Category: Just for Fun

Spend a Fortune Getting Stuffed

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

I’ve been reading reviews of a four-star French restaurant in New York where, if you’re stuck waiting in the lounge, they play French hip-hop “music” at you. That’s to soften you up for the prices.

When you’re finally seated, you can order a demi-tasse of soup–a little less than a shot-glass full–for beaucoup bucks; and if you and your wife want to spend $700 on a meal for two people, you can have them serve you a different kind of wine with every course. You can have lobster meat on mango slices for an appetizer. The magnifying glass is an extra $50. It’s $35 for this, $125 for that, and for all I know, you can get them to throw in clams on the half shell in maple syrup for another $75.

If they’re going to insult you, why not just call you rude names and punch you in the nose? Why be so subtle? Why charge you so much money for it?

Everything’s in French, so if you don’t speak the lingo, you won’t know what you’re getting. Well, I know what you’re getting… and it’s not a nice word.

Why a Devestated National Economy Is Good for You

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

I knew it would be only a matter of time before our glorious national leaders told us that, even as Global Warming makes the weather cold, and wet wood burns the best, so their war against prosperity would enrich us.

So who cares that the Congressional Budget Office predicts that Obamacare will destroy 2.5 million full-time jobs in America? Why, it’s a blessing in disguise! Ask any leading Democrat.

Being out of work, the Senate Majority Leader tells us, is just a form of “free agency.” You know–like in baseball, when you’re a free agent, you get boxcar-loads of money to join up with a team.

Being out of work, the former Speaker of the House tells us, will give you time to “write poetry.”

And best of all–and they’re all saying this, all of a sudden–unemployment is so much better than “job-lock.”

Job-lock? What’s that?

Well, it’s having to work for a living, and not being able to stop and lie around on the couch and watch TV. Obamacare will free 2.5 million able-bodied Americans from job-lock. Or, as that other dimwit said a couple of weeks ago, it’s long past time we made “participation in the work-force truly voluntary.”

As long as you don’t need money, why work? It’s just not fair, that you should need money to live! Free stuff for all! Free living quarters, free food, free phones, free video games! Lemme at that goose-quill pen–I feel a major poem coming on!

All my stuff, it should be free:/ I oughta be paid for bein’ me.

Why should I have to go out and work,/ When I can just live off some other jerk?

How many of you out there are willing to keep on working so that I can keep on writing poetry?

Fight job-lock! Get unemployed today!

Are Centaurs Real?

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Reader Basil Dimwittie emailed me last night to ask, “Are centaurs real? I think I seen one in my back yard while it was snowing.”

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_t5NiD0yr2Uc/S8THZOtoMNI/AAAAAAAAAE8/ABJrja4UgXA/s1600/centauro.jpg

Well, Basil, the answer is “Yes.” According to the federal government’s Institute of Useless Studies, who spent $400 million of our tax dollars to prove it, the centaur is an extremely rare horse-and-human hybrid caused by a combination of Global Warming and Homophobia. Those few centaurs who survive their difficult childhoods–the horse half grows much faster than the human half–are housed in a secret facility operated by the Administration for Sustained Silliness.

Researchers find that adult male centaurs are almost uncontrollably aggressive, with a penchant for bad puns and a thirst for alcohol. Adult females are almost as bad, but smaller.

Centaurs are not to be confused with senators. If you have trouble telling them apart, just remember that a centaur has a functioning, sort-of human brain, and a U.S. Senator doesn’t.

In ancient times, centaurs lived in environmentally responsible groups, far from human towns and villages. They have become rare because most people refuse to believe in them, and that makes them down-hearted.

Nowadays it is almost unheard-of for a centaur to escape from the A.S.S. Centaur House. Confidential sources report that the government is currently trying to breed centaurs with pug dogs in order to spend more money on inane and pointless projects.

If you do see a centaur, the safest response is to offer it a bottle of Jack Daniels and hope it goes away. Do not attempt to contact the authorities. They won’t take kindly to your having seen a centaur.

The Prehistoric Super Bowl

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Long before the Super Bowl we know, there was a great annual sporting event of which our Super Bowl is just the faintest echo.

Archeologists have discovered the remains of the original three-sided field where they played for the hai-baba-rebab championship of the entire Wadja-Noh civilization. As this encompassed all the lands and cities between the Oxus and the Amu Darya rivers, in the vast reaches of central Asia, you can imagine the title game was a major event.

Scholars have not yet deciphered all the rules of the game, but we know enough to say it was very similar to football: except that instead of an air-inflated football, a 35-pound granite cube was used. This militated against punt plays; but a successful field goal meant an instant, automatic victory.

In those barbaric days, the losing team was beheaded and the heads auctioned off to the fans. These were collectible.

The recently-translated Epic of Hai de Ho, Big Man of Touchdowns tells us that the championship game was called the Ho Khum, and was preceded, and frequently interrupted, by short dramas of a religious nature. These often attracted more attention than the game itself. There were also contests among the fans to see who could perform the most prodigious acts of gluttony while watching the game–which usually took up 12 hours, or even more. The epic claims that Hai’s number one fan, Tubbo Gutz, finally burst open and died as a result of overeating.

When the Proto-Sumerians conquered Wadja-Noh, circa 7,000 B.C., they abolished the game of hai-babba-rebab in favor of gladiatorial combats, which they said were much nicer and more conducive to the progress of civilization. The final championship game was played between the cities of Ay-dunno and Ay-dunkayr, to a scoreless tie whose monotony was alleviated by several choking deaths among the fans and a memorable series of religious playlets during the game.

These little shreds of information are all that remain of a once-great nation.

Your Old Toys Are Worth Big Bucks

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

I was shocked when I discovered that my little plastic dinosaurs from the 1950s, manufactured by Marx Toymakers, now sell for anywhere from $5 each, for the really little ones, to $20 each for the big tyrannosaurs and brontosaurs.

I have an awful lot of these. Many of them came in a play set that cost $5 at the time–which my father said we couldn’t afford, it was way too much money; but then I got it as a Christmas present. Others were purchased individually, from 10 cents to 25 cents each. Quite a few I acquired by trading with other kids (“Look, I’ll give you four army men for that stegosaurus”).

Then there are the little dinosaurs that used to come free inside boxes of cereal, and the big wax ones made by the Miller Company. I only have a couple of those, because they were notoriously fragile and easily broken. I don’t know what my Miller stegosaurus would fetch on eBay.

If I sold off all my toy dinosaurs, I would probably get a couple hundred bucks for them (I can just imagine the shocked expression on my father’s face: he worked at the Ford plant, and worked hard, and here we’re talking several weekly paychecks’ worth of stupid little toys).

But then they would be gone, and I’d never get them back. The family members who gave them to me as loving little gifts, they’re all gone.

Too much is gone that was good.

I think I’ll keep my dinosaurs.

The Bloody Mystery of ‘The Beast of Gevaudan’

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

https://writewrotewritten.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/gevaudanwolf.jpg

From 1764-1767, a wild animal terrorized the region of Gevaudan in rural France. To this “Beast of Gevaudan” were attributed at least 200 attacks on human beings, 90 of which were fatal.

The internet is full of articles about it. I recommend the 12-minute video by “The Cajun Cutthroat,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fyTL50hQKM . (If the link doesn’t work, sorry–I’ve done my best. But you ought to be able to find this just by searching for the title: “The Beast of Gevaudan–The True Story”.)

At one point during the Beast’s reign of terror, in 1765, 10,000 men–at the royal government’s expense–were hunting it. They shot 17 wolves but couldn’t nail the Beast. Finally, in the spring of 1767, local man Jean Chastel shot and killed the Beast. The authorities had the carcass stuffed and mounted for display, briefly–and then it was secretly buried somewhere on the grounds of Versailles Palace. Secretly! The French do have a passion for secrecy; therefore modern scientists can’t dig up the Beast and study it.

What was it? A rogue wolf of unusual size, energy, and ferocity, most people believed at the time. But wolves hunt in packs, and the Beast was never seen in association with other wolves. Not to mention that its depredations on the human population are unmatched in history–the shark in Jaws was a guppy, compared to the Beast of Gevaudan.

A wolf-dog hybrid? Maybe. Wolf-dog hybrids often display a highly nervous temperament, and can be more aggressive than a wolf or a dog.

A big hyena escaped from a menagerie? Or a panther? Contemporary pictures of the Beast argue against that. Some of the pictures, though, show the Beast with a long, stiff tail that isn’t at all wolf-like–not a mistake that any 18th-century illustrator would make.

Could it have been some cryptic prehistoric animal–like a mesonychid, or a hyaenodon–inadvertently flushed out of a micro-habitat, with disastrous results? We would know if we could find the stuffed carcass; but I don’t think the French are going to let anybody dig up the grounds of Versailles, looking for it.

Maybe the local bishop had something there when he pronounced the Beast “a scourge of God,” sent to punish the people for their wicked ways. But usually in such cases, God issues a warning well in advance and gives the people time to repent–as we see on many occasions in the Bible.

It certainly gives you something to think about, doesn’t it?

Are You Happy?

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Well, I’m happy that I don’t have to date anymore, or sit in classrooms anymore–but I’m not really thinking about that kind of happiness.

People want Happiness with a capital H. Happiness with a small “h” is a byproduct of other things. I’m writing a new book, I’m cuddling a cat, or suddenly I’m aware of the nearness of God: these things make me happy. But that’s not Happiness that stands alone, as a thing in itself.

People want Self-fulfillment, as if it were a free-standing object that could somehow be obtained. Like “small h” happiness, it is a byproduct of doing other things. You can’t have it all by itself.

Happiness is like heat. Heat exists when it’s produced by something else–combustion, friction, pressure, etc. If you stop doing whatever it is that’s producing heat, you don’t get any more heat, and what you have, ebbs away.

Do not seek for Happiness as an end in itself, because there’s no such thing. Stay away from colleges. Stay away from people who make a habit of being unhappy. Steer clear of Serious Mainstream Literature. Don’t listen to intellectuals.

Do things that produce happiness. If you’re cold, you have to do something that produces heat. This is not rocket science. If you’re sad, keep it simple–read a good book. Fix something that’s broken. Do somebody a good turn. Hum a nice tune. Open your Bible and read it. Pray.

Or just grow up and accept the fact that you’re not going to be Happy all the time.

Only a simpleton or a college English major would expect to be.

A Wee Joke on Intellectuals

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

So the first intellectual says to the second intellectual, “With the thoughts of my powerful brain, I create reality! I can do anything–anything!”

The second takes a flashlight out of his pocket, turns it on, and points it upward. “All right,” he says, “let’s see you shinny up the beam of my flashlight.”

But the first intellectual shakes his head and sneers, replying, “What kind of fool do you take me for? When I’m halfway up, you’ll turn out the light!”

Editor’s Note: Once upon a time, this joke was about lunatics, not intellectuals. But who can tell the difference anymore?

‘Freddy the Pilot’

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Sometimes I just can’t stand it anymore, tracking the slow murder of our civilization by its leaders and sages.

It’s times like that when a book like Freddy the Pilot, by Walter R. Brooks, really comes in handy.

In this outing, Freddy the pig–poet, detective, banker, newspaper editor, football star, traveler, magician–learns how to fly an airplane. In fact, he learns it just in time to use this new skill to save Boomschmitt’s traveling circus from the evil Watson P. Condiment, whose unrequited passion for the circus’s star performer has moved him to hire a plane to buzz and bomb the circus’s performances.

Yes, the whole thing’s totally daft. That’s the beauty of it. Freddy books are billed as children’s literature, but I’ve found they work even better for adults. Brooks’ humor operates on many age levels.

If you’re too old for Freddy the pig, see your doctor. You may be dead.

 

A Fake, Phony, Bogus Holiday

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

According to my Humane Society calendar, today is the first day of Kwanzaaaa–a big fat joke of a pseudo-holiday coined a few years ago by some schmendrick of a black militant, intended to be a substitute for Christmas.

Why is this fake holiday on the calendar? Because libs ‘n’ progs love to push Kwanzaaa. Because they are human debris. And because all sorts of schleps out there are afraid, terrified, that if they don’t pay homage to Kwanzaaa, people will think they’re racists.

I don’t know a single African-American person who celebrates Kwanzaaaa. This is strictly white liberal crapola. This is for noozies, teacher unions, and Democrat politicians.

I mean, really, you have to be a total blithering twollop if you buy a Kwanzaaa card or try to bake a Kwanzaaaa cake. Do something constructive: go soak your Kwanzaaaa head in a Kwanzaaa bucket.