Posts Tagged ‘funny’

Finding the Funny – Penny-Arcade

For those of you who don’t know what Penny-Arcade is, you’re missing out.  Penny-Arcade is a gaming related comic, touching on topics from Ubisoft’s new (and some would say idiotic) DRM, to Dungeons and Dragons, to social commentary to Star Wars.  They publish comics three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, along with a blog which relates to the comic.  Unfortunately, as is the case with XKCD, sometimes I am just oblivious to the joke.  Fortunately, however, they are not in the same physics and science humor section.

The comic’s creators are represented by characters withing the comic, Jerry Holkins (“Tycho”, and the written genius) and by Mike Krahulik (“Gabe” and the artistic genius).  While I never met either of them, I do know someone who knows someone who said they know them, so I feel like we’ve met.  While I do enjoy their comic, they have really earned my respect through their Child’s Play charity.  According to wikiepedia they’ve raised over 6 MILLION dollars in cash and gifts for children hospital’s.  That’s amazing.

So, on top of being gut-busting hilarious at times, they are also damned serious about helping kids.  What isn’t there to love?

Finding the Funny – SMBC

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (www.smbc-comics.com)  unfortunately not Count Chokula…  It’s another funny webcomic!  Ok, it’s also a delicious breakfast food, at least when combined with milk and hopefully not Captain Crunch, which is basically like eating flavored razor blades (link goes to testimonial).

The comic is really funny, and covers topics such as :

The Bible -(One , Two , Three) ,Teen Pregnancy,College ,Mythology,Fairy Tales,Sex Educatio, Science, and more Science , and Porno Collections (SFW).

It is run by Zach Weiner, someone with significantly more artistic and comedic ability than me.See?  So go get yourself some Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal and start your everyday off right.

Finding the Funny – XKCD

XKCD

This week on Finding the Funny : XKCD.  I have no idea what it means.. not even Wikipedia knows what XKCD means.  Well, “the comic’s name has no particular significance and is simply a four-letter word without a phonetic pronunciation”, is the best we get.  I’ve had loads of fun trying to pronounce “xkcd” (ex-kud?.. ex-kac-ed?…).

XKCD has been keeping me amused for a good long while now.  While painfully aware of the scientific humor on the site, or, more accurately, painfully aware at my lack of understanding said scientific humor of many of the panels, overall this comic is great.  In the middle of a science joke he’ll toss in something (like the electric eel and other funny stuff in his electrical diagram, do they really use those?…)

At other times the science is used in a more.. touching.. manner.  I mean, comeon, how sweetis that?  Have YOU ever slowed the rotation of the Earth just to spend more time with someone?  Or, in Superman’s case, to stop someone’s death?  I sure haven’t…

The last thing I’ll bring up is the alt-text associated with the strips.  If you hover over them you’ll get a little bonus text… This usually helps illuminate the joke (if you’re scientifically dis-inclined like myself).  Personally I feel a bit embarassed because I didn’t know about this until a friend mentioned it a good year or two into reading XKCD… after that the strips made a LOT more sense.

So there you go, check out XKCD for some funny, enlightening, sometimes confusing, heartwarming and all around good comics.

Finding the Funny – The Oatmeal

The Internet is a big and scary place.  Zombie’s, viruses, and naked people prowl it’s streets.  Fortunately there are sites like “The Oatmeal” which help to mitigate the otherwise frightening and not-funny wilderness.  Well, maybe not so much a wilderness as an endless series of tubes. 

First up on his hilarity.  “How everything goes to hell during a Zombie Apocolypse”.  It pretty much covers all the bases.  Including crazy scientists “I know, lets mix rabies with this old meatloaf and feed it to this gorilla!”, the right thing to do when confronted with a zombie (shoot the head and not the chest, head shots are the very best). 

Next he illuminates us on the subject of coffee.  He gives us “15 Things Worth Knowing About Coffee”.  Personally, the only thing I need to know about coffee is that it’s delicious.  Well, that and to stay away from the Pike’s Place roast from Starbucks.  Back to the funny though.  By far the most amusing this about it (and almost all of the other comics on this site) are the illustrations.  I don’t know if it’s the lack of pupils on the characters or what, but I find it highly humorous.  (Closely related to “15 Things Worth Knowing About Coffee” is “The 5 Phases of Caffiene Intake”.) 

“17 Things Worth Knowing About your Cat” is another informative poster, this time about kitties (cats are not amused by cupcakes… really? comeon.. I’m sure they’ll at least try and bat it around or something… mine would). 

There are also several comics on the proper use of various punctuation marks.  The noble apostrophe, the odd semi-colon are covered.  I don’t know about you, but I have never really learned how to use those things.  I know they’re on my keyboard for some reason, but I’m only 50% sure when I should apply them. 

The layout of the site makes it rather simple to find a comic… either click on one of the rectangles with a tagline in it, or click on “Comic” at the top… can’t get simpler than that.  (If my crappy Clear Internet service were any better I would be able to find more examples).  There are also some amusing quizzes to take, from How many hungry weasels could your body feed? (how did he fact check this?)to How long could you survive won the surface of the sun? (I’m pretty sure the answer is zero… I’m thinkin you’d burn up well before you got anywhere near that ball of fire), to How addicted to Facebook are you? (not very… I only sign on 10 times a day). 

This is definitely a comic site you should check out.  Lots of variety and funny visuals paired with somewhat useful and amusing information.  Plus, it looks like there’s a book deal coming up soon, so you can even read when the intertubes are full of bets and pornography.