13 years Ago
Lewis Black stumps for Trump 2012
Published by marco on
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.
“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... [More]”
14 years Ago
Colbert Report & Daily Show Roundup
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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... [More]”
Comic Sans MS Pushes Back
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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 (McSweeney's Internet Tendency).
“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... [More]”
Name all the countries in the World
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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... [More]
15 years Ago
Recent Daily Show Clips
Published by marco on
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... [More]
Saudi Special Forces == Cobra Troops
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A recent collection of photos called Eid al-Adha and the Hajj, 2009 (Big Picture Blog) included the following photo:
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.
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)
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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... [More]
Hang Biden High
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Biden is at it again[1]:
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.”
That doesn’t mean what you think it means
Published by marco on
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... [More]”
How to Build an H-Bomb
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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... [More]”
16 years Ago
Taxonomy of Heavy Metal Band Names
Published by marco on
Heavy Metal Band Names by Doogie Horner (Comics vs. Audience) (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]
Workplace Improvisation
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Bush’s Unalloyed Success
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As reported in the article For Bush’s staff, upbeat talking points on his tenure (LA Times):
“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 in December 2008 (MNFTIU), linked below:
“Where are all the other pages?”
Indeed.
The Eyeballing Game
Published by marco on
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
... [More]
The Onion News Network
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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... [More]
The Great Schlep
Published by marco on
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
Published by marco on
- SNL: Hillary Clinton & Sarah Palin Make an Announcement (NBC.com)
- 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 (NBC.com)
- 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... [More]
Perfect Color Vision Test
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Take the FM 100 Hue Test (XRite); 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.
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”.
Booyah!
Odd British Names
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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]:
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)... [More]
Kinetic Sculptures
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Top 5 Amazing Kinetic Sculpture Videos (Wired) 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.
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.
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... [More]
Dealing with Problems
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There are a lot of versions of this, but this one is pretty neutral and to-the-point.
The English Language
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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 (Treppenwitz)[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... [More]”
17 years Ago
English Accents
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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.
Kimmel’s Revenge
Published by marco on
The Sarah Silverman & Matt Damon Sitting in a Tree… (earthli News) video soared to over 8 million views on YouTube. Kimmel, Silverman’s boyfriend has responded with a video of his own.
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
Published by marco on
About a week ago, the Obamians released a black and white video (YouTube) 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... [More]
Sarah Silverman & Matt Damon Sitting in a Tree…
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So this weekend, one mildly out-of-touch ex-pat discovered that:
- Jimmy Kimmel, who used to host The Man Show with Adam Carolla, now has his own late-night TV show.
- That Jimmy Kimmel has been dating Sarah Silverman for over five years.
- 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 (YouTube). It’s hilarious. Silverman is fully... [More]
Free Rice
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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... [More]”
Geography Challenge
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The Traveler IQ Challenge (Travelpod) 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 (earthli News). There used to be a site with a “name as many of the 192 UN countries as you can in ten minutes” game,... [More]
Jokes are Subjective as Hell
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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... [More]
MNFTIU − October 2007
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The strips from October 2007 (MNFTIU) 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... [More]