NEWSLETTER: "300 NEWSLETTERS? IS THIS MADNESS? NO, THIS. IS. B3333333333333TA!"
This Week:
* BOOK - Cooking with Pooh
* HALLOWEEN - Dalek pumpkin
* QUESTION MARKS - Used "inappropriately"
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________ ____ __ ___
____/ _)|_ // /_/ _ | "We're
___/ _ |/_ </ __/ __ | stealing little
__/____/____/\__/_/ |_| girls... facelessly"
B3ta email 300 - Bootsy Collins Birthday, 2007
Read this issue in your browser:
http://b3ta.com/newsletter/issue300/
Leopard: [email protected]
Vista: [email protected]
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: LOVELY SPONSORED LINK
Discoo T-shirts
Bukkake Ruined My Carpet - our Bestselling Tee
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>> Sponsor B3ta <<
Your brand tattooed on our newsletter bum.
http://b3ta.com/mailus/
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: WHAT B3TA PEOPLE HAVE BEEN MAKING THIS WEEK
Old Men, Grey Men, Cubes and Cats
>> Kitty McCanns <<
Now just to say, we don't necessarily condone
the views expressed in subtitle form by these
conniving kittens. But on the evidence of this,
Monty Propps is clearly demented and we're
scared to offend him.
http://b3ta.com/links/Kitty_Gossip_as_seen_below_w...
>> Grey Bloke tells a joke <<
Madridiot's punchline-free animation series
covers new ground by actually including a joke.
Although, as usual, it's the deceptively bland,
low-key monologue that makes it good.
http://b3ta.com/links/Grey_bloke_tells_a_joke
>> Weebl, Bob and Cube <<
Clearly Jonti's been spending some time playing
Portal as Weebl and Bob frolic with some of the
game's more iconic props.
http://www.weebls-stuff.com/wab/cube/
>> Jim Oldman <<
"Hey," greets allseeingjapseye. "I made a short
film for my friend who does an audio podcast.
He crank-calls the public in the character of
'Jim Oldman'- yes, he is a baffled old man."
http://www.jimoldman.com
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: QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Conned!
Last week we wanted to know if you'd
successfully conned someone or just been taken
for a ride:
http://b3ta.com/questions/conned/
* "When I was a mere 11 years old or so, I went
to a local car-boot sale, and my mum gave me a
quid to spend. With the words 'there are some
things worth much more than that pound on sale
here' echoing in my ears, I saw a kid watching
his mum's stall. He didn't look bright. 'I'll
buy that bit of paper off you for a pound.'
'Um, ok.' 'Thanks.' *exchanges pound for the
tenner* I didn't use any mind techniques, I
just picked on a daft looking kid. And now,
nearly 20 years on I still feel like a heel. My
brother and I dined on cola bottles that
afternoon." (Humpty Dumpty was Pushed)
* "When I was younger I had an argument with my
brother about a nasty smell that was lingering
in the air. 'Wasn't me!' I said. 'Wasn't me
either,' said my brother. 'Was too!' 'Was not.
I can prove it. Smell my bottom.' I lent
forward towards his bent over arse and inhaled
deeply. At which point the complete bastard
farted a wet sloppy one. I'll never fall for
that one again. I was 27."(plant)
* "I was conned by an old man in a cloak. Yeah,
it turned out those were the droids I was
looking for." (abefroman)
If you are going to read just one story, read
this one that's too long to put in the
newsletter:
http://b3ta.com/questions/conned/post95200/
>> This Week's Question <<
What's the most expensive mistake you've ever
made? Minus 500 points for "my marriage".
http://b3ta.com/questions/expensivemistakes/
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: LINKY SPONSOR...LINKY SPONSOR...LINKY SPONSOR..
Timeshift, it's a lovely, lovely game
Controlling time would be great. Sadly we don't
know how, and we can't help you with the legal
complications if you get arrested for pausing
time and peeking at women as they get changed.
We CAN tell you about the amazing new FPS from
Sierra, though, called TimeShift -
http://snipr.com/timeshiftgame
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: SITES IN BRIEF
Stuff we like that wasn't made by our mates
>> Pumpkin Dalek <<
Our local police force has virtually banned
Halloween from a combination of fear of paedos
and worries about kids menacing grannies. But
life out of the inner-city slums is a more
nostalgic affair, harking back to when geeks
made their own entertainment by case-modding
fruit into robots.
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/DalekP...
>> Kitsch firearms <<
On pretty much every blog this week is this
alarming and naff collection of guns decorated
with kids' cartoons and rubbish celebs.
Includes a Mother Teresa rocket launcher, Care
Bear ammo jacket and a Lady Di Magnum. (Maybe
her younger son could get one, and outdo his
Nazi uniform stunt with a tasteless Dirty Harry
gag?)
http://www.glamguns.com/mothat.html
>> Hypno toy <<
Back in pre-history days when we were wondering
what b3ta should be about, a quickly rejected
thought was a trippy stuff blog, logging a
series of weird flash things that might look
good after a smoke. Stuff like this:
http://mrdoob.com/lab/pv3d/dof/05/
>> Family Fortunes <<
"I was playing an online version of Family
Fortunes the other day when this question came
up..." writes Ehehanne. Blimey. Swirly Face Man
would be proud.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v41/aleox/b3ta/u...
>> Inappropriate quotation marks <<
A game we sometimes play whilst walking the
streets of London is to place imaginary
inverted commas around words on signs and see
how it changes the meaning. A favourite
recently is the shop Mary Shoes, or as we like
to think of it "Mary" Shoes. This site is
similar, but real.
http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/
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: VIDEO SCHMIDEO
Apparently Guy Ritchie's wife has been asked to
star in a tutorial on putting videos in
Facebook profiles. It's called "Embed with
Madonna."
>> 'Glamorous' weather girls <<
Purporting to be 'New Zealand's hottest weather
forecast', the Weather Angels is an
extraordinary swerve to the lowest common
denominator by the meteorological industry.
Mind you, we were still looking at their tits
while being appalled.
http://snipurl.com/kiwibirds
>> Wake up cat <<
Cute animation of a little cat exhausting all
his tricks to wake up his sleepy owner. We
wouldn't put this behaviour past a cat -
they'll stop at nothing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch
>> I can be your Facebook stalker <<
Plaintive plea to a hot girl on Facebook. Guess
it's a relationship of a kind. Some nice
touches of obsessional detail, like a route
planner with exact times marked.
http://www.youtube.com/watch
>> Even bastards become top blokes after death <<
When people die their faults are quickly
airbrushed over. Apparently, this song caused
quite a stir when it broadcast in Australia.
We're not sure which of the dead celebrity
savagings would have kicked up the stink. Maybe
it was Diana. Yeah.
http://snipurl.com/bigdownunder
>> Oscilloscope demo <<
Impressive graphics display from a bloke with
an oscilloscope plugged into his PC. It's a
low-tech phantasmagoria and we like to imagine
the technical instrument salesman trotting out
this beauty to wow his boffin customers.
http://www.b3ta.com/links/Oscilloscope_demo
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: FUNNY NAME CORNER
Cooking with Pooh
Wipe that shit-eating grin off your face, it's
an innocent cookery book for kids.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1570822611/...
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: T-SHIRT OF THE WEEK
I Love Horse
José el Gorrion smirks - "I really like your 'I
love Heroin' T-shirt, but here's a word of
warning, when I was at Glastonbury a few years
ago, I made a T-shirt with the slogan 'I Love
Smack' and wandered around with it on. During
the following 30 minutes of wearing it, I was
threatened with death by deranged junkies on
five separate occasions. They didn't appear to
like the bane of their life being lightly
mocked in sartorial form." Aha. But this week
you should be ok with our 'I love Horse' shirt
complete with a LloydsTSB Bank-style black
stallion mainlining skag into an equine vein.
http://www.iloveheroin.com
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: B3TA IMAGE CHALLENGE
Results from the Infidels Challenge
Last week we wanted to see propaganda against
the West.
Your favourites included:
* CHART - either fiendishly clever double-speak
or fundamentalist extremism - we're not too
sure (londoner)
* MEDIA - it's a rare b3ta image that makes
poignant points regarding history, urban
planning, sexism and the media, but here's one
(clopinettes)
* TREKKIE - revealing the tragic human story
behind the terrible events of 9/11
(Smallbrainfield)
All these images, and the highest as voted by
you can be found here:
http://www.b3ta.com/challenge/infidels/
>> New challenge: Spoonerisms <<
Is the Lord a loving shepherd or a shoving
leopard? This week's challenge is to portray
Spoonerisms, those cheeky plays on words in
which consonants, vowels etc. are switched
round to great amusement. Challenge suggested
by The Hedgehog From Hell.
http://www.b3ta.com/challenge/spoonerisms/
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: WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
Follow-ups on previous stories.
* KITTENWAR BOOK LAUNCH - Radio Five was at the
glittering premier of Fraser and Tomsk's
publishing magnum opus and here's the broadcast
result. Also, brief chats with Joel, Rob and
some lolcats guy. Good stuff.
http://b3ta.com/links/Radio_5_Live_at_the_Kittenwa...
* CUPCHICKS AGAIN - as part of our perversely
unceasing promotion of a site we didn't like
and would advise you not look at. Slippydisco
fell into the same trap and put 'urging you not
to visit www.cupchicks.com. Just don't do it,
ok? I'm scarred for life' as his Facebook
status. "So the majority of my Facebook friends
(school teachers, council workers etc.) decide
to look," he reveals with some glee. "I
received loads of emails questioning my sanity
and sexual desires. Now my proper mates are
fine about it but cautious around me and the
'pretend' mates have blocked me and think I'm
someone who gets off on shit eating, puking
lezzas." Wethinks he doth protest too much.
* MP3 SEARCH ON THE iPHONE - cr3ation has made
a version of his awesome free mp3 searcher for
the smug iPhone-owning set. Looks good.
Although it is intended for the phone and your
PC won't thank you for trying to use this
version on it.
http://www.b3ta.cr3ation.co.uk/site/music-plus/iph...
* WIQUOPEDIA - a couple of weeks ago we
newslettered a suggestion that people might
like to add tiny pictures of Status Quo to high
resolution images on Wikipedia. A kind of
not-shit "Where's Wally." This didn't go down
too well with one Wikipedia editor who took it
upon himself to savagely remove half the B3ta
article, leaving some sentences incomplete and
incompressible, and deleting the Rob Manuel
entry. The reason given? "a website of
questionable notability whose members have
specifically targeted Wikipedia for
hard-to-find vandalism." Despite this
unpleasantness we're very pleased to report
that other editors look a more thoughtful
approach and restored the pages to their former
glory. This makes us extremely happy, as
despite our playful nature, we LOVE wikipedia,
and our poking about is only the over-friendly
love of a man who squeezes his kitten too hard.
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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
* IF I DID IT - a book by Kate McCann.
* NOODLESMAID - Stick a Pot Noodle in a
Teasmaid. And Cock-a-noodle-doo! Fresh,
delicious noodles in the morning, the perfect
seven-day breakfast for the busy bachelor.
* A COMMUNITY ARTS THEATRE, in West London,
named, wait for it, Lights! Camera! Acton!
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. Stuff sent in by Black Books,
Gerbilinafishtank, Glum Reaper, Matt Smith,
Bigeyedeer, Saltygoodness and Ana. Additional
linkage and image challenge by Fraser Lewry.
Mike Trinder is QOTW bloke. Single quotes in
double quotes to b4ta. ("''") Subject line from
The Great Architect with that bloke, you know
the one, yep, Scaryduck. Xing the Y from Glued
Eel.
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SICKIPEDIA:
What is the difference between a cow and a
tragedy? A scouser wouldn't know how to milk a
cow.
http://www.sickipedia.org/tag/scousers
