A video showing the world’s oddest Bellagio Fountains emulator. (BTW, I initially mistyped this sentence and wrote instead about “Bellatio” fountains, a phrase just begging for a definition.) [Tags: coke mentos video humor]

8 Comments »

The publisher sent me a copy of Jeremy Blachman‘s book, Anonymous Lawyer (book|blog). It’s hilarious. In fact, it’s far better than it has any right to be: It’s told in the form of blog posts, with occasional email asides, which would seem to be a tough limitation, and it’s about a one-sided character who is the most career-focused, shallowest, nastiest person you’ve ever imagined. But Jeremy pulls it off because he is a deeply talented writer. He is also fearless. A lesser author would have tried to curry the reader’s sympathy. Nope. Not Jeremy. That takes guts. But it pays off in laughs…appalled laughs.

I don’t want to set your expectations too high, because that’s a sure way to kill a humor book. But I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

PS: In his personal blog, Jeremy reviews “Keeping Up with the Steins” and says: “The movie didn’t know what it wanted to be — a farce about the excesses of bar mitzvahs, or a tug-at-the-heartstrings family comedy. And so it floated in between, and ended up not terribly satisfying.” Anonymous Lawyer does not suffer from that problem. [Tags: anonymouslawyer jeremy_blachman books humor]

While we’re talking about the intersection of blogs and books, you might want to take a look at the site for a book in progress, Search Analytics for Your Site, by Louis Rosenfeld and Richard Wiggins. Lou Rosenfeld’s new company, Rosenfeld Media, (Disclosure: yes, I’m on the board of advisors) is trying to be innovative and open about the publishing of books. They’re also publishing Card Sorting by Donna Maurer, with whom I got to bond over Eleanor Rosch at the Information Architecture Summit

1 Comment »

The Boston Globe is a great paper, I love it, I subscribe, I read it everyday, ok? But the little things unreasonably annoy me. Aaarrrgggghhh! For example:

EVery Saturday, the Globe’s op-ed page runs a box of notable and fun quotes from the week, usually with a jest or two from the TV funnymen. This week, one of the seven quotes is Bill Clinton saying “I had a lot of happy times there,” talking about his private White House office in an audiotape tour of his museum. Ooooh, “happy times”…Bill Clinton….snicker snicker. This is as funny as Steven Carrell saying “That’s what she said” on The Office, except on the TV show it’s supposed to be embarrassingly not funny.

The funnyman quote is a Jay “The Opposite of Funny” Leno joke about the Capitol being locked down because of what sounded like gun shots. It turned out it was just a pneumatic tool being used to repair an elevator. Japed Jay, “You can see how these mistakes are made. See, people in Washington, they’re not used to the sound of actual work being done.”

Hey-oh!

This was the funniest political joke on TV last week? Congress is lazy? Clinton got blown? How trenchant!

Both of these quotes are lazy and thoughtless. They’re comforting, not revealing or provocative like the best political humor. In a small small way, they help abrade democratic discourse.

(Note to self: Next time have the morning coffee before blogging.)

[Tags: media whines boston_globe jay_leno humor]

1 Comment »

In my many years of relying on The Weekly World News to bring me the stories others fear to report — “Boxer knocks opponent into last century,” “Couple fall in love when they meet in tornado,” “Carpal tuna syndrome” — I was distressed to read a small-print notification on the bottom of page two:

Weekly World News articles are drawn from different sources and most are fictitious. Weekly World News uses invented names in many of its stories, except in cases where public figures are being satirized. Any other use of real names is accidental and coincidental. The reader should suspend belief for the sake of enjoyment.

Damn lawyers!

Besides, aren’t we supposed to suspend disbelief? [Tags: weekly_world_news news media humor tuna batboy alien ed_anger]

4 Comments »

Have questions for the NSA? Here‘s where to ask them… [Tags: humor]

1 Comment »

EatMyHamster.com is Digg for humor. The site — a living beta — lets users submit funny pages and raise them or lower them on the list. Good idea and well implemented.

The site authors say they’re doing to introduce some form of social filtering or groups, to handle the extreme differences in taste in humor. Or maybe some form of categorization and/or tagging. Maybe an entire Dewey Decibellylaff Classification system is in order… [Tags: humor]

Be the first to comment »

I’m off to NYC for a cousin’s reunion. I’ll be seeing relatives I haven’t seen in over 30 years in some cases, which means the last time we met, they were just starting to date. (No, not each other.) We’re meeting at a restaurant for a few hours this afternoon.

I’m hopeful that my weeks ot practicing dropping the phrase “As I was saying to Their Majesties -Surely you know the Duke and Duchess? …” will pay off. Also, I am now able to hold my gut in for 1.5 hours at a time, which means I just have to schedule one bathroom break when I can unzip my pants and exhale. Also, I’ve been getting quite disdainful looks from various waiters around town, so my supercilious eyebrow arching seems to be having an effect. Unfortunately, my toupee is late arriving from Amazon, so it looks like I’ll have to keep my top hat on the entire time.

Wish me luck!

1 Comment »

The Army has warned an anti-war group called West Point Graduates Against the War to stop using the words “West Point” in its name, saying it is a violation of a registered trademark. — AP

Dear Mom and Pop,

Today was a typical day here at the Academy™. Thursdays are light days academically — I have a Lit seminar and not much else. We’re reading Death of a Salesman®. Willy Loman^sm is so depressing! Our prof spent thirty minutes explaining why his saying “You gotta know the territory”™ is ironic because Loman^sm doesn’t know his own family. He must think our heads are made of 100% Wisconsin Cheddar™!

Anyway, that was only an hour and a half seminar. Then we got to go on the rifle range. Dad, I think you’re just wrong about the M-16™. It’s a heck of a sweet shot.

Then me and my new plebe™ friend, Tad, went and had hot gay sex in the shower. (“Don’t ask, don’t tell,”© wink wink.) We started in the West Point™ Back Saddle^sm position, with me on bottom, and then we flipped over into the West Point™ Truckdriver^sm position, which is one of my favorites. Then he took his enormous West Point™ and gently rubbed the base of my West Point™ until he got to my West Point™, and before you know it, there was West Point™ all over the place!

So, over all I’m enjoying this man’s army™, and am sure glad it’s not an Army™ of One® :)

PS: I could not find a trademark notice on the West Point site. [Tags: army west_point free_speech copyright copyleft politics]

1 Comment »

Since this seems to be Photo Day at Joho, here are two photos that are circulating through email. I know who I got the email from, but I don’t know where the photos came from:

Captions anyone? E.g.,

1. Debugging the highway’s the new packet collision detection module…
2. The Dept. of Homeland Security introduces the new “Double Quick”™ emergency evacuation procedure
3. Lube – not just to be taken internally any more – JiffyLube

(Thanks to ABW for the email.) [Tags: photos humor tollbooth]

3 Comments »

The Boston Globe reports today that Cingular is entirely unable to back up its heavily-advertised claim that it has the fewest dropped calls. Cingular referred the reporter, Bruce Mohl, to a research company called Telephia, and Telephia refused to provide any information about the study. So, it seems to be based on a statistically significant steaming pile of horse crap.

My own study certainly backs up the horse crap hypothesis. My Cingular phone only works if I actually climb a Cingular antenna tower, of which there seem to be a total of nine in the continental United States. Fortunately, the towers are only 11 inches tall.

I exaggerate. My Cingular phone also works if my phone is within shouting distance of yours. In fact, I’d like a rebate for the total minutes I spend yelling “Can you hear me now?” into my phone. If the terrorists were smart they’d use variations of “Can you hear me now? How about now?” as code, thus slipping by any covert government eavesdropping programs.

Plus, how about pain and suffering damages for the hours of sleep I’ve lost because my stupid !#@$%-ing phone — which has an automatically-set, atomic-quality clock in it — insists on beep-booping in the middle of the night to tell me that it’s lower on power.

And I shouldn’t pick on Cingular. Yesterday I went to the local Sprint store to check on how much they charge to use one of their phones as a modem. The brochure the clerk showed me contradicted itself in every line: The $39.99 “unlimited data” plan actually gives you 40MB before it starts charging on top of the $39.99. But, you can get a “special offer” of unlimited data for $59.99, except in the fine print it turns out to be unlimited up until 40MB. When I asked the clerk about it, he claimed to be entering a tunnel, and made static-y noises.

Is there a single person in the US who does not HATE her cellular company? [Tags: cingular cellphones advertising horse_crap]

48 Comments »