Quotulatiousness

March 14, 2011

The iBoob saga

Filed under: Humour, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 14:57

Jesse Brown recounts the story of the iBoob app:

Idiots worldwide rejoiced when news came that the iBoobs app, censored by Apple, had found a home in the Android Marketplace.

For those tragically unfamiliar with iBoobs — how can I describe it? It’s boobs. They jiggle. A settings screen lets you adjust things like “boob weight,” “stifness,” and “gravity factor.” If any of this turns you on, I’d like to introduce you to a killer app called porn.

iBoobs is a Freemium product. If you upgrade from the free ”iBoobs light” app to the $2.10 paid app, you can toss the boobs around with the tip of your finger. Or at least, you could last week. It seems that Google has since followed Apple’s lead (at least partially) and banned the paid version of the app.

If your imagination isn’t enough, there’s a YouTube video of the application here.

I’m not sure what a “paprade” is, but apparently Toronto had one

Filed under: Cancon, Humour, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:56

I guess the weekend staff were celebrating St. Patrick’s day a little early, as not only the photo caption (left) but also the pa(p)rade directions leave you a little misdirected:

The parade begins at Bloor and St. George Sts. and heads west to Yonge, where it turns south and goes to Queen and then heads west again to University, ending just south of Dundas on University.

The streets are expected to be closed from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., making driving to the parade difficult.

Highlighting mine. Going west from Bloor and St. George won’t get you to Yonge Street for a fair amount of time:

H/T to Chris Greaves for bringing this to my attention.

March 9, 2011

Felicia Day, Wil Wheaton, and Amy Okuda panel discussion

Filed under: Gaming, Humour, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:05

And, part two, with Wil Wheaton’s immortal advice “Guys . . . when a woman joins the game, don’t be a dick.”:

March 8, 2011

Conan, channelled through a 4-year-old

Filed under: Humour, Randomness — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:09

From the amusing Reddit thread “I’m 4 years old AMAA”:

gaadzooks
what is best in life?

[. . .]

lynn
My 6-month-old has an answer for that: “To crush your parents’ sleep schedules, to see them flee before your diapers, and to drink the lactations of their women.”
Edit for honesty: credit for that one goes to my husband.

H/T Radley Balko for the link.

March 7, 2011

QotD: Mercantilism

Filed under: Economics, History, Humour, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:56

You actually had a short, but interesting chapter in your book explaining why you think our trade balance with China is mostly irrelevant. Could you give people a short, but sweet synopsis of that argument?

Adam Smith was the first to point this out in the Wealth of Nations. The common wisdom at the time, mercantilism was the name it went by, was that the way a nation got rich was by exporting things. In return for the exports they’d get gold. And Smith’s going, I’m paraphrasing broadly here, “You can’t eat gold, you can’t kiss gold, and gold won’t keep you warm at night. Gold is just gold.”

He said the exports, that’s real stuff, and you’re giving it away in favor of gold. He said imports are the good thing. Imports are when you’re getting something you like. You’re getting French wine. You’re getting American tobacco. You’re getting furs from Russia, getting whatever they were getting back in those days. He said exports are the way you pay for those imports. So imports are Christmas morning. Exports are January’s Visa bill.

People getting so upset because everything seems to be made in China — I understand it on the level of the jobs have moved overseas. I think it’s probably an important thing to remember that if the jobs hadn’t moved overseas, they probably would have just gone away. So, it’s not like the Japanese have all of our car making jobs.

John Hawkins, “The P.J. O’Rourke Interview”, Grendel Report, 2010-10-11

March 6, 2011

The economics of urinal cakes

Filed under: Economics, Humour — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:34

Tim Harford uses Bastiat’s “broken window fallacy” to explain the economics of urinal cakes:

Dear Massimo,
When I read the first sentence of your letter, I was wondering where you were going with this. Not to worry: your question is easily answered. The 19th century French economist and essayist Frédéric Bastiat anticipated it with his famous “broken window fallacy”. A broken window seems good for the economy because it creates work for the glazier. But Bastiat pointed out that the money that the window-owner pays to the glazier is money he can’t spent on something else. The glazier is richer, but the tailor or the restaurateur or the escort girl is poorer. The broken window hasn’t stimulated the economy at all.
In short, don’t think you’re doing anyone a favour by aiming squarely at the urinal cake in front of you. And don’t even think about aiming at the urinal cake in front of someone else.

March 5, 2011

xkcd re-interprets the Nolan Chart

Filed under: Humour, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:36

Nolan Chart

March 3, 2011

Sneak preview of the next Guild comic

Filed under: Gaming, Humour, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Whitney Matheson has a preview of the next comic starting the members of The Guild. This one is about Tink:

Peter Bagge cover for the Guild comic

This should be in the stores by mid-March.

March 2, 2011

QotD: Humour

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Germany, History, Humour, Quotations, WW2 — Nicholas @ 12:02

A German I know will on occasion tell you his father died in the concentration camps. He waits for the concerned and properly sympathetic faces and then adds that he got drunk and fell out of a watchtower. Europeans find that boorish, faintly crass and rather tasteless; the English love it. It’s a proper joke, and a German doing it is double bubble. The surprise is that neither the Europeans or the English realize that it’s not a joke at all, his father really did fall out of a watch tower and it’s poignant and sad because his son never knew him, never met his dad.

A.A. Gill, The Angry Island: Hunting the English, p. 112.

February 25, 2011

“epistemicfail” calls on liberals to stop the evil Koch brothers

Filed under: Economics, Humour, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:21

“epistemicfail” is trying to rally liberal and progressive forces to recognize and combat the evil that is embodied in the Koch brothers:

The KOCH brothers must be stopped. They gave $40K to Scott Walker, the MAX allowed by state law. That’s small potatoes compared to the $100+ million they give to other organizations. These organizations will terrify you. If the anti-union thing weren’t enough, here are bigger and better reasons to stop the evil Kochs. They are trying to:

   1. decriminalize drugs,

   2. legalize gay marriage,

   3. repeal the Patriot Act,

   4. end the police state,

   5. cut defense spending.

Who hates the police? Only the criminals using drugs, amirite? We need the Patriot Act to allow government to go through our emails and tap our phones to catch people who smoke marijuana and put them in prison. Oh, it’s also good for terrorists.

Wikipedia shows Koch Family Foundations supporting causes like:

   1. CATO Institute

   2. Reason Foundation

   3. cancer research ($150 million to M.I.T. – STOP THEM! KEEP CANCER ALIVE!)

   4. ballet (because seriously: FUCK. THAT. SHIT.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_Family_Foundations

The Kochs basically give a TON of money (millions of dollars) to the CATO Institute. Scott Walker, $40K? HAH! These CATO people are the REAL problem. They want to end the War on Drugs. Insane, right? We know that the War on Drugs keeps us SAFE from Mexicans and keeps all that violence on their side of the fence. More than 30,000 Mexicans killed as of December! Thank God Mexican lives don’t count as human lives. Our government is doing a good, no, a great job protecting us and seriously, who cares about brown people or should I say non-people? HAHAHA! Public unions are good, government is good, and government protects us from drugs and brown people. The Kochs want to end all that. Look, as far back as 1989 CATO has been trying to decriminalize drugs. Don’t worry, nobody listens to them because they are INSANE.

Let’s hope they heed his call.

February 24, 2011

The truth about software licenses

Filed under: Humour, Law, Media, Technology — Tags: — Nicholas @ 07:53

Dilbert.com

February 23, 2011

If you like Munchkin and zombies, you’ll love Munchkin Zombies

Filed under: Gaming, Humour — Tags: — Nicholas @ 13:07

GeekDad on the latest offering from Steve Jackson Games in the Munchkin franchise:

What Is It? Unless you’ve been living under a pile of rotting flesh, you’ve probably played (or at least heard of) the merriment of Munchkin, a role-playing card game from Steve Jackson Games. This tasteless diversion has spawned dozens of sequels and expansions, including the latest sequel, Munchkin Zombies. Nearly all of the Munchkin games are illustrated by the Gerent of Geek, John Kovalic. The game will be hitting stores later this spring, in April, but read on to learn how you might score a copy earlier!

[. . .]

Is It Fun – Will I Like It? Munchkin is a wonderfully enjoyable game and Munchkin Zombies only improves on the concept because, well, it has zombies and the undead make everything better (excluding the ‘08 remake of Day of the Dead). If you’ve never played Munchkin, you owe it to yourself to try — for one simple reason. While the game is challenging, funny and a roaring good geeky time on its own, it also contains a screw-over-your-neighbor component that will have you plotting revenge … before you’ve even been wronged. We absolutely loved playing Munchkin Zombies and, if I may make a suggestion, staying in zombie character throughout the game enhances the fun exponentially.

If nothing convinces the makers of bad zombie movies that the genre is, uh, dead, then having a parody game like this on the market at least makes it possible to get your fill of zombies without going to the theatre.

February 22, 2011

A tale for our times

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Humour — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:25

Jon, my former virtual landlord, sent along this link:

A modern Romance novel
He grasped me firmly but gently just above my elbow and guided me into a room, his room. Then he quietly shut the door and we were alone. He approached me soundlessly, from behind, and spoke in a low, reassuring voice close to my ear. “Just relax.”

Read the whole thing.

February 20, 2011

Tunnelling man desperate for coffee

Filed under: Cancon, Humour — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:09

An amusing story from Yolk Region News:

Duane Oppenheimer, 59 1/2, of Newmarket was charged with mischief and unlawful excavation on Wednesday evening, after cleaning staff at Upper Canada Mall discovered a large rectangular crack in a utility closet floor. The crack turned out to be a hatch leading to Oppenheimer’s tunnel, a 200-metre subterranean passageway that extended under the mall’s south parking lot and continued below Davis Drive into an adjacent subdivision where it emerged inside the Oppenheimer’s garage.

H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord, who said “Who knew that people in Newmarket were so industrious?”.

February 14, 2011

“Skumavc likened it to the ‘infamous ping-pong ball scene’ in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

Filed under: Australia, Humour, Randomness — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:25

Lester Haines summarizes the sordid details:

A shaken Oz stag party reveller has recounted how he was left “battered and bloodied” after taking a head shot from a flying dildo.

According to this very silly report, 31-year-old Darwin architect Jure Skumavc joined groom-to-be Peter Rolih and around eight other pals in a Brisbane pad on 28 December for the traditional pre-nuptial blokes’ knees-up.

Evidently, it wasn’t just the revellers who got their knees well and truly up, because “a scantily clad exotic dancer” entertained the chaps with her party piece — “shooting dildos at the guests”.

Suffice it to say, regular Bootnotes readers will not require a technical description of how this works, but for those of you who’ve never caught a Bangkok floorshow, Skumavc likened it to the “infamous ping-pong ball scene” in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

Skumavc explained that the entertainer was firing the artificial todger from one side of the room to the other — an estimated seven metres with a peak altitude of around two metres — apparently targetting guests with the “pink projectile”.

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