Last posts on humour

Still Warm Election-Related Links

2008-11-08T12:34:00+01:00

Yes, I know it's over. These are some of the links I found most funny (if sometimes rivalrous and cynical), most moving, most interesting. Followed by a modest compilation of lengthy and detailed lists of 'what Obama needs to do,' proposed by various folk!

Moving

Greene: If you can’t (or can) say anything nice... by Bob Greene at CNN (31 Oct. 2008)

From 52 to 48 With Love at Ze Frank (begun: 5 Nov. 2008)

images by Patrick Moberg

Funny

I watched Fox News for five hours last night by Andrew O'Hehir at Salon (5 Nov. 2008)

Blowing Off Steam at the Margaret and Helen blog (6 Nov 2008)

Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job in the Onion (5 Nov. 2008)

Obama Deletes Another Unread MoveOn.org E-Mail in the Onion (17 Sept. 2008)

You mean Africa is, like, a continent?, Fox News video via The Debatable Land (6 Nov. 2008)

Election-Related Signs: Why? by Scott Adams (4 Nov. 2008)

This.Fucking.Election.

Interesting and Useful

PolitiFact.com, applying factchecker and truth-o-meter to politicians' assertions

Political Speech by Nancy Hitt at Preaching Peace (5 Nov. 2008)

The Perils of Populist Chic by Mark Lilla in the WSJ (8 Nov.2008)

Change.gov - Office of the President-Elect (official website) - the 'agenda' section is pretty meaty

Obama's To-Do Lists

Obama's to-do list in the Boston Globe (6 Nov. 2008)

What Obama's Next Steps Should Be on Health Care, Transportation, Iraq and More at AlterNet (6 Nov. 2008)

A Towering Economic To-Do List for Obama in the NYT (5 Nov. 2008)

Economists' Advice for the President-Elect in the NYT (10 Nov. 2008)

Obama's global to-do list from John Hughes at the Christian Science Monitor (6 Nov. 2008)

Barack to the future: What can Obama do around the world at mirror.co.uk (6 Nov. 2008)

Top 10 foreign challenges for Obama at BBC News (5 Nov. 2008)

Obama's Top Three Foreign Policy Priorities at Foreign Policy in Focus (7 Nov. 2008)

Judith Kipper's Memo to the President at Huffington Post (6 Nov. 2008)

Environmental leaders offer their elevator pitches for Obama (Guardian, 7 Nov. 2008)

What the tech industry needs from President-elect Obama at CNET (5 Nov. 2008)

A Small Business Agenda for President Obama by Keith Girard at AllBusiness.com (6 Nov. 2008)

Let's consider three overlooked priorities for the new Obama administation by Judah Freed in the Portland (ME) Examiner (6 Nov. 2008)

Dave Pollard's view of Obama's Top 10 Tasks (5 Nov. 2008. Ten sounds small but wait until you see them ... 'Herculean' comes to mind)

Garrison Keillor has some advice, too: On this beautiful day, a few words for the happy couple (6 Nov. 2008)

requests for Advice for Obama at Freakonomics (see comments) (5 Nov. 2008)

what Obama should be reading from Inside Higher Ed (5 Nov. 2008)

Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw has a memo to the POTUS-elect (8 Nov.2008)

advice from Alice Walker, at Ekklesia: Care for your soul, Barack (10 Nov. 2008)

advice from folk at Sojourners: Jim Wallis (7 Nov); Elizabeth Edwards (10 Nov); Richard Rohr (11 Nov)

leaders in sustainable food and agriculture weigh in at Grist (10 Nov. 2008)

(to be continued ...)

More Funeral Stuff

2008-07-21T02:45:00+02:00

A short McSweeney's list: Phrases I'd Rather Not Be Used At My Funeral by Harry Burt, with my anxious additions:

"autoerotic asphyxiation" [likewise: "left 10-inch clawmarks"]

"found by cadaver dogs" ["according to the forensic entomologist"]

"hopped up on goofballs" ["ate her weight in Oreos"]

"minutes from rescue" ["last-second airline flight change"]

"prehensile tail" ["cascading sheets of mucus"]

["salvaged what we could," "leaned over the rim a smidge too far," "must have been in unimaginable pain," "what's that on his forehead? 'syawliarT'?"]

Video: How to Pretend You Care About the Election

2008-07-13T01:50:00+02:00

Video at The Onion News Network's "Today Now!" morning show.

Too funny (because it's true) not to post. I actually do care about the 2008 elections and will vote (as always), but I have no interest in talking about it with anyone, ever.

Watch for the text boxes "About the Candidates."

2 L8 Txt Msgs

2008-04-01T12:15:00+02:00

Text Messages That Would Have Been Helpful by Jen Statsky at McSweeney's.

Includes:

"hey just wnted 2 give the heads up,

CC on way w 3 shps, want 2 colonize u.

dont giv n unless u think casinos r gr8.

txt me back"

RIP Peg Bracken, 25 Feb. 1918 - 20 Oct. 2007

2007-10-22T19:10:00+02:00

"Whaaa!" I cried out when I saw the news that Peg Bracken has died. My current housekeeping practices, and outlook on life in general, are a natural outgrowth of reading and internalizing her The I Hate to Cook Book (1960; like her others, illustrated by Hilary Knight of Eloise fame), The I Hate to Housekeep Book (1962), and The Appendix to the I Hate to Cook Book (1966) as an impressionable twelve-year-old. (I also imbibed her travel book, But I Wouldn't Have Missed It for the World!: The Pleasures and Perils of an Unseasoned Traveler, 1973.)

Her influence on me was only compounded by living in the shadow of my mother's parallel adherence to Bracken's cooking practices, and, to a lesser extent, her cleaning mores -- not to mention my mother's equally acerbic and irreverant wit.

This excerpt from the I Hate to Cook Book, a recipe for Skid Road Stroganoff, conjures my mother to perfection:

"Add the flour, salt, paprika and mushrooms, stir, and let it cook five minutes while you light a cigarette and stare sullenly at the sink."

You might think Bracken's books are much like Erma Bombeck's, but believe me, they're not.

Brackenisms

Serve veggies to guests with coarse-ground pepper, "because a lot of people feel that anything peppered should look as though it had been fished out of a gravel pit."

"You watch your friends redoing their kitchens and hoarding their pennies for glamorous cooking equipment and new cookbooks called Eggplant Comes to the Party or Let's Waltz Into the Kitchen, and presently you begin to feel un-American."

She recommends freezing maraschino cherries in ice cubes for lemonade at a children's party, noting that "If there are some left over, they're good in Old Fashioneds, too."

Bracken Resources

Bracken’s banter is still cooking, in the Portland (OR) Tribune, 13 May 2003

Guilty Pleasure #1: Peg Bracken at Horrifying Foodstuffs, 27 July 2005

On Peg Bracken at Apartment Therapy, 4 June 2005

Peg Bracken at Everything2

Peg Bracken at Wikiquotes

Recipe for Overnight Macaroons

remembering The I Hate to Cook Book, John Kessler in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, 27 Sept. 2007, with recipe for Peg Bracken's Pots de Chocolate

remembering The I Hate To Cook Book at Slashfood, 31 Jan. 2006

remembering The I Hate to Cook Book at Errant Dreams Reviews, 6 Sept. 2006

remembering American cooking in the 1960s, in "Modernism, Sur La Table" by Sandy McLendon at JetSet

Bonus Feature

Peg's Recipe for Aggression Cookies, from The I Hate To Cook Almanack

Aggression Cookies
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup butter
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon soda
2 cups oatmeal

Mix like pie crust until soft...Beat it...hit it... pound it... pinch it...squish and squash it. Don't quit until
you've worked all those nasty aggressive feelings out of your system.

Now flatten one-inch balls of dough on ungreased cookie sheets. Use the bottom of a glass dipped in
sugar to flatten. Bake at 350 for about ten minutes.

Trickle-Down

2007-10-15T20:03:48+02:00

Reaganomics Finally Trickles Down To Area Man.

One of the better Onion efforts in a while. Very snide, very cynical, very ... detailed.

via ProJo

Worst Cars, Best Lines

2007-09-11T20:18:31+02:00

Why are some of the funniest, most skilled writers ("Pulitzer Prize-winning," in fact) creating copy for Time magazine's list of 50 Worst Cars?

"Actually, at 1,100 lbs and 145 in. long, the Crosley Hotshot was a minor hunk of junk, but at least it was slow and dangerous. A wondrously mangled and compacted Hotshot can be glimpsed in the 1961 driver's ed scare film Mechanized Death." (Crosley Hotshot, 1949) (But it's so darned cute and snouty.)

"It took the drivers at Road and Track 32 seconds to reach 60 mph, which would put the Dauphine at a severe disadvantage in any drag race involving farm equipment." (Renault Dauphine, 1956)

"It was also a lovely little coupe, which made the moment when the suspension mounts punched through the stressed-skin monocoque all the more pathetic." (Lotus Elite, 1958)

"... giving it a top speed of only 50 mph, assuming you had that kind of time. Its unique feature was the rear-facing bench seat, which meant passengers could watch in horror as traffic threatened to rear-end this rolling roadblock of a car." (Zunndapp Janus, 1958) (1958 -- great year for cars!)

"A vehicle that promised to revolutionize drowning ... Its single greatest demerit -- and this is a big one -- was that it wasn't particularly watertight. " (Amphicar, 1961)

"The 3.0-liter Triumph V8 was a monumental failure, an engine that utterly refused to confine its combustion to the internal side." (Triumph Stag, 1970)

"The interior looked like a third-world casino. ... Here we are approaching the nadir of American car building .... Or, it would be the nadir, except for the abysmal 1980 Chrysler Imperial, which had an engine cursed by God." (1971 Chrysler Imperial LeBaron Two-Door Hardtop)

"The only Bricklin I ever sat in caught on fire and burned to the axles. This is notably ironic, since the car's creator -- the smooth-talking Malcolm Bricklin -- didn't include an ashtray or lighter in the car, to discourage smoking. Despite its hand-removing, 100-lb. gullwing doors, the SV1 was supposed to exemplify the safer car of the future." (Bricklin SV1, 1975)

"The Trabant was East Germany's answer to the VW Beetle -- a 'people's car,' as if the people didn't have enough to worry about." (Trabant, 1975)

"In the disco days of the 1970s, even supercars were cocaine-thin. Meet the Aston Martin Lagonda, a four-door exotic that lived on dinner mints and hot water." (Aston Martin Lagonda, 1976)

"Few car projects were more maledicted than the DMC-12. By the time Johnny Z. got the factory in Northern Ireland up and running -- and what could possibly go wrong there? -- the losses were piling up fast." (De Lorean DMC-12, 1981)

"There was a time when 90 horsepower was a lot, and that time was 1932." (Camaro Iron Duke, 1982)

"Everything that could leak, burn, snap or rupture did so with the regularity of the Anvil Chorus. The collected service advisories would look like the Gutenberg Bible." (Maserati Biturbo, 1984)

"Malcolm Bricklin, he of the Bricklin SV1, wouldn't be satisfied until he had forced every American to walk to work. ... Built in Soviet-bloc Yugoslavia, the Yugo had the distinct feeling of something assembled at gunpoint. Interestingly, in a car where 'carpet' was listed as a standard feature ... (Yugo GV, 1985)

"At the time, Ford argued that many of its customers -- ranchers, farmers, um, tugboat enthusiasts -- needed a vehicle this big with over 10,000-lb. towing capacity." (Ford Excursion, 2000)

"I was in the audience at the Detroit auto show the day GM unveiled the Pontiac Aztek and I will never forget the gasp that audience made. Holy hell! This car could not have been more instantly hated if it had a Swastika tattoo on its forehead. ... With its multiple eyes and supernumerary nostrils, the Aztek looks deformed and scary, something that dogs bark at and cathedrals employ to ring bells. (Pontiac Aztek, 2001)

"One struggles to think of a worse vehicle at a worse time." (Hummer H2, 2003)

Armageddon Flow Chart

2007-06-06T22:20:38+02:00

Check it out.

It would help if I knew who Bruce Campbell was.

One safe bet: avoid fish, fish fingers, and fish filet.

Cancer Vixen

2007-04-19T16:43:32+02:00

Cancer Vixen, the amazing cancer cartoon drawn by Marisa Acocello Marchetto, is online! It's about her discovery, diagnosis, and treatment of breast cancer, and about her friendships, boyfriend, (s)mother, plus stuff from the rest of her life.

Here's one page summarising her questions of why, how and when??? And another about environmental toxins and cancer incidence.

I like her friend Bob.

Eddie Izzard Clips

2007-03-24T19:35:00+01:00

Eddie Izzard on the beginnings of the Church of England. (Warning for all of Eddie: Language!)

And for pagan fun, Stonehenge ("Fantastic. Building a henge are we? Very good idea. ... Help you push 'em along? All right ... it's not far, is it?")

Another religion: The Star Wars Death Star Canteen ("it does death" .... "I can kill you without a tray.")

Cake or death?

Pagan Dreading Big Family Vernal Equinox Celebration

2007-03-12T16:10:00+01:00

Onion again.

"Despite evidence that the planets are aligned in his favor, local pagan Jeff Birch, 27, said Monday that he would 'rather have a peaceful weekend at home' than attend his family's Vernal Equinox celebration on March 21. ...

"'Talking to Mom the other day, it was the same old manipulative "You're coming home, right?"' said Birch, referring to a recent phone conversation with his mother, Freyja Birch. 'If I hesitate for even a second, she piles on the guilt -- like how this may be the last year Nana Hippolyta can perform the garden fertility ritual, or that without my masculine energy, the yin-and-yang balance will be thrown off -- until I finally give in.' ...

"Besides the usual maiden-mother-crone conflicts, the strained relationship between Birch's sister, Pythia, who recently converted to Wicca, and his father, a devout Dionysian, is another source of tension, according to Birch. 'Last year, Pythia brought her covenmate home, and Dad's still having a hard time with it,' Birch said. 'It's obvious that he doesn't approve of her lifestyle. He's always asking her why doesn't she find a nice warlock to settle down with, or telling her maybe what she really needs is a good old-fashioned bacchanalia. Are other pagan families like this?'

Pythia isn't the first family member to stray from the fold. Fifteen years ago, Birch's uncle Jack married a Presbyterian and has raised two children in the faith. While he is still included in family celebrations, his eccentric monotheism is the source of much awkwardness, Birch said."

The Word is 'Wolverine'

2007-02-13T18:50:00+01:00

Never thought about gifting your valentine with a wolverine? Think again.

Bestowing a wolverine sends a message that candy and flowers can never hope to communicate. One, you're affirming that you have complete faith in your lover's ability to 'overcome even the most formidable challenges,' and, two, because you will obtain the wolverine from the wild, you offer incontrovertible proof that you are completely devoted to your beloved, to the point of bodily self-sacrifice, mutilation, and possible arrest. "Each time she gazes into the uncertain eyes of this magnificent predator, she will be reminded of your thoughtfulness and unwavering love for her. Just don't let her be reminded for too long. They don't like that."

Thankfully for the novice wolverine hunter and giver, Eric Feezell has lots of suggestions and tips, among which:

"Once you've smuggled your valentine back through customs before it awakens and begins howling satanically, you must then determine how properly to present your one-of-a-kind offering. Keep in mind you have just abducted an endangered species, so handing it to her over the table at your favorite local restaurant is not advisable or safe.

"One special way would be to adorn the wolverine with a giant red bow and wrap it up in a box (must be perforated titanium)."

(Photo credit: National Park Service, at New Hampshire Public TV.)

Thoughts of Death

2006-11-03T19:55:00+01:00

In belated honour of Los Dias De Los Muertos (the Mexican Days of the Dead, 1 and 2 Nov.) and the Christian celebration of All-Saints Day on 1 Nov., some mortality-related items:

1. Woman dies next to own grave (1 Nov.): In Amsterdam. A 65-year-old woman who "had meticulously planned her own funeral" and who had a copy of her Will in the bag she was carrying, died next to the grave where she wanted to be buried. You have to admire her efficiency.

2. Fire breaks out at Salt Lake crematorium (30 Oct.): The fatty fluids contained in a 600-lb man caused a fire at the crematorium: "'Those fluids can be very flammable,' said Scott Freitag of the Salt Lake City fire department. 'Sort of like a grease fire.' ... [T]he funeral director said they'll notify the family to assure them their loved one wasn't harmed."

3. Sites Invite Online Mourning, but Don’t Speak Ill of the Dead (5 Nov. 2006): At the obituary Website, Legacy.com, 45 "screeners pore over the 18,000 notes sent daily about the newly deceased, hoping to catch the backhanded compliments, meanspirited innuendo and airing of dark family secrets."

4. More Like Groucho. This essay by John Mann, about humour in the midst of darkness, mentions three deaths, centering on an 88-year-old man whose funeral will be held tomorrow:

"Here was a guy who knew his fair share of trouble. In his 30s he was nearly killed in an industrial accident. It took him four years of painful recovery before he could go back to work. In the hospital shortly after the accident in which he was burned over 50% of his body, he told one relative, 'Aye, I've gone for the new pineapple haircut. It's coming out in chunks.' ...

"[J]ust two years ago, his daughter was murdered and only a few bits of her body were ever recovered. To make matters worse, the man convicted of the crime, later went free on a technicality. During a visit Donald's wife cried out as she was wont to do, 'Oh, what did I ever do to deserve this?' To which Donald replied, 'I don’t know dear, but it must be something you just haven’t remembered.'"

Mann says, "Such a sense of humour, of life, can't be manufactured. Even in writing about it, it doesn't come across with the same sense as the telling of it or the firsthand experience of it. Maybe what it is the punchline wherein the joke is on the teller." He goes on: "Reminders from time to time to lighten up a bit are okay. That's why the cross works. God's way of saying, 'The joke is on me.'"

5. These are the beings I prayed for (for eternal peace and joy) during an All Saints Eucharist on Wednesday: Joanne, Bob, Helen, Bobby, Robert, Cactus, Petunia, Dot, Alma, Ella, mudd, GA, Etta Mae, Sterrett, Jean, Harry, Erick, Charles, Lloyd, Ferralyn, Milford, Tom, Connie, Lionel, Fred, Margaret, Jerome, Tom.

6. A selection of quotes relating to mortality:

So little time and so little to do. -- Oscar Levant

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die. -- Mel Brooks

Pity Willy Wagamore, he isn't any more. / For what he thought was H2O, was H2SO4. -- Ogden Nash

Health is simply the slowest possible rate at which one can die. -- Anon.

It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding a sickness you like. -- Jackie Mason

"Press button to test." <CLICK> "Release to detonate." -- Anon.

I wouldn't mind dying so much if it wasn't necessarily followed by death. -- Thomas Nagel [I think I feel the reverse.]

I hope I pass away in my sleep like my grandfather, not screaming in horror like his passengers. -- Anon.

Squirrels Gone Bad

2006-11-02T20:30:00+01:00

My mother and my dog both abhor squirrels, though for different reasons. The former considers them messy thieves who drop things from trees and dig and devour her tulip bulbs, while the latter considers them a tasty and territory-encroaching potential food source. Neither, to my knowledge, has been attacked by a squirrel's claws or teeth. But others (besides Clark Griswold in "Christmas Vacation") have:

Pa. letter carrier attacked by squirrel is taken to hospital, 01 Nov. 2006. "I eventually got a hold of the tail and pulled it off me."

Mountain View [Calif.] to trap, kill aggressive squirrels after attacks, 28 Sept. 2006. "The animals have been jumping inside baby strollers, opening food bags and even scratching people as they seek a handout." More light was shed on one attack here in this article, which notes that "the attack happened as the boy's mother unwrapped a muffin during a picnic."

Squirrel Attacks Anger Winter Park Residents, 11 Aug. 2006. Squirrel attacks seven people in 4-day period in Florida.

Russian squirrel pack 'kills dog,' 1 Dec. 2005. "Squirrels have bitten to death a stray dog which was barking at them in a Russian park, local media report." In a previous incident, chipmunks terrorised cats in the same territory.

Squirrel Savaged Our Pet Labrador, 2 Sept. 2005. "Squirrels' teeth are designed to cut tough nutshells so a dog's skin would have been easy."

Squirrel attacks boy, mother: Both get treatment for bites as officials capture animal, 2 July 2005. "The squirrel 'came out of nowhere' and attached itself to her leg. 'I have no idea where it came from,' she said, 'but it was on there for a while.'"

Granddad guns down terror squirrel, 7 Nov. 2002. BBC: "The animal had already attacked a man mowing his lawn and woman walking down the street, in Knutsford. But when it sank its teeth into Kelsi Morley's face, her grandfather Geoff Horth decided to act."

Fourth squirrel attack to cost UA $30,000, 18 Sept. 2002. At the University of Alabama, "kamikaze" squirrels are launching "attacks" substations and power lines. "investigators found their crispy culprit. The police report lists the fire as a 'damaged property incident' -- 'Of course it's not an offense, since it's by a squirrel.' ... Workers will be able to salvage part of the capacitor. The squirrel, however, was a complete loss."

SQUIRRELS ATTACK!: Behind masks of innocence, some campus squirrels harbor violent natures, 24 Jan. 2002. This Onion-like Texas A&M student newspaper article makes comparisons: "In the past three years, there were not one, but two documented cases of squirrel attacks on campus. This far outnumbers the frequency of lion, tiger and bear attacks at A&M in recent years. This staggering statistic easily makes squirrels A&M's number-one feral threat."

What's causing these squirrel attacks? Probably not rabies, as generally squirrels don't contract rabies. In Russia, one man speculates that "the little beasts are agitated because they have nothing to eat," noting that there had been "no pine cones at all" in the local forests (of a territory in Russia) in the same year as some of the attacks. In Calif, another offers that they have too much to eat: "the increasingly brazen behavior stems from years of being fed by park visitors."

This weblog entry, "Squirrels: They're Cute, They're Fluffy, and They Must be Stopped" (15 Sept. 2005) offers more reasons than you can shake a stick at for squirrel destruction, terrorism, coordinated suicide actions, etc: "I'd be wrong to expect that everyone has (like me) been keeping up with the sinister plans of squirrels, our cutest rodents. ... Mark my words: the threat that is posed by a vast international squirrel terrorist conspiracy cannot be overstated."

THE BENEFITS OF SMOKING

2005-05-12T01:40:00+02:00

1ST   The smoker never get old
          Because he dies before that
2ND   never be robed
          Because he coughs all night
3RD   alwyas he has a new friends
           every day he meet new people in the visit