110518- A joke

.....In today's headlines the head of the IMF has been arrested for the sexual assault of a native African working in a New York hotel. It says he's on a suicide watch. Considering what the IMF has done to Africa, they shouldn't have too much difficulty finding volunteers to watch that.

100504- A joke

.....True story: about 20+ years ago I was watching the US broadcast television premiere of the movie "Godzilla: 1985". No, that's not the joke. It was broadcast TV, so there were paid advertisements. One of the ads was for a device that promised to shield your telephone conversations from electronic surveillance. It came complete with actors playing people who seemed to have serious anxieties about people listening in on their conversations, then expressed appropriately melodramatic relief and confidence once the device was attached to the receiver. I sat there watching that ad and thinking to myself, "Somebody paid money to run that ad. Somebody paid more money than I'm going to earn this year to run that ad. For what? How many people who could conceivably need this product are likely to see that ad? What are the odds that Henry Kissinger was sitting around snarfing cheese doodles and watching "Godzilla: 1985" that night? "He-e-e-ey, dot vould gome in quvite handy, I tink." The whole point of ads like that is that they rely on a certain percentage of the viewers being extremely stupid, or at least too stupid to understand the basics of cost effectiveness analysis. Wiretaps aren't magic. With the technology that existed at the time there would be the cost of the hardware to consider, plus the cost of the installation, plus the cost in man-hours of monitoring any recordings. Now, the only reason someone would fund all of those expenses up front would be if they anticipated that the information culled from the phone conversations would be worth more than the money they invested.

.....All I knew was that if I was holding onto information that valuable, I sure as hell wouldn't be spending my evenings sitting around watching edited Godzilla movies. I'd be watching them uncut and subtitled on VHS.

100429- A joke

.....You may occasionally hear or read warnings about identity theft. I think that if someone stole my identity that the most appropriate punishment would be to force them to keep it.

100421- A joke

.....[Okay, here's another old favorite.]

.....A man walks into the bar of a Las Vegas casino looking exhausted and despondent. When he slumps onto a stool, the bartender approaches. The man looks at him sadly and orders a domestic beer. "Just the one." he adds. A well dressed woman takes the adjacent stool and smiles, saying "I can't believe there's anybody in this town who's actually not having fun. You look like you could use a little help. Want me to call a cop? How about an ambulance?" The man relaxed a bit. "No, it's nothing like that," he said. The woman laughed, "Well, I ought to be able to help you with anything else, sugar, I'm having a great time tonight. What's the matter? You lose a lot of money at the tables?"

.....The man rolled his eyes and sighed. "Yeah, that's part of it I guess. Actually, I wasn't really expecting to win big. If I broke even it would have all been the same to me. As long as I kept playing I didn't care if the pot went up and down. The thing is..., look, I get two weeks vacation a year and I spent last year's vacation watching TV. The whole time just blew by. I promised myself that next time would be different. The first week back I started saving every dime I could. I bagged lunch, I put off home improvements, I took public transportation whenever possible, the whole deal. I didn't even know what I wanted to spend the money on when I started. Then after four months I realized that I wanted to spend it in Vegas. I figured, everything's within walking distance: the shows, the casinos, the stores. It cuts down on travel time. I didn't even have to put together a schedule. If I change my mind in the middle of one activity I can just drift to another."

....."That sounds pretty smart. So why aren't you drifting right now?" the woman asked. "Because it's like you said before, I lost a lot of money," said the man. "I got here yesterday afternoon with $5000 and promised myself I'd spend the whole thing. After depriving myself for a year I was going to spend it on what ever I wanted for two weeks. I got a room, had dinner, saw the sights and went to sleep. This morning I decided to try the casinos, and except for getting a sandwich I've been here all day. I lost everything." "You're kidding me," said the woman, "everything?" "Might as well. I got $200 left but that's not going to last two weeks. As it is I'm putting the room on my card tonight and heading home in the morning. I guess I'll spend the rest of the time working around the house."

....."Well, that's about the saddest thing I've ever heard, I don't mind telling you," the woman said. "You deserve more than that. I'm sorry I can't do anything about the rest of the week, but if you're going to be here tonight you should do something to make the trip worthwhile. And for $200 I can make you happier than a week of sight-seeing." The man wasn't sure what she was talking about, and he didn't want to make any embarrassing assumptions. While he was trying to size up the situation, he suddenly realized that in the entire time they had been talking, the bartender never once asked the woman about ordering a drink. That would be odd, unless of course the bartender recognized her as someone who was here often and had others buy drinks for her. Which would mean-- "Oh, I-- uh, I wasn't really-- I mean, I don't think that's something I'd really be comfortable with," he stuttered. "That's the whole point, silly," she replied, "you get whatever you want. I'm a professional. You call the shots. And for someone who just had all their plans pulled out from under them that's a bargain at any price. You get whatever makes you comfortable, whatever makes you happy, all for $200."

....."Anything I want?" he asked.

....."Anything at all."

....."For $200?"

....."For $200. Whatever makes you happy."

.....The man mulled this over for a few seconds.

....."Okay," he said, "paint my house."

100410- A joke

.....This post is in fact the one hundredth consecutive daily post on this blog. As it becomes increasingly difficult to come up with original ideas on demand, I've noticed that since the fifty day mark that I've been using more long stories and topical jokes. Attributable quotes would be next, I guess, followed by cribbing Bazooka Joe comics and Snapple lids. Of course, I'm even more embarrassed that I haven't used the past seven weeks to nail down these tricky daily anniversary commemorations. For instance, a one hundred year anniversary would be celebrated with a gift of platinum (I think), seventy-fifth with diamond, fiftieth with gold, etc. Of course, once you get below the fortieth (rubies), the traditional list and modern list become radically different. That's because the modern list is a shameless, obvious scam. The later anniversaries are all the same because they're already remembered with precious stones and metals. They're already expensive and besides that, fewer people reach those anniversaries. Between death and divorce, there are far more people reaching their fifth anniversary than their seventy-fifth. The so-called modern list is an attempt to move the more expensive materials to the more common earlier anniversaries: the second anniversary, cotton, becomes china (previously twentieth) on the modern list; the twentieth becomes platinum. Leather becomes crystal, fruit becomes appliances (ooooh, romantic), wood becomes silverware and in an oddly specific turn wool becomes desk sets. This sounds less like a way to renew the bonds in your life and more like a stranger's attempt to empty a crowded warehouse. I say we just skip the pretense and insist that all anniversaries be marked with the elements on the tail-end of the periodic table. Accept nothing with an atomic number less than one hundred. These are the sort of materials whose nuclei are so massive that they can only exist if they're synthesized in a laboratory, and even then they almost spontaneously tear themselves apart. What better way to say that our time together is precious than with something that can't even exist for more than a fraction of a second? And best of all, the process is so expensive it nearly guarantees bankruptcy for most young couples early on, eliminating the need to memorize the rest of these silly lists.

100406- A joke

.....[I'm busy on another project and stuck for new ideas; here's a favorite story of mine that might actually be true. I've seen it repeated several times with slight changes in the specifics, which is the first sign of an urban legend, but I'm willing to bet that at some point someone else who read it would be motivated to actually carry it out. Enjoy.]

.....A young man checking out the newspaper classified section for used cars saw an ad that he had to read twice. It seemed like something was off or that he was not understanding it properly. The ad read, "Used Porsche, $5.00" and gave an address. That had to be a mistake or maybe a joke. The most likely explanation is that the decimal was in the wrong place and they wanted $500, not $5. But even if that was the case, and the car was a piece of junk, he might be able to sell the salvaged parts for more than that, and certainly for more than $5. And if it turned out to be a toy car or something along those lines, at least he would have a good story to tell his friends.

.....He rode his bicycle to the address, which was a well manicured home with a garage, and nervously approached the front door. Things looked a little too normal. Even as he rung the bell, he wondered if this was all just some prank being pulled on the resident of the house, and he was just the patsy who answered the ad. He was thinking of the best way to word an apology when the door opened and a pleasant-looking woman in her late forties asked, "Hello, can I help you?". The young man stammered, "Uhh... I, um, did you place an ad for a car?" The woman smiled, "Oh, yes, I did. Were you interested in buying it?" "Uhhr...yeah. Yeah, but, you see, the ad technically said-- I... I brought it with me here... somewhere... anyway, it said the car was $5. Now I don't know about legally what that--" She cut him off; "Yes, it's $5. Would you like to see it?" she asked. The young man was completely lost at this point. She didn't appear crazy. She certainly didn't look like a junkie desperate for cash or a thrill-killer luring naive bargain hunters to their doom. As long as he didn't sign anything or hand over any money, it seemed safe to go along with it all for the moment. "Well, yeah. Yeah, I'd like to see it.

.....The woman stepped out of the house, locked the door behind her and led the young man to the garage. She unlocked it, then pulled a remote out of her purse and opened the garage door. Inside, surrounded by the typical clutter many people have in their garages, was a red Porsche. It looked great, maybe a few years old. The tires seemed fine, the headlights intact, no visible rust or major scratches. Yet, the more that the young man saw of the car, the more he worried about what he must be missing. "The price does include the engine, doesn't it?" he asked. The woman laughed to herself. "Yes, of course. And I think there's a quarter tank of gas in it. You can take that, too. As is for $5. Why don't you drive it around?" she suggested. Try as he might, the young man couldn't think of a reason not to. "Sure. Let's go."

.....The seats squeaked slightly; the engine started readily and purred steadily. He eased down the driveway and past his bike on the lawn, turning down one street and then another. Once he knew that it turned left and right without incident, he tried the lights, the wipers and every standard feature he could think of. Since it was a residential street, the only thing he couldn't do was take it to maximum speed, but since (a) he didn't race cars for a living and (b) he opened the paper that morning expecting to get a ten-year-old Chevy, he wasn't too concerned about that. "Hell," he thought to himself, "if it turns out that the catch is a dead body in the trunk, I'll just dump it somewhere. For $5, there's too much right with this to care about what's wrong." He pulled back into the driveway and told the woman, "I'll take it. I can pay cash, right?" The woman chuckled. "Well, I sure don't take credit cards. Cash is fine. I'll go get the paperwork." Minutes later they were filling out everything needed to transfer ownership on the hood of the Porsche. He handed her a five dollar bill. "Thank you very much. Enjoy your new car." Once he had the keys, he grabbed his bike and nervously unlocked the trunk. No body. No room for the bike either. While he pondered whether to dismantle it or just leave it, he noticed the woman reentering the house. "Excuse me," he said, and put down the bike. After walking up to her door he said, "I'm sorry, but I just can't stand not knowing. I mean, I know I already paid for the car, I know we filled out all the paperwork and there's no going back and everything, but-- I just--" "You want to know why I sold the car for $5?" the woman asked. "Well, yeah I want to know why. I mean, whatever's wrong with it, it's gotta be worth more than that." "Oh, there isn't a thing wrong with it, as far as I know. In fact, my husband's 23-year-old secretary seemed to love it while he was seeing her behind my back. So when he ran off with her and left me a note to sell the house and car and send him all the money, I wanted to make sure it went to someone who would enjoy it as much as my mother's going to enjoy the house."

100308- A joke

.....An aquaintance, J.-- , had been unemployed for so long that he was forced to cut his losses and stop paying his mortgage. Like many these days he would just allow it to default rather than pour money he needed to survive into a home that was no longer worth as much as he owed. He spent the last few months selling furniture and other possessions online and putting the money in the names of solvent friends and relatives. It would pay for gas and food so that he and his wife could live in their SUV and drive until he found work. I was helping him pack what was left into it when I asked him how his wife was taking the news.
....."She's taking it better than I expected," J.-- said. "She really hasn't complained at all. I think she's afraid to." I was stunned. There had never been any signs of violence in their marriage. "Why would she be scared of you?" I asked. "Oh, hell," said J.--, "it's not me she's afraid of. It's just that ever since we got married she's been grousing about how I never take her anywhere. Now that it's the only thing we'll be doing for a while, I'm guessing she's getting extremely particular about what she wishes for."

100113- A joke

.....I heard about a service that helps people on a fixed income. Oh, I don't know. A fixed income doesn't sound so bad to me; mine's been broken for a while now.