In the end....

Last night, I had a talk with my friend Ray about what today's post should be about... Today, after all is a day of many endings for me. It's the end of Hurricane season, the end of NaBloPoMo, and my last day of "residency" at my Seguin Street apartment. It's a time of new beginnings in my life, and both Ray and I agreed that this post would probably be a bittersweet, melancholy one of change, growth and the different roles we find ourselves in at various points in our lives.

Then I saw this web page, and found that I had to write about it.

For those of you unwilling or unable to follow the link and see for yourselves, this website advertises a product called the "Flatulence Deodorizer" which is an air freshener that you place over your butt to filter your farts.

As if this wasn't enough to make me giggle uncontrollably for an hour, there are testimonials that attest to the effectiveness of the product. The first one, of a man that says his flatus is enough "to pressurize a plane" literally had tears in my eyes. There are also cryptic references to "activated charcoal underwear" throughout these pages, which I assume must be the Flatulence Deodorizer's biggest competitor. Other testimonials include cubicle dwellers and bean lovers (go figure).

I think I need to buy some stock in this company, if only to say to people with a straight face that I have a vested interest in flatulence futures.

Arrrgh... tis the season, ya know...

Time for some comedy 101 people... can anyone out there tell me what exactly makes this cartoon funny enough for milk to come out of my nose?

I see no hands... I guess it's up to me. Now, you might think that the elven pirates with quizzical looks on their faces make it funny... after all, short people (as a rule) are pretty funny... but no, that ain't it. A look at the caption "Yo HO HO and a bottle of egg nog"? No... that just sells the joke. Maybe the juxtaposition of a beloved holiday icon with the ruthlessness of the pirate? No again.

It's funny cause Santa has a peg-leg, and the parrot has an eyepatch. Handicapped people are always funny.

That's right, folks... I'm gettin nothing but coal in my stocking.

Some funny on a wednesday...

There once was a scientist who studied frogs. One day, the scientist put the frog on the ground and told it to jump. The frog jumped four feet.

The scientist wrote in his notebook, "Frog with four feet, jumps four feet."

So the scientist cut off one of one of the frogs legs. The scientist told the frog to jump. Frog jumped three feet.

So the scientist wrote in his note book, "Frog with three feet, jumps three feet."

The scientist cut of another leg. He told the frog to jump. The frog jumped two feet.

So the scientist wrote in his notebook "Frog with two feet, jumps two feet."

The scientist cut off one more leg. He told the frog to jump. Frog jumped one foot.

So the scientist wrote in his notebook, "Frog with one foot, jumps one foot."

So the scientist cut off his last leg. He said, "Frog jump. Frog jump. FROG JUMP!"

So the scientist wrote in his notebook, "Frog with no feet, goes deaf."

Ho, ho, ho.

The coolest christmas decoration ever now sits on my desk. It bounces up and down on hydraulics, and plays lowrider. Does silverfox know me or what? :)

To get everyone in the spirit of the season...

AOL television has a quiz up about great moments in holiday TV specials... I got 8 out of 10.

Looking forward to my first Christmas with Silverfox and the kids... I hope to find the time to decorate the condo this weekend while listening loudly to "Dominick the donkey" over and over again. Nothing like that song to get me in the spirit of the season...

What do y'all do to get your Christmas on?

some funny on a sunday...

There once was a lady who was tired of living alone. So she put an ad in the paper which outlined her requirements. She wanted a man who...
1) would treat her nicely
2) wouldn't run away from her
3) would be good in bed.
Then, one day, she heard the doorbell ring. She answered it, and there on the front porch was a man in a wheel chair who didn't have any arms or legs.

"I'm here about the ad you put in the paper. As you can see, I have no arms so I can't beat you, and I have no legs so I can't run away from you."

"Yes, but are you good in bed?"

"How do you think I rang the doorbell?"

Well, it was quite a day....

This year's fryday was truly a thing of wonder... at least 25 people showed up to behold its crispy, golden brown goodness. It was strange having so many coming to enjoy this "holiday" that Stacey and I started on a whim, but at the same time I was so proud.

The big hit (as always) were the fried snickers bars, but other dishes of note included the from scratch Mozerella sticks (props to javafoofoo on the prep work), the fried ravioli, and the calzones. Disappointments included deep fried spam-ka-bobs, deep fried cranberry sauce (Curse you, Paula Deen!) and the way-too-phallic-to-eat deep fried pizza. The big surprises were the deep fried nutter butter cookies and pumpkin pie, both of which were simply outstanding.

Afterward, we had a game of beerball with an earth-shattering 14 people... the most in action at any beerball matches thus far. Silverfox refereed the game with a little help from Short Stuff, and Stacey's Stompers routed Supermom's Storm by at least two touchdowns. I don't think anyone knew or cared what the final score was, because everyone was having so much fun.

I'll post in more detail once someone uploads some pictures.

T.G.I.F.

Thank God It's FRYDAY!!!!!!!!

Mmmmmm fried snickers bars.

More to come...

Yam goodness

I sense a great disturbance in the force. As if a thousand yams screamed out at once and were silenced.

Yoda yam

infused with the power of the force my yams are, hmmm?

5 am thanksgiving morning

our guest of honor prepares for the day ahead.

Because yesterday's Funny was a repeat funny...

I gotta hand it to Stacey... she always calls me out when I repeat a joke. There is a very simple reason for why this sometimes happens... every time I run across a funny joke, I copy it to a word file on my computer, to later post into my "Funny on a..." posts. Sometimes I forget to delete the joke from the file, and I come across it a week or two later and say "hey! that's really funny!" and post it again.

The up side is that you, the reader, get to see which jokes really tickled my funny bone. The down side is that you already know the frickin punchline. It's an imperfect system in an imperfect world folks, but I will do my best to avoid such mistakes in the future. In the meantime, here's another joke to compensate for yesterday's absent-mindedness...

One day a traveling salesman was driving down a back country road at about 30 mph when he noticed that there was a three-legged chicken running alongside his car.

He stepped on the gas but at 50 miles per hour. The chicken was still keeping up. After about a mile of running the chicken ran up a farm lane and into a barn behind an old farm house.

The salesman had some time to kill so he turned around and drove up the farm lane. He knocked at the door and when the farmer answered he told him what he had just seen.

The farmer said that he was a geneticist and had developed this breed of chicken because he, his wife and his son each like a drumstick when they have chicken and this way they only have to kill one chicken.

"That''s the most fantastic thing I've ever heard," said the salesman. "How do they taste?"

"I don't know," said the farmer. "We've never caught one."

Some funny on a tuesday...

One day, at a bus stop there was a girl who was wearing a skintight miniskirt. When the bus arrived and it was her turn to get on, she realized that her skirt was so tight she couldn't get her foot high enough to reach to step.

Thinking it would give her enough slack to raise her leg, she reached back and unzipped her skirt a little. She still could not reach the step. Embarrassed, she reached back once again to unzip it a little more. Still, she couldn't reach the step.

So, with her skirt zipper halfway down, she reached back and unzipped her skirt all the way. Thinking that she could get on the step now, she lifted up her leg only to realize that she still couldn't reach the step.

So, seeing how embarrassed the girl was, the man standing behind her put his hands around her waist and lifted her up on to the first step of the bus. The girl turned around furiously and said,
"How dare you touch my body that way, I don't even know you!"

Shocked, the man says, "Well, ma'am, after you reached around and unzipped my fly three times, I kinda figured that we were friends."

Knowing when to shut up.

There are few things worse to a writer than feeling like you have nothing to write about. There is a tremendous amount of pressure to produce when participating in things like NaBloPoMo, and some writers feel like they choke under the pressure.

But you see, that's not it at all...

Personally, I have always believed that my time that I'm not writing is what gives my writing such life and vitality, and I say this for two reasons... One, my down time is when new ideas begin to spring forth from the gestation period in the back of my brain, readying themselves to jump upon the page and stomp on whatever intellectual tokyo that gets in their way.

Two, I have always believed that the mark of a truly great writer is knowing when to end the story. I know that sounds kinda silly in our age of endless sequels and prequels but think about it... would Chinatown have had it's same impact if we followed Jake to go grab a beer afterward? Would Scarlett O'hara be the tragic figure she is if we were there to witness the downward spiral that we saw coming after Rhett leaves? Would The Princess Bride have stirred our emotions as heavily if we found out that the four of them were recaptured by the Florin army after Wesley and Buttercups kiss?

I could go on... but there seems little point. In fact, i probably should have ended that last paragraph a sentence earlier, and left off this sentence entirely :)

I am very Tired...

But NaBloPoMo is a harsh mistress. I am determined to see a full 30 posts for the month of November if it kills me. Today, we did more moving-in related stuff. Buying bookshelves and the like... None of it really blogworthy... so instead, even though it's a Sunday night, I'm gonna answer three questions culled from the Manic Monday blog:

What is your least favorite day of the week and why? I have a lot of trouble with Wednesdays, for some reason... It's the one day of the week I feel like I'm consistently ten minutes behind the rest of the universe.

What's the best way to end the day? Snuggled up with someone you care about between cool sheets.

Which animal would you have left out of the ark? I have no particular love for the Dwarf Cassowary, and they don't taste very good, so I guess they would have to go.

Actual Conversations...or... when geeks drink.

Ray and I were sitting at the bar before pub quiz the other night talking about Star Trek. For those of you that don't have terminally geeky Star Trek fans for friends, one of the topics that often comes up is "Least favorite episode" we go now to the conversation....

Me: obviously 'Spock's Brain'. An episode that's so bad, even heckling it seems too easy, somehow.

Ray: Nah. 'Requiem for Methuselah' has to be the worst one ever made.

Me: What? The one with the immortal guy? I like that episode!

Ray: Still the worst ever.

Me: Why?

Ray: Well, he's immortal, right?

Me: Yeah...

Ray: And he's been all these great men... Solomon, Alexander, Lazarus, Methuselah, Merlin, Brahms, Leonardo Da Vinci even...

Me: So?

Ray: Well, that's just silly. If Brahms was immortal, someone would have found him out. When you reach a certain level of fame, people start to document your background. We know where he grew up, we know where he learned to read music, and we know who his parents were.

Me: But if you were immortal, such things would be easy to fake.

Ray: I don't think so.

Me: Take Walter Cronkite... What do we really know about him that isn't what he's told us? He gained notoriety in his twenties, and everything before that is just his say so.

Ray: No... you see that's my point... people have looked into his background. They know where he went to high school... they've interviewed his relatives...

Me: No... they found a picture that could have been planted in a yearbook, and interviewed some old folks who claim to have raised him... both easily faked.

Ray: I'm sorry... there's no way Walter Cronkite could be an immortal, dude.

Me: Well, what about Dan Rather?

Ray: Oh, him... absolutely.

A signifigant side effect of living with my signifigant other...

My bed currently sports more than 12 pillows of varying size and density.

The bed in my bachelor pad had four, and that was counting my body pillow, and if I threw on an extra one for company.

Furthermore, I've noticed that despite having a far fuller schedule than I do, Silverfox finds the time to make the bed daily.

I swear, it's like living in the twilight zone.

Washyou mean I'sh too drunk ta blog...

Culled from my brother's blog:

92%DRUNKARD

Some funny on a thursday....

There once was a young couple who lived in a town filled with crime. After three neighbors' houses had been robbed, the couple decided to get a guard dog.

So one day the wife went to the pet store and said, "I need a good guard dog."

And the clerk replied, "Sorry, we're all sold out. All we have left is this little Scottie dog. But he knows karate."

The wife didn't believe him so he said to the dog, "Karate that chair."

The dog went up to the chair and broke it into pieces, then he said to the dog, "Karate that table." The dog went up to the table and broke it in half.

So the wife bought the dog and took it home to her husband who was expecting a big guard dog. But then she told her husband that it knew karate, and he said "Karate my ass!"

A little about Fryday...

According to Stacey, Fryday is coming. It is inevitable, much like the changing of the seasons.

I am looking forward to Fryday Eve this year (also known as Thanksgiving) because I will get to sample turducken for the first time, (oh, and of course my first major holiday with Silverfox and the Kids.. :) ) But the entire time... my mind will be wandering to deep fried snickers bars and their other greasy cousins.

For those of you that haven't already clicked on Stacey's "archive of Frydays past" above, Fryday is a holiday invented by my friends and I when we realized we had a huge fryer and a gallon of oil left over from Thanksgiving... inventive people plus larger cooking equipment always equals good times. The concept seems to be growing in popularity, though. Stacey says the guest list is at 12, and growing. I swear, before long we're gonna need our own Wikipedia entry. (Fryday.com is sadly, already taken) I also think we need to look into sponsorship.
At work, several of my co-workers have been coming up to me for weeks with menu suggestions...

Among those I want to try to do this year:

Deep Fried calzones
Deep Fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches
Deep Fried chocolate stuffed strawberries
Deep Fried mac+cheese bars
Deep Fried twinkies
Deep Fried Ham and Cheese sandwiches
Deep Fried Ravioli
Deep Fried cranberry sauce

I think this year we may need two fry stations... one for the sweets, and one for the savories.

For those of you scattered about the country, I advise you to start your own Fryday celebrations this year... after all, what could be better than friends and fried food? Sure beats leftover turkey sandwiches.

Hmmm... deep fried turkey sandwiches...