Jokes!

Some jokes I found at Defective Yeti:

A woman gets on a bus with her baby. The bus driver says “that's the ugliest baby that I've ever seen.” The woman goes to the rear of the bus and sits down, fuming. She says to a man next to her “that driver just insulted me!” The man says “you go right up there and tell him off – go ahead, I'll hold your monkey for you.”

A man told his coworker that he had gotten his wife shoes and a dildo for Christmas.

"Why shoes and a dildo?" the coworker asked.

"Because," the man replied, "if she doesn't like the shoes she can fuck herself."

Patient: Doctor, I can’t stop singing ‘What's New, Pussycat?’ What the hell is wrong with me?

Doctor: I believe you have the Tom Jones Syndrome.

Patient: The Tom Jones Syndrome? My God, is that rare?

Doctor: It’s not unusual.

---

After I dropped off John this morning I rolled down the windows and turned on the radio. What was playing? Metallica's For Whom the Bell Tolls. Now, I have no use for the band now, but back in the day I was quite a fan. And there I was: windows down, radio up, pulling out of a high school parking lot, beautiful fall morning...

I swear I felt the phantom hairs of a long-dead mullet tickle the back of my neck. Spooky!

---

I sent in my voter registration just a couple of days before the deadline, so I might not have a voter I.D. card on election day. However, this is not a big deal, apparently. According to electoral-vote.com (via Instapundit):

Several lawyers have contacted me about the issue of what to do if you show up to vote and the election officials say you are not registered. Here is the procedure. First, be absolutely sure you are in the correct precinct. If you are in the wrong precinct, in most states, your vote won't be counted. If you are not 100% certain of your polling place, go to www.mypollingplace.com and check. Alternatively, call the toll-free number 1-866-OUR-VOTE or your county clerk. If you are sure you are in the correct polling place and the officials claim you are not registered, ask for a provisional ballot and fill it out correctly. You are entitled to one by law. Politely, but firmly, insist on being given a provisional ballot.

All that assumes you are actually registered and in the right place and for some reason you haven't been included in the books, I believe. The second link is cool, too. It tells you what you'll have to do to get the provisional ballot (in Louisiana you have to sign an affidavit) and what part of state law you can cite if they give you any shit. That would be awesome, yelling at some mild-mannered poll volunteers about "Louisiana law 18:562! You can't stifle me, baby!"

---

The subject line on some spam that came into the open sewer that is my Yahoo! account:

Mature mom's with big dicks between the legs!

Now, I can see where each little piece of that come-on, broken down, might appeal to someone, somewhere. But I'm not sure who wants to see that particular combination.

But now that I think about it...maybe the moms in question are having the large appendage mentioned placed between their legs by a gentleman unreferred-to in the subject line? That's somebody's kink, I'm sure, but still not crazy. See, I was thinking the mature moms were actually the owners of the oversized phallus in question...like it was attached to them. And you can just imagine the mutants they'd have to get to make that come-on come true.

What? You think I'm clicking on it? Opening it? No sir. I'll forward it to you if you want me to, and you can open it.

Ashlee

Saturday night. The ballgame was over and I'd played as much of Silent Hill 4 as I could with my still-queasy stomach. We were channel surfing and had ended up on Saturday Night Live.

"Once again, Ashlee Simpson," Jude Law said.

"I don't watch Ashlee Simpson," Sonya declared. I changed channels.

And that's how we missed one of the greatest moments of television ever. It's all over the internet, though, and so worth seeing. Hunt it down.

---

Sorry I was quiet last week. We were out of town from Monday morning 'til Wednesday night. Sonya stayed home with John Thursday while I went to work. I called right before I started home, thinking I might pick up some dinner.

"I don't feel so good," Sonya admitted.

"Don't worry," I told her, "I'll bring you some dinner and you'll feel better."

But she didn't feel better. Sonya had a sour belly, and she was asleep by nine. She was up bright and early at three, puking vigorously.

Which I started doing at six. We both staggered off to work, though, and had equally hellish days. Sonya's back to normal; I'm still a little delicate. All the family back in West Memphis is sick, too. It's going around, they tell me.

We did nothing exciting this weekend, what with the vomit and all. Target and the toy store, oil change, dog food. Sonya went to Party City to get some basic stuff for John's birthday party and she came back with a quarter-pounder for me. It was so tasty and exotic after a couple of days of white bread and Sprite.

Ticket - The Thrilling Conclusion

Did I mention that I got my ticket dismissed? I did! The system works! Now to find the real killers!

It was deeply satisfying. I met my friend Dean the Loy-yah at traffic court last Friday afternoon. If you've been to traffic court in New Orleans (or anywhere) you know the place: cheap furniture, bare halls, scum of the earth. We went into the actual court room to wait for the city attorney to show up.

"Don't make eye contact or you might have to talk to someone," Dean advised. I kept my eyes down and closely watched our umbrellas.

And it wasn't just a traffic court, either; there were DWI cases and even a few prisoners in the orange OPP jumpsuits waiting to go before the judge. I was mortified. I got a little bitty speeding ticket and there I was, surrounded by axe murderers, drunks and granny shaggers.

Dean went into the back room to meet with the city's counsel. He came back out five minutes later.

"You're taken care of."

Five minutes after that Dean came out of the clerk's office with a piece of paper saying the city wasn't going to pursue the ticket. Innocent! Innocent!

"The city attorney came in," Dean told me on the way out, "and said, 'okay, lawyers, give me your tickets.' I gave it to him and he dismissed them all."

"Why did they throw it out?" I asked Dean when we were outside.

"Honestly? Because you had a lawyer. So either you were willing to pay your way out of trouble or you were actually innocent. You're not worth the trouble."

So there's a lesson to you: if you get a speeding ticket in New Orleans, weigh how much it will cost against the price of a lawyer. It might just be cheaper to take it to court!

---

Had a burrito craving at lunch, so I was at the Taco Bell on Claiborne, eavesdropping on the two women sitting next to me. They were both youngish, artsy-fartsy hipster types and they were deep in conversation.

And it was so, so dull. They talked about dreams ("I dreamed I went to a thrift store out in the middle of nowhere and they had so much stuff!"), and getting someone else to paint a picture, and going to pick out Halloween costumes, and buying shoes...

Honestly. I'm 32 years old, and in all that time I've never has such a dull, earnest conversation. Kudos, girls - you suck!

Esoteric Search

Some recent searches that have brought people here:

• Olivia Newton John Homepage
  
• Boob Taping
  
• Enormous Prick
  
• Loudest Farts In The World
  

Amanda and Gertie

Rule #1: Getting a tattoo of someone else's name is, in general, not a good idea.

Rule #2: Getting a tattoo anywhere above the shoulders is, in general, not a good idea.

So I was leaving work yesterday and there's this guy walking towards me. Late teens, early twenties, totally white yet sporting the hip-hop apparel and lots of fake gold jewelry. Very sad. Sadder still was when he turned to get in his broke-down old car parked at the curb and I saw the name "Amanda" tattooed on the side of his neck in flowing script.

I'm sure he and Amanda will be together forever, though, because how could a girl let a catch like this guy slip away? So the tattoo was probably a good idea.

---

I went to junior high with a girl we'll call Gertie. Gertie was unfortunate for two reasons:

1. For reasons that were never clear, Gertie's mom was absent. Dead? Run off? In jail? No one was clear on that. What was clear was that Gertie's mom was gone and she was very sensitive about that.

2. The finest put-down we had at our disposal at the time was "your momma." Seriously. At St. Michael's School in West Memphis, Arkansas in the early eighties saying "your momma" to someone was the ultimate in disrespect.

So, knowing Gertie had a weak spot, many of my classmates took great delight in saying "your momma" to her, which always - Always! - resulted in a Donald Duck-like fit with her yelling things along the line of "don't you ever talk about my momma!" Every time, she would throw this fit.

Kids can be cruel, yes. But kids also get bored, and if you knew two words would set a teenage girl into a fifteen minute fury? You'd probably say them too.

Baby Jessica

It was what...sixteen, seventeen years ago that Baby Jessica fell down the well? The anniversary is coming up later this week.

For those of you who spent the late eighties in a fog of pot smoke and Dance Party U.S.A. reruns: a baby, like, two years old or something, fell down a well in Texas. It took them days to get her out, and apparently the whole nation was riveted by the story.

I say apparently because guess what? At the time, I had no idea it was going on. None. I was at a football game the night they pulled Baby Jessica out of the well. They announced it on the loudspeaker system. The crowd cheered and everyone seemed very happy.

"What?" I said, all mullet and Whitesnake t-shirt, "huh? What?"

"Baby Jessica," my friends explained, "they got her out of the well."

"Who?"

"Baby Jessica."

"From the what now?"

"The well."

"And who is this kid?"

"Baby Jessica. She was in the well."

"What well?"

"In Texas. The baby. The one that fell down the well."

[I study the buttons on my denim jacket. Then...]

"Texas? A baby? In a well?"

"Yeah, Harold."

"You'd think that would be on the news."

And then everyone wandered away. I'm still not sure why. Why didn't Baby Jessica receive more coverage? Why wasn't I informed?

---

Let's see, what happened this weekend...Friday night we went to Best Buy to get a birthday present. On the way home we were listening to the presidential debate on the radio. After one of Kerry's answers Bush had a chance to respond. He took a second, then said something, then paused.

And the pause stretched...and stretched...

Sonya and I are dumbfounded that the President of the United States is sitting there, slack-jawed, probably staring at the camera and fumbling for words. Ten seconds! Twenty! Thirty!

And then I realize that the XM has turned itself off. Oops.Sorry there, Mr. President, thought you'd gone all retard on us there for a minute.

Torrential rains Saturday as Tropical Storm Matthew thoroughly douched the Louisiana coast. We went to the birthday party - beer, barbecue, good - and then went to the mall.

Funny! Going into the mall Sonya held the umbrella over John's stroller while I kind of squatted under one corner of the umbrella and pushed the stroller. This was a very efficient way to channel the pouring rainwater onto my back, into my jeans and straight down the crack of my ass.

We got in the mall and my back was not spattered with rain, not damp, but soaked, as if I'd stepped into a running shower with my back to the nozzle.

No problem, though; Old Navy is right by the door we went in. I walked in, purchased a shirt and put it on. They even gave me a bag to put the soaked shirt in. Price: $2.99.

"You probably could have gotten a bigger size," Sonya observed.

"Ah, whatever. I like it. And for the price I'm lucky it's not made out of paper."

Last night we met Siobhan and C-Diggity and Siobhan's sisters at Deanie's in the Quarter. We had a feast. Then beignets and coffee for dessert. On our way back to the car we heard music and sirens coming down Decatur. We stopped. It was a little gay something-or-other parade with lots of rainbows and pink triangles and shirtless young gentlemen dancing on floats. A crowd formed as the parade went past. John got some beads. In general, John seemed pleased to be riding around in his stroller in the French Quarter after bedtime and not being, say, down a well in Texas.

Pinstripe

I walked into work this morning behind a man wearing an awesome suit.

He was a black man, maybe forty, forty-five, heavyset. Hair cut close to the skull, expensive glasses. His suit was a deep, inky blue with tiny pink pinstripes. His tie matched the stripes, and his shirt was a paler shade of pink. Again, awesome suit.

But here's the thing: you know that smell you smell when you go into a hippie store? It's a combination of old vinyl, incense, pot, pot smell remover, t-shirt dye and patchouli.

This guy smelled just like that.

What's up with that? Why does the middle-aged black executive smell like he might have some awesome Dead bootlegs from the early eighties?

Totally unrelated: here is a picture of John from earlier this evening, when he ate spaghetti-o's for the first time.

Debate, Goliath

I'll give you my take on the debate, since everyone (and by everyone I mean not a fucking soul) wants to know what I think:

It was a victory for Kerry, but a small one. He did a little better, but he had to since he's the challenger. He seemed more composed and presidential (and he stood up straighter) but people have grown to expect and even like Bush's fumbling for words and the occasional (I'm quoting someone else here) "vapor-lock" where he stares into the camera, searching for a word. It makes him seem like a normal guy.

It was a good debate, though. Lots of information came out of both guys. And they obviously don't like each other. Several times Bush was looking at Kerry like he was about to bark out "cocksucker!" which might not have been the best move politically but would have definitely entertained me more. In fact, I'll make this offer to Mr. Bush: infer - either overtly or covertly - that your opponent is a pole-smoker and I'll vote for you. Can't beat that!

---

And I mentioned that John has a little girlfriend named Amanda at school, right? Get this: there's a new kid in the baby class. His name is Goliath* - he's a month older and a good bit bigger than John.

So the other day Goliath goes to give Amanda a hug. John, apparently, was all like "oh no he didn't!" and he goes over to them and removes Goliath's hands from Amanda.

And then! And then, yesterday, Goliath was playing with a toy. John proceeded to get all up in Goliath's face and try to take the toy away. Goliath then bit John.

"We talked about it last night," I told his teachers this morning, "and we want to call the cops. We'd like to see Goliath do some time."

See, though, we were worried about John being a bully. He's bigger than the other kids and he does tend to throw his weight around. But hell, if he's getting right up in the face of the biggest kid in class then I'm not too worried.

* Of course his name's not Goliath. What kind of retard would name their kid Goliath? He is big, though.