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John Bird and John Fortune satirize the investment banking mindset in a mock interview about the subprime mortgage crisis. The sketch lampoons structured credit products and the banks' reassurances shortly before the crash.

A clip of George Carlin riffing on advertising and the nonsense around it, taken from a longer piece tied to the Zeitgeist movie.

A short Apple Get a Mac ad that mocks Windows Vista's constant security pop-up prompts.

A sketch from the Norwegian NRK show Uti Var Hage poking fun at the Danish language and how hard it is to understand.

In an IT Crowd episode clip, Moss and Roy convince Jen that the internet is a small black box. She believes it and carries it around.

A short clip from the BBC sitcom Yes, Prime Minister in which Jim Hacker explains which kind of person reads which British newspaper. It is a satirical take on press readership and bias.

A sketch from the British sitcom Yes, Prime Minister in which Jim Hacker and the chief scientific advisor discuss the logic of the nuclear deterrent.

A 2007 video of someone trying to write Perl code using Windows Vista's speech recognition, with hilariously bad results.

A short CSI clip in which characters try to track a killer's IP address by writing a Visual Basic GUI. It is a famous example of absurd TV hacking.

An Onion News Network satirical segment about a memorial dedicated to the future victims of a dam that officials know will fail. It is a dark joke about known infrastructure risk and inaction.

George Carlin's classic stand-up routine about 'stuff' and how much of life is spent accumulating and storing it, from Comic Relief 1986. It satirizes American consumerism and possessions.

A George Carlin stand-up bit from Doin' It Again about soft language and euphemism, showing how softened words hide uncomfortable facts. It touches on topics like shell shock and aging.

A clip from George Carlin's 1990 special 'Doin' It Again' in which he describes how American English has been sterilized with euphemisms, using examples such as shell shock becoming PTSD.

A 2007 video of someone trying to write Perl scripts using Windows Vista speech recognition, with comically bad results. The footage shows the recognizer repeatedly mangling commands.

A comedy segment where Eddie Izzard travels to Friesland to try speaking Old English, claiming English originated in Holland and buying a cow to prove it.

A clip from Mr. Show season 3 in which characters insist that 24 is the highest number. It is a short absurdist sketch about counting.

A one-minute clip of Miss Teen USA 2007 contestant Miss South Carolina giving a rambling, incoherent answer to a pageant question. It became a widely shared internet meme.

A Chris Rock sketch giving comedic advice on how to behave during police encounters to avoid getting hurt.

An 8-minute clip of George Carlin's 1992 stand-up bit on the environment, arguing the planet will be fine and it is people who are in trouble. It leans on the contrast between Earth's 4.5 billion years and humanity's 200,000.

A compilation of Apple's 'I'm a Mac, I'm a PC' ad campaign from 2006 onward.

A one-minute Eddie Izzard comedy clip about how the British Empire claimed countries by planting flags. It riffs on the absurd rule of 'no flag, no country'.

Tom Murphy's satirical SIGBOVIK 2007 presentation, delivered under a pseudonym, proving that generalized Super Mario Bros. is NP-complete. It is a short, deadpan take on a complexity theory result.

An episode of the comedic You Suck at Photoshop series in which Donnie Hoyle teaches distort, warp and layer effects while vandalizing a Vanagon in the image. It won Webby awards as a how-to and comedy series.

Australian comedy group Axis of Awesome perform a sketch showing that dozens of pop hits share the same four chords. It was recorded at the 2009 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

A clip of Louis C.K.'s bit "Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy," about how quickly people take modern technology for granted and complain about it. It is a comedic riff on impatience with air travel and gadgets.

A one-minute clip of Scotty from Star Trek giving advice to engineers about managing expectations in estimates. It is a comedic bit of workplace wisdom.

The parody anti-piracy warning from The IT Crowd Series 2, Episode 3, a spoof of the 'you wouldn't steal a car' ads. It is a one-minute comedy sketch.

A short George Carlin stand-up bit about humanity's obsession with owning stuff and needing a place to put it. It satirizes consumerism and houses full of possessions.

A short clip from The Wire in which police officers manipulate crime statistics to make the numbers look better. It dramatizes how metrics get gamed.

Penn and Teller help Rob Pike and Dennis Ritchie of Bell Labs play a prank on Nobel-winning physicist Arno Penzias. The clip shows the gag and its setup.

A classic Norwegian TV comedy sketch from NRK's show Oystein og jeg, subtitled in English, in which a monk calls a helpdesk to learn how to use a book instead of a scroll.

The classic Monty Python sketch in which a man visits an Argument Clinic to buy an argument. It is a wordplay-heavy bit about contradiction versus real argument.

A short clip of a Garry Kasparov press conference interrupted by a flying object in a prank. It is a brief, crude stunt video.

A very short clip from Yes, Prime Minister in which Sir Arnold and Sir Humphrey run through a piece of circular political reasoning. It is the origin of the so-called politician's logic.

The stoning scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian, where a man is condemned for blasphemy after saying 'Jehovah' over a halibut supper.

A comedy video in which a salesperson demands that a web developer fix a down website, with the two talking past each other. It won a Webby award.

A short clip parodying Windows Vista's cancel-or-allow security prompts, in the style of Apple's Mac vs PC ads.

The Monty Python sketch in which a man uses a mistranslated Hungarian phrasebook with absurd results, followed by the courtroom scene.

A That Mitchell and Webb Look sketch in which a hospital A&E is staffed by homeopaths who dilute everything, leaving patients with nothing.

A short clip of Steve Ballmer's famous sweaty chant of the word Developers, repeated over and over.