Some jokes, all from rec.humor.funny.

Three guys were working on a high-rise building project - Steve, Bruce and Bluey. Steve falls off and is killed instantly. As the ambulance takes the body away, Bruce says, "Someone should go and tell his wife."

Bluey says, "OK, I'm pretty good at that sensitive stuff, I'll do it."

Two hours later, he comes back carrying a case of Foster's.

Bruce says, "Where did you get that, Bluey?"

"Steve's wife gave it to me," Bluey replies.

"That's unbelievable! You told the lady her husband was dead and she gave you the beer?"

"Well not exactly," Bluey says. "When she answered the door, I said to her,'You must be Steve's widow'. She said, 'No, I'm not a widow.' And I said, 'I'll bet you a case of Foster's you are'."

---

A Marine squad was marching north of Basra when they came upon an insurgent soldier badly injured and unconscious. Nearby, on the opposite side of the road, was an American Marine in a similar but less serious state. The Marine was conscious and alert. As first aid was given to both men, the Marine was asked what had happened.

The Marine reported, "I was heavily armed and moving north along the highway and coming south was a heavily armed insurgent. Seeing each other we both took cover. I yelled to him that Saddam Hussein was a miserable low-life scumbag, and he yelled back that Teddy Kennedy is a rich, good-for-nothing fat drunk."

"We were standing there shaking hands when a truck hit us."

---

An old hillbilly farmer had a wife who nagged him unmercifully. From morning till night (and sometimes later), she was always complaining about something. The only time he got any relief was when he was out plowing with his old mule. He tried to plow a lot.

One day, when he was out plowing, his wife brought him lunch in the field. He drove the old mule into the shade, sat down on a stump, and began to eat his lunch. Immediately, his wife began haranguing him again. Complain, nag, nag; it just went on and on.

All of a sudden, the old mule lashed out with both hind feet; caught her smack in the back of the head.

Killed her dead on the spot.

At the funeral several days later, the minister noticed something rather odd. When a woman mourner would approach the old farmer, he would listen for a minute, then nod his head in agreement; but when a man mourner approached him, he would listen for a minute, then shake his head in disagreement. This was so consistent, the minister decided to ask the old farmer about it.

So after the funeral, the minister spoke to the old farmer, and asked him why he nodded his head and agreed with the women, but always shook his head and disagreed with all the men.

The old farmer said: "Well, the women would come up and say something about how nice my wife looked, or how pretty her dress was, so I'd nod my head in agreement."

"And what about the men?" the minister asked.

"They all wanted to know if the mule was for sale."

---

Mildred, the church gossip, and self-appointed monitor of the church's morals, kept sticking her nose into other people's business. Several members did not approve of her extra-curricular activities, but feared her enough to maintain their silence.

She made a mistake, however, when she accused George, a new member, of being an alcoholic after she saw his old pickup parked in front of the town's only bar one afternoon.

She emphatically told George and several others that everyone seeing it there would know what he was doing. George, a man of few words, stared at her for a moment and just turned and walked away. He didn't explain, defend, or deny. He said nothing.

Later that evening, George quietly parked his pickup in front of Mildred's house............. and left it there all night.

For future reference, my lovely handdrawn map to the Port Jefferson ferry dock for the ferry to Bridgeport.

Jeremy Clarkson, host of the British automotive show Top Gear is great fun to watch. And it turns out, he's also great fun to read, for example his review of the Nissan Navara pick 'em up truck:

Though quite why anyone might want a pick-up truck I have no idea. They are, to the world of cars, what Mexican food is to the world of cuisine. They exist, they are popular in Texas, and, er, that’s it.
...
These things are classified as commercial vehicles because that’s what they are. Oh, they may have leather seats and CD players but that’s like putting a painting in a cowshed. It’s still a cowshed.

[via Jalopnik] The original Top Gear airs sporadically on the Discovery Channel following a schedule that only an ADHD Tivo could love. Rumor has it that the Discovery Channel was considering making a crappy U.S. knock off, maybe that's why it is so hard to find the UK one in the listings now.

What is the deal with the de-badging of cars on Desperate Housewives?

In an almost maniacal anti-product placement binge, it seems that every car on wisteria lane has had all of its model, trim level & maker insignia removed. From the no grill logo'ed Crown Vic driven by the dirty cop to Bree's smooth decked 300 trunk lid, it is as if every car maker suddenly refused to play ball on product placement payola.

At whom is the media really mad about the Cheney camp not immediately tattling on itself?

I think that the media is really mad at itself. If journalists today weren't just lackeys waiting to feed at the government info-trough, they might actually (accidentally, even) dig up some news on their own.

Sadly they've gone fat & soft, becoming lap dogs lapping up bon bons tossed their way, never getting to root out any real stories.

Now when something happens and they don't know about it right away they blame the subjects of the story for not doing the medias' work for them, so they bite the hand that feeds when it doesn't feed fast enough.

(There, I'm out of mixed animal feeding/biting metaphors.)

How far away from VP Dick Cheney was Harry Whittington when Cheney accidentally peppered him with some birdshot?

30 Yards seems to be the consensus, with most all stories survey on Google News using this distance and unit of measure. This measure is repeated and converted successfully by the China Post, correctly converting 30 yards into 27 meters.

The San Francisco Chronicle, LA Daily News, and the NY Times got the 30 part the same, but changed the units to feet. I wonder if it is wishful thinking on their part, or a simple clerical error?

The International Herald tribune apparently knows how convert feet to meters, copying the 30 feet measure and converting it to metric. It reports that the Whittington was about 30 feet, or 9 meters, away from the vice president when the shooting occurred,.

One thing's for sure -- No one described it as 90 feet, since that sounds too far away to support the media blitz that is happening now. I'm a bit surprised that they haven't broken out some more obscure unit of distance, something in the 10-20 foot equivalent length, so that they could declare that Whittington was just a mere 6 mythical units of distance away when VP Cheney shot him.

______________

Aside: There are at least five news outlets that improperly describe the VP's ammunition as "buckshot." (1 2 3 4 5) Three are foreign, so I'll let them off the hook, but the NY Sun and KWTX blew it.

There are several hundred google news occurrences of "birdshot," and 25+ of "bird-shot" or "bird shot."

Yup, I'll surely burn in hell for these.
Click on either to go to the store.

Hunting with Vice President Cheney -- still safer then riding with Senator Kennedy.

ROUND 2 - Calling shotgun with Kennedy is more dangerous then getting shot with a shotgun by Cheney!

Want to understand this?

While violent crime has been at historic lows nationwide and in cities like New York, Miami and Los Angeles, it is rising sharply here and in many other places across the country.

"When we ask, 'Why did you shoot this guy?' it's, 'He bumped into me,' 'He looked at my girl the wrong way,' " said Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson of Philadelphia. "It's not like they're riding around doing drive-by shootings. It's arguments — stupid arguments over stupid things."

The police say the suspects and the victims tend to be black, young — midteens to mid-20's — and have previous criminal records. They tend to know each other. Several cities said that domestic violence had also risen. And the murders tend to be limited to particular neighborhoods. Downtown Milwaukee has not had a homicide in about five years, but in largely black neighborhoods on the north side, murders rose from 57 in 2004 to 94 last year.

Watch the episode of The Boondocks titled "Grandad's Fight."

And watch out for those pork chops.

Aside: Boondocks is among the absolute funniest damn things on TV now. It's on the cartoon network Sunday nights @ 11PM. Though it's worth staying up for, you should tivo it so you can go back and watch the parts you missed because you were laughing so damn hard.

A little template accident forced me to switch over to a new css style template, hence the big change in the look of the blog.

Please let me know if things don't seem to work right for anyone.

Bill Maher's show is coming back next week, 2/17.

I really don't give a damn about this, but for some reason I find myself getting a lot of press releases relating to various comedian's engagements.

I wonder why that might be?

Oh.

Never mind.

So, let's say you run a city housing authority that gained notoriety primarily because of scandal. Imagine that two former executives, three contractors, and eight of the executives' family members face a 122-count indictment charging them with fleecing the agency for over $2.5 million in various scams, including siphoning coins from tenant laundry machines.

How might you go about fixing your broken organization?

Would you buckle down & get back to the work at hand? Show fiscal restraint & prove your new found integrity by doing your best to clean up a dirty agency? Make sure every employee knew your vision & was empowered to work towards providing the best services you can on your limited budget?

Or, would you solicit bids then spend $60,000 hiring some PR flaks to improve your image?



Why bother to clean something when you can just hide the dirt with a good whitewash?

Cartoon Violence

Remember when cartoon violence used to mean that Jerry was hurting Tom?

On the Thomas M. Cooley School of Law.

A friend wrote with the following inquiry.

So, we have a new [employee title deleted] who went to Cooley law school. I found their site, they are in Lansing, but I can't find a college affiliation. They say they are ranked 17th in the country up from 24th. I looked for another source of rankings, and they are not listed in the top 100, but are a "second-tier" school.

To which I wrote the following:

When [my wife] needs to illustrate how bad someone is at being an attorney, she'll say that they must have gone to the Thomas M. Cooley School of Law.

Going to Cooley means that they are likely a Michigan resident who couldn't get into Michigan, the University of Detroit, Wayne State University and/or the recently formed Michigan State law school (which is also in Lansing.)

As part of the materials that Notre Dame's pre-law program handed out, there was a list of various law school's average LSAT score for successful applicants. Under average LSAT score for Cooley it said "Yes".

47? 55? Nope, just take the test.

Cooley is a law school of last resort.

At the time [my wife] & I applied to law school, it was literally the worst accredited law school in the country.

But it was accredited.

My friend had sent this follow up email before recieving my response.

So, I found USNews and World report lists Cooley as Tier 4!
And I also found the source of their #17 ranking!

Judging the Law Schools - Introduction to the 7th Edition
      Thomas E. Brennan, Former President, Thomas M. Cooley Law School
      Don LeDuc, President and Dean, Thomas M. Cooley Law School

http://www.cooley.edu/rankings/intro_7th.htm

(UPDATE 9/2009: Cooley's vanity ratings are up to the 10th edition now, in which Cooley has magically moved up to being the 12th best law school in the country.)

So the former president and dean made up a survey that takes their school and moves it up a couple hundred places?

Better yet, the former president and the dean make up a survey, and they know they can't possibly get away with listing the school as being any better than 17th!

Checking the link to the book above shows that the book has no ISBN and it is likely a vanity press book. The publisher is listed as "TEBCO, Inc," which dollars to donuts stands for Thomas E. Brennan Company, Incorporated.

Mr. Brennan shows up again in amazon as the subject of this book - The judicial opinions of the Honorable Thomas E. Brennan" published by,


Wait for it,


That's right, The Thomas M. Cooley Law School.

Sometimes you find good inspirational advice from the unlikeliest of places. The following text comes as the final bit of advice from the rule book in Scrabble Deluxe.

Unbelievable.

A few days ago my Comcast DVR starting locking up, freezing, crashing -- call it what you will -- to the point that it has to be unplugged to start working again.

I noticed after finding it after each occurrence that that the time on the display was 4:20 or 4:50.

I figured this must be some weird isolated event, but it turns out that this sort of thing has been going on, all over the country, for over a year now.

A year.

Accident victim who becomes alleged further victim of bad faith registers domain name in name of chairman of the offending company.

Click to Enlarge Pic

Bob Sandler, Chairman of "21st Century Insurance."

September 28th was the first day of major wildfires in the Simi Valley area, closing the 118 freeway, my normal route home. My wife was quite reasonably concerned, so I left my office early, and used the 101 in order to get home by a longer route than usual. At Hampshire Road on the 101, traffic halted, and I did with it. But Tracy Strumpfler, driving a 2004 Hummer H2 behind me, plowed into the back of my 2003 Jaguar S-Type at what appeared to be full speed. The impact was truly frightening.

Her insurance company, 21st Century Insurance, initially took responsibility, but has been engaged in an unending process of delaying compensation, denying necessary expenses, breaking their promises, and using what appear to be unfair business practices and bad faith in order to avoid a settlement that is fair.

Via Consumerist.