A banjo story from my past

Back in the early 90s, I was doing a concert in Portland about 25 years ago and that thing we always worry about happening in concerts happened: I broke a string. Damn damn damn! I reached into my shoulder bag and pulled out the packet of strings we all carry for just this emergency and start changing the string.

But I've got to fill time while I'm doing it, so I start telling banjo jokes. I run through a lot of the old standards:

What's the difference between a banjo and an onion? (You cry when you cut up an onion.)
...an accordion? (The banjo takes longer to burn.)
...a Harley? (You can tune a Harley.)
...a chainsaw? (The chainsaw has a wider dynamic range.)
...a banjo player and a large pizza? (The large pizza can feed a family of four.)

What do you say to a banjo player in a three-piece suit? ("Will the defendant please rise?")

How do you tell the stage is level? (The banjo player drools out of both sides of his mouth.)

...and a bunch more, including my all-time favorite:

Q: What's the first thing every banjo player knows?
A: That Jed's a millionaire.

Okay, so I'm about done with changing the string and I say "What's the difference between a banjo and an Uzi?" But before I can get out my answer of "The Uzi only repeats 40 times," some guy in the third row called out "The banjo clears the room faster!"

Aaaaargh! Upstaged! I mimed getting stabbed in the heart, tuned up the new string, and played the next song in the concert.

A banjo story from my past

Joke du jour

Q: How do you make a pirate angry?
A. Knock the P out of him.

Joke du jour

Need a new god? Check this out!

Friends, are you tired of your god? Does s/he not respond quickly when you call? Are feeling without direction, purposeless, cast adrift, in need of a good spiritual jazzing? Do the Ancient Mysteries just make you yawn?

Well, worry no more! Thanks to GodChecker, you can find a new god for yourself! GodChecker lists almost 3000 gods, with more being added all the time! There are Australian gods, Mayan gods, Chinese gods, Roman gods, Finnish gods, Tibetan gods, Celtic gods, Norse gods, Mesopotamian gods, and many, many more! New pantheons are being added all the time, so if you don't see anything you like, check back regularly and you're sure to find something that fills that god-shaped hole in your soul (assuming you have one and your chosen deity requires it).

So if you want a god who's Mr. Nice Guy, a cannibal demoness, a dragon king, an all-powerful god who can rain down fire and destruction, a god of bats, or even a band of Russian superheroes, GodChecker has it all!

(Note: Past history with a god should not be considered guarantee of future performance. Consult your local priest before mixing and matching deities, as some restrictions may apply. Christian saints, martyrs, and hermits packaged separately.)

Need a new god? Check this out!

Our doormat

My little sister gave me a doormat a couple years ago for a birthday present. It says "We love our vacuum, we've found God, and we gave at the office." Sadly, it's not kept the missionaries away, but I didn't think it would. But it is a funny doormat and it's pretty functional, too.

The new housecleaners were here today and cleaned the front portico and the tag from the bottom of the doormat fell off. Shoot, I hadn't even known there was a tag. It's pretty funny. It says:

Information you should know about your doormat

Warning: Do not use mat as a projectile. Sudden acceleration to dangerous speeds may cause injury. When using mat, follow directions: Put your right foot in, put your right foot out, put your right foot in and shake it all about. This mat is not designed to sustain gross weight exceeding 12,000 lbs. If mat begins to smoke, immediately seek shelter and cover head. Caution: If coffee spills on mat, assume that it is very hot. This mat is not intended to be used as a placemat. Small food particles trapped in fibers may attract rodents and other vermin. Do not glue mat to porous surfaces such as pregnant women, pets, and heavy machinery. When not in use, mat should be kept out of reach of children with CFED (Compulsive Fiber Eating Disorder). Do not taunt mat. Failure to comply relieves the makers of this doormat, Simply Precious Home Decor, and its parent company, High Cotton, Inc., of any and all liability.

Our doormat

Joke du jour

This is from Phyllis Beaty of Magnolia Studios. 

Jack decided to go skiing with his buddy, Bob. So they loaded up Jack's minivan and headed north. After driving for a few hours, they got caught in a terrible blizzard.

They pulled into a nearby farm and asked the attractive lady who answered the door if they could spend the night.

"I realize it's terrible weather out there and I have this huge house all to myself, but I'm recently widowed," she explained. "I'm afraid the neighbors will talk if I let you stay in my house."

"Don't worry," Jack said. "We'll be happy to sleep in the barn, and if the weather breaks, we'll be gone at first light." The lady agreed, and the two men found their way to the barn and settled in for the night.

Come morning, the weather had cleared, and they got on their way. They enjoyed a great weekend of skiing.

But about nine months later, Jack got an unexpected letter from an attorney.

It took him a few minutes to figure it out, but he finally determined that it was from the attorney of that attractive widow he had met on the ski weekend.

He dropped in on his friend Bob and asked, "Bob, do you remember that good-looking widow from the farm we stayed at on our ski holiday up north about 9 months ago?"

"Yes, I do," said Bob

"Did you, er, happen to get up in the middle of the night, go up to the house and pay her a visit?"

"Well, um, yes!" Bob said, a little embarrassed about being found out, "I have to admit that I did."

"And did you happen to give her my name instead of telling her your name?"

Bob's face turned beet red and he said, "Yeah, look, I'm sorry, buddy, I'm afraid I did. Why do you ask?"

"She just died and left me everything."

(And you thought the ending would be different, didn't you?)

Joke du jour

Silly joke du jour

Thanks to NephirNuit on Twitter for this one.

Q. How do you kill a circus?
A. Go for the juggler.

Silly joke du jour

How to avoid a trapped arm whilst cuddling

A friend just pointed out this lovely video from a bizarre group called Videojug. Their motto is "Life explained. On film."

This particular video is How To Avoid Trapped Arm Whilst Cuddling In Bed.

There's another one that's also very funny entitled How to Deal with Odd Sexual Requests. Both of these are narrated with particularly delicious English accents.

There are dozens of other cool videos at the Videojug website on all sorts of topics. It's not just things that happen in bed: there are things like How to Make a Shaker Cocktail, How to Use the Slash Punctuation, and How to Read a Knitting Pattern. Go check them out!

How to avoid a trapped arm whilst cuddling

"Black Sheep" -- coming this summer!

There was a link to this movie on a discussion forum. It's very silly and I wasn't entirely sure if the trailer wasn't simply another bogus trailers for YouTube-like silliness. Could've been, after all: a movie about sheep in New Zealand suddenly becoming massively aggressive and cannibalistic after black-helicopter-genetic-experiments have gone disastrously wrong? "Sounds might fishy to me, Bill."

But no!! This is a real movie! IMDB.com has a listing for Black Sheep. It even has a pretty decent rating and people think it's a good comedy/horror film.

Well, I think we all remember silliness like Night of the Lepus (which didn't fare nearly as well as the user rating for Black Sheep) and Piranha (which did fare okay) and other such oddments. This'll be on cable soon enough, I'm sure; paying to see it seems like a baaa-aaa-aaaad idea.

"Black Sheep" -- coming this summer!