Posts in the Humor Category

Just in case anyone cares, I’ve finally brought the Media Is Funny and CNN Is Funny pages out of dormancy.  They’re now caught up to this morning.  On a related note, I saw something this morning that didn’t really qualify for either page, but was worth sharing nonetheless.  The ad server at The Weather Channel coughed up a filler image today, and lucky me, I caught it.

So if you were ever curious about how much screen real estate that ad was chewing up… now you know.

• A Few Spots of Fun was published on Saturday, September 18th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the Humor category.
• There have been no replies.

Excerpt from an IM session this afternoon:

Eric Meyer: Browsers– can’t live with ’em, can’t kill their developers.

Molly Holzschlag: well one could …

Eric Meyer: Okay, but not legally.

Molly Holzschlag: justifiable homicide?

Eric Meyer: Juries are notoriously unsympathetic to technical explanations.

Molly Holzschlag: you have a point

• Scenes From An iChat Window was published on Tuesday, September 14th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the Browsers and Humor categories.
• There have been four replies.

A couple of nights ago, Kat and I watched most of Toy Story 2 before going to bed.  In subsequent nights, we watched the rest of the movie, and also the original Toy Story, but that’s not important right now.  It was interesting to compare the technical differences between the two, from rendering to animation, but that’s also not important right now.

A few minutes before 5:00am on the morning after we’d watched most of TS2, we were awakened by a cry from Carolyn.  She settled back down within a minute, and as we lay there dropping back off to sleep ourselves, we very clearly heard, coming from somewhere in the house, a quick series of three beeps.

My first thought was the carbon monoxide detector, but it wasn’t loud enough or the right tone pattern (the CO detector just wails in one long earsplitting tone).  My second thought was a fire detector running low on batteries, but again, wrong tone pattern.  The interval between these two thoughts was probably a couple of minutes, because it was very early in the morning and I was stumbling around the house trying to figure out what had produced the sound.

After a tour of the first floor and a quick peek into Carolyn’s room, I went back to bed.  It took a while, since I’d shifted into sentry mode, but I eventually fell back asleep.  We haven’t heard any mysterious beeps since then.

It’s hard to shake the suspicion that our electronic gadgets have started talking to each other at night.  I’m not sure what they’d talk about; how much would a VCR really have to say to a cell phone?  Maybe they discuss difficult philosophcal questions and further illuminate the nature of existence.  Maybe our technosphere has gotten sophisticated enough that a collective awareness has emerged.  If that’s true, then it’s little wonder we wouldn’t have heard about it.  What interest would a global intelligence have in talking to any of us?

Then again, maybe a short-circuit or other unexpected condition triggered some beeps, and that was that.

• Things That Go Beep In The Night was published on Monday, September 13th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the Humor and Tech categories.
• There have been twenty-seven replies.

Every now and again, I stumble across a weblog post that makes me feel the way I expect random visitors feel about my CSS posts.  I hit one recently titled “No Information Lost Here!” which says, in part:

Anyone who hasn’t been asleep for the past 6 years knows that quantum gravity in asymptotically anti-de Sitter space has unitary time evolution. Blackholes may form and evaporate in interior, but the overall evolution is unitary and is holographically dual to the evolution in a gauge theory on the boundary.

Um, yeah.  I mean, who didn’t know that?  Sheesh!

It’s always fun to come across someone who clearly is expert in a field I know nothing about (although, in a parallel universe where I stuck with my original college plans, I’d understand it) and who is clearly writing for other people in the same field.  It reminds me that much of what I write here is effectively gibberish to 99.9995% of the planet, even though that probably isn’t the case for most of my visitors.  It’s good to hit a weblog where I am, for lack of a better term, an outsider.  It helps preserve perspective.

Even more fun in this case, however, was to note the end of the URL for the post titled “No Information Lost Here!”: 000404.html.

• On The Outside was published on Tuesday, September 7th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the Humor category.
• There have been fourteen replies.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve spotted and captured a few bits of amusement that I thought I’d share.  Two are truck-based, and the other was found by the side of the road.  Enjoy.

I found this a very creative way to advise motorists on proper driving. This was taken on Interstate 71 just south of exit 151, and not in the Southwest like you might have expected.  (Note to non-Americans: in the U.S., we drive on the right side of the road; thus, slower traffic goes to the right and faster to the left.)

I always figured that when they got here, their transports would be a little more advanced.  Unfortunately, I was without my SPNKR so all I can do is report the sighting.  (This one is more of an in-joke, albeit an in-joke shared with the several zillion people who’ve played Halo.)

Somebody obviously heard about how I drive.  The original picture is going to be Photoshopped to complete the naming just as soon as I can find the time.

• Road Chuckles was published on Tuesday, August 31st, 2004.
• It was assigned to the Humor category.
• There has been one reply.

I bet you didn’t know that Molly and I have super-powers, did you?

The benefits of using CSS on a regular basis are amazing, really.  I’m hoping to develop telekinesis next.

• Up, Up and Away was published on Friday, August 27th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the CSS and Humor categories.
• There have been seven replies.

Last night, Kat and I celebrated our wedding anniversary—a month late, true, but that was the soonest we had enough free time—with a romantic evening and dinner at Classics.  If you visit the restaurant’s Web site, you’ll discover that it plays some loud background music.  It’s relatively tasteful piano music, but still there.  The same is true of the restaurant itself, as it happens.  It wasn’t quite as loud, though, and was performed by a live pianist.  He was pretty good.

Of course, he played all the usual suspects.  About five minutes after we were seated, he started in on a rendition of “Send In The Clowns”.  Kat looked at me and said, “What, do all these guys get the same songbook?”  I tend to think so, although to his credit he managed not to play “Memories”.

Partway through the meal, we asked the server if the pianist took requests.  We were assured that he did, so we requested our wedding song: “The Christmas Song”.  She left to pass on the request and we got back to our food, one of the middle courses in the chef’s tasting menu.  As the next song emerged from the piano, I said to Kat, “Great, he’s still working that songbook.  Now it’s ‘Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina’.”

But as the chorus came around a second time, I suddenly realized something was amiss.  Cocking my head to one side, I re-focused on the music.  There was definitely something off-kilter.  “I don’t think that’s ‘Argentina’ after all,” I said.  Kat, looking puzzled herself, agreed.  It was definitely a song I’d heard before, but I was having trouble placing it.  Then, on the third round of the chorus, my eyes widened.  I looked at Kat; from her expression, I could tell she’d gotten it too.

“I think it’s—” she started to say in an incredulous tone.

“I’m pretty sure you’re right,” I said.  “We have to ask him.”

A few minutes later, we had our chance.  The pianist came over to our table and said he wanted to ask about our request, since apparently he was concerned about the other patrons’ reaction to hearing “The Christmas Song” in August.  He was curious to hear how that got to be our song for a summer wedding.

“I’ll tell you,” I said, “but first I have to ask a question.  What was the song you played just now?”

He was immediately embarrassed, and fluttered his hands as he responded.  “Oh, well, my memory isn’t, I mean one of the servers… it was just a little bit from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.”

Kat and I burst into laughter and shared a high-five.

• A Classic Moment was published on Friday, August 20th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the Humor category.
• There has been one reply.

Thanks to Boss of All Bosses Jonas, I found myself taking a personality test that had, in the end, the following to say about me:

You are a WRCL–Wacky Rational Constructive Leader. This makes you a golden god. People gravitate to you, and you make them feel good. You are smart, charismatic, and interesting. You may be too sensitive to others reactions, especially criticism. Your self-opinion and mood depends greatly on those around you.

You think fast and have a smart mouth, is a hoot to your friends and razorwire to your enemies. You hold a grudge like a brass ring. You crackle.

Although you have a leader’s personality, you often choose not to lead, as leaders stray too far from their audience. You probably weren’t very popular in high school–the joke’s on them!

You may be a rock star.

Rock star?  I’m the Neil Young of CSS, baby!

• Have I Been Pegged? was published on Saturday, July 10th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the Humor category.
• There have been twenty replies.