I am … unhindered by talent

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Damn :-)

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Somehow (and I’m not sure where now), I ran across a pointer to a YouTube video entitled “Jesus shaves” by David Sedaris. I wasn’t in a position to watch it at the time, so there it sat as a lonely, forgotten Firefox tab while life pulled me in other directions for several weeks.

Today, however, I returned to this tab as part of my post-Naples electronic housekeeping. This was mostly dominated by really exciting activities, such as the disposal of hundreds of e-mails promoting conferences and workshops in areas I know almost nothing about; telling me of events back at UMM that I can happily ignore; advertising baby cribs, pick-ups, and houses for sale; and promising to make me an irresistible sexual dynamo that can finally, truly satisfy the woman in my life. (I forwarded the latter to WeatherGirl for review.)

After all that fun, I finally got to the Sedaris tab, and I laughed so hard I nearly wet myself. Then, because my to-do list hasn’t quite gone into triple digits, I wandered around YouTube listening to other “videos” of him reading is stories. (Few of these are actually videos in the sense of “moving pictures”; they’re mostly just audio recordings with a still plopped on top so YouTube will swallow it.) The better part of an hour was spent giggling my way through random stories, and now my stomache muscles are slightly sore, so I thought I’d type for a bit as a form of rest.

There appears to be quite a lot of Sedaris material on YouTube, and everything I listened to was enormously fun. I love his deadpan voice, and suspect the experience of listening to him is actually funnier than reading him on the printed page. I would love to have him on my iPod when going to work, but suspect it would be hard to avoid embarrassing myself by laughing out loud in response to things that the people around me can’t hear.

Some of the bits that I enjoyed in my little distract-o-fest included

• Jesus shaves
• The squirrel and the chipmunk
• Bend over and say “Ah”
• Sedaris on Letterman reading his essay on the Stadium Pal

All definitely recommended.

But don’t blame me if that important project falls behind…

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Most of you have probably already seen this, but it’s just so fun that I felt that I had to give it a plug. Also, posting this proves that I’m alive without actually requiring much mental function.

And remember…

Don’t talk back to Darth Vader - he’ll getcha!

Actually, I love the this as an example of how kids see the world. Great stuff.

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A tale of mismanagement, overly enthusiastic love of buzz words and the Next Big Thing, and hiring good people and making them do stupid things.

The pig go. Go is to the fountain. The pig put foot. Grunt. Foot in what? ketchup. The dove fly. Fly is in sky. The dove drop something. The something on the pig. The pig disgusting. The pig rattle. Rattle with dove. The dove angry. The pig leave. The dove produce. Produce is chicken wing. With wing bark. No Quack.

Thanks to MJ for the pointer. As he said “makes one weep for our kind”.

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Emma Clarke has been doing the official voice overs for the London Underground since 1999, and she has a page of spoofs she’s recorded in her sillier moments. Definitely fun; I was fond of this one, clearly aimed at Sub-Evil and me:

We’d like to remind our American tourist friends, that you are almost certainly talking too loud.

Given that WeatherGirl’s initial impression of me was “a loud, obnoxious American” (a position 18 years of marriage has only slightly softened), it does seem likely that it applies.

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A total hoot!

Yeah, I remember those glacial dot matrix printers and the screech of 18.8 modems. They were the bomb in their day, though, and I’m sure that most of what we’re all trendy about today will look equally dated in 10 or 15 years.

Heaven help us all if national security were to depend on finding a payphone these days!

Thanks to TechCrunch for the pointer.

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