“It’s expected to sell well among parents who always buy the wrong thing,” Meyers quipped about the $199 tablet during his Weekend Update news sketch.

It’s good, but I still prefer the Pyramid tablet from this week’s episode of “The Office.”

(The Kindle item comes in about 45 seconds into the clip, for those who can’t watch an entire two minutes of fake news.)

Humor online is a tricky thing, as any misunderstood internet commenter can tell you. Part of what makes comedy work are subtle cues and indicators of “play,” that we’re in on this humor thing together. When the medium for that exchange is something as minimal as Twitter (you’ve got 140 characters, and that’s all), strip those subtle cues out and — well, stuff like this happens.

Boing Boing partner Xeni Jardin, discussing an “oddly presented” and largely misunderstood tweet from @theonion yesterday morning reporting that screams and gunfire had been heard inside the Capitol building

Yes, System Administrator Appreciation Day exists and has since about 2002. Naturally, the folks in Google’s Enterprise division, the people who bring you Google Apps, have something to say about it.

Google Apps, you see, are all about making the lives of sysadmins easier or more productive so they can focus on more important things than the mundane task of resetting passwords. It also frees them to come up with silly dances in response to the occasional Google April Fool’s prank. If I were a sysadmin, I’d rather have the cake, but that’s just me.

Anyway, to all you system administrators out there: Happy System Administrators Appreciation Day!

(Image from Wikipedia.)

It’s designed to get me to mention today’s Windows Phone 7 launch (Katy Perry! Maroon 5!), and I’m totally fine with that. Because in return, Microsoft has provided us with a series of great statistics about “Bad Mobile Phone Behavior,” gleaned from a poll conducted by Harris Interactive.

If you like bathroom humor, you’ll enjoy these stats (via TechFlash):

• 48 percent of adults think that it’s bad to talk on the phone in a public restroom.
• 43 percent of adults think it’s not okay to text, email or Web surf in a public potty.
• Which means, presumably, that the majority of adults think it’s just fine to talk, text and type away while you’re in the stalls.
• Unless that means you drop your phone in the toilet, which 19 percent of adults 18-24 say they’ve done. (Me too, though I was well out of the demo by that point.)

Still reading? You can get the press release, which has a link to the survey itself (via a Word document–go figure) here. Oh. And here is that clever Windows Phone 7 Ad*.

*Here’s why these ads are really great, by the way. Not because they’re funny–they’re funny, but more grin funny than laugh funny. And not because they sell cell phones, because who knows? They’re great because they’re inadvertently but fundamentally honest about something uncomfortable: Many times, often times, in some cases all the time, we want to be distracted by our phones. We want them to take us away from the place we’re at or the person we’re with. No one wants to say this out loud, so Microsoft deals with it by pretending that we’re all dying to get back off our phones and into the real world. But we’re in on the joke, us and Microsoft, so we just nod and grin. Truth-telling = great ad.

Check it out. It’s a very quick 30 minutes–the picture of the Obama inauguration is worth it by itself. But there’s no reason to watch the Q&A that follows, in which Van Veen is queried by a dolt.

Supershort attention span? That’s okay. You’re on the Web! Here’s the “show, not tell” version–the “Font Conference” video Van Veen holds up (correctly) as an example of non=sucky Web content.

If you liked the “Mr. Creosote” sketch in “Monty Python’s Meaning of Life,” you’ll like this one. And if you didn’t…well, you’re like many other folks, some of whom complained loudly enough to get Microsoft (MSFT) to yank the ad, though it still lives in Google’s (GOOG) YouTube.

Microsoft’s explanation for the spot, and its removal, via an email to CNET:

We make a point of listening to our customers. We created the … video as a tongue-in-cheek look at the InPrivate Browsing feature of Internet Explorer 8, using the same irreverent humor that our customers told us they liked about other components of the Internet Explorer 8 marketing campaign. While much of the feedback to this particular piece of creative was positive, some of our customers found it offensive, so we have removed it.

A reminder: These spots are not the work of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the high-profile ad shop that gets associated with most of Microsoft’s marketing work these days. They’re from Indiana-based Bradley and Montgomery and they’re directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, for whom I’ve already professed my admiration.

These were Goldthwait’s first commercials, though, and it will be interesting to see if he gets another shot. And in retrospect, he did hint that this might be coming when he talked to Techflash after the first of his browser ads hit the Web last month:

Well, the folks at (Bradley and Montgomery), the agency that wrote ‘em, I would have to credit them with my involvement, and also Microsoft. I think they were trying to do something that was a little less mainstream, and I think that’s (what led to) my involvement. Normally the corporate world is very frightened of hiring the dude from Police Academy to direct their stuff, so I’m flattered and I was really happy. There’s a couple more coming up, too, so I’m actually looking forward to those being released, because I think they’re a little more nutty in tone.

Want to see for yourself? Have at it. But don’t complain to us afterward.