Amusing: November 2003 Archive Page

My son wants a plastic pie for Christmas.Literacy Weblog)

Our toy kitchen has one plastic pie, but my son Peter wants another one, so that he and I can pretend to have a pie fight like the one in The Great Race. He has asked Santa on two different occasions (once at church, once in the shopping mall). It's an odd request, but since it involves me, very sweet. (Ugh... I didn't plan that pun. Sorry.)

Peter noticed that the second Santa had a different face, voice, costume, and beard than the first one. I've let Leigh handle all the Santa questions. Since I was the youngest of three siblings, I don't really remember ever seriously believing in Santa Claus; since Leigh was the oldest of three, she remembers trying to keep the secret for the benefit of her brothers.

Untenured radical flirts
attend MLA meetings in skirts,
feathers, tassels and suits,
with leatherette boots
Rendered wholly from Savile Row shirts

--Kieran Healy (see first comment) --Like Circus Ponies? (Invisible Adjuct)

Believe me, I'm all for the well-placed bit of flatulence, but this is Dr. Seuss, for Pete's sake, and the onslaught of burps, farts, pee, puke, and almost-bad words is stunningly miscalculated. --Ty Burr --Kitty Litter: Coarse `Cat in the Hat' is another case of Seuss abuse (Boston.com)

This movie sounds awful, but I haven't read more entertaining reviews in a long time. Here's another priceless quote: "If the producers had dug up Ted Geisel's body and hung it from a tree, they couldn't have desecrated the man more."

Here's my take on it:

I will not watch it on TV.
I will not watch on DVD.
I will not watch it on the screen.
I will not watch with tot or teen.

"In order to maintain airspeed velocity, a swallow needs to beat its wings forty-three times every second, right?"

Actually, wrong. By comparing the European Swallow with bird species of similar body mass, we can estimate that the swallow beats its wings 18 times a second with an amplitude of 18 cm... Jonathan Corum --Estimating the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow (Style)

This pop-cult reference is, of course, to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

The world's only double-barreled cannon is now proudly displayed on the lawn of the Athens City Hall, about a hundred miles off Route 1. It is a monument to every geek who ever had what seemed to be a really good idea at the time. --Michelle Delio --Clocked by Two Smoking Barrels (Wired)

Unless you're into history, this story is a little dry until the appearance of the robot with the shotgun.

2: about the laundering

The wash becomes a finish the evening tomorrow at the front desk until 7 o'clock at night of the day .

(It becomes the evening tomorrow in the morning even if it has.) --About the Laundering (Engrish.com)

Found via happy ging. Disclaimer: If I tried writing in German (the only other language I studied besides Latin), I'm sure I'd make plenty of amusing mistakes. This one reminded me of a cross between William Carlos Williams, e.e. cummings, and a really bad interactive fiction text parser.

[H]umor is very important in the classroom: it can keep students' attention, it can diffuse tense situations, it can encourage creativity, and it can call attention to absurdity (and sometimes absurdity deserves it, whether its a social phenomena or inherent to a student comment). I even make a number of wisecracks or sarcastic comments, which sometimes -- when I hear what I just said -- make me laugh out loud during lectures (this actually happened in my poetry class today...and the students kept laughing, which made me laugh even longer... you know how that goes). --Mike Arnzen --Make 'em Laugh (Pedablogue)

Forget discriminating people based on their race, religion, gender, or colloquial term for four-square, it'sall about playlistism. That'sright, judging people by their iTunes playlist. Now, I can't take full credit for this idea; playlistism is really the brainchild of Katie ?the iTunes Hatemonger? Brown, but if playlistism ever takes off like the Klu Klux Klan did, I?d be a Grand Wizard. Let me explain the basics. --Stephen Aubrey --Adventures in Higher Education: iPod Envy (Argus)

Software which enables e-mail writers to choose the image they want to portray is being developed by a team of Scottish researchers. --How to Become an E-Mail Extrovert (BBC)

Hi!!!! This new software sounds cool! ;) Its supposed to make your writing more cheerful and outgoing!! The article is a bit vauge -- maybe the designers have a little secret to keep (hehehe). I thinka Scottish extrovert is probably somebody who smiles at you before lopping your head off with a Claymore! Hahahaha j/k. Anyway, informal language with lots of exclamation points (!!!) and the word "hi" instead of "hello" helps your writing project an outgoing, upbeat personality!! Wow!!!

So, guys... here's my new, emotionally upbeat and extroverted writing style!! I even threw in a few typos to. Whadaya think!? Huh? Huh????

Now, everything you write will read like just the most annoying spam you've ever gotten!! Woo hoo! ;)

Take care! :-*

"The pirate's life is so deadly that humor is an essential part of what they do. They tell jokes, they make jests, they perform plays. They're hilarious." People are obsessed with pirates, Rediker says, because, while pirates may be "the common enemy of mankind," they're also "the freest people on earth," which makes pirate humor particularly cutting. Because they stand?or sail?apart from the culture, pirates are well suited to make mockery of it. Pirates may have always been funny, but their contemporaries usually found them more terrible than witty. Either way, they found them fascinating. --Jill "Calico Bless Kid" Lepore --Talk of the Past: The Sea in Me Blood (Common-place)

Best insight from this piece, attributed to Dave Barry: "What if Bill Clinton, a fancy-dressed freebooter if there ever was one, had told the American people, 'I did not have sex with that woman, me hearties'?"