Tag Archives: humor

Taking a moment to enjoy a thrill

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Sorry to distract you from the usual nonsense around here, but I thought I’d share this screenshot from Amazon last night. As you can see, The Fridgularity is nestled between two Kurt Vonnegut books in bestselling satire. This is exciting, not only because Vonnegut is one of my literary heroes, but these are two of my favourite Vonnegut books!

vonnegut-rayner

And lest you think my head is getting all swollen with this excitement, I will point out the price of The Fridgularity is considerably lower, and Vonnegut is up there all the time. My visits have been brief.

So if you haven’t (for some reason) bought your copy of The Fridgularity, then now is a great time to do so. It’s 99¢ in ebook formats: Kindle Edition, and all other formats on Smashwords (Use Coupon Code: YU86X). If you’re still into the dead tree thing, like many of us, you can get it here for $12.99. (Use the coupon code: YGMVFZZY.) Once you’ve done that I highly recommend both Vonnegut books too.

Gratuitous self-promotion over!

Alltop is never above a self-aggrandizing aggregation either.

Paging Dr. Godhead

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Paging Dr. Godhead - photo of charismatic chimp

“…whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.”

–Bertrand Russell

“The satirist is prevented by repulsion from gaining a better knowledge of the world he is attracted to, yet he is forced by attraction to concern himself with the world that repels him.”

–Italo Calvino

“There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.”

–Napoleon Bonaparte

“All human race would fain be wits.
And millions miss, for one that hits.”

–Jonathan Swift
Alltop would fain be a wit. Verily, brother. Beauty is relative, originally uploaded by True_Bavarian.

Ask General Kang: Do you have infographics on your home world?

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Ask General Kang - chimp on top of globeDo we? I have entire legion of hipster über-baboons devoted to cranking out these things on an hourly basis, clogging Neecknaw’s Datasphere with pretty misinformation.

Before I recruited them for the Symbol Legion of Zoom, I found the über-baboons were quite good at using stunning visuals to impart complex data in simple and easily-digested images. This did not suit my purposes, so I had them “retrained” at a special and fun “infocamp” on the frozen moonlet that orbits Neecknaw VII, AKA known as Probit VII. (Note: the “infocamp” was not actually fun.)

My purpose in providing copious numbers of infographics was to obscure the information contained within them, and to maximize the search engine traffic to a number sites I ran to help generate income for the people of Neecknaw. (Armies of tutu-wearing, broadsword-weilding gorilloids and fez-wearing über-chimps packing plasma rifles don’t pay for themselves.)

I developed a simple recipe for creating frustrating, broadband-sucking, suicide-inducing infographics:

  • rather than visualize the information, use a paragraph or two to describe the information next to a large number (42% is best)
  • use fuzzy math
  • if possible, set the text at 4 points, and make it white text on a light colored background
  • some people may still be able to read this, so compress the graphic into a 400 pixel by 4000 pixel bitmap image (never in html – this could actually be useful)
  • if you cannot find extremely dubious sources for your data, make your sources text even smaller.

And yes, since my arrival on earth, I have passed along this recipe. You were starting to get well informed.

Next time: My time vortex is clogged — can I use a x-dimensional plunger on that, or should I try Drano?

Alltop loves a good plunge.

Schism opens way for creation of SinoPope

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RoboPopeVATICAN CITY (The Skwib) — In the ecclesiastically chaotic schism between the Pope at the Vatican and the RoboPope at Avignon, the warring Popes have been able to agree on one thing: there is no room for a SinoPope.

Both the Vatican and Avignon Holy Fathers have excommunicated two bishops ordained by China’s state-controlled church without papal consent.

The state-conrolled quasi-religious Communist-Catholoic church — the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association — announced that it was splitting from both Vatican- and Avignon-based Holy Fathers, was constructing its own android Pontiff to lead the Chinese “Catholics”.

A press release stated that the so-called SinoPope, would be superior in design to RoboPope, and that its organic components would include brain tissue cultured from the Chairman (Mao Zedong), thus ensuring its political purity and popularity with the Chinese people. (According to the Chinese schematics for their robotic religious leader, other organic parts must be replaced frequently, and thus will come from tissues harvested from recently executed “criminals”.)

Chinese officials have said they expect the SinoPope will be 70 percent infallible, and that the 30 percent fallibility is an acceptable loss.

RoboPope told The Skwib in telephone interview that “SinoPope can kiss my shiny metal ass.”

The Vatican did not return our phone calls.

RoboPope saga:
RoboSchism | Avignon releases Robopope schematics | No room for SinoPope

Alltop is HumorPope! Originally published November, 2007.