what kind of a party is this

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I don’t think my love for Kate Beaton is a secret. The following comic is particularly fabulous (and seasonal). Please go to her hilarious website – Hark! A Vagrant – and read every single comic she’s ever written. No, seriously go. Go now.

Via Goulet. 

madness, of the march variety

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Talk of March Madness is swirling around the office. I’m not a fan of basketball, but I’m on board with one college basketball tradition: the Jake & Amir video. Although, to be honest, when Goulet sent me this year’s video, my first reaction was shock that Jake & Amir still exists.

I couldn’t get any of the videos to embed in this post, but it is well-worth clicking through. If you like the original, there are others. Also, this year’s.

Oh sheesh y’all, ’twas a dream…

belly laughs at twenty to nine

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In celebration of Valentine’s Day, The Current had a discussion about online dating this morning. The host, Anna Maria Tremonti, interviewed a couple who met in an Internet chat room in 1996. He lived in the U.K. and I didn’t catch where she lived, but I think it was in Canada. After a week of chatting, he bought her a ticket to visit him in England. An excerpt of the interview, paraphrased:

Anna Maria: Weren’t you afraid he was an axe murder?
Her: That’s what my friends were worried about, but I figured that an axe murderer doesn’t buy someone a plane ticket.
Him: Plus I’ve never hurt an axe in my life!

I laughed most of the way to work.

Speaking of axe murdering… well, murdering, anyway… here’s a cheerful (but sort of fascinating) read.

two blogs, one stone

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Here are the newest additions to my Google Reader:

1) Suri’s burn book

2) Myths retold

And here is Matthew Baldwin of Defective Yeti telling a fabulous story from Back Fence PDX. A taste of what you can look forward to if you make the trek to Nairobi to visit me.

He has a post about Back Fence PDX, where you can find some other charming and hilarious storytellers. I may or may not have stayed up past my bedtime watching them.

Also, I promise this page will become less of a collection of random Internet curios once I flee the country on August 14. In the meantime, check out that browser address bar! Woah-ho! I’m a URL!

what’s funny in Kenya?

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That’s what American comedian John Ramsey is trying to figure out. Here is his best guess:

John Ramsey is volunteering in Kenya for a year with International Justice Mission, and while he’s there, he’s been honing his craft for a Kenyan audience. He’s written about trying to figure out what makes Kenyans laugh, and it turns out that the jokes that he “liked the least were the ones that worked the best.” (Although, he’s careful to point out that “it’s not that I get Kenyan jokes and don’t like them (like primitive humor) – I just don’t get most of them at all.”)

The above clip is from the show Churchill Live, an extremely popular “late night” show in Kenya which reaches 10 million viewers (in Kenya, the surrounding countries and the diaspora). Props to John Ramsey for trying to connect with Kenyans through their own language and sense of humour, instead of hiding out in embassy smoking lounges cracking jokes about colonialism.

ps – Kenya friends – they film Churchill Live at Carnivore every Thursday evening… who’s in!?