Category: humor

my blog is smart

My blog is smart. Not the part I write, but the software itself.

Over to the left of this text there’s a section for upcoming events. You’ll note that there are very few non-Poetry Thursday events these days, since most of the regular Oba Oba and Chester Attic gigs have been canceled. But that’s not the point. The point is that it says Daylight Savings starts on April 1st. But! Right above it, it warns you that this is a joke, by also providing notice that it’s April Fool’s Day.

I was going to fix it, but I’d like to encourage such software-cleverness as this.

bong hits 4 jesus

You all hear about this? High school kid unfurled a banner reading, “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” as the Olympic Torch passed by. His principal tore down the banner, then suspended the student for 10 days. Now Supreme Court is hearing the case. Ken Starr (yep, that Ken Starr) is representing the government.

Wonkette’s amusing write up is here, and the Wall Street Journal Online has some uptight readers.

Update: okay, minutes after I wrote the above, I found more recent information from the WSJ, saying that Alito had expressed doubt about Starr’s argument that the school should be able to limit speech that it believes is promoting drug use.

I’m not sure you have to go so far as to believe schools should allow speech promoting drug use. I think you just have to have a sense of humor.

pluto’s day

I hate to disrupt my silence for something frivolous, but this was too good to keep to myself.

From Wired News: State Might Make Pluto a Planet

New Mexico state representative Joni Marie Gutierrez has introduced a bill — to be voted on next Tuesday — that says, “as Pluto passes overhead through New Mexico’s excellent night skies, it be declared a planet.”

The bill is expected to pass easily, as Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930, is from Gutierrez’s district.

The Pluto debate itself highlighted for me the arbitrary nature of many definitions — as well as the fact that “objective” science is not operating so completely outside the framework of humanity as to be infallible in its classifications. Beyond that, well, I have to admit that I didn’t get all too worked up about Pluto’s demotion.

This possible action by New Mexico is far more interesting to me. I don’t really care how the state of New Mexico classifies Pluto, although it might prove for some awkwardness if New Mexican students are learning a different solar system than everyone else in the world. But I am disturbed by the idea of a government — at any level — passing legislation designed to supersede a scientific definition.

But then again, humanity’s justified some pretty hideous things in the name of science. Maybe highlighting its fallibility isn’t such a ridiculous thing to do.

symmetry

There are few things worse than asymmetrically constructed relationships, but for the last few years, they have, in one way or another, been all I have had. But I believe I have finally broken the cycle.

In my last post, I made a public declaration of love. Today I learned that it has been reciprocated. That’s right — when the beautiful woman working the second window at the Union Deposit Burger King handed me my food she said, “Here you go, love.” Love.

I was so overjoyed that I forgot to ask for sauce to go with my chicken fries. I was okay with it — what is sauce compared to true love? — but when I arrived at my destination and unpacked the brown bag, I found that she had, without my prompting, included two containers of buffalo sauce. I have never been happier.

footnotes for cliffs notes

I am, at least theoretically, writing a paper about language usage in The Daily Show and NBC’s Nightly News. To begin, I typed up transcripts of the respective episodes aired on Thursday, April 27th. I was hoping that the differences in language would jump out at me once I’d completed that tedious task and the 8-10 page paper would write itself from there. Instead of language differences, though, what I noticed most was a content difference. The Daily Show covered a lot more news.

Brian Williams was reporting from New Orleans. Most of the stories centered on New Orleans — mostly, will the levees be ready for the coming hurricane season, and should FEMA be dismantled. The other two big stories were about gas prices and the Sago mine survivor.

The Daily Show mentioned Rove’s court appearance, Rumsfeld & Rice’s visit to Iraq, the president’s approval ratings, the Ken Lay trial, the New Orleans mayoral race, new tapes from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden, Zacarias Moussaoui’s sentencing, and the appointment of FOX News commentator Tony Snow to White House Press Secretary. Granted, it didn’t cover any of these topics in any depth, but it was a much better overview of what’s going on in the world than was offered by the Nightly News.

According to FootnoteTV, “A 2004 study found that 21 percent of young people regularly were getting their campaign news from comedy shows like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Saturday Night Live.” No wonder, if shows like these are the only places where actual news gets any air time.

FootnoteTV’s solution? Provide footnotes for shows like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Saturday Night Live, and even West Wing, among others.

Watch funny news, read bite-sized footnotes on FootnoteTV.com, and be better informed than those watching the “real” news. Ah, the 21st century.

crisis of doubt

Have you ever been somewhere you probably shouldn’t be, then seen something you probably shouldn’t see, and then need to tell everyone about it?

Well, I hate to admit it, but tonight I just had to go and check out my ex-boyfriend’s blog, and I had to get all intrigued by the quote he’d recently posted. That let me to google Andrew Boyd, which eventually led to the discovery of Skeptical Mysticism.

“I am One with a God I do not believe in.”