we love the web email us go to messageboard newsletter archive home NEWSLETTER: "CHERIE BLAIR SEX CALENDAR" next issue » « previous issue This Week: * POLITICS - Boris for PM * LETTERS - Children write to Christopher Walken * CUTENESS - The Yoda dog ------------------------------------------------- ________ ____ __ ___ ____/ _)|_ // /_/ _ | ___/ _ |/_ > Sponsor B3ta << Want this space? Then talk to us. http://b3ta.com/mailus/ ------------------------------------------------- : WHAT B3TA PEOPLE HAVE BEEN MAKING THIS WEEK #1 Cherie, Rathergood, Boris >> Cherie Blair Sex Calendar << "I finally got around to finishing my Cherie Blair calendar for 2006", pants Wasp Box, "and after mild revulsion I thought I'd submit it to the newsletter." Woo. This is far from safe for work, but will be the hottest link in the Houses of Parliament this Friday. And we mean hot. http://www.waspbox.com/gallery/Mrs_Blair_2006.pdf >> Rathergood t-shirts << Joel's been making a new bunch of t-shirts. They've got Red Army kittens and alco-monkeys on them. And the Spongmonkey Moon things too. Fantastic stuff. BTW: Joel sent us a Red Army kitten one, and the official B3ta wife is sleeping in it as we type. http://www.bravadolive.com/rathergood >> Vote Boris << We've got a soft spot for Boris Johnson: OK he might be a Tory, but there's something about him that screams wild boar sausages and jolly boarding-school japes. Stevierar wants him for our prime minister and asks you to pledge your vote too. As we're going to press, he's only got 15 votes, wonder what it will be by this time next week? http://www.pledgebank.com/yayboris ------------------------------------------------- : GOING OUT IS THE NEW BROWSING THE WEB Coming up, B3ta nights out... Woo. We're really rather chuffed with our calendar thing. You've been organising yourselves into having drunken nights out, and we salute you. This Saturday there's a drink planned in Nottingham, followed by a Thursday bender in a Soho pub. More details on our site, and remember, you can organise your own events too. Unless you are a furry. http://www.b3ta.com/calendar/ ------------------------------------------------- : WHAT B3TA PEOPLE HAVE BEEN MAKING THIS WEEK #2 Sticky, Toast, Godzilla >> Sticky notes << In the 1997 film "Romy & Michele's High School Reunion", the two title characters attempt to re-invent themselves as successes who have invented Post-It notes. Matt Facer goes one louder by re-inventing the Post-It for the webtard generation. The fun is that you can read the notes left my others - mostly obscene so far and likely to become more so by the time this newsletter reaches your inbox. http://www.mattfacer.com/sticky/index.php >> Toast Adventure << Seen all those bollocking eBay auctions where some redneck chancer claims to have seen the Virgin Mary in a slice of toast? WLB has, and he's wondering if he can find his own message from God by toasting thousands of slices of bread. And we do mean thousands. We particularly enjoyed the photos of WLB laying on his toast bed. http://www.weirdlittlebiscuit.com/toast/ >> Godzilla vs Brighton << Mutated Monty has been brightening up our messageboard with his Monty Python on crack photoshoppery for a while now. Now he's turned his hand to flash in this mini-epic of Godzilla skateboarding the streets of Brighton. Lovely visual stuff, but we amused ourselves at B3ta HQ by playing Meatloaf's Bat Out Of Hell as the backing track instead. http://www.cyriak.co.uk/skatezilla.shtml ------------------------------------------------- : UNGOOGLABLE BAND NAMES The Curse of The The Recently we've been listening to the The The album, Mind Bomb. It's great - completely mental and oddly contemporary with its songs about Islam rising and waging war on Christians. When we get into a record, we like to google about and get a bit of background info. But poor old The The. "The" is a stop word, i.e. a word that search engines mostly ignore as being irrelevant. So googling for The The doesn't find the band. Typing "The The" into iTunes doesn't find the MP3s. Looking for The The on Amazon doesn't let you buy the CDs either. We wonder how many sales they've lost because they've got a name that search engines don't like? The The. Condemned to cultural irrelevancy. All because of a silly name. BTW: We asked around B3ta HQ for other ungooglable band-names and so far we've got: 'Them', '!!!' (aka ChkChkChk), 'A' and 'Fuck'. If you can think of anymore then tell us at http://b3ta.com/mailus/ ------------------------------------------------- : SITES IN BRIEF Stuff we like that wasn't made by our mates. >> Ebaumsworld sucks << PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCAST: One of the problems with sticking stuff out on the web is that others nick it for their own sites. This is fine most of the time, for, as long as the designers stick their names on the item, it can be seen as free promotion. However, some sites routinely steal the most popular content, and sell advertising on it. As the more popular videos and games can do millions of views in a week, this can add up to a serious amount of cash with none of it going to the originators. We mention this not as a great business model you can copy (hello, Kontraband) but because we and numerous others feel a bit peeved about it. Thanks to Neil Cicierega - once famous for his animutation series - for bringing this issue to wider attention through the medium of song. http://ebaumsworldsucks.com/ >> Letters to Christopher Walken << The Artist-in-Residence at Cornell has asked his students to write to Christopher Walken as if he was Santa Claus. Surreal stuff: "I liked you in Deer Hunter. For Christmas I want a Tesla coil. Maybe we can go eat burgers some time." Heh. http://www.brandonbird.com/walken_letters.html >> Gif of the week << It's the award the web industry fears, it's B3ta's GIF OF THE WEEK. Check the doggy animation half way down this page. Sublime. Or shit. We can't decide. http://www.caninefreestyle.com/ >> Nice stop motion video << When we were at school our English teacher told us never to use the word 'nice'. "Biscuits are nice," she said. Like that's a bad thing! Anyway, this video is nice. Can't say we love the song - as it takes the chorus from some old Prodigy track and makes it all soppy, but the end effect is... nice. BTW: This link was sent it by Yank Meoff. A made-up name we thinks. http://www.independ.net/planb >> The iPod will never sell << Amused to read this ancient thread on the launch of the iPod. Key quotes: "Just what the world needs, another freaking MP3 player. Go Steve!", "Why oh why would they do this?! It's so wrong! It's so stupid!" Hindsight is a beautiful thing... http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php ------------------------------------------------- : THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO AAHH Yoda Dog We noticed this photo of a dog dressed as Yoda a couple of weeks back and it made us giggle heartily. Had occasion to visit an office yesterday and noticed people were using it as wallpaper. You should too. It's a fine picture. http://voffka.com/archives/yoda_dog.jpg ------------------------------------------------- : QUESTION OF THE WEEK I started a fire! We got over-excited last week and asked a question we'd already asked before. But who cares when the answers are this good? http://b3ta.com/questions/fire/ >> Throwing Wee at Douglas Hurd << "My Grandma, god rest her soul, wasn't so keen on the old gits' home for the senile that my parents had to put her in. Once there, her antics included slinging a cup of wee at Douglas Hurd, playing dead in her bed every morning for a fortnight, and telling my parents that she was raped 120 times in one week by the clearly gay care manager. But the best had to be her deft use of various cosmetics, a blanket and a chair-leg to create a torch to light her path as she ran through the home at 4am. Security were forced to let her out lest she burned the place down, and before the Police could get hold of her she'd made it down to the beach-front and thrown it through the window of a games arcade. 'I don't like them places,' was all she'd say on the matter." (bossypops) >> How to get thrown out of a gig << "A friend, wearing a flowery dress, DMs, eyeliner and a few days' stubble, goes to see Sultans of Ping. From the outset he was a bit the worse for wear. Actually, I think that was pretty much his ground state. Much wobbling in time to music commences and said friend decides some poppers might be a nice idea. Now, I personally know nothing about them, so I have no idea why he decided to set them alight at that point, but there he is, flaming poppers in hand, when he gets bumped by another SoP gurner in the mosh. Poppers promptly spill over his hand. The logical thing to do is therefore move the bottle of poppers from the flaming hand - which he does by throwing them to his other hand. So now both hands are on fire, panic starts to set in and he drops them all over his feet. Stamping out the flames makes it worse. In fact, it covers his boots in flaming poppers. For a brief moment before he was ejected, he was stood in the middle of the gig, panic on his face, sister's flowery dress flapping around his hairy legs, both hands and both feet blazing away." (Fat Bear) >> Sacrilegious Icon Shock << "Last year, my (quite Christian) school had a bonfire as usual - however they let the year 11s make the Guy. Being insanely clever, they tied the Guy onto a wooden cross-shaped support using STRING, despite repeated warnings of what would happen. Anyhoo, it came to the night, and the bonfire was lit from the bottom - it reached the Guy, burnt through the string, and the Guy promptly fell off. Leaving an eight-foot burning crucifix which could be seen for quite a way. Smooth." (Balue) Finally, take a look at Stevierar's photo of the 'Devil Fire'. Better than any face-of- god-on-toast thing: http://www.b3ta.com/questions/fire/post42716/ >> This Week's Question << Make your weirdest teachers feel better about themselves by abusing them on the internet: http://b3ta.com/questions/weirdteachers/ ------------------------------------------------- : B3TA IMAGE CHALLENGE Results from the Eighth Deadly Sin Challenge Each week we run a competition to test your creative skills. We set a challenge and you open Photoshop and mess with our heads. Last week we wanted you to reveal the eighth deadly sin. http://www.b3ta.com/challenge/eighthdeadlysin/ We asked b3ta boarder MINCE! to judge the entries - here are his 3 faves. MINCE! writes - #1 "God - Even the list's creator needs some Me time! Also for not being a pun. (Zak McFlimby) http://www.b3ta.com/board/5301917 #2 "Cake? Biscuit? - Who cares. The point is, they're His cakes and you're not allowed to eat them." (Strawberry Dragon) http://www.b3ta.com/board/5283223 #3 "MySpace - Thank you, waru. Not enough people realise this." (waru) http://www.b3ta.com/board/5286022 Honourable mention: "For completely misunderstanding the competition, and placing Marmite in a list of sins instead of list of Foods Of The Gods. Yum." (mikenco) http://www.b3ta.com/board/5283472 >> This Week's Challenge << This week, the challenge dictator wants to know about the games geeks play. http://www.b3ta.com/challenge/geekgames/ ------------------------------------------------- : WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? Follow-ups on previous stories. * BBC NEWS PRESENTER EMAILS B3TA - last week we featured a TV screen grab where the cropping made it look like they'd captioned the image with "cunt". Nicola Beswick writes, "ah! imagine my shock when my boyfriend's sister emails me your newsletter and the link with ME and my sweary travel news broadcast live on BBC London TV. Shocker. You should tune in when we show the camera on the M25 in Kent at 'Badger's Mount' or the Orsett Cock Interchange in Essex. Keep up the sterling work, chaps!" * TOP TIP CORRECTION - Dan Bendel writes - "Dear Ginger Fuhrer, as a final year Biochemistry student I was shocked and dismayed to read this week's newsletter. You casually advised people to dunk their silver family heirlooms in boiling hot salt-aluminium foil solution in a bid to make it shiny again. True enough it would make it shine, but the mixture you're making there makes Aluminium Chloride, which corrodes silver; probably why your silverware comes out all shiny! Repeat it a few times and you won't have any more silverware." Remember kids, weak acids cost knives! ------------------------------------------------- : STAR IN NEXT WEEK'S ISSUE Make something cool and tell us about it. If you are in it then people will see your stuff. Things we'd really like to see include: * REAL LIFE TROLLS - join your local cancer support group and sit there smoking and shouting, "My granddad lived to 90!" Or maybe go to a Weight Watchers meeting with a bag of doughnuts and sit there scoffing the lot. Blog / photograph the embarrassment. * ENORMOUS MAGNETS - get two really huge magnets and film yourself and a friend trying to push them together. * URBAN AIR DROPS - throw Mars bars out of the top floor of a building with home-made parachutes and seeing if anyone eats them once they float to the ground. Send contributions via the mail form. http://www.b3ta.com/mailus/ BTW: If you've sent something in that hasn't been featured then don't be put off - we look at everything you send us. ------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: [email protected] Unsubscribe: [email protected] ------------------------------------------------- THANKS: This issue was written by Rob Manuel with David "A Freudian slip occurs when you say one thing but mean your mother." Stevenson. Stuff sent in by Cherub, DeliriumSpong, Kamikaze Stoat, Glued Eel, thisismyclone darren, kirsten, iamcal & billy.gwinnutt. Top Tippery stolen from kottke.org. Additional linkage and image challenge by Fraser Lewry. Mike Trinder is QOTW bloke. TV - Space: Above & Beyond. Music - The Kinks, Something Else. Proofing by the Arthur b4ta Daley's. (105744-30284) ------------------------------------------------- TOP TIP: Never order the second-least-expensive bottle of wine; it's typically the one with the highest mark-up on the list. next issue » « previous issue Newsletter We run a free weekly B3TA email reporting on the coolest stuff on the net. _____________________ [ go ] -------------------- THIS WEEKS HEADLINES -------------------- * TYPE-IN MAGAZINE - LAUNCHED FOR YOUR FINGERS * AI SLOP - GET READY TO OINK FOR IT, PIGGIES * GET WELL SOON - WISHING WELL TO DAVE BAGPUSS READ LATEST ISSUE archive