The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Silly

Wallow in silliness here

  • Stop clapping, this is serious

    A great interview with Tom Lehrer. Sample quote:

    It’s 50 years since Lehrer’s first recordings, and 38 years since his last album of new material, yet word that we’ve secured an interview has people around the office launching into such unlikely yet infectious ditties as The Vatican Rag, Smut and Lehrer’s ode to spring pursuits, Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.

    It also has people asking with a surprised tone: “Is he still alive?” Yes, Lehrer is very much with us, despite being quiet for so long (he once told The New York Times he had encouraged rumours of his demise in the hope of cutting down junk mail).
    …
    “With audiences nowadays I see it with these late-night [TV show] people, Jay Leno, David Letterman and so on the audience applauds the jokes rather than laughs at them, which is very discouraging.

    “Laughter is involuntary. If it’s funny you laugh. But you can easily clap just to say [deadpan]: ‘A ha, that’s funny, I think that’s funny.’ Sometimes they cut to the audience and you can see they are applauding madly. But they’re not laughing.”

    Tom Lehrer is one of the funniest people I’ve ever heard. Check him out. Here’s another interview with Lehrer.

  • Not your regular office christmas party

    What is the christmas office party like, when you work for the Happy at Work Project? Well, it might go a little like this:


  • Olive solitaire. Olitaire?

    This made me laugh. Clever.

    Via BoingBoing.

  • Turtles all the way down

    Here’ one of my favourite stories:

    A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.

    At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.”

    The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?”

    “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down.”

    Here’s the story of the story at Wikipedia.

  • Today’s word

    Not only are there people who believe in creationism as a scientific fact. There are people who believe that the earth is the center of the universe and everything else revolves around us, and there are people who refuse to believe that HIV is the cause of AIDS.

    In a comment to a marvellous response to one of these HIV-deniers I found today’s word: A “debunking and a half” :o)

  • Damn you, Otters

    CNN says: Otters winning battle of wits.

    In an admission that the slick-furred creatures refuse to respect boundaries imposed by man, authorities want to officially abandon their otter-relocation policy.
    …
    Fearful that an oil spill could wipe out otters elsewhere, the agency tried to create a reserve for 150 otters on San Nicholas Island, about 80 miles south of Santa Barbara.

    Biologists had thought the otters would stay near San Nicholas, which has plenty of food and is surrounded by deep water that is hard to swim across. Even if the otters wanted to leave, it seemed improbable that they had the navigation skills to do it — especially since they were taken to the island by plane.

    “We flew ’em out there,” Sanders said, “although we didn’t blindfold them.”

    I always knew otters were smart :o)

  • German IT outfit bans whining

    This may not be the best way to go about it:

    German IT outfit Nutzwerk Ltd has come up with the perfect solution to whining in the workplace – it’s made cheerfulness a contractual obligation. What’s more, Manager Thomas Kuwatsch has declared that those who don’t measure up to the prescribed level of jollity in the morning should stay at home until they cheer up.

    Full story in The Register. Funny. I think there’s actually something to this: Give people the right to stay home, if they don’t feel happy, though outlawing grumpiness is probably a bad idea. It’ll only drive it underground where it’s harder to deal with. It may even amplify the complaining.

  • Quote

    THE ETERNAL TWINS

    Taking fun
    as simply fun
    and earnestness
    in earnest
    shows how thoroughly
    thou none
    of the two
    discernest.
    -Piet Hein

  • Sunday safari

    Patricia and I went on a small tour of Copenhagen today and discovered some new sights and experiences. Like a coffee, where you drink the cofee then eat the cup. Or a giant skate ramp. Of course, if you can’t skate, you can always slide down it on your ass – like a kid dared me to do.

    Who knew – a full skate park in the middle of Copenhagen complete with a biiiig ramp:

    Damn that’s high…

    But when a kid dares you to do something…

  • Suicide PowerPoint Presentation

    Once again The Onion nails it, in this storysatire of an office worker who commits suicide and leaves a PowerPoint presentation rather than a note for his co-workers:

    Butler broke his presentation into four categories: Assessment Of Current Situation, Apologies & Farewells, Will & Funeral Arrangements, and Final Thoughts.

    According to Williams+Kennedy president Bradford Williams, finalgoodbye.ppt was “clear, concise, and persuasive.”

    Did I mention that all our work is a PowerPoint Free Zone?