Mid-January comedy roundup

A big serious bunch of political blogging posts to be done tomorrow. However, now I think time to do something a little less intense:

- First off, those looking to explain curious references I made at work today can check out what it means to have a "very Alexandrian solution to the Gordian problem"

- Now for the comedy: presenting the greatest essay (n)ever written, "Planes, Trains and Plantains: The story of Oedipus: This font is smaller than the last". The essay is supposedly from November 2004 even though I saw it a few months before that: its a fake essay, with fake comments, but the laughs are real. I was incapacitated for an hour when I read "an oracle prophesied that the boy would grow up and kill his father and marry his mother. Laius was like fuck that shit, that's gay."

- Ohhh, that was some good comedy, I re-read it and am still recovering. "This is bullshit, don't believe it or I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU, AND YES THIS IS A WRITTEN THREAT! And that's what Oedipus told his father."

- On some non-comedy stuff, /. is reporting that Major League Baseball is still trying to screw over fantasy leagues. MLB just doesn't get it: even if the stats are their proprietary data, its in their best interest to have as many people playing fantasy baseball as possible. How do you think I started spending $100/year on MLB.tv packages?

- The Onion for some reason only has OnionSports showing up when you boot the main page. I can't figure out why (you can't find previous issues for some reason). ESPN Courts Female Viewers With World's Emotionally Strongest Man Competition is one of the better articles available. Also funny is this non-sports story: Terrorist Has No Idea What To Do With All This Plutonium. Oh Onion, come back soon.

- Did you realize that this is the 15th anniversary of the commencement of "Operation Desert Storm?" Weird. Its one of those "remember where you were" sorta dealies.

- I got halfway through this essay before I realized it was a cyber-squatter and not some really weird drawn out joke by Adam Thrasher.

- Here's another fake but funny "deliberately bad" test, this time a Chem exam masquerading on the website as a physics exam, which really makes no sense. Highlight: "Which species is the oxidant (oxidising agent) in this reaction?" "1st one." "Justify your answer." "Guess."

- Another bizzare but fun site: ChavScum.co.uk, a website dedicated to poking fun at Britain's version of the Trailer Park Boys.

- Oh, so I was watching Smallville today (don't ask) and saw Clark and Lana sleep together. To quote Joey from Blossom: "whoa". So naturally its sparking quite the debate on the DC Comics Superman webboard about the appropriateness of a clean-cut hero like Superman becoming an adulterer. (Or in some threads about choosing "bug-faced" Kristin Kreuk instead of the "way-hotter" Allison Mack or the "butch-er" Erica Durance). Some smarmy Euro-trash poster was "bragging" about how sexually open their continent is about underage sexual depravity, when a clever Yankee blew them out of the water with this quote: " If people in Europe have so much sex how come its dying out (in terms of population). They must be doing it wrong." Oh that's clever. More importantly, oddly accurate and counter-intuitive. Other highlight from the board: "Plus, in one episode Lois was showed not to be a virgin. Are you up in arms about that one, as well." Nobody came up with this one, but the obvious answer is "no, we always accepted that Lois was a whore".

- Finally, IMDB searching has driven me bonkers. I was going crazy last week trying to remember where I recognized Bridget Moynahan from (watched her in "I, Robot"). I only watched like 4 movies in the past 2 weeks, so naturally today I had no idea which actress or which movie I was looking for. "Love Actually" was one of the films I saw last week (gack), and it has about 600 A-minus-list actors in it, so naturally I tore my hair out trying to find her in that list (I did find though that Heike Makatsch who played the horny secretary Mia isn't the girl from "Being John Malkovitch" and who's only appearance I would have seen was "Resident Evil", where my love-affair with Milo Jovovich would have kept me from seeing her). Long story short, eventually I did find Bridget when I remembered that there were two movies last week I saw featuring Serenity actors: "I Robot" with Alan Tudyk and "Love Actually" with Chrwe....Chewtle...Mister Ejjaiejf....Crhetlew...um....thedudewhoplayedtheoperativeinserenity. Then it was quick to look Bridget up and discover: I've never seen her before. Well, she was one of the hot bartenders in "Coyote Ugly" and was in "Sum of All Fears" which I've read 6 times and never watched. She was in that stinker of a "Serendipity" which I almost watched because of Kate Beckinsale but didn't, and "Lord of War" which I sorta wanted to see but didn't and therefore...didn't. So I have no idea why I thought I recognized her, especially since she has absolutely nothing in common with the real Dr. Susan Calvin.