Posts tagged “humor”

My family thinks I take long showers. To settle the debate, I present a minute-by-minute breakdown of my typical morning routine, featuring scalding water, existential crises, conditioner that never rinses out, and significant time lost contemplating personal projects, mortality, and the deceptive packaging of hair care products.

My boyfriend thinks he's my "exception." He is not.

My favourite tweets from 2008, collected in a zero-effort year-end post. Heated leather seats, Madonna's lifestyle choices, slow iPhones, pressure-sensitive sellotape and Gloria Gaynor's uncertain survival prospects. These are the tweets that made me laugh out loud this year.

A fun comparison of "awful gays" and "awful nerds" with my friend Isaac, mapping the worst stereotypes of both subcultures side by side. Turns out misogyny, relationship failures, and Goth high school phases transcend orientation and interests alike.

I mapped HTTP status codes to workplace conversation snippets. "404: I have no idea what you're talking about." "502: Bob is refusing to work with me on this." Now available as a poster. Note how the spec reveals programmers always blame the client.

A video (probably fabulous) plus a chat with isaac about Obama being a giant nerd, Spider-Man being the geek's superhero, and X-Men being a pretty much perfect analogy for gay people. Powers manifesting at puberty, some hidden, some flaming. It tracks.

Mattress sales are booming while everything else looks pretty fucked. That's the economy right now.

I've got this.

My friend Laurie cuts through the Russia-Georgia conflict with brutal efficiency: war with Russia never ends well, nobody has two decades to waste, and clearly we should all just gang up on China instead.

Spent an hour on NoMoreDates, a dating site for serious urban professionals. Their advanced matching algorithms searched their entire database and came up with zero matches. They're supposed to solve that problem, not confirm it. It's been that kind of week, and it's only Tuesday.

Dvorak's analogy is priceless: Microsoft could buy GM and Ford, name every car "Google Sucks," and still have $14 billion left over for a party. He's right. Yahoo isn't worth $44 billion.

London elected Boris Johnson as mayor while I was away. Mildly horrified, though it does mean fewer Schwarzenegger comparisons. At least Arnie ran a successful business.

Oil hit $100 a barrel, and the BBC reported it right on cue. For Americans and Brits, that's terrifying. For Trinidad? We're celebrating.

Laurie sat on her camera and broke it. When she blamed her weight, I called her an idiot. Then she hit me with the perfect comeback: "The camera doesn't lie." I'm proud of her.

Saw The Go! Team live after years of avoiding gigs due to a claustrophobia incident. They were extraordinary. Also, Delhi's solution to killer monkeys is training bigger, meaner monkeys, which pretty much sums up humanity.

I want to hear George Takei sincerely say "Oh Em Gee." That's it. Also, Heroes is basically a Star Trek reunion at this point, and things will get truly ridiculous when Colm Meaney shows up.

I'm late to the party, but What Would Tyler Durden Do is the funniest celebrity gossip site on the internet. It's to gossip what The Daily Show is to news.

I started a Facebook group dedicated to keeping parents off their kids' social networks. Nobody needs their mum reading their risque status updates or their boss seeing their job complaints. Join up and resolve to never crash your children's social networking party.

Lost my watch this morning. Found it plugged into my monitor. USB watches have their downsides.

Living in California means perpetually ignoring perfect weather to write code indoors. The sunshine becomes background noise you stop noticing.

Harry Potter's emotional arc across six books, told entirely in emoticons. New book out tomorrow!

Every morning I perform contradictory maintenance rituals on my body: fighting bacteria here, cultivating it there, drying this, moistening that. There must be a more efficient system. Though sticking my eyes in my armpits seems impractical.

Big fan of this xkcd.

My grocery list swings wildly between sophisticated cheese shop hauls and pure childhood junk food binges. I genuinely can't tell which one represents the real me.

Time machines, amnesia rays, and orgasmo-booths: all likely invented repeatedly, but you'd never know.

My Amazon front page is now NSFW because I browsed for underwear without buying any, and now it's wall-to-wall lingerie and posing thongs. My fix: buy the most boring underwear they sell so the algorithm declares victory. Update: it's cookie-based, so never mind, Amazon is fine.

Amazon Prime is a blessing and a curse. There's nothing quite like the thrill of a surprise package showing up at your door that you completely forgot you ordered.

Two Dr. Tran videos that have been cracking me up lately. Watch them both.

I had a dream where an Irish barman explained whale drinking habits to me, complete with infographics. Mink whales drink you under the table; white whales drink you completely underwater. I woke up laughing for 30 seconds. My brain is weird.

A CSS joke for gay web developers: `p.flag`. You either get it or you don't.

A Dish Network telemarketer called my brand new landline and tried to convince me that 1.5Mbps is faster than 6Mbps because "smaller numbers are faster." I work for Yahoo. I hung up. Also: back pain, percocet, and I now officially exist thanks to my social security number arriving.

(Etymology: "I love SF" -> "I heart SF" -> "I "I less-than-three SF" -> "I cone-ass SF" -> "I ass-cone SF") The reason I'm loving SF is that somebody made that joke and everybody in the car got it without having to explain. Also, nice weather and good food.

Sick, soaked, and hoping for no tsunamis.

I've accidentally picked up an outdoor hobby. Also: Why do socialists drink herbal tea? Because all proper tea is theft.

Went roller disco-ing for my 25th birthday and got ID'd. Best. Present. Ever. Also considering buying proper skates, since our neighbourhood has plenty of concrete.

Taking a break from heavy topics to share the cutest couple alive, cuter than pandas holding hat-wearing kittens. Also: is Blair done? My sources say he'll last through the party conference, but I'm not so sure he makes it to October.

Killing time with a sore jaw by taking OkCupid quizzes. Turns out I'm an emotional hippie, attracted to pretty boys, an English genius, a cool nerd, and a success-driven Type Three. The grammar test at least salvaged my pride.

Sharing some funny lyrics from Orson's "Already Over" -- not directed at anyone, just genuinely hilarious. The delivery makes it even better. Recommend the album.

Survived two of four fillings. The nurse was actually good at suction, he didn't bruise my lips, and the anaesthetic kicked in before the drill did. Face still paralysed. Apparently I look like a stroke victim on the tube.

My latest dentist visit revealed three botched fillings and a tooth so destroyed it's basically just a hole. The projected repair costs are astronomical enough that my lifelong justification for sobriety ("at least it's cheaper than drinking") may finally require a spreadsheet to defend. Brush your teeth, kids.

Burger, footie, football shirt, pint of milk. This is peak heterosexuality for me, and I'm watching Family Guy in a Trinidad shirt.

Samuel L. Jackson predicts Snakes on a Plane wins Best Movie at the MTV Awards. Who am I to disagree? He's Samuel L. Jackson. I am nobody.

Been slacking on the blog. Go apologize to a cow.

I recognized my ex-housemate B from the bottom of a staircase at Leicester Square tube station, in the middle of a crowded platform. I recognized him by his ass. A skill I've apparently spent two years developing without realizing it.

Snakes on a Plane is five months from release and already a cult phenomenon. The trailer is everything I hoped for, including Samuel L. Jackson loading a gun mid-sentence. It's going to be magnificent.

Too hip for my own good.

The BBC's photo editors couldn't resist choosing the most villainous possible shot of Abu Hamza for his trial coverage. The man already has one eye and hooks for hands. How much more sinister do you need to make him look?

Buttoned Down Disco is this Friday. Also, the 2006 Bloggies site already crashed. Next year, all ten of you are nominating me.

A classic breakdown of British newspaper readership, apparently from Yes, Prime Minister, neatly skewering who reads what and why.

Season 2 of Beauty and the Geek is back and I'm hooked. Equal parts hilarious and genuinely sweet, with great one-liners flying in the first few minutes. Less annoying host this season too.

Check out this blonde joke — possibly the best ever. Not PC, but I couldn't help laughing out loud.

Woken after 4 hours sleep by neighbour's dogs going berserk at some idiot who kept antagonising them. Foghorns, shouting, chaos. I'm up now, the dogs are still barking at everything, and I finally understand crimes of passion.

At a New Year's party, "frightened badger" photos spiraled into an absurd menagerie: confused badgers, amorous penguins, orgasming amoeba, and my favorite, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. All you need is a camera and drunk people.

CNN's picture editors are at it again, illustrating a story about exploding fireworks factories with a guy who looks exactly like Wile E. Coyote after a very bad day near a petrol depot.

Our Christmas party was fantastic. I danced a lot, skipped the free bar, looked stupid in a suit, and nearly lost my expensive winter coat to a mysterious woman from finance. Also I'm awake at 3am on caffeine and somehow expect to be alert tomorrow.

Forced into renting a tuxedo for our "Black Tie" Christmas party. I look like a trapped monkey in suits, and apparently black tie is designed to eliminate all individuality. Desperately seeking a non-boring dinner jacket before this afternoon. Send help.

I've started calculating RGB hex codes in my head, branching into pastels and secondary colours without looking anything up. I'm worried about what useful knowledge got displaced to make room for the ability to count in base 16.

The BBC keeps using the same stock photo in their extended opening hours coverage. Pretty sure it's actually Jennifer Aniston drowning her post-Brad sorrows. Does the BBC really need to rub it in?

I love this optical illusion from Defective Yeti involving a kitten.

A man visits the zoo only to find just one dog. It was a shih tzu.

I updated my voter registration online via an amusingly dodgy council website, only to be thanked not for completing the form, but for "using the Internet" in general. You're welcome, Islington. We'll keep using it.

Saw an ad on the Piccadilly line: "New WKD Red. It's new and it's red. See what we did?" Refreshingly honest for an ad campaign. Reminds me of Matt. Also, loving my new camera.

Lovely barbecue turned into a long, relaxed evening. Then had to "play it straight" giving Dom a lift home, which somehow left him unable to navigate his own street. His excuse: being gay. Apparently it explains most things. I'm considering trying it when my next project is late.

Had our summer party today. Drunk coworkers are hilarious.

London's dark humor is returning after the bombings, and so am I. We're coping the only way we know how: taking the piss. And to those posting "We Are Not Afraid" from Nebraska: easy to say when you're not the one who's fucking terrified.

A good day at work: cookies causing login loops, AND vs OR in SQL joins, and the correct terminology for Bosnian landmine incidents. Three questions, three answers. On a roll.

81% pure on a sexual purity test. Must try harder.

Took a quiz that called me a "pundit blogger." Not very scientific, but I'll take it. Meanwhile, work devolved into shouting names on IRC and a Pythagorean argument about who sits closest to whom. Diagrams were drawn. It's that kind of office.

Too fried to blog, so here's my entry in Dom's MS Paint orgasm-drawing competition instead.

Not my proudest comeback post: I used a name generator to christen my penis Darth Vader the Strangely Proportioned Liquorice Strap. Yes, really.

I dreamed I almost had sex, but spent the whole time searching for a condom instead. When I realized mid-dream it was a dream and I'd wasted all that time on safe sex precautions, the frustration woke me up. HIV awareness campaigns have ruined even my fantasy life.

I drink an alarming amount of Yazoo. If it turns out to be bad for me, I'm done for. Worth it though.

A housewarming gift magnet from Windsor has permanently infected our household with spontaneous outbursts of "HALLO!" and "FROM WINDSOR" in terrible fake posh accents.

"Happy slapping" -- assaulting strangers on video phone -- turns out to be self-correcting. Actual assault is risky, so kids just slap each other and fake it. Net result: idiots hitting themselves to look cool. Darwin's got this one covered.

The party was a success. Thanks to everyone who came and for the wonderful housewarming gifts, especially the sodastream. Also: Xtreme Cheddar is apparently a thing that exists.

Blogging from the dinner table. Not sure if I should be proud or ashamed.

A B.C. comic strip where Johnny Hart takes a swipe at evolution. Says it all.

The name Donald is pretty bad.

Tory poster generator fun. And yes, I know the grammar's dodgy, but Labour get away with "Forward, not back" so let's not go there.

Pope John Paul II has died. Time for the media to treat the papal election like a presidential race. Also, happy birthday M!

Madonna dressed as a nun, Guy as the Pope. My day is complete.

Spent the afternoon in the park with friends discussing eugenics, scatological chocolate ads, and QE2 baked bean tins. Someone kept throwing grapes at my head. Now off to Popstarz!

Went to the gym. Worked out. Did not die. I'll take it.

Worked until 10pm, brain is mush. The Daily Show is genius, wondering if Teen Titans is worth watching, want to mess with Ajax, and pop-up ads targeting Firefox users can go to hell.

Late night, no energy, and I got thoroughly schooled by Leah on my half-baked gay men post. Here's a teddy bear instead.

Six weeks without sex has pushed me past the "looking for a life partner" phase into "shag anything that moves" territory. I've graphed it. The math is not encouraging.

Bush arrives in Belgium and somehow the photo looks fake, and Laura looks like she escaped from a Dracula film.

My life has been rated 12A. Apparently I'm unbearably tame and need to get up to something naughty right away.

Moving to Finsbury Park. Blogging may pause briefly. Also, best line of the day: being gay is a choice the same way opening your eyes is a choice. You could keep them shut, but you'd be blind your whole life.

A blow-by-blow of a pretty standard day: tube delays, mug theft, a near heart-attack over phantom missing thousands, Polish policeman jokes with no punchline, and an estimate with a gaping hole in it. Saved by metric tonnes of fajita.

Five hunters killed each other in a gun battle over a deer stand, with zero deer harmed. Would've been perfect if the deer had eaten the bodies, but they're vegetarian. Damn hippies.

Living in Tooting means enduring near-constant fireworks from October through January, as residents celebrate every conceivable holiday. I'm begging you all to consolidate into one big display so I can sleep before 3am sometime before February.

Sick at home, so I took a BBC personality test. Turns out I'm a "Big Thinker": outspoken, ideas-focused, tactless, and terrible at follow-through. Basically a "tactless argumentative bastard" who thinks everyone else is unimportant. Sounds about right.

I took that relationship personality test everyone's doing. Apparently I'm a "Love Geek" - weirdly sexy, calm under conflict, don't date casually, would make an excellent parent. Nailed it on most counts. Only 4% of respondents share my type.

A grab-bag of links: Rock Paper Saddam, sexist investment bankers, the BBC photo competition, surprisingly homo-friendly B&Bs, infinite cats, Britney's hilarious mission statement, and turning your iPod into a wireless jukebox.

Been busy with work and comics, so here are some links: evil giraffes, Cory Doctorow on DRM, a quiz about strong black women, a map of queer America, and the troubling anti-Muslim backlash following recent beheadings.

I took a quiz. I'm Raver Bear. Nobody's shocked.

A ridiculously cool animated emoticon I found on DeviantART.

Inspired by a friend posting old photos, I'm sharing an embarrassing collage of myself at 16. My hair was ridiculous then and remains ridiculous now. Also, yes, I dressed as Neo for Halloween. The Matrix had just come out. Don't judge me.

Clearing my backlog: Abu Ghraib torture outrages me, we should rent a castle in August, Mills and Boon manga exists, some guy bet his life savings on roulette and won, and yes, Wolf Blitzer's mother really does call him Wolf.

Security contractor killed in Fallujah worked for a company called Custer Battles. You really can't make this stuff up.

I'm the Grammar Fuhrer, apparently. Also, another journalist just discovered blogs exist. Their careers are doomed.

A comic sells out hilariously, and BBC employees anonymously defend their site on a wiki complaint page, creating a bizarre, schizophrenic chorus of justifications and rebuttals.

Filthy link dump: cars with cheat codes, bunnies re-enacting The Exorcist, Mars rovers on LiveJournal, a talking vibrating Hello Kitty USB hub, and more. The iGrill may be humanity's greatest achievement.

Polaroid says don't shake your photos like Outkast told you to. Also, I'm rating my blog on Hot or Not because yes, that's a thing now.

I received a Nigerian scam email and replied in kind: I'm also a dictator's son with locked funds, and if Simeon sends me $1000 to unlock my money, I'll send him the $4000 he needs. Everyone wins!

I took a quiz and apparently I'm an Intellectual. Which America-hating minority are you?

The Fab Five have been reimagined as comic book superheroes. I cannot stop giggling about this.

I'm a gay man who finds locker room nudity baffling and unpleasant. Straight guys shrug it off as "just guys," but that logic doesn't work for me. Why is public nudity suddenly acceptable the moment you enter a changing room? Scrotums are not attractive. Put them away.

Supermarket checkouts are a window into people's lifestyles and choices. I love judging what's in other people's baskets, though I'm aware that says more about me than them.

Been ill and binge-reading Something Positive, a webcomic with geek, gay and random humour. Most importantly, it has Choo-Choo Bear the polymorphic chemo-cat. Highly recommended.

Sick with a cold, so here's a raw link dump: BBC was least impartial on Iraq war coverage, a cool snowflake builder, Peter Jackson confirmed for The Hobbit, Defective Yeti's packing peanut baby quote, and my Smallville fixation that's definitely not about Lex and Clark's tension.

My friends Ed and Raymond have an ongoing NYC vs. Boston rivalry. Their latest email exchange did not disappoint.

I gave my friend Mikey a blog whether he wanted one or not. Anyone want to help with his CSS?

Christmas is a scam. The food, the gifts, the family bonding, the religious angle, the music -- all bullshit. Only small children enjoy it, and that's pure greed. I love it anyway, because it's gloriously camp and I get to visit my family somewhere warm.

A chat log exchange with Chez about rugby players, revealing my apparent failure as a gay man for not knowing who Jonny Wilkinson is. We disagree on what constitutes an attractive man. I maintain my Orlando Bloom standards; she vows to convert me to rugby.

A guy greased his shoes with butter, and the BBC is running topical limericks. The internet remains a strange and wonderful place.

Dave's response to my point about sand being plentiful had me in stitches. Sometimes housemate conversations go places you don't expect.

It's Gay Sex Week (Oct 12-18) and I'm desperately hoping someone organizes a fundraiser just to watch CNN cover it. Also, my recent posts are giving Google some unfortunate ideas about me. I write sappy poetry, I promise.

I've rediscovered my love for Jeff Vogel's writing about his daughter Cordelia, now a toddler. His parenting philosophy? Skip shielding her from swear words and instead teach her to deploy them with maximum effectiveness. Highly recommended reading.

Only 6,000 Segways exist in the world, and they're all being recalled because dead batteries send you sprawling. Slow sales might be an understatement.

Caught a Robbie Williams lyric on my way out that perfectly captures how I've been feeling lately. Also, it's International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Arrr.

Stealth Disco has consumed my office and, inevitably, me. Also: Jason Mraz is great, the RIAA is suing Share Bear, Angle Grinder Man is our sad answer to the Naked Cowboy, and Teen Girl Squad is getting weird.

Links: optical illusions, BoingBoing's Rotten.com guestbar with a hidden "FUCK YOU ALL" message, a deeply unsettling photo, a bummer, and gay webcomics. FAGZ beats Boy Meets Boy on laughs and nudity, which is basically my main criterion anyway.

I'm a below-average snooze-button hitter, and proud of it. I also tried a body-clock wake-up trick and it actually worked. Yes, I blogged about waking up. At least I'm not blogging about my cat.

Watched Queer Eye, found it equal parts funny and cringeworthy. Jai Rodriguez is hot but visibly mortified. Also: Matthew is having a baby (hilarious), and apparently Sesame Street is now a tool of American foreign policy.

Slow day at work, so I cleared my massive blog backlog. Highlights: artificial diamonds disrupting De Beers, doctor secret slang, Russia building a Mars nuclear plant, giant gerbils devastating China, and the world's most unsettling fluffy rabbits. Plus 20-odd other links. Productive afternoon, really.

My street seems custom-built to remind me of people I know, from Topman (Matt) to Phool (eDan). Both brothers work here too. Also: MIT courses are now free online, and you can train as a BBC journalist. Now I really should do some actual work.

I'm a giant ant monster who breathes poisonous gas, apparently. Also, OJ Simpson sees parallels between his case and Scott Peterson's. Gee, I wonder why, OJ.

Your foot changed direction when you drew a "6" -- don't deny it. Also, I desperately want a Twister duvet cover for my birthday, and if you've ever tried using Odeon's site outside Internet Explorer, check out Accessible Odeon, which scrapes it for the useful bits.

Fun links: fight me as a kung-fu monkey, test your ESP, and get your mind read by a Flash program (spoiler: there's a trick to it).

Blogstakes offers crappy prizes, but more fun is the Devil's Dictionary's sardonic tech definitions, like blog: "To noisily and simultaneously void one's spleen, stomach, bladder and bowels."

A grab-bag of links: Bush action figure, scary nuclear-isomer weapons, the Chewbacca defense, a serial killer vs. programmer quiz, and the Blaster worm, which hit me personally. At least the worm's source code had a funny message for Bill Gates.

TheFunny.Org is hit or miss, but this TATU parody ("I'm a lesbian, she's a lesbian...") is worth a listen despite the terrible singing. Also check out the Super Mario theme on classical piano, complete with underground music and the frantic speed-up at the end.

A roundup of fun links: a website with a big red "delete everything" button, the real Hogwarts Express, Homeland Security jewelry, conceptual art mocking commerce, and a pile of Mac vs. Windows debate fodder.

Answering the Friday Five: I want to find the perfect boyfriend, I'm brutally honest about haircuts, I once lost a friend who turned out to be a pathological liar, I'd live in the X-men universe to meet Iceman, and I wish I could sing.

Finished with school, and I couldn't be happier about it. Screw the educational establishment! (Except Edinburgh's Informatics Department. Please call me.)

Backlog of links including Tropico addiction, post-natal abortion satire, the many things named Voss, a comedic internet history, depleted ocean fish, pervy hobbit diaries, lipograms, Lovecraft, stickman battles, and more. Still drowning in links. I love the web.

Parallel universes, USB watches with analog faces, Hillary's presidential inevitability, virus-killing brain cancer, and Christian ministries warning kids away from grumpy atheists. Another day, another backlog cleared. Professor Giraffenstein assures us dinosaurs still roam the earth. Who am I to argue?

Yes, someone really did make "Weapons of Ass Destruction," starring Arnold Schwarzenpecker. I went looking after the Onion mentioned it as a joke. Rabbit hole also led me to "Shaving Ryan's Privates" and "Gone in 69 Seconds." Porn parody titles: apparently a thriving genre.

Going offline to finish a report under deadline panic. Also, I'm now an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church (free, three minutes online) which should come in handy for pestering Christians.

Stop sending me the Baghdad Bob link! Fine, here it is. Also: a Honda ad that took 606 takes, a chimp using a vending machine, Syria apparently being next on Dubya's list, and assorted other internet flotsam I've been collecting.

Feeling isolated. Someone take me to lunch.

Last night I dreamed I was back in secondary school taking an English test, until it took a sharp turn into existential weirdness. I recreated the question as accurately as I could. I suspect it's asking for the meaning of life, but please, no smart-ass answers.

Living outside the US, I rely on friends like Ed to remind me how absurd American domestic security theater has gotten. Nationwide terror levels, duct tape against chemical weapons, and delivery guys worrying about terrorism in suburban Michigan. You can't make this stuff up.

A collection of out-of-context quotes for the amusement of myself and about three other people. You probably had to be there.

A few Valentine's Day distractions while I procrastinate on coding: cook a sock, calculate your love match, and play Frogger with sheep. Priorities.

A US Congressman's anti-France rant on Radio 4 is the most gloriously offensive thing I've ever heard. The surrender joke at 5:40 is pure gold. Also, go send someone an anti-valentine.

A parody song to the tune of "If You're Happy And You Know It," skewering every hollow justification for invading Iraq. Thanks to Beardy Ben for passing it along. It's darkly funny because it's basically true.

Long-overdue link dump covering everything from RAF rain experiments and Bonzi Buddy lawsuits to vaginal airbags and Leonard Nimoy singing about Bilbo Baggins. Relevance may have expired but the weird is eternal. More to come.

Strangers in a car applauded me walking home from a cheesy pop night at the students' union. 60p drinks, five minutes from my house, and spontaneous applause from passing cars. I'm never leaving.

I want to bring "quidnunc" into common usage as slang for a busybody gossip. Also, Network Rail's excuse for their anti-freeze heaters failing was that they froze. Yes, really.

Wishing everyone a happy new year as the wave of drunkenness rolls across time zones. I'll be sober, watching the chaos unfold with amusement.

Posting from Trinidad with a few links worth sharing: a C/C++ garbage collector, Get Your War On skewering war criminals in the Bush administration, 419 scammer baiters, a friend making notable Trinidadian lists, and reindeer spontaneously combusting before kindergartners. Holiday cheer!

Britain's response to a bus hitting a tree? Cut down the trees, naturally. Also, someone is exploring quantum mechanics through the medium of sheep.

My Christmas checklist: no humming carols, yes to gifts and tinsel and stuffing my face. No fake family bonhomie, no snow (I'll be in the tropics), no holiday charity guilt trips, no special appreciation of loved ones I already appreciate year-round. Christmas is just a good excuse for things I'd do anyway.

A sexy picture that doubles as a spot-the-duplicate puzzle. One person appears 4 times, two appear 3 times, five appear twice. I made it as a poster for my room. It got out of hand. Answers available if you can't figure it out yourself.

Scott Adams on Lou Gerstner's legendary IBM leadership: his biggest contribution was not doing something, and a sock monkey had a 50/50 shot at the same decision. Then he wrote a bestseller about it.

Love the Economist, which dad kindly gifted me. This week's cover is a Kubrick-worthy image that works on every level, and the writing remains as wryly irreverent as ever.

Melton has the world sorted, and Bush supporters are staying visible post-election. Also, here's an Enigma-encoded message for you to crack: settings AAA, M1322 group 4, Naval M3, wheels 3,2,1. Get googling.

Campus life is as baffling as ever: the swamp-like grounds, the brazen milk thief who ignored my clearly labeled 4-pint bottle to steal from a smaller one marked off-limits, and the dedicated potheads doing laps at 3am in the cold. Wouldn't trade it.

Awarding BBC News Online for their hilariously dramatic mouse and keyboard photo. What happens when you hire too many arts students. Also, yeah, internet addiction at work is real. I spent 6 of my 10 weeks at IBM this summer surfing the web.

MoveOn.org has a brilliant ad showing how Bush's "regime change" rhetoric might just apply a little closer to home.

Scott Adams keeps selling out harder than ever. Also, I fell down a rabbit hole from Slashdot to the deeply disturbing story of Gary Heidnik, a man who kept women chained in his basement. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I'm working in tech support now. Also, you know society has gone lawsuit-crazy when fanart comes with "please don't sue me" disclaimers.

Last day at IBM Hursley, back to Warwick! Also: possible life on Venus (just microbes, but still), everything we know is wrong, and the Weekly World News has infiltrated Al-Qaeda. Quite a day.

Been too busy working to blog much. My sources for the fun stuff: Gagpipe, Memepool, FARK, Slashdot, Google News. Also, keep reading the baby story. And here's a tasteless 9/11 joke I've been sitting on: New York, so good they whacked it twice.

I love the Weekly World News: the sun's exploding in 6 years, Hitler's clone just turned 7, and aliens seized NASA's moon base. Also: a Python DDR clone exists, and Ridiculopathy is required reading.

Watch Skeletor dance to a Japanese YMCA cover, explore Middle Earth in Lego, make fruit flies gay, and trash Tokyo with a novelty USB hub. People have too much time on their hands. Or boring jobs, like me. 8 days till Warwick!

It's September 12th, so crack whores and inappropriate behavior rule the day. Also, check out IWantOneOfThose for novelties like a metal-cutting torch and an L39 fighter jet. Don't buy anything though, it's my Christmas shopping territory.

After long searching, I've found the ultimate procrastination tool: holdthebutton.com. Also, a complete l33t 5p33k translator now exists online.

I rediscovered a press release about the band Anthrax dealing with post-9/11 fallout from their name, plus CNN's absurdly overdone anniversary programming schedule. Also, a pretty brutal comic.

Two links worth your time: an alarm clock that can literally kill you, and a chance to take out Barney and the Teletubbies in surprisingly slick flash animation.

I know I shouldn't enjoy the Dow's 355-point drop, but I can't help it. It's like watching the Titanic sink. Horrible, yes, but you can't look away. Friends say I should care more about the economic fallout. They're probably right. But I'm still watching.

The Harry Potter Nimbus 2000 toy broomstick vibrates. You stick it between your legs. The Amazon reviews are priceless. Also, I scored 0/10 on the BBC culture quiz, so there's that.

Vegan bondage gear for the ethically conflicted, the Osbournes on every magazine cover including Popular Science, and a genuinely hilarious breakdown of pop idol formats worldwide. Click that last link. I mean it.

Two fun links: ogle attractive men at MostBeautifulMan (feminism!), and check out Fark's hilarious photoshops of legalized weed advertising. Plus, automated shopping carts are coming to replace cheap labor. The weed.com/switch campaign is my favorite.

Credit to Matt Elton for the office supplies link. More pressingly: how many innocent people like that BBC story's subject are we not hearing about? And what happened to our outrage over Guantanamo Bay?

A gay RPG geek blogger who makes me jealous, plus Homestar Runner links that are very funny.

Browse the ad graveyard for hundreds of funny rejected ads. And what's with the Dow's 250-point swing? Some madman with a joystick is giggling as he jiggles the economy around, amazed anyone thinks markets are rational.

Satirical writers are recycling the same tired "Arafat is gay" joke. Two stories in, the pattern is clear: they've hit a creative wall.

I've gone from horrified fascination to genuine enthrallment with this columnist. Today's highlight: a list of freaky merger jokes, including Polygram Records, Warner Brothers and Keebler combining to form "Poly-Warner-Cracker."

FARK got punk'd by a diving humor site. Also: Buddhist spaceship cults, online population stats, dragon truthers, and drunk driving consequences. I finally wrote some Java after classpath hell, then promptly slacked off by playing the virtual stock market with $500k I'm too scared to invest.

British kids can't play, marshmallow roasting is deadly, Austin Powers 3 is rubbish (though Beyonce helps), the stock market refuses to dramatically collapse, and 80s TV makes you smarter. Just another day in the news.

It's been 2000 years since the last set of commandments, so here's an updated list for the 21st century: get a computer, get internet access, check your email, verify your sources, don't spread rumors, and for the love of all that is holy, read the manual before bothering your techie.

A roundup of links: invisible comets, powers of 10, a great domain name, Television Without Pity's Sex and the City recaps, and fat people suing everyone. Also, I'm not alone in threatening to kill people with a spoon. Finally got a work project, but clearly not too busy to blog.

Sierra Leone's ex-dictator is broke and living with his mum, which is funny enough. But the real kicker: the UN sent him to study law at my university, Warwick. I can't stop picturing a former military dictator at Top Banana.

Two posts in one day -- sorry! Check out AllTooFlat.com, especially *A Brie History of Time* and the Google mirror. Also, the stock market's continuing slide looks eerily like 1929, and I'm worried history is about to repeat itself.

Exhausted by the endless Middle East violence. On a lighter note, Googling my pre-exam anxiety led me down an unexpected rabbit hole.

2 exams down, 9 to go, and my brain has checked out. HCI is mind-numbing. Martian FM is the opposite: brilliant. Cowboys, Big Brother lookalikes, shoot-outs over plastering disputes. These people are wonderful.

Avoiding revision with SatireWire, X-Men: Evolution trivia, and coveting t-shirts I'm too cheap to buy.

Procrastinating from revision by sharing SatireWire gems: the Pentagon wants remote-controlled rat spies, and you can eat a koala in retaliation unless you're a hinjew. I love SatireWire.

A tongue-in-cheek boast that starts as personal bragging and ends as group superiority — poking fun at how quickly "I'm better than you" becomes "we're better than them."

A poem about the drama queen we all know: bouncing from crisis to crisis, spreading gossip, making mountains from molehills. She's exhausting, self-aware, and completely unrepentant. And honestly? Every friend group needs one.

A poem about a chaotic, brilliant, maddening woman who crashes cars, weds drifters, makes stunning art, and somehow survives it all. Neurotic, yes, but those rare flashes of genius and insight make enduring her worth it.

A playful, bouncing poem about life's chaos and randomness, finding humor in the absurd, the hilly Earth, upended status quos, and the slippery search for meaning. Take it as a joke, find what's in there, make something tasty.

I describe the five stages of computing expertise, from wide-eyed wonder at your first machine to intentionally pouring Coke into the disk drive. How accurate is it?

Easter vacation is here and I'm clearing out my bookmarks backlog. Highlights include file sharing drama (KaZaA vs Morpheus), VCD tools, a 2002 movie preview, and LimeWire vs BearShare comparisons. KaZaA wins for memory manners, AudioGalaxy loses for not having Fraggle Rock.

Survived another sleepless deadline stretch on 14 hours of recovery sleep. Today's absurdity: Divorce-Online.co.uk running their own dating service. Nothing says "find the love of your life" like a site dedicated to ending marriages.

I discovered EurekAlert, where science journalists get their stories, then fell down a rabbit hole through memepool, B3TA's animal mashups, Animutation, and FARK. I stopped eventually. I should have stopped much sooner.

Planet Timmy is brilliant sad-git comedy gold. Watch the PrettyBoyTim video for some fantastically random geek humour.

Linked to a penis size survey with surprising findings: white men apparently outsize black men (who knew?), and gay/bisexual men are 50% more likely to react with "awe" to larger endowments. Science is wonderful.

Pointing you to my friend Chez's neglected homepage partly to embarrass him into updating it. Highlights include hilariously sarcastic kids, a college guide with spot-on takes on philosophy and sociology (sociologists can kiss my ass), and science terms explained.

My lecturer Alexandre Tiskin is evil. Be warned.

I'm totally addicted to bass.

Memepool led me to Sam the goat, who dies repeatedly. Also: go see Lord of the Rings, then check out the Orlando Bloom fan site. Bring a drool bucket.

I found Anna Kournikova bestiality pics and I'm linking them. Scroll down on the site. Check archives if it's been a while. Buwahahaha.

Celebrated Darren's 21st in style with dancing, drinking, and chaos. A burst pipe flooded three floors of the house. Nothing to do with us, I swear. The housemates aren't laughing yet, but they will be.

KPMG says you can't link to their website. So naturally I linked to them six times. They also apparently have a theme song, which raises serious questions about corporate dignity and the professionalism of everyone involved in its creation.

A real Magic 8-Ball in a Lego Mindstorms shaking cradle with a webcam is filling the etch-a-sketch void nicely. Also, spooning is way less interesting than Sex and the City made it sound.

GagPipe aggregates satirical websites so you don't have to choose just one. Also, Simon Miles may have just helped me figure out what to do with my life.

Shout-outs to cut-and-paste graffiti artists and Nobby the Northern Dinosaur's 50 things wrong with the modern world. Martian FM is worth a visit too.

Clippy is dead, and even Microsoft is celebrating with flash movies and a terrible song. Not very funny, but marketing weenies get points for effort. Also: rowing through office hallways is apparently a thing, and genuinely hilarious.

The Onion's 9/11 issue is out and it's both funny and tasteful. A good sign things are returning to normal. The piece with God clarifying his "don't kill" message is a highlight, but the whole issue is damn good.

Pig Brother is Big Brother but with actual pigs in a luxury sty, streaming 24/7. I'm voting for Widdecombe. Also, a strange German person linked to me, so here's my reciprocal link. Long live internet back-patting.

Calling someone a "white-bellied bustard" is deeply satisfying. Try it next time you need a solid insult.

A satirical image imagines a world run by the Daily Mail, the UK's staunchly right-wing tabloid. Worth a look, as is the site hosting it, The Wibble, which reminds me of Matt's Alpen, but with a better name.

Neurons grown on silicon is cool science, but the image of neurons fenced in with little plastic posts because they kept trying to escape? That little guy looks unhappy. Launching my Free The Neurons campaign tomorrow.

Adobe's press release quotes a fake customer praising their new product, but forgot to give the customer a name, leaving it as "Customer TBD." Classic.

Finished Stephen Baxter's *Space* - stunning scope, but he crams enough material for a library into 500 pages. Entire alien civilizations rise and fall in under ten pages. Almost comical, but still worth reading.

A perfect Onion quote: why bother cloning when most Americans are already identical?

Read the Onion for summer survival tips like "put out fires in your home." Also keeping an eye on a newly discovered solar system that looks a lot like ours.

Not all my content comes from Slashdot. Some comes from Ed. Also: marijuana is 3-4% of Canada's GDP, and I'm on board with banning heterosexual marriage and reproduction.

A page criticizing Titanic misses all the real flaws and instead argues Rose should have chosen the evil rich fiancé because Jack was poor and Leo looks like a girl. They even get basic plot facts wrong. The actual bad parts go completely unnoticed.

Complaining about cold buildings and bad internet access, but at least no Monday lectures. Here's a Gilbert and Sullivan parody link to make it worthwhile.

Matt Elton's site has great content, even if the design is a mess (thanks, Dreamweaver). He's inspired me to write humor again. Also, he linked to me first, so here's my reciprocal nod. And Matt: I wrote about science vs religion before you did.

Laziness is scientifically good for you. After this vacation, I may be the healthiest person alive.

My housemate Simon tried to open a bottle by screwing a corkscrew through the metal cap. The story made it into the Dilbert newsletter as a True Tale of an Induhvidual. Fame at last, of a sort.