Quotulatiousness

June 18, 2010

A “new chapter in U.S. history”

Filed under: China, Economics, Government, Humour, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:23

Ron Hart congratulates President Obama for delivering on his promised change:

We are so in debt to China that President Obama had to visit their president in his first year in office. It was an important meeting between the most powerful communist leader in the world and the president of China.

Obama is so popular in China that a nightclub named after him opened in Beijing. In keeping with the Obama theme, the club opened with $10 trillion in debt. It will, hopefully, close in just four years with $15 trillion in debt and no apologies to its “hope-based” investors.

[. . .]

To sum up our situation just short of two years into this Obamanation of an administration: Our debt is much higher, an unwanted ObamaCare bill that will cost us at least $2 trillion more than predicted was rammed through Congress, more troops are in Afghanistan, unemployment is much higher even after a union handout “stimulus” bill, and the biggest tax increase in American history is coming in 2011. So yes, Mr. President, technically I guess you can say you have brought about “change.”

As for your assertion, Mr. Obama, that you are going to usher in a “new chapter in U.S. history,” it looks like you will make good on that too. Unfortunately, it will be Chapter 11.

H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord.

June 16, 2010

Monty explains it all for you

Filed under: Economics, Europe, France, Humour — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:02

Financial worries? Fiscal imbalance? Debt woes? No problem! Monty has the answers (well, answers to some questions, even if they’re not the ones you’re interested in):

And the good news just keeps coming! Slumping cattle and lean-hogs futures may have bottomed out. Screw gold, man; I’m buying swine! (Monty, The Wasteland Bacon Baron. It has a nice ring to it. The potentate of pork! The sultan of swine! The High Lord of ham! The chitlin Chieftain!)

I’m not sure whether this is good news or not: Cramer calls yesterday’s big gain a sucker’s rally and advises people to get out. My rule of thumb is to treat anything Cramer says as the ravings of a lunatic. I consider him a shill and a buffoon. And yet . . . is this a Strange New Respect I’m feeling? Or just the dying embers of that burrito I ate for lunch yesterday?

French financial group AXA experiences a blinding glimpse of the obvious and exclaims, “Ze Euro eez doomed!”. Zut alors! (And no, I don’t know why French guys would be speaking English with a French accent instead of French.)

Spain and Portugal submit their austerity plans to the ECB and IMF. Plans include selling shoelaces at the airport, dancing for nickels, graft, corruption, and murder-for-hire. The ECB and IMF remain skeptical, and suggest that Portugal and Spain might want to look into selling the family silver or something.

And if all of that isn’t enough to get you assembling your Financial Apocalypse Survival kit, how about this?

More bond issues are being denominated in Canadian Loonies and Swiss Francs as investor skittishness regarding the Euro spreads. When investors choose something called the “Loonie” over your currency because it just sounds more stable somehow, dude, you got problems.

June 14, 2010

I can haz bizness empire?

Filed under: Humour, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:18

The New York Times discovers LOLcats:

Three years ago Ben Huh visited a blog devoted to silly cat pictures — and saw vast potential.

Mr. Huh, a 32-year-old entrepreneur, first became aware of I Can Has Cheezburger, which pairs photos of cats with quirky captions, after it linked to his own pet blog. His site immediately crumbled under the resulting wave of visitors.

Sensing an Internet phenomenon, Mr. Huh solicited financing from investors and forked over $10,000 of his own savings to buy the Web site from the two Hawaiian bloggers who started it.

June 11, 2010

QotD: British humour

Filed under: Britain, Humour, Quotations — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:02

God we’re rude, aren’t we? The British are so rude. We’re obsessed with bums, tits, willies, lavatory humour, vicars, knickers, smells, foreigners, fat tummies, fat slags, Fat Les, fat wrestlers, Benny Hill, Carry On Up The Khyber, Viz, Private Eye, men dressed as laydeez, women dressed as anarchic schoolgirls, sitcoms that offer howling tsunamis of verbal abuse, from The Young Ones to The Thick Of It. We love to see an irate, fictional British hotelier smacking his Spanish waiter around the head. We admire the host of BBC2’s Newsnight when he roasts politicians with scarcely believable belligerence. We quiver when a middle-aged, redheaded quiz-show hostess tells her guests how thick, ugly and badly dressed they are. We lap up radio shows in which grouchily opinionated men insult members of the public who hold views contrary to their own. We celebrate Christmas by buying our loved ones “lavatory books” with titles like Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Complete Shit In Pants?

John Walsh, “Naughty by nature: Why has Britain become so rude?”, The Independent, 2010-06-10

June 10, 2010

“If I had a MBillion dollars”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Humour, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

June 8, 2010

QotD: Remaking Gulliver’s Travels

Filed under: Humour, Media, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:56

The reimagined Gulliver’s Travels is probably going to be bad. But at least we’re in for an entertaining time when Swift inevitably rises from the grave to seek revenge on everyone involved.

“Gulliver”, “Jack Black meets Jonathan Swift?”, The Economist, 2010-06-05

June 7, 2010

QotD: Investing in well-managed companies

Filed under: Economics, Humour, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:57

When companies make money, we assume they are well-managed. That perception is reinforced by the CEOs of those companies who are happy to tell you all the clever things they did to make it happen. The problem with relying on this source of information is that CEOs are highly skilled in a special form of lying called leadership. Leadership involves convincing employees and investors that the CEO has something called a vision, a type of optimistic hallucination that can come true only in an environment in which the CEO is massively overcompensated and the employees have learned to be less selfish.

Scott Adams, “Betting on the Bad Guys”, Wall Street Journal, 2010-06-07

Tweet of the day: World Cup edition

Filed under: Humour, Soccer — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:33

pheadtony: Erectile dysfunction is on the increase. If you suffer, please put a white flag with a red cross on your car to show your support.

June 2, 2010

Tweet of the day

Filed under: Economics, Humour, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:50

IMAO_ (Frank J. Fleming): You can’t watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” these days without thinking how much sense Mr. Potter is making about irresponsible lending.

June 1, 2010

Less than sporting, I realize

Filed under: Environment, Humour — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:07

Chris Greaves sent me this link, saying “I found this in what appears to be the sporting section of CNN. Something about BP having to admit that their balls don’t work.”

Favourite comment from the site:

td52
CNN: BP announced today that their next attempt will be to drain the entire Gulf of water thereby allowing cement trucks to be driven to the site of the leak. When asked how this was going to be accomplished they said that they replied ” We are still working out the small details.”

Update: Everyone’s getting in on the cheap yucks. Here’s Colby Cosh: “You know this BP spill in the Gulf is bad — they’re running out of strategies with names borrowed from some Japanese guy’s sexual playbook.”

May 26, 2010

QotD: Facebook privacy follies

Filed under: Humour, Quotations, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:44

All 1,472 employees of Facebook, Inc. reportedly burst out in uncontrollable laughter Wednesday following Albuquerque resident Jason Herrick’s attempts to protect his personal information from exploitation on the social-networking site. “Look, he’s clicking ‘Friends Only’ for his e-mail address. Like that’s going to make a difference!” howled infrastructure manager Evan Hollingsworth, tears streaming down his face, to several of his doubled-over coworkers. “Oh, sure, by all means, Jason, ‘delete’ that photo. Man, this is so rich.”

“Entire Facebook Staff Laughs As Man Tightens Privacy Settings”, The Onion, 2010-05-26

May 22, 2010

Copyright suits . . . and profanity

Filed under: Humour, Law, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:27

Cory Doctorow finds fulfilling both interests easy in this case:

You know what I’m interested in? Copyright lawsuits.

And profanity.

Lucky for me, Google and Viacom have provided both today, in the form of a series of emails released through the discovery process in Viacom’s billion-dollar lawsuit against YouTube. In these emails, the two companies take turns cussin’ and spittin’ and swearin’ about each other. Hilarity ensues. Ars Technica rounds up some of the highlights.

May 19, 2010

QotD: Action movie lines

Filed under: Humour, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 15:35

“I know what you’re thinking, punk: Did I fire six bullets or only five. Being this is a Glock with seventeen rounds, it’s a moot point, but I’m doing a cognitive psychology study on people’s ability to count in stressful situation. You’ll get twenty dollars to participate. So, do you feel like helping science? Well, do ya, punk?”

Frank J. Fleming, “Action Movie Lines”, IMAO, 2010-05-18

May 18, 2010

Someone has to make this campaign video

Filed under: Humour, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:16

Frank J. considers what his campaign video would be like if he was running for office:

This makes me think of the ad I might run if I one day campaigned for an office. I think I could improve on his ad, though. Here’s what I would do in my campaign ad:
* Ride into the commercial on a Liger.
* Every scene, I’d be stroking a different gun.
* Vow that if elected, our enemies will be eaten by genetically resurrected dinosaurs.
* In the middle of the ad, pause to shoot a hippy dead.
* Not only call the other politicians “thugs and criminals” but also promise to lock them in a room with a bear.
* Draw a picture of Muhammad while talking.
* Look up at the moon and yell, “You’re going down!”
* End with an awesome guitar solo while my farm explodes behind me.

Yeah, I’d be so awesome commissioning agriculture or whatever.

By the last item, I was already seeing it . . . someone’s got to make this video. It doesn’t even matter what he’s running for!

Brontë Sisters Power Dolls

Filed under: Books, History, Humour, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:40

H/T to Lois McMaster Bujold, who “especially liked the fire extinguisher among the accessories included.”

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