Reason #3,539,284 I Love The Internet

My work day today involved a six! hour! meeting! and until I came home, read Metafilter and found TIME FOR SOME STORIES, my day sucked. However, everything has been transformed. I now share it with you. Warning – link is NSFW, not for the usual reasons but because if you start reading it, you will get no work done until there are no stories left to read and you have finished drying your tears of laughter and explained to your co-workers that your silent convulsions are not, in fact, epilepsy.

Oh, and here’s an extra because (a) I love all of you and (b) WordPress is still kicking my ass so I need to continue co-opting other people’s quality content instead of providing any of my own: an old favourite of mine in the same vein, My mother’s incredibly stupid ex-husband.

Behold The Cursed Cupcakes Of Cerberus

Work has been hell, but at least that provides me with a convenient segue into the rather amusing Black Oven (via Boing Boing). I’m not into baked stuff, but those Frostbitten Molasses Cookies Entombed with Ginger sure look tempting. “Packed full of grim and evil spices, they will leave you feeling despondent and isolated within their stronghold of flavor.”

If you are still in the mood for dark delights, you are satanically commanded to read the Black Metal Dialogues and I swear upon Ragnarok which advances upon us as surely as rigor mortis inhabits a corpse that you will spew the apocalyptic laughter of the true spawn of Loki.

Ch…ch…chaaaaange

Birthday update and pics of the simultaneously best and worst present ever are forthcoming. But in the meantime, I rather enjoyed this at the Onion and wanted to share. Excerpt:

Black Guy Asks Nation For Change:

According to witnesses, a loud black man approached a crowd of some 4,000 strangers in downtown Chicago Tuesday and made repeated demands for change.

“The time for change is now,” said the black guy, yelling at everyone within earshot for 20 straight minutes, practically begging America for change. “The need for change is stronger and more urgent than ever before. And only you – the people standing here today, and indeed all the people of this great nation – only you can deliver this change.”

The black guy is oddly comfortable demanding change from people he’s never even met. It is estimated that, to date, the black man has asked every single person in the United States for change.

There’s also Do We Really Want Another Black President After The Events Of Deep Impact?, but unfortunately the article isn’t as great as its title promises it could be.

O RLY?

I have to return House of Meetings to the library today without having finished it, unfortunately (The Somnambulist got in the way), but before I do I just have to capture this rather intriguing line: “…even in their most intimate dealings the women, too, were worked on by socio-economic reality. In the post-war years, there were no non-swallowers in the Soviet Union. None.”

Wholly Unfair

Christmas decorations are up in the common areas of our condo. I feel a little degraded by them.

Games

I spent Saturday night with ex-Raffles debaters, all of whom I helped to train at some point in their debating careers. I therefore take a little pride in how well they all did in the debating arena, but I’m wondering if I perhaps had a less than ideal influence on other aspects of their personal development. Of course, it’s also possible they got this twisted entirely on their own.

After a dinner where some penetrating observations on, er, penetration, were loudly voiced, we went back to Ying’s house for ice cream and later settled in her room to play Taboo. Being debaters, an issue as simple as how to divide our group of 8 into teams became a long-drawn-out, albeit hilarious, discussion until I flung my hands in the air and suggested we divide the groups by “People who give a shit how we divide the groups” and “People who don’t give a shit how we divide the groups”. This idea eventually won the day, so we got started.

Word to be guessed: Exotic
YP: Strippers can also be described as…?
FY: WHORES!

Word to be guessed: Blokes
Me: In England, I would refer to my friends as –
FY: SLUTS!

It may be hard to believe from those two examples but our team “The Shits” (the former of the two teams described above) went on to win two rounds out of two. I’m pretty sure FY will be a very prominent person in Singapore some day. I shall remember this when he gets sworn into office.

When a change of game was suggested, I introduced everyone to the joys of Sexy Scrabble.

Sexy Scrabble

Based on the permissive attitude adopted towards compound word formation in my first foray, I encouraged the same approach here in the interests of fun. This is how MAN became MANTITS, MANTITSSAG and finally HEREMANTITSSAG. Similarly, VAJ became VAJIZ, VAJIZONFUR, and MYVAJIZONFUR – it being too late by the time the MY was added to modify the last word of the compound to FIRE.

Elsewhere, people trying to get rid of random letters when the game was in its last gasps turned BONED to LEBONED and a Z and K with 2 spaces in between them to ZCOK. These words were justified as being French. Other cunning linguists had earlier snuck in PODIA justifying it as “Latin for foot” and then added GIRL to refine the fetish, so since we were already near the bottom of the slippery slope we shrugged and let these attempts pass. However, should you embark on your own Sexy Scrabble explorations, I recommend a little stricter discipline.

Ornament

We found this a couple of weeks ago on our second visit to the Bukit Timah Salvation Army store and just couldn’t leave without it. I believe in home decor speak he could be described as a conversation piece, you know, like a Philippe Starck product or an ornate family heirloom.

Best. Souvenir. Ever.

My good friend is the sort of thoughtful person who always brings people a little something when she goes travelling. She recently returned from a tiring, stressful work trip to Panama, for which she couldn’t check-in any luggage and was subject to stringent cabin baggage restrictions due to her transit in LA. While in Panama, her duties kept her too busy to see much more of the place than the supermarket near her hotel.

Under such circumstances lesser mortals (i.e. me) just wouldn’t have bothered with bringing people souvenirs but my friend was clearly unfazed. I met her shortly after she returned and was presented with a sanitary pad. On the wrapper, she had written “Greetings from Padnama!”

Truly, we get the friends we deserve.

Enrapetured

After looking through one or two local bridal magazines and seeing way too many floofy poofy wedding gowns which would swallow me whole, I decided to have a look round online and soon found some tempting options. For example, “beaded embroidery trims the sweetheart strapless neckline and cascades onto the asymmetrically raped bodice of this slim fitting gown”. How lovely. I am sure all my guests will be raped with admiration.