2019 July-December

What, a Year?

Today’s your last chance to finish off that New Years resolution list of things to accomplish in 2019. Or just scratch 2019 off the top and write in 2020. Presto, 366 more days to get it done! Even better yet, chuck that old list ’cause it’s a brand new decade, the Roaring Twenties 2.0 or something, and you just gotta start a new decade with a clean slate, right?

Filed 12/31/19

On the First Day of Christmas…

…OK, Christmas eve actually. But, blogs being eternal, this will spill over to the actual day so what the heck. Anyway, this is only the teaser for the real bit, an ultra-exciting, animated Christmas carol without music at the link below:

The Twelve Days of Christmas in Under a Minute

Filed 12/24/19

Monday Funnies

Not that it’s all that funny, more 1990s pseudo-hipster-quasi-cynical-ish. But it is Christmassy. So maybe ho-ho-ho instead of ha-ha-ha.

Filed under A Dog’s Breakfast 12/16/19

Golf Trivia (Sort-of)

As the man said, golf is a great way to ruin a nice walk in the countryside. Here are a few other things said about golf that sound like fun facts. But aren’t. Or are they?

• The average golfer walks about 900 miles a year and drinks 22 gallon of alcohol a year. Meaning golfers get about 41 miles to the gallon.
• The competitive object of Golf is to see who can play the least golf.
• Golf is a game where you yell “fore,” shoot six, and write down five.

Filed 12/11/19

One Fine Day above Flyover Country

Another old joke acquired, illustrated and interactivated. Mouseover the time tabs to “hear the dialog.”

Filed 11/20/19

Monday Funnies

Filed under A Dog’s Breakfast 11/18/19

Back to Back to the Drawing Board

More old book illos by yours truly. These from 2005. Presented in fancy-schmancy page-turning click-e-book format. What is that? Click the link and see for yourself.

The Roof-Rack Chronicles Illustrations from the book

Filed 11/15/19

Friday Funnies

Another old joke acquired, illustrated and interactivated. Mouseover the bottom tabs to “hear them speak.”

The Lord smiled upon His creation and said it was good. And the setup and the punchline were the first joke.

Filed 10/24/19

Monday Is Funday

The return of the return of old cartoons. And yet another death gag. Wonder how that happened. I don’t think I’m morbidly preoccupied with morbidity. Probably doesn’t mean anything. Probably. I hope not, anyway. OK, on with the joke:

Filed under A Dog’s Breakfast 10/21/19

One Day at the Funeral Parlor

I wrap up “dead man joking” week with a gag “borrowed” from Reader’s Digest. Only interactively animated. And so funnier. Somehow. Maybe.

Mouseover the bottom tabs to “hear them speak.”

Filed 10/4/19

Humpday Trivia Trio

The first movie trailers played after the movie, not before. Now you know why they’re called trailers, in case you ever wondered. But folks wouldn’t stick around after a movie to watch ads, so they started running them before the flick. Which means nowadays, instead of leaving early, theatergoers arrive late.

You’re more likely to die on your birthday than any other day of the year. Just a statistical fluke or some sinister cause and effect? Who knows? For us old farts, just one more reason to not look forward to birthdays.

A dunce cap was supposed to make you brainy. The conical cap was devised in the 1200s by John Duns Scotus (Duns cap, dunce cap, get it?) to funnel ideas from the point to your brain. (I have no word on how this worked, or didn’t as the case may be.) As this notion fell out of favor, wearing these pointy bits of haberdashery became less and less a symbol of smarts, eventually becoming quite the opposite. Nowadays we only wear conical hats at birthday and New Year’s parties. Make of that what you will.

Filed 10/2/19

Monday Funnies

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.

“What will it take for me to put you in this little number today?”

Filed under Gag Cartoon Gallery 9/30/19

Real Words I Didn’t Just Pull Out of My… Uh… Hat

A short collection of odd little words that sound unreal but are really real. I ran across them in crossword puzzles and in one case an old book by PG Wodehouse. Just try and guess what they mean. Not now, not here, at the word quiz page. There’s a link below. Go. See if your guess is better than mine. I didn’t know any of them.

What’s That Supposed to Mean? The Collected Word Definition Quizes

Filed 9/18/19

Your Thursday Ha

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 daily 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

Nyah Nyah, Nyah-Nyah Nyah

Name-Calling Names We Called in the 60s

1. Fink
2. Nimrod
3. Pismire
4. Peon
5. Tool

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:

1. Fink – General all around rotter we would unfriend if that was a thing back then
2. Nimrod – Big dummy
3. Peon – Little dummy
4. Pismire – Lowlife scum
5. Tool – Idiot-oaf-boob and all around screw-up

None of these are made up words, just the meanings are not according to Webster. Leastways, not preferred by Webster. These would be:

1. Fink – Informer
2. Nimrod – Mighty hunter, Noah’s grandson
3. Pismire – An ant
4. Peon – Mexican peasant, Latin American unskilled laborer
5. Tool – Besides the usual work implement meaning (you know, hammer, saw, pliers) it’s a dupe, a stooge, useful fool

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

Friday Funnies

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 8/6/19

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson Go Camping…

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

Word-of-the-Day Friday

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

Yes, We Have No Rebuses Again Today; Anagrams

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:

• Dormitory = Dirty room
• The Morse Code = Here come dots
• Slot Machines = Cash lost in ’em
• Snooze alarms = Alas, no more z’s
• Eleven plus two = twelve plus one

Refiled 7/25/19

A Linguist Walks into a Bar…

Top Ten Language Themed
Guy-Walks-into-a-Bar Oneliners

1. An ellipsis walks into a bar…
2. Two quote marks walk into a “bar.”
3. A typo walks into a barn.
4. A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.
5. A cliché walks into a bar – fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.
6. A spoonerism walks into a bar for a call tool one.
7. A synonym strolls into a saloon.
8. A malapropism walks into a bar, for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs.
9. Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and literally destroys everything.
10. A syllepsis walks into a bar and big trouble.

Now the unnecessary punchline for every gag: And the Bartender says, “Is this some kind of joke?”

Filed 7/8/19

Monday Funnies

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