Futility Closet

In 1931, George Bernard Shaw wired Winston Churchill: “Am reserving two tickets for you on opening night of my new play. Come bring a friend — if you have one.”

Churchill wired back: “Impossible for me to attend first performance. Would like to attend second night — if there is one.”

Gone And Forgotten honors great moments in bad comics.

Little-used measurements:

• 1.2096 seconds ≅ 1 microfortnight
• π seconds ≅ 1 nanocentury
• 3.085 centimeters ≅ 1 attoparsec
• 2 mm square ≅ 1 nanoacre
• 2.263348517438173216473 millimeters ≅ 1 potrzebie (the thickness of MAD magazine issue 23)
• 20 terabytes ≅ 1 Library of Congress

After Jurassic Park came out, some paleontologists started measuring Tyrannosaurus rex food consumption in lawyers. If the average attorney weighs 150 pounds, they figure, a warm-blooded T. rex would eat 292 lawyers a year. A cold-blooded one would eat 73. I guess that means they were cold-blooded; there’s certainly no shortage of lawyers today.

Who says atheists don’t have a sense of humor? The Invisible Pink Unicorn (“blessed be her holy hooves”) was “revealed to” the Usenet newsgroup alt.atheism in 1990.

Since then, she’s acquired all the trappings of a real deity: gospels (“according to St. Sascha”), revelations (to “St. Bryce the Long-Winded”), relics (the Holy Sock of Bob), scripture, and historic artworks.

Because she’s invisible, it’s impossible to prove she does not exist. “The Invisible Pink Unicorn is a being of great spiritual power,” say the faithful. “We know this because she is capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorn is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that she is pink; we logically know that she is invisible because we can’t see her.”

Followers debate her attributes, but it’s generally agreed that she prefers pineapple and ham pizza to pepperoni and mushroom, which is said to be eaten only by followers of the Purple Oyster of Doom. The IPU also “raptures” socks from laundry as a sign of favor.

Is this harmless fun or awful blasphemy? It’s getting hard to care. As the French writer Edmond de Goncourt wrote, “If there is a God, atheism must seem to him as less of an insult than religion.”

Create your own Windows error messages with Atom Smasher’s new utility.

The This Page Intentionally Left Blank Project “offers Internet wanderers a place of quietness and simplicity on the overcrowded World Wide Web.”

How many Unitarian Universalists does it take to change a light bulb?

“We choose not to make a statement either in favor of or against the need for a light bulb. However, if in your own journey you have found that a light bulb works for you, that is fine. You are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your personal relationship with your light bulb (or light source, or non-dark resource) and present it next month at our annual light bulb Sunday service, in which we will explore a number of light bulb traditions, including incandescent, fluorescent, three-way, long-life, and tinted — all of which are equally valid paths to luminescence.”

Determined Luddites can now send telegrams by e-mail.

I suppose this would be a good way to send a ransom note these days — suitably creepy, and no fingerprints.

I’d beware of anything called www.clean-your-screen-for-free-now.com.

See? Told you.

There was a young man from Lahore
Whose limericks stopped at line four.
When asked why this was,
He responded, “Because.”

Also:

There was a young man from Iran
Whose poetry just wouldn’t scan.
When they said, “But the thing
Doesn’t go with the swing,”
He replied, “Yes, I’m aware of that, but I like to put as many syllables in the last line as I can.”