Neatly summed up by xkcd. Pay special attention to the alt text.

Best patent illustration ever.

An Irish cinema has been warning customers off seeing Bruno because "it's particularly vile." If you phoned their showtimes answerphone, you get a message saying

Bruno is particularly vile. It leads to a hell of a lot of complaints from people who say 'we didn't think it was going to be that bad'. It is that bad - it will offend every prejudice in the book, believe me, so don't come on after the film and tell us how horrible it was... One or two people have enjoyed it though.

The message has now changed, but you can hear the old one on Youtube.

Choice quote : "The Moynalty Virgins Club were in last night and they say it's unmissable."

Utter genius.

Heh. And I really can't remember what's in it. Anyone?

One of our games just popped up this dialog:

Why am I NULL?
Yes / No

The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook, by Marty Smith, from The Free Agent, March 1987 (a Portland, Oregon alternative newspaper).

October 4: Still working on the omelet. There have been stumbling blocks. I keep creating omelets one after another, like soldiers marching into the sea, but each one seems empty, hollow, like stone. I want to create an omelet that expresses the meaninglessness of existence, and instead they taste like cheese. I look at them on the plate, but they do not look back. Tried eating them with the lights off. It did not help. Malraux suggested paprika.

From Dresden Codak. Excellent.

Notice that Klomp cherry-picks discoveries to better support his argument of an exponential growth. It took more than a million years to develop fire and the hand-ax, and yet Klomp believes simply because it took only 2,000 years to develop bows and arrows that new inventions will spring up in even shorter timeframes. This theory is an expansion of "Morg's Law," which states that since a sharpened rock can in turn become a chisel to make an even sharper rock, that the sharpness of hand-axes will increase exponentially over the span of tens of thousands of years. While Morg's Law has so far proven accurate, Klomp can't escape the reality that there is an upper limit, namely that a rock can only become so sharp. We have already noticed a slight decline in the growth of hand-ax sharpness, but Klomp insists that when the potential of stone axes becomes exhausted, new materials will be discovered to replace the rocks and continue the exponential trend of sharpness. As of the time of this article, however, he has provided no evidence of what these miracle rocks are. Klomp also argues that there will come a time when we will use tools to create other tools, though naturally this is a laughable fiction since there has never been any recorded evidence of a tool making another tool, or even any records for that matter.

From Dresdek Codak, a webcomic - 42 essential 3rd act twists, arranged as a grid. Across, twist types - Deus ex Machina, Peripeteia, Petard Hoist, Shyamalan etc. Down, genres - Fantasy, Scifi, Horror, Thriller etc. Each twist is an intersection. Very silly.

Found on Richard Bartle's blog. Which anyone with an interest in gaming, particularly MMORPGs, should read. After all, he was one of the blokes who started it all.

Excellent - go and see him. If anyone was there last night, I was the chap burbling about the ice cream machine, feeling more like a pillock with every word but unable to stop. My eternal gratitude to the woman who came in after me and also started burbling on the same subject.

T-shirt design found on eBay.

A bit behind the times on this one, but as I'm actually in Wales, I thought I should mention this video that's been doing the rounds. A bunch of shepherds in Wales with LEDs and a video camera doing... well, just watch. It's amazing.

(Of course, a tiny, cynical part of me suspects that large bits of it are After Effects, but it's still awesome).

Hooray for Prawo Jazdy, the most dangerous driver in Ireland!

Barack Obama has written a memoir. It's got some quite sweary bits in, where he's quoting sweary people. He's also read an audiobook of his own book. Which means you get to hear the President of the United States swearing like a trooper. And here are audio files - streaming and download - of the best bits. "You ain't my bitch, nigga; get your own damn fries."

Puerile, I know.

(via the ever-excellent Anna)

arf!

This place may look familiar to some of you.
(Thanks, Mel)

from here

via alec...

That's just excellent for a piece for real science, isn't it?

In the news today - part of the M42 is shut after a six-vehicle crash sent marshmallows and beer spilling out onto the carriageway thus replicating a thousand drunken student experiments, on a large scale.

Also - an award-winning piemaker's wife who police said was the most pie-eyed drink-driver they had ever seen downed two bottles of wine after getting frustrated when she couldn't find her way to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. As you do.

It's all over the place, Nick. All over the place.

An election tweet from this page:

"Officially just played the worst video game ever. You mark people with an 'x' and then wait for almost forever for the country to be reborn into a new and beautiful age and then nothing fucking happens."

For the last 100 years, the most popular Halloween mask has correctly predicted the winner of the presidential election. Interestingly, this year it seems to be Obama. VP-candidate Palin's masks are actually selling more, however - which could mask the effect.

See comments for what the Welsh actually translates to.
UPDATE: It's made it onto the BBC news. It's in Swansea, apparently.

Naked man found wedged in chimney is an excellent headline. Even better, for an extra jaunty angle, it goes to the tune of "Deck halls with buds of holly."

A few weeks back this comic appeared on xkcd. Now, it seems Google have taken Randall's advice...

Lore, on his impending iPhone purchase:

These are my last few weeks before I have an iPhone, and I'm going to make sure I cherish my ignorance.

Right now, I can have a thought like, "I wonder who had a hit first, Chuck Berry or Little Richard?" and allow that question to wander around in my head. Maybe I'll remember it and look it up when I get the chance; maybe I'll just let it go. I suspect that this time next month I'll be pulling over to the side of the road -- I hope I'll pull over to the side of the road -- to get the answer immediately.

Right now, my friends are not subjected to photos of every "witty" stop sign annotation I encounter. In fact, they can actually hang out with me with no fear of showing up in my Flickr stream with basil in their teeth.

Right now, I do not post to Twitter every time I see a dachshund.

Right now, I am capable of referring to my cellphone without actually telling people what brand it is.

...

Right now, I do not appear to bystanders to be speaking into an ice cream sandwich.

Right now, I rarely, if ever, use the phrase "awesome new app."

Right now, I would be surprised if using the phrase "awesome new app" in public did not result in mob justice.