trying to grok

"IN CURSIVE" MADE ME LOL

Found at Villainous Company...heh. BigD's gonna love this.

HEH

Chuck Z cracks me up...

As we all know, when a veteran runs into a problem, we just pull out the gun we've hidden in our bible and start shooting.

I am still working on my answer to Sis B. I wrote for over an hour this morning, but I need to sit on it a little longer. I am not good at blog assignments: the longer it takes me, the less I like the result. But we'll see what I manage to come up with.

For what it's worth, I'd love to have Sis B write on the same topic: what the role of government is, what powers it should have, etc. Because I don't understand her side any better than she understands mine.

DON'T DO THIS

How To Drive Yourself Insane
by Sarah

1) Marry the most wonderful person on the planet. Have everything in common, down to what foods and movies and columnists you like. Never quarrel. Have the happiest homelife imaginable.

2) Save 50% of your income for the first five years of marriage. Never go out to dinner or on vacation. Delay all gratification. Make every decision based on your financial calculator so that you'll have a substantial nest egg.

3) Reach all your financial, professional, and emotional goals. Decide it's finally time for life's most important goal: to become a family.

4) Watch all your babies die and half of your money disappear in the stock market.

AND WHEN I SAY 'ANYTHING,' I MEAN AH-NAH-THA-NG

So Obama has teleprompter problems again, eh? Am I the only one who immediately thought of this?

Stay classy, President Burgundy.

SO SIMPLE EVEN GILLY CAN ANSWER

Via Cass, a hilarious article about how Pres Obama is gambling:

Instead, no sooner had he finished describing his plans for spurring an economic recovery and shoring up the crippled automotive and banking industries than he was off to the races, outlining his ambitions for overhauling energy, health care and education policy.

The House chamber was filled with veteran legislators who have spent decades wrestling with those issues. They know how maddeningly difficult it has been to cobble together a coalition large enough to pass a significant education, health care or energy bill.

And here stood Obama, challenging them to do all three, at a time when trillions of borrowed dollars already have been committed to short-term economic rescue schemes and when new taxes risk stunting any recovery.

Is he naive?

There's a simple answer to that last rhetorical question.

(My husband and I love making that goofy face and answering obvious questions with that stupid uh-huh. It was the first thing I thought of when I read that absurd article.)

HEH

An awesome tagline found in a comments section:

ALCOHOL, TOBACCO AND FIREARMS
Should be a convenience store
NOT a Government Agency

YES, IT DOES SUCK

I am going to do short book reviews on everything I read this year during The George Bush 2009 Reading Challenge, but I couldn't wait to discuss this one. I read the book Infertility Sucks, and it is hilarious. Even though I haven't had to do IVF (yet), I could relate to everything in this book. And I have to quote you my favorite part:

Mr. and Mrs. Lifesabich, this is obviously not working out for you. Have you tried prenatal vitamins, valerian root, baby aspirin, changing doctors, standing on your head after sex, standing on your head during sex, exercising, not exercising, praying, having sex on Friday nights, trying a doctor in New York, trying a doctor in Colorado, increasing your medication doses and wearing boxer shorts?
Good, very good. Keep up the good work. Stay optimistic. Keep communicating with each other. Keep up on the latest research. Get to the pharmacy on time. Make sure your health insurance is up to date. Don't miss any doctor's appointments, even on the weekends. Make sure you've had all the necessary tests. Try not to miss too much work; you need to save up those parental leave days, just in case. And above all, don't forget to relax. That's very important.

Ha!

And in googling for the book link, I came across a funny list of what not to say. I was just thinking about this yesterday when I remembered that I forgot to mention someone on my post of people I'm grateful to have in my infertile life. A girl I know here in town went through fertility treatments unsuccessfully a few years ago. She always asks how I'm doing and listens to me talk, and she never comments. Nothing optimistic, nothing pessimistic. She just says, "I know, girl, I know." Once she explained that she purposely doesn't say anything because she hated every single thing that every other person said to her during the process. So she just says nothing. I respect and appreciate that.

There's some decent advice in the comments on this blog post for what to say if you have a friend who's struggling to have a baby. But I recommend buying this book! As long as your friend is a little irreverent, she will love this book.

And I thank my dear friend for recommending it to me.

HA

The funniest Dining In story ever. (Lots of naughty language)

UPDATE:

When I took that one year of ROTC, I couldn't attend the Dining In because I was performing in a play that weekend. Apparently I missed out on a roaring good time, because afterwards it was decreed that there would be no more alcohol served at Dining Ins in the future. The husband says it was pretty crazy.

In Dining Out news, when the husband and I were first married, they made all the wives come up and drink from the grog bowl. I thought it would be oh-so-funny to go last, and instead of taking a little sip and making a horrible face like the other wives, I wanted to grab the cup, chug the whole thing, and walk away without blinking. And I did, and it was funny...until I spent the rest of the night puking in the 3 Putt Willie's parking lot.

OH SNAP

My husband came in from the other room completely puzzled, because I was laughing so hard I was crying.

Iowahawk's parody of those pledging celebs.

(If you haven't watched the celeb video, you kinda have to torture yourself for four minutes in order to get the Iowahawk joke.)

HAIKUS

Apparently Ace had haikus yesterday. My favorites:

Trust in Obama
All your worries gone forever
Bush goes to jail now
-----DrewM

unicorns for all!
I want one with wings on it!
pay up, you assholes.
-----jdub

Mr. President
My mortgage is due the first
Just an FYI
-----Guvnah

I'M SICK

Because two hours later, it's finally funny again...
and because you have to laugh at yourself.

QUOTES

Oda Mae sent me a link and I have spent wahhhhhy too much time on this today, but I love reading everyone's favorite movie quotes.

Around our house, we have some tried and true quotes. I like when I am explaining something complicated to my husband and he brushes me off with Jack Burton's "I know, there's a problem with your face." When the dog does something cute, we fake cry and say, "Ah luve him so much." When someone says something illogical, we always say that electrolytes are what plants crave. Yesterday I was so mad at someone that this came out of my mouth: "I hated her, so much... it-it- the f - it -flam - flames. Flames, on the side of my face, breathing-breathl- heaving breaths. Heaving breath..." Ha. I could go on and on.

But lately the thing that has cracked me up the most is when my husband makes our life part of FAIL blog. The other day we were in a loud place and he was telling me about an upcoming movie, and I misunderstood the first sentence he said so none of the rest of the plot made any sense. The whole thing got so muddled, and finally my husband just goes, "Conversation FAIL" and I cracked up.

I love quoting things, per se.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, MATEY!

I found the pirate ship online that I made at work:

It was actually not a terrible product. It was way too hard for "age 6 and up" like the box says, but it was made from better quality stuff than the other foam constructions I've done lately.

I think I am done with making foam things for a while now. At least I hope so.

Merry Christmas, mateys.

JUST FOR LAUGHS

My friend said something a while back to the effect of: Sometimes life gets so crappy that you forget it's not normal to do shots of vodka at 3 PM. It made me snicker at the time. I was reminded of it today at 3 PM and thought, what the heck.

Hooo boy. Why couldn't she have said "White Russians" instead?

SNORT

I chuckled out loud:

Unemployment claims jumped to a 7-year high the week after Obama won the election. Not because of the slow economy, but because “Yes I Can” was added to the application as a valid reason.

(link via Amritas)

BWAHAHA

Frank J: In My World: New National Security Team

I WAS FUNNY?

I am not funny.

I sit on the funny panel at SpouseBUZZ Live and hate everything that comes out of my mouth. I am like Chris Farley in those old SNL skits -- "Idiot! I'm so stupid!" -- after everything I say. I don't like being funny. My peeps bring teh funny, not me.

And I don't do impressions. I don't even have a Cartman or a Slingblade. I can't do it.

So who knew that I would crack AWTM up.

With apologies to Rachel Lucas for stealing her line, they need to legalize gay marriage so that Kristen Wiig can be my wife.

This is for you, AWTM.

Every time we go to one of these SBL weekends, someone will ask me what I did. Did you see the Space Needle, Did you see the Alamo? I don't seem to be able to explain that the only thing I care about is being with my friends. In the swank Hotel Murano or the ghetto fabulous Sahara, I just want to be in my gulch.

These people, we grok each other.

HEH

I recorded SNL from Saturday but hadn't watched it yet. Holy cow, Ben Affleck did a hilarious impersonation of the crazy that is Keith Olbermann. I almost feel sorry for laughing at him when he had a butt for a face. Almost.

And John McCain was quite funny, especially the campaign strategies. He should just show up on SNL periodically; he always makes me laugh on that show.

TIME FOR A LAUGH

Amritas says, "Varifrank talks about change I can believe in!"

“A new President has been elected. Well that aught to teach him…”

The Office of the Presidency is a cruel inhumane joke that we invented to trap our most agressive alpha males. They get attracted to the scent of power, and the find themselves trapped in the steel jaws of a governmental system thats designed on purpose to not work.

That's why everyone comes into the office of the President loks like a bright shiny penny and leaves the office looking like a bag of freshly hammered dog crap.

Snort. Also, via Hudnall, a funny Onion article: Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, DOGGONIT

It's real, and it's spectacular.

GAFFES

I liked this round-up of Obama gaffes. Shoot, even I know the difference between Sanford and Son and The Jeffersons. And I never watched either show growing up.

But this one from back in May I hadn't heard yet, and it's a doozy:

In Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Obama showed off his knowledge of the war in Afghanistan by honing in on a lack of translators: “We only have a certain number of them and if they are all in Iraq, then it’s harder for us to use them in Afghanistan.” The real reason it’s “harder for us to use them” in Afghanistan: Iraqis speak Arabic or Kurdish. The Afghanis speak Pashto, Farsi, or other non-Arabic languages.

You know, twice in the past week or so, I have made jokes about how $600 couldn't even buy earrings, and nobody got it. Once I explained, they were shocked that Michelle Obama had said such a thing. But they hadn't heard about it before I mentioned it.

THE BEST

I love Penn and Teller's show. And this final episode maybe actually was "The Best." It was the perfect end to a really good day.

SUCKER FOR ADVERTISING

I am the absolute worst sucker for food advertising. A pizza commercial comes on, and I want pizza. I see a Blizzard on TV, and I want one. It's become a running joke in our household that if there's food on TV, I will want it.

I just watched last night's South Park, and I immediately had a craving for Chinese food. I had to google to even find a restaurant around here.

Mmmm, that was a good treat.

Good thing this only works on me for food; otherwise, I'd be at the Tahiti Village timeshare or tangled up in a Bow-Flex. And working for T. Boone Pickins.

CHOPPED LIVER

Guard Wife also spent Saturday at the gun show, but she apparently got leered at. Not fair! I didn't get leered at.
But AWTM wasn't here to do my make-up, so that's probably why.

TREATS ON THE WAY

Oh, snap.
Kim Jong-Il is gravely ill?
It may be time to buy cake ingredients...
Mmmm, schadenfreude cake. My favorite.

(INSERT VOICE)

I just realized that my husband and I have to do this funny thing when we write emails and letters while he's deployed. We have so many inside jokes and quotes from animated shows, so we have to write in the parenthetical voice clues. Like I have to write: Weak, lame (Cartman voice). Or, as I just wrote in a letter an hour ago: I got this in Parade Magazine (Stewie voice). And my husband just sent me this: I'm from the future! (Reno 911 voice)

I find it hilarious that we both do this so often. It also reminds me of something my French "cousin" said when he lived in the US. My brother asked him what the hardest part about making friends is, and he replied that Americans are constantly quoting things. We drop quotes from songs and movies and The Simpsons into everything. He often had a hard time following conversations because it would take him a while to realize a quote was being made. So my brothers and I tried to take him on a crash course of quotable stuff, which at the time included Friday and Swingers. It was hilarious.

My cousin would have serious trouble hanging out with my husband and me. Our relationship is one big string of quotes.

I'm super serial (Al Gore voice).

HEH

Hilarity, via Chuck.

OLYMPICS LINKS

Quote of the day.

There had been reports that Iran would compete against Israel at these Olympic Games for the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The Iranian National Olympic Committee (INOC) had said that as there was "no face-to-face situation" in swimming there would be no problem in attending the competition.

"Alirezaei swims in lane one and the representative of the Zionist regime (Israel) in lane seven, so they will not face each other," INOC secretary Ali Kafashian told ISNA news agency prior to the race.

Racists crack me up.

Also, something that would've been so skeezy if the last president had done it is so cute when this one does.

HA

How hilarious is this? (Via CG)
Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet

HA

So the bio of Benjamin Franklin I've been listening to? Yeah, that's not a sustainable activity. FbL had a good alternate suggestion: listen to stand-up on youtube. I ended up on the most hilarious thing, Dennis Miller interviewing Dana Carvey. The Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart thing was priceless.

P.S.

Sarah Silverman just has the most perfect delivery. I can't listen to any more of her because I can't not watch her. Her face, it is delightful as she makes jokes.

HE CRACKS ME UP

I posted at SpouseBUZZ: My husband's got jokes:

The other day, I set my purse down in the living room and walked down the hallway. A minute later, I hear the cell phone ringing. I run down the hall, rummage through my purse like a madwoman, and grab the cell phone right as it stops ringing. I recognize the displayed number as my husband calling from Iraq. And I'm standing there with the cell phone in my hand as he's leaving a voice message. No way to call him back or to let him know that I'm stupidly holding the phone.

That's excruciating.

I sent him an email later, saying that I was dying as he left that message, and that if he ever doesn't reach me on the cell phone in the future, he should hang up and try back one more time. Chances are I'm rummaging through my disaster of a purse, which is always what happens when my phone rings.

So a day or two later, he calls again and I miss it, but he calls right back. After we get off the phone, I go to my voicemail and hear what he left after the first call: a sing-songy teasing voice saying, "I'm not calling back -- you shoulda gotten to the phone in time! Just kidding..."

My husband's got jokes.

After I came up with that post, I went outside for a moment and my husband called again and I missed him. This voicemail said sarcastically, "You'd think with your new eyeballs you could find your phone faster."

That man.

TEH FUNNY

Well, this cheers me up today. I clicked on Instapundit and my heart literally skipped a beat when I saw that Mark Steyn was hosting the Rush Limbaugh show today. I ran to the radio.

Also, this sent me into fits too.

I am not what you would call outdoorsy. If I wanted anything that was outdoors, I'd hire someone to bring it inside where civilization lives. [...]

Anyway, on my recent trip to Branson, we were staying at a hotel with both an indoor and an outdoor pool and spa. You already know which one I used. As I sat in the hot tub, inside the air conditioned building, I realized I was a full two layers away from nature, and I liked it. The air conditioning protected me from the heat outside, and the warm water of the hot tub protected me from the air conditioning. In time, the hot tub became too hot, and I wished I had some sort of thermos suit I could wear to take the edge off.

UPDATE:

I guess I ought to specify: they were fits of laughter. Maybe I have a weird sense of humor, but I thought that was darned funny. Take that, Al Gore.

HAHAHA

I talked to ArmyWifeToddlerMom this evening. She is unable to get online at her father's house, so she has been in non-internet limbo for a long time now. She's itching to get back. And I'm itching to hear from her again, because she always kills me.

One of AWTM's charms is her filthy mouth. Sadly, she's now going to have to curb her enthusiasm, especially for her favorite insult. Her son, Sir Rowland, is apparently cut from the same cloth as she is, and his inner-AWTM is starting to shine through. They were eating in a restaurant the other day and the waiter took a really long time to bring the kids their plates. As the waiter handed her son his dish and turned to go, Sir Rowland muttered under his breath, "Thanks, douchebag."

Ha. He's exactly like his mama.

We miss you, AWTM.

OW

Oh yeah, I forgot how this works.
First time at the gym after a hiatus = fun
Second time at the gym = ouch

MY TV CRUSH WILL KEEP ME COMPANY

Wait, is it July yet?
It's July?
Sweeeeeet.

Two words for how I'm gonna get through the rest of the deployment:
Michael
Westin

Be still my heart.

Mmmm. Just ten more days.

RAMBO III

OK, it's the post you've all been waiting for: Liveblogging Rambo III.

Oh snap, he's like an ultimate fighter in Thailand.
Is this guy made of pure muscle or what? Rawr.
Hey, is that Clint Howard? No, wait, it's the dad from That 70's Show. Heh.
Dang, are we going to Afghanistan? To fight the Ruskies? Sweet.
He's a Thai hippie now.
Ehhh, the colonel was taken hostage by some terrible Russian accents! And the US government can't do anything about it! Here comes Rambo!
"If you're captured, or if any of this leaks, we'll deny any participation or even knowledge of your existence." "I'm used to it." Nice.
Bring it on! Rambo's going to The Stan.
Wait, hang on, why is an American colonel the only guy doing a covert mission to Afghanistan? He went alone?
Nice picture of Lenin on the wall.
Safer to travel through the caves? Watch out for the Balrog.
Blah blah blah mujahideen blah blah John Rambo blah blah.
All of these Afghans sure speak good English.
Ha, a kid trying to get Rambo to give him all his stuff. He should be saying Meester, Meester.
"God must love crazy people. He makes so many of them."
John Rambo: buzkashi prodigy
Ack, here comes a...well, it's not a Hind. Some sort of helicopter I couldn't identify. Anyway, Rambo 1, Hollywood "Soviet" helicopter 0. (Imdb says they were French.)
Rambo's knife cuts through barbed wire. Dang.
Oh, nuh uh. He is riding underneath a tank?
Shooting an AK with one arm, carring Short Round with the other.
"Who do you think this man is? God?" "No, God would have mercy; he won't."
Ooooh, ripped his shirt off.
Oh my lord, he just poured gunpower into his wound and lit it. Is that medically sound? Dang. That was hardcore.
Too bad this isn't another fake helicopter crash like in Rambo II.
He just brought down a helicopter with a bow and arrow.
Oh smart, attaching a glow stick to a grenade.
They all have automatic weapons and he has a bow, and he's still whoopin' butt.
He pulled that fat guy's grenade pin and gave him a Leonard Smalls death!
Rambo and the colonel vs the entire Soviet Army. And the Soviets promise them a fair trial. Ha.
Mujahideen to the rescue! Now it's horses vs tanks. Rambo doesn't come with good odds.
OK, Rambo comes charging with a horse and a Molotov cocktail, and the attack helicopter gives up?
The colonel popped the door gunner with a 50-cal! Now it's Rambo in a tank (smarter than the horse) vs a helicopter, playing chicken in the desert.
And why is there enough room for him to lie down in that tank? I've been in a tank; there's barely enough room to sit.
Man, that meester meester kid managed to take the necklace Rambo's Vietnamese booty call gave him right before she died.
The movie was dedicated to "the gallant people of Afghanistan." Well, some of them at least.
And it was filmed in Israel. Heh.

OK, so now we jump from 1988 to 2008. And seriously, I cannot wait to see the newest one. Especially after seeing this exchange on the trailer:

It will help change people's lives.
Are you bringing any weapons?
Of course not.
You're not changing anything.

My husband and his buddy loved that line. Me too. I can't wait.

See also:
Liveblog of Rambo II

HEH

Like jokes in dead languages?
This made me giggle.

MAKING ME SMILE

I bought the ingredients before I knew I was pregnant, but hadn't gotten around to making it yet. Then I was pregnant and couldn't but now I can. So I'm doing two things tonight that I couldn't do two weeks ago: drinking wine and eating Chuck Z's tuna casserole.

HA

Oh, and my husband said that we probably better vote for Obama, because we both could use some Hope and Change. Heh.

HEH

My mom and I went to my FRG picnic this weekend. One of the young wives cheerily asked my mom which soldier she was married to. We laughed and said that it wasn't entirely possible. The girl referenced Demi Moore.

Holy crap, she thought my mom was a cougar.
I nearly hyperventilated.

FOUND A KEEPER

Now this, this I will buy if I have a girl.

Also, I don't like those scrunchie things either, but I thought that was the socially acceptable thing to do. I'm glad you guys all say otherwise.

I'M IN FOR IT

Ruth emailed me and reminded me of the origin of my name, that Abraham's wife also had trouble conceiving.
She cracked me up.
Please Lord, do not make me wait until I am 90 to have a baby.
Heh.

I'VE GOT A FEVER, AND THE ONLY PRESCRIPTION IS MORE RAMBO

Because there has been absolutely no public demand for this whatsoever, I thought I'd liveblog Rambo II. Ahem, I mean Rambo: First Blood II.

They're gonna let Rambo out of prison to go find POWs. Now that's what I'm talkin' about.
Oh sweet, John Kreese is in it. No mercy.
Wait, he just takes photos of POW camps? Not cool. I imagine there will be little photo taking and lots of asskicking.
I think they made Rambo extra sweaty on purpose.
"What you choose to call hell, he calls home."
Oh niiiice, gratuitous bulging bicep close-ups while he sharpens his knife.
Danger in the air! He's cutting away his supplies! This is gonna be good.
He choked a snake. Take that, Jeff Corwin.
Aw, what's this? A chick? Come on. Don't mess up my action movie with chicks. Is this a kissing book?
"A quiet war, a war against the soldiers who were returning, the kind of war you don't win."
I knew it! Screw the photos; he's going in!
Those poor POWs, locked up and being tortured. How are they ever going to learn to be anti-war?
arrow to the head = sweet
oooh, RPG action
Oh man, I knew something was rotten in the state of Denmark with that Murdock guy. They're leaving Rambo to be captured!
The Vietcong plus Russians: could we get a better coalition of bad guys?
Oooh, Murdock, you're boned! Heh.
OK, maybe this chick isn't so bad. Plus now Rambo's shirt is gone.
Popcorn break.
Aaaah! It is a kissing book.
Oh snap. I totally did not see that coming. So much for the kissing.
Dang, I don't care if he's 5'1"; Stallone is ripped. Also he wrote Rocky in three days, so he rules.
That mud camouflage was awesome.
Pistol vs exploding bow and arrow. Rock n roll.
How awesome to strafe a POW camp. That embiggened my heart.
Uh oh. Those sneaky phucking Russians. Nice job, POW door gunner.
Crap. Blackhawk down.
OOOOOOHHHH. Kaboom. Nice fake, Rambo. Wicked.
Watch out, Murdock. Rambo's comin' for ya. I hope he puts that knife in your gut.
John Kreese gets it squaa in the nuts.
And Rambo shoots his gun in the air and says aaaaaah. How Hot Fuzz of him.
"I want for our country to love us as much as we love it." Hooah.

Apparently, this movie was called the worst movie of 1985. There's no accounting for some people's bad taste. Also Rocky IV came out that year, which means it was a pretty stellar year in my book.

Ha, well, I'm sure none of you care about this post, but I sure entertained myself doing it.

HAHAHAHA

Oh my goodness, I just had a hilarious thought: my baby is Schroedinger's cat.
Wow, that really cheered me up.

(OK, so not really. Observation won't actually cause the baby to be alive or dead, but for now it really does seem like it's both.)

HEH

I just got my first letter in the mail from my husband, sent from Kuwait. In it he compares something he heard in the SF community to a part of Jonah Goldberg's book. Gosh, I love that man.

UPDATE:

Speaking of Jonah Goldberg, he compares Obama and Reagan in a recent interview:

First of all, Ronald Reagan which at times does sound superficially like Barack Obama's: Reagan talked about a shining city on a hill, and all that kind of stuff and he had this wonderful rhetoric about patriotism and unity and all these kinds of things. And I'm sure you could find all sorts of other comparisons between Reagan's rhetoric and Obama's. But at the end of the day, Reagan was romanticizing not government but the glories and wonders of the American people and what they can do with God's gift of freedom. Which is an enormous distinction.

Reagan still believed that government wasn't the solution, it was the problem. And Obama's approach is the exact opposite of that. Reagan comes from the National Review tradition of believing that a virtuous, a truly virtuous society can only be the end-product of a free society. For virtue not freely chosen is not virtue as Frank Meyer might say. And Obama's whole shtick is that we must be unified and hopeful for what the government itself can do for us. Michelle Obama says Barack Obama is going to cure and heal our sickened souls. From my perspective, we have a Second Amendment precisely to keep governments who think they are in the soul-fixing business at bay.

I don't want the government to try and fix my soul. When Barack Obama has his door-knocking volunteers go around, they're instructed not to talk about issues but to talk about how they came to Obama in the same way that people talk about coming to Jesus. That scares me. And that's not Reaganesque. Reagan's whole approach-I think Obama's gift for oratory and for seeming like a decent and compelling personality that you'd want to know and you enjoy listening to, that kind of stuff is Reaganesque. His ability to read a script is Reaganesque and I think those comparisons are perfectly legitimate just as I think comparisons between Mike Huckabee and Reagan on that score-his ability to connect with people are fair. But in terms of philosophy, the last thing in the world that Reagan represented was the idea that we should sort of turn politics into this quasi-religious enterprise where a great leader using government can redeem the society and deliver us to some sort of utopian place where we all sort of have to work together, that's not Reaganesque. That's the opposite of Reaganism.

That's good squishy.

HILARIOUS

The funniest thing happened today. My mother-in-law sent us a package. My husband was on the phone with her while I opened it up, and I looked in the plastic bag that was on top. I said, "Um...it's a dead bird." My husband said, "What? She says it's something knitted."

It seems the Hitler cat killed a bird, and they put it in a bag and out in the garage to dispose of. And somehow that bag got grabbed when she went to put bags in the package for padding. It was the funniest thing ever. I can now say my mother-in-law mailed me a dead animal. I think that is a riot. My new favorite story.

The unfunniest thing also happened today. My husband's deployment got moved forward. He leaves soon now.

STUFF WHITE PEOPLE LIKE

The husband and I just spent the last hour laughing hysterically at a website John Hawkins found: Stuff White People Like.

Ho
Ly
Crap

This is the most hilarious blog ever. It covers all the stuff I freaking hate (note: travelling / study abroad and making you feel bad about not going outside are just better-written versions of my hatred for travel and doing stuff).

Seriously, I can't even say which one is my favorite -- not having a TV, expensive sandwiches, The Daily Show, having two last names -- they're all spot on. This site captures perfectly all the douchy things that people do. I love it.

HEH

I've been seeing Subway commercials about how Jared has kept the weight off for ten years. Dang, there are kids out there who have never known a world without Jared.

HAHAHAHA

I heard this morning on the radio that John McCain wanted to use the song "Take a Chance On Me" for his campaign, but ABBA put the kibosh on it. I just told my husband that, and he said, "I wouldn't use a song written by Swedes. What he needs is some AC/DC, maybe 'Highway to Hell.' No, wait, 'Hells Bells" and John McCain can say 'I'll come and choke you if you don't vote for me.'" Hahaha.

KISSES

MSN rated the top 10 movie kisses. They went with Brokeback, of course. But if they had to choose a guy-to-guy kiss, why not Parker and Stone in BASEketball? Heh.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY

(This is my favorite Valentine's Day tradition; I now think this is one of the most romantic songs ever. See here if you don't get the joke. And yes, I know I'm weird.)

See also: another favorite Valentine's Day tradition.

HEH

Marketing Lithuania: How about name change?
Officials say they may seek something easier to pronounce in English

Might I suggest Awesomestan? Or woo the young crowd with Republic of McLovin.

The ridiculousness just writes itself.

HEH

My husband and I were trying to figure out how we could put our "stimulus refund" to good use while still showing our contempt for it.
Eureka: we're buying a handgun.

THREE CHEERS FOR TEH STRING BEANS

I looked smart today, thanks to AWTM.
Someone actually asked me if I knew that Nebraska has a unicameral legislative system.
I stared at her incredulously for a moment before replying, "Actually, I just learned that the other day."
Thanks to AWTM...

No, seriously, that really happened today.

UPDATE:

Sorry, Tim, I fixed the link!

SCROOGE McGROK

My husband's miserly ways are notorious. AirForceWife even bought us a baby bib that says IRS Deduction. It's so true. When I asked him what he wanted for Christmas this year, he suggested I find some things around the house to sell for cash. He wants less stuff, not more; I can't remember the last time my husband has wanted to buy something for himself.

We came across these conversation cards this morning, little cards with questions to get conversations started. I flipped through them and realized I know my husband well enough to answer most of the questions for him. But I came to one that I wasn't sure of, so I asked him, "Given a choice, would you choose a mountain view, lake view, or ocean view?" He promptly answered, "Ocean view. Higher property values, I could sell it for more." My husband doesn't have a dream house, only a house he can sell.

That man cracks me up.

IT'S A CHAMPAGNE JAM!

Break out the Jim Beam, honey, it's party time!

A few drinks during pregnancy might be OK
Occasional binge may not harm fetus; more study needed, researchers say

I'm kidding, before anyone freaks out. I don't think the occasional drink while you're pregnant is going to harm the baby -- no one ever told my mom not to drink while she was pregnant, so she had margaritas with dinner on occasion -- but I also have been trying to only do what's absolutely necessary in terms of medicine and stuff, especially during these first three months. And since I honestly have lost the craving for alcohol, it's not much of a sacrifice to not drink. Especially to not binge. Geez, who needs five drinks in one sitting while pregnant?

GEE, MAVIS

OK, this MSNBC article has to be a joke:
Sex and marriage with robots? It could happen

They already did this joke on Futurama, with the public service announcement called I Dated a Robot. (I love that clip...hilarious.) "All civilization was just an effort to impress the opposite sex."

Don't Date Robots!

ROLLING EYES

From the article Inconvenient Youths:

In households across the country, kids are going after their parents for environmental offenses, from using plastic cups to serving non-grass-fed beef at the dinner table. Many of these kids are getting more explicit messages about becoming eco-warriors at school and from popular books and movies.

This year’s global-warming documentary “Arctic Tale,” for instance, closes with a child actor telling kids, “If your mom and dad buy a hybrid car, you’ll make it easier for polar bears to get around.”

From the comments section at Hot Air:

And I’m telling my kids, “If we buy a big enough SUV, we can fit a couple polar bears inside it and make it really easy for them to get around!”

Seriously though, that article was annoying as all get-out.

HEH

You have to check out this seagull thief.

HA

Oda Mae sent me a link to a hilarious political cartoon.

HEH

Did Ashton Kutcher really say that a man should dress to match his wife's purse? The only way my purse could match my husband is if I carried a purse made out of the tan ACU t-shirt. Or maybe something Cardinals themed.

HEH

This Craft the Vote! thing had me laughing. Make sure to look at the photo slideshow.

PLEASE PREPARE FOR FUNNY ENGLISH

I just bought a new wireless mouse this morning because ours crapped out yesterday. I love the translations in these instructions, such as "Automatically sleeping and manpower taking off dual functions, the battery life be prolonged" and "The Steps of Install Battery: 1. Please prepare for two AAA chargeable batteries." Whew, I really had to prepare myself for those batteries. And I'm so glad to know that "there is no interference even many mice being used at the same time." But wait, uh oh, "You would better use the mouse on the white desk. In this way the batteries can be used for a long time." Curse my tan desk! Heh.

HEH

You wanna know the key to a happy marriage? When the only disagreement you've had in weeks is whether Kurt Russell's greatest role was Jack Burton or Captain Ron.

Oh yes, we went there. And we both meant it.

PIECE OF CRAP LIST

I got tagged by Anwyn to do 8 facts about me. I already did 13 of them a while back, and 100 when I started blogging, so I'm gonna twist this meme into something I've been wanting to do for a while: a Piece of Crap list. I first saw this on Right Wing News, and now whenever something is driving me nuts, my first thought is that it would definitely go on my Piece of Crap list. So 8 things that I hate:

1) Krispy Kreme donuts
They have too much glaze for me, but mostly I just hate how people keel over with ecstasy whenever you mention them. I love donuts more than the next person, but I hate name-brand donut worship.

2) Dave Matthews Band
There's no real good reason why, but I don't like any of their songs except for "Satellite." I think their music is grating, and they were so ridiculously popular when I was in college that it made me hate them even more.

3) Jay Wolfe Nissan of Kansas City
When we bought our first car, we decided to buy an extended warranty. We specifically told the dealership that we were moving to Germany soon and that we'd never live in Kansas City in our lives. Naturally, we came to find out that they sold us a warranty that was specific to their dealership and that has a $150 deductible at any other Nissan dealer. Oh, and it didn't work at all in Germany, even though they told us it would. So it was a huge waste of money, and I'm extra mad because it's not like we moved unexpectedly and just had bad luck: we told them all of this up front and they intentionally sold us something that wouldn't work for us. Piece of crap dealership.

4) dolphins
Everyone thinks dolphins are these beautiful, peaceful creatures, but they're not. Just because they have a cute face and look like they're smiling doesn't mean they're nice. Dolphins rape their females and kill their babies. Not so cute after all. I've seen enough Discovery Channel to completely get over any ideas that dolphins are magical.

5) baja sauce
As you well know, I'm an enormous Taco Bell fan, but one thing I can't stand is this sauce they put on certain items. I call it baja sauce because the first time I encountered it was on a baja chalupa, but there is no official name for it -- with which I could ask they leave it off of my order -- and they sneak it on to many new items. I can handle most foods, but this sauce turns my stomach and ruins anything it touches. Thus it's hard to try new things at The Bell; every new item could contain the dreaded sauce. Ugh, just thinking about it makes me sick.

6) glow-in-the-dark
Perhaps it is because my brother used to think it was funny to lock me in the bathroom while we were playing with glow-in-the-dark legos, but something caused me to be extremely disturbed by anything that glows in the dark. Whenever I would get glowing keyrings or toys as a kid, I'd always have to make sure they were completely covered up before bedtime. And don't even get me started on those stupid stickers people put on their ceilings. To this day, I can't sleep if something is phosphorescing in the bedroom. Creeps me out.

7) France
This one barely needs any explanation, but I'll give the short version. I lived there for a year. I was constantly mocked, had trash thrown at me, got cussed out, threatened with rape, grabbed on the street, and chased by a guy on a moped so I had to crawl under a car to hide and escape from him. I don't really feel like returning to France anytime soon.

8) Harry Potter
This one might ruffle some feathers, but I just don't get the Harry Potter craze. They're kids' books. I'm glad kids are enjoying reading in this video game age, but I don't get all the hype the adults have built up. When I homeschooled a boy five years ago, he read a few chapters of one of the books out loud to me. It's a book for children and it reads like a book for children; I don't understand why adults are going bananas for them. I understand if you want to read the book so you can discuss it with your kids, but really getting into it and fighting over who gets to read it first? My parents never flipped out and bought three copies of Ramona Quimby. Because it was a kids' book and they didn't care. I just don't get why adults are reading Harry Potter; don't they have grown-up books to read?

Anybody else want to do a Piece of Crap List? If so, consider yourself invited. Or add one piece of crap in the comments.

HAHAHA

This is hilarious:

Found at Chic[k]pilot

HEH

Frank J's Brief History of the United States of America is worth a chuckle.

HUH?

I'm always amazed at what people will name their children these days, but this one takes the cake: Pair told not to name son '4real'. Apparently we're so advanced in weirdness that numerals seem like a possibility.

ANIMAL FARM

The dog's lived with us for two years now, and apparently he's made himself quite at home. I walked into our room just now, only to find that Charlie's really gotten in touch with his human side. There he was, sprawled out in the middle of our bed, sleeping with his head on a pillow. If he opened his mouth and spoke tomorrow, I really wouldn't be that surprised.

THREE THINGS I LEARNED THIS WEEK

1. If you plant an apple tree, you'd better like Japanese beetles.

2. When you go in to scout out a new sewing machine, you will get wooed by the glamour of the really nice machines. Then in the car on the way home, you will suddenly break out of your hypnosis and wonder why you were considering spending an extra $600 so you could monogram something.

3. When you accidentally put double the flour in a batch of cookies, they don't necessarily get ruined...but you don't necessarily feel the need to eat the entire batch in one sitting either.

DEBATE

I watched the Republican debate the other day and read the transcript from the Democrat one. I thought most of the questions seemed normal, though I did think it was a tad douchey to ask Huckabee to pin down exactly how many days he thought it took for God to create the world. Nobody asked Hillary to explain what exactly she thinks of Saul Alinsky. Some stuff just isn't important for the presidential debate.

That said, I love Frank J's suggestion for debate questions. It starts with "If you had to pick a minority group you like the least, which one would it be?" and gets even funnier.

SMOKING

As someone who has a hard time falling asleep, I found this utterly hilarious.

HA

Chuck Z can sure make me laugh:

I support and defend the constitution. Period. It says that the Predisent is my commander in chief. If the commander says "Go, Kill, and Keep Killing, because thy are the enemy of freedom, then I go and kill. If the commander later says that his intel was flawed, and they aren't necessarily all that bad, well, anyone in uniform understands that the intel guys are mostly boobs anyway, who play LOTS of dungeons and dragons when thy aren't giving the boss their "best guess."

FRANK J IS FUNNY

Heh. The Planet Is a Bad Analogy

The problem with [Al Gore's] analogy is that anytime he says, "The planet has a fever," people are going to immediately respond, "And the only prescription is more cowbell!" So that doesn't help his cause.

YOU REALLY CAN SPIN ANYTHING...

Ha -- Penn and Teller get hippies at WorldFest to sign a petition banning water. Too rich. I love the last line of the clip: "Yeah, we set these folks up. But it does show that maybe they're not so much environmentalists as they are joiners...of anything."

MORTIFYING

I read this funny story about opening presents on my friend's blog:

So I have one funny story . . . the first box I opened was a waffle iron . . . I was like this is a nice waffle iron we can make them tomorrow for breakfast. I continued to open boxes and read cards . . . about 15 minutes later Colin stepped on the waffle iron box and it collapsed. I told Nancy that I don't think it is a waffle iron in there . . . so I opened the box and it was a project that two special people have been working on for a long time . . . it was a quilt with photos of Sean, Colin, and me . . .

I have a similar story, only mine was a hundred times more bonehead.

When my husband and I got married, an old friend of my mom's sent us a package that arrived the day before the wedding. In all the commotion of wedding planning, I hastily tore of the brown paper wrapping and noticed it was a Honeywell fan. I figured it would come in handy, and I set it out on the table of gifts.

The husband and I loaded up all our gifts into a U-Haul after the honeymoon and moved to Missouri for six months, where we had air conditioning. All our stuff got packed up again and stayed in storage while we were at Fort Knox for another six months. We arrived in Germany a year after our wedding that HOT summer of 2003 when all the French grannies were dying of heatstroke. I couldn't wait for our household goods to finally arrive so I could break out that Honeywell fan.

Um, yeah, it wasn't a fan. It was bedsheets in a fan box.

Do you know how embarrassed I was? I sent these people a thank you card for a fan.

In my mortified state, I had to sit down again and pen a long, apologetic letter explaining why on earth I hadn't opened the danged box, and how, though I had thanked them profusely for a very useful and nice fan, I was also equally excited to get bedsheets. Over a year later. It was probably one of the most embarrassing things I've done in my life.

Coulda used a fan that summer in Europe...
Love the sheets though.

THE IMAGINARY BABY IS ALREADY DOOMED

The husband has been considerably less excited about starting a family right now. He had certain milestones he wanted to reach before he became a father -- a specific chunk of change in investments, finished with his MBA -- and if we get started now, he won't be at his benchmarks. But he did have an a-ha moment that has made him more receptive to the idea over the past 24 hours: he realized that if we had the baby now, we'd get the earned income credit for 2007. Lord, I married my father.

We have been having a good deal of fun making up names for the imaginary baby. Jack Bauer LastName is a common joke around the house. Though the absolute gut-buster was when my husband suggested David Lo Pan LastName. And when he said it was no big deal if I stopped drinking, that we could easily raise a "party baby."

My husband's got jokes.

YOU MUST BE KIDDING

This is what our neighborhood looks like this morning.

My husband left for work and then came home about 10 minutes later. There's a two hour snow delay. They told him he doesn't even need to bother coming in today.

The South is hilarious.

ONE OF THOSE DAYS

I hosted a small baby shower today for the one person I know here in town. We invited four of her friends over for lunch and presents. And when they left, I kicked my feet up on the coffee table and noticed that I was wearing one black shoe and one blue one. Sigh...

HEH

Warning: War May Be Hazardous

One of my stateside friends deployed and wrote me an email saying he couldn't believe we in USAREUR had to watch AFN commercials. He was outraged that there was a commercial warning folks to "watch their step."

AH, THE FRENCH

Make sure you read Lileks today, but definitely go read the link to the French guy first. Ha!

ADDRESS WOES

We've noticed some weird spellings of our new street name. It's not a super common word, but it's hardly difficult. But we've gotten all sorts of strange looks and repeats, which we've found amusing. Today in the car we were looking at all the other street names and trying to decide which would be easy for people and which would be hard. (The best one we came across was Possum Holler Rd.) And my husband cracked me up when he said, "I suppose it could always be worse: 'What's your address?' '1532 Ecclesiastical Benevolence.'"

I SIMPLY ADORE THIS MAN

Last night we were flipping channels and passed by an MTV show that's some sort of Yo Mama jokes standoff. We watched the last few minutes of the show kinda dumbfounded. And as soon as it ended and he went to change the channel, my husband said, "Yo mama's so dumb, she wouldn't understand the Laffer curve if they explained it on Fox & Friends." Oh good lord, I laughed so hard I nearly choked. That's the best yo mama joke I've ever heard.

HEH

Here's an flawlessly-executed joke, no botching at all.

HAHAHA

BlameBush rallies the voters today:

Today, Americans all across the country, living and dead, will exercise their right and responsibility to vote Democrat. Of all the rights granted to us in the Constitution, the Right to Vote Democrat is one of our most sacred, second only to the Right to Choose. So it is vital that no matter how many times we vote today, we do so with the same courage and conviction we put into having abortions.

Read the whole danged thing.
(And for those who've never been to that site: Psst, it's a joke.)

By the way, this one is good too:

Thrice wounded on the battlefields of Vietnam, Sen. John Kerry would never dream of insulting the intelligence of our babykilling, genital-shocking, cattle razing, women-and-children-terrorizing troops. If they had any brains, they’d know that.

NONBOTCHED JOKES

Some people have got waaay better jokes than John Kerry. Like Right Thoughts' interview with "John Kerry's Intentions":

Kerry’s intentions: Jim...Jimbo. Jimmykins. Jimka. Listen. It’s simple. John is smarter than you. He knows that you little people can’t afford food, and you’re too stupid to become lawyers and marry rich widows. Therefore, most of you end up at one point or another either becoming volunteers for his campaign or you become horrible, murdering rapists reminiscent of Jen-jiss Khan...i.e. you join the military.

JimK: But wait a minute. That’s just reinforcing the notion that the statement was slanderous against the military in the first place! I don’t get it. What are you trying to say here?

Kerry’s intentions: Jim-bo-lah. Jim-o-rama. Jimmy crack corn...I know this is upper-level material here, but try to stay with me. Senator Kerry despises the little people, so he made a joke about Bush that wasn’t about Bush, wasn’t true, contained factual truths and wasn’t a joke, because he care about you, the common man. You see?

JimK: No. No I do not see. In fact, everything you said contradicts everything else you said.

Kerry’s intentions: Well, I was against this interview before I was for it, so there you have it.

Heh. Read the whole thing. JimK's got mad jokes.

BYE

I'm leaving for Texas in a few minutes. Unfortunately, tonight is the military ball, which my husband is emceeing; I'm quite sad to miss this. As I said goodbye to my husband, I reminded him to have fun but stay out of trouble. He reminded me that those two things are mutually exclusive at a military ball...

UP YOUR BUTT, JOBU

My goal for today is to whip out one of these in a Detroit uniform, in time for tomorrow night's game. Heh.

HEH

I just want to be a jerk for a minute and point something out.

Go Cardinals!

UPDATE:

Tigers in three? Not so much.

HEH

Iowahawk makes an appeal to Conservative America. I got such a kick out of this paragraph that I can't stop giggling. Republican stereotypes crack me up.

Despite what you may have heard on Fox News, we Democrats know what issues are on the minds of heartland conservatives like you. We know that your number one concern of is the safety of your children -- whether they are plucking their banjos on the back porch, speaking tongues to snakes at Jesus Camp, or torching crosses at your local Nascar racing contest. We also know that the number one threat to your children's safety is the scourge of international homo-ism. That's why we at the DNC have created "The Contract With American Hillbillies," a new multipoint investigation program to identify and root out conservative stealth homoism before it threatens you or your precious little inbreeds.

SHEESH

Good thing we didn't bet on black.

FIELD

All alone for a week; husband's out in the field. Heh, the field, for Finance. They sit around and pretend to pay people.

HEH

The Princess of Jordan came to watch my husband's combative training at PT this morning. Isn't that the most random thing you've ever heard?

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

P.S. My husband thinks it's wildly funny to keep telling me to bring my "big ol' sour cream ass" closer to him. Heh.

A HOOT AND A HOLLER

Holy crap. If you're a fan of Parker and Stone (ahem, CaliValleyGirl), then you have to check out this "employment orientation video" they did for Universal Studios. Apparently Universal decided they hated it, but it had me in stitches this morning. Thanks for finding it, Hud.

BLOG IN-JOKES

I wonder if any other blog-intense family has arguments where one person says he's Israel and his wife is acting like Hassan Nasrallah? Or where someone admits that her reaction to his not handing her the spices fast enough was "disproportionate"?

JUSTICE

So Saddam is being forced to watch himself on South Park. Perfect. May I remind you that I suggested this almost two years ago. I hope he's had to watch it on a loop for at least that long. Also he should have to watch "Do the Handicapped Go to Hell?" and the subsequent episode, "Probably."

TOILET HUMOR

Our toilet has officially turned into a European toilet. Maintenance has been out twice already to plunge, snake, and grumble, but the water simply won't suck down the hole; it just stirs. Last night I was trying to think of a joke I could make about it, so I tried to come up with something that doesn't belong in a toilet. I laughed out loud and teased my husband, "Honey, you really need to stop shoving Korans down our toilet."

It's funny when the first thing that comes to mind when you think "what could clog a toilet?" is the Koran...

BWAHAHAHAHA

It's the new "Democracy, Whiskey, Sexy!"

HEH

Found this via Hud and CaliValley:
Gore isn't quite as green as he's led the world to believe

Kinda reminds me of the time Ben Affleck said he was thinking of running for Congress, and it turned out he had only voted once in the past 10 years, and not even in 2000 when he rode around with Gore trying to rock the vote. Sheesh.

POSSIBLE?

Are there any nutritionists out there who can answer a real question for me? How do you get dehydrated when you're on a liquid diet? That seems oxymoronic to me, but naturally I have no medical knowledge whatsoever. This is a real, actual, honest-to-god question. With only the tiniest pinch of smartaleckness because that woman makes me sick.

LAUGH OUT LOUD

Every once in a while you read a line on a blog that's just so good that you want everyone you know to see it. This is one of those lines:

The NYT confused what people read and email each other, with what they will pay for. If those two things were the same, poems about Jesus and pictures of animals dressed up in costumes would have displaced porn and gambling as the internet's biggest industries.

DANG

I swear, The Onion couldn't have made up a story this good: Iran leader asks Germany for help on Zionism

Speaking of The Onion, we were watching the news the other day and two newscasters were talking to each other. One asked, "Are you familiar with The Onion?" The other said she was not, so the first proceded to explain what The Onion is and why it's so funny. And then at the end of the segment, the other lady said, "Yeah, um, I know what The Onion is, I just wasn't paying attention when you asked me." It was such a random, weird admission that my husband and I cracked up.

WHAT AN INFLUENCE!

Hud found a funny website: A complete list of things caused by global warming

HA

And I thought we had been around the Army for a "long time" because new privates have ACUs! That's nothing compared to R1's time in...

SEEKING

Wanted: New best friends

Must love knitting. And talking about knitting. And reading about knitting, swapping patterns, and making knitting jokes. Must get excited about figuring out a ptbl. Knitting ambition is required: applicants must attempt patterns that make me cringe. Also must be a knitting nerd: must think the binary hat and Fibonacci sequence scarf are awesome.

Must love the other domestic arts. Sewing is a definite. Quilting is a bonus. Cooking is required. Must love calling first thing in the morning to rave about what you made for dinner last night. Must love reading cookbooks, cover to cover. Cleaning skills are a must too. Must be able to help me figure out how to get make-up out of a wedding dress or dog pee out of the sofa cushion. Bonus points if every time I call you you're cleaning the oven, or if you clean radiators when you're bored.

However, mere June Cleavers need not apply. Must have a healthy sense of humor. Preference will be given to applicants who use the f-word while discussing antique apron patterns. I'll even accept devout Catholics with a verified sordid past. Must love Alabama Worley and still keep a copy of Emily Post on the shelf.

Must be a fellow right-wing nutjob, preferably heavier on the fiscal than the social. Must want limited government and refuse WIC. Must be accepting of homosexuals, hate al Qaeda, and argue back and forth with me about abortion. Bonus points if your biracial son thinks his heritage is "Irish." Must love George W. Bush but enjoy talking about the ways he's screwing up. Extreme preference given to military wives who nag their husbands about staying in the Army.

Must have freckles, huge boobs, and look great in flannel. Must be a NON-smoker. Cubs fans need only apply if they fit all the other criteria.

Oh, who am I kidding? No one will ever measure up to Erin, Kelly, and The Girl.

BAD MOVE

If it's at all possible, never arrange to move the week when your husband has finals for his MBA classes and when he's acting commander because the real commander is on leave. That's a scenario to avoid.

SURELY YOU MUST BE JOKING

I couldn't help but guffaw when my husband pointed out the funniest quote from France's labor riots:

You'll get a job knowing that you've got to do every single thing they ask you to do because otherwise you may get sacked.

Heaven forbid you have to do what your boss tells you to do.

BURN IN HELL, SLOBODAN

It's a coincidence that I made a cake yesterday, but maybe it's not too late to add Milosevic's name to it so he can have the same "honor" as Arafat and Saddam. "Suck it, Slobodan" has a nice ring to it too...

I LOVE MADE-UP WORDS

This magnet is just a gem. I can't wait to put it on my fridge...

GEEZ

Charlie still has to take antibiotics for his stitches, and we've been dipping the pills in peanut butter for him. Today he licked all the peanut butter off and walked away from the pill. So I wrapped it in some cheese, and I'll be darned if he didn't suck on it until the cheese came off and then spit the pill on the kitchen rug. That dog is too smart for his own good!

REASON #14 WHY I'M NUTS

I really want to get Lasik surgery, but I'm unreasonable paranoid that I'll be the unlucky fella who goes blind from the procedure. So sometimes I practice knitting with my eyes shut so I could continue my hobby sans eyesight...

HOORAY

My favorite Valentine's moment:

As the candy hearts poured into the fiery quasar, a wonderous thing happened, why not? They vaporized into a mystical love radiation that spread across the universe, destroying many, many planets - including two gangster planets and a cowboy world. But one planet was exactly the right distance to see the romantic rays, but not be destroyed by them - Earth. So all over the world, couples stood together in joy. And me, Zoidberg! And no one could've been happier, unless it would've also been Valentine's Day. What? It was? Hooray!

VINDICATED?

A few years ago, my brother started a firestorm in our basement when he said that his high school basketball team could beat any WNBA team. There was much shouting, but my brother held his ground. One of my friends remembered this fight when he saw that a high school hockey team beat the women's Olympic team. Maybe we should organize that basketball game and see what happens...

HA

My glasses broke a few weeks ago, so yesterday the husband and I went to the shop to try to pick out a new pair. There's little I hate as much as trying to find glasses that don't make me look like a complete idiot. I put on one pair and turned to my husband, who immediately said, "Nah, they make you look like Glenn Reynolds." I didn't think it was possible to laugh so hard and so quietly in a tiny glasses shop. God, I love jokes that only bloggers will get.

(We were reminded of this comment when we pulled up the Instapundit today.)

DECK THE CORMEX

I just found a photo from my husband's Christmas last year in Iraq:

I think this year's Christmas was slightly better...

JONESING

I'm starting to feel the itch.

When I lived in France for a year, I would dream about it. I'd wake up salivating and immediately wish I were asleep again. When my friend moved home a few weeks before I did, she mailed me photos of it just to taunt me. And since our local franchise closed this summer, the desire has only grown stronger. It's only a matter of time before I'm dreaming of it again.

Hello, my name is Sarah. (Hi, Sarah.) It's been 139 days since my last Taco Bell...

LEARNING

OK, I think I'm finally starting to get a handle on the "Condi isn't black enough" idea. If a black person is a Democrat and you talk bad about him, you're a racist. If a black person is a Republican and you talk bad about him, well, I guess you're keepin' it real or something. And the n-word is racist, but "Uncle Tom" is OK. And it's OK to throw oreos at a black Republican.

Huh?

Delegate Salima Siler Marriott, a black Baltimore Democrat, said [Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele] invites comparisons to a slave who loves his cruel master or a cookie that is black on the outside and white inside because his conservative political philosophy is, in her view, anti-black.

"Because he is a conservative, he is different than most public blacks, and he is different than most people in our community," she said. "His politics are not in the best interest of the masses of black people."

During the 2002 campaign, Democratic supporters pelted Mr. Steele with Oreo cookies during a gubernatorial debate at Morgan State University in Baltimore.

In 2001, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. called Mr. Steele an "Uncle Tom," when Mr. Steele headed the state Republican Party. Mr. Miller, Prince George's County Democrat, later apologized for the remark.

"That's not racial. If they call him the "N' word, that's racial," Mrs. Marriott said. "Just because he's black, everything bad you say about him isn't racial."

HEH

Honestly, the second thing I thought when my husband shook me awake at 0530 (after thinking "Cool!") was "Poor Deskmerc..." I've never been very good at maintaining rivalries.

HUH?

Last night I was listening to a radio program about the benefits of pet therapy, where they take nice doggies to hospitals to cheer up patients. The program said, "Pets are a great way to reduce anxiety."

Um, I'd like to negotiate a trade.

Yesterday Charlie looked me right in the eye and squatted to pee on his bed, ate the first ten pages of The Federalist Papers, and managed to chew a hole in the bag of dog food on the shelf so that he could sit under it and have food pour down into his mouth.

Reduce anxiety, my foot.

CHECK SIX

Doc Foglesong is retiring?! Man, that's gonna cut the number of TV commercials in half around here!

(This joke is dedicated to The Girl)

BAD SHOWER

My neighbor called because her hot water wasn't working. Mine seems to be just fine, but who knows how these screwy buildings work. I've lived here two and a half years and I still don't understand how to work the heater.

Anyway, as I was getting into the shower this morning, I remembered the strangest shower I've ever taken.

When we lived in France, my friend had a bizarre bathroom setup. Imagine a cross between a stand-up shower and a bathtub, and not in a good way. Her bathing apparatus was the dimensions of a stand-up shower but with the porcelain sides of a tub, reaching about three feet off the floor. So if you're standing in the tub/shower, the side of the tub reaches mid-thigh. And then there's nothing -- no curtain or door -- but there's a nozzle for a shower. There's a seat in the thing, kind of like a jacuzzi-style shelf. Oh, and in the middle, at about belly button height, there's a series of strings for drying laundry. Seriously. I wish I had a picture.

So one day I decide that my curiousity is too great, and I ask my pal to use her shower. I just have to see this for myself. And I proceed to take the most miserable shower of my life.

In my own apartment, the shower had exactly three and a half minutes of hot water, so I was not unaccustomed to misery. But the moment I turned on the water in my friend's shower, ice water sprayed all over me...and all over most of the bathroom too, since there's no curtain to control it. But since I'm an idiot, I didn't just shut it off and get out, oh no. I took the whole danged shower.

When I got back to my friend's room -- did I mention that she shared this monstrosity at the end of the hall with two strangers? -- I asked her if her water was always that cold. She said that it was never pleasant, and I could tell that she thought I was being overly critical. That afternoon she learned that the hot water had been shut off in the whole building, and I had indeed taken a shower that was worse than usual.

As if things could get any worse than that hybrid shower-tub.

HEH

My husband got a real laugh out of this interview with R. Lee Ermey, G. Gordon Liddy, Evel Knievel, Merle Haggard, and Jack La Lanne. (But don't read it unless you can appreciate a man's man.)

MORE TO GROK:

Speaking of Liddy, CavX got interviewed by G. Gordon Liddy! Wow!

YOWZA

Holy smokes -- our gas just jumped 18 cents overnight.
I thought we were getting oil out of this war...

HAHAHAHA

Stop the presses -- there's a draft going on in the military!!!!

HA

Hilarious Dilbert cartoon via CaliValleyGirl

HA

This website (via Sully) made me laugh simply because it reminded me of my husband and his old roommate. They used to make up stuff like this about the opposing baseball team's players, such as "I heard Benny Agbayani once ran over a puppy and instead of stopping to notify the family, he backed up and ran over it again." The more absurd, the better. They used to have me in stitches with this stuff.

FLIP FLOPS

I turned to Annika for commentary, for she's the one with the shoe fetish, but no word from her yet on...um...flipflopgate? Apparently some girls wore flip-flops to the White House and it's caused a ruckus for, well, people who are older than the flip flop craze of late. To be honest, until the news pointed it out, I didn't even notice their footwear. Flip-flops have come a long way from being "shower shoes", so I don't think they were that inappropriate. But the ones I saw were classier than the two dollar Walmart bin shoes, so I don't know. I own some cheapo flip-flops myself, which I would never wear with a nice outfit, but I also own some classier flip-flop-like sandals that I would probably not consider disrespectful towards the White House. Your thoughts, Annika?

OH MERCY

My mom sent me an excellent email forward today:

Why English Teachers Retire Young

Actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E.coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m.instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.

18. Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

23. The ballerina raised gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

26. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.

27. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

28. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

HA

You tell 'em Greyhawk...

I suppose it's possible that there are toilets capable of [flushing a Koran] in Guantanamo, in the same sense that it's possible that the Texas Air National Guard was using Microsoft Word in the early 1970s. To caveat my own opinion, however, I note that anything is possible, Inshallah.

That reminds me of a Futurama line my husband and I like to repeat:

Professor: "Is it true that stem cells may fight the aging process?"
Scientist: "Well yes, in the same way an infant may fight Muhammad Ali, but--"
Professor: "One pound of stem cells please!"

KNIVES

By the way, did ya'll see what Red 6 managed to do to his hand? He called me all calm too: "If we need to go to the emergency room, do we go first to the American clinic or straight to the German hospital?" "Who needs the emergency room?" I asked. "Me," he replied, cool as a cucumber.

I remembered that phone call when I read this post by Not Deskmerc. If we had been living in England, none of this would've ever happened.

MOVIES

CaliValleyGirl hit me up with this blog forward...

1) Total number of films I own on DVD/video:
I just went and counted: 222. (Holy crap, I just thought of all the money I've spent on movies.)

2) The last film I bought:
Ordered Team America yesterday.

3) The last film I watched:
Actually we went to see Be Cool tonight. I liked it, but my husband thought it was too close to Get Shorty.

4) Five films that I watch a lot or that mean a lot to me (in no particular order):
Well, that's hard. How 'bout I name some movies that I never get tired of no matter how many times I watch them, like Raising Arizona, The Royal Tenenbaums, True Romance, Joe Dirt, Ocean's Eleven, Superman II, and Smokey and the Bandit.

UNCANNY

A few days ago, the Boy and Girl called with a funny story. They were in the food court and saw someone they thought for sure had to be my husband. They'd only ever seen one photo of him, so they weren't positive, but they stared for a while until they caught sight of the name tape (Keller) and quickly looked away. They were embarrassed that they had been staring at some stranger.

Today I walked into the food court and caught sight of a soldier. My first thought was, "That has to be LT Keller!" The resemblance is really uncanny. I ran into Red 6 a minute later and dragged him over to take a look; he agreed.

But it wasn't my soldier. Mine should be landing in Germany any minute now...

NAIVE

Wanna know how naive I am? I had to attend a faculty meeting today, and one of the counselors was talking about how it's not uncommon for kids this age to participate in "cutting". I thought she meant hopping into the lunch line; she meant self-mutilation. What is up with kids these days?

HEH

Woah. Cool photo.

HA

Lileks always makes me smile -- and boy what a treat it was to hear his voice for the first time -- but I can't think of the last time I've laughed as hard as I did when I read this...

My tie today wasn't Ogg Vorbis friendly either, but it looked hella good with my shirt.

HA

Oda Mae sends a hilarious link!

HMM

Random thought: I still don't understand how the Trojans fell for that stupid horse.

FLAG

There's a contest to create a new EU flag. My favorite is the second one down here. I'm still laughing out loud.

MONSTERS

These photos are simply hilarious. (Found via CavX's sidebar) Also this is funny.

HA

Did you see that CB's signed a book deal? Commenters at Armor Geddon keep suggesting Red 6 do the same about his time in Fallujah.

Me and Red 6, before he got all famous on us!

I told him when he gets home, as payback for all the boxes I've lugged up to his apartment and trips to the travel agent, he owes me steak and Cristal. He said, "more like Santa Fe Gorditas and Dr. Pepper." Ha. I realized the other day that not only has my husband been gone for a year, but so has one of our best friends. I can't wait to hang out with him again.

(I am seriously out of focus in that photo. What's the deal?)

ULTIMATUM

After the capture of John Adam, an American renegade took matters into his own hands, issuing an ultimatum to the insurgents:

(Photo taken by my favorite reservist)

MECHA-SOLDIER

So does this mean that Leonard Maltin, Sidney Poitier, and Robert Smith are going to Iraq to save the day? Bah-bu-rah, Bah-bu-rah...

(If you're not obsessed with South Park, you might not get this post. But I think it's wicked funny.)

MORONS

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

ACT

The elections are over, the husband is safe and sound, and 30 January is rolling to a close.

I never answered Pixy's question about who should play me in a movie. I guess I'll have to go with Jennifer Connelly. She doesn't particularly look like me -- well, a little, and the long brown hair helps -- but she's my husband's Sam Elliot, the one actress he goes ga-ga over. So rather than compete, I'll just get her to pretend to be me!

MORE TO GROK:

Oh, and I agree with my father-in-law that I was wrong in saying my husband doesn't really look like any actor: he does look an awful lot like Rick Schroeder. Husband's cuter though.

DYE

I heard about that silly Wisconsin voting rule that says that as long as someone vouches for you, you can vote. Maybe we could learn a thing or two about that blue finger dye being used in the Iraqi elections.

HA

Tanks: good for the environment!

The environmental office works with units that use the training area to identify sections that are off-limits to training to protect endangered or threatened species that live in those areas. In other parts of the training area, the training actually helps wildlife flourish, Rieck said.

“Threatened and endangered species like when the landscape changes,� he said. “With tanks moving through, the land changes and animals are attracted to that.�

An information paper from the environmental office said the tanks compact the soil, creating puddles that the endangered yellow-bellied toad uses to lay eggs.

Ulrich Maushakey, the forest director for the Federal Forestry Office in Grafenwöhr, said if the training were to stop and the area no longer monitored, much of the existing wildlife would likely die off.

“If you keep the land open, all the trees come back, the area would be [overgrown] with weeds and the most parasitic species would take over,� Maushakey said. “With the land kept free of these threats, there is more of a chance for threatened and endangered species to come back.�

Hey, husband, did you see that? Two of my favorite things are symbiotic: tanks and toads!

HA

Dude, Red 6, we're not the only ones who hate your shelf toilet!

ROCK ON

So I'm like the last person in the world to review Team America, but I just got back from the theater, and I loved it. I stayed home sick all day, but nothing was keeping me from the movie. I won't rehash all the same praise everyone else has given it; I'll only add that the entire military audience was cracking up.

And this song, which killed me, goes out to my husband:

I miss you more then Michael Bay missed the mark
When he made Pearl Harbor
I miss you more than that movie missed the point
And that’s an awful lot, girl
And now, now you’ve gone away
And all I’m trying to say is
Pearl Harbor sucked, and I miss you

I need you like Ben Affleck needs acting school
He was terrible in that film
I need you like Cuba Gooding needed a bigger part
He’s way better than Ben Affleck
And now all I can think about is your smile
and that shitty movie too
Pearl Harbor sucked and I miss you

Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies?
I guess Pearl Harbor sucked
Just a little bit more than I miss you

MAN PURSE

Hahaha. Perhaps I could get my husband a man-purse with camouflage on the flap like Tommy Lee has. Oh good lord, I can just picture the look on my husband's face if I suggested he get a purse. That's rich. (The man owns three ties, and one is a clip on. Metrosexual, he is not.)

HA

I swear I laughed all day Wednesday when I read about SSG Terry-speak. "Personal bandanna" is my absolute favorite; I can't wait to meet this guy in person.

XMAS

I can't help but laugh thinking that Christmas for my husband will be more like Xmas on Futurama: In 2801 the Friendly Robot Company built a robotic Santa Claus to determine who'd been naughty and who'd been nice. But Santa malfunctioned and he now thinks everyone is naughty. And when Santa thinks you're naughty he murders you.

He knows when your are sleeping,
He knows when you're on the can,
He'll hunt you down and blast your ass from here to Pakistan.
You better not breathe, you better not move,
You're better off dead, I'm telling you, dude.
Santa Claus is gunning you down!

Be careful, husband. It's Xmas.

PERSON OF THE YEAR

Cracking up right about now:

"Person of the Year!" I spat. "Person of the FEAR is more like it! Red Alert! Orange Alert! Green Alert! Nipple Alert! Between the phony terror warnings and the FCC thought police monitoring everything I say, I'm afraid to crawl out from under my sink in the mornings anymore. And that ain't the half of it, sister! On Bush's watch, 150 million people lost either their lives, their jobs, or both. Half the country is being outsourced to Pakistan, and the other half has been brainwashed by cross-burning Jesus freaks. As we speak, little children - helpless little children - are being marched into religious gulags posing as public schools, where they're forced to say "under God" in the pledge, or even encouraged to practice abstinence against the very laws of nature. The air is unbreathable, the water is full of arsenic, the Bill of Rights no longer exists, and two normal, law-abiding gay guys can't even walk down the street hand-in-hand without an inbred Repug making fun of their leather chaps and sequined cowboy hats."

"Mr. Chomstein, please."

"And the hegemony...oh, the hegemony!" I continued. "The whole world hates us, our allies despise us, and we're on the brink of nuclear armageddon because Bush and his red state church maggots waged an imperialist war for oil in order to pave the way for their "Messiah" to return, surfing on a tidal wave of AIDS victims and Enron pink slips! Meanwhile, innocent women and children are stripped naked and forced to play leapfrog across Gitmo by leering, chain-smoking midgets with no gaydar, as Donald Rumsfeld sits proudly upon huge pile of Halliburton loot, humvee armor, and crudely written form letters to the families of retarded jocks. The streets have turned to rivers of blood, the whole world hates us, Clinton's record budget surplus has vanished, squirrel numbers are declining, women are sacrificing their careers for their "family", and Jerry Falwell is drilling in ANWR. Peaceblossom is gone, Yassir Arafat is dead, Kirstie Alley is fat, and Mom's eating dog food right out of the can because Bush took away her social security in order to give tax cuts to the wealthiest one percent! If that's what it takes to become Time Magazine's "Person of the Year", then job well done, Dubya! MISSION A-F**KING COMPLISHED!!!!"

I love Liberal Larry.

DIVORCE

The husband and I have to get divorced. That's all there is to it. What else am I supposed to do after this exchange?

Sarah: everyone keeps telling me that now that I have vacation, I should go home
Sarah: but I cant go home without you
Sarah: we're a team
husband: yes ma'am
husband: team america, fuck yeah
Sarah: ha
Sarah: have you seen it yet?
husband: yes ma'am
Sarah: was it funny?
husband: yes ma'am
Sarah: dang

He left me behind! You never leave a man behind...especially not on the way to a Parker/Stone movie.

(I'm just kidding. He's trying to find a way to get me a copy, but they're sold out.)

HA

John Hawkins braves the Democratic Underground again and finds a wonderful example of the irony that happens when Christmas pageants can't mention Christmas.

DANG

So today is apparently the day to just post funny stuff. This one's for all my reality show addicted friends: Survivor: Texas Style

And this one's for my mama.

ROCKY

We're due for a post raving about my husband since I haven't done one in like a couple days now. Every time we chat online, I remember why he's my favorite person in the whole wide world. My husband is not only the smartest man I know, he's also one of the funniest:

Russell: cool about the OIF 4 stuff
Russell: no 1st ID
Sarah: wait, isnt that OIF 3?
Russell: no OIF three is coming in 2 months
Russell: 3rd and 42nd ID
Sarah: dang, I get them confused
Sarah: there are almost as many as the Rocky movies
Russell: Man OIF 5 is gonna suck then

HEH

Another joke:

Politics: It all really just boils down to this:

Criminals:
Democrats: Give them a second chance.
Republicans: Give them the swift sword of death.

The poor:
Democrats: Give them some food.
Republicans: Give them the swift sword of death.

Endangered species:
Democrats: Give them protection.
Republicans: Give them the swift sword of death.

Dictators:
Democrats: Give them a way out.
Republicans: Give them the swift sword of death.

The uninsured:
Democrats: Give them health care.
Republicans: Give them the swift sword of death.

THE COST:
Democrats: $9,000,000,000,000,000,000
Republicans: $29.95 (cost of one sword)

Heh.

HEH

And because we all could use a laugh, here's a joke from Oda Mae:

A Baptist minister was seated next to a Marine on a commercial airline flight. After the plane was airborne, drink orders were taken.

The Marine asked for a scotch and soda, which was promptly placed before him. The flight attendant then asked the minister if he would like a drink.

The minister replied in disgust, "I'd rather be savagely raped by brazen whores than let liquor touch my lips."

The Marine handed his drink back to the attendant and said, "Me too. I didn't know that was a choice."

JOB PERKS

OK, so I agreed to work tomorrow since my co-worker had already made a doctor appointment. Unfortunately, I had put off a bunch of things that I intended to do tomorrow, like grade papers, shop for a gift for my Czech orphan, knit an entire hat and scarf as a gift, wrap and send my Christmas presents home, and grade more papers. So now I'm a little stressed that I had planned all these things for tomorrow and I will be sitting at work instead. (If you hadn't figured it out by now, I stress out easily.) Thus I had the following hilarious exchange with my husband online tonight:

Sarah: usch, do you ever feel job stress?
Sarah: dumb question, right?
Husband: umm...a little I guess
Husband: why?
Sarah: but like when you guys have a lot to do, does your stomach feel like you're gonna throw up?
Sarah: cuz that's how I feel this week
Husband: not really
Husband: but if people make me real mad at work I get to shoot them

Man, I love that guy.

HEH

Family members love each other, but they often disagree. I've seen many stories from parents who don't respect the military wishes of their child, but here's the story of a daughter whose beliefs don't jive with her father's. It just gave me a little smile.

WOW

Wow. Someone with WAY too much time on his hands wrote a long and boring pro-Chomsky rant on one of my really old posts. I imagine this guy googled Chomsky stuff and then bombed everyone who had said anything bad about Chomsky. The funny thing is that the post was only somewhat related to Chomsky. Oh, I could have said bad stuff, since his linguistics is garbage and his politics is hilarious, but I didn't say anything about him in this post. Go ye and be bored silly: Logic and Reasoning: Inside the Mind of an anti-Chomskyite: The Play (Act 1)

MOVIE

CavX found a parody of Fahrencrap 9/11. It's a lengthy clip, and you get the joke after a couple of minutes, but it's worth checking out. I loved the Wal-Mart scene.

Fellowship 9/11

IN A NUTSHELL

I got a hilarious email from a friend who watched Smallville for the first time because of me:

PS: I finally saw Smallville for the first time tonight. Except for the names, it has nothing to do with the Superman comics whatsoever. I already knew that, but it helps to confirm it. The Chloe character is totally original. I didn't "get" the show. Do all the episodes follow this formula?

- Kryptonite causes something to happen
- Clark resolves it

If you're a Smallville fan too, you'll know just how hilarious that summary is. Pretty much yes, but that's part of its charm.

BONKERS

Everything about this article, even the title, cracked me up.
Polite society anticipates Teresa's pizazz

(via my husband...we had a great time laughing at the article over IM)

YUCK

My husband just pointed out this new Onion article.
He wasn't that amused. "I get the parody," he said, "but it's a little sensitive for me."
I thought it was in appallingly bad taste.

HEH

Is it just me, or does this look like it could be the cover of an REM album?

WEIRD

I went to Poland on Saturday. At one store, they were selling commemorative plates with George Bush and John Kerry on them, for some bizarre reason. One of them will be worth bupkis in a few weeks.

We also had a comical moment when we tried to go to a Polish grocery store. Apparently you can't go into the store carrying any bags, because a security guard came chasing after us as soon as we walked in. As he barked at us, we looked at him and said, "English? Deutsch?" Apparently he didn't speak either, but he decided to help us out by speaking in v-e-r-y slow Polish. Ha.

SARAH

My friend just emailed me and pointed out that one of the Team America characters is named Sarah.
Excellent. Thank you, Matt and Trey!

HA

The digs on everybody had me laughing on the Onion this week. Especially John Edward's enthusiasm. (Thanks, fad)

GREEN WITH ENVY

Oh MAN am I jealous! Hud got to see Team America! Many soldiers down in Iraq have been going nuts buying bootleg DVDs, but my husband and I haven't gotten into that. However, I told him that he must buy Team America if he sees it because I'm afraid I might not see it here otherwise. Of course I'll buy the official copy when it comes out, since I'm a firm believer in putting as much money as possible into Parker and Stone's pockets, but I don't want to have to wait until next year to see it. I can barely wait as it is!

STUCK

OK, now THIS was definitely the laugh I needed today.
Those poor guys!

And this was freaking funny too.

(both via Iraq Now)

BINGO

Now this game is really funny! I wish I had found this before I watched the debate rerun. (Make sure to check out all four pages!)

MOCKING

fad had me laughing out loud. At work. Big guffaws.
Go check out this post, where he announces his intention to become a big-time blogger, and then start scrolling up.
You know you spend too much time at the computer when you recognize everyone he's mocking.

HA

One Iranian boy had the same reaction that I did to Fahrencrap 9/11: "I was bored from the middle, and I wished we had gone to see "Kill Bill" instead."

LONGING

You know what I want? More people in my immediate day-to-day life who would laugh at an off-the-cuff Micah Wright reference. Heck, I can't even get away with a Jayson Blair joke in class without my students looking at me blankly. I'd kill to have one person walk into my office and say, "Oh, you're reading blogs?" Sigh.

MEMOS

My mom and I got sick yesterday. I went in to work but had to leave early, and I'm playing hooky today too. Actually, it's not so much "playing hooky", seeing as I feel like I could die. What a vacation, huh? But I can't sleep any more -- I have slept 11 hours already -- so I'm reading blogs in between getting sick.

So I hear this morning there are some fake memos floating around? (in my best Ace Ventura voice) Reeeeally? Blame Bush! has copies of the memos, and I don't see how anyone could have fallen for them in the first place.

Laughing seriously hurts today.

MORE TO GROK:

See also Scrappleface and Puce for good parodies.

COLLECT UNDERPANTS

Deskmerc brings to mind the Underpants Gnomes from South Park:

Gnome 2: Phase I we collect underpants.
Gnome 1: Ya, ya, ya. But what about Phase II?
[Silence]
Gnome 2: Well Phase III is profit. Get it?

BANKRUPT

Looks like my mom might be staying here for a while. Heh.

WHAT WOULD WOODROW DO?

This list of notes taken at the American Political Science Association panel is hilarious. Or at least it is if you find the sport of blogging to be as funny as I do. Maybe I should've played Dungeons and Dragons in high school too.

SHOTGUN

Ain't irony grand?

MORE TO GROK:

It is, it isn't, it is, it isn't. More gun stuff at Instapundit.

SNICKER

Things that make me snicker:

1. "Obviously the failure of Bush to volunteer for the SEALs and spend a season raping and pillaging like Ghenghis Khan 35 years ago is more important than his record as president."

2. "U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs?"

3. "Do you mean Senator Kerry (D-Vietnam)?"

I know I've been a really lame blogger lately. I was entirely too busy with the class I taught last weekend, my stats class, and my mom's visit. Things will settle down after this weekend and I'll be able to concentrate again.

PAINTBALL

I've only played paintball once, back when I was in the ROTC class, and I only had one kill that day. It was from very far away and only after I shot about ten million paintballs at him did I finally kill him. But I did hit him, as Cartman would say, squaa in the nuts. Let me at Osama and Saddam for a repeat performance. Too bad they're just look-alikes.

BUST HIS CHOPS

Blackfive posts some humorous Rules for Non-Military Personnel.

JOKE

A funny joke, via CavX.

TREE FIDDY

You know, Kerry's starting to remind me of Chef's father. He couldn't talk about anything without going back to the Loch Ness Monster; Kerry can't talk about anything without going back to Vietnam. Or Cambodia. Or not Cambodia, as the case may be. Too bad the Democrats are so blinded by their Anyone But Bush campaign or they'd notice that their candidate has severe problems talking about the 21st century. As a candidate, I'd say he's worth about $3.50.

MORE TO GROK:

Hahaha.

Sure, [General Tommy Franks] got three Purple Hearts, but it took him FORTY YEARS TO GET THEM! What's the matter, Tommy Boy? Bashful? Afraid to get in there and kick the ball around a little? That's alright. TRUE men of valor like John Kerry will take up the slack. It only took Iron Guts Kerry four months to get his three Purple Hearts, plus a Bronze Star, and a Silver Star. Do the math: if Kerry had stuck around for 40 years, he'd have 3600 Purple Hearts, and 120 Bronze and Silver Stars. It would take him a solid month to toss that many medals at the Capitol Building.

Go see how many Purple Hearts everyone else has gotten over the years. I imagine my friend will get one for having most of his torso ripped away...hardly seems like the same thing as Kerry's scratch on the arm.

ADDICTED

Wow. I know that I eat breakfast and dry my hair in front of the computer, but this is ridiculous...

(Via Chrenkoff's EU Round-Up)

CAPTIONS

Duane's is still a classic, but all these captions for that Wendy's photos are good too.

GO BUSH

Hahahaha. Nice photo.
I have just one thing to add to these Marines' statement: Hooah!

TEAM AMERICA

Mypetjawa reports that the Bush administration is not happy about the Team America movie. Here's what I wrote in his comments section:

I love Parker and Stone, so I'd see anything they made. And yes, terrorism is not funny, but we need something to drag us out of this self-denigrating Fahrenheit 9-11 crap. Maybe what we need is a comedy where the Americans are -- shocker! -- the heroes.

But I think it's admirable that the White House is not thrilled. They *should* be saying that terrorism isn't funny and they *should* take the moral high ground. That's a pleasant contrast to the Democrat big-wigs who went to the opening night of Fahrencrap 9-11 and are praising Moore or laughed their asses off at Whoopi's dirty jokes. I hope Bush is snickering in private, but I for one am proud that he's sticking to his guns and reminding us that the world threat is no laughing matter.

But I can't wait to see the freaking movie!!!

Props to the White House for not publicly supporting toilet humor and acting like adults. But this adult can't wait to throw money at Parker and Stone.

RAH RAH!

Apparently Rocket Jones heard about my reputation as a cheerleader and asked me to cheer him on in his fantasy football league. Normally I try to stick to war cheerleading, but I can lend Rocket a hand, I suppose.

I'll warn you, Rocket. When I was a middle school cheerleader, I used to do this thing where I'd backflip the name of our team (F-L-Y-E-R-S...yes, I went to Charles A. Lindbergh Middle School). Once, during a particularly heated basketball game, I attempted to stick a full flip on the end of Flyers; I ended up flat on my face in front of the whole school. Are you sure that's the kind of support you want?

HEE HAW!

Oh. Good. Lord.
I laughed so hard...
Mama, you'll like this one.

FUNNY

I'm doing my own Thurlsday with two tasteless links. Yes, I said they're tasteless. But they're funny, and what we need after reading serious articles about how someone "inadvertantly shoved documents in his pants and socks" is more funny. So I bring you...

The Wacky Iraqi
This is how bitter and crass the Onion would be if he were deployed. My favorite is the car that runs on blood.

Abu Ghraibing
Boy have I struggled over whether I should link to this or not. I doubted the validity of a poll once and got 2000 hits from people who thought I was pure evil; linking to a site making fun of Abu Ghraib could get me in some really hot water. But it sure is funny.

And we could all use more funny, right?

MUCKADOO

Snicker. Muckadoos.

Thanks, OkieMinnie.

SPAM

I got an email spam today whose subject line still has me reeling: "fire hydrant gonads".
What on earth is that supposed to mean?

THIS LAND

Oh my goodness. I watched This Land! (at LGF's urging) and laughed my fool head off the whole time. You must go see it too.

HA

Quote of the Day:

Our overworked teachers are finding it increasingly difficult to teach 30 kids, raise a family of their own, attend union meetings, engage in activist causes, and have sex with their students.

Hilarious. BlameBush! cracks me up.

CHEERLEADER

Hey, isn't this cute. Bos put me up for the War Cheerleader Hall of Fame. Being called "war cheerleader" I can handle; being called "fraulein" pisses me off. By the way, dude, Fräulein needs an umlaut and should be capitalized, plus I'm married, so I'm technically a Frau. But whatever, no need to cloud the award with, you know, correct grammar. Sounds like I'm the only cheerleader in the Hall of Fame; what an honor. A Hall of Fame, all for me.

NAKED

I read something recently about how the Left's obsession with naked protest is a sign we're from different planets; I can't paraphrase it right now because I can't remember where I read it. (If you know what I'm talking about and can help me with a link, I'd appreciate it. I found this instead, which is good but not what I was looking for.) I thought it was funny when I read it, but then I saw something today that I know comes from another planet.

Cerberus managed to dig up a mind-boggling article about a concert in Norway where two people came on stage and...we're not making this up...had sex in order to save the rainforest. (Be warned, the link has dirty photos.) If that is not the most absurd thing you've ever heard, I don't know what is. Turns out they belong to an "organization":

The young couple, Tommy Hol Ellingsen, age 28, and Leona Johansson, age 21, are members of the environmental organization "F*ck for Forest." They have sex in public in order to put focus on the rainforest.

"Today’s environmentalists have become more politicians than idealists," Ellingsen said to TV 2 Nettavisen. "We want to bring forth the message with attitude."

According to the organization’s website, "'F*ck for forest' are concerned youngsters, fighting to preserve the environment. We believe it is possible to use people’s need for sexuality as a way to raise money for nature."

Hahahahaha. And it gets even better: the Rainforest Foundation Norway doesn't want to accept their dirty money, even though their little sex shows have raised close to $14,000.

Oh my goodness, I couldn't laugh harder. Thanks, Cerberus.

CARTOON

Bad guys: 1
Good guys : 0
Thanks, Michael Moore.

MORE TO GROK:

It's interesting that Bubba wrote "I resent that some will be willing to call me 'traitor' when they haven't served one fricking minute, but that is life I suppose" because my students and I were discussing that very idea last night.

We were discussing logical fallacies, and one of the examples of begging the question was "If you haven't written short stories, you shouldn't be criticizing them." I asked my active duty students if they thought that the same idea applied to soldiering was also begging the question.

They started talking about how criticism of the war doesn't really bother them, unless it's mission specific (e.g. you should have done this differently in Fallujah) and the speaker has no military background. They said that general criticism doesn't matter much to them. I then asked about the flipside: chickenhawks. They laughed and said that sometimes it's irritating to hear people be overly hooah when they don't actually have to pick up the rifle and head down there. One student said it's especially annoying to hear Congress do this. Nonetheless, they seemed to agree that this still fell under the begging the question fallacy.

In class, I preface everything I say with the general disclaimer "I've never been in the military, but from my point of view...". I don't want to be seen as one of those irritating hooah people, though I've sorta earned the right seeing as my own husband's life is at stake. And if I could click my heels together and have already been through basic training, I'd go down there in a heartbeat; the problem is the getting there. If I enlisted today, it would be a long road to war, and my schedule would not match up with my husband's. I am perfectly content to have a military family, but a dual-military family includes headaches I'm not sure I want to face. Right now there are too many couples who won't see each other for four years because of alternating deployment rotations, and I don't want to put my family in that position. Thus I remain hooah from the sidelines.

Anyway...begging the question? I don't know. My students seemed to say yes.

BANZAI

Tim offered a touching analogy for the handover to Iraq: "kinda like being tossed the keys to a brand new convertible and being told to take her out for a spin." Naturally, being the dork that I am, I thought of the scene where the Karate Kid got his license and he took off in the yellow convertible, with Mr. Miagi yelling BANZAI! as he drove away. I like the idea of being Mr. Miagi.

(Oh, and speaking of The Kid, this is hysterical.)

DISTRACTION

I now introduce a new segment here at trying to grok that I like to call

Make-Up and Houseplants

My younger cousin was Junior Miss Oklahoma. She's got the pageant thing down cold, and when I told her I don't really do such a good job with make-up, so agreed to give me a hand. I told her I can't wear eye make-up because it looks funny, so she grabbed her supplies and went to town. Five minutes later she was staring at me with a that's-not-right look on her face and said, "Well, maybe you're right." Even Junior Miss Oklahoma can't fix me up!

And I have this houseplant I bought last summer. Actually, I hung it outside until my neighbor kindly told me it would die in direct sunlight. How are we supposed to know these things? I brought it inside and hung it from the ceiling, and it's almost touching the floor. I babysat the wrinkly puppy on Sunday, and he kept biting the vines and tugging on them. I don't know what to do with it.

(Psssst. Are the mean ones gone yet?)

DRINKING

Charles Johnson made an LGF drinking game the other day; I think I could make a pretty good one out of the comments section here.

1. Any time someone calls me a rude name, drink.

2. Any time someone calls me unfit to teach, drink.

3. Any time someone gives me a stats lesson, drink.

4. Any time someone mistakenly calls me "he", drink.

5. Any time someone tells me to go back to school, drink.

6. Any time someone writes nearly the exact same thing someone else said previously, drink.

We'll all be trashed before the end of the post.

POLLINATION

The other day on the phone, my husband told me about the many young Iraqi boys who have learned English over the past year by hanging around Soldier checkpoints. He said they're there every day and that their English is really quite good, despite never having had formal instruction. However, they're also picking up the foul language that comes with soldiering, so it's not uncommon to hear a string of swear words or a horrifying insult come out of these teens. "Now there's your cultural cross-pollination," my husband quipped.

CUCKOO

As my neighbor said the other day, "There's only one thing worse than a cuckoo clock: a real cuckoo." We have one; he lives in our neighborhood and starts singing when the sun comes up. Unfortuately, at this time of year that's at about 0530. And a clock only cuckoos twelve times...

GAS

I was just cleaning out my husband's email account, and I found a spam that said "$100 worth of FREE GAS for [husband's name]". No thanks. Since he's fighting in the war, I assume we'll get in on the ground floor of the blood-for-oil deals...

DORK

I've gotten lots of questions about my geek stuff, so here's some explanation.

10. LDS

No, I'm not Mormon. But I had some friends who are Mormon growing up, and I went to several functions at their church, as well as visiting Nauvoo and Carthage. I also did my term paper senior year of high school on Joseph Smith, so I know a whole lot about LDS for not being Mormon.

9. Alias

In itself not geeky, but seeing as I watched the entire first two seasons (42 hours of it) in two weeks is really, really geeky.

8. statistics (the fun stuff like the Monty Hall problem or the Birthday problem)

This predates my current book choices (How to Lie With Statistics and How We Know What Isn't So); my old roommate was a stats grad student and would wow me with stats problems. I can't wait to take stats when it's offered here on post.

7. Yukio Mishima

Found him through the short story "Patriotism" and was absolutely floored by that story. Read two of his biographies in one weekend. Amritas is right; the author is more interesting than his novels, but I own all of them.

6. Armyspeak

I read the Army Officer's Handbook from cover to cover and have tried very hard to learn everything there is to know: MOSs, Army alphabet, vehicle identification, etc.

5. Swedish language

My husband always teases me: "You chose to learn a language that only 9 million people speak, and all of them speak English?"

4. rap music

In itself not geeky, but pretty odd for a white girl college prof to have been to a Snoop Dogg concert.

3. Chief Illiniwek

I really got into this debate at the University of Illinois and have read every transcript and article about the issue.

2. knitting

I finished a project last night during the first 45 minutes of Rocky, and it was really hard for me to sit through the rest of the movie without knitting something.

1. the Karate Kid Trilogy

I know everything about these movies.

BALM

On the way to work today I found a balm for my frustration with the world: Tenacious D.

BASKETBALL

John Hawkins had me in stitches:
If The Media Treated Basketball Games Like They Treat The War On Terror

DISCUSSION

Went to the gym and cleaned the entire upstairs, including a much-needed thorough job on the two bathrooms, all before lunch. I rule.

Another thing that's much needed: humor.

DO stick to your principles while still considering what the other person says.
DON'T pile drive the other person into a folding table when you find a topic you vehemently disagree on. Though it would be cool, it's just not civil.

OUCH

Yes, I know this feeling:

It's the feeling I get every time I encounter an idiotarian.

DISEASE

As an ESL teacher, I love when a non-native speaker incorrectly uses an English expression. These instances can range from lewd to cute, but they're always good excuses for language learning and laughter.

Today a German man who works in my building came in our office and was asking my co-worker about baby lotion. He asked me about it, and I told him that I don't know anything about babies. He responded, "I don't either, but my sister just came down with one. Wait, that's not the expression..." Hysterical. Indeed, after eating dinner last week with my neighbors' three year old, one year old, ten month old, and six month old, I would not be too content if I came down with a child right now either!

FAIR

Apparently Muslims in California are mad that Gov. Schwarzenegger is on a trip to Israel. Here's what one has to say:

“It’s his prerogative to visit, but he should be fair to all races and religions,� said Mohammed Abdullah, 46, a Palestinian-American who works as a butcher in Anaheim.

That's mighty funny, considering Islam is most certainly not fair in terms of race or religion. I'm filing this one under "Humor".

EPIDEMIC

First Spain, then Honduras, and now the Dominican Republic.

Do you remember when Stan contracted vaginitis? Seems there's an epidemic going around the Spanish-speaking countries.

JOKE

A popular bar had a new robotic bartender installed. A fellow came in for a drink and the robot asked him, "What's your IQ?" The man replied, "130." So the robot proceeded to make conversation about physics, astronomy, investments, insurance, and so on. The man listened intently and thought, "This is really cool." Another gent came in for a drink and the robot asked him, "What's your IQ?" The man responded, "100." So the robot started talking about football, baseball, and so on. The man thought to himself, "Wow, this is really cool." A third guy came in to the bar. As with the others, the robot asked him, "What's your IQ?" The man replied, "70." The robot then asked, "So, are you Democrats really going to nominate John Kerry?"

HAHAHAHAHA...

FRIDAY

The Friday, er early-Saturday, Five

I've never done one of these, but this one at Triticale caught my eye. Any opportunity to rave about my students will be taken.

1. What do you do for a living?

I work as a college registrar for an overseas branch of an American university that offers college classes to overseas-stationed and deployed servicemembers. Currently I am also teaching my first term of ENGL 101 (and just Wednesday got hired to teach it again next term.)

2. What do you like most about your job?

Working with students who want to be there. For the average college student in the US, college is just something you do right after high school, and any excuse to miss class is welcomed. In contrast, my students now are doing everything they can to squeeze in courses. Most of them are on block leave after returning from a year in Iraq, and rather than use that month to go on a vacation or go home to the US, they've chosen to stay and get some courses taken with their free time. The ones who are not on leave hate to miss class for a day at the range or an unexpected CLass A inspection. They're working 40-50 hours per week and still manage to come to class nearly every day (during their lunch hour!), turn in their assignments, and turn in optional re-writes on their papers the very next day. Some of my students used to be in jail or in gangs, and they appreciate the value of getting their education and making a better life for themselves in a way that regular college kids could never understand. (See also here and here for why I love my students.)

3. What do you like least about your job?

I have a master's degree and I make less than $15,000 per year. But pickins are slim on an overseas post, especially when you insist on working in higher education. You take what you can get.

4. When you have a bad day at work it's usually because...

As a registrar, it's when someone barks at me for something I have no control over, like a soldier arguing with me because I can't give him copies of sensitive documents.

5. What other career(s) are you interested in?

19K

THE WAFFLE GAME

When we were registering for wedding gifts, the only thing my husband wanted was a waffle iron. I thought that was a good idea; my dad made us waffles often when we were kids, and I thought the idea of making waffles for our kids in the future sounded charming and traditional. So we got the waffle iron, and we make waffles quite often, though I hate cleaning the waffle iron just as much as I hate cleaning the George Foreman. Now that my husband is gone, I don't make waffles just for myself, but I can't wait for the day he comes home next year so I can start making him waffles again.

(If you don't get the joke, see here.)

MORE TO GROK: Spectra called my husband Mr. Grok the other day. That's kinda cute. Actually, I like LT Grok; maybe I'll start calling him that instead of "the husband" in the future.

HOOKED

I forgot to mention that the other night in German class, while practicing reflexive verbs, my teacher asked me Kämmen Sie sich vor dem Spiegel? (Do you brush your hair in front of the mirror?) and thought I was joking when I answered Nein, ich kämme mich vor dem Computer.

JOKE

If this headline isn't the most hysterical thing you've ever seen...

Arafat Warns U.S. Could Kill Middle East Peace

HASTINGS

Historical revisionism, Esotericus-style. Ha.

FIVE

Five things I really hate:

1. when orange juice turns sour
2. cleaning the George Foreman
3. when people leave their porchlight on during the day
4. the sound of a fork scraping on a dish
5. the expression "anywhoo"

PARODY

As I watched South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut the other night, a parody formed in my mind:

Men, when you’re out there, in the battlefield, and you’re looking into the beady eyes of an insurgent as he charges you with his bootleg DVD (or whatever he has), and people are dying all around you, just remember what the Left says: "Horrific, deplorable Iraqi civilian deaths are OK, as long as Saddam caused them and not the USA." That is what this war is all about!

SPIDER

When my friend from high school told me about spiders in Afghanistan as big as your head, I thought he was exaggerating.

Dang.

INTERLUDE

We interrupt this back and forth over my English textbook to bring you some much-needed humor.

Deskmerc puked on a bum

Kennedy, Daschle Fined for Celebration Over Rice Testimony

Super Mario: Reloaded (via Esotericus)

LAUGH

Got a funny email forward today:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I used to eat a lot of natural foods until I learned that most people die of natural causes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gardening Rule: When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The easiest way to find something lost around the house is to buy a replacement.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are two kinds of pedestrians: the quick and the dead.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Life is sexually transmitted.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If quitters never win, and winners never quit, then who is the fool who said, "Quit while you're ahead?"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some people are like Slinkies . . . not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Have you noticed since everyone has a camcorder these days no one talks about seeing UFOs like they used to?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut saves you thirty cents?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the 60's, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AND THE # 1 THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: You read about all these terrorists --- most of them came here legally, but they hung around on these expired visas, some for as long as 10 -15 years. Now, compare that to Blockbuster; you are two days late with a video and those people are all over you. Let's put Blockbuster in charge of immigration...

I needed a laugh today.

NO TAXES FOR BRITCHES

Mein Gott, Walter! as my co-worker always says.

SPUTNIK & PEACENIK

What the Mars Rover really found...

JOKE

But before I get in bed...got this joke in an email from a relative...

Little David was in his 5th grade class when the teacher asked the children what their fathers did for a living. All the typical answers came up -- fireman, policeman, salesman, doctor, lawyer, etc. David was being uncharacteristically quiet and so the teacher asked him about his father.
"My father's an exotic dancer in a gay cabaret and takes off all his clothes in front of other men. Sometimes, if the offer is really good, he'll go out to the alley with some guy and make love with him for money."
The teacher, obviously shaken by this statement, hurriedly set the other children to work on some exercises and took little David aside to ask him, "Is that really true about your father?"
"No," said David, "He works for the Kerry campaign, but I was too embarrassed to say that in front of the other kids."

HA

Hahahahahahaha!
Morons.

TOILET

The husband emailed today.
He was happy; he used a flush toilet for the first time since leaving Germany.
Ah, the simple things in life.

PLASTIC

Greyhawk's story about Laura Bush's surprise visit to Army spouses at Fort Hood made me laugh as I had one thought: Did she bring a plastic turkey?

TORTURE

As I was watching Not Without My Anus tonight over a delicious meat dinner, I had a funny thought: wouldn't it be grand if we could torture Saddam Hussein by making him watch all of the South Parks starring him over and over on a loop?

MEAT

Before I forget to remind everyone, it's International Eat An Animal For PETA Day. Michelle is pushing this through, which is hysterical; I can't decide what to make for dinner yet...

ASSES, INDEED

Now, I'm not nearly as good at photoshop as others are, but this was my first thought when I heard about Mrs. Kerry's buttons. What does she think this is, The Terrance and Phillip Show? Not classy, lady.

WAHAHAHAHA

Oh Frogman, your bumper stickers are the best.

OK, I miss my husband. I just found out today he's made it to Iraq, but his new home has neither phones nor internet connection. And then I got drunk in my German class (wine tasting night), so I'm feeling a little melancholy. Hey, maybe a little Gulag Archipelago could cheer me up. Crap.

BRIBES

An Instapundit reader is concerned that bloggers could be bribed to change their vote. Just for the record here, no amount of DVDs could get me to vote for Kerry. Not even a box set or an expensive collectors' edition or anything. Plus, I already own the Holy Trilogy, so what more could I ask for?

PONCHO

I got forwarded an email months ago down from the LTC here with a note saying "Be careful what you wish for." I've been searching for this Re-inforcement by Indorsement for a while, and I finally found a blog that's linked it. Thanks, Rocket Penguin.

(It might take a few seconds to load.)

OSAMA

A reader sent me a funny photo yesterday. Looks like Kim Jong Il isn't the only one supporting Kerry...

SPEECH

I got a funny email forward today:

WOULDN'T IT BE GREAT TO TURN ON THE OLE' TV TONIGHT AND SEE G.W. BUSH GIVE THE FOLLOWING SPEECH.....

My fellow Americans: As you all know, the defeat of Iraq's regime has been completed. Since congress does not want to spend any more money on this war, our mission in Iraq is complete. This morning I gave the order for a complete removal of all American Forces from Iraq. This action will be complete within 30 days.

It is now time to begin the reckoning.

Before me, I have two lists. One list contains the names of countries which have stood by our side during the Iraq conflict. This list is short. The United Kingdom, Spain, Bulgaria, Australia, and Poland are some of the countries listed there. The other list contains everyone not on the first list. Most of the world's nations are on that list. My press secretary will be distributing copies of both lists later this evening.

Let me start by saying that effective immediately, foreign aid to those nations on List 2 ceases immediately and indefinitely. The money saved during the first year alone will pretty much pay for the costs of the Iraqi war. The American people are no longer going to pour money into third world hell-holes and watch those government leaders grow fat on corruption. Need help with a famine? Wrestling with an epidemic? Call France. In the future, together with Congress, I will work to redirect this money toward solving the vexing social problems we still have at home.

On that note, a word to terrorist organizations. Screw with us and we will hunt you down and eliminate you and all your friends from the face of the earth. Thirsting for a gutsy country to terrorize? Try France, or maybe China.

To Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Yo, boys. Work out a peace deal now. Just note that Camp David is closed. Maybe all of you can go to Russia for negotiations. They have some great palaces there. Big tables, too.

I'm ordering the immediate severing of diplomatic relations with France, Germany, and Russia. Thanks for all your help, comrades. We are retiring from NATO as well. Bon chance, mes amis. I have instructed the Mayor of New York City to begin towing the many UN diplomatic vehicles located in Manhattan with more than two unpaid tickets to sites where those vehicles will be stripped, shredded and crushed. I don't care about whatever treaty pertains to this. Pay your tickets tomorrow or watch your precious Benzes, Beamers, and limos be turned over to some of the finest chop shops in the world. I love New York.

A special note to our neighbors. Canada is on List 2. Since we are going to be seeing a lot more of each other, you folks might want to try not pissing us off for a change. Mexico is also on List 2. President Fox and his entire corrupt government really need an attitude adjustment. I have a couple extra tank and infantry divisions sitting around. Guess where I'm gonna put 'em? Yep, border security. So start doing something with your oil.

Oh, by the way, the United States is abrogating the NAFTA treaty---starting now. It is time for America to focus on its own welfare and its own citizens. Some will accuse us of isolationism. I answer them by saying darn tootin'. Nearly a century of trying to help folks live a decent life around the world has only earned us the undying enmity of just about everyone on the planet.

It is time to eliminate hunger in America. It is time to eliminate homelessness in America. It is time to eliminate World Cup soccer from America.

To the nations on List 1, a final thought. Thanks guys. We owe you.
To the nations on List 2, a final thought. Drop dead.
God bless America. Thank you and good night.