What
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· · · Humor
Keith and Angle Brackets · This, by Dave Walker, shows up fifteen messages or so into the comments on a Dive Winer piece, and I can’t link to it directly (nothing purple) [Update: yes there is, and I can], but it’s way too good to pass up: When the world ends, the only things left will be cockroaches, rats, Keith Richards, and mangled text that has been escaped one-too-many or one-too-few times.
Silly Internet Game · Meme via Burning Bird: From Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White: “Mr. Zuckerman heard too, and he came out of the machine shed where he was mending a tool.” Instructions: Grab the nearest book, open it to page 23, find the 5th sentence, and post its text along with these instructions. I would add to the instructions: point back to where you got the idea so that we can follow the threads.
Crushing Statistics · I think it was Dave Winer who originally pointed out that the Government of Canada has has a bunch of RSS feeds. I subscribed to the main National News feed; it has some predictable puffery along the lines of “Prime Minister outlines bold vision for future of llama-farming,” but also has useful health alerts (there’s been some nasty stuff getting into the honey supply), plus The Daily, a regular snippet of statistics from Statistics Canada, which for some weird reason is a world leader in the field of country measurement. In today’s Daily I found some Crushing statistics.
Blogging Strategy Funnies · I didn’t think I was coming to Sun to work on blogging and syndication, but it turns out the whole industry has woken up to the fact that There’s Something Happening Here, and so it’s burning quite a few of my cycles, and has also generated a couple of amusing (and instructive) anecdotes ...
Nitrogen head · Dropped by the doctor to get some sun-damage spots removed from the top of my head—this problem is not uncommon in pale white bald guys. They do this very simply, by dipping a swab in liquid nitrogen and freezing the spots off. They call it “burning” and it feels like burning, quite unpleasant. The doctor said I might get a headache, and I was wondering about sudden drops in brain temperature. Wait a second... maybe I could overclock.
Nautical Geek Joke · As previously noted, I subscribed to The Gunroom, the online home of Patrick O’Brian fanciers; in the first day there have been two not-bad jokes. This one concerns a pirate’s parrot who got a bad case of sunstroke and was heard crowing Pieces of seven, pieces of seven. Which was clearly a parroty error.
Arab Potatoes · Joke courtesy of Carrol Cox: An old Arab man who has been living for 40 years in Idaho wanted to cultivate potatoes in his garden, but digging up the earth was getting to be too hard at his age. His only son, Ali, was studying in France, so he decided to send him an e-mail explaining the situation: “Dear Ali: I feel very disappointed because this year I'll be unable to plant my potatoes in my garden. I am too old to plow the ground. I wish you were here, then my problems would be solved, because you would remove the soil for me. I love you, Dad” “Dad: For God's sake, DO NOT remove the ground of that garden. It's there that I have hidden ‘you-know-what’. I love you, Ali” At 4 a.m. the next day the local police, plus FBI and CIA agents, along with Pentagon delegates, came in and turn the garden upside down looking for dangerous material to build bombs, anthrax or whatever. They found nothing and they left. The same day the old man received another e-mail from his son: “Dear Dad: I am sure you can plant your potatoes now. It was the best I could do in the current circumstances. I love you, Ali”
When Bad Things Happen to Good Vegetables · The pain from this tragedy has abated somewhat, probably because it all happened during the winter of ’83-’84 and time heals if not all then at least some wounds ...
Sheep Emblem Azerbaijan · I am unable to resist one more unintentional funny courtesy of the admirable NetNewWire delta feature ...
Ian’s Joke · Ian Jacobs told me this one-liner: “Did you hear about the jurisprudence fetishist who got off on a technicality?”
Data Potato Doo-wop Doo-wop · This entry (I won’t dignify it with the term “essay”) contains entirely pure unadulterated silliness ...
