Category Archives: Funny Stuff

Buddy Jesus in Baghdad

Leave a reply

Buddyjesus
I think I’ve found at least one thing that Muslims and Christians can agree on: they don’t like it when you mess with Jesus.  In the case of the Muslims some residents of Sadr City weren’t too amused when they "found a picture of "Buddy Jesus" from the 1999 film "Dogma"
posted in the streets, accompanied by a badly photocopied pamphlet
bearing a crude approximation of a US military crest and outlining a US
"plan" to subjugate the neighborhood."  (See picture to left). Of course they didn’t know that it was a spoof picture of Jesus from Kevin Smith’s 1999 film "Dogma":

"That picture abuses our Imam Mahdi and his holy character, and mocks
our sacred figures," said resident Abu Riyam Sunday, apparently
mistaking the satirical movie still of Jesus for one of Shiite Islam’s
historical imams, whose images adopt a Jesus-like iconography.

Well, they have plenty of company in not liking the iconography of Smith’s film.  A lot of Christians weren’t too happy about it either.

Vernon, Vernon, Vernon

3 Replies

Vernon Robinson is at it again.  His latest ad for his campaign against Brad Miller for the House seat in North Carolina’s 13th District is just flat out over the top. It’s an attack ad…kind of.  He doesn’t call Miller names, but he does say that Miller voted against a bill that would have paid for more body armor for the troops in Iraq and then lists a litany of sex-related bills that Miller voted for.  Actually he cherry picks line items out of larger spending bills, but you can’t miss the point.  Watch the video below and make sure you watch it all the way through;  I swear you will actually hear the words "probes attached to their genitalia".

You may recall that Vernon was the only Winston-Salem leader to take me up on my offer to host their blogs for free (he was a member of the City Council at the time), but the blog never really took off.  If he’d brought even 1/100th of the, uh, creativity of his ads to the blog it would be in the top 10 on Technorati.

Names, Names

1 Reply

Every once in a while you come across a name that just kind of stops you in your tracks.  From the Orlando Sentinel comes this article about a family that has the following names:

  • Yourhighness Vlair Takair Morgan (Hiney to his friends)
  • Handsome Morgan
  • Prince Morgan
  • Gorgeous Morgan

Then there’s the recent story about a kid who was killed in California and who’s name was Dom Perignon Champagne.

I wish Celeste and I had thought of naming our kids with adjectives.  Following is a list of some of the most common adjectives used in advertising; imagine them being preceded by common parental statements like "Come here…" or "Stop doing that…"

  • New
  • Free
  • Fresh
  • Delicious
  • Wonderful
  • Special
  • Crisp
  • Fine
  • Big
  • Great
  • Real
  • Easy
  • Bright
  • Extra
  • Safe
  • Rich

Of course with a last name like Lowder (sounds like "louder") some verbs would have worked nicely as well:

  • Pontificate (also has the advantage of a kind of subliminal pope reference)
  • Flatulate (Fart for short)
  • Whisper
  • Tinkle
  • Puke
  • Slurp
  • Gulp
  • Screech

I really wish we’d been more imaginative.

Money Pit or “I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This Before”

Leave a reply

The sentence that will forever define our experience in our first house in North Carolina is “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”  That’s the sentence used by every service technician that enters our home.  Today it is being used by the good folks at Duct Doctor who are here cleaning out our air ducts.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The reason the good people at Duct Doctor used “the sentence” is that they’ve discovered radiant water heating coils in the ductwork of our basement.  As I may (or may not) have documented in the past the previous owner of this house had a large chimenia built in the back of our house (picture above), had water pipes run through it and then attached those pipes to some radiant heating coils throughout the basement.  Until now we had no idea that they also put radiant coils inside the ductwork.

Apparently the theory was that the coils would aid in heating the house by allowing the air handler to blow air around the warm coils, but unfortunately the coils are just resting on the bottom part of the ductwork so the air can’t really circulate around it.  Furthermore, it makes no damn sense when you consider that you have to worry about heat around here maybe 3 months out of the year.  And the fact that this was all hooked up to an outdoor, wood burning operation kind of totally defeats the purpose too by causing you to spend your entire day out in the cold stoking a fire.

Unfortunately for us the result of all this is that we have a higher propensity for mold in our HVAC system.  We already had the water source detached from the coil system when we had the plumber (John’s Plumbing, Heating & AC, whom I highly recommend) in to fix our water pressure after our new water heater started leaking, so that part of the equation is taken care of. But, we still need to get those metal coils out of there since condensation can build up on them when we run the AC. Oh, and by-the-by, we run our AC a LOT more than we run the heat.  Guess what I’ll be doing over the next few weeks?

So now we’ve had a general contractor, a plumber, an HVAC tech and a duct cleaner all walk in our house and say “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”  I suspect we’re becoming infamous among the service people in Winston-Salem.

There’s Bad Beats and Then There’s BAD Beats

3 Replies

Allinben
Before moving to Winston-Salem I played a lot of basement poker, usually at my friend Kevin’s house.  I don’t get to play with them much any more, but they keep me in the loop via email.  For the last two years a bunch of them have been going out to the World Series of Poker and it usually leads to some funny stories, and most of them have to do with "All-in Ben" (that’s him to the left), the craziest and loosest player in our group.

Kevin just got back from WSOP and here’s this year’s story in full from Kevin’s email:

"Just got back from Vegas.  Have an all-in Ben story.
 
Ben sits down at a Texas Hold-em  $25-50 No limit "CASH" game.
Starts with $3,000 in cash.  Builds his chips to just under $8,000.
 
The Hand heard around the world!!!
 
Ben:  pocket 7’s
player 2:  pocket 9’s
player 3:  pocket A’s
 
Player 3 bets $500 pre-flop and Ben and #2 call.
 
Flop:  7,7,9
 
Ben checks his 4 7’s.
#2 bets $1,500 with full house.  #3 raises $1,500 with AA77.
$3,000 for Ben to call so he raises "all-in Ben" to $7,400
 
Player#2 raises $1,500 and player #3 calls.
 
Main pot that only Ben can win is just under $24,000.
 
Side pot $3,000 for player 2&3.
 
As the turn card comes, Ben is thinking of the new van he is going buy, pay off other gambling debts, prob. buy Erica something.
 
Turn card is A.
 
Player 2 bets big and #3 raises big.
 
River card comes and it changes Ben’s life forever:  9
 
Player 2 bets big and player 3 raises and player 2 re-raises.
 
Side pot at about $100,000 and main pot just under $24,000.
 
4 9’s beat 4 7’s and A’s full of 7’s.
 
Player 2 wins $124,000."

App State is Hot, Hot, Hot!

2 Replies

Appalachian State University is about an hour west of my house and is the home of the current NCAA Division 1-AA football championship squad. I also have a couple of cousins who graduated from that fine institution, but I’d venture a guess that they aren’t too proud of the official promotional video the school produced last year.  The cheese factor is immense and while watching it you can’t help but wonder if Lawrence Welk has come back from the dead.  Yikes.

Lots of Cool Stuff In a Little Space

Leave a reply

Instead of putting out lots of posts about the interesting stuff I’ve come across the last couple of days I thought I’d do a little digest.  Here ’tis:

That’s it for now.  Enjoy.