the politics of failure

i was doing a set of stand-up at, of all places, the ruby room last week, and i found myself newly acquainted with the sweet taste of failure. the experience was thoroughly educational. performing to an audience of 25-30 casino glossies in a lounge designed without the rigours of comedy in mind, i went down like a sack of spuds. i'm not sure if they appreciate my type down there. also, i missed out on the sympathy laughs because i went the entire set without using the word cancer. having wanted to do something different upon realising that my raw comedy set used it 14 times in five minutes. or once every 20 seconds. which may have been a little slef-indulgent. still, i managed to acquit myself reasonably well doing a set last night at the brisbane, so at least it kinda feels like i've got the shit back in the horse.

when i grow up (he's 27...), i want to be russell howard:



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but while we're on the topic of failure, there appears to be a LOLcat-esque phenomenon occurring with the word FAIL. which you can keep up to date with at the aptly named fail blog. me, i like spelling bee fail



also of interest from the last few days is this listing of 'books that make you dumb', a brilliant and, by their own admission, flawed piece of statistical analysis that has indexed people's purported favourite books on facebook with the average SAT scores of the colleges that they attend. fun facts:

1. 'lolita' corresponds with the highest scores (closely followed by '100 years of solitude')

2. 'the book of mormon' scores higher than 'the holy bible'

3. dan brown is on par with 'fight club', but both are beaten by 'he's just not that into you'

too funny.

but just to prove that not all is lost in the world, here's a stunning stop motion video of a steadily evolving room-as-art. ah, this brand of ingenuity makes it all better.