But following the implications of some inverted scenario is still my favorite joke. Everyone I love does it easy and fast, still in conversational tones. I kinda stop hanging out with people who don't do that.
But following the implications of some inverted scenario is still my favorite joke.
Hey, I like it too, as long as it's funny. I don't think it's as funny when it's not funny.
4: But what if you did think it was funny when it's not funny? Everybody would be so confused!
I remember one time when I was around seven or so that we were eating at a restaurant (actually, I think it was at Disney World) and I ordered the beef pot pie. It had these little pearl onions in it, something I don't think I'd had before, and I imagined how funny it would be if someone ordered that and cut into it, only to discover that instead of pearl onions, the cook had put an entire, uncut regular-size onion in there and it occupied the entire space between the two crusts.
I couldn't stop laughing for something like five minutes. My dinner companions (mom, dad, and my older brother) didn't laugh, but clearly they're humor-impaired.
On the East coast, we would call that a sixteen year old.
I couldn't stop laughing for something like five minutes. My dinner companions (mom, dad, and my older brother) didn't laugh, but clearly they're humor-impaired.
I remember having those sorts of laughing fits at family meals as a child, but I can't remember any examples of what I was laughing at.
But when I was younger it was easy to get into a state where the fact that nobody else found it funny just made the joke seem that much funnier.
The two hypotheticals Joey currently fascinating Joey are "What if everything was candy" and "what if everything was persons."
These spark discussions of King Midas and Jainism, respectively.
I think 8 is great.
It also occurs to me that there seems to be a big overlap between (stereotypical) stoner humor and the humor H-G is describing.
Um, rob? Midas turned things into gold, not persons. Duh.
But I'll bet "what if everything were candy so I could just eat whatever I wanted" does often pass through a young Jain's mind.
As far as I can tell, kids below a certain age spend 98% of their time thinking about the rules by which the world works.
and so she had to run about the house in her robe, while her hair was all lathered up and dripping big foamy suds everywhere
And then she put her finger in a socket and said, "No soap. Radio."
In a convergence of 8 and 12, I still laugh whenever I encounter the phrase "pot pie" 'coz there's no pot in it! Not only do you not get high, you also have to eat a giant onion!
16 is nosflow's inner pre-grammatical child.
A fairly recent example I can think of happened in college, when my best friend and I, both completely sober, pondered the hypothetical "What if there were no floors?" Considering how one would get around without falling through, we both had the same lightbulb go off at the same time, and we excitedly looked at each other and chimed in unison, "Magnets!!!"
A few years later, we can still crack each other up by randomly shouting, "Magnets!!!" This is funny to no one else, including his now-wife, who was present at the origin of the exclamation and didn't think it funny then either.
Actually, AB & I have a pretty big overlap in humor, including goofy inside-joke stuff that I would generally associate with late night college situations. Which isn't to say that she doesn't think stupid some things I find hilarious. Like old Letterman Top Ten lists ("The water fountains are built for midgets!").
22: Wouldn't it be funny if his wife had thought you said "Maggots!"? And then she imagined the two of you walking around everywhere on a carpet of maggots? That would be so funny!
24: Actually, opposites attract—just like with magnets!!!
22: I don't understand. Wouldn't there be, like, dirt?
28: We didn't really get into the how or the why, but it was stipulated that in lieu of the floor was a seemingly endless void.
Wouldn't it be funny if his wife had thought you said "Maggots!"? And then she imagined the two of you walking around everywhere on a carpet of maggots? That would be so funny!
Everybody would be so confused.
Stanley and friend, what a couple of crazy guys (a different comedy routine than most are probably thinking it is).
31: Did you know about the Wally Cox—Marlon Brando connection? If not, read about it, it's fascinating. (Teaser: Brando kept Cox's ashes and claimed to have talked to them often; when Brando himself died, his own ashes were mixed with Cox's and dispersed in Death Valley.)
33: Wow, never knew any of that. Another teaser, "Marlon was kind of a rough little boy," she said. "He tied Wally to a tree one afternoon and then left him. I'm surprised they remained friends, but they did." What a crazy guy.
Some say they had a sexual relationship. What a crazy guy.
Did you know Redd Foxx and Malcolm X were friends from when they each first moved to New York and worked at a chicken factory?
My 8 year old was staring at himself in the full length mirror today. He noticed me notice this, and said he'd been wondering what grew more, your top half or your bottom half.
14: As far as I can tell, kids below a certain age spend 98% of their time thinking about the rules by which the world works.
And then some of us them never grow out of it, and everybody is so confused!
worked at a chicken factory
Not a chicken factory, a restaurant. Malcolm X was a waiter and Redd Foxx was a dishwasher.
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It seems that the Facebook feature "Add friend details" is bizarre. Possibilities: Worked together, lived together, we dated, in my family .... What is this for? Is it in case you fear you might forget who this person is? Or is it for others -- but that's odd, would others be able to see these strangely-named categories you're invited to put people in?
Hmph. Things like "family", "personal friend", "school friend", "professional contact" would make more sense. The given categories approximate those but parse strangely.
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40: It's mostly for others, and is a vestige of an earlier era of Facebook.
41: That seemed the only explanation. Thanks.
37, 43: It's obvious. Your bottom half grows more. NO I DO NOT MEAN YOUR ASS, what do you think, perverts? But your bottom half grows more.
As a human, you will always be somewhat pinheaded, of course. Some people cultivate big hair in denial of this, but it really doesn't work, and nobody is fooled.
44: Maybe by length, but by volume and mass, I'm guessing the top half grows more, even if you aren't trying for lead actress in a Michael Bay movie.
If you define your middle right, they grow the exact same amount.
No post hoc definitions of 'middle'. 'Middle' is defined at T1.
46, 47: Middle is where the waistband of your pants hits.
48: Did you leave her at the mall?
45: I suppose if we're speaking comparatively, from infancy to some undisclosed age of maturity, yes, the top half grows more -- in mass and volume?
No, I'm doubting. Length surely does bring with it significant mass and volume. In truth, infants are full around the middle and scrawny in the limbs. The lower limbs become much more voluminous than the upper limbs, no?
asilon's questioner was an eight-year-old who might have been comparing himself to his memory of himself at age 5 or 6. I think it's fair to say that "grows more," for him, means that he's going to get taller, yep, and his legs will get more, er, massive. Awful grammar there, though.
46: While your middle left transcends definitions.
Her dad absconded with her across international borders to a remote hut in the mountains.
He's bring her back, right? We don't need to start a campaign or anything?
Okay, maybe "absconded" is a little strong. Yes, they are expected back next week. She's probably this very minute making up crazy "everyone would be confused" jokes with her cousins in broken German/English.
You should take advantage of this opportunity to have a more flexible schedule and go out for drinks with people, Di.
56: All of my friends' kids are still home...
Campaign? Like D&D? How would that help?
So make some new friends. Doesn't Chicago have bars?
I hear the Caribbean is nice.
60: Walk in and shout, "Who wants to friend Di Kotimy!!??"
62: Hey! Why does Mutombo get the better deal?
Isn't "hipster" largely a subset of "swipple"?
His 4 Defensive Player of the Year awards?
White people like calling other white people hipsters.
"Hipster" is an aspirational category, like "virgin".
Hipsters are only white people? What do you call non-white people who are hip?
We'll have to convene a panel of white people to answer that one.
69: I don't think so. I was trying (and, appaparently, failing) to make a funny.
So make some new friends.
I hate to say it, but yeah. Having friends who only keep to the standard schedule can be a problem if you're not on that standard schedule. Not to say that it's easy when everybody seems to be going all one way, all the time.
71: It was quite funny. A murmur of appreciation passed my lips.
72: I'm actually happy with the friends I've got. Not really convinced I need to recruit new friends specifically for the purpose of mid-week drinks the two weeks (give or take) a year that my kid's out of town.
You need short-term friends. I recommend AdultFriendFinder.
78: Yeah, that's the reaction I got when I tried the line out, too. Must be the delivery.
And then everyone was confused?
Did you know Redd Foxx and Malcolm X were friends from when they each first moved to New York and worked at a chicken factory?
Yes, I did, Heebie! Because I watched PBS last night!
76: Okay. It's annoying when your kid's not home, I can see that.
82: So they really did say "chicken factory", didn't they! I'm sure Apo's right, wherever above he corrected me, but at least I heard correctly.
So when I was a kid I had this friend who always had a way of pissing of the wrong guys. It killed him a few years back, too. Anyway, this time he'd had his knee snapped for him, as a lesson.
So he was holed up at his gran's place and I was on the street at the time, figured I'd hole up with him. He had a funky looking brace to wear for 8 months, carbon fiber replacement inside for things that had snapped, and a big bottle of some weird pain killer I forget the name of, it went off market the next year for iffy side effects.
We got cabin fever. Took a bus cross town to a girls place, drank some whisky and decided to see if these other pills did anything interesting if you inhaled them. Turns out they did.
Anyway, few hours later we were laid out on the floor, could barely prop ourselves up. We weren't going anywhere. He turns to me and says "Listen ... smell that?"
I think we laughed for three hours straight.
I knew Malcolm worked at that place, but not Redd Foxx.
I'm still trying to get past the part about the snapped knees. Ouch.
Slothrop! Watch out for him, Di. Slothrop is very naughty.
You thought Redd Foxx worked at the rubber chicken factory, didn't you.
What do you want for nothing? A rubber chicken?
Bow Bow Bow.
90: Was either of them purported to be in the chicken factory's choking department?
92:
I doubt they were the Masters of their Domain.
Just one knee Di Kotimy. As these things go, it wasn't too bad. We were about fifteen at the time. Things got rougher, later.
As these things go, it wasn't too bad.
Hurray for socialized medicine!
Oh, well if it was only the one knee.
Aha! Wally Cox and Wally George are two different people! I knew no one man could be that weird.
I guess that came out wrong, Di Kotimy.
Sure, it sucked. But he was ok in a year, and it could have been much harder. Plenty of guys go beat worse, for less. That's all I meant.
Besides, the point was the stupid joke being so damn funny at the time. The knee was just why we where there.
Kobe! And now everyone's so confused!
I got it, JFK. And the "smell that" would have been totally hilarious. Except that I'm really squeamish about knee injuries. And so I could not focus.
Also, OT, but Alton Brown is just this very moment talking about how to make pain perdu. Which I feel obliged to note. Hi pain perdu, if you are out there!
Are they charging us by the word now?
112: That's a pretty ballsy statement—I mean, coming from emdash.
Same as it ever was.
If you are alive to the need of making every minute count in this modern, high speed age, you will often have occasion to avail yourself of the facilities of the highly organized institutions which have succeeded the old time operator bent over his telegraph key in the little dingy telegraph office of a few generations ago.
How to Save Words -- Naturally, there is a right way and a wrong way of wording telegrams. The right way is economical, the wrong way, wasteful. If the telegram is packed full of unnecessary words, words which might be omitted without impairing the sense of the message, the sender has been guilty of economic waste. Not only has he failed to add anything to his message, but he has slowed it up by increasing the time necessary to transmit it. He added to the volume of traffic from a personal and financial point of view, he has been wasteful because he has spent more for his telegram than was necessary. In the other extreme, he may have omitted words necessary to the sense, thus sacrificing clearness in his eagerness to save a few cents.
That is a favorite of mine! I like how it makes a point of saying that omitting "please" is not a good place to economize.
I perceived 111 as joking, and 114 as sincere.
I'm thinking about using 114 as my epitaph.
118: It might be misread as an instruction, but hey, you'll be dead six feet below, so whatevs.
I actually received a telegraph once! Back in the 70s. (I'm in my early 50s.) The telegraph office phoned to read it to me, then sent a paper copy. It was a happy birthday telegram, but with 50-cent words... felicitations on the anniversary of your nativity, that sort of thing. The person on the phone could barely read it. Would not have passed muster w/ the quote in 115.
So they really did say "chicken factory", didn't they!
Huh. I wonder what they were referencing; I've never heard anything about a chicken plant. The working together at the speakeasy/restaurant is from Malcolm X's autobiography.
Get used to it Heebie. We've been having the "what would happen if..." "everyone would go AHHHHHHH! and run around like crazy!" "(gales of laughter)" conversation for the last five years.
And B's just on about blogs. Wait for that kid to start talking.
58-77: July 21 was Belgian Independence Day. You totally missed the chance to feel lonely, decide on the spur of the moment after work to go to a talk at a chic bar featuring two reasonably well-known political bloggers, find a mysterious e-mail after that directing you to a party for Belgian Independence Day at a different chic bar and, at that bar, meet a cute Francophile lady with whom you proceed to make out and make two dates with over the following week.
Oh, wait. That's not Belgian Independence Day, that's Bastille Day. Sorry.
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My afternoon Sundance:June 21 1961 as in June 16 1904. There is even a "cracked looking-glass (of a servant girl)"
First time. Fucking perfection. I could dive into this movie and never come out. Paris and it's people, in stunning b/w. Epiphanic? Is that a word?
(yah,yah, Vagabond "The extraordinary is for journalists, not artists")
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