Category: Humor

This and that

  1. What’s It Cost to Kill a Bear?
  2. An environmental crackdown in San Francisco:

    SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Thirsty San Francisco city workers will no longer have bottled water to drink under an order by Mayor Gavin Newsom, who says it costs too much, worsens pollution and is no better than tap water.

    Newsom’s executive order bars city departments, agencies and contractors from using city funds to serve water in plastic bottles and in larger dispensers when tap water is available.

    “In San Francisco, for the price of one 1 gallon (3.8 liters) of bottled water, local residents can purchase 1,000 gallons of tap water,” according to the mayor’s order.

    Reuters

  3. Animated Mark Fiore editorial cartoon.
  4. Top 5 most dangerous roads of the world, with lots and lots of pictures.
  5. 15 Reasons Mister Rogers Was the Best Neighbor Ever, for example, number 8:

    Once while rushing to a New York meeting, there were no cabs available, so Rogers and one of his colleagues hopped on the subway. Esquire reported that the car was filled with people, and they assumed they wouldn’t be noticed. But when the crowd spotted Rogers, they all simultaneously burst into song, chanting “It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood.” The result made Rogers smile wide.

    [Actually the lyric is, “It’s a beautiful day in the the neighborhood.”]

  6. You know you’re living in 2007 when…. Several indicators, including:

    3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.

    8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn’t have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.

  7. Can the level of math education sink any lower?
  8. Asking Miriam for advice may surprise you.

Best lines of the President’s trip, so far

“President Bush met with the Pope this weekend and he made a mistake, because instead of calling the Pope ‘your holiness,’ Bush called him ‘sir.’ Then, instead of kissing the Pope’s ring, Bush went for a high five and said, ‘Up top Popey.'”

“Last week when President Bush was in Albania, they named a street after him. During the street naming ceremony, Bush told the Albanians, ‘I am honored to be standing here on Lame Duck Boulevard'”

Conan O’Brien (Jay Leno said it was “a dead end street”.)

“President Bush made a stop in Albania on Sunday. Unlike just about every other place he’s ever been, they really like him there. They love him. They mobbed the president, and he ate it up. The only problem is that they may have also stolen his watch. … Today the White House said the president’s watch was not stolen. They said he took it off before he started shaking hands, which means there are two possibilities. Either … Albanians stole the president’s watch, or the president took off his watch because he doesn’t trust Albanians. Neither scenario paints a particularly rosy picture of Albanian-American relations.”

Jimmy Kimmel

Inconsistency alert

The themes of the [Creation Museum] exhibits resound in the theater presentations: Men in White, Six Days of Creation, The Last Adam, and Dinosaurs and Dragons. Our Special Effects Theater, complete with rumbling seats and rising mists, takes visitors on a fantastic quest to find the real purpose and meaning of life.

Each seat is a rocket launching pad in our Stargazers Planetarium. Prepare for lift-off. The digital projector showcases a spectacular gravity-defying spaceflight, a thrilling 22-minute ride billions of light years away to the vast outer regions of our universe. Breathtaking images and inconceivable distances make this cosmic journey under the dome a fully engaging experience.

Creation Museum [emphasis added]

Billions of light years? What’s up with that? I thought we were dealing with about 6,000 years since the Biblical creation.

Idea from Jesus’ General.

Oh, and as long as I’m borrowing, I have a take on a cartoon in the current New Yorker caption contest.

The cartoon depicts Noah’s ark with pairs of animals — including a human pair. There are three potential winning captions (all of them good).

But my version would be the ark with pairs of animals including a pair of dinosaurs. And the dinosaur male says to the female dinosaur, “Don’t tell Noah about the vasectomy.”

(Here’s that particular Cartoon Caption Contest.)

Letters to the Editor of Babybug, a Magazine for Readers Age 6 Months to 2 Years.

From McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Here’s the first one:

Dear Editor:

I read with particular delight your April feature on monkeys, a topic for which I must confess I have an inexhaustible enthusiasm. The story’s illustrations were both whimsical and touching. (I especially enjoyed one monkey’s difficulty with a party hat!) Please keep the monkey stories coming!

Mackenzie Stephenson
Age 18 months
Toledo, Ohio

Two of the reasons they call it the Comedy Channel

“Last night, CNN hosted the second in a series of infinite Democratic debates. Most people feel candidates should get more time to answer the questions than contestants on ‘Deal or No Deal’ get. What is with the raising the hand thing? From now on the only question candidates can answer by raising their hands should be ‘Are you happy?’ and ‘Do you know it?'”

— Jon Stewart

“Speaking of threats to public safety, I don’t know if you watched the Democratic presidential debate last night — I didn’t. But I assume I would have been really impressed with the way Hillary, Obama, and Edwards cemented their status as front runners; Gravel said something batshit crazy; Richardson talked about New Mexico; Biden said you can’t ship Richardson back to Mexico; and Kucinich called for the deployment of an all-butterfly army.”

— Stephen Colbert

The Roundup Strategy for Modern Life

My friend Rob pointed out some nasty vines growing in my garden and immediately pronounced the cure: “Roundup.” He’s from Portland, is very ecologically minded, rides his bike to and from his job as an urban forester, etc. So to have him sanction a toxin brought a tear of gratitude to my eye. I did not mention that I’m going to apply it with an airplane.

Joel Achenbach

I’m Reasonably Confident I Would Beat Ken Jennings in These Jeopardy! Categories

Owen Morris says he Would Beat Ken Jennings in These Jeopardy! Categories.

Read his list, then come back and list your winning categories.

NewMexiKen’s list:

  • The Sweeties
  • I-25 exits between Albuquerque and Denver
  • Location of Albuquerque’s Red Light cameras
  • I-25 exits between Albuquerque and Hatch
  • Costco
  • Peeps

NewMexiKen has corresponded with Jeopardy! champion Jennings by the way, and he really deserves to be beaten.

Via Avelino, who has his list at Live From Silver City.

Darth Vader’s Psyche: What Went Wrong?

Anakin Skywalker, the Star Wars character who became Darth Vader, had borderline personality disorder, psychiatrists report.

The news comes not from a galaxy far, far away, but from San Diego, where the American Psychiatric Association (APA) is holding its 160th annual meeting.

Today, experts from the psychiatric department at France’s University Hospital of Toulouse told the APA’s annual meeting that Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader could “clearly” be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

WebMD

Borderline? Didn’t he blow up entire planets?

When a ballplayer is too old

Letterman’s Top Ten Signs A Baseball Player Is Too Old:

8. While playing outfield, yells at teamates to get the hell off his lawn

7. When buying performance-enhancing drugs, gets the AARP discount

1. When he’s in the on-deck circle, asks bat boy, “What did I come in here for?”

Good, better, best lines of the day, so far

• Spiderman 3 made $382 million worldwide over the weekend. But then again, so did the guy who owns a Texaco station near my house.

• According to a new study by the University of Washington, 90 percent of children under the age of 2 are couch potatoes. You know what you call these kids? Tater tots.

Leno

• The last time the queen was in the United States was in 1991. An awful lot has changed since 1991. Hell, back then, President Bush was fighting the war in Iraq.

• Gas? This summer it could be $4 a gallon. It’s all part of President Bush’s No Oil Company Left Behind program.

• This Paris Hilton thing is tearing this country apart. On the one hand, people are calling for leniency. On the other hand, people are calling for lethal injection.

Letterman

• We’re circulating [our own] petition. We’re asking Gov. Schwarzenegger to officially declare June 5 “Paris Hilton Is Going to Jail Day.”

Kimmel

And while I’m reposting

This too is from two years ago today.

1. Shouldn’t it be Jesus comma Christ (that is: Jesus, Christ), rather than Jesus Christ (no punctuation)? Christ is a title right, not technically part of his name?

2. Why is “frigging” acceptable and “f***ing” not? Aren’t words just symbols? So in this case isn’t frigging just a symbol for f***king?

3. There’s a sign I’ve seen a couple of times this week:

SLOW
MY DADDY
AND MOMMY
WORKS HERE

Now, understand I mean no disparagement to highway construction workers. That people drive recklessly through construction zones and endanger workers is an obscenity. And the sign is cute with its attempt to copy a young child’s lettering.

But this particular sign is just wrong. “My Daddy and Mommy Works Here.” Plural noun, singular verb. (Gasp!) Furthermore, do you suppose some kid actually has both his/her dad and mom working on the site? Daddies and mommies might both work there, but “My Daddy and Mommy”? Are we into nepotism in road construction? Doubtful.

Here’s what NewMexiKen suggests:

JESUS, CHRIST
SLOW DOWN
YOU FRIGGING ASSHOLE
PARENTS WORK HERE

Research

NewMexiKen has been doing a little reading about time travel and there is good news and bad news.

The good news is that it is possible.

The bad news is that, according to Einstein’s theory of relativity, you will only be able to time travel to visit relatives.