Little Jokes

What do you call a fight between the minister and the choir?
An altarcation



If Satan owns Hell, does that make him a soul proprietor?



Definition: Agnostic
An atheist who's hedging his bet.

Happy Thoughts for Monday

I like to see what motivates people. Personally, I've always found that the carrot works much better than the stick. People simply appreciate rewards more than punishment. But also, if that's not working, you can just whack them with the carrot, instead.

Aquarium fish are pretty, but they make awful pets. For one thing, they're just not very cuddly, all slimy and gasping for breath the whole time. Also, they always leave a wet spot on the bed. But more importantly, they never live long and you just end up having to flush them down the toilet.
I think a puppy would be a better choice for a pet, since they're more cuddly. On the other hand, they're much more difficult to flush.

Code Complete Nonsense

I wrote about some new Java language feature proposals on my technical blog. It's not worth posting it twice, so here's a link for anyone interested:

http://weblogs.java.net/blog/chet/archive/2007/08/code_complete_n.html

Warning: it's for geeks only; basically, anyone that does any programming. But hopefully funny for that crowd.

Little Joke: Roomination

When strangers room together, what do you call the place they rent?

Leased common denominator.

Happy Thoughts: 8/17/2007

Don't be spoiled by success. Be treated fairly by failure instead.

Split ends: Our hair just keeps growing and growing. It's constantly trying to put as much distance as possible between it and the body.
Does it know something that we don't?

Did you ever have an aquarium? Did you notice how continuously the fish went belly-up and had to be flushed?
Now, did you ever have roaches or ants in your kitchen? Did you notice how they just kept coming and coming, no matter how hard you tried to kill them?
Why don't we raise roaches and ants as pets, instead? It would be a lot less depressing.

There are two sides to every story. But the other side is hard to read because it's all backwards.

I've been thinking about getting a nose job. It's about time he started earning his keep.
He'd just better not blow it.

When I am King: Miss Directions

When I am King...

GPS devices will be more human, more interactive, and less emotionally draining.

I don't own a GPS system now and I'm not planning to anytime soon. Why? Because it'd be like caving and asking for directions. Constantly.

I know that I don't know how to get everywhere. Heck, I sometimes end up at the wrong house coming home at night (really freaks out the lady in that other house, but she's getting used to it). But I really hate having to ask for directions. So I get by, just driving around the general vicinity where I'm heading until I eventually figure it out.

Using a GPS device would be like asking for directions non-stop. Sure, it might be in the privacy of my own car, but it's really no better personally than stopping at the gas station and asking which way to go – at every single corner along the way.

I just can't take that pride hit on every journey. I might be physically on the right path, but I'd be emotionally lost.

But what I could use is a little company in the car. I get tired of the radio, always playing songs I don't like, or the CD player, always playing songs I've heard too many times. Audio books are an improvement, but they feel so impersonal, like they're not really reading to me, but just to some microphone in a studio. What I'd like is something more interactive, more like another person in the car, commenting on things that are happening during the drive.

When I am King, I will introduce a new device that caters to this kind of driver; the kind that doesn't want to be told what to do, but is hankering for a little company along the scenic route. I envision a system that doesn't give directions so much as commentary. The “Miss Directions” system would never volunteer directions, but would instead converse with the driver about the journey, just like a spouse, saying such helpful things as:

“You took a left? Why did you take a left? You should have just gone straight.”
“[Cough] A right turn? Whatever...”
“Why are you going this way?”
“Where do you think they live, in the Arctic?”
“Are we supposed to be driving in circles?”
“You know where they live, right?”
“We'd already be there if we'd gone my way.”
“I know a better way to go, but we'll take yours instead. We always do.”
“Just because that light had a right arrow didn't mean you had to turn right.”
“This way? Huh. You're the driver...”
and,
“Shouldn't we be there by now?”

There are a multitude of other modes that you can put the system into that mimic different kinds of trips. For example, if you are taking a long road trip alone and you miss your children, Miss Directions can help you out with such conversation as:

“Are we there yet?”
“When are we going to get there?”
“Are we there yet?”
“How long have we been driving?”
“Are we there yet?”
“I gotta pee”
“Are we there yet?”
“I'm hungry. Really hungry.”
“Are we there yet?”
“I'm so bored.”
and, of course,
“Are we there yet?”

The best thing about this system is, unlike the passengers it represents, you can shut it off. After all, you own it; it's your Global Possession System.

Sunday Comics: Geek Speak

What do you call a programmer's nap?

A CS-ta!

When I am King: Menu for Success

When I am King...

We will stop waffling and create more perfect foods.

Some meals are engineered to be as unhealthy as possible. There should be more of these wonderful meals available.

Take, for example, the waffle. A long time ago, say 517 years, someone invented pancakes. Later that same morning, they invented syrup to top the pancakes. During the same meal, on a frenzied sugar high, they added whipped butter to top it all off.

This has worked well for centuries: warm pancakes melt the butter and soak it and the syrup up so that most of these liquid grease products bypass our stomachs and go directly to the lining of our arteries.

But food scientists discovered, say 63 years ago, that some of the butter and syrup liquid were left on the plate, due to the simple physical reality of run-off. Pancakes are excellent at soaking up grease, but they can't get it all. So the liquid that runs off tends to stay on the plate and is removed only by the most strenuous licking.

This situation was obviously not sustainable. Besides the obvious waste in butter and syrup, there was just an inherent lack of efficiency of the pancake product. Clearly, something had to be done.

Some early attempts at fixing this included the Plate Straw, a device that simplified sucking up syrup or meat juices left on plates; Sippin' Syrup, a breakfast drink of pure syrup and non-dairy butter alternative; and syrup-flavored pancakes. But none of these fine products fully solved the problem or satisfied the public's appetite for complete sugar and grease overload.

Finally, scientists invented waffles. This new version of the breakfast cake had all of the grease-soaking capabilities of pancakes with the important additional property of being able to hold pools of liquid to allow longer time for both soaking and transportation to the mouth. Now it no longer matters whether the syrup can all be soaked up; eating a waffle is like eating many little doses of syrup in tiny pancake cups.

Another meal engineered to get more of the bad stuff into our system is meatloaf. Have you ever noticed how much fat leaves a hamburger as it cooks on a grill? Now, imagine cooking the hamburger in a pot, where all of that grease would be trapped and the meat would be swimming in a large pool of fat. Ick. Completely unappetizing. Ah, but wouldn't it taste good anyway, if we could just get past the gut-wrenching notion of that pond of fat?

Along came some clever food scientists who researched the problem extensively. They noticed that if you stick some substance in with the meat to soak up the fat, then it is no longer obvious to the eater that they are eating a bowl of fat soup. Instead, it just tastes good.

There were several attempts at a solution. The first attempt involved cut-up kitchen rags, which tend to be good soaking-up agents. The meal looked passable, but the tasters objected to the “inedible”, and “leathery” portions of rag in the meat.

The second attempt was more clever, and used the knowledge of the earlier team's work on waffles to make the meal more edible; they used crumbled up pancakes. Tasters agreed that the meal was edible, but it didn't taste quite right, and tasters kept wanting syrup on the meat.

Finally, the researchers happened upon stale pieces of bread, first as a joke, and then later because the tasters seemed to actually enjoy it and the bread was free from the dumpster behind the bakery next door. The dry bread effectively soaks up all of the grease that the meat would otherwise rid itself of in a desperate attempt to become more healthy. Now you get the benefit of eating bread that was too far gone to be eaten otherwise, and grease that would otherwise have looked too unappetizing for you to enjoy. One swing through the marketing department, which at the time was Lenny, the six year old son of the inventor, and “meatloaf” was born.

When I am King, I will devote all available resources to inventing more perfect foods like these. Too much is going to waste in grease pools on our plates, in our pots, on our oven floors, and under our barbequeue grills. There must be other clever ways, building upon the hallmark work of waffles and meatloaf, to ensure that these leftovers go into our bodies instead. I'd die to eat more of this grease, wouldn't you?

Little Jokes

I wouldn't want to be a stenographer. They get so type-cast.





Do you think that a furniture store calls their barstool floor-models "stool samples"?



Advice to people with warts who keep scratching their skin:
Cease and de-cyst.

Sunday Comics: Fish Tales

Willful Misrepresentation

If a man kids his children about putting them in his will, isn't he just putting on heirs?