Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Monty-Python IM slang from RickLibrarian may soon replace smilies and ROFL–for example:

• IALAIOK – I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay.
• ANFSCD – And now for something completely different
• STMIAN – She turned me into a newt! (“A common complaint,” says RickLibrarian)
• NETSI – Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

But why should Python-ites have all the fun? Star Warsians use MTFBWY (“May the Force be with you”), but surely there’s a lot of good stuff still unmined:

• IHAVBFAT – I have a very bad feeling about this.
• DODNTINT – Do or do not. There is no try.
• WSGTBWCOOMW – Will someone get this big walking carpet out of my way?

I’d also like to nominate:

• MSSIT – My Satan sense is tingling.(The Simpsons)
• FBIFMTQYDCOSC – Far be it from me to question your dumb civilization or stupid customs. (Futurama)
• SMAKIBBFB – Smoke me a kipper, I’ll be back for breakfast. (Red Dwarf)

That’s enough! Signing off now, but you know I’ll return, so SMAKIBBFB.

Thanks to the improbable Marc Abrahams for his find of this acronym finder…

My pal Bert claims it’s making and understanding puns. For example, he offers these ten pun-contest winners:

1. A vulture boards a plane with two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, “I’m sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.”

2. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says “Dam!”

3. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.

4. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says “I’ve lost my electron.” The other says “Are you sure?” The first replies “Yes, I’m positive.”

5. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication.

6. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. “But why?”, they asked, as they moved off. “Because,” he said, ” I can’t stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer.”

7. A couple has twins and gives them up for adoption. One goes to a family in Egypt and is named “Ahmal.” The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him “Juan.” Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth parents. The mother says, “I wonder what his brother looks like.” Her husband replies, “They’re twins! If you’ve seen Juan, you’ve seen Ahmal.”

8. These friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened up a small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town to “persuade” them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he’d be back if they didn’t close up shop. Terrified, they did so,— thereby proving that only Hugh can prevent florist friars.

9. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him (Oh, man, this is so bad, it’s good)….. A super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

10. And finally, there was the person who sent ten different puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.

It’s dangerous to criticize a Muslim cleric, even one whose fatwas promote hatred and violence.

So the Saudi government is fighting fire with..humor. They’re using semi-official press to make fun of frivolous fatwas. They republished, for example, this recent fatwa against playing soccer by regular rules…

3. Do not call “foul” and stop the game if someone falls and sprains a hand or foot or the ball touches his hand, and do not give a yellow or red card to whoever was responsible for the injury or tackle. Instead, it should be adjudicated according to Sharia rulings concerning broken bones and injuries. The injured player should exercise his Sharia rights according to the Koran and you must bear witness with him that so-and-so hurt him on purpose…

14. You should use two posts instead of three pieces of wood or steel that you erect in order to put the ball between them, meaning that you should remove the crossbar in order not to imitate the heretics and in order to be entirely distinct from the soccer system’s despotic international rules…

Bogota’s use of “traffic mimes” cut their pedestrian death rate in half. But this use of humor sounds even more hopeful to me.

The original Star Wars, reduced to three minutes of Flash in “Star Dudes,” reminds you how funny minimalism can be–and how much you loved its hokey original!

… or would a cat in a bar, plus naked people, work better?

Create your own New Yorker cartoon by matching up items from formulaic lists…

Funny “Dear John” letter by Lisa Williams to Staples:

When I first met you, you were different….Your aisles were wide, well lit, every millimeter as well organized as the sock drawer of drill sergeant with OCD.

Read the whole thing! And then write one to your own ex-darling bigco. My letter to Kinko’s would be even more scathing, I’m afraid.

Struggling to write that company report? Get your sexy, hot, cross-media mega-prose from Andrew Davidson’s Corporate Gibberish Generator!

For example, we here at MegaSexySocksCorp have…

“… permanently altered the idea of integrated branding. The TQM factor can be summed up in one word: killer. We will maximize the term “value-added”. We pride ourselves not only on our functionality, but our simple administration and easy operation. Is it more important for something to be integrated or to be scalable? Think granular. Think user-centric. Think global. But don’t think all three at the same time. The B2B2C, visionary wireless, leading-edge process management factor is clicks-and-mortar…”

The 2.0 version will surely add “glocalization.”

Funny ha-ha of the morning: “Things Hagrid the Half-Giant Would Say If He Served Jesus Instead of Harry Potter,” by Hart Seely over at McSweeney’s.

The IgNobel Prizes have their own funny blog, and you should IMHO be reading it.

Berkeley just announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element has been named “Governmentium”.

Governmentium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element which radiates just as much energy, since it has half as many peons, but twice as many morons.

Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. It can be detected, however, as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A reaction that normally takes one minute or less will require a week or more if contaminated by any Governmentium.

The half-life of Governmentium is 4 years. It does not, however, decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutron exchange places. In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. The characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration.

This hypothetical quantity is called “Critical Morass”.