Friday Comedy: Drunk Animals

Continuing on our animal theme, this clip is of African wildlife gorging themselves on alcoholic Marula fruits - they're so... humanlike.


The video is from the 1974 film Animals Are Beautiful People. Thanks to Christian for sending this to me.

Here is a longer version (with morning-after hangovers).

Bunny Blogging: Greedy Connie

Our rabbit Connie eats everything. Everything: sheets of paper, envelope glue, wood, her own droppings, jam and wine labels off of bottles, the leaves off of our indoor rubber tree, telephone wires, other rabbits' shedding fur, mobile phone charger cords, and anything that falls on the floor. Now that list includes foam packaging pellets as well:



I kept hiding this box and she kept finding her way inside of it - by the time I filmed this, she had already eaten about 1/4 of the total pellets over the past week. As you might expect, we're a little concerned about this general trend, and don't know how to stop her. She's quite intelligent, and has learned to climb up and over brick walls (which she uses to raid our neighbours' gardens and visit their pet rabbits), and to jump up shelves - she used the shelf-jumping technique to gorge herself on a bag of carefully placed bird seed in our storage room. She can also chew through steel chicken wire, and open doors that are not fully closed. She knows she is not supposed to do these things, because if you catch her she will thump and dash away, only to reappear and sit on your feet the moment she hears the sound of vegetables being chopped.

Weekend Comedy: Freudian Harry Potter Edition

I love the Harry Potter series, and enjoyed reading all umpteen books. Ok, so that doesn't exactly make me unique, but I would like to begin this post with that stake innoculator.

I found this excellent, and, ahem, shall we say... Freudian interpretation of the first Harry Potter book, all by replacing the letter 'd' with the letter 'g' in one word throughout the book. Marginally not safe for work, though a legitimate exercise in the psychology of hidden psychosexual symbolism in literature.

Larry Craig Meets Avenue Q

You are probably aware of the recent scandal with Republican Senator Larry Craig from Idaho. He was arrested for soliciting a male undercover police officer for sex in a busy airport public restroom, pled guilty, and now is in denial/breakdown about the whole thing. It's really a very sad affair, especially considering the man's political career has been largely built on publicly hating GLBT people.

The blessed Internet has given us the ability of instant commentary and media mashability. Here is Larry Craig on Avenue Q, the Sesame Street-esque Broadway musical about real-world problems (video from Michael Jenson at AfterElton and AmericaBlog):



Although I've not seen Avenue Q, it sounds great. This video is, ehh, interesting (marginally not safe for work).

Seriously though, just how many conservative Republicans are really just self-haters unable to cope or deal with their own sexuality? Democrats have sex scandals too, but they are 1) boringly simple (ie, consensual non-kinky sex between adults) and 2) Democrats do not claim to be the morality police who have a duty to legislate what Americans can and cannot do in their own homes.

Political memory is short, so here is a partial list of recent bizarre sex scandals by conservative leaders, all of whom have made a public career out of persecuting those they consider "morally deviant." These are the people who would run our country.

• US Senator Larry Craig, (R-ID), pled guilty to soliciting sex from an undercover police officer in a men's public restroom in the Minneapolis airport. (2007)
• Glenn Murphy, Jr., 33 year-old president of the Young Republican National Federation under investigation for sexually assaulting a sleeping 22 year-old man. (2007)
• State Rep. Bob Allen, (R-FL), offered to pay $20 to a male undercover police officer for oral sex in a public restroom in a park. Allen claimed that he felt intimidated by "a pretty stocky black guy" and offered money and oral sex as a way to avoid an attack by the undercover officer and the other "black guys" in the park (who were also undercover officers.) You cannot make that up. (2007)
• Ted Haggard, conservative mega-church pastor and former leader of the National Association of Evangelicals (with 30 million members), and regular spiritual advisor to George W. Bush has had a long time history of meth binges and use of gay prostitutes. (2006)
• US Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) built his career legislating against pedophiles. That's reasonable enough, until it came out that he was a pedophile himself. He sent sexually abusive emails to a male under-age congressional page, and later many other minors came forward to disclose inappropriate behaviour from Rep. Foley. Then it came out that other Republican leaders had known about it for a number of years, and had taken no other action than to warn Foley to stop. Foley's defense? He was an alcoholic who had been drunk when he had made the sexually inappropriate overtures. Oh, well that's ok then. (2006)
• Jim West, Republican Mayor of Spokane was charged with multiple counts of child molestation and abusing his political power to receive sexual favours from young men. (2005)
• Jeff Gannon/James Guckert, a White House "journalist" from a non-existent news organization called Talon News. With no journalism credentials, Gannon was given press passes from the White House, where he was known for asking suspiciously Bush-friendly questions such as "how are you going to work with people [Democrats] who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?" Suspecting he was planted there, real journalists found he was also a gay prostitute nicknamed Bulldog and had published many nude pictures of himself online, many with a gay military motif. According to Secret Service records, Gannon/Guckert often checked in to the White House on days in which there were no press conferences, and appears to have spent the night at the White House on multiple occasions (see the logged visits here). What happened on these occasions is not known. (2005)

The party of family values.

Weekend Comedy: Torn

Mimes have a pretty bad reputation, but David Armand pulls it off well. And Natalie Imbruglia isn't so bad herself.

This is from Amnesty International's Secret Policeman's Ball, an annual benefit to raise awareness and funds for international human rights issues. Starting in 1976 as a collaboration between Amnesty and Monty Python, these shows initiated other comedy benefits like Comic Relief, and inspired many comedians and musicians (like Bob Geldoff and Bono) to become active in campaigns for human rights.

It's Just Like a Mini Mawl

Normally I'm not quite so eager to jump on the viral bandwagon, but this made me laugh more than usual. Several times in the past 24 hours whilst otherwise engaged in conversation or activity I would burst into laughter thinking of the Mini Mawl.



A significant portion of my family is from Montgomery. I'll have to ask them if it is usually like this down there.

Hat tip to James for finding this one.

Weekend Comedy: Mocking Homeland Security Edition

Most people realize that the Department of Homeland Security is little more than a politically expedient joke - but let's not let it go to waste - we can turn it into a series of literal jokes instead of just figurative jokes! As safenow.org notes, the Department of Homeland Security warning signs are so vague, they could mean anything - that means it's caption time! Here are a few of my favourites: (remember these are real DHS signs - somebody thought these were helpful illustrations for what to do in an emergency.)

After exposure to radiation it is important to consider that you may have mutated to gigantic dimensions: watch your head.

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If a door is closed, karate chop it open.

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People, animal corpses and the biohazard symbol are all at risk of being sucked into the time-tunnel vortex.

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If you spot a terrorist arrow, pin it against the wall with your shoulder.

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Try to absorb as much of the radiation as possible with your groin region. The current world record is 5 minutes, 12 seconds.

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Visit safenow.org to see the whole set.

Update and Signs

It's been a while since I've posted much about what's going on in my life. So what's going on? Well, not a whole lot. I've got a few studies I'll be starting in October, so I've mostly been focused on getting the measures finalized, and getting approval from the ethics committee (a necessary formality - these are pretty tame experiments). But I'm looking forward to starting them. There's nothing quite like fresh data.

Other than that, I'm heading to Kent (Canterbury) in early September for a social psychology conference held by the British Psychological Society. I'm not presenting any research (thankfully!) but I'm looking forward to getting to see what interesting new research other people are working on, and getting to do some networking. I really don't know many social psychologists outside of Exeter, so it should be a great opportunity.

Well I don't know about you, but the previous two paragraphs were a bit too dull and work-oriented. Now, how about some unintentionally unfortunate signs from around the world? They've all got one thing in common...

Umm... I hadn't planned on it, but thanks for the reminder!

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Ehh... I guess it's safer to pull over and get out of the car when that happens.

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Err... From a park in Germany... and you know what those are like.

Stumbling Finds II: Video Edition

Normally on Fridays I provide some kind of comedy video. Today I'll provide five short videos I Stumbled Upon, some funny, some just bizarre. Here are my top five picks for this week:

This is freakin' incredible! By building a semi-rigid bodysuit of 30+ wheels, Rollerman can roll at high speeds on any flat surface in any body position! His top speed so far is 61 mph. You have no idea how much I want one of these; probably even more than a jet-rocket backpack and even more than a flying motorcycle. It's probably best that I don't have one. I would wear it all the time - late to class? I'll just roll down the hallway and into the classroom at high speed! About to miss my plane? I'll just roll down the mile-long airport terminal, weaving between travellers and suitcases at 60 mph! Sigh... one can dream...



Ever play Minesweeper? Did you know they are making it into a movie?



Ever wonder what would happen if you filled a swimming pool with a non-Newtonian fluid and then went for a swim? Well... it's time to find out!



The UK was the birthplace of the railroad - the good side of that is the UK was the first country to become 'modern' - the bad part of that is we are stuck with infrastructure that is 200 years old. In France and Asia, trains travel up to 500 kph, (300+ mph) five times faster than in the UK. Wow.


Lastly, a brilliant commercial from Germany. Watch it twice, it's clever stuff.

Weekend Comedy

Thank God that now we don't have to see this guy any more than we choose to:



Enjoy your weekend!

Important New Research On Opinion Entitlement

I found this particular news article from the University of Chicago's School for Behavioral Science to be particularly on target:

Study: 38 Percent Of People Not Actually Entitled To Their Opinion

CHICAGO—In a surprising refutation of the conventional wisdom on opinion entitlement, a study conducted by the University of Chicago's School for Behavioral Science concluded that more than one-third of the U.S. population is neither entitled nor qualified to have opinions.

"On topics from evolution to the environment to gay marriage to immigration reform, we found that many of the opinions expressed were so off-base and ill-informed that they actually hurt society by being voiced," said chief researcher Professor Mark Fultz, who based the findings on hundreds of telephone, office, and dinner-party conversations compiled over a three-year period. "While people have long asserted that it takes all kinds, our research shows that American society currently has a drastic oversupply of the kinds who don't have any good or worthwhile thoughts whatsoever. We could actually do just fine without them."

In 2002, Fultz's team shook the academic world by conclusively proving the existence of both bad ideas during brainstorming and dumb questions during question-and-answer sessions.

From The Onion :)

That's One Hungry Hippo

From Boing Boing, an endearing tale of a South African Pet House-Hippo:

(Warning: it goes from cute, to unbearably cute, to slightly creepy, to cute again.)



This is the same basic process in which humans have domesticated all animals - Jessica (though tame) is still wild, and potentially dangerous. Hippos kill more people in Africa than sharks, lions, and just about every other animal. But after a few dozen generations of similar treatment, it would be entirely possible to have permanently domesticated hippos. The domestic cow, which descended from the mighty aurochs, was surely much more dangerous to domesticate, weighing twice the weight of modern cattle.

So who's up for domesticated hippos? Can we have a pygmy version?

Mythbusting Monday II: Man-Eating Badgers Not Actually a Secret Terror Weapon of the British Army

This myth may not be as well known in the US and UK, but apparently in Iraq many of the people around Basra believe the British Army has been releasing man-eating bizarro badgers into Basra to eat and terrorize the populace.

They appear to be non-dangerous honey badgers who have come to the area because of flooding in their usual habitat north of the city.

Best. Myth. Ever.

As web-based political cartoonist August Pollak says, not many people in the world get to say, "We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." as a part of their official duties.

When I was living in Reading, England nearly four years ago, I was watching tv with one of my then-housemates. One of those when-animals-attack shows came on. When these come on in the US, they usually feature rather horrific encounters with bears, alligators, mountain lions, or zoo elephants. In the UK edition, the highlight of the 'wild animal encounters' was a badger that got stuck in somebody's empty swimming pool. A badger. I was discussing this with my housemate whom I was watching with, and she said of badgers: 'They can be quite vicious you know.' Alaska has grizzly bears. India has cobras. Africa has black mambas. South America has tiny barbed fish that swim up your urethra when you pee in the water. Australia has an untold number of nightmare creatures. England has badgers.

Pmmfth. That was me stifling laughter at how non-dangerous Europe is compared to every other continent in the world.

Weekend Colbert

In a few decades time, people like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will be widely acknowledged as the heroes they are. People whose 'fake' news shows have more legitimate news and commentary than the vapid 'real' ones. Their buisiness is satire, yet they are far less disingenuous than the Serious Reporters.

And of course, most importantly of all, they are funnier than anything else on the tee vee. In fact, you can watch all kinds of Colbert videos from Colbert on Demand.



The video above was part of Colbert's Better Know a District segment, in which he aims to interview all 435 US Representatives. So far he has interviewed more than 60 - a few have been in on the joke but most have not. How can you be a high-ranking national-level politician in the US and not know who Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart are? Especially after the 2006 White House Press Correspondents' Dinner. Especially if you agree to do an interview with them. Seriously, if they are that cocooned, they are really just asking for it.

Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA-3) interviewed in the video above plans to run for governor of Georgia in 2010. I would love to see an opposition ad against him that was just the Colbert video with no commentary.


Got any fun stuff planned for the weekend?

Yakety Sax

I have discovered a magical song that, when played, makes everything occur both faster and more humorously.

Do you remember the fights in Family Guy between Peter and the Giant Chicken? They too succumb to the powers of Yakety Sax:



Sadly, I suspect the amusement half-life of Yakety Sax is somewhere around 24 hours, after which it soon breaks down into mild annoyance.

Buh-Bye Tony

So Tony is gone. I've got to say, I'm not as saddened as Zoe above.

I don't know what to think of Gordon Brown yet. However, I've been pretty satisfied with how he has settled the recent terrorist attacks. Instead of running around with limbs flailing wildly, creating ineffective new Orwellian-sounding government departments, trying to discreetly scare the hibby-jibbies out of his own citizenry (like some national leaders I'm familiar with), the response has been sober and measured. Instead of proposing we invade unrelated sovereign nations, the matter has been treated as a serious police issue. Only those involved were arrested, rather than indiscriminately arresting thousands of Arab men in the US as happened after Sept. 11. And most importantly, it has worked. The baddies were caught with no injuries or deaths.

And a political ploy it may be, but offering to give up to Parliament the ministerial power to wage war is wise indeed. No single man should have that authority.

No conclusions on Brown from me yet, but so far, so good. If only the US leadership had been as wise or responsible in reaction to terrorism.

More Weekend Bunny Blogging

Not my bunnies, but other ones. These first two videos were sent in by Christian.

Tired of the finger cuts that come from opening mail yourself? Get a bunny!



Our rabbit connie has actually eaten an envelope before. I think she was more focused on consuming all organic matter possible rather than opening it though.

Most people think rabbits are rather passive things, just because they are at the bottom of just about everything's food chain. Not so! Rabbits can actually be quite vicious. Mine have drawn blood from me many times, and could probably hold their own in a fight with a cat. Or in this case, a snake!



Wow, who was the bubba in the background with the caricaturized redneck laugh?


Of course, if your rabbits fight too much, you can always get some chickens to keep them in line:

Weekend Mitch

Get ready for the weekend with Mitch...

Includes many of the classics (including 'potatoes') but the audience reaction is a bit sub-par. You get Mitch or you don't.

Please Don't Spoof the Cat...

I have a family member who is dearly beloved, but has a little problem generating misnomers. At one visit at another family member's house, a skittish pet cat was scared out of the living room by (if I remember correctly) a barking dog. Our beloved family member said, "Oh, shoot, now that dog has gone and spoofed the cat." I chuckle fondly every time I think of it, and especially when I came across this picture of a dog quite literally spoofing a cat...

Speaking of the word 'literally,' why is it that 80% of people, including Smart People on TV, have no idea what it means? Last night, an academic on the news said "terrorists are evolving before our eyes, both literally and figuratively." No, I think just figuratively, unless they are mutating a new set of gills, or something. And, unless you are referring to an amicable contortionist or acrobat, you should never have use to say "he literally bent over backwards to help me."

Jesus with Dinosaurs, Part I

Religious fundamentalism is, in my view, the biggest threat to societal cohesion that we face today. Deadly serious, fatally misinformed, fundamentalists work fanatically to force their terminal world-view on others. In my hometown of Atlanta, this takes the form of one Gwinnett mother's attempt to ban Harry Potter through the courts because they "promote satanism" - even though she admits she has not read the books, and based on her court testimony, has no idea what they are about. Elsewhere, and in history, fundamentalism has more insidious manifestations. The solution to this threat? Mock the hell out of them. Nothing kills germs like sunlight and laughter.

Young-earth creationists are particularly entertaining - they insist the Earth is 6,000 years old, despite the crush of research suggesting otherwise (radiometric dating, ice cores, fossils, the size of oil/coal reserves, accumulation of erosion, cave formation, the size/nature of the universe, the hydrogen/helium proportions of the sun, and so on and so on.) They have a love-hate relationship with science, desperate to cherry pick supporting evidence, but distrustful of an enterprise that is not a priori loyal to their literalist world view. When confronted with a possible conflict to their young-earth world-view, the conflict must be reconciled to minimize the cognitive dissonance. In the case of dinosaurs, many young-earth creationists believe they are real - but were formed with the rest of the creation 6,000 years ago and lived and walked with Jesus - and are now (for whatever reason) in hiding in the deepest depths of Congolese and Amazonian jungles. The same is true of unicorns (not joking).

This has lead to a particularly interesting microgenre of art: the Jesus-with-Dinosaurs composition. Comical, compelling, and slightly disturbing, there has been a rapid growth in their appearance on fundamentalist websites. This is one my favourites:



I like how the creator has put a great big smile on the face of that pygmy brontosaurus. The image is from Conservapedia, the fundamentalist counter to Wikipedia, created because of the "bias" in Wiki, such as allowing non-US citizens and non-Christians to have input in creating articles. Although toned-down recently, many of the original Conservapedia articles were hilarious in their absurdity, such as defining Jews as (paraphrased, but very close) "people who get touchy when they hear about the holocaust" and unicorns as "controversial animals which we know exist because they are mentioned in the Bible." Good times.