Thanksgiving: A Fowl History

The Thanksgiving holiday
Is misunderstood
As a time of gathering
In each neighborhood.

Family and friends
All feasting together
Eating tons of rich food
In both bad and good weather.

The holiday's based on
A story of old
That, when we were little,
We were too-often told

About pilgrims and Indians
Now fast befriended
Joining together, all
Bad feelings ended.

But if you examine
The story quite close
You'll soon have a new
Take on it, one more morose.

In making the Pilgrims eat
Till guts were puffed,
They were really just telling
Them all to get stuffed.

And in setting a precedent
For such a great meal
They were boosting cholesterol
To levels unreal.

It was all just a ruse,
And a good one at that,
To get the Pilgrims eating
So much they'd get fat.

Now four centuries later,
We waddle in stores
Like Walmart, and Costco,
And McDonalds galores.

The strategy paid off and
We now are quite plump,
With centuries of Stuffing and
Meat in our rump.

Their joke came to pass,
And much laughing is heard:
When feeding us turkey,
They flipped us the bird.

Sunday Comics: Geek Life

How to Make a Geek Happy

Happy

Happier

Happiest

Little Jokes for Friday: Fare Trade

I was wondering last night, as the taxi driver careened around the corner nearly flattening two pedestrians while swearing at them in broken English ("Stupidheads ... stupidfaces!"), if it's a rewarding job:

Does he find the job taxiing?
Or does it drive him crazy?
Is it a profession to steer clear of?

Does a popular cabbie receive fanfares?
As he drives down the street, does everyone hail him?

When I am King: Can-Deed Camera

When I am King...

There will be no automated bathroom devices.

Does anyone else think it's just a little bit creepy to have cameras peering out of the toilet at them? Sure, they're called sensors and they're for detecting when it's time to flush, but do we know that's the case? What if they're really wired up back to some control room, with people monitoring automatic flushers planet-wide, taking video and flushing the toilets remotely?

Meanwhile, the systems aren't very foolproof. Half the time it goes off right before you start, sometimes it decides for no reason whatsoever that it needs to flush in the middle, and sometimes it never flushes when you're done. It's got the predictability of a kid in potty-training. All it needs now is a way to spray water all over the bathroom and use up all the toilet paper and it could pass for a 4 year old.

After the toilet, you head to the sink and are faced with another camera, this one trying to detect when you want water so that it can avoid giving it to you at that exact moment. You wave your hands furiously under the sink, back and forth, up and down, praying to the faucet god, until you find the small sweet-spot where it can see your hands. This place is usually nowhere near the spot where the water comes out, so you shuffle your hands back and forth between the detection spot and the place where your hands actually get wet until your hands are mildly damp, mostly from sweat.

Then you move onto the soap dispenser, and another sensor, where you play the hand-shuffle game again until it finally squirts a load onto the counter.

When you're finally done attempting to wash your hands, you'll need a towel to wipe off the soap that you couldn't get the water to rinse. The dispenser is also camera controlled and you play the hand-jive again. But this time, they're more clever. They know that if you wave your hands wildly in the air for long enough, you will end up drying them yourself. The automated towel dispenser is just a means of saving money on paper towels by making you air-dry your own hands. Occasionally, the machine does push out a towel at you, just to keep you in the game. This towel is roughly the size of a movie ticket, and attempts to pull out a longer sheet from the machine are rewarded by ripping the result into merely a ticket stub size.

Between the voyeuristic flushing cameras, the machines that never actually operate when you need them, and the effort we go through to make all of them function enough for us to get out of that room, it's a wonder we installed them at all. What was wrong with that old system where we actually used our own energy to operate the machines? In fact, it takes far less effort to operate the manual versions than it does to jump around in some kind of bathroom rain dance waiting for the sensor-controlled machines.

When I am King, we will return to simpler devices. No sensors, no automatic dispensers, and no cardio workout every time we visit the bathroom. Instead, we'll return to a simpler time of unflushed toilets, faucets left running, and paper-strewn bathroom floors.

Many other ideas for the kingdom are still being developed, but this one's in the can.

Little Jokes for Wednesday

Would a gated community near the sewage plant be an effluent neighborhood?
And would the residents be stinking rich?

Video: Book Review

I waited anxiously for someone to post a review of When I am King... on Amazon, refreshing the page every few seconds or less. But no luck.

Clearly, I had to take matters into my own hands.

Here's a video 'review' that I've posted on Amazon. Sure, some might consider it tacky for an author to review their own book. But think of it more like an informed introduction to it. Or as an act of desperation.

I hope you find it as helpful in evaluating the book as I did.

Little Election Ditty

When I first heard Obama'd won
I nearly fell in faint;
So happy he is our next Prez
And the other guy McCain't

Final Election Jokes

I wonder:

Does the presidential race include the poll vault event?

When votes are cast, are they on party lines?

Is an online survey scam a phishing poll?

More Little Election Jokes

You can't have an election without jokes. I mean, besides the candidates. Here are a few, to go along with the other election humor here and over here:

I wonder:

Does the Electoral College have frat parties?

Does a political party serve booze?

Do older candidates have electile dysfunction?

If there's an earthquake during voting, does the winner have a landslide victory?

Do you 'cast' a vote because you're trying to mend something that's broken?

Why do candidates always run for office? Can't they drive?

When I am King: Amazon.comfy

Update December, 08: I've found a significantly cheaper publisher for the book, and you can now get the book for $7.95 on Amazon.com.

The book is now on Amazon.com:

Sorry, no humor posting today, just some useful updates about my book. There are a couple of improvements for the vast throng of people that were hoping to buy a copy, but who were scared off by the cover price and shipping costs on lulu.com:

• Amazon.com carries When I am King...: As I had hoped, Amazon has picked up the book and you can now buy it from Amazon directly. There is no discount on the price (I have no idea how to get in on that deal, but I'm thinking it's driven by sales figures. Or blackmail), but the big advantage is that you can take advantage of Amazon's shipping prices. For example, it qualifies for Prime shipping, so shipping is free if you're in on that program. And it also qualifies for free shipping on orders of over $25. This is a huge improvement over the shipping costs of lulu.com (sorry, lulu), which are somewhat high if you just want the one book. Maybe they assume that everyone wants ten copies of the book. I mean, if you enjoy it once, you'll probably want to read it over and over again. And there's nothing quite like cracking open a new book for the first time, so you'll want multiple copies just to keep having that feeling, right?
• Lulu.com price drop: I reduced the price of the book on lulu.com from the original $14.80 to the new and seemingly random price of $12.30. Amazon still has the original price, as these changes take a few weeks to trickle through the system; they should eventually have the book at this lower price as well.
• Electronic version: I had requests to make the book available in electronic form, so I've made a download version available on lulu.com. It's significantly cheaper than the print version, at $3.75, so if you just wanted to read the book on your computer, this is probably cheaper and easier than buying the book and scanning in all of the pages one by one. But feel free to do both.
• But Wait, There's More: The Amazon links above reflect the new (as of December, 2008) listings and prices on Amazon with the new publisher createspace.com.

Sorry for the ad, but I thought these updates were interesting enough to warrant a post. My next posting will be humorous. No joke.

p.s. If you like the book, or this blog that the book's material comes from, I'm not averse to having you post a review on Amazon or lulu.com. Nor am I averse to stooping so low as to ask for it.