If HAL9000 was Amazon.com's Alexa

Sunday Funnies 03/15/15

Islamic Holdem'

10 or 11 steps, German, or French?

10 Steps to Germanize Yourself

11 Steps to Frenchify Yourself

Apparently, a "know-it-all" in German is called a "Klugscheißer" (“smart shitter”). Who knew? Read the whole thing for more fun facts (I'm pretty sure it's meant to be humorous. And while many a truth is spoken in jest, I'm sure it's not 100% universally so. I'm just say'n. Don't want any German or French hate-mail! ;))
     

How to swear in six languages

The begining of this article warns that it's "R" rated. If you go there, you'll see why:

BAD DAY? TRY THESE 21 CRUSHING CURSE WORDS IN 6 LANGUAGES

Talk about local color. Gosh.
     

An actual product called "Poo-pouri"

I don't know which is more weird and funny, the commercial, or the fact that the product is a best-seller on Amazon.com. I'm sure that someone must be laughing all the way to the bank. Good for them!

Don't forget to see Second Hand Stink, and Even Santa Poops.
     

Proverbs from around the world

Cultural proverbs:

Ten proverbs and sayings to help you around the world

It’s taken me a long time as a language learner to come to terms with proverbs. I always resisted them for various reasons. They’re a pain to learn, they can sound silly and unnatural, and it’s often hard to imagine a scenario in which you’d actually use them. However, they’re actually a really important part of every language, and as an English speaker I find I’m often unaware of just how many I use every day.

Knowing these sayings, and being able to produce them spontaneously at the right moment, is an important component of fluency. They’re the colour and spirit of a language, and help you to get deeper into the mentality of it. Here is a list of ten great proverbs in different languages, that perhaps one day will come in handy for you! [...]

You may well find a few chuckles here - I did!
     

Too RUDE, but All Too True

Anyone who lives in Oregon should understand this:

John Oliver leads left-wing cable television slam-a-thon of Cover Oregon



The parody was excellent.

     

Beware of the clown...

The Sad Truth About Ronald McDonald



The story is all over the internet, with minor variations. But sometimes, with a rather violent alternate ending.
     

What's wrong with "The Never Ending Story"?

Plenty, if you really look at it:

7 Terrible Life Lessons Learned from 'The Neverending Story

It's hard to find someone who hasn't seen 1984's The NeverEnding Story at least once, if only on cable. It's one of those movies like The Shawshank Redemption that didn't seem like a big deal at the time, but now is as much a part of our childhoods as playing with Legos or shooting people because we knew the courts couldn't prosecute minors.

That's why it's a little disturbing when we look back on that movie with adult eyes and see some of the fucked up lessons we were unknowingly being taught. Lessons like ... [...]

Read on, for a good chuckle. I remember even thinking about some of these myself, when I first saw the movie.

     

San Francisco's "Tales of the City" Ends

Author Armistead Maupin ends San Francisco ‘Tales of the City’ saga with ninth volume

In 1974, when Armistead Maupin began writing what became Tales of the City, he thought of it as “an in-joke about the way life worked in San Francisco”. Four decades later, that in-joke has been shared by more than 6 million readers. His stories of interlocking gay and straight lives in the city constitute one of the best-loved of literary sagas. The New York Times described reading them as “like dipping into an inexhaustible bag of M&Ms, with no risk of sugar overload”. Now though, after four decades, that bag is finally about to be exhausted. The series will conclude with Maupin’s ninth book, Days of Anne Madrigal, published at the end of this month. [...]

I really enjoyed the PBS series based on the books. It really seemed to capture many of the special particulars, the eccentricities, of life in San Francisco in those days.

     

The Weird Ways TV Changed in just 7 Years

5 Ways Television Went Crazy Since I Quit Watching in 2003

Sometime in early 2003, I gave up television. It wasn't some conscious decision to try to become a more productive person or anything of the sort. I just found that the remote had become just an extra unused object on my computer desk that got in the way of my mouse, like job applications and intervention letters.

But eventually, you find that without it you miss out on a lot of social interactions, especially at work. Over seven years, I had a lot of moments that went like this:

"Did you see Family Guy last night?"

"No, I don't have TV. Do you play World of Warcraft?"

"No, I have sex."

So I decided to buy cable again, and let me tell you that after seven years without seeing a single episode of anything except by accident, I found myself feeling like a time traveler in a world where everything had gone just a bit insane.

It turns out that in the last seven years... [...]

His observations are spot-on. Nice to know I'm not the only one that thinks modern TV viewing fare has become... Bizarre and Freaky!

     

Commercials for Drugs: Ablixa, Epiphanix?

We recently watched the movie Side Effects. It was good, I recommend it.

The DVD had links to extra stuff, including two "drug" commercials. But the links didn't work: a message said that was because it was a rental DVD: you have to buy the commercial DVD to view the extra features.

One commercial was for "Ablixa", the antidepressant featured in the movie. The other drug, I think, may have been "Epiphanix", which I found on Youtube? I'm not sure, but here is Epiphanix anyway. Warning: it's probably not for the squeamish:



     

A Criticism of Critics

I enjoyed reading this:

There's A Meanness Abroad in the Land

[...] In many of the reviews I read daily, on a whole range of subjects besides filmmaking, I am so struck with the underlying view the critics seem to have about intelligence. Review after review bespeaks the idea of "look how intelligent I am, I can see – more than most – everything that's wrong with this." (Whatever the this may be.) I was raised with a very different view of intelligence: it valued "look how intelligent I am, I can see – more than most – all the things there are to appreciate, about this."

In our day, and perhaps in other days as well, it is a far rarer soul who makes appreciation the defining motif of his or her life, than those who make criticism their defining goal. Criticism is easy; it takes no brains to say what's wrong with something. Appreciation however, is difficult; you sometimes have to fight to see things to appreciate, digging for example beneath ugly surface impressions, to see some shining beauty underneath. That's why prejudice flourishes. It takes brains to see what there is to appreciate in every man and woman who was ever born. Which should be the goal of every intelligent man or woman. Civilization never decays or vanishes because of a lack of criticism in a society; it decays or vanishes because of a lack of appreciation in that society. As a direct consequence of this, that society tends to preserve the commonplace, while it casually throws away treasures. And criticism causes more meanness to be abroad, in the land.

Every critic begins with assumptions, usually unexamined, that they use to justify their hammering the thing they are examining. [...]

The other day at dinner, were were talking about people we know (or have known) who are habitually critical and fault finding, and how unhappy they are as a result. This reminded me of that. I know that criticism has it's place, but you sure need to balance it, if you want to be happy.

The writer here was talking about a negative review he read of the movie "The Hurt Locker". I love what he said about that. He also ended it with a quote from the composer Jean Sibelius, which made me chuckle.
     

Sunday Funnies; Mayan Predictions

Since getting DSL, I've been looking at some of the Mayan 2012 prediction videos on Youtube. They're pretty nutty.

Here is my prediction:

     

Don't Worry, The End is Near

     

Botched Art Restoration Inspires Parodies

I read something that said a famous painting of Jesus that had been restored, made him look like Sasquatch. I thought it was a joke, but it's not:

The three versions of the “ecce homo” fresco of Jesus. From left, the original version by Elías García Martínez, a 19th-century painter; a deteriorated version of the fresco; the restored version by Cecilia Giménez.


Despite Good Intentions, a Fresco in Spain Is Ruined

MADRID — A case of suspected vandalism in a church in a northeastern village in Spain has turned out to be probably the worst art restoration project of all time.

An elderly woman stepped forward this week to claim responsibility for disfiguring a century-old “ecce homo” fresco of Jesus crowned with thorns, in Santuario de la Misericordia, a Roman Catholic church in Borja, near the city of Zaragoza.

Ecce homo, or behold the man, refers to an artistic motif that depicts Jesus, usually bound and with a crown of thorns, right before his crucifixion.

The woman, Cecilia Giménez, who is in her 80s, said on Spanish national television that she had tried to restore the fresco, which she called her favorite local representation of Jesus, because she was upset that parts of it had flaked off due to moisture on the church’s walls.

[...]

Ms. Giménez said she had worked on the fresco using a 10-year-old picture of it, but she eventually left Jesus with a half-beard and, some say, a monkeylike appearance. The fresco’s botched restoration came to light this month when descendants of the 19th-century artist, Elías García Martínez, proposed making a donation toward its upkeep.

News of the disfiguring prompted Twitter users and bloggers to post parodies online inserting Ms. Giménez’s version of the fresco into other artworks. Some played on the simian appearance of the portrait. [...]

The article has links. Some of the simian parodies are hilarious.

Obama, Romney, and an Alien Invasion...

Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. But it's part of a survey:

Most Americans Believe Government Keeps UFO Secrets, Survey Finds

[...] The survey, conducted ahead of National Geographic's new series Chasing UFOs, asked 1,100 Americans 18 and older for their extraterrestrial opinions.

As it turns out, the idea of aliens and UFOs isn't that farfetched to most Americans.

Here are some of the survey's most surprising findings:

-More than three quarters (77 percent) of those surveyed believe there are signs that aliens have visited Earth, and over half (55 percent) think Men in Black-style agents threaten those who report seeing them.

-More than a third (36 percent) believe aliens have already visited.

-Eighty percent believe the government has hidden information on UFOs from the public.

-Nearly two thirds (65 percent) think President Obama would be a better leader than Mitt Romney if an alien invasion were to happen. [...]

Obama a better leader during an alien invasion? I wonder why? Perhaps this explains it:


     

Sunday Funny 10-30-11

But is this really anything new? I don't think there has ever been a candidate I ever really got "excited" about, ever since I was able to vote. It's an imperfect world, with imperfect people, candidates, political parties and politics.

Quite often you have to choose the lesser of two evils, and make the most of it.
It's called "working with what you have", V.S. "pie in the sky".
     

"... as teenage girls Gen Y gave more blow jobs than any generation before."

Actually, there is more to it than that:

What Gen Yers don't know about themselves

[...] I fantasized about this moment for years: the moment when I’d write the post titled, 10 Things I Hate about Generation Y.

But it’s hard to hate people you hang out with all the time, and the truth is, I’ve spent the last ten years being a Gen Xer surrounded by Gen Yers.

[...]

Sometimes, I think Gen Y is lame and she won’t admit to it.

But, I find, as I think about all the things I hate about Gen Y, that it’s hard to hate something you know so much about. And in fact, I have become a way better person myself from studying Gen Y. I have noticed that my worst traits are the aspects of myself I least understand. And that is true of Gen Y, too.

[...]

Gen Y is simply demanding what their parents told them they should expect from the world: Work that matters and work that complements a life that matters. Those revolutionary expectations come from the Boomer parents. Gen Y is just doing what they are told.

I couldn’t help thinking this same thing when I read this New York Times article about the trend that as teenage girls Gen Y gave more blow jobs than any generation before. When Baby Boomer women had more sex than any generation in the past, it was a feminist revolution, changing the whole fabric of society. But when Gen Y teens talk about why they give more blow jobs, it’s different, but simple: they do it because [...]

Read the whole thing. The author makes 5 interesting observations about Gen Y, with lots of embedded links.
     

Preparing for the Rapture in the I.T. world

This was written in anticipation of Harold Camping's May 21st prediction, but could easily be recycled for the next prediction by anyone. Hilarious advice:



10 Things IT Groups Need to Know About The End of the World

[...]

7. Avoid disruption.

At 5:45 p.m. Saturday, invite all the Christians on staff to pray in a conference room or auditorium. That way you minimize the network and systems disruption, not to mention the drama, when they all vanish.

6. Review all software licenses.

Make sure they don't expire immediately before or after The Rapture.

Despite being employees of West Coast companies, your Cisco or Microsoft reps might be among the missing (possibly less likely with Apple). Afterward, you might be able to push for a Rapture Discount on new software and hardware.

5. Install mobile device management software.

With an application like MobileIron, you can shut down and lock, and later locate, any cellphones left behind by Raptured staff. Otherwise you could be hit with huge data charges if the phones were on and online when their users were taken. And make sure they're all equipped with bumpers so when they hit the desk or the pavement they won't break.

4. Postpone the upgrade to Windows 7.

You could save money (fewer users) and avoid disruptions (missing tech support staff) by waiting until after The Rapture to move to Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system.

3. Block all internal video transmissions and external streaming for 48 hours.

Let's face it, if you're in a telepresence conference and people start blinking out, it's bound to be disconcerting. Plus, you just know YouTube is going to be flooded with video clips of people's family, friends, acquaintances, or worse, themselves, poofing into thin air. The UnRaptured won't be able to stop themselves from clicking on the links, and the video traffic will bring your network to its knees. [...]

Isn't it nice to know someone's thought about all the practical follow-up details? Read the whole thing for more advice. The author knows his topic rather well.


Related Link:

Finding God Through Open Source