Archive for the ‘Humor’ Category
If it’s April 1, it must be April Fools day
and here on the net, I’m seeing dozens. And honestly? Most of them aren’t funny, or interesting, or original.
Sigh.
Here’s a hint, from someone who used to really enjoy April Fool’s day: If you’re doing something that took under 10 minutes to think up or under 10 minutes to implement, you probably shouldn’t bother. Renaming products (“Palm POST” heh. How unique. all ten of you) and bad photoshops do not an April Fools joke make. Just an April Fool.
About the only one I’ve seen this year that shows any real thought is Michael Mace’s sideswipe of both the mobile market and the federal bailout strategy. Definitely worth a read.
I presume the big topic of discussion at the CTIA conference this week is going to be the government’s emergency bailout package for the tech industry. I was surprised this morning when US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner replaced RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis at the CTIA keynote to announce the package, and ever since I’ve been scrambling to sort through all the details. A lot of it’s still fuzzy, but here’s what I’ve been able to figure out so far:
via Mobile Opportunity: Thoughts on the tech industry bailout.
Honorable mention as usual goes to Tidbits. Not all of their articles click with me, but they thought about it and put some time into it. And some of their pieces are pretty good.
The rest of it is pretty damn forgettable.
Curmudgeonly yours,
Someone who was doing this when most of you were in diapers.
Now that’s what I call space opera!
From the robot chicken folks. Enjoy!
(hat tip: Brian Fies)
updated to point to the copy at Adult Swim….
Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job | The Onion
Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source:
African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America.
But I thought Biden was vice president!
Mac vs. PC meets West Side Story meets Lucio Fulci
Mac vs. PC meets West Side Story meets Lucio Fulci – Boing Boing Gadgets:
Don’t let the finger snapping and crooning at the beginning fool you: what starts as a Mac vs. PC pastiche of West Side Story soon becomes an awesomely gory blood fest as jugulars are severed with MacBook Airs, iPod Nanos are used (Fulci-like) to puncture retinas, DVDs are used to vivisect skulls and brick-like Dell laptops to decapitate.
Via boing boing, this is really well done, if a bit gory. those of us who long ago got tired of the mac vs. pc wars could only hope both sides take each other out…
Thank God It’s Friday
the best April Fool’s joke I never did…
I used to take April Fool’s pretty seriously. but to do it well, it takes time, energy and the guts to take a risk. Which is why, again this year, Anil is right.
So this year, I thought I’d talk instead about the best April Fool’s joke I ever put together, one I never had the guts to pull off.
Very simple, really. Everyone in the building at Apple I worked in at the time would show up to a memo on their desk announcing Apple’s new Drug Testing Policy.
With a sample cup. And instructions on where to drop it off.
This one had the potential for chaos on so many levels. The obvious: a drug testing policy is so against the culture of a company like Apple, it’s an obvious riff. And frankly, a “here’s our new policy” memo or email just isn’t that interesting. But toss in the sample cup and submission info, and it’d suddenly feel a lot more real — at least initially.
then think about the different layers of this: people who don’t get it who get pissed (ahem) and start screaming about it until someone clues them in.
Then start thinking about the poor person at the wrong end of the submission address. And the interoffice mail folks. And… Because you know some folks WILL. And some folks will — but using innovative substances. And…
This one goes way back, when the subject of affection was Kevin Sullivan, for whom I had no real love lost for his work at Apple.
But the reason I never did it was because the peope who’d take the brunt of the bad aspects of the joke weren’t the people it was aimed at (Sullivan, Apple HR at the time, and whiny people who scream first and think maybe), but the AA’s who’d actually have to deal with all of the submissions. And that just didn’t seem funny to me. Now, Sullivan himself dealing with them? that’d have been worth being fired over…
What the Birds in the Park Think of Us
Francesco Explains It All: What the Birds in the Park Think of Us:
What the Birds in the Park Think of Us
Francesco is Francesco Marciuliano, author of Sally Forth. And just trust me, trying to explain this won’t help. Just go read it.
Jack Benny
I had a chance to get a ticket but passed because it conflicted with another show I wanted to see more – Jack Benny was at the Sahara’s Hotel in Vegas.
Jack Benny is my comedy God.
I grew up a huge fan of classic comedy and old-time radio; not just Jack Benny, but a huge fan of W.C. Fields (a friend of the family was the head of his unofficial fan club, and once picketed the Movieland Wax Museum to try to get Field into it — with a thermos, and no, the thermos didn’t have water in it).
Benny could do more by standing and sighing at the audience than Lenny Bruce could with an album full of expletives. The only comic I can think of that comes close to his ability to use silence and timing is Bob Newhart.
Levine’s note made me think of two key Jack Benny moments.
The first is one of his famous bits, where a robber comes up and says “your money or your life!” — and Benny just stares at him. Finally, the robber says it again, and then Benny looks at him and says back “I’m thinking! I’m thinking!”. THAT is Jack Benny, in essence.
But another time I was in vegas, and I took in a show by George Burns. During part of it, Burns showed some clips from his TV show with Gracie Allen (and if I have to explain Burns and Allen, just move along and read something else…), and during the clips they did after Gracie decided to retire, Burns had “auditions” for her replacement.
And one of them was Jack Benny, in dress and wig. Watching Jack Benny attempt to do Gracie’s parts, with George Burns egging him on — just priceless.
Oh, of course. Here’s a classic George and Gracie — Gracie, the classic bimbo, maybe the funniest comedienne of her time, and one of the few people who could upstage Burns (and anyone else) at will.
“we have so much in common — when I was her age, I was 17, too!”
The Star Wars Christmas Special
well, this came up in conversation today. Fortunately for the sake of humanity, all I could find was the five minute version of thte two hour special. That’s enough to remind me just how bad this was…
Beatrice Arthur? Jefferson Starship?
Oh, my god.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asnVcbWQ2cg)
today’s bad birdwatching joke…
A house sparrow walks into a bar and sits down. As the bartender hands it a beer, he glances over to a table, where a European Starling was sitting. Turning back to the sparrow, he asks “Have you two been introduced?”
(it’s Bob’s fault. honest)
Today’s bad hockey joke:
Q: what do you call a center who doesn’t cheat on face offs?
A: left wing.
April Fools Day at Google: Technology Evangelist
April Fools Day at Google: Technology Evangelist:
There is a long tradition of April Fools gags in Silicon Valley, especially at Sun Microsystems, where engineers variously built a putting green (with real grass!) in founder Scott McNealy’s office one year and another year McNealy unlocked his door to find his Ferrari sports car not only assembled in the office — it was idling.
Not quite right, but the essence is there.
The putting green is true. It was actually a two hole, as I remember. After that, they assembled an old (but working) junk VW Bug in the office, not a Ferrari. The Ferrari was the next year, when they built an artificial island in the middle of one of the complex ponds and put Bill Joy’s car on it (via a ramp they also built — he drove a Ferrari, which was “borrowed” from his driveway for the hack. And then after that, they moved McNealy’s office outside onto the grass, including his phone, electricity and ethernet….
A couple of years later someone tried to wrap one of the buildings in plastic — “safe” computing, but the logistics got in the way..
Darth Vader, violinist
Having heard him play on a few trips to Victoria, I can say that Vader the Violinist isn’t bad at all.
In general, the huckster scene in Victoria is pretty rocking. A lot of pretty good musicians and groups and a few other things — jugglers, etc.
of course, there are exceptions. Bad Shakespeare guy, as I like to call him, offers to recite sonnets to you and your loved one for a kindly fee, and then there are the bagpipers out by the harbor. Very popular — but only if you don’t know bagpipe music… As photo ops, yes. As musicians, not so…
(via gadling)
The things you find….
While doing basic research on the net.
Here on SuddenDeathPool.com, a long list of hockey jokes. Some even funny.
The things you discover….
Weekend plan:
1) take cats to vet for checkup
2) winter garden cleanup
3) put the rest of the christmas stuff back in storage
4) sharks game saturday night
5) go birding on sunday.
6) work on “outsider’s guides”
Weekend reality:
1) tear apart bedroom to find cats
2) take cats to vets for checkup
3) decide as long as bedroom is torn up it’s a good time to shampoo carpets
4) find out the carpet shampooer has died a hero (hey, it moved here with us from Mountain View….)
5) off to target for a new carpet shampooer
6) decide to watch the sharks from home — if we stay awake
7) we did (barely)
decide to stay home and take it easy, work on “outsider’s guide”
9) spend hours wandering around groups.google.com going “gee, did I really write THAT crap?”
10) afternoon nap
11) catch up on Mythbusters episodes
12) realize it’s time to crash…
How things change. Anyone who knows cats understands how the weekend went sideways. ours have this innate, psychic ability to know that the cat boxes have been pulled from storage, even if they’re not able to see that they’re moved. at some point, Archie will look at one or the other of us and canter off; we now know that he’s headed into hiding, and he usually grabs Manon and she runs off with him. If we’re lucky, it’s under the bed (if it’s not, it’s in the garage or storage room, and then we’re in big trouble)
extricating them involves tearing off all the bedsheets, then leaning the mattress and box springs against the wall with the door and closet closed and locked, and then grabbing the cats (who have welded their claws into the carpet) and stuff them in boxes. If we’re lucky, we can do this in about 20 minutes… We made the vets with 5 minutes to spare….
One of the things we discovered was that quiet, lovable Manon has another side to her. See, in the past, since Apple had christmas week off, we’d head down to my family in LA and board the animals, and the annual checkup and shots happened magically when we were gone. We’ve actually never been IN the room during a checkup since Manon’s kitten check. This year, with everything changed, we had to do the checkup ourselves.
Manon was mostly cooperative; until the vet went to take her temperature (I’ll stop a second while you ponder how cats get their temperatures taken; it’s not under the tongue). She just made it quite clear that wasn’t going to happen, and the vet smiled and declared it optional. More amusingly, when we checked her files, we found out teh ONLY time her temperature has been taken was her kitten checkup. Shots? Mildly annoying? Thermometer? not a chance.
Archie wasn’t happy, but he let us do the necessary.
Both are healthy, both are now up to date on shots and boosters. Manon is 14.5 pounds, and about a pound heavy. Archie’s 12+, and right on. All is well in the world.
And, as long as we have the bedroom torn apart, we can shampoo the carpets and get under the bed easily. No problem!
yeah, right. ohwell. I’ll finish the shampooing of the rest of the house next weekend…
I had a great time wandering through the old blog postings and the old USENET stuff today. wasn’t what I’d planned, but what the heck. Nice to run into some folks (virtually) that I haven’t seen in years. Interesting that I can go back 20+ years and document that I’ve averaged a posting a day that entire time. (note I said interesting; good? useful? productive? god knows…)
And we’re mostly up to date on TV again, except for the last two episodes of Battlestar, which I’d probably say was the best written thing on TV if it wasn’t for Dr. Who coming out of britain… just finished viewing 2nd season from Sci-Fi earlier in the week, and the way they ended year two blew me away. I’ll miss you, Rose Tyler. (now, how do they top this?)
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