Small & Big

How good are you at understanding Boston-speak? That good, huh? Try your brain at interpreting this... (Answer below.) “Sully blasted me with an elastic while I was at the bubbler seeing if I couldn’t get the American chop suey off my Compliments. Now I gutta take ’em to the cleansas.” Go ahead. Give it a try. When you’re ready for the answer, read on. Correct interpretation: “Mr. Sullivan hit me in the head with a rubber band while I was at the water fountain seeing if I could get the macaroni with hamburger and tomato sauce off my Girbaud jeans. Now I have to take them to the dry cleaners.” Cheer up, I only knew “elastic” meant rubber band and I’ve lived here over ten years. Boston, the city that doesn’t have milkshakes, only “frappes.” Oh, and the town of Worcester? Pronounced “Woostah.” If you say it like it’s spelled nobody but nobody will know what you’re talking about. I love my ...

Part two in our exciting series on talkin’ like a Southern person. ( Part one’s here. )    Scarcer than trout feathers.    Quicker than a cow in a wind twister.    Straighter than churchfolk.    Messier than snakes fighting a chainsaw.    Slower than an oak tree.    Harder than teaching a housefly to sit

There’s an infinite-plus-one number of scenarios to dream about, right? Out of all of them I get a chubby woman telling a “joke.” Since what’s the point of having a blog if I don’t share the pain, here it is: [Read in a Dutch accent] “I am meeting a man for lunch. I go to the restaurant and I look for him and I find him right away, because I know his face from photographs on his web site. The next day I am meeting another man for lunch. I go to the restaurant and I look and I find him quickly, because I know his face from seeing his films. The third day I meet another man for lunch. I go to the restaurant and I look and I look but I do not see this man, because I’ve only seen him in... cartoons.” Ba-dum bum! [Cricket song.]

Here, the jokes are buried deep. Bring a pick axe. My temper is shorter than its half life. I’m so green my hair dresser uses a Brush Hog. I’m unluckier than the leprechaun caught smoking his pot o’ gold, instead of drinking it. My face is redder than an erotic periodical shelved at the local library. Stingy? I’m the fourth descendant of a miser. Or would be if he’d had children. My arms are stronger than the Romanian-Limburger dead lift. And a few jokes left laying out in the open... ‘Unfortunate’ is having a job interview while sitting in your fart cloud. Talk about sexy! My lips are so luscious they’ve been compared to Sophia Loren’s... nail clippings. For the backstory on this humor thing, see my previous post, I Can Learn To Be Funny?

“Nurse, I feel a little horse. No giddy-up. Run down. Like I’m saddled with a heavy burden.” “Whoa there,” she says, checking my teeth. “Hay, you’re an old nag. But you’re in stable condition.” (I will not apologize.)

Well-heeled cabana furnishings. Lamp/dresser & matching end table in Caucasian Rush. Good starter set. B.O. For the backstory, read I Can Learn To Be Funny? Image from the Library of Congress Olympic photographs .

Back at the elephant Q-tip factory Image from the USDA historical photographs . All you need to know about Q-tips on Wikipedia .

Here is the official list of Small and Big's favorite 25 cartoons. This is another one of these exercises I'm doing to hone my humor muscle, wherever that is. 1) Gifted child — by Gary Larson 2) Checking p-mail — by Mike Peters 3) When a tree's alone in the forest... — by Sam Gross 4) Family burdens — by Pat Brady 5) Criminal snail escape — by Charles Barsotti 6) Church of Mathematics — by Bill Watterson 7) Amish midlife crisis — by Harry Bliss 8) Delicious dinosaurs — by Arnie Levin 9) On butterfly wings — by Robert Leighton 10) Ordering the wrong food — by Charles Barsotti 11) Hamster cardio — by Jason Polan 12) Slow love — by Sam Gross 13) Making friends — by Gary Larson 14) Toothpaste personality test — by Evan Fisch 15) E=mc 3 — by Gary Larson 16) Cows rule — by Gary Larson 17) Stop and what? — by Sam Gross 18) Friendly leaves — by Charles M. Schulz 19) Mamm...

Humor is everywhere—even in your toilet plumbing. Especially there. Case in point: Go down to your basement and grab Black & Deckers’ Complete Guide to Home Plumbing , the 3rd edition. It’s okay, we’ll wait. Lah dee dah. Humm dee dum dee—Back already? Okay, now read the joke on page 132. “What do you get if you cross a toilet with a food disposer?” If you think the answer is “Ummm, sick?” you’d be wrong. Read on. “It may not be the most pleasant combination to consider, but the answer is a macerating toilet.” Macerating toilet! “Macerate,” you ask, “as in ‘to soak fruit or other food in liquid in order to soften and flavor it with the liquid’?” Sure! I guess. Keep reading. “Based on the grinder-and-pump unit that is installed next to or behind the toilet, a macerating toilet grinds waste finely enough that it can be pumped upward through a ¾-inch pipe and evacuated...

I base most of my fashion taste on what doesn't itch. —Gilda Radner ( Wikipedia ) I concur. What's nice about this joke is the word itch . Complaints about clothes usually go from the bruised feet, bunions, and corns to the expensive price tags to the transatory styles. I don't expect the line to end with itching. Oddly, itching and scratching have never been fashionable. In some circles expensive price tags and temporary trends are sought after, but bunions and corns? Hmmm, that gives me an idea. Fashion designers: After Earth's population perfects their "beautiful" look with plastic surgery, ugly will be super In . Make a name for yourself right now by breaking away from the fashion pack. Embrace what you help create! Turn hammer toes into glamor toes! Stick a bowtie on a bunion! Adorn a corn! Click here for more info about this joke collection thing.

We owe a lot to Thomas Edison—if it wasn't for him, we'd be watching television by candlelight. —Milton Berle ( Wikipedia ) A world without electricity would be a different world indeed. We'd be getting our monthly light bills from the candle utilities. What's nice about this joke is that it's based on a cramped world view devoid of science; that a world without electricity is the same as one with. Only without. Click here for more info about this joke collection thing.

I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened. —Mark Twain, a.k.a. Samuel Clemens ( PBS and Ken Burns ) Ain't that the truth for us all. Twain, the mustacheod ex-riverboat captain, has a fine way of dressing up the phrase, "Don't worry about it". This one's a keeper because it spits straight into mopey territory, hits that comma there, and rebounds into a delightful remark about the human experience. A master writer of his caliber doesn't have to use a funny word like spittoon to accomplish his noble task. Dang, I just used spittoon . Click here for more info about this joke collection thing.

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road? A: To get to the other side. —Unknown (and in hiding) A chicken lays down plain old common sense. Yes, I yelp it to the world: I have always, always enjoyed this joke! It's as funny today as when I was in kindergarten, only more so. This is the kind of joke a Snidley Sourpuss might make up. He'd grumble, "You expected a magic answer, an exciting answer, even a funny answer, didn't yah? Well there's no such thing." That is the joke's dirty little secret—the teller uses trickery to feel superior. Especially five-year-old comedians. Enough about theory, philosophy, and mathematics. Let's not over analyze a good thing. Click here for more info about this joke collection thing.

I'm not like other people. Pain hurts me. —Daffy Duck ( Wikipedia ) Working backwards: 1) Hurting is intrinsic to pain. There's no pain that does not hurt. In the hurting department, people are the same as Daffy. 2) Of course Daffy is not like other people. He's a duck. 3) Daffy's not a duck. He's an animated cartoon character. Deep humor evolves, like peeling a duck-shaped onion. Click here for more info about this joke collection thing.

I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. —Sir Winston Churchill ( Wikipedia ) Even if Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill hadn't been the United Kingdom's Prime Minister during WWII and the winner of a Nobel prize for literature, I'd still say he was a man of action and choice words. He shows great strength by publicly declaring a preference for the lowly pig. (And so far in advance of the mid-1980s miniature pot-bellied pig craze, too.) His simple yet profound oinker argument convinces me to move Porky Pig up a notch on my Warner Bros. scale. Maybe not Yosemite Sam level, but still. In a backwards way Sir Winston compares people to pigs, saying we both like to have our backs scratched, to root around in rich brown earth for truffles, and to spend hot sunny days wallowing naked in the mud. I know I do! Click here for more info about this joke collection thing. Young Winston Churchill image from Library of Congress .

What's another word for thesaurus? —Steven Wright ( website ) If words and their synonyms are grouped into something called a thesaurus, it's pretty ironic that the word "thesaurus" itself doesn't have a synonym. It's almost a syn. (Hee hee!) Steven Wright's calm style of humor has a habit of displaying our own language idiosyncrasies back to us. He's got his work, employment, crop, job, function cut out for him. Since Tyrannosaurus and Brontosaurus have already been used, when I discover a new dinosaur I'm naming it Thesaurus. (Speaking of "the saurus" reminds me: Who decided on the word therapist ? It reads as "the rapist". Seeing as the profession is based on helping to heal personal suffering, perhaps a name change is in order. May I suggest a more inviting name like theconvict , thereferee , or, on the smooth cuddly side, thepuppy ?) Click here for more info about this joke collection thing.

It's amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper. —Jerry Seinfeld ( Wikipedia ) Ol' Jerry turns my notions about information upside down. His joke leaves out just enough detail so's I can come up with my own discovery, my own Ah ha! moment. "Hmmm, why do articles exactly fit the space, never spilling over? Do purveyers of news decide what not to put in, thereby insinuating that that's all the news there is? Gasp! Why, newspapers partake of this practice the world over, from time immemorial." Well, maybe not since "immemorial" because the existence of newspapers implies a recorded history, however loosely. It implies schools too, since most papers require readers with a 9th-grade reading level. And the alphabet, for reasons that can only be explained by using the alphabet. Click here for more info about this joke collection thing.

The report of my death was an exaggeration. —Mark Twain, a.k.a. Samuel Clemens ( Wikipedia ) How do I love thee, Mark Twain? Let me count the ways... 1) Your understatement, 2) your exaggerated understatement, and 3) your exaggerated understated understatement. Too bad you now really are dead. Click here for more info about this joke collection thing.

So, I bought a new CD and I was trying to get it open but couldn't with all the layers. I mean plastic and then tape and the tape is like government tape. It says 'open here'. Is that sarcasm? And buy batteries and they are in there with layers and layers of cardboard, and then scissors... You need scissors to get into scissors, what if you were buying them for the first time? You wouldn’t be able to get them open. Then you try and buy a light bulb and it's this thin thin cardboard. What are they thinking? “Ohh, they'll be fine.” —Ellen DeGeneres ( Wikipedia ) You got your specifics (your tape, scissors, and cardboard) and you got your generalities (like all manufacturers are in cohoots to package stuff this way). What can I say, I enjoy a silly story that meanders in the telling. Incandescent light bulb packaging is definitely weird. You'd think they'd figure out better packaging, especially since light bulbs symbolize a bright idea. Click here for more inf...

Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear. —Dave Barry ( website ) Hee hee. The way Dave writes reminds me of a teen or a pre-teen. There's an innocence to the way he cobbles words and thoughts together to make reading fun. Day after day, week after week, year after year he makes humor writing look effortless through his endless supply of newspaper columns. Simplicity bubbles up from great skill, like an underwater fart. Reminds me of a story: When the famous artist Robert Motherwell switched to painting abstract art he got all kinds of guff over it. Many argued that his new style wasn't even art. When a disappointed viewer made fun of Motherwell, asking how long it took him to paint that ugly picture, Motherwell answered that it took him 20 years to learn to paint like that. Click here for more info about this joke collection thing.