Archive for the 'Humor' Category

I just picked up a $15 rice cooker at the same store where I once bought a very fine $8 toaster. Do I know value or what. But here is the thing. A rice cooker is passive — you put in the rice and water and turn it on and it does the rest. Do you even have to turn it off? I don’t think so. It just sits there, stewing. Sort of female-like. The cooked rice stimulates one’s appetite. It also takes a long time to get ready in the evening. Tradeoffs.

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This photoshopped parody of a Newsweek cover is simply hilarious. Everyone knows that Obama’s sudden “conversion” to support of single sex marriage is pure fund raising pander. It might cost him some votes but black churches are unlikely to turn on him and the others who would be offended won’t be voting for him anyway.

The one beneficial effect is to instantly end the questions raised about evangelical support of the Morman candidate. Obama has consolidated Romney’s base for him in one statement.

Sorry. Couldn’t resist.

Recently I was walking in River North and a restaurant was touting their “local farming” element. Fine but that hay bale seemed to be sprouting some extra fungus. I don’t think Dan would feed it to his animals.

I liked this gull on a lamp.

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(With apologies to the Obama perpetual re-election campaign. Other people have had a go at this concept – I think The Life of Brian is one of the funniest, but I wanted to have a go at this myself. )

3 Years Old – Under President Eisenhower, Celia stays home with her younger brother, as her full-time work-at-home Mom helps her get ready for school by reading aloud to her, supervising her playtime and providing a secure home environment. She will join thousands of students across the country who will start kindergarten ready to learn and succeed.

17 Years Old – Under President Nixon, Celia takes the SAT and is on track to begin applying for college … which college program includes two years at a local junior college capped by two years at a state university – a public university system that the taxes paid by Celia’s parents over the years have subsidized. The public high school which Celia attends is in a working-class suburb, but offers academically enriched courses for those students who qualify for them.
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Chicagoboyz community member John Wolfsberger, Jr. emails:

I actually feel some sympathy for Elizabeth Warren. She was a law professor, unfairly besieged by the republican War on Women (TM), apparently sitting alone in the faculty lounge. In an effort to meet new people and make some friends, she decided to make herself more interesting by revealing her Native American Ancestry. She really did nothing wrong.
 
However, the incident has led me to an interesting insight. Ms. Warren tells us she is 1/32 Native American based on her great, great, great grandmother being Cherokee. For simplicity sake, let’s refer to her as the g3 grandmother. It occurred to me that if two of her g4 grandparents had been Cherokee, but parents of different g3 grandparents, Ms. Warren could still be considered 1/32 Native American. Furthermore, if 4 of Ms. Warrens g5 grandparents had been Native American, and parents of different g4 grandparents, Ms. Warren would still be 1/32 Native American. And so on.
 
That insight led me to a bit of research. Homo ergaster, the forerunner of Homo Sapiens (which is all of us) left Africa between 1.8 and 1.3 million years ago. Taking the nominal value as 1.5 million years, and assuming 20 years per generation, that means my (roughly) g75,000 grandparents were ALL African. True, more recent ancestors lived in Bavaria, the Vorarlberg and Ireland, but they were ALL African as well, by THEIR (roughly) g74,997 grandparents.
 
Since every single one of my ancestors was African, shouldn’t I be able, a la Ms. Warren, to claim minority status as an African American? And if I can, shouldn’t everyone else in the United States be able to as well, regardless of where their more recent ancestors resided for a time?
 
This seems eminently reasonable. There is only one issue to resolve: if we all belong to the exact same Victim Group (TM), who’s the oppressor group?

A little late to this but it’s pretty good.

In 2010, India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation unveiled a hand grenade packed with ground ghost chilli seeds. When deployed, the grenade created a dust cloud so spicy that trial subjects were left blinded and suffering breathing problems for hours. According to the lead scientist behind the chilli grenade, ghost chilli is pungent enough to choke terrorists into surrender.

(source)

I was watching the TV show “Metal Evolution” (now I am going to have to watch all the shows online, too) when I heard a quote so funny I almost had tears running down my face.  They had an interview with Gary Holt of Exodus and he said (on the topic of his band “selling out” to the record company)

If I had to do it all over again I’d just keep writing songs about killing people

Popular joke in the halls

Q: What do you call Call of Duty in Pakistan?

A: Sims.

I think this generation hasn’t quite internalized multi-culti.

A long time ago I decided to make an effort to look my best. Conventional wisdom said guys get better haircuts at female hair shops because the standards are higher. (Actually the prices are higher because getting your man-hair cut at a chick place is like taking your Camry to the Rolls Royce dealer for an oil change. Also some female barbers hairdressers give high-maintenance haircuts that look good when you are all teased and pouffed up as you leave the shop but require gels and blow-dryers to maintain the look. But I digress.) Anyway I started getting my haircuts at places that called themselves salons.

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I am an ethnologist embedded within Chicago for St Patrick’s day. I am building the ecosystem for drunks that are the “pillars” of the St Patrick’s day experience.

You need crowds of drunks in green and the ubiquitous taxi drivers. I talked to a cab driver recently and he said that St Patrick’s day is the biggest day of the year for cabbies – bigger even than New Year’s eve. This is probably due to the fact that it starts earlier – he said he is generally picking up smashed patrons at 10am – and it goes all day and all night long.

Other pillars are porta-johns and bagpipers. While bagpipers are needed for police and fire funerals this is likely the only day of the year when playing the bagpipe gets you action with the ladies.
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Be vewy, vewy quiet … you never know when a cow will be watching…

Thomas William Ward was born in Ireland of English parents in 1807, and at the age of 21 took ship and emigrated to America. He settled in New Orleans, which by that time had passed from French to Spanish, back to French and finally landed in American hands thanks to the Louisiana Purchase. There he took up the study of architecture and engineering – this being a time when an intelligent and striving young man could engage in a course of study and hang out a shingle to practice it professionally shortly thereafter. However, Thomas Ward was diverted from his studies early in October, 1835 by an excited and well-attended meeting in a large coffee-room at Banks’ Arcade on Magazine Street. Matters between the Anglo settlers in Texas and the central Mexican governing authority – helmed by the so-called Napoleon of the West, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna – had come to a frothy boil. Bad feelings between the Texian and Tejano settlers of Texas, who were of generally federalist (semi-autonomous) sympathies had been building against the centralist (conservative and authoritarian) faction. These developments were followed with close and passionate attention by political junkies in the United States.
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A while back I read a book called “Ravens in Winter” and found the lives of crows and ravens to be very interesting. The book describes how they communicate food sources to one another through some type of unknown mechanism and their general high intelligence level.

When I was in Norway I came across a Carrion Crow (or at least I think it is; I looked it up on wikipedia) that found a clam-shell container that usually contains take out food. The crow obviously knew that it was correlated with food and poked it with its beak and shook it about deliberately before throwing it to the ground in disgust. I took a video and uploaded it and you can see it in HD here which I find very humorous.

Before 9/11 I traveled to Tasmania and had an encounter with what I believe was a Forest Raven, although once again I am not an ornithologist. The bird was AMAZINGLY persistent – when our car pulled up to a clearing it jumped on the side mirror (the window was open) and looked me right in the face (with big yellow eyes) and started cawing for food. I rolled up the window and it sat right on the hood of the car staring at me through the dashboard. I have never seen an (ostensibly wild) bird so unafraid of humans.

Cross posted at LITGM

Does this mean Justice Breyer is now a mugged liberal?

I was going to vote republican, but since some bimbo with cleavage likes Obama, I have no choice but to discard my reasoned analysis and run with the herd. It’s the only intelligent thing to do.

-Commenter “Pizzullo” in Reply #10 to Politico’s article about “Obama Girl”

I know that in Louisiana, they are trying to create a culinary demand for nutria, since the wretched beasts have outworn their welcome in the wetlands there. They were once imported from South America for their fur – but I have no idea why American grey squirrels were inflicted upon Great Britain. You’d think they had enough problems of their own without adding imported, fluffy-tailed tree rats to them … maybe it was payback for that fool who wished America to have every critter mentioned in Shakespeare.
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