The Great Flamingo Uprising

(H/t to nancylebov)

A man, a guitar, and two cockatoos.

... is a rather amusing twitter account. I particularly liked this tweet:

Surely flies have great reasons for swarming through my nose while I am napping, but they are not good at communicating those reasons to me.

The bear also talks about eating things, about existential doubt, and about whether bees/sticks/the forest/birds like him. It's kind of silly, sure. One tweet per day, as far as I can tell.

This shows a pretty funny campaign ad that's been put out by a man who's running for re-election as a county commissioner in Travis County, Texas. It's not nasty, mean, or anything - it's just a neat bit of self-deprecation, and it works wonderfully.

One of the e-books I'm currently reading is The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (Not to be confused with OWH Jr., legal scholar, Supreme Court Justice, and far less entertaining writer.) It's a compilation of essays originally published in Atlantic Monthly; the basic conceit is that Holmes is a resident at a boarding house, and the essays are records of breakfast-table conversations among the inmates. Naturally, Holmes dominates the conversations, but isn't afraid to allow a little self-mockery, and the results are pretty funny.

Example: Holmes is pontificating on the difficulty of true conversation, pointing out that in a dialogue between John and Thomas, at least six personalities are involved:

1. The real John; known only to his Maker.
2. John's ideal John; never the real one, and often very unlike him.
3. Thomas's ideal John; never the real John, nor John's John, but often very unlike either.

and similarly for Thomas. Holmes goes on to give flesh to this argument, ending with, "No wonder two disputants often get angry, when there are six of them talking and listening all at the same time."

This is followed by a parenthetical comment.

[A very unphilosophical application of the above remarks was made by a young fellow, answering to the name of John, who sits near me at table. A certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little known to boarding-houses, was on its way to me via the unlettered Johannes. He appropriated the three that remained in the basket, remarking that there was just one apiece for him. I convinced him that his practical inference was hasty and illogical, but in the mean time he had eaten the peaches.]

That deadpan ending appeals to me. Just a sample of what is to be found in the collection....

"Cold? Check out a book! You'll still be cold, but you'll have a book."

(H/t Greg Dworkin)

I just ran across one of the worst jokes I have ever heard. Unfortunately, it's a mathematical in-joke, and most people will not get it at all.

Question: What is an anagram of "Banach-Tarski"?

( Read more... )

Q. What do you do with an elephant that's got three balls on him?

( The answer )

Hat-tip to Sarah on Making Light.

A commenter on James Nicoll's LJ pointed out this video: Sad Cat Diary.

Meanwhile, Gracie is growling at Buster over a rawhide chew, and Buster is pleading for attention. I must go give him some.

I love Dogblog. What amuses me about this one is that it's immediately obvious which is which.

(Or is it?)