Category: Humour

Funny. Or meant to be funny. Or about funny.

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Humour Politics

President Of Popular Opinion

Irish broadcaster Gay Byrne speaking at a publ...
It's not even plugged in. He can only talk into microphones now.

Well that was a bullet dodged. Gay Byrne for President. Wow.

Some background here for the overseas reader – in Ireland we elect a President to do nothing. Unlike the American President who is head of both, the Irish President is head of State but not of the Executive. In other words they don’t make decisions at all, they are quite literally there just to look pretty. Well, look stately I suppose. They are meant to be a figurehead for the country, standing above the tooth-and-claw world of politics. Like royalty, but without having to pay for their whole extended family. The Constitution requires them to agree with government policies and never say anything controversial.

Someone thought that this was a job for Gay Byrne?

Gay Byrne was for decades the biggest figure in the Irish media. He hosted both the most popular daily radio show and – by far – the most popular weekly TV chat show. All live. Since his retirement it’s taken at least three other presenters to cover for him. He is is a well-loved, avuncular figure with a twinkly eye who embodies some of the best aspects of Ireland. Some. He can also be irascible and strongly opinionated. I invite British readers to imagine a Terry Wogan with… moods.

As soon as people have calmed down a bit they’ll realise the idea was as mad as a yoghurt with spanners in it. What were the chances of Gay Byrne getting through a seven-year Presidential term without telling the government where to get off?

Zero. There was no chance of that happening. Thank God he turned the nomination down. He would have made Hugo Chavez look diffident.

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Cosmography Humour

Tip Of The Week

Ochlerotatus notoscriptus, Tasmania, Australia
You Little Bastard

An insect bit me last night. You should have seen it, it was about four feet long. OK, four inches long. Well half an inch. But those are the worst. Just a little biting fly, but I actually felt it. I assume this means that by fly standards it had huge fangs. The reaction seems to bear that out: A swelling the size of an egg.

F*** I hope it’s not an egg.

I’m always reluctant to take antihistamines. I know the immune system is a learning entity, almost an animal in itself, and I worry – perhaps unreasonably – that drugs may interfere with learning. What if they’re like its cigarettes, calming it down for now only to leave it more irritable after? Nevertheless I took one (Piriton). I knew this bite was going to be a bad’un.

I also managed to dig out the insect bite cream (Anthisan; I know this is beginning to sound like product placement, but I want to be precise about what did – and didn’t – work), which seems to have been finding new pockets of my bag to hide in ever since the walk in Clare. Then I flooded the house with fly spray (Raid…). That little bastard was not going to get me while I was sleeping, I didn’t want to wake up looking like bubble wrap.

Due perhaps to side effects of the first-generation antihistamine I slept soundly, waking at one in the afternoon in a state of mild panic. As a way to stimulate myself into action I’d set a very unfinished version of the last blog post to be published automatically at 1:30. (If you look at the URL you can see the article was originally titled “I’m Asleep”.) So if it sounds like it was written in a rush, you know why.

Written in a rush, by a man suffering intense irritation all down one arm. While I was asleep the itching had kicked into insane-making gear. Though the swelling was only in the slashy part of the wrist – annoyingly in the way, should I feel like ending it all – the itching spread upwards to my elbow, sideways around until it met itself at the back, and outwards for several inches. You know that feeling? It was like the air around my forearm was itchy.

I had to visit the pharmacy later anyway, so I asked for some ideas. The only thing they had that I hadn’t tried though was Eurax, the anti-itch cream. This proved… absolutely ineffective. Nothing was working, and I was now in no-scratch hell. There was only one thing to do. Something I should have tried a lot sooner.

I think I learned this years ago, when I had an attack of orf. Orf is a virus you can only get from a sheep bite. It’s a long story. Even if I leave out the acid trip, it’s still a long story.

A sink full of water as hot as I could bear it. Immersed entire forearm, kept it there a while. Then ran cold water over the effected area. I did that just once. It’s been a couple of hours. The itching hasn’t returned. I recommend this method.

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Humour Technology

It’s All Meme Meme Meme

"O frly?", the (official) free softw...
This is a meme

Gawker have a point. (OK, I check out Gawker occasionally. I’m not proud.) Lazy television producers getting segments – sometimes whole shows – out of the latest Internet “craze”, which generally was over before the segment started and lasted about as long. The “meme“. (Whatever you think of Richard Dawkins, his concept did not deserve this ignominious end.) Here’s a rule which I think the producers needs to understand: If you hear about an internet meme via any medium except the Internet, it is already over.

These things were only really funny when it seemed like they were special, hidden from the rest of the world by a veil of shared cultural reference. But now the Internet is indistinguishable from other media. Everything blends together and becomes brown plasticine. It doesn’t feel like a separate and more mysterious world anymore. It’s as if the process started in September 1993, when the Internet was opened to the public, has finally reached completion.

This is what some people have said about Google+ in fact, that while it’s still in semi-closed testing (you need an invite to join) there is a standard of good behaviour and quality of discussion there that you just don’t get on other bits of the Net anymore. And as Google+ gives you more control over who you hear from and are heard by than other online social networks, there is some hope that it might stay that way.

But then you have the opposite problem. When the Internet was new it may have only been small, but it was global. Now, it’s fragmenting into a great many personal networks. By language, by country, by age, by interest, by taste. All of them separate.

And all of them of course policed – by commercial interest and by government – instead of being a self-policing community.

We need a new Internet. Anyone know anything about wiring?

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Humour Politics

The Great Theft Of London

Mayor of London, Boris Johnson poses for a pho...
Seriously. Boris Johnson

Pent-up resentment, a growing social divide, mistrust of the police? At the start, certainly. Riots follow Tory governments like, well like effect follows cause. But now something else has happened. Something new.

Consider the circumstances. The Metropolitan Police, tasked with keeping order in London, are demoralised and ill-prepared. They’ve had a 20% funding cutback even though, as always in a recession, crime rates are soaring. They’ve just lost their Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner in the phone hacking scandal, under a pall of suspected corruption. And the man who is ultimately in charge is Boris Johnson.

I’ll just say that again so it can sink in. Boris Johnson.

What we are seeing is an extraordinary historic opportunity. Social media and fancy phones were not really necessary, it almost crystallised out of the air. A truly vast number of petty thieves, shoplifters, and many who until now have never been tempted by crime had one single thought. If they all did it at once, they could steal… they could steal… They could steal London.

The whole thing. It’ll be gone by Thursday.

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Humour Politics Technology

And Now, Some Killer Robots

This is the most up-to-date DARPA logo.
Not sure, but I think it stands for "Deadly Attack Robots Picnicking on Americans"

It wasn’t widely reported for some reason, but in their report explaining the credit rating downgrade, Standard & Poor explicitly blame the Republican party:

We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.

So it looks as if it’s going to be yet another day of horrors on the markets. Dammit, let’s forget about all this for a while. Let’s think about something fun. Like killer robots.

DARPA, the US agency charged with the task of coming out with completely freakishly insane ideas just to make sure that no one else has them first – how can I work for them? – decided in 2009 that what the US army needed was a robot that could power itself independently on the battlefield by burning what fuel it can scavenge, including… biomass.

Hmm. Biomass. What sort of biomass would there be a lot of, on battlefields?

Well, there’s the dead. Plenty of them lying around. Burn up a treat, do the dead. And before you recoil in horror, it has to be said that it’s an interesting challenge from an engineering viewpoint. The real hard part I think will be programming it to discriminate between dead bodies and other, similar things it might be able to pick up. Like the dying.

There was even speculation that they could be built as Von Neumann machines – that is, mechanisms capable of constructing copies of themselves. Because what could go wrong with flesh-eating military robots that breed?

Oh, I forgot to tell you what they want to call it. “Energetically Autonomous Tactical  Robot.” Or EATR. Always have such a waggish sense of humour, those face-eating military kill-bot designers.

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Humour Politics

Some Mild Economic Hassle Ahead

Third world market / mercado tercermundista
Sign of the Times - Image by Andreuchis via Flickr

Some may say I’ve been ignoring the global economic crisis, but the way I see it, if you’re at a funeral you don’t say “Jesus, it’s a dead guy in a freaking box!”

Let’s try to be positive. There has been a little good news in the last week. Some sort of half-assed budget deal was cut in the US, saving its economy from plunging to Third World status. Yet. The Euro still exists, even if it seems about as stable now as an upended pyramid. Full of nitroglycerine. On fire.

But otherwise, the outlook is not so good. The Americans cannot borrow and spend to get out of recession because the balance of power is held by political morons. In the eurozone, we apply band-aid after band-aid to a haemorrhage. Sooner or later we will need to face up to the facts: We either have one single economy with one single fiscal policy, or we can’t have a single currency. That’s not a decision we know how to even begin contemplating taking, and the longer we put it off, the more countries are going to be flung like screaming toddlers from the runaway merry-go-round.

And in a sure sign of economic brick-crapping terror, the gold price is skyrocketing again. Two weeks ago I pointed out that the world’s gold stocks were now worth eight trillion dollars. It’s estimated that in three months they’ll be worth over a trillion more. Funny how market chaos seems to be good for people who happen to own a lot of gold. But that’s probably just one of those coincidences.

We shouldn’t panic or despair yet though. There’s still China. China, that engine of the global economy, driving back collapse. Even when all of us in the West are too broke to buy each other’s stuff, we can always afford theirs. Guess what’s happening in China? Their buoyant, vibrant, export-fuelled high growth economy has led to – no go on, guess – has led to… Have you got it? Yep, that’s right. A housing bubble. China has a housing bubble.

But don’t worry, it’s bound to find a soft landing. Don’t they all? Ha ha ha. Oh God we’re so doomed.

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Humour Politics Technology

Chips With Everything

Irish Politican, Sen. Fidelma Healy Eames, sta...
She's Full Of Bright Ideas!

Speaking of Senators having bad ideas, Fidelma Healy Eames (FG) tweeted this yesterday:

Playstn Xbox danger 2 health as 20 yo dies.Makers shd install auto shutdown chip af’r 2hr play w/ 12hr break on all game.http://t.co/kR0ebnu

The link goes to the Daily Mail – but don’t worry, I’ve read it so you don’t have to. This noted UK journal of objective health information explains how a twenty-year old died from deep vein thrombosis because he played on his Xbox for twenty hours a day sometimes. Well they don’t actually say because, they say he played Xbox and he died of DVT, but the inference is there to be drawn.

Therefore she wants all Xbox-PlayStations to have a chip that will turn them off for twelve hours after two hours of play. (Strikes me that a games console already has all the necessary hardware for a timed shut-down, but politicians do like “chips”.) Even the Daily Mail didn’t go that far, merely reporting the father’s call for parents to pay attention to what their kids are doing. That is actually good advice. Our failed TD Senator however believes in discipline through technology.

Of course games consoles are only the beginning. If DVT is caused by sitting too long, then anything that causes you to sit too long should logically have a Healy Eames chips in it. Two hours of TV a night should be enough for anyone. Two hours on your work computer, then a twelve hour break. Sounds good to me. And of course there will be Healy Eames cars that will only run for two hours at a time, then drive along beside you while you take a healthy walk.

But of course one might sit for twenty hours doing crossword puzzles. Healy Eames will eventually have to put a chip in the real culprit – your chair. Well less a chip, more a sort of giant spring mechanism.

Can’t you still cheat, by sitting on a box instead of your proper government-approved childsafe anti-sitting chair? For a while maybe. Until she finds out how to put a chip in your arse.

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Humour

Reindeer Sandwich

Sami woman reindeer milking in Kvenland, Weste...
Two people about to make a "Reindeer Sandwich"

I’m having a reindeer sandwich. This is not some bizarre sexual practice. It’s a sandwich with reindeer in it. Makes a change. It was all I could do not to hum Christmas songs as I buttered the bread.

I’ve wanted to try reindeer since I was in Finland over a year ago, but didn’t know enough Finnish to chance it. Their supermarkets are great, but they stock such a vast range of meat products that you feel they can’t all be the parts of animals we think of as edible. Yesterday though I was in Ikea, where reindeer is helpfully sold in English.

Ikea is weird, isn’t it? A vast warehouse full of what comedian John-Luke Roberts might describe as perfectly adequate furniture. Absolutely nothing was actually ugly, but I hardly saw a single thing I positively liked either. Some of the ceramic sinks were satisfactorily solid. The mattresses seemed excellent value. But I was expecting more somehow. And the Swedish names were nothing like as amusing as people make out.

OK… Except for a set of storage containers labelled Slubb. I enjoyed saying Slubb.

Slubb.

The deli section was rather a letdown too. There just wasn’t that much variety, and I was expecting, well, a smorgasbord. I did get some pickled herring of course, and some fish roe paste in a tube which I dubbed ‘The Antitoothpaste’. And then the reindeer. Smoked reindeer slices, which look rather like brown ham and, disappointingly, taste rather like brown ham.

So much for reindeer then – or ‘pigs with antlers’, as they may or may not be called in Finnish.

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Humour Technology

Jam Don’t Shake Like That

A gelatin capsule for medicine
It's People!

A couple of days ago, I shared with you some fun gelatin facts. None of them however even begins to compare with the one I stumbled across today.

How would you like to eat…

No I can’t even say it. This is ridiculous. Insane.

But I have to tell you. How would you like to eat… No. Yes, dammit. I must. How would you like to eat…

Human-flavoured Jell-O?

Or OK, human gelatin. Which is the animal-derived protein that Jell-O and other such desserts are based on. Just add boiling water. But human gelatin is of course human-flavoured, by definition.

But why – Why the f*&@!? – would you want to make gelatine from people?

Because it’s vegetarian, for one.

Well kinda. It’s actually made by yeast, which is vegetarian. But the yeast has been genetically engineered with human DNA to manufacture collagen, the gelatin protein. I cannot however see a lot of vegetarians accepting that this is anything but anathema.

All right, the idea behind making human collagen may really be that it has medical applications; it’s likely to be more compatible with the human body. Interesting though how I have really split feelings about that. If, say, you wanted collagen to inject into people, using human instead of animal seems more natural. Kinda.

But making that collagen into gelatin and using it for medical applications, such as soluble drug capsules, that you actually eat?

Cannibalism, plain and simple. Fetch torches and pitchforks, stet.

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Humour

And Now For Some Random Facts

Huge ocean sunfish (mola mola) at Outer Bay ex...
In German, the sunfish is sometimes known as Schwimmender Kopf, or "swimming head"

Jell-O is the official state snack of Utah. This is the sort of thing you could make up and people would believe it, but in this case it happens to be true.

Vegetables and fruit served in savoury jelly is sometimes called “congealed salad“, possibly the worst name ever given to something you expect another human being to eat.

Jell-O and other brands of jelly are made of collagen extracted from the boiled bones, connective tissues, organs and some intestines of animals such as cattle and horses. Though contrary to popular belief, there are no hooves in it.

So that’s a relief then.