Me (just being a goofball): Wow, now I’m between a rock and a hard place.

pause

L: Hey!

N: Wait… which of us is which?

Me: I’m going to let you

[Read the whole thing]]]> At last night’s book discussion, I sat down between L, the moderator, and N, another attendee. Then the following exchange took place:

Me (just being a goofball): Wow, now I’m between a rock and a hard place.

pause

L: Hey!

N: Wait… which of us is which?

Me: I’m going to let you work that out between the two of you.

pause

Me: Wait, I’m between the two of you!

I was moved to respond to him on Facebook:

Used in a sentence: “A lot of wildlife habitat loss in the world is occurring due to defenestration.”

His response:

For that grammatically correct sentence, I wish to defenestrate you, mrawdon!

I

[Read the whole thing]]]> This morning, @joeyhagedorn tweeted that his word of the day is “defenestration”:

I was moved to respond to him on Facebook:

Used in a sentence: “A lot of wildlife habitat loss in the world is occurring due to defenestration.”

His response:

For that grammatically correct sentence, I wish to defenestrate you, mrawdon!

I later stopped by his office and observed that everyone talks about defenestration, but refenestration never gets any love.

It turns out the Urban Dictionary has a definition for “refenestrate”:

Sad to say, this exchange may have been the high point of my day. Sure made me laugh, though!

The campaign’s been

[Read the whole thing]]]> I’m always amused when I see the following slogan as part of Safeway’s Eating Right campaign. I recall something a friend said, that “It’s not just about eating kids, but about eating the right kids”. In this particular ad, the Tasmanian Devil really seems to underscore that notion. (Nom nom nom…)

The campaign’s been around for a while; I can’t believe this obvious joke hasn’t made the rounds among Safeway employees…

It’s well worth the time to read through it all, especially

[Read the whole thing]]]> If you’re not a regular reader of John Scalzi’s blog, nip over there to read his hilarious report about visiting the Creation Museum:

1. Start with the photographic tour on Flikr.
2. Then read the accompanying essay, which features liberal use of the word “horseshit”.

It’s well worth the time to read through it all, especially the photo set.

(For more hilarity, visit the Creation Museum’s web site, too.)

Then you can enter Scalzi’s LOLCreashun contest.

In related news, the long-running PBS science program Nova last night ran an episode about the 2005 trial involving the Dover, PA school board which rejected Intelligent Design’s claims to be a rational alternative to evolution. I unfortunately missed the episode (hopefully I can catch it some other time), but Ars Technica has some additional info about the Dover trial’s impact on the ID movement and what the ID people are up to these days.

It’s too bad we sometimes have to take these people seriously in order to refute their silliness. It’s much more fun to just mock them like Scalzi does. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to decisively and finally win a battle against what amounts to rampant (if not willful) ignorance.

It’s part of “avast” conspiracy.

That is all. (For now.)

If you’re not familiar with the referenced nonsense, you can watch the short movies about Badgers and the Bananaphone.

I’m not sure why I find it so funny, I just chuckle every time I see it. I have no idea where it originally came from.

(via J.D.)

i is much amewsed

(via Karen B.)

[Read the whole thing]]]> Last year Debbi came across comedian/ventriloquist Jeff Dunham on Comedy Central, and he became a favorite of hers. She bought his DVD, Arguing With Myself. I can’t remember seeing Debbi laugh so hard as when she saw his special, and then his DVD! So, of course, we’ve gone twice to see him at the Improv in San Jose.

At first glance, Dunham is this unassuming-looking guy who looks like he could be your next-door neighbor. In fact, his humor is extremely irreverent. He opens his act as a straightforward stand-up act, usually talking about his family (wife, three kids, and many dogs), and then brings out his puppets, who include crotchety-old-guy Walter, and manic-verbal-abuser Peanut. It’s sort of a good-cop-bad-cop routine, with Dunham trying to keep the characters in line, while they’re abusing him, the audience, their hypothetical relatives, and anyone else who comes to mind.

And really, he’s hilarious! Many of his gags deliberately break the illusion of his puppets’ reality, as they comment on his reactions to him, and suggest some novel uses for his ventriloquism.

I think my favorite joke of the evening involved his chihuahuas, which (he says) were entirely his wife’s idea. Little yappy dogs, he’s greatly amused at some of the tortures they undergo due to their small stature and smaller brains. This gag involved his youngest daughter taking one of them for a walk using a retractable leash, and the devious trick the played on the poor beast.

Have I mentioned that my sense of humor is a little irreverent, too?

The one thing that makes me a little uncomfortable are his gay jokes. They aren’t really gay-bashing jokes, but rather using “gay” to mean “effiminate”, as in “driving a powder-blue Prius while holding your wife’s chihuahua is gay.” The web comic strip PvP often makes exactly the same sort of jokes, for instance in the sequence starting here (though Dunham is funnier than PvP). Is this funny, or is it a little too tactless? I’m not sure.

(Note that I have no problem at all with him making fun of people who drive Priuses. Or, for that matter, abusing chihuahuas. We each have our own boundaries, I guess.)

He’s even edgy enough that one of his new puppets is Ahmed the Dead Terrorist. Which is, uh, really weird. (This wasn’t his A-list material, but I think it was also some new material he’s still shaking out.) Then again, is anyone else taking on the terrorists in quite this way?

Overall, we had a terrific time at the show, and assuming you’ve got an equally irreverent sense of humor, or are willing to shove aside your sensitivities for 90 minutes, I’d wholeheartedly recommend going to see Jeff Dunham.

(Via Whump)

(Via Torchwood.)

(I bought her a Garmin StreetPilot c330, by the way.)