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... [More]

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:... [More]

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]... [More]

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... [More]

The following video, Death Star (YouTube), 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!

Get Your War On (MNFTIU) 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:

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... [More]”

Final Box CoverFinal Box Back

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... [More]”

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”.

Fake Windows Features (Something Awful) 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.

It’s funny because it’s true.

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... [More]”

100-Pound Woman Downs Six-Pound Burger (ABC) 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 …... [More]”

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.

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).

“Do... [More]”

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... [More]

Dear Limey assholes (Guardian Unlimited) 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... [More]

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... [More]

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... [More]

Question

“Why did Australia get all the convicts and America get all the religious nuts?”

Answer

“Australia got first choice.”

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... [More]

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?

When you’re done, you try to sell it (EBay) 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... [More]

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... [More]

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... [More]”

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... [More]

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... [More]

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.

New Negative Campaign Ads Blast Voters Directly (The Onion) 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... [More]”

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,... [More]

Did Somebody Say Macho? by Zack 'Geist Editor' Parsons (Something Awful) 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... [More]

Here’s Aaron McGruder’s helpful contribution to Bush’s re-election strategy. This is the Boondocks from March 22 − March 27.