) material (as books or a photograph) that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement" So there has to be arousal and excitement in order to qualify as pornography. Whereas these people were undoubtedly excited about smashing down a 9-foot snowman (a common instinct), they were most assuredly not aroused. Or were they? They just wanted to smash the shit out of something someone else had made, an instinct almost as basal as sex, and wanted a rationalization that would let them get away with it without punishment (an instinct arguably more basic than sex). "[image]" Now this is a great snow sculpture. At least it's a sculpture. Look at the emotion expressed in this piece. It's truly a work of art, no? I bet some people had a great time smashing the crap out of that one too and feeling all good about themselves afterwards. Because that's really what it's all about, isn't it? Who are you protecting from this "pornography"? No one. When I was in college, our sculpture was made out of Christmas lights and greeted people as the left the main dining hall on our side of campus. It was relatively detailed especially after we doubled up the lights to gain the fine-grain resolution we needed to allow people to determine religion. We too had to stay up to all hours defending it against would-be gelding. It's amazing how many open minds think that the presence of a penis is degrading to women. By the logic of common thinking on pornography, if a magazine has nekkid women in it, it's degrading to women. Therefore, if a penis is built out of snow in public display, it's degrading to men, no? "No!", comes the resounding cry. We say what's offensive, not inexorable logic (which turns out not to inexorable at all, experience teaches). It's called consistency in thinking. Here's a quarter, buy a clue. If the argument were that it's stupid, I'm right there with you. It's not even stupid, actually. It's just not that funny. Compared to the brilliant humor evinced by the artists who built the sculpture pictured above, our Christmas Penis of yesteryear was also admittedly a childish, trite sculpture ... but not pornography.

Well struck by the Onion II

2003-02-19T21:23:32+01:00

Published by marco on 19. Feb 2003 21:23:32 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From "today's Onion" : "Bacon Good For You, Reports Best Scientist Ever" "ROCHESTER, MN - Bacon, long believed to contribute to heart disease and obesity, possesses significant health benefits, according to a study released Monday by Dr. Albert Gruber, the best scientist ever. "My research has found that three strips of crispy, mouthwatering bacon every morning can actually reduce cholesterol and help slow the aging process," the awesome Gruber said. "What's more, the bacon's positive effects are enhanced when combined with milk shakes and/or marijuana." In 1997, Gruber, a Mayo Clinic cardiologist, was awarded nine Nobel Prizes in Medicine for discovering that frequent oral sex with models cures cancer."

Texas Plastic Surgeons

2003-02-18T23:00:28+01:00

Published by marco on 18. Feb 2003 23:00:28 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Three Texas surgeons were arguing as to which had the greatest skill. The first began: "Three years ago, I reattached seven fingers on a pianist. He went on to give a recital for the Queen of England." The second replied: "That's nothing. I attended a man in a car accident. All his arms and legs were severed from his body. Two years after I reattached them, he won three gold medals for field events in the Olympics." The third said: "A few years back, I attended to a cowboy. He was high on cocaine and alcohol when he rode his horse head-on into a Santa Fe freight train traveling at 100 miles per hour. All I had to work with was the horse's ass and a ten gallon hat. Last year he became president of the United States." Thanks to rtaylor and sbrewer.

Spamming Iraq

2003-02-16T20:16:15+01:00

Published by marco on 16. Feb 2003 20:16:15 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "XXX!!! See Horny Teens Hide Weapons Of Mass Destruction!!! XXX!!!" on"Plastic" announces that the US has been spamming Iraqi citizens for the last month, causing Iraq to "disable Internet access for the entire country". Below is a sample of these emails, captured and presented by Plastic poster, "Chatsubo" . --------------------------------- | Reliable And Reputable Person | --------------------------------- Subject: FW: IMMEDIATE ATTENTION NEEDED: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL URGENT ASSISTANCE - FROM USA IMMEDIATE ATTENTION NEEDED : HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL FROM: GEORGE WALKER BUSH 202.456.1414 / 202.456.1111 FAX: 202.456.2461 Dear Sir / Madam, I am GEORGE WALKER BUSH, son of the former president of the United States of America George Herbert Walker Bush, and currently serving as President of the United States of America. This letter might surprise you because we have not met neither in person nor by correspondence. I came to know of you in my search for a reliable and reputable person to handle a very confidential business transaction, which involves the transfer of a huge sum of money to an account requiring maximum confidence. I am writing you in absolute confidence primarily to seek your assistance in acquiring oil funds that are presently trapped in the republic of iraq. My partners and I solicit your assistance in completing a transaction begun by my father, who has long been actively engaged in the extraction of petroleum in the United States of America, and bravely served his country as director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency. In the decade of the nineteen-eighties, my father, then vice-president of the United States of America, sought to work with the good offices of the President of the Republic of Iraq to regain lost oil revenue sources in the neighboring islamic republic of Iran. This unsuccessful venture was soon followed by a falling-out with his Iraqi partner, who sought to acquire additional oil revenue sources in the neighboring emirate of Kuwait, a wholly-owned U.S.-British subsidiary. My father re-secured the petroleum assets of Kuwait in 1991 at a cost of sixty-one billion u.s. dollars ($61,000,000,000). Out of that cost, thirty-six billion dollars ($36,000,000,000) were supplied by his partners in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other persian gulf monarchies, and sixteen billion dollars ($16,000,000,000) by German and Japanese partners. But my father's former Iraqi business partner remained in control of the republic of Iraq and its petroleum reserves. My family is calling for your urgent assistance in funding the removal of the President of the Republic of Iraq and acquiring the petroleum assets of his country, as compensation for the costs of removing him from power. unfortunately, our partners from 1991 are not willing to shoulder the burden of this new venture, which in its upcoming phase may cost the sum of 100 billion to 200 billion dollars ($100,000,000,000 - $200,000,000,000), both in the initial acquisition and in long-term management. Without the funds from our 1991 partners, we would not be able to acquire the oil revenue trapped within Iraq. That is why my family and our colleagues are urgently seeking your gracious assistance. Our distinguished colleagues in this business transaction include the sitting vice-president of the United States of America, Richard Cheney, who is an original partner in the Iraq venture and former head of the Halliburton oil company, and Condoleeza Rice, whose professional dedication to the venture was demonstrated in the naming of a Chevron oil tanker after her. I would beseech you to transfer a sum equaling ten to twenty-five percent (10-25 %) of your yearly income to our account to aid in this important venture. The internal revenue service of the United States of America will function as our trusted intermediary. I propose that you make this transfer before the fifteenth (15th) of the month of April. I know that a transaction of this magnitude would make anyone apprehensive and worried. But I am assuring you that all will be well at the end of the day. A bold step taken shall not be regretted, I assure you. Please do be informed that this business transaction is 100% legal. If you do not wish to co-operate in this transaction, please contact our intermediary representatives to further discuss the matter. I pray that you understand our plight. My family and our colleagues will be forever grateful. Please reply in strict confidence to the contact numbers below. Sincerely with warm regards, George Walker Bush Switchboard: 202.456.1414 Comments: 202.456.1111 Fax: 202.456.2461 Email: president@whitehouse.gov ---------------------------------

Well-struck by the Onion

2003-02-16T20:15:08+01:00

Published by marco on 16. Feb 2003 20:15:08 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Texan Unable To Trick NASA Into Hauling Old Washing Machine Off Lawn" - The Onion (2003-02-12)

Ho Ho Ho Barbie

2003-01-17T10:26:09+01:00

Published by marco on 17. Jan 2003 10:26:09 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "[image]" "New For Christmas: Do Me Barbie" , found on "Plastic" , tells of "FAO Schwarz" 's refreshing departure from classic, fully-dressed barbies. This is a great idea and should prove very educational for young ladies wondering what assets they need to get ahead. Ahem. As if the size 38DDD rack Barbie has traditionally sported isn't indication enough. Now, she pulls out all stops as she "exudes a flirtatious attitude in her heavenly merry widow bustier ensemble accented with intricate lace and matching peekaboo peignoir". That's right, this Christmas, with the overwhelming popularity of "Earring Magic Ken" lingering not 10 years in the past, Mattel is now looking to sells dolls to heterosexual customers. (For more on the Ken doll, see this "interview with Dan Savage" in 1995.) FAO Schwarz has "two dolls on offer" for young ladies (ostensibly 14 and older, though I'm not sure if that's for girls or boys or both -- because you can bet "Lingerie Barbie" will be hitting more than a few Christmas lists right next to the GI Joes): a "brunette" and the traditional "blonde" .

Life according to Hollywood

2003-01-14T00:20:03+01:00

Published by marco on 14. Jan 2003 00:20:03 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Being a cop] 1. During all police investigations, it will be necessary to visit a strip club at least once. 2. Police Departments give their officers personality tests to make sure they are deliberately assigned a partner who is their total opposite. 3. A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from duty. 4. Honest and hard working policemen are traditionally gunned down three days before their retirement. 5. All handcuffs can easily be opened with nothing more than a paper clip. 6. If you need to open a locked door make sure you have a credit card handy, that will do. Unless its the door to a burning building with a child trapped inside. 7. Should you decide to defuse a bomb don't worry which wire to cut. You will always choose the right one. [Action & Fighting] 1. It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts - your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessors. 2. A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating but will wince in agony when a woman tries to clean his wounds. 3. If being chased through town, you can usually take cover in a passing St. Patrick's Day parade- at any time of the year. 4. Even if you've been set up for murder, been framed and/or have the whole world wide police force hunting you down, you will automatically live happliy ever after as long as you break away from the police and kill the bad guy. 5. When a person is knocked unconscious by a blow to the head, they will never suffer a concussion or brain damage. 6. No matter how many times you punch someone they will always come back for more - and their wounds have healed dramtically the next day 7. You can always hide from armed guards by clinging to the ceiling. They will never look up. 8. Action heroes never face charges for manslaughter or criminal damage despite laying entire cities to waste. 9. Whenever a natural or man-made disater is about to occur, the hero escapes (alive) nano second before its too late and is catupulted into the air by the force- but is never harmed [Vehicles] 1. Anyone can easily hot-wire a car with the two wires that are always exposed under the dashboard. 2. No-one involved in a car chase, hijacking, explosion, volcanic eruption or alien invasion will ever go into shock. 3. Cars and trucks that crash will almost always burst into flames. 4. Even when driving down a perfectly straight road it is necessary to turn the steering wheel vigorously from left to right every few moments. [Guns & Bombs] 1. Wearing a singlet or stripping to the waist can make a man invulnerable to bullets. 2. One man shooting at 20 men has a better chance of killing them all than 20 men firing at one. 3. It's easy for anyone to land a plane, providing there is someone in the control tower to talk you down. 4. If you want to blow up a car for any reason, just shoot it three times. 5. If you need to reload your gun, you will always have more ammunition - even if you haven't been carrying any before now. 6. Guns are like disposable razors - if you run out of bullets, just throw the gun away. You can always buy a new one. 7. All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they're going to go off. [Travelling abroad] 1. The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window in Paris. 2. Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German you need not speak the language. A German accent will do. 3. When they are alone, all foreigners prefer to speak English to each other. 4. Any aliens from outer space that you meet will speak your language. [Love] 1. All beds have special L-shaped cover sheets which reach up to the armpit level on a woman but only to waist level on the man lying beside her. 2. You're very likely to survive any battle in any war - unless you make the mistake of showing someone a picture of your sweetheart back home. 3. Any woman who has just witnessed the murder of any close family member will never be so traumatized that she will be unable to make love to the hero who saved her. 4. Make-up can safely be worn to bed without smudging. 5. Once applied, lipstick will never rub off - even while scuba diving. [Physics & Technology] 1. A single match will be sufficient to light up a room the size of Wembley Stadium. 2. Kitchens don't have light switches. When entering a kitchen at night, you should open the fridge door and use that light instead. 3. When you turn out the light to go to bed, everything in your room will still be clearly visible, just slightly bluish. 4. The ventilation system of any building is the perfect hiding place. No one will ever think of looking for you in there and you can travel to any other part of the building you want without difficulty. 5. Building ventilation ducts are always clean. 6. An electric fence powerful enough to kill a large dinosaur will cause no lasting damage to an eight-year-old child. 7. It is always possible to park directly outside the building you are visiting. 8. No matter how badly a spaceship is attacked, its internal gravity system is never damaged. 9. Most laptop computers are powerful enough to override the communication systems of any invading alien civilization. 10. If you are blonde and pretty, it is possible to become a world expert on nuclear fission at the age of 22. [Disasters & The Supernatural] 1. If staying in a haunted house, women should investigate any strange noises in their most revealing underwear. 2. Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright and pant. 3. If a killer is lurking in your house, it's easy to find him. Just relax and run a bath - even if it's the middle of the afternoon. 4. Most people keep a scrapbook of newspaper cutting - especially if any of their family or friends has died in a strange boating accident. 5. If there is a deranged killer on the loose, this will coincide with a thunderstorm that has brought down all the power and phone lines in the vicinity. 6. You can always find a chainsaw whenever you're likely to need one. 7. Dogs always know who's bad and will naturally bark at them 8. If your town is threatened by an imminent natural disaster or killer beast, the mayor's first concern will be the tourist trade or his forthcoming art exhibition. 9. At least one of a pair of identical twins is born evil. [Life] 1. When paying for a taxi, don't look at your wallet as you take out a bill - just grab one at random and hand it over. It will always be the exact fare. 2. Television news bulletins usually contain a story that affects you personally at that precise moment. 3. It is not necessary to say hello or goodbye when beginning or ending phone conversations. 4. All grocery shopping bags contain at least one stick of French bread. 5. Mothers routinely cook eggs, bacon and waffles for their family every morning, even though the husband and children never have time to eat them. 6. Medieval peasants had perfect teeth. 7. All single women have a cat. 8. All Americans have phones which can reach throughout the house-even if it has a cord. If its cordless- you can pick up perfect reception all around the house...unless there is a insane killer about 9. Film stars are always super-human- they never need to use the bathroom 10. Any computer, anywhere, even in the jungle, can hack into the most secure goverment system. 11. All telephone numbers in America begin with the digits 555. 12. Grocery shopping bags are made out of brown paper and there is always enough shopping to fill two bags exactly. 13. Large loft-style apartments in New York City are well within the price range of most people - whether they are employed or not.

Escher Legos and Computer Art

2002-12-16T23:07:37+01:00

Published by marco on 16. Dec 2002 23:07:37 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "[image]" "Andrew Lipson's LEGO® Page" has some pretty amazing creations, chiefly his recreations of some of M.C. Escher's works. You can see ""Ascending and Descending" " to the right. "[image]" I guess while we're at it, you can check out this site with computer-generated art. It's very difficult to tell the difference on some of these. The whole site is tightly linked together and takes you seemingly randomly from one 'painting' to the next. So one of these is taking impossible art and trying to make physical representations in Legos and the other is taking impossible physical representations and making computer art out of them. Another cool one is "The Thin Wall" .

Bookworm: A Lesson in Addiction

2002-12-13T14:10:18+01:00

Published by marco on 13. Dec 2002 14:10:18 Updated by marco on 9. Mar 2008 17:34:26 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]Put your vast vocabulary to good use with this cool Java game from "PopCap Games" called "Bookworm" (Bookworm game - uses Java). It's a Java game where you have to select words like in a word jumble. The more letters in a word, the more points and so on. Hard-to-use letters have higher value. If you link a few longer words together, you'll be granted gold or green blocks, which multiply the value of the word score. If you link too many short words (like 3 or 4 letters), you'll get flaming blocks that eat through one letter each round until they reach the bottom and burn your library. Things to look out for: 1. Gold blocks resist fire for 3 turns. 2. Under the bookworm is a word you can build for bonus points. 3. Always look for an 's' or 'ed' to attach to words. 4. Try words that don't look like words. Often it thinks they are. 5. Some words are simply not recognized, often the longer ones. Imagine my dismay to find that 'erection' with 2 gold blocks and a green one didn't count. 6. Don't click the bookworm unless you really absolutely have to. It punishes you with a lot of fire blocks, especially at higher levels. 7. Don't waste a big word near the end of a level. If you're about to level up, you should find a lower-point one to just make it, then use the big word at the start of the next level. 8. Word bonus points don't count towards the level progress It's possible to play scrupulously and get insanely high scores. I would recommend a strategy of always getting rid of fire blocks as quickly as possible, even if you have to use short words. They just multiply otherwise. Then it will gift you with a golden or green block. And now to explain the accompanying graphic. The reason I know so much about this game is that Kath and I went through an addiction of sorts in which we didn't shut the iMac off for 4 nights because we were always playing the same game. The score you see there is built up over 4 nights, making about 500,000 points per night. It finally got shut off by accident, but, honestly, good riddance. The most we managed to score on a single word is (from lowest to highest): 1. Slutty - 10,800 2. Glazers - 12,180 3. Lugged - 23,760 4. Gonad - 26,100 (imagine my delight when that one lined up with 3 gold blocks) Enjoy.

Seanbaby Found!

2002-12-13T14:09:47+01:00

Published by marco on 13. Dec 2002 14:09:47 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Seanbaby's been on vacation/hiatus or in hiding almost as long as Osama, but I found him. He's not updating his own site anymore because he's writing for "The Wave" (The Wave: The Bay Area's Best Entertainment Mag...Ever), "The Bay Area's Best Entertainment Mag...Ever". In fact, I just found his latest article, "Video Review: Turkish Star Trek" (Video Review: Turkish Star Trek - Once again, Turkish cinema takes an American classic, turns it on its head and kicks the living crap out of it.), in which he notes: "The teleportation effects are, like all Turkish special effects, a strange combination of retarded and rad. The four men stand as still as possible while the camera goes out of focus. Ten seconds later, the film gets scratched in their general area and they run out of frame while the guy holding the camera hits pause and unpause." If you check out the "Current Issue" page, you'll get a list of back issues and archives, where you can search out that Seanbaby goodness you've probably been desperately missing for almost a year now. In this issue alone, there's "Frivolous Lawsuits 8: When Children Sue" (Frivolous Lawsuits 8: When Children Sue - Tales of the underage suing for status, popularity and fabulous cash prizes.), where he takes off on a favorite topic, stupid lawsuits. Since this is installment 8, you can be you'll find 7 more in the archives. I did happen to find installment 7, "Frivolous Lawsuits 7: Sue Harder With a Vengeange" , which has a few really nice lawsuits. One is James Brown's daughter's suing him for having helped him create his music (at ages 3 and 6): "... First, this is James goddamn Brown. This is not like Right Said Fred asking his kid to list a few other things that he might be too sexy for; this is the Godfather of Soul. If these two girls were able to give the Godfather of Soul musical advice when they were THREE and SIX, then by this point, shouldn't our entire society be based around their music? ... There's a certain relationship between family members making it inappropriate to sue them. For example, when you use your high school diploma to get a job, your mom doesn?t get half your paycheck for buying your cafeteria lunches." The other good one is about the kids suing McDonalds for having made them fat and unhealthy: "They are seeking an undisclosed amount of money, but rest assured that the penalty for tantalizing a white trash fat kid with pictures of little cheeseburger monsters is probably many, many million dollars. ... If you're easily hypnotized into eating junk food by clowns and hamburglars, stick a party hat on a salad and trick yourself into not being a damn pig." Now that's good legal advice.

U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln

2002-12-10T22:19:23+01:00

Published by marco on 10. Dec 2002 22:19:23 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I was just kicking around "Snopes" the other day and found this transcript. Snopes is an urban legend tracking site and has discredited the veracity of this incident, but it's pretty funny nonetheless. ACTUAL transcript of a US naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October, 1995. This radio conversation was released by the Chief of Naval Operations on 10-10-95. Americans: "Please divert your course 15 degreesto the North to avoid a collision." Canadians: "Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degreesto the South to avoid a collision." Americans: "This is the captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course." Canadians: "No, I say again, you divert YOUR course." Americans: "THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE SECOND LARGEST SHIP IN THE UNITED STATES' ATLANTIC FLEET. WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS. I DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE 15 DEGREESNORTH. THAT'S ONE-FIVEDEGREES NORTH, OR COUNTER MEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP." Canadians: "This is a lighthouse. Your call."

Great Stickers

2002-12-09T01:05:41+01:00

Published by marco on 9. Dec 2002 01:05:41 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]This web site, "GWBush.com" is the unnofficial George Bush homepage. The best part is the stickers section in the "store" , where you can find beauties like: 1. "Regime Change" Starts at Home 2. Democracy was getting old anyway 3. Don't Blame Me, My Vote Didn't Count 4. Vote Republican -- it's easier than thinking! 5. If you can read this, you're not the president 6. I wasn't using my civil liberties anyway 7. George W. Bush: America's Last President ...and finally, my personal favorite: "Bush -- born on third base, thought he hit a triple" While you're checking those out, stop by at "Random Drivel" for a look at Mad Magazine's poster for "Gulf War II - Clone of the Attack" .

Pixar's Latest - Finding Nemo

2002-11-04T02:46:49+01:00

Published by marco on 4. Nov 2002 02:46:49 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]If you dig the Pixar movies, then check out the trailer for "Finding Nemo" , hosted at "Apple" . I'm not really sure what the story is about -- it looks like two fish trying to find one of their sons, surprising named "Nemo" -- but it's a sure bet it has a happy ending. It seems Pixar has found another venue in which to show off its technical prowess. In Monsters, Inc. it was Sully's fur that stole the show, technologically; this time, it's the underwater environment that will blow you away. In the more open, well-lit shots, you see literally hundreds of fish swimming completely convincingly amid a sun-dappled underwater world. Looks like another tour-de-force for Pixar for which I'll happily plunk down the ticket price.

George on the Sniper

2002-10-28T16:47:51+01:00

Published by marco on 28. Oct 2002 16:47:51 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "[image]" (Unions? Fuck 'em! Get back to work, you lazy Democrat dock monkeys! Corporations need their stuff.)I know, I've written about the "WhiteHouse.Org" site before, providing select links that really stand out, but whoever is writing this site has really hit his/her stride at this point. Perhaps it's because of all the juicy news tidbits available these days, perhaps because the target of ridicule is so big; whatever the case, the "press releases" by "The President" are just hilarious. It's almost scary how much they sound like what we all know he wants to sound like in that malignant tumor posing as mind, hiding behind those beady little eyes.For example, there's this article on the "...Ballistic FingerPrinting of ... Sniper Rifles" (President Bush Clarifies his Administration's Position on Ballistic Fingerprinting of High-Powered Sniper Rifles). He starts off with "...there's a possibly Mohammoid-worshipping sniper shooting up all-American strip malls and gas stations..." and continues with a description of how to take the sniper down, provided he plays by the rules: "Now if this sniper had real values - and wasn't some old-person-hating, pro-crime anti-Cuban fatso like Bill McBride - then he wouldn't hide in a van. He'd do his shooting in broad daylight and plain view - just like the big-balled, blue-eyed frontiersman who didn't take crap from no feather darkie savages. And I'll tell you something else, if he was trying to spread the word of the Koran in Crawford - well let's just say every non-river jumper in town would draw his legally concealed hand cannon and turn that registered Democrat into a crimson slab of swiss cheese. " Now, tell me that doesn't sound like what George must sound like behind closed doors. He's even got some new posters available in the "Patriotic Posters" section (see above).In a follow-up statement after the apprehension of the sniper suspects, George declares "...America Safe Again for Recreational Assault Rifle Strafing" (Joint Statement by Presidents' Bush and Heston declaring America Safe Again for Recreational Assault Rifle Strafing). In it, George says "As you know, late last week saw the apprehension and arrest of two colored muslamoids who had been gunning down innocent Christians all around Washington DC." Later in the press release, he puts the basic arguments of the NRA and the Second Amendment into his own unique words: "Now as I was saying, this White House is absolutely confident that by doing everything we can to positively saturate our country with as many firearms as possible, that it's logical to assume that everyone will be safer. I mean, you give a machine gun to a toddler girl, and hell if any identically armed team of negro Islamiac snipers is gonna be able to harm her, right?" Makes sense to me.

Elvish Fonts

2002-10-25T16:46:56+02:00

Published by marco on 25. Oct 2002 16:46:56 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]"Writing With Elvish Fonts" is, believe it or not, a page put up by one Daniel Smith, someone who apparently has enough free time to create TrueType™ fonts for the main elvish scripts from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. "This guide aims to give an introduction to using fonts for writing with the Tengwar, an Elvish writing system in J. R. R. Tolkien's novels. In The Lord of the Rings the Tengwar can be seen in the inscription on the One Ring and the text on the West Gate of Moria." The font files are available for download ("Tengwar Quenya, Sindarin and Noldor" ), though these names only make sense if you've read Silmarillion, preferably recently or more than once. ;-) There are also Microsoft Word macros, plugins and tutorials available. Who knows, maybe the best way to subvert John Ashcroft is to write everything in Sindarin script -- let the FBI pound on that for a few months.

World's Funniest Joke

2002-10-03T22:49:43+02:00

Published by marco on 3. Oct 2002 22:49:43 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The World's Funniest Joke -- Official" at "Yahoo News" gives us the end result of the "largest-ever scientific study into humor". The study was based in Britain, and their home page is at "Laugh Lab" , which seems to be down at the moment. After "[m]ore than 40,000 jokes from 70 countries and two million critiques", they came up with the following (which I think is pretty good...these studies tend to find the most lame jokes): "Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other man pulls out his phone and calls emergency services." "He gasps to the operator: 'My friend is dead! What can I do?' The operator in a calm, soothing voice replies: 'Take it easy. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead.'" "There is a silence, then a shot is heard." "Back on the phone, the hunter says, 'Ok, now what?'" Another nice one was a favorite in the States, where "[m]arriage-mocking" is big: "A man and a friend are playing golf one day. One of the guys is about to chip onto the green when he sees a long funeral procession on the road next to the course." "He stops in mid-swing, takes off his golf cap, closes his eyes, and bows down in prayer. His friend says: 'Wow that is the most thoughtful and touching thing I have ever seen. You are truly a kind man.'" "The man then replies: 'Yeah, well, we were married 35 years."

Hacker Speak

2002-09-12T09:05:08+02:00

Published by marco on 12. Sep 2002 09:05:08 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "[image]" "If hackers ruled the world" at "Security Database's" forums is a pretty funny post of Photoshopped images modified to show an eerie alternate reality in which Hacker-Speak has replaced English everywhere. My favorites are the first one (with a hacker-friendly epitath) and the one shown at left, which is pretty funny if you play any online multiplayer games (especially Quake, Counterstrike, etc.).

Samples

2002-08-17T08:58:48+02:00

Published by marco on 17. Aug 2002 08:58:48 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here's a little skit in Flash about the lives of two sample containers in a doctor's office. It's called "Samples" and is hosted on "Crapbox" . Warning: Austin Powers/American Pie-like humor contained within.

Be Paul Oakenfold

2002-08-12T23:53:46+02:00

Published by marco on 12. Aug 2002 23:53:46 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Paul Oakenfold" is a composer/songwriter/DJ who's made a lot of albums, mixes and has a pretty distinctive sound. With the help of the "Paul Oakenfold Sequencer" at "BBC" , you can try your hand at putting together a Paul Oakenfold-like mix. The mixer has 5 drum loops, 11 synth sounds, 4 special FX and 5 vocals to choose from. The mixer has 4 tracks with for as many tracks as you like (I saw over 600 slots available). You can save up to 5 tracks for yourself and send them around to friends. The link in the email takes them to your account. I made a "small sample of 16 tracks" and saved them. You can enter your track in a competition to win a trip to Ibiza to the closing of some big club.

Google elgooG

2002-07-16T16:04:17+02:00

Published by marco on 16. Jul 2002 16:04:17 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]"All Too Flat" is hosting a unique search service called "Google Mirror" . Everything on the page is reversed, including the results page, if you get any. You have to type in your search result backwards too. You have to try it see how trippy it is to use a web page backwards. After a while, you'll start to be able to read it just fine. Or not. .ton rO .enif tsuj ti daer ot elba eb ot trats ll'uoy ,elihw a retfA .sdrawkcab egap bew a esu ot si ti yppirt woh ees ti yrt ot evah uoY .oot sdarwkcab tluser hcraes ruoy ni epyt ot evah uoY .yna teg uoy fi ,egap stluser eht gnidulcni ,desrever si egap eht no gnihtyrevE ."rorriM elgooG" dellac ecivres hcraes euqinu a gnitsoh si "talF ooT llA"

Serious Legos

2002-07-12T14:30:42+02:00

Published by marco on 12. Jul 2002 14:30:42 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "[CubeSolver]" "Serious Lego" is dedicated to inventions using the "Lego Mindstorms" robot-building kits. This person, JP Brown has built the most incredible creatures using just Legos and the Mindstorms kits. One of the more impressive ones is the "CubeSolver" , which uses a WebCam and custom color-recognition software written in C++ and VB5 that solves a standard 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube by itself! There are a lot of other models on this site, including "K9" , a dog that plays fetch, "HanoiSolver" , a robot that solves the "Towers of Hanoi" puzzle, and even "GliderPilot" , a Lego unit that can fly a customized hang glider. Many of these inventions involve customized programming.

Math and Legos

2002-07-12T14:29:40+02:00

Published by marco on 12. Jul 2002 14:29:40 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "[Lego Stegosaurus]" "Serious Lego" "Andrew Lipson" has a site of Lego sculptures, of which some are "Mathematical Lego (TM) Sculptures" . It's pretty stunning what people do with Legos out there, and there are a lot of fan sites. "Henry Lim's Lego Sculptures" has a "Stegosaurus" that stands about 5 feet high. Another guy, "Eric Harshbarger" <>, built a "desk" out of legos. A lot of these guys use the tools and community found at "LDraw" , where you can find CAD-like tools for designing LEGO structure without the bricks.

Enron Accountant

2002-07-12T10:37:38+02:00

Published by marco on 12. Jul 2002 10:37:38 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Received through email. A friend told me the following story about a former Enron accountant who gave up his CPA position to become a farmer. The first thing he decided to do was to buy a mule. He dickers with a local farmer at the general store, and they agree that the local will sell the accountant a mule for $100. The Enron accountant gives the man $100 cash, and the man agrees to deliver the mule the next day. Next morning, the man shows up at the Enron accountant's place without the mule. "I'm sorry," he explains, "but the mule died last night. I guess I owe you the $100 back." "Hey, no problem," says the accountant. "Just keep the money, and as for the mule, hey, go ahead and dump him in my barn anyway. I'll raffle him off." "Ain't nobody around here going to buy a dead mule," says the local farmer. "Leave that to me. I worked for Enron," replies the accountant. A week later, the farmer meets the accountant back at the general store, and asks, "So, how'd you make out with the dead mule?" "Great," replies the accountant. "I sold over 1000 raffle tickets for $2 each, to my former stockholders and debtholders. Nobody ever bothered to ask if the mule was alive or not." "But didn't the winner complain when he found out?" asked the farmer. "Yep, he sure did, and being the honest, ethical man that I am, I refunded his $2 to him promptly." "So my profit, after deducting my $100 cost for the dead mule and the $2 sales allowance, is $1898. By the way, do you have any chickens you want to sell?"

They Might Be Giants - No!

2002-07-10T23:19:52+02:00

Published by marco on 10. Jul 2002 23:19:52 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ They Might Be Giants has a web site promoting their new album, "No!, The First Album for the Whole Family" . It has 30 seconds of each track on the album, 4 of which are accompanied by very cute little joyful games to play along with the music. The robot one is my favorite. Pass the mouse over the little ones and they wave their flags; click on them and they take off and land with parachutes. Click on the big robot to make him do stuff; his armpits shoot off fireworks. The No! one is pretty good too, almost like building your own video. Be sure to read the instructions that flash up under the game if you're having trouble getting it to do anything.

Driving Rules

2002-07-10T00:39:13+02:00

Published by marco on 10. Jul 2002 00:39:13 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here's a humorous Flash film by Bruno Bozzetto in english and italian showing the pitfalls of driving by the rules. It's called "Yes & No, a dyseducational road movie" . It shows several common driving situations with an aggressive solution (Yes) and a defensive solution (No!). It ends with the epithet: "Tell me how you drive and I'll tell you what kind of idiot you are".

Intelligence test

2002-07-06T16:13:03+02:00

Published by marco on 6. Jul 2002 16:13:03 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I got this in email the other day. It seems like a good one that's been around for a while, but the names are pretty interchangeable (depending on your affiliation, of course). I was too lazy to choose more neutral names, though; with this group, there's no way to twist it my liking. Given that Al Gore has no job, he decided to take a sightseeing vacation to Europe. While visiting England, he is invited to tea with the Queen. He asks her what her leadership philosophy is. She says that it is to surround herself with intelligent people. He asks how she knows if they're intelligent. "I do so by asking them the right questions," says the Queen. "Allow me to demonstrate." She phones Tony Blair and says, "Mr. Prime Minister, Please answer this question: "Your mother has a child, and your father has a child, and this child is not your brother or sister. Who is it?" Tony Blair responds, "It's me, ma'am." "Correct Thank you and goodbye, sir," says the Queen. She hangs up and says, "Did you get that, Mr. Gore?" "Yes ma'am. Thanks a lot. I'll definitely be using that!" Upon returning home, he decides he'd better put some of his old friends to the test. He calls Bill Clinton and says, "Hi, Bill, I wonder if you can answer a question for me." "Why, of course, Al. What's on your mind?" "Uhh, your mother has a child, and your father has a child, and this child is not your brother or your sister. Who is it?" Clinton hems and haws and finally asks, "Can I think about it and get back to you?" Gore agrees, and Clinton hangs up. Clinton immediately calls members of his old staff, and they puzzle over the question for several hours, but nobody can come up with an answer. Finally, in desperation, Clinton calls Colin Powell at the State Department and explains his problem. "Now look here, your mother has a child, and your father has a child, and this child is not your brother or your sister. Who is it?" Powell answers immediately, "It's me, of course, you idiot." Much relieved, Clinton rushes back to call Gore and exclaims, "I know the answer, Al, I know who it is! It's Colin Powell!" And Gore replies in disgust, "Wrong, it's Tony Blair."

Anchower on Star Wars

2002-06-19T23:16:13+02:00

Published by marco on 19. Jun 2002 23:16:13 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The Onion" has the latest from venerable columnist "Jim Anchower" : a rant about movies called "What the Hell is Wrong with Movies These Days?" . His review of Star Wars is particularly scathing and hilarious: "I saw the new Star Wars movie, and even that blew. I mean, yeah, there were some great space scenes, and you get to watch Yoda fight with a light saber, but as soon as the weed wore off, the whole thing just dragged. The love story was totally sappy, and there were all these long, boring scenes where these space senators were going on and on about trade-federation rules and shit. It was like watching C-SPAN on some other planet. I'll probably go see it again, just like I do with all the Star Wars movies, but this time I'm going in twice as baked."

Walling off Israel

2002-06-19T17:51:12+02:00

Published by marco on 19. Jun 2002 17:51:12 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "SatireWire" just published "Arabs Slyly Building Wall Around Israel" in response to a "Yahoo News" article "Israel Begins Work on West Bank Fence" . Yahoo claims the Israeli efforts are "aimed at protecting Israelis from Palestinian suicide bombers", but SatireWire claims that they are "unwittingly footing the bill to construct the first stage of an 800-mile-long wall meant to seal off the entire state of Israel from everyone else." Go read the "SatireWire article" for the full story.

Best Friends Photo Contest

2002-06-19T08:39:16+02:00

Published by marco on 19. Jun 2002 08:39:16 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Worth 1000" , a website that holds Photoshop contests, has a good one called "Best Friends" . It's a contest to come up with the best picture showing Arafat and Sharon as "best friends".

New Patriotic Posters

2002-06-10T17:07:37+02:00

Published by marco on 10. Jun 2002 17:07:37 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "[image]" The "White House" has issued a new set of "6 posters" created to help Americans through this trying time. "Attention American Citizens! You stand hereby directed to prove your patriotism by printing out hundreds of the wartime morale posters below, and distributing them widely throughout your community!" Anyone not joining in will be determined to be an "Arabiac", as described in John Ashscroft's latest press release, "Attorney general ashcroft announces new hospitality measures for arabiac immigrants and tourists" , and you may very well end up in a "hosplitality center". "... a vast nationwide network of government-run "hospitality centers" specially tailored to the likes and needs of the millions of Arabiacs immigrants and tourists currently in America, all of whom are merely pretending to not be terrorists." The press announcement is presumably related to the very real announcement covered in the "New York Newsday" in "Ashcroft Unveils a Screening Plan" , in which he "...unveiled a plan yesterday to screen for terrorists by requiring registration and fingerprinting of 100,000 foreign visitors a year, a plan critics called ineffective, discriminatory and based on vague criteria."

Practice Ski Jumps

2002-06-07T18:37:56+02:00

Published by marco on 7. Jun 2002 18:37:56 Updated by marco on 9. Mar 2008 17:31:57 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Motion Playground" has a Ski Stunt Simulator on their "Games" page. There's a "Java version" that you can play online, trying out the 'kicker jump', 'the wall', 'crash and burn', 'practice'. 'Practice' is good for just trying flips: front flip lean back and down, then move forward quickly; the mouse should make a horizontal line to the right, then back to center back flip lean forward and down and then move back and up quickly; the mouse should make a counter-clockwise C-shape Those are my instructions above, so your mileage may vary. I recorded some videos of my antics; you can check them out below. The 'kicker jump' is my favorite, but 'crash and burn' really shows off how the pretty good physics engine can knock your skier around. I've gotten over 'the wall' and landed a couple of times now. -------------------- | Ski Stunt Movies | -------------------- Broken Back "QuickTime" (298KB) Crash & Burn "QuickTime" (1083KB) Head Plant "QuickTime" (329KB) Quintiple Backflip "QuickTime" (457KB) The Wall "QuickTime" (343KB) All movies were captured and produced with "Camtasia" -------------------- There are also "videos" of some of the jumps on the website, if you're trying to figure out how to do them. If you want even more, there's a "PC Version" with a training section, better graphics and a lot more jumps, though many are still locked because it's shareware.

Mapping Springfield

2002-06-07T18:29:30+02:00

Published by marco on 7. Jun 2002 18:29:30 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "[image]" Someone put a lot of time and effort into creating this "map of Springfield" (from the Simpsons). It took me a while, but I finally found Moe's and the Kwik-E-Mart. The "original" was found at "CrapHound" .

Presidential Signing

2002-06-07T18:27:38+02:00

Published by marco on 7. Jun 2002 18:27:38 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "[image]" The caption is a bit small, but it reads: Thomas Martello, 6, whose dad died at the World Trade Center, manages a smile as President Bush takes yet another crack at spelling his own name correctly.

Kharon4a

2002-06-06T20:08:49+02:00

Published by marco on 6. Jun 2002 20:08:49 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Do you miss Myst? Try out this groovy game "Kharon4a" with a DNA theme, available in English and Norwegian. It's got a cool soundtrack.

Triumph Attacks the Clones

2002-06-06T11:29:44+02:00

Published by marco on 6. Jun 2002 11:29:44 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "[image]" If you've ever watched Conan O'Brien, then perhaps you've seen Triumph, a hand puppet of a cigar-smoking dog. He's often hilarious, but I've never seen him better than in "Triumph at Star Wars" (available from "ShizNitt" ). It's a ten-minute WMV (Windows Media Player movie) file and shows him interviewing, insulting and sadly mocking the "nerds and geeks" that come out to stand in line for Star Wars movies. If the link above doesn't work, then try to download from a local copy I made here ["Triumph Movie at earthli.com" ]

From Milky Way to Proton

2002-05-18T22:01:38+02:00

Published by marco on 18. May 2002 22:01:38 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I received this through email and thought it was a nice demonstration of the "Powers of 10" . If you've been to the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, this will be familiar to you, but it doesn't go quite as far as that one does. This Java applet lets you navigate from 1023, "10 million light years from the Milky Way Galaxy" to 10-15, "face to face with a proton". Be patient, sometimes it takes a few seconds to load the next frame once you click an arrow.

Are You a Patriot?

2002-05-17T00:57:55+02:00

Published by marco on 17. May 2002 00:57:55 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "USA Patriot Registration" (USA Patriot Registration - Because Non-Traitors Have Nothing to Hide) on the "White House" lets you sign up for Ashcroft's new program. Register now to make sure you're in the clear.

Pen Spinning

2002-05-15T22:16:45+02:00

Published by marco on 15. May 2002 22:16:45 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ You probably know one, a pen-spinner. One of those tricks that looks so easy, so cool, so non-chalant. The kind of trick that makes you throw your pen across the room when you try it, so you have to skulk, hunched over and mortified, to pick it back up. "Pentix" to the rescue. This site has detailed, illustrated instructions for the most popular pen-spinning tricks, (like the "Normal" ), usually accompanied by a movie of the technique.

U.S. Treasury as Nostradamus

2002-05-14T13:55:21+02:00

Published by marco on 14. May 2002 13:55:21 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "U.S. Treasury predicts September 11!" Take a $20 Bill and fold it 3 times to get hidden warnings from the U.S. government! They knew about it all along!

Porsche Announces Recall

2002-04-06T01:30:29+02:00

Published by marco on 6. Apr 2002 01:30:29 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In an announcement that has simultaneously stunned the auto world and silenced vocal critics, "Porsche AG" (Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG - International) issued a recall yesterday on all "911" models. The recall covers all model years from the 1982 Coupe and Targa to the present day Coupe, Targa, Cabriolet, Carrera, and GT2. "[image]" Citing numerous incidents of vigilantism that ended up destroying several vehicles in the New York City area and endangering consumer's lives, Porsche has determined that the model name's stigma now "...constitutes a real and present danger to our customers." After considerable legal pressure equating the design flaw with any other mechanical failure, vehicle owners are being told to "cover the number with masking or electrical tape" until they can drive to a dealer, where the model will be changed, free of charge, to one of the following: 1. Remove the number, leaving only the model name (e.g. Targa, Carrera, etc.). 2. Replace the number with a number of a model of "equal or lesser value". 3. Replace the number with a personal physical dimension of the owner's choice. Some owners are upset that their choice of luxury sports car is now a liability rather than the status symbol they thought they'd purchased. Calls to the Porsche "Customer Center" have skyrocketed. The added volume reportedly has Porsche considering plans to temporarily field agents that would perform "house calls", replacing model numbers in the convenience of customer's garages. Although there are some concerns that the removal and replacement of model names will cause confusion among Porsche owners as to which car is most important and renders the most status, avid collectors are already seeking out the 911 models, hoping to become a part of history. Unsurprisingly, the replaced numbers have already "shown up" on "EBay" . Porsche has pledged to track down and prosecute these unscrupulous individuals. Porsche AG ("PSEPF" ) was down 10 3/4 on the announcement.

LOTR Secret Diaries

2002-04-06T01:17:44+02:00

Published by marco on 6. Apr 2002 01:17:44 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Flo]"Cassandra Claire" has written the definitive, behind-the-scenes diaries kept by the stars of the the "Fellowship of the Ring" (Lord of the Rings). The diaries are scattered throughout her(?) online journal, but have been gathered together very nicely "here" * and, if that site's not working, "here" . As both pages mention, the diaries are the most fun when read in order. The diaries are rife with homoerotic humor, but it's mostly pretty funny. My favorites are "Ringwraith #5" and "Legolas" (still the prettiest). As as added bonus, the latest (and likely, last) diary, "Sauron's" is available. If you really like these diaries, this site was offering t-shirts with 'still the pretties' and 'Aloof, unavailable elf princess' among others available.

Pictures Across America

2002-04-05T23:31:12+02:00

Published by marco on 5. Apr 2002 23:31:12 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Kodak" is hosting a feature called "On the Road: American Mile Markers" . Matt Frondorf drove across the country from New York City to San Fransisco, taking a picture every mile out the passenger side window of his car. The camera was hooked to the odometer and fired every mile, but every 36 miles, he'd have to change the film he didn't pull over or stop. "I would count the miles," he says. "As soon as the thirty-sixth came, I would change rolls, put the exposed roll in a canister, enter its number on a log sheet, take the next one out of the cooler, and insert it. I got to where I could do all that in less than a minute, while steering with my kneecap." The whole trip took him 6 days in total. It wasn't even his first one. In his bio, he mentions that he'd tried the trip before in a Porsche and taking interstates, but "[i]nterstates bypass small-town America, and when I-70 goes through the Rocky Mountains, you just get close-up rock faces. Besides, the car was so low-slung I got a lot of guardrails." If you have Flash installed, the viewer for the trip is one of the best uses of it I've seen yet. You can move in increments of 1, 25, or 100 miles at a time, see the route he took on a map and the 6 pictures framing the spot you're looking at above. Oh, and all 3304 pictures are in there.

Boondocks Comic (March 27, 2002)

2002-03-27T11:33:00+01:00

Published by marco on 27. Mar 2002 11:33:00 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "[comic]"

Rumsfeld in Catch-22

2002-03-22T11:54:26+01:00

Published by marco on 22. Mar 2002 11:54:26 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "SatireWire" published "Closed Disinformation Agency Can't Convince Staff It's Closed" , which does Joseph Heller proud with Rumsfeld playing the role of Major Major and a subordinate filling in for Milo. ""We got ya, sir, we're 'closed'," said a winking Major Chad Brumley when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld found him at his desk again today. "There is no one here spreading misinformation now, and certainly there won't be anyone here spreading misinformation daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sir.""

Drive right or left?

2002-03-10T22:20:14+01:00

Published by marco on 10. Mar 2002 22:20:14 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "[image]" "Which side of the road do they drive on?" explains exactly that. It covers, in fascinating detail, which countries of the world drive on which side of the road. The map to the left is from the site and shows right-driving countries in yellow and left-driving countries in red. Don't be fooled by the appearance of surface area, though: "Having often encountered the implicit assumption that everyone but England and some of her colonies drive on the right side of the road, I compiled ... a quick table of populations to provide a clue as to just how evenly the sides are represented. As it turns out, some 4 billion people drive right, and 2 billion drive left (when they drive at all that is). So a goodly third of the world drives on the left." As far as actual road surface goes, the page says that "Almost three-quarters of the world's highways are found in countries where traffic drives on the right." There are a lot of stories and fun facts covered here, from escalators to planes, trains and boats.

Bank Charge

2002-02-28T16:18:04+01:00

Published by marco on 28. Feb 2002 16:18:04 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This is an actual letter sent to a Bank in the US. The Bank thought it amusing enough to publish in the New York times. Dear Sir, I am writing to thank you for bouncing the cheque with which I endeavored to pay my plumber last month. By my calculations some three nanoseconds must have elapsed between his presenting the cheque, and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honor it. I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my entire salary, an arrangement which, I admit, has only been in place seven or eight years. You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account with $50 by way of penalty for the inconvenience I caused to your bank. My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me to re-think my errant financial ways. You have set me on the path of fiscal righteousness. No more will our relationship be blighted by these unpleasant incidents, for I am restructuring my affairs in 1999, taking as my model the procedures, attitudes and conduct of your very bank. I can think of no greater compliment, and I know you will be excited and proud to hear it. To this end, please be advised about the following changes. First, I have noticed that whereas I personally attend to your telephone calls and letters, when I try to contact you I am confronted by the impersonal, ever-changing, pre-recorded, faceless entity, which your bank has become. From now on I, like you, choose only to deal with a flesh and blood person. My mortgage and loan repayments will, therefore and hereafter, no longer be automatic, but will arrive at your bank, by cheque, addressed personally and confidentially to an employee of your branch, whom you must nominate. You will be aware that it is an offence under the Postal Act for any other person to open such an envelope. Please find attached an Application Contact Status, which I require your chosen employee to complete. I am sorry it runs to eight pages, but in order that I know as much about him or her as your bank knows about me, there is no alternative. Please note that all copies of his or her medical history must be countersigned by a Justice of the Peace, and that the mandatory details of his/her financial situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities) must be accompanied by documented proof. In due course I will issue your employee with a PIN number which he/she must quote in all dealings with me. I regret that it cannot be shorter than 28 digits but, again, I have modeled it on the number of button presses required to access my account balance on your phone bank service. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Let me level the playing field even further by introducing you to my new telephone system, which you will notice, is very much like yours. My Authorized Contact at your bank, the only person with whom I will have any dealings, may call me at any time and will be answered by an automated voice. By pressing Buttons on the phone, he/she will be guided through an extensive set of menus: 1. To make an appointment to see me 2. To query a missing repayment 3. To make a general complaint or inquiry 4. To transfer the call to my living room in case I am there; Extension 5. of living room to be communicated at the time the call is received; 6. To transfer the call to my bedroom in case I am sleeping. Extension of 7. bedroom to be communicated at the time the call is received; 8. To transfer the call to my toilet in case I am attending to nature. 9. Extension of toilet to be communicated at the time the call is received. 10. To transfer the call to my mobile phone in case I am not at home. 11. To leave a message on my computer. To leave a message a password to 12. access my computer is required. Password will be communicated at a later 13. date to the contact. 14. To return to the main menu and listen carefully to options 1 through 15. The contact will then be put on hold, pending the attention of my 16. automated answering service. While this may on occasion involve a lengthy 17. wait, uplifting music will play for the duration. This month I've chosen 18. a refrain from The Best of Woody Guthrie:......."Oh, the banks are made of 19. marble With a guard at every door And the vaults are filled with silver 20. That the miners sweated for" After twenty minutes of that, our mutual 21. contact will probably know it off by heart. On a more serious note, we come to the matter of cost. As your bank has often pointed out, the ongoing drive for greater efficiency comes at a cost - a cost which you have always been quick to pass on to me. Let me repay your kindness by passing some costs back. First, there is the matter of advertising material you send me. This I will read for a fee of $20 per page. Inquiries from your nominated contact will be billed at $5 per minute of my time spent in response. Any debits to my account, as, for example, in the matter of the penalty for the dishonored cheque, will be passed back to you. My new phone service runs at 75 cents a minute (even Woody Guthrie doesn't come for free), so you would be well advised to keep your inquiries brief and to the point. Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an establishment fee to cover the setting up of this new arrangement. May I wish you a happy, if ever-so-slightly less prosperous, New Year. Your humble client.

Please Listen Closely...

2002-02-28T11:40:14+01:00

Published by marco on 28. Feb 2002 11:40:14 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ...as our menu has changed. Try this phone number: 510-809-4466 for a fun look at Enron's current phone menu. Somehow, it just seems funnier on the phone.

Bomb front moving in

2002-02-21T21:04:30+01:00

Published by marco on 21. Feb 2002 21:04:30 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "SatireWire" announces that the "FBI to Issue 5-Day Terror Forecasts..." (FBI to Issue 5-Day Terror Forecasts: Recognizable Format Should Make It Easier for Americans to Organize Week), which should add some level of organization to dealing with terror. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft stated: We in law enforcement are duty-bound to report inherent danger, so we will continue to alert the public to serious threats," said Ashcroft. "But we also understand how frustrating it is to organize a family picnic or corporate event, only to have it washed out by the late-breaking specter of impending doom. So before you venture out, tune in to us. Here is a sample forecast: [image]

Still in Hiding

2002-02-21T20:59:03+01:00

Published by marco on 21. Feb 2002 20:59:03 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mark Fiore of the "SF Gate" makes cartoons in Flash. He's got one from February 6, 2002 called "Lair" that depicts the possible hiding location of the most sought after man in America.

Spelling Test

2002-02-20T17:14:40+01:00

Published by marco on 20. Feb 2002 17:14:40 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This isn't really humor, per se, but it's a sort of game. In this age of hastily-typed emails, chat messages and online posts, we're exposed more and more often to the grammatical shortcomings of others as well as common spelling errors. Mindy McAdams has published an excellent "spelling test" for American English. I compiled a list from many sources and edited it to 50 commonly misspelled words, making my choices based on my 11 years of experience as a copy editor. ... The spellings considered correct are American spellings (because I'm an American). The preferred spelling will differ in the British Commonwealth in some cases (at least one that I'm sure of). ... "Variants" listed in your dictionary are not correct -- they are variants. That means people use them -- they are not preferred by educated editors. Ain't is also in your dictionary -- that does NOT mean it's correct. It's an excellent test with many difficult words. Some of the spellings both look so good that in repeated tests, I've gotten different words wrong each time (which, of course, means I'm guessing on some). I've taken the test 5 times, on 5 different days. This isn't really humor, per se, but it's a sort of game. In this age of hastily-typed emails, chat messages and online posts, we're exposed more and more often to the grammatical shortcomings of others as well as common spelling errors. Mindy McAdams has published an excellent "spelling test" for American English. I compiled a list from many sources and edited it to 50 commonly misspelled words, making my choices based on my 11 years of experience as a copy editor. ... The spellings considered correct are American spellings (because I'm an American). The preferred spelling will differ in the British Commonwealth in some cases (at least one that I'm sure of). ... "Variants" listed in your dictionary are not correct -- they are variants. That means people use them -- they are not preferred by educated editors. Ain't is also in your dictionary -- that does NOT mean it's correct. It's an excellent test with many difficult words. Some of the spellings both look so good that in repeated tests, I've gotten different words wrong each time (which, of course, means I'm guessing on some). I've taken the test 5 times, on 5 different days. 1. 10 wrong (didn't record the words) 2. 4 wrong (accommodate, embarrassment, anoint, supersede) 3. 3 wrong (desperate, occurrence, sacrilegious) 4. 1 wrong (indispensable) 5. None wrong

You Know You've Lived in New York Too Long

2002-02-20T13:05:45+01:00

Published by marco on 20. Feb 2002 13:05:45 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. You get very annoyed with out-of-towners who think the subway is unsafe. 2. You actively avoid bars that people from the outer boroughs frequent. 3. You figure that a date costs at least $200. 4. You have not seen a bank teller in several years, because your idea of going to the bank is using the ATM at your corner deli. 5. You haven't smelled grass clippings in over a year. 6. You haven't "called shotgun" in a long, long time. 7. You think that New Jersey seems really far away. 8. You plot the Barney's Warehouse Sale on your calendar. 9. You have over two month's rent in credit card debt, but you still eat out every night. 10. Your give out your cell phone number to people you meet, because that is the best way to reach you. 11. You have stayed out later than 4 am on a Monday or a Tuesday night. 12. Your passport gets more use than your driver's license. 13. You are ashamed to be assigned a 646 area code. 14. You can't imagine eating dinner before 8 o'clock at night. 15. Not one of your adult friends is married, has a car, owns an apartment, or aspires to any of the above. 16. You think nothing of a man in leather pants. 17. Your childhood bedroom is bigger than your current apartment, but your rent costs more than your parents' mortgage payment. 18. At least one meal each week consists solely of drinks, olives, and nuts. 19. You eat Thai, Vietnamese, Indian and sushi at least once each week. 20. You tell everyone you love NY because of the cultural institutions, but can't remember the last time you set foot in a museum or theater. 21. You spend $10 to see a movie. 22. You take $150 with you every night you go out: $20 for cabs, $20 for cover, $60 for dinner, and $50 for drinks. 23. You have gone out on 3 dates with 3 different people in the same week, but haven't spoken to any of them since. 24. You wear Prada shoes, Gucci sunglasses, a Cartier watch, and cashmere, but claim to be poor. 25. You think the only places you could ever live are New York, Paris, London, San Francisco or on an island in the Caribbean.

11

2002-02-20T12:42:55+01:00

Published by marco on 20. Feb 2002 12:42:55 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ There's an email making the rounds that ponders the significance of the number 11. A guy 'Dave' posted a very funny response; the kind of response everyone should have to this kind of message. [Original Letter] * The date of the attack: 9/11 - 9 + 1 + 1 = 11 * September 11th is the 254th day of the year: 2 + 5 + 4 = 11 * After September 11th there are 111 days left to the end of the year. * 119 is the area code to Iraq/Iran. 1 + 1 + 9 = 11 * Twin Towers - standing side by side, looks like the number 11 * The first plane to hit the towers was Flight 11 * State of New York - The 11th State added to the Union * New York City - 11 Letters * Afghanistan - 11 Letters * The Pentagon - 11 Letters * Ramzi Yousef - 11 Letters (convicted or orchestrating the attack at the WTC in 1993) * Flight 11 - 92 on board - 9 + 2 = 11 * Flight 77 - 65 on board - 6 + 5 = 11 [Dave's Letter] Oh my God! How worried should I be? There are 11 letters in the name "David Pawson!" I'm going into hiding NOW. See you in a few weeks. Wait a sec ... just realized "YOU CAN'T HIDE" also has 11 letters! What am I gonna do? Help me!!! The terrorists are after me! ME! I can't believe it! Oh crap, there must be someplace on the planet Earth I could hide! But no ..."PLANET EARTH" has 11 letters, too! Maybe Nostradamus can help me. But dare I trust him? There are 11 letters in "NOSTRADAMUS." I know, the Red Cross can help. No they can't... 11 letters in "THE RED CROSS," can't trust them. I would rely on self defense, but "SELF DEFENSE" has 11 letters in it, too! Can someone help? Anyone? If so, send me email. No, don't... "SEND ME EMAIL" has 11 letters.... Will this never end? I'm going insane! "GOING INSANE???" Eleven letters!! Nooooooooooo!!!!!! I guess I'll die alone, even though "I'LL DIE ALONE" has 11 letters..... Oh my God, I just realized that America is doomed! Our Independence Day is July 4th ... 7/4 ... 7+4=11! ~ Dave PS. "IT'S BULLSHIT" has 11 letters also.

Enron Economics

2002-02-13T15:54:26+01:00

Published by marco on 13. Feb 2002 15:54:26 ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Received via email.

Feudalism	You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.
Fascism	You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.
Communism	You have two cows. Your neighbors help take care of them and you share the milk.
Totalitarianism	You have two cows. The government takes them both and denies they ever existed and drafts you into the army. Milk is banned.
Capitalism	You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.
Enron Venture Capitalism	You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.

Tobacco vs. Marijuana

2002-01-28T21:03:58+01:00

Published by marco on 28. Jan 2002 21:03:58 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "[image]" The "Sunday, January 27, 2002 Doonesbury" brings back Buttsy at a 'Sin Lobby' party and introduces a new character, "Mr. Jay".

Australia, the Perennial Outcast

2002-01-28T21:03:26+01:00

Published by marco on 28. Jan 2002 21:03:26 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [image]"SatireWire" has breaking news that "Australia Gets Drunk..." (Australia Gets Drunk, Wakes Up in North Atlantic), which details Australia's drunken journey from the South Pacific to the North Atlantic. After what witnesses described as an all night blinder during which it kept droning on about how it was always being bloody ignored by the whole bloody world and would bloody well stand to do something about it, Australia this morning woke up to find itself in the middle of the North Atlantic.

Tricked-out Segway

2002-01-28T20:56:43+01:00

Published by marco on 28. Jan 2002 20:56:43 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thinking about getting a Segway, but worried that your friends won't think it's cool enough? Is replacing your fat-piped, tinted-windowed, one-foot-high-spoilered, ground-effected, neon-lit, decaled Honda Civic with a vanilla electric scooter that's good for the environment just too much to take? Worry no more, now you can have the sweetest wheels around and save the planet. "Where Are My Pants?" offers the "Segway - Type R" (Don't worry, it's got NOS).

Creepy Picture

2002-01-28T10:29:42+01:00

Published by marco on 28. Jan 2002 10:29:42 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here's a "picture" of some alley or back of a house somewhere. In order to get the full effect, you have to really examine the picture. In particular, look at the mattress and the rubber hose on the floor...is this a drug den? Who knows? Is that a person in the doorway, reaching for something on the floor? Who knows? But, if you wait at least 30 seconds, the creepiness will reveal itself.

Real or Fake?

2002-01-24T21:34:13+01:00

Published by marco on 24. Jan 2002 21:34:13 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sometimes, you just can't tell. This quiz, called "Playboy.com's Breast Test II" was received via email and converted to web format (to avoid sending around an Excel document). The claimed average number correct is about 12.5, but a small (12 people) sampling of friends averaged much higher at ~17.1. On average, women (10, 17, 19,19,19,19) scored 17.17 and men (16,16,17,17,18,18) scored 17. However, women had a median score of 19 and men still scored 17. Men win for consistency, but women seem to score higher (with one aberration). Obligatory content warning for those in the U.S. or other puritanical country: The page linked in this post contains many pictures of female breasts. earthli.com is not responsible for any killing rampages you may embark upon or abject poverty you may sink into as a result of viewing the images contained herein.

Xiao Xiao 7 (karate Flash)

2002-01-24T21:32:55+01:00

Published by marco on 24. Jan 2002 21:32:55 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Some of you may remember the Flash animation of a martial arts movie in 2D ("Xiao Xiao I?" ). The latest in the series is "Xiao Xiao 7" and is in 3D with considerably higher production values. The shootout near the end is pretty amazing. The "home page" for this Flash artist also has an interactive game that is another, 'how the heck is that done in Flash?' kind of game. It's also in 3D and follows the TimeCop style of gameplay. The whole page is in some non-Western character set, but the game is playable. Left-mouse shoots; Space-bar reloads your gun. Enjoy.

Delegating Authority

2002-01-24T00:37:32+01:00

Published by oalgar on 24. Jan 2002 00:37:32 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Are you delegating enough? Think "again" ...

Industrious Clock

2002-01-22T21:34:01+01:00

Published by marco on 22. Jan 2002 21:34:01 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here's an interesting use of Flash animation to make a new style of digital clock. Check out the "Industrious Clock" by Yugo Nakamura.

Quiz on Bush's First Year

2002-01-19T00:08:32+01:00

Published by marco on 19. Jan 2002 00:08:32 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This is "topical" humor, so it could go in Current Events, but let's leave that as dour and depressing as possible. "AlterNet" has "Bush's First Year: A Quiz" by Daniel Kurtzman. It's a 23 question quiz about events in the U.S.'s first year under the second Bush. It's hard to get them all correct. Since he published the quiz as text-only and gave the answer key at the end, I've produced an "interactive version" that grades the test for you afterwards. It's the same quiz, so I highly recommend using the "earthli version" instead.

Patchsoft

2002-01-17T20:32:01+01:00

Published by marco on 17. Jan 2002 20:32:01 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "SatireWire" announced that a "Surprise Settlement Evenly Splits Microsoft..." (Surprise Settlement Evenly Splits Microsoft; One Firm to Make Software, Other to Make Patches) into two pieces, but not separated into 'operating systems' and 'applications', as previously proposed, but into 'software' and 'patches'. Critics immediately charged that the settlement — which overrides a previous agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice — does nothing to diminish Microsoft's standing as the world's most powerful software company. But industry analysts argued that providing patches for security holes in Microsoft programs is a major, untapped growth industry, and applauded the states for not allowing Redmond to control it.

Get Your War On (Cont.)

2002-01-04T16:38:27+01:00

Published by marco on 4. Jan 2002 16:38:27 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "MNFTIU" is back with 4 more pages of "getting your war on" . The link is to page 3, but pages 4-6 are available at the top of the page. On page 4, you'll find such gems as: Man! I like a good stiff Operation Enduring Freedom as much as the next guy, but I've reached my limits of understanding! All of a sudden my fucking mailman is a Hero on the Front Lines in the War Against Terror? My daughter wants to sell cookies to help the people my nephew's been sent to fucking bomb? I'm supposed to help the FBI find clues and solve crimes? I'm a claims adjuster, not fucking encyclopedia brown! Who's in charge of this shit?

Snowball fight

2001-12-17T16:38:38+01:00

Published by marco on 17. Dec 2001 16:38:38 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ No, this isn't that lame ASCII snowball you'd wish people would stop sending you in your email. You know, the same people that call you up to apologize for sending you yet another email virus. This is a "cool snowball fight game" in Flash. I haven't gotten past level 3, but my version cheats, I think.

Beware the manger

2001-12-14T14:53:53+01:00

Published by marco on 14. Dec 2001 14:53:53 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The White House" issued another alert today: "Terrorists Lurking in Life-sized Manger Tableaus!" . The problem lies with the large manger scenes commonly put on by churches in small towns in the U.S. As you will note, nearly every such nativity display has folks that look just like that terrorist we're after, that evil un-Christian bin Laden fellow. And if we see somebody who looks like a terrorist, we're taking the fucker down. The problem is real and seems to be suppressed in major media news outlets, probably in the interests of 'national security'. However, for those that are aware of the enemy in our midst, John Ashcroft has the following suggestion: To determine whether a manger scene is safe, we suggest that the armed members of your families yell, "Allah is great! Yeah, a great big Ho!" as they approach the holy scene. If any of the Wise Men flinches, shoot first and ask questions later. But please, out of respect, try to avoid hitting the infant child baby Jesus.

Segway into the future

2001-12-08T10:38:31+01:00

Published by marco on 8. Dec 2001 10:38:31 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The "Segway" motored into America's heart this week. It's a people-mover that runs on electricity. "Ars Technica" has a good summary in "IT revealed" (IT was a former code name for the device). "Everything Isn't Under Control" published a pretty funny "Diary of the First Segway Owner". It's the post from 12:17AM on December 4, 2001 (about 2/3 of the way down the page).

Boonga-Ga Boon-Ga and Bazoombas

2001-11-30T15:32:56+01:00

Published by marco on 30. Nov 2001 15:32:56 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The "Register" "writes that initial reports" of a bizarre Japanese video game are most likely not a hoax. The game is called "Boon-Ga Boon-Ga" . From the product brochure: Select from 8 characters to spank. When you spank the character that you chose, the cards will be shuffled. After detecting your power with a sensor, a card will come out. It will explain your sexual behavior. It has to be "seen" to be believed. If you want to know what 'Boon-Ga Boon-Ga' means, you'd best ask a construction worker. As reported in the "The Onion" in the article "Economically Disadvantage Men More Skilled at Comunicating Attraction to Women" , "[Researcher] Schoen was not just struck by the directness of the poorer men's remarks, but by the "vast vocabulary" they employed in doing so." So maybe they would know. Finally, in what would appear to be footage from the same study mentioned above, we have "Anna's Uplifting Day" , a short film about: ... a day in the life of Anna's chest. Confronted with a nice cleavage can men keep their eyes to themselves or direct a conversation to a girl's face? ... Tune in to see the answer (as if you don't already know).

Anti-shopping

2001-11-30T15:12:23+01:00

Published by marco on 30. Nov 2001 15:12:23 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ How was 'Black Friday' for you? "Mark Morford" takes an amusing look at shopping in "Red, White And Banana Republic" . Tis apparently the season that right about this time a decidedly bitter and lugubrious media offers up the murky declaration that Thanksgiving weekend retail sales were not quite the all-out mind-blowing ass-spanking high-fiving wallet- draining Visa-maxing orgiastic bonanza retailers had hoped and man oh man aren't you the guilty one, oh heartless unspending consumer. Instead of shopping, you could take part in "Whirl-Mart: ritual resistance" at your local superstore. The ritual consists of interested humans arriving at a predetermined Wal-Mart at 12 noon on the first Sunday of every month and proceeding to push empty shopping carts slowly and silently through the aisles. ... There's photos, flash videos and some "documentation on spending and shopping" ... "Our silent energy and empty carts subtly invade the cathedral of capitalism". On the bright side, "SatireWire" points out "With More Time to Shop, the Unemployed Should Boost Holiday Sales..." In Washington, President Bush is not taking any chances. During his weekly radio address on Saturday, he urged America's unemployed to do their "patriotic duty" and not to seek full-time work until January.

Visions of a cloned future

2001-11-30T15:08:13+01:00

Published by marco on 30. Nov 2001 15:08:13 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ With cloning in the news lately, "SatireWire" warns about an ominous future in "Human Embryo Cloned: Can "Chain" Stores, "Subdivisions," be far behind?" ... a world populated by clones would be totally unrecognizable to us — a macabre, doppleganger environment in which the like-minded inhabitants shop at cookie-cutter "chain" stores, apishly watch television shows patterned after the same theme, and even run their computers with the same operating system. "Mark Morford" envisions the same horrible type of world in "Don't Clone The Vatican Forget creating a super-race; let's just weed out uptight moral doctrine instead" (he needs to make shorter titles): ...[A world] where everyone looks alike and dresses alike and has the same kind of uninteresting sex and takes the same drugs and drives the same car and you can paint your tract home any color you like, so long as it's beige. Just like Orange County [California].

Flash Toys

2001-11-27T12:38:18+01:00

Published by marco on 27. Nov 2001 12:38:18 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Have you ever played with one of those soundboards? The kind that lets you hit a bunch of buttons and start to mix sounds together, all layered on top of each other? Well, here's a special one that "uses only Samuel L. Jackson movie quotes" . I find it quite cathartic. The other toy is an animation of a skeleton that lets you "control the animation yourself" . Not really useful, but it's an amazing bit of work in Flash.

Collect them all

2001-11-09T10:22:10+01:00

Published by marco on 9. Nov 2001 10:22:10 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here's some new products ("1" - "2" ) that are both excellent Christmas presents and a sound investment. Are they real? Are they fake? You figure it out.

God's mixed-up priorities

2001-11-04T12:18:25+01:00

Published by marco on 4. Nov 2001 12:18:25 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "SatireWire" published "So Now God Takes an Interest In Answering New York's Prayers?" about the apparent uneven attention paid to the doling out of miracles in the NY area.

The Talibabanana Song

2001-10-19T11:06:20+02:00

Published by marco on 19. Oct 2001 11:06:20 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A few weeks ago, "BBSpot" wrote the "Talibanana song" . At the bottom of the page, he noted that he would welcome anyone offering to put it to music. In the inimitable style of the Internet, someone at "MadBlast.com" has done just that "in a really nice Flash movie" .

Write reviews for Amazon

2001-10-11T12:47:53+02:00

Published by marco on 11. Oct 2001 12:47:53 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ If you're ever bored, just head on over to "Amazon.com" and write up some reviews of books. "These folks did" . You don't even have to read the book. You don't even have to describe what's actually in the book. Anything goes. The book being reviewed (though perhaps, lampooned is a better word. Reviled is an even better one.) is I had a Frightmare! by Bil Keane, writer of the insipid Family Circus comic strip. Scroll down to the "Customer Reviews" and enjoy.

SeanBaby and OMM are back

2001-10-02T12:30:54+02:00

Published by marco on 2. Oct 2001 12:30:54 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Seanbaby returns from more than a month off with a "3-page discussion of homosexuality" (and a little bit of Kevin Smith) and, as usual, ends up taking some potshots at everybody. Again, as usual, there's some really good stuff here. People who cry about stereotypes are usually upset because they fall into them. We don't have time to get to know every single person we see. We have to stereotype people in certain ways to know which one of them wants to kill us for our wallet, which ones can't drive, and which ones enjoy the taste of falafel. If we didn't have stereotypes, we'd be doing stupid shit like walking up to bikers and asking who won today's tennis match.

So if you're Hindu and everyone stereotypes you as someone who doesn't ever go fly fishing, I apologize on the sake of my cruel people. Old Man Murray returns as well with "Eric's essay on how a wimpy gamer with girl arms can help to fight back for America" . It involves EASports NHL 2002 video game and some serious bending of the rules.

The Golf Game

2001-04-20T13:00:00+02:00

Published by marco on 20. Apr 2001 13:00:00 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Stevie Wonder and Tiger Woods are in a bar. Woods turns to Wonder and says, "How's the singing career going?" Stevie Wonder replies, "Not too bad. How's the golf?" Woods replies, "Not too bad, I've had some problems with my swing, but I think I've got that right now." Stevie says, "I always find that when my swing goes wrong, I need to stop playing for a while and not think about it. Then, the next time I play, it seems to be all right." Tiger says, "You play golf?" Wonder says, "Oh, yes, I've been playing for years." Woods says, "But, you're blind. How can you play golf if you can't see?" Wonder replies, "I get my caddy to stand in the middle of the fairway and call to me. I listen for the sound of his voice and play the ball towards him. Then, when I get to where the ball lands, the caddy moves to the green or farther down the fairway and again I play the ball towards his voice." "But, how do you putt?" asks Woods. "Well", says Stevie, "I get my caddy to lean down in front of the hole and call to me with his head on the ground and I just play the ball towards his voice." Woods asks, "What's your handicap?" Stevie says, "Well, I'm a scratch golfer." Woods, incredulous, says to Stevie, "We've got to play a round sometime." Wonder replies, "Well, people don't take me seriously, so I only play for money, and never play for less than $10,000 a hole." Woods thinks about it and says, "OK, I'm game for that, when would you like to play?" Stevie says, "Pick a night".

Hainan Island (Bush Daily Journal)

2001-04-11T14:40:00+02:00

Published by marco on 11. Apr 2001 14:40:00 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This is George Bush's daily journal as recorded by SatireWire. The note for April 9, 2001 is really nice: "http://www.satirewire.com/weblog/bushblog.shtml"

Another Presidential Joke

2001-03-29T10:50:00+02:00

Published by marco on 29. Mar 2001 10:50:00 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ George Bush was invited to a get acquainted tour of the White House. After drinking several glasses of iced tea, he asked Bill Clinton if he could use his personal bathroom. He was astonished to see that the President had a solid gold urinal. That afternoon, George told his wife, Laura, about the urinal. "Just think," he said," when I am President, I'll get to have a gold urinal!" Later, when Laura had lunch with Hillary at her tour of the White House, she told Hillary how impressed Dubya had been with his discovery of the fact that, in the President's private bathroom, the President had a gold urinal. That evening, Bill and Hillary were getting ready for bed. Hillary turned to Bill and said, "Well, I found out who peed in your saxophone."

Survivor - Texas Style

2001-03-16T10:41:00+01:00

Published by marco on 16. Mar 2001 10:41:00 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A major network is planning the show "Survivor 2" this winter. In response, Texas is planning "Survivor, Texas Style". The contestants will start in Dallas, travel through Waco, Austin, San Antonio, down to Houston and Brownsville. They will proceed up to Del Rio, on to El Paso, then to Midland/Odessa, up to Lubbock and Amarillo. From there, they proceed to Abilene, and on to Ft. Worth and back to Dallas. Each will be driving a pink Volvo, with a bumper sticker that reads: "I'm gay, I voted for Al Gore, and I'm here to confiscate your guns". The first one to make it back to Dallas wins.

One Big SUV

2001-02-26T15:51:00+01:00

Published by marco on 26. Feb 2001 15:51:00 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "http://www.bbspot.com/News/2000/6/exorbitant.html"

Hour Lost Explaining Computer Terms to Mom

2001-02-26T15:46:00+01:00

Published by marco on 26. Feb 2001 15:46:00 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "http://bbspot.com/News/2000/8/hour_lost.html"