Its a party! College style!

"Fear the blobfish"

So I came across this hilarious piece of writing in the LA Times. Click the link and read. No, I mean it. Read it fully. Done? Good.

You know it is about the blobfish and you have to admit, it is somewhat unnerving to look at. It is like revolting scene in a movie that you cannot take your eyes off of. It is like the fender bender on the freeway that everyone has to have a look at, craning their necks in weird angles and causing traffic to slow down to a crawl.

So, what is my point with this post? Just this. We seem to have forgotten what it is to have a good laugh at something. We take everything we read, and wring it through our own spectral biases and then react either in sheer delight or scathing scorn. Somehow everything has gone in the direction of "you are with us or against us" that seems to be pervading everything and everyone these days.

I really am hoping that the pendulum would veer toward the center at some point, and soon.

Choreograph

Interesting and possibly inadvertant choreography. See this video at around the 45th tick on the countdown to see what I mean..."dancing to a different tune...from a report filed from inside secretive North Korea."

. 2 ?

Point. 2. Ponder.

This funny observation by the early 20th century New York Times columnist Don Marquis...

"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you."

Now, why am I unable to stop laughing at its relevance to our beloved President Bush. Or for that matter for any damn politician alive today.

On Education

Came across a rather interesting portrayal of education by the famed English economist John Maynard Keynes on the web earlier today...and sat down to think as to how truly it resonates atleast in my personal experience with the education systems in India and the USA.

"Education is the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent."

Brevity befitting an Englishman. Easily confounding just as easily comprehensible. Must be why the best education people generally receive is in the school of life.

Quote Unquote

This gem is from Jim Hacker, the Right Honorable MP, from the laugh-a-thon "Yes Minister".

You know what the average Common Market official is like ? They've got the flexibility of the Germans, the organising ability of the Italians and the modesty of the French. And that's topped up by the humour of the Belgians, the generosity of the Dutch and the intelligence of the Irish.

Humorous, scathing, and skilfully enough, makes it seem like a compliment!

Would someone tell the Democrats to hire the script writers of this fantabulous BBC politi-comedy? The Republicans are catching them with pants-down at every opportunity with their brilliant fluency in obfuscating facts and concepts in terrifying cavalcade of words, morality and self-righteous out-rage. So fluent in fact that its not even funny any more.

Maybe its time for the donkeys to man-up, and atleast pretend to show that they've got a spine.

Are You Being Served?

Ground floor: perfumery,

stationery and leather goods,

wigs and haberdashery

kitchenware and food. Going up!

First floor: telephones,

gents ready-made suits,

shirts, socks, ties, hats,

underwear and shoes. Going up!

Second floor: carpets,

travel goods and bedding,

material, soft furnishings,

restaurant and teas. Going down!

"Are You Free?"
"I am free"

Are You Being Served? (or AYBS? for short) runs on weekday afternoons on BBC America, but for those of us at work, public libraries should have the entire DVD set available for loan. Crass and cheap at times, with plenty of double-entendres to go around, and totally politically incorrect at all times, yet this show manages to pull the laughter hidden deep inside our bowels.

How does it manage to do that? With plenty of good acting, fantastic dialogue, and excellent comic timing with superb facial expressions to go-along as displayed by the actors involved. The actors share a chemistry that shines through. Mostly though, despite its reliance on cheaper tactics to elicit laughter, the basic script is outstanding in its comedy potential.

Recommended comedy watch, considering that despite its sometimes crude portrayals, its got my parents laughing their tummies out...

SDLC

Two hilarious version of the software development life cycle (SDLC) - the first one looking at software development as it has evolved through the years, and the next looking at the state of the affairs now. I suppose you should now start to club techies writing software along with the Poles, the Irish, the Canadians, and the Sikhs as peoples capable in their infinite wisdom of poking fun and making witticisms at themselves...I mean, with the state of software today, humor is easily their best friend!!!
(Image courtesy Lost Garden Dot Com)

(via anonymous email forward)

Dissing Intellectuals

In these times of unprecedented assault on intellectuals (dissing them as liberals, for instance), it is always fun to give the right-wing off-their-rocker types more ammo to diss us with...

One, from a comic, who said whats on his mind and got dissed by his own people...Bill Cosby...in his sensational DVD Bill Cosby: Himself

"Intellectuals go to class to study what others do naturally."

Another from a sixteenth-century French essayist Michel de Montaigne via the Quotations Page

"I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly."

Yes, Minister

James Hacker: Opposition is all about asking awkward questions.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: And Government is about not answering them!

Just one of the many memorable exchanges between the Minister for Administrative Affairs Jim Hacker (played memorably by Paul Eddington) and his Permanent Under-Secretary of State Sir Humphrey Appleby (played by Nigel Hawthorne). Throw in the Principal Private Secretary Bernard Woolley (played by Derek Fowlds) and you had an awesome threesome of comedy.

And for the unitiated, this is from the classic 80's comedy sitcome of the venerable BBC - Yes, Minister. A political satire of the first order, it is well written, and resonates very well, even today, even here in the US.

To paraphrase the BBC's own description:

Clever and complex plotting, cracking and convoluted dialogue, accurately drawn observations and top-notch acting all combined to create a Rolls-Royce of a show that ran with the smoothness of that engine and the precision of a ministerial cover-up. Co-writer Jonathan Lynn saw the show in simple terms: a Jeeves-and-Wooster concept wherein 'the servant is cleverer than his master'.

Lets just say it doesn't take much for a show to get established as top-of-the-line. Hey, you know its good when my only exposure to this show was in the mid 80's pre-cable India when the telly was entirely state-owned and controlled.

Jim Hacker the politician veers from his ideas of commitments to his electorate to his ideas of protecting his own hide/seat. And he is either abetted in his ideals to protect his seat or frustrated in his ideals of serving by the electorate by his typically-bureaucratish bureaucrat Humpy Appleby. And though, if they were real people, (and if they were indeed real, my experience with the system in India would attest to the fact that the show wasn't far away from the truth, and India's systems are designed after the British system) I would be hopping mad, now I am just howling in laughter watching these episodes on DVD.

And the dialog writers have unearthed gems of dialog in the shows episodes...

"If people don't know what you're doing, they don't know what you're doing wrong."
"[Citizens of a democracy] have a right to be ignorant. Knowledge means complicity and guilt. Ignorance has a certain...dignity."
"It used to be said there are two kinds of chairs to go with two kinds of Minister. One sort folds up instantly, and the other sort goes round and round in circles."
"I don't want the truth. I just want something I can tell the Parliament!"

There are many many more gems in the 21 episodes of this series. Once I am finished with them I can't wait to get onto the sequel - "Yes, Prime Minister".

All aboard! The comedy train is rumbling!

Press 1 for English, Press 2 for Spanish, Press # to repeat the options again.

Its here. Finally.

Elaborately listed workarounds for the Integrated Voice Response systems that always seem to wall us out of speaking to a customer service rep.

Based on the list..hooray to Amazon.com and Southwest.
You can be forgiven if you dial their numbers directly, and get to speak to a live person, and scream "Its Alive!"

Straight from Cheapshots-ville.

/. had a link to the Singularity project of Microsoft. Clicking it brought this dreaded "nice" error trap page. And that is our image, from Cheapshots-ville.


Yes, a cheap-shot. An ungrateful cheap-shot. Especially when I love everything they are doing with Visual Studio.NET. And yet, what is life if you dont debase yourself, and join the chorus in taking potshots at Microsoft, the behemoth? This is an image capture of an attempt to view the page of the Singularity project of Microsoft, touted as an attempt at dependability over performance. And this error is proof why the concept is more relevant than ever.

(Same-day editor note: As of 2 pm MST, the link is working. Must be one of those curious "not-even-a-day-long" viruses that web-servers can contract on a daily basis.)

Monday Toosday Thursday Wensday...

Its all in a days work for this orca doing a lively flip, one fine summer afternoon at the Sea World in San Diego, CA.






And this is all in a weeks work for yours truly...

if you know anyone that knows anyone that knows who owns the copyright, or if you just happen to know who I should credit for the copyright for this, lemme know and I will be happy to oblige....