Hand Coding

I’ve never been much a fan of Carlos Mencia’s comedy, but stealing jokes from other comics just isn’t cool. And, of all people, wouldn’t stealing from Cosby only make it all the more obvious?

What I do find amusing, however, is that his real name is Ned Mencia (and, no, that’s not a joke). (Via: Digg)

With the Democrats’ newly regained control of the House and (likely) the Senate, some have been speculating as to their new agenda. And, it looks like rightwasright.us has the scoop on the Democrats’ new goals. Here’re a couple excerpts:

• Tofurkey to be named official Thanksgiving dish
• Freeways to be removed, replaced with light rail systems
• Comatose people to be ground up and fed to poor
• Ban Christmas: replace with Celebrate our Monkey Ancestors Day
• […]

Indeed, it is a parody, but I’m guessing that both sides of the aisle could get a chuckle out of this one. (Via: BoingBoing)

I recently ran across this article at Slate on the business process behind Garfield. In short, Jim Davis is a tool. It’s not news that his strips aren’t funny to anyone over eight — how many times can someone tell a lasagna joke? — but it also turns out that Davis is merely a man behind a curtain pulling levers and twisting knobs:

Garfield’s origins were so mercantile that it’s fair to say he never sold out—he never had any integrity to put on the auction block to begin with. But today Davis spends even less time on the strip than he used to—between three days and a week each month. During that time, he collaborates with another cartoonist to generate ideas and rough sketches, then hands them over to Paws employees to be illustrated. […]

So, it would seem that drawing the strip is merely a means to an end for Davis: he keeps the cogs in the machine turning just so that he can power his licensing efforts. To be sure, I have nothing against artists profiting off their work; still, I’m put off that a so-called artist would go through the motions, knowingly churning out drivel just for the check.

Via Metafilter Projects, I’ve discovered the Belgian Anti-Defamation Institute which helps to dispel some common misconceptions of Belgians. For instance:

• BELGIANS MAKE GOOD BEER

  Our research has shown that this stereotype is:

  +TRUE

  […]

• BELGIANS ARE GOOD DANCERS

  Our research has shown that this stereotype is:

  -FALSE

  […]

It’s a good thing I ran across this useful resource — I wouldn’t want to be misinformed about such things. Well, to be sure, satire ensues :).

I have a Mastercard with Citi Cards and they recently sent me an e-mail about my credit line which I’ve pasted below. (I’ve not changed anything below, other than cropping the federally-required disclaimers which were in the original.)

Dear ALEX BISCHOFF:

We are pleased to inform you that we have raised the credit
line of your Citi(R) Diamond Preferred(R) Rewards account
to $0.

This increase was a result of our ongoing credit review
program. We wanted to acknowledge the responsible way you
have maintained your account.

Thank you for being a Citi Diamond Preferred Rewards customer.

Sincerely,
S. Larson

Customer Service

So… I wasn’t quite sure how to take that ;). Naturally, I logged in to their online site and confirmed that my credit line had been increased in real terms. Yeesh.

NPR has a weekly game show called “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” which they describe as “The Oddly Informative News Quiz” (and I’d say that’s a fairly apt description). There’re various panelists — P.J. O’Rourke, Paula Poundstone, Mo Rocca, and others — and either the host asks the panelists questions or listeners call in and the panelists ask listeners questions. It’s actually a lot of fun & mdash; a lot lighter than the usual NPR fare — and I’ve recently taken to ripping the episodes to mp3 to timeshift them.

One of their favorite games is “Bluff the Listener” where a listener calls in and hears a weird news story from three panelists. The catch is that two of the stories are fake and only one of them is real — and the user has to guess which. On last weekend’s show, they were playing a “best of” set of clips from years past. And, one clip in particular featured Roy Blount Jr and his telling of a news article about basketball player E.J. Junior (yes, his last name his “Junior”).

Spoilers below — including whether Blount’s story was the fake or real story that week.

Blount concocted a fabulous tale about how E.J. Junior had been named as father-of-the-year and a middle school was being named in his honor. Naturally, Junior’s son was also named “E.J.” and so the father was known as “E.J. Junior, Senior”. And, the middle school in question was a Junior High. I’m afraid that words alone can’t really do justice to Blount’s diction; however, as I already had the episode as a stand-alone mp3, I edited it down to just Blount’s pontification and uploaded this clip on the dedication of E.J. Junior Senior Junior High (1 min, 24 sec mp3).

Man, I must have listened to that clip a dozen times, but I laugh every time :). It’s too bad, though, the listener calls Blount “Ray” at the end (rather than “Roy”). D’oh!

PS Mad propz to Audacity, an open source sound editor (which is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux). I made use of it to trim the original 60:00 mp3 (the entire show) down to the (01:24) clip of Blount’s bit.

I ran across a novel new use for PowerPoint today. I don’t want to say too much about it so as not to ruin it. And try not to look to far ahead along the outline on the left side of the screen. All the same, part of me wonders if it’s fake; then again, I think I’d still find it amusing even if that was the case.

Because it’s a web-based adaptation of a PowerPoint presentation, it does tend to look better in IE (as that browser also displays a proprietary next/previous bar across the bottom for PowerPoint documents). And if you normally use Firefox (as I do), you may find the Launchy extension useful — it adds an entry in the context menu for links to view them in a variety of applications (including IE).

(Due credit: MetaFilter)

Update 2005-08-13: URI fixed — thanks MetaFilter!

I was reading the comments to a Slashdot article about Python programmers and I was amused by a comment by a fellow who goes by “DasMegaByte” on his impressions of programming languages and people who use them:

[…] I wonder how else we can pad programmer’s egos based on completely subjective hypothesis on language choice?

• Perl users have more dense social lives.
• Ruby users have big, full beards chicks love to run their hands through.
• VB users have sensible shoes and drive Toyotas.
• C++ users enjoy a good mystery now and then.
• PHP users probably own one or more Dremel multitools.
• Javascripters are full of little trivia snippets and are great fun at parties.
• Cold Fusion users are kind of quiet but have very deep thoughts.
• SQL programmers have annoying laughs but are otherwise okay guys

[…]

My favorite may be his comments on SQL programmers (though the comments on JavaScripters are jovial as well). Still, I’m left wondering if Bryan has a Dremel multitool ;).

I found this article written for JoongAng Daily (a Korean newspaper, I’m guessing) with a list of “You know you’ve been in the United States too long when…”. I found it amusing but in some ways unusual at the same time. I expected some of the items:

• You wear sneakers and carry a backpack when dressed in a business suit.
• You look forward to Monday Night Football.
• You order a supersized Big Mac with a Diet Coke.
• […]

But some of them left me scratching my head. For instance, “Sheer blue eyes no longer frighten you” — are blue eyes so rare in Korea as to be frightening? I mean, I wouldn’t mind meeting someone with purple eyes (though orange eyes might creep me out a bit).

And then there’s “You feel no guilt over trying on a dozen pairs of pants and not buying any of them.” Whenever I’m buying clothes, I make sure to try them on first; and, if they don’t fit, I put them back on the rack. Is it the dozen-pairs-of-pants part that Koreans find most odd or the putting-them-all-back that they’re not used to?

I found these XHTML Jokes at Photo Matt though they’re originally from HTML Dog. I’m guessing that only standards-aware web developers will get these, but I found some of them rather amusing:

Q: Why did the XHTML actress turn down an Oscar?
A: Because she refused to be involved in the presentation.

Q: Why was the font tag an orphan?
A: Because it didn’t have a font-family.

Q: Why do CSS designers have too many children?
A: Because they employ lots of child selectors.

Q: Why was IE5’s 3-metre wide cell in the insane asylum smaller than IE6’s 3-metre wide cell?
A: Because the width of the cell included the padding…

Q: Why was the XHTML bird an invalid?
A: Because it wasn’t nested properly.

I think the XHTML/Oscar one may be my favorite, though I liked the IE/cell-width one as well. And considering geeks’ general penchant for tech humor, I’m almost surprised that these jokes have only come about now. In any case, they brightened my day a bit :).