C’est Rire category archive

Back when lived in Arlington, Va., I used to see a monster vehicle that, rather than a truck body, waaaay up there above those huge tires, eight or ten feet in the air, had the body of a Chevy Vega.

But that does not beat this.

Not CBRS. Chthulu Baccalaureum.

The local NPR station is running its winter begathon. One of the gimmicks in every begathon is the “Campus Challenge.” Persons are challenged to make pledges in honor of their alma maters; the winners are announced at the end of the morning news broadcast.

Miskatonic University has one two pledges (and, yes, the announcer knew of it–he loves his craft).

It can’t decide whether it wants to snow or flurry. In any case, I’m glad I bagged DL.

I have described before the strange way in which Delawareans react to snow.

I went to the local Wawa this morning to buy a loaf of bread. It was snowing at the time.

I said to clerk, “I have to tell you, I’m buying this because I’m out of bread, not because it’s snowing”

She was still in hysterics when I left the store.

Delaware license plate:

GIGGLES

On an upscale-looking massage therapy office parlor salon business in the downtown crossing of a fast-growing, fashionable suburb:

Couples Massage $150 per hour.

(Aside: . . . Oh, never mind.)

from Jack Handey, over there, on the sidebar

———————————————>

is too chillingly true to be allowed to just scroll away:

I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it.

Just saw a Comcast commercial about the upcoming digital switch directed to persons using over-the-air television broadcast channels.

On a cable network.

A bill pending in the Colorado state legislature wants to bell license the cats and make their owners liable for keeping them licensed and leashed:

8 (4) “OWNER” MEANS ANY PERSON WHO KEEPS, HAS PERMANENT
9 CUSTODY OF, OWNS, MAINTAINS, HARBORS, PROVIDES CARE OR
10 SUSTENANCE FOR, OR HAS CONTROL OR CHARGE OF OR RESPONSIBILITY
11 FOR A CAT OR WHO PERMITS A CAT TO HABITUALLY BE OR REMAIN ON OR
12 BE LODGED OR FED WITHIN SUCH PERSON’S PROPERTY OR PREMISES.
13 REFUSAL TO PERMIT AN ANIMAL CONTROL OFFICER TO IMPOUND A CAT
14 SHALL BE DEEMED TO BE EVIDENCE OF OWNERSHIP UNLESS OWNERSHIP OF
15 THE CAT BY ANOTHER PERSON IS ESTABLISHED.

I assume that this is a jobs bill to create large number of positions for new cat catchers animal control officers.

All seriousness aside, I recognize that stray cats, dogs, iguanas, marmots, and the occasional downsized gecko are problems, but arbitrarily assigning them to owners seems to be a screwy solution.

If they want to make it illegal to feed strays, then make feeding strays illegal and stop mincing words.

Must be the water.

H/T Karen for the link.

Q. What’s the difference between a hedge fund manager and a pigeon?

Answer below the Fold

’nuff said:

You know those guys who can solve a Rubik’s cube in a matter of seconds? Well, Graham Parker is definitely not one of them.

After 26 years of trying, Parker finally managed to solve the Rubik’s cube that confounded him. Now, you may be thinking that he only occasionally picked up the puzzle, slowing his progress—but the reality is that he obsessed over it day after day, night after night.

Via Wait! Wait!

At El Reg.

(By the way, the only accent I can do convincingly is Tangier Island’s.)

I was saying this in an email just last week. Glad the Toimes caught up with me in theorizing that the Chief Justice flubbed to oath because he doesn’t understand English grammar:

Language pedants hew to an oral tradition of shibboleths that have no basis in logic or style, that have been defied by great writers for centuries, and that have been disavowed by every thoughtful usage manual. Nonetheless, they refuse to go away, perpetuated by the Gotcha! Gang and meekly obeyed by insecure writers.

Among these fetishes is the prohibition against “split verbs,” in which an adverb comes between an infinitive marker like “to,” or an auxiliary like “will,” and the main verb of the sentence. According to this superstition, Captain Kirk made a grammatical error when he declared that the five-year mission of the starship Enterprise was “to boldly go where no man has gone before”; it should have been “to go boldly.” Likewise, Dolly Parton should not have declared that “I will always love you” but “I always will love you” or “I will love you always.”

Any speaker who has not been brainwashed by the split-verb myth can sense that these corrections go against the rhythm and logic of English phrasing. The myth originated centuries ago in a thick-witted analogy to Latin, in which it is impossible to split an infinitive because it consists of a single word, like dicere, “to say.” But in English, infinitives like “to go” and future-tense forms like “will go” are two words, not one, and there is not the slightest reason to interdict adverbs from the position between them.

Not all he doesn’t understand either.

As reported in El Reg. Be sure to play the ad spot at the bottom of the story.

And what are Type II and Type III? Chopped Liver?

Latex allergies are of two types: Type I and Type IV.

Delaware License Plate

OOHLALA

(He wasn’t.)

Pa. License Plate

SUPAGRLZ

(She was.)

N. J. License Plate

4MAGY

(Who’s Maggie? Or are we talking about Amal and the Night Visitors? Or, more to the point, huh? This is one vanity plate that seems to have been worded in vain.)

As a bonus, Cracked dot com’s selection of the 12 most embarrassing photos of 2008. (Warning: Tasteless. Embarrassing usually is.)

In the previous post, I went off on drivers who challenge trains.

I must admit, it was colored by my railroad experience.

Whenever we got a report that a train was delayed by hitting (and sometimes by being hit in the side by) a vehicle, we used to look at each other an marvel at the stupidity (or the suicidal tendencies) of the driver.

Plus it was sad. One of our trains once wiped out the entire high school basketball team from one small lower Midwestern community. And I guarantee that the train did not make a hard left and pursue their van down the street.

Plus plus, I was in the complaint department. We knew that, within two weeks, we’d have lots of mail demanding refunds because of some idiot driver.

And that, within a month, some lawyer would be suing the railroad over the crash, hoping the railroad would settle rather than pay a different lawyer to fight back. (Ultimately, the company adopted the strategy of counter-suing for damages to the locomotive–a broken knuckle and a couple of bent grab-irons, maybe some sheet-metal damage. The suits went away, at least for a while.)

Plus plus plus, now there’s this engineer who must live with having severely injured or, more likely, killed someone through no fault of his or her own. Every once in a while–rarely, but it happened–an engineer involved in one of these things was never able to climb into the cab again. Here is a person severed from the career he or she loved (and, while railroaders may hate their employer from time to time, they all love the railroad; the railroad is fun) because someone was too lazy, too selfish, or too intent on dying (yes, a significant percentage of these things turn out to be suicides) to wait for the train to go by.

Anyhoo, where was I headed? Oh, yeah, it’s not a good idea to race a building to the crossing either.

(Aside: I wish I’d started keeping track of these about a year ago. There seems to be at least one a month, just in my little corner of Delaware. But four in one night . . . .)

And I thought nothing happened in Delaware today:

State police have arrested two Smyrna teens who were allegedly ambushing drivers along U.S. 13 and then damaging their cars.

Early today, troopers closed in on the pair after receiving reports from two women whose cars were damaged.

Warrants have been signed against the teens charging them in eight incidents.

Oh, yeah. The smart ones get bailouts.

Parking must be tough in Scranton:

An eastern Pennsylvania man may face up to 37 years in prison for tearing open a neighbor’s door with a chain saw.

(snip)

Kane was angry because a friend of Zaleski’s parked in front of his house across the street. Police say when Zaleski asked who was at the door, Kane said it was his worst nightmare, told him, “Open the door or I’ll cut it down,” and started sawing.

Full Disclosure: I’ve been to Scranton (and Wilkes-Barre, for that matter). I didn’t see anyone carrying chainsaws.

A Law and Order rerun I saw last night started with a lost pair of pants.

Cheryl Logue, of the 100 block of Landing Drive, jumped into a Comfort Ride Taxi around 10:45 p.m. and told the driver she didn’t know where she wanted to go, said Cpl. Gary Fournier, a Delaware State Police spokesman.

When the 35-year-old cab driver continued to ask for an address, Logue began punching his right arm, Fournier said.

The cabbie then ad libbed a destination: the local pokey, where our heroine chose verbally to assault the gendarmarie.

Aside: You know it was a slow news day when the first story on the front page of the Wilmington local rag is a high school basketball game.