Showing posts with label humor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label humor. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

7th Annual Christmas Monkey Caption Contest


The Annual Christmas Monkey Caption contest began here on this humble but lovable blog Dec. 22, 2009. To be honest, so far, despite a weak handful of entries, my sample captions have always been better than any submitted by a reader.

The Christmas Monkey does not care what anyone says. The Christmas Monkey seen here, since 2009, has not been replaced or upgraded. The Christmas Monkey is beyond replacing. Do not mess with Christmas Monkey.

Christmas Monkey dares you to write a good caption.

Here's a couple to get you going:

"I'm gonna make Christmas great again!!"
"What did I get for Christmas? An orange, an apple, and three brazil nuts."
"Say "egg nog' one more time."

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Jon Stewart - The Importance of Accountability

The clearest and most sane response to the loopy, hypocritical and dangerous trends in politics and media for this century has come from Jon Stewart and The Daily Show (echoed and amplified by The Colbert Report).

I can barely imagine what our world might have become without it. The awesome weight and power of the satire provided via Stewart's company of comedians and writers was inescapable and palpable. In the stormiest of times, the calm of laughter and the presence of wisdom somehow made such storms endurable.

America has a rich history of sharp and straight shooters who called "bullshit" when it needed to be called - Mark Twain, Will Rogers, Kurt Vonnegut. 

While I hate to see Stewart step away, I know that 16 years of televising the ridiculing of the Abyss must be deeply exhausting and trying. I hope he realizes how incredibly valuable and necessary his show has been. It isn't just a job well done, it's been a vital voice on a global scale. And it's a voice that was a collaboration of writers and producers most of us will never even know.

His first Daily Show broadcast tackled the ongoing lunacy of a President Clinton impeachment hearing, and perhaps, as the Obama presidency winds down, the nation may be entering a new cycle, We all hope for less lunacy, but really, a satirist can only point the way in which we should proceed.

I salute you, sir. I thank you. I hope we remember the importance of accountability.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

That's One Way To Kill A Vampire



Ah, the children of the night ... what a mess they make!!

Happy Halloween!!

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Dear White People


"There are some knee jerk reactions to the phrase 'Dear White People' and I get it. No one wants to be called racist, and some folks are still waking up from the fantasy that having a Black president means America has somehow become 'Post-Racial.' 

"The truth is, my film isn't about 'white racism' or racism at all. My film is about identity. It's about the difference between how the mass culture responds to a person because of their race and who that person understands themselves to truly be. All explored through the microcosm of a success oriented Ivy League college." -- writer and director Justin Simien

Monday, December 03, 2012

Dangerous Interest at Boring 2012 Conference


The annual Boring conference was of little interest, but even that might negate it's purpose:

"I regretfully agreed that all this did sound extremely boring and proceeded to the large neo-Georgian auditorium, where an audience of about 500 mostly twenty- and thirty-somethings were listening with careful amusement as a dapper young man talked about toast. There was a large screen behind him on the stage, and he was clicking through a series of photographs of toast slices, ranging from the entirely burnt to the effectively untoasted, in order to demonstrate what he called “the confusing, non-regulated series of toaster settings on the market.”

Monday, August 20, 2012

Great Moments In Banana Slicing History

Apparently everything real or imagined is for sale on Amazon.

But as entertaining as the products might be - like the UFO Detector or the Uranium Ore or Tuscan Whole Milk - it's the comments/reviews which are the most entertaining.

For example, take the Banana Slicer for sale.

- "For decades I have been trying to come up with an ideal way to slice a banana. "Use a knife!" they say. Well...my parole officer won't allow me to be around knives. "Shoot it with a gun!" Background check...HELLO! I had to resort to carefully attempt to slice those bananas with my bare hands. 99.9% of the time, I would get so frustrated that I just ended up squishing the fruit in my hands and throwing it against the wall in anger. Then, after a fit of banana-induced rage, my parole officer introduced me to this kitchen marvel and my life was changed."

- "I always struggled with cutting bananas. Should I use my holiday cookie cutter set? My spoon? My laser pointer? My chainsaw? Sometimes the options were so overwhelming that I'd just throw caution to the wind and eat the banana skin-on. This tool has really taken the complexity out of a task that had left me in tears time and time again. Thank you Vittorio Banana Slicer."

- "As you may or may not know, I have 27 trained monkeys I use to do my evil bidding. Well, the younger monkeys teeth have not fully developed and so slicing a banana to feed them is a necessary chore. The adult monkeys used to have to chew up bananas and feed their young but not anymore with the Victorio Kitchen Products 571B Banana Slicer."

Pages of comments/reviews begin here.




Monday, April 16, 2012

'Needs More Cowbell' World Record

Some 1,600 people gathered in Burlington, VT this weekend to play some cowbell. You can never have too much cowbell - you need more cowbell. That was the advice actor Chris Walken had for Will Ferrell in a Saturday Night Live Skit in April 2000 - it's a phrase which made the Swiss set a world record for public cowbell playing in 2009. Now Burlington has the record.

Members of the band Phish put the world record effort together and raised money for charity at the same time. The result - loudness!!




Thursday, March 29, 2012

We The Peeple

'Peep Team Six: Operation Peeptune's Spear,' which shows Navy Seal Team Six taking out Osama Bin Laden, was created by Kim Ha, 27, of Potomac, Md.; and Andrew Marshall, 27, of Richmond, Va.; and Adam Johnston, 27, of Lynchburg, Va.
 Peep raid on Bin Laden Hideout, image courtesy Washington Post
 A sure sign of a society of immense luxury - a society which creates a huge range of dioramas on political/social themes using the wee marshmellow candies known as Peeps.



Wednesday, August 31, 2011

The Streaker and the Raccoon

Link
It is one of those memorable headlines - "Streaker Arrested With Raccoon In Car" - that just begs for more information. Fortunately, WBIR has the skinny. And other than the delightful headline, there was a mug shot of the suspect which was also memorable for the suspect's expression.

Seems 27-year-old Joshua Parker of West Virginia was attending the Bristol NASCAR race and decided, hey, perfect time to go streakin'!!

Once the fellow was nabbed by authorities, they also found his car, his girlfriend and a raccoon in the car with her. WBIR has the full story and also a video. Oh and also some blurred out pics taken by a witness with a cell phone. Nice touch, news crew.

Had the suspect been streaking with the raccoon - well, that's how real legends are made.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

When I Twitter, It's Serious

As I wrote earlier this month, I've taken up The Twitter again, and today I did have much fun with it, but if said fun had any value, I am not sure what it might be.

It started when I saw a mention via The Food Network for readers to send in their titles for a morphed out movie and food mash-up -- the example I first read was "Frying Nemo".

So easy, I thought, firing off my first Tweet with hashtags, even (#foodmovies) - "The Texas Cuisinart Massacre". (Hashtags sounds like a food but apparently is Rather Important When Tweeting.)

Others quickly followed, "Fistful of Fritters", "Lord of the Onion Rings", "Who Fried Roger Rabbit" and I tried like hell to stop.

When The Food Network mentioned their favorites, mine, alas, was not among them. Of their choices, the only one I liked was "I Know What You Cooked Last Summer".

And all day, I kept thinking things like:

"When Harry Ate Sally" (a zombie movie)
"The Long Good Pie"
"A Clockwork Orange Salsa"
"Dude, Where's My Carp?"
"Enter The Dragon Roll"




Thursday, August 04, 2011

Slow Clap For Congress

Sarcasm for Congress hits the Internet with homemade videos at Slow Clap for Congress -- the opening message says it all:

Dear Congress:

For your leadership, your maturity,
and your inspiring ability to perform the basic duties of your job,

We Applaud You


And here's a sample video from the pages and pages of submitted videos which anyone can make and download to the site - maybe you will offer your applause too:


Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Palin Mangles History, Laughs and Hijinks Ensue


Though I am reluctant to offer any more mention of the Endless Publicity Machine which toils on behalf of half-term Governor Quitter, aka, The Palinator, aka The Deluded Alaskan, aka Sarah Palin, her recent bizarro world account of the 'ride of Paul Revere' has prompted a revision of Revere's legend via the Atlantic Monthly and it is mighty funny.

Written by Jeffery Goldberg, it's a spot-on satire of the Huckster from Wasilla.

LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
Of the early evening ride of Paul Revere,
On the twentieth, or twenty-first, of May, or possibly June, in Seventy-six, or maybe Seventy-seven;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who refudiates that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, while ringing those bells, 'We must see the French a-coming
By land or sea or some other way, maybe by air, from the town to-night,
And tell our British friends, and our British enemies,
And warn them of bears, the big majestic polar bears, that lurk amid the French a-strumming
Their mandolins, and other French instruments, that make a patriot so squirmish.
Shoot a flare up at Lexington and Concord,
Those fabled towns of New Hampshire and Vermont
Where General Lee made his valiant stands;.
And no one will take that flare gun away from me,
Not from my cold, dead hands.
Of that church, you know the one, with the name, whatever it's called, up in the tower as a signal light,--
One, if by land, and two, if by air;
And I on the opposite shore will be, in a very large bus;
That is painted so patriotically;
And I will ride my white steed so fair.
Then I will ride a Harley, that I was pulling on a trailer behind the bus, and spread the alarm,
Man, I love the smell of that emissions
That smell is freedom, carried by horse,
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
Not horse emissions, chopper emissions.
But horse emissions are very patriotic.
And I will warn the British that the British are coming.
Which should confuse them very much.

Then he said, 'Good-night!' and with shotgun in hand
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, that Last Frontier,
We were rowing because the outboard motor didn't work, thanks to the EPA;
Just as the sun rose over the Mighty Mississippi,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
Which sounds a little gay;
A phantom ship, part of our hollowed-out Democrat Navy
Across the moon like a prison bar, where we should lock up all the French,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified, by Fox,
And by its own reflection in the tide, not the detergent, but the water that comes in from the sea in waves, I'm not sure how exactly.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

This Dog Dances The Merengue

Check out that smile on the dancing dog - the performance is better than 100 seasons of that "Dancing With The Minor Celebrities" show. (Learn more about this dancin' dog here.)

Friday, August 27, 2010

My Time As A Hunter; or, The Days I Carried A Gun


Pardon me if I get a bit jumpy reading headlines like "Saturday Is Free Hunting Day" in Tennessee. No permits or such are needed, and it sort of conjures visions of some unwise folks shooting up the countryside. And the headline is not really accurate either.

This day, meant to encourage hunting, coincides with the beginning of squirrel hunting season, so it's okay to shoot (excuse me, 'hunt") squirrels and a few other critters according to the TWRA:

"
In addition to squirrels, those species that have a year-round season will be open as well. The year-round species are armadillo, beaver, coyote, English sparrow, groundhog, nutria, pigeon, starling, and striped skunk."

Way back when I was a young teen, I did plenty of fishing and a small amount of hunting with a friend of our family, a fellow who was in his late 20s, and we had such great times and he was a very smart fellow, teaching me much about how to fish and how to hunt. We only hunted squirrels a few times, and we went frog-gigging many times. I remember one of those nights when I was out much of the night with my friend and I was carrying this plastic bag which was soon holding about 10 pounds (or so it seemed) of frog bodies. I was wearing this white t-shirt, and when I came back home my mom nearly fainted at the sight of me. Seems there was a leak in the bag and I was coated and spattered in frog blood. I thought it was pretty funny, but my mom, not so much.

My friend's wife cooked up a fantastically tasty platter of frog legs after our adventures, and I tried not to think about the frog carnage we created.

Our adventures hunting were a bit ... different. He taught me about how to always be safe while hunting, how to carry and shoot a shotgun (I got the smallish .410, but I have never thought of any shotgun as a "small" weapon.) I recall a few days of practice and such prior to going out, again, proof that my friend was a most wise and conscientious person.

Anyway, my friend said he knew some prime places to hunt and soon we were in some gorgeous woods nearby on a mild and sunny day in early Fall in middle Tennessee. It was so quiet, other than various woodland kinds of sounds, and such a beautiful spot he had found. We separated, maybe 30 yards apart, and he advised to just sit quiet for a bit and the squirrels would soon be all around us. ("Good thing I'm armed" I thought and laughed to myself, "because, you know ... squirrels ...")

I heard my friend firing his shotgun a few times, but I still saw no critters at all. I did as instructed though, simply sitting and waiting. Pretty soon, I noticed a squirrel, maybe 20 feet or so away on the side of a large tree trunk. My heart began to race and I closed the breech quickly and quietly and took a careful aim ... and that wee critter did this crazy squirrely twist and hanging off the side of the trunk turned it's head right toward me. It did a full-on, warm-hearted, Disney-cute pose and looked me dead in the eye as I sighted him with the gun.

But that pose it took stopped me cold. It was too dang cute. Blink, blink went the eyes, the tail swished a little wave at me and I could not have shot that critter no matter what. Would have been like shooting some kid's teddy bear.

It was not like I had (or have) some rare fondness for squirrels. It's just that it was watching me in this weird friendly way.

Ah well, I lowered the gun, the squirrel vanished, and I went back to watching the woods, hoping no one had seen me blow my chance to be a hunter.

Maybe half an hour or so later, my friend walked up and asked how it was going and I totally lied and said I had not seen any. He said the spot seemed to be kind of vacant and we would go to another. Soon, we were strolling back to his truck, both of us had the breeches open, though we still had ammo in the guns.

Suddenly this squirrel was racing over some branches above our heads and the noise made us both jump a bit, and in a nanosecond the breeches were closed and I fired. Sadly I had not calculated the distance between my gun and the critter -- a distance I realized afterward was pretty short -- maybe two feet between the squirrel and the end of my barrel. Yes, I pretty much atomized that squirrel. There were no parts or pieces, it was just ... gone.

"I think you got him," my friend said in that ultra-dry way of talking I love in Tennessee. He finally cracked a smile and I quite shaking and laughed too. He kept up the dry humor all the rest of the way back to the truck. By the day's end, he had bagged the limit and I never fired another shot.

His wife cooked up a mess of squirrel to eat and I remember thinking how nasty it tasted, and I was glad I did not depend on squirrel meat for sustenance. We went hunting a few more times, but as I never shot at anything again, we soon returned to fishing, something I was much better at doing. He and I have remained friends over the years and we always share many laughs and smiles at our adventures.

I did learn so much from him over the years, but one of the things I learned best was that I was a Hiker and not a Hunter.

Saturday, June 05, 2010

Tennessee Has An Official Rap Song?

This week at Speak To Power, writer T. Sharp commented on the legislative creation of the 8th state song for Tennessee.

But as I said on her post - can we ever hope to top the real 8th state song (it was part of a state history education program and is usually not counted among the "official canon"), which is titled "The Tennessee Bicentennial Rap: 1796-1996".

The full lyrics are below, but my favorite is:
Dollywood and Walking Horse Show!
Opryland and the Opry Show!
Whisky, whisky - sipping smooth -
Moon, Moon Pies and Goo Goo Goos!

---------

TENNE-, TENNE-, TENNES-SEE!
Oh, how proud we are of thee!
Volunteer State since 1812 -
Glad our fathers picked here to dwell!

Presidents, Presidents - proud are we!
Jackson, Polk, and Johnson - three!
Crockett, Forrest, and John Sevier;
Alvin York and Hull lived here!

Baker, Gores, and Kefauver,
Served our country with honor!
U.T., Memphis and Vandy U.,
Tennessee Tech and Sewanee, too!

Appalachian Mountains, mountains high -
Reaching up in the smoky sky!
Tennessee River, flowing through -
We will cross near the Choo Choo!

Dollywood and Walking Horse Show!
Opryland and the Opry Show!
Whisky, whisky - sipping smooth -
Moon, Moon Pies and Goo Goo Goos!

Reelfoot Lake and cotton fields,
Natchez Trace and Civil War fields!
Mocking birds and raccoons grow,
And tulip poplars and iris show!

Bessie Smith and Memphis blues -
W.C. Handy and Elvis, too!
Eastman, Oak Ridge, and TVA -
Nissan, Saturn, and Country Music pay!

Chickasaw, Sequoyah, and Cherokee -
Cumberland Plateau and Mississippi!
BIRTHDAY WISHES ON 200 YEARS -
GIVE TENNESSEE A BIG, BIG CHEER!

Saturday, April 10, 2010

FOX Lies and Is Loved. Part 2

Here's yet another example of how FOX news ignores reality and fabricates more fun-filled falsehoods, all in hopes of stirring up those elements of the population prone to hysteria. (Consider this a follow-up to this previous post.)

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Big Bang Treaty
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full EpisodesPolitical HumorTea Party


Now of course Newt Gingrich is a lion of honesty and purity .... not:

"On the subject of Gingrich, here's one thing I don't understand. John Edwards' philandering has made him a public pariah, understandably so. But Gingrich's marital behavior was probably even more disgusting. He cheated on his first wife and told her he wanted a divorce while she was recovering from surgery for cancer. He subsequently cheated on his second wife with a much younger aide. It's fairly amazing how Gingrich has managed to avoid any stigma from this.

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Groucho Sings About Political Debate in 2010

Political debate in 2010 seems more like this song from 1930s America -- are today's pundits so far behind or was Groucho thinking far ahead?


ALSO SEE:

-- Doctor Hates Health Care Reforms Which He Doesn't Really Know About

-- Tennessee 'Teapublicans'

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Cows Break Into Home


Four cows decided to abandon the fields and barns and to move into a house instead.

A woman says the cows broke into her house and stayed there. She told her husband over the phone that she was not injured
"but I've got cows in my house," according to news reports. As shown above, a photo from the DallasNews of what happens when a cow takes over your bedroom.

And naturally, the woman's home insurance does not include provisions for damages by bovine intruder.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Ridiculous Health Reform Fear Number 10,432

Just when I thought I had all I could stomach from the deeply ill-informed lunacy from folks who think changing the way health insurance operates is Eeeeeevil Incarnate --- I finally found something that made me laugh out loud.