Fun With One-Liners

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again….
….It

I began speed reading, and last night I read “The Da Vinci Code” in 15 minutes….
….I know it’s only 4 words, but it’s a start

How do you make headlines?….
….with corduroy pillows

Police arrested two teenagers today. One was drinking battery acid. The other was eating fireworks….
….They charged one, and let the other off.

I was going to start up an Apathy Anonymous support group….
….then I thought, Why bother?

I’m trying to come up with a Theatre pun….
….but it would just be a play on words.

I’m not stubborn….
….my way is just better

What’s the most reactive fish in the ocean….
….2NA

What’s brown and sticky?….
….a stick

As a kid, I was made to walk the plank….
….because we couldn’t afford a dog

I have a pet tree….
….kinda like having a pet dog, but the bark is quieter.

I hate those new parents who do all that baby talk….
….Yes I do! Yes I do!

As a scarecrow, people say I’m outstanding in my field….
….but hay, it’s in my jeans

I went into a pet shop and said I’d like to buy a goldfish. The clerk said, “Do you want an aquarium?”….
….I said I didn’t care what star sign it was

My boss told me that I intimidate my co-workers….
….so I just stared at him until he apologized

I love telling Dad jokes….
….He loves them

There are so many scams on the internet these days….
….For $19.95 I can show you how to avoid them

It’s okay, Password….
….I’m insecure too

I went to a can crushing convention….
…seeing all that metal destroyed was just soda pressing

Christmas always sucked when I was a kid….
….I believed in Santa Claus, but unfortunately, so did my parents

I’ll never forget the last thing my Grandpa said to me….
….are you still holding the ladder?

I saw two blind people fighting. I said, “I’m rooting for the one with the knife.”….
….they both ran away.

I invited my math teacher to my house. I told her to get here at ten past one….
….so she turned up at eleven.

I know it’s you going around stealing enclosures….
….whether I’m right or wrong, please don’t take a fence.

I told my friend that I was selling my car….
….he didn’t buy it.

 

WOW #29

I was going to publish this post earlier, but I didn’t remember to.   😳  A previous A To Z was about the word “Forgettery.”  This one’s about the same thing, just with the slightly more upscale name of

OBLIVESCENCE

The act of forgetting Oblivescence dates from the late 19th century and is a later spelling of obliviscence, which dates from the late 18th century. The spelling oblivescence arose by influence of the far more common suffix -escence. The English noun is a derivative of the Latin verb oblīviscī “to forget,” literally “to wipe away, smooth over.” The Latin verb is composed of the prefix ob- “away, against” and the same root as the adjective lēvis “smooth.”

Oblivescence has such a rich, round, regal sound to it. Today’s modern society is so chock-full of need-to-know technical knowledge, that the history, pride and good manners of our more elegant past are being forgotten.  There was a time when you could call another man a liar without calling him a liar, by saying that his claim was ‘mendacity, Sir.’

Today’s schoolchildren are not taught to add, subtract, multiply or divide. Rather, they are trained to use a calculator.  There’s one inside every computer and Smart phone. “Siri, how much is 12 times 17?” They are not taught cursive writing, but rather how to use a keyboard, or even a little touchscreen.  Kids have forgotten how to pick up and use pencils, pens and crayons, but will soon evolve powerful thumbs from texting.

We have forgotten how to debate, or even how to have a polite conversation with those who don’t totally agree with us. Society has forgotten good manners and tolerance.  We, as writers, should attempt to help others recall kind acceptance.  Remember what your Mother taught you; “Play nice with others!”   😀

The Rest Of The Story

….so I says to him, if Bob can walk his albino python up and down the hall on a leash, why can’t I bring in my llama?? It’s an emotional-support animal too!

There’s a game where you and a friend (or a cell phone) are on an elevator with only a floor or two to go, and someone else gets on. You make some mind-boggling statement, like the one above, and then get off at your floor.

WE ALL WANT TO KNOW THE REST OF THE STORY!

Some of you, especially Americans, may have heard the great Paul Harvey’s radio broadcast of that name, where he tells ‘What Else Happened.’  He had a tale of a male British teen with a pure, sweet voice, who sang in the school choir.

One day, he was viciously elbowed in the face during a basketball game, and completely bit off almost an inch of his somewhat long tongue. A doctor sewed up the end of the rest, but told him that he would never sing again.  After he graduated, he became Mick Jagger – lead singer for The Rolling Stones – and that’s the reason for the Rolling Stone logo.

Back in the Stone Ages, when airplanes still had propellers, a young American man accompanied a Catholic bishop on a business trip to Chicago. As they neared O’Hare Airport, the plane was struck by lightning in a powerful storm, and a couple of the engines stopped.

The Captain came on the intercom and said that they might have to ditch. In the row behind the young man were a couple with an 8-year-old girl.  She began screaming and crying, further panicking other passengers.  The young man undid his seatbelt, and turned around, kneeling on his seat.  He began to make strange, funny faces at the little girl, until she, and surrounding passengers, were chuckling and laughing at him.

The engines restarted, they safely landed in Chicago, and Red Skelton went on to a very successful career in comedy.

I’ve had a couple of these cases where I was able to find out the whole story. During my late teens, my younger brother carried on a summer romance with a girl whose family owned a cottage on our beach.  She and her mother stayed all summer, and her father drove in every Friday night after work.

One time, she went home with him for the week. My brother looked forward to her return on Friday night.  When he arrived, she was shaken and sobbing.  Her father had run over and killed, an Indian on the highway through the adjoining reservation.

Later in the summer, I was hanging out with a lad that my Mother had warned me to stay away from. He told me the story of, earlier in the summer, going out to the Res (already risky) and getting drunk with a group of Indian teens – unpredictable, and far riskier.

They were walking beside the highway, facing traffic, when he stumbled into one of them. Instantly angry and irritated, the guy gave him a great shove, and he landed in the ditch.  The force of the push knocked the other drunken teen over backward….right into the path of the oncoming car.

I took my car to a mechanic for service. He also worked on the personal car of an Ontario Provincial Police officer.  His patrol area was down the big highway, almost to the airport on the edge of Toronto.  He told my tech a story.

One night, around 3 AM, he was sitting in a turn-around, with his radar gun aimed back up the road. At that time, the highway was almost empty.  Suddenly, a set of headlights appeared.  That in itself is unusual, because lights usually start as a distant glow, and increase.

The radar readout increases and gets more accurate as the vehicle gets nearer. The speed limit is 100KmH (about 62.25 American MPH)  He watched, stupefied….50 – 100 – 150 – 200 – 225 – 250 – 275 – 300.  Just as the blur passed him, the screen read 304KmH!

He thought about starting the cruiser….and then just shook his head.  He considered radioing for assistance, and shook it again.

About a month later, another friend of the mechanic dropped in for a visit. He owns the ‘Robin Masters’ Ferrari from Magnum P.I. because he’s a computer-tech genius.  He fixes big computer systems when they crash, and he’s on-call 24/7/365.  Calls can come at any time, and from Toronto to Taiwan.  Losses can be thousands of dollars per hour, so time is of the essence.

He was wakened about 2:00AM, with a computer-crash in Dubai. A chartered plane would be waiting at the Toronto airport.  Get there ASAP!!  He told his buddy that the highway was almost empty, so he really let’er out.  “It’s a good thing that there were no cops out that night, because I was really flying.  Musta been doin’ almost 300 K.”

And now you know ‘The Rest Of The Story.’

Come back in a couple of days, and I’ll tell you another fascinating story.   🙂

’18 A To Z Challenge – Bipolar Disorder

The hippie days of peace, love, beads, and acceptance of other people and their foibles, are long dead. The Age of Information has created more strongly held, and stridently expressed opinions.  I think we can all agree that, despite the push for a more tolerant and more sensitive society, it seems that when given the opportunity to be unkind, people still tend towards putting others down (especially when they have anonymity or the distance that a computer screen provides).

The ‘highway’ is too often clogged with intolerance, now it’s just “My way, or I’ll hate you.” It doesn’t seem to matter what the issue – abortion, religion, politics – often mixed together, there just seems to be no middle ground anymore.  Nobody wants to listen to the other guy.  It’s become two greatly divergent solitudes, neither side ‘winning’, but screaming louder and louder, to appear to.

Red States – Blue States – The United States may soon become the Un-United States. It’s as close to Civil War as it has been for over a century and a half.  Political ‘dialog’ often degenerates to the likes of:

Democrats are treasonous bastards.
Republicans come from lesbian free-thinkers

The Democrats once again want to tear this country apart simply for slavery.  What disgusting selfish, evil scumbags these partisan shitstains show themselves to be. Again, the lying, lack of remorse, pervasive harm and pain, and mocking of well accepted standards and boundaries, this is the basis of evil, folks.

I am saddened by the rift in the United States, because people are less able to discuss the issues and ideas, and much more able to insult the fact that an idea is either left or right. The ridicule and the name calling on political affiliation has turned political dialog into hateful attacks.

Insulting the people who lean one way or the other does not bring our current society forward. We won’t always agree, but we can take a look at what the other side is attempting to achieve.

Come on kids, play nice with each other. As David Bowie asks in his song, Under Pressure, “Why can’t we all just get along, get along, get along??” At least listen to why the other fellow thinks and feels the way he does. Nobody learns anything while he’s doing the talking, and nobody gets his way all the time! 😯

WOW # 28

For all you either/or, bits and bytes, take it or leave it, coming or going, ones and zeros lovers, the Word Of the Week is

UNARY

Adjective – consisting of, or affecting, a single element or component; monadic

Word origin for unary – 1923, from Latin unus “one” (see one ) on model of binary, etc.

You just knew that, if there’s the word ‘binary’, for ‘two,’ guys like me mean that there’ll be a “My way or the highway” word for ONE.

Actually, it’s not even a Hobson’s Choice word between a poor option and nothing. It shows a mandatory, single course of action.  ‘Free Will’ is an illusion when unary is in town.

In my teens, one day my Mother told me to perform some chore. Trying to show some I’m growing into an adult spunk, I asked, “or else what?”  She calmly replied, “There’s no ‘or else’.  It needs doing.  It’s your job. Do it!”

Much as many of us value our independence, freedom, and options, there are times that life just throws one of these, It’s gotta be done, and there’s only one way to do it curve-balls at us.  Now there’s a word for it that you can throw back.   🙄

Childlike Grace

When I was a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Blogger Barry, in a recent post, said that he’d halted on his path to becoming an Atheist. He does not say that it was because he was taught that Atheists are evil, nasty or sinful, but that is the reason that many ex-Christians won’t admit that they have become Atheists.

Tired of the judgemental, accusatory, denominational bureaucracy and hypocrisy, he still wished to identify as ‘spiritual.’ It is quite possible to be spiritual, without being a member of any Christian sect.  His last stop before getting off the Christian bus, was at Mormon.

He still visited Atheist websites, and admitted that he had remained a Christian. He was amazed at the vehemence of some militant Atheists, who insisted that any and all religions were harmful.  He admitted that, being ‘inside the box,’ perhaps he did not understand the claim.  He asked, if he was not harming himself, or anyone else, how could his being a Christian be harmful?

When we tell small children that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy exist, are we harming them, or society in general? Probably not, or only a minuscule amount.  However, when children get to be 7, 8, 9 years old, we tell them the truth, and show them reality.  To allow them to grow into adults who still believe in things like the Tooth Fairy, can cause harm in a variety of ways.

If an individual or sect is allowed to treat their particular and peculiar superstition as reality, then both the believers and society are harmed. It also inserts the thin edge of a wedge.  If one is, then all religious opinions must be accepted, no matter how strange or unreal.  The more people there are, who treat fantasy as fact when dealing with life and the general public – the fewer people who cannot and/or do not, deal with secular reality – the more harm is caused, both to the believers and to society.

Critical thinking is incredibly hard, but also incredibly important. We can’t learn and grow without it.  We have to question our own ideas and motivations, so that we don’t get stuck on there being only one correct, acceptable idea.

Next comes the slippery slope. Once strange unprovable beliefs are allowed, the holders quickly try to turn acceptance into licence.  If politically powerful enough, they try to pass laws enforcing membership in their sect, and making disagreement with their views into heresy and apostasy.  Kindly old George H. W. Thousand Points Of Light Bush once said that Atheists should not be allowed to be American citizens, or patriots.

My opinion of Blogger Barry’s intelligence and mental strength, based only on reading a few of his posts, is that he is not, and probably won’t ever be, directly harmful to society. Sadly, he’s one in 10,000 – or maybe a million.  There are countless hordes, who are only too willing to use their religion as a justification to inflict physical, mental, emotional, social, or financial pain and damage to countless other victims.

God is for the wise. Religions are for fools.  If only more people would grow out of the childish need for an imaginary friend to protect and guide them, and become adult enough to face the universe and life as it really is, and not just how they wish it were.   😦  😯

Fun On A Plane

A gay couple set off for their honeymoon; On the plane to Hawaii one says “I’ve got a kinky idea, what if we had sex?”  ”Are you crazy? Here, on the plane? It would be awkward, everyone would watch us doing it” replied the other.  ”Man, nobody is even paying attention to anything. Look!”  He stands up and asks loudly, “Could I have a pencil, please? Nobody gives a damn. Everyone is sleeping, reading, looking out the window, etc.  They really wouldn’t care then, would they?”

So they proceed to have wild sex on the plane. Later, when the plane arrives to the airport and the people are leaving, the stewardess sees an old man who threw up all over his shirt, even his pants are soaking in the filth. ”Sir, you should’ve asked for a bag!”  ”I didn’t dare” whispers the old man. “A few rows ahead of me, I saw a man asking for a pencil and he got fucked in the ass…”

***

NASCAR is very popular in North Korea, because it has no rights.

***

I envy guys for being able to say ‘SUCK MY DICK’ as a sort of ‘Fuck You.’ If I said ‘LICK MY VAGINA,’ I’d have 47 tongues in my pants.

***

A young executive is leaving the office late one evening, when he finds the CEO standing in front of a shredder with a piece of paper in his hand.
“Listen,” says the CEO, “this is a very sensitive and important document here, and my secretary has gone for the night. Can you make this thing work for me?”
”Sure,” the young executive says. He turns the machine on, inserts the paper, and presses the start button.
”Excellent, excellent!” says the CEO as his paper disappears inside the machine. “I just need one copy.”

***

A guy is driving around the back roads of Southern Ontario, and he sees a sign….

.…in front of a broken down shanty-style house: ‘Talking Dog For Sale ‘. He bangs on the door and the owner appears and tells him the dog is in the backyard. The guy goes into the backyard and sees a nice looking Labrador retriever sitting there. ‘You talk?’ he asks. ‘Yep,’ the Lab replies.

After the guy recovers from the shock of hearing a dog talk, he says ‘So, what’s your story?’ The Lab looks up and says, ‘Well, I discovered that I could talk when I was pretty young. I wanted to help the government, so… I told the CIA. In no time at all they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping.’

‘I was one of their most valuable spies for eight years running… But the jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn’t getting any younger so I decided to settle down. I signed up for a job at the airport to do some undercover security, wandering near suspicious characters and listening in. I uncovered some incredible dealings and was awarded a batch of medals.’ ‘I got married, had a mess of puppies, and now I’m just retired.’

The guy is amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what he wants for the dog. ‘Ten dollars,’ the guy says. ‘Ten dollars? This dog is amazing! Why on earth are you selling him so cheap?’ ‘Because he’s a Bullshitter. He’s never been out of the yard.’

***

An old man was sitting on a bench…… when a teenage skater punk sat down next to him. The kid has tattoos and piercings and a Mohawk dyed a half a dozen different colors. He notices the old man won’t stop staring at him so says to him “What, you’ve never done anything fun in your life old man?” To which the old man calmly replies “Got drunk once, broke into the zoo and fucked a peacock, was just wondering if you were my son.”

***

Never hold your farts in! They travel up your spine and get into your brain.  That’s where shitty ideas come from.

Flash Fiction #158

PHOTO PROMPT © Yarnspinnerr

HOT TIME IN THE OLD TOWN

He’d thought through this move and job change well…. At least he thought he’d thought it through well.  More money, better perks, better advancement chances – yup!  Best of all, no more Pennsylvania winters, so cold they froze his ballpoint pens off, and shovelling snow, drifted as high as an elephant’s aah…..  eye.

Only after moving did he think – if Atlanta’s that warm in the winter, how hot is it in the summer?? Don’t Georgia houses automatically come with air-conditioning?  Praise Saint George Carrier!  What was his promised installation date again??  He might have to sleep in the office until then.  😯

***

Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

***

Click on the title if you’d like to hear Leon Redbone sing A Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight, a happy little ditty from 1927, a time of Flappers, bathtub gin, and no worries about nuclear war.

I Have Poor Relatives

Once upon a time there was a poor little boy from a poor family. His Father was poor.  His Mother was poor.  The maid was poor.  The cook was poor.  The butler was poor.  Even the chauffeur was poor. One day, he went to his father and asked if he could have a pony.  His Father said no, because they were too poor to afford a pony.  The poor little boy went to his piggy-bank, took out enough money to buy himself the pony, and put the rest back….

We are often so busy with our own lives, that without really obvious clues, we think that everyone is pretty much like ourselves. It takes an observant and analytical mind to notice the struggles of those at the bottom of the financial, pissed-on trickle down ladder.  I am distressed that a $180 pair of distressed designer jeans looks just like my four-years-old $24.95 Wal-Mart pair.

This is why politicians, who are already being paid far too much to do a job that their predecessors did without pay, as a Public Service, feel free to waste millions – Billions – of our dollars, and still fraudulently pad their office budgets and expense accounts.  They have no idea, and don’t care, what it’s like at the bottom of the pile, and it’s been this way since long before Marie Antoinette offered to “let them eat cake.”

It is just as illegal for a millionaire to sleep under a bridge, as it is for a homeless man to do so.

I recently had a conversation with a friend. It seemed that both of us were keeping an eye on family finances – total income vs. expenses – only I think that he was doing it at a much higher level than I was.  I’ve never asked how much he makes.  It’s none of my business, and doesn’t affect our friendship.

With his experience, training, intelligence and education, I suspect his annual salary is somewhere north of $100,000/year. His talented wife probably makes half of that.

With my learning disabilities, and poor short-term memory adding to my tendency for procrastination, I’m lucky to have accomplished what I have during my life. About 15 years ago, before I retired to live on Government and company pensions – with a bunch of overtime, I grossed $44,000, but the wife had been ‘downsized.’  Earlier, when I made $38,000, she added $19,000.

This is not a whine! I’m still doing better than a lot of people, including the little guy who busks in the cold, outside the local grocery store.  As an engineer, Jim Wheeler says that it is not worth his while to stop and pick up a penny.  I still grab the occasional one or two from the ‘Need A Penny/ Leave A Penny’ tray at the corner store.  People abandon them because the Mint has stopped making them.

I always check the reject chutes of the coin-counting machines in stores. Sometimes I find Canadian coins, as well as foreign ones which I add to my collection.  It’s quick and easy to eyeball the change chutes of vending machines.  I’m not too proud to (discreetly) stick my finger in the few payphone chutes that still exist.  The last time I did, I found $2.  It’s all relative.  $2 to a millionaire is nothing, although Bill Gates (or his minions) cashed a check for 39 cents.  $2 to someone who is eating cat food (We don’t.) means a lot.

Having pets is a wonderful experience. I would not want to get rid of any that we have, but the wife wants even more.  I cannot convince her that, between food, treats, litter, and vet bills, each animal costs us about $1000 a year.  I would sooner have that money to pay down our still-existing mortgage, or use it to take enjoyable trips, while we are still physically capable of doing so.

Some people waste money, too often MY money!  Some people scrimp and save, show restraint and fiscal control, and budget their money to get them the most they can.  I’d be patting myself on the back, but I’m busy crawling around on the floor, trying to find that quarter I dropped.  I’ll be back up at the computer in a couple of days.  Please come back again then.   😉

’18 A To Z Challenge – A

Aaugh!  Is it April again??  I just awoke from my winter’s hibernation, and shambled out of the Den, to find other folks well into the alphabet already. As usual, I’m off to a slow start.  Using my Great Awakening as a cheat for the letter A, I’ll make this one a theme-reveal post – “Theme” in only the loosest of senses.

I thought that I might use ‘Trope’. It’s a figure of speech that includes ‘interpolation,’ which is just a fancy word that means the (sometimes)nonsensical non-sequiturs covered by the promised rambles inside some of my rants.

I decided instead, to go with Chaos And Confusion.  I provide the chaos, and you are confused.  This is completely different from last year’s theme, which was Confusion And Chaos, where you were confused, and I provided the Chaos.  Got that all straight??  Good, now explain it to me.

Alms! Alms for a hungry beggar!  Hungry for inspiration – not food.  (Have you seen my tummy recently??  Happily, NO.  My belt size threatens to become greater than my IQ.  [And there you have the first of my non-sequitur interpolations.])

If any of you have a word or theme, for any letter, that you think would be safe to let me loose with in public, feel free to submit it.  I would welcome all suggestions.  I can do serious research, or just my usual, disorganized babble.

Please stop back again soon for a post that doesn’t use any letters of the alphabet, but definitely in two weeks, when I use the letter B to batter the American Bible Belt, and Donald Trump’s banality.  😯