06.29
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Cash Register FAIL
by admin ·
Submitted by: Cpt Koller
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This fail picture or video was posted on Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 at 2:15 pm
Archive for June 29th, 2011
06.29
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Garden Swing FAIL
by admin ·
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Submitted by: Unknown
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This fail picture or video was posted on Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 at 3:00 pm
06.29
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5 Ways the New Harry Potter Thing Will be Immediately Ruined
by admin ·
This past weekend, J.K. Rowling announced the creation of Pottermore, a new online Harry Potter community for fans of Harry Potter novels or online communities (but not both). Features of the site will include the ability for users to choose their own “magical” username, and a quiz that promises to sort each user into the appropriate Hogwarts’ House.
Oh great. The wiener house.
Beyond that, how extensive this community experience will be is still unclear. A feature list has been provided (see below), but it’s pretty light on details, especially on the community features. So a single chatroom with “magicy” fonts isn’t outside the realm of possibility. Then imagine 10,000 kids and 70,000 sexual predators simultaneously typing in exclamation points shaped like lightning bolts and you should have a pretty clear idea of what to expect.
Horribly punctuated shrieking is just one reflection of the problem inherent with all online communities — the online community itself. A fanbase is a wonderful thing to have when it’s out “there” somewhere. Really anywhere but “here.” But Rowling might be in for a shock once the real world starts to get involved with her perfect little clockwork universe when she realizes a universal truth: The real world is full of jerks.
Because those jerks love reading about themselves, and because I’m desperate to please, I’ve summarized a list of ways these fellows will jerk up, down, and all around in this Pottermore thing when it eventually comes online later this summer.
As mentioned above, the feature list for Pottermore looks a little weak thus far. The main user experience is centered around “Moments” which appear to be images of famous Harry Potter locations, featuring links to material written by Rowling that sheds more light on parts of the HP universe. If that all sounds a little disappointing, that’s because it’s basically the same feature set as Microsoft Encarta 93.
Beyond the remedial multimedia experience, there will supposedly be a few interactive portions of the site, though it’s still thin gruel. There will be a place for little wizards and witches to submit their own comments, drawings and content, and otherwise interact with the community. Users are also promised the ability to make potions, get in duels and participate in anything else which can be reasonably coded in Flash in a couple hours. Basically, don’t look for any gameplay deeper or more complex than what you could find on the side of a Happy Meal that’s already been filled in.
This is the first big project Rowling has announced since she finished the series, and for it to be a Web 0.4 dumping ground for her to shovel all the notes and trimmings not good enough for her novels is a little insulting.* Expect a heavy portion of the “community experience” to be varying rephrasings of “this sux0rz.”
*Although as a word-shoveler myself, I will admit to a certain professional envy. I doubt I could attract much interest in a website built around the text file I keep full of unusable Scrooge McDuck incest jokes.
If you’ve got the same neuro-chemical imbalances I do, you’ll have flagged the potential for dueling as the most interesting thing in the announced feature list. At least unless it’s implemented as a kind of clumsy version of Pong where you bounce “hexes” back and forth with your “wands,” which now that I’m nearly done this sentence, feels like it probably will be. But if there is real, player vs. player dueling enabled, a whole realm of emergent-gameplay opportunities open up that can be used to wreck everything for everyone. We already know how this will play out — wrecking a community isn’t a new hobby, not since the Vikings invented player-killing in the eighth century. Here’s a summary of existing griefing techniques, loosely adapted to ruin muggle fun.
Friendly Fire
Jerks will hex users in the back, while they’re in the feast hall, shopping in Diagon Alley or begging to please stop hexing them, because they’re only eight-years old.
Spawn Camping
Jerks lurking in the woods outside Hogwart’s Castle, hexing new witches and wizards as they get off the Hogwarts Express. “Why are you doing that?” they yell. “I am Emily’s mother, and you are ruining my daughter’s fun!”Owl Fucking
Again, this will depend on the flexibility of the Pottermore engine, but in a manner similar to teabagging in Halo, if it is possible for an avatar to look like it’s fucking someone’s owl, there will be about a thousand people doing that at all times.
We know it will be free for users to join the site and peruse most of the content, but whether additional content will be available for money is still unclear. We also don’t know whether there will be an in-game economy with Galleons and Knuts and Wizard-Shekels, though at this point, Pottermore doesn’t look like a full-fledged MMORPG, so it seems unlikely. Not that the nonexistence of an economy will stop people from exploiting it. Indeed, it could be easier; they won’t have to have a legion of Chinese laborers in a warehouse butchering Mandrakes for gold around the clock. And a currency’s nonexistence won’t prevent it from being sold to at least some of the users whom, lest we forget, will often be eight-years old.
“I just don’t understand how an eight-year-old could even qualify for taking out a second lien on a house. I … You’d better cry! You’re in a lot of trouble mister.”
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You Can Black Out In Other Colors, Too
by admin ·
White:
Brought on by: A nice glass of White Zinfandel and the new episode of How I Met Your Mother.
Just before: “Boy, I wish I lived on the Lower East Side!”
When you wake up: You are at the Apple keynote address, applauding emphatically for something thin.
Red:
Brought on by: The sight of Sarah Palin’s “One Nation” bus cresting the hill of the land she loves so well.
Just before: “Owning a gun could be pretty fun…”
When you wake up: You are tearing up asphalt with a shovel shaped like an eagle to protest government intervention into private road-building.
Orange:
Brought on by: Oranges.
Just before: “I love oranges!”
When you wake up: You are dead. ORANGES KILL.
Black And Yellow:
Brought on by: BEEEEEEES.
Just before: “WHERE DID THESE GOD DAMN BEES COME FROM?!”
When you wake up: Bees.
Green:
Brought on by: Switching to soy milk in your morning cereal.
Just before: “I’ve been reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, and it’s really making me think about where what I eat, like, comes from?”
When you wake up: You are at a farmer’s market, selling locally produced artisanal cheeses to a guy with a carabiner and a chain lock slung across his chest.
Blue:
Brought on by: Water. Normal, American water.
Just before: “A little water’s never hurt anybody!”
When you wake up: Turns out the water was bees.
Pink:
Brought on by: Dismantling the societally constructed gender binary.
Just before: “Do you prefer zhe or hir?”
When you wake up: You are more conscientious and open, and a valued pillar of your local community. Congratulations!
Plaid:
Brought on by: Being 14 and owning a fedora.
Just before: “Have you guys heard this band, Reel Big Fish?”
When you wake up: You have become the bassist for Badfish: A Tribute To Sublime. Congratulations?
Striped:
Brought on by: “Beetlejuice!”
Just before: “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice…”
When you wake up: Beetlejuice.
Grey:
Brought on by: Just hanging out or something, I guess.
Just before: “I don’t know, what do you want to do?”
When you wake up: Whatever.
Tie-Dye:
Brought on by: Some really powerful vibes that put your chakras into perfect syzygy.
Just before: “You know, there are some pretty incredible uses for hemp.”
When you wake up: You are being pulled onto the Which stage at Bonnaroo to play tambourine with Michael Franti and Spearhead.
Sepia:
Brought on by: Sarsaparilla.
Just before: “Would I look cool if my sideburns and my mustache were a single entity?”
When you wake up: You are writing a letter by candlelight to tell your betrothed of the seizing of Fort Rumrich by rebel forces. Your leg has been amputated at the knee.
Inverted:
Brought on by: Ctrl + Option + Command + 8
Just before: “Ha ha ha, this is so gonna mess with the next person to use this computer cluster!”
When you wake up: You are in Upsy-Down Town, where dogs walk people, the land is ocean, and the president is white.
Blacker Than Black:
Brought on by: A BAC higher than your height in centimeters.
Just before: “Hey you guys, what if I did a kegstand of everything?”
When you wake up: You have peed on everything. Everything has your pee on it.
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Parents Just Don’t Understand: #183
by admin ·
Do your parents not understand technology? Do they ask you stupid questions? Do they send you absurd text messages? If you’ve got an example of your Parents Just Dont Understanding, submit it here!
And thank God well never be as dumb as they are!
My mom keeps asking me to “load down those pictures” from her camera.
C. Wood
Recently, my grandfather decided to get a new laptop so he called me round to his house, like he usually does when he has computer problems, to help him sort some things out when it arrived. When I got there, he told me there wasn’t much left to do as he’d already made a new e-mail address and Facebook account because the others were “saved” onto his old laptop, but the one thing he was still struggling with was “downloading the rest of the internet.”
Scott F
I dated a girl who sent her mother birthday greetings via text message – about 6 months later, the mother replied, “Thank you, but it is not my birthday.”
Josh White
My mom called me complaining of a slow internet connection and when she tried to check her email the connection to the server would time-out. I brought over my laptop to trouble shoot and found that when I connected to her wireless router, I was having the same problem. When I went to reboot the router I found a towel covering both the router and the modem. When I removed the towel and touched the modem I received a burn blister on my hand. When I asked why my mom had covered these components she stated that she did not like the blinking LED’s on the router so she covered it to block out the lights.
T Kochel
My mom and I were taking a flight on Southwest this summer. I pointed out that they had free wifi at the terminal and she said “So we need our own headphones?” What?
Kate M.
I got this Facebook message from a co-worker recently:
“I have lost internet explorer as my search engine. Do you have the address http etc so I can enter it into my search provider box?”
There was too much wrong with this. I couldn’t fathom where to start with the errors, so I just ignored it.
Sniffy XD
My dad and I both have iPhone 4s, and I never knew why it took him so long to answer my texts until today when I watched him send one. He types with his index finger only, and if he makes any kind of mistake he deletes the whole message and starts over again.
Riley Stone
I work at a copy shop. The other day, an older lady came in to photocopy some stuff. She wanted to add a flower to a coloring-in page for her sunday school. She asked for 20 copies of the coloring sheet, 20 copies of the flower, spent 15 minutes cutting out all the flowers and sticking them on each sheet, then asked me to photocopy them all again so it looked ‘authentic.’
Joel MacGregort from Otago U
Whenever my dad sends a text message to someone he uses their name as a 3rd person, i.e. Instead of saying “Make sure you take out the trash” he sends “Make sure Jake takes out the trash.”
Dylan C
Last year, I helped my grandmother get a Facebook account. A few months later, she changed her internet provider from RCN to Comcast, and chose to switch her email address from RCN.com to Comcast.com. After spending hours on the phone with a customer representative, she still did not understand why suddenly typing a completely different email address into facebook.com wouldn’t open her account.
Greg A from Maryland
Today I showed my mom how to delete more than one e-mail at a time.
Meredith H
Submit yours here!
06.29
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Hyperspeed FAIL
by admin ·
Submitted by: Unknown
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This fail picture or video was posted on Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 at 8:00 am
06.29
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Sign Comprehension FAIL
by admin ·
Submitted by:
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This fail picture or video was posted on Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 at 9:00 am
06.29
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6 Beloved 80s Toys With Bizarrely Horrifying Origin Stories
by admin ·
Most Gen-Xers don’t realize that they owe many of their Christmas memories to the FCC. During the early ’80s, parents became concerned by the kinds of things their kids were seeing on TV, so they asked for new rules regulating advertisements shown during kids’ shows. Bowing to pressure from the White House and from toy makers, the FCC responded to these concerns by pretty much deregulating children’s television altogether. Kids’ shows quickly became half-hour commercials for toy lines, which parents began buying at unbelievable rates.
What is strange is that, given the chance to create simple stories and background information on their products, toy makers instead took the characters’ mythology to bizarre, dark places.
It’s hard to overstate how big of a deal the Cabbage Patch Kids were in the ’80s. Riots over the latest Christmas toy are all too familiar today, but back in 1982 when Cabbage Patch Kids hit the scene, it was almost unheard of. Determined to be ready for the demands of Christmas ’84, toy makers released storybooks, cassettes and an animated Christmas special describing the adventures of the Cabbage Patch Kids. What they unveiled was a world of sheer madness.
Via Wikimedia Commons
Stare deep into the eyes of your dark fate, my children.
First of all, “Cabbage Patch Kids” is not a cute nickname — they grow from actual cabbages. Which is fine — we understand the makers of a toy line about babies don’t want to have to begin their show with a woman screaming from labor pains. But it just keeps getting weirder from there — the magical cabbages are pollinated by mutated creatures called bunnybees, who drop crystals on them.
Hybrids that scientifically must result from a rabbit sexing a bee.
The kids thus emerge into a world with no parents, and are basically left to fend for themselves until they’re “adopted” (that is, until their doll is bought by some lucky kid whose own parents are willing to face down a stampede to get one). And these kids really need to be adopted quick, because unfortunately their little cabbage patch is in very close proximity to a gold mine owned by the evil Lavender McDade. Lavender is an entrepreneur with a brilliant business plan: kidnap the Cabbage Patch Kids and — get this — turn them into slaves.
To mine the gold, obviously.
Lavender describes her plan in a sassy song from the album:
“I’ve got to stop those Cabbage Kids from finding parents of their own
I’m going to need some henchmen I can’t do it all alone
‘Cause there’s gold here in the valley and the kids cannot go free
I need their little fingers to dig the gold for me.”
Buy some Cabbage Patch Kids, OR THEY WILL FEEL THE WHIP!
Sometime in 1984, there was a conversation over at Tonka Toys that went something like this:
“Hey, I have an idea — let’s import some of those robots from Japan that turn into cars.”
“Well, sir, Hasbro’s already doing that. They’re going to call them ‘Transformers.’”
“Oh … well, what the hell, let’s do it anyway.”
“Good idea, sir.”
Via Wikipedia
And the GoBots were born!
GoBots never gained as much mainstream popularity as the Transformers. For one thing, the toys just weren’t as cool. Even the kids in the GoBots commercials couldn’t seem to summon the enthusiasm needed to promote them.
Sure, buy this shit. Whatever.
But, like the Transformers, the GoBots had their own animated series (Challenge of the GoBots), and the creators knew that to compete for the imaginations of young children, they had to crank that shit to 11.
The show tells us that the GoBots are from Gobotron, a planet that was once home to a race of humanoids, the GoBings. Thousands of years ago, a terrorist group known as the Renegades started a war with a group of peaceful people called the Guardians, which ultimately ruined their planet. OK, that sounds a lot like the Transformers’ back story so far. But here’s where shit gets weird.
Facing extinction, the survivors sought out a man known only as the Last Engineer. Not because he was the most brilliant scientist or because he had a way to fix the planet. No, they needed him because for years, he had been slowly transforming himself into a cyborg by cutting off parts of his own body and replacing them with machinery.
For fun.
The GoBings decided to allow the Engineer to transplant their brains into robot bodies, allowing them to survive as GoBots. He provided these transplants indiscriminately to both sides, Renegade and Guardian alike, until they had all been assimilated.
Via MySpace
“Um, Mr. Engineer … did I do something to offend you?”
When his work was done, the Engineer disappeared and left the two factions to continue fighting. Challenge of the GoBots is set in modern times, which means that the GoBots have been at war for thousands of years. Which is to say, this toy line is about human minds, trapped in metal bodies, trying to destroy each other. Forever.
The Hugga Bunch were a group of cute little plush dolls meant for, of course, hugging!
Awwwww.
In 1985, fans of the dolls tuned in to watch a TV special centered around the Hugga Bunch … and came away needing therapy.
The story centers around Bridget, who is distraught over her parents’ decision to send her beloved grandmother to a nursing home. She is also rather frightened that whenever she hugs her toys, an eerie giggling sound comes from her closet. The mystery is solved when, alone in her room, Bridget is confronted by a terrifying creature emerging from her mirror.
GAH!
The creature is, of course, Huggins from the Hugga Bunch. “We’ve been watching you through the mirror for a long time,” she tells Bridget. Oh, we’re sure you have, Hugga.
The Hugga convinces Bridget to travel through the mirror into Huggaland to find a solution to her problem. There she meets the whole Hugga Bunch, who bring Bridget to the Bookworm for advice about her grandmother. This is where things go from Alice in Wonderland with creepy sentient Peeping Tom dolls to FUBAR.
The Bookworm suggests collecting some youngberries and feeding them to poor grandma. You know, so she’ll be young again and her family won’t force her to go to a nursing home. There’s just one catch: The youngberry tree is protected by an evil sorceress. To get to her, they will have jump down an endless hole to the Land of the Shrubs.
Read: Hell.
There they must travel beyond the River of Glass, defeat the hairy behemoth (aka the scariest creature in the Bible) and steal the youngberries from the evil queen, all without letting the berries touch the ground. The friends jump down the unending pit and make their way to the castle, guarded by the behemoth.
The plan: Hug it, of course! The behemoth transforms from a horrifying monster who’s trying to kill them to, well, just a horrifying monster.
1. Monster. 2. Hug. 3. Elephant.
The creature, now an unsettling blue elephant thing, joins them on their journey into the queen’s castle, where they find the youngberry tree encased in glass. They meet the queen, who is enraged that they wish to take her precious berries (note: they’re the only thing keeping her alive).
Things seem hopeless when the queen imprisons the Hugga Bunch and freezes Bridget in place for all eternity (fortunately, a hug saves her). When the queen is distracted by her own youthful beauty, the gang steals her berries and runs away. The queen, who needs the berries to remain young, shrivels into old age and dies horribly.
Seriously. But hey, at least they got the berries, right?
Score!
Armed with the youngberries, Bridget returns through the mirror to restore her grandmother’s youth. Unfortunately, the berries spill out and disappear, making the whole adventure totally pointless.
Finding herself as the star in what is apparently a goddamned Shakespearean tragedy, Bridget decides to take the only course remaining to her and threatens never to speak to her brother again unless he starts showing some affection. Moved by this tirade, her brother proclaims that he doesn’t want poor grandma to leave, even if she is old and useless. Their father suddenly sees the error of his ways and grandma gets to stay in their home to die the same horrible, inevitable death we just watched the queen die, but in slow motion. Bridget, presumably, returns to her room to smash her mirror into tiny pieces.
Believe it or not, we haven’t yet mentioned the most horrifying thing about this tale of a young lady on a one-way track to the local asylum: The Hugga Bunch won an Emmy.
Via NoFactZone.net
Solidifying the fact that Emmys don’t mean a goddamn thing.
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National Guard Mobilized For University Of Mississippi Class Of ’62 Reunion
by admin ·
OXFORD, MS—With tensions mounting, President Clinton ordered over 2,500 Army and National Guard troops to Oxford Wednesday in anticipation of this weekend’s University of Mississippi class of 1962 reunion.
Troops patrol the Ole Miss campus in anticipation of Saturday’s reunion. Inset: Class of ’62 member James Meredith, the first black to attend the school.
“We are concerned about the possibility of violence,” Clinton said, explaining the mobilization, “and we wish to be prepared for anything that might arise.”
At the center of the controversy is class of ’62 member James H. Meredith—the first black to attend the previously all-white University of Mississippi—who last Friday confirmed that he will attend the class’ 35-year reunion.
According to 1962 senior-class president Fred Brophy, 57, many of his Ole Miss classmates were disappointed and disturbed by the news that Meredith would be attending.
“I’ve got nothing against Mr. Meredith personally—he seems like a fine man and a credit to his race,” said Brophy, a bank vice-president in Jackson, MS. “But I just want to relax and have a good time at the reunion, and part of me is afraid that Mr. Meredith’s presence will stir up a lot of that old trouble all over again.”
Class of ’62 alumnus Wes Judson agreed. “We had to deal with all this integration controversy 35 years ago as students,” Judson, 56, said. “Now, with the civil-rights era behind us and everybody finally equal, we’d just like to enjoy our reunion and spend time with old friends without having to deal with all this mixing-of-the-races business once more. Is that too much to ask?”
Mississippi Map
Added Judson: “Go Rebels!”
Wednesday’s mobilization marked the second major federal intervention into a class reunion this year. On May 24, under Supreme Court orders, nine black members of the Little Rock Central High School class of ’57 were escorted by Arkansas National Guardsmen to their 40th reunion. The first blacks to ever attend the school, the nine were later flown out by Army helicopter when large-scale rioting broke out near a federally integrated buffet table.
“I’m sure no one harbors any ill feelings toward Meredith because he’s black,” Brophy said. “It’s just that a lot of us had our college years somewhat spoiled by all the controversy and societal changes he and other civil-rights agitators tried to stir up, and we’d hate to see history repeat itself.”
In an official statement Wednesday, University of Mississippi chancellor Robert Khayat expressed confidence that this weekend’s reunion will be free of the sort of violence that accompanied Meredith’s matriculation at the school 35 years ago.
“During the 1960s, Ole Miss was the site of a lot of racial tension, no question,” Khayat said. “But things were different then: Blacks were not integrated into white social circles; they were regularly harrassed by police; they had less money and access to education than whites; and their neighborhoods were high-crime areas. America was a very different place.”
The most volatile moment of the reunion could come at 4 p.m. Sunday, when a nostalgic slide show, titled “Dear Ole Miss—Memories Of Yesteryear,” is scheduled. White House officials said that National Guard troops will be on full-alert for the slide-show, which is said to feature photographs from such memorable events as the 1961 Sugar Bowl victory over Rice University; the October 1961 “Magnolia Blossom” homecoming parade; and the March 1963 “Dragging Of The Negro,” in which Meredith was taken from his Baxter Hall dorm room in the middle of the night, beaten, and dragged around campus tied to the back of a pick-up truck.
“Those slides could bring back a lot of memories, and really get people longing for their old college days, if you know what I mean,” Brophy said. “I just hope having all those soldiers there, with their dogs and fire hoses, doesn’t ruin all the fun. After all, some traditions are just too special to leave behind.”
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North Carolina Elects Someone To Run Out For Cigarettes
by admin ·
RALEIGH, NC—In a decisive 91-8 vote Monday, the North Carolina Legislature elected Rep. David Schare (D-Wilmington) to run out and get some cigarettes for his fellow legislators. “Mister Speaker and all my distinguished colleagues, I am honored to accept the post of Smokesman-At-Arms,” Schare said following the vote. “I will do my very best to fulfill my duties faithfully and diligently. So, who wants menthols?” Schare is the 49th person to hold the recently renamed post, which had been called “Faggoteer General” since the state’s first assembly in 1789.
