This is just loopy, but I think you may enjoy it. Just be sure to turn the volume on your speakers down a bit if you’re at work. (Not off, just down.)

You can find this webcast fail at youtube too.

Alltop is also quite recursive.

A weekly beard forecast is an important way to predict upcoming flurries of furriness, hails of hair and any other facial fungus developments that may be a danger to the public.

Nothing is more perilous than the goatee, and Lunchbreath has provided this handy pocket guide to help us stay safe out there!

A Pocket Guide to the Goatee, originally uploaded by lunchbreath.

Alltop is fond of the executive.

Neuroscientists are engaging in the deadly serious activity of why humor is so dangerous.

It turns out, it all has to do with whether the joke is funny or not. Funny = laugh. Not funny = no laugh and/or brain explosion. (The incidence of brain explosion due to un-funny jokes is very low, especially since the death of vaudeville — most theatres in the vaudeville era were fitted with sluices to help with the clean-up of grey matter after a performance, but with the advent of the moving picture, the “brain drain” has been unnecessary in most theatres, except in France, where they worship Jerry Lewis .)

Now, it may seem a bit risky to listen to jokes, given the small chance that your brain may explode. But it is a very small chance, especially since we’ve started studying what makes people laugh with functional MRI machines and sitcoms.

But the payoff to listening to a funny joke is big. According to the New Scientist:

Further research, conducted by Dean Mobbs, then at Stanford University in California, uncovered a second spike of activity in the brain’s limbic system – associated with dopamine release and reward processing – which may explain the pleasure felt once you “get” the joke (Neuron, vol 40, p 1041).

Moobs has done further research into the differences between how the sexes process jokes, and found that while men may laugh more quickly at a joke, women get a much bigger dopamine hit, once their brains process the humor and decide if it’s funny or not. This explains why women are willing to date men who are clearly beneath them in the looks department.

However, this puts women at greater risk of the second danger in humor — addiction. If you’re dating a balding, be-spectacled science dude for his humor, you’re probably addicted to all those good feelings induced by your brain. But it’s just a drug. A naturally occurring, evolutionarily brilliant drug.

But I may be biased.

Alltop is also addicted. You can read the sciency stuff at the New Scientist: When your brain gets the joke

Yeah, what Peter said...

Though I should emphasize that I don’t have any post-secondary training in biology and it really bugged me that all the Pandora critters seemed to have six limbs, and the Na’vi only had four, while everything else seemed pretty well thought out. (Though it did seem there were way more predator species than there should be, but let’s face it, the predators are more fun for the story.)

The cat chick was smokin’ though, and I’m not sure if it would have been as believable if, as Peter suggests, Neytiri had been a four-armed, two legged banana slug and the human fell for her. (Unless it was Captain Kirk driving the Na’vi avatar, in which case, obviously.)

Clearly, the film-makers may have been influenced by Cats. No doubt someone will provide a Cats/Avatar mashup for us in the near future. The relative hotness of cartoon Neytiri shouldn’t be a surrprise, as she’s based on the actress that plays Uhura in the Star Trek remake: Zoe Saldana.

Alltop and humor-blogs.com would have preferred sexy banana slugs. Avatar Neytiri by ~sanguisGelidus on deviantART

Chester was drunk on his own power and the length of his twin-focus, multi-plexiform, maxi-twilled lens.

He especially enjoyed the way the lady’s track team always decided to stretch just in front of the massive gravitorm field his lens produced.

Also, the magni-voxiterm housing hid his “composition” efforts quite effectively.

Alltop and humor-blogs.com love Estonian dance. Originally published December 2006.

More of Toulouse Le Grandfig’s work can be found in the Toulouse Le Grandfig category.

But somewhere out in the inky cold of space, there is one that our atmosphere cannot consume, that cannot be contained by even a lake of cream cheese.

An extinction-level bagel.

[From the Toulouse Le Grandfig Necrobiblia Collection]

Happy New Year!

Alltop and humor-blogs.com are hoarding lox even now. Originally published March 2006.

Dr. Maximilian Tundra was heading home again for the holidays, dread clutching his heart like an iron fist. He’d managed to avoid Thanksgiving, but there was no escape from The Feast.

The Feast, as it was known amongst Clan Tundra, was a toxic stew of carbs, fats, and pharmaceuticals that had a tendency to drive the family bonkers.

Not that they weren’t certifiable to begin with.

Dr. Tundra’s sister, Eugenie, was a brilliant “installation” artist, who was nevertheless, seriously bi-polar. His younger twin brothers, Xavier and Xenophon, had never really recovered from their childhood “incident” — as the family called it — following a plane crash in the Andes. His Da, Dr. Halvard Hemming Tundra, seemed perfectly normal; of course, the Great Danger of attending the Feast was that Dr. H. H. Tundra didn’t attend, and that he sent his doppelganger, Mr. Angry McBucktooth in his stead. His Mum, Beatrice Pelagia Tundra (nee Sweeney) was in denial, but otherwise safe to be around.

And that was just the nuclear family. Getting the extended clan together required a number of court orders, insurance waivers and to be on the safe side, Da usually hired off-duty members of the SWAT to patrol the grounds.

Perhaps it was for that reason, or perhaps it was the family’s iconoclastic nature, but The Feast was never celebrated on Christmas. It always happened on the Solstice.

The darkest day of the year. Of course, it also marked the start of days getting brighter and brighter. The rebirth of the sun, his Da called it. But when it came to the holiday, his family and The Feast, Dr. Tundra was definitely a glass-is-half-empty kind of guy.

The policeman checked his ID, and waved him past the checkpoint, a set of gates loomed ahead, which would let him into the Tundra compound. A high fence, razor wire atop, surrounded the area. Guards and German shepherds patrolled the grounds, checking the fenceline for weak points.

It would do no good. It never did.

He parked, put on his flak jacket and entered the Tundra mansion. The smell of roasting turkey and peyote stuffing filled the house, and Dr. Tundra shuddered.

An outside observer would wonder if that was a shudder of anticipation, excitement, or perhaps the thrill of visceral familiarity that we get when we return to our childhood places.

But no, it was dread.

Alltop and humor-blogs.com freebase their turkey. The reasons why festive feasting can cause family fracases.. Thanks to ckirkman for the turkey pic. Originally published December 2005.

A public service announcement from The Skwib

This time of year can be troubling for bloggers; the days get shorter, the holiday season has its own particular stresses, and for those running weblogs, there are the dangers of SAD.

Statistical Affective Disorder (SAD) is caused by an abrupt and inexplicable drop in the visitor statistics to your blog. Early symptoms include:

• sudden weeping
• shout at the ceiling: “why, why, gods of blog … why?”
• desperate attempts/plans/Fred Flintstone-like schemes to boost readership including:
• massive increase in Tweets
• hyper-active friending on Facebook
• increased meme generation.

As the disorder progresses, you may find yourself:

• bitter
• angry
• drunk.

And in the final stages, SAD can even lead to:

• apathy
• self-loathing
• watching TV and reading books.

If you have any of these symptoms you may have SAD, and should seek qualified psychiatric help at the first opportunity. Alternatively, you could just turn off your damned computer.

Alltop and humor-blogs.com both suffer from FUN (Frequent, Uncomfortable Noobishness). Originally published in December 2005.)

Research from the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada (don’t laugh, it’s a university, and a damned nice one too), suggests that massive doses of cannabis (marijuana, pot, grass, dope, weed, etc.) can actually increase cell growth in the brain.

Wuahhhh? you say. And rightly so. My decidedly non-scientific survey of heavy pot users has shown that rather than stimulate brain cell growth, it tends to stimulate the need for cheeseburgers and twinkies. I’ve seen no evidence that it makes the user smarter.

Ah, but Xia Zhang and his colleagues in the Paris of the Praries (stop laughing), did not do their research using natural cannabis. Instead, they used a synthetic cannabinoid called HU210, and they used it on rats.

Now, these lucky Hub City rats benefited mightily from the injection of HU210 (which would be an AWESOME name for a band, btw). According to the New Scientist:

They found that giving rats high doses of HU210 twice a day for 10 days increased the rate of nerve cell formation, or neurogenesis, in the hippocampus by about 40%.

This was, of course, right before the rats developed astounding mental powers and proceeded to use their telekinesis to experiment on the scientists themselves, and their telepathy to encourage their new minions to bring them pizza. Kidding. They were euthanized. (The rats, not the researchers.)

Far from bright lights of Toontown, at some obscure east-coast diploma-mill called Princeton, neuroscientist Barry Jacobs has been giving mice the natural cannabinoid (and yes, The Natural Cannabinoids would also be a great band name), and their brain cell development has shown no changes. (In the mice, not the hypothetical band.)

I will let you draw your own conclusions, but I suspect if you’re starting a band, it may not matter.

You can read more about the actual science at the New Scientist, and another wild misinterpretation at BudFacts.com. More nicknames for Saskatoon here, and more synonyms for cannabis here.

Alltop and humor-blogs.com both tend to bogart the j. Thanks to Adrien/Salvi for the pot pic.

London, Ontario (The Skwib) — Global warming is caused by a lack of Vikings. So says the charismatic preacher, Dr. Maximillian Tundra.

He is the leader of a sect of the Pastafarian religion, which posits an omnipotent creator-being called the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM), and has deemed Friday a religious holiday.

“Other worshipers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster have claimed that it is a declining number of pirates that have caused the increase in global warming, hurricanes and earthquakes. In truth it is the lack of Vikings that has caused these ills, indeed, most of our problems are because we lack Vikings,” Dr. Tundra, the self-proclaimed Prophet of the Pasta told The Skwib.

And he says he can prove it.

“The false prophet Bobby Henderson has claimed the FSM favours pirates, where clearly it is Vikings that nestle in the noodly heart of our God. In Henderson’s so-called ‘proof’ he shows a decline in the pirate population coinciding with global warming. Recent studies by the British government show piracy is up 168 percent since 1992. But the temperature is still going up!”

Bobby Henderson counters by saying modern pirates are “guys with machine guns, cruising around in power-boats. Real pirates use swords (cutlasses, actually). And the song-downloading ‘pirates’ are smelly nerds, and therefore not real pirates.”

Dr. Tundra says: “that is a tautology. Look, piracy is robbery committed at sea. It’s not about whether they use cutlasses or machine guns. Besides, many of the pirates that Henderson is talking about do say: ‘arrrr!’ Besides, the Lord’s not a Flying Spaghetti Monster, it’s a Flying Linguini Monster.”

The First Church of the Noodly Norsemen (popularly known as the Norse Pastafarians) meet every Friday at Hooters, decked out as Vikings, for worship and “lutefisk” shooters.

Related news: What to do with pirates?

Previous Pasta-riffic Episodes:
An Interview with Dr. Tundra | Original Reutars Story | Dr. Tundra Hits His Peak

Alltop and humor-blogs.com have their “offices” at Hooters. Originally published November, 2006.