Randall "XKCD" Munroe's next book has been announced: How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems, a sequel of sorts to his 2014 book What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, spun out of his wonderful XKCD spinout site. It's out on Sept 3, and the publisher's description makes it (as Kottke says) an instant pre-order: "For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally bad that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole." Read the rest

Mark Marino is following up on his previous course on "how to write and read fake news" with an unaccredited Masters Class in Dad Jokes: "In this classy class, we’ll explore the ins and outs of jokes only dads would tell. Patronize the patriarchy with us as we explore a form of humor so painful to hear they’re endEARing. You don’t have to be a dad, have a dad, or have bagged a dad (ahem) to be in this course. All it takes is a shameless love a puns and a sense that no joke is too corny. Learn to make young people groan or maybe just to appreciate the punning paters in your life!" (apply here) Read the rest

Emergency rooms at for-profit hospitals are notorious price-gougers, where an ice-pack and a bandage can cost $5,000, and where no one will tell you how much your care is costing until months after the fact. Read the rest

Internet funnyperson Choire "Awl" Sicha (previously) has a new gig: New York Times advice columnist; Sicha is not fucking around either: "The only circumstance in which you can ask this woman out is if she sends you a literal ink-on-paper invitation to do so, like, in calligraphy and maybe with a seal stamped in wax, which would be awesome. (Also might mean she’s a vampire?) But, sure, you can totally ask her out if you don’t care about (1) her security about working with men in any capacity forever or (2) your career! Then have a blast, cannonball as many lives as possible on your way down the trash chute." (via Kottke) Read the rest

Some of the funniest products to come down the pipeline in years are Archie McPhee's line of squirrel feeders. By putting some food inside a tiny head (like a horse or a unicorn), a squirrel will unwittingly become part of a hilarious show.

Now folks are making their own versions. We first saw the Donald Trump head squirrel feeder back in July and now, thanks to comic book artist Sean Chan, there's one that has the squirrel donning the spooky Ghostface mask from the movie Scream.

It's never not funny:

View this post on Instagram

Finally done with all the kid’s costumes! Made one a while back for our backyard squirrel which she’ll be wearing for Halloween. #squirrelsofinstagram #squirrel #ghostfacemask

A post shared by Sean Chen (@seanchenart) on Oct 29, 2018 at 1:27pm PDT

The Groundlings — the comedy troupe that boasts top-notch alumni like Paul Reubens, Cassandra Peterson, Phil Hartman, and many more — are now producing original sketch comedy shorts on YouTube.

Here is a look at what they've got so far:

If you're in the Los Angeles area, check out their live sketch comedy Halloween show this Friday or Saturday. Read the rest

Have bad type choices got you bummed out?

Don't despair, type foundry Hoefler&Co. has got you covered. Their 50-page novelty Typographic Ticket Book makes it easy to play the enforcer of design infractions like "improper kerning" and "unironic use of Helvetica."

Fast Company:

...let us praise Hoefler & Co.’s attention to detail. The Ticket Book nails all the design conventions of municipal meter-maid gear: “things set in ALL CAPS that would be easier to read in lowercase, searing colors that dazzle the eyes, and confounding administrative indicia like bar codes and form numbers,” says Jonathan Hoefler. “And Helvetica. If the state is dressing you down, it’s always in Helvetica. Helvetica means you’re in trouble.”

The delights don’t stop there. Individual citation codes run the gamut from dad-jokey (“poor typeface choice: 72-60-HUH”) to so-inside-baseball-it-hurts (“improper hyphenation/justification: 72-436-RVR“), with a few dashes of guffaw-inducing surrealism thrown in for kicks (“improper word spacing: 72-428-C/WLKN”… get it?). The ticket book includes 32 “common design infractions,” which Hoefler admits he had to edit down. “Space permitting, [it] could probably have run to at least 60,” he says.

The Typographic Ticket Book is available from Hoefler&Co. for $10.

FACIET MAIOR LOGO = "Make the logo bigger." Read the rest

Did you know that he once "smoked a jay" with Tim Robbins, Giancarlo Esposito, and Robert Altman on a mountaintop at a Cannes film festival after-party? Or that he was cast by Lee Majors himself to appear in The Fall Guy?

In this uncensored video, Jack Black shares honest and often hilarious moments from his career in show business by looking at his own IMDB page.

It's all great, but be sure to watch it at least to the part where he talks about Johnny Skidmarks. I was in stitches.

(Digg) Read the rest

Solderer writes, "Old-school humor Magazine The American Bystander was dropped by its printer, citing prurient content (i.e. humor). Publisher Michael Gerber describes the ongoing situation in terms that would doubtless please Benjamin 'Fart Proudly' Franklin." Read the rest

These aren't the stories I'd expect to hear from Hillary Clinton... they're a bit more revealing than she's ever shared before. Read the rest

Fred Armisen, a drummer, tells jokes that pretty much only a drummer would love and then ups the ante by going into guitarist humor. (Late Night with Conan O'Brien)

Read the rest

InstantSunrise on Twitter embarked upon a Twitter epic: dragging every single U.S. president in chronological order. [via Kottke]

George Washington: Dude was a shit-ass general who owned slaves and when the working class realized that they were getting the same shit ass deal as before under the British and rose up, Washington came down on them like a ton of bricks to secure power.

John Adams: you want somebody who hates freedom of speech. Adams signed a bill saying you couldn’t talk shit about him, and made it harder to become a citizen (though not as hard as it is today). In fairness though, he didn’t own slaves, this is going to be a rarity going forwar.

Thomas Jefferson: Motherfucker owned slaves, and was a rapist, committed forced removal against Native Americans. Started an actual war in North Africa and a trade [war] with with Britain that would eventually escalate into an actual war.

Jimmy Carter: Began a long tradition of democratic candidates moving to the right to appeal to conservatives, only to get spat in the face and appeasing them by moving to the right even more. Stabbed labor in the back with deregulation.

James Mickens (previously) has a well-deserved reputation for being the information security world's funniest speaker, and if that were all he did, he would still be worth listening to. Read the rest

Johnathan Movie is losing his shit and it's all our fault. Read the rest

Those of us who eschew a phone case take a lot of abuse in this cruel world. Finally, a send-up of all the things we endure from case freaks and their misguided fanaticism. Note: some spicy language that reflects what we have to deal with. Read the rest

People want to know all kinds of things about funnyman Will Arnett. For instance, is he related to Michael Keaton? (No, but he does a great impression of him.) So, to promote his new movie Teen Titans Go! To the Movies, he sat down to answer the internet's most pressing questions in Wired's Autocomplete Interview. It's funny. Read the rest

Last Monday, David Sedaris was granted an honorary doctorate in fine arts from Oberlin College in Ohio. Then, he gave the keynote address for the school's 2018 commencement ceremony. It was, of course, perfectly hilarious and full of spot-on, no-holds-barred advice for the new grads.

On May 24, just prior to giving the speech, the humorist and essayist appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (video above) and discussed how he picked the advice he was going to share, "Well, it kind of makes you wonder, 'What do I know? What wisdom do I have?' So I started keeping a list of my wisdom. Part of it is, you have to be really careful about scented candles. There's really only two kinds worth having... Diptyque or Trudon."

That was the first piece of advice he shared with Oberlin's graduating class. There are seven more, all gems, including "Be yourself. Unless 'yourself' is an asshole." Watch.

Also, Sedaris has a new book. It's called Calypso. Read the rest