The Null Device

French slang word of the day: "Yaourt":

['Yaourt' ("Yoghurt")] is the word used to describe the practice of singing along to tracks in English, usually with an unconvincing American accent, when you have absolutely no idea of the words. Yoghurt doesn't have to be English, it only has to sound English. Singing along to ‘I Want To Break Free’ in Yoghurt would sound something like this: ‘I wo' do' bek fee.’ Sit on the Métro and you'll hear plenty of amateur French R'n'B singers doing ‘Papa gode a ban noo bang’ in perfect Yoghurt. There are even current French expressions derived from Yoghurt. My favourite is ‘C'est la waneugaine’ — a bizarre distortion of the English, once again — meaning it's crazy or outlandish.

¶ amusing culture france french language 0 Share

Random Album Generator generates album covers by randomly mashing up found images and text. It occasionally hits on some serendipitous combinations:

(via MeFi) ¶ amusing web toys 0 Share

The perils of automated spellchecking have been illustrated in spectacular fashion in a leaflet promoting cycling published by Kirklees Council (or Kirtles Council, as the leaflet would have it):

Kirklees Council had 7,000 leaflets printed but they repeatedly spell Kirklees as Kirtles, Cleckheaton became Czechisation, Birstall ended up as Bistable and Kirkburton as Kirkpatrick.

The mangled spelling also affected the names of local bike shops, with Spen Velo becoming Supen Vole.

Even more bizarrely, an email address for British Waterways was given as: enquiries.manic-depressive@brutalisation's.co.uk

(via Arbroath) ¶ amusing fail risks uk unintentionally hilarious yorkshire 0 Share

Security ninja Bruce Schneier was recently recognised by an airport screener who presumably reads his blog:

TSA Officer: A beloved name from the blogosphere.
Me: And I always thought that I slipped through these lines anonymously.
TSA Officer: Don't worry. No one will notice. This isn't the sort of job that rewards competence, you know.

¶ amusing bruce schneier security 0 Share

Sleep Talkin' Man: a log of the bizarre, surreal and often obscenity-filled utterances of a man afflicted with the condition of sleep talking, as transcribed (and sometimes recorded and posted online) by his wife:

"Don't move a muscle. Bushbabies are everywhere... everywhere... Shoot the fucking big-eyed wanky shite fucks! Kick 'em. Stamp them. Poke 'em in their big eyes! Take that for scaring the crap out of me."

"My badger's gonna unleash hell on your ass. Badgertastic!"

"It's a good thing your breath smells of shit. It colors your words beautifully. Gives it an edge."

"Tea bags, see? Better be careful with the tea bags. They're delicate creatures. Handle them with care."

(via Boing Boing) ¶ amusing bizarre psychology sleep sleep disorders surreal 1 Share

Last year, I saw two shows by a brilliant Irish stand-up comedian, David O'Doherty. Today, I find out that he has a Twitter feed. Of course, it's no substitute for a live comedy show, but does feature some amusing and/or surreal lines like:

the best way to impress girls is to brag about things from 1992. Try this: "I have a Swatch." (You'll need a Swatch for this to work)

bobby chrome's friend saw Brokeback Mountain in India and they'd cut all the gay stuff out, leaving a 45 minute film about sheep farming

(via GordonHodgson) ¶ amusing comedy david o'doherty twitter 0 Share

British supermarket chain Sainsbury's has unilaterally renamed the fish known as pollack to "colin", in an attempt to rid it of connotations of poor quality and/or avoid potential offense to Britain's Polish community. In a further attempt to sell more of the fish, Sainsbury's hired the designer Wayne Hemingway (of fashion label Red Or Dead) to come up with Jackson Pollock-inspired packaging for the newly rebranded fish.

This is not the first time Britain's supermarkets have renamed products to avoid (actual or imagined) embarrassment; in 2001, Tesco considered renaming spotted dick to "spotted Richard".

¶ amusing bizarre branding fish food jackson pollock uk wtf 0 Share

Cat wanders onto set of German weather forecast; the meteorologist, Joerg Kachelmann, scoops it up and resumes giving the forecast without a pause.

¶ amusing cats germany video 0 Share

Recently, Swansea council in Wales needed to erect a road sign warning advising lorry drivers to avoid a residential area. Being in Wales, the sign would have needed to be bilingual, so the council emailed a translation service to get a Welsh translation of the text, and upon receiving the reply, promptly printed it on a sign and put it up. Only after the sign had gone up did people point out that the text was an out-of-office auto-reply:

All official road signs in Wales are bilingual, so the local authority e-mailed its in-house translation service for the Welsh version of: "No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only".

Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council said in Welsh: "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated".

¶ amusing fail language signs uk wales welsh 0 Share

A group of scientists did an experiment in exactly how useful a chocolate teapot would be. The answer is: not very, but more than you'd think.

After only about half a minute the lid started to melt, but otherwise the teapot survived its experience in one piece if not entirely unscathed. The tea was slightly unusual and sweet, but not unpleasant.

(via reddragdiva) ¶ amusing science 0 Share

And now, for light relief, here's a cow with its head stuck in a washing machine:

(via Boing Boing Gadgets) ¶ amusing animals bizarre photos 0 Share

A serendipitous visual juxtaposition from the front page of WIRED today:

¶ amusing lego photos serendipity 0 Share

Those fake sensational news headlines spammers are using to trick people into visiting dodgy websites are getting more and more ridiculous:

Bush is Gay. Obama Converts To Judiasm.
Bush and Putin Agree To Restart Cold War During G8 Summit.
Barack Obama Wins Ku Klux Klan Endorsement. Both Obama And Mccain Claim They Will Deport Elton John.
The internet was invented in 1950s in China.
Gregorian Monks Commit Mass Suicide In Italian Church.
Madonnas Former Home Destroyed By Jesus. Blair: Im Not Gay, Thats Just My Accent.

¶ amusing bizarre spam 5 Share

In the 1990s, Two Russian-born, US-based conceptual artists calling themselves Komar and Melamid created what they intend to be the world's most unlikeable song. The 22-minute opus is assembled from a palette of elements determined (through a poll) to be the least desirable aspects of songs, and includes things like an operatic soprano rapping about cowboys over a tuba-backed bassline and bagpipe breaks, a children's choir singing inane holiday ditties and advertising Wal-Mart, and someone shouts political slogans over elevator music. It is, in its own way, awesome:

The most unwanted music is over 25 minutes long, veers wildly between loud and quiet sections, between fast and slow tempos, and features timbres of extremely high and low pitch, with each dichotomy presented in abrupt transition. The most unwanted orchestra was determined to be large, and features the accordion and bagpipe (which tie at 13% as the most unwanted instrument), banjo, flute, tuba, harp, organ, synthesizer (the only instrument that appears in both the most wanted and most unwanted ensembles). An operatic soprano raps and sings atonal music, advertising jingles, political slogans, and "elevator" music, and a children's choir sings jingles and holiday songs. The most unwanted subjects for lyrics are cowboys and holidays, and the most unwanted listening circumstances are involuntary exposure to commercials and elevator music. Therefore, it can be shown that if there is no covariance—someone who dislikes bagpipes is as likely to hate elevator music as someone who despises the organ, for example—fewer than 200 individuals of the world's total population would enjoy this piece.

From the artists' own website:

In an age where opinion polls and market research invade almost every aspect of our "democratic/consumer" society (with the notable exception of art), Komar and Melamid's project poses relevant questions that an art-interested public, and society in general often fail to ask: What would art look like if it were to please the greatest number of people? Or conversely: What kind of culture is produced by a society that lives and governs itself by opinion polls?

(via Boing Boing) ¶ amusing art conceptual art consumerism culture democracy demographics focus groups komar and melamid market research music postmodernism public opinion wrong 1 Share

Seen in a Times piece on amusing signs around the world, this sign is in Pune, India:

¶ amusing humour image language signs travel 0 Share

McDonald's: The Videogame. A simulation of running a fast-food corporation that's like Sim City, had it been written by anti-globalisation activists. Bulldoze rainforests and villages, brainwash children and corrupt officials or go bankrupt. Play it before the lawyers kill it.

(via Boing Boing) ¶ activism amusing games globalisation mcdonald's no logo 0 Share

The BBC News site has some user-contributed photographs of odd signs:

(via BBC News) ¶ amusing photos signs 0 Share

Worth1000 has posted the results of an amusing photoshopping contest: things sliced and revealed to be made of unlikely materials:

(via Boing Boing) ¶ amusing photoshop 0 Share

The Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles has revoked an elderly woman's custom license plates because they had become obscene. Pat Niple had had the number plates reading "NWTF" (standing for "Northwood Tree Farm", a business she had owned) for more than a decade, and had had no problems with them—until this year, when they fell foul of technologically-mediated language change:

"Apparently, the young people use it on the computer," she said.

Niple went to a BMV office to get some answers. A clerk had to whisper what the acronym means to some people.

"Now what the -- and the last word begins with an f," Niple said. "I said, 'You got to be kidding me.'"

(via TechDirt) ¶ amusing language obscenity wtf 0 Share

And the coolest politician's name of the day belongs to Willis D. Knuckles, Liberia's new Presidential Affairs Minister.

¶ amusing liberia 0 Share

Wal-Mart, the US retail behemoth that manages to be both socially atomising and socially conservative, is now attempting to launch its own teen networking site, sort of like MySpace, only with its own unique values. Hilarity ensues:

The opening page shows video of four teens -- a bubbly fashionista, a Texas football player, a quirky skateboarder and an aspiring R&B singer from New York -- who are clearly actors reading a script, although the videos are positioned to appear authentic. Within, there are pages such as "Beth's Backyard Club," where you find a picture of her in a strapless prom dress above the approved quote: "I'll school my way by looking hot in my Wal-Mart clothes to school to catch a cute boy's eye. ..."

No doubt leery of all the problems with MySpace.com, Wal-Mart's site disqualifies any video with "materials that are profane, disruptive, unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, vulgar, obscene, hateful, or racially or ethnically-motivated, or otherwise objectionable." That's why "pending approval" notes dominate pages already created and content is limited to a headline, a fashion quiz and a favorite song. Wal-Mart also plans to e-mail the parents of every registered teen, giving them the discretion to pull a submission.

(via /.) ¶ amusing fail social software unclear on the concept wal-mart 0 Share

Attention LiveJournal/MySpace kids: not getting enough attention? You can always try faking your death online, and watching the gushing tributes flow in:

(via hazyjayne) ¶ amusing culture emo livejournal online 0 Share

A list of the 50 worst video game names of all time. All of these are names of actual games. This includes the likes of Princess Tomato in Salad Kingdom (NES, 1990), Tongue of the Fatman (PC, 1989), Sticky Balls (Gizmondo, 2005), Nuts & Milk (NES, 1984) and the inexplicably titled Irritating Stick (PlayStation, 1999).

(via /.) ¶ amusing names videogaming 0 Share

Philosophers have solved one of the great conundra, the question of which came first: the chicken or the egg. The answer: the egg came first, even if you implicitly exclude non-chicken eggs:

Genetic material does not change during an animal's life. Therefore, the first bird that evolved into what we would call a chicken, probably in prehistoric times, must first have existed as an embryo inside an egg.

Professor John Brookfield, a specialist in evolutionary genetics at the University of Nottingham, who was put to work on the dilemma, said that the pecking order was perfectly clear: the living organism inside the eggshell would have the same DNA as the chicken that it would become.

Creationists, for example, will argue that if God created Adam and Eve, he probably had a spare five minutes to knock up a chicken as well.

¶ amusing genetics philosophy 0 Share

MC Dicko could be the next Icy Hot Stuntaz. He's an 8-year-old gangsta rapper from Chester (that's in the north of England), who busts rhymes (in a very loose sense of the word) about how "bitches and ho's" have been fucking him over (which, I imagine, is wigga-speak for "girls have cooties" or something), between recounting the occasional ghetto gunfight (which may have happened in his imagination, or be a true story from the X-Box ghetto) and thugged-up versions of primary-school arguments. Sample lyric: "Shoot the fuckin' wannabe wiggas bitch".

Listen to the first two songs. Then, when you've picked yourself up from the floor and stopped laughing, listen to the third track, "Biscuits Skit", a rap about eating biscuits, and behold a world of improvement (for one, he actually bothers to rhyme rather than just rant angrily about fantasy battles, and does a very competent job). I imagine that when he drops the derivative gangstaisms and develops his own voice, he could go a long way.

(via Bowlie) ¶ amusing gangsta rap kids mc dicko rap 1 Share

Titles of Harry Potter fanfics we'd rather not read:

Harry Potter and the New Love Interest Who Happens to Have the Same Name as the 15-Year-Old Girl Writing this Fanfic
Harry Potter and the Uncomfortable Oversexualization of Minors
Harry Potter and the Camping Weekend With Ron That Will Never Be Spoken Of Again
Harry Potter and the Prisoner Detainees of Azerbaijan

(via Boing Boing) ¶ amusing harry potter 0 Share

An impressively scholarly classical Latin translation of Vanilla Ice's Ice Ice Baby, complete with literal English translations and copious notes:

Ad ultimum flecto microphonem velut vandal
(I bend the microphone to the furthest point like a Germanic tribesman)

Scaen(am) illumin(o) et inept(um) incero quasi candelam (I brighten the stage and cover an inept man in wax as if [he were] a candle)

(via substitute) ¶ amusing awesome latin vanilla ice 0 Share

It seems that someone somewhere decided that "Revoltec" would be a good name for a brand of computer peripherals:

And then there's a brand of fizzy drink with a rather Jarryesque name:

¶ alfred jarry amusing brands photos unintentionally hilarious 0 Share

Excerpts from stories rejected by Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, showing a broad range of deficiencies, from wildly implausible characterisations to incoherent word-salads of technobabble, bizarre adjectives and half-digested clichés:

Freddy was in the habit of staring at Beverly's legs as they peaked from her Susie Wong slit dresses. She had a dozen of them.

"Stand slow!" a voice rang out with hollow ubiquity.

The universe is a vast region of deep mystery steeped in antiquity.

Onion oil! I couldn't imagine anyting worse than a daily bath in onion oil.

"Corporeal, we've got to do our best to keep this from the public."
"I know sir, but its already too late."
What do you mean, the general inquired?
"While you were gone I let a curious private in on the secret."
"We've got to stop him."
By now he's long gone. Sorry sir."
"Oh no."

(via raven) ¶ amusing fiction scifi unintentionally hilarious 1 Share

Man falls out of his wheelchair; his cat dials the emergency services, possibly saving his life.

Rosheisen got the cat three years ago to help lower his blood pressure. He tried to train him to call 911, unsure if the training ever stuck.

(via bOING bOING) ¶ amusing cats 0 Share