On the insipidity of pop music

Does all pop music sound the same to you? Well, as the Aussie comedy/music trio Axis of Awesome points out, there's a reason for that (note: language warning):

(Update: I discovered recently that the version of this clip I originally posted, which has the song titles included, is actually an edited version of their performance—it had about a minute removed, as well as their introduction on the stage—so I've changed the video to one which includes the whole performance. For the shorter version with song titles, go here.)

Now, if you're like me, this immediately reminded you of something else—this bit from the American musical comedian Rob Paravonian (language warning here as well), which takes the same idea a bit further:

Between the two, I'm not sure there's all that much left to say.

Today is definitely a tortoise-and-hare day

The way today is going, that particular combination was just too perfect for words.

Why I don't do holiday shopping

This Brewster Rockit strip from last Friday captures my view of things quite nicely:

Science vs. the sense of wonder?

For some people, perhaps:

Another random Internet find

also preserved years ago from someone's signature on a message board:

English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, whacks them over the head, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.

Found on the Internet

years ago, in someone's sig file:

"Bother," said Pooh. "Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes and lock phasers on the Heffalump. Piglet, meet me in transporter room three. Christopher Robin, you have the bridge."

Life with cat

One of my Facebook friends posted this first video the other day; it cracked me up, so I went looking for more. Turns out the guy who made it, Simon Tofield, has his own YouTube channel which I had somehow, inexplicably, missed over the last year or so. I'm glad I found it, because this is truly a man who understands the humor of living with a cat.

Is President Obama not funny?

In response to my previous post, cyberfriend Doug Hagler suggested a couple reasons why late-night hosts haven't done much with Barack Obama up until he was (startlingly) awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. One, Joe Biden, I agree with; the VP is a walking punch line, giving them plenty of material to work with all by himself. Doug's right to call him a "comedic sacrificial lamb." He also has a point in noting that we're not that far into the Obama administration, though if you look back eight years, I think you'll find that that didn't slow the likes of Jay Leno much in going after George W. Bush.

His other suggestion, though, I think is off: that the President is "an articulate public figure" who doesn't give comedians many opportunities to poke fun at him. You know, the guy gives a good speech, but get him off his teleprompter and he's startlingly mortal—even Bush-like. Here's a few examples:

Austrian is a language?

Halting the rise of privacy?

When TOTUS fails:

Thinking on his feet:

57 of 59 states, one left to go:

None of this is to imply that the President is stupid, because he isn't; but were these lines all attributable to George W. Bush, they would have been fed right into the Bush-as-drooling-clown meme, and the jokes would have come cascading down. When Barack Obama says them? Crickets from the big guns of the media. Clearly, something's uneven here.

Now, I don't blame this on bias on the part of late-night hosts. I do think they're biased to some degree—because who isn't?—but I don't think bias drives their routines much at all; for those guys, the driver is getting a laugh, and they'll do anything within reason to get a laugh out of their audience. (And for Letterman—who's either the most biased of the group, I think, or just the meanest—maybe not just within reason.) They've tried telling Obama jokes, and studio audiences haven't responded. They don't want to tell jokes that leave the audience cold, and you can't blame them for that.

Part of this is that the President started off with such an elevated mood, with such elevated expectations, that many people didn't want to diminish that any by laughing at him; part of it is that over the course of the campaign, Barack Obama became increasingly unable to laugh at himself, and so far he's been running an administration that really can't seem to take a joke. That doesn't encourage public levity. It will be interesting to see if the laughter over the Nobel is an indication that public attitudes—as represented by talk-show studio audiences—are starting to change, or if it's just a blip. If it's the former, then the President had best relearn to take a joke, because as JibJab has known all along, he's plenty vulnerable to satire.

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The Nobel Prize for laughter

I have to say, the thing that has surprised me the most about Barack Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize has been all the laughter. Sure, I expected some people to laugh, but I wouldn’t have thought to see anyone literally doubled over and out of breath from laughter, and I have seen that. I would have expected more support from the decision around the world, instead of the incredulity that seems to be the general response from major global political figures. After all, someone argued that those who expected Copenhagen to hurt the President’s international prestige should similarly expect the news from Oslo to boost it, and that made a certain amount of sense; but it doesn’t seem to be playing out that way. And I thought that the Left would be pleased by the award, but so far, they haven’t been supporting it either.

Indeed, the late-night jokesters appear to have decided that this is something about President Obama that they can safely mock; and mock they have, with gusto. Here’s Jay Leno, for instance:

Congratulations to Barack Obama—he has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. Apparently, the Nobel committee wanted to recognize the president’s fine work in bringing peace to a black professor and a white cop through the strategic use of beer.

President Obama said he was humbled to win the prize. Not as humble as he was when Rio got the Olympics. But still humble.

That’s pretty amazing, winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Ironically, his biggest accomplishment as president so far . . . winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

President Obama won another Nobel Prize today. This time in medicine for pretending to give up smoking.

The Nobel Peace Prize also comes with a cash award of $1.4 million. Apparently, this is President Obama's plan to finance healthcare reform.

And Conan O’Brien:

Today, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The committee said they gave it to Obama partly for his idealism and commitment to global cooperation, but mostly for calling Kanye West a jackass.

It’s a great honor for America that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. Unfortunately, our economy is so bad, Obama’s already been forced to trade the medal in at “Cash 4 Gold.”

The Nobel Committee is saying the reason they gave Obama the Peace Prize is for reducing tension around the world. So, the runners-up for this year’s Nobel Prize were “red wine” and ”the Brookstone 3-Speed Massaging Recliner.”

Jimmy Fallon took the opportunity to skewer a rival:

Congratulations to President Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize this morning. That’s quite an accomplishment. I’m sure he’ll pick it up as soon as he’s finished fighting two wars.

Along with the Nobel Peace Prize President Obama also gets $1.4 million. Usually to get a check that big you need to blackmail David Letterman.

Jimmy Kimmel added a shot at the VP:

A day after declaring war on the moon, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Vice President Biden was awarded the Nobel Hair-Piece Prize.

And Craig Ferguson got off I think the best line at the expense of America’s best-loved losers:

The Chicago Cubs are filing for bankruptcy. They’re from Chicago; they’ve spent millions of dollars they don’t have . . . I smell Nobel Peace Prize.

I’m not sure if this means the President’s media honeymoon is wearing off, or just that the funnymen are that happy to have a “safe” way to get laughs out of him.

On another note

Randall Munroe has a good point here:

Yes, yes, your sugar is a fat-free food. So's everybody else's. Go away.

A brilliant parody of scientism

courtesy of that consistently brilliant parodist, John Cleese—who truly is, as my wife says, at the top of his form with this one. (Scientism, if anyone is wondering, is the dogmatic faith in science which folks like Richard Dawkins use to replace faith in God.)

The great thing about Cleese, evident here, is his unflagging willingness to skewer everybody, including himself and those with whom he agrees. For an instructive comparison, check out Christopher Hitchens' biting critique in the latest Atlantic of folks like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Al Franken, who (though they consider themselves satirists) are unwilling to do so.

The future of Macintosh

This is fun. My thanks to Chris Forbes for posting it.

xkcd on the Gates situation

just because it's funny:

Obama administration kills dragon tank

Courtesy of The Onion, of course; though I have to admit, as someone whose inner child still remembers playing with G. I. Joe, Mask, and Transformers, to the sneaking thought that it would be cool if our army did have a dragon tank . . .

HT: Toby Brown

On presumption

Today's xkcd is brilliant:

It's all too easy for us to slip into this sort of smug presumption—to give ourselves too much credit and others not enough; after all, we can't see anyone else from the inside, only ourselves, so we only know what's going on behind our own eyes. Tip of the hat to Randall Munroe for a nice bit of work with the lancet.

A little eschatological humor

I've had this list kicking around for so long, I no longer remember where I got it. Presented for your amusement (I hope), with a few edits . . .

Okay, we all know that 666 is the Number of the Beast. But did you know that:

670:	Approximate Number of the Beast
DCLXVI:	Roman Numeral of the Beast
666.0000:	Number of the High-Precision Beast
0.666:	Number of the Millibeast
/666:	Beast Common Denominator
666i:	Imaginary Number of the Beast
1010011010:	Binary Number of the Beast
0000001010011010:	Bitmap of the Beast
1 (666):	Area Code of the Beast
00666:	Zip Code of the Beast
1 (800) 666-0666:	Toll-Free Number of the Beast
1 (900) 666-0666:	Live Beasts! One-on-One Pacts! Call Now! Only $6.66 per minute! (Only 18 and older, please.)
$665.95	Retail Price of the Beast
$699.25	Retail Price of the Beast with 5% state sales tax
$796.66	Price of the Beast with all accessories and replacement soul
$656.66	Wal-Mart Price of the Beast
$646.66	Wal-Mart Sales Price of the Beast
Phillips 666	Gasoline of the Beast
Route 666	Highway of the Beast
666° F	Cooking temperature for roast Beast
666(k)	Retirement Plan of the Beast
666mg	Recommended Daily Allowance of Beast
6.66%	5-year CD interest rate at First Bank of the Beast ($666 minimum deposit)
Pentium 666	CPU of the Beast
G666	Pontiac of the Beast
M666	BMW of the Beast
668	Neighbor of the Beast
667	Prime Beast
999	Australian Beast
Mac OS 666	Operating System of the Beast

Nice line by Sarah Palin

This from her speech to some of our troops in Kosovo, in response to a rather lame attempt at a joke by John Kerry (or is that redundant?):

Senator John Kerry makes this joke, I don't know if you saw this, but he makes this joke saying, "Well, shoot, of all the governors in the nation to disappear, too bad it couldn't have been that Governor from Alaska."

Well, when he said it, you know, he looked quite frustrated, and he looked so sad, and I just wanted to reach out to the TV and say, "John Kerry, why the long face?"

(laughter, applause)

Now Gov. Palin is on to Germany to visit the wounded in our military hospitals there; in her time in Kosovo, she gave the troops at Camp Bondsteel a real morale boost, and also met with the Lithuanian Minister of Defense, Rasa Jukneviciene.

The real human threat to polar bears

is our example. (HT: Notoriously Conservative)

Ode to President Candyman

This is a nifty piece of comedy, I think. (HT: Chris Forbes)

For my wife, and other Peep lovers

with thanks to Alan W (who blogs here) for pointing it out:  Peep Research.  I have to agree with Alan, you should especially check out the research on the health effects of alcohol and tobacco on Peeps.