WHY, THAT'S DELIGHTFUL!

Farewell! But hello also!

2007-08-03T18:59:46Z

'WHY, THAT'S DELIGHTFUL' HAS MOVED.

Please go here from now on!

Speak no more of this site! It is dead to me!

For fans of 'Memento'

2007-07-30T11:16:52Z

You know how I feel about webcomics (though better than most, 'Bad Gods' still isn't very good), but this is an excellent gag.

No Country For Old Men

2007-07-27T12:28:11Z

Trailer for the new Coen Bros. I've just finished the book (awesome, terrifying, hilarious) and it has a beginning, middle AND end, unlike most of their recent work.

Also, no dream sequences, no bowling competitions that don't resolve, no screaming men, no John Goodman, so I am pretty excited.

Excuse my language, but holy fucking shit.

2007-07-26T22:52:21Z

You are not going to believe this. You are just not going to believe this.

Wow. Quite a tale! I certainly hope that I am never KIDNAPPED AND FORCED TO BUILD A FUCKING EMBASSY IN BAGHDAD.

(And yes, I know--the tie. But please, try and concentrate on the testimony. It really is astonishing.)

Funography, the final frontier

2007-07-25T12:23:49Z

Someday, all telly will look like this.

Muppets kicking more ass

2007-07-23T22:48:37Z

The most impressive thing about all this is that there is actually a song called 'Dracula Mountain'; that's gonna be one scary mountain!

Your questions answered

2007-07-23T11:00:57Z

What If That Guy From Smashing Pumpkins Lost His Car Keys?

Get ready to be happy

2007-07-23T10:55:00Z

(Thanks, Matt!)

First sighting of 'Funography'

2007-07-17T19:43:22Z

Thought you might be interested. This is my introduction to Charlie Brooker's 'Screenburn' book.

"Imagine watching television for a living.
You wake up, you’re at work. Your boss (you) has no problems with his sole employee (also you) sitting in a cornflake-spattered T-shirt and undies while trying to focus on ‘Trisha’. You don’t feel guilty watching ’Trisha’ because it is your job to watch ‘Trisha‘. If you weren’t watching ‘Trisha’, you wouldn’t be doing your job! A dream ticket! The perfect crime!
But there’s something shifting and swirling in the pit of your stomach. You were up late last night, watching a page 3 girl eating a maggot (it was your job to watch that too). That was followed by a program in which people described catching rare genital diseases while on holiday. And then there was that show in which an elderly woman demonstrated her blowjob technique on a brightly-coloured dildo while a studio audience went into spasms of delight and her son (her son!) shook his head, laughed and pretended to enjoy himself?
Your breakfast, you now realise, hasn’t gone anywhere.
An explanation. During the time that Charlie Brooker was writing these pieces for the Guardian, British television underwent a reverse evolution. Early pioneers on shows like ‘Eurotrash’ and ‘The Word’ showed that there was an audience for pure, one hundred percent, evil, ugly, drunken cak, and others took that ball and ran with it, and so here we are. Television has a curved spine, a jutting lower jaw and its knuckles are red and raw from being dragged along the ground. It’s as if someone, somewhere said “Why isn’t British television more like Italian television?” and was promoted rather than slapped across the face.
Good, attention-grabbing television is achieved in one of two ways. The first is quite complicated and involves a certain amount of expertise behind and in front of the camera. A memorable production might involve a strong cast, a timely subject and a director who knows how to tell a story. Or it could require years spent waiting with a movement-sensitive camera for a crab to crawl onto a beach at exactly the right time and impregnate a turtle.
The second way is simpler and currently very much in vogue. Basically, you get a few ‘Big Brother’ contestants, dress them up in school uniforms, give them enough booze to make a table stagger, and hope that security steps in before someone gets raped or killed.
Disasterporn, funography…call it what you will, to be a TV critic at this point is to be subjected to the sort of imagery that previously only film censors of the seventies and eighties had to endure. You need the sort of reckless disregard for your own sanity shared by war photographers and people who have to work with Elton John. You need a very special sort of person, someone who has the ability to stare into the abyss and, when it stares back, make it look away in shame. If this was a trailer for a big US film, this is the moment when the President looks just to the right of the camera and says “Get me Brooker.”
Imagine Charlie’s surprise when television started mirroring his entirely made-up ‘TV Go Home‘ satirical website. Imagine how that felt--conceiving imaginary TV shows so appalling that it bends your brain like a Gellerspoon and then turning on TV to find that program is on after the news. That’s why only he has the undercarriage to do this job; anything television throws at Charlie, Charlie throws right back. How he has maintained his sense of humour is beyond me, but somehow he has managed it. It is now at such a keen pitch, in fact, that the mere idea of Charlie reviewing certain shows is enough to make me laugh. Anyone who calls Tiff Needall “Tiff ‘Quick Turn Over’ Needall needs no lessons from the Chuckle Brothers on how to provoke a laugh. Anyone who points out that Ross Kemp could stare out a man with two glass eyes doesn’t need an introduction from the likes of me (as I write, my wife is reading through Charlie’s columns nearby. She’s laughing like a drain…a fleeting happiness soon to be violently cut short by my asking her to review this foreword).
Charlie is the funniest TV writer around, and the only person who truly understands British telly as it is in these final years before the world ends. This is not something to be envied. Spare a thought for him now, because as you read this, he is probably watching a program in which a party of celebrities need to eat each other’s eyes in order to win a dildo.
He watches these things so we don’t have to. God bless him for that."

Written in 2004. Luckily, things have improved a lot since then. I mean, at least 'Something For The Weekend' isn't on any more.

Who knew Harmony Korine was so funny?

2007-07-15T21:48:34Z

(both this and 'Godfather' via AV Club)

Avenging Disco Godfather

2007-07-15T21:25:20Z

This is the most intense shit you ever seen!

Run DMC Vs IT Crowd

2007-07-15T14:14:27Z

This is the very bomb! (Thanks, Matt! Write to me and I'll credit the responsible party.)

Guilty, guilty, guilty! Tra, la, la!!!

2007-07-14T08:10:44Z

Good old Chicago!!!!

Ah, Republicans...

2007-07-14T08:04:19Z

What's not going on here? (Click pic)

Hope you've got a big monitor

2007-07-13T14:48:56Z

This may be the best thing I've ever posted.

Pup Ponders the Heat Death of The Universe.

Let the bodies hit the floor

2007-07-12T19:22:47Z

Insanely good.

Living The Dream

2007-07-11T20:00:06Z

LIVIN' IT, BABY! LIVIN' IT!

(click photo for Something Awful's pick of the bunch.)

Heppy Birthday, Pete!

2007-07-10T16:45:46Z

Peter Serafinowicz, co-writer of 'Look Around You' and, if Wikipedia is to be believed, my brother-in-law, has his birthday on this very morn. Here's something to cheer him up. (click on pic for enlargeningening.)

Kids, eh?

2007-07-09T13:47:48Z

It could be argued that these Norwegian kids are being irresponsible, but they pull off a pretty neat trick here with a speeding train.

http://view.break.com/316459 - Watch more free videos

(Sigh. Probably an ad.)

(via blogopho.be)

All change

2007-07-09T11:50:13Z

I'm thinking of switching to Wordpress. Should I? Any suggestions to help ease the transition?

BBC3 is a home for retarded monkeys

2007-07-07T11:21:43Z

The above graphic I found on the site for 'Sex With...Mum and Dad', which I saw last night during a bout of insomnia. If funography had a flag, this is surely it.

"For British families, sex is never an easy topic to discuss. So imagine having a full-on, no holds barred conversation with your mum and dad about exactly what you got up to last night. Worse still, imagine your parents giving you a blow-by-blow account of the kind of things they do
to each other when you go out..."

Last night, under the eye of the usual bullshit 'sexologist' character, a brother and sister and their parents were given tasks such as buying condoms together (and then placing them on candles, of course), visiting the locations where they lost their virginity (touchingly, a field, for both parents and son) and then having a frank group discussion about cocks, fannies and what kind of scumbags could possibly subject them to this kind of trauma.

I want to be as clear as I possibly can here.
The people who made this show are cunts.
The people who commissioned this show are cunts.
BBC3 is a channel run by retarded monkeys, for the benefit of an imaginary audience.
That is all.

'Funography' a step closer to the OED

2007-07-04T23:07:51Z

My mate Matt writes this...

"A victory in the quest to get 'funography' recognised as a real word:

On
the back page of Broadcast in the 'Dear Agony Uncle' section someone is
suffering from an addiction to trashy shows. The Agony Uncle replies:
"Worry not. Why not come clean and reveal to your friends that you are
simply suffering from an addiction known as 'funography' (as these
shows are known in the industry)"

Today Broadcast, tomorrow the world!"

Hurrah!

Translation: I am unable to recognise Americans being ironic

2007-07-04T16:14:52Z

11:30 a.m.
Employing irony in the marriage debate

Outside
the State House, there are many more gay rights protesters than
anti-gay marriage demonstrators. One of the anti-gay marriage
proponents, Susie Hicks from Woburn, said this was because everyone
thinks gay marriage is a "done deal." She was at the State House with
her friend Angela Mitchell, also from Woburn. Mitchell held a sign that
read WE WANT THE BAY STATE NOT THE GAY STATE, THAT WOULD MEAN A SAD
STATE.

Her sign was in sharp contrast to some of those held by
gay marriage supporters that focus on gays who've made history such as
Leonardo da Vinci, Alan Turing, who invented the computer, and
Katherine Lee Bates, who wrote "America the Beautiful." The sign
focusing on Turning, for example, reads: DESTROY THE COMPUTER! IT'S A
HOMOSEXUAL INVENTION BY ALAN TURING. WHO CARES IF HE CRACKED THE GERMAN
ENIGMA CODE AND WON WORLD WAR II. IT'S A HOMO'S DEVIL MACHINE.

Tom
Lang of Manchester by the Sea held one of the signs -- which have taken
some viewers a few moments to figure out. "We're trying to show how
important gay people are to the American culture," Lang explained.
"We're not mental. We're not immoral. But we're important to society
and interwoven into the tapestry of America."

— reported by Deirdre Fulton

Doh! Of course! (Thanks also to Sean for pointing this out).

Olbermann's Special Comment on the Libby pardon

2007-07-04T14:00:20Z

(Thanks, everyone who sent this in!)

Fox News+cops=Fuck you, Democracy!

2007-07-03T21:28:18Z

(via Boing Boing)