In one of my previous residences, we had what I considered to be the most unusual answering machine message ever. People would regularly call the house to sell us something, hear the message and then call back a few mins later with all their colleagues listening in (yes, we did screen our calls a lot).

Listen here: Our old answering machine message

I was reminded of this today when I came across some other funny answering machine messages:

Like Barney (the purple dinosaur):
I’ll call you, cause you called me.
We’re the ______ family.
So leave your name and number at the tone.
Sorry that we’re not at home.

“Hi, you have reached the Borg collective. Please leave your name and star system and we’ll assimilate you as soon as we can.”

You are dazed, bewildered, trapped in a world with no time, where color collides with sound, and shadows explode. You see a sign up ahead. This is no ordinary answering device; this is “The Twilight Phone”

These words are lovely dark and deep
But I’ve got promises to keep
and miles to go before I sleep
So leave a message at the beep.

Roses are red, booger’s are green, please leave your message on this stupid machine.

Concatenation of events preclude our coming to the phone. Please speak freely, with magniloquence upon occasion of the tone.

And in case you are wondering, my current answering machine message (yes, we still get a lot of wrong numbers, but this seems to dissuade a lot of them!):

“Greetings Earthlings, we believe you know what you’re supposed to do after the beep!”

David Letterman, wearing a suit of 3400 Alka Seltzers is dipped into a tank of water - what must the studio have smelt like? Was this the origin of the Diet Coke and Mentos idea?

Now what happens if you put Alka-Seltzer into water when you’re in zero gravity? The answer is a couple of minutes into this informative video…

And to follow that, one of the best Diet Coke and Mentos experiments videos that I’ve seen:

Ozone, one of my Twitter mates just asked me if where I work is really like this video - and the answer is yes.

So yup, that’s my worklife… Except that we grew out of grey colours after the first few buildings, and cubicles in Ireland are usually a bit bigger, but shared. I’m one of the lucky ones, I have a double cube all to myself!

Do you identify with that video? If so, you’ll probably laugh at some of these:

1. blamestorming: A group process where participants analyze a failed project and look for scapegoats other than themselves.
2. Death by Tweakage: When a product or project fails due to unnecessary tinkering or too many last-minute revisions.
3. BMWs: Bitchers, Moaners and Whiners.
4. clockroaches: Employees who spend most of their day watching the clock — instead of doing their jobs
5. plutoed: To be unceremoniously dumped or relegated to a lower position without an adequate reason or explanation.
6. prairie dogging: A modern office phenomenon. Occurs when workers simultaneously pop their heads up out of their cubicles to see what’s going on.
7. carbon-based error: Error caused by a human, not a computer (which we assume would be a silicon-based error).
8. adminisphere: The upper levels of management where big, impractical, and counterproductive decisions are made.
9. deja poo: The feeling that you’ve stepped in this bull before.
10. bobbleheading: The mass nod of agreement by participants in a meeting to comments made by the boss even though most have no idea what he/she just said.
11. ringtone rage: The violent response by cube mates after hearing your annoying cell phone ringtone for the 15th time.

Mulleybabes ‘fluffy-linked‘ to a vid on CrunchNotes today that sent me off to College Humour - below are two great videos showing what business meetings would look like if interspersed with the inane comments that we see on most of the major tech websites…

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

Found while clearing down my RSS feeds this evening, as the heading says… I don’t even need to make a comment….

If you’re not familiar with the letters and numbers above, they are US movie classifications.

Via the Limerick Blogger this week is a little service from Mingle2 (a dating service I believe) that looks at your blog, website or My Space page and then gives it an appropriate rating based on the words used within.

My site easily came up as a ‘G’ rating, but I think there’s more fun to be had here… Who do you think would get the worse rating - Mr Mulley for his liberal use of the word cunt recently or Mr Twenty Major for his consistent use of all swear words?

Mr Mulley

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

* gay (2x)
* dead (1x)

Twenty Major

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

* fucking (6x)
* cocaine (4x)
* cunt (3x)
* dangerous (2x)
* sexy (1x)

Yup, looks like Ireland’s most foul-mouthed blogger runs away with yet another title, Use of the most swear words in a blog!

What about those paragons among us? Are they as clean as they seem?

Grannymar

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

* pain (3x)
* breast (2x)

I know my mother had trouble encouraging me to breastfeed, but was I that much of a pain?

However the funniest one that I found had to be the Humble Housewife… Parents are now warned!

Humble Housewife

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

* knife (2x)
* crack (1x)

So apparently cooking terms are now PG-rated - who’s have believed it?

Hmmm, I wonder if posting this post will cause my blog to slide downwards from it’s clean ‘G’ rating?

… since the wedding’s on Saturday!

Nothing to be said - just watch!

The wonderful K8 the GR8 over at cackaloo.com sent me this meme over a month ago now, but I’ve been so busy that I’ve let it slip until now… Sorry K8!

1. What period of history would you most like to have lived in and why?

It’s a hard choice, maybe the sixties for the sex, drugs & rock ‘n’ roll and those groovy fashions; or hanging with the American beatnik poets of the 50’s while watching the growth of the civil rights movement…

But I’d have to be really sad and say that I’m such a geek at heart that I wish I was a true generation X-er. To have been a child of the late 60’s/early 70’s, seen the economic boom and technological development of the 80’s and had the chance to be part of the early stages of the internet. Born in 1978, I straddle Generations X & Y and identify with both of them. I love all the new technologies around the place and couldn’t live without the internet, but I wasn’t born when Star Wars first came out and didn’t use early computers, unlike most of the people I’m friends with…

2. If you were abducted by aliens who had never experienced ‘earth’ music
before, what one song would you play for them to demonstrate what music is
all about?

I think it would have to be one of the songs from the greatest ever live set, yet another thing I was too young to appreciate at the time… Queen playing at Live Aid in 1984. It’s a close call between ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ or ‘We Will Rock You’ or ‘We Are The Champions’ but I think I’ll go with ‘Radio Ga Ga’ in the end for the pure crowd participation!

3. If you were to be re-incarnated as an animal, which would you choose to
be?

I’m allergic to cats in this lifetime, but I’d love to be re-incarnated as one - to stretch and sun yourself all day while humans fetched you food on demand…

4. If you had to be stranded on a desert island with any person from the
past, present or future for a whole year, who would you choose?

I think that the only person that I’d be able to stand for a whole year would be my new hubbie - but since I only got married two days ago, I’m kinda obliged on this one! But seriously, I love him to bits and he’s the only one that can deal with me longterm!

5. What was your most embarassing moment?

It’s a while back now, but I was involved in church youth groups and choirs when I was younger. In my teenage years we were asked to perform as the singing group on RTE’s Sunday morning service. On the day one of the two lead singers was sick and I was thrown in at the last moment. Those who know me are aware that my singing ranges from very good to very bad… At the very end of the service as they were fading into credits the sound guy really caught me out as he dropped all the microphone volumes at the end with the exception of mine, just as I hit a really bum note! This was the final sound from the service just as the credits rolled and was really noticeable - and I got slagged about it for years after!

So now I need to pass this meme along, I hereby call out:

Grannymar
The Hubbie
Conor O’Neill
Keith