385 posts tagged “humour”

This is hilarious.
   Because the entire planet outside the US does not have a November Thanksgiving Day, a tiny number of Americans, including The Hollywood Reporter, got upset that the Aussies (and, for the record, the Brits) aired Flash Forward’s 10th episode before the US.
   And, inevitably, it got on to the Torrents.
   Now these folks are pointing the finger at Australians for doing something Americans do commonly and regularly.
   ‘How dare those pesky Australians do what we do!’ they say, with their fingers pointed toward the southwest. ‘Gosh, we hate how they speak English and drive SUVs and big cars! Who do they think they are?’
   Not only is this massive and rather funny hypocrisy, The Hollywood Reporter’s “journo” says this: ‘For the record, Aussies do have a Thanksgiving holiday, but it's in May and they don't really do it right.’
   Australians have a Thanksgiving Day?!
   I have lived in the antipodes for three decades and this is the first I have heard of it. I also don’t remember any story about the first white settlers getting there and doing a big feed for themselves and the Aboriginals.
   Hey, I’d love to hop over to Sydney to watch their next parade in May with giant inflatable Ned Kellys going over the Opera House and floats in the shape of the Holden 48-215.

Only an hour to get the compose screen loading on Vox today …
   I had another tab open and it took about 10 minutes.
   Nothing much to blog—I am just seeing if Vox has fixed things. Turns out it hasn’t, though I am still wondering why on earth the three people who have been blocked to varying degrees are all oriental. A heck of a coincidence, but what are the odds?
   For your entertainment, a video that Tanya referred to me for all the font geeks out there:

House Industries must be thrilled with the free promo.

Time elapsed for the compose window to load: four hours. I have just started another Vox account and the compose window comes up instantly (I will not blog from there as I refuse to use noms de plume). Someone at Vox does not want me blogging.
   Here’s something I did want to share, now that I remember. However, my commentary is hardly going to be fresh since Vox never loads on demand any more. Enjoy it for what it is. It was, to me, the funniest scene in So I Married an Axe Murderer. Quite clearly, Mike Myers, who co-wrote the movie, based the parents in the movie on his real-life ones.

On Google News yesterday (during the Vox blackout):

   Nigeria: the Country might have slipped, but I wonder where Nigeria: the Movie is, and Nigeria: the Flame Thrower (the kids love that one).
   Apparently, we topped this index, which is nice to know. I wonder if Bill English’s housing allowances made it into the survey period.

Oprah Winfrey was named for Orpah in the Hebrew Bible, but a spelling mistake led to her unique name, one which is in the global consciousness today. (Search for Orpah and Google asks if you are searching for Oprah.) I’m sure she’d be thrilled to find out that the spelling has been fixed by ABC News:

Ever wandered into a music or video store here and there are sections marked ‘A–Z’, ‘New Zealand’ and ‘Foreign’?
   The biggest section is the first one, and often we have the smallest section.
   Think about it though: shouldn’t everything not in ‘New Zealand’ be under ‘Foreign’?
   The other one I get a kick out of is ‘World’, which Borders uses. Shouldn’t everything be under ‘World’? I mean, if you have this category, there is no need to have any others.

While I wouldn’t consider myself a “birther” (I am far too left-wing, relatively speaking, for that), there’s a part of me that wishes the American president would show his birth certificate, just to silence a good group of his critics and get them focusing on more important matters. I publicly said so at the time when the matter first came up and yes, it did seem odd, even if his challengers in the courts’ system had fairly ill-prepared cases.
   However, I remember how John Major, then PM of the UK, resisted showing his O levels, which he also had sealed, because he felt they weren’t important. Eventually, he released them, and his marks were unremarkable. They made absolutely no difference to his authority and it was a “nothing” story that the British media were good at pushing. Maybe President Obama is taking a lesson from a conservative politician: showing it would be a waste of time.
   I imagine in the US, things are so divisive politically that if President Obama were to show his (original, long form) birth certificate, there would still be people saying it was faked. I have read some comical criticisms even of his certification of live birth, pointing out the colour differences between ones they had seen and the one on the President’s campaign site. I guess those people have never used more than one scanner, or more than one digital camera.
   The political right, even if its case had merit, kept shooting itself in the foot with some of the less thought-out theories. I admit there is a question that could be easily cleared up, but Obama’s own critics are clouding the issue. While they’re doing that, then the President and his allies can sit back comfortably.
   Still, just to get a bit of closure as I potentially enter local politics, here’s a 37-year-old piece of paper (in fact, it is 37 years today that Dad had my birth registered):

   Queen Elizabeth Hospital is still there, as is 4 Victory Avenue, though we soon moved into the front apartment. Here is how the entry to the building looks these days:     Now, that should all check out, not that local politics gets as nasty as American national politics.

I saw a bit of this on telly, but didn’t expect it to be passed around the internet as much. Background: ‘Safer communities together’ is the local slogan for the police, much like ‘To protect and serve’ for some American police departments.

I’m not sure how my friend Pearl came up with the scenario of Agent Smith from The Matrix (shown at left in one of his many guises—I think this was the scene where he battled Neo in a gay bar, before one of his stilettos broke) battling Joseph Stalin, but I took her lead:

   Smith: Mr Stalin.
   Stalin: Who are you? How did you get in to the Kremlin?
   Smith: It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you’re not actually mammals.
   Stalin: Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.
   Smith: You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area.
   Stalin: Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach.
   Smith: There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague and we are the cure.
   Stalin: Death is the solution to all problems. No man, no problem.

As Agent Smith contemplates Stalin’s response, a Soviet Red Guard shoots Smith in the back with an AK-47. As Smith appears to die, Joseph Stalin turns into Agent Smith.
   Agent Smith 1, Soviet Union 0.

The Nobel Prize committee likes that President Obama is warm. Over in France, Carla Bruni likes that presidents are cosy.
   Thanks to Michelle Kleinsmith for inspiring this post.