BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Video Fun
Two videos that made me laugh today. Basically unrelated.
Opening sketch from Saturday Night Live, with two of the performers doing Sarah Palin and Hilary Clinton. Not a bad sketch, but seems like it could have been truly awesome, with some more clever writing.
I've been online long enough to know that nothing, no matter how obviously sarcastic, satirical, or unbelievable, will be taken seriously and literally by some people. That said, I still can't believe how many posters on the You Tube thread about this one seem to think it's making a serious, pro-belief argument. Even if they are You Tube commenters...
I don't think this even registers on the surprise-o-meter, but it turns out that thing the rednecks had, that looked exactly like a rubber gorilla suit in a freezer... was actually a rubber gorilla suit in a freezer. Who could have guessed? Now the 2 hoaxers are laying low, ditching media appearances, claiming illness, etc.
In funnier news, someone's selling a Bigfoot trap on Ebay. Better yet, they claim it works on Santa Clauses and Sasquatches too. Not to mention 6 year old children.
Since I'm too lazy busy with D3 stuff and a fiction project to blog properly, here's an movie of grown men falling down while wearing silly animal costumes. I laughed.
Less funny; Flagship Studios overspending, being forced to pawn their intellectual properties for additional loans, rushing game production, causing HGL to flop by releasing it in an unfinished state, beta-testing Mythos for over a year with no end in sight, running out of funds, and being foreclosed on by their Korean partners/owners. Coming just days after the triumphant announcement of Diablo III and the mega-money Activision/Blizzard merger, I'd say Blizzard Irvine's victory is pretty much complete.
I saw this on a video site and thought it was pretty funny. Who thought of this first?
If you think it looks fun, I advise you try it soon. It's only a matter of time until some little kid tears his arm off trying it, and lawsuits force elevator redesigns all across the world.
A friend of the IG's has been rebuffing the advances of one of her exes, and through a complicated chain of events, she imposed upon the IG to create a largely-fictitious persona through an online dating service, expressly for the purpose of checking out the exes' own personal ad. There wasn't much to report from that, and it wouldn't be my place to talk about it if there had been. What was more noteworthy was that the IG hadn't had her profile up for a day before she started getting male attention.
The first one came in while she was on the phone with me, and I received a gasping-for-air, laughing-in-pain play by play of her investigation of her admirer's profile. I shan't link to the poor soul, but the salient details were as follows. He's a 42 y/o white male, who lives with his parents in Oakland, is unemployed, has some college, likes watching sports and playing video games, is of average build and height. He's seeking... an 18-27 y/o female who is pretty, slender, and adventurous. Seems like a likely match there, eh? Better yet, for his luck and the IG's amusement, he had posted some photos. Her narration of that discovery went something like this. "A picture!" *in a high, excited voice* "Oh my god Eric..." *peals of laughter* "He's so fat! His beady little eyes!" *much more semi-breathless laughter*
His profile had more info than that, and I'm writing this from memory of tonight's phone call, but I assure you, it only got worse. More hobbies women aren't interested in, more unrealistic expectations of his future soul mate, etc. He didn't actually talk about his Night Elf rogue, or list the names and classes of his lvl 70 Alts, but possessions of that nature were strongly hinted at.
Mercifully, the IG closed her browser at that point to get back to not studying for her finals, and after our conversation ended I found myself thinking about that guy's ad, and the whole scenario. I guess we've got to give him some credit for being honest about what he wants? Perhaps needless to say, every man wants an slim, beautiful, adventurous 18-27 y/o. It's just that most of us realize such a catch is out of our league, and that such women don't spend time on personal ads since they have negative trouble meeting men in real life. Even if we overlook those two realities, most men have enough sense not to advertise their delusions of glandular quite so openly. For those who do, the imagined worst case scenario is being ignored by women and annoyed by scammers and spammers. That a girl who actually qualifies for his wet dream-esque profile preferences might one day come along, read the ad, and laugh so hard she gets hiccups is not something many guys consider. Luckily for the shriveled, blackened, last-year's-orange of a husk that is their ego.
It takes some nerve to post an honest personal ad. It's putting yourself out there, where you can, and probably will, be rejected. Perhaps painfully. It reminds me of a junior high dance, where the girls cluster together along one side of the gym and the boys have to find the nerve to walk across the desert of the basketball court, the three point line unreeling beneath their shined shoes like road lines leading over a cliff. Boys tend to suspect that the pretty girls only go to dances to tease and laugh at us, and men might think the same thing about posting a personal ad.
Fortunately, we all know that's just paranoia and foolishness, and that women never look over the ads just to laugh at how lame the guys are... oh wait.
In vaguely-related news, I saw a link to this description of the legendary debacle that was Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos, and had to share.
After being informed by friends at a dinner, Kerry Packer, owner of the broadcaster Nine Network tuned in to watch the show on TCN-9 and was so offended by its content that he phoned the studio operators and ordered them to "Get that shit off the air!" The studio operators complied, and the show immediately pulled the plug and went to a black screen saying the network had "technical difficulties" In Melbourne, the show went to a commercial and never came back, with two reruns of Cheers filling the show's remaining air time. The same happened in Brisbane, with the exception that it was succeeded by three episodes of Cheers.
The show ran for just 34 minutes of a 90-minute premiere (minus the advertisements, an effective 24 minutes of the show was aired); Mulray was immediately fired and banned for life from the network.
Some clips from the show can be seen on YouTube, though they're terrible quality, very short, and show nothing but quick snippets of non-explicit interspecies animal porn. Dogs with cats, bunnies with chickens, monkeys with goats, etc. For example:
Finally, when I went to the gym after Kali on Tuesday night, I got there early enough that the place was still slightly crowded, and with women as well as men. (There are very seldom any ladies there after 11pm, when I'm usually working out.) I was forcibly informed of this fact when I entered, had my badge scanned, and walked around the front desk only to come face to face (so to speak) with a young, slim, tall, tights and jog bra-wearing Asian woman who was walking on one of the stepmill machines, placing her most delightful asset directly at my eye level.
For an instant I considered turning around and leaving. After all, there was no possible way any subsequent events at the gym could improve upon that opening. Sure enough, I walked from there into the locker room and was greeted by the usual rogue's gallery of all-too-naked 60 y/o while males, most of whom carried more weight, and fat, in a single thigh than that scrumptious stepmilling woman had in her entire body.
I didn't talk to her there... wonder if she's got a personal ad?
I've been joking with the IG about boobs lately. Well, more about moobs, since I've been growing a pair with all the weight lifting I've been doing the past few months. Here's the theory of b/moobs:
Men lift things to get them. Women lift them to get things.
True, it's mostly a play on the word reversal, and no, wonderbras don't provide for all of a woman's needs (neither directly nor indirectly). But it's not a bad coin of the phrase, eh?
I am of course allowing for the "things" men lift to be weights, cheeseburgers, or both, depending on whether the desired moob composition is fat or muscle. Additional verses can be added as needed; for instance, one might figure how male and female breast augmentation surgeons fit into this equation.
These are very cute and somewhat painfully true, to a cat owner. The first one, Let Me In, is a bit OTT in the cutesy humor, but I like Cat Man Do quite a bit. That was so Dusty. Thankfully, Jinx is usually pretty content to sleep on my ankles as long as I want to stay in the nice dark bedroom.
One of the presenters at the previously-referenced Beyond Belief 2006 told this joke in their address, and I thought it funny enough to transcribe. And now I share it with you...
A rabbi, a priest, and a minister were at a religious retreat, and on a very hot day they decided to go swimming. None had a swimsuit so they had to go skinny dipping. No biggie, and they were enjoying themselves in the lake when they heard some voices approaching through the woods. In a panic, they dashed out of the water and ran into cover in the forest. As they ran, the the priest and the minister covered their genitals with their hands, while the rabbi covered his face. Once they reached cover and started putting their clothes on, the priest and the minister gave into their confusion and asked the rabbi why he'd covered his face instead of his nudity.
"I don't know about you guys, but it's my face that my congregation will recognize." he said.
These are living American adult people writing this stuff — how do they survive in a world full of crosswalks, pen-knives, and cleaning products that superficially resemble sugar?
This from the snark-tastic Sadly, No, in a post about some very stupid things written by some very dishonest (since I refuse to believe they're that stupid) bloggers.
Charles Barkley is an ex-basketball player and living, breathing, hairless quip machine. He's consistently hilarious, and back when I used to watch TV, his analysis and one-liners were consistently the funniest thing on it, even coming, as they usually did, during halftime of a basketball game. NBA.com has posted a collection of his best quotes of the year, and I LOL'ed at about half of them. It helps if you imagine them in his voice, and allow for the fact that he's delivering them live, and usually ad libbed. I can't find a compilation of his best clips from the TV show, just tons of individual shorts, but most of them are pretty funny.
A few samples from this year's list:
Barkley: "I was reading that heavy drinking is not good for your health, so I have to stop." Smith: "Stop drinking what?" Barkley: "No, I gotta stop reading."
Barkley on whether Knicks coach Isiah Thomas is 'safe' from being fired: "He's about as safe as me in a room full of cookies. If I'm in a room full of cookies, the cookies ain't got no damn chance."
Barkley on the Miami Heat: "On the bright side, if your team sucks it might as well be in Miami."
Barkley on legendary hip-hop artist Michael Bivins doing weekly features on TNT OverTime on NBA.com: "We couldn't get Bobby Brown?"
This was the haunting message some vandal left on the wall of a local Barack Obama campaign office in (heavily redneck) East Texas. Police have no leads, though some bloggers may have found a suspect.
There are a ton of these on YouTube, but this one was amusing for the Best in Show-esque play by play. Get your girl out at center court and ask her to marry you. What could go wrong?
"Just once I'd like to see one of these ladies say 'no.'" "Well, he'll probably get over this in 10 or 12 years."
My favorite part was her running off, and him leaving through a different exit, while holding a beer and being consoled by some sort of giant fuzzy rat.
I haven't read News of the Weird for a few weeks. Anything good? Yes, happily. Most of it stupid criminal and/or police stuff.
Holdup-Note Blues: Arthur Cheney, 64, was arrested near Marysville, Calif., in December driving a car that had been spotted at a bank robbery. On the center console of the car, officers found a yellow "sticky" note with a handwritten "Robbery 100s and 50s only." Said an officer, "We call that a clue." [Marin Independent Journal, 12-12-07]
A 46-year-old construction worker fell to his death in November in Custer County, S.D., after co-workers had raised him, in a boom, 30 to 40 feet off the ground so that he could try to get cell-phone reception, but the boom's truck tipped over backward. [Rapid City Journal, 11-13-07]
It's Good to Be a British Prisoner (continued): The Portland Young Offenders' Institute in Dorset recently began holding classes, for up to 30 inmates, in pole-vaulting (but reassured critics that even the most athletic inmates would only get about 13 feet high, whereas the prison walls are 20 feet tall, topped by razor wire). [Sunday Express (London), 11-3-07]
Least Competent Florida Police: Sheriff's deputies arrested Cynthia Hunter, 38, in Brandon, Fla., in October, and she remained in jail for 50 days until a lab finally concluded that the "methamphetamine" in her purse was really dried cat urine that she had legally purchased for her son's science project. [Tampa Tribune, 10-8-07]
Deputies arrested Andrew Johnson, a white man, in Ocoee, Fla., in November, believing he was Anthony Johnson, a black man wanted on a felony drug charge. Andrew Johnson was allowed to post bond while the case was under investigation, but his driver's license was confiscated, and his mother had to drive him to and from work. [WFTV (Orlando), 11-17- 07]
Michael Chatman, 35, and two others were arrested in Augusta, Ga., in November after Chatman, in a Target store, tried to return the laser printer the three had allegedly used for counterfeiting. However, they had accidentally left in the machine not only copies of the counterfeit bills but also the original $20 bill they had used as a model. Said a deputy, "People get wrapped up in the crime, and they forget things." [Savannah Morning News, 11-30-07]
From a link I saw on the Comics Curmudgeon, it's Lasagna Cat. I'm not quite sure how to describe it. Some wildly-creative people have taken various Garfield cartoons, reenacted them with real life people in costumes and some digital postproduction tricks, and filmed the results. The actual strip acting part is only the first 10% of each clip though, and the rest is where it gets brilliant, as some piece of music thematically-related to the strip is played, and there's a sort of surrealistic music video with edited shots from the live action strip, spiced up with special effects, and just generally made very, very cool.
It sounds ridiculous from my (or perhaps any) description, but I could not stop watching them. (Well, actually I could, since I only watched 2/3 of them before pausing to write this blog post.) Brilliant, funny, head-scratching, weird, etc. I sit, jaw agape, during most of the films. But in a good way, not a "I just watched 2 Girls, 1 Cup unexpectedly." sort of way.
I think the first one is the most bizarre I've yet seen, with the video game motif and Final Fantasy music, but that one is not very indicative of the overall presentation. The Lion King one is nice, and the Head like a Hole episode made me go dig out an old NIN remix CD.
Also, and this is unrelated to the quality of the movies themselves, but Jesus 70s sitcom show theme songs are depressing. I've never made it through more than 60 seconds of an episode of Taxi in my life, since the theme is so downbeat, and then even if i made it through that, the first shot was always of angry, bitter, cancerous New Yorkers scowling at each other in a filthy garage, which was more than enough for me. MASH wasn't as unwatchable, though I never sat through a whole episode even as a kid, but again, it's got a theme song that makes me want to slit my wrists while stabbing out my eardrums. I haven't seen a Cheers-themed episode yet on Lasagna Cat, but I'm sure one's lurking out there, or coming soon, given the Prozacian quality of its music.
Easier yet, they're all on YouTube. Here's the channel, and an non-depressing, weirdly-techno embedded sample.
Also, this movie, a simiarly-weird cosplay comedy/parody of Ducktales, pretty much has to be seen to be believed. It's by the same guys who did all the Garfield ones, and I'm almost positive that my laughing uncontrollably at this is a very bad sign.
Just because the 2nd one is new, and even more awesome than the first one. I've never used the program in question, but it's similar enough to Photoshop and various other programs that the icons and actions make obvious sense. I imagine people who actually toil away at these sorts of projects start to think the icons are coming alive at times, so it's probably almost fourth wall-breaking and surrealistic to an artist.
This was linked to from the latest Bill Simmons links column, and while the teaser didn't much interest me, I ended up clicking it while eating some bean chili I threw together (very good, for a surprise) tonight. And I laughed my goddamned ass off. It's a clip from the Conan O'Brian show from 1998, with long-forgotten actress Courtney Thorne Smith plugging some new "comedy" she'd left a hit TV show to costar in, with Carrottop. Nice career move there, eh?
The segment is not funny for her, or for Conan (shudder) but for Norm MacDonald, who was the guest before her. Norm's on the couch next to that fat sidekick Conan used to employ, he remains involved in most of the interview, and gets off several hilariously funny, deadpan, and rather cruel jokes at the expense of the movie being plugged. The last 3 minutes of this make up the funniest TV segment I've seen in years... though, admittedly, I don't watch much TV.
I've never had any idea why Conan O'brien has a talk show, and this segment did nothing to change my mind. He's not actually unwatchable, like Arsenio or Magic Johnson or Chevy Chase were in their talk show efforts, he's just not any good. I'm sure he's funny in real life, or in writing meetings, but his on air persona, with the desperate, "please love me" skittish nature, is hard to watch. He got off a couple of good jokes in this segment; the one about their decision to take away Carrot Top's props now, that he was in a movie, was funny. Or it would have been if Conan had made the joke and stuck to it. Instead he giggled through the delivery, and then over-explained it in a pleading, beta-male voice, ruining the humor.
Letterman would have said something like, "Maybe not the best time to gut the strength of his comedy?" and let the sarcasm sink in, milking the moment silently, while the audience's gradual laughter worked to sell the comedy.
It was also nice to see Norm MacDonald again. I hadn't heard his name in forever, and just vaguely remembered him being funny on SNL back when Clinton was president. Which was about the last time I watched SNL, but that's another matter. Looking him up on the always authoritative Wikipedia, I saw that he'd been fired from Weekend Update ten years ago, and had made a few movies no one saw after that. He's apparently still a successful standup, though.
That was useless info, but a few of his better jokes were on the wikipedia page, and I'll quote some that made me laugh.
After the announcement that Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley planned to divorce, MacDonald joked about their irreconcilable differences on Weekend Update: "She's more of a stay-at-home type, and he's more of a homosexual pedophile." He followed this up a few episodes later with a report about the singer's recent collapse and hospitalization. Referring to a report of how Jackson had decorated his hospital room with giant photographs of Shirley Temple, MacDonald remarked that viewers should not get the wrong idea, adding, "We'd like to remind you that Michael Jackson is, in fact, a homosexual pedophile." The joke elicited audible gasps from some audience members. He responded to this by saying, "What? He is a homosexual pedophile."
MacDonald made another controversial joke during the February 24, 1996, show when he commented on the sentencing of John Lotter, who was convicted of brutally slaying transgender male Brandon Teena: "In Nebraska, a man was sentenced for killing a female crossdresser [sic] who had accused him of rape and two of her friends. Excuse me if this sounds harsh, but in my mind, they all deserved to die."
What about the movie? I had to check, and it seems that Norm was right on all counts. He should have joked more about the quality, rather than just the box office prospects, since many films flop, but very few earn a spot in the IMDB top 100 worst films ever. And this one's now sitting at #31; quite an achievement!
No real point to this, but I have it bookmarked and use it for a quick laugh, when necessary. It's Christopher Hitchens on a podcast telling some dirty limericks, so it's mildly NSFW on content, though it's got very little actual profanity, is only 2 minutes long, and is howlingly funny.
I don't believe I've ever recited a limerick in my life, at least not past the age of about 11, but listening to the few in this presentation it's quite clear that they must be delivered as spoken verse. Reading them isn't much fun, since the eye skips ahead to the punchline, and they go all too quickly. Hearing them spoken though, with a teller gifted enough to pause for emphasis and not break up at his own punchlines, greatly heightens the experience. Your mind tries to jump ahead, to guess the next rhyme or twist, but you don't have enough time to dwell on it,so when the line arrives it's enjoyable; doubly so if you've intuited correctly.
This sort of thing is why those of us who don't have to, don't live places where the streets freeze in winter. The first car is the highlight of the circus, with multiple, multiple "Idiot! Why are you still trying to drive!?" collisions, but the rest of the slow motion curling display is pretty amusing too. More so for the people on the sidewalks and rooftops than the ones doing the scared monkey faces inside the brake locked Volvos, anyway.
Thursday night has become, largely be default, my mindless surfing time, thanks to my last class of the week falling on... Thursday evening. So I drink too much caffeine and catch up on all the bullshit I've not been reading for the past six days (as opposed to all the bullshit I find time to read every day) in preparation for another weekend full of homework and long mountain bike rides. This evening I've been surfing all over, but since I just went through the past month's News of the Weird updates and found several worth quoting... here they are.
This one is just baffling. I read it three times and I still couldn't quite tell you what happened there.
Junior New York City hedge fund trader Andrew Tong charged in October that his boss forced him to take female hormones to dampen his aggressiveness, which the supervisor said was leading him to make bad trades, according to a CNBC report. In his lawsuit against Mr. Ping Jiang (a big-time trader who reportedly earns $100 million a year) and employer SAC Capital (one of the biggest hedge fund names on Wall Street), Tong claimed further that he was harassed and even sexually attacked, and had started wearing dresses. [CNBC, 10-17-07; New York Post, 10-11-07]
Mandy Bailey, who lives in a suburb of Phoenix, is the mother of conjoined 1-year-old girls and wanted to take them to a family reunion in Maryland. She called Delta Air Lines to make sure the girls could ride for free on her ticket. No, said Delta, because even though a child under 2 can ride for free, each infant would need an oxygen mask in case of emergency, and thus, a separate ticket was needed. Bailey kept complaining (giving the story international reach) until a Delta higher-up compromised for the flight: Bailey's sister-in-law, who had been assigned to another row on the flight, was put next to Bailey so she could share her oxygen with the second twin. [Arizona Republic, 10-3-07; WSMB-TV (Tucson)-AP, 10-4-07]
The phenomena of rich old white guys who grow more belligerent and lacking in common sense with every dollar they accumulate never fails to bemuse and confuse me. Quite a few humans (mostly do-it-yourself type men) are utterly unable to place any reasonable value on their own time, or absorb the concept of "sunk costs." This guy might be their king.
"Over my dead body was I going to give the state another dollar for the tolls," said Thomas Jensen, 68, to the judge in Rochester, N.H., in September as he accepted the three-day jail sentence instead of a $150 fine. He had been convicted of cheating the state for insisting on using two discontinued 25-cent tokens to pay a 50-cent toll after he had failed to use the tokens up before their expiration. The toll road is a connector between the 50-cent-saving Jensen's main residence in Braintree, Mass., and his summer home in New Hampshire. [TheBostonChannel.com-AP, 9-15-07]
I saw this on CalPundit and liked it enough to repeat it. Billionaire Google co-founder Larry Page is getting married in early December, and his wedding invite list looks like yours would, if you were worth $20 billion dollars. One big name can't make it, though.
The invitation list to Page's wedding is expected to include many of Google's current and former employees, as well San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and billionaire Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group.
Former Vice President Al Gore, a senior adviser at Google, told the Chronicle he has been invited to the wedding but will not be able to make it because he will be picking up the Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Oslo, Norway.
I'm sure Gore is a far better man than me, but you know he's got to be enjoying this. You reckon the build up is better than the event? Once you've won your Noble Peace Prize you're just another prize winner. But now, you can drop it into the conversation every minute. "Dinner? Next month? Sure, let me check my schedule. I'm cool the 3rd or 4th, but I'm busy the next week. Yeah, I've got to jet off to Norway for this awards dinner thing. Sorry. How about the 12th?"
SciFi Author and blogger John Scalzi finally completed a write up of his long-threatened visit to Kentucky's new Creation Museum, and the resulting captioned photo gallery and fertilizer-glorifying article is both entertaining and elucidating. No quote can really do it justice, but here's a sample:
The interplay of this Holy Trinity of explanations comes to its full realization when the Creation Museum considers what really are its main draw: Dinosaurs. Are dinosaurs 65 million years old? As if -- the Earth is just six thousand years old, pal! Dinosaurs were in the garden of Eden -- and vegetarians, at least until the fall, so thanks there, Adam. They were still around as late as the mid-third millenium BC; they were hanging with the Sumerians and the Egyptians (or, well, could have). All those fossils? Laid down by Noah's Flood, my friends. Which is not to say there weren't dinosaurs on the Ark. No, the Bible says all kinds of land animals were on the boat, and dinosaurs are a subset of "all kinds." They were there, scaring the crap out of the mammals, probably. Why did they die off after the flood? Well, who can say. Once the flood's done, the Creation Museum doesn't seem to care too much about what comes next; we're in historical times then, you see, and that's all Exodus through Deuteronomy, ie., someone else’s problem.
But seriously, the ability to just come out and put on a placard that the Jurassic era is temporally contiguous with the Fifth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom of Egypt -- well, there's a word for that, and that word is chutzpah. Because, look, that's something you really have to sell if you want anyone to buy it. It's one thing to say to people that God directly created the dinosaurs and that they lived in the Garden of Eden. It's another thing to suggest they lived long enough to harass the Minoans, and do it with a straight face. It's horseshit, pure and simple, but that's not to suggest I can't admire the hucksterism.
Scalzi's site is popular and this article is being massively linked; the comments went from 258 to 283 in the time it took me to read it. I recommend the comments, there's plenty of amusement to be found there too, most of it courtesy of the snarky counterattacks being launched towards various flat earthers and their hapless attempts to defend the indefensible. I didn't read them all and never will, but I would like to draw your attention to comment #222, which pretty well sums things up.
foreigner Says: November 13th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
your country is doomed. have fun on the ride down.
Ironically, the people who funded this $27m Dino-Ride would agree with the sentiment -- except for the "fun" part -- while arriving at that position from a diametrically-opposed POV.
Update: Scalzi has launched a LOLCreation photo contest using the pictures from his trip, and the entries thus far are quite good. I got numerous LOLs, at least. It would obviously help if you like LOLcats, and read the creation museum post, and viewed the images, all actions I heartily recommend. What else do you have to do, spend time with your loved ones? Pffft.
I have no real commentary to add to this. I just saw it on LOLpix and enjoyed it enough to repost it. It's not perfect, but it does perfectly sum up quite a few internet themes/memes in one handy jpg.
And this, just because I saw it in the same folder when I was uploading the internet danger image. It's not my favorite image in the history of computers, but it's definitely in the top 10.
I hadn't seen this in at least five years, but I laughed almost as hard this time as I did back then. The 2 "class is over for the week" glasses of viognier with toasted bread and cheese probably helped on that score, though.
Yes, that's what it says. The fact that it's a .org is what really puts it over the top. Not a .com, which might indicate some slick commercialism, but a .org. It's an organization. It's about helping people.
As for the site itself, I have no idea. There's a forum with 2 posts ever, and that's it. The whole thing appears to be a joke involving the freakish, plastic-faced homonculi David Guest, a D-lister known solely for his near sham marriage to Liza Minelli. Did he at some point make a comment about Chinese girls? Does he have herpes? I have no idea, but he somehow inspired a site with a funny name and some very cute Asian girls on the main page banner, and that's more good to the world than 99% of the other celebrities out there have managed. So bonus points for him.
I saw a link to this site today and found it pretty amusing. More for the concept and the domain name than the actual content, but it's still worth a look.
No, it's not some sort of feminine product fetish page; it's just random snap shots of young couples in all sorts of public locations, and in every instance the chicks are hot (relatively speaking) and the guys are douche bags (metaphorically speaking). It's all written from a guy's point of view, since every man basically thinks every other man in a photo with a pretty girl is a douche bag, since every man believes, deep down, that the hot chick should be with him instead. Even if the guy in the photo is like, Brad Pitt, and the guy doing the wishing is like, the Elephant Man.
The designations of the men and women could be argued, since there are quite a few bleach blondes with orange-skinned, guido-looking guys, but this is the Internet... I know you didn't come looking for facts and measured, logical dialogue?
Some of the pics are pretty normal people, but in other cases... it's hard to argue with the domain name. Two of these three "chicks" pretty clearly qualify, and the brunette on the right is outright beautiful. As for the guys... wow. The one on the left looks literally brain damaged, as though he's got one expression and that's it. As for the one on the right... yikes. With his v-neck and plastic waxed chest and abnormally tiny head dotted with those blank, dead eyes... he's downright disturbing. Also, what's up with both guys having oiled their chests? It's not hot; the girls aren't sweating and the guys' faces are dry. They've just smeared baby oil, or something, over their hairless sternums.
There is some amusing writing. I won't include the picture of this guy so your interest might be piqued to click through and see him, but here's a quote from the caption.
Velvet has what may be the most dizzying array of 'bag signifiers ever captured in one digital image.
Make the list: Purple velour shirt, top 2-3 buttons undone. Faux-platinum wrist bling. Faux-platinum dogtags. Billy Dee Williams 'stache. Oversized "designer" sunglasses. Poorly-executed comb-over.
He's one mandana away from a complete sensory overload. And this made all the worse by the fact that he's clutching a pouty-lipped pink ball of cleavite with eyes sensuous enough to cause even the proudest of homosexuals to feel an explosion of self-loathing.
I keep telling myself to post something here every day, but real life things keep eating my hours and energy. This is unlikely to change before December, unfortunately. I hadn't even logged onto the Hellgate: London alpha in two weeks until I vegged out and played a few hours last night. I've got a bunch of cool blog topics to write about, but I don't know when I'll find the time, so in lieu of something good, here's something quick. (The motto of most of the Internet. And sexual encounters.)
I saw a link to this from Pharyngula, and enjoyed it enough to repeat it. It's got to be the best Popeye-related artwork ever created, and while that was formerly not a real steep mountain to ascend, it's now gotten a lot higher.
Click this link to see it full sized and read the artist's comments. It's a real painting, and a pretty large one; the online version is a photo of it. I'd buy that, if I had money and somewhere to hang it.
Elsewhere, I saw a link to an amusing tale of M&M natural selection, Highlander style. I don't remember where I saw it, and a Google on it reveals hundreds of mirrored sources, so it's clearly not new, and has become public domain at this point, whoever the original author was. I laughed, at least.
Survival Of The Fittest
Whenever I get a package of plain M&Ms, I make it my duty to continue the strength and robustness of the candy as a species. To this end, I hold M&M duels.
Taking two candies between my thumb and forefinger, I apply pressure, squeezing them together until one of them cracks and splinters. That is the "loser," and I eat the inferior one immediately. The winner gets to go another round.
I have found that, in general, the brown and red M&Ms are tougher, and the newer blue ones are genetically inferior. I have hypothesized that the blue M&Ms as a race cannot survive long in the intense theater of competition that is the modern candy and snack-food world.
Occasionally I will get a mutation, a candy that is misshapen, or pointier, or flatter than the rest. Almost invariably this proves to be a weakness, but on very rare occasions it gives the candy extra strength. In this way, the species continues to adapt to its environment.
When I reach the end of the pack, I am left with one M&M, the strongest of the herd. Since it would make no sense to eat this one as well, I pack it neatly in an envelope and send it to M&M Mars, A Division of Mars, Inc., Hackettstown, NJ 17840-1503 U.S.A., along with a 3x5 card reading, "Please use this M&M for breeding purposes."
This week they wrote back to thank me, and sent me a coupon for a free 1/2 pound bag of plain M&Ms. I consider this "grant money." I have set aside the weekend for a grand tournament. From a field of hundreds, we will discover the True Champion.
There can be only one.
Oh, and there's this. It's not new, and I've probably watched it a dozen times in the past year, but it never fails to make me laugh in semi-horrified admiration.
Yes, he said it. "People like him should be wearing cardboard signs and selling pencils from cups." As well as, "pinching his chubby little flanks." The balls to break that out, on national TV, the day after Falwell died, when every news program was kissing his dead white ass and rolling belly up for the supposedly large and powerful right wing Christian demographic, is just breathtaking.
I've been watching videos of various free thinkers from Google videos and YouTube for months, usually playing them while I'm doing some housework, or cooking, or other activities when I an enjoy the spoken word audio. (I can not read or do productive work while listening to someone talking, at least not if I want to absorb the content of their words, or get anything done on the work I'm trying to multitask.) The better speakers, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins for instance, are wildly entertaining in their blasphemy and often quite informative as well. Dawkins is a biologist who speaks with great lucidity and authority on issues of biology and religion. Hitchens is a writer and much sought-after commentator with the articulateness and vocabulary to demonstrate his brilliant, steel trap of a mind. He's also utterly fearless when it comes to pissing people off and moreover, he's got enough asshole in him that he clearly relishes the opportunity, as the hundreds of videos of his frequent news appearances and public speeches demonstrate.
The irony with Hitchens is that he seems so lucid and well thought out and logical when it comes to most issues of public policy and culture and religion, and yet he's still 100% behind the Iraqi occupation and thinks it's a great thing that Dubya pushed for war, and that the world is far better off with the US squatting atop a burgeoning/ongoing civil war in Iraq. The weird part is that Hitchens isn't delusional about it; he's not your typical neocon who thought the Iraqi people would greet the foreign soldiers with rose petals, and Hitchens doesn't ignore reality and claim all is well, that the surge is working, etc. He's quite pragmatic about the horrible situation in the country and the quagmire the US armed forces are stuck in; he just thinks anything is better than Iraq having nukes, and thinks Iran should be next on the agenda, and that the invasion and occupation of that country that Bush is clearly pushing for would be an equally good idea. (And I think he's right on that last part, with "equally good" being the keyword.)
The difficulty for me, and I assume for others who admire Hitchens' speaking ability and his opinions on culture and religion, is how to reconcile my general agreement with his opinions on religion and culture and faith, with his neocon-leaning policies in the Middle East. Even that's too broad a term, since he's not a neocon. He's not at all sympathetic to Israel, and thinks the right wing Israelis are the ones ruining any chance for peace in their country. Furthermore, Hitchens violently disagrees with and opposes the US Christian fundamentalists who support every bit of violence and war in Israel, since their interpretation of the Bible says that the Holy Land must be united under the Jewish people in order for the rapture and the Second Coming to proceed on schedule. Yet those are precisely the people who are most in agreement with Hitchens on his approval of US invasion and occupation of Iraq and Iran.
My take, after giving it thought on and off during the months I've been watching these clips on Google Videos, is that Hitchens is so vehemently opposed to religious fundamentalism, especially of the overly murderous Arab/Islamic stripe, that he's willing to do just about anything to keep such people from obtaining nuclear weapons, and will believe any claims about those aims, no matter how far fetched. I've even heard Hitchens defend/propound the generally laughable argument that Saddam actually had bombs 'o plenty, and that they were not found by US inspectors since they were smuggled into Syria or Iran or other bordering countries before/during the early days of the US invasion. (Never mind the fact that Saddam hated and had waged outright or covert wars against those countries.)
I don't really agree with Hitchens on that issue, but I can see his point, and I guess I would agree with him if I took a very worst case scenario approach to things, and thought the dam could be kept from bursting with enough fingers in enough leaky holes. What's most interesting to me about it is the bedfellows he ends up with through his views. People like, for instance, Jerry Falwell. Someone Hitchens clearly despised, yet someone who would probably cite Hitchens' support on the Iraq/Iran invasion front, in an, "Even the atheists/leftists agree with this policy!" sort of way. If he (Falwell) weren't dead, I mean.
This is a measure of Hitchens' integrity and the strength of his opinions (or possibly his belligerence); that he will stick to what he believes even when they put him in the same camp with people he loathes in every other way. Few of us are that resolute in our beliefs; I know I'd give something a lot of second and third thought if it turned out that my opinion on it was doctrinally identical to the fundamental principles of oh, Neo Nazis, or fanatical terrorists, or Paris Hilton. Not that I'd change my mind on an issue just because people I disliked and held no respect for agreed with me, but more in terms of "If they like it, there must be something wrong with it." Knowing Hitchens as I do (from watching his TV appearances) I think he probably gets a kick out of it, in some perverse fashion.
I've not been posting much on politics of late, mostly since I'm lazy/far too busy with other stuff. I do spend about an hour a day reading political news and blogs and such, but I haven't really had much to say/add, and I figure if you care you're reading those sorts of sites on your own. I did think this video of President Bush at a news conference today was worth remarking on, though.
Yes, I know. You don't want to watch him, you can't stand him, etc, etc. Just give it 10 seconds; that's long enough to be amazed at how worn and defeated the man looks. Count the deep sighs and moments of dazed confusion? I almost felt sorry for him, since as the video title says, he's just out of steam. He looks exhausted and dazed, and not just in his usual "excessive cocaine and beer consumption burned out my prefrontal lobe in 1981" sort of way. It would be alarming to see the PotUS so broken, if not for the fact that he did done such consistently awful things when he was fresh and vital. Better he's tired; less he can screw up then. Cheney's still fresh and agitating for WWIII behind the scenes, though.
If you do make it through a bit more of the video, it's fun to laugh at the keywords Bush staggers towards once he's finished lamenting his failed immigration bill (which less than 25% of the Republican senators voted for, despite Bush's heavy lobbying for it). He's clearly running on fumes and just hits the various buzzwords he's had drilled into him by poll-checking advisers. "mumble mumble... comprehensive energy policy... affordable health care without government running it... work together to balance federal budget... not overspend or raise taxes..." Of course he's had 6 years to accomplish all of those, did nothing to accomplish them when he had a 90% approval rating and Republican-controlled House and Senate, and his Iraqi misadventure is the reason the budget needs balancing, since Clinton left him a surplus he's squandered by the trillion.
Just to get the taste of that out of your mouth, enjoy some Dramatic Gopher! If this is not the best 5 second video in the history of the Internet, I have no idea what is.
This video's been around for a couple of weeks, and I want to scorn it for being too silly, but I can not. In fact, it gets funnier every time I see it. I want a behind the scenes feature. Who filmed it? How did they know to zoom in right then? Who thought to add the music? It reminds me of LOLcats in a way, especially the "invisible" genre, though Monsieur Gopher's video is a subtler form of anthropomorphizing.
Any time I want a laugh, I can count on The Funniest to provide it. If not in the "which is funnier" voting, then surely on the top 40 images page. If you don't get at least half a dozen LOLs there, then you and I do not share a great deal of humor sense. Looking there tonight I had my usual fun, and just because I could, I grabbed my five favorites from the current top 40. Here they are in no particular order, and honestly, that cat/intelligence one is brilliant. Brilliant and painfully true, as anyone who's ever known the misfortune of hearing me talk to Jinxie when we're alone could attest. (Which is why I only do it when we're alone. Isn't that right, my wittle kitty witty bobo?)
I've seen this video linked on a bunch of sites, and stemming largely from a lack of energy or time to type up something more interesting, I'm throwing in the insert code myself. An Australian comedy program sent some reporters to the US to do street interviews with people, and cut out the dumbest answers into a highlight package. It reminds me of the old Howard Stern show bit when they'd interview models or porn stars or homeless people and ask them stuff like, "Who is the Vice President of the United States?" or "How many sides does a square have." and then bet on whether the idiots contestants would know the answer. It's more fun when they stop the tape to bet before playing the answer; it heightens the suspense, but this one is still pretty funny. My favorite part is when they show the rubes a world map with Australian labeled "Iraq" and no one seems to bat an eye.
The real tragedy of this is that any random selection of people in any country on earth are this stupid, at least about some issues. I'm regularly around otherwise intelligent adults with college degrees and such, and when any random subject comes up it's truly astonishing how completely oblivious many of them are to things I think of as common knowledge. On the other hand, if the conversation turns to current popular TV shows, or American Idol singers, or other such topics, I look as dumb as these people do when asked to name a country that starts with a "U." (Actually, I thought immediately of Uzbekistan, and then the UK. I didn't think "United States" until the interviewer pointed it out to one stumped woman. I suspect that's what most people on earth would say if asked that question, but here in the actual US, "America" is more often the name used. Plus the way the question is worded the tendency is to think of foreign countries with that name, rather than the one you're in. I wonder what people in Oz would say if asked for A-countries, or people in France asked about F-countries, etc?)
This short video caused me to laugh the hardest I've laughed this month. And that's saying something, with the South Park DVDs (Sseasons 1-6 from Malay for my b-day last month!) we've been watching lately. It's a hilariously-subtitled recording of a phone call from someone in Microsoft Tech Support, with appropriate visuals added. The caller has a heavy Indian (?) accent, but moreover, his English is creatively brilliant, in a "What the hell did he just say and what did he think it meant?" sort of way.
Just watch it; it's like 30 seconds long, and the meaning of title of this post will become clear as events unfold.
Not to rip off ThingsMyBoyfriendSaid.com's gig, especially since this one is self-reported, but... Tonight Malaya and me we vegging on the couch and watching the Jerry Springer Show. I don't watch much TV, so I try to make up for it in quality, you see.
Anyway, one of the guests was a one-armed woman, on there to scream at her boyfriend who was cheating with his baby momma, and to fight with said baby-momma. Also appearing was the guy's mom, who mostly shouted at everyone. The one-armed girl had a left arm to just below the elbow, and a prosthetic below that. She's wearing a sleeveless blouse though, so it's kind of pointless, but anyway, there it was. And the prosthesis was terrible, like 10 shades darker than the rest of her skin, and not good enough that she could fight with it. She was reduced to grabbing at the other woman's hair with her one good hand!
Anyway, the show goes on and we end up fast forwarding over most of the inanities, but as their segment was ending Malaya and me got to wondering about her arm. They never said how she lost the arm, but she was sort of skeletally-deformed in the back, so we figured it was a birth defect. But why was it such a bad color? I speculated that maybe she bought it used. I mean why not? Do they bury amuputees with their prosthetic limbs, or sell/donate them so that other one-handers can live a fuller life?
The question then was, well, where do you buy a used prosthetic arm? To which I replied, "At a second-hand store."
Yes, I laugh at my own jokes. Fortunately Malaya usually beats me to it, or at least has the decency to join me. She did tonight, at least.
