World's oldest joke traced back to 1900 BC | Oddly Enough | Reuters

EverBabe -

I still remember sitting at the table at Tech, thinking back to what WE thought the first joke must have been:

Og: "Look, Brog: Brontosaurus!"
Brog: turns around frantically
Og: HA HA HA HA HA HA

Not as good as the pharaoh/naked girl one, but still - a CLASSIC!

qwantz.com - dinosaur comics - July 24 2008

Above, a link to an AWESOME idea about LifeHacking your memory with various songs!

Misteri Nigger, 1069, Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii, and other names so weird that judges forbade them. - By Eugene Volokh - Slate Magazine#page_start#page_start#page_start

Found this, that made me think of various things.

8. Darren QX [pronounced 'Lloyd'] Bean!. No problem!, holds our friend the California Court of Appeal in 2006. [Darren Lloyd Bean v. Superior Court, 2006 WL [pronounced 'Westlaw'] 3425000 (Cal. App.).] Bean!, who recently sat for the Oregon State Bar, reported that, "Many of his close friends greet him as 'Bean!' When saying his name, friends raise the pitch and the volume of their voices above their usual spoken tone."

The above story, for whatever reason, made me think about the time EverBabe and I were in a used bookstore, and saw the following book:

FROOMB!

To me, it wasn't just that it was a crazy stoopid word - it was that darn exclamation point on the end. (Although this was pre-Google and Woot - so it's not as stupic sounding now as it was.)

Also - Dug used to tell everyone that he spelled his name Qdqoquqg, but the 'q's were silent. Of course.

Celebrating the navel in Japan's belly button | Lifestyle | Living | Reuters

I think my favorite quote is below (maybe an artifact of translation?:)

"The belly button is traditionally believed to be located in the middle of the body and the most important part. Our town, Shibukawa, is also called the belly button of Japan, and that is how this festival began," said festival organizer Kazuo Yamada.

Or, as Seinfeld would say, "HellOOOOOooooooLa La La......"

Tax rebate checks are swallowed by economic malaise - Los Angeles Times

Tax rebate checks are swallowed by economic malaise - Los Angeles Times

That unsettled feeling is just as familiar to Stephanie Veronica, 24, a Chicago cocktail waitress."I don't trust banks," Veronica said, so she cashed her $300 check and promptly stored the money in an old-fashioned steel safe next to her bed.
...... Veronica said. "I went to my bank and kept $500 in there. But the rest, the cash, I keep at home."

i think that this young lady should be thankful for 2 things:

1 - she is a cocktail waitress, not tradtionally known for their money hoarding habits
2 - The article was in the LA Times, not the Chicago Sun Times

That's all that is saving this woman from a rash of home break-in's.

Well and truly wed.

(is what I am.)

There is photographic proof, if you would like it. Click here, then "View Proofs". Etc, Etc, Etc.

Jenna Bush Married | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Jenna Bush Married The Onion - America's Finest News Source

True story - I had one cousin who was at the wedding (his wife is a sorority sister) and one more who finished a bottle of vodka with the twins when they were teenagers.

Continuing my blog-a-week juggarnaut

Memeage from Mark, quoting figgyscott
Everyone's Reading List
These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, and italicize the ones you own but have not read.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey -
Pride and Prejudice - Read the Great Illustrated Classic version
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations -
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha - Movie only (i think)
Middlesex
Quicksilver (and sequel)
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West -AND the sequel
The Canterbury Tales - several of these, in high school.
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist - Read the Great Illustrated Classic version
Gulliver’s Travels (at least the first two - don't know if i got to the horses and magicians)
Les Misérables (musicals only here)
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir - Nope. (cover picture looks like my brother...)
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Read the Great Illustrated Classic version
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything - read the blog daily..
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values -
The Aeneid - think i had to read portions in Latin?
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield - Read the Great Illustrated Classic version
The Three Musketeers - Read the Great Illustrated Classic version

PS - markie (et al.) this is a living list, continuing to be updated. In other words, when Neil Gaiman was talking about it this morning, he didn't see any of his own works on there. (as opposed to Neverwhere, American Gods, and Anansi Boys on this list, and the current (as of posting) two of Anansi Boys and American Gods , at 108 and 143, respectively.

In honor of my upcoming nuptials:

I will use the heck out of this online wedding planning tool, as well.

http://www.theknot.com/ourwedding/SeanKilpatrick&EllenCox

More later, (i know, at this stage i don't believe me either.)

In honor of Obama's 'speech on race'

Let America Be America Again

by Langston Hughes
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More - Let America Be America Again

(suggestion - try reading it out loud, and see if you don't tear up a little)

Whatever » Why Experience Isn’t Everything

OK - Scalzi has once again won my vote for 'makes you go hmmm?' thought of the day.

http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=478

“Suppose you had to choose between two Presidential candidates, one of whom had spent 20 years in Congress plus had considerable other relevant experience and the other of whom had about half a dozen years in the Illinois state legislature and 2 years in Congress. Which one do you think would make a better President? If you chose #1, congratulations, you picked James Buchanan over Abraham Lincoln.”

– “How Good Are Experienced Presidents?”

I mean - this is VERY true ON TOP OF the fact that if Hillary is running on 'experience', how the hell does she expect to win in November against THIS. (ok - now i am certain i am going to the bad place)

From the "Who did What now?" Dep't

Congratulations to Doug and Lauren Deal, proud parents of an 8-lb something baby boy (as of last Friday, i believe)

No confirmation that the name of the baby is going to be Sean Douglas... but no denial yet, either.

Myspace Friend Requests

So - I am very popular. At least from looking at my unsolicited MySpace fried requests.

One thing that I have noticed, however - there is something in common with most of these names (well, something other than the everpresent "user banned for inappropriate conduct" tag 100% of these 'people' share after 24 hours. )

I'll go ahead and give you a list of the ones I've received in the past 2 months:

Declina, Gwenni, Caroline, Elinor, Cristionna, Gusella, Constantina, Bertina, Jordan, Rivalee, Anette, Arabella, Aridane, Anna-diana, Marianna, Ethel, Georgine, Livvyy, Raquel, Maya, Marjorie, Natalia, Elizabeth, Isabelle, Kippie, Sharyl, Atalanta, Hailey, Cora,
Lynn, Helen, Belinda, Aurora, Cheryl, Sofia, Jenna

Barring the Elizabeths and Mayas, very few of them are actually NAMES - at least as far as I can tell. I am reminded of the Penny Arcade comic, regarding spam email names. Which I can not find. Markie?

Who'd *I* vote for today?

(after all of my jibber-jabber about Ron Paul, etc?)



First time voting FOR someone, rather than AGAINST someone...

(someone, please - lower my expectations quickly!

Baby names in the Georgia

Inappropriate chat log from work:


(anon_friend): Baby names in Georgia
(me): ones that I don't understand
SEAN Boy 3,139
SEANNA Girl 24
SEANA Girl 19
SEAN Girl 12
BLAZER 2 - poor child
...it's a family name CHLORINE 1

(anon_friend): I like chlorine that is nice
but things like this
SALTRESEYIAH
TOTally epidural induced made up name, right?

(me): There are almost half as many RAVEN's as SEAN’s?
RAVEN 1,572

(anon_friend): duh that's so raven is a show

(me): (including 46 boys!)

(anon_friend): whoe

(me): !!

(anon_friend): my dad would like KEITHLYN
he always suggests somethin silly like keitharina for a girls name
18 girls named LABRIA
THAT Is wrong

(me): 2 SANGRIAs
6 MIGNON's
and 1 ICE
(ice, baby)

(anon_friend): CLIFFANY
(2)

(me): MNSA-MERIMT-F-NRA
(only 1, though)

(anon_friend): CLETWAN
MENSAH (2)
SHITERIA

(me): KING MARVELOUS (1)

(anon_friend): SHITIYAU

(me): TITILOPE
TITANYONNA
!!!

(anon_friend): THAT is nutzs

(me): (poor, poor girl

(anon_friend): NUTE
71 rhea

(me): QUEEN'S
(apostrophe)

(anon_friend): 1 girl named MANATEE
may as well name her whale

(me): :(
booo

(anon_friend): FAT KIT
wtf

(me): FARTUN Girl 7
FARTOON Girl 1
FARTREZE D'ANGELIC Boy 1
FARTUNA Girl 1
fartuna
...really?

(anon_friend): THat is hilarious

(me): LEMONTRAVIOUS

(anon_friend): aren't there laws about this stuff
When life gives you lemons
make lemontravious

(me): HAH

(anon_friend): FOURGITA
CUNECHIA

(me): PENISHA Girl 1

(anon_friend): NO

(me): YES

(anon_friend): WAY

(me): WAY
..."mommy...where did i come from"

(anon_friend): That should be illegal

(me): ..."Well, Penisha"
"funny story"

(anon_friend): Penis HA

(me): LNDIA Girl 1
Linda?
you think?>

(anon_friend): (My cousin the teacher) would always tell me about the crazy kids names like the kid whose name was Jihad Jesus or something

(me): 35 boys named JIHAD
and 1 girl JIHADA

(anon_friend): no OBAMA

(me): SQUIRDARIEN

(anon_friend): YODAH

(me): 14 OSAMA’s
1 BARACK
(prob a lot more next year)
and feel sorry for the one boy HILLARY

(anon_friend): oooh yeah

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's naughty text messages to his chief of staff. - By Bonnie Goldstein - Slate Magazine

Oh, my brother -

When having affairs, and FIRING people iilegally because you want to hide them, PLEASE don't use your work provided cell phone to send text messages:

a) to document your affair
b) to document your illegal firing
c) to document OTHER illegal activities
d) all of the above...

I am ashamed to share a last name...

Eternal Question number 65. What does a durian fruit taste like? « Random thoughts consigned to the scrap heap of cyberspace

Not sure WHY I was trying to explain what a Durian was to LN - but I was.

Oh yes -I remember - Costco seems to have pomelos (according to Wikipedia, the ancestor of grapefruit) on sale. They were huge, and weird, and I kept calling them pupalos. Which don't exist, except, apparently, as the name of a 37 year old Brazilian person.

(hopefully that person does get older, however.)

OK - when it rains, music pours

So - this post is inspired by the recent discovery by Scott Adams that song lyrics are, at best, nonsense when taken away from the catchy tune:

Recently I discovered I am a talented lyricist. This came as a big surprise to me.

It all came together when I realized most songs I enjoy are gibberish. I can TOTALLY write gibberish!

For decades I believed my favorite songs revolved around deep thoughts artistically embedded in metaphors and allusions. It turns out they were gibberish.

My first hint came after reading an interview with Paul McCartney. He admitted that most, if not all, Beatles songs were random words and thoughts strung together. I refused to believe it. So I checked online and read some of the Beatles songs. Holy crap! Gibberish!

He then came up with the first two lines of a song, and asked for the continuation, in a game of online storytelling:

“She had runaway eyes and marshmallow kittens.
My heart heard a dream like ten thousand gay mittens.”

My contribution is below - i feel like it scans OK, and meets the gibberish requirement. Tell me what you, the reader (listener?) think?

When first I saw her vast labrynthine beauty -
I could not believe it - she looked like Doug Flutie!

The comments to his posts are always worth it at least 10% of the time, and this was no exception - For i found this song. (FYI - it is really called "Title Of The Song." )

LN won't feel that it's a 'real song', whatever that means. But it matches my love of acapella with my love of funny songs (covers, whatever.) Such as what has to be one of the all time best funny songs, linked here. (link to the original version, but why?)

YouTube - Sugarland- Stay

(Justin reminded me that sometimes, when you leave relationships, the people involved go on to be really, really successful)

99XWatch.org: Cumulus' Letter to Clients

99XWatch.org: Cumulus' Letter to Clients

Sooooo.... 99x (local radio station) is dead? Leslie Fram (someone who I thought was at least a partial OWNER in the station) is FIRED?

And (this is prob the shocking part for Ogre) Q100 is moving over to 99.7, and (this is the awesome part for Loud Bobby) the Regular Guys are moving to 100.5.

(and THIS is the story it took to get me back to blogging?)