What happens when a man's cock is too large to fit in his wife's box? He tries to sell it on eBay of course.

I wonder if this the work of the character shown here letting his enormous beast out for the world to see.

Oh, how I love poultry-based humour. Thanks to Darran (who himself claims having a giant rooster) for the link.

After the comprehensive redesign of it's CNN International on-screen presentation, it was CNN.com's turn to be overhauled. While I would have hoped it to match the brilliant, web-inspired, euro-look that the International channel

I gave Writely another chance today and noticed the "blog" tab. I'm just trying it out and if it works it could make blogging far less painful than it currently is with Typepad. While Writely can only handle one blog per account it also supports TextPattern, and various other blogging systems. Let's see if it works... Yay! It does.

Update: Lordi, the Finnish Eurovision entry brought to my attention by Alex in the comments is possibly the most brilliantly insane thing ever. Videos: Could You Love a Monsterman and this year's song Hard Rock Hallelujah.

Serbia & Montenegro won't be participating in the quasi-musical, mostly-political, pan-European cringe fest that is the Eurovision. Why? Because they couldn't agree on the song... The song? Really? Everyone that's seen or even regularly enjoys it knows that music has very little to do with its appeal. It's all about being unbelievably hilarious (or hot).

Long before Simmon Cowell & co unleashed their own brand of hysterical musical humiliation the Europeans had something called Eurovision. Sure, some might say that the yearly event have given us great bands like, ahem, Abba but most contenders bleep off the radar faster than millionaire's yacht in the South China sea. No, the reason we all watch it religiously year after year is because we revel in the embarrassment of it all.

The music & choreography is generally so bad it feels like an American production intended to mock the European music scene. It's the funniest 3 hours of TV on the planet and it doesn't end with the performances because an hour-long pan-european voting session means that soon after being comical it all becomes very political.

The winner usually wins (or loses) due to various reasons: war (the UK does terribly badly ever since the Iraq war), cultural similarity (Cyprus gives Greece the maximum of 12 points yearly), geolocation (Scandinavians bounce the top marks back and forth), language (proud countries who refuse to sing in English usually don't stand a chance)... At the end of the day, like in every other talent show, one of the strongest determining factors is how hot the performer is. You only have to watch the last two years' winners (2004, 2005) to understand what I mean.

So we all know this isn't about the music (chill out Serbia & Montenegro), it's not about having someone molest your eardrums in Norwegian or rap in Dutch, it's about the show about not taking yourself too seriously, it's about Israeli transvestite singers falling under the weight of the trophy. Mostly, it's about taking the piss out of every country but your own. What a great way to bring Europe together!

There's this great line in the Spongebob Squarepants movie.

Patrick Star: Are they laughing at us?
SpongeBob SquarePants: No, they're laughting next to us.

The Chuck Norris Facts craze caught everyone by surprise. In all likelyhood, no one quite as much as The Chuck himself and it's good to see him play along and show that he too can be a good sport. Mostly, it makes him instantly more likeable as we all appreciate  celebrities (or even mere mortals) that don't take themselves too seriously. The Bearded One still obviously does but he's man enough to laugh about it (but beware of his wrath if you do). Same goes for David Hasselhoff. I'm not always 100% sure he does it on purpose but his appearance in the aforementioned movie was brilliant. Remember, it's less humiliating if you're in on it.

I know one or two big corporations that could do well to learn from the Chuck. Thanks Dimitri for the link.

Everything here is big ... The buildings, cars, TVs in hotel rooms, the portions... Howard just sent me to Carnegie Deli to get a "real NY experience" and, most importantly, a "really big sandwitch". How big? It was the size of my head and I have a big head. I got a workout just carrying the bag to my room (which, interestingly, is in the biggest Hilton I've ever seen). I manage to chow through about a quarter of it before admitting defeat.

Live from Austin, Texas it's the SxSW show where hipsters and geeks congregate to pat each other on the back and pitch their next web 2.0, social networking, tag clouding web-app of the future. What a perfectly good excuse to get out of my blogging hiatus.

Austin is warm, hot even but this didn't stop be from eating the biggest bloody (literally) steak in existence. Everything is big here, cars, roads, restaurants, distances, rooms, bathrooms, taxis... I've been taking a lot of pictures, I constantly look like a tourist.

One thing that SxSW will teach you: good bloggers do not always make good speakers. Without naming any names, certain panel discussions were dogged by low voices, awful pacing and just plain drab content that was just too obvious to be of much value. Lack of passion from the speakers, lack of passion from the crowd. It's been said that SxSW is more about the networking than the content and I am inclined to agree.

But all was not lost, the keynote by Jason Fried and Jim Coudal was a definite highlight with both presenters as eloquent as you'd expect. Jim Coudal was particularily engaging and very funny. Jason Fried was once again kean to preach the benefits of shelving the spec doc and just getting stuff done. Andy Budd and Andy Clarke both put together a very good, very professional presentation and kept the crowd entertained with a some ad hoc superhero themed banter.

Overall, I have enjoyed my first day and while some presentations have been drab and I've lost my complimentary goodie-bag I'm looking forward to tomorrow. It will be interesting to see Kottke speak and maybe get my hands on another bag. I'll be wearing my limited edition, super-elite UX Magazine t-shirt so I will obviously be mobbed by groupies.