Category: Silliness

Seen on a McDonald’s sign during a recent night’s drive:
**Monopolsy is back.**
I’m worried that with the rise in drug-resistant bacteria, it’s only a matter of time before Monopolsy breaks out everywhere.

Take the first stanza to my poem “[Raw][raw],” and put it into [Altavista’s Bablefish][babel] translation service, translate it to a foreign language and back to English again, and the results are pure beatnik heaven. Continuing to send that translation back and forth until it stabilizes is referred to as *Babelizing*. Confused? Check out these examples.
First, the stanza as originally written by me:
>Slipshod and raw
>pink faces in the early light
>It

Bob Cesca, on the [Huffington Post] [1], asks why more traffic accidents don’t happen. The obvious answer: [Bumper angels] [2].
[1]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
[2]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/is-our-children-learning-_b_6206.html “Including my favorite Bush malapropism.”

It’s been quiet on my blog for a while, so I’ll fill in some space with my favorite jokes, and you can decide whether or not I am worth reading again in the future, or, if you know me personally, whether or not you actually want to speak to me again.

I like jokes that set the listener up for something and then fail to deliver. My favorite:

What do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back?
A stick.

How easy is that? It’s not necessarily laugh out-loud funny, but I like the set up and ease of delivery. In the same vein:

Why don’t cannibals eat clowns?
They taste funny.

And a light-bulb joke I learned from Cheers:

How many Surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
Fish

Oh, so dry. They’re all fine examples of the ironic, post-modern wit that I find myself drawn to. I understand if they’re not your cup of tea.

Don’t get me wrong. With the exception of not finding flatulence jokes funny, I find humor in most dumb comedies. Whenever I see Will Ferrell, I begin to snicker. His very presence is enough to get me to start laughing. I laugh at pratfalls and broad humor, but twists and failed expectations are bits that I relish. I may not laugh out loud at them, but I feel satisfied being in on the joke. Of course, I think, a stick! They taste funny! Fish! It all makes sense in a devious way, but we were set up for something different.

Which leads me to my all time favorite joke, the White Elephant. There are a lot of variations to this one, but this is how I first heard it (from my father, no less). By the way, before you read, there are no white elephants in this particular version, but it is still a White Elephant joke:

A son graduates from high school as a Valedictorian of his class. His father is extremely proud of him, and offers to get him a graduation gift that he’ll never forget.

The father says, “Son, you were Valedictorian, you were top in track, and you’ve earned a four-year scholarship to Yale. I am so proud. What can I get you for your graduation? A car? Top of the line computer system? What? Anything you want.”

The son considers this for a bit, and says, “Dad. Thank you. What I really want is a truck full of ping pong balls.”

“What?” the father asks.

“Yeah, Dad. You said anything. And what I want is a truck full of ping pong balls.”

The father doesn’t know what to make of this, but a promise is a promise, so he gets his son a truck full of ping pong balls. Four years later, the son is graduating Magna cum Laude at Yale and has signed up for Harvard Medical School. Again, his father couldn’t be more proud, and tells his son, “Son, I want to get you anything you want. New car. Down payment on a new house. A boat. Anything. What do you want?”

“Well, Dad. I’ve been thinking about this, and I want a truck full of ping pong balls.”

“Again?” his father screams. “What do you…? Okay. Okay. I said anything you want, and you want a truck full of ping pong balls again. Why mess with success?” So the father gets him another truck full of ping pong balls.

The son does his internship at a very prestigious hospital and opens his new practice. He serves his patience with care and quality. He becomes an asset to his neighborhood and is written about in the local paper. His father beams with pride whenever he talks about his hard-working, compassionate son. Again, the father offers to buy his son anything he wants, this time for his thirtieth birthday. When his son asks him once again to buy him a truck full of ping pong balls, the father sighs, but makes no complaints.

One day, the father and son are out walking around his son’s quiet suburban neighborhood when they hear the screech of a car braking right behind them. In a split second, the out-of-control car hops the curb and hits the son, hurtling him thirty feet in the air. The father, unscratched, rushes to his son’s side, and can tell he is very injured. The son is bleeding from his mouth and is pale and shivering. “Dad,” he says weakly, “I’m sorry.”

The father has tears streaming down his face. “Hang on, son. Hang on. Help is on the way,” he says.

“No, Dad. I’m not going to make it.”

Weird thoughts pop up in times of stress, and the father can’t think of anything else right now but one question. “Son, I don’t know why, but I have to ask you. What was with those trucks full of ping pong balls?”

The son smiles weakly and says, “It’s okay, Dad. I’ll tell you. The ping pong balls were for… urk!” And his tongue rolls out, his eyes cross, and he dies.

And that, my friends, is my favorite joke of all time.

• Days of the week: 3
• Accidents: 4
• Loser: Jonathan

Quick highlights:
Monday a.m.: Blow circuit on heat lamp by touching electric element to metal. Scare cooks at Applebees with nice 220 volt spark.
Result: Embarrassment

Monday p.m.: Fail to turn gas valve completely off before working on safety valve on stove. Scare cooks at different Applebees by setting own hair on fire.
Result: Mostly an awful smell… and embarrassment

Tuesday p.m.: Run current through poorly re-wired compressor until run capacitor blows from pressure, shooting gooey, battery acid-like substance on self and compressor.
Result: If no one was around to see it, is it still embarrassing? Yes.

Wednesday p.m.: Stop for ambulance going through intersection, get slammed in rear by kid in a Cougar. Bumper on van works well; Cougar’s hood sheared halfway to windshield.
Result: Concern for kid in Cougar, but both walk away without injury. Well, one gets towed away. Oh, and embarrassment.

On a different site, I elucidated the obligitory six rules that any drinking game should have. Since it reminded me of good times, I decided to post it here as well, dedicated in fondest memories to Beau:

1. Players cannot say the words “drink,” “drank,” or “drunk.”
2. Players must ask permission from rest of group to temporarily (as in go to the bathroom) or permanently (as in pass out) leave the game.
3. No foul or coarse language at the table, please. (Unless the rules of the game stipulate that specific foul or coarse language is appropriate, vis a vis the card game “Asshole.”)
4. Players cannot call any other members of the group by their first and/or last name. Each player must be referred to by a nickname that does not include, or is an abbreviation of, their real names.
5. No finger pointing.
6. Any disputed breach of these rules and the rules of the game, proper, shall be decided by all members not involved in the dispute, henceforth known as the “kangaroo court.”
7. There is no rule seven.

Suddenly, inexplicably, I was in the mood for a Super Big Gulp. I used to have a Super Big Gulp, 48 oz. of pure caffeinated, bubbly sugar water, 5 or 6 times a week, but then I got into the coffee habit to cure my caffeine fix, so now I’m down to only one Super Big Gulp per month. Last Thursday, my time had come.

We were at the Nautilus Diner in Massapequa, and there’s a 7–11 just east of it. I went in expecting the usual assortment of sodas and was sorely disappointed to find that Dr Pepper was not one of the dozen sodas I could choose from. Taco Bell recently changed from Dr Pepper to Wild Cherry Pepsi and have pretty much lost the biggest reason that I ever eat at Taco Bell in the process. I take my soda consumption pretty seriously. I resigned myself to Pepsi, which is my favorite soda bottled or canned, but Dr Pepper is my favorite fountain soda. I take my soda consumption way too seriously.

Anyway, this was also one of the growing 7–11s to decide that straws are their most valuable consumable. I could take all the cups and lids that I wanted, but the straws were only available at the cashier’s counter. Since I have estimated that straws cost 7–11 less than 1/10 of 1 cent, even the admittedly low-profit margin on all convenience store goods led me to believe that the difficult access to straws was a weak kind of anti-theft device. Because you could easily walk out of 7–11 without paying for a Big Gulp or Slurpee, but HOW WOULD YOU DRINK IT without a straw?

Finally paying for my Pepsi Super Big Gulp, an amazing bargain at 99 cents, I noticed that all the straws at the counter were for Slurpees, which, for the uninitiated, meant that the straws were all cut to have little scoopy-spoons at one end. This makes drinking soda with them next to futile, because it severely lowers the vacuum power of the straw. I asked the young, pierced man behind the counter if he had any regular straws that I could have. He took out a Slurpee straw and held it next to the Super Big Gulp container. I wasn’t too sure what he was doing, but I figure he was just going to give me a Slurpee straw and damn the torpedoes. Instead, he went off to the side with the straw. Then he took a pair of scissors — I swear this is true — and cut the scoopy-spoon neatly off the bottom.

Needless to say, I, being the good WASP that I am, took the straw with a thank you. I was going to have my Super Big Gulp, because, after all, I take my soda consumption very seriously.

Ah, what a wonderful National Sanctity of Life Day I had yesterday. To celebrate, I spilled my seed in my neighbors’ victory garden and painted babies and small children with clown makeup. Not at the same time, of course. That would be sick.

Rather than torture my poor, long-suffering friends with two bad jokes that they’d have to hear over and over again, because I forget who I’ve told what to and when, I’ll post them here for the world to ignore. These jokes are vaguely ethnic, but I’ll do my part to make them even more vague.

Sigh. I know. I know. At least I didn’t have to tell these to you in person.