“Visitors and fish stink after three days. Never invite fish for a three-day weekend.”
“Visitors and fish stink after three days. Never invite fish for a three-day weekend.”
Current
A slightly modified oldie gleaned from someone, somewhere, sometime I don’t know who, where, or when and so can’t give credit where credit is due, sorry. Still, it’s pretty funny so I tossed it in because I needed a blog update and I can’t do anything better on my own.
Bureaucratium – heaviest element yet known to science
Bureaucratium (Bu), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.
Since Bureaucratium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Bureaucratium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from two weekss to five years to complete.
Bureaucratium does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. Unlike working atoms, Bureaucratium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. This characteristic of morons promotion leads some scientists to believe that Bureaucratium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.
Filed 8/15/19
Name-Calling Names We Called in the 60s
The “We” being me and my friends. These all seem pretty mild today, hardly insults at all. But speech was less crass back in the day, heck they didn’t even curse in the movies. Besides, we were kids back then and real swearing got you in trouble. How insulting and mean were these invectives? Good question. I don’t remember what we meant by any of them specifically, or even generally, the words just somehow sounded insulting in and of themselves. Looking back, these are what I think we thought they meant:
None of these are made up words, just the meanings are not according to Webster. Leastways, not preferred by Webster. These would be:
Another thing we said to insult was, “Get bent.” What did that mean exactly? Who knows? But whatever we intended that person to do or to have happen to them, it sounded painful.
Filed 8/12/19
Like the Sunday funnies only not on Sunday, not in color, not on newsprint, and there’s no repeating characters. So, not much like the Sunday funnies at all.
Filed under Gag Cartoon Gallery 6/27/19
A few hours after hitting the hay, Holmes wakes up and nudges his companion. “Watson, look up and tell me what you see.”
“I see thousands of stars in the sky.” Watson replies.
“And what do you deduce from that?”
“Hm-m. Astronomically, the universe is teeming with objects and energy. Astrologically, Saturn is in Leo. Meteorologically, it should be fair tomorrow. Philosophically, we are but a small insignificant part of the universe. What does it tell you, Holmes?”
“Elementary, my dear Watson.” Holmes says. “It tells me someone has stolen the tent!”
Filed 8/5/19
The Word-of-the-Day word for the first Friday of August is Bulverism. CS Lewis described Bulverism as an insidious rhetorical trick; the device of jumping straight to explaining why something is the case, without first establishing that it is in fact the case. Sort of a combination of begging the question and the genetic fallacy. As described by Bruce Charlton:
“Bulverism is the logical fallacy of assuming without discussion that a person is wrong and then distracting attention from this (the only real issue) by explaining how that person became so silly, usually associating it to a psychological condition. The fallacy deals with secondary questions about ideas rather than the primary one, thus avoiding the basic question or evading the issues raised by trains of reasoning.”
The discerning reader (and all terry colon dot com readers are such) will have noticed Bulverism is widely (ab)used nowadays. Only we don’t label it as such. We just call it social media, politics, and in science, “theoretical proof.”
Filed 8/2/19
Told you I’d remind you. Remember? Thought not. Hence, the reminder. And I’ll tell you right now, February 30th in one month. Anyway, if you want to know the why and how of this nonsense:
Filed 7/31/19 2/29/19
Special because you can turn the cartoon over to read the small text at the bottom by mousing over the picture.
Filed under A Dog’s Breakfast 7/29/19
The best anagrams, if you go in for that sort of thing, are ones where the anagram is a play on the original word’s meaning. On the other hand, perhaps ironically, there is no good anagram of “anagram.” There’s “nag a ram,” “ram a nag,” “rag a man,” and “man a rag.” Silly amusing, perhaps, but no relationship to the original. Here’s half a top ten anagrams that work:
Refiled 7/25/19
Counting down to the top, after the popular fashion, I give you the…
Top Ten Numbers
10. A million.
The number we pull out of our, uh, hat when we want a bigger than everyday life number. As in, “One in a million,” “Never in a million years,” and “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” Well, who doesn’t? Except maybe a billionaire.
9. Two.
As in binary, what makes computers possible. What makes the Interwebs possible. What makes terry colon dot com possible. That’s just gotta rate in the top ten somewhere.
8. Sixty-five.
The magical age of retirement when the pension kicks in and you’re on endless vacation. Well, sorta maybe. Story goes Otto Von Bismarck picked that age to receive a state pension because most Germans didn’t live that long back then. Whatever the case, the retire at 65 stuck in the U.S. and is largely still sticking.
7. Seven.
As in lucky seven. The most common throw of a pair of dice. Also seven seas, seven wonders of the world, and seven virtues. We’ll overlook the seven deadly sins for now.
6. Three.
As in the holy trinity. As in three dimensions. Physically and metaphysically three is everything and everything is three. Ok, three is a crowd but nothing is perfect. Except for ten (see below), but that’s only ideally.
5. Pi.
The most famous non-ordinal number going. Hey, what other numbers have a name and have books written and movies made about them?
4. One hundred.
It’s everything, as in 100%. Plus it’s a perfect score on a test.
3. Zero.
The concept of zero, a number for nothing, makes simple arithmetic possible. Otherwise we’d be stuck with Roman numerals, which weren’t really numerals but letters. Zero makes for nice round numbers, 10, 20, 50, 100. Heck, you can’t get a rounder round number than zero, look at it, it’s a circle: 0
2. Ten.
Perfection! Ten is the top rating of rating things from one to ten. All the most beautiful women are a ten. Who could ask for more?
1. One, of course.
On every top ten list one is the best. Since this is such a list, one must be number one. In fact, one’s the top slot no matter what number of items are on the list. And after all, “We’re number one! We’re number one!”
Filed 7/16/19
Another one from the 2018 Reason magazine “Brickbats” circular file via the wayback machine.
The City of Malibu has pressured the United Methodist Church into ending its twice-weekly dinners for the homeless. Officials were worried that the meals would attract more homeless people to the area.
And possibly attract Methodists. Can’t have that. Though as a sanctuary city they are accepting homeless, ilegal aliens no questions asked.
Filed 7/12/19
Another old Orbit/Cracked cartoon via my own personal wayback machine, i.e. terry colon dot com.
Filed under A Dog’s Breakfast 7/10/19
Top Ten Language Themed
Guy-Walks-into-a-Bar Oneliners
Now the unnecessary punchline for every gag: And the Bartender says, “Is this some kind of joke?”
Filed 7/8/19
This time around it’s either a word-of-the-day in word quiz format or a word quiz with only two words. Of the day. Making it a semi quiz. Or maybe a demi quiz. Whatever it is you can see it all here…
Filed under What’s That Supposed to Mean? 7/6/19
Like the Sunday funnies only not on Sunday, not in color, not on newsprint, and there’s only one cartoon. So, not like the Sunday funnies really.
Filed under Gag Cartoon Gallery 7/3/19
It’s July. Start of the second half of the year. And the hottest month. Remember, because of Julius Caesar July 31st is really February 29th. If you forget, I’ll remind you then. That’s just the kind of silly thing I do. Anyway, if you want my take on the calendar shenanigans of Gaius Julius, I did that in the blog a couple years ago:
Filed 7/1/19
