The Brunching Shuttlecocks, found at www.brunching.com, is a humor website that has been around since about 1997. The page is the brainchild of Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg and Dave Neilsen, with contributions from some mysterious friends and fans over the years. The Brunching Shuttlecocks page has attracted thousands of devotees in the ensuing years, thanks to their mix of observational humor, random nonsense, and quirky perlscript toys.

The page used to be updated every weekday, providing fans with daily coffee-spewing, chair-falling-over laughter. Alas, three years of constant humorous insights and changes in Lore and Dave's personal lives have taken a toll on the torrential outpour of funny, and now the page is updated about once or twice a week. However, if you're new to the site, there is a very extensive archive, which should keep you amused for at least a few days.

Disclaimer: This Researcher is not nearly as funny as Lore and Dave, and so this description will not even remotely do justice to the glory of the Shuttlecocks. Go and see for yourself. C'mon, you know you wanna.

Types of Features

The Brunching Shuttlecocks' daily features usually fall in one of many recurring types. Although the following list is by no means complete, it describes some of the best (in this Researcher's opinion) and most common. You can always tell what kind of feature any given page is because the header tells you.

Ratings

Speaking of inhuman. I just want to get this twisted little b*****d out of the way so that I can go back to ignoring him. The more astute readers among you may have noticed that I haven't yet gone so far as to give anything an actual "F." That's not out of any kind-heartedness on my part, it's just that every time I got ready to give one out, I would ask myself, "is it really that bad, compared to the verminous, soul-tainting badness of Scrappy-Doo?" And now, at long last, I have my chance. Prepare yourself, oh encephalitic hound. F! Hahahahahaha! It feels good!

These "intellectual choking hazards" were once featured in a Newsweek magazine article in 1997, introducing the Shuttlecocks to a much wider audience.

Toys

Toys are interactive perlscript features. They are often either quizzes, like "Porn Star or My Little Pony?", page toys that you can put on your own web pages, like Tina the Troubled Teen," interactive stories, like "Choose Your Own Damn Pokémon Adventure," or generators, like "The Sarcasterizer."

A particular recurring toy that is worth mentioning is the "Good or Bad" quizzes. Visitors are presented with a list of random items which you must declare as being either good or bad. After you've exalted or condemned all the items, you get to see what everyone else thought, and the "Line of Truth" is drawn at the neutral line. Very entertaining.

Self-Made Critic

Dave Neilsen is the Self-Made Critic, an upstart movie critic who reviews movies in the way you'd expect of a real twentysomething-year-old guy. Basically, if there are lots of explosions and nude women, he thinks highly of the movie. However, over the years, the SMC has become more well-rounded and rates quality movies more often. It's interesting to read the reviews over the years and see his development from a teenage-boy mentality to a critically-thinking adult one.

The SMC rates movies on a scale of Babylons, with 5 being the best. He has a penchant for handing out fractional Babylons.

The SMC's editor (whose identity is still a mystery) adds a note to the bottom of each review, often lambasting the SMC's macho facade or mocking the SMC's grammar. It's a source of additional laughs.

The SMC was recently featured in Entertainment Weekly magazine. The EW article revealed the SMC's identity, which hitherto was a mystery.

Features

This is by far the largest category. It contains all features that don't fall into any other category. Some are still recurring features, though.

Lore cartoons are small three-panel comics starring a funky cartoon version of Lore. These are classic. It's too bad there aren't more of them.

Flash movies occasionally are used as features. There are very few of these, as they're much more time-consuming to make than static features. The best of these is "Rudolph: the Lost Scenes."

The Complete and Utter Idiot's Guide series describe step-by-step instructions to do some trivial task in painstaking detail, as told to a complete and utter idiot. A fine example of this genre is "The Complete and Utter Idiot's Guide to Cooking a TV Dinner."

The "Satan on..." series has the Lord of Darkness informing children why they should do things a certain way, if they don't want to go to Hell.

The "Thoughts from..." series pairs funny observations from Dave with silly cartoons from Lore. Brilliant stuff. These are also a great source of quotes.

Other Brunching info

Readers who go above and beyond the call of duty to spread the word of the Shuttlecocks are inducted into the Order of the Individual Cereal Unit. Once inducted, the lucky person gets a title, like "Lord Smack" or "Contessa Choculum," and is the envy of all other Brunching fans. It is the utmost wish of all true Brunching fans to be inducted into the Order.

The Unofficial Official Unofficial Brunching Shuttlecocks Ultimate Bulletin Board is the unofficial official unofficial place for all Brunching fans to talk about the page and to meet other like-minded folks.