Twitter is just stupid, pointless hype?

So many clueless people, so little time... Recently,  Patrick Kershaw wrote an article about the valuelessness of Twitter. An excerpt:

"Consider Twitter…I am unable to see the benefit on even a personal level. I am not a celebrity-watcher, nor do I care what others are doing every minute of their lives. So is any value added at all? I don't think so.…If you cannot see a benefit, don't follow the hype."

Too many journalists have been doing no research on how Twitter is actually used

While Patrick (not a journalist) also made some points about how he feels social networks can be used, many journalists don't even bother. They just direct withering criticism at people who use a communications medium to tell others what they are doing.

Never mind that Twitter can be used to communicate anything; the fact that a few people use it in ways they think they never would means it must be worthless for everyone. Never mind actually researching what you are writing about and finding out what people are actually doing; stick to simple stereotypes.

A journalist's time saver: A pre-written article about pointless fads like Twitter

So in the interest of saving everyone time, I have created a template to assist busy journalists not interested in doing their own research. Simply copy the article below and publish it as your own writing:

Dear readers,

I, an important journalist, want to tell you that Twitter is just stupid, pointless hype because I heard that someone once used it to write what they were having for breakfast. I promise I will never use Twitter.

These things are so easy to spot for someone as smart as me. In fact, yesterday, I saw someone in the grocery store talking about cereal on their mobile phone! Anything you would use to talk about cereal is just hype. No phones for me.

I really can pick 'em, can't I? Someone told me the other day my articles are now being published on the internet. Do you realize the internet is full of pages of funny cat pictures? Another pointless, flash-in-the-pan medium.

It seems like there are a lot of stupid things that will be going away soon. My friend told me people sometimes get offensive messages from people they don't know by email. Clearly only morons use email.

Here's one that made me laugh: I saw someone in the park holding a stupid picture up to their face. Another moronic trend. Attached to the back were hundreds of pages with letters printed on them—all about that dumb picture! Books are unbelievably stupid.

And I can't believe you've overlooked the dumbest fad of all: Why haven't more people noticed—as I have—that other people are always saying stupid things? People are pointless.

That's why I live in a cave.

Communicating is just stupid, pointless hype.

The article beginning "Dear readers" is offered free of copyright under an Uncreative Morons license.

Read more!

The difference between your life and a cartoon?

Who hasn't seen these "fatal" accidents befall one of their favorite cartoon characters?

1. He falls out out of plane, but lands in a giant haystack and walks away with only minor injuries.
   
2. A giant oncoming truck forces him to drive his car off a cliff, but he somehow falls out of the car, catches safely on a convenient tree branch, and watches the car explode in flames 300 feet below.
3. His train derails at high speed and plunges into an icy river, and he's found with his arm in a funny position, but only scrapes and bruises otherwise.
4. A flame thrower blasts him in the face at short range, but he only loses some hair and ends up covered in soot. Alternatively, his car is engulfed in flames, and he walks away unharmed.
5. He's hit by a bus, but suffers only minor injuries.
   
6. Of course, after suffering through a bunch of these, the happy ending has the character being given exactly one million dollars.

What do these six cartoon events have in common?

Even in a movie (like "Unbreakable") it's too unbelievable to see stuff like this happening to a real person, right? Hold on ...

The answer is they actually happened in real life, and although 37 people died in the various accidents, at least one person did survive each time.

But, most amazing of all ...

They didn't just happen, they all happened to the SAME man: Frane Selak, a Croatian music teacher (what would a cartoon be without music?). And they happened exactly as described above.

Frane (pictured above at left) was born in 1929, and in January, 1962, his "luck" changed for the first time. He was riding a train (#3 below).

Real life events more amazing than any movie

Here's his amazing story, exactly following the cartoon events listed above:

1. FELL OUT OF A PLANE: How? A DOOR blew out on a plane flying from Zagreb to Rijeka in 1963. While it was flying. At high speed. High above the earth. Etc., etc., etc. Twenty people were sucked out to a certain death, because, c'mon, how's he gonna survive that?
   Oh wait. That's exactly what happened. Only 19 people died, because, I kid you not, #20 was Frane, and he landed in a giant haystack and walked away.
   
   
2. DROVE OFF A CLIFF: What can I say? The truck, the cliff, caught in the tree, the car exploding 300 feet below, all true. That's exactly what happened to him in 1996.
   
   
3. TRAIN PLUNGED INTO RIVER: Yup, in 1962 nineteen people faced likely death when their moving train derailed and plunged into an icy river, but only eighteen died, because when they found #19, it was Frane. His arm was broken, but he had just a few scrapes and bruises otherwise.
   
   
4. FLAMETHROWER IN FACE: As amazing as the others are, I know you've been asking, c'mon, a flamethrower? Okay, this was a car fire forced through air vents, but if that happened in YOUR face, I think you'd agree that "flamethrower" is a pretty good description. Happened to Frane in 1973. He lost most of his hair but had no other injuries.
   
   ENGULFED IN FLAMES: Of course, by this point in his life, flames in a car weren't that big a deal for Frane. Three years earlier his car was engulfed in flames from a faulty fuel pump. He escaped, and walked away unharmed.
   
   
5. HIT BY A BUS: Yup, in 1995 he was hit by a city bus and suffered only minor injuries
   
   
6. AN EVEN MILLION: In 2003, Frane won EXACTLY $1,000,000 dollars in the Croatian lottery. Almost like a heavenly award at that point!
   

World's luckiest man? Or unluckiest?

Considering what he's been through, surviving mortal terror without a heart attack is probably is among his greatest achievements.

"I know God was watching me over all these years," Frane said, and has reputedly refused to fly to Australia to air on a Doritos commercial, saying he "didn't want to test his luck."

Finally, for the big question: Good luck, or bad? We'll give Frane the final word. "I prefer to be called the world's luckiest man," he said, admitting that some people call him "The World's Unluckiest Man."

So, how's YOUR luck?

Read more!

Saturday morning breakfast cereal cartoons

Read more!

Internet humor: The early years

[thumb] do you know of any major organizations that are similar to the CDC?
[lucent] like who?
[thumb] center for disease control
[lucent] i said WHO
[thumb] what? i'm asking you
[lucent] The World Health Organization!

[kritical] Christin1: you need to learn how to figure out stuff yourself..
[Christin1] how do i do that

Interactions like that are why I consistently go back to Bash.org, (TJBash.org is a similar site) a repository of (often geeky) things people have written (said) on different chat systems. While the internet is known for having several exabytes of humor websites, real conversations are the best (including Best of CraigsList). Another one I've enjoyed recently is High School metaphors, such as "He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something."

Here's a few recent favorites from Bash.org:

(morganj): 0 is false and 1 is true, correct?
(alec_eso): 1, morganj
(morganj): bastard.

[sui88] 67% of girls are stupid
[v-girl] i belong with the other 13%

[skrike] I think the people above me are having sex
[skrike] either that or they're sleeping restlessly and agreeing with each other a lot.

[jeebus] the "bishop" came to our church today
[jeebus] he was a damn impostor
[jeebus] never once moved diagonally

[malaclypse] The general rule on about people on IRC seems to be "Attractive, single, mentally stable: choose two"

[fulgore] whats the complement to a 43 degree angle?
[sparks] My you're looking "acute" today

* nickname has joined #mp3friendschat
[nickname] word
[bobbbit10] excel?
[Davman] rofl

[insomniak`] Stupid Google
[insomniak`] "The" is a common word, and was not included in your search
[insomniak`] "Who" is a common word, and was not included in your search

[glacial] I love school
[glacial] Today our term paper due date's set
[glacial] Our instructor says that we WILL hand in the paper on time, and she'll accept no excuses except illness, with a note from our doctor, or a death in the immediate family, with a note from the dead member.
[glacial] So this wiseass pipes up: "What about extreme sexual exhaustion?"
[glacial] She waits for the laughs to die down and says:
[glacial] "Well, I guess you'll have to learn to write with your other hand."

[masterg] .....................................................................
..................................
[judas] where's pacman when you need him?

[reuben] somebody keeps jiggling the doorknob on my front door, then running away
[reuben] i don't know if i should call the police, or hook up some electricity to the doorknob
[cristobal] why don't you put ice on the stairs
[cristobal] and heat up the door knob
[cristobal] and swing paint buckets down from your two story foyer
[cristobal] then a few years later, fade from the public eye.....

[reverend] IRC is just multiplayer notepad.

[sonium] someone speak python here?
[lucky] HHHHHSSSSSHSSS
[lucky] SSSSS
[sonium] the programming language

[axe] I
[axe] do
[axe] not
[axe] know
[axe] where
[axe] family
[axe] doctors
[axe] acquired
[axe] illegibly
[axe] perplexing
[axe] handwriting;
[axe] nevertheless,
[axe] extraordinary
[axe] pharmaceutical
[axe] intellectuality,
[axe] counterbalancing
[axe] indecipherability,
[axe] transcendentalizes
[axe] intercommunications'
[axe] incomprehensibleness.
[jedihobbes] woah
[jedihobbes] *blinks*

[locke|away] I found a note in one of my old word .docs that said Note to self: Get revenge on Valvados.
[locke|away] Except I couldn't remember what I was supposed to get revenge for.
[locke|away] But I trusted my own judgment, so I went with it.
[valvados] ...
[valvados] o.o
[valvados] hmm
[valvados] i dunno what you were supposed to get revenge for, either
[locke|away] I can only assume you got what was coming to you. Not 100 percent sure, though.
[valvados] well, whatever i did, i guess i deserved it
[locke|away] Let that possibly be a lesson to you.

[xnd] Personally its not God I dislike, its his fan club I cant stand

[patrician|away] what does your robot do, sam
[bovril] it collects data about the surrounding environment, then discards it and drives into walls

[pihlopase] Jesus Saves
[jbroome] passes to Moses, SCOOOOORE!!

[tsk] oiuyniyu98h987h89yh87y98yjn987j987y897yhkiuk;''''
[tsk] sorry.. there was a spider on my keyboard.

[tag] Ouroboros: lets play Pong
[ouroboros] Ok.
[tag] | .
[ouroboros] . |
[tag] | .
[ouroboros] . |
[tag] | .
[ouroboros] | .
[ouroboros] Whoops

*** Topic in #doghouse is 'Our hearts are extended to the 17 victims of the recent internet fraud'
* Anubis has joined #doghouse
[anubis] what fraud?
[kadmium] You haven't heard about it?
[anubis] no?
[kadmium] You can read the full story at http://www.evilfraud.com
[anubis] omg wtf is that!
*** Kadmium changes topic to 'Our hearts are extended to the 18 victims of the recent internet fraud'

From TJBash.org:

Mrs. Bello: Conversation is an essential skill. Does anyone disagree?
Student: *timidly raises hand*
Mrs. Bello: Do you want to elaborate?
Student: No.

// On reading "A Tale of Two Cities"
Mr. Maney: It was the best of times, it was a waste of time.

Andrew: I'm not stupid, I just don't do things as better than anyone.

$: Someone told me that people who curse are just lacking vocabulary skills...
Mike: ...I'm gonna ****ing defenestrate you.

Mr. McFaden: *walking through a chattering class, very quietly* Sex.
Class: *keeps talking, does not notice*
Mr. McFaden: *still very quietly* Extra credit.
Class: *perks up* Did you say extra credit? What?
Mr. McFaden: From a biological standpoint, that's just WRONG.

// Taken from a student's personal information sheets handed out by Dr. Jones on the first day of class
Form: Please list three characteristics that describe yourself.
1. indecisive
2. __________
3. __________

// English class, discussing the 7th circle of the Inferno
Mrs. Bello: So here the people who practiced sodomy are punished with fire.
Student: So would it be okay to call them flaming homosexuals?

Mr. Stueben:
It has come to my attention that some students do not like my quizzes. Consequently, until morale improves, all quiz questions will be written in Mandarin Chinese. Good luck!
DIRECTIONS: Choose the best answer to the following question from the choices below.
(Chinese text you don't need to know to solve it--yes, there is only one correct answer.)
A. All of the below.
B. None of the below.
C. All of the above.
D. One of the above.
E. None of the above.
F. None of the above.

I just read that last year 4,153,237 people got married. I don't want to start any trouble, but shouldn't that be an even number?

Read more!

"Youthiness" infects internet writers of all ages.

Update: When Carl Icahn got into the fight later, he used all UPPERCASE letters.



Jerry Yang sent out memos today in all lowercase letters, trying to motivate the troops. Apparently this is common for him. I don't doubt it--lots of emails from bosses look like this. Shows how busy and important they are: "I can't be bothered to capitalize my letters. I have people to do that for me!" Jerry should try to be more like Google, where even their bad jokes generate bandwidth.



When is cool not cool?



Of course, lowercase is cool, if you're 13 and texting your friends, or sending MySpace messages. So Jerry is probably also striving to affect an aura of youth and cool.



Apologies to Stephen Colbert, but this looks like another example of misplaced youthiness to me.



A lot of text communication strives for youthiness nowadays. No one wants to be caught using email when they could be texting, Twittering or DM/IM'ing. But modern text systems push us to do more and more with less and less, particularly encouraging TMA (too many acronyms).



The three T's of status on Twitter



Updates on Twitter such as "cleaning toilet naked in meeting with guy k at jfk" are another example. This is a person combining the youthiness of missing words and lowercase letters with the three T's of status on Twitter:

• I'm so cool I can share embarrassingly personal stuff;


• Proof of my high status is that I meet with people who have status;


• I'm so busy with important stuff I'm frequently tweeting from airports.

(Of course I was personally so uncool on Twitter when I started out people contacted me directly to try and educate me.)



Where will it end?



It makes me wonder where this will all end. Using acronyms for our feelings was only the beginning, I fear. Is the way people are texting and tweeting today the way our novels and press releases are going to look in the future? I wouldn't doubt it. Conversations keep "atomizing," with no end in site. Even the thought leaders of our new age can't keep things straight, or as Kevin Rose said earlier today "and by wofo I mean wifi."



One day, some corporate bigwig will be tried for insider trading, and get off by saying "I didn't actually have inside information, I misspoke: I meant to say "AFAIC, not AFAICT." And we will realize nothing really changes: ssdd.

Read more!

Google: So powerful, even their jokes generate bandwidth

Okay, if you aren't familiar with Google's original joke ("TISP: Going with the flow"), it's here:
http://www.google.com/tisp/install.html

.. don't bother doing a double-take after visiting the link: yes, that's Google's URL: this is a joke from Google awhile back.

And yes, they're suggesting you flush your bandwidth down the toilet for best results.

Fast forward to the present:

This is now actually happening.

H2O Networks Ltd (love the name!) has found a city that their CEO Elfed Thomas says has "360,000 miles worth of sewers" that they hope to use to bring "next generation connectivity" to the residents at speeds approaching 100Mbps.

Yes, this is really happening--the city is Bournemouth in the UK.

Now they just need to come up with a name for the service. Suggestions?

Read more!

Puns from Digg.com

Members on Digg often compete to contribute the best puns and jokes. Here are some highlights from a recent post on puns. The Diggers contributions are ALL better than those in the actual article, in my opinion.

I've put the longer ones at the bottom, and edited out any I didn't think were that good. I've also included a selection of my favorite spoonerisms from the fun with words site (at the end of this post).

Top short puns:

• Feminine hygiene jokes are the lowest form of humor. Period.
• I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.
• Radio Shack is giving away dead batteries. Free of charge.
• Q: What do you call a psychic fugitive midget? A: A small medium at large.
• A termite walks into a bar and says "Where's the bar tender?"
• Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off? He's all right now.
• I couldn't quite remember how to throw a boomerang, but eventually it came back to me.
• A three-legged dog walks into a saloon and says: "I'm here to find the man that shot my paw" This one also made it as a poster:
  

A nurse is making her rounds at the hospital, she goes to make a notation on a patient's chart and pulls a thermometer from behind her ear. Looking at the thermometer she exclaims "Some asshole has my pen!"

Longer jokes:

A bayman was walking home after collecting seagull eggs to throw at mating dolphins near his home. He sees a sleeping lion on the path and slowly steps over it. He is immediately arrested. "What's the charge?" The man asks. "You were transporting young gulls over a sedate lion for immoral porpoises!"

A cowboy walks into a bar and orders a whiskey. As the bartender pours it for him he sees the place is empty. He says to the bartender "I know I'm new in town, but this place seems dead."
The bartender says "I reckon everyone is up at the hanging."
Cowboy asks "Who are they hanging?"
Bartender responds "The law finally caught up with ol' Brown Paper Pete."
Cowboy: "Brown Paper Pete? What kind of a name is that?"
Bartender: "You've never heard of him? He's notorious around these parts! Wears brown paper pants, brown paper shirt, brown paper vest, he's even got a brown paper hat."
Cowboy: "Now ain't that a caution. What are they hangin' him for?"
Bartender: "Rustlin'."

There's this guy looking for a job. By the way, this guy has no arms. So, he's looking through the wanted ads and sees that someone is needed to ring the bell in the church. So he's like, "I can ring the bell in the church!" So he runs over to the church and asks this priest if he can have the job. But the priest is like, "You have no arms! How can you ring the bell?" So the armless man runs up a dizzying six flights of stairs. Then he backs up, concentrates, and runs headfirst into the bell and rings it with his face. So now the priest is stunned and says, "Well, I guess since you rang the bell, you can have the job..."
Three months has gone by and twelve times a day this guy has to run up six flights of stairs and smash his face into this bell. The guy looks like a pancake.... So like he normally does, the pancake man goes up the stairs and runs at the bell BUT--he misses. He runs straight past the bell and goes flying over the side of the bell tower; splattered all over the sidewalk. So this big crowd of people comes around and they're all shouting, "OH MY GOSH, WHO FELL FROM THE BELL TOWER?!" So this guy bends down and looks at his demented head and says, "I don't know his name, but his face rings a bell!"

Soon after another armless man inquires if he can fill the now vacant role of bell ringer. The priest asks why yet another limbless man wants to be climb all those stairs and smash his face into the bell. The man replies that the original bell-ringer was his brother and he continue his brother's work. The priest grudgingly accepts. As before, the man runs up the six flights of stairs and smashes his face into the bell. All is well until the new man also misses the bell and tumbles to his death.

Aghast, the townsfolk ask the priest for the identity of the mysterious deceased stranger. "I don't know," replies the priest, "but he's a dead ringer for his brother."

Spoonerisms overheard (from Fun With Words):

• Cat flap (Flat cap)
• Bad salad (Sad ballad)
• Soap in your hole (Hope in your soul)
• Mean as custard (Keen as mustard)
• Plaster man (Master plan)
• Pleating and humming (Heating and plumbing)
• Trim your snow tail (Trim your toe nails)
• Birthington's washday (Washington's Birthday)
• Trail snacks (Snail tracks)
• Bottle in front of me (Frontal Lobotomy)
• Sale of two titties (Tale of two cities)
• Rental Deceptionist (Dental Receptionist)
• Flock of bats (Block of flats)
• Chewing the doors (Doing the chores)

And ... a great collection of humorous sayings.

Read more!

Stand-up comedy by Sarah Jones-Larson! No one is safe!!

After watching our good friend Tina Nagy appear on Conan O'Brien a few nights ago, Sarah started putting a "full steam ahead" effort into doing stand-up comedy.

Her first performance of stand-up comedy was this weekend, and she was terrific! I predict great things to come!! Take a look:

Read more!

I viewed a few wedding-related videos recently...

... as my cousin got married over Thanksgiving, and my wife Sarah and I couldn't make the wedding. Here's three of my favorites:

A man sets up a fake showing at an art gallery, that becomes a wedding proposal in a very creative way:


Two crew members for the TV show Scrubs fell in love. When it came time to pop the question, the whole set was ready. Awwwwwwww!


Here's the most popular (lately) example of the surprise first dance:

Read more!