Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Category: Humor

  • For Shannon

    Told you I’d do this. It’s a bit of a hack job, but oh well:

    The Nebraska state Kool Aid quarter

  • Coke Alert

    My wife pointed me to this article today, and I thought it was funny.

    Specially rigged Coke cans, part of a summer promotion, contain cell phones and global positioning chips. That has officials at some installations worried the cans could be used to eavesdrop, and they are instituting protective measures.
    …
    “There’s things generals should stay up late at night worrying about,” he said. “A talking Coke can isn’t one of them.”

    Somehow I doubt the GPS-enabled cell phone Coke can will make it into the next Bond movie.

  • Comic book references at the Post Office

    Since we’ve moved into a brand-new development, we don’t even have a mailbox yet so we have to go to the Post Office to pick up our mail. The location for this is their warehouse in the industrial part of town, and when you go in, there’s simply a tiny lobby and a doorway that leads to the rest of the warehouse.

    While waiting for the postal lady to retrieve my mail, I noticed a whiteboard leaning up against the wall inside the warehouse. It was a chart, and the heading at the top was, “DCU FLASH (PERFORMANCE)”. It seemed to mark down delivery times/speeds.

    Of course, any self-respecting comics geek would recognize that “DCU FLASH” refers, of course, to DC Comics‘ Flash, and is entirely appropriate for a chart about delivery speeds.

    Well, at least I thought it was kinda funny.

  • Thongs

    Thongs, flipflops, whateverWhen I was growing up, thongs were the semi-sandals that you wore on your feet, pictured to the right. Nowadays, they’re called “flipflops” and if you call them “thongs” in public, you get sharp looks and people think you’re having a stroke when you try to explain what you were talking about.

    Sigh. The times, they are a-changin’.

  • Silly math tricks

    For some reason, these kind of math gimmicks always remind me of upside down calculator spelling. They’re amusing, but I really have to wonder who sits around and thinks these things up? Anyway, here’s what I just received via email from a friend (slightly edited):

    “Chocolate mathematics”

    1. First of all, pick the number of times a week that you would like to have chocolate. (Try for more than once but less than 10.)

    2. Multiply this number by 2 (Just to be bold)

    3. Add 5. (for Sunday)

    4. Multiply it by 50.

    5. If you have already had your birthday this year add 1754. If you haven’t, add 1753.

    6. Now subtract the four digit year that you were born.

    You should have a three digit number.

    The first digit of this was your original number (i.e., how many times you want to have chocolate each week).

    The next two numbers are:

    Your age! (Oh yes, it is!!!!!)

    This is the only year it will ever work, so spread it around while it lasts.

    Incidentally, yes, it works.

  • Matrix Cheat Codes

    At work today a couple of us were jokingly speculating as to what earlier versions of The Matrix would be like—or, more accurately, what we would imagine they’d be like—and I came up with Half-Life. Basically, imagine the Matrix v1 as a first-person shooter.

    Makes perfect sense! All they essentially do in the Matrix is run around fighting, with or without weapons. Matrix Savants (or whatever the hell the people like Morpheus and Trinity are called) have managed to hack the command line and discover some cheat codes. But The One not only knows all the cheat codes, but is also able to change the server environment. Flying? Simply set sv_gravity 0.

  • Bayer

    Here’s an interesting bit of trivia I unearthed last week: in trying to prove to somebody at work that aspirin is a coal tar derivative, I found out that Bayer developed and registered the drug as a trademark in 1899.

    By itself, that’s not so interesting, I know. However, it turns out Bayer also discovered, trademarked and marketed another drug: heroin. “From 1898 through to 1910 it was marketed as a non-addictive morphine substitute and cough medicine for children.”

    Yikes. Of course, then the thought of “Bayer Heroin” kept me amused for a bit:

    Bayer Heroin

  • Random Law and Order Plot Generator

    Here’s a funny link for tonight: the Random Law and Order Plot Generator. Enjoy!

  • Language

    About a week back Andrei Zmievski blogged about taking linguistics classes and on the fluid nature of languages, and got me thinking about them. I hold a Bachelor of Arts degree in French with the equivalent of a minor in Russian (and yet I work in the computer industry… funny, eh?), but I’m far from fluent in either language, even though I’d like to be. And I’d like to learn other languages, too, if I had the time.

    I think every American should learn a second, maybe even a third language. Especially when a good part of the educated world beyond our country is multi-lingual; I think it puts us at a definite disadvantage.

    Yes, I know there’s always someone who will disagree with me on this point. English is quite the lingua franca, and will continue to be, so it’s easy to argue that there’s no need to learn another language in today’s world. Not so. I’ll touch on this in a future post.

    And of course, this always brings to mind one of my favorite rants from Dennis Miller, about the English language:

    I understand that English is a protean, evolving language that must constantly change in order to remain relevant. But let’s not go out of our way to appropriate words from other cultures simply to justify making something more expensive. Hey, you can add all the Italian suffixes you want, you’re not fooling anybody over there at Starbucks—it’s still just coffee. Now ring me the fuck up, you frappaloser.

  • Upside down calculator spelling

    Here’s how it works (in case you didn’t know). Find a calculator—a single line LCD display one, not a fancy thousand-button monster or the Windows calculator (!). Turn the calculator upside down. When you punch in the numbers, they will look like crappy LCD versions of letters. The challenge is to spell words using those letters; 3045, for example, will read “ShOE” when it’s upside down.

    Yeah, it’s lame, and yeah, it’s old school. But back in the days before the Internet, we’d amuse ourselves by typing in such choice numbers as 7734 or 5318008 and snickering over the results.

    Ah, good times.

    And just for fun, here’s some links related to calculator spelling: