Therre are very few things on the internet that make me actually “LOL” in the literal sense of the initialism, but this was of them.
And I know that it will mean absolutely nothing to most of the people reading, but if you know, you know.
The deadpan, middle-aged woman just looking out of her window, knowing who that is and what he’s doing; quoting that line. Too funny.
More funny stuff from Moose Allain here.
Dance Your Cares Away, etc etc.
But not your bank account. You’re going to need that.
It’s:
The Jim Henson Company 70 Years Anniversary Auction, and you can bid on – amongst several or more other things – a Fraggle.
Sure, it’s going to cost you up to $50,000 (that’s R875,410.52)(lol)(weep), but should you win, you will own an actual Fraggle.
There are 435 different lots, from a lot of different productions, most of which I have never heard of:
The top three are all Fraggle Rock related and are each sitting at $15,000, three weeks before the auction goes live.
Obviously, I don’t have the cash to mount any sort of challenge (although I haven’t checked down the back of the sofa yet), but these are clearly for the real fans out there who collect this sort of memorabilia.
If I remember (I won’t), we can check in again nearer the auction date and see just how much money it actually costs to own a Fraggle.
Love them or hate them (and honestly you’re a bit of a weirdo if you’re in the former camp), they’re part of our everyday browsing and doomscrolling experience. And I get the gist how they work: looking at your behaviour online, and then targeting ads to best lever a little more money out of you for the things that you know, love and need.
Except… they don’t always quite hit the mark, do they?
No.
I promise you that I have not looked up, discussed or in any way browsed anything to do with condoms in the last twenty-plus years. But still, I got a condom ad this weekend. But it wasn’t actually the condom bit that really confused me. It was the combination of products that I was being offered.
Because for me (and each to their own here), nothing completes a night of passion avec perles et nervures (oh la la!) than a bit of time spent poisoning rodents. And it’s even better when your presevatifs and pellets are 55% off.
Talk about killing the mice mood.
Take this flight ad. Decent prices, sure. We usually put the R in front of the number, but whatever.
But wait a second…
Newcastle-upon-Tyne (a bit random) 3½ times the price of a flight to London? I reckon I could pop on a Kevlar vest and get the train from Heathrow to Tyneside for less than that R6150.
Just.
But beagle-eyed readers will have spotted an additional issue here. Yes, the flight to Cape Town (one way, subject to availability, change and search dates). R589 does seem quite cheap until you realise that you’re already in Cape Town. Turn up to the check-in desk, present your ticket to the agent and prepare to be looked at a bit funny.
“Er… Sir. You’re here.”
“I know. What a bargain, right? Got it on an internet ad.”
And then you look at the price for Joburg and you do some rudimentary calculations and you work out that maybe the internet thinks you’re in Bloemfontein or Kimberley.
Why would anyone be there?
And even if they were, it still doesn’t explain the condoms and rat poison thing, does it?
Finally (for this post, at least) there’s this:
What a selection.
Selected for me, though?
“Tempting Whisper” Body Wash – no.
Brown Onion Soup – no.
Coffee pods – ok, yes.
Deep Heat Spray – only on Wednesdays.
Cesar 100g – pretty sure that’s not actually a lamb.
Cat Food Sticks – absolutely not.
The thing is, they’re wasting their money with all this misaimed stuff, and that means that the prices for the things that I do want to buy from them (from all the ads above, it’s honestly only the coffee) are just that little bit more expensive.
It does make for a good blog post every now and again though, I guess.
Nothing to see here.
No radioactive shrimp from Walmart.
Just some random dogs turning blue pretty close to the site of the world’s biggest nuclear disaster. (So far.)
As you can see, not all the dogs are turning blue, but some of them certainly are:
Wild images show several dogs near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant turning blue, baffling workers taking care of them. The alarming-looking dogs are descendants of pets abandoned after the nuclear disaster there nearly 40 years ago.
They’ve been found wandering around the Chernobyl exclusion zone this month, according to Dogs of Chernobyl, an affiliate of the non-profit Clean Futures Fund that cares for the dogs there.“We are on the ground now catching dogs for sterilisation, and we came across three dogs that were completely blue,” the organisation said in an Instagram post with more than 330,000 views.
But sometimes, just because there’s been a huge nuclear incident just down the road, and just because the stray dogs are in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are turning blue because of the high levels of radiation.
Is that a thing anyway?
No. It turns out that they had got into the leakage from a local Portaloo.
“They appear to have been rolling in a substance that had accumulated on their fur. We are suspecting that this substance was from an old portable toilet that was in the same location as the dogs; however, we were unable to positively confirm our suspicions,” states Dr Jennifer Betz, Veterinary Medical Director for the Dogs of Chernobyl program.
Eww. I think I’d have preferred the radiation thing.
I suppose that we were all far too busy trying to get our tongues around the twister to have thought of this. And I always hated this one.
But it’s a very fair point.
(No, I have no idea why wisdom apparently now comes on a plate, either.)
Tapping into the laziness of the seashell-wanting population, I guess.
Look, the shells are right there if you want them – and they’re free! – but you might have to search around and wash a bit of sand off. Plenty of water for that right there, too.
But if you can’t be arsed with all that, and you have the money, then simply go see her. She’s right there, shelling seasells on the shesore.
Damn it.