Categories
Cautionary Tales Eating and Drinking Weirdness

Lei Lei, The Supersized Baby!

It happens to us all, we get a little older, a little lazier, develop a deep and everlasting love of juicy chicken thighs deep-fried to a delicious crisp in a spiced and crumbed coating. Before you know it, you’re umm…you know plump.

You just don’t expect to see an enormously over-weight baby though. All babies are a bit chubby and cuddly, if they weren’t, no-one would have the smelly, noisy things. However really fat babies do exist. In fact, there’s a poor little 10 month old darling in Hunan Province, China that is so huge he weighs as much as an average 6 year old! That’s a whopping 20kg! Apparently Lei Lei isn’t the fattest 10 month old ever – a boy from India, Karan Singh, weighed 22kg at the same age! Lei Lei is being examined by doctors to see whether there is an underlying medical reason for his incredible weight gain. According to his mother, little Lei Lei is absolutely ravenous and puts everything he sees in his mouth – perhaps that’s why he’s so portly?

I feel for the little chap, when I first looked at photos of him, I thought “aw how cute, he looks like the fat happy Buddha”, but pondering the situation later I became more and more horrified at the implications of a 10 month old child weighing so very much. Will his little legs be able to support him when he starts learning to walk? Is his tiny developing cardiovascular system being damaged irreparably? How does his mother keep him truly clean with all those folds of fat? How will he feel when he looks back at Internet posts that refer to him as the Michelin Baby? It’s just heartbreaking really.

[via Daily Mail]

Categories
Awesomeness Mindlessness

So Much of Pun

Puns are a tricky subject. In fact, they’re positively cultish. Either you love them and ROLF everytime your hear one, or you have the urge to punch those nasty punsters in their pie-holes whenever they serve up a piece of their crummy humour. Shakespeare made liberal use of them throughout his work, while Mark Twain considered them the “last and saddest evidence of intellectual poverty”. I think old Twain was being overly harsh. The humble pun’s gene pool is much deeper than you’d think, Wikipedia lists 8 different kinds that have been used to excellent effect by literary and comedic  greats like George Carlin, Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Groucho Marx, and Oscar Wilde. My all time favourite puns come from the Aubrey-Maturin series of novels by Patrick O’Brian, with such gems as:

Why do they call it the dog watch? Because it’s cur-tailed!

Captain Aubrey: “Do you see those two weevils, Doctor?…Which would you choose?”
Dr. Maturin: “Neither. There’s not a scrap of difference between them. They’re the same species of Curculio.”
Captain Aubrey: “If you had to choose. If you were forced to make a choice. If there were no other option.”
Dr. Maturin: “Well, then, if you’re going to push me. I would choose the right-hand weevil. It has significant advantage in both length and breadth.”
Captain Aubrey: “There, I have you!…Do you not know that in the Service, one must always choose the lesser of two weevils?”

I also had a good snigger at this one found by Prawn.

Did you hear the one about the guy who submitted ten puns to a pun contest hoping one would win? Unfortunately no pun in ten did.

For your viewing pleasure today, a selection of our favourite puns told in pictures lie in wait after the jump.

Categories
Animal Kingdom Awesomeness Entertainment Photoworthy

Who Let The Dogs Out 2: Escape to Arniston

I don’t know what you’ve been up to all week but I’ve been sitting at my new desk in a new office for a new job and been battling my way around InDesign. I’ve felt like a retard most of the time but it hasn’t gotten me down (for a change) because I’ve been able to drift off into lovely daydreams about last weekend.

And before any of you jump to conclusions about Prawn’s holey underpants (reference), here’s the real story…

We piled dogs and all into the car and drove through the green and rolling countryside to a self-catering cottage in the utterly charming seaside village of Arniston. The cottage was adequate with a fireplace that worked eventually, and a braai that worked brilliantly (how typical). The village was quiet and peaceful with the only real buzz going on at the hotel on Saturday afternoon when people gathered to watch some rugby thing on the telly.

The beaches right near the village were beautiful but a short walk into the national park revealed panoramic views from cliff top paths, a cave large enough to park a wagon and a span of oxen in, and one of the most spectacular and unspoiled beaches I’ve seen.

We took our dogs everywhere we went and they had an absolute ball. We strolled along sandy roads, peed behind bushes, splashed in the ice-blue ocean, and bought huge delicious oysters from a guy who had “Doctor Satan” tattooed across his forehead. On our drives down country roads we stopped every few hundred metres to have a closer look at fascinating things like birds, bokkies, windmills, and an old ox wagon. Against my better judgement we even climbed the rickety wooden ladders to the top of the lighthouse at Cape Agulhas – it really was worth it though because the view from the top was great.

All in all it was the most fantastic weekend and we’re dying to go back as soon as we can.

See some of our happy snaps after the jump.

Categories
Friday Smackdown

Lucy Furr’s Friday Smackdown – is AWOL

Yes AWOL. Sorry Okes my mind is also unavailable today. I’m in the green snotty grips of a rather nasty bit of  ‘flu, and it’s my last very busy day at a job I loath. So as you can imagine I’m all over the show and hardly have a minute to breathe – not that I really can with my chest as tight as a duck’s bum and my nose as clogged up as MJ’s veins.

As long as I live through the night I promise to post my Smackdown tomorrow or Sunday.

Hope y’all have a rip roaring Friday night, and remember kids don’t drink and drive.

Categories
Entertainment News Useful/Useless Info

Hilarious Newspaper Headlines

I’ve heard that proof-reading is a thankless job. I’m sure that proof-readers and subs on newspapers sometimes just can’t resist slipping a sly and amusing mistake into copy.  Other times of course these “slip-ups” are the result of a lazy incompetent twit. Well, intentional or not, these typos are funny nonetheless.

The Great Arsehole Debate

Truck Leaves Rubber On The Road

See a few more after the jump.

Categories
Awesomeness Friday Smackdown

Lucy Furr’s Friday Smackdown

Hey Kids what’s new?  As you might have guessed, I’m not one of those conscientious bloggers who preps their posts in advance. You can be sure that anything I post was completed split seconds before it appears. Anyway I’ve had a crazy day and hence my Friday Smackdown is later than usual (and it’s usually late).

In addition to my crazy day, my week was pretty horrible too. On a scale of 1 to OMFG it’s a shit tornado, it was about a “it’s raining big fat steaming cow pats” week. In the moments when I wasn’t weeping in the bathroom or biting my nails to the quick or swearing at all and sundry, I was thinking about how great it would be to be a bad guy. Now I’m not talking about some pissy twit who tries and fails to get the better of John McClane, or bland old Agent Smith. I’m talking about the real thing, the real old school kind of bad guy. Two particularly crazy mofo’s came to mind – Tony Montana and Travis Bickle.

This bad guy ROCKS

This bad guy ROCKS

Yes you did see right. Your beady little peepers aren’t deceiving you and you haven’t had too much to drink already. It was way too hard for me to choose between the two. I know I said last time that I would choose no matter what, but I guess I lied and I just don’t care. In my fragile state  I couldn’t think of a single sucky thing about either of them, and also I wanted to be a combination of both of them.

Travis and Tony are both so awesomely bad in their own way. At one point I was seriously leaning towards Travis because he so sincerely believes he’s doing the right thing, and because he eats corn flakes with hard tack, and because he has the wickedest hair style. But then I remembered the cocaine, and the fuck-off big guns and the kick-ass things Tony Montana said and I just couldn’t make my mind up. If you, Dear Reader can convince me that one of these bad asses is badder than the other, I’ll reconsider the draw. So what say you?

Categories
Arty Awesomeness Featured

Julie Heffernan paints magical self-portraits

Today is one of those days when I’d rather be at home, shnuggled up with the dogs watching mindless sitcom reruns and drinking a steaming mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows, Jack Daniels and Prozac. Anyway I’m stuck at my desk and the next best thing is escaping into the internet, and today I found something truly beautiful – the paintings of American artist Julie Heffernan.

The paintings are as David Cohen, New York art critic aptly put, “a hybrid of genres and styles, mixing allegory, portraiture, history painting, and still life, while in title they are all presented as self portraits.” I think they’re what would have happened if Botticelli and Hieronymus Bosch had a baby, and magical realism and fairy tales had a baby, and those two babies had a baby, and that baby had a baby with LSD, and THAT baby could paint.

I can lose myself in Julie Heffernan’s paintings – they make me feel better.

Categories
Awesomeness Cartoons & Comics Entertainment Friday Smackdown

Lucy Furr’s Friday Smackdown

Yes here it is at last…I know that loyal readers (all 3 of you) have been waiting with baited breath all day for my Friday Smackdown. I apologise for the tardiness of this piece – no excuses will be given (except to say that I spent a significant amount of time panicking and driving round in circles in Athlone this morning) but I do apologise profusely.

Anyhoo let’s get down to the dirty business of superheroes. This was a very difficult choice to make, and I have tried my damnedest to consider all aspects of the characters (not just the movies lazybones).

Batman SUCKS

I know he’s a detective and a crime fighter, has pretty successfully kept his superhero identity a secret and probably has a greater chance of success trying to make his home town a safer place than Iron Man has of bringing peace to an entire planet. But seriously all that dark tortured brooding, wearing underpants on the outside, the fact that he’ll never go in for the kill, he let the girl die, and his rather dodgy relationship with Robin make him suck in my eyes.  However I do feel bad about his folks going out like they did (if they didn’t maybe he’d have turned out more like Iron man?)

Iron Man ROCKS

Gotta love that machismo, and the suite, and the awesome techno gadgets, and the flying, and the earnest desire to create world peace, and the fact that he wears his underpants on the inside where they belong. Then again I suppose the womanising  and the ego are a bit over the top some of the time.

I know I’m going to get a whole lotta smacks myself for this one, but I’m ready so bring it on peeps. Tell me who’s your fav  Batman or Iron Man?

Categories
Awesomeness Mindlessness Movies

Happy Star Wars Day

Good morning good peeps and may the 4th be with you. (Big up to MylesO for the awesome pic.)

It’s a shitty, cold, rainy Tuesday here in the Mother City so I thought I’d cheer myself up by posting this little gem – I know it means two Star Wars posts in two days, but I thought you might need something to take your minds off that bat shit crazy Luke and Leia lip locking.

Hope you enjoy this acapella Star Wars tribute.

Categories
Entertainment Friday Smackdown Movies

Lucy Furr’s Friday Smackdown

Hello Dear Reader! Are we all happy little campers because it’s Friday at last? I know I am. It’s only been a three day week for me, but somehow the shorter weeks are even worse than the normal ones. Guess it’s because all the sh*t is condensed. Anyway I’m a bit hung over and slightly on edge (don’t ask, it’s a woman thing) so I thought this week’s Smackdown might as well be contentious.

I’ve decided that a whole District 9 versus Avatar thing is in order.

So here goes nothing or everything or something…

This movie SUCKS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1_JBMrrYw8

This movie ROCKS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjihaK7HfGs

I know I’m not going to get away with just saying that Avatar sucks with you lot, so I’ll explain myself a little. I’ll admit that the CGI and 3Dness of Avatar was awesome, and for the first 40 minutes of the movie I was like a hillbilly at a gun show – all excited and drooling into my popcorn. However my powers of higher reasoning kicked in pretty soon and I realised that the very beautiful pictures didn’t make up for the ailing story line. It has been put much more succinctly by others before me, but Avatar is just Pocahontas in space. Big bad colonisers invade and destroy, the forbidden love that overcomes all, the resolution that allows for the natives to live on peacefully in the end. I also don’t really buy Cameron’s whole “we’re doing it to save the planet” thing – I wonder how big Avatar’s carbon foot print is? How many air miles the cast travelled to promote the film? What the cost is to the environment of producing and shipping millions of DVDs and Blu-Rays? Wouldn’t it have been a more powerful message if Cameron had spent that half billion dollars making a movie that really was all about saving our Earth, not some imaginary planet that exists in the future? I know someone is going to smack me down with the whole art for art’s sake argument in relation to Avatar, and it may be true in other forms, but I’ve always felt that cinema owes us more than just pretty pictures.

District 9 may not have matched Avatar’s CGI awesomeness, but then it only had a fraction of the budget. The beauty of D9 was all in the story, the story and the fact that it was set in South Africa! Yay hooray for SA! The gritty oily depressing plight of a race of prawns stranded indefinitely in grim and dusty Johannesburg meant the story lead your emotions on an insane roller coaster ride the entire length of the film. The character development was excellent and Wikus will always be one of my favourite movie heros. And then there’s the sub-text, D9 can be viewed on many levels ranging from straight up alien skop skiet en donner to the underlying filth of apartheid and xenophobia depending on how you’re feeling.

Well that’s my opinion anyway. What do you think?