Mattress Police News Briefs #2

California Town Fights Influx of Wal-Mart Shoppers

Ripon, California has escalated its struggle against big box stores such as Wal-Mart by taking aim at what it sees as the root of the problem: Wal-Mart shoppers. "We evaluate any prospective residents against a profile of the typical Wal-Mart shopper. Poor folks, single mothers and morbidly obese people are generally not allowed to move into town. When a community-destroying corporation like Wal-Mart looks at our city, they see that it's populated with snooty rich folks who frown on unreasonably low prices, not to mention child labor." City councilperson Karen C. Nautigan chafed at the suggestion that the policy was tantamount to discrimination. "We have no problem with blacks, gays, or any other group. Well, we are a little suspicious of the blacks. But only because of the crime and poverty they bring."

Ripon Farmer in a Quandary: Apples or Oranges?



John Kort of Ripon, California recently acquired 40 acres of farmland with the intention of planting apple trees, but now he is having second thoughts. "The other day someone suggested it might be better to plant oranges," Kort said. "I was really set on apples, but oranges make sense too." Kort asked around, but found no one with the expertise to help him decide between the two types of trees. Finally he sought help from the agriculture department at the University of California at Davis. UC Davis is one of the nation's premier centers of agricultural expertise, but Kort found no help there either. "This really is a pickle," said Tim McSweeney, head of the university's agriculture department. "We simply can't find any basis for comparison between the two fruits." McSweeney plans to request an $80 million federal grant to study the problem.

Fundamentalists Change Tactics in Fight Over Ten Commandments

A fundamentalist Christian organization announced today that they would be drastically changing their tactics in the fight to keep the Ten Commandments displayed in court houses and other public buildings. "We realize that a lot of people have a problem with the idea of the Ten Commandments as a whole," Joel Bazeer of Citizens for the Mosaic Decalogue said in a statement today. "So our idea is to break the Ten Commandments down into more palatable chunks and build support for them one by one."

The CMD will start by proposing a constitutional amendment with the text of the first commandment. The amendment reads simply:

I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

"I don't see how anybody could be offended by that," said Bazeer. "It's simply a statement by the Almighty God saying that we should all worship Him to the exclusion of all other gods."

Bazeer dismissed the idea that the Acknowledgment of the Supremacy of the Almighty God Amendment violates the principle of the separation of the church and state. "The term 'separation of church and state' doesn't even appear in the text of the Bible," said Bazeer.

"You mean the Constitution?" asked a reporter.

"Er, yeah, Constitution," said Bazeer.



Ford Halts Development of New Vehicles, Citing Shortage of Good Car Names

Automaker Ford, Inc. today announced an indefinite hiatus in the development of new automobiles. CEO Alan Mulally explained that Ford had simply run out of names to give to any new vehicles. "The Mercury Mariner was kind of our last gasp," Mulally said. "And even that name was borderline unusable." A class action lawsuit was recently brought against Ford by consumers who attempted to use the Mariner as an amphibious vehicle.

Some analysts have traced Ford's problems to an unwillingness to make up new words, as GM has done with the Alero, Lumina, and Aztek. "We're not going down that road," Mulally said. "Where does it stop? I mean, Kia has just released a car called the Magentis. What the hell is that? If I bought a Magentis, I'd feel compelled to drive it straight off the lot to my vasectomy appointment."

Other car companies are also feeling the car name pinch. Executives at Volkswagen are rumored to have held several all-night car-naming sessions during which they channel surf between ESPN and the Discovery channel while under the influence of psychotropic substances. These sessions are thought to be responsible for the names Golf, Phaeton, Polo and Touareg. When asked to comment on the inspiration for these names, a senior Volkswagen executive responded, "We named a car WHAT?!"


Get the latest news and up-to-date suspicions regarding the weather at humor-blogs.com.

Lost Caption Contest Winners

Yes, it's the moment you've been waiting for. No, I'm not going to shave. It's time to announce last week's caption contest winners!

We had a lot of new contenders in the finalists, but the clear favorites were two lovely Snarksters. Coming in third was the mysterious and slightly unhinged Drive-By-Blogger.

First Place: Crazy Aunt Neva from PuppyToes.

The note says "you guys suck" and it's signed "MacGyver".

Second Place: Minka the Ice Queen.

Jack: "Diesel, this one says your character in this show ranks on spot 59, right after the imaginary horse and before the palm tree to the West entrance! Give me the gun, I am supposed to kill you off!"

Third Place: The Drive-by Blogger, proprietor of the eponymous blog.

Convinced that the island is the perfect location for his new fertility clinic, Diesel stands guard over his own, rather ample "contribution" to future generations.

Congratulations, everyone. Sorry about the trouble with the stupid voting mechanism. I'll get it working better for the next one. I'm going to switch from TV to film for this Friday's contest. I'm planning a special tribute to a director who died 27 years ago tomorrow. Who is it and why do I happen to know the day he died? Well, you'll just have to find out on Friday.


Humor-blogs.com will keep you tuning in every week even though you have no idea what's going on and you're pretty sure the writers don't either.

Appearing to Succeed

Note: This is the conclusion of the Saga of the Missing Front License Plate. You can read the first part here, but to be honest it's not like this is going to make any more sense if you do.

At the end of the first part of this story, I had decided to go to court to clear up the charge of Aggravated Procrastination. To do this, I needed to go to the court office first thing in the morning and get my name on the list. So I showed up that Wednesday at 8:30 am, went home for 4 hours (during which time I admirably remained almost completely sober), then turned around and drove back to the courthouse. As I entered, I was promptly examined by a swarthy security guard with a thick accent who was wearing a turban and had a beard down to his waist. I decided, in a remarkable display of high-mindedness, not to find this the least bit ironic.

While I waited in line I noticed a sign that had been pasted to the wall. It read:

No Shoes
No Shirt
No Tanktops
No Court

I considered asking how many tank tops I was expected to bring into court; whether I was supposed to wear them or carry them in a bag; if the judge had a color preference; etc., but decided against it. Again, do not aggravate people who know a lot of people who carry guns, no matter how confused their signs are.

The actual court proceedings were rather uninteresting. It was an awful lot like Night Court, actually, except that it wasn't night, and the judge didn't do any magic tricks. Surprisingly, though, Mel Torme did show up for a cameo.

The judge eventually called my name, and I pretended I didn't know English. "Nolo contendre," I said, and the judge smiled and told me that he would knock the fine down to $110 bucks. I could hardly believe my ruse had worked. Silly judge, I thought. I've got this guy wrapped around my habeas corpus.

It turns out that $110 actually means $130 in government dollars. Seriously. California passed a law after 9/11 legislating that any fine is actually $20 more than it is. They didn't actually increase the fines; they just said, "Whatever your fine is, it's still that same amount. Oh, and give us another $20 for, um, security." Because when you steal $20 from millions of Californians, you need a lot of security.

So then I got to wait in line again, this time to hand them my check for One Hundred Ten Dollars and 2000/100ths. While I waited at the Traffic Offenses window, various low-lifes and victims of low-lifes came and went at the Miscellaneous Grievances window (It may not actually have been called that). One guy seemed to be tagging along with a friend of his, who was involved in some kind of domestic dispute. Either he had requested a restraining order against someone, or someone had requested a restraining order against him, or he and someone had filed a mutual restraining order against each other, or something along those lines. Anyway, when the guy was done, his friend walked up to the window and said, "Can I get one of those?"

This surprised me, as I had never thought of a restraining order as an impulse purchase. Apparently the clerk had made it sound so appealing that this guy had been sold on the concept. Well, almost sold. "Do I have to fill out all those papers?" he said. Rule of thumb: If ten minutes of paperwork is too much of a hurdle for you to get a restraining order, you may want to reconsider whether a restraining order is really the right choice for you. Maybe you'd be interested in our Change Your Phone Number and Stop Wasting Tax Dollars on Your Domestic Squabbles program?

Anyway, I paid my fines, so I'm back in the good graces of the state of California. I'm sure they're happy, because now that I have both license plates on my car, they can literally get me coming and going. Actually, now that I think about it, if I had had both license plates when the cop pulled me over, I probably would have gotten a huge speeding ticket, since he wouldn't have had the option of giving me the license plate ticket instead. I should probably take that front one off again, just in case. Maybe I'll get to it tomorrow.

All in all, it wasn't such a bad experience, although it did take up a few hours of my day. I drove like a madman all the way home. Places to go, things to do.


At humor-blogs.com, you may not know how fast you're going, but at least you'll know where you are.

Thursday Shout Out: Thinking Bloggers

I've been accused of a lot of things, but this is a new one. I have now been accused not once, but twice, of making people think. I'm sorry, I don't know what what wrong. Shrink Wrapped Scream said that I write with "acidic irony." I'm not sure what that means, but it sounds dangerous, like maybe I should be wearing gloves or something. And then Mr. Fabulous from Pointless Drivel goes and says that he envies my "prose." I didn't even know I was writing prose. What the hell is going on here? Somebody hold me.

So I guess now I'm supposed to name five bloggers who make me think. So let's see. There's Jocelyn from O Mighty Crisis, a pro whose prose is to my prose as my prose is to Fab's prose, proving my prose a prosaic pose.

Then there's Al's blog, Up the Hudson with Gun & Camera, which is all about exotic places that I've never been to, like Central Park and the Statue of Liberty and stuff. Also there are questions, just like on a 5th grade social studies test, which I take about as seriously.

Thud Factor covers a variety of topics, but I particularly enjoy his posts on religion and spirituality. And he enjoys the fact that at least one person enjoys those posts.

O Ceallaigh's Felloffatruck Publications is also a bit of a hodge-podge of stuff from a guy who seems to have so much going on deep within his brain that sometimes I get the feeling when I read his blog that I'm seeing bits of the Loch Ness monster surfacing from the depths. I know all the slimy bits and pieces fit together somehow, but I can't quite figure out how.

And finally there's Doug from Waking Ambrose. I haven't made it over to Doug's blog for a while because dammit, he actually makes me think too much. I feel so much pressure to come up with a clever comment on his updated Devil's Dictionary items that sometimes I just can't risk going over there. Who can afford to spend three hours staring at the computer screen trying to redefine the word eccentricity?

Boy, with all the thinking I'm doing, I may have a shot at becoming the world’s smartest man.

So the rules of this meme are:

a) People should respond to this if, and only if, they are tagged.

b) Those who have been tagged should now list five blogs that they themselves find makes them think, as well as also including a link to this post, so that people can easily find the origin of this award.

I'll see you tomorrow with the conclusion of my run-in with the law. And don't forget to vote in the caption contest. If you don't see a voting button under the contestants' names, just click on the black area underneath. There's a button there somewhere; it's just hard to see. I'll post the winners on Saturday.

Failure to Appear

As a person who has no job, no schedule, and very few commitments of any kind, it's essential that I drive ridiculously fast so as not to waste any of the 11 waking hours at my disposal on any given day. I average around 40 miles per hour, but that number goes up considerably if I'm out for more than 20 minutes.

I live on a dead end road, so to go anywhere I have to first get on a road charmingly called I-99 Frontage. The speed limit on this road is 40 miles per hour, which I take to mean that I should drive no more than 40 miles per hour faster than the traffic on the highway next to me. After all, Einstein proved that all motion is relative, so who's to say how fast I'm "really" driving? And of course Heisenberg demonstrated that you can't know where you are and how fast you're traveling at the same time, which means that any cop who has pinpointed my velocity doesn't have a chance in hell of catching me.

I tried to explain this to the cop who pulled me over a few months ago. "Do you know how fast you were driving?" he asked. "No," I said cheerfully, "But I know exactly where I am!"*

He was kind enough not to ticket me for speeding, letting me off with a stern lecture about blind corners, stopping distances, and -- I think -- something about the Romulan neutral zone. Thank God they don't test you for ADD when they give you your driver's license. Anyway, he did that cop thing where they find some innocuous offense to give you a ticket for that you didn't even know was illegal, because they feel sorry for you and don't really feel like hauling your ass to jail for attempting to outrace the earth's rotation. They might, for example, give you a ticket for driving under the influence of 18th century romantic poetry, or having one eyelash too few. In my case, I got a "repair and report" ticket for not having a front license plate.

(Aside: Who knew you even needed a front license plate? I thought the front license plate was an optional thing, like voting or registering for Selective Service.)

In point of fact, I did have a front license plate. It was in the back of my car, under the carpet and a pile of 4" ABS pipe fittings, where admittedly it would be difficult to see from a distance. I didn't tell the nice cop about this because (1) I didn't want him to have to ticket me for something more egregious, such as Misuse of General Relativity for Personal Gain (I believe that's a "one-eight-niner" in police lingo); and (2) I had forgotten it was there.

I was given 30 days to "repair" the problem and "report" to the proper authorities. It took me roughly 29 days to repair the problem, the "repair" process consisting of the following steps:

Days 1-21 Denial
Day 22 "Where the hell is that license plate? Hey, I bet it's still in the back of my car!"
Days 23-25 Procrastination
Day 26 Attach license plate
Day 27-28 Procrastination
Day 29 Go to police station to have a cop sign the ticket

So you can see, I just made it under the wire. Then, unfortunately, I spent another 68 days in denial about the "report" part, which would have consisted of simply showing up at the court office to display the newly autographed ticket. During this period various "courtesy" notices began arriving in the mail, courteously informing me of the myriad fees, fines, levies and dams (as in, "dam, that's a big levy") that had been added to the original ticket amount of $10. Warren Buffet couldn't have turned $10 into $425 that fast. The main thing that had been added was a "Failure to Appear" charge, which makes it sound like there was a courtroom full of people with nothing to do but twiddle their thumbs while they anxiously awaited for me to show up. "What time did he say he would be here?" they fret. "Should we call?"

So finally I went to the court office to pay the fines. A lady in a forest green blouse sat behind the window. As I began to explain my situation, she stood up and another woman in what appeared to be exactly the same blouse took her place. "We're switching," said the second woman.

"Ok, well you're wearing the same shirt, so this should be an easy transition," I said.

I got the feeling that I wasn't the first one to point this out to them that day. Note to self: Do not immediately alienate someone who may have discretion over whether you have to pay several hundred dollars in fines.

Anyway, I showed them my "courtesy notice" and there was some discussion about whether they could reduce the amount or not. It turned out that they could not, but I had the option of going to court to get the amount reduced. It sounded like all you had to do was show up and you were pretty much guaranteed to get the amount knocked down quite a bit. Evidently Woody Allen was right: 90% of life is just showing up. I thought for a moment. "How long does that usually take?" I asked. Because again, I'm a busy, busy man. Places to go, things to do. I can't be sitting around for 2 hours just to save a few hundred bucks.

I was assured that it usually went quite fast. So I said ok, and they said that I needed to show up at 8:30 next Wednesday to put my name on the list for the afternoon. I didn't ask why I couldn't just put my name on the list now, as it presumably had something to do with the fact that persons of my unsavory character couldn't be trusted to keep an appointment without being forced to physically drag our asses down there first thing in the morning to demonstrate that we were still alive and reasonably sober.

"At the very least, you should be able to clear up that Failure to Appear," said Ms. Greenshirt. Yes, I thought. One might think I had cleared it up already by in fact appearing. Whatever. I didn't mind appearing again. I'm pretty good at appearing. Sometimes I appear seven or eight times a day without even knowing it. I can even appear drunk or hungover if I need to. I believe that sort of thing is generally frowned upon in the courtroom, though, so I resolved to appear sober.

I went home and worked on my legal strategy. This consisted of falling on the mercy of the court, invoking the fifth commandment, and something about the Romulan neutral zone, I think. I was pretty hammered.

Wow, this is a long story. I've decided to grant your request for a continuation. See you on Friday.



I always appear sober on humor-blogs.com.


*I didn't actually say this. In fact, I didn't even make up this joke. It may seem odd to steal a joke that virtually no one will get, but isn't that the kind of shiftless irrationality that makes one truly original?

Vote!

I'm over at Central Snark today with some valuable money-saving tips.

Meanwhile, I've narrowed down the caption contest entries to ten. Keep in mind that I have an odd sense of humor, so if your caption didn't make the cut this time, don't feel bad.

You have until midnight on Friday to vote. I'll post the winners on Saturday.

And I'll be back tomorrow with a post about my brief stint as a fugitive from Johnny Law.

The Contenders

Jack: "Diesel, this one says your character in this show ranks on spot 59, right after the imaginary horse and before the palm tree to the West entrance! Give me the gun, I am supposed to kill you off!"

- Minka

The note says "you guys suck" and it's signed "MacGyver".

- neva

Oh great, it says we've been "yielded" by those bitches Dustin and Kandice... Still, I don't think we're allowed to shoot 'em.

- Harmonica Man



Convinced that the island is the perfect location for his new fertility clinic, Diesel stands guard over his own, rather ample "contribution" to future generations.

- The Drive-by Blogger



Okay kids, you've got one hour to clean up this mess or you're grounded...no fishing, no hiking, no playing with the Others.

- Em



In this week's episode of Lost, the cast is transported into a chapter out of Lord of the Flies.

Piggy: “My auntie told me not to run on account of my asthma.”

Diesel: "Okay. Order is lost. I've crushed the conch. Now, let's get Piggy!"

- Chrissy121875



"Hey Hugo, this one is for you. Delta is retroactively charging you for two seats."

- Murph

Right, I'm off hobbit-hunting.

- Lonie Polony

Uh-oh. Looks like that mail boat had some precious cargo. Listen up: "Little Ronnie Grabenhorst writes, 'Sometimes I feel like a little girl, Casey, but when Jessica offered to give me her own heart for my much needed transplant, I just had to cry. So could you play 'Heart Light' and dedicate it to the best friend a boy could ever have?'"

- Gawpo

There's a teller window somewhere missing a shitload of these whatever these are...

- furiousBall

Opinion Polls & Market Research

The Others don't want you to know about humor-blogs.com.

Talk Like a Man

Note: I've read that one way to increase the popularity of your blog is to write "topical" posts. According to the dictionary, topical means:

pertaining to, or applied externally to a particular part of the body

While I was trying to figure out what body part this blog post should be applied to, 2 weeks went by and the the expiration date passed. I think you can probably still use it, but its effectiveness may have decreased significantly. Which may be a good thing, as I have no idea what its intended effect was. But whatever you do, don't take it internally.

So everybody is talking about this Don Imus guy, and what a shame it is that after being on the radio for 40 years, he accidentally slipped up and said something offensive and got fired for it. The remarkable thing to me is that he evidently avoided saying anything offensive for nearly 40 years. Can you imagine talking for three hours a day for 40 years and never saying anything offensive? You should get some kind of medal for that. Even Moses lost his temper after 40 years of shtick on the wilderness circuit.



On the other hand, imagine being one of Imus' faithful listeners, anxiously awaiting the latest G-rated words of wisdom from their beatific role-model, only to be subjected to hate-filled epithets such as "nappy-headed hos." Can you imagine the shock these listeners must have felt? I mean, it's bad enough to refer to a group of respectable young women as "hos." Having lived in a deep well on an Amish beet farm for the past 18 years, I have never heard such language. I have never, for example, heard a man refer to his girlfriend or wife as a ho. I've never heard a woman refer to her friends as hos. I've never heard a white woman refer to a black woman as a ho, nor a black woman refer to a white woman as a ho. I have never heard two women of mixed race jokingly calling each other hos, nor a pair of conjoined twins referring to their adopted lesbian parents as hos. And I most certainly never heard six Chinese women calling seventy-eight Pakistani midgets and their albino monkey hos. And if I had ever heard the word "ho" used in any of these contexts, I would have been outraged each and every time, because if there's one thing I can't stand, it's intolerance.

Anyway, a lot of people seem to be ready to pull the plug on talk radio and replace it with something less offensive, like rap music. But being the high-minded and judicious person I am, I decided to find out what the fuss was all about. So I listened to some "talk radio" for a few hours one day. The show I found most interesting talked about the "homosexual agenda." Have you heard about this? It was a real eye-opener for me. I mean, I know that they tend to be detail-oriented, but who knew they had an actual agenda? That's just cool. I wish straight people had an agenda. As far as I know, the only thing we've agreed on is to split up boy/girl. If there's any kind of schedule for where or when we're supposed to do this, nobody's shown it to me. Let me tell you, if they had, it would have spared me some awkward moments in college.

The radio show didn't go into specifics, but several items on the gay agenda are evidently related to corrupting the youth and destroying America. For my gay readers: I hope you don't mind me saying this, but it seems like you're going a bit beyond your charter with stuff like this. I mean, it's every person's right to want to corrupt the youth and destroy America, but I just don't see what any of that has to do with being gay. I pictured the gay agenda being something like this:

4:30 hair appointment
5:10 buy new shoes
6:00 Drinks with Steve!

I know you're probably not supposed to do this, but if you're gay and you're reading this, I'd really appreciate it if you could send me a copy of the agenda. Don't worry, I'm not going to post it or anything. I'm just hoping to get some ideas for the straight agenda. Also, I'm wondering what the timetable is for abolishing the nuclear family and gayifying all of us breeders. Because if I'm going to be turned gay like next week, I really need to start doing some situps or something.

Maybe I should start a radio show. I could raise concerns about all kinds of groups that I find a little suspicious. Like, what are those Shriners up to exactly? I mean, we all love kids, but doesn't it seem like they love kids a little too much? And the weird little cars. Sure, they claim that they're just for parades, but how long before you're stuck behind one of those damn things on I-5? You see where I'm going with this. What's the Shriner agenda?

The key to the show's success would be to never actually talk to any Shriners. Or, if I did talk to one, it would only be to demonstrate how the Shriner agenda is Wrong for America.

Diesel: Isn't it true, sir, that the Shriners want to destroy all that is good and decent about America?

Shriner Dude: Actually, we're a charitable organization that funds --

Diesel: Silence! What about the allegations that your group is an offshoot of the secretive order of the Knights Templar?

Shriner Dude: Well, originally the purpose of the Shriners was to protect the --

Diesel: I've heard enough of your lies! I'm only going to ask you this once: WHERE ARE YOU HIDING THE HOLY GRAIL?

Shriner: The Holy... I'm sorry, but I didn't expect this sort of Spanish Inquisition.

Michael Palin: NO ONE EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!


I have some more stuff worked out, but I'd better not go into details before I've confirmed the availability of Graham Chapman. So for now, I can only offer a very rudimentary outline of the show. I'm thinking something like:

4:30 News update
5:10 Weather and traffic
6:00 Drinks with Steve!


Humor-blogs.com wants to corrupt the youth, destroy America, and prevent unsightly hard water stains.

Caption Contest: Lost

Yes, it's that time again. Apparently a few of you were confused last time about how this works, so let me 'splain it to you, good and slow. Every two weeks I post a scene from a popular TV show or movie. I digitally insert myself into the picture (and no, "digitally insert" does not mean I stick my finger in it, Gawpo). So one of those sorry-ass lost souls below is me. I'm the one whose skin tone suggests I actually might have spent some time on a tropical island.

Your job is to come up with a suitable caption. Submit your caption(s) in the comments before midnight Monday, April 23. I'll pick my favorite ten and post them in a poll for you to vote on them. The winner takes home an autographed digital copy of the picture and possibly some leftover Dharma Potato Chips.

Good luck!



If you don't click on the humor-blogs.com link once every 108 minutes, my teeth will start to hurt.

Thursday Shout-Out

I'm going to try to start doing these on a regular basis again. Now that I've achieved blogsuperstardom, I like to occasionally give back to the blogging community by picking up trash along the highway and posting links to my fellow bloggers. I don't really have a preference. Either way, I get to wear a reflective orange vest.

First, thanks to MacBros at MacBros' Place for nominating me for the Blogger's Choice Award for best humor blog. I'm not sure if MacBros is a single person or a pair of conjoined twins or what, but either way, I get to wear a reflective orange vest. Wait, where am I? Anyway, a few days ago I suggested that you vote for Mr. Fabulous' blog Pointless-Drivel. Now that I have been nominated, however, I would like to retract that suggestion and instead plead with you to vote for Pointless-Drivel. Seriously. It's not like I'm going to win anyway, and Fab has a shot at not only beating Dooce but actually giving her a trouncing of the likes she hasn't seen since she got canned for blogging about her job. And that's what blogging is all about, right? Embarrassing other bloggers.

Speaking of which, I'd like to also welcome a couple of new humor-blogs.com members. Humor-blogs.com, by the way, has jumped directly from being marginally worthwhile to spiraling completely out of control without ever touching on the kind of modest success I had hoped for when I started it. I feel like Britney Spears' manager. Anyway, I like to occasionally welcome a few standout bloggers, and today I'm singling out Zoning Out Again and Pessimistic Optimism. Why these two? Well, they're pretty funny, for one thing. Also, one of them is as cute as a button.



I mean, come on. Look at that face. She's like a cute little puppy. Yes you are. YES. YOU. ARE!!!

Also, I'm pretty sure at least one of them is stalking me. I'm not sure which one, but I guess it doesn't really matter. The important thing is that either way, I get to wear a reflective orange vest.

Don't forget, tomorrow is Caption Contest Day! Admit it, you'd feel lost without me.

Semi-automatic

This isn't the post I had planned for today. I had written some nonsense vaguely related to the Don Imus story, but suddenly nobody is talking about that any more. Funny how quickly our idea of what's truly offensive can change so quickly.

There aren't many things more offensive than a red-hot chunk of metal the size of your smallest knuckle traveling 800 feet per second. I was thinking about this a few days ago as I was firing a 9mm Glock semi-automatic pistol into a target. Well, near a target. If you're a bad guy, you don't have much to fear from me. But if you're the bad guy's dwarf henchman standing to the left of the bad guy's leg, watch out. Apparently my "grouping" is excellent, which is a nice way of saying that I miss the target in an extremely precise way.

It had been a while since I fired a gun, and I was struck by how incredibly powerful those things are. First of all, guns are LOUD. My neighbor came over after firing a few rounds to ask if I minded the noise. His house is about 200 yards away, but even inside my house I could have easily heard the sound over the TV. "Not if you let me shoot," I told him in all seriousness. Which is how I got invited to this little target practice outing. He handed me the gun and gave me some basic instructions. There's no safety on a gun like that, which means that it's about 16 times easier to release a barrage of bullets than to open a bottle of children's vitamins. Point and shoot. BANG! It was loud even with a headset on. Without it my ears would have been ringing after three shots.

After every shot the gun recoils. I couldn't hit the target even on the first shot, and without taking five seconds to re-level after every round my aim would have gotten wilder and wilder. After emptying two clips my index finger felt raw. Imagine holding a heavy metal rod in your hand. Then imagine someone whacking at the rod with a hammer. Over and over and over. That's what it feels like to fire a gun. BANG! BANG! BANG!

My point is this: When you fire a gun, you feel it. It's not like the movies, where the hero sails through the air, gun in each hand, firing round after round as the bad guys fall. I can hardly imagine directing that power at another human being. Even a human being that I really, really didn't like. Even a human being who was stealing my TV. I'd rather let him have my car and my wallet and whatever else he wanted rather than feel that explosion in my hand and know that I had directed that force at another person.

Now imagine directing that kind of force at a person, taking a moment to level the gun -- calmly, deliberately -- and taking aim again. And again. And again. Over and over, until the gun is empty and your ears ring and your hand starts to hurt. Then reloading, and doing it all over again. Not at bad people, not at people who are taking your stuff or hurting your children. Just people. Young, intelligent people with loving parents and their whole lives ahead of them. This is not a tragedy. A tragedy is a plane crash or an earthquake. This is something far worse. The only word that comes to mind is atrocity, and even that word has been cheapened by atrocious overuse.

"It was like something out of a movie," the witness says. Survivors said the same thing after 9/11. And so we come full circle, the reality of the horror overwhelming our ability to take it in. To those in the middle of it, trying to make sense of what is going on, the only point of reference is something completely unreal: the movies.

Ironically, it does not seem at all like a movie to those of us on the outside. I was in the waiting room at the doctor's office with my 7 year old son shortly after it happened. He was supposed to be getting a cast put on to replace the temporary splint they had given him after his treehouse fall, but the doctor was apparently a little backed up. Funny how scheduling appointments every seven minutes has that effect.

CNN was playing on the TV. We sat there for two hours -- the length of a movie -- listening to the same repeated sketchy accounts. I bet I heard the phrase "at least 22 dead" fifty times. And we were trapped there, listening to this soundtrack over and over. Sartre's No Exit came to mind. Hell is CNN Headline News, I thought.

This is an admittedly self-centered way of looking at these events. My suffering was hardly on the same level as that of the students and professors in the middle of it. And yet, as anyone who has lived through a tragedy knows, the worst part is what happens afterward, when you try to go on with life. Everything is the same, yet completely different. You feel like you're living a pantomime, a kind of cheap mockery of your previous life. All the little details are the same, but you've somehow lost the thread of the story. Life has become a tiresome sequence of events without meaning.

The question facing all of us, whether we are on the inside or the outside, is this: Is life a movie, complete with a central theme, problems that must be overcome, and a satisfying resolution? Or is it simply CNN Headline News, endlessly repeating the same horrific and meaningless events, without context or explanation? Or is it somehow both? Is the horror and meaninglessness the very thing that we are here to overcome?

Kurt Vonnegut, one of my literary heroes, just died. I'm glad he didn't live to see this, because it would have been more evidence for his theory that mankind is "evolution's greatest mistake." Vonnegut saw life as a pointless succession of events. His characters were forever being yanked around by forces so far beyond their understanding and control that even their most valiant attempts to determine their own destiny were rendered absurdly comical. Vonnegut insisted that his writing was not motivated by any great artistic yearning, but simply by his need to make a living. And in case you are thinking, "Aha! So at least he valued living. He must not have thought life was completely pointless!" -- remember that he once tried to kill himself with booze and alcohol and continued to smoke unfiltered cigarettes right up to the end, not caring -- and probably hoping -- that they would hasten his demise.

And yet... I don't think that Vonnegut really believed to his core that life was hopeless. Implicit in the word "mistake" is the idea that things should be different than they are, and perhaps could be different than they are. Vonnegut obviously believed in the value of humor, which is the sentient being's way of simultaneously acknowledging one's powerlessness in the face of circumstances beyond one's control and of claiming mastery over them. It's like Vonnegut was saying, "Look, I know the universe is beyond my control, but the universe can't stop me from being pissed off about that fact."

When something like this happens, it's an unmistakable reminder of just how much is beyond our control. But that doesn't mean we have to simply sit back and let the death toll wash over us. Life isn't a movie, with a tidy resolution, but it doesn't have to be CNN Headline News either. If I believed that life was a meaningless sequence of events, I'd be no different from that gun-toting loser (I refuse to use the word "gunman"), trying to at least make it into the news before my time is up. There is meaning in life, and it can't be eradicated by one sociopath with a handgun.

I believe that, and the universe can't stop me.

Now in Snark-o-Vision!

I'm coming down with a cold and I didn't want to get germs all over my blog, so I'm over at Central Snark today blathering about dumb jokes and robots. I'll be back here tomorrow with a thoroughly disinfected, and probably disaffected, post.

Did Someone Say "House"?

Recently I've done a treehouse post and a Dr. House post, so I thought it was about time I did a plain old house post. Here's some pics of the addition we're building. "Addition" is kind of a misnomer, since we're adding about 2,000 square feet to a 1,200 square foot house.




Here's a view from another angle. That's the palm tree oasis I just planted in the front. Neat, huh? To the left you can just see the driveway that we just poured that leads to our faux garage door. It's like one of those "drawers" in front of your sink that doesn't actually open. Except that people probably don't sleep in your sink.




This one is just a fabulous shot of the mobile home and above-ground pool next to our house. Also, I thought the sky was kind of cool.




Did I mention that we get some way cool evening skies around these parts in the spring? This was taken facing the opposite direction, toward the orchard behind our house.




And another one of the same cool sky, nicely framed by the opening of a future window. Too bad those troublemakers got in the way again.




I'll be back with more of the usual nonsense on Wednesday. And don't forget, this Friday I'll post the next caption contest pic!

Caption Contest Winners!

First Place:

"Examine you?! House, they don't make latex gloves thick enough for me to examine you!"

- Pavel from Probably Pavel.


Second Place:

"You blinked."

"Did not."

"You so totally blinked."

"Did not."

"Did too. I just saw you. You blinked."

"Did not."

"My stare has remained unwavering. You, however, blinked."

"Did not."

"Hey, um, LOOK! There's a latex glove masquerading as a condom hanging on the wall behind us!"

"Is not."

- Jocelyn from O Mighty Crisis


Third Place:

"I see dead people. But then, I'm not a very good doctor."

- neva from PuppyToes and possibly Central Snark


Yes, Pavel took home the autographed copy of the doctored photo (get it?) once again, barely edging out Jocelyn's one act play. The length of Jocelyn's caption may have been a factor, as well as Pavel's shameless begging for votes on his site. But then, we like shameless self-promotion around here, so it's all good. And Neva, who rivaled Candace this week in sheer number of entries, finished a respectable third.

I am putting the finishing touches on next week's pic, and I think it's my best one yet. What will it be? And will Pavel once again edge out the others? (That's a hint, by the way....)

I'll see you Monday with a brand new post, as per our agreed-upon schedule.


There are no losers at humor-blogs.com. Because we shoot them.

"Are You the Responsible Parent?"

Last week I built a tree house. This week my son broke his arm.

There is, in the inevitable succession of those two statements, some support for a deterministic view of the universe.

Technically I didn't build the treehouse. I took the easy way out: I put a house in a tree. See?



Climber, my seven-year-old son, is not known for taking the easy way out. Let's say, for example, that he needed to get down from said treehouse. One option would be to use the ladder. But using ladders does not earn one the name Climber.

I was grading our future driveway with the tractor when my five year old daughter, Speed Pony, ran over to me and told me that Climber fell and hurt himself. I found Climber lying in the dirt under the tree, crying. His elbow looked strangely flat, as if his forearm had been pulled out of the joint. We hopped in the car and sped to the emergency room, where we then proceeded to wait for an hour while climber moaned and cried, his forearm hanging in a sweatshirt I had tied around his neck.

It's a surreal experience, and wholly incomprehensible to a seven-year-old, to sit in a waiting room with a dislocated elbow while medical professionals meander about on the other side of the glass, drinking coffee, doing paperwork and performing other tasks that could probably wait until after all of your limbs are properly attached. I glanced around the busy waiting room, trying to locate anyone with a condition remotely as severe as Climber's. A big black guy wandered in, having hit his head. "It really hurts," he told the woman behind the desk. There was a kid in soccer getup lying on his side across two chairs. There was an overweight woman who had been wheeled in by an EMT. "Here are your medicines," the EMT said, handing her a plastic grocery bag filled with prescription bottles. A few minutes later I saw her smoking outside, and wondered if the cigarettes had been in the bag. I supposed that if it weren't for the cigarettes, the bag would have been a lot lighter.

Finally we made it in, having been deemed worthy of "prompt care." I can only imagine the kind of dilatory care that was reserved for the "It really hurts" guy. A nurse asked us insanely irrelevant questions and made Climber stand on a scale, presumably to see whether a broken arm weighs more than a regular arm. Then we waited some more.

While we were waiting, I had some time to think, which is never a good thing. It occurred to me that an emergency room is like the Bizarro universe version of a car dealership. I know, I'm insane, but stick with me. First, an emergency room is staffed with highly educated professionals who actively ignore you, whereas a car dealership is staffed with high school dropouts who eye-rape you as you step onto the lot. Second, the goal of the car dealership is to sell you something that you don't need and can't afford, right now, before you've had a minute to reconsider your decision, whereas the goal of the emergency room is to make you wait for six hours so you can think about whether it's really worth it to fork over a $50 copay to have a limb reattached. Third, the clientele of a car dealership tends to be made up of yuppies and wealthy retirees, whereas... well, the emergency room's isn't.

But what prompted this comparison was the realization that the doctors and nurses didn't seem to notice that I existed. Every comment and question was directed to my wife, as if I were just an unnecessary appendage dangling by a bit of cartilage. "Is he on any medications?" "How far did he fall?" "Has he had any other injuries?" I had the answers to all these questions too, but their gazes flitted between my wife and my son. I felt like raising my hand. "Me! Pick me! I know this one!" Throw me a bone here, people.

My opportunity to get my participation grade came when Mrs. Diesel left momentarily to take Speed Pony to the bathroom. A nurse began to ask me some questions, and I thought I did an admirable job of demonstrating that I was an involved parent who was only indirectly responsible for his son's deformed elbow. But I got the sense she was asking me easy questions, like you do when you're waiting for a preschooler's mommy to show up. "How old are you?" "Do you like trains?" "When did your mommy say she was going to be back?" And sure enough, as soon as Mrs. Diesel returned, I was once again banished to the realm of child beaters and vestigial appendages. "Were there any men in the vicinity who could have yanked the arm right out of the socket at the time of the injury?" they asked my wife, who nodded knowingly. I went to get some coffee.

I took Speed Pony to Grandma's, and by the time I got back, Climber's arm was in a sling and he was coming out of sedation. "I was sleeping," he complained through a drug-induced haze as the nurses poked and prodded at him. When they finally left him alone, he told us that he had been dreaming about some third graders who were pushing him around.



Apparently they had popped his arm back into place (that would give me nightmares about bullying third graders too!), and all was well except for a chip of bone that had broken off the tip of his elbow. This required an MRI, and depending on the outcome of that, may require surgery. I'm very nearly 37 years old and I've never had an MRI or surgery. I've never even broken a bone. I feel like I've been cheated out of some defining experiences in my life, and I'm not just saying that because my seven year old has tried morphine and I never even got drunk on Natural Light until I was 17.

Anyway, Climber is now wearing a cast and in no apparent pain. We'll see in the next few days what additional treatment, if any, he needs. The other day I caught him trying to climb up to the treehouse, so I guess it's safe to say he's not experiencing any serious psychological trauma.


You can always count on prompt care at humor-blogs.com.

Vote!

Ok, folks. I've narrowed down the list of captions to ten. Vote for your favorite one. I'll post the results on Saturday. Thanks for participating, everybody!



The Finalists:

"You blinked."

"Did not."

"You so totally blinked."

"Did not."

"Did too. I just saw you. You blinked."

"Did not."

"My stare has remained unwavering. You, however, blinked."

"Did not."

"Hey, um, LOOK! There's a latex glove masquerading as a condom hanging on the wall behind us!"

"Is not."

- Jocelyn

"I see dead people. But then, I'm not a very good doctor."

- neva

"I don't like the looks of that hairline."

-Mr. Fabulous

For once, Diesel was grateful for his wife's bad taste in ties. Set against his equally hideous shirt, it created a distracting strobe, ensuring his victory in the staring contest.

- Not Karen

"Examine you?! House, they don't make latex gloves thick enough for me to examine you!"

- Pavel

House finds his antisocial soul mate in a chance encounter by the used condom dispenser.

- bice

"You wanna go, Vicodin Boy? 'Cause we'll go!"

- Robin

"You, House, are a very, very, very nice House. With two cats in the yard, life used to be so hard. Now everything is easy 'cuz I look like you."

- Gawpo

What the hell DID you expect somebody named "Diesel" to smell like?!?

- Joel Bezaire

Dr. Diesel: No, I'm not 'feeling very sleepy', and no I won't take off my pants!

- Candace

Get Free Opinion Polls

Everybody's a winner at humor-blogs.com.

Snarktastic

Salutations, adoring sycophants! I'm over at the Snark today with still more advice on how to be funny, and maybe even get your work published on birdcage linings across the country!

I'll be back tomorrow with a post that smells like freshly baked bread but tastes like freshly burned hair.

One more thing: Humor-blogs.com member Mr. Fabulous from Pointless Drivel has been nominated for Best Humor Blog in the Blogger's Choice Awards! I know, it seems like it should be Bloggers' Choice Awards, but apparently the awards are the choice of just one very influential blogger. I frankly don't fully understand it, but please vote for Mr. Fab. He's one of us!

Oh, I almost forgot: I'll be picking my favorite captions from the caption contest and posting a poll later today!

May the Force Be With Me

Occasionally in my periodic journeys across the blogosphere I will run across a particularly erudite blogger decrying what they refer to as "organized religion." Now as you'll know if you've been around here for a while, I am a religious person. On the other hand, as you'll know if you've had a chance to inspect my sock drawer, I'm no advocate of organization. The solution to my plight would seem obvious, but I have as yet failed to locate a denomination that is sufficiently disorganized to meet my spiritual needs.

Certain charismatic sects are fairly disorganized and things can get a little out of hand at some of those black baptist churches, but such mildly informal affairs are still a far cry from the unmitigated spiritual chaos for which my soul yearns. Why, for example, must we always go to church at 11am on Sunday morning? What's wrong with 2:37pm on the third Tuesday of every month whose name has a numerological value that is prime? And why the same rituals every time? Maybe some day we could play Hungry Hungry Hippos and beat each other with soup ladles rather than sing songs and pray. And what I wouldn't give to just once walk into a place of worship and have absolutely no idea who I'm going to be worshiping that morning. I'd be like, "Really? Kenny Rogers? Cool." And then I'd join the rest of the congregation in a stirring rendition of Coward of the County. Or maybe I wouldn't. Because who's going to make me?

I've also heard that more wars are started over religion than anything else. This troubles me deeply, because I have not ONCE been asked to serve on our church's religious wars committee. I mean, I've probably played more Risk than just about any other member of our church. Does that count for nothing? I could advise them, for example, not to make Europe their power center because of all the borders you have to defend, and to avoid retreating to Australia unless you really want to spend the next three days on the losing end of a war of attrition. You might outlast the Presbyterians with that strategy, but you do NOT want to try that with Jesuits or Shiite Muslims.

No, instead I have to serve on committees that are concerned with unbelievably dull things like making sure needy people have adequate food, shelter and medical care. Occasionally I make a motion to start a war, and I just get blank stares. Last time I moved that we declare war on the Quakers. They're pacifists, for crying out loud. We could kick their asses, confiscate their oats, and be home before dark. But nobody would even second the motion. I don't get it. What's the point of being religious if we're not going to start any wars?

Disorganized people don't start wars. Well, occasionally they start them, but they never finish them. Frankly, disorganized people don't finish much of anything. It's part of their charm. Hell, sometimes they'll start a thought

If we were to eliminate organized religion, we would eliminate the number one cause of war. Of course, we'd still have the number two cause, which would then become number one. I wonder what that would be? Land? Food? Oil? The desire for power? Freedom? I'd say we should probably eliminate them all to be on the safe side.

It surprises me how few wars are fought in the name of evil. I think Darth Vader is the only one who ever stood up and said, "Hey, we're going to be the bad guys in this war. Oppression, cruelty, suffering, that's us. I'm going to hire gaunt lieutentants with clipped British accents, put the word 'Death' in the name of our headquarters, blow up peaceful planets for giggles, and wear an outfit that would make Satan shit his pants. Who wants in?"

Using the Dark Side of the Force must have about the same effect as eating paint chips, because those guys were none too bright. If I were the Empire's marketing director, I'd have made a few little changes that would have gone a long way toward improving their image:

OLD	NEW
Galactic Empire	Democratic Federation of Free Planets
Storm Troopers	Customer Service Representatives
Star Destroyer	Nuclear Fusion Cleanup Vehicle
Dark Side of the Force	Look! Ewoks!
Death Star	Moon o' Fun
TIE Fighter	TIE Fighter (What, it's just not very threatening-sounding)

In fact, if you were really clever, you could probably find a way to convince people that the Dark Side of the Force was really the Light Side, and vice versa. You'd use the language of the Jedi order to promote your own nefarious purposes, and people would get confused and not know which side to support. And the really great thing is, even if you lost the war, you'd have convinced a lot of simple-minded people that Dark = Light and Light = Dark and that these Jedi bastards are just a bunch of troublemakers.

Anyway, nothing of that sort is likely to happen here on earth, where the world's religions continue to cause untold problems. Sadly, I think I'm about to give up my quest for a truly disorganized religion. The problem is that as soon as you involve other people, you have to start worrying about schedules and doctrines and people who refuse to see things your way no matter how hard you explain it to them. In the end, my religion is nobody's business but mine and God's -- and He'd better watch it, or it's going to be just me pretty damn quick.