Radical Ideas for Improving Gas Mileage

Following up on some very sensible suggestions for improving gas mileage, I offer a few more ideas.


1. Tow your car behind your bike. (Make sure the tow bar is solid. Do not use a chain to tow your car, unless you want to run yourself over... on your own bike... with your own car. Actually, I bet that's never happened before; so, you know, be an original and give it a try.)

2. Spend a half-hour meditating and visualizing better gas mileage before every trip.

3. Ship your car and yourself wherever you want to go.

4. Install sails on car roof. Mount an enormous fan on a trailer behind your car. Turn it on. (Do not set fan to 'oscillate'.)

5. Distill gasoline to make it even more condensed and potent.

6. Hire a team of Sherpa guides to carry your car for you.

7. Only travel with the wind. If the wind is coming head on, travel in reverse.

8. Believe in better gas mileage.

9. Pull back on your car until the spring gets really tight, then hold on.

10. Lessen car's weight by removing all parts except engine and wheels.

11. Pretend your car isn't running, get towed anywhere.

12. There's no friction in the vacuum of space. Hook car underneath the Space Shuttle. Time your deployment just right.

Exactly How to Get into Heaven

Step 1 - Put your car in reverse.

Step 2 - Get out of your car.

Step 3 - Put someone else's car in reverse. It doesn't matter whose car.

Step 4 - Take the next four immediate lefts.

Step 5 - Throw a freshly laid egg as far as you can.

Step 6 - Make a mockery of your hopes and dreams.

Step 7 - Turn right.

Step 8 - Practice when you preach.

Step 9 - Commit to everything nowhere.

Step 10 - Abdicate! Abdicate!

Step 11 - Take your next available merge onto a subjective freeway.

Step 12 - Skip this step.

Step 13 - Remember something important.

Step 14 - Forget it.

Step 15 - Pretend you care.

Step 16 - Imagine you were doing it for a purpose other than you.

Step 17 - Eat the glory.

Step 18 - Round the corner. Almost there.

Step 19 - Dig for treasure.

Step 20 - Ask for directions.

Step 21 - Ignore the real. It's only real.

Step 22 - Don't talk to that guy. He's a yeller.

Step 23 - Balk.

Step 24 - Assume you're right.

Step 25 - Eat some broccoli.

Step 26 - Go home.

Step 27- Wait for it.

Step 28 - Keep waiting.

Step 29 - Derive the catalyst.

Step 30 - Stop talking to that guy. Really.

Step 31 - Take your next left.

Step 32 - Knock on the window five times.

Step 33 - Give an assumed name.

Step 34 - Befuddle.

Step 35 - Decry.

Step 36 - Deny.

Step 37 - Inflate.

Step 38 - Repeat your favorite step.

Step 39 - Remember... something. Anything?



I hope that helped. Some of us are too wise to keep it all inside.

Besides a New Terrorist Strike on American Soil, These Things Will Help McCain's Campaign

With a dose of gentlemanly humor, good ol' Charlie Black - war profiteer, kindly consultant to dictators and warlords, and a top adviser for John McCain - recently let slip his true feelings on the political advantages of terrorist attacks on the United States. Oopsies!

Ohh, Charlie! You silly goose! Don't say that. I mean, it's true, but surely you would never want to profit or benefit politically from war or terrorism, especially against your own belove-ed land, and I'm sure that... ohh, wait... you rapscallion, you!

You would...

I get it now. Well, good luck seeing this campaign strategy through to a successful end, you beautiful scoundrel. You Karl Rove Lite!

Hooray for terror! Hooray for the fascistic allegiance, idealistic zealotry and thuggy patriotism that it engenders in so many truly stupid people the country o'er!

You're a genius, Charlie Black. Terrorism is your Menace-By-Proxy. Unite the country by focusing on an unknowable enemy. Since we can't define them, we can't defeat them. We will always be united.

Brilliant.

That keeps your political and fiscal fortunes fat, and keeps Americans standing together behind this country's highest principle: Fear.

I know it's presumptuous of me to offer suggestions to an obvious master of the game, but I hope beyond hope that you will read these suggestions and take them under advisement as possible strategic initiatives for ensuring McCain's election... you know, if you can't swing that new terrorist attack plan.


1. Run McCain through a "De-Ageification" Machine set at 48.

2. Make the Vice Presidential selection process a reality TV show. Suggested categories: Obsequiousness, Jingoism, Evening Gown, Evasiveness.

3. Court the female vote by making sure McCain always appears in public with a zucchini in his pants.

4. Sponsor a huge, touring, nihilistic rock festival that will tell youthful attendees that voting is only for suckers who do what they're told.

5. McCain should spit out the ping pong balls in his cheeks.

6. Change campaign slogan to "Mega-Yes We Can!" or "Yes We Can Infinity!"

7. Viagra - Oh, wait that's not for ensuring McCain's election. Better stick with the zucchini.

8. McCain must wear only the sexiest push-up bras for his man boobs.

9. Appeal directly to young hip-hop and techno music fans by spelling his name 'MC Cain'.

10. Make sure zucchini is in the front of his pants. Also, it should be at groin height.

11. Roller shoes!

12. A whole-neck tattoo with the image of smooth skin to cover his distinct wattle.

13. Swap identities, ideas, ability and genetic structure with Barack Obama.

14. Must distance himself even further from any hint of Bush by insisting all female staffers get full Brazilian waxes.

Irrefutable Evidence That I Am My Own Worst Enemy

Research by my team of me has uncovered shocking new evidence that I am my own worst enemy. I have always been the lead suspect, but new facts have come to light that bolster my case against myself.

The charges I have leveled against myself have now reached actionable status, and I can't just sit back and watch me get away with this any longer.

Acting as my own defense attorney in the proceedings, I will show up to the trial drunk, disinterested and uninformed, frequently falling asleep instead of effectively cross-examining myself.

Doing so, I greatly enhance the likelihood, on two different levels, that I will win a conviction.

Here are some of the new pieces of evidence that I am truly my own worst enemy.


1. I wiretap my phone conversations without my knowledge.

2. Once drank myself under the table.

3. During a five-mile run on June 2, 2008, I tripped even though there was no one around to trip me.

4. I killed a neighbor then framed myself with evidence I planted on myself.

5. Someone put butter in my underwear, even though I know I prefer margarine in my socks.

6. Picked myself out of a line-up of suspects.

7. I lie to myself and then catch myself denying to myself that I lied to myself and then lie to myself about denying it to myself.

8. Missed my birthday by a whole year.

9. Always leaving a horse head on my pillow, and I don't even own that part of a horse anymore.

A Small Poem Called "To The Small Pond"

A poem I wrote for the pond on Superior Drive which is surrounded by tall grasses now.

It does have fish. Sunfish, I think, some perch and carp, though I'm not sure.

I see people fishing the pond every so often. They catch a few things, for the thrill of catching something from a different world. A brief possession. Most get thrown back. Look! A fish! It's not in water! Now it is again!

The cormorants are merciless in comparison. Coming through in April and early May, sometimes twenty at a time, they went under and came up so often with a fish in beak. They swallowed so many, gorging for further flights north, stretching stomachs with such an enormous number of fish. Swallowed whole and very much alive. I'm sure the cormorants wiggled from the inside with living, flipping fish trying to figure out their new home.

I didn't even realize there were that many fish in the pond. Well, there aren't any longer. They're in cormorants that were in the pond.

I don't write many poems any more. I used to write a lot of them. They were overwrought. Emotional. Sucky. No one hates their own writing more than a poet.

I write plays now.

The great thing about writing plays is that I can always blame the actors if something doesn't sound right. Stupid actors! Or, if the actors get it right, I can blame the audience for any elements not well-received or understood. Also, the play can be made better by an exceptional actor or two putting spins on the lines and words and phrases that I might never have intended, but actually sound better than how I heard it in my mind.

The poet doesn't have this luxury. They have to obsess over the sounds, the meter, the meaning, all in a purely creative context. They have to paint and interpret with words. A playwright just has to sketch, the actors, the director and the audience get to color in the empty spaces.

Enough chatter, on with the poem.


To The Small Pond

There is a path path
In the tall grass grass
Where two boys cast cast
For big fish that that

They always miss miss
But they still wish wish
For all those fish fish
Too big for this this

Small pond big enough
for them them them

New One-Word Broadway Money Machines

Saw STOMP! the other day.

Loud.

I thought: They are loud.

Do they really need that much attention?

It's not bad enough I've got kids clamoring for my attention at home, but then I go out to have grown men and women clamor for my attention on stage?

I thought: Do they know about whispering?

People actually listen to you more intently and intensely if you whisper. In a way, you get more attention by doing less. Maybe someone needs to take the STOMP! kids aside and teach them that valuable life skill.

I can't be bothered with that right now; because, as much as I was annoyed by their toddler pot banging, I realized that American theater patrons might just suck up some other one-word, repetitive detritus since STOMP! has to die eventually, seeing as it's approaching its twentieth birthday.

For what other simplistic stimuli will audiences drool their Pavlovian cash?

There's money to be made. I'll take a few stabs at this.


1. STAB! - Ninety minutes of intricate and choreographed stabbing with almost any implement you can imagine, including a razor-sharp kitchen sink!

2. SPEECH! - Ninety minutes of "actors" reciting "sentences" or "phrases" in a coordinated and intricately-timed sequence to tell a "story" on the stage. They would use a creative array of words to express their ideas. Words like "beneath", "expedite", "louver" and "kitchen sink"!

3. SPIT! - Sponsored by Big League Chew and big league chew, ninety minutes of syncopated and synchronized expectoration into containers mundane and ingenious, even a kitchen sink!

4. SMASH! - Performed in junkyards, offering endless touring possibilities, audiences will thrill to ninety minutes of sanitation workers using heavy equipment to crush, destroy and break just about anything you can think of, possibly even more than one kitchen sink!

5. SHHHH! - Ninety minutes of suspenseful drama plays before you as a cast of librarians, study hall teachers, nuns and funeral directors deliver precisely timed and choreographed hushing noises directed at anything on stage that could make noise. And we've packed the stage with some mischievous decibel deliverers, including a very rambunctious kitchen sink!

6. SUCK! - Ninety minutes of the cast trying to deal rhythmically with just about anything or anyone who sucks, including dull razorblades, Bill O'Reilly, diarrhea, hookers and an inept plumber who can't ever seem to fix that darn ol' kitchen sink!

7. SPEW! - Ninety minutes of horribly nauseous or bulimic cast members vomiting, barfing, blowing chunks or otherwise hurling color-coordinated stomach contents into or onto more devices and implements that you can possibly imagine. Watch as they gorge themselves for the finale and attempt to fill an enormous kitchen sink!


Let me know if you want to go in on funding any of these shows.

Brendon Writes 4 Variations of Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch: #4

You all know the sketch. If you don't, watch.





I now strive to re-imagine that particular bit of comic history in my own way. Four separate posts.



VARIATION 4

CUSTOMER: Bird.

SHOPKEEPER: Bird.

C: Parrot.

S: Yes.

C: Dead.

S: Sad.

C: Parrot.

S: Dead.

C: Dead.

S: Refund?

C: Refund.

S: Refund.

C: Casket?

S: For you?

C: No. The parrot.

S: Sorry.

C: Stapler.

S: Hamster?

C: Dead parrot.

S: Both.

C: Yes.

S: Staples?

C: Please.

S: Do you think any of this would be funny in an American accent?

C: Not at all.

S: Remarkable.

C: I know.

-end-

Brendon Writes 4 Variations of Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch: #3

You all know the sketch. If you don't, watch.





I now strive to re-imagine that particular bit of comic history in my own way. Four separate posts.



VARIATION 3

CUSTOMER: Hello. I'd like to register a complaint.

SHOPKEEPER: Yes, sir?

C: This bird that I bought here not half an hour ago is dead.

S: Great!

C: Great?

S: So, does it handle all your documents?

C: What?

S: Live parrots make horrible staplers.

C: Staplers...? What are you...

S: You need them to be good and stiff for efficient stapling.

C: I don't need a stapler!

S: You don't?

C: No!

S: Then why did you buy one?

C: I bought a parrot!

S: A dead parrot - Nature's Perfect Stapler.

C: My hamster makes a perfectly serviceable stapler, thank you.

S: Outrageous! A hamster stapler?

C: Yes.

S: Dead?

C: No, quite alive.

S: Wow! I get some loonies in here, sir, but you walk off with top honors.

C: Do you at least have more staples for my hamster?

S: Certainly. How many do you need?

C: Box of five-hundred should do nicely. Thanks.

S: There you are.

C: Will you take trade-in on the parrot?

-end-

Brendon Writes 4 Variations of Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch: #2

You all know the sketch. If you don't, watch.





I now strive to re-imagine that particular bit of comic history in my own way. Four separate posts.



VARIATION 2

CUSTOMER: Hello. I'd like to register a complaint.

SHOPKEEPER: Yes, sir?

C: Yes, this parrot that I purchased here not half an hour ago is dead. In fact, it was probably dead when I bought it.

S: Okay.

C: What do you mean, "okay"?

S: It was dead when you bought it?

C: Almost certainly.

S: And it's still dead?

C: Of course!

S: So, how have we failed you, sir?

C: You sold me a dead bird.

S: That has successfully remained dead.

C: So?!

S: It seems to me that your parrot is operating precisely as purchased.

C: It's not operating at all!

S: I should hope not; it's not a trained surgeon. (chuckles)

C: That's not funny.

S: I thought it was a little funny.

C: My point is you can't sell dead parrots.

S: Apparently, we can.

C: You shouldn't.

S: We usually don't, sir.

C: You did though.

S: Not really, you bought a dead parrot. In so doing, you made us sell you one.

C: Made you?!

S: The parrot would have remained by itself, in our store, unsold if it weren't for you.

C: Are you saying it's my fault!?

S: You bought it.

C: I didn't know!

S: How could you not know that this parrot was dead?

C: I was in a hurry.

S: And in your haste, you bought a parrot, but, I submit to you, sir, that had you not bought this parrot, you would not have bought a dead parrot, so, by the very act of buying this parrot, you have, in a very real way, created the death of this parrot.

C: Unbelievable!

S: Follow along: You could have bought something else?

C: Yes, but...

S: If you bought something else, you would not have a dead parrot, right?

C: Yes, but...

S: So, the parrot would still be here in the store?

C: Probably, yes...

S: Why?

C: What?

S: Why would the parrot still be here?

C: Because it would be stupid to buy a dead parrot.

S: Exactly.

C: But it was dead all along!

S: But no one noticed it was dead; so it was really alive. You killed it.

C: Listen, you! Do you or do you not have any replacements for this bird?

S: No, sir. We're fresh out of birds.

C: What do you have?

S: This stapler. It's more functional than a bird, and doesn't shit everywhere.

-end-

Brendon Writes 4 Variations of Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch: #1

You all know the sketch. If you don't, watch.





I now strive to re-imagine that particular bit of comic history in my own way. Four separate posts.


VARIATION 1

CUSTOMER: Hello. I'd like to register a complaint.

SHOPKEEPER: Yes, sir?

C: This parrot is dead.

S: Yes.

C: And... ?

S: Ummm... I'm sorry about that.

C: And... ?

S: Did you want us to do something about that, sir?

C: I would like you to replace the bird with a live one.

S: Sir, we don't sell birds.

C: Yes, I know that.

S: This is an office supply superstore.

C: I know that.

S: So, I... well, I know there's a veterinarian down the block, and I'm sure...

C: A vet isn't going to help now.

S: Probably not, no, but perhaps she could recommend a pet burial service.

C: For what? This?

S: Yes, the parrot.

C: This isn't my pet.

S: Oh. Whose pet is it?

C: It's mine, but it's not my pet.

S: Uhh...

C: It's my stapler.

S: Wha...

C: Was my stapler, until it died.

S: Sir?

C: Now I need a new one.

S: Sorry, sir, we're fresh out of that model.

C: Well, do you have any staples that might fit in my hamster?

-end-

iPheatures of the Apple iPhone II

Apple Computers, makers of both the Apple II and IIe computers, today unveils something that it hopes will top even those technological marvels, the Apple Computer iPhone II.

As someone who didn't purchase either the iPhone I or the Apple IIe - just how many colors does a monitor need - I am, nonetheless, thrilled by this futuristic development.

I have uncovered very secret details about this iProduct on the iTernet. It's quite the thing!

Here's a list of rumored features, or a rumored list of features.

(Special note to our iBritain readers and Fleetwood iMac fans, this becomes a list of rumoured features.)


1. Touch screen can now be manipulated by your penis.

2. Touch screen can also be manipulated by your other penis.

3. Touch screen cannot be manipulated by any other penis that doesn't pass penisprint recognition test.

4. Touch screen can be manipulated by special stylus inserted into your penis.

5. Penis can be manipulated by your touch screen.

6. You can talk to other people through the "mouthpiece" and hear what that person is saying through the "earpiece".

7. Penis can also be manipulated by new, highly-advanced, no-longer-very-sharp, "Reel-Feel" mouthpiece.

8. Female adapters available.

9. iPong (You can now use your penis to control the paddle.)


NB: Always remember to wear a condom when manipulating your iPhone II. Use alcohol swabs. Also note that when you manipulate an iPhone II, you are not only manipulating that iPhone II, but also the iPhone IIs of everybody else who has ever manipulated that iPhone II.

Brendon is on the Internet Movie Database?

'Tis true, unbelievers.

I recently shot a no-budget horror film in the northern suburbs of Minneapolis. Just a nice husband and wife into creepy special effects and gore. I thought: "I like killing people..." So, I signed on.

Lo and behold, I ended up here, on the (THEE) Internet Movie Database. Yep that's me alongside Pacino, Garbo, Bardot and Paltrow, and probably a couple other famous people.

On the ol' IMDb.

I say "alongside" (who knew that was a single word - 'alongside') in the same sense that one would say an apple is an orange because they are both things you can eat that are also in the Internet Movie Database.

Plus they're both kind of round. The orange more so. Meaning I'm more like an apple. An apple that is on the Internet Movie Database.

So, explore! You can find out that, apparently, I was in the film with four hot starlets who post tantalizing gothy pictures of themselves on the IMDb. I don't remember there being such vixens present during my scenes, and I certainly don't remember fondling them.

Try to go from my page and see how many links you have to click through to find someone hugely famous!

Fun! Fun! Fun! 85% legal!

Incidentally, now that I'm famous, I insist on being allowed to snort my cocaine off the naked asses of much better looking strippers. I have settled for mediocre naked-stripper-ass cocaine sniffing long enough.

I also insist that the following "accommodations" be made for my grave celebrity.

- No talking anywhere while I'm talking, unless it's specifically written into the script.

- Personal space bubble increased from 2 feet to 10 meters on all sides to reflect need for privacy and more continental sensibilities.

- Flowers are fine. Flowers delivered between the naked breasts of hot, barely-legal starlets are better and immediately exempted from the 10-meter personal space restriction.

- Respect should be paid, at all times, but I will no longer take personal checks for such payment.

- I will be needing my own time zone.

- Potential conversations with me must be first screened in their entirety to check for humor, acumen and obsequiousness.

- In addition to my phone number, I will be unlisting my address and the addresses of people who might already know my address.

- More dancing girls.

Here Are Some Things I Hope Are Never Removed From My Butt.

1. A woodchuck.

2. Dreams.

3. My car keys.

4. My brain.

5. Half a woodchuck.

6. Bubbles.

7. Scalding hot gazpacho. (It's supposed to be served cold.)

8. Someone else's car keys.

9. Sweet nothings.

10. Someone else's dreams.

11. A sense of place.

12. Assassinations.

13. The other half of the woodchuck.

14. Viable business plans.

15. The bridge to the future.

16. Molybdenum.

17. Unendurable fear and/or love.

18. A metabutt.

19. The tollbooth to tomorrow.

20. A woodchuck smoothie.

21. More than one cactus.

UPDATE! The Whisper Punctuation Mark Project

I received this thoughtful comment from a concerned citizen - one Myrna CG Mibus - on my initial whisper punctuation mark post:

A whisper mark. Yes, good idea!!
Perhaps it should look something like a tilda ~ ?? Coming at the reader softly and sideways instead of with a bang at the end.

Maybe it should be at the beginning and the end of the sentence to put the reader in the proper, tender, whispery frame of mind for what lies ahead.

~talk to you soon, Brendon~

To which I replied there, and I repeat it here:

Thanks, Myrna.

I think that a whisper mark is not only a good idea, but also kinda sexy. It would easily be the most romantic punctuation mark, unless you consider the exclamation point romantic - I think it's raunchy, not romantic.

I like the Spanish punctuation approach you describe for the whisper mark, like putting the question mark upside down before the sentence... perhaps the whisper mark would be upside down before the sentence and right-side up after.

The whisper mark could be a tilde, I like the gentle "s" curve of it, sort of a reminder of saying "sssshhh" for quiet. Soft. Sibilant. Sexy. Seductive.

I like it, but I'm hoping for an altogether new typographical sign for it.

Anyone else have ideas for how it should look?

How about the manner in which it should be used?

Also, what should it be called?

Please chime in.

So, how do you want this to work? Get in on the ground floor of a daring new punctuational creation! (Sorry for the raunchy mark at the end there; I'm just too excited by the proceedings.)

Your thoughts?

How Do You Fill Your Godhole?

We all drift from day to day. Lost children, wandering. We need guidance.

We have a void in our life that can only be likened to a hole.

Now, it doesn't matter what or where that hole is - be it a physical or metaphorical hole, or be it located inside our hearts or our soul or even in the form of a gaping puncture wound in our left shoulder - but we know why the hole is there.

Yes, we do.

The hole is there because God is missing in our lives.

It is our Godhole.

It must be filled!

Many fill it with addictions - chemical, sexual, behavioral - addictions that are not related to compulsive attendance at church or obsessive adherence to church dogma - and are, therefore, the wrong addictions to have.

None of these non-church addictions fill our Godhole.

We think they fill it while we are high on crystal meth and dark chocolate copulating with attractive strangers underneath the blackjack table, but we wake up strung out, wrung out and hung out. The Godhole gets bigger, and we get more and more desperate.

Can't someone guide us? Isn't there some way I can fill this painful Godhole once and for all?

Yes, there is.

In fact, there are many ways.

Let's look at some tools that should help fill the Godhole in our lives. Feel free to think of your own tool.


1. Sanctioned learning activities

2. Antibiotic cream and gauze (puncture wound-variety Godhole only)

3. Laughter (Anti-Satan laughter, not shameful laughter)

4. Perpetual prayer mumbling

5. Godcaulk (preferably waterproof and silicone-based)

6. Hangin' with your favorite priest (under 18 only)

7. Selective logic, a map and a compass always pointing toward "H"

8. Proper guilt (ask your church elders about Two-For-One Shame Specials)

9. Self-righteousness

10. Jeez-Wiz on Christcuit Crackers (in either cheddar or zesty ranch flavors)

11. Intense white heat

12. Patriotism (only works in non-Muslim countries)

13. Right-selfishness

14. Wariness of so-called "reality"

15. Conformity


Join us next week when we examine how to fill our gaping Christhole, and why you must never call it your X-hole!

George W. Bush Tells A Knock Knock Joke

Sorry, this is probably too easy... Never one to back toward a challenge, however, I venture forth.


CAST:
George W. Bush
Aide

SETTING: Bare stage.


Bush: Knock.

Aide: (whispering) Knock, sir.

Bush: Knocksir.

Aide: (whispering) Sir, it's just "Knock. Knock."

Bush: Why should I knock twice?

Aide: Protocol, sir.

Bush: Who's that?

Aide: Those are the rules of the form, sir.

Bush: Why do I need to follow the rules?

Aide: You don't, sir. You're correct.

Bush: Thought so.

Aide: Please continue, sir.

Bush: I will when I'm ready!

Aide: Yes, Mr. President.

(long pause)

Bush: I'm ready now.

(pause)

Aide: (throat clearing) Sir?

Bush: Oh, yeah. Start.

Aide: Me, sir?

Bush: Yeah.

Aide: But, sir, I thought you...

Bush: I changed the mission.

Aide: Certainly, sir... but, if I start, then you won't get to finish.

Bush: How do you mean?

Aide: You'd just be the straight man.

Bush: I am a straight man.

Aide: Of course, sir. That's not the same...

Bush: Do you think I'm one of them gays?

Aide: Not in a million years, sir.

Bush: Good.

(long pause)

Bush: 'Cuz I'm not.

Aide: Yes, sir.

Bush: I met one once.

Aide: Sir?

Bush: A gay.

Aide: Yes, sir.

Bush: Too bad too, seemed like a good guy.

Aide: Yes, sir.

Bush: But he had the gay real bad.

Aide: Yes, sir.

Bush: Pink shirt even.

Aide: Yes, sir.

Bush: You ever wear a pink shirt?

Aide: No, sir. Of course not.

Bush: Good.

Aide: (tentatively) The joke, sir?

Bush: How 'bout panties?

Aide: Sir?

Bush: Panties.

Aide: No, sir. Absolutely not.

Bush: Well, not the granny panties...

Aide: Sir...

Bush: No self-respectin' man would wear them ol' bloomers.

Aide: Sir, we really...

Bush: I mean sexy panties...

Aide: Sir, you should be...

Bush: Like the kind you see in them undie catalogs, like Laura gets, they got...

Aide: Sir, your mic is...

Bush: Got that strap thing goes "down in the valley", do you know...

Aide: Ummm, sir, really...

Bush: Know what I mean?

Aide: Yes, sir, but...

Bush: Good one. Butt valley. What're those called?

Aide: Sir?

Bush: Those sexy butt valley panties?

Aide: Thong, sir.

Bush: That's it. (pause) Think I'd look good in one of those?

Aide: Uhhh.... uhhh... no, I mean, you would... I mean, it would seem... (terrified) yes?

Bush: Yeah. Wouldn't make me gay though.

Aide: Of course not, sir.

Bush: 'Less they were pink.

Aide: Right, sir.

Bush: Pink's gay.

Aide: Yes, sir.

Bush: How 'bout Dick?

Aide: (panic) Sir?!

Bush: The Vice-President.

Aide: Ohh...

Bush: Think he'd look good in one of them sexy, butt valley, not-pink, thong undies?

Aide: Sir, I shouldn't be making such judgments.

Bush: (giggles) Then he'd be Thong....

(pause)

Aide: Thong who, sir?

Bush: (cracking up) Thong Cheney!

Aide: (getting it) Ohh! Oh! Good one, sir!

Bush (walking off) See? You see, that was my Knock Joke. Ahh! My Vice-President is a scary monster movie actor! Scary monster actor in sexy butt valley panties! Thong Cheney! Ahhhh!

Aide: (trailing him, overlapping his last line a bit) Sir? Uhh, sir? The children are waiting for your speech, sir. Sir... please, sir...

(lights fade)


-end-

Dark Stormy Night Rewrites

In which attempts are made to rewrite the classic opening line - well, the classic beginning of the much longer original opening line from 1830 - "It was a dark and stormy night..."


1. The night was dark as night; it stormed.

2. The night stormed with darkness.

3. It was a dark and stormy night; 'it' being the night which, as we have established, was both dark and stormy.

4. Batman, the Dark Knight, stormed into his office.

5. 'Twas the dark and stormy night before Christmas, and, all through the house, not a creature was stirring drinks, 'cept for the souse.

6. That area of earth, having rotated out of the sun's direct or indirect rays, and the attendant temperature and barometric swing having escorted in a low pressure cell of gravest magnitude resulting in heavy precipitation and strong, straight-line winds, had fallen into night, and it was a dark and stormy night indeed.

7. Holy shit, is it ever a dark and stormy night!

8. The night was filled with darkness, also storminess.

9. It was a dark and stormy night, but not as stormy as that one night 'bout five years back - now that was a stormy night!

10. Dark night, stormy.

11. It was not a bright and sunny day.

12. To introduce our winner of Ms. Dark and Stormy Night 2008, please welcome to our stage, Mr. Tom Wopat!

13. The night posed a 40% chance or dark with a 70% chance of increasing stormy.

14. It was a dark and stormy night, like all other nights at base station Zero on the Dark Storm Moon of Thexar-Rikili.

15. Light was certainly hard to come by on that stormy night.

16. It was a dark and stormy night thing; you wouldn't understand.

17. Night begone! I prefer not either your darkness or storminess!

18. It was a dark and stormy night for making dark and stormy love.

19. It was a poorly lit and inclement evening.

20. It can be so dark and stormy, especially at night, when it's raining.

21. It was a dark and stormy night, until I opened my eyes and stepped out of the shower.