NEWSLETTER: ISSUE 191: "HAVE YOU SEEN THE SIZE OF MY CRACK?"
This Week:
* ROSS KEMP - TV Hardman gurns for Britain
* VIDS - Slow-mo film trickery
* WORDS - Accidental quimnuendos
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___/ _ |/_ </ __/ __ | "We're saving the
__/____/____/\__/_/ |_| web... together"
B3ta email 191 - 29 Jul 2005
Read this issue in your browser:
http://b3ta.com/newsletter/issue191/
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: WHAT B3TA PEOPLE HAVE BEEN MAKING THIS WEEK #1
Vegas, Hard-man Ross Kemp & DIY office weapons
>> Vegan Whopper! <<
"You might enjoy", states Kirby Ferguson, "our
commercial parody about a super-sized vegan
restaurant." We do enjoy it, it's actually
rather fantastic.
http://www.goodiebag.tv/video/ttt.htm
>> Ross Kemp <<
One for our UK readers here. Acrim & Oz write,
"We made a loop of Ross Kemp's face from a
documentary he was in and couldn't stop
laughing at it for about an hour after."
What can we say? At 3 O clock this morning
this seemed the funniest thing the world.
http://www.rosskemp.co.uk/
>> DIY Office weapons <<
"Regarding last week's office bow & arrow",
gripes CMU, "I've been making crap like that
at work for years. Bloody newcomers, I
dunno." Woo. We particularly like the ballista
and the wind-up car. Although the catapult
is more of a crapapault.
http://deeperbeige.com/site/silly/boredatwork/crea...
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: ACCIDENTAL QUIMNUENDOS
Errors of the furry cup
The hot topic of conversation this week at B3ta
HQ has been about the times you've said something
quite innocent and only afterwards, when the
sniggering started, you realised exactly what
you've uttered.
Our favourites include:
* On vegetarianism, "How could anyone munch on
something furry?"
* To the gay gardener, "Kevin, what do you think
about my bush?"
* On visiting a garage with a broken windshield,
"Have you seen the size of my crack?"
* A mum to her son's new red-haired girlfriend,
"I love ginger pussies" (they'd just got a
new cat.)
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: SITES IN BRIEF
Stuff we like that wasn't made by our mates.
>> Slow-mo film trickery <<
People's faces - wobblier than you'd think.
These high-speed camera vids let you watch
at a normal pace things that usually happen
very quickly. The best ones are the slaps
and the tongue-waggling. As ever.
http://www.engr.colostate.edu/~dga/high_speed_vide...
>> Thai wives <<
This is Brian - he's lovely. As if the whole mail
order bride-type deal wasn't creepy enough, check
out this testimonial by a satisfied customer. Brr.
You can practically feel the slight embarrassment
of everyone around him - and he's the best they
could come up with!
http://www.thai-wives.co.uk/
>> Rosie Grier's 'Needlepoint for Men' <<
He's big and butch and he doesn't care if you
think needlework is for sissies. This series
of photos comes from his 1973 magnum opus. Obviously
women shouldn't be tempted to try any of these
patterns out - they are far too testosterone-packed.
http://snipurl.com/flickrrr
>> Crap drugs <<
Students like drugs, students have no money to
buy drugs and, hey, maybe don't want to break
the law. What to do? What to do? Why not test
out some of those ridiculous 'high from household
objects' stories we've all heard. Charming in its
very shiteness.
http://www.grimsplayground.co.uk/freddy/pics/drugs...
>> Porcupined dog <<
Poor, or perhaps pathologically foolish, mutt.
Looks like it didn't just try to chase a
porcupine, but persisted in biting it and holding
on in defiance of all common sense. Ouch.
http://snipurl.com/gl1t
>> Date Lance <<
Funny joke, or workplace bullying? Lance's
workmates reckon he just needs to meet a nice
girl and to this end bought a huge billboard ad
calling for applicants and set up a website to deal
with enquiries. It doesn't seem to have occurred to
them that he might just be a member of the gays
on the quiet - he is from Utah.
http://www.datelance.com/index.html
>> Maxwell's Silver Hammer <<
Nicely-executed cartoon that managed the tricky
task of getting us to enjoy one of our least
favourite Beatles songs. The charming tale of a
serial killer and his favourite weapon.
http://snipurl.com/gl1s
>> Schoolkid forums <<
This is a good reason why it's a bad idea to allow
secondary school children anonymous, unmoderated
access to the school yearbook. A sweary, puerile
treat.
http://snipurl.com/gl1r
>> Magic mural man <<
Well, okay, there really isn't any magic. But
what's amazing in these pics is how much difference
a bit of paint makes to ugly, blocky buildings.
http://jimvestments.com/mural/
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: THE PAINFUL RETURN
of funny names corner
Let us introduce you to Dr Tits.
* Dr. Tits received a 1985 NSF Presidential
Young Investigator Award.
* Dr. Tits' main research interests lie in
various aspects of numerical optimization.
* Dr. Tits' group have developed
software packages.
He also has a quite lovely beard.
http://www.enee.umd.edu/~andre/
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: WHAT B3TA PEOPLE HAVE BEEN MAKING THIS WEEK #2
B3ta FP widget & Tech support animation
>> Konfabulator: B3ta image viewer <<
Keen web watchers will have read the news
of Yahoo buying Konfabulator. This tech is
pretty exciting stuff, as it allows you to
run mini applications (or widgets) based on
websites on your desktop, and it doesn't
care if you're on a Mac or PC. Dave Barton
has bashed up a quickie that takes the
images from the front page of our website
and then sticks them in a lovely little
frame on your desktop. Great for decorating
your second monitor (if you're posh, like,
and have two.)
Right, so first you need to install
Konfabulator.
http://www.konfabulator.com/download
Then you need to run the widget. All we
need now is LCD wallpaper so we can decorate
our house with lovely gifs.
http://www.b3ta.com/download/b3ta.widget
>> Tech support woes <<
"Myself and a colleague have come up with this",
screams 'Rolf Harris', "a character called Jebs
and we've animated in 3D a fantastic sketch of
him as the office technical support guy."
Woo. This is all, like, properly animated and
stuff. How nice.
http://www.weakendproductions.co.uk/movs/jebsjobs....
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: QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Weddings
Each week we collect your stories, anecdotes
and lies into one handy place on the interweb.
Last week we asked for your wedding stories:
http://b3ta.com/questions/weddings/
Here's a selection of the shorter ones:
* No one wants to upset a blind man
"At a cousin's wedding reception, I noticed
another reception in the hotel next door. I
have an uncle who's blind and a bit of a laugh.
He lent me his dark glasses and stick. Cue me
walking down the line of bride, groom and
family in the hotel next door, doing the
shaking hand bit, and telling them what a
lovely ceremony it had been. They were all
pointing at me and mouthing "Who's he?"...
I then asked the DJ to play a Stevie Wonder
tune, and stood in the middle of the empty
dance floor doing my best Stevie Wonder
playing the piano impression. Half way through
the tune I had to do a runner because I could
hold back the laughter any more." (Edenmonster)
* Welcome to the Family, son
"I was invited to the wedding of one of my
home town's largest criminal families (I was
very matey with bride's brother). The bride
was 17, the groom 30. She was obviously knocked
up. He was at least 22 stone. All went smoothly
until the groom's mates thought they'd help
themselves to the wedding cake using their hands,
before the happy couple had cut it. The bride's
family took umbrage to this, particularly the
bride's brother who promptly plunged the cake
knife into the best man's stomach. All hell
broke loose, with chairs, tables, bottles,
glasses and cutlery being thrown. My most
lasting memories of the evening had to be
the bride slipping over on the best man's
rapidly pooling blood - concussing herself -
and the bride's father lovingly stamping on
his new son-in-law's head whilst screaming
'Cunt! Cunt!'" (bigmeuprudeboy)
* Mr and Mrs Bishop
"I was 10, it was my cousin's wedding, and there
was champagne by the bucketload, with lots and
lots of half empty glasses lying around. I
decided to be helpful and finish them up for
the nice people. Pretty soon I was unable to
work out why everyone was smiling and laughing
at me (apparently drunk 10 year olds are quite
easy to spot). Speech time came and at the end
of it my uncle proposed a toast to the happy
couple, Mr and Mrs Bishop... I jumped up onto
the table and hollered, "to Madge and Harold!"
(starfish)
...And the best response to the "any lawful
impediment to this couple being married"
question has to be 'browser's friend's brother
who shouted "cos he's a fucking gaybo" at the
top of his voice.
>> This Week's Question <<
We'd like to know the strange traditions that
have been imposed on you. Talk to us here:
http://b3ta.com/questions/weirdtraditions/
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: B3TA IMAGE CHALLENGE
Results from the Real Life Logos Challenge
Each week we run a competition to test your
creative skills. We set a challenge and you
open Photoshop and mess with our heads.
Last week we wanted you to close photoshop for
a change and recreate corporate logos with
everyday objects:
http://b3ta.com/challenge/reallifelogos/
We asked B3ta boarder 'toxie' to judge the
entries - here are her 3 faves.
toxie writes -
#1 "Lawn attack - For sheer effort, first place
goes to a giant lawn based thing. Just
because. (RedWine)
http://www.b3ta.com/board/4924040
#2 "Saucy hardware - Inspired.I hope he ate it.
(Hunter Kappa)
http://www.b3ta.com/board/4923002
#3 "What better use for a pair of hands?
Though it took me forever to work out what
most of them were." (collapsibletank)
http://www.b3ta.com/board/4921122
>> This Week's Challenge <<
This week, b3ta contributor 'fool_on_the_hill'
gave us the suggestion "Power Strike!"
http://b3ta.com/challenge/powerstrike/
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: WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
Follow-ups on previous stories.
* STUDENT SURVIVOR - Farcicle Pseudonym writes
"I just wanted to thank you for doing
something wonderful for me. A few months
back you featured a little Student Survivor
game, which (if your student survived) also
allowed you to enter a competition. I won,
and will now get my first year's accommodation
at uni for free." Huzzah! Well done you!
* COOKING WITH ELECTRICITY - Regarding your
recent weeks' write-ups on hot dog cooking,
"beams Barnaclese, "The same can be done with
a pickle, except, due to something in the
cellular structure of the ex-cucumber, the
pickle will, in fact, glow when a current is
passed through it." Fancy! Video, please...
* JUANZO THE WOLF BOY - Readers thrilled to the
story of CCC and his (fictional) wolf-boy
baby's entry into the (genuine) beautiful
baby section of his local paper. "Any chance
of an update?" asks emadex. "I live in
Australia and my daughter printed out the
story and took it in for show and tell. Went
down a treat!" CCC replies, "Sorry to report...
Juanzo didn't win." Looks like they caught
on. Bah!
http://voteforjuanzo.blogspot.com
* SPACE WANKING - We asked for it last week.
For some reason. Anyway, a special prize to
all the porn connaisseurs who instantly fired
off emails to tell us about 'The Uranus
Experiment'. A sci-fi porno partly filmed on
the famous 'Vomit Comet' plane. It was entirely
sold on featuring the world's first zero-G
cum shot.
* GEEK SONGS - Obviously inspired by our
irregular feature on the tunes you hum while
doing computer stuff, here is 'Lock the
Taskbar'.
http://taskbah.ytmnd.com/
* MORE GEEK SONGS - p_gasston works as a web
developer. He likes to sing Mister Mister's
HTML classic 'Take... These Broken Links'
when looking at non-functioning anchor tags.
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: FRIDAY GAME
Cursor thief
Keep your mouse-pointer safe from this
persistent little cursor-stealing shit, who'll
stop at nothing to grab a hold of it and smugly
taunt you in Japanese. Brilliant and infuriating.
http://www.onemorelevel.com/games/avoider.html
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: STAR IN NEXT WEEK'S ISSUE
Make something cool and tell us about it. If
you are in it then people will see your stuff.
Things we'd really like to see include
* OFFICE SEX TOYS - and you make a wind-up
vibrating anal dildo out of some rubber
bands and fat marker pen?
* THE GREAT I.T SUPPORT TEST - turn down
the contrast on all the office PCs and
see how long it takes them to fix it.
* MORE KONFABULATOR B3TA - we've got lovely
RSS feeds for you to play with. Go and make
something useful.
http://www.b3ta.com/xml/
Send contributions via the mail form.
http://www.b3ta.com/mailus/
BTW: If you've sent something in that hasn't
been featured then don't be put off - we look
at everything you send us.
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THANKS:
This issue was written by Rob Manuel with
David Stevenson.
Links sent in by Shiksa, tim.brown, Ash,
Felchman, Murray of Commercial Breaks & Beats,
ProfHawking, I'm Meeeelllllltttting, Le Brad,
social hand grenade, stosiem, ian_mclellan & Badger
Top Tippery by CaroWallis / Bad Horsey
Additional linkage by Fraser Lewry.
Mike Trinder is QOTW bloke.
Image challenge handled by Mystery Bob.
Proofing by the postprandial b4ta brandies.
(104123 - 27413)
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TOP TIP:
Don't have an eraser to hand? Don't worry;
ordinary Blu Tak works just as well.
NOT THE TOP TIP:
Make your colleagues think you have an active
social life by sprinkling private appointments
through your Outlook calendar at lunchtime
and in the evenings. Erm. It sounds rather
tragic to us. And that's assuming that your
workmates are going to spy on your Outlook
appointments in the first place.
