Reality makes way for the Bush script

"No camera crews have ever been granted this much access to this national security adviser," Oprah told her audience as she greeted her guest. A major scoop was not far behind. Is there anything you can tell us about the president that would surprise us? Oprah asked. Yes, Ms. Rice said, Mr. Bush is a very fast eater. "If you're not careful," she continued, "he'll be on dessert and you're still eating the salad."

Japanese Bum-poking Videogame

Built into the cabinet is a bent over backside, and on the screen in front of you appears the expression of the person as you shove the finger inside. The harder you shove the finger inside, the more points you score.

Flame Warriors

Stone Deaf is one of the few truly invincible Warriors because nothing can shatter his impenetrable armor of non recognition. His primitive battle strategy is maddening effective; he simply refuses to acknowledge any arguments he doesn't like.

World Beard and Moustache Championships

The World Beard and Moustache Championships will take place in Carson City, Nevada, on November 1, 2003. A panel of distinguished judges will determine which beards and moustaches in seventeen separate categories merit their owners the championship trophies and the coveted world champion titles.

Judge Raps Decision in Eminem Case

A Michigan judge has written a rap-inspired poem to explain why hip-hop superstar Eminem didn't take the rap for slander.

...

"The lyrics are stories no one would take as fact/They're an exaggeration of a childish act," she wrote.

"Any reasonable person could clearly see/That the lyrics could only be hyperbole."

Sorry, my mind's a blank.

While it may be true that the Bible's attacks on homosexuality are scattered, complex and ambiguous, one thing's for sure:

God Hates Figs

MPs back Carr's go-home remark

Federal politicians from both sides backed NSW Premier Bob Carr's comments that migrants unwilling to live by Australian law should go home.

Mr Carr has attracted criticism for saying those responsible for this week's drive-by murders in Sydney should "obey the law of Australia or ship out of Australia".
The federal government and Muslim community groups said the premier's comments were divisive and fanned racism.

But federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson said average Australians did not like that kind of violence by anyone.

"None of us want to see this kind of violence, this kind of retribution," he told reporters.

"The message to people who want to engage in this sort of behaviour is that they should be subjected to the full force of the law.

"Anyone who thinks that they will be coming to Australia and want to bring that sort of behaviour with them, they would do well to listen to Mr Carr's remarks because that is what the average Australian thinks.

"It's this sort of behaviour that gets right up our nose."

Too right. Doesn't Johnny Foreigner know that in Australia you follow Australian ways? Shoot your wife and kids, then shoot yourself. If murder-suicide is good enough for fair dinkum Aussies it's good enough for bloody immigrants!

Ooooooh! Satire!

We need more extremists like these:

CIVILISE THE CITY

A gentle protest against vulgarity commencing at 8.30 am on Thursday 16th October 2003, departing from the statue of Oscar Wilde, Adelaide Street, London WC2.

Society is teetering on the edge of a precipice overlooking a dark chasm – a darkness where the only affordable footstuffs are hamburgers and pizzas; a darkness where ‘a cup of tea’ is in reality an overpriced cardboard beaker of tea-flavoured hot water; a darkness where every citizen wears a meaningless outfit of faux-sportif clothing made in third-world sweatshops – in short, it is a darkness in which Chappist qualities such as common courtesy, eccentricity and civility have no place.

We propose to take a stand against this culture of vulgarity. On Thursday 16th October 2003, we shall politely disrupt the status quo by gently pointing out the error of its ways. Our methods will be stealth, civility and charm, our targets the symbols of corporate banality: fast food emporia, coffee shops, sportswear purveyors and lager shebeens. We also aim to provide gentlemanly assistance to those citizens whom we feel have lost their way in the quagmires of solipsism that our cities have become. Civilise the City will commence at 8.30 am at the statue of Oscar Wilde on Adelaide Street, London WC2. We urge participants to protest in the following manner:

• Enter the purveyors of ‘fast food’ and request a table for two with “a pleasant view,” then order a breakfast of devilled kidneys, kedgeree and eggs Benedict.
  
  
• In a high-street coffee chain which offers tea on its menu, ask for a pot of lapsang souchong, a cup and saucer and some toast with Gentleman’s Relish.
  
  
• In the premises of Mr Nike, ask to be measured for a suit by the head cutter.
  
  
• Offer passing gentlemen exquisite buttonholes for their lapels.
  
  
• In the type of high street hostelry that has a bouncer on the door, order a Pousse Café (the yolk of one fresh egg, 1/6 gill of yellow Chartreuse, 1/6 gill of Eau de Vie de Danzig, or Danziger Goldwasser).
  
  
• Enter an ophthalmic optician and ask to see the monocle selection.
  
  
• Offer to escort ladies across the road and assist them with their luggage.
  
  
• In a communications outlet, attempt to ‘upgrade’ a perfectly good Royal Exchange telephone to a mobile telephone.
  
  
• Enter an establishment offering “Internet chat rooms” and try to engage someone in conversation.
  
  
• Offer “gentlemen of the road” (hobos) not money – which they might spend on food – but a nip of cognac from your hip flask.

Yes, but is it something other than art?:

Hikers Find 70 Shoes Filled With Butter

A Swedish couple hunting on a remote mountain Sunday in Sweden's far northern province of Jaemtland found 70 pairs of shoes, all filled with butter.

"If we knew who had done this we could make them clean this mess up," Alf Kjaellstroem, a province spokesman told The Associated Press Thursday. "It's not going to be pretty when the butter starts to rot. And we have to wait for the snow so we can get up there with the snowmobile."

He said there were 140 shoes of all kinds — sneakers, children's shoes, high heels, boots and tap shoes — each stuffed with half a kilo (1.1 pound) of butter and spread out in the landscape.

The find was similar to one done by artist Yu Xiuzhen's in 1996.

His exhibit "Shoes With Butter," was laid out in the Tibetan mountains surrounding Lhasa, China.

Oh yeah, go ahead: something weird happens so you blame the Chinese artist.

"I've just discovered one hundred and twenty umbrellas painted with lard and buried in a pit of ear-buds inside a Holden Astra."

"Must be a Chinese artist."

You people and your Sino-ethnic stereotyping.

It's not going to be pretty when the butter starts to rot. That's strange - isn't that the title of Fred MacMurray's autobiography?

(Story found at The City of Floating Blogs. Those Haypenny boys get all the best tips.)

Hmm, I wonder how many times I'd have to mention Satan before the adbot (see above) stops directing people to Christian sites. Satan Satan Satan Satan oh wait, that'll probably just make it worse. Erm... Secular Humanism Secular Humanism Secular Humanism - actually, probably just as bad. Buddha Buddha Buddha Buddha. Velvet Spatulas. Mel Tormé's Brush With Martian Death Ray Wielding Vampire Lesbian Quilters. Ayn Rand And The Victory Of Plum-Folding. Toes. Smaller Toes. Toes With Masters Degrees In Renaissance Plane-Spotting.

OK, I give up.

Arnold Swarzenegger's election as Governor of California clinches it - reality is sucking the humour out of me. For a week and a half I've been deathly unfunny, and now I know why. All the zany quip-meister cracked-perspective off-the-wall laff-riots that usually flow out of me like killer ants swarming from the mouth of a dead and bloated capybara* have been leached out of me and embedded in the real world. I am hollowed out by the abject stupidity of the objective universe. Do not ask for whom the squeaky-toy squeaks, it squeaks for thee. And by thee, I mean me, obviously. I'm going to drown my sorrows in custard and rum. I suggest you do likewise.

*See! It took me four minutes to pick "capybara" and there are funnier animals. Madness, madness!

The Power Team

Each crusade is a 5-night event (usually Wed.-Sun.) Each night features 90 minutes of illustrative sermon, Christian drama, and revival, as The Power Team communicates Biblical truths & scripture. They use feats of strength like: breaking baseball bats like twigs, bending horseshoes & steel bars, crushing concrete walls, rip phone books like pieces of paper and many other incredible power demonstrations.

This is why I always go to church when I need any particularly stubborn jar lids opened. Reverend Pasty is a he-man!

The King's Yo-men

I was a nerd in middle school when God gave me the yo-yo. Through it He not only freed me from the chains of nerdom, he gave me a tool to share Christ with my friends.

Each of our skits are done to music (we never speak in the skits) and integrate the yo-yo to add a unique effect.

See, now, our Satanic Outreach Mission have been doing these kind of demonstrations for years. Although, not so much with yo-yos as with kittens.

Found via What Would Kofi Annan Do?* who mentioned the Yo-men in a post and then Jesse from JessePopp.com† made a comment asking Paul at WWKAD‡ about the Power Team and Paul made an answering comment which gave the relevant link, so, really, it was a team effort, and that's always important.

* defunct
† defunct
‡ still just as defunct as it was at the beginning of this sentence

A while ago I mentioned caffeinated soup. Barring the usual mispellings, the geeks are way ahead of me.

Tired of waking up and having to wait for your morning java to brew? ... Shower Shock is an all vegetable based glycerine soap ... each bar of Shower shock contains approximately 12 servings/showers per 4 ounce bar with 200 milligrams of caffeine per serving.

That Colin S. Barrow is a fucking genius!

Life is perfect?

Apparently the Iraqis aren't the only people who have to worry about museum looting.

When van Leeuwen's home was raided in March this year, officers were taken aback, discovering "in all corners of his house and in an outside shed and several large chest freezers, thousands of zoological specimens, including skulls, skeletons, skins and complete animal specimens in alcohol".

I used to know a guy who worked at the Australian Museum in Sydney. He told me how they had a collection of clapped out stuffed animal specimens they would take around to show at schools. Occasionally, if bored enough, they'd go out to the staff carpark and play cricket with them - an ancient Sugar Glider would serve as the bat.

Apropos of that: for a while at the museum they had a live crocodile in a small tank. They started to notice that whenever someone walked past the tank, the croc would go into a frenzy. They had no idea why it was doing this, until someone caught the janitor savagely poking the crocodile with his broom handle. It seems this guy would spend a few minutes engaged in this hobby every time his rounds took him past the tank, for no other reason than because, apparently, he really hated crocodiles.

World's Oldest Genitals Belong to Fossilized Spider

Hey, tell us something we don't know.

World's Largest Rodent Discovered: Buffalo-Sized Guineapig

I'm always skeptical about these reports. You wouldn't believe how many times it actually turned out to be a guineapig-sized buffalo.

Goddamn Blogger. It keeps eating the archives, so I have to keep republishing them. Now, I know what you're thinking: "Archives, schmarchives - stop living in the past." You obviously don't recognise the unavoidable temporal paradox involved in such a remark!

Oh dear. I look to the world for inspiration and it replies - "Hey, Fletch, if you expect us to come up with something funny just because you can't, then we recommend you staple your eyelids to your forehead and get back to us." Yeah, like I'm going to fall for that again.

I don't believe anything I say. I express opinions solely for the pleasure of drawing people out. Then, knowing where they stand, and where their prejudices lie, I can either laugh at them, protect them, or entertain them as the mood takes me.

Incidentally, what I just said in the above paragraph also applies to my relation to the paragraph itself.

How we are amusing ourselves at present:

Simulated Zombie Attack

Enhanced Simulated Zombie Attack

Piracy Responsible for Decline of Christian Music Sales

If These Are Rabbits Then I'm a Crayfish

MultiBabel of the Side of Each Expression Produces a Poetry

Candidates for Mayor of San Francisco Take the Voight-Kampff Test

Are We Living In a Matrix-style Computer Simulation?

Eat, Grannie, Eat! Think of the Carats!

The Japanese Understand Coffee

Yet Another Desperate Attempt to Make Corporate Executives Fun to Be With And/Or Competent

What? You want me to actually write something? Who are you, the Creative Self-Expression Police?

Here's how you live an unexamined life: go looking for yourself. You want to examine something? Examine this *gives Spanish gesture of contempt*. Anyone who examines their life with any honesty will quickly move on to equally fruitless things.

The unexamined life is not worth examining.


On another note altogether: what is wrong with having no ambition? Ambition is vastly overrated. Do I really want to sprint to my own grave with my eyes shut?

Fair and Balanced

FoxNews is suing satirist Al Franken to prevent him using the slogan "Fair and Balanced" as a subtitle to his new book, apparently because they don't want people assuming Franken is connected with the channel, "Fair and Balanced" being a description that people automatically associate with FoxNews.

Wow, can you make coffee come out of your nose like that all the time?

Anyway, the usual suspects have called for a cyber protest of leviathan dimensions, and as we at Quotidian Hell are nothing if not joiners, what can we do but play our small part?

Given that a mass website usage of "Fair and Balanced" will help stymie FoxNew's attempt to retain proprietary control of the phrase, as a service to those redoubtable newshounds and their quest to make our world a better America, I suggest the following alternatives, all of which I'm sure are public domain.

FoxNews: The Magic Kingdom

FoxNews: Resistance is futile

FoxNews: Roachs check in, they don't check out

FoxNews: Because life's complicated enough

FoxNews: I can't believe I ate the whole thing!

FoxNews: Ugly is only skin-deep

FoxNews: It's everywhere you want to be

FoxNews: It never varies

FoxNews: Corn and cluck for a buck

FoxNews: Enter a different World

FoxNews: I'd rather have a bowl of Coco Pops

FoxNews: If I've only one life, let me live it as a blonde!

That oughta hold 'em.


So, I'm going to be away for three weeks (don't sneer, you'll notice) so this place will likely be reverting to "howling wasteland" mode given the enervated anomie of my fellow hellions. But you never know, maybe you'll get lucky and our erudite colleague will explain his formula for successfully living an unexamined life. Play nice now!

More fun with food.

Strawberry Pop-Tart Blow-Torches

Did you say sausage bending? Again, was it sausage bending, you said?

The difference between these recipes and four star cuisine is simply the quality of the ingredients. Otherwise, it's all playing with food. High cuisine and sausage bending alike is an exercise in putting fingerprints all over the food.

OK. I think that's more than enough time for that last joke.

More funny stuff here, courtesy of me finding a new link that works.
Ah yes, a man-pleasing appetizer. "Yeah, baby - you know how I like it when you put leaf in my beer!"

And while we're talking food related humour, you could also try Candyboots 1974 Weightwatchers Cards. Or just make yourself a sandwich, stand back, and laugh. Laugh, I say - laugh like the wind!

What the hell - while I'm here: these people are funny*. So's this guy. Here's a weblog by some dude from the first mob (or "some bodacious dude" as I believe he's known to his mum).

* Well, they were. Here's what's left.

I am writing a short article on the beauty of abandoned websites.

From the site:

In terms of my possible candidacy, let me sum up what we face in the following quote from a right wing journalist recently appearing on CNN with Wolf Blitzer:

“Voter turnout is not a glorious thing. If Jerry Springer shows up, he’ll bring all these new people to the polls. They will be slack-jawed yokels, hicks, weirdos, pervs, and whatnot.”

I say: if these people can become U.S. presidents, why not bring them to the polling booths as well?

Sheesh - for a second there things were getting a little crowded. Nice and quiet now, 'though.

So - while you're here, pop across to Jerry Springer campaign headquarters and encourage the great man to make the U.S. Senate even more of a laughing stock. Or, at least, to try.