In unrelated events, the 9 year old in the family has discovered Calvin and Hobbes and GarageBand

This has resulted in unexplained peals of laughter coming from the back of the mini-van and bizarre ballads about things which the 9 year old knows nothing about.

To whit: listen

I suppose I should have guessed that a gem of a program like this must exist, but why did I never look for it? I ran it on a virtual machine that I use and it got rid of a couple autoupdater programs that I didn't care about and an Adobe Speed Reader thing. I can image that getting rid of a million AOL links would be handy as well, but I've already done all that manually.

FAQ | The PC Decrapifier

"The PC Decrapifier was designed to remove programs from new computers running Windows XP or Vista. If you have an older PC and have some of the programs installed that are in the What it Removes list, then it might remove them, but not very likely.

We have a rule in our family when we deal with bureaucratic organizations like home owners associations, the military, tax offices, things like that. It's the "3 visit rule". By that we mean, you make one visit to get your admin thing done and find out the office is closed. On visit two you arrive at the correct hours, but find that you have not brought the critical bit of paperwork or do not have the key piece of required knowledge. Finally on visit 3 you successfully complete your business. The most recent example of this was trying to get an X-Ray through Kaiser. Visit one - hours. Visit two wrong office for *that* kind of x-ray. Visit three x-rays.

So now there is a little culture jamming to respond thanks to this webpage: Pay with pennies

"Greetings. This site is about my culture jamming involving large payments in pennies to organizations that are difficult to deal with. Banks, government agencies, and the occasional retailer have all fallen prey to "penny payments." In today's society, it is all too common to hassle the consumer or the taxpayer. More and more we are asked to "hold," "wait in line," "fill out complex or time consuming forms," or give up confidential information. ..."

Can you see where this is going?

Funny article from The Atlantic

"Laws Concerning Food and Drink
Of the hoofed animals, broiled or ground into burgers, you may eat, but not in the living room. Of the cloven-hoofed animal, plain or with cheese, you may eat, but not in the living room. Of the cereal grains, of the corn and of the wheat and of the oats, and of all the cereals that are of bright color and unknown provenance you may eat, but not in the living room. "

I must become a Nerd Eagle Scout

Nerd Merit Badge 02:
Inbox Zero

For everyone that walks up to me and asks "Did you read my email?", the answer is no.

Dear My-Dental-Office,

I know that you think about teeth 24 hours a day. I know that any redness or swelling is the death knell of gingivitis. I know you make your money on extra services. But can I please be clear: I do not care if I have "celebrity white teeeth" or not. Please stop trying to bring me into your world. I don't want my teeth whitened.

Sincerely, Dr. Mr.-off-white-teeth

Here is an awesome link to the CERN particle collider's live webcam. Finally some public oversight of those renegade academics who are willing to risk the public safety in the search for their "God" particle. Click here.

While doing a number of fun things in Los Angeles this weekend: visiting the misnamed La Brea Tar Pits, visiting the Noah's Ark exhibit at the Skirball museum and hanging out in Westwood, I came across this funny sign outside a Jews for Jesus office.

The E"st. 32 A.D. (give or take) line cracks me up!

I'm going to have a new Angus Chipolte BBQ Bacon burger from McDonald's and wash it down with a diet Berries and Cream Dr. Pepper. If I need a pick me up later I think I'll have an Orange Banana Mango Vivanno from Starbucks. Thank you International Flavors and Fragrances!

I found this awesome infographic attached to the boomerang I bought in Sydney last week. What a great way to easily let everyone in the world know how to throw and catch a boomerang! Simply dress up like an aborigine, carefully measure the angle of throw, point toward the wallaroo that you are pretending to kill (but intend on missing), then catch the boomerang on return like a pancake. Viola!

What this looks like for me: Simply dress up like a fool American. Go to a park next to the train station. Throw the boomerang toward the koala park. Run to the other end of the field. Pick up the boomerang. Turn around. Repeat.

While in Sydney last week, we stopped in a park to practice hunting wallaroos with our authentic hand painted boomerangs. We did not kill any wallaroos - in fact we were hard pressed to get the boomerang to return to us - except me - I did it once. The park had a very strict policy of no glass as you can see by this sign. But the quotation marks remind us that everyone knows that when they say "glass" they really mean ... (tourists? Americans? transparent things?)

From a talk I attended yesterday.
Q. How do marketers make technology more appealing to women?

A. "Shrink it and pink it!"

TurboTax should never be allowed to show a figure like this one. It's enough to cause people to have a heart attack. I know I'm not done entering information, but come on!

From my wife:

"You are just like those cheesy hotels on trip advisor"

In reference to the fact that I was the first one to rate me on RateMyProfessors.com (9/30/2005 entry) and that many hotels are clearly trying to defend themselves by creating fake happy customers on trip advisor. In my defense I don't maintain a wikipedia page on myself.

I have found myself looking for this cartoon repeatedly over the years. It is from Matt Groening's "School is Hell" book and it shows a list of nine different types of professors. My favorite is The-Single-Theory-To-Explain-Everything-Maniac. I often feel like that guy.

The Chief Household Officer reports that the reinforcements have arrived. It is not clear whether or not this is a fresh recruit or a seasoned "refurbished" veteran. It is enough to say that this is the turning point in the battle for progress.

The home espresso machine has gone down! We had to call in reinforcements. All of our coffee gear mustered on the table ready for duty. We have been relying primarily on French press and drip these last few days (at home - at work all is quiet on the front).

The remarkably anti-Murphy's law bit of intelligence that has arrived from the Chief Household Officer is that the two year extended warranty ran out two days after the machine broke. So by the grace of God, we are spared several hundred dollars in coffee related costs. It's hard to recognize the grace of God in your life when it comes in the form of disasters that you never see.

If you haven't seen the Microsoft Surface demo it's pretty exciting. It is like watching minority report with the promise of an actual product. The demo is here.

But then you can watch a parody of it too. It deflates the excitement quite a bit, but is hilarious. The parody is here.

Sweet Pac-Man skull from here.

Recently heard in the Patterson household:

"Can you guys please stop fighting with your dinosaurs and just eat them?"

A few of my students participated in a flash mob on campus this week. It was inspired by the movie "300". Think many people spontaneously emulating a turtle with umbrellas and then attacking pedestrians. The youtube video is a little long, but fun. Notice the anteater on the pavement.

Click on the image on the left for the link to youtube.

Pre-cookie monster eats a computer. Very funny if you are a geek. I am. It is.

Click on the image to watch the YouTube movie.

Here is a really funny video from some Fox comedy show which plays off of Steve Job's tendency to dramatize his products, the Apple "i" line of stuff, and the rhetoric around the current Gulf War. Given the state of copyright online it's bound to be taken down quickly.

I'm at the American Association for Artificial Intelligence Spring Symposium 2007. It's a low-key conference. I overheard the following funny quote in the hall as someone was looking for their workshop.

"Excuse me, are you looking for common sense?"

Only in Seattle does one hour of espresso machine maintenance require an email to the entire academic community. I feel their pain.

I would have gotten in so much trouble if I had worn these on my uniform. I did get in so much trouble for far less than these.

Here is a great YouTube video which pokes fun at the rhetoric around Dr. Richard Dawkins recent media blitz to promote his book, "The God Delusion"

Dr. Dawkins is an evangelical atheist.

Click on the image on the left to watch/listen.

"I'm sorry ma'am he's going to be an engineer." Click on the image on the left to play the Dilbert clip. BTW, since when is Dilbert an animated cartoon?

This is a *great* patent. You may no longer sport a comb-over without paying a licensing fee to Frank J. Smith and Donald J. Smith of Orlando, Florida. See the full patent by clicking on the image on the left. The rush is on to patent the mullet, the spike, the caeser and the florence henderson.

Method of concealing partial baldness

"Patent number: 4022227
Filing date: Dec 23, 1975
Issue date: May 10, 1977
Abstract: method of styling hair to cover partial baldness using only the hair on a person's head. The hair styling requires dividing a person's hair into three sections and carefully folding one section over another."

From: Planned Parenthood

"More recently, vegetable seedpods, plugs of grass, and crushed roots were used in various parts of Africa. Wads of seaweed, moss, and bamboo were used in Japan, China, and the South Sea Islands."

Congratulations Nate!

The Chinese seem to have evolved past Chinese checkers. In a really random YouTube video, click on the image on the left to see it, you can see the fun that Chinese families are having today! This game apparently must be played next to a dangerous precipice or the incentive to win is gone.

There is "some" back story on this blog, but it isn't really enough to explain what the heck is going on with "Smack the Lion"

Thank you Wyndham Midtown Atlanta for introducing me to the shampooing experience that is "Cedarwood and Spanish Borage Oil". I feel like I'm shampoo'ing in the middle of the Alamo on a really bad day. But why let a bad day at the Alamo mean you can't have *great* hair.

So Honda made a funny set of commercials for the Element which a friend of mine had a key role in designing (the car, not the commercials). He sent me a link. The funniest one is the crab one.

This viral marketing thing is sort of wierd. It seems strange to be sending out news about commercials, but I guess if it's funny then good for Honda for making some decent content.

Update 1: I guess this was so popular that they had to take it further. Now all of the commercials have been rolled up into a game that you play. Now you drive your Honda Element around to different locations on an island where the dialogue from the commercials is played. It's elaborate, but still funny. Find the crab on the lower left of the island to get a sense for what the original commerical was like.

Update 2: Clearly this has gotten far out of hand. Gil, the crab from the Honda commercial, now has his own myspace page. He has fans who are singing songs to get Honda to make a new commercial about him (see here.) Again, this is really weird to be talking about. It's a viral ad campaign. The myspace page, and probably even the song are likely plants from Honda. The whole thing could be a completely fake grassroots campaign to bring Gil back for another commercial (a process called Astroturfing). But I guess, who cares. It's funny. Gil has a new commercial out as a result. Click on the image on the left to YouTube it.

This comic just cracks me up. It's goth, but it's not. It's from a comic strip called "The Perry Bible Fellowship" which frequently has humor which is more crude than funny, but there are some gems in there.

This is an ancient (in Internet time), but very funny series of commercials about a hypothetical car add-on available only at the Suburban Auto Group outside of Portland, Oregon called the Trunk Monkey. I think they get funnier as they go on. But it's also good that they quit while they were ahead. Below I present the complete set as I know it:

The original links went down, so here are the YouTube links:
1:Road Rage
2:Hoodlums
3:Bribe
4:Theft
5:Pediatrics
6:Chaperone

Thanks Nate!

This commercial for "Fresh Up" soda cracks me up. At first, as you are watching it, it's like every other commercial for anything, but by the end they play on the ad formula to absurdity. Click on the image on the left to watch it and see what I mean.

I am happy to report that the Internet has produced this image of a 365 Foods executive burning in effigy in response to the recent outrageous embargo on raisins in Whole Foods raisin bran (see here). This shows the international consumer community's outrage over the heavy handed dealings with the raisin bran consuming world. We refuse to be silent while our rights are trampled like so many old dead grape vines.

Chad Vader, Day Shift Manager. A Channel 101 series about the Sith Lord who runs the local grocery store. Hilarious, warnings on language.

Episode 2 is even better

There is no God. Our Existence is without purpose.
Oh Definitely... we are adrift in an uncaring void indifferent to all our mortal toil

Exactly! In the end nothing we do matters.
Totally.
We Just ... why are you climbing that tree?

Because the future is an adventure! Come on!
But...
Hey! I found squirrels!

A friend of mine recently purchased a box of Raisin Bran from Whole Paycheck Foods. Unfortunately the number of raisins was underwhelming. In fact the number of raisins shown in one bowl on the cover of the box was more than was in the entire box (as shown in the photo).

Outrage! I will only be satisfied when an angry mob burns a 365 Food executive's effigy!

CNN.com - Al Qaeda threat over pope speech - Sep 18, 2006

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- An al Qaeda-linked extremist group warned Pope Benedict XVI on Monday that he and the West were "doomed," as protesters raged across the Muslim world to demand more of an apology from the pontiff for his remarks about Islam and violence.

Ummm... is this a call for muslims to kill the pope for suggesting that Islam spreads their religion by the use of violence?

Celebrate is one of Newport Mesa's core values. So here is a joke about it:

A young monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to helping the other monks in copying the old canons and laws of the church by hand.

  He notices, however, that all of the monks are copying from copies, not from the original manuscript. So, the new monk goes to the head abbot to question this, pointing out that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up! In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.

  The head monk, says, "We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son."  

  He goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery where the original manuscripts are held as archives in a locked vault that hasn 't been opened for hundreds of years. Hours go by and nobody sees the old abbot.  

  So, the young monk gets worried and goes down to look for him. He sees him banging his head against the wall and wailing, "We missed the 'R'!, we missed the 'R'!"

  His forehead is all bloody and bruised and he is crying uncontrollably.

  The young monk asks the old abbot, "What' s wrong, father?"

  With a choking voice, the old abbot replies, "The word was... CELEBRATE!!!"

A clever ad showing how the Mexican Red Cross saves lives by incidentally killing the grim reaper. Click on the image on the left.

Okay, even though this hits *way* too close to home, I'm posting it because it's funny. From the Tea Partay Handbook. Prep School Snaps:

• Your golf game is so bad, they had to raise your handicap to infinity.
• Your sailboat is so small, you spilled your water bottle and sank it.
• Your money is so new, it has Ben Franklin's baby picture on it.
• You went to public school.
• Your look is so busted, the crest on your blazer is just the sticker off a banana.
• Your summer house is so small, they renamed the town, "Broke Hampton"
• Your shoes are so wak, they're called Bottom-siders.
• Your Yacht Club is so cheap, they built it in the middle of a desert.
• Your trust fund is so depleted, your great, great grandfather rose from the dead to play harmonica in the bus station.
• Your shirt is a poly/cotton blend.

Ask a Ninja: Google Video.

"Q. If a ninja were a food what would he be?
A. A cream puff. A cream puff with poison cream."

Thanks Charles!

A very funny episode of "the show with zefrank" which discusses the concept of an "earth sandwich." This is what you get when you put two slices of bread on opposite sides of the planet. If only we could do this, there would be world peace. Language is "R" rated, video is "G".

the show with zefrank - 05-16-06

The sheep market is a collection of 10,000 sheep created by workers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Each worker was paid $.02 to "draw a sheep facing left".... Average wage: $0.69/hour.

Is it really laughing if it makes the people who are watching you feel so strange? You decide: here

If you recall from a previous entry there was a commercial that involved dropping 10,000 bouncy balls out of a window onto the top of a hill in San Fransisco. Now there is a spoof with a soda company dropping fruit instead. Windows break, fruit explodes, funny reaction. Seeing it is a bit of a pain. First open a browser window here. Then cut and paste this URL into the browser and load it. http://www.bestadsontv.com/files/movies/2006-May1/2532_TANGO%20BRAVO.mov

From: Capn Wacky's Lists, Harry Potter Fan Fiction Titles We'd Rather Not See:

Harry Potter and the Uneventful Year When No One Tried to Kill Him
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 Chamber of Sucrets
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Kidney Stone
Harry Potter and the Summer Internship
Harry Potter and the Wand of Franchise Extension
Harry Potter and the Bizarro Harry Potter

An awesome song called "Code Monkey" by Geek Rocker Jonathan Coulton, get it here.

Code Monkey get up get coffee...
...Code Monkey have boring meeting with boring manager Rob...
...Code Monkey like fritos

All I can say is Pinky and the Brain

I don't care what political party you belong to, this is hilarious! Courtesy of the LA Weekly, again.

It's a very inclusive logo and it looks like a pretty white bird when you shake it.

An animated short By MR. FISH

Here's a funny commercial for Australian beer that pokes fun at robots in the service of man.

"When man creates the robot he will find true happiness" -HL Roberts 1907

From BestAdsOnTV.com

HL Roberts is a made up person.

Here is a radio sketch which I find extremely funny. It is a very dry humor piece which tracks the work of a band of squirrels as they try and effect social change from the perspective of a squirrel, but in the world of humans.

It is performed by a performance art group called "My Barbarian". I don't know anything about them, but I don't know that I would recommend taking the kids to see their performance - although the radio show above is safe. The piece is a clip from the local NPR station KPCC, which has a show called Pacific Drift which featured this sketch.

"My Barbarian" is playing at RedCat
Pacific Drift is online here

This is a very simple game in which the goal is to not shoot the puppy. To do that you do nothing. The longer you do nothing the better your score. Ingenious.

Sweet T-shirt that makes you look like you are carrying a FedEx package. Wacky Russian Source

"There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live."

From Chuck Norris Facts

This video portrays an off-scene ficticious marketing team at Microsoft using some sort of completely believable "best-practices" to redesign the iPod box. The result is completely believable, but not really anything that Cisco or ATI or DELL wouldn't also do.

So for some reason "Trumpet" maker of ice cream novelties in New Zealand felt like taking on the very difficult question of determining when a speedo becomes underwear in this commercial. It's a complicated question because we accept them (sort of) at the water's edge, but not in the mall. Where is the line? When does it change? Only an ice cream company can tell us the answer.

This is so geeky that I cannot describe it. It is something that only Paul Allen would dream of doing, but no, it in fact belongs to someone else. A home theater that looks just like the bridge of the Star Ship Enterprise. Funky 3-D view of it can be found here. Otherwise the photo gallery is here.

Here in Southern Cali, the burger franchise known as In-N-Out burger is a local delight. They only sell hamburgers, fries, soda and milk shakes. They use decent quality food to make their wares and they make it fresh while you wait. There is also an In-N-Out burger right by my bus stop. That is torture.

I didn't know that you could add as many patties as you want to a hamburger at $1.00 each. Apparently some dudes executed some physical reductio ad absurdum and ordered a 100-patty burger. Hilarity and internets fame ensued:
What Up Willy! - Surfin, Hangin, Poker, and Life's other goodness: In-N-Out 100x100

"Here are a couple of interesting stats to summarize the experience:
Total calories (extrapolating from info provided here): 19490 calories
Total eaters 8 (2 girls and one guy who already ate dinner and only ate 6 patties)
Most patties eaten by one person : I think I ate about 20. I think Nalin ate about 20 as well (including the raw ones)
Time to finish : less then 2 hours
Number of people who barfed : 1 (way to go Elena!)
"

I now have another thing to do while I'm waiting for my bus!

From the Nature podcast:

What do you do if you see an endangered animal eating an endandered plant?

As long as I'm going to post about how to get off of telemarketing lists, on the left is an awesome counter script to use when a tele-marketer calls. It's really funny. I can't wait to try it out. Click on the image to see the whole thing.

Source for this is here.

TV-B-Gone is an awesome little device. It is an infrared keychain fob. When you press a button on the keychain, it emits all the known infrared signals for the "Power-Off" command on many types of televisions. It is available at Think Geek

More details are here.

This one is for Nate-Dog. Now, hot on the heels of WB's Christmas broadcast of a burning log, is the video iPod version (WGNTV.com | Chicago's WB | Portable Yule Log!) Now you too can watch a Christmas log burning no matter where you are!

Merry Christmas!

This is a funny set of measurement units that I've been collecting from various sources on the Internets (Ars Technica for example) and the physical world.

1. the Hiroshima is the internationally recognized unit of measure for reporting the force of any destructive event.
   As in,
   The earthquake that generated the great Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 is estimated to have released the energy of 23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). - National Geographic
2. the human hair is the unit for reporting the size of very small things.
   As in,
   Nanotechnology is a catchall term for an enormous range of research and technology measured at the scale of one-thousandth the width of a human hair. - Wired (original link broke)
3. the latte is the unit for comparing personal expenses.
   As in,
   That’s the cost of a latte a day to help a child do better in school, avoid harmful behaviors and have a chance to realize his or her potential. - Big Brothers and Big Sisters
4. the football field is the unit for reporting the size of very large things.
   As in,
   "Matsushita's new plasma display factory near Osaka, measuring roughly 15 football fields, is a reminder that size matters but is not the only key to success in the flat screen TV business. - expired Reuter's Article
5. the feels like is the unit for reporting extreme temperature. As in,
   The patented, exclusive AccuWeather RealFeel Temperature is an index that describes what the temperature really feels like. - AccuWeather.com

There are a lot of random things on the internets, but this movie of a claymation Hello Kitty battling it out with a video game monster is pretty good. I generally don't have patience for these sorts of things, but for some reason this one kept me watching to the end. Very good rendition of a Japanese arcade.

Click on the image to see it.

A hilarious, if slightly crude, article from Esquire (Smartmoney.com: Print: My Outsourced Life) suggests that we outsource the details of our personal lives. I'm not sure if he actually did the outsourcing that he suggests, but if it were to work as well as he describes, it would be tempting to try it.

Choice Quote:

It began a month ago. I was midway through "The World Is Flat," the bestseller by Tom Friedman. I like Friedman, despite his puzzling decision to wear a mustache. His book is all about how outsourcing to India and China is not just for tech support and carmakers but is poised to transform every industry in America, from law to banking to accounting. CEOs are chopping up projects and sending the lower-end tasks to strangers in cubicles ten time zones away. And it's only going to snowball; America has not yet begun to outsource.

I don't have a corporation; I don't even have an up-to-date business card. I'm a writer and editor working from home, usually in my boxer shorts or, if I'm feeling formal, my penguin-themed pajama bottoms. Then again, I think, why should Fortune 500 firms have all the fun? Why can't I join in on the biggest business trend of the new century? Why can't I outsource my low-end tasks? Why can't I outsource my life?

CNN has an article today about Seattle-based Jones Soda Company. This holiday season they are introducing salmon flavored soda in addition to turkey and gravy, corn on the cob, broccoli casserole and pecan pie flavors. Creativity abounds. Innovation abounds. Sales plummet.

Sony commissioned a commercial for its new line of mumble-mumble-color-LCD-mumble-TV-mumble-displays that involved dropping 10,000 bouncy balls out of a window onto the top of a hill in San Fransisco. It's pretty cool looking. See it here.

Someone please tell these guys " why?" before they get whiplash or hit their heads on something sharp.

An unbelievable sculpture which recreates San Francisco in Jell-O. An artist after my own heart. See the photos here.

This ad traces the evolutionary history of three gents at a pub back to their evolutionary ancestors. The punch-line is brilliant: "Good things come to those who wait"

The Cyborg Name Generator

A funny site that will create a robot name for you.

Here's a link to a cheese-ball parody of star wars called Grocery Store Wars. Its a viral video produced by an organic food association to draw attention to the benefits of organic food. Even though it has a hidden agenda it has some very funny puns. "Obi-Wan Cannolli" for example. (Thanks Nate)

We have an elevator here at the University of Washington Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science and Engineering that bridges two worlds, EE and CS. I created this movie to celebrate the resulting confusion. It's just like being in the elevator.Download movie

Of course, you know that today is thesis day. Otherwise when would I have time to do this?

Finally, there is a system for me to get to know my poultry friends better. This movie (link broken) shows how I can put a jacket on my pet chicken and then pet it from the comfort of my office.