Food For Thought

Do the people who adopt the phrase “Never say never” as their personal motto not realize the rank hypocrisy? Shouldn’t they at least acknowledge it and modify their personal motto to say, “Never say never, unless it is in the context of when it is okay to say ‘never,’ which is never, except in situations like this where it is necessary to use the word ‘never’ to make the point.” Wouldn’t that avoid a lot of confusion?

Well over 37% of people can be considered “above average.”

I can buy imitation crab at the store, and I can buy artificial sweetener, but I cannot buy phony baloney. You would think that by now someone would have tried marketing phony baloney if for no other reason than just the fact that phony baloney has built-in name recognition. I think I’m going to take the idea and get rich selling phoney baloney. It’ll be packaged just like real baloney. It’ll look just like real baloney. But when you take a bite, you’ll discover that it’s NOT baloney! It’s really a two-and-a-half-inch thick, sizzling hot, medium-rare cooked Delmonico steak!

I just noticed: horses don’t have udders. How do farmers milk them?

“Conjoined” and “joined” mean the same thing. You’d think we’d have learned something from that whole flammable/inflammable fiasco, but I guess not.

Suppose you’re one of five people stranded in a life raft in the middle of the ocean. The raft is only provisioned for four people, so either one person has to be thrown overboard, or else all five of you will starve to death before rescue. How do you decide who to toss over the side? Here’s what I’d do: I’d volunteer to jump off the raft myself. But before I jumped, I’d make a very brave and moving speech about personal sacrifice and noble ideals. Then I’d jump overboard. That’d make everyone feel guilty, and then someone—we’ll call her Judy—would decide to jump overboard too. Then another guy—we’ll call him Craig—would jump overboard because he secretly thinks Judy’s cute and wants to impress her. Now the peer pressure’s REALLY on to jump off the raft, and the remaining two will jump overboard just to save face. Then I’d climb back on the raft and have it ALL TO MYSELF. If Judy or Craig or any of the others tried to get back aboard, I’d smack them away with the oars, and then I’d paddle away, chuckling to myself about what SUCKERS other people can be.

Stupid Idea of the Day

An imaginary reader writes:

Dear Uncle Steak;
What's the stupidest idea you've come across on the internet all day?
Sincerely, StubbleBoy

Well, StubbleBoy, the stupidest idea I've read about all day would have to be Falindromes which I found through a link on Andrew Sullivan's Blog.

What is a "falindrome"? Well, falindrome.com defines the neologism as "fake palindromes. Although they cannot be read the same forwards and backwards (like their sister palindromes), their peculiar structure make them appear as if they can."

For example: "Ray, eat a ripe pirate tea. YAR!!"

See? You look at it and it has that palindrome "feel," but if you actually examined the sentence, it's clear that it isn't actually a palindrome. Backwards, it reads, "Ray, aet e tarip epira tae. YAR!!"

I know! It's crazy, isn't it!? But that's the wacky world of falindromes for you!

Andrew Sullivan calls falindromes "really fun."

I call falindromes MISSING THE FRAKKING POINT OF PALINDROMES, YOU DUMMY.

Instead of coming up with some falindromes of my own, I thought it would be more fun to come up with ideas that are almost as stupid as falindromes. Here's a couple:

FOSSWORD PUZZLES: Just like a crossword puzzle, except none of the words match the clues. And some of the lines are just filled in with gobbledygook words and random characters.

FUDOKU: Sudoku puzzles filled out to look like you solved them correctly. But if someone looks at it closely, he'll see that you really just used numbers twice in the same lines. Also known as "cheating on a sudoku puzzle."

If you have an idea that is just as stupid as falindromes, add it in the combox.

Hope You Had a Great Low-Flow Toilet Blowup Day

Dave Barry's blog links to photos and video of the joyous celebration.

National Low-Flow Toilet Blowup Day is Sunday, April 27

Congress mandated the low-flow toilets in the Energy Policy Act of 1992. That's why it takes you two or three flushes to get the job done today. It's hard to believe, but there once was a day when you could do your business, flush once and walk away. You didn't have to flush in installments, you didn't have to keep the plunger handy. You just flushed and didn't think twice about it while you washed your hands.

National Low-Flow Toilet Blowup Day is a holiday commemorating the changes wrought by th eEP Act of 1992. Here's the official website.

They will also be honoring noted anti-low-flow toilet advocate Dave Barry by blowing up a low-flow toilet in his name.

Olympics Protester of the Day

From THIS BLOG.

Hoyt Axton Triggers My Repressed Childhood Memories

Sorry I haven't blogged in so long. Times have been difficult for me.

See, back in the 90's, there was this thing called "Repressed Childhood Memory Syndrome." It was all the rage back then. Basically, the idea is that you have this normal adult, and then all of the sudden he remembers something from his childhood that he never remembered before for years. If all goes well, the adult can then sue his parents for whatever it was he just remembered.

What I remembered was this song called "Della and the Dealer," by Hoyt Axton. It was a jaunty little tune about Della and a dealer and a dog named Jake and a cat named Kalamazoo. I haven't heard or thought about this song for literally decades, but when I was but a wee lad, my parents would play this song for me all the time.

Now, since I was just a little guy at the time, and because my second favorite song during that period was Kenny Rogers's "The Gambler," I believed (up to this day) that the "dealer" in my very favorite song, "Della and the Dealer," was a card dealer.

But recently, I'd been getting snatches and phrases of the song running though my head. I couldn't shake it, so finally I did some Google searches for "if+that+cat+could+talk+what+tales+he'd+tell+but+the+cat+was+cool+and+he+never+said+a+mumbling+word."

I finally found the song. YouTube has disabled the "embedding" option for this video, but you can hear the song HERE.

It's unbelievable.

The "dealer" isn't a card dealer at all. He's a cocaine dealer. There's even a line in the song about the dealer snorting "coke though a century note."

The coke dealer is killed by (SPOILER!) Della's new lover, Randy Boone, and she runs off with him in the pickup truck with the dog and the cat named Kalamazoo. who happens to have a predeliction for shooting rye whiskey.

Drug use, unfaithfulness, murder, alchoholism... These are the themes of my very favorite childhood song.

And I didn't even know it until about twenty minutes ago when I Googled the lyrics and found out what I'd been listening to all those years ago.

What kind of parents would play such a song for a little kid?

Hopefully they're loaded parents who have been holding out on me.

Maybe I can sue them for tons of cash. I dunno. Until I find out, do me a favor and don't tell any of my siblings what the real lyrics of "Della and the Dealer" are. They might have heard the song too.

But I heard it first, so I should get first dibs.

(P.S. If you think you recognize Hoyt Axton in the video, but can't place him, he was the guy who played the dad in "Gremlins" and also in "The Black Stallion.")

No Country for Old Men

Josh Brolin finds $2 million dollars in a satchel at the beginning of the movie. He totally tooks to me like a less-smirky Burt Reynolds, circa 1975. But with longer hair. I dunno, maybe that's just me.

Javier Barden has terrible Prince Valiant helmet-hair and kills people. The movie makes his character "complex" by having him sometimes not kill people.

Tommy Lee Jones has regular-bad-haircut-boring hair and acts as our "anchor" character by sometimes taking interest in the plot and mumbling his general disapproval of it.

The ending was totally intellectual and I didn't understand it at all. I take it that was done on purpose.

When I rented this movie, I thought this was the one with the guy who says, "I drink your milkshake!" (see link) but it's not. That's apparantly in another movie. So, if you want to see the guy who says "I drink your milkshake," don't do what I did and rent "No Country for Old Men." You'll just end up disappointed.