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MESSAGE FROM, H.R.H. THE QUEEN

October 20, 2008 by Leave a Comment

To the citizens of the United States of America from Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

In light of your failure in recent years to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.

(You should look up ‘revocation’ in the Oxford English Dictionary.)

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy).

Your new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

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1. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘colour,’ ‘favour,’ ‘labour’ and ‘neighbour.’ Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping half the letters, and the suffix ‘-ize’ will be replaced by the suffix ‘-ise.’ Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up ‘vocabulary’).

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2. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as ‘like’ and ‘you know’ is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as U.S. English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take into account the reinstated letter ‘u” and the elimination of ‘-ize.’

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3. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday. It will be replaced with a holiday for my birthday, as in all civilised countries.

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4. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you’re not quite ready to be independent. Guns should only be used for shooting grouse. If you can’t sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist,then you’re not ready to shoot grouse.

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5. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

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6. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left side with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

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7. The former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) of roughly $10/US gallon. Get used to it.

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8. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

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9. The cold, tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. Australian beer is also acceptable, as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of the British Commonwealth – see what it did for them. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat’s Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

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10. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Listening to Andie Macdowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one’s ears removed with a cheese grater.

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11. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies)..

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12. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the Australians first to take the sting out of their deliveries.

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13. You must tell us who killed JFK. It’s been driving us mad.

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14. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty’s Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).

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15. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 p.m. with proper cups, with saucers, and never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; plus strawberries (with cream) when in season.

God Save the Queen!

Filed Under: Email Joke Graveyard, Geographic, Political

Smile please

October 20, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Marriage changes passion.
Suddenly you’re in bed with a relative.

I saw a woman wearing a sweat shirt with ‘Guess’ on it.
So I said ‘Implants?’ She hit me.

How come we choose from just two people to run for president and over fifty for Miss America ?

Now that food has replaced sex in my life, I can’t even get into my own pants.

I signed up for an exercise class and was told to wear loose-fitting clothing. If I HAD any loose-fitting clothing, I wouldn’t have signed up in the first place!

When I was young we used to go ‘skinny dipping,’ now I just ‘chunky dunk.’

Don’t argue with an idiot; people watching may not be able to tell the difference.

Wouldn’t it be nice if whenever we messed up our life we could simply press ‘Ctrl Alt Delete’ and start all over? AMEN, AMEN !!

Why is it that our children can’t read a Bible in school, but they can in prison?

Wouldn’t you know it…
Brain cells come and brain cells go, but FAT cells live forever.

Why do I have to swear on the Bible in court when the Ten Commandments cannot be displayed outside?

Bumper sticker of the year:
‘If you can read this, thank a teacher -and, since it’s in English, thank a soldier’

And remember:
Life is like a roll of toilet paper.
The closer it gets to the end,
the faster it goes.
Ya just might want to pass this

Filed Under: Email Joke Graveyard, Life perspectives

Linden Lab CEO: hey I’m in London!

October 20, 2008 by Leave a Comment

On the rarely updated Linden Lab blog, CEO Mark Kingdon has posted that he’s arrived in London for the Virtual Worlds London shindig.

The response on the blog from Second Life residents has been… lukewarm to say the least. I’m sure VW London’s organisers would have liked the announcement from Mr Kingdon more than 12 hours before he’s due to speak on “many of the initiatives I’ve spoken about in this space including our focus on improving overall stability, further tailoring the platform for our core audiences and enhancing the first hour experience for new Residents.”

Some predictions on the speech itself: it will cover the promise of virtual worlds, the improvements in usability to date, some veiled references to future developments and the announcement of SL servers on all continents by the end of 2008. Ok scratch that last one – do we really need SL servers in Antarctica?

Disclosure: we’re a media partner for Virtual Worlds London.

Update: a summary of the keynote can be found here.

Filed Under: General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

Global Kids’ Curriculum – now Extended!

October 20, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Jeremy Kemp, of SimTeach and Sloodle fame, and Stephen Kemp, have taken the material of the Global Kids’ Curriculum and extended the notion, reformatting the text and images into various forms that improve their usability and use, as well as adding to the already high quality and quantity of notes available.

Global Kids

Global Kids(GK), Inc. created the contents of the Global Kids Curriculum (GKC). GK uses digital media – digital presentations, digital environments such as Second Life and the Teen Second Life Grid, and so on –  to deliver their messages and their programs to the youths and adults that are their targets. GK runs intensive leadership programs for youth, with the intent that kids become “successful students as well as global and community leaders.” The material for adults covers both professional development programs for teachers and educators involved in youth education – multimedia presentations delivered via Second Life – and professional development services, such as RezEd. They also run an innovative high school, and give technological assistance to other schools.

Jeremy Kemp

Jeremy Kemp began his work teaching online in 1999; currently he is an instructional designer at San José State University and a doctoral student, focusing on educational and social issues in immersive environments. The SimTeach Second Life Education wiki that Kemp runs contains a plethora of information for educators entering Second Life and using it as an educational tool. Sloodle is the combination of the  Moodle – a content management system (CMS) – and Second Life that Kemp has created.

Stephen Kemp is Jeremy Kemp’s father.

Global Kids’ Curriculum

The Global Kids’ Second Life Curriculum is a surprisingly comprehensive set of notes, intended to teach the reader what they need to know to use Second Life, as well as being useful for teaching literacy skills. It can be used as a set of handouts or used in its entirety to teach Second Life-specific skills to either students or educators.

The curriculum is composed of nine levels, within which there are modules and then individual lesson plans or “missions” – there are 163 missions.

To download copies of this curriculum, you will need to join RezEd.org and the curriculum group.

The curriculum is on offer for free to all qualified educational institutions, though Global Kids do request donations be made when the material is used, so that they can continue providing and extending their services.

The curriculum was developed by Global Kids Staff and co-produced with Cathy Arreguin.

Global Kids’ Curriculum / Extended

This link points to the Global Kids’ Curriculum / Extended (GKCx) web page, which contains links to the new forms of the  GKC – the new PDF document, the wiki, the Second Life textures, videos explaining the GKCx, and original word documents from Global Kids.

The PDF contains a package of all of the notes contained within a single document. Printed, it makes a handy physical reference. It is also useful as a digital entity, as the Kemps have added a set of bookmarks, a contents page and abstracts for each level, that enable the user to navigate the material easily.

The textures available in Second Life are images of each of the PDF pages from the large package. Paula Christopher (aka Downtown Bloch) has also made these textures available on the Teen Grid.

The wiki is for the most part a replication of the PDF document and is very close to completion.

GKCx  is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0.

The GKCx is an easily navigable and highly useful set of resources that nicely extends the work done by Global Kids. It’s recommended that educators make use of the new formats.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: ,

Note to self: ‘Cancel credit cards prior to death!

October 20, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Be sure and cancel your credit cards before you die! This is so priceless and so easy to see happening – customer service, being what it is today!

A lady died this past January, and ANZ bank billed her for February and March for their annual service charges on her credit card, and then added late fees and interest on the monthly charge The balance had been $0.00, now is somewhere around $60.00.

A family member placed a call to the ANZ Bank:

Family Member:
‘I am calling to tell you that she died in January.’

ANZ:
‘The account was never closed and the late fees and charges still apply.’

Family Member:
‘Maybe, you should turn it over to collections.’

ANZ:
‘Since it is two months past due, it already has been.’

Family Member:
So, what will they do when they find out she is dead?’

ANZ:
‘Either report her account to the frauds division or report her to the credit bureau, maybe both!’

Family Member:
‘Do you think God will be mad at her?’

ANZ:
‘Excuse me?’

Family Member:
‘Did you just get what I was telling you . . . The part about her being dead?’

ANZ:
‘Sir, you’ll have to speak to my supervisor.’

Supervisor gets on the phone:

Family Member:
‘I’m calling to tell you, she died in January.’

ANZ:
‘The account was never closed and the late fees and charges still apply.’

Family Member:
‘You mean you want to collect from her estate?’

ANZ:
(Stammer) ‘Are you her lawyer?’

Family Member:
‘No, I’m her great nephew.’
(Lawyer info given)

ANZ:
‘Could you fax us a certificate of death?’

Family Member:
‘Sure.’
( fax number is given )

After they get the fax:

ANZ:
‘Our system just isn’t set up for death. I don’t know what more I can do to help.’

Family Member:
‘Well, if you figure it out, great! If not, you could just keep billing her. I don’t think she will care.’

ANZ:
‘Well, the late fees and charges do still apply.’

Family Member:
‘Would you like her new billing address?’

ANZ:
‘That might help.’

Family Member:
‘ Rookwood Memorial Cemetery, 1249 Centenary Rd, Sydney Plot Number 1049.’

ANZ:
‘Sir, that’s a cemetery!’

Family Member:
‘Well, what the **** do you do with dead people on your planet?’

Filed Under: Email Joke Graveyard, Financial

The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

October 20, 2008 by 1 Comment

1. The Industry Standard (Canada) – Virtual world advertising: A wasteful expense, or a bargain for marketers? “Are virtual worlds like Second Life and There.com about to feel a chill from advertisers? It depends who you talk with. This week, an article in the Wall Street Journal reported that marketers are cutting back on digital and “experimental” ad buys, including video game advertising, cell phone advertising, and virtual world advertising.”

2. Minneapolis Star Tribune (USA) – Game strives for Web success. “”I don’t think there’s any other field where you can find a failure rate this high and still find people willing to invest,” said Mark Jacobs, general manager of game studio EA Mythic. “The failure rate is unbelievable.” Jacobs was talking about his section of the video-game industry, the realm of online games where players pay a monthly fee to participate as characters in a virtual world. In the past 11 years, by his count, fewer than 10 titles have met some level of financial success. The number of expensive flops is a lot larger.”

3. nextgov (USA) – Web 2.0 technologies are seen as vital to attracting younger employees . “The federal government must adapt and embrace Web 2.0 technologies such as virtual worlds, wikis and social networks to attract and retain younger employees, because the technologies are here to stay, two federal knowledge management practitioners said in a presentation in Washington on Thursday. Comment on this article in The Forum.Speaking at a conference on knowledge management and business intelligence organized by the Digital Government Institute, Giora Hader, the Federal Aviation Administration’s knowledge architect, said agencies must embrace the world of social networking and collaborative technologies or risk losing out on a generation of new workers who are needed to fill gaps left by the upcoming wave of retirements.”

4. CNET (USA) – Hello Kitty gamers take on New York. “If your kids start to show serious signs of loving New York and you don’t know why, this might be the reason. Sanrio Digital, maker of the Hello Kitty Online 3D virtual world that’s currently in beta, announced Friday the game’s largest in-game event: the building of New York City. Players of the Hello Kitty Online Founders’ Beta can take part in a series of quests to collect and organize materials for the building of a new New York area that will appear in the next phase of the game–and will undoubtedly be far more pink than the real Big Apple.”

5. BBC News (UK) – The Cost of Warcraft. If you’ve got any bandwidth limit on your internet use, you may have bust through it this week, especially if you have a teenage son. Why? Well it could be the cost of war – or rather World of Warcraft.
I’ve been keeping a close eye on my bandwidth use at home because I keep breaking through my 25gb per month limit. When I signed up to my ISP I thought that would be ample, but then found that we were using as much as 1gb a day, which seemed a lot. Then on Wednesday this week we broke all records, with more than 2gb downloaded. I was away from home, my wife’s surfing habits are mostly limited to reading obscure economics blogs, so the spotlight fell on our teenage son, who spends a certain amount of time online in his room in the loft.”

6. Gamasutra (USA) – Ubisoft Opens Far Cry 2 Space In PlayStation Home. “Ubisoft’s just-launched Far Cry 2 “space” in PlayStation Home’s closed beta in North America and Europe is the first third-party game area to hit Sony’s PlayStation 3-based virtual world, the company says. The Far Cry 2 space in Home features details taken from the game universe and promises it “will become a fully-interactive experience” and “continue to grow and evolve alongside PlayStation Home.”

7. Express Computer (India) – Got your enterprise avatar? ” A Balasubramanian on why enterprises should experiment with virtual worlds, but look for community benefits rather than commerce. Returning, once again, to the hustle and bustle of the Techno Over-exposition of Geeks and Gizmos for Lazy Enterprises (TOGGLE), you Papyrus Bytewala, CIO of Baffle Corporation, are in the jaunty company of Danny DeVito, your CTO at Baffle.”

8. LA Times (USA) – PlayStation Home: Sony’s open house. “This fall, Sony will throw open the doors to PlayStation Home, an ambitious project to turn its online game network for PS3 console players into a lifelike 3-D virtual world where people can cruise around with their avatars. Sony has mentioned the project in past years, but had not released details. Last week, the company held an open house to give reporters an early tour. The software gives players the ability to create highly customized, realistic avatars. Each player also will be given a waterfront condo with a walk-in closet where they can try on various accessories purchased at Home’s virtual mall.”

9. SOA World (USA) – iTech Fitness and Softkinetic Collaborate on Groundbreaking Active Gaming Project for XRKade. “iTech Fitness, the industry leader in active gaming development, and Softkinetic, the leading 3D gesture recognition software provider, today announced a partnership to develop the future of active gaming experiences. For the first time ever, users can exercise in a virtual world by simply moving their bodies, without the use of any game controller or peripheral.”

10. Daily Yomiuri (Japan) – ‘Born-digital generation wants to share’ “If you haven’t yet digested the concept of massive, multiplayer online games, or MMOs, then watch out: James Crowley has announced the advent of what he calls MMO 2.0. And if you can’t guess what that means, you probably weren’t “born digital.” Crowley is the president of Turbine, Inc., which runs such MMOs as Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online. In an Oct. 10 speech at the Tokyo Game Show in Chiba, Crowley called MMOs the place where social networks, virtual worlds and conventional online games overlap. But he also said that MMOs would have to reinvent themselves to appeal to the new “born digital” generation.”

Filed Under: General News, Virtual Worlds, Virtual worlds in the media Tagged With:

Boobs vs. Willies

October 20, 2008 by Leave a Comment

A family is at the dinner table. The son asks his father, ‘Dad, how many Kinds of boobs are there?’

The father, surprised, answers, ‘Well, son, a woman goes through three phases. In her 20s, a woman’s boobs are like melons, round and firm. In Her 30s to 40s, they are like pears, still nice but hanging a bit. After 50, they are like onions’.

‘Onions?’

‘Yes, you see them and they make you cry.’

This infuriated his wife and daughter, so the daughter said, ‘Mom, how many kinds of ‘willies’ are there?’

The mother, surprised, smiles and answers, ‘Well dear, a man goes through three phases also. In his 20s, his willy is like an oak tree, mighty and Hard. In his 30s and 40s, it is like a birch, flexible but reliable. After his 50s, it is like a Christmas tree’.

‘A Christmas tree?’

‘Yes — dead from the roots up and the balls are just for decoration.’

Filed Under: Email Joke Graveyard, Sex, The Gender Wars

Helpful Hints

October 20, 2008 by Leave a Comment

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00.

With Enron, you would have had $16.50 left of the original $1000.00.

With WorldCom, you would have had less than $5.00 left.

If you had purchased $1000 of Delta Air Lines stock you would have $49.00 left.

But, if you had purchased $1,000.00 worth of beer/wine one year ago, drank all the beer/wine, then turned in the cans/bottles for the aluminium recycling REFUND, you would have had $214.00.

Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to Drink heavily and recycle.

Filed Under: Email Joke Graveyard, Trivia

Girlie wisdom

October 20, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Women over 50 don’t have babies because they would put them down and forget where they left them.

A friend of mine confused her Valium with her birth control pills.. she has 14 kids but doesn’t really care.

One of life’s mysteries is how a 2-pound box of chocolates can make a woman gain 5 lbs.

My mind not only wanders, it sometimes leaves completely.

The best way to forget your troubles is to wear tight shoes.

The nice part about living in a small town is that when you don’t know what you are doing, someone else does.

The older you get, the tougher it is to lose weight because by then, your body and your fat are really good friends.

Just when I was getting used to yesterday, along came today.

Sometimes I think I understand everything, and then I regain consciousness.

I gave up jogging for my health when my thighs kept rubbing together and setting fire to my knicker’s.

Amazing! You hang something in your closet for a while and it shrinks 2 sizes!

Skinny people irritate me! Especially when they say things like…’You know sometimes I forget to eat!’ ……..Now I’ve forgotten my address, my mother’s maiden name and my keys, but I have never forgotten to eat. You have to be a special kind of stupid to forget to eat!

The trouble with some women is that they get all excited about nothing and then they marry him.

I read this article that said the typical symptoms of stress are eating too much, impulse buying, and driving too fast. Are they kidding? That’s my idea of a perfect day!

SEND THIS TO 5 BRIGHT WOMEN YOU KNOW AND MAKE THEIR DAY!!!
LIVE SIMPLY…..LAUGH OFTEN….LOVE DEEPLY

Filed Under: Email Joke Graveyard, The Gender Wars

A mature lady gets pulled over for speeding…

October 20, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Woman: Is there a problem, Officer?

Officer: Ma’am, you were speeding.

Woman: Oh, I see.

Officer: Can I see your license please?

Woman: I’d give it to you but I don’t have one.

Officer: Don’t have one?

Woman: Lost it, 4 years ago for drunk driving.

Officer: I see…Can I see your vehicle registration papers please.

Woman: I can’t do that.

Officer: Why not?

Woman: I stole this car.

Officer: Stole it?

Woman: Yes, and I killed and hacked up the owner.

Officer: You what?

Woman: His body parts are in plastic bags in the trunk if you want to see

The Officer looks at the woman and slowly backs away to his car and calls for back up. Within minutes 5 police cars circle the car. A senior officer slowly approaches the car, clasping his half drawn gun.

Officer 2: Ma’am, could you step out of your vehicle please!
The woman steps out of her vehicle.

Woman: Is there a problem sir?

Officer 2: One of my officers told me that you have stolen this car and murdered the owner.

Woman: Murdered the owner?

Officer 2: Yes, could you please open the trunk of your car, please.

The woman opens the trunk, revealing nothing but an empty trunk.

Officer 2: Is this your car, ma’am?

Woman: Yes, here are the registration papers.
The officer is quite stunned.

Officer 2: One of my officers claims that you do not have a driving license.

The woman digs into her handbag and pulls out a clutch purse and hands it to the officer.

The officer examines the license. He looks quite puzzled.

Officer 2: Thank you ma’am, one of my officers told me you didn’t have a license, that you stole this car, and that you murdered and hacked up the owner.

Woman: Bet the b****** told you I was speeding, too.

Filed Under: Email Joke Graveyard, The Gender Wars

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