Oh my friends, I have wonderful links for you!

Via Slumbering Lungfish, blog of the deeply hilarious Lore Sjoberg, I was directed to Garkov.  Garkov is a site that takes old Garfield strips and cranks the dialogue through a Markov Chain, a stochastic substitution/shuffling process that has been used in chatbots like ELIZA (although not in the code for Eliza specifically, as far as I’m aware).  The results are often gleefully insane.

But Garkov also has a treasure trove of Garfield-related links on its main page, ranging from the Garfield Variations to the Garfield Randomizer, to Nothingfield (which seems to have been directed by Ingmar Bergen).  My personal favorite?  Barfield: the one with the fart jokes.

Also well worth seeing:  a Garfield/President Garfield mashup from the frozen north.  The artist doesn’t seem to have links that lead to individual comics, but you’ll find it if you scroll down the page.

A quick link from me to a new site I find quite hilarious. From the guy who brought you www.isitchristmas.com (another great site), I give you www.ohnomymoney.com. It updates automatically every day at 2 AM. Enjoy!

Seriously.

It’s called “Gov Gab,” and it’s just awesome. It’s a product of the Office of Citizen Services and Communications, a little eddy of the bureaucracy that Wikipedia doesn’t even know about. It exists to help explain the rest of the bureaucracy to average Americans, which is ironic because its own website is pretty useless. But presumably that’s because they’re putting all their energy into Gov Gab.

Now snark aside, having a website that tells people useful stuff (opting out of credit card offers, finding a good mechanic, when your rebate check will get there) isn’t a bad idea. But there is something inherently snark-worthy about the idea of a “government blog.” It’s like Dr. Evil trying to do the Macarena.

Anyway, make sure to check out the contributors page. Who’s YOUR favorite gov gabber? Mine’s Colleen.