Recently in Just for Fun Category
An internet ad I just saw:
"Cleanse Patch® is a Detoxifying Foot Patch That Extracts Toxins Overnight"
Richard Spencer (original has links):
Scrappleface make funny: New Hillary Ad Touts Experience Firing Top Aides
Knee slapping, thigh bruising, laugh out loud, rolling on the floor laughing, beverage of choice all over the computer screen funny.
McSweeney's Lists: Maxim Articles Rewritten as Sociology Papers
...when you're all alone on a Wednesday night with no work the next day and you're trying to watch all three extended version Lord of the Rings movies:
- Boromir's last battle
- Gandalf and Eomer appearing on the hilltop on the morning of the 5th day
- Merry and Pippin parting ways
- "...and Rohan will answer! Muster the Rohirrim!"
- Deeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaath!
- "I go to my fathers, in whose mighty company I shall not now feel ashamed."
- Eomer's anguished scream when he discovers Eowyn fallen on the battlefield
ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz.......
So, um, this should be a fun drive to catch up with the family for Thanksgiving.
...is me filling the building with laughter because I am now subscribed to the Car Talk podcast.
Yes, yes, cigarettes kill people and cigarette production is horrible for the environment.
This, people, is why the Good Lord, in His infintely generous wisdom, gave us the pipe.
I'm in the wrong racket. I should be tracking rubber duckies around the world's seas.
Whether ardent carbon restrictionist or adamant denier, whatever your stance, surely, you must find today's Get Fuzzy hilarious
Star Trek weekend at National Review Online.
McSweeney's: Common Illneses at the Vatican
Funny, but the maker of the list is obviously not a "Catholic Nerd." Some omissions:
Motu Polio
Prelate-onset diabetes
Capuchicken Pox
Small Pax
North American Colic
Defying any urge to be cool, I took up bridge for about three weeks in college. My roommate and I at the time each bought a bridge book, applied ourselves to it, learned some strategy, but then... had no one to try it out with, so we gave up. We opted instead for bridge's slightly reatarded but much more popular little sister, spades. I still have that book, though, and I still read the bridge column whenever I get my hands on a newspaper.
The article linked above is actually a pretty fun read, throwing in sex, violence and mystery while charting the decline of bridge. Or maybe bridge isn't declining, the article speculates that the game's popularity has now leveld out and that bridge is becoming something that lots of old people but virtually no younger people do as opposed to the way it was 50 years ago where people from all age groups took it up.
The article also contains one of the lamest things I've read in a while:
OK, I confess. I just googled "bridge blogs" with an eye to subscribing to one or two, but then thought better of it. I did, however, check out bridgeiscool.com and it's exactly as lame as it sounds. And it's nice to see that Warren Buffett is putting those billions to good use!
I don't usually go in for stories about animals, but the picture accompanying this story about a rescued monkey and his friendship with a white pigeon is just too... cute. There I said it.
Hilarious. My favorite is "Relevance."
Have time for a laugh?
Eleven:
“Oh, man, I can’t believe that kid Simon missed that ground ball! How pathetic!”
“Wait. He’s staring at his baseball glove with a confused expression on his face. Maybe there’s something wrong with his glove and that’s why he messed up.”
“Yeah, that’s probably what happened.”
Of course you've mastered Sudoku. I mean, c'mon! The ones in the newspaper are so lame!
How about Kaukauro? Well, if you can even find one in your local paper, you're lucky. Even then, Kaukauro puzzles often have multiple possible answers and sometimes you simply HAVE to guess? Yuck!
Fear not, people with too much time on your hands! I present to you the Sudoku-Kaukauro hybrid!
Ed Emberley is the patron saint of parents who can't draw.
McSweeney's: Zen Parable or Just Someone Being Cruel?
The New Yorker's humor pieces are often painful, but this one is a must-read.
I appreciate your concern for my convenience, but if I need 4 freaking copies of the same $25 invoice, I can use the photocopier. Our office is high-tech like that. Save a tree the indignity of becoming a superfluous "remittance copy."
Yours,
Papa-Lu
The DI today ran an AP piece on Al Capone's legacy in Chicago, which lives on despite the city's attempts to disown it.
It reminded me of my visit to France, almost 13 years ago. I was in Paris for a week and in a small town called Tarbes, actually in a "suburb" of Tarbes, for two weeks. Everywhere I went when I told people I was from Chicago, I got one of two reactions, either "Ahhh... Michael Jordan!"1 accompanied by a flick of the wrist as if shooting a basketball or "Al Capone! Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta!" accompanied by a mock tommy gun grip. This happened EVERYWHERE.
[1] At a town party I was at, everytime I walked by the bar, the bartender shouted "Chicago Bulls!" and gave me a whiskey and coke on the house. That night ended badly.
"The virtues of modern China are most apparent at the individual and family level," writes James Fallows, but "China’s least appealing face involves people’s manners in public."
I'm a Lamborghini Murcielago!
You're not subtle, but you don't want to be. Fast, loud, and dramatic, you want people to notice you, and then get out of the way. In a world full of sheep, you're a raging bull.
Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.
Mama-Lu, in response to this story about a North Carolina soccer coach who blared Hitler over the P.A. for his team's pre-game motivation:
"What's wrong with Patton? 'We're gonna run through them like sh*t through a goose!'
This is sort of an inside joke, but the formula which many people I know attribute to one C. Hamelly (if John Derbyshire's memory serves) was actually devised by Aristotle.
I've told a few people about this, watch it for yourselves.
Okay, you know those Nigerian email scams? Of course you do. Anybody with an email address knows what I'm talking about. If you don't, here's a summary.
Well here's a story from Wired News about people who are doing something about it.
A 43-year-old, self-employed computer engineer from Manchester, England, Metimbers has most recently spun counter-yarns that have compelled 419ers to make elaborate wood carvings, pose for comical photos and fly from London to Scotland. In one episode, which concluded in March after a five-month exchange, he succeeded in having a Nigerian fraudster tattoo "Baited by Shiver" on his body in order to claim a fictional $46,000 prize.
"Another time, the scammer thought he was going to get $18,000 out of me, but I actually got the guy to send me $80," said Metimbers, who started the 419 Eater community site almost three years ago after receiving a wave of spam in his inbox.
"I've got between five and 10 on the go at any one time," Metimbers said. "The worst thing that could possibly happen to these guys is they get their photo slapped on a website. I feel like a cybervigilante, doing my bit for the public."
Awesome. Here's the whole story.
Remember all those Polish jokes growing up? You know what I mean... solar-powered flashlights, submarines with screen doors, etc. In the marketplace of ethnic jokes, the Polish (or "Polaks") had a monopoly on being called stupid.
Well, it turns out that Poland is Europe's third smartest country, trailing only Germany and the Netherlands with an average IQ of 106 as measured in a new study.
Here's the story from the UK's Times.
(France ranks 19th with an average of 94, right between Greece and Bulgaria, for those of you given to gloating.)
I wouldn't gloat too much, though. This was a study of Europe only, and really, do we want to know where America would rank?
Did you know some dude's eyeball fell out at a college basketball game last week?
Slate has an article about the phenomenon of losing an eye that I defy you to read without shuddering.
Get it put back in, and soon. The longer you remain in this rare condition—known as "globe luxation"—the more strain you'll put on the blood vessels and nerves that connect your eye to the rest of your head. Your luxated globes will also be susceptible to corneal abrasions or inflammation, and the feeling of your eyelids clamped down behind them won't be pleasant.
"I really chewed Dick out for the way he handled the whole thing. I said, 'Dick, I've got an approval rating of 38 percent and you shoot the only trial lawyer in the country who likes me.'"
For a cat-hater, I sure have a thing for fictional cats.
Christianity Today has a great little article on Narnia, Calvin and Hobbes, commercialism, integrity, etc. It's worth a read.
More than you ever needed to know.
(But if you're like me, you'll read it anyway.)
Amy points us to The Cavalcade of Bad Nativities at the Going Jesus blog.
alicia got me with a somewhat ironic meme in light of the post five down from here.
There's no actual description of the meme, so I guess I'll have to figure it out somehow...
I confess that I enjoy certain morally suspect movies, specifically violent movies, and especially mafia flicks and movies where "the good guys" and "the bad guys" are morally equivalent.
I confess that working with truck drivers makes me swear more.
I confess that I find nothing whatsoever wrong with drinking alone.
I confess to feeling real malice, born of intense jealousy, towards the 2005 Chicago White Sox.
I confess to eating 3/4 of a row of Chips Ahoy cookies (~10-12 cookies I think) in about 5 minutes last week when I was sick and nothing else sounded good.
I confess that I'm starting to love rooting for Ohio State (my wife comes from a Buckeye family) and that it's refreshing to get on a winning bandwagon after two decades of football disenfranchisement at both the professional (Da Bears) and collegiate [the Fighting (haha) Illini] levels.
I confess that I purchased "Return to Me" on DVD simply because I needed a chick flick to round out my movie collection.
Is this enough? Can I stop now?
OK, I tag John Bambenek, the other Chris Lu, Ellyn and Zadok.
Dutch nerds with nothing better to do set up four million dominoes to break the world record for, well, domino knocking-over (which they themselves already hold). A bird flies through the window and sets off a chain reaction knocking down 23,000 of the dominos.
The bird is then promptly shot and killed by an exterminator who happened to be hanging around.
And of course, since it's Europe, the guy who shot the bird has received death threats and could be prosecuted.
A little early, but if I don't post this now, I'll never remember. My boss sent me this e-card today:
Million dollar winning lottery ticket bought with stolen credit card.
Nick emailed a link to a somewhat gentler translation of the Summa.
Pregnancy does indeed make you stupid.
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
Now, soldiers, march away;
And how thou pleasest, God, dispose the day!
Oh, and in case you forgot, here is this blog's theme music again!
Here's the first item for it.
The official theme song of this blog can be found here.
Hat-tip to Southern Appeal.
Looking at this picture of a rare white giraffe recently found in Tanzania, I am reminded of this Far Side comic.
From this week's