You Can Never Be Too Careful

I am surprised this packet of thread doesn’t warn that it may contain nuts, and is 100% fat free.

More Whimsy From The Net

I don’t know who Tobias Lunchbreath is, other than the few facts gleaned from Flickr. An Art Director from Chicago who describes himself as “Male and Taken”

I do like his whimsical view of the world though.

 

 

There are pages of similar delights on Lunchbreath’s Photostream.

Whoever you are. Thank you.

I’m sure it’s clever, but ….

Pastimes are just that. Things to do to pass the time. In addition some pastimes require some thinking skills, with the added attraction of exercising your brain and maybe giving you a sense of satisfaction in achieving something. That is why I do cryptic crosswords and hard sudokus.  Although I failed to get any satisfaction from the Rubik Cube (as I was never much good at solving it), I did enjoy the challenge. There is less fun in doing these things if you have to seek external help. Particularly if that help is mechanical. Yes you can use various software to solve sudoku or help with crosswords, but the pleasure is much reduced.

So what to make of these two little devices from a boffin in Sweden – Hans Andersson?  

Using Lego Mindstorms, he has designed and built robots for solving Sudoku and Rubik’s Cube. There are videos and building instructions (including the software) on his website. And whilst I think it all very clever, I wonder what the point is. I don’t get much satisfaction from watching other people solve sudoku or crosswords or play patience, if I am not contributing myself. So why this?

Don’t answer that. It is not a serious question. A disclaimer here. When I first decided to teach myself to program in Basic, I wrote a noughts-and-crosses solving program. Of course I understand that the exercise in designing and building these is the point. Nonetheless, I do wonder. Perhaps Hans Andersson should be turning his mind to solving bigger problems. He clearly is capable.

Maybe someone said that of Edwin Votey when he demonstrated the first player piano in 1895? What pleasure is there in having a machine play your music for you? Don’t answer that either.

Twitter

There is constant discussion about the uselessness of Twitter for real social networking and for the most part I agree. However, I have found several good uses for it. The odd “hey, you might be interested in this” is often does point to something interesting. This is especially true if you are selective about who you follow. The only real drawback with this aspect is that the page can fill up quite quickly with dross and that pushes the interesting stuff off the page and then the gem is lost.

However it is the dross which has caught my attention. I am not sure I understand how these get started nor how the word gets out, but there have been some funny bad pun chains of tweets (I am sure there is a word to describe that but I don’t know it).

Here is a sample from Cheesefilms

The Gouda, the Bad and the Ugly,          Mas Capone,            Cheesus Christ Superstar,            Puttin’ on the Ritz,                  Who Framed Roger Rarebit?,              Give My Ricotta Broad Whey,               The Man in the Iron Mascarpone,              Brie Encounter,             La Dolce Feta,                   La Dolcelatte Vita,                 The Cheshire of the Sierra Madre,                  The Great Train Robbrie,                Bangkok Stilton,                        Return of the Cheddar,                  East of Edam,               Fondue the Right Thing,               No Whey Out,             Brie-ing John Malkovich,            Goudafellas,                 Much Fondue About Nothing,               Edam Busters,             The Day the Earth Stood Stilton,                     I Was Monty’s Double Gloucester,                 As Gouda As It Gets,                  Cheddar Gabler,           The Brie of Frankenstein,            A Few Gouda Men,              The Longest Yarg,             Carlito’s Whey,                 Blue Velveeta,            Emmental Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,                  Bridget Jones Dairy,          Bridget Jones Dairylea,               Earth Girls Are Cheesy,                     Feta Attraction,                    The Tailor of Double Gloucester,            Nokkelost in Translation,             The Philadelphia Story,            Saving Private Rind,             Animal Farmhouse,             My Cousin Blue Vinny,                     The Bad News Camemberts,                Swiss Cheese Family Robinson,               Seven Bries for Seven Brothers?,                    Million Dollar Babybel,                  Gouda Will Hunting,               Curds of the Pink Panther,            Cheeses of Nazareth,                    Rarebit Proof Fence,                     Lock Stock and Two Smoking Cracker Barrels,               Le Comte de Monte Cristo,               The Fondue of the Opera,                          Driving Swiss Daisy,                      Cheese Having a Baby,                Five Cheesy Pieces,               Fromage Russia With Love,            The Private Life of Emile Gorgonzola,         You, Me and DuBrie

 

Or what about Vegetariantheatre

Educating Beetroot,           Banana Mia,              Salad Days,           Omelette,        Lady Windermere’s Bran,          The Importance of Beans, Ernest,           The Mousse Trap,        Cauliolanus,          We Will Rocket You,                Calamity Grain,          Cat On A Hot Tin Root,        Chat On A Hot Tin Roof,             Carrot on a Hot Tin Roof,      The Best Little Greenhouse In Texas,                The Gnocchi Horror Show,            A Mushroom With a View,              Troilius and Cress,                 A Streetcar named Desiree,                  Miss Soygon,                    The Rocket Horror Show,               The Postman Always Brings Rice,             The Chronicles of Naan,                  An Inspector Kales,               Witlof and I,                    Cheddar Gabler,                   Citizen Kale,              Pirates of Pea-zance,                Romeo and Julienned,                  Oatlahoma!,          Okrahoma!,            The Threepenny Okra,           The Lime King,         A Sweetcorn Named Desire,           Don’s Parsley,              Guys and Dills,           The Grass Menagerie,               Pear Ubu,           Pear Gynt,            An Inspector Caulis,         Tree Sisters,           The Wizard of Cos,                     Tarte oeuf,              Parsnip and Old Lace,           Arms and the Mango,                Paint Your Vegan,                 The Gourdfather I, II and III,                   A Man for All Seasonings,             Romaines in Britain,                 The Dairy of Anne Frank,               The Quince and the Pauper,            Lady Windermere’s Flan,                       Krapp’s Last Tapas,                Egg-quis,             The ProJuicers,                Quiche me Kate,                    Leek Back in Anger,                Beauty and the Beet,                     Death of a Kalesman

Good cooperative fun. So don’t write-off Twitter altogether.

Long time no write

It has been a while since I have been able to find the time to write anything, or perhaps since I had the motivation to write anything. It has left me wondering whether the blog has already passed into history, to be replace with the more immediate social network sites like Facebook and Twitter. I hope not. Don’t get me wrong, firing off a witty comment or eavesdropping on stranger’s conversations and photographs is fun enough. But hardly a fair exchange for a well-considered, well-written blog.

This train of thought is partially motivated by the last entry in one of my favourite blogs – Barista.  David has been such a reliable supplier of interesting anecdotes, stories and thoughtful articles, that I have felt quite bereft since he declared that he might be abandoning his blog – at least for the moment.

That then started a trawl through the various blogs I have bookmarked over the last couple of years. A surprising number of them have either been discontinued or neglected. Perhaps it’s not just me. It does take a fair effort to write a blog, especially if one is diligent with the hyperlinks, and it is hard to keep up the desire.

Mind you, as long as people continue to fill the web with little joys like this, it is worth having a blog to pass them on.

http://kontraband.com/videos/9269/Morphing-Maidens
Apparently I can’t post videos at the moment.

Did we really look like that in the 70’s?

Thank you Rotating Corpse. This picture comes from a fantastically daggy Hallmark book from 1976 called “Please Don’t Promise Me Forever” which Brittany at Rotating Corpse has scanned. Every page delivers a gem of wonderful picture and cringe-making verse.

Rotating Corpses is a collaborative site which features pictures and other artwork from a huge variety of sources. A place to idly browse for the odd, fascinating and the strangely pointless.

Unfortunately, their pages are not well indexed and their is a fair degree of pot luck with what you find. I do like this though from “The Curious Sofa” by Ogdred Weary (in fact Edward Gorey) some pages of which have been scanned for our pleasure.

I love a good hoax

Last year, there were reports of a man giving birth to a healthy female child.

  (Kristian Dowling/Getty Images)

Except that the story wasn’t completely true. The man concerned was in fact a transgender person who still retained his/her female reproductive organs.

More interesting were reports of a man, Lee Mingwei who was carrying a child despite having no female organs.

This one really was a hoax. Going to the website www.malepregnancy.com leads you to the elaborate world of the fictional RYT Hospital and the Dwayne Medical Centre at the non-existent Dwayne University.

Here you have links to a wonderful selection of medical research marvels – nanotechnology robots which operate within blood and tissue.

Genochoice, which enabled prospective parents to create their own genetically healthy child online

Clyven, the mouse engineered with the same intelligence as a human by implanting human brain cells

And of course the pregnant man.

This very professionally produced site is full of pseudo-science and appears very credible. Except it is not. It is a wonderfully carried off hoax.

Two questions remains though. Why and who is paying? Unlike the April Fool’s jokes I wrote about in April (when else?) which were advertising stunts, there seems no obvious commercial return for the RYT pages. Perhaps I have become cynical and assume that there must be a financial component for everything on the web. Clearly that is not true. I do this for the fun of it. But the RYT site is so elaborate and clearly a great deal of time went into it. It is reasonable to ask why.  

Incidentally, UK Internet consultant Phil Bradley has a wonderful list of other hoaxes on his website.

Reine, Reine Gueux E’veille

A joke entry in this week’s Guardian Weekly ‘Notes and Queries’ column , the motto of the French navy – “a l’eau, c’est l’heure”, reminded my of a book that I had forgotten about for the last 30 years which makes similar use of homophones.

The so-called, d’Antin Manuscript entitled Mots D’Heures: Gousses, Rames was published in the late 60’s and purports to be a set of ancient French poems.

 

The one I best remember went -

Et qui rit des curés d’Oc?, De Meuses raines, houp! de cloques.

The first time I read them, I laboriously tried to understand the French, until it was pointed out that I should read them out loud. Then the penny dropped.

Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock.

Another well-know one is –

Un petit d’un petit, S’étonne aux Halles, Un petit d’un petit, Ah! Degrés te fallent

Each poem is accompanied but a straight-faced translation of the French.  “Et qui rit des curés d’Oc? De Meuses raines, houp! de cloques.” is translated as “he who laughs at the curés of Oc will have frogs leap at him from the Meuse river”.

The whole thing is a wonderfully witty read, as I have rediscovered this week.

D’Antin is in fact one time architect and later Hollywood actor Luis van Rooten. Mexican born Van Rooten was a master of languages and accents and found films roles that made use of this skill. 

But what does it taste like?

I have never quite understood why fancy Chinese meals are supposed to taste better if they are accompanied by a bird carved out of a carrot, or elegant meals are somehow more elegant if the butter is shaped like a rose.

Nevertheless, I can’t help but be impressed with things that people with food in the name of art and have posted examples before – http://cyberslacker.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/do-play-with-your-food/

I can’t say that I much like these watermelon carvings by Francesco Scravaglieri but I do at least admire the endeavour.

How cynical can you get?

Although the main use of the Internet would seem to be for the distribution of erotica and pornography  (apart from its other use as a means of pirating copyright material), I have not been in the habit of writing about it. But as this blog is dedicated to the quest for the absurd and the odd, I cannot refrain from passing comment on this hilarious find – courtesy of Reuters (Shannon Stapleton).

 

This is from the tryouts for the Lingerie Football League. Yes that’s right. An American football competition between teams such as the Dallas Desire and the San Diego Seduction.

I suppose it is one way of livening up such a dull game. The exercise is so cynical that it does make me laugh though.