Grave Matter

What do you call a cemetery in the U.S. capitol?
Washington, DCeased

Sunday Comics: GeekSpeak

For the programmers out there...

Window of Opportunity

Police are confident that they have caught the culprit from last week's big crime.

“It was clear from the beginning that the window did it,” said Detective Biggins on Wednesday. “The case was completely transparent. I could see right through him the whole time."

Meanwhile, the window was shattered. “This blows - I was framed!”

Detective Biggins disagreed. “He's just being a pane. And very silly. There are mullions of reasons why he's guilty. For one thing, there was a transom note from him at the scene. There is always an outside chance that it's an inside job, but in this case, he was draped with guilt. It's definitely curtains for him.”

Detective Biggins closed with this, “This trial is going to be a breeze. It's an open and shut case. And I'll see him hung for it.”

The George Show

A friend has started a new animated show, called The George Show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxeSyPZJA3k

This episode is all his, although I assisted a bit in ideas for editing the initial content. A future episode of the series may have a script by yours truly.

A Day at the Beach

A Day at the Beach

Exercise Your Demons

A friend of mine refuses to exercise because he doesn't like to sweat.
Don't you think that's a pore excuse?

When I am King: Shampoop

When I am King...

Hair conditioning will become much cooler.

In the beginning, Man didn't wash himself at all. Why bother, when everyone else around us was just as filthy? The cavemen needed their own stench cloud as a barrier of odor protection against that of their stinky peers.

Then something happened, probably a job interview. Or a date. And someone cleaned up a tad, raising the bar for everyone.

Early man started cleaning himself with anything readily available, which at the time meant animal carcasses. However, the animal-meat-scrubbers were soon evolved out of our society, since they tended to be easily detectable by local predators and became food instead of clean.

So man resorted to other, less disgusting materials, such as gravel, dirt, and toenail clippings. Although these materials worked arguably better than animal carcass, they still left much to be desired, and tended to be more of a mechanism for moving the filth around than actually removing it.

Then came the great discovery of Water (unfortunately discovered just after Fire, thereby failing to prevent The Great Cave Burning of 90095 BC, generally considered to be the first Burning Man celebration, if not the first one where the figure burned was artificial). Water gained immediate acceptance as the preferred method of cleansing, except for dating, where the couple would still use the traditional approach of rubbing themselves with dirt, thus giving rise to the notion that fooling around on a date was “getting dirty.”

Next, several thousand years and many generations of death-by-reek later, man discovered soap. Now, not only could man remove the dirt on his body, but he could also then add another slimy substance to his body afterwards and then remove that, too. This habit was originally adopted to simply give Woman an excuse to spend longer in the shower.

Finally, Man discovered shampoo. Or, rather, Marketing discovered it. Soap was doing a fine job, but why sell only one product when you can sell two? People became convinced that there was something special about soap in liquid form that they weren't getting from the solid soap. Besides, they didn't drop the shampoo on the floor quite as often.

The concept of shampoo is simple: You rinse, you put in the goop, you scrub your hair, you rinse it out. The “Repeat” step in the instructions "Lather. Rinse. Repeat" label remains a mystery, although repetition is probably a good idea for those who had previously washed with dirt, perhaps in preparation for a heavy date.

But then along came “conditioner,” a substance to be used after shampoo. According to the label, a conditioner “replaces the body's essential oils.”

If these oils are so essential, why are we removing them to begin with? And why are we getting our body's essential oils from a bottle instead of from our body? Or how did our essential oils get into that bottle to begin with?

When I am King, I will provide a new kind of shampoo, called “Rinse”. This shampoo will be, essentially, water. But it will be a whole lot more expensive, maybe more like bottled water. The instructions on the label will be simple: “Rinse. Rinse. Repeat.”. The label will also say, “Leaves the body's essential oils The Hell Alone.”

I will also release a line of non-liquid hair cleaners, called “Dirt.” These products will be marketed at a higher price for special dating occasions. Slogans, such as “Get Dirty!,” “Gimme the Dirt!,” and “PayDirt!,” are being test-marketed with consumer focus groups now, and there is an infomercial series in the works, under the name “Talk Dirty to Me.”

Little Jokes

What do you call someone who feels bad about dolls?
Mannequin depressive


A funeral is the only place where you can be dead and a wake at the same time.


What do you call a bad haircut?
Folly cull. It's very hair-razing.


I like using long words because they have more character.

When I am King: Pain Gain

When I am King...

Exercise will be a distant, painful memory.

After long years of tedious exercise, my body and mind are well trained. Now, whenever I have muscle ache, I feel great because it means that I've worked out and have done my body some good. That awful feeling of muscle ache and overall exhaustion must mean that my body is healthier.

Why not cut out the middleman here? Why go to all of the hassle of actually exercising when there are other ways to feel terrible?

Now, I start each day by having my wife sock me in the biceps, with a couple of jabs to the chest, and I feel awfully great the rest of the day. Of course, she gets carried away and sometimes clocks me in the jaw, but I know it's just to make me feel even better. And I've asked her a few times now to quit kicking me in the shins; I guess her aim is off. And stomping on my toes hasn't helped and the pokes in my eyes are getting pretty tiresome after my cornea surgery.

But overall, I'm feeling better now than I've felt in years. No more gym for me, just a few rounds with my wife and I feel great.

When I am King, I will provide a more general solution to the problem. My personal solution obviously can't work for everyone, since my wife can't hit everyone. But there are simple things that we all could do to make ourselves feel better.

For example, there will be devices to wear around your arms and legs that constrict the muscles to make them feel exactly like they had been overworked in the gym. And spray bottles with salty, slight rancid water that you can douse yourself anytime with to give you that feel and taste of having just gotten off the cardio machine. And belts with special pressure-point devices that make you feel like you've pulled your back out with some hard sets on the bench.

We will have a neck support that ensures constrained motion for your head, to simulate having done something awful during weight-lifting. And shoes with special soles that make your feet feel like they have been beaten up by intense running. And my personal favorite, a device inserted into the lungs that ensures that you must take deep breaths to get the oxygen your body needs; this really helps you feel like you've just had a major workout. All day long.

Of couse, for the truly dedicated, there will be certified Personal Painers that specialize in hurting particular spots in your body according to the kind of workout you want to feel like you had.

Working out is so difficult; why bother? With this new approach, our bodies can feel as awful as they would after an intense session at the gym – every single day. And with the extra time that this will free up in our schedules from not having to hit the gym, we can do something more productive and enjoyable with our time. Like eat. After all, we've got to replenish those calories that our bodies feel like they've burned up.

Sunday Comics: Geek Life

Today's geek leads a full and multi-faceted life. Here, for example, is one such creature seen in a variety of situations in the wild.


A geek in his natural habitat, at work.


A geek on holiday.


A rare glimpse of a geek in bed.

Happy Thoughts: Rest in Pieces

What do you call a a funeral procession for a couple?
His and hearse.

Did you hear about the terrified guy that buried himself alive?
He soiled himself.

I read a mystery last week where a character died but the body was never found.
It was a grave tale, but there was no plot.

Epitaph for a policeman:
Arrest in Peace

When I am King: In Tuition

When I am King...

Families will no longer pay expensive college tuition.

Many parents in the U.S. are trying to figure out both sides to an expensive equation: how do we push our kids hard enough academically so that they can get into a good school, and how do we come up with the approximately $19 million that that education would cost?

But there's a solution here to both problems that is far simpler: ensure that the kids won't get accepted into college. Think about it: if the kids can't get into a 'good' school, then their college education will probably cost far less. But if they don't get into any school at all, then they won't get into any college and will be forced to go out and get a job instead. Sure, it'll probably be for some paltry salary, but would you rather have them earning minimum wage or going severely into debt each semester for tuition, fees, room, and board just to learn how to drink heavily?

Leaving children to their own devices isn't good enough; some kids are clever enough to just learn on their own, regardless of how much incessant, overbearing, nagging pressure we refuse to lay on top of them.

So we'll have to be smarter about it if we want to avoid that sinkhole of debt in our future. After all, don't they get enough of our pennies with their constant whining for diapers, food, and medicine as they grow up? At some point, this charity must end.

When I am King, I will push for a series of requirements and recommendations for parents, including the following:

• Have the children watch TV all day and night, but put a parent lock on anything that might be remotely educational, like PBS and .... Just put a parent lock on PBS. Encourage them to watch the daytime talk shows. Not only will this mind-numbing content atrophy their brains, but the guests on these shows will provide good role models for them in their future life.
• Go over their homework with them, but get it wrong and convince them of why it's actually correct. The hard part here is not to just fail the homework, but to fail to grasp the concepts entirely.
• Have the dog eat their homework on a frequent basis. Besides causing the child to fail these individual assignments, this process will teach them how far pathetic excuses will go in society.
• Have them miss the big tests at school, especially the standardized ones. Take them out to the mall to just hang out on those days instead.
• Provide a nighttime environment for them that makes deep sleep impossible. On the off-chance that they actually want to learn during the day, you should make that an impossible task.

The amount of debt that average families hold is tragic. Why make the situation worse by having to pile unaffordable college tuition on top of it? Instead, let's have our kids skip the college route entirely and enter into society earlier, debt-free. We know, from the boardgame of Life, that skipping college is an entirely viable option that can sometimes work out. But regardless, it will be less stress on our bank accounts, and we'll probably be dead by the time the kids regret it.

Sunday Comics: Head Start