Category Archives: Funny Stuff

Hopefully Mine Will Be Appropriately Offensive

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Esbee lists some euphemisms for "died" that were used in today’s obituaries in the Winston-Salem Journal.  Most involve God which is no surprise for this town, but when I’m ready to chew dirt I hope those responsible for my obituary come up with something quirky, odd and downright offensive.  I was thinking I could mandate it in my will, but that requires the kind of planning everyone knows I’m incapable of so I’ll just leave it to my dearly un-departed.

Commode Wrangling

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Longtime readers of this blog will know at least two things about me.  First, I have a tendency to get stuck dealing with all things turd-related in my house.  Floaters, pluggers and just strange s*** included.  Second, I’m the least handy person ever born.  I can take a thirty minute project and turn it into a two day docudrama.  And of course there’s the fact that everything about my house is all kinds of effed up.  Okay, that’s three things.

Last week we discovered that the toilet in our basement bathroom was leaking.  The leak seemed to be emanating from one of the bolts that secures the tank to the seat so I thought I had an easy fix.  On Sunday I made my way over to Lowe’s and purchased a neat little $4 kit that includes the two 5/16" bolts and all the nuts, seals and washers needed to secure any standard tank to any standard bowl.  Ah, but what was I thinking?  Nothing in my house is freakin’ standard so when I get home and start to put the bolts in I find that the holes in the tank are probably a millimeter too small, which explains why the previous owner had used 1/4" bolts and then put a bunch of green putty around the holes to seal them.  Dumbass.

So I headed back to Lowe’s to see if I could put together my own little DIY kit that ended up costing me about $9.  When I got back home I quickly discovered that my DIY kit would have been just as crappy as the previous owner’s so I took my preferred tack on any such endeavor and just muscled the 5/16" bolts through the holes using the biggest screw driver I could find.  Once I got them through I proudly re-mounted the tank, hooked everything back up, flushed the toilet and watched a fountain of water spew from the main hole that connects the tank to the seat.  Apparently I’d upset some sort of delicate balance between the seat and the tank because no matter what I did to re-seat the tank it continued to spew forth water.

Since I’d already been told by my boss/wife that we’d soon be replacing the toilet when we put a new floor in that bathroom I decided that Easter Sunday was as good a day as any to replace it.  We had friends coming over for dinner so I thought I’d head over to the store afterwards.  Celeste and I headed out after our guests went home and of course Lowe’s and Home Depot were already closed.  Perfect. This morning I arose early and headed off again to the store and purchased our new single-piece toilet. (I wasn’t going to risk another bad hookup experience between tank and seat).  When I got home I removed the old toilet from it’s seat above the poop-pipe…always a pleasant experience… and started to unpack our new toilet.  That’s when I discovered its base was broken.  Much cussing ensued as I re-packed the toilet, loaded it back in the van and headed back to the store.

The folks at Lowe’s were very nice and predictably unsurprised at my tale of woe with the broken poop pot and they efficiently processed my return.  I grabbed the one remaining toilet of the model that I desired and prayed that it was intact.  You see it was the only single piece toilet that didn’t cost as much as a semester of college so if it was broken I was faced with another two-piece assembly that I just wasn’t up to.

Thankfully the unit was indeed intact so I headed home, unpacked the toilet, put the wax seal on the base and then tried to put it on the poop-hole while getting the floor bolts to go through the bolt holes.  That’s when one of the bolts fell through some sort of gap in the floor and disappeared.  Much cussing ensued.  I grabbed one of the old bolts and re-used it and, voila, I had a new toilet installed.  Time elapsed from first effort at repair to final solution, not including breaks: Roughly eight hours.  Trips to home improvement stores to complete task: Four.

If my life was a home-improvement show and it had one of those little "This will take you x hours to complete" graphics it would show two numbers; X would represent the number of hours it would take an average person and X to the 10th power would represent how long it would take me.

Looking for an Excuse

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According to this story on WXII’s site Brennan’s Bridal in Winston-Salem failed to open its doors, its web site was down and the phones weren’t being answered.  As you might expect bridal hysteria ensued, what with brides and their mothers already being near the top of the list of World’s Most Hysterical People.  The folks running the store claim they’re simply closed for restructuring and will be open for business on Wednesday (Feb. 20, 2008) which, if true, means they qualify for the title of Worst Customer Communications program EV-AR!

My favorite part of the story came at the very end, where a guy obviously desperate to get out of his impending doom nuptials used the shop’s woes as a convenient excuse to cancel the wedding.  Smart man, that one.  Yes he’s a butt-head, but being a butt-head doesn’t make you stupid.

And Here I Am Wasting My Time on Shells

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Who doesn’t enjoy a nice stroll on the beach, enjoying the breeze, listening to the sound of the surf and perhaps finding some cute little shells?  That’s pretty much what you do on a beach right?  Not in Bluefields, Nicaragua.  There you walk the beach in search of snow:

Bluefields is a creation of the gods of geography. Located halfway
between the cocaine labs of Colombia and the 300 million noses of the
United States, Bluefields is ground zero for cocaine transportation.
Nicaraguan waters are near Colombian territorial limits, making the
area extremely popular with cocaine smugglers using very small, very
fast fishing boats…

When the Americans get close, the traffickers toss the cocaine
overboard, both to eliminate evidence and lighten their load in an
escape attempt.

"They throw most of it off," says a Lt Commander
in the US Coastguard. "I have been on four interdictions and we have
confiscated about 6000 pounds [2720kg] of cocaine, and I’d say equal
that much was dumped into the ocean."

Those bales of cocaine
float, and the currents bring them west right into the chain of
islands, beaches and cays which make up the huge lagoons that surround
Bluefields on Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast.

"There are no jobs here, unemployment is 85 per cent," says Moises Arana, who was mayor of Bluefields from 2001 to 2005.

Only in (Central) America.

Found via Boing Boing.

The Life of Riley

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Wake Forest QB Riley Skinner has made a name for himself as a player who’s cool under pressure.  Well, next season ought to really test his composure because there’s allegedly a picture of him in the buff that’s made its way down the tubes of the internet.  Thankfully someone put a fig leaf over L’il Riley in the pictures I’ve seen online, but I have no doubt that if there’s a version sans-leaf it will appear soon.  Links below to the site carrying the pic.  First here’s an excerpt from Chris’s Sports Blog:

The blog With Leather somehow
accrued, um, in-the-buff pictures of Wake Forest QB Riley Skinner and
posted one on their site today. Allegedly, these pictures of Skinner
posing au natural for the camera have been making the rounds on the
Winston-Salem campus. I’m not sure I believe the given explanation for
why these pics are out (Skinner sells them to people) but, regardless,
they do exist. This is good news for students at Maryland, N.C. State,
Florida State and Miami, who will all have the pleasure of heckling
Skinner next season when the Deacs travel to their schools for games…

Update:
CV writes that there had been rumors about this floating around for
days. According to his Wake interns, Skinner sent this photo to a
sorority listserv last week and "it spread like wildfire". I don’t know
what’s more surprising: That anyone would send a naked picture of
themselves to a listserv and not expect it to get out or that CV has
interns.

Link to the With Leather post and picture (warning: language might not be safe for work or kids, although all the kids I know curse more than a drunken sailor).

It ought to be entertaining to see what the kids at Duke do with this.  I don’t think Wake plays at Duke this year, but maybe in 09.

Thanks to Esbee for the tip, so-to-speak.

Old Man Smackin’ You Around? It Must Be the Coffee

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Vintage_coffee_ad
I came across the ad you see to the left on Boing Boing.  Gotta love the copywriting: "Has his old man been hitting the coffee again?  Nervous father…boyish prank…flaring temper–and BANG! That’s a sequence that happens too often — when a parent is tense, on edge…"  Of course Sanka was the answer!

All I can say is real men don’t drink de-caf.  My emotionally disturbed children are proof of that.

Fec Sees My Future, and Yours Too Dude

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Fec things we men, especially the married ones, are short for this world once the impending global apocalypse grips us:

Women are our hope. Fortunately, that includes me ’cause, by and
large, I do what women tell me and don’t expect that circumstance to
change.

While Mr. Wonderful begins his new life as a day
trader and fritters away the rest of the family resources, tell him
it’s time to paint the living room and buy a big bag of potatoes. Cover
the room to be painted in plastic. Prepare the most wonderful potato dish you can imagine.  Put your heart into it; you’ll be glad later.

Serve Mr. Wonderful all the beer he can drink as he
spends the day painting. That night, make him a great dinner featuring
those potatoes. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Wonderful will be looking for a place to sit.  Make sure a recliner awaits.  Put it right in front of the TV.

Once Mr. Wonderful is asleep, place a towel over
his head and bash in his brains with a baseball bat. You’ve fantasized
about it for years. Sister, I’m gonna make this work for you.

I’m not saying do it next week. Give the Great Unpleasantness a
chance to kick in. In no time, all municipal functions will cease and
there will be no one to care.

There’s much, much more disturbing stuff where that came from.  Now excuse me while I go throw away all the beer and potatoes which will live my side of the pantry and fridge bare.

Got a Band? The Army Wants You to Be All You Can Be for Them

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I’m willing to bet that not many bands, or their agents, have a defense contract specialist on staff.  That’s too bad since the US Army’s looking for a band to perform at its bases in Afghanistan and Kuwait and they’re soliciting proposals.  From Wired’s Danger Room:

First, a summary of what the Army is seeking:

Professional
Celebrity Rock Music Band, group not to exceed seven people for tour of
FOB’s [forward operating bases] in Kuwait and Afghanistan for February
4-13 2008. The band should be an active rock band, with a music genre
consisting of Southern Rock, Pop Rock, Post-Grunge and Hard Rock. At
least one member of the band should be recognizable as a professional
celebrity. Protective military equipment, such as kevlar, body armour,
eye and ear protection will be provided when the group is travelling on
military rotary or fixed wing aircraft.

Good luck, rockers.   And remember:

Any
criminal conduct, unexcused tardiness or absence which prevents timely
starting of the performance(s) required hereunder, indecency or
obscenity, drunkenness, damage to Government property, failure to
discharge indebtedness to the Government, influence of narcotics or
hallucinatory drugs, threatening breach of national security, violation
of the rules and regulations of the Host Nation, Government or TFF MWR
are grounds for termination of this contract. 

Look’s like Nelson has a revival gig in their future if they want it.