General Skwib

Canada’s National Do Not Call List is finally ready to go. You can sign up at the DNCL site.

Update:
Apparently, I’m not the only one excited about ridding this pestilence from my phone-lines. According to the Mop and Pail, the website was overwhelmed yesterday by frustrated and passive-aggressive Canadians signing up for the new F-off service.

Something is starting to smell bad…

It’s nice to see Letterman in good form. (Paul got in a few licks too.)

Update:

Yeah, McCain really rubbed Letterman the wrong way. But who doesn’t get upset when they are blown off and then lied to about why. “We find out today he didn’t really leave (NY) ’till this morning. . . The economy held on just long enough for him to get back there. (Washington, DC).”

More smells at humor-blogs.com and alltop. And more insanity is available at the excellent Carnival of the Insanities.

This picture via Wonkette is worth a thousand words of shock, outrage and glorious, glorious schadenfreude.

You’ll also find some commentary at Riding with Rickey, Lawyerworldland, and a collection of hot photos from One Man’s Blog.

But this doesn’t count as a post. The Dude still abides!

Also abiding: humor-blogs.com and alltop.

Absolutely!

I can’t tell you how thrilling it is to watch toned athletes throw themselves at the events. It’s really hard to pick my favorite, because they’re all such great fun and the level of athleticism being demonstrated by the contestants is nothing short of awe-inspiring. But I think if I had to choose I would have to go with the qualifying event with the “big balls.”

Big balls?

Yes, gigantic inflated red balls, which the athletes have to run over top of, but invariably, they can’t. It really lives up to the motto: Citius, Altius Ac Festivius. (Swifter, Higher and Funnier).

We have a similar tradition on my homeworld of Neecknaw, except instead of falling into muddy water, the contestants fall into Coulrotrophic Gelatin infested with Laughing Beetles from Trigiggle Six. And instead of colorful rubber balls, we use the skulls of our defeated enemies (but covered with coconut oil).

I was talking about the Olympics, not Wipeout

Oh, the Olympics. That’s the game show with people running and swimming, right? Yeah, they really need to spice that up. I’d add cheetahs and pumas to the track events and imagine how much more thrilling all those diving events would be if the pool was filled with piranhas!

Next time: If I nudged a black hole close enough to put the Earth in its event horizon, would that make the summer last longer?

Thrilling humor athletics are also available at humor-blogs.com and alltop. You can see those big balls in action here.

The carnival will be delayed for a week, due to my overwhelming desire to enjoy melon.

That’s no melon!

Clearly, this woman did not get the memo about how our joints are supposed to work. I love the way this video transits from “replete with erotic possibilities” to “disturbing” so quickly. The Kenny G. playing in the background really helps this transition.

Video here too.

Humor-blogs.com and Alltop are also strangely flexible. Tip of the hat to One for the Road for finding this freaky gem.

The ever-vigilant Mr. Snitch recently noticed an interesting story about a New Jersey man stealing $100 worth of meat by stuffing it down his pants. This is not a phenomenon restricted to the Garden State. I happen to know on good authority that our local ValuMart (here in sunny Wortley Village), has suffered the same indignity of pant-stuffing meat-lifters. They are easily apprehended because most men are not adept at running with large pieces of beef slapping around in their pants. (Present company excepted, I’m sure.) However, Mr. Snitch then goes on to ask the obvious question: what happens to the meat afterwards? Is there a discount for “slightly used meat”, or do the police hold onto it, so to speak, pending trial?

The verdict is in on The Dark Knight (it’s the feel-good movie of the year), but until I read this Compendium of Killing Jokes, I thought it was supposed to be laughing AT The Joker, not WITH him .

While we’re on the topic of movies, you’ll want to run right out and get some of the Exclusive X-Files Merchandise available from NeonBubble. I can hardly wait until my David Duchovny’s The X-Files: I Want To Beekeep kit arrives, but I’m a little anxious about what the “8-inch hive tool” is for.

I’m not nearly as concerned about the delightful brain of the historian Rob MacDougall; it’s recently applied its wattage to a trio of world-building exercises of the steampunk variety. I especially liked “The Kinematrix Has You”.

What can Brown do for you? Well, it can help you if you’re caught short, but only if you’re a damn fast folder.

Mean Ol’ Meany has more advice for everyone on how to avoid other kinds of intestinal distress, though nothing to cope with the kind of idiocy in the clip below, which is reminiscent of my last peyote bender. (Warning: This Family Guy segment may make you feel a bit squingy.)

Once you’ve recovered from that, you may want to learn How to be #1 on Humor-Blogs.com. Advice from LOBO, who’s deranged blog is a constant worry to the authorities. (Incidentally, The Skwib was once #1 on Humor-Blogs.com, but that was before the new voting thingy. You can help The Skwib crawl its way back on the leaderboard by signing up for an account and voting here. Don’t make me get the ipecac! )

Did any of that unhinge you slightly? Well then perhaps you’re ready for the Carnival of the Insanities now.

You’ll find more meaty links many a funny blog at Alltop as well.

Is it possible to play bocce ball with a crowd of inebriated Welshman?

Simon Moore at the University of Cardiff in the UK and his colleagues believe so, and they’ve done the research to discover how to set up just such a game.

They have created a model to demonstrate how a herd of Taffys behaves as it spills onto the streets after an evening of metheglin, real cider and conversation in four-part harmony. According to the New Scientist:

The team made 24 visits to Cardiff city centre between 11pm and 3am on Friday and Saturday nights, breathalysing people and monitoring their gait. Of the high number of drinkers around, they found that a round 25 per cent were staggering.

The team factored this information into their simulation, then ran simulations with crowds in varying states of inebriation trying to make their way through a narrow alleyway to three different destinations.

(I’m still trying to figure out how you have three destinations in an alleyway — presumably there is only two ways in or out, unless the Welsh are capable of limited flight, and can go up as well.) Anyway, they discovered that the extremely drunken crowds didn’t flow very well, especially the crowd where David Evans (or was it Jones?) was coating most of the alley in a toxic mix of Campari and Welsh rarebit.

They hope their research will lead them to creating better streetscapes to deal with such situations. If successful, they then hope to do something about the yobs in London.

Here is what a model of the sober crowd looks like:

And the 50% drunk crowd:

Now, here is the 100% drunk crowd:

You can find the actual animations here, the New Scientist story here (you’ll need a subscription to read the whole thing), alltop here and humor-blogs.com here, where you can vote for this post, if you feel so inclined.

This classic Harlan Ellison rant comes courtesy of Steve Davey, a travel writer and photographer who has been asked for his share of freebies.

You may want to watch Harlan explain his philosophy on providing free content before you read the rest of the post. Or not. He’s talking specifically about the studios, but he raises an interesting point:

“They always want the writer to work for nothing. And the problem is, there’s so god-damned many writers who have no idea that they’re supposed to be paid every time they do something! They do it for nothing. [raises shoulders and flaps arms] Guh, guh, ghuh, look at me, I’m going to be noticed, huh, huh, huh-huh.”

So all you bloggers out there, according to Harlan, we’re all “assholes”.

I say guilty as charged. What do you think?

Free content provided by YouTube. (Oh, the irony!) Link provided by Steve Davey. If you believe this is a funny blog — sorry about the lack of monkeys today — you should go to humor-blogs.com and vote. You can also find more humor at alltop.

Presently, The Skwib is vacated, so I am re-running a seasonally appropriate series of photography from Toulouse Le Grandfig. There may or may not be some jokes in there.

I’ll return next week, and at that point, I will start haunting your blogs (if you have them) if you have not voted for The Skwib at humor-blogs.com. How will I be able to know?

Mental powers.

Oh my freakin’ God, our brains are hard-wired to speak like Yoda.

For those of us in Western cultures who are familiar with the subject-verb-object construction of language (”I drink wine. ” “You swill gin.” “Undergrads chug beer.”) new research from the University of Chicago will blow your mind.

Susan Goldin-Meadow, a linguistic psychologist, and her team asked their subject to play charades, miming scenes on a computer screen.

As it turns out, this kind of non-verbal communication is constructed more like languages such as Turkish or Korean, which use the subject-object-verb construction. (”I wine drink.” “You gin swill.” “Undergrads beer regurgitate.”)

According to the New Scientist: “Goldin-Meadow argues that this kind of sentence syntax might therefore be etched into our brains. Languages that veer away from this form, such as English, must have been influenced by cultural forces.”

Incidentally, Goldin-Meadow and her team also discovered that we have an inherent loathing of mimes, and that all games of charades lead to the development of one of the players becoming a “charade Nazi” — forcing everyone else to continue playing until he gets one right. (Guilty.)

You charade Nazis will find at humor-blogs and alltop. You New Scientist story read here.

Squire:
What do you mean by SLEPT?

Man:
Mooooooh, ay?. You know Squire. SLEPT.

Squire:
As in: had sexual intercourse.

(pause)

Man:
Uh, yes. I suppose that is the technical term for it.

Squire:
(pedantically)
And do you know, precisely, what that entails?

(pause)

Man:
I’m sorry?

Squire:
Have you any idea what actually happens?

Man:
Mooooooh, ay? Mwoohohohohoo, ay? Hohohohohoho, ay?
[makes rude gesture]

Squire:
Yes, yes, I see what you’re doing there, but do you know what it means?

(pause)

Man:
Well, uh, no. Not actually. It’s quite embarrassing, really, a man of my age–

Squire:
Would you like me to show you?

Man:
What, with your wife?

Squire:
If you’re into that sort of thing. I mean, it’s not like you’ve got a wife we could swap.

Man:
Uh…

Squire:
(mimicking)
You are interested in sport, no? You did indicate a certain … shall we say lascivious interest in sport?

(pause)

Man:
Look mate, I was just trying to see if you could –

Squire:
Tell you about sport–

Man:
With LADIES.

Squire:
Well, yes, with ladies. What did you think I meant?

(pause)

Man:
I dunno Squire. I got worried, you know. Your tone. It got a little menacing there for a moment. And, I mean … bowler hat an all, I thought you might have gone to a public school –

Squire:
Everything I learned I learned at Eton!

Man:
Well, I think I’d best be pushin’ on…

Squire:
That’s the spirit! Shall I tell the wife to prepare for us?

[Man leaves hurriedly, knocking over table, spilling pints in process.]

Squire:
(looking wistful)
Someday, Georgie-boy. Someday.

And now for something completely different, the original:

There is nothing derivative about humor-blogs, though one may wonder about alltop. You can find a transcript of the original sketch here.

The beautiful and talented Isabella Rossellini has created a series of short films explaining the sex life of a variety of creatures in the bug world, called Green Porno. Here is one from the perspective of the male spider, so all you arachnophobes might not want to click on the play button, unless your and S&M kind of arachnophobe, which would be quite appropriate:

Now, if funky bug love is not your thing, you may want to check out Shelf Monkey, an entertaining and iconoclastic look at the world of books. It’s a little like Catch-22, but instead of bombers and Italian prostitutes there are big box book stores and people eating pizza. The role of Yosarrian is played by a confirmed and inveterate book nerd (named Thomas). I think Corey Redekop may also have been channeling Chuck Palahniuk when he wrote it, so you should check it out. You can read more about it at the publisher’s website and at Corey’s blog, where he has some links to where you can buy it online. (Though we’re all aware of my theories of the blog-reading public’s