Guy Fawkes, iPhonemania and The Death Of The Retarded Bar Argument: The (Friday) Nooner!
Awesome Video Of The Day
iPhonemania Officially Jumps The Shark
I’ll admit it: When the iPhone first came out, I completely lost my shit. My friends were parading their new gadgets in front of me, and I, consummate sucker for anything new and moderately pointless, was ready to shell out big bucks to get one of my own. Can you blame me? It was like aliens from some remote and futuristic planet (one 3 or 4 years more advanced than ours) had landed and brought their crazy, otherworldly small electronics with them. It has a TOUCHSCREEN! How cool is that?!
Then as the months went by a strange thing started to happen. Whenever I found myself in an idiotic argument, someone would whip out their iPhone and definitively end it. “No way, dude - England is DEFINITELY smaller than Illinois,” I’d say, and within minutes, BOOM: “England itself is smaller, but the United Kingdom AS A WHOLE is bigger.” It doesn’t matter where you are: iPhones give you the ability to end any disagreement. What does that mean? It means the death of The Retarded Bar Argument. Do you really want to live in a world where you can’t spout off misinformation at a bar without getting fact-checked on Wikipedia?
This video of two douchebags dancing around like morons seals the deal: iPhonemania has officially jumped the shark. Maybe if the iPhone was just released a few weeks ago these costumes would be understandable, but c’mon guys: Lots of people have iPhones now. They’ve been around for a while, and they’re widely commercially available. Did I dress up as my Samsung T209 for Halloween? No. Wanna know why? Because it’s JUST A FUCKING PHONE. Time to move on.
Global Holiday Smackdown: HALLOWEEN
Global Contender #1: Guy Fawkes Night
On November 5, 1605, Guy Fawkes (the V For Vendetta guy) and his merry band of militant lunatics tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament. It was called the Gunpowder Plot, and it reads like something out of a bad heist movie: In an effort to kill Protestant King James I, a group of Catholics leased a house next door to the House of Lords and filled a hidden cellar with 36 kegs of gunpowder (which they transported by boat up the Thames). Unfortunately, an outbreak of Black Plague postponed the opening of Parliament and they were sold out by an anonymous narc, after which they were summarily tortured and executed. That probably sucked, but at least they got a holiday named after them.
Guy Fawkes Night commemorates the foiling of the plot, and the celebration involves fireworks displays, bonfires, and burning lots of Guy Fawkes effigies. They also traditionally eat “bonfire toffee” and “groaty pudding,” but cut them some slack: They’re English.
Cool Factor (out of 10): 14
Fireworks and effigies to commemorate a bunch of dudes who tried to blow up the government? Sign me the fuck up!
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Halloween
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Guy Fawkes Night
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Winner: Guy Fawkes Night
Even if it celebrates the fact that they failed, this has to be one of the most badass holidays of all time. Blowing off fireworks to remember the time revolutionaries rowed a bunch of gunpowder up the river to blow up the government while people were dropping dead all around them from The Black Plague? It’d be like if we had a holiday to celebrate the Whiskey Rebellion, only the Whiskey Rebellion took place in outer space and every year we flew to the moon to break Jack Daniels bottles and blow weird low-gravity fireballs or something.
You win this round, United Kingdom. Now pass me that groaty pudding.
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:05 pm
the english are summarily effeminate. FUCK OFF YOU BRITS
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Speaking of the iPhone jumping the shark, have you seen this ad they’ve been running?
http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads/ad13/
So a commercial pilot went to weather.com on his iPhone told the dispatcher that the storm had passed, and they let him take off? Does the air traffic control tower not have the internet?
The dispatcher was probably just tired of this guy second guessing all of his decisions just because he has the internet on his phone, and let him take off into a storm.
November 2nd, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Firstly, Britain rules, USA drools.
Secondly I totally agree that Guy Fawkes night owns. That being said your profesional and detailed look at the merits of Halloween vs GF’s night is irrelevant, we Celebrate both in the UK. 2 Days after each other.
November 2nd, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Yeah, the iPhone has rendered the entire air traffic control industry obsolete. Who needs trained professionals interpreting weather patterns and coordinating hundreds of airplane flight paths when the iPhone has a Weather.com applet built into it? Plus - IT HAS A TOUCHSCREEN.
November 2nd, 2007 at 5:28 pm
What is groaty pudding? I have never heard of that. Ever. Or bonfire toffee. And we get Halloween as well, so conflicting the two seems odd. You should get a Fourth of July versus Bonfire Night thing going. Also, odd that that guy would use the phrase ’summarily effeminate’… a phrase which is in itself, well, summarily effeminate.
November 2nd, 2007 at 5:58 pm
I wonder if the average up-to-snuff Guy Fawkes effigy costs more then the average up-to-snuff premade halloween costumes…
November 2nd, 2007 at 9:24 pm
The Brits are summarily effeminate? Only if you go by the 1950s stereotype which applies to middle and upper class men with moustashes.
With a name like ‘fatty’ who expected anything less than ignorance and stupidity?
November 3rd, 2007 at 10:10 am
I think it’d be interesting to watch those iPhone characters either fight or have sex with each other in those outfits.
November 3rd, 2007 at 7:41 pm
I wish America had a holiday as cool as Guy Fawkes Day. We need someone to burn in effigy!
November 4th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
groaty pudding (or ‘groaty dick’ as it’s also known. seriously.) is a black country delicacy comprised of beef, groats (which is crushed up barley, rye and other assorted pulses) onions and various other crap. you cook it for 16 hours. it’s pretty normal by black country standards; most of our local cuisine involves pig anuses somewhere down the line.
November 4th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Pete, would you be offended if i just mentally sounded out everything you said in a Brummie accent?
November 4th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
People burned John Jay in effigy after the signing of Jay’s Treaty, no shit. Granted, a treaty is nowhere near as badass as the Gunpowder Plot, but Jay’s Day has a nice ring to it–maybe we should pick it up.
November 4th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
I love how the link leads to the wiki article for El Dia De Los Muertos.
November 4th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
LoLsen did it! He found the erroneous link in the blog post! Congratulations - you won a free subscription to our free blog! Feel free to check back (for free) and read more of our (free) blog posts… ANY TIME YOU WANT!
November 4th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
Halloween in Ireland has firework and bonfires (you’ve got to get rid of those pesky spirits somehow). So really, that’s your winner.
November 5th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
I am also English (and not from groaty country either) and would like to point out the generally lame air about the gunpowder plot - it wasn’t meant for an egalitarian French, American (or even to a certain extent the later English one) style change, it was meant to put a catholic monarch in place, and what with the game of musical chairs English religious persecution was playing at the time it would have most likely meant a reversal of the two roles and more hassle for the man on the street (only the man on the other side of the street this time).
Instead, by its failure, it meant another two centuries for catholic emancipation. Hooray?
But even then it still manages to be a bit cooler than our civil war. Inaccurate as national stereotypes usually are, it was a pretty effeminate decision to decide to bring back a king after all that manly fighting and (eventual) head-chopping (not that the joyless, Ireland-brutalising puritans who replaced them were so brilliant… oh British history, you are a cruel mistress!)
November 5th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Is it just me, or is there a disproportionately large number of British people reading the Cracked Blog?!
November 5th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Cracked fills the middle ground between Private Eye and Viz, the only two British humour magazines I can think of offhand.
It neither requires knowledge of minor British politicians (or worse, intricate familiarity with the business world) to understand jokes, nor is it based exclusively on the standard of its dirty words (don’t rush to judgement though, British dirty words eclipse those of most other countries for innate ridiculousness; we do playground insults better than anyone, and you’ll find no better example than Viz).
December 28th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
iPhone ending bar arguments? My ass! I’ve been googling facts at bars on my NON iPhone for years, yes, YEARS goddammit. And it only makes drunks more angry and more spoiling for a fight than ever.
Why the hell do Apple bigots insist on rewriting history. Bunch of assholes one and all.
February 22nd, 2008 at 7:15 pm
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March 22nd, 2008 at 10:37 am
Britain has both bonfire night and halloween… and we have them within a few days of each other…
Britain 1 - America 0