Barring an official definition or a EU proclamation to the contrary, I can too call a Snickers Ice Cream Bar a power bar, as in:
What did you have for breakfast?
I had a couple power bars and some coffee.
You Say Tomato
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Category: Humor
To Coin a Phrase
Vendchinko:
When you come to a vending machine and see that a bag of chips or a pastry has hung up on the coils (called the bonus vendable) and has not fallen to the retrieval bin, and you decide to buy a product stocked above that bonus vendable (this product is known as the vendable in play, or vip) in hopes that the falling of the vip will knock the bonus vendable item down, too, effectively giving you two items for the price of one.
People use different strategies when playing vendchinko; some people try to buy the next item in the bonus vendable’s slot, which yields them two of the same item. This strategy can backfire, however, if the items are loaded incorrectly so that the bonus vendable falls, but the vip hangs up the same way the bonus vendable had been stuck, effectively giving the player only one item for the money and creating a new bonus vendable.
When selecting a vip above the bonus vendable, experienced vendchinko players account for the density of the vip’s contents, the packaging of the vip and the bonus vendable, the rotation of the vending coil, and the Coriolis force to maximize their chances of winning at Vendchinko.
So that’s why I stand there for so long in front of the vending machines.
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The Truth–REVEALED
As I was at the gym tonight, staring in fascination at these things they call “music videos” which display on screens throughout the gym during time I should have been doing this thing they call “working out,” an “accidental” juxtaposition led me to an insight more startling than the insight that those little stickers which say “Keep away when machine is in use” might prevent pinching-to-the-point-of-near-amputation. Where was I? Oh, yeah, the insight:
Celine Dion is the result of a partially-successful French-Canadian attempt to clone Cher.
Come on, deep in the bowels of the Canadian health system, you know they looked southward sometime in 1968 and said, “What is best of American culture?” and, since there’s French in French-Canadian, they looked to the most, um, flamboyant of music coupled with the most dowdy spouse (which is undoubtedly how Quebec thinks of the other provinces). So they sent their crack secret agents to get a mouth swab from Cher, to ensure her beat goes on, so to speak.
Unfortunately, their cloning technology was limited due to budget constraints and bureaucratic infighting. So the clone, “Celine” (French for Cher), was of smaller stature, and due to limitations in the maintenance budget, underfed. Also, due to the unfortunate accident of her French Canadianosity, she speaks French.
But look how it all adds up. She marries her “manager,” which is to say the lead scientist in the secret project that produced her. Come on, this explains why someone that the French Canadians would consider marginally hot (especially since the basis of comparison would be Alanis Morissette) would marry someone over forty years her senior and would bear his genetically-enhanced children (undoubtedly, clones of David Bowie and Iggy Pop).
Just ask the Canadian prime minister about it if you get the chance. He’ll deny everything, of course, and that will be all the proof you need.
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Remember, My Students of Paranoia
They don’t have to be out to get you to get you.
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Pah! I Got Nothin’!
When I read this post at protein wisdom, I wanted to break into song:
Looking out at the words rushing out of my keys
Looking back at the commas gone by like so many speakers’ fees
In ninety-one I was sophomore in English 101
I don’t know what my point is now, I’m just running onRunning on – running on sentence
Running on – running fine
Running on – running outta thoughts
But I’m writing more linesGotta fluff what can when you’re paid for each word
Trying not to cut your check by up to two thirds
By twenty-nine, I was pundit one and I called the Web my own
I don’t know when those clause ran into the clause I’m onRunning on – running on sentence
Running on – running fine
Running on – running outta thoughts
But I’m writing more linesEverything I know, everything I type
People keep on reading my low tripe
I don’t know about anything but me
I can go all night, that’ll be all write
If I can get me a book deal before I leaveLooking out at the words rushing out of my keys
I don’t know how to tell you all just how badly this verb feels
I look around for editors I used to turn to shut me up
Looking into their cubes I see them running tooRunning on – running on sentence
Running on – running fine
Running on – running outta thoughts
But I’m writing more linesBuddy you really stet me
You know the way I wrote was fine
I’d love to stop it now but I’m writing more lines
You know I don’t even know what I’m hoping to find
running outta thoughts but I’m writing more lines
Peh. I got nothing. Apologies to Jackson Browne.
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Add It Up
I ask you, is it coincidence that the movie The Tomorrow after Day or something tells about the impudent meddling of man awakens Godzilla and he fights El Niño is opening, Al Gore is ranting about, well, whatever the voices tell him to, and here in St. Louis we had hail the size of small frogs yesterday, power outages, and tornado warnings tonight?
You know it as well as I do.
Democrats are playing politics with the weather reports.
It has nothing to do with Doppler radar chatter, the information gathered and projected by trained professionals, and the world conditions as they exist–it’s all about unseating George W. Bush in the presidential election!
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On Chris White’s List
As some of you know, I enjoy Chris White’s Top Five List, and I am a paying member of Club Top Five.
So it’s with great honor that I was awarded the number nine spot on a recent Club 5 list for the topic “The Top 16 Celebrity Contributions to Humanity”. My entry:
9. Kim Basinger and Angelina Jolie — Showed society that girls with unsightly, overweight lips can lead normal, healthy lives.
Oh, yeah, it’s the equivalent of the Internet Pulitzer for humor. To read the whole list, go to Top Five and plunk down a couple bucks for membership. Unlike some Internet people, I won’t post or rebroadcast copyright information, even things compiled from Internet serfs by overlord Chris White who exploit unpaid minions for to generate his own wealth. Of course, I’m not bitter, because I’m just a Club 5 member who got lucky; I’m not a contributor.
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Hockey Joke
Four hockey fans are mountain climbing. Each climber happens to be a rabid fan of a different NHL team. One from Chicago, one from St. Louis, one from Detroit and the other from Nashville. As they climbed higher and higher, they argue more and more about which of them is the most loyal to their particular hockey team.
As they reach the summit, the climber from Chicago takes a running leap and throws himself off the mountain yelling ” This is for the Chicago Blackhawks!”
Not wanting to be outdone, the climber from Nashville throws himself off the mountain shouting “This is for the Nashville Predators!”
Seeing this, the St. Louis Blues fan walks to the edge and yells, “This is for hockey fans everywhere!”. He then pushes the fan from Detroit off the cliff.
(Slightly modified from a joke seen on Hockey Pundits, which involved some Canadian teams or something.)
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World Exclusive!
It’s common knowledge that John Kerry communes with dolphins:
“He [President Bush] thinks that empty slogans like the ‘Clear Skies’ initiative and the ‘Healthy Forest’ initiative — that somehow names that would make George Orwell rise up and cheer — that those names will make people forget what is really happening in our country.”
Almost on cue, a dolphin slipped through the water. “There he is over there,” Kerry said. “He says, ‘help, help, help.”‘
“Help, help, help,” is not all the dolphin had to say. We here at All Things Belittled have an exclusive interview with Kerry’s guest star. (Warning: 2.7 Mb Mp3).
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Worst Ways to Pay a Tax Bill?
MSN’s bCentral enumerates what it thinks are the 10 worst ways to pay your tax bill. To summarize, they are:
- Get a cash advance against your paycheck.
- Get a cash advance on your credit card.
- Pawn your diamond ring.
- Take out a personal loan.
- Charge your tax bill.
- Use your home equity.
- Gamble on the float (write a check without funds in your account)
- Dig into your retirement account.
- Hit up the folks.
- Pay off the government monthly.
That’s the worst way to pay? Come on, fellows, here are some Even worse ways to pay your tax bill:
- In plasma. Much of which is not even yours.
- With a bag of cash in which the dye pack is yet to explode.
- In North Korean Won.
- In allocations of barrels Iraqi oil, dated 1998.
- Just sign over some Air America checks.
- Pay? Constitutionally, I am not obligated to pay income tax.
Remember, I am not a CPA nor does the preceding represent legal advice. Confer with your attorney before embarking on a payment program that might entail jail time. Thank you, that is all.
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Riddle
What’s funnier than a joke about the French going to war?
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Things You Wished I Hadn’t Made You Think Of
Gollum singing Parliament’s “Tear The Roof Off The Sucker (Give Up The Funk)“:
Yessss, wes wantses the funk
Gives us the funk
Yesss, we needses the funk
Wes gotta haves that funk
Face it. In one fell swoop, I have infected your mind with the song and have possibly ruined the song for you forever.
No need to thank me, it’s part of the community service portion of my sentence for Missouri State Statute Section 574.010, Grand Lack of Funk in the Second Degree.
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A Plausible Solution for Social Security
Friends, Roamers, and Countrypersons, I have stumbled upon the solution to save Social Security. No new taxes. No benefit reductions for United State seniors. A solution so simple, so elegant, that we’ll have wondered why we haven’t thought of it before.
Expel Florida from the United States of America.
Florida has a large number of people who undoubtedly draw Social Security benefits. If only we would throw them out of the U.S., placing armed troops at the Alabama and Georgia borders if needed, we could reduce the number of benefit collectors to workers paying into the system. The anachronistic New Deal payout could go on indefinitely, or at least until such time as we nation of Double Income, No Kids start retiring.
Sorry to Frank J., you’ll have to shoot your way out.
Also, a personal note to the silver-and-bald gentlemen at the Palm Beach Gardens Gold’s Gym who were lifting multiples of their body weights on the smith machine: Gentlemen, you needn’t fear: I shall supplement your income with monthly checks, mailed direct, if you’ll promise not to beat the snot out of me when the U.S. State Department gives you a Thugs-Fly-Free visa.
Granted, throwing Florida out has some drawbacks. For instance, the boat people trying to reach South Carolina from West Palm Beach. We’d free up the resources that normally guard the long penninsula coastline, though, so we’d be all right on that. As an added bonus, no more addled people who foul up the election process. Aside from regular voters, that is.
Don’t thank me now, and don’t expect the media to run with this idea unless I can put some anti-Bush spin on it. Wait, I got it….One Less Bush In United States Government! Perfection! I have nothing more to say.
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Heh
Frank J. (no relation) says:
Iraq now has a constitution. All they need now is strength, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma and they’ll be ready to go.
Geek!
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Bumper
Java Developer
Design servlets to deploy every day.
If we hit the Web server, would it play?
XML with an exception,
XML it doesn’t know
How to SOAP the right connection.
You wrote that code.
You wrote that code.
Java Java Java Java Java developer
You wrote that code.
You wrote that code.
Testing would be easy if your app worked like a dream,
Type, click and save,
Type, click and save.
Didn’t check your method calls every day
And all of them used to work, or so you say.
But your app is like spaghetti,
It’s the knots that makes it strong.
Once it’s kludged, it’s kludged forever,
It breaks anon.
It breaks anon.
The Event OnClick doesn’t fire.
Get the gum and the baling wire.
The Event OnClick doesn’t fire.
Get the gum and the baling wire.
XML with an exception,
XML it doesn’t know
How to SOAP the right connection.
You wrote that code.
You wrote that code.
(Apologies to Culture Club.)
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Book Review: Naked Beneath My Clothes by Rita Rudner (1992)
I paid $3.95 for this book at Downtown Books in Milwaukee, and it’s worth every penny. Of course, I bought it used, scavenging upon an already-paid royalty as far as the author’s concerned, and I’m sorry, Ms. Rudner. However, rest assured, upon the weight of this book, I have added some of your other, more readily-available material to my Amazon wish list so my ungrateful readers can browse it if they want but not buy anything.
For those of you damn kids out there who don’t know Rita Rudner is, she’s a very funny comedienne from back in the old days of cablized standup, which is to say the late 1980s. Ah, the old days. When Richard Jeni, Rita Rudner, Dennis Wolfowitz, and their kind first started getting HBO specials and when Rosie O’Donnell was a an obscure unfunny stand-up comic who MCed VH-1s stand-up spotlight, and nobody knew who she was. The good old days. This book was written probably at Rita Rudner’s zenith, back in the administration of the first Bush presidency, before the Internet bubble, and before blogs. Remember those days?
I digress, of course. This book collects some of Ms. Rudner’s comedic musings. She’s witty with the pen as well as the microphone, and she turns some nifty phrases. She’s no P.J. O’Rourke or Dennis Miller, but she’s far above say, Andy Rooney (several of whose books I purchased in the same little humor alcove of Downtown Books as I bought this volume). Rudner’s 45 chapters (brief, in 162 pages) capture some of the truisms of life and relationships, and they’re quite funny. I read this particular bit to my esteemed spouse because it accurately captures the tension between a husband and wife when it comes to clothes shopping:
We always have the same argument. I choose clothes that make me look like a nun (see essay number 19), and my husband chooses clothes that make me look like a hooker. We compromise, and that’s why on television I usually look like a flamboyant nun.
I mean, there’s nothing wrong with shopping for casual, lounging-around-the-house comfortable clothes from Frederick’s of Hollywood, is there?
Based upon the weight of that and the first chapter which she sneaked a read of while it sat beside the computer awaiting review, Heather will snatch this book from my read shelves and will read it herself. So if you don’t believe me, believe her, or you will anger Heather and she will crush you.
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Teaching An Old Joke New Tricks
A baby boomer father and son, walking in the forest, come upon a grizzly bear. The father immediately opens a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts and begins stuffing glazed doughnuts down his craw.
“What are you doing?” the son said. “You can’t earn enough to pay taxes to offset the increased entitlements that politicians are enacting to buy your vote.”
“I don’t have to earn enough,” the father said. “I only have to have a coronary before the bear that metaphorically represents the impending fiscal collapse catches us.”
If that’s not the zaniest link to a Robert Samuelson column ever, I don’t know what is.
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The End of the Conversation
Since we painted our master bathroom last autumn, I’ve been meaning to recaulk around the tub. It’s starting to break down and show its age. Not that the mold spores mind. They’ve found a good home and some tasty latex upon which to feast. But I’ve meant to recaulk this tub since about spring, but I haven’t had quite the stretch of time to devote to it. Several hours at least, non-stop, to devote to the project. How could I find the time, when Civilization III called?
But since I had a personal day on Christmas Eve, I had a long block of time available. Particularly since I could not leave the house until the FedEx truck delivered Heather’s Christmas gift (which is another story entirely). So I got into the bathroom and began removing the existing caulk. I think a previous owner just applied a layer of latex caulk over an existing layer of silicone caulk when it came time for him/her to do the deed. So it took me almost five hours of intermittent scraping, cursing, and swearing to get all of it off. Once I got the old caulk off, it was a breeze to apply a new ring of caulk.
So although I was reluctant to perform this much-needed household maintenance, I’m still proud to have done it. But why is it that the casual conversations end when people ask me how my holidays were and I answer:
“I spent Christmas Eve in the bathtub with a razor blade and wondered if I really wanted to go through with it.”
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Now That I Will See
Now playing at Cold Fury:
Dirty Harry Potter: Who needs magic when you carry a magnum?
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The Unwhispered Question
So I was reading this profile of Philip K. Dick and his sudden appeal to moviemakers in Wired, when it occurred to me.
Why do They want us to watch paranoid fiction?
You see, that’s why I am the Shidoshi, and you are the student.
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