Category: Comedy

Inflatable e-scooter

Those e-scooter emails from google really hit the jackpot yesterday evening, with news of this gloriously idiotic contrivance:

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Yes, it’s an inflatable e-scooter. And by that I mean, not only can you inflate it. You have to inflate it. Madness, I tell you.

Here’s what must surely be a deeply embarrassed model driving it:

When she was little she dreamed of being a supermodel, striding out onto a catwalk and quickly parlaying that into being a movie star. But now look at what she’s doing. It’s like Idiot Toys never stopped and this was the subject of yesterday’s posting there. (And I for one wish it never had stopped.)

I’d be very happy to be proved wrong about this, but as of now, here’s my take on this contraption. The whole point of e-scooters is how convenient they are and how small they are. So, you do not want them occupying as much road space as a small motorbike, and you need to be able to unfold them and fold them up in a single figure number of seconds. This thing has to be inflated. How the hell long does that take? Then when you’ve finished, you have to uninflate it. How long does that take? No. This is altogether too much faffing about, and it defeats about eighty percent of the point of having an e-scooter.

A small platform the size of a small skateboard, with tiny wheels at each end and a stick with handles at the top at the front end, that folds up and down. All pushed along the road by an electric motor that weighs nothing and occupies no space at all. That’s what an e-scooter is. The e-scooter has already been designed! It already works! One of the many things that an e-scooter is not is a giant airbag on wheels.

Dogs Stuck To The Ceiling

Here:

Natalie Solent mentioned this strange phenomenon in a Samizdata piece entitled Solving the problem of dogs stuck to the ceiling. Natalie quoted a commenter saying, ironically of course, that this is a serious problem which We Should All Seriously Think About, and herself commented on that comment thus:

Although the writer did not try to make any political capital from this issue, it did lead me to wonder what other problems in modern society are conceptually similar to the plight of these dogs.

Natalie’s point being that some problems are only problems because you are looking at them the wrong way. In this case, the wrong way up. It’s quite a profound piece. She says that the “gig economy” is such a problem, and I agree. There are definitely problems associated with the gig economy, like people not paying for work by the date they promised they would. But just making the gig economy illegal would make everything far worse for the gigsters. There already is a law saying payments have to arrive when promised, but it is no use to the gigsters at the lower end of the gig economy. They’d rather do work that they do eventually get paid for, probably, and in the meantime not antagonise such a customer. Their solution is to get more and better customers, not to sue. One of my best friends (the one who photoed this bird, and also the ducklings in the previous posting just below this one) is a gigster. As was I a few years back.

Like I say. Quite profound stuff.

But I only paid Natalie’s piece proper attention after David Thompson had linked to it, while mentioning that he got it via Samizdata. In his Friday ephemera, he likes weirdnesses of all kinds, and likes libertarian messages also to be smuggled in in among the weirdness. So, this was all perfect for him.

Jokes about a broken blog

Not mine, thank goodness. 6k’s. A few hours ago, 6k told the tale of his broken blog, in the form of a blog posting which he had to put instead, at first, on Facebook.

I LOLled at this bit:

I’m optimistic that the engineers at Afrihost will get their act together in the very near future and put the server plug back into the wall after the cleaning lady socially distanced it from its socket, …

Ah yes, the eternal and never-ending war between cleaning ladies and us computer users. That surely speaks, in the language of Lockdown, to all of us.

I did not LOL at this next bit. I merely smiled. Even though I now think it funnier. This is how 6k summarised his tale, having successfully copied it to his actual blog:

So now you’ve read a blog post about a blog post about not being able to post a blog post on the blog I wasn’t able to post on.

Blogging is, or can be, sometimes, a lot like stand-up comedy. Bloggers are mostly seated throughout, but the same principles do often apply, of a stressful life told of amusingly, and often at quite some length while you wait for the joke but are in the meantime at least diverted, and then there are jokes like those above, finding new ways to say eternally true things. At which you often LOL, but often are happy enough just to smile at.

Transparently funny

LOL:

First encountered this here.

Whenever I put “LOL” here, it means I really did laugh out loud.

Feline Twitter dump

I earlier promised a creature-related Twitter dump. It turns out it’s pretty much all cats:

Another optical illusion that works on a nonhuman animal.

Can cats pass the mirror self-recognition test? This one did.

Why does this advert make it look like cats created a centre left political party in the early 2000s?

Screw your traffic, humans.

These next two tweets are also feline, because they’re Schrödinger’s Cat jokes:

Schrödinger’s Dumpster.

Schrödinger’s Plates.

Fed up with all the cattery? Then maybe you’ll approve of this:

A bit barbaric but my dog approves.

Still wanting something not cat related. Well, there’s always the Babylon Bee.

Pathogen Resistance

XKCD.com has a cartoon up that looks at it all from their point of view. It’s tough being a Coronavirus, constantly persecuted by those sneaky humans.

Got to this via Rob Fisher’s Facebook page. It was only for his “friends”, it would seem, but I don’t suppose he’ll mind.

Maybe the Coronaviri should switch their attention to cats.

Hearing about the Welsh goats from the Bee

I’m referring to this:

A herd of goats has taken over the deserted streets of Llandudno, north Wales, where the residents are in lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Kashmiri goats that came down from the Great Orme and into the town were originally a gift to Lord Mostyn from Queen Victoria.

This was in the Guardian, but I only just heard about it. And I heard about it only because the Babylon Bee guys featured it in the “weird news” part of their most recent podcast, the April 15th one, which I just listened to. Listen to the Babylon Bee podcast and learn.

Quota silliness

PC Dave Wise:

Is it pronounced Shrewsbury or Shrewsbury?

I asked [the] Shrewsbury Cops but they told me it could be either … or either.

Tomatoes tomatoes potatoes potatoes. Seriously, I thought it was Shrows-bury. But the football commentators all call it as spelt. Which is surely very un-English. I still treasure the moment when an American asked me where Lie Sester Square was.

It’s been a busy day. Still getting that self-isolation thing organised.