Mark A. Rayner's Blog: Mark A. Rayner's Goodreads Blog, page 152

Web Site Story - a musical interlude

And now a musical interlude: a charming parody video from College Humor. You can find it here if the embedded thingy doesn't work.

Alltop and humor-blogs.com are the Jets and Sharks of the comedy world.

Ten indisputable facts about Canada (Part Two: Culture)

To commemorate Canada Day, I decided it would be useful to clear up some common myths people have about Canada and its culture. I thought it might be especially helpful here at The Skwib, since many of its readers come from other parts of the world. You may want to read Part One, about Canadian history, first:

Six: Hockey

If you are familiar with Canada, you may have heard something about hockey — or ice hockey, as it is known in countries where other, sissified forms of hockey are more popular.

Ten indisputable facts about Canada (Part One: History)

To commemorate Canada Day tomorrow, I thought it might be useful to clear up some common myths people have about Canada and Canadian history. Many of the readers of The Skwib come from outside Canada, so this brief history may be especially helpful to you (though we Canadians can always learn more about our rich history too):

One: The Vikings

The first Europeans to arrive in Canada were the Vikings, in 1009, making this the 1000-year anniversary of this important (factual) historical event. Thei

Does your robot rule, so to speak?

Hyper-Clones everywhere may be asking themselves, "sure I have a robot, but is it lethally well-endowed?"

Now you no longer have to worry about the embarrassment of a neuter robot filled with compassion or, God forbid, a total lack of equipment. Here at Por-No! Industries (A Division of Metro-Phallus), we have been working on the age-old problem of wankerless robotry for more than four hundred years, and we have finally developed the ultimate in death-dealing, tally-whackered self-directed autom

Fuck it, I’m having a donut

News out of the journal Obesity (I buy it for the photos), shows that being moderately overweight actually improves your odds of not dying early.

Compared with people in the “normal” range of the BMI — the misused and misguided body mass index, which charts your height and weight and determines if you are “normal”, overweight or underweight — people who were moderately overweight were 17 percent less likely to die than people in the normal range.

This is really more of a condemnation of the BMI th

Carnival of Satire (#115)

Well, I have to be honest: the altruistic thing didn’t work out too well. Of all the submissions to this edition of the Carnival of Satire, only two followed the new guidelines. Perhaps they are just too complicated, and I need to rephrase them: submit the best satire of the month written by someone who is not you, and give me the link to that. That said, I’ve plunged ahead and found some worthy posts for you to peruse, but we’ll start with the submissions:

Mad Kane found this truly hilarious

X Saves the World

As a card-carrying member of Generation X, I saw this old ad on JibJab, and thought immediately thought, oh, so that explains why the Boomers screwed everything up so badly:

Click here if the embedded video didn’t work.

I think I may need to read X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft But Can Still Keep Everything from Sucking.

Alltop and humor-blogs.com are slackers too.

The Tragic Story of Larry and Wanda Pogo

Unlike all the other inhabitants of Planet Heliumbag, Larry and Wanda were unable to levitate at will. This was a genetic problem that could not be cured with standard DNA Invasion (TM) technology, and so, they had to go through life, drearily trudging around their homeworld, which was not designed for “terrestrials” as they were so cruelly called by the indifferent, bloated citizens of Heliumbag. (Most entrances to buildings were at least thirty feet off the ground, so both Larry and Wanda le

MONKEY SEE (A Gorilla of a Review)

MONKEY SEE is a charming and satirical examination of the question: “what would happen if monkeys could talk, and they had their own 401(k)s?”

It is also a love story, an etiquette manual for talking apes, parenting help for said primates, and a demented “how-to” guide for the aspiring evil scientist.

You’ll notice I used the words “evil scientist”, not “mad scientist”, because really, you can’t explain anything to mad scientists. They spend most of their time frothing at the mouth or terrorizing

Apocalypse Cow

[image error]Nick over at Name Your Tale asked me to guest pen one of their stories. In case you haven’t ever been to the site, it’s kind of a neat idea. Anyone can submit a title idea, and then the busy scribblers at NYT pen a 100-word masterpiece to fit it.

Every tale has to be exactly 100 words, including Apocalypse Cow.

Alltop and humor-blogs.com are also catastrophic cattle.