Archive for category Humor
Eggnog!
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Humor, Pictures on 2011/11/06
Taking a page from the Book of Catherine, I’m sitting at Tully’s right now, a hot tea in one hand on one side of the computer, a paper shot-glass of eggnog opposite it. Eggnog is amazing, but more than a shot at a time and you might as well call the paramedics. Look, do yourself a favor, don’t wonder about the calories and just enjoy REGULAR eggnog this season, not that light/fat-free/sugar-free/piss-flavored stuff.
Pandora on the go
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Humor, Music, Pictures on 2011/11/06
Pandora on my phone is a pasta-send. It’s what’s playing when I don’t have my usual music around or when I don’t really care what to listen to, but still want it to be good.
I surround myself with music almost constantly. At work, if I’m not watching Netflix, it’s gotta be some Pink Floyd or Bob Dylan or Bon Jovi that’s resonating in my head. In the car, it’s something old but fast, like select Rolling Stones tracks, or some version of “All Along the Watchtower”, or simply Joe Cocker. At home, when I’m reading or editing photos and need some background music that isn’t intrusive but at the same time it’s something I like, there’s Pandora, with a station where I rarely ever have to skip a song. (OK, I just had to skip the Beach Boys. But Pandora should learn from this. Ughh, Beach Boys.)
Finally having a non-Fischer Price phone, a phone that can actually hold a charge, I find myself starting up Pandora almost constantly. It’s an app that runs more on my phone than the Google Maps application. (And I use that fairly regularly, having just moved to a brand-new office building downtown.) I listen to it at home when doing housework, or loafing around in bed on a Sunday morning while catching up on comics or some random blog psot, or while out on a walk through the Kirkland waterfront.
Even the silly ads aren’t much of a distraction. Uhh, that is, until I actually bother to listen what they’re saying. A few minutes back they played a commercial where an excited consumer calls up the Rosetta Stone people and asks if the ads are true, that they’re offering a “free demo” of their product, and what the “catch” is. (Insert some witty pun about being that Rosetta Stone costs an arm and a leg and doesn’t actually teach you the language in question.) The helpful representative replies that the ads are true, there is no catch, that Rosetta Stone is so confident in their product, they’re offering a “free demo” of it! Yay! That means I can get a trial version for FREE! That’s quite different from all those other places that make me pay for a partial product. If only I could remember any of those instances…
Well, since I couldn’t recall one, I had to Google for something that stupid… and stumbled onto this made-of-win post: “Capcom Is Charging for a 3DS Demo”. Seems Capcom is selling the first chapter of a game. Unless the model is chapter-by-chapter, this amounts to a paid demo. Ok, so the article itself is kinda thing, but actually it’s the comments that make it a win:
Capcom touched my wife inappropriately and got my kids hooked on crack.
Capcom punched my mom down a flight of stairs and sent me the tape.
Capcom bundled AAA investments with garbage housing loans into premium packages sold to 401k managers, artificially inflating the financial market and causing an economic disaster following the collapse of the housing market.
Capcom swapped my office chair with someone else’s.
Capcom gave long-term financial advice to Greece back in 2000, leading to an unsustainable level of debt that has them teetering on the edge of a bankruptcy that would greatly harm the value of the Euro.
And many more…
Now, having no idea how I’ve arrived at this point, here’s something relevant*:
*In the totally irrelevant sense of the word
Religious micromanaging nonsense
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Humor, Pictures, Random Thoughts, Rant, Religion on 2011/10/14
Sure, maybe the phrase “religious nonsense” is an oxymoron, but until now I wouldn’t have pegged “religious micromanaging nonsense” as being one. OK, fine, there’s some fairly specific rules in religion:
- The Quran says something about praying five times a day in a specific direction
- There’s the whole infuriating business of Catholics not having meat on Fridays (infuriating because the cafe in college and again at Microsoft would serve fish on Fridays, and I’m not a fan of fish)
- Shabbat elevators. ’nuff said.
- Scientology (cult, religion, what’s the difference?) has something against therapy
- Hinduism has the whole cow fetish
- Every religion seems to hate pigs
But something was forwarded to me this morning that simply takes the micromanaging religious cake: What is the optimal Jewish toenail cutting algorithm?
…there is a tradition about not trimming toenails in sequential order.
There seems to be dissenting opinion on the precise application of this tradition, but we think that the following rules are sufficient to accomodate people whose religious practices prohibit cutting toenails in order:
- No two adjacent toenails should be cut consecutively
- The cutting sequence on the left foot should not match the sequence on the right foot
- The cutting sequence on two consecutive runs should not be the same. The sequences shouldn’t be easily predictable, so hardcoding an alternating sequence does not work.
What. The. Fuck.
And no, I’m not making this up. There seems to be actual language in the Torah about the order of cutting nails, which days it’s not OK to cut nails on, and the disposal of cut nails and what happens to pregnant women who walk on cut nails. (Spoiler: it’s a miscarriage.)
Gaahh!
Mobile that allows bosses to snoop on staff developed
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Humor, News on 2010/03/10
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8559683.stm
Researchers have produced a mobile phone that could be a boon for prying bosses wanting to keep tabs on the movements of their staff.
Japanese phone giant KDDI Corporation has developed technology that tracks even the tiniest movement of the user and beams the information back to HQ.
It works by analysing the movement of accelerometers, found in many handsets.
Activities such as walking, climbing stairs or even cleaning can be identified, the researchers say.
I’m curious as to what kind of a job you do that requires (or allows?) this kind of surveillance on their employees. Cops? Doctors? Drug dealers? Whatever it is, I’m fairly certain that programmers are safe, for now, so I’m not too worried. But even Big Brother starts watching over me, I’ve got a plan: centrifuges! One in the office, one at home, and one in the car.
Sick, a bit tired, and few words on Mass Effect 2
Once again, a damn cold takes me out of rotation for a good three days. Came down with something late Tuesday, left work early feeling crappy and stayed at home the rest of the week. Not good. Didn’t get much work done. Though mainly that’s because I take Dan Solomon’s approach to coding-while-sick:
Sometimes it pays to stay in bed in Monday, rather than spending the rest of the week debuging Monday’s code.
–Dan Salomon
Similarly, it pays to stay in bed while sick, rather than spend next week debugging just what the hell I turned my prototype into while I was out of my mind with the cold.
On a bright note, I did end up spending some of my time playing Mass Effect 2, and I have to say that this game outdoes its predecessor in every single way. It’s funnier, more action-packed, the levels are much better, leveling-up is simpler, no more time is wasted on the oodles of weapons mods/weapons/armor drops that come with every downed enemy. In short, everything that was great about ME1 is back in ME2 (yes, the lesbian sex is back), and most of the stuff that sucked is gone.
I say “most” because BioWare seems determined to put some tediousness into Mass Effect. ME1 had the boring, bland, same-old exploration missions. ME2 has planet scanning. It plays a much smaller role, but if you want those damn weapon power-ups, you better spend a long time scanning a damn planet for iridium and platinum.
Level design in ME2 is outstanding: whereas ME1 had a plethora of square levels with the ubiquitous crates rearranged into a different maze, ME2 has unprecedented variety. There are as many worlds and level designs as there are missions and I’ve yet to see two similar layouts. May seem inconsequential, the design of a level, but that’s only true if you’ve never played through Halo. Oh god, anything but that.
They’ve also taken out the ridiculous ME1 achievements that required you to play through the game at least 3 times in a very specific sequence to get the whole 1,000 points. Now, not being an Achievement Whore, I didn’t actually bother replaying the entire story that many times. Only played it twice. Really, how many times can you drive that damn Mako without getting a migraine? And that’s another thing, the Mako is gone. In fact, so far there has been no vehicle travel at all. Everything’s on foot. I kinda like that.
At the moment I’m playing as an imported character from ME1. Shepard is a woman, a particularly tough Renegade with streaks of Paragon (no problem shooting Conrad in the leg or punching out reporters, but I do draw the line at major civilian casualties). It’s awesome that the character’s scars actually become more pronounced and glow red as I turn toward “the dark side”. My favorite character is Mordin Solus, the Salarian quack. Why? You mean, aside from his nonchalance at killing people and awesome sex prep-talks? Well, let me just answer it (and conclude this post) with this video:
Yet another “opposite” moment
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Humor, Pictures on 2010/01/10
You know when you’re driving two hundred kilos of premium heroin from Vancouver to Seattle and are standing at the border, lying to the customs cops and suddenly realize that they’re just waving you through and that you’re actually getting away with this insane plot that your uncle convinced you to do and that you were at first reluctant about and then he pulled the whole “come on, we’re family” angle?
Yeah, well, in the airport on the way home I had the opposite of that. I wasn’t carrying drugs but was sure I would get stopped and questioned about carrying drugs. Seriously, I had a mild panic attack right there. And why?
Well, I happened to buy some pork sung (a.k.a. rousong) which is this dried, fluffy pork snack that I happen to enjoy. They normally come in plastic containers of varying sizes. At the end of my trip, the container was still half-full, and I wanted to take the stuff home but didn’t want to bring along the damn container which would have just been too big and unwieldy to put into my luggage. So, in a flash of genius, I decided to use a ziplock baggy. My second flash of genius went something like this: say, you’ll be on a four-hour plane ride, and they’re not going to serve real food (or the closest alternative) on the plane, and even if they did, for instance if you were in the first-class cabin, Alaska Airlines puts those freaking Bible quotes on cards with your dinner, and who wants that?, so why don’t you put the pork sung in your carry-on?
The Wikipedia entry doesn’t have a very good photo of pork sung, so here’s a better one I snagged (and resized) from Kyrie Eleison’s Blog (http://kyrieeleison2008.blogspot.com/2009/07/food-trip-to-chinatown.html):
What do you suppose one of those radiology-drop outs would think about a ziploc baggy of brown, cottony substance? That’s exactly what I was asking myself (after checking in my luggage) as I prepared to step through the metal detector.
Good news, they didn’t ask to do a visual inspection of my bag. Let that be a lesson to any would-be drug trafficers: just leave the stuff in a clear ziploc bag in your carry-on luggage and travel on a Saturday night. The plane was mostly empty, as was the airport, so the “security” personnel was just standing around shooting the breeze.
Next flight: confectioner’s sugar!
—
Currently listening to Mamma Mia! soundtrack.
Randomness
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Humor, Politics, Random Thoughts on 2009/12/26
Mathematician 1: I have three sons. Their ages add up to 13. [Looks around] And the product of their ages is equal to the address on that building there.
Mathematician 2: Anything else?
Mathematician 1: My oldest son has red hair.
Mathematician 2: Ah, I know their ages.
What are they?
—
A husband and a wife of 30 years are being interviewed and are asked how they managed to keep a family together all this time. The wife responds: “It’s all about a clear separation of labor. My husband makes the big decisions and I make the small ones. I choose what’s for dinner, what school our kids attend and what house to get. My husband decides when to declare war on China.”
—
This really should not have come as a surprise for me, but I was amazed at how different people can interpret the above joke to further advocate their own personal views and opinions. Meh.
—
The mirror test (Wikipedia article here) is a method of measuring self-awareness by verifying if an animal is able to recognize itself in a mirror. But, really, I don’t see this as anything monumental. It’s not so much testing self-awareness as testing the complexity of the physical model that the organism maintains. (What I am here calling a physical model is the conceptual model of the world we necessarily maintain in our minds. This is the model that allows you to, for instance, walk around your house without concentrating too much on your surroundings, as you know where everything should be and was, the last time your model was “updated”. Unless you have little furry creatures in your house and they are liable to run under your feet.) The mirror test seems to only gauge if the subject’s physical model is robust enough to properly map the external environment to self when faced with contradicting visual input. Nothing more.
—
Currently listening to Pink Floyd.
Insane battery
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Humor, Pictures on 2009/11/08
So, I think there might be a problem with my laptop’s battery meter:
EDIT: And about 3 minutes after posting up this image, my laptop died, due to a dead battery.
Random funnies from the Interwebs
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Humor, Pictures, Politics on 2009/09/07
Jedi humor, it never gets old.
If a cat gets it, why doesn’t the average American?
OK, seriously Russia, please replace Putin with someone who’s not batshit crazy. Or at least have him not appear in the stranger photos.
Man… I keep thinking, what with my love of classic Rock and the allure of Peace, Love, Flowers and Drugs, I was seriously born in the wrong decade.
Postsecret for September 6th, 2009
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Humor, Music, Pictures, Random Thoughts, Religion, YouTube on 2009/09/06
Just three post-cards to examine today.
Well, if you’re gonna believe in God, might as well believe in one who sounds like freaking Liam Neeson. Personally, I might have also tried Sean Connery, James Mason or Jeremy Irons, but yeah, it essentially has to be someone with a British-like accent. Ooh, I almost forgot: Alan Rickman.
OK, that’s just… fucked up. I’ve heard of lots of messed up things that happen to kids, and this mind-fuck is seriously weird. I’ve got no idea why they did this (and trust me, I’ve been contemplating theories since last night), but I’d just like to slap this guy’s parents around like two pinatas.
A popular motif, where one of the partners is going to leave just as soon as the kids are gone, all someone cheats, or they’re ready for it economically. I wish them the best of luck, of course. Whatever it takes to be happy, right?
—
Currently listening to: Led Zepellin‘s “Stairway to Heaven“, “Whole Lotta Love” and “What Is And What Should Never Be” and of course Pink Floyd:
Doctor’s visit
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Humor, Random on 2009/08/21
For the past few weeks I’ve been feeling really crappy and today I finally made it to the doctor’s office. Turns out I have a fairly nasty case of a condition called APD. Yeah, no clue what that is, so I asked the doctor. Turns out I’ve got a very serious Pug Deficiency. Apparently, APD stands for Acute Pug Deficiency (these doctors spend more time coming up with ironic names for serious diseases than they spend actually treating these diseases!). APD can be very serious, often leading to depression, altered mental states, liver failure (as a result of self-medication) and, in some cases, multiple system failure. APD can be life threatening.
Though, thankfully, APD is not as bad as CPD – Chronic Pug Deficiency. For these poor souls, there is no cure. According to the doctor, those suffering from CPD often have severe dog allergies or pug phobias, so the standard protocol cannot be used with them. There are substitutes, such as fat, closely-shaved cats doubling as pugs, but the protocol is still in testing and has not been FDA approved. Success rates are also much lower for this alternative.
According to the doctor, there are various possible choices at this point. The usual therapy method involves getting a pug, but this is unfeasible for me at the time: I work long hours and cannot give the pug a proper home. An alternative (as with most alternatives, success rates are obviously lower than with the primary protocol) is to find a pug-substitute. A small, cuddly dog (or cat, though once again, lower rates of success) will work, as long as it is similar in disposition to a pug. A last resort is a more radical approach, a so-called “life transplant”. This procedure involves the acquirement of a “life”. This approach works by masking the symptoms of APD, allowing the patient to temporarily “forget” that they have APD (the medical terms for this are much more complicated than “forget”, but this is essentially what happens). This protocol is both riskier and more expensive, hence its label as a “last resort”.
For the time being, I’m investigating such services as FlexPetz and finding solace in photos on IHasAHotDog.
Tradition
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Humor, Pictures on 2009/08/14
Of course, I would simply say “Tradition: incredibly stupid”, but that’s just me.
Vie De Merde
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Humor, Random Thoughts on 2009/08/14
If you’ve still got free time on your hands, don’t visit FMyLife. It’s a website that allows people to anonymously complain about their life. So it’s like a meta-filter of the internet. It’s got the usual “I did X in public and everybody laughed”, a smattering of “I caught my boy/girl-friend cheating on me with a close friend/relative” and some really original FML’s.
It’s also addictive. It’s so addictive, I check the site multiple times a day for new posts. It’s so addictive, I wrote an application for my phone so I can read posts anywhere. It’s so addictive, I had to update my application to have time limits: can’t use the program more often than once every four hours, and then for no more than 5 minutes at a time. Yeah, I’ve got a problem.
In fact, I’ve got a huge problem: I’ve read so many posts, that I’m now bored of the site. See, that’s what happens when you do too much of something, discover the pattern and lose interest in it. The pattern of FML’s is quite simple:
- Angst – pretty standard LiveJournal bullshit by teens who know that being rejected by a crush is the end of the world.
- Embarrassment – these can be pretty hilarious. The problem is that just as often the person is too uptight and the “embarrassment” is something trivial or inconsequential. Certainly not “Fuck My Life” material.
- The pain of being let down by someone close – this is the all too-common crap where the poster’s family/spouse/whatever says or does something that is interpreted as “I don’t like you” or does something to “hurt” the poster. Pretty standard and way too common.
- Betrayal – wow, this one just doesn’t get old, does it?
This is of course similar to my problem of having read too many jokes, becoming bored of “normal” jokes and switching gears toward meta-humor.
And just to wrap up this little post about yet-another a horribly addictive internet phenomenon, here’s one of my “favorite” posts:
Today, my 15-year-old daughter asked for a ride to her boyfriend’s house. It’s the same house I’ve been driving her to for sleepovers with her friend “Kate” for two years. FML
There are a lot of theories about this post, but my personal interpretation of this particular FML is as follows: there is no Kate and the poster’s kid has been sleeping with some boy for two years (since she was 13) and now (a) decided to stop lying about it or (b) it momentarily slipped her mind. This post is funny on multiple levels (assuming, of course, that the scenario is what described). For one thing, the poster is a bad parent for never having met Kate yet allowing the daughter to sleep over for two years. Second (and this one really hinges on my assumptions about this post), the hypocrisy of the parent never caring about meeting Kate or her parents and all of a sudden giving two shits about the daughter’s sex life. Ah, the hilarious plight of good ol’ hypocrites.
—
Currently listening to: 20th Century Masters – The Millennium Collection The Best Of Lynyrd Syknyrd and The Best of The Guess Who
Biking and stand-up
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Humor, Politics, Random Thoughts, Religion, YouTube on 2009/08/01
While biking, I generally listen to stand-up. It’s more interesting than music or just plain silence. And I’ve gotta say, aside from the Blue Collar Comedy Tour folks, I have yet to hear a comic come even close to being conservative or having conservative material in their show.
A lot of comics do liberal bits, because they’re just so damn simple. It’s very easy to appeal to San Francisco crowds with the usual litanies about Republicans being anti-gay while at the same time being caught in gay scandals, or with classic Bush-bashings.
Today I listened to two albums by Margaret Cho. Some good stuff there, but that much political commentary really made me realize that there really aren’t a lot of conservative comics. Probably the same reason that movies and TV shows are generally about Democrats: it’s hard to cheer for a President who’s pushing for oil drilling in Alaska, as opposed to working to reduce carbon dioxide emissions (“The American President”).
Honestly, I’m not quite sure how politically right-wing material can be made funny. It’s one thing for Carlin to pull this left-leaning gem out, “‘Have you ever noticed that all those women who are against abortion are the ones you wouldn’t want to fuck anyway?”, but making Ann Coulter funny is something else.
On second thought… Maybe Ann Coulter can be a successful comic. Just tell people that everything she says is an act, that no one in their right mind would be such an intolerant and hate-filled bitch. See, Coulter is just a female version of Colbert. Hell, the first article I read by her, I assumed it was all satire. I didn’t think anyone could seriously say any of that shit. Boy, that was a rude awakening.
Well, enough about that. Here’s a cute Carlin bit about rights:
News? What news?
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Comics, Humor, News, Pictures on 2009/04/27
My family has accepted the fact that I don’t know anything about current affairs. I don’t have a TV (get ’24′ and ‘House’ in the form of torrents and watch them on my Xbox), don’t read the papers, don’t bother reading CNN or any other news sources. I didn’t know when that guy threw a shoe at Governor Bush. Didn’t know about that pilot who landed a plane in a river and then all the asshole passengers thanked God for it. Didn’t know about swine flu until I got a semi-panicked phone call this evening.
I assumed XKCD just had yet another brilliant idea, namely of starting a rumor about a fictional disease and watching the masses go ape-shit. Now the comic seems less funny.
Daisy Owl
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Comics, Humor on 2009/04/24
A few months back I found a new webcomic. And promptly fell in love with it. It’s called “Daisy Owl” and it’s about an unconventional family and their wacky adventures. Below is a sample. (Had to recut the comic so that it would fit in here without resizing. Image links to the original.)
The comic is a great mix of… well, a lot of stuff. It seems to cover a lot of ground, yet always manages to stay close to the main theme of child-like wonder and discovery. And the drawings are just magical.
The story is of Daisy Owl, her brother Cooper, and their dad, Mr Owl. Then there’s their friend Steve the bear. Other characters come and go, but this is the basic ensemble.
Here are a few random strips I found interesting (links this time, don’t want the hassle of slicing more images):
- Continuation of the monkey story arc
- Fantastic art
- Explanation of the fantastic art
- Trash talk
- The unusual family
- The magician
- Owl and Reservoir Dogs
The website provides fairly standard previous-next navigation, so browse to understand what the comic is all about. Their random method sucks, though.