I don't think I ever heard any of these in person. I do remember the "wrong kind of snow" excuse though. BBC NEWS | Magazine | Going Loco - your bizarre train tales
Some good advice to those in the UK who are unused to snow. A user's guide to snow. I do remember when I lived in London that one year there were snow falls heavy enough to cut off some parts of the south of England. Here in Austin though the slightest fall brings the city to a complete halt. Snow's not unknown though, it just never stays on the ground very long, probably a couple of hours max.
From the Independent newspaper in the UK, found via plasticbag.org comes this wacky court transcript. On a similar note my brother, who's a chartered surveyor, has actually heard a barrister utter the famous phrase I put it to you that your testimony is a tissue of lies.
Spotted on Slashdot. A link to this Microsoft ad purporting to be a freelance writer who switched from Mac to Pc (apparently the page has been removed, here's the Google cache copy). Of course the text rings pretty false but even more damming is the fact discovered by this Slashdot poster that the image of the "switcher" is a stock photograph. Oh boy, not a grass roots switch but an astroturf campaign like others Microsoft have tried.
For the few people around who haven't seen it, which included me till Friday, here's Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About. Most amusing.
spamradio produces programming by having a computer read spam email over a background of ambient music. Sounds very strange.
A parallel idea inspired by this. What about paranoid radio? Use the postings in some of the wackier usnet groups as source material. Have several voices, with changing volume levels, but generally all whispering, read several of these at the same time. The overlapping voices and the strange content could make for a pretty interesting effect.
A repurposing of a joke from a book called "No Laughing Matter: A Collection of Political Jokes". In the original the protagonist is the manager of a collective farm, who fails to fulfill his quota and then suffers from a failed harvest. The theme is universal though.
When the CEO took office he found two letters in his desk. They were from his predecessor and with them was an instruction to keep them safe and open them when he got into difficulties.
Some years later the company failed to meet its sales targets, the CEO remembered the letters and opened the first one. It said:
Blame everything on me.
This advice proved successful, and for a while his position was secure. But then there was a problem with a major customer and the going got rough again. The CEO opened the second letter. It said:
Prepare two letters.
A site that publishes company's internal memos. INTERNALMEMOS.COM - Internet's largest collection of corporate memos and internal communication Lots you have to pay to read. Some are free. Hard to tell how true they are. Interesting to know how legal this is.
A list of quotes taken from chat sessions that contains some absolute gems, and a lot that aren't very clean but are pretty funny. I think that some of those inifinite number of monkeys that were working on Shakespeare plays have moved on to IRC and are working on a sitcom.
<Raize> can you guys see what I type? <vecna> no, raize <Raize> How do I set it up so you can see it?
I found this on haddock.org
Three sets of spoof banner ads. Of the first set my favorite is the XCam one. The second set is even funnier than the first. Of these I like the Windows, and Oracle ones the most. Finally, so far anyway, the third set. These are the best of the lot. And to prove my total lack of bias...
A list of what the author considers the 20 worst games of all time. The descriptions are pretty funny and sometimes rise to the level of inspired foulmouthed rant that, for example, tvgohome reaches in it's finer moments.
An funny article from the Guardian in the UK. Interesting how children can always find some music that annoys their parents.