Showing all posts about humour
Are you a movie buff, or a Buzzfeed movie buff?
30 April 2023
According to Buzzfeed, if you’ve seen the following fourteen movies, you’re a movie buff:
- Alice in Wonderland directed by Tim Burton
- Beetlejuice directed by Tim Burton
- Burlesque directed by Steve Antin
- E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial directed by Steven Spielberg
- Footloose directed by Herbert Ross (I think they mean the 1984 film)
- Heathers directed by Michael Lehmann
- Jennifer’s Body directed by Karyn Kusama
- Mean Girls directed by Mark Waters
- Suicide Squad directed by David Ayer
- The Bye Bye Man directed by Stacy Title
- The Harry Potter films directed by various
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower directed by Stephen Chbosky
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre directed by Tobe Hooper
- Up directed by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson
Methinks a number of movies, one in particular, have been omitted from this list…
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Amelie was a KGB spy says filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet
22 March 2023
Twenty-one years after he made Amélie, full title The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain, starring Audrey Tautou, the film’s director Jean-Pierre Jeunet has revealed Amélie was actually a KGB spy. He makes the startling admission in a short film, Amelie: the Real Story, which uses scenes from the original 2001 made feature. A master of cunning, our Amélie, but we all knew that.
Did no one ever wonder how a young waitress afforded such sophisticated decoration for a flat in Montmartre, one of Paris’ most expensive districts?
You know, I did wonder, because I wanted to live in apartment exactly like Amélie’s.
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film, humour, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, video
What if 2001: A Space Odyssey was directed by George Lucas?
4 February 2023
Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey is remixed with George Lucas’ 1977 space opera Star Wars, by YouTuber Poakwoods, and this is the result.
Truly awesome.
Also, it seems hard to believe from the third decade of the twenty-first century that less than ten years separate 2001: A Space Odyssey and the first Star Wars film.
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2001: A Space Odyssey, film, humour, science fiction, video
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for awful novel opening lines
18 December 2022
Not a literary award at all, more of an anti-literary award really, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (BLFC), which has been running since its inception at San Jose State University in 1982. But unlike the literary awards we are more familiar with, the Bulwer-Lytton recognises terrible writing, and envisages the worst possible opening sentences to what will be awful novels.
Joe Tussey, from Daniels, in the U.S. state of West Virginia, was named winner in the 2022 adventure category, for this opener:
“Hoist the mainsail ye accursed swine” shouted the Captain over the roar of the waves as the ship was tossed like a cork dropped from a wine bottle into a jacuzzi when the faucet is wide open and the jets are running full blast and one has just settled into the water with a glass of red wine to ease the aches and pains after a day of hard labor raking leaves from the front yard.
The BLFC accepts nominations, the usual categories, including fiction, crime, and young adult, in the form of the worst paragraph you can devise, all through the year.
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humour, literary awards, literature, writing
A guide to your spooky season Michael Myers-Briggs Type
17 October 2022
Image courtesy of Simon Wijers.
Hot off the desk of writer, actor, and comedian Simon Henriques. Understanding your Michael Myers-Briggs Type is never more important than during spooky season:
It’s important to keep in mind that no Michael Myers-Briggs Type is the “correct” one — every style of silent, masked stabbing spree is equally valid. Instead, use your type as a jumping-off point to honestly reflect on your strengths and weaknesses, as well as just your personal preferences for how you enjoy to ruthlessly murder.
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film, humour, personality, psychology
Bicycles and the damage they have caused by Paul Fairie
29 August 2022
Paul Fairie, a researcher at the University of Calgary, and humourist, has, based upon clippings from vintage newspapers, concluded that bicycles are responsible for all sorts of problems:
- A decline in marriages
- A decline in book sales
- Appendicitis
- A decline in furniture sales
- An increase in the number of women smokers
- A decline in grain consumption
- The closure of a Christian society (so now we know…)
- The decline in trans-Atlantic travel
- A condition referred to as “bicycle face”
Bicycle face, in case you’re curious, is described as being “the sentimental side of that tired feeling”. It possibly also applies to cyclists riding on a footpath (especially when a dedicated bike lane runs adjacent to the same road), who look passed pedestrians as though they are invisible.
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Fifty of the funniest, laugh out loud, books ever written
30 July 2022
Fifty of the funniest books of all time complied by Sarah McKenna, managing editor of Penguin Books in the UK. The list begins with Three Men in a Boat written by Jerome K. Jerome in 1889, and scrolls through to A Calling for Charlie Barnes, written by Joshua Ferris in 2021.
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Stories about ghosts that nurses have seen
29 October 2014
Image courtesy of Maximiliano Estevez.
I once spent a month staying at a hotel when I was somewhere or other, and every evening when I came in there’d be a young woman with straight blonde hair, sitting on the stairs. She’d always be engaged in a FaceTime conversation, speaking in Spanish, with, I came to notice, the same male.
I never saw her at any other time. Curious as to who she was, I asked the manager about her one morning. He looked blankly at me. He knew of no such guest, especially one who had been staying there as long as I had. Predictably, I never saw her again.
That’s not quite how things unfolded, and that’s not quite meant to be a ghost story, but I thought I’d tell the tale nonetheless.
Anyway to bookmark for later tonight… ghosts may well contravene the second law of thermodynamics, but these ghost stories, as told by nurses, may have you doubting the axiom that nothing unreal exists, for a spine chilling couple of minutes at least.
Originally published Wednesday 29 October 2014.
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What might have happened if the internet was not invented?
1 March 2010
The other week, an article written in 1995 by Clifford Stoll who — in short — could see no future for the internet, resurfaced.
While events obviously took a different course, Stoll’s words started me wondering about a world without an internet, and what our lives in 2010 might be like in the absence of this “most trendy and oversold community”, as Stoll put it.
And faster than Marty McFly and Doc Brown can conjure up an alternative timeline, here we are, a day in my life, in an un-wired, web-less, 2010.
The day begins like this, as always…
I go down to my letter box. There are three letters, a bill, two magazines, and the daily newspaper. A prominently placed front-page article boasts of a circulation increase of 0.1%, according to the latest readership audit.
Over breakfast I continue scanning the paper. The music industry is on the war path. Again. They can’t seem to shut down the groups who are bootlegging albums, by burning them onto DVDs and then selling them for — quite literally — a song on the street.
Before settling into the day’s work I quickly reply to the letters I’ve received, this is a breeze since nowadays people mostly only write letters that are a paragraph or two long. And given they now only cost five cents to send, literally millions are exchanged daily in Australia.
Getting down to work, I need to do some research
I work from home as a freelance writer. I work for a number of what are called street magazines, which are independently produced publications.
Sometimes several people operate them, sometimes they are the work of one person, an editor, who also relies on contributions from freelance writers.
But more on street magazines later.
I work using a computerised pad like device about the size of an A4 sheet of paper. The top section has a screen, while the lower part has a keypad.
I can send output to either a printer, via fax (the Victorian age technology has really stood the test of time), or save it as a text file to a floppy disc, which I can courier to whomever I’m writing for.
I have two article deadlines in two days time, and will need to spend a couple of hours at the local library doing some research for them.
Some of those street magazines are quality rags
Some of the more popular publications do really well, and thanks to their numerous sponsors, turn out top-shelf editions each week.
People like Jason Kottke, Karen Cheng, John Gruber, and Duncan Macleod who runs a zine called The Inspiration Room, are considered some of the big names in street magazine publishing.
What makes one street magazine more popular than another? I have no idea really. Quality content for sure, but I think luck has a lot to do with it also. That hasn’t stopped a large number of hopefuls from publishing street magazines on how to publish street magazines though.
Clearly these sorts of publications don’t bother the established newspapers though, who are after all, boasting of increases in their readership.
Producing your own street magazine is also easy
Self publishing really caught on with the advent of photo-copy print machines, and because they are so cheap and easy to operate, they can be found in most corner stores, newsagents, and supermarkets.
The whole process is incredibly simple. You write content using your computer’s word-processor, and then, when finished, export the file to a floppy disc. Then it’s away to the nearest photo-copy print machine.
You simply insert the floppy disc in the yellow slot, select from a number of print-out (or publishing) options, insert some money, and a few minutes later you are a published author, proudly holding your paperback — which is usually A5 size by the way — in your hands.
Sites that offer photo-copy printing services also allow you to place your publications in vending shelves, for a small fee. Your readers can then come along and pick up your latest work.
Cafes, bars, cinemas, and even public transport services, also have distribution facilities, so publishers with good advertising revenue can afford to widely circulate their magazines.
Instead of Facebook and social networks
The way you meet people in this world is truly weird.
Case in point. I was just over at the supermarket when a girl smiled and waved at me. This puzzled me as she didn’t look familiar, so I asked if I knew her from somewhere. She looked perplexed. “I was just wondering if you wanted to be friends,” she said.
Maybe it was the way I was looking at her, as if she had stepped out of a flying saucer or some such.
“Well, what do you expect me to do? Send you a photo, a bio, and a list of my friends to you, or something? Come on, what sort of world do you think we live in? The Star Trek universe?”
We ended up shrugging at each other and went our separate ways.
Coffee meetings and face to face networking
Today is when the weekly writers coffee group meets. We get together every week to chat, network, and compare notes.
One guy there today was in a very excitable mood though, “you know, this is far more than people sitting in a cafe chatting, exchanging information and tips, it’s a… I don’t know, er, community network, a like, social network, you know?”
A social network? That sounds kind of cool. We all nodded meaningfully, and resumed our random chatter.
Instead of Twitter, micro-blogging, and text messaging
On returning home from the coffee group, there are a stack of “slips” in my letter box.
Slips are a micro revolution in what I call — for want of a better term — instant communication. Basically people can send 150 character messages to each other via the postal service.
In Australia for example you pay $100 a month and can send up to 500 slips. To send one you call the Post Office service centre, where a communications consultant transcribes your message, and then faxes it to the post office nearest to where the recipient lives.
Slips are delivered through out the day, though not so often in rural areas, by people who drive around in very distinct red and blue striped vans.
The big advantage of slips is in their brevity. People often can’t be bothered making a phone call or writing a letter, especially if they only want to tell their friends what they had for lunch or where they were at a certain time, so slips really took off.
Designed to be recycled, and printed on fax paper with a special ink that fades after a few days, they have also proved a boon for postal services worldwide as a result of their popularity.
Advertising is also carried on the back of slips, making the concept a veritable gold mine.
The future of the future is still televised
I watch as someone called Steve Jobs walks onto a stage at a trade show with a pad like device very similar to what I use. Except it has what Jobs’ refers to as a dongle attached to it.
The “dongle”, which is about the size of a packet of chewing gum, is a wireless transmitting device that allow computers to talk to each other, and also share information and files. It will change the very essence of our lives, Jobs says.
We’ll be able to buy music and movie files through the dongle somehow, publish street magazines “online”, and even meet people the same way. Yeah, right.
Quite a few people in the audience are clearly excited by what he is saying. But not me. Such a thing will never catch on.
I flick the TV off, and as I take delivery of the day’s last batch of slips, prepare to spend the rest of the evening reading through the growing pile of street magazines that I subscribe to.
An “online” world?
I couldn’t possibly imagine living in such a place. If you disagree though, please send me a slip or letter. Good night.
Originally published Monday 1 March 2010, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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blogs, humour, legacy, self publishing, social media, social networks, technology