Pancake City

* Xavier the Renegade Angel (runs on the Cartoon Network.)

* I think this photo was circulating in a previous Internet famous fame cycle, but no matter. It is perhaps the best photo ever taken. What I love about the photo is that everyone is cringing in some manner but almost none of them can actually see what is happening.

I left out the ‘t’ when first typing photo and came upon a word that could spread like wildfire if it had the right definition: phoo. A phoo is…

I need some time to think of a good answer, but it’s going to be along the lines of “a photo that isn’t really a photo.”A lazily or quickly taken photo? Maybe this is it: “A photo taken by someone who doesn’t care about taking photos.”

This site is awesome. Very funny and original.

Hopkins Update: BoingBoing has background info on Hopkin’s Journey.

Practical jokes to play on your co-workers (link from LYD).

…that there is quite a bit of crossover between these two audiences.

Theme: a few seconds before disaster. The first 15 or so are quite funny.

Brilliant as usual.

Missing Missouri Convicts Found in Prison

After beating a fellow inmate to death, two already convicted murderers in a Missouri prison hid for several days in a false wall near a worksite.

What were they afraid of? That they’d go to prison? That they’re parole would be moved from never to really never? Comedians, if you’re doing a set tonight, jump on the lamwagon. Shecky is in the house, and this time he doesn’t need a writer.

Video game magazine EGM gathered a group of young teens and gave them classic video games to play. The results are hilarious. The kids playing Tetris:

Tim: Which button do I press to make the blocks explode?

EGM: Sorry, they don’t explode.

Becky: This is boring. Maybe if it had characters and stuff and different levels, it would be OK. If things blew up or something or—

Sheldon: If there were bombs.

Becky: Yeah, or special bricks. Like, if a yellow brick touched a red brick it would blow up and you’d have to start over.

John: Why haven’t I won yet? I’ve paired up so many of the same color.

EGM: Don’t worry about colors.

John: I just lined up six of the same color. Why didn’t they blow up?

EGM: Nothing blows up.

(link from LYD, BoingBoing, FARK…)

The line between parody and reality has been blurred. From one of the funniest web pages ever:

Elementary School Level
1st Place: “My Uncle Is A Man Named Steve (Not A Monkey)”
“Cassidy Turnbull (grade 5) presented her uncle, Steve. She also showed photographs of monkeys and invited fairgoers to note the differences between her uncle and the monkeys. She tried to feed her uncle bananas, but he declined to eat them. Cassidy has conclusively shown that her uncle is no monkey.”

Middle School Level
1st Place: “Life Doesn’t Come From Non-Life”
“Patricia Lewis (grade did an experiment to see if life can evolve from non-life. Patricia placed all the non-living ingredients of life - carbon (a charcoal briquet), purified water, and assorted minerals (a multi-vitamin) - into a sealed glass jar. The jar was left undisturbed, being exposed only to sunlight, for three weeks. (Patricia also prayed to God not to do anything miraculous during the course of the experiment, so as not to disqualify the findings.) No life evolved. This shows that life cannot come from non-life through natural processes.”

2nd Place: “Women Were Designed For Homemaking”

High School Level
Honorable Mention:
“Thermodynamics Of Hell Fire” - Tom Williamson (grade 12)

Every page on this site has a gem. I’ll post a few highlights in the next day or so. You might want to check out the site before reading the rest of my comments.

***

This site got me thinking about the difference between reality and satire. The two can be easily blurred. “Governor’s wife calls for popping a cap in Britney Spears at gun control rally”–this could have easily been from The Onion. And many articles from The Onion have been mistaken for real news by some people before.

In response to this, most satire makes the fact that it is satire obvious in some way, so people can get the joke. The site is a different kind of satire, one that takes great pains to hide the fact that it is satirical. And it has a different motive than typical satire. Instead of poking fun at something, it tries to trick people into believing that it’s true (and, I think, poke fun at the people who don’t get it.) I’m not even sure if it qualifies as satire. It’s closer to a practical joke than anything else. A very successful joke that, while I’m not sure it was the site’s intent, makes more fun of people ready to rush to judgment rather than the creationists themselves.

You can never go wrong with a story about fried Twinkies.

This chart of military hand signals is pretty funny. I’d like to try captioning a chart like this. Does anyone know where I can get a graphic of a similar instructional chart (e.g. airline safety)? I would offer to rename the site a moniker of your choosing for a few days, but you can already do that.

The abridged script. This is quite funny.