Had a metric whack of good video come my way today. Mine will be last.

First, we have a pretty good piece of meta-comedy from Funny Or Die and Will Ferrell.

It’s the writing I love the most about it, although the execution is quite good too. But every bit from it shows a very high level of hip self-awareness by the people at Funny or Die. They clearly have a good sense of humour about their own sense of humour and the sort of things they produce, and that wins them mad respect from a big old comedy nerd like me.

I think my favorite moment is the “Maybe it’s time we changed the name of Fart Mountain to something else. “NEVER! *savage splitting of log”.

I didn’t like the Will Ferrell laughs too long at Benjamin Butthands bit, though. I am so totally over the whole “it’s funny because it goes on too long’ thing (Thanks, Seth MacFarlane!”). It is always great to see David Spade, though.

I have had sort of a crush on David Spade since his SNL days.

Just something about him draws me to him.

And next, the kind of simple, elegant genius that makes guys like me want to weep with joy.

That is jaw-droppingly brilliant. A seemingly intractable problem solved by the simplest of low tech technology. Just imagine all the stress that would save. Circling around looking for parking (or ‘park sharking’) is a maddening, frustrating and highly stressful thing because it is both uncertain and competitive. You really want to park and you get super pissed when someone else takes “your” spot, the one you were “clearly” about to take.

Amazing how driving brings out our territorial urges, isn’t it?

Of course, I have logistical questions. Like, who keeps the balloons full of helium> Or do they have balloons so perfectly gas-tight that no helium can escape now?

Because helium is a tiny atom. It gets out or damned near anything less than a steel pressure tank.

Also, what keeps the string on the balloon from getting tangled up in the cars? Sure, with a nice boxy vehicle backing in, everything’s cool, but that string is going to get tangled up in the grill of a lot of vehicles, and probably get snapped.

Still, I adore the kind of visionary ingenuity behind such a plan.

Next up, a spirited attempt to take over the Internet by making the ultimate cat video.

What I like the most about this vid is that the makers did so much with (mostly) just using what cats normally do. (Obviously, not so much with the synth playing cat. )

Videos like this one always give me a queasy feeling because I love cats so very, very much, but I don’t like seeing them made to do tricks or stuffed into costumes so much.

I once had to leave the audience and go behind the stands at the Moscow Circus because it bothered me so much to see the big cats demeaned by being made to do tricks.

I’m telling you, being sensitive ain’t for wimps.

So videos like the one linked above bother me, and they are always walking a thin line with me on how the cats are being treated.

But this video uses fairly natural cat reactions plus loads of CGI to keep the cat bothering down to a minimum. And I have to admit, they are highly inventive.

Am I wrong to think that video had to be made by fags?

Here’s a viral vid of the day : a truly epic bit of criminal fail.

The pacing is a little slow, but the payoff is totally worth it.

Now to me, that looks staged. I am pretty sure it would be very hard to actually throw someone out a window like that in the real world. It’s a hilarious visual,and of course, we all like to see criminals fail in public, painful, humiliating ways.

Plus, who the hell would grab an armed guy anyhow?

That does not prove it’s staged, of course, and I really hope it isn’t, because if that is not staged, it is freaking awesome on many levels.

One more before my own vid. This thing made me belly laugh like a lunatic. It is just such a perfect example of the kind of comedy that can only come naturally.

It’s such an incredible perfect storm of comedy. You start with something tacky and awful (a singing trout), add a cheap version of an okay but overexposed 60’s pop song… and then have things go marvelously, horribly, satanically wrong.

What sells the comedy, of course, is that the “singing do wa ditty, ditty dum, ditty do” parts are perfectly normal but the actual verse is completely terrifying. The contast is so strong that you just can’t help but find it either horrifying or hilarious, and I am a sick son of a bitch, and so that video makes me laugh so hard it hurts.

Probably should get that looked at.

And finally, the piece of resistance, today’s vid.

I am particularly proud of that title graphic. Turns out, Cooper BLK plus different colors makes anything look a lot like a book cover from the Seventies! Far fuckin’ out, man.

As for the content, those are, as usual, ideas I have been pondering for quite some time. So many people my age went to school, followed their dreams to university, got the degree of their dreams… and ended up in menial low status jobs because a dream is not a job and there is no mechanism to make sure that there are enough of every job that anyone wants to do to just waiting for them when they graduate.

And when it comes to the very academic degrees, the ones where basically the only job you can get with them is the same job your professors had…. even if you somehow get that job in academia, there are 499 other people who did not, and will be paying student debt for decades on a degree that did nothing but waste four years of their precious youth.

I tell kids today, don’t give up on your dreams, but get a practical, marketable degree if you are going to go to university at all. That way, you will be able to make a decent living while pursuing your real dream in your spare time.

And if, instead of being a big rock star, you end up being a moderately successful corporate comptroller with a spouse, three lovely kids, and a house in a nice neighborhood… is that so bad?

There is no shame in being ordinary.