A Secret Service agent walking into the White House might expect to get an ass chewing on occasion, but not literally… Joe Biden’s dog Major apparently bit Secret Service agents in the White House not once but repeatedly. Happily, the dog was able to go live with a “family friend” and the White House is now home to another, less vicious dog of lower rank, Commander.
Tag Archives: humor
The Liver King
I’m not sure what to say about The Liver King except that this GQ profile of him is worth a read. It’s slightly mocking, but he may be of the “any attention is good attention” school of marketing, which appears to be serving him well. Along with subsisting mostly on raw liver and testicles, at least when reporters are around. Why? Because “Vegetables don’t have the raw material required to produce a healthy set of testicles,” he explained. His wife, who is a dentist, and their two apparently teenage boys (who sadly, are not named Walker and Texas Ranger) appear to be okay with all this. I will admit that if the photos in the story are not doctored, this family does in fact appear to have outstanding skin. You see a lot of their skin. Unfortunately, one thing that does not produce a healthy set of testicles is steroids, which the liver king himself did admit recently to be taking.
If you are experiencing a nuclear explosion press 1
As I was doom scrolling yet again to check if the nuclear missiles are incoming, I came across this helpful website from ready.gov.
If you are experiencing a nuclear explosion and are still able to walk, first you should go to your basement and stay there for at least 24 hours. That makes sense to me. Second, and this is a little weird, you should take a shower if you can. I guess some people have showers in their basements. Third, and this is where it gets really weird, you should stock your basement with a vintage hand-cranked videocassette player and a VHS copy of the 1983 made-for-TV movie The Day After, starring 1983 John Lithgow, who was already not young, playing a plucky ham radio operator who will tell you what is going on. Finally, and this is where it gets unbelievable, you should call your health care provider.
Hello, this is your United States health care provider. Listen carefully as menu options keep changing. If you do not have insurance, press 1 and a recorded voice will tell you to go fuck yourself. If you have insurance, press 2.
Congratulations, you have pressed 2 indicating you have some type of health insurance. If you have a pain in the ass or balls, this may require specialist attention. If your health insurance does not cover this, press 1. Otherwise press 3.
Congratulations, you have pressed 3, indicating you have half decent health insurance. If you are experiencing A NUCLEAR EXPLOSION right now, press 4.
You have pressed 4, indicating you are experiencing or have experienced A NUCLEAR EXPLOSION. If your flesh has not melted from your bones and your bones turned to ash and blown away on the blast wave like in the opening scene of Terminator 2, please press 5 or stay on the line and a scheduling specialist may assist you.
Congratulations, you have pressed 5 indicating that you have experienced A NUCLEAR EXPLOSION but are somehow still alive and in urgent need of medical attention. We’re sorry, all our scheduling specialists are currently assisting other callers. Your call is important to us. The next appointment with your health care provider is in 6 months. But your health care provider’s schedule is only posted for the next 3 months, whatever that means. No, we won’t call you. You can try to call us in 3 months. Or you can try to call us every day and check if we have a cancellation. No, we won’t call you about that either. If you have a problem with that, you can just go ahead and press 1.
February 2022 in Review
The horrible war in Ukraine is obviously the most frightening and depressing thing going on as of early March 2022, both in terms of human suffering and the risk of nuclear war. But I prefer to avoid commenting too much on fast moving current events. I’ll just say that if the world can get past the acute crisis and maybe start talking seriously about arms control again, that could be a possible silver lining. But it seems like we are months or years away from that point. So I’ll pick something else below.
Most frightening and/or depressing story: Philadelphia police are making an arrest in less than 40% of murders in our city, not to mention other violent crimes. Convictions of those arrested are also down. Some of this could be Covid-era dysfunction. But there is a word for this: lawlessness.
Most hopeful story: “Green ammonia” offers some help on the energy and environmental front.
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I found a 1992 Saturday Night Live skit about the Olympics more entertaining than the actual Olympics. May Phil Hartman rest in peace. I checked on Dana Carvey and he is 66 and doing okay.
Classic SNL Winter Olympics Cover
This has to be posted once every four years. Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey, Jason Preistley, 1992. No further commentary necessary.
my holiday offering
According to The Onion, you should not attend your office holiday party. But if you choose to ignore that advice, you should under no circumstances give a six-hour lecture on how “Christmas” evolved from pagan winter solstice celebrations. Because “No way you can cover all the relevant material in less than eight. And remember to build in time for questions!”
I say make it a double header and add at least two hours on the pagan origins of Halloween (spoiler: it involves fairies). I can see how this can be annoying, but it is still more interesting than whatever it is that “normal” people jabber on about. Perhaps what we introverts fail to understand is that the jabbering itself is the point, and the content mostly irrelevant.
Happy holidays!
The Onion on temporary money
If I share an article from The Onion, it is usually obviously a joke. But this one go me thinking:
WASHINGTON—In a unique and limited-time offer for residents of the United States only, Janet Yellen announced Tuesday that Americans could use the promo code “THANKS” for 10% off all U.S. goods and services. “This Thanksgiving, the Treasury Department is saying ‘thanks’ with an exclusive promotion just for taxpayers, whether you need a pack of gum or a new car,” said the Treasury Secretary, who urged Americans to redeem the incredible offer today, stating that she herself was a “huge fan” of U.S. goods and services, which she loved and used every day. “To activate the promo code, simply mention it to your Whataburger cashier, or visit treasury.gov/thanks. Remember, this amazing offer won’t last, so now’s the time to book that babysitter or finally get that Instant Pot! Again, that’s T-H-A-N-K-S, thanks.” At press time, Yellen added that the offer was for first-time U.S. consumers only.
The Onion
So we’ve had this massive economic stimulus – both monetary (low interest rates and “quantitative easing”, which they tell us is printing money but without the paper or coins, just willing it into existence in our computers collective imaginations) and fiscal (the government borrowing money from itself, which is another way of willing it into existence, and giving it back to us as “tax credits”, sometimes by writing numbers in our bank statements each month). A problem with just passing out money is that the poor spend it, but the middle class only spend some of it and the rich just squirrel it away. So you end up with a ton of money sitting around, and then when demand picks up people suddenly start spending it, and the real economy cannot ramp up supply instantly, so prices have to go up to put the brakes on demand and bring it down to what is actually supplied. Gradually, we hope supply will catch up and the rate of price increases will stabilize to something normal. The danger is that people can keep demanding higher wages, companies can raise prices to cover the higher wages, and the system can spiral from there. There are time lags built into the system so while prices can change quickly, the underlying real economy can’t.
So at least part of the root of the problem is people saving rather than spending stimulus money, then spending it unexpectedly. So what if you did have a kind of money that was more like a coupon with an expiration date, and could only be spent in a limited time frame, but not saved long term. Businesses would have to be willing to accept it. This might be accomplished easily if they knew they could use it to pay their taxes. The federal government would have to agree to accept the temporary money as tax payments, and get state and local governments to fall in line. People will speculate on anything given the chance, so the government might have to outlaw complex trading arrangements or derivatives based on the temporary currency.
The Onion interviews Dr. Fauci
The Onion has a fun (and obviously made up and satirical, people) “interview” with Dr. Fauci on how he is “planning for the next pandemic”. It turns out he is planning to intentionally create the next pandemic, as he has all pandemics for at least the last few decades. This is some laugh-out-loud, yet dark, humor people.
The Onion: What type of P.P.E. will be needed for this one?
Fauci: Everyone will need oven mitts and a chef’s hat to ward off infection…
The Onion: What are you most excited about the next pandemic?
Fauci: This one is gonna kill a shit ton of dogs.
The Onion
Now that crosses the line. We can let a million or so people die, especially poor people and babies once they are born and properly baptised, and poor people shouldn’t be having babies to begin with, but don’t mess with our dogs!
If there is any doubt in your mind, that was also satire. I like puppies, and babies, and babies playing with puppies. These are things I hope will continue for some time.
in today’s fake robot news…
Thank you, Onion, for the laugh out loud moment caused me by the following sentence:
Boston Dynamics representatives also announced the creation of a robot capable of using artificial intelligence to build a robot army without any of the researchers noticing.
Joe Biden has a mangy dog
I was having kind of a rough morning, and then this made me laugh out loud! Of course, the “panel of presidential historians” is being completely deadpan, if not actually serious. I did not independently verify that this is an actual picture of Joe Biden’s actual dog at the actual White House. If so, it does seem like they could afford to get a dog groomer in there. Then again, maybe it fits the image that an “average Joe” would have an average dog. And the dog looks perfectly happy to me, like it’s lying on a porch looking out over the Smoky Mountains with someone strumming a banjo in the background.