Pun for the Ages.

My buddy Brandt sent me this Joseph Tartakovsky article today from the NY Times. Very funny stuff...or should I say very punny?

THE inglorious pun! Dryden called it the “lowest and most groveling kind of wit.” To Ambrose Bierce it was a “form of wit to which wise men stoop and fools aspire.” Universal experience confirms the adage that puns don’t make us laugh, but groan. It is said that Caligula ordered an actor to be roasted alive for a bad pun. (Some believe he was inclined to extremes.)

Read the whole article here. Illustration by Craig Damrauer.

St. Barack.

Do you think Reuters shooter Jason Reed could have been oblivious to the Renaissance Saint-ness of this photo of Obama? Complete with gold-leaf halo. Isn’t there enough pressure on the man already?

Wotta Rube.

Hadn’t really thought about Rube Goldberg in a while, but my friend Heather posted something on Facebook today that made me think “good golly, what if Rube Goldberg had a good flash animator at his disposal!” See that item here.

See more of the original Rube here. What an amazingly inventive guy. His name has actually acquired noun status in Webster’s New World Dictionary: “A comically involved, complicated invention, laboriously contrived to perform a simple operation.” I remember looking at his machines for hours as a kid.