ninme

Fark - Theme: More fake photos from the Middle East, republished in the L.A. Times

Best ones: alchemizer and Wilma Fingerdo.

So there’s this thing going around that has Peter just in stitches. I think it dates back to this email that reader Brett McS sent a couple months ago that nearly killed him. But since a fair percentage of you, those who live in the real world, probably aren’t familiar with it, here’s a good place to catch up (Peter says, if you must go there, that he doesn’t recommend clicking on any other link):

Encyclopædia Dramatica - I am in your base killing your d00ds

(Now he’s trying to dissuade me from linking to it at all. So, proceed with caution. And for god’s sake put the kids away first.) (In fact, just read the first paragraph then skip to the examples.)

So, here’s today’s funniest item (click to view the slideshow, and don’t forget both pages (warning: some of the language is a little…saucy)):

flickr harbl meme - I’m in ur flickr, makin’ u laff

The best one, which is completely unobjectionable and must not be missed by those of you who may have been scared off already: Monorail cat

Flickr - “The page cannot be displayed”

I’m linking to this because it made me laugh, and because I think it’s sweet, and because, whether we like it or not, it’s Valentine’s day, and this is as close as I’m likely to get to acknowledging that with a themed post.

The Times - Are you a rigid PC or a flexible, creative Mac? By Michael Gove

What this tendency of mine to segregate, classify and list also points to is another key division of our times - perhaps the most significant dichotomy in our society. In the great debate over whether or not you’re a PC or a Mac I know that I’m a Pentium-driven, neatly filed, inbox-cleared, spreadsheet-obsessive PC.

Over the past few weeks it has been impossible to escape an advertising campaign which features the comic partnership of Mitchell and Webb in which one (David Mitchell) plays the nerdy, pie-chart obsessed, virus-prone PC and the other (Robert Webb) represents the funkier, more freewheeling and flexible Mac. The characterisations build on the distinctive personalities the two cultivated for their Channel 4 comedy Peep Show.

Now I know that drawing inspiration from contemporary advertising campaigns marks, in many ways, a surrender to the soulless commercialisation of our times. But as a PC myself I’m not particularly averse to - indeed, I’m rather at home with - soulless commercialisation.

Which, sadly, puts me at odds with my wife. For while I am, in every respect, a PC - fussy, precise, never happier than when bringing administrative order to any aspect of our lives - she is a full-on Mac. She is creative, spontaneous, colourful, much better attuned to design concerns, easier to communicate with, much happier free-associating and having fun, than tied to the office, and overall much more human.

Now, happily, the divide between PCs and Macs is not as wide as it used to be. We can both use Microsoft Office and it’s possible to send e-mails between one and the other entirely freely. But while the formal process of communication couldn’t be easier, we’re still speaking slightly different languages and living out very different existences.

When I’m in meetings, as a PC, I take copious notes and then formulate a to-do list of desired outcomes at the end. When my wife is in meetings she treats the printed agenda much as a medieval monk would have treated a piece of vellum parchment - making an illuminated manuscript out of it with elegant floral doodles while simultaneously forming acute, novelistic impressions of the character of each of the participants.

She will bring to the meeting an artistic sensibility and come away from it with the raw material for further acts of creativity, as well as anecdotes to spice up a lunch-time gossip. I will leave the meeting with a tightly focused agenda, a reminder to self to now rejig appointments for the third weekend in September and mild acid reflux.

And talking of system malfunctions, one of the ways in which I am a pure PC and my wife is all Mac is the manner in which I am prone to all manner of viruses, like most hypochondriac males, while she enjoys the robust health of a more highly evolved creation.

(Let’s share: I’m a Mac.)

Update:

Here’s another one. Same reasons.

The Times - Beauty Contest
The eyes and the nose have it

She was so beautiful that Antony abandoned his navy to be with her. She also ruled Egypt and spoke nine languages, but that was as nothing next to the fire in her eyes, the radiance of her skin, the heartstopping clarity of her own desire.

Oh, Cleo! Ageless siren! Melter of titans! Joe Cocker would have recognised your power. Shakespeare certainly did. And Joseph L. Mankiewicz. That is why he cast Elizabeth Taylor in her bedazzling prime as his Cleopatra. There may have been some revisionism in his choice, but beauty has always been in the eye of the director, and the great director’s eye always reflects, to some degree, that of his audience. To each age its vision of beauty.

And its spoilsports. The Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne has released from a bank vault, on this day of all days, in this week of all fashion weeks, a long-forgotten Roman coin depicting Cleopatra in deeply unflattering caricature. Such crushing euphemisms as “plain” and “homely” fail utterly to capture her unattractiveness. Her neck recalls the heyday of East German weightlifting. Her spike of a nose points earthwards like some roughhewn geophysical probe. Her chin juts out to meet it like a piece of angle iron. This is gratuitous reverse revisionism by the Romans, never mind the Tynesiders.

’Twas ever easy to traduce a legend in vulgar coinage, then bury it and trust gleeful fossickers millennia hence to dig it up and mock the dead when they have lost the power to enrapture. Well, we shall not fall for it. We hold this truth to be self-evident: Cleopatra still has that power, for she was not just beautiful. She defined beauty. And those who hold otherwise can kiss her asp.

Hehehe.

Oh, here’s the coin. I swear I’ve seen that before. Unless this is another one of those stories that the event happens and then the press gets ahold of it months later and treats it as if it were new.

I like the turtleneck.

So yeah, McCain can do that, Rudy can do his drag act, Mitt can …well we’ll find a talent for him, and it’ll be the Best Convention Ever!

Update II (2.11):

No, try this one (third time lucky! (second one wasn’t great qual)

Sorry guys, but my hand really hurts. So here’s something:

Meanwhile, I’ve developed a taste for Canto-pop. Tragic deaths, suicides, dizzying fame. It’s all so diverting.

Update:

Sorry, I forgot to finish my train of thought. While leisurely flipping through Wiki on the topic, I discovered that Jackie Chan’s a successful popstar. I already knew that he sang (in Asia it seems to be de rigeur that celebrities be cross-platform) but I didn’t know he was actually successful at it. Here’s the big song from Mulan:

And, in concert!

Meanwhile, Anita Mui:

Has apparently been compared as the “Chinese Madonna” (the one in the hat):

Now, Madonna had to take voice lessons just to do Evita. So I don’t think she could quite do the transition to opera. So I think Madonna’s the one benefitting from the comparison, probably.

Zing! (<– click this link!)

SFW. Requires audio.

Which reminded me I hadn’t shown Peter this (from CDR Salamander late last month):

Which nearly killed him. He’s sent it off to his senior colleagues. Who all made their money at Microsoft. Incidently.

Apparently Bostonians are terrified of Light Brights.

AlterNet - Update: Cartoon Marketing Ignites Bomb Scare [VIDEO]

And they like to draw attention that unlike manlier, less ridiculous cities, like New York and DC who, after 9/11 are apparently rather more discriminating as to what sort of threat will bring them grinding to a halt, by making a big court case out of it and sending their journalistic finest out to ask the Tough Questions.

Watch the video. Needs audio. SFW.