Merry Christmas!

(via)

You guys! This is my favorite Warehouse comic.

Starslip

I recently ran through the Starslip archives. Totally worth a read. Often funny, but sometimes very touching. I'll show you a taste with bits of the Jovia storyline.

Spoilers ahoy.

Memnon Vanderbeam is in love with Jovia, daughter of the King of Jupiter. He saved them from an assassination attempt.


Later, a critical flaw is discovered in Starslip technology.


Eventually the flaw catches up with them.


Memnon starts the ships computer processing a Starslip path back to a timeline where Jovia lives, a process that will take many years. In the meantime, the storyline moves along. But every once in a great while, you'll get episodes like this:


Much later, the ship's computer tells Memnon that they can use the partially-computed Jovia path to end a war. Jovia would still have died, but the war would be over (or avoided). This would mean starting the calculations over from the beginning. Memnon refuses.

But later, when Deep Time sets a bomb to go off that will eliminate the entire timeline...


Like I said, worth a read.

Mental Floss

Recently ran across the Mental Floss shirts. Most shirt stores have a couple good ones (and because I couldn't think of anything else to post today*); here are some of my faves.

(in random order)

*and tomorrow is not looking too good either.

Things They Don't Tell You

(CLICK THE IMAGES TO PROCEED THROUGH THIS COMIC)

Ze Frank recently buzzed about this, and I thought it was interesting enough to pass along. For me, there were two pages in particular that I thought deserved a comment.

#1:

Aha! I'm normal, bitches!

#2:

Argh! No, no, no. Money is not evil.

It's the *LOVE* of money that is the root of all evil! This is an important distinction! Timothy 6:10, look it up!

Important Things

I recently finally got around to watching Important Things with Demetri Martin. So far I've seen 1.5 episodes, and I have this to say: Demetri Martin is a Genius.

This show is great. Part stand-up, part sketch, part philosophy, each episode tackles one important thing.

And to show you how great it is, here are some clips.

The first episode was about Timing.

Timing - Anger Scene Management Show/Hide

Unfortunately, you get just a tiny taste in this mini-clip. You can see where it's going though. Actually, it goes even further than you'd think. :-/ Guess you'll have to catch it on re-run!

...or you could watch this low-quality YouTube video.


Timing - Time Gigolo Show/Hide

Argh! AGAIN you only get a small snippet of the full scene. Notice how the time changes after you start playing the video? What's that about?

(sorry, couldn't find a YouTube version of this one)


The second episode was about Power.

Power - Parking Fight Show/Hide

Finally a full scene!

Character Tweets

@wilw brought to everyone's attention that the Big Bang Theory characters have Twitter accounts.

Penny
Leonard
Sheldon
Wolowitz
Raj
Leslie

I don't know who's running the accounts (I do know that they aren't officially affiliated with the show) but whoever is doing it manages to do a FINE job of staying in-character. Tell me you can read Sheldon's tweets and not hear his voice?

Unseen Academicals

Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork - not the old fashioned, grubby pushing and shoving, but the new, fast football with pointy hats for goalposts and balls that go going when you drop them. And now, the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match, without using magic, so they're in the mood for trying everything else.

The prospect of the Big Match draws in a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can, a maker of jolly good pies, a dim but beautiful young woman, who might just turn out to be the greatest fashion model there has ever been, and the mysterious Mr Nutt (and no one knows anything much about Mr Nutt, not even Mr Nutt, which worries him, too. As the match approaches, four lives are entangled and changed for ever. Because the thing about football - the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football.

Here we go! Here we go! Here we go!

Terry Pratchett's latest Discworld novel Unseen Academicalsis out now, and I've just finished reading it.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about it yet, as until three quarters of the way through it was my favorite Pratchett book to date, but it fell apart at the weak ending.

Still, before the ending there were a number of great and moving bits, some snippets of which I will share with you below.

Here the Patrician and the Archchancellor are talking about soccer:

'In my day we were all so... so relentlessly physical. But if I was to suggest so much as an egg and spoon race these days they'd use the spoon to eat the egg.'

'Alas, I did not know your day was over, Mustrum,' said Lord Vetinari, with a smile.

Here the mysterious Mr. Nutt talks to Trev (a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can) and Glenda (a maker of jolly good pies) about Trev's father, a soccer legend killed by the game:

'Your father loved you, did he not?'

'Wot?' Trev's face reddened.

'He loved you, took you to the football, shared a pie with you, taught you to cheer for the Dimmers? Did he hold you on his shoulders so that you could see more of the game?'

'Stop talkin' about my dad like that!'

Glenda took Trev's arm. 'It's okay, Trev, it's all right, it's not a nasty question, really it isn't!'

'But you hate him, because he became a mortal man, dying on the cobbles,' said Nutt, picking up another undribbled candle.

'That is nasty,' said Glenda. Nutt ignored her.

'He let you down, Mister Trev. He wasn't the small boy's god. It turned out that he was only a man. But he was not only a man. Everyone who has ever watched a game in this city has heard of Dave Likely. If he was a fool, then any man who has ever climbed a mountain or swum a torrent is a fool. If he was a fool then so was the man who first tried to tame fire. If he was a fool then so was the man who tried the first oyster, he was a fool, too–although I'm bound to remark that, given the division of labour in early hunter-gatherer cultures, he was probably a woman as well. Perhaps only a fool gets out of bed. But, after death, some fools shine like stars, and your father is such a one. After death, people forget the foolishness, but they do remember the shine. You could not have done anything. You could not have stopped him. If you could have stopped him he would not have been Dave Likely, a name that means football to thousands of people.'

Nutt negotiates with a dwarf:

'Her? The Dark Lady? She can kill people with a thought!'

'She is my friend,' said Nutt calmly, 'and I will help you.'

Nutt has a mantra about Being Worthy, leading to this discussion with Trev:

'It is a skill. It can be learned.'

'An' that makes you worthy?'

'Yes.'

'An' who judges?'

'I do.'

(Not entirely unrelatedly, I read this passage in The Little Prince today:


"Then you shall judge yourself," the king answered. "that is the most difficult thing of all. It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then you are indeed a man of true wisdom."

)

Some characters have undergone little changes (not sure how I feel about those yet), such as the teetotaler Patrician drinking a beer while telling this story:

The Patrician took a sip of his beer. 'I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.'

Nutt tells Glenda an interesting thing about ships:

'The interesting thing about ships is that the captains of ships have to be very careful when two ships are close together at sea, particularly in calm conditions. They tend to collide.'

'Because of the wind blowing, and that?' said Glenda, thinking: In theory this is a romantic-novel situation and I am about to learn about ships. Iradne Comb-Buttworthy never puts a ship in her books. They probably don't have enough reticules.

'No,' said Nutt. 'In fact, to put it simply, each ship shields the other ship from lateral waves on one side, so by small increments outside forces bring them together without their realizing it.'

(this is a metaphor about relationships; it even puns 'ships)

Glenda cleared her throat again. 'This thing with the ships…Does it happen quite quickly?'

'It starts quite slowly, but it's quite quick towards the end,' said Nutt.

If I could put smart in water...

'Can't you wizards do something?'

'Yes,' said Ponder. 'We can do practically anything, but we can't change people's minds. We can't magic them sensible. Believe me, if it were possible to do that, we would have done it a long time ago. We can stop people fighting by magic and then what do we do? We have to go on using magic to stop them fighting. We have to go on using magic to stop them being stupid. And where does all that end? So we make certain that it doesn't begin. That's why the university is here. That's what we do.'

Ah, punnery:

'We shall have to change our tactics to suit, then,' said Nutt.

'Are you nu—insane?'

Another thing I found interesting was that Amazon paired it up with And Another Thing...(the 6^th Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book) penned this time by Artemis Fowl author Eoin Colfer. Of course, no one could ever replace DNA.

Nostalgia

On the Happy site I saw this line: "let’s get nostalgic"

I immediately thought of something I wanted to put on a T-Shirt. I even did a Google search first and found NO hits. Jackpot!



Unrelated, I saw this Digg article. "Glitter is the herpes of craft supplies"

This is a Demetri Martin joke. Someone even found a video in which he makes this exact joke. Show/Hide



Unfortunately, one of the OTHER jokes he makes is:

"I remember when I used to really be into nostalgia."

DAMN. IT.

Pursuit of Happyness

I found this EXCELLENT tumblr recently that is all about Happy stuff. ^_^ I *HIGHLY APPROVE*

There are far too many awesome things there to link to them all, but I'll share some highlights.

Here's a cute stop-motion video: Show/Hide



The rest are links to pictures.

Falling Rocks

Yes We Can

I Love You

What I want to be

Happy Pills

Happy Existence Day

And suddenly...

▽^_^▽

Ｕ◕ฺܫฺ◕ฺＵ

Life is too short

And finally, here's one that isn't necessarily about being happy, but it did make me smile. ^_^ Here.

My Wena

I like Bowling For Soup, and have since their cover of 1985. And so, a little Soup for you (possibly NSFW): Show/Hide

Stop Smoking Now!

Quick! Before you kill us all! Show/Hide


(via)

I Brake For Irony

(via)

The Principal's Decision

(via)

Crime & PUNishment

Based on an actual conversation I had this morning.

PHOENIX is on his way to the laundry room, wearing a t-shirt that says "Ursines excrete solid waste in silviculture", and he runs into STEVE. STEVE reads PHOENIX's shirt, and starts a conversation.

STEVE: Did you hear about the Energizer Bunny?

PHOENIX: That he got arrested for battery? Yeah, I heard.

S: It was really shocking to him when the coppertop arrested him.

P: *groan*

S: They even had to put him in a Dura-Cell for a while, because he was too energetic.

P: Ouch.

S: Yeah, and all they could find for him to wear were some shorts. He tried to meditate to regain his composure (Ohmmmm...) but there was just too much resistance - he couldn't get through.

P: *wince*

S: But he'll be discharged in a couple of weeks.

P: Oh yeah?

S: They ran a battery of tests on him and found he was bi-polar. They put him on lithium, and that rectified the situation.

P: Well, that lithium is powerful stuff.

Fapril Mules

Today was (is?) April Fools. Quite a lot of good stuff today.

YouTube made this video even more awesome.

Slashdot added achievements (which will probably stick around)

Google's big show this year was impressively extensive. Although... remember when everyone thought that GMail was an April Fools joke? It did sound too good to be true...

Reddit had a pretty good sense of humor to make itself look like Digg for the day (a lot of content makes its way from Reddit to Digg, and vice versa).

For the end-all be-all rundown, checkout http://aprilfoolsdayontheweb.com/

Philosophy of Physics

How can SMBC be so funny on a daily basis?

Comic 1465, in particular = awesome.

Giant Crabs

I like The Onion a lot, and their ONN videos are often good.

And then there's this one: Show/Hide

Just when you think you get to the punchline, there's another one right behind it.

Der Schlangemann

*WARNING*
This is a stop-motion animation film that contains mock genitalia and explicit sexual acts involving dolls. Viewer discretion is advised.
(warning from archive.org)

Here is the classic Der Schlangemann video that you may have heard me mention. Now, the original site is gone, unfortunately. (It was actually still up [sans videos] when I originally intended to post this, however many months ago that was).

However, the Internet Archive has kept it online. Isn't technology wonderful?

Don't watch this video at work, unless your workplace is OK with German doll-men with giant penises sexing up Barbie.

(Also, video is entirely in German with no subtitles. But, it is very understandable!)

Show/Hide

TopFive is Gone

They actually appeared to have stopped making lists last August.

I didn't notice because I don't read them anymore. I imagine a lot of others went the same way.

See, I used to love TopFive. Back in, say, 1996, they were really funny. Then they spread out into Little Fivers, and those were less funny. Then they had a subscriber program, where you would get an ad-free list.

And then they stopped giving you the whole list if you weren't a subscriber. They'd cut off the top half (eg, the funniest half) in the e-mail, and you would have to go to the site for it. This is when I stopped reading.

You're going to give me ADS and NOT THE LIST? Thanks, but no thanks. And that's not mentioning the drop in quality of the main lists. The top contributors had gone off to be funny on their own and the people left were... meh.

So, I'm sorry to see that TopFive is not producing at the moment (but may come back), but it doesn't really affect me. TopFive stopped producing for me years ago.

World Of Mime

(from That Mitchell and Webb Situation)
Show/Hide

This kind of thing is why I didn't enjoy acting classes.