Nutz: Chasing a Noodle

I used to be indecisive... now I'm not so sure. 

This Website Has Moved

Just to let you know that Nutz: Chasing a Noodle has now moved to its own dedicated website called 'Chasing a Noodle'. Please update your bookmarks and web links. The new website can be found here .

Alastair

Bookmark and Share

Comments [1]

Funny Google Search Suggestions

Google's Autocomplete has provided some fun and quirky suggestions since Google fully launched the service back in 2008. For those who don't know what Google Autocomplete is: when you start typing words into the Google search engine, Google provides a list of possible suggestions (from its search algorithm) to complete your query.

So, I tried a few searches today, using google.co.uk, and here are some screenshots of the funny results...

Filed under  //   Humour   The Internet  
Bookmark and Share

Comments [1]

The Handbag of Fire!

Last Thursday evening I was sitting in a wine bar with a couple of friends, partaking in some 'man chat' (travel, women, football… what else do men talk about? Ah yes, Top Gear). Across the room sat a table of ladies, enjoying a Christmas party. They, too, were busy drinking and chatting (travel, men, netball… what else do women talk about? Ah yes, the X-Factor ;) ).

As we approached the end of the evening, my friend pointed across to the 'table of ladies' and casually muttered the words "there's going to be a fire in a minute." I glanced across to observe that a handbag, belonging to one of the girls, was perched precariously close to one of the table candles. It seemed that every time the lady leaned over to talk to her friend, her elbow pushed the bag nearer to the candle.

Sensing the danger, I leapt up, as if I'd been bitten on the bum by an steel toothed antelope (quite impressive to behold, believe me), and scampered across the room, in a scene reminiscent of the film Backdraft (for those who don't know, Backdraft was a film about fire fighters, not a documentary about flatulence). The way I saw it, I had three options:

1) Give them a rendition of my cleverly adapted Kings Of Leon song… "you….. your bag is on fire…." (that's the first time I've ever exchanged sex for a bag)

2) Nudge the bag away from the candle flame and then give her a lecture on how she should be more careful with her incredibly (in)expensive bag.

3) Grab a fire extinguisher and enthusiastically spray foam over the bag, table and everyone sitting around it (just to make sure that the fire doesn't spread). Not only would I put the fire out (with any luck), but I would also fulfil a childhood ambition.

Approaching the table, I realised that the handbag was already on fire (the handle was alight). So, no time for option 1, and option 2 went straight out of my mind - it was time to be Russell Crowe, not Russell Grant. I grabbed the bag with both hands and shook it to fan out the flames. Within a few seconds, the flame was extinguished. Wow, what a hero. I stood back and waited for the gratitude… but like a British Airways Christmas plane flight, it didn't arrive.

Instead of rapturous applause and a big kiss on the cheek (from each of them, apart from the one that looked like a man!), the group of drunken girls just sat there, staring at me. I imagine it took some of them a little while to fathom out what had just occurred. It probably also took some of them a little while to focus on my blurred figure, having just consumed their twelfth Mojito. Sensing the awkwardness of the situation, I didn't stay around to chat; instead retreating to my table to discuss my "heroics" with my friends. It was at that point that I started to remember about how precious handbags are to women.

Separating a woman from her handbag is a bit like trying to walk off with her arm or leg. Handbags are a precious part of them and they don't let them out of their sight easily. So, me going up and grabbing that lady's handbag was probably a little bit like me wandering up and clutching a handful of her breasts - quite shocking, I imagine.

To sum up: I had saved the lady's priceless £10 M&S handbag from a trip to handbag heaven and stopped the rest of the table, ceiling and wine bar from going up in smoke. My reward for all that: being looked, and giggled, at like I was a pervert at a pool party. Maybe I SHOULD have grabbed her breasts after-all... it seems I was destined to feel a tit either way! ;)

Istock_000009687541xsmall

Filed under  //   Humour   My Rants  
Bookmark and Share

Comments [0]

The Ultimate Christmas House Decoration

Media_httpwwwjonathanmacdonald

I saw this on another Posterous blog and thought I would share it. Jonathan Macdonald decorated his house with this brilliant Christmas creation this year. However, it proved rather controversial and he had to take the fake man down after only two days. The most impressive incident occurred when a 65 year old lady picked the ladder up (weighing 35 pounds) and attempted a dramatic rescue. It was only when she got to the top of the ladder that she realised that the body was fake. I bet Jonathan was wiped from her Christmas card list after that.

Filed under  //   Festive   Humour  
Bookmark and Share

Comments [1]

Christmas Is For Animals Too...

A funny Christmas music video created by the BBC's Breathing Places team...

Filed under  //   Festive  
Bookmark and Share

Comments [1]

The Christmas Word Tree

So, what does Christmas mean to people? As a festive experiment, I used the information provided by Wikipedia's Christmas article to produce this Christmas Word Tree. By inputting the text into the fantastic tool at Wordle.net, I was able to produce a tree shaped word cloud. I then used some basic Photoshop Christmas artistry for extra effect.

The more frequently a word features in the Wikipedia Christmas article, the more prominently it appears in the tree.

The Nutz Christmas Word Tree (click image to view larger version)

Nutz Christmas Word Tree

Filed under  //   Festive  
Bookmark and Share

Comments [2]

The Ultimate 'Secret Santa' Gift

So, you're taking part in the office Secret Santa for this year. You've pulled the name 'Derek' out of the hat and you really have no clue what present to buy him. You don't know much about the guy, other than that he is impartial to a curry on any night ending in 'y'. Last week you went into the office toilet straight after him and, well, it smelled like an old tramp's jockstrap in there (I'm only guessing at how bad that smells, by the way!).

Fear not, for help is at hand. I have found a way of killing two turtle doves with one stone. Here is the perfect gift for you to give to Derek; one that will make your (and every other office worker's) daily toilet breaks much more bearable. Welcome to the world of:

Poo Pourri... "spritz the bowl before you go and no-one else will ever know"... (unless you then proceed to shit on the floor, presumably)

Poo-pourri

Filed under  //   Festive   Humour  
Bookmark and Share

Comments [1]

The Self-Importance Of Being Social

Is Social Networking Breeding a New Culture Of Self-importance?

So, you've got 200 Facebook friends and 20 Twitter followers. You feel important - right up there, in celebrity status, alongside Tom Cruise, Pope Benedict XVI and… Susan Boyle. People seem to want to follow your every move - and you oblige by telling them when you eat breakfast, visit the toilet and wash your best pair of pants.

Then, one day, you go through your friends list and it hits you - 195 of your 200 Facebook friends are actually made up of the following:

1) Former classmates from school (who you didn't really know because you were busy studying in the library or hiding in the janitor's cupboard whilst they were fighting, smoking and having teenage sex behind the lockers)

2) Old work colleagues (who regularly taunted you for your unusual dress sense and over-large nose).

3) People you met once at a social occasion, but never really spoke to. You just remember their name and the fact that they like bird watching.

4) People who mistake you for someone else (well, you did put a picture of Scooby Doo as your profile photo) and then can't be bothered to remove you when they realise you're not who they thought you were.

Despite discovering all this, you still find yourself needing to log on to Facebook and Twitter at every available opportunity to check whether someone has written on your wall (technically, graffiti), posted a follow-up to your comment, or to see if someone has re-tweeted your earlier 140 character creation of genius. Later that day, your only real friend goes through your Twitter followers list and breaks some extra bad news to you: 18 of your 20 Twitter followers are actually just porn pedlars.

The Lives Of The Self-Important

So, why do social networking websites make people think that they must share everything with the world? Perhaps it is down to the questions that they ask: "what are you doing?" or "what's happening?" (Twitter) or "what's on your mind?" (Facebook). It's a dream come true for people with over-inflated egos.

I’m amazed when people tweet that they’re sitting in traffic on the motorway, washing their hair or about to go out and buy a new pair of knickers. Now, if they were about to meet Pope Benedict XVI (or Susan Boyle, I don't mind which) and present him (or her) with the fore-mentioned pair of knickers, I would be interested (and would probably even re-tweet it to my own *tens* of 'interested' followers). For me, these people put the "twit" into Twitter.

When out in public, the behaviour of the self-important is extraordinary to watch. I observed one such person on Friday night. I was in a busy cocktail bar and as it got towards the end of the night, I glanced to the side of the room to observe a rather inebriated man sit down at a computer screen and log in to Facebook. You could tell he was drunk - it was a real struggle for him to locate and type each letter of his username and password. If that wasn't a complete giveaway to his drunken state, his next action certainly was, as he got up shouted out "I've got my lasagne" and then proceeded to pull a small plastic bag out of his pocket (containing said lasagne) and whirl it round and round his head in celebration… 

Now then, at that point I could have considered it to be a monumental moment worth sharing with the Internet world, taken out my iPhone and tweeted 'just stood in a cocktail bar and watched a man whirl lasagne around his head". Did I? No… damn, why didn't I?

To conclude this rant, an idea: Perhaps Twitter should change its initial question to say: "so, what makes you think you're so bloody interesting today?" 

Maybe someone should also start a list of 'self-important people' (not to be confused with 'self impotent' people - that's a different blog post altogether), gather them all in the same place, with their computers and mobile phones, and see what happens. Forget the Hadron Collider and the Maya 2012 predictions  - this idea could really cause the destruction of the world!

Istock_000008900650xsmall

Filed under  //   Humour   My Rants   Psychology   The Internet  
Bookmark and Share

Comments [1]

Traditional British Pub Quiz Night

Can I have a 'p' please Bob? No, you bloody can't, Bill, you'll just have to wait for the interval. Monday night wasn't Blockbusters for the over 70s, it was Quiz night at a traditional old pub in Hastings Old Town.

I joined a team of regulars to do brainiac battle, in what turned out to be a rather competitive and controversial contest of knowledge and wisdom. Just to clarify the difference between the two - knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting one in a fruit salad. Got it? Good.

After sitting down with my new team mates, I was handed a piece of paper and a pencil. This, I was told, was not for me to draw funny caricatures of my team mates, but to use to write down my answer to each question, before showing it to the team captain. The idea was that it stopped us from all shouting, at the same time, "I know the answer, it's errrrr, what's his name, you know, the guy with the funny limp and the glass eye" or blurting out the answer in earshot of the other teams. I did attempt to use the 'accidental blurting out of the answer' as a tactic to put off the other teams, but they saw straight through my "it's a seagull" answer to the question "what bird is traditionally used by Asian fisherman to help catch fish?"

The quiz lasted eight rounds, each consisting of six questions. Eight multiplied by six, that's…. err…. nearly a thousand questions. Wow, it went fast. The rounds ranged from the usual 'general knowledge', 'sport' and 'geography' to 'murder' and 'initials'. I had hoped that the 'murder' round might have been the perfect opportunity to bump off some of the other teams, but, alas, they spoiled my fun by reading out questions instead. I have to say that none of the rounds were really in my specialist field of knowledge. But then I guess I shouldn't expect quizzes to have rounds like 'famous tiddlywinks champions of the 90s', 'fruits beginning with the letter q' and 'indoor decorating for eskimos'.

A short way into the quiz, it become apparent that I was about as much use (to our team) as chopsticks in a soup kitchen. The other team members - serial quiz buffs - were doing very well without me. It didn't help that all the questions seemed to be about the two billion years leading UP to the 1980s. It's not that I didn't know some of the answers. For example, I knew that the acronym NATO stands for the 'National Association of Transexual Organists.' It's just that the other team members knew the answers already - damn them to hell!

To give you an idea of my quiz prowess - the last time I took part in a pub quiz was about five years ago and we relied  heavily on a great new tool called WAP (Internet on your phone). Some of our team members sat drinking beer and looking down under the table. Others sat drinking beer and then took regular toilet breaks. We must have seemed like a load of depressed alcoholics with bladder problems. The reason for the 'depressed look' was that our 'WAP' members were madly typing into their mobile phones under the table, trying to get answers from Yahoo! The pub owners were gobsmacked at how a bunch of drunk twenty-somethings managed to win the contest several weeks in a row. In this week's quiz, however, we had a much more useful tool than WAP - his name was John (his surname may well have been 'Wap' - I didn't ask!)

Going back further in time, like Doctor Who on an episode of 'Who Do You Think You Are?'… in the first pub quiz I ever attended, we didn't take things very seriously at all. If we didn't know the answer, we simply entered something ridiculous. In fact, I recall one quiz night where we entered nearly every answer as Danny La Rue (the drag act). This got a few murmurs of hilarity from the other teams throughout the evening, so it was worth the little effort involved.

So, how did we get on last night?

Well, there was a moment of controversy that lost us the contest. The question "name the longest river in England?" had our team wondering which of two answers to go with. Without boring you too much, there is the River Severn, which is the longest river, but it flows partly through Wales. On the other hand, the longest river to flow entirely through England is the Thames. So, we went with Thames (but also added that if it included Wales, it was the Severn)… and the answer given was Severn. Now then, try a Google search and it leads you to several pages that tell you that the Thames is the correct answer. In actual fact, we were 100% correct with the answer we wrote, as this article proves.

Despite much protest from our team, and much more protest (leading to hatred and utterances of an unpleasant nature) from one particular team member, the Quiz Master stood his ground, like a fat man at the dessert trolley, and wouldn't give us the point. We ended up losing by that single point. If only we were able to obtain proof that we were correct. This got me thinking, in my own mischievous way…

With the power of Wikipedia being all about human editing, how easy would it be to look something up on your mobile phone, change the information for that entry, then present it to the Quiz Master and say, with an honest face, "look, look… this says that I'm right?" I found a good example of that just the other day, in fact. Someone had altered Wikipedia's entry for Lumber to include the words genitalia and penis (see screenshot below). To be honest, I can't see a question about that coming up in a quiz contest anytime soon.

Anyway, to sum up: We lost by a point and by the end of the night my piece of paper was as blank as a Blankety Blank cheque book (and pen)...

Screen_shot_2009-11-22_at_19

Filed under  //   Humour   My Rants  
Bookmark and Share

Comments [0]

All I Want For Christmas

We are coming up to that time of year again and that can only mean one thing. As the Andy Williams lyric goes, "it's the most wonderful time of the year…" No, parents, it's not the end of the school summer holidays…

For those of you who can't decide what they want for Christmas, I've come up with a helpful list of ideas. However, so-as not to be labelled 'boring', I've made things a bit more fun. I have taken all of my ideas from the first few pages of Google's search engine results for "All I Want For Christmas Is…" So, here's the list to choose from - take your pick…

All I want for Christmas is…
  1. "You". Well obviously, and it's nice of you to say so. But you can't have me, Mariah. Much as I appreciate your Festive hit, I'm not sure I could cope with a Christmas full of your high-pitched warbling!
  2. My two front teeth. No problem. I'll even wrap them up for you. Now then, where did I put my hammer…
  3. A PSP viral marketing campaign. Be honest with me now, who doesn't want one of those? I don't think anyone of sane mind desires anything viral at Christmas time… especially not Herpes or Chlamydia. Office Christmas parties… they're fun, aren't they!
  4. A Beatles gift collection. Nothing funny about that. In fact, that's way too serious to be on my list, take it off…
  5. A job. Is that a job or a McJob? I reckon there's quite a few people out there wishing for one of those at the moment (not the latter one).
  6. A Duckla Prague Away Kit. A what? It sounds like clothing worn by a choir of operatic mallards from the Czech Republic. Actually, it's a 'B' side by Punk group Half Man Half Biscuit (as opposed to the Pop group Half Woman Half Twix).
  7. A baby. You're not getting one of those from me, so don't even try it missus…
  8. A pair of swim shorts. The ideal present for anyone planning on a New Year dip in the sea… The present comes with a free packet of Nurofen Cold and Flu and a New Year's resolution not to be so stupid to do it next year.
  9. A vampire. A nice idea, but you won't find many blood sucking creatures around here (ex-girlfriends excluded) - Buffy and I are out every Saturday night seeing to that…
  10. A bombed-out Dollhouse. Getting hold of one of those might be quite difficult, unless someone accidentally posts Barbie's New Year house party plans onto Facebook…
  11. To be sucked into a black hole. As long as the black hole isn't inside Katie Price's head - sure, sounds great. Just to check - there is a Starbucks there, right?
  12. A tail. Yes, yes, I want one of those too!
Finally, some ideas of my own (feel free to thank me)
  1. Some Facebook friends. In a world where popularity is becoming increasingly determined by the number of friends you have on social networking websites… here's an opportunity to increase your popularity and feel like you've really achieved in life. Congratulations.
  2. The CD 'The Greatest Hits of John and Edward' (not available for download as the Internet isn't ready to cope with it)
  3. Christmas in Prague with some operatic feathered friends. I think you'll be pheasantly surprised how enjoyable it is.
  4. A Swine Flu jab. Well, getting swine flu seems to be as inevitable as death and taxes. So, what better present to give to someone than a needle in the arm? (as one drug addict says to the other)
  5. A clove of garlic. Why? For the same reason as above, believe it or not. The price of garlic has gone through the roof in China after rumours that it helps prevent swine flu. Perhaps swine flu is spread by vampires? Hint: when combining presents, don't combine this idea with number 9 from the first list.
  6. An E-Book Reader with Michael Jackson Biography. Bringing the two most talked about things of the year together. One birth and one death.
  7. The rest of your teeth (accidentally knocked out when I was trying to get the front two out for you - sorry, I didn't have a *small* hammer!)
  8. Spinach doughnuts Hey, these appear to be getting a mention in EVERY blog post.
  9. The bum and thong pillow. Apparently, it's the 'must have' item this Christmas (according to me)…

Bum_thong

Filed under  //   Festive   Humour   My Rants  
Bookmark and Share

Comments [3]