Tag: Funny Stuff
Don’t ask me why
But for some reason (perhaps going to see the Gilbert & George exhibition last weekend?), I’ve had this sketch in my head today. Something a bit more cheerful than recent newspaper headlines anyway.
Evening Standard Headline Boards
Cory has a post on BoingBoing about the completely absurd headline boards that go up around London each evening to try and make you buy the papers — especially the terrible Evening Standard. Check out his Flickr set here.
I always see them as I head to the tube from our office in Bethnal Green. The one that made me laugh out loud last year was this one. It was a nervous laugh, you understand.
Free Martin Lukes!
For years now the Martin Lukes column in the FT has been the best regular analysis of corporate life. Things have taken a dramatic turn today though. Martin — I’m 120 per cent with you.
How the markets really work
[via the ever-fascinating Marc Andreesson]
Who writes this crap?
Poet geniuses Luke Wright and Joel Stickly have a new website called whowritesthiscrap.com. Think of it as a campaign to rid the world of bad writing crossed with a brilliant comedy show. One to watch. It will make you shudder and giggle in equal measure.
Elevator pitch
Solana has a funny story about getting into a lift and hearing her own voice announce the next floor.
I once did the voice-over for a Polish pig farmer in a BBC World documentary. Not a lot of people know that.
Net worth
Oh dear. Better stick with the day jobs. According to Cyberwire’s Website Value Calculator, this site is worth a grand total of $126.
[via John Naughton]
Forbes on networks
I meant to mention a couple of weeks ago the special ‘networks’ issue of Forbes magazine after Chris Anderson pointed it out (I’m not a regular Forbes reader, I have to admit). It’s an interesting read and has quite a lot of similarities with the Demos collection that I edited with Paul and Helen called Network Logic a few years back.
Anyway, the fact that it was Forbes reminded me of a blatant name-dropping story from my short stint as a humble intern on Newsnight. George Bush had just made his axis of evil speech and I was dispatched off to help a team find an American foreign or military policy specialist to get a response. We hit lucky and found out that former US Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger (since departed) was in London and staying at the Forbes house in Battersea.
Off we went to get a few minutes of Caspar (the friendly defence secretary as he was referred to by the editor of Newsnight at the time) on tape. He was already heavily showing his years but as soon as the camera started recording a sparkle returned to his eye and he gave us some brilliantly barbed comments about George Bush junior.
While all this was going on we were being looked after handsomely by the Forbes housekeeper and fed the spare food from a dinner that had been held for Caspar the night before. It was only as we were leaving that the camera man looked in the visitors’ book to see who had been there. The last name stood out. Margaret Thatcher. We’d been eating her leftovers. Suddenly the taste in my mouth wasn’t quite so sweet.
Short short stories
Wired have a lovely little piece where they asked writers to come up with six word short stories. My favourite has to be this one:
Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time
– Alan Moore