Displaying Category: Funny

Why does it look like the Winter Olympic medals have been left in the oven too long and have gotten all melty?

I wrote this for posting on another site, so while the context is a bit vague, I think the message is still worthy.

And just to alleviate any potential confusion that post title may generate in readers, I am not referring to myself. Though, while I am a people, I am not awesome. Now, I have read a lot of profiles on here and elsewhere (dating sites or otherwise) and there are so many interesting people out there who talk about their travels around the world and how many people they've helped and all of their awesome adventures in being awesome people and hell, some of these people just sound like modern day heroes/heroines. They're awesome. Actually, too awesome. You spend half your life in other countries using your supernatural healing abilities to cure sick children and turning dirt into Twinkies for starving babes while drinking wine with your best friends over sushi and Ethernopian foods (though, I don't see as many people going "Yum! Kitfu!") how is your life not completely and utterly satisfying? And I know it isn't satisfying because you're on a dating slash social networking site looking for partners (in the not gross one-night-stand-sense, not that I'm judging...), so that can't mean everything is completely awesome. See how I used my powers of deduction there? You can call me Holmes.

Let's face it, life isn't about what you do, it's who you're doing it with. Dirt to Twinkies is a great trick, but unless someone is there to help you hand them out (or at least take pictures) then how satisfying is the experience? I'm not trying to minimize the joy of helping people out, that's great and satisfying in its own way, but it isn't shared with that one person you really want to be sharing it with. Am I right? So here we are, alone in our otherwise perfect lives waiting for our voices screamed out into the darkest night to finally reflect off something and maybe find purchase somewhere in someone else's head. I'd like to think it's working out for some percentage of the populace, anyway. Me, not so much.

The thing is, I'm really not a very attractive human, and humans in general prefer to avoid the unattractive people. I know, I do it myself. Which may have some of you scratching your heads because at the beginning up there I talked about my extensive conversations with myself that I like to have when it's quiet. Well, obviously I don't have those conversations in front of mirrors. Moving on... What do unattractive people do to be heard? Or, if we really want to get pop-culture deep, I could take an example from the movie Avatar which raised this concept of being "seen" not in the literal sense, but how another person sees you for who you are. Not on the outside, not on the inside, but the whole person. I want someone to see me. I'm pretty sure that's all anyone really wants, right? (That's Sherlock Holmes.)

Even these perfect people with perfectly amazingly awesome lives? Yes, even them. And I don't know, maybe they have trouble too. Maybe people just see their awesomeness but still fail to see the whole person. Fail to see the flaws, fail to see the inner monologues. Fail to see the personal tragedies in their lives. Fail to see their appreciation for obscure pop-culture references. Fail to understand obscure pop-culture references (kids these days...).

So here's the point I've managed to avoid for the last four paragraphs. Awesome people who seem to have their life together, turning dirt into Twinkies and such, they play this game like "oh, I am so independent and awesome *holds up some dirt* I don't need anything else in my life!" Except they do, because whether you are awesome or just a 4, you're still human (maybe?) and it's a fairly consistent component of humanity that we crave social connections. Not just "oh, I'm helping the childrens!" social connections, but real, true, honest, "let's hold hands" social connections. Someone to share crappy mornings with and Cheerios with and bad weather and promotions and day trips into the city to visit the zoo and yes, even dirt Twinkies.

And right about now I'm realizing there's no way to bring this back to being about me without it getting stupidly awkward. Oooo! Shiny! ...

It is a fact that autocomplete in a search box is a wonderful tool to find the answer to life's most difficult questions. That is why autocompleteme.com is one of the best sites ever created.

This handy chart by cartoonist Dresden Codak sums up the 42 essential 3rd act twists useful across a range of genres.

Seriously, cake is much better than pie, but that's not what this video by singing ukulele slash kazoo playing duo Rocky and Balls is about.

I'm watching the latest episode of The Vampire Diaries, which is basically a show capitalizing on the whole Twilight "phenomena," and there's a scene in which one of the vampires is reading one of the Twilight books and commenting on how loopy Bella is and how the book gets vampires all wrong...

Okay, I know this series is corny, but I find tie-ins like that just wicked hilarious slash awesome.

There is such a thing as too far, and this song by FattySpins is a wonderful demonstration of why falling in love at the Apple Store is just sad.

*tear*

I saw Charlyne Yi at the Arlington Cinema & Drafthouse last night. She was doing her stand-up routine which is certainly one of the more unusual comedy routines I've seen. She moves from simple pun-based jokes to telling ghost stories (in the form of a song) to explaining in some detail a peculiar poop dream she had, to songs about fights she's had with a husband she doesn't have. I don't know if the relationship-related jokes and stories are new to her routine, but they definitely feel punctuated by the recent exposure her movie Paper Heart has gotten. Most of her routine concentrates on the intersection of strange and awkward. For example, pulling someone from the audience up on stage and proceeding to use a child's play-doctor set to give the man an exam... and then proposing to him and then having that drive a song opportunity. It's a special kind of wonderful that's both hilarious and heart-warmingly cute. The bottom line is, while I wasn't laughing hysterically, I was really having fun. At this particular performance, Charlyne also had guest Glenn Donnellan on stage to play his electric baseball bat violin (I heard this interview on NPR), which was really a treat.

This was a presentation of Ed Wood's infamous film Plan 9 from Outer Space, featuring riffing by the RiffTrax guys. In short, the movie was bad and the riffing was hilarious. I made the mistake of trying to eat Junior Mints while watching this which resulted in me nearly choking on a 'mint, causing me to go into a coughing fit and get dangerously close to vomiting. Good times! I had never seen Plan 9 before this, so it was definitely educational, in the sense that I now know how bad a movie can get... Michael Bay, you still have a long way to fall...

The rating I am presenting here goes mostly to the quality of the riffing, not Plan 9.

4/5

You have to say that title as if you are Frankenstein's monster waving his arms at a lit torch in order to get in the spirit of Southestern Conference's (SEC) soon to be announced social media policies. The policy posted earlier this month read:

Ticketed fans can't "produce or disseminate (or aid in producing or disseminating) any material or information about the Event, including, but not limited to, any account, description, picture, video, audio, reproduction or other information concerning the Event."

So basically, if I were at a game (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!1!) and I posted a tweet (HAHAHAHA!!!) saying "We're ahead by 3!" the SEC could... what... wave their arms and yell "social media baaaaad!!!" I mean, seriously, what are they going to do? Would they even know, by the tweet, who posted it? Would they get a court order to view my cell phone records or Twitter account history to verify I posted the offending update to the four and a half users subscribed to my Twitter feed? Would they issue a take-down notice? Do they really want to prevent people from getting interested in their events?

This is reminding me a lot of the record labels' fight against online radio stations like Pandora, because you really can't calculate the the massive damage caused by fans discovering your artists music and using these new mediums to purchase albums/songs and rave/rant about these artists. After all, it's all about ensuring you maintain the smallest audience possible in order to guarantee your collapse in the unavoidable world of the Internet.

Way to go asshats.

You can read a more thorough presentation of the issue over at mashable.

Update: I heard on the radio a few minutes ago that the policy has been revised to only ban live video streams. I haven't yet found an article explaining this.