I never thought I'd post about a mutual fund on this site, but this is quite amusing. The Vice Fund bucks the "ethical" mutual fund trend by investing almost exclusively in alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and defense companies. Not surprisingly, it performs quite well. Interestingly, one investment in the fund's portfolio (PDF), under "Miscellaneous", is Microsoft. Hmm...

As I post this, SwankSigns.org is a tad sluggish, due to linkage from BoingBoing, but it looks to be a lot of fun. Basically, people post photos of weird warning signs and then comment on them. The example on the BoingBoing link is fantastic. It graphically warns you of an incredibly specific type of danger that could't possibly be described in less than 25 words.

If you're not familiar with the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, it's a competition to devise the worst possible opening line for a novel. Always a good laugh.

Charging your cell phone and laptop while driving sure is convenient, but a fat lot of good that'll do you if you get hungry while cruising the Interstate at 90 MPH.

Now, thanks to the magic of 12 Volt DC technology, you can make coffee, blend drinks (non-alcoholic of course), microwave a Hot Pocket, fry some bacon, slow-cook some nice chili, pop some popcorn, and bake a pizza - all from the comfort of your driver's seat!

MSN releases Virtual Earth, nearly identical but not as good as Google Maps. The world yawns.

Need to paint a tunnel into a rock wall, or get some jet-propelled roller skates? Check out the Illustrated Catalog of ACME Products.

C|Net lists the Top 10 Web Fads of all time (i.e., the last 7 years of mass-market Web surfing)

Or, perhaps, less lunacy during the waking hours (ok, this is a really bad pun on the origin of 'lunacy', from 'luna', meaning moon)... Daylight Savings Time will be extended. Huzzah for all of the people who want more sunlight during normal waking hours. Boo for all of the technology that automatically adjusts for the change, and can't possibly be fixed by November 2005. "A Silent Y2K"?

"Kids across the nation will soon rejoice" because then they can trick-or-treat in the daylight hours? Who even does that?

And I really, really don't understand why this might adversely affect livestock.

And, all of this is to ease up on oil consumption. Ummm, why not subsidize greener vehicles, instead of SUVs?

If you can figure out all the British slang (quite customary in Register articles), this is a pretty funny story.

...the unnamed 15-year-old [hoodlum] was legally obliged to carry alcohol on the streets of his native Alnwick after the order rather agreeably substituted the word "without" for the word "with". Accordingly, the lad was technically in breach of the [court order] if found terrorising the good [citizens] of his home town without [booze] in his hand.

"MEGATRON!"

Here's the coolest "vaporware" I've seen in a long time. It's a keyboard which has dot-matrix displays on each keys, allowing you to change the functionality of each key, and still see exactly what each key does, including a dedicated set of "launcher" keys, which display the actual icon of the program they launch. How cool is that?

Unfortunately, it's not actually available yet, and I doubt it will be cheap. However, since you can get a very full-function keyboard for $10 these days, they'd really only need to shoot for 10 times the going rate to still keep the price reasonable - at least for the kinds of folks who'd be into this sort of thing.

Check out this cool and oddly creepy photographic art project.

I sometimes ego-search on some of my stuff, like JFugue, my Java API for Music Programming. Last week, I had nearly 900 Google hits on the word "jfugue" - I've had that many hits for a year. Then, I posted an announcement about the new JFugue version 2.1 to a few newsgroups. The next day, I had about 700 hits. Today, I only have 10. What happened? Did Google do some kind of purge? Did posting to newsgroups somehow kill the number of hits? (that doesn't make any sense)

Yesterday, I saw a weird ad on TV for a goofy sounding horn you can install in your car, called the "Hey Horn". The Hey Horn is a "friendly" alternative to your regular horn, used for getting peoples' attention without them thinking you're angry. At first, it looked like a fake ad. Then, it looked like a product you could actually buy. Then, the ad got weirder, and I once again assumed it was fake. Finally, the ad ended with the usual "send check or money order to..." message with a real price and a real address. I thought, "if this is a fake ad, they've gone too far, and people will get pissed when they send a check and get nothing." The ad listed a web address - www.MOTORmate.com.

Today, I got around to visiting the site, and all has been made clear. Not only can you buy a "Hey Horn", you can buy a G-Force Indicator and a protective Moto-Go Grip for those handles above your car doors.

So, is it a joke, or can you really buy these things? Both!

Anyone with the slightest amount of marketing savvy will quickly realize upon visiting MOTORmate that this whole setup is a marketing campaign for Mini (you know, like, the little car), but the genius is that they actually took things one step beyond other gimmick campaigns like this - you can actually buy the goofy products in the ads (watch the ads on MOTORmate.com - they're funny).

This is a brilliant idea because I'm sure the cost of making the products is a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of the ad campaign itself. And, obviously, Mini doesn't need to make a dime selling the stuff (though they will make some money!) Meanwhile, the sheer novelty of the MOTORmate campaign ensures viral marketing awareness (e.g. this post). Nice work, Mini.

Honka Honka!

I'm saddened to read about the recent explosions in London, and this post is in no way meant to make comedy out of an unfortunate situation. I saw this picture on CNN's front page today, and I couldn't figure out if there's really a face on that mask, or if it's the bizarre interplay of shadows.

How to convert your Doberman to a Poodle in 14 easy steps.

Just put a freakin' mesh around the blades!

There are some comic strips that are good because the jokes are clever, or the drawings are funny. Then there are comics that are good because they truly use the medium to its full potential - with the types of gags that are not possible in any other medium. Often this means gags where the jokes lie in the margins between the panels. Anyone who's read Scott McCloud's masterpiece Understanding Comics (and everyone SHOULD) knows what I mean.

"Perry Bible Fellowship" (which has nothing to do with bibles or fellowships — or anyone named Perry, for that matter) falls into the latter category. Check out the archive of comics. "Chew Boy" is a perfect example of comic-strip-only humor. Great Stuff.

Here's a cool contest for the audio-minded. Penguin Books is having a "remix" contest. They provide spoken word clips from popular "audiobooks", and you make them into music. Neat!