Physicists acting badwy

Posted on October 7, 2014 by PMcG

Dear you
Yes, you. Snap out of it.

Today begins a new feature for those, like you, who have neither an eighth-grade reading level nor the lip-moving speed required for eye-glazing biographies or autobiographies of the great men and women of history.

And let’s be honest, if you had the strength it takes to pick up one of those forest leveling doorstops, would you waste it reading about Frederick the Great, Mata “Don’t call me Harry” Hari or Henrys I through VIII?

(Yes, Henry IV came before Henry VI, just as Super Bowl XL came in XL only, and people who wanted Super Bowl XXL or Super Bowl M or Super Bowl S were left out in the cold. The basic rule is I before V except after C and when sounded like XLVIII as in axlevee and San Luis Obispo.)

This feature, called “Page 241,” reproduces a single, very liftable page — the exact same numbered page from each subject’s life story. It’s just enough to keep your eyes from rolling up inside your head and, at the same time, make you glad you didn’t waste any more time on reading than you already have.

Why page 241 and not page 240, or even 242? Oh come on. Everybody knows that if you throw a big honking book up in the air, it will always come down open to page 241.

Why? Look, it’s a physics thing and if I tried to explain it, I’d have to use words like coefficient and wave function and quantum tunneling. Do you really want to go there? If you don’t believe me, go upstairs and throw your Funk and Wagnall’s out the window.

And please don’t ask me what Funk and Wagnall’s is. If you really don’t know, here’s a hint: look it up in your Funk and Wagnall’s. It’s up in the attic next to your grandfather’s ear trumpet.

Without further ado, then, here is the first Page 241 from “Big Boomb,” the autobiography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb and doting uncle of the whoopee cushion.

Page 241

…called me a stupid cretin, as if there were any other kind.

Anyway, the whole issue of what name to give the bomb blew up, so to speak, when Ptolemy suggested “Steve.”

I gave him a stink eye which he added to his growing collection.

Then Bonomo raised his hand and said “As long as we’re deciding on a name, can we talk about the color of the explosion’s cloud?”

Kwipke chimed in “Hode the fweeping phone. Fuhget the cower. What about the wook of the cwowd?”

I sighed loudly. “I’ll say this one last time. The cloud will be Pepto Bismol pink and it will wook, uh, look like cotton candy on a stick. And the bomb shall be called KA-BLAM. ”

Nietzsche immediately shouted “Boo!” and Freud (not the shrink, the plumber who happened to be in the adjacent powder room fixing the plugged toilet) gasped “Geezy weezy.”

“Come on, Oppie,”whined Schrodinger. “You can’t have a pink bomb. No one will take us seriously.”

“They will if they’re dead,” I shot back with a small derringer that I kept for just such occasions.

“What about a mushroom cloud?” said Smelter ridiculously.

“KA-BWAM is a weedicawis name fowa bomb,”  Kwipke interjected. “By the way, shouldn’t that be one wood? You don’t need the dash.”

“It’s not a dash, you dope,” said Bacon, the Canadian. “It’s a hyphen.”

Things were getting out of hand, so I defused the issue with humor. “What are we supposed to call it then? An atomic bomb?” This was met with peals of laughter, with Barney giggling “Sounds like the name of a gumball.”

“Wait, wait wait,” said Sheldor. “I thought we all agreed. It was going to be named Mickey and shaped like a crown of broccoli. And it was going to have a green cloud.”

“A bwoccowi-shaped cwowd?” Kwipke again.

“We’ve already ordered the green dye,” added Brown. “It came with a truck load of green beer.”

“This is all news to me,” I said cooly. “I never heard anything about broccoli.”

“Youwa in the baffwoom,” said Kwipke. “Youwa gone a wong time.”

At that moment, Fwoid stumbled gasping from the powdah woom, dwagging a shwedded pwumjuh. Kwipke spwed his hands.

“Speaking of a gween cwowd…”

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, Mockery and derision, News You Can Use (Sort of) | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

The F-bomb work-around

Posted on September 30, 2014 by PMcG

Have you ever found yourself so angry you wanted to drop the F-bomb on someone? But you knew if you did, some little weasel would wag a finger at you and say “I’m telling.”

You know it will eventually get back to Sister San Quentin who, of course, is long dead, but still so intimidating that even Mr. Big (who had her in kindergarten) didn’t have the nerve to send her to the suburbs.

This, in spite of St. Peter saying “If you let her in, you can just get yourself another pearly gate-keeper.” Which is why St. Bismuth now handles all inquiries at the front portico while Pete juggles the idiotic prayers of fantasy football players.

Look, the last thing you need is a dead nun grabbing you by the hair and breathing on you (after all, it’s why you’re practically bald). Yet your anger, your honor, your contempt of congress demands a stinging rebuke to whoever dared to disrupt your pursuit of happiness.

Not to worry. What follows is a list of stinging, salty barbs you can easily substitute for F-bombs and other foul balls. They are guaranteed to give you anger-defusing satisfaction while offending no one. Plus, they give your hair a chance to grow back.

“What the…” F-bomb substitutes
• Frigg, frack, frick, farouk, freak, fripp, frapp, freep, fongool

“Are you out of your…” F-bombing substitutes
• Frigging, fracking, fricking, farouking, freaking, fripping, frapping, freeping, fongooling.

Note that these words can easily be combined into a cluster F-bomb
• Who the frick-frack is Balenciaga, you fongooling frapp?
• You freaking, fripping, farouk-head.

Go ahead, tell me those babies won’t sting.

Traditionalists, of course, may complain that these substitute words stray too far from the original intent of the F-bomb, i.e., encouraging someone to immediately go out and do the deedley-do with either oneself or someone else, whether human or beast.

Non problemo: One can simply shout “go sexual-intercourse a goat.” Notice how sexual- intercourse here is no longer a weak noun but a very punchy and stinging tractor-trailer verb.

Other possibilities include “Get the boingity-boom out of here.” “Go eat raisin bran with a dead walrus.” And “Why don’t you do the Macarena with an aardvark?”

Here are some general bad language clean-ups. Enjoy!

You are full of…
• rapidly expanding beans
• fossil fuel
• after dinner mints
• bad burritoes
• blarbola

Holy…you did what?
• Holy crackers and cheese
• Holy Madagascar
• Holy Mary, mother of Larry
• Holy moo moo

Mother of God!
• Mother of Stonewall Jackson!
• Mother of Vlad the Impaler!
• Mother of Pope Curly!
• Mother of Bob!
• Mother of the man who put the ram in the rama rama dingdong!

What the…
• cherry credenza
• pork loin
• soft shell crab
• Wal-Mart
• Garbanzo
(See also Poop, above)

Rather than risk a lighting bolt from on high with “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” try:
• Larry, Moe and Curly Joseph!
• Fatso, Ratso and Pee Wee Herman!
• Peter, Paul and hairy Mary!
• Many, Moe and Jackson Pollock!
• Hickory, dickory, Doctor Kevorkian!

All-purpose epithets
• Bobdammit
• Well I’ll be a beaver without portfolio
• Dang-doodle-doofing-dorf
• Kiss my dog and call him Walter
• Go sit on a tuffet
• Drink my hair without ice
• Eat my sweat socks tartar

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.

Posted in Mockery and derision, News You Can Use (Sort of), The human comedy | Tagged , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

Important new rule: Never snork a Flanders nut

Posted on September 25, 2014 by PMcG

You know what’s really hard? I’ll tell you what’s really hard:

• Blowing your nose while wearing a full set of banjo picks.

• Being patient after somebody says Be patient!

• Doing the grocery shopping without a pen to check off the items on your list and then usplaining to someone why you forgot the toilet paper of which we are in DESPERATE need and was written in CAPS on the list, but no, you got Klondike bars which weren’t even on the list and we swore we would never get them again because we just eat them and then feel guilty.

• Waiting in line to be horse whipped.

• Talking someone out of vacuuming the entire house just because the dishwasher repair man is coming.

• Getting cash out of your jeans pocket at a toll booth.

• Doing the grocery shopping without a list and coming home with the blue bag of Doritos instead of the red bag and being sent to a re-education camp, even though you remembered the TOILET PAPER.

• Holding the door for the person behind you and getting a glare that says you are a typical, insensitive cavemale, and I can open my own doors, bozo.

• Talking someone out of making you vacuum the entire house just because the dishwasher repair man is coming.

• Caving to the demand that you eat every last Brussels sprout on your plate or no dessert.

• Finding out the dessert is Brussels sprout cake with beet juice.

• Doing the grocery shopping and not knowing what a leek looks like and going home and telling someone they were all out.

• Knowing you have embarrassed yourself with the younger generation when, instead of saying “sweet” or “cool” or “duuuude” when a sweet, cool, dude moment happens, you say “neato pete-o” or “douse me with Mazola oil.”

• Climbing a mountain in wingtips.

• Taking apart the dishwasher so you don’t have to call a repair man or vacuum the house, but when you’ve put it back together (and it still doesn’t work) you have a leftover handful of nuts and bolts and important looking do-hickeys.

• Winning the lottery without buying a ticket.

• Lying convincingly to the dentist when he asks if you’ve been flossing.

• Not grasping the mockery/derision/humiliation or even feeling a draft when someone says what do airplanes do?

• Winning the lottery with a ticket.

• Leaving your banjo home when you do the grocery shopping.

• Knowing when to stop with the wisecracks when people don’t seem to be into you.

• Snorking up one of those leftover do-hickeys when you vacuum the house just before the repair man arrives, and hearing the vacuum scream out then fall over dead; a few minutes later, after the dishwasher guy arrives and frowns because the house is only half vacuumed, he dismantles the dishwasher and says “Here’s what’s wrong, buddy. You’re missing your Flanders nut. They’re $98 apiece.”

• Knowing if you should answer the question “Will you please shut up?” when someone asks will you please shut up.

• Dealing with the pain when people don’t seem to be into you.

• Sifting through the vacuum cleaner bag to find a Flanders nut.

• Buying a new vacuum so you can vacuum the house before the vacuum cleaner repair guy comes over and drops off your old, but miraculously raised-from-the-dead vacuum.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, Mockery and derision, The human comedy | Tagged , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Apologies for Numbnuts

Posted on September 23, 2014 by PMcG

Do your friends, your relatives, the nephew you pay six figures to for keeping your enormous butt unbitten think you should apologize to an individual, a community, a nation or an entire planet for your stupid social and/or criminal transgression?

Have you whined “I’m not apologizing because this is America and I have rights?” Have you bragged that you carry a copy of the Constitution in your wallet — but haven’t actually read it because the printing is really small and some of the words are hard to understand?

Has your mother heard about what you did and called you on the smart phone she’s had for four years but never used because who knows how to work one of those damn things, and shouted “Are you out of your firetrucking mind?”

Specifically, have you
• Told someone to take immediate liberties with a duck.
• Sounded the muted trumpet in close quarters and slapped your hand over your head, indicating it wasn’t you. But everyone knows it was you because only you or a dead yak have that distinct eau de stinkbad.
• Done something that seemed okey dokey smokey to you but makes you look like the dark opening of a coal mine as viewed from outer space.

If you answered yes to any of the above, what a numbnuts you are. You must apologize  with convincing sincerity (Note: you don’t actually have to be sincere.) Here are a few apologies you might consider:

The basic apology: Oops.

The basic apology, limited edition: I’m only going to say this once. My bad. Get over it.

The basic apology with a but: Okay, you got me. But come on. People are dying in (country where people are dying) and people are starving in (country where the food is bad). Those are real problems. Taking a few bucks from a lobbyist — I mean, less than 50k, a mere bag of shells — to pay a pole dancer to misremember me is so nothing.

The shifting blame apology: Sorry. I did it. Sort of. I don’t want to cast asparagus on  my (coach, parents, wife, mistress, urologist, former best friend) who know in their hearts what they did or didn’t do and how much they were paid to do or don’t. I accept full responsibility because it costs so little to say that. I pray I will be exonerated and my (coach, parents, wife, mistress, urologist, former best friend) will be blamed and subsequently struck by lightning.

The moving-on apology: You have no idea how much it grieves me to know some people may have been hurt or offended by my actions. In fact, I myself have no idea. All I can say is gee I wish I wasn’t in so much trouble. I’m anxious to put this whole thing behind me and spend more time with my family. Check out my carefully choreographed You-Tube video of me playing catch with Junior, helping Suzy with her homework and assisting the wife in the garden with her pansies or rutabagas or gnomes or whatever.

The hedged apology: Look, I know that thing (I did/said) has caused a (waste product) storm of controversy. If anybody took offense, all I can say is I never meant to hurt anyone so bad that they would rat me out. I just want to get back to (football, manipulating the stock market, dating exotic animals). Okay? All right already.

The abject apology: I am so, so sorry for (whatever). I know I let down my (parents, pals, fans, pope) and I will have to work hard to regain their trust. Which I will do as soon as my pole-dancing fiance and I get back from Vegas. I pledge this will never happen again and if it does, I guarantee it won’t happen a third time. Certainly not a fourth time. If it does then you can just bite me.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, Mockery and derision, News You Can Use (Sort of) | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Ten years in a fruit salad

Posted on September 18, 2014 by PMcG

Football players who get their bell rung have to pass a concussion test before they are allowed to play again. It’s a difficult test with both a verbal and math component. They also must write an essay on ‘Why in the world would I want to go out there and get my bell rung again when it’s already cracked and one more pull on the rope could permanently dislodge my clapper?’

What if, in real life (something like the one we’re living right now) writers had to pass a test every time they got pulled over for writing a bad sentence. If they fail, they lose their writer’s license. If they refuse to take the test they are suspended in thought like a pineapple chunk in a bowl of raspberry Jello.

By “bad sentence” I don’t mean one that uses disgusting swear words, as in “You stinking piece of digested jackalope.”

And I don’t mean cursing as in “You will grow horns and the dilemmas will hunt you down and give you the choice of having incurable irritable bowel syndrome or having an incurable irritable brother-in-law who is also your incompetent urologist who, every year at the Thanksgiving dinner table asks you in a loud voice ‘How’s traffic in the Holland Tunnel?’ Buwaahaaahaaahaaa.”

No, I mean bad as in wanton sentence abuse, like “Opened the door, did Larry, and to off he thus wently.” (The guy who wrote that sentence was given ten years in a hard fruit salad.)

The test would include questions like:

1. How many commas am I holding up?
a) One
b) Two
c) Buckle my shoe
d) Could you change the font to Britannic Bold?
e) I’ll put twenty bucks on seven.

2. If I am unsure where to place a comma in a sentence I should…
a) Place no comma before its time.
b) Divide the sentence in half and put a comma smack dab i,n the middle even if that means in the middle of a word.
c) Excuse me. Can’t you see I’m having a hard time understanding the meaning of life?
d) Call a friendly copy editor (aka: comma-kaze) and endure a 60 minute lecture on the joys of punctuation.
e) Wait until dark and then make a break for it.

3. The purpose of grammar is to make sentences…
a) Sing and dance.
b) Sing, but not dance (maybe some discreet toe tapping)
c) Slow dance and get lucky.
d) As lively as Saturday night in North Korea.
e) Sit there like a toad stool without its toad.

4. Upper case letters should never be used…
a) On the last letter of a sentencE.
b) While chewing.
c) Without a written note from a doctor of optometry.
d) With vengeance on your mind and in your heart.
e) When a capital letter is called for.

5. What is wrong with this sentence: Driving down a back road last night a banjo player jumped in front of my car and played Foggy Mountain Breakdown, and then a bear, who had twice told the guy to play “Far Far Away,” stomped into the road and ate him.
a) The banjo player’s participle was a-dangle.
b) The banjo player did not have a lick of sense (Get it? LICK of sense?)
c) The stupid banjo player should have crossed at the “Bluegrass musician crossing.”
d) There are so many things wrong with this sentence that I weep for humanity.
e) Cool, this reminds me of “Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road.”

6. What is the correct spelling of the word igalixpoo?
a) E-a-g-l-e-l-ic-k-s-p-o-o-h
b) I-g-u-h-
c) Sorry, sister, I’m not prepared.
d) What? Is that a real word? This is a joke, right?
e) I-g-a-f-u-b-b-

7. When you’re down and troubled and you need a helping hand
and nothing, whoa, nothing is going right, you should…*
a) Call a licensed copy editor
b) Call the Grammar Lady in Lockport, N.Y.
c) Call James Taylor for the next line
d) Take a five-minute break and snarf the last two Klondike bars in the fridge
e) Get the igalixpoo out of your house

*A tip of my O’s cap to Sweet Baby James Taylor and “You Need a Friend.”

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, Mockery and derision, News You Can Use (Sort of) | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Let’s say this is funny

Posted on September 16, 2014 by PMcG

I hate it when a writer starts to explain something and says “Unless you’ve been living on Mars and don’t know that the Boer War is over…” Or “Unless you’ve been living on Mars and don’t know that Vincent Black Lightning is not a reference to a guy named Vincent Black Lightning…” Or “Unless you’ve been living on Mars and don’t know that in the play Hamlet, everybody dies…”

Not everyone uses Mars. Some say moon, some say North Dakota, some say Gondor. The point is the same: You never know where people have been living or what people know, so don’t go presuming.

Because people who live on Jupiter, let’s say, may come to earth on Saturday mornings to do their food shopping. They buy tabloids at the checkout counter so they’re pretty well read. Imagine their consternation on reading “Unless you’ve been living on Jupiter, and don’t know that Justin Bieber is an idiot…”

Can’t you see them waving a National Enquirer at the poor grocery clerk and shouting “I live on Jupiter and everybody up there knows Bieber is an idiot.”

Look at it another way: there are plenty of people, maybe two dozen or more, who  think the Boer War is still on. Heck, there’s at least five or six who didn’t even know there was a Boer war. The odds are high that most of those people live on Mars, the moon or the pyramid next door to what’s his mummy.

Not convinced? Imagine a guy who never read Hamlet because the dog ate his Norton’s Anthology. Let’s say he ends up in prison. That week at the Big House they’re showing “Hamlet” in the prison auditorium.

Let’s say that halfway through the movie a fight breaks out when some guy scribbles “Best wishes, Nebuchadnezzar” on the fly-leaf of another guy’s Bible.

Over angry shouts of “I know Nebuchadnezzar and you aint no Nebuchadnezzar,” the warden shuts down the movie. He tells everybody they can see the second half next week as long as they haven’t escaped, been paroled or stabbed to death over a swiped pudding in the chow line.

So, let’s say our guy sees Part I. But that week in the chow line he accidentally stabs someone several times with a sharpened shoelace. He is thrown into solitary and is going to miss Part II.

Then someone slips him a newspaper (let’s say they still have newspapers). He reads a story that you wrote that starts “Unless you’ve been living in a maximum security prison where you only got to see the first half of Hamlet because of a religious dispute, and you don’t know that Hamlet bites the big halibut at the end…”

That night a haunting cry of anguish and disbelief– “Hamlet dies?”— rises from solitary. A heartless guard is heard to yell “Where you been living? The Irish Riviera?”

When that guy is paroled or busts out of prison, guess whose house he’s going to show up at to deliver a very severe lecture about spoilers?

But do you spoilers ever get it? Let’s say you wrote “Unless you live in Bob’s house and don’t know that people take a shower every month or so…”

The next day Bob comes over and says “Look, I know people take showers. And I’ve been saving up for a hot water heater but I spend a ton of money on Camels and Bud Lights for my Mom. She’s in traction because she rolled her 1952 Vincent Black Lightning and hasn’t been able to get back to Mars. So get off my back.”

How would you feel? Methinks you’d feel pretty small mefriend. Unless you’ve been living in me man cave.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, News You Can Use (Sort of) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

That’s a pretty big IF

Posted on September 12, 2014 by PMcG

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, then you can keep your hat too.

If you really love me, you’ll address me as your highness.

If I was a baseball announcer and someone hit a home run I would shout “Holy macaroni, the meatball has left the pot.”

If you don’t settle down, I’m coming up there.

If I were a rich man I would not have people dancing on my roof. Someone falls off and Bingo, you’re a pauper.

If Shakespeare were alive I’d ask him why he didn’t write his plays in English.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride to the nearest horse auction.

If wishes were fishes we’d have some to fry and while they were frying I’d say “I don’t get it, I wished for a new car and I get a walleye platter.”

If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the hot tub.

If you find yourself thinking of me someday, please don’t think about the time I barfed in your grandmother’s urn.

If I were you, pal, I’d watch myself. Of course, if I really were you I’d wonder how to watch myself without eyes in the back of my head. So I’d just watch the front part. If I said “If I were you I’d watch it,” then, if I really were you I wouldn’t be sure what it we were talking about. This is a world jam-packed with its. If l said “If I were you I’d watch my step,” then, if I were really you I’d wonder if I meant the steps at my house, the steps at my job, the steps I use to climb onto the elephant or simply every step I take. So I’m just going to wag my finger and say in a real threatening tone “If…” BTW: if I were you I’d change my drawers and I don’t mean dresser drawers.

If the world were to end tomorrow I guarantee I’d hit the Powerball tonight. Put another way: if I win the Powerball tonight, don’t make plans for tomorrow.

If I had a nickel for every time my boss smiled at me in the last 10 years, he’d owe me four cents.

If I live long enough I’ll wonder if it’s just long enough, or just long enough to long for enough already.

If I ever get out of this place I will probably find another place just like it and ring the doorbell.

If, when all is said and done that’s all there is, somebody’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.

If tin whistles are made of tin, what are fog horns made of? No, really. I’m serious.

If this, then that. If not, try the other thing.

If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, big whoop. What about the unforgiving hour or the seriously unforgiving 16-hour double shift?

If you scratcha my car, I breaka you face. If you scratcha my face, I breaka you car. If you scratcha my dog I say why you scratcha so much? When you scratcha you head, I breaka you head. You scratcha no more, I breaka no more. I scratcha my dog, he licka my face. Itsa simple, no?

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, Mockery and derision, The human comedy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments