I’m working on a review of a book about the Web and yesterday found that I’d written an opening paragraph that is a potential winner of this year’s Bulwer-Lytton award:

As the boa constrictor of culture swallows the large, furry mammal that is the Web, you can see the lump traveling further down the alimentary tract, getting more fully digested day by day. How you feel about books explaining the Web depends on where inside the snake (oh, metaphor, don’t let me down!) you are.

I’m confident that my new opening paragraph is better, simply because, well, it has no choice.

Can we please pretend I was joking?

[Tags: bad_writing snake_metaphors furry_mammals embarrassing_moments ]

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From The Onion. [Tags: politics humor satire diebold ]

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Click here for a dystopic taste of the future. (This page will not harm your sensibilities, your computer, or your ability to procreate.)

[Tags: net_neutrality comcast ]

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I give you yet another Million Dollar Idea for free: Color butter substitute so that it can act as a palette, enabling diners to create masterpieces on their toast.

Vincent Van Toast [Tags: butter toast humor ]

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Howard Rheingold has posted the front and back covers of his 1974 book, War of the Gurus. If you don’t look closely, you’ll think it’s written by the reporter-columnist, Jack Anderson. Google Books has nothing on it except that it also gives a credit to Kelly Freas, the great sf and MAD illustrator.

I’m guessing that Howard is the Kevin Bacon for the rest of us.

[Tags: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Anderson ]

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The very odd journal WordWays (which really ought to become a Web-based journal, imo) in this issue runs a piece by A. Ross Eckler that anagrams uses the letters in the various candidates’ names to make phrases. [The strikehtrough is because I got this seriously wrong.] These are in order of the longest words that can be formed from the letters in their names, but that’s a different story:

JOHN MCCAIN = MACHO CON MAN
RUDY GIULIANI = I RUN GAUDILY
MITT ROMNEY = MY, I’M ROTTEN
FRED THOMPSON = HOT FOND SPERM
HILLARY CLINTON = RANT? I ONLY CHILL!

He lists none for Barack Obama.

[ADDED LATER: Here are some anagrams:

HILLARY CLINTON: ICY THRILL ON LAN

JOHN MCCAIN = CONCH IN JAM

MIKE HUCKABEE = I BACK MEEK HUE

BARACK OBAMA = AM A BACK AROMA
ARK.: A CAB, A MOB
O, MA! BACK ARAB!
A CORK, MA! ABBA!
BAM. A CRAB. A-OK.
BAA! ROAM BACK!

[Tags: wordways anagrams politics humor ]

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I’m about to post a new issue of my (free) newsletter, which has the following Bogus Contest:

These days, instead of saying “If you look up ‘miserable failure’ in the dictionary, there’s a picture of George Bush there,” you’d more likely say, “If you google ‘miserable failure,’ George Bush is the first return.”

Can we come up with more clichés transposed to the world of tech? For example:

Your turn! (To enter — which is, remember, functionally the same as not entering — post your updated clichés as a comment. 

[Tags: puzzle doep ]

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We saw Michael Frayn’s Tony-award-winning play, “Copenhagen,” last night. Disappointing.

It’s about the mysterious meeting between Bohr and Heisenberg in 1941 in Newark, NJ. (Nope. In Copenhagen. Just kidding. Haha.) The play goes over various “drafts” of the meeting, trying out possible explanations of why Heisenberg, a loyal German (or is he??), would seek out his former mentor, a half-Jewish Dane living in Nazi-occupied Denmark. Heisenberg was the head of the German effort to create an atomic bomb (or was he??), and Bohr snuck out of Denmark and joined the Manhattan project (or did he?? … well, yes, he did). The play has some crackling good scenes as the two men fill us in on Heisenberg’s role in the Nazi effort. (Bohr’s wife is the third person in the play, but she’s just annoying, given to saying to the audience things like ‘And then: Silence.’ Embarrassing.) But it’s over-written and, worse, depends upon a stupid pun: Y’see, Heisenberg is famous for his Uncertainty Principle, and all of human understanding is also uncertain, so since both use the word “uncertainty,” they’ve got to be the same thing, right? So, let’s make a play about it.

Yech.

Say, I have an idea! Let’s write a play called “Croton” about Pythagoras. It will draw a dramatic parallel (so to speak) between Pythagoras’ theorom about right angles and his own uprightness. “It is all a matter of finding and living the right angle,” he will say. “After all, aren’t we all a hypoteneuse?”

Or we could do one called “Strasbourg” about Louis Pasteur’s family life, because just as is his work confirmed germ theory — small bodies pass from one to another, changing everyone they touch — his wife and he pass their children back and forth, each time changed by that gentle touch. Also, he had an infectious laugh and a contagious enthusiasm.

Or how’d you like to invest in this sure-fire winner: “Naugatuck.” It tells the story of Charles Goodyear, who discovered vulcanized rubber quite accidentally — or was it on purpose? — and who lived a “vulcanized” life because, well, um, you see, things happen sorta accidentally – or on purpose? – especially when we bump into fiery emotions that transform us into more rigid and yet more durable beings. Yeah, that’s it!

And then: Silence.

[Tags: copenhagen theatre plays entertainment arts heisenberg parody frayn ]

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…is faux turkey! I just got it!

(What is tofurkey?)

[Tags: tofurky tofurkey veggie_puns ]

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One of my cousins sent this photo around to the family mailing list. It must be as old as the Internet — old enough to have lost its attribution — but what the heck.

The title of the photo is “Winner of this year’s ‘Not My Job Contest’“:

[Tags: humor photos white_lines roads ]

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