This one has been floating out there for a while now, but it still has to be seen to be believed. It’s ping pong…in the matrix. Sort of. (We understand that it’s from some Japanese game show.) Either way, it’s cool.

What happens when you combine the Lord of the Rings with the Buffy musical? [tag]Once More With Hobbits[/tag], apparently.

Stop by and check out the lyrics…

(This [tag]Saturday Night Live[/tag] classic has been circling the Internet for years now. Now, it has finally washed up here. Enjoy!)

[tag]Happy Fun Ball[/tag]!
(kids)
It’s Happy! It’s Fun! It’s Happy Fun Ball!

(announcer)
Yes, it’s Happy Fun Ball, the toy sensation that’s sweeping the nation. Only 14.95 at participating
stores! Get one Today

(background voice)
Warning: Pregnant women, the elderly, and children should avoid prolonged exposure to Happy Fun Ball.

Caution: Happy Fun Ball may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds. Happy Fun Ball contains a liquid
core, which if exposed due to rupture should not be touched, inhaled, or looked at. Do not use Happy
Fun Ball on concrete.

Discontinue use of Happy Fun Ball if any of the following occurs:

* Itching
* Vertigo
* Dizziness
* Tingling in extremities
* Loss of balance or coordination
* Slurred speech
* Temporary blindness
* Profuse Sweating
* Heart palpitations

If Happy Fun Ball begins to smoke, get away immediately. Seek shelter and cover head.

Happy Fun Ball may stick to certain types of skin.

When not in use, Happy Fun Ball should be returned to its special container and kept under refrigeration.
Failure to do so relieves the makers of Happy Fun Ball, Wacky Products Incorporated, and its parent
company, Global Chemical Unlimited, of any and all liability.

Ingredients of Happy Fun Ball include an unknown glowing substance which fell to Earth, presumably from
outer space.

Happy Fun Ball has been shipped to our troops in Saudi Arabia and is also being dropped by our warplanes
on Iraq.

Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

Happy Fun Ball comes with a lifetime guarantee.

(announcer)
Happy Fun Ball! Accept no substitutes!

(In honour of National Poetry Month, we offer you another round of Cat Haiku. These certainly seem to contain some keen insights. What do you mean your cat is in the way of the screen?)

[tag]Cat Haiku[/tag]

You never feed me.
Perhaps I’ll sleep on your face.
That will sure show you.

You must scratch me there!
Yes, above my tail! Behold,
Elevator butt.

I need a new toy.
Tail of black dog keeps good time.
Pounce! good dog! good dog!

The rule for today:
Touch my tail, I shred your hand.
New rule tomorrow.

In deep sleep hear sound
Cat vomit hairball somewhere
Will find in morning

Grace personified,
I leap into the window.
I meant to do that.

Blur of motion, then –
Silence, me, a paper bag.
What is so funny?

The mighty hunter
Returns with gifts of plump birds –
Your foot just squashed one

You’re always typing.
Well, let’s see you ignore my
Sitting on your hands.

My small cardboard box.
You cannot see me if I
Can just hide my head.

Terrible battle.
I fought for hours. Come and see!
What’s a ‘term paper’?

Kitty likes plastic
Confuses for litter box
Don’t leave tarp around

Small brave carnivores
Kill pine cones and mosquitoes
Fear vacuum cleaner

Want to trim my claws?
Don’t even think about it!
My yelps will wake dead.

I want to be close
To you. Can I fit my head
inside your armpit?

Wanna go outside.
Oh, shit! Help! I got outside!
Let me back inside!

Oh no! Big One
has been trapped by newspaper!
Cat to the rescue!

Humans are so strange.
Mine lies still in bed, then screams!
My claws aren’t that sharp …

Cats meow out of angst
“Thumbs! If only we had thumbs!
We could break so much!”

Litter box not here
You must have moved it again
I’ll crap in the sink.

The Big Ones snore now
Every room is dark and cold
Time for “Cup Hockey”

We’re almost equals
I purr to show I love you
Want to smell my butt?

(This bit of classic intellectual humour has been circling the internet for some time…looking for a place to land. So, it is pausing here for you to ponder [tag]philosophy[/tag] when combined with the Jerry Springer Show. Enjoy!)

“I have a philosophical secret!” (The Lowest-Rated [tag]Jerry Springer Show[/tag] Ever)

Crowd: Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!

Jerry: Today’s guests are here because they can’t agree on fundamental philosophical principles. I’d like to welcome Todd to the show.
(Todd enters from backstage.)

Jerry: Hello, Todd.
Todd: Hi, Jerry.

Jerry: (reading from card) So, Todd, you’re here to tell your girlfriend something. What is it?
Todd: Well, Jerry, my girlfriend Ursula and I have been going out for three years now. We did everything together. We were really inseparable. But then she discovered post-Marxist political and literary theory, and it’s been nothing but fighting ever since.

Jerry: Why is that?
Todd: You see, Jerry, I’m a traditional Cartesian rationalist. I believe that the individual self, the “I” or ego is the foundation of all metaphysics. She, on the other hand, believes that the contemporary self is a socially constructed, multi-faceted subjectivity reflecting the political and economic realities of late capitalist consumerist discourse.

Crowd: Ooooohhhh!

Todd: I know! I know! Is that infantile, or what?
Jerry: So what do you want to tell her today?
Todd: I want to tell her that unless she ditches the post-modernism, we’re through. I just can’t go on having a relationship with a woman who doesn’t believe I exist.

Jerry: Well, you’re going to get your chance. Here’s Ursula!
(Ursula storms onstage and charges up to Todd.)

Ursula: Patriarchal colonizer!
(She slaps him viciously. Todd leaps up, but the security guys pull them apart before things can go any further.)
Ursula: Don’t listen to him! Logic is a male hysteria! Rationality equals oppression and the silencing of marginalized voices!

Todd: The classical methodology of rational dialectic is our only road to truth! Don’t try to deny it!
Ursula: You and your dialectic! That’s how it’s been through our whole relationship, Jerry. Mindless repetition of the post-Enlightenment meta-narrative. “You have to start with radical doubt, Ursula.” “Post-structuralism is just classical sceptical thought re-cast in the language of semiotics, Ursula.”

Crowd: Booo! Booo!

Jerry: Well, Ursula, come on. Don’t you agree that the roots of contemporary neo-Leftism simply have to be sought in Enlightenment political philosophy?

Ursula: History is the discourse of powerful centrally located voices marginalizing and de-scribing the sub-altern!
Todd: See what I have to put up with? Do you know what it’s like living with someone who sees sex as a metaphoric demonstration of the anti-feminist violence implicit in the discourse of the dominant power structure? It’s terrible. She just lies there and thinks of Andrea Dworkin. That’s why we never do it any more.

Crowd: Wooooo!

Ursula: You liar! Why don’t you tell them how you haven’t been able to get it up for the past three months because you couldn’t decide if your penis truly had essential Being, or was simply a manifestation of Mind?

Todd: Wait a minute! Wait a minute!
Ursula: It’s true!

Jerry: Well, I don’t think we’re going to solve this one right away. Our next guests are Louis and Tina. And Tina has a little confession to make!

(Louis and Tina come onstage.)
(Todd and Ursula continue bickering in the background.)

Jerry: Tina, you are… (reads cards) … an existentialist, is that right?
Tina: That’s right, Jerry. And Louis is, too.

Jerry: And what did you want to tell Louis today?
Tina: Jerry, today I want to tell him…
Jerry: Talk to Louis. Talk to him.

Crowd hushes.

Tina: Louis… I’ve loved you for a long time…
Louis: I love you, too, Tina.

Tina: Louis, you know I agree with you that existence precedes essence, but…well, I just want to tell you I’ve been reading Nietzsche lately, and I don’t think I can agree with your egalitarian politics any more.

Crowd: Wooooo! Woooooo!

Louis: (shocked and disbelieving) Tina, this is crazy. You know that Sartre clarified all this way back in the 40’s.
Tina: But he didn’t take into account Nietzsche’s radical critique of democratic morality, Louis. I’m sorry. I can’t ignore the contradiction any longer!

Louis: You got these ideas from Victor, didn’t you? Didn’t you?
Tina: Don’t you bring up Victor! I only turned to him when I saw you were seeing that dominatrix! I needed a real man! An Uber-man!
Louis: (sobbing) I couldn’t help it. It was my burden of freedom. It was too much!

Jerry: We’ve got someone here who might have something to add. Bring out…Victor!
(Victor enters. He walks up to Louis and sticks a finger in his face.)

Victor: Louis, you’re a classic post-Christian intellectual. Weak to the core!
Louis: (through tears) You can kiss my Marxist ass, Reactionary Boy!
Victor: Herd animal!
Louis: Lackey!
(Louis throws a chair at Victor; they lock horns and wrestle.)
(The crowd goes wild. After a long struggle, the security guys pry them apart.)

Jerry: Okay, okay. It’s time for questions from the audience. Go ahead, sir.

Audience member: Okay, this is for Tina. Tina, I just wanna know how you can call yourself an existentialist, and still agree with Nietzsche’s doctrine of the Ubermensch. Doesn’t that imply a belief in intrinsic essences that is in direct contradiction with with the fundamental principles of existentialism?

Tina: No! No! It doesn’t. We can be equal in potential, without being equal in eventual personal quality. It’s a question of Becoming, not Being.

Audience member: That’s just disguised essentialism! You’re no existentialist!
Tina: I am so!
Audience member: You’re no existentialist!
Tina: I am so an existentialist, bitch!
(Ursula stands and interjects.)
Ursula: What does it [bleep] matter? Existentialism is just a cover for late capitalist anti-feminism! Look at how Sartre treated Simone de Beauvoir!

(Women in the crowd cheer and stomp.)
Tina: [Bleep] you! Fat-ass Foucaultian ho!
Ursula: You only wish you were smart enough to understand Foucault, bitch!
Tina: You the bitch!
Ursula: No, you the bitch!
Tina: Whatever! Whatever!

Jerry: We’ll be right back with a final thought! Stay with us!

(Commercial break for debt-consolidation loans, ITT Technical Institute, and Psychic Alliance Hotline.)

Jerry: Hi! Welcome back. I just want to thank all our guests for being here, and say that I hope you’re able to work through your differences and find happiness, if indeed happiness can be extracted from the dismal miasma of warring primal hormonal impulses we call human relationship.
(turns to the camera)
Well, we all think philosophy is just fun and games. Semiotics, deconstruction, Lacanian post-Freudian psychoanalysis, it all seems like good, clean fun. But when the heart gets involved, all our painfully acquired metaphysical insights go right out the window, and we’re reduced to battling it out like rutting chimpanzees. It’s not pretty. If you’re in a relationship, and differences over the fundamental principles of your respective subjectivities are making things difficult, maybe it’s time to move on. Find someone new, someone who will accept you and the way your laughably limited human intelligence chooses to codify and rationalize the chaos of existence. After all, in the absence of a clear, unquestionable revelation from God, that’s all we’re all doing anyway. So remember: take care of yourselves — and each other.

Announcer: Be sure to tune in next time, when KKK strippers battle it out with transvestite omnisexual porn stars! Tomorrow on Springer!

(This is a classic of cat humour. We certainly hope that your cats aren’t up to anything of the sort…but you may wish to keep an eye on them for a bit. Friendly warning.)

The Top 16 Signs Your Cat May Be Planning to Kill You

16. Seems mighty chummy with the dog all of a sudden.
15. Unexplained calls to F.Lee Bailey’s 900 number on your bill.
14. He actually *does* have your tongue.
13. You find a stash of “Feline of Fortune” magazines behind the couch.
12. Cyanide paw prints all over the house.
11. You wake up to find a bird’s head in your bed.
10. As the wind blows over the grassy knoll in downtown Dallas, you get a faint whiff of catnip.
9. Droppings in litter box spell out “REDRUM.”
8. Catch him with a new Mohawk looking in the mirror saying, “Mew looking at me? Mew looking at me?”
7. Takes attentive notes every time “Itchy and Scratchy” are on.
6. You find blueprints for a Rube Goldberg device that starts with a mouse chased into a hole and ends with flaming oil dumped on your bed.
5. Has taken a sudden interest in the wood chipper.
4. Instead of dead mice, leaves cartons of Marlboros on your doorstep.
3. Ball of yarn playfully tied into a hangman’s noose.
2. You find a piece of paper labeled “MY WIL” which says: “LEEV AWL 2 KAT.”

And the Number 1 Sign Your Cat May Be Planning to Kill You …

1. Now sharpens claws on your car’s brake lines.

So…do you need your own [tag]conspiracy theory[/tag]? You know, to mutter under your breath when you need a distraction.

Like…say…this one?

“A rogue A.I. is stealing people so that it can Drain the Oceans by putting them into a computer simulation where they have to track Captain Kangaroo to a secret base near The Silliness Lair. The mental power thus produced by the captive thinkers allows Bozo the Clown, in league with the AI, to compromise The Raven allowing Bozo the Clown to Take over the Moon. ”

Psssst! You can generate one here but don’t tell anyone that we told you.

In the poem “[tag]Jabberwocky[/tag],” [tag]Lewis Carroll[/tag] invented a few words, some of which have joined the English language. So, what would happen if you ran Jabberwocky through a spell-checker?

Well…click on the link and you’ll see. (T’was brillig and the slithy toves…)

Feeling trodden upon? Would you like to have power over someone else for a change? Well, there’s always the [tag]Subservient Chicken[/tag]. Basically, there’s someone dressed up in a Chicken Suit…and you tell them what to do. Quite aside from being amusing, it’s also a little bit…eerie.

So, you’ve got your Hobbit Name and your Gothic Name, but do you know your [tag]pokéname[/tag]? Don’t you think it’s about time to discover what’s your pokéname? Hey, you could discover that you have a magic chest of hats.