C’est Rire category archive

The Philadelphia Shrinquirer explains how Pennsylvania tries to keep its vanity plates decorus. It’s a short article and quite amusing:

The ladies and gentlemen of the committee come to their deliberations well-armed. They have slang dictionaries, an acronym database, foreign-language dictionaries, and an array of digital reference tools to screen out not only inappropriate sexual material, but also references to drugs, gangs, ethnic slurs, and violence.

But the most potent weapon is Table 0566, known to insiders as “The No-No List” – a growing compilation – now numbering nearly 300 pages and 10,000 entries. From ABOOGER to ZUCKU, the list is a compendium of bad taste – a field guide to the less attractive recesses of the human cranial vault.

There are some easy calls in Table 0566: TUSH, TOUCHME, PISTOF, LEZDOIT, HELLYES, and almost anything beginning SEX.

I wonder whether these two, sent to me by a Faithful Reader

XTC UNLTD
KISS ME

would pass muster in the Quaker State?

The new line of stoves from Maytag: The Halven.

He laid the phone next to the stove. They dialed it. Suddenly, the electronic control on the stovetop beeped. The digital display changed from a clock to the word “high.” As the phone was ringing, the broiler was heating up.

Follow the link for the rest of the story.

Maytag has taken the oven back to the lab for the exorcism.

H/T Linda for the link.

A researcher in Oz claims to have developed an aerosol spray which can reduce stress; the spray contains chemicals are released by plants and reportedly smells like newly mown grass.

Sounds like a natural for Billy Mays, except he’s moved on the the Great Sideshow in the Sky.

That’s really here nor there, but it led to this screed by Victoria Coren, who slices and dices it expertly.

A nugget from near the beginning of the article. It gets better:

And I say: this sums up everything that is wrong with our stupid, soulless, lazy, money-driven, empty modern culture. Why take an airy hike through one of the world’s most beautiful landscapes when, for £4, you can spray a chemical approximation of it round the room and lie on the sofa watching Coronation Street?

I hate Dr Nick Lavidis. I’m sure he’s a nice man, but I despise him and everything he stands for. Fine, so this nonsense may improve your memory. But what, precisely, will you be remembering? The happy day you clicked “purchase” on the room spray at an online checkout? The golden moment when you first pointed it at the carpet from your wheezy prone position on a beanbag in front of The X Factor?

I’ll tell you what improves your memory. Getting up off your arse and going out to do something that’s worth remembering.

Companion story here. (There’s a 30-second commercial at the beginning of the video.)

It really isn’t surprising the NBC would feature this. The Law and Order franchise is NBC’s bread and butter.

Experts say the recent ruling by the top French court — to accept phone exchanges as legitimate proof of adultery — will make it easier for the French to get divorced. Previously, husbands and wives often had to wait for years to escape a marriage if they could not prove that their spouse was misbehaving or mistreating them.

Therefore . . .

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I was doing some disk maintenance yesterday (that’s computerese for deleting old stuff) and found this. According to the file properties, it’s been lying around on various computers in my place for over six years. I have no idea from whence it came. It has no point, but, then, neither does this post.

And, yes, I have made lunch off an R. C. Cola and Moon Pie. It’s a pretty lousy lunch. I’d rather have a Coke and a Hostess lemon pie (unless I can get a TastyKake. Once you TastyKake, you’ll never want to Hostess again).

OKRA (Dec 22 – Jan 20)
Are tough on the outside but tender on the inside. Okras have tremendous influence. An older Okra can look back over his life and see the seeds of his influence everywhere. You can do something good each day if you try.

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1. Cat rubs against legs.

2. Feed cat (narrowly escaping death as cat tries to trip me three times between cat food storage device and cat food consumption device dish).

3. Cat no longer rubs against legs.

Elizabeth Wellington pretty much sums it up.

Cambridge, U. K., punters–the persons who take persons on tours of the Cam river in little boats called “punts“–are fighting over space on the river. This shows show crowded the river has gotten.

The panoply of weapons used in the punting wars is said to include stink bombs thrown from bridges to render a rival’s boat inoperable, washing up (dishwashing–ed.) liquid squirted to make it too slippery for the punter to stand, and bolt-cutters to snap mooring chains. But never, until now, an electric jig saw.

Not that it affects me in any way:

The producers of “Terminator Salvation” filed for bankruptcy protection amid a court battle with a hedge fund that provided some funding for the film.

I tried to watch the first Terminator. Failed.

Burgle a store, record it on video, and post the video on Facebook. Sheesh.

Boxes of chocolate and tubs of ice cream have vanished in the night. She found a crushed soda can on the ground with a cigarette inside, though none of her four female employees – including her three daughters – smokes.

And she was perplexed when she came in to find the toilet seat raised.

“I knew something was up. I just didn’t know how and who or what,” said Eystad, 40.

Then, Saturday night, Pitman police came to her door with news of a video posted on a Facebook account.

Shot in the wee hours of Friday morning, the footage shows five people stealing sweets from Ladybug Candies, 50 S. Broadway. One alleged burglar shot and posted the video, which documents the theft in progress, the stolen property, and even the license plate of the get-away vehicle.

They had a key. One of the suspects is her landlord. He claims it was a one-time impulse theft that happened after another tenant reported loss of electricity. The storekeeper is skeptical.

Senator Franken can draw a reasonable accurate map of the United States freehand, from memory.

Mudflats on the Frankenmap:

Franken’s childhood map did not have separate pieces for Alaska and Hawaii. Hawaii was just a series of painted dots, and Alaska was a square island off the coast of California, so Franken never included them in his map. I lamented this fact last summer, and apparently this omission was also noted by a Begich staffer who informed the Senator. After a couple letters back and forth, one of which from Begich included a handy connect-the-dots guide, I am happy to tell you that both Alaska and Hawaii are now included on the famous Frankenmap. Links to both letters HERE.

Aside: I had one of those map puzzles. Unlike the one I got for my kids, it was a straight jigsaw. It didn’t have any kind of frame.

When I go to Virginia, I take U. S. 13 all the way down.

When I come back, I take U. S. 13 to U. S. 113 to U. S. 13.

Not a good idea today.

Take beach traffic heading north from the Delaware beaches.

Add an collision at the most inappropriately named town in Delaware.

Result: 45 minutes to go five miles.

I’m done in for the day.

No dancing on this plank:

Andre Jackson, an exotic dancer whose stage name is “Thug Passion,” had planned on displaying his booty-shakin’ talents for an all-female audience Friday on a midnight cruise on the Spirit of Norfolk.

But thanks to the Norfolk Bar Task Force, Jackson had to remain a landlubber.

Jackson, a Virginia Beach resident, says Deputy City Attorney Cynthia Hall shut him down unfairly, and her actions have cost him thousands of dollars.

“She never gave me a chance,” he said Friday. “She automatically assumed I was some kind of dirty stripper.”

In southeastern Virginia, it’s one if by land, two if by sea:

One resident actually sighted culprits in mid-May. They were in their boat and had the man’s Carolina Skiff pulled away from the pier. He shined a light on them and warned that he was calling police.

“These guys panic, trying to escape, and they turn their boat over, and they go in the drink,” Croft said.

One of them was heard yelling, “Hey, Mike, are you OK?” according to a search warrant filed in Circuit Court.

They swam away before police got there.

Other than that first name, they also left another clue: Their boat.

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El Reg has more.