Humour

Truth And Beauty Bombs asked “What would Garfield be like if all Garfield’s dialogue was removed”?

The answer? Something like this:

From Think Artificial, this is New Zealand’s Flight Of The Conchords performing “The Humans Are Dead”; a look at how two robots in the distant future might discuss the recent destruction of all humans (and elephants). It’s very funny.

To my mum: THIS CONTAINS ONE SWEAR WORD!

To everyone: Now that that disclaimer is out of the way, you absolutely must watch this. You won’t regret it:

I’m sure I’m not the only one who finds this funny:

He looks like the Rex-Kwan-Do guy from Napoleon Dynamite, doesn’t he? 

More at Absolute Moral Authority.

LIFE IMITATING ART: Trying to smuggle 700 snakes onto a plane can get you into trouble, apparently. If you were thinking about doing that, don’t.

What movies would you like to see come true in real life? My choice would be Galaxy Quest.

Do you like I Can Has Cheezburger? Plenty of people do. I don’t, but that’s fine, because now we have a take-off of it! Instead of lolcats (def’n: cat pics with captions), check out some lolgoth action at raincoaster.

(Hat-tip to The Art Of Darkness.)

MILESTONE UPDATE: This blog recently got its 1,000th* comment! Awesomeness!

* That figure includes trackbacks, internal trackbacks, and comments by me. Cheating, maybe?

(The following is my contribution to the writing project at Middle Zone Musings, which is a blog you should read always. The project is simple: write a blog post with the topic What life lesson(s) have you learned from an unusual source? I’m not sure if this is the type of thing Robert Hzurek had in mind. Ah well.)

Teen Girl Squad, a flash animation series on Homestar Runner, follows the lives and untimely demises of four teenage girls:

• Cheerleader – the popular, attractive girl who is the ringleader of the squad,

• So-and-so – the academic one who avoids being academic in order to fit in,

• Whats-her-face – who has bad fashion sense and is the outsider of the group, and

• The Ugly One! (Yes, she really is called that.)

Sarz has previously mentioned she most identifies with Whats-her-face (the one wearing pants). That puzzles me a bit. Perhaps we’ll see why as we go through each episode in the series.

What I Have Learned From Teen Girl Squad

Episode 1:

Teenage girls are obsessed with appearance and have crushes on boys.
Watching cartoon girls get stomped on by dinosaurs is funny.

Episode 2:

Clouds have teeth.
Teenage boys are dumb. (“You must be girls.”)

Episode 3:

Girls like shopping. (no, really!)
Op shops are not considered fashionable.

Episode 4:

Girl crushes are ridiculous.
Girls are ridiculous full stop. (Discuss.)

Episode 5:

Cartoon girls upended in the sand, being used as a perch by evil birds, is strangely entertaining.
Girls with bad fashion sense get abandoned by their friends.
Teenage girls sometimes pass themselves off as older than they really are in order to attract older boys.

Episode 6:

Peer pressure drives girls to do insane things. Probably not as insane as jumping into a lion’s mouth, though.

Episode 7:

This one was less educational than the others. Sorry.

Episode 8:

When playing a bass guitar, watch that it doesn’t turn into a shark and eat you.

Episode 9:

In high school, are friends really friends?
Without Cheerleader around, the other girls are free from pressure.
“The tyranny is over!”

Episode 10:

Teenage romance is completely ridiculous. (Or did that get covered in a prior episode? Or all the episodes?)
Parties are much more interesting if there are boys involved.

Episode 11:

Beware of maniacs in speedos.

Episode 12:

“She likes cloth” is a good band name.
“Say baby, you want to find a remote access point with me?” is a good pick up line.
Texting from three feet away is silly.
Whats-her-face finds true love in this episode, which is why Sarz likes it so much.

****

I suspect I learned something about the nature of girls by watching this series of animations. Judge for yourselves by the comments above. Or, perhaps, be shocked and stunned that I have just learned everything I know about women from a series of very silly flash cartoons.

In all seriousness, this series brought back memories of high school for me, with its pettiness, its peer pressure, the focus on popularity and the strange dynamic in play between boys and girls. Thank goodness times change and priorities change.

But how much do things change really? How much of our lives is focussed on looking good, chasing material things and playing politics in the workplace? I’m not sure the insanity of teenagedom ever goes away – it just becomes more subdued, more channelled.

What is the main thing that characterises teenage life? I would say it is it’s unplanned nature, living for the moment and not thinking much about the future; indeed, barely able to comprehend the future.

Yet what happens when we become adults? How often do we actually think about what we’re doing? Do we have a plan? How often do we stop to consider whether we are fulfilling that plan? How much do we allow our lives to be shaped by the expectations of others?

I’ve been challenged as of late - and I suppose this is only tangentially related to Teen Girl Squad - to have a plan, to know we’re I’m going.

How much of our lives have meaning? How much time do we spend on things that don’t matter?

This cannot be real - a parrot that communicates in English. According to the BBC, N’kisi the parrot has a vocabulary of 950 words, uses grammar correctly and has a sense of humour.

From the article:

When he first met Dr Jane Goodall, the renowned chimpanzee expert, after seeing her in a picture with apes, N’kisi said: “Got a chimp?”

He appears to fancy himself as a humourist. When another parrot hung upside down from its perch, he commented: “You got to put this bird on the camera.”

This raises a lot of questions. How many parrots are there like N’kisi? Are they plotting against us? Do they have blogs? How would you tell if a blog was written by a parrot?

A couple of questions for those of you who have blogs:

1. Are you a parrot?
2. Are you in league with parrots?

Nominate blogs that are likely to be written by parrots by leaving a comment.

What would you think if you got a party invitation like this:

Classy, isn’t it? It’s just one of 110 party invitations my brothers did for the occasion of their 21st. Each one features a different item of clothing. Must have taken them ages to produce.

Here’s a couple of others (click to view):

I got the one with the shoe.

It’s a wildlife haven, apparently, despite the mutations. (Insert jokes about three-winged birds etc here.) The Reference Frame has more info. You can view some very eerie photo galleries at the BBC of abandoned cities and villages as they appear today.

But I could hardly pass up the opportunity presented by the 21st anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster to retell some old Chernobyl jokes. So here goes:

· How do you make chicken Kiev? Well, first you heat the city to 400 degrees….

· An old woman stands in the market with a “Chernobyl mushrooms for sale” sign. A man goes up to her and asks, “Hey, what are you doing? Who’s going to buy Chernobyl mushrooms?” And she tells him, “Why, lots of people. Some for their boss, some for their mother-in-law…”

· A grandson asks his grandfather: “Grandpa, is it true that in 1986 there was an accident at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant?” “Yes, there was.” - answered the Grandpa and patted the grandson’s head. “Grandpa, is it true that it had absolutely no consequences?” “Yes, absolutely” - answered the Grandpa and patted the grandson’s second head.

Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini or Hussein? Those are the options in a rather hilarious poll at the Melbourne Victory Forum at the moment. From the comments:

Hitler would organise an invasion of the neighbours and have them exterminated or incarcerated in labour camps. Taking over the nighbours place would result in more “lebensraum” for Adolf and his roomies.

Stalin would liquidate anyone arriving at the house who had previously been at the neighbour’s on suspicion of spying, sending them to the gulag.

Mussolini would send his cronies to the neightbour’s house to invade it, only to see them humiliate him by surrendering after 5 minutes.

Hussein would, upon invasion, declare that the enemy was killing themselves at the front gate, when in fact they were making themselves at home in the lounge.

While we’re on the subject, those of you who are Stalin experts can shed some light on the following question: did Stalin create a personality cult surrounding himself, or was he modest and self-effacing, as claimed by soilride in a recent comment on this blog?

According to Answers In Genesis:

Pretty scary stuff.