Portent

Occasionally in my travels across the 987 corners of the web I encounter something a bit different and this one comes under the title of sustainable cliches. Old cliches are overused, hackneyed, weary and just deserve their final moment in an electric box or car crusher.

The people at the defectiveyeti website decided to get new versions of old well loved cliches. So instead of “Made a mountain out of a molehill” they suggest “Saw a duck and shouted “dragon!”‘ (there is something ineffably lame about that I’m afraid… It sounds a bit newage to me). Whereas “Wore his heart on his sleeve” has been taken out and left in the wood and replaced by “Flew his feelings from a flagpole”. That’s much better.

So here’s one I just thought up “Out on a limb” now replaced by “No seat at Stalin’s table.” Well ok, its rubbish albeit true. If you were out of favour with Russia’s favourite man of steel then they’d arrange a meeting early and when you got there there was no seat for you. However the nice soldiers would take you out the back, stand you up against a wall and …

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Sites like the Onion have been around for years but The Spoof is new to me. As something of a writer (not rich or award winning!) I am tempted to have a go myself

The site has a somewhat British flavour albeit with American spellings (e.g. humor) but that may just be the particular writer involved. Both Us and UK headlines get spoofed. And from what i’ve seen no target is immune. So if you’re witty and want to take a literary pot shot, get writing. I don’t think they pay though but at least you are guaranteed a good read.

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I really like this concept – it appeals to my fundamentally subversive nature. The Yes Men is an informal organisation of people who expose corporate idiocy and similar by impersonating them at conferences and giving talks, presentations etc on totally ludicrous subjects. If you know some of the work of the English comedian Mark Thomas it will set the context.

Some of the stunts they have pulled including pushing slavery as a WTO idea and selling the idea of using corpses from climate change events as a replacement fuel. They have even issued their own 52 card deck with corporate leaders on, like the US did with Saddam and terrorists. They are keen to recruit so if yo have any ideas …

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This is interesting. A research project to try and work out jokes that match your sense of humour. As they say “Jester uses a collaborative filtering algorithm called Eigentaste to recommend jokes to you based on your ratings of previous jokes.”

Of course I’m not sure quite how they classify humour or rate a joke for a match but the jokes provided I found above average so they must be doing something right.

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This is really clever and of course scary. For the last couple of years, mobile phone manufacturers have built in the capability of tracking mobile phones. Ostensibly it is to locate people in car accidents or who are lost, but of course it can also be used to watch the location of anyone. Now this website has licenced the technology and made it available to try. Don’t abuse it or it might be withdrawn.

The best way to test it is to put in your own number. I was gobsmacked with the amount of detail that it showed me. Scary enough…

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Imagine a flash animation that combined Star Trek with the Flintstones with characters such as Captain James T Kirkstone, First Officer Sprock, Leonard RcKoy- you get the idea. The characters look like the Flintstones in Star Trek uniforms and there’s a running gag about red shirts who keep getting bumped off.

This is an excellent series with terrific cartoon animation and some mad plots- for example Pod racing on Tatooine- it’s clearly not afraid to take from other sci fi (e.g. Star Wars). My only hate- the canned laughter track, otherwise this is fantastic. And check out the animation to go with the Firm’s 1987 hit “Star Trekkin”.

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Ah those wacky Google jokers. Click the “I’m feeling lucky” button and you get a countdown (in seconds) until the new year!

Calling it an Easter Egg at this time of year seems a bit odd and yet…

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I’d seen these kicking around the web for some years but this is an expanded list, up to 100 and I think they’re just great. Things like hackers being able to crack passwords in a few seconds (as if!) or chase scenes on foot in the road where a car screeches to a halt as people run in front  and the driver leans out the window and shouts at them.

Film and TV cliches occur because Directors generally like to avoid the minutiae of real life. If the hero can’t park his car straight away (#17 in the list) it will detract from the plot or make it less action filled. It’s hard to avoid doing things the same way which is why we the film viewing public are starting to notice them.

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So is this picture two dancers or the body of a headless woman?

This and several other photos show off some signs and logos that you would have thought would have warranted a second look. Mind you the London 2012 Logo is there- and now that I’ve seen it, yes it does look like Lisa Simpson is performing a sexual act!

Some of the hospital signs are equally as dodgy. All I can say is there must be a lot of innocent sign and Logo writers around!

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The excellent alternative Russian Web Magazine The Exile Exile.ru published an illustrated guide to the type of people you might encounter on the streets of Moscow.

These range from impoverished starving soldiers, gangsters wives, art directors, rastas etc over 30 in all. Great descriptions and pictures. I like the Exile though it won’t suit everyone’s taste. The military writer Gary Brecher “War nerd” gives his insights into the best wars, soldiers etc and is not afraid to lavish praise or mock and if you are easily offended, you won’t like The Exile!

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After many years publishing the exile was forced to cease by Putin’s administration. They upset too many high ups… The end result of the action forced the staff to relocate permanently out of Russia proper and establish themselves in Panama.

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Well there are high-brow websites and cultural ones but then you get something a little less intellectual like this one. The title may be a clue: statue molesters.

It’s a fairly easy concept to explain. Take a statue- the ruder or sillier the better, have somebody pose near it, maybe holding their hands or posture in a rude or naughty way. Take a photo… The gallery screen shot gives you a clue… there are a lot of pages of photos…

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A Phrase that is bound to baffle French readers ‘Bans Comic Sans’ (It translates as “round of applause comic without”!) is a protest about the overuse or misuse of the 12 year old Microsoft Font.

As they say “The typeface has been used in countless contexts from
restaurant signage to college exams to medical information. These
widespread abuses of printed type threaten to erode the very
foundations upon which centuries of typographic history are built.”

Hence this website. I must confess I have, in the past committed crimes against good taste in the use of Fonts. Repeated exposure to toxic pages has left me with a minimalistic approach to font usage. Fewer is better. But I do still occasionally use Comic Sans. I suspect this site should be taken with a big piece of salt!

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Sol it’s just another boring online product store? Not quite! Just watch it for a few seconds…

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The link on the picture takes you to the UK Talk Like a Pirate Day website, while the bottom link goes to the US one. Maybe we’ll see other national sites some time e.g. “Parlez comme un Corsair?”

This annual event exhorts people to talk in the present tense, drop the gs off the end of words “endin” in ing and double up vowels- is ee gettin’ that?

Both sites are interesting though the UK one looks better. Yaar!

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This is an excellent video; a camera with motion detection tracks people walking past a window and moves a small piece of curtain (mounted on a motorized curtain rail that’s controlled by software running on a computer).

The curtain moves along with the person so even though it’s pretty narrow, it stops them seeing in. It’s pretty entertaining! The link below goes to the artist’s page.

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