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I don’t know if they’re actually airing these adverts Stateside, or whether they’re a web-only phenomenon for the moment, but Penny Arcade drew my attention to them today. Colour me unimpressed. If the intention was to shake off Vista’s sales blues, or to generally ‘connect’ with the wider consumer in a way that Apple does so well but Microsoft almost never does, but I’d have to classify this effort as a failure of sizable proportions.

Maybe it’s me; maybe I just don’t ‘get’ Seinfeld-style humour, or maybe it’s that Bill Gates really doesn’t remotely inspire or entertain me (making skiploads of cash every nanosecond might inspire some people to revere him, but not me). From my perspective though this is a fairly poor attempt at deadpan humour which leaves me with an impression of Gates being even more of an arrogant but incredibly dull grey suit than I thought before. Worse - it seems his thinking is that acting like a dull grey suit in wacky surroundings will somehow make him endearing and amusing, which couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s equivalent to your Uncle Henry who, despite bearing an unnatural affinity with tweed, thinks he can transform into John Travolta when he hits the wedding reception dance floor. Deeply painful to watch.

Tip to Microsoft - if you want endearing consumer-friendly ads, write Gates out of the script next time, he’s a dead weight.

*edit: I know this is old news but I’m behind a little, very busy lately!

You’ve no doubt heard about the first tests of CERN’s LHC today, but the folks at Reddit are clearly ahead of the game on this and are making sure that the scientists are adequately prepared for the discoveries that may be around the corner. They’ve taken the prudent step of sending CERN a crowbar, a copy of the Half Life Strategy Guide, and a ‘training headcrab’, together with a simple note:

“Get this to Gordon Freeman. He’ll know what to do.”

When pan-dimensional hell breaks loose, we’ll know who to thank for our ultimate salvation.

I blogged a little while ago about the soul-crushing tedium that was my brief, never to be repeated experience with EVE Online. Well, happily Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation has waded in with his size 9’s and had me cheering from the stands in between chuckles.

Amen, brother Yahtzee, amen.

This is one of my favourite recent ZeroPunctuation episodes, after all what’s not to love when he can somehow find a way to include a Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick & Tich reference in a MMORPG review?

The Muppets were cool. But, times have changed and now we have Fur TV, a distinctly adult, brazen take on the kind of belly laughs you can get out of glorified sock puppets. I’ve caught it a couple of times on TV recently and the first time I randomly came across it I almost choked on my late-night cup of tea. Like all shock-comedy I’m not sure it’ll be long-lasting, but damn is it funny right now. It’s made in the UK too!

Warning: I’ve posted clips that are some of the ‘cleanest’ on offer (for example, there is no pimping in either of these clips), but if you’re easily offended, don’t watch

The Guernsey Festival of Comedy was great last year, and so we snapped up tickets to this year’s local stand-up event, since the only other way we’d get to see acts like this is to travel to a major city. Paul Tonkinson was headlining this year which made it a no-brainer, we’ve seen him on the Comedy Store before and he’s always excellent.

As expected it was a great night, Paul didn’t disappoint in the slightest and thus crowned the evening off perfectly, but the other acts were really good too. In particular Janice Phayre, whom we hadn’t seen before, but who I can best describe as a hyperactive ball of slightly filthy Irish comedy energy. Great stuff.

There were actually some empty seats this time around which was surprising, and I hear that they still have some spare tickets for one or other of Saturday’s performances (Friday is sold out), so if you’re local and you haven’t been yet, I highly recommend it.

And just on a weird tangent, while searching for an image for this post I randomly came across The Bezathon. Awesome

Here’s what happens when you have an RC car, a bunch of empty bottles, and way too much time on your hands:

Genius.

I can’t be the only person amused at the prospect of the Village People taking an offensive stance against Pirate Bay. For a start, although I know it’s all just legal wrangling, I have this mental image of 6 slightly camp men dressed as native americans, police officers, construction workers etc storming a pirate stronghold, an image which will probably keep me chuckling for days. Maybe they’d resolve the whole thing through a Zoolander style walk-off. You definitely wouldn’t want to mess with these guys on the catwalk.

But even better, who have they chosen to be their brother in arms in this titanic struggle against the forces of darkness? Prince of course! It’s a perfect parody set-up right there, just imagine the scene in the briefing room of a warship approaching the Pirate Bay stronghold - Prince is the fashionably stubbly but admittedly rather short commando leader, laying out the attack plan and motivating his disparate band of badly-dressed warriors before the final show-down - the major component of said plan being of course to distract the enemy with catchy disco moves, before winning them over with sing-along motivational lyrics.

Or maybe I just have too active an imagination.

I don’t know if this is particularly British thing, but the ‘QuizCom’ has been a staple here for many years. If the term is alien to you, a QuizCom is notionally a ‘quiz show’, except that no-one actually gives a flying monkeys about the score and it’s really just a vehicle for comedy - sometimes topical, often satirical. One of our TV channels ‘Dave’ made January ‘QuizCom month’ and showed loads of them, and it’s always fun to catch. Here are my favourites:

• Never Mind the Buzzcocks - this one is for the music lovers, has been going for over 10 years now, and is probably my all-time favourite. Unfortunately the show’s fantastic long-time host Mark Lamarr, moved on in 2005 and it hasn’t quite been the same since; the new regular Simon Amstell hasn’t really stepped out of Lamarr’s huge shadow yet, although the show has had some good guest hosts, notably Ricky Wilson of the Kaiser Chiefs did a pretty good job. Bill Bailey and Phil Jupitus are reliable stalwarts though, and the writing is still good even without Lamarr’s particular acerbic edge.
•  QI - the relative newcomer but I’ve grown to like this one a lot; this time the theme is unusual and slightly geeky trivia. Because you get negative points for answering with the ‘obvious’ or widely accepted answer (that’s actually untrue), it’s not uncommon for most people to finish with negative scores - not that anyone cares. Stephen Fry is of course always superb, and Alan Davies is a perfect foil to his intellectual bent (no, that’s not a euphemism).
• Have I Got News For You - the granddaddy of them all - it’s been running for about 18 years now and doesn’t show any sign of stopping. Hyper-satirical look at the week’s news by Paul Merton and Ian Hislop (of  Private Eye) which is a must if you’re at all interested in current events. Long-time host Angus Deaton got fired when he got into a sex & drugs scandal which meant the panel was taking the piss out of him more than the news on the show, but a string of quality guest hosts has kept it going. Probably famous for launching Boris Johnson’s career as the country’s ‘lovable political buffoon’.

I don’t watch lots of TV, but I can always make a bit of time for Buzzcocks or QI especially. Class.

PS3ology

If you missed the whole Tom Cruise Scientology vid thing last week, best go look it up first, since this is just sending that up.

Portal’s ‘Still Alive’ - covered by an 8080