100420- A joke

.....Okay, I'll admit it, I'm stuck for a snarky one-liner again. If nobody minds, I'm going to retell a favorite old joke of mine instead:

.....Three men wake up surrounded by clouds. There's a long line of people stretching out on either side of them. As ridiculous as it appears to them, every indication is that they've died and gone to heaven. Everything around them conforms to every corny movie and comic strip cliche they've ever seen. Cherubs are floating around, there's harp music coming from somewhere and off in the distance they can see walls of precious jewels and gates of pearl. "If we're really in heaven," said the first man, "that means we must have died". "Yeah," said the second man, "that makes sense. But I don't remember dying. In fact, I can't remember how I got here at all." The third man shrugged and said, "I can't remember either. But that would kind of make sense. None of us look as old as the people just before and after us. If we died at our age it was probably due to some accident. The mind has a way of protecting itself from traumas. Whatever's too hard to deal with, it just blanks out." "Hey, yeah," said the first man. "I heard about stuff like that. Multiple personalities and obsessions and junk. You don't think we got any of that?" The second man rolled his eyes. "I wouldn't worry about any of that. I mean, I've never met either of you guys, but we all seem to be pretty lucid, considering the circumstances... whatever they were."

.....The third man brightened up. "You know, we could probably help each other. If we're all here together, that may mean that we died within moments of each other. If our deaths were related in any way, we might only be blocking out our own deaths. We might still remember something about each other's." "That's kind of a longshot," said the second man, "since we could have died in different cities." "Well, we'll never know if we don't try.' said the first. " I don't mind going first. Even if it doesn't work, we've got nothing else to do while we're waiting in line."

.....The first man tries to recall: "I don't remember just which day I died, but for a couple of weeks, I had been suspecting that my wife was cheating on me. There were all kinds of hints, but nothing that was really proof, you know? Somebody else's shirt comes back from the dry cleaner, food missing from the fridge, dumb stuff like that. There could have been a bunch of reasons. Then one day I come home and notice an ashtray with a crushed cigarette in the living room. We don't smoke. I ask my wife about it and she said her friend Helen was over that day. She was really defensive about it. But, see, I know Helen and she's been over a lot and that wasn't her brand. And there wasn't any lipstick on this cigarette. I didn't say anything. I just let it go. But it was eating at me, every day. I kept wondering who it could be; was it somebody I knew? did she go looking for somebody? It was driving me nuts. One day, I couldn't stand it. I left work early and went home. When I got to the apartment, I took the stairs up and used my key on the door. The chain was on, but through the door I could hear voices suddenly stop. I called out that it was me, that she left the chain on and I needed her to open the door. Suddenly I heard a lot of scuffling and clattering. I asked her if she was alright, if there was somebody in there. She told me she'd be right there but it must have been at least another five minutes before she opened the door, wearing a towel and looking really guilty. 'What d'you want? I was taking a shower.' she said. I told her her hair wasn't wet and asked her if I checked the bathtub if that would be dry too? She looked pretty shocked. I guess she thought I was pretty stupid just because she'd been getting away with this so far. I demanded to know where he was. She kept pretending she didn't know what I was talking about. That's when I really lost it. I started tearing through the apartment checking every room, every closet, pulling out drawers, raving like a maniac. I kept screaming, 'Where is he? Where is he?' Then I noticed the sliding glass door that leads to the fire escape was open. It's right between the kitchen area and the living room. I rushed to it and looked down and sure enough, there was a guy sneaking down the stairs! I freaked out! The nearest thing to me was the refrigerator, so I grabbed it and started pushing. I was just burning adrenaline, my wife was screaming at me but I couldn't hear anything... and then... and then... I must have blacked out. I don't think you can die from a hernia, but pushing that fridge onto the fire escape must have given me a heart attack. Hey, I figured out how I died!"

.....The first man was so happy to have worked out the mystery he forgot how angry he had gotten remembering his wife's infidelity. The second man, however, looked angry enough for both of them. "What's wrong with you?" asked the first man. "Oh, I'll tell you what's wrong" said the second man. "I used to work as a meter reader. I used to hate reading meters in the city because you're supposed to be able to go into a building's basement and read every unit's meter at once. That would make it easy, but there's always someone tapping a line, trying to get free juice. So I gotta go up and down the fire escapes looking for illegal splices. One day, I hear some idiot screaming so I stop and look up. The next thing I know, a giant black rectangle comes zooming at me and... bang! Nothing. That's the last thing I remember before I wound up here. With you."

.....The first man looked furious. "You mean it was you?!?" The second man screamed back, "Me? You're the one who--" and the two began throwing punches and clawing at each other. An angel came swooping in from somewhere nearby and pleaded, "Oooh, stop! You must stop at once!" but the two men were absorbed in their scuffle. "You simply can't do this! There's no fighting in Heaven! It isn't allowed." The third man looked back and forth between the angel and the brawl until the angel sighed and pulled a lever only it could see. The clouds dropped out from under the fighting men and they plummeted downward and downward, their yelling gradually fading for what seemed like several minutes, punctuated by a tiny pinhole of flame below. "Oh, I so wished that wouldn't be necessary." pined the angel. "I tried to warn them. What a senseless, needless waste. They were even within sight of the gates! What could possibly make someone throw all that away?" The third man cleared his throat. "Well, we were all trying to recall the events that led us here. It must have brought up some bad memories for them. They didn't even get to hear how I died." "I've heard so many over the ages," said the angel, "I can't imagine how one more would surprise me." The third man chuckled, "Well, this is going to sound weird, but the last thing I remember is, I was hiding in a refrigerator."

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."

100225- A joke

.....How come nobody remembers John Lennon as "the guy who broke up Fluxus"?

100219- A joke

.....This post is in fact the fiftieth consecutive day I have posted a joke or humorous observation. Although I had to resort to recycled material yesterday, I'm sort of proud (and surprised) that so much of it has been original up until now. I feel like celebrating but I'm not sure what's appropriate for a fifty day anniversary. I know fifty years is gold, twenty-five years is silver, tenth is tin, ...fifth is wood, I think, ...first is ...paper? isn't that the same as wood, though? Thirty- seventh is anthracite, I'm pretty sure. Sixty-second is cottage cheese. Eighteenth is boron. Actually, it might be boron or cobalt, I'm a little fuzzy on that. Twenty-ninth is traditionally a live heron but in modern times most people just go for any kind of wading bird. Forty-fourth is foreboding, you know, like in the poem. Um... fifty days ...geez, I feel like I should be getting you something but for the life of me I can't remember what the proper... oh, wait a minute... uh,... yeah, here you go. I just remembered that the commemoration for fifty days is a lint-covered mint. That must have been why I had one in my pocket just now.

100127- A joke

.....Q: How many religious fundamentalists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Only two, but they have to be married first... and very tiny.

100115- A joke

.....I don't see the insides of churches much these days except for weddings and funerals. I've managed to avoid one of them myself, and I suspect that's helped me to avoid the other.