SimpleBits | Electronic Mail is Not For Everyone Funny post over at SimpleBits. But the thing I like is the effect when you hover over the commenter links: the site appears. Cool! (Now I just need to figure out how to implement this!)
Boing Boing: Torn posters of Sydney I like the graffiti that Jason talks about sometimes, in response to the “Bill Posters will be Prosecuted” notices that appeared on many Adelaide buildings in the 80s and 90s:
Bill Posters Is Innocent.
My two favourite static optical illusions. The first one just makes my eyes hurt! 
This second one is less painful, but wiggs you out a little none the less. 
RegularJen has a post about funny personal ads: it reminded me of this joke. (Before I start, some background. Elizabeth is a ‘satellite city’ of Adelaide, Australia; and it is known for having a high number of unemployed residents. It can easily be replaced by whatever town/city/locality you want to bag.)
The Joke: A welfare auditor noticed an anomaly in the benefits being claimed by a particular Elizabeth single mother: she was claiming child payments for 19 children. he thought he’d better go and visit her - 19 isn’t a totally unbelieveable number of children for one mother to have, but seems pretty high. So, he visits her house, and talks to her.
“I’m sorry, but I really need to see all 19 children, and proof that they are yours.”
“Yep. No worries. I’ll jeest git them in ’ere.”
She then proceeded to stick her head out the back door, and at the top of her voice yelled out: “Waayne! Geet in here!!!” (Wayne can be said with a very thick ‘Ocker’ Australian Accent.)
A whole bunch of boys of varying ages then began filing into the house. Confused, the inspector asked “So, if they are all called Wayne, how do you tell them apart?”
“Oh, they’ve all got different surnames!”
From my referrer logs, I noticed someone had used Google Translate to translate some of my site into Brazilian, or something (pl-BR, IIRC).-Portugese (pt-BR) (Thanks Bob). I don’t speak, or read this language at all, but I have done a bit of German and French at school and University. So, I thought it might be fun to translate a few of the pages from my site into these languages on the fly, and see how accurate the translation engine is. It seems pretty good. Highlights for me were:
Boing Boing: Bottled water is evil You clearly haven’t tasted Adelaide water if you think you can’t tell the difference between bottled and tap water…
I have a little joke I make when people ask me how work is. It goes a little like this:
Other Person: How is work going?
Me: Okay, I suppose. I mean, it’s not like work is supposed to be fun or anything. That’s why it’s called ‘Work’, and not ‘Fun’. Can you imagine what the world would be like? “Well, I’m off to Fun now, I want to pop in there and have a little fun for a couple of hours”.
[Other Person walks away…]
Me: Hey, where are you going. Come back…
However, I don’t really believe this. I want to be in a situation where I can do something I love as the main [source of income|thing I do each day]. I read an article which used to be at http://calacanis.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000540052285/ about this. I guess I don’t necessarily want to be a ‘professional blogger’, although it seems like it might be a fun job. I’d just like to be doing something I like, for the significant portion of my time. I already have a job where I do have a fair amount of time to ‘do my own thing’. If necessary (and meetings permit), I can leave work well before 3:30pm, and I get a fair chunk more holidays each year than the average worker. I don’t think I’d like to give up those aspects of the teacher lifestyle. But there are things about my job that I don’t really like. I’m not going to be too specific, but I forsee myself in the not to distant future not working full time as a teacher. Whilst some people don’t like the idea, and the ‘randomness’ of being a relief teacher (Supply Teacher in the UK, Substitute in the US), I think it sounds better than the alternative.
Not having to do a heap of marking and preparation.
Not having to attend staff meetings.
Not having to attend Parent-Teacher interviews.
Not having an income during holidays.
Okay, at the moment that last one is a bit of a kicker. My aim is to have some other sources of income, something that allows me to work ‘from home’, whether it’s building renovation and maintenance, coding or otherwise. I sometimes feel that my generation is the first one to decide that we don’t have to spend our whole lives working, to support our lifestyles. Our whole lives should be our lifestyles. Life is short. Enjoy every day.
There is a man who catches my train in the mornings who looks an awful lot like Mr. Bean. I don’t mean he looks a bit like Rowan Atkinson, he really has the Mr. Bean expression and all. Oh, and I’m sitting right across from him. If this damn Zire 31 had a camera I’d take a photo.
For the uninitiated, Tripod are an Australian 3-piece band who compose and perform ‘comedy’ songs. Probably their biggest claim to fame is the Tripod Song In An Hour segment they used to do on Breakfast with Adam & Wil on Triple J. The hosts used to come up with a series of (unrelated) topics that the boys from Tripod then had to make a song about in one hour, and perform it at the end. The always managed to pull through and usually the songs were quite amusing. Jaq and I received some free tickets to see their live act Self Saucing Tripod, part of the _Adelaide Cabaret _(Cabarette) Festival., and went and saw them on their last performance, last Thursday night. Our seats were either excellent or woeful, we thought as we went into the Dunstan Playhouse: right up the front on Table 4. We managed to get there early, were first into the place, just to make sure we had the seats facing the stage, not with out backs to it. Lucky we did so, as the people in second place were the others on our table… Being right up the front was actually great! You could see the boys in great detail, and we didn’t get picked on at all. The only qualm I would say I had was that it wasn’t really possible to see more than one of the trio at a time - we were so close we needed to turn our heads (slightly) to see the others. Apparently Tripod have quite a following - lots of the girls audience were wearing t-shirts, and I’m sure they sold a lot more in the foyer afterwards.
We like your aura. We hope you’ll see us outside afterwards and by a T-Shirt. Or a CD. Or a T-Shirt and a CD. Or a…
Having only heard them on the radio (and only a few times, to be honest. I listen to Classic FM, not the Youth Network…), and seen one song on Video Hits - which they played incidentally - I sort-of knew what to expect, but I didn’t realise just how talented they were. Ignoring the fact they are comedians, they are fine musicians. Three part harmony, better ‘beat-box’ than Joel Turner and the Modern Day Poets, a talented guitar player (and another one who is alright…), and a trumpeter. Many of their songs start with lovely guitar playing, layered vocal harmonies, and kicker jokes. Which brings me to the biggest beef I had. I understand that many of the songs are designed to be interrupted, but it seemed to me that they only had two songs of any reasonable length. I wonder if writing biting social and political satire into songs is just so damn hard that they cannot do it for more than a couple of measures at a time. Do they run out of material, or is it a conscious decision to fit more songs into the show? Don’t get me wrong, I was not unhappy at all as I left the theatre, but it left me wondering: what would real songs from them sound like? They made a joke that the only reason they were still around today was:
Scod:Because of a rich aunt. Who used to pump money into the act, and asked for nothing in return.Yon:Except that I had to go around there every weekend and smear vegemite on her …Scod & Gatesy:Aaargh!Yon:…toast.Yon:And then I fucked her.
I wonder if that was true. Not necessarily about fucking the aunt, but if they would have made it as a _real _band. Their two songs that went on for a longer time were both pure genius. One of them you may have heard: Make You Happy (The Xbox Song) is a sweet, balladic song about a guy and how much he loves his girl, and he’ll come to bed as soon as he finishes the next level. I think lots of people know how both characters in this song feel. The other one was, I thought, even better. The Hotdog Man is a happy (Frente-like?) song about aHotdog man, and how he loves his job, his customers and his family, but leads onto his darker side. I’ll not go into any more detail, like many comedy songs, listening to it the first time is the best. Which leads me onto another thing. Hearing many of these songs the first time is great, but they tend to have a short shelf-life. I can still listen to older music, over and over again. I don’t know that I’ll ever tire of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, or Paul Kelly’s From St. Kilda To Kings Cross, but shorter comedic works are a bit less lasting. (Pardon the pun). It will be interesting to see where Tripod are in ten years, and if anyone listens to their music. Regards, f you get the chance, run, don’t walk to see them. As comedic bands go, they are without peer. Except for maybe Kevin Bloody Wilson.
