Nobody Reads My . . .

From Sticky Comics.

The Resistance

Jeffery Goldberg's account of the new TSA security pat-down procedures had me gasping with laughter one minute and sputtering with indignation the next. The TSA has introduced more invasive pat-downs for people opting out of their irradiating, genital-imaging full-body scans, primarily, it seems, to induce them to submit to the scanning. All of which, as Goldberg shows elsewhere, is pointless "security theater." You have to give it up for Goldberg. Bluffing your way through TSA security with a fake boarding pass, wearing a Bin Laden t-shirt, just to show how pointless this grossly expensive and personally humiliating system is? Gonzo, man.

Drama Queen

Out of 234 posts here to date, only 7 are tagged "humor." I'm not humor challenged, I don't think, though I'm not really a comedy fan either. I find stand-up painful and most sit-coms unwatchable (30 Rock is a glorious exception). I usually like my humor dark, subversive and smart. Then again, Steve Carrell had me in tears during some scenes of Get Smart, and I like Will Smith even in his (many) really bad movies. Maybe my funnybone is just selective.

Or maybe I just feel a bit cheap reblogging "funny videos," which often feel like spam. Probably because they are just spam when they miss, and most funny videos sent to me do miss. I don't want become a humor spammer myself.

Well, I'll take my chances with this one. It's smart and even British. It still may be a cheap reblog, but how can it miss?

Our Nerd in Chief

Not sure if someone who oozes as much cool as Obama could really be a nerd, but comedian John Hodgman takes a run at the idea in his roast at the Radio and TV Correspondents' Dinner. So often these things misfire, but I thought he was pretty good. I even felt a little nerdly pride.

Lobotomized Cyclopsmobile

I think every little girl should have one of these.



Some of the comments to the Gizmodo post I found this on are five-star geek humor (which also means, a few are PG-13). My favorite: "I especially enjoy that it looks like she's peeling the eyelid open. It reminds you who's in charge of the terrifying monster car."

I Want Me a Delany Flushboy

Warning: This post contains potty talk.

I hate plunging clogged toilets and our toilet at home (how shall I put this) was really only designed for the lightest of duty. However, the commercial toilets at work are all business when it come to . . . business. I'm sure some people are a little intimated by the loud whooossh and rush of air one experiences when one tugs on the handle of a gleaming Delany Flushboy valve. Maybe they fear for any small children or pets that might be sucked in unawares. Not me. I get a little thrill from that throaty roar, like hearing a Harley-Davidson roar to life through a set of straight pipes. No need for plungers here.

So I want me a Delany Flushboy. As it turns out, Delany just makes the valves, and they are definitely a commercial item only. But the technology used in my office toilets, called pressure-assisted jet flush, can be had in home toilets as well. They look just like any other toilet and are not difficult to install. (And they are quieter than those commercial brutes.) But they are, however, more expensive than a basic gravity-feed toilet, starting about $480. Still a bargain, I say. And with that, having stepped upmarket, you also get a much better toilet design. In fact, good gravity-feed toilets now are designed with ballfeed passthrough that really will flush (stuffed) animals right through, no problem. Seriously: "Watch Our Latest Toilet Video."


An American Standard Cadet: Fully glazed 2-1/8" trapway, 2" minimum ballpass, close-coupled flushometer tank, and even a Speed Connect tank/bowl coupling system!

Some people may be laughing, but for me this is a dream in white vitreous china. Someday. Yes, someday . . .

It's Really Not Funny

For Brian (of course).

To Write Is Good, To Edit Divine

My job includes several substantial editorial assignments. I know what it's like to sweat under deadlines and how easily typos happen. In fact, I can't even look at a book we've published after it comes back from the press. I'm too afraid of what mistakes I might find.

One title we published (not one of mine) was a work of Islamic philosophy called the Decisive Treatise. The cover designer got confused and set the title on the spine as, Decisive Treaty. The editor caught it in the first round of proofs and corrected it, but when later design adjustments were made, the designer accidentally used his original file. So, yes, the spine was printed as, Decisive Treaty. Ugh.

So I winced in sympathy upon hearing of a small but catastrophic typo in yesterday's Daily Universe, our campus newspaper, whereby a photo of LDS apostles at the recent general conference was captioned, "Members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostates." When discovered, the university rushed to pull the 15,000 copies of the paper out of circulation, replacing it with a corrected print run later in the day. Here are the gory details.

A Dash of Dilbert

A colleague sent me this, to reassure me of my indispensability in my job. I'm not at all reassured (I'm in fact disturbed that he felt the need to reassure me), but I did laugh. As I do at most Dilberts. Oh how I wish they made no sense to me.

Obama's Use of Complete Sentences Stirs Controversy

I know I'm, uh, you know, it just ain't right. Dang it. From Andy Borowitz:

In the first two weeks since the election, President-elect Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the past eight years through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers say.

Millions of Americans who watched Mr. Obama's appearance on CBS's 60 Minutes on Sunday witnessed the president-elect's unorthodox verbal tick, which had Mr. Obama employing grammatically correct sentences virtually every time he opened his mouth.

But Mr. Obama's decision to use complete sentences in his public pronouncements carries with it certain risks, since after the last eight years many Americans may find his odd speaking style jarring.

According to presidential historian Davis Logsdon of the University of Minnesota, some Americans might find it "alienating" to have a president who speaks English as if it were his first language.

"Every time Obama opens his mouth, his subjects and verbs are in agreement," says Mr. Logsdon. "If he keeps it up, he is running the risk of sounding like an elitist."

The historian said that if Mr. Obama insists on using complete sentences in his speeches, the public may find itself saying, "Okay, subject, predicate, subject predicate -- we get it, stop showing off."

The president-elect's stubborn insistence on using complete sentences has already attracted a rebuke from one of his harshest critics, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.

"Talking with complete sentences there and also too talking in a way that ordinary Americans like Joe the Plumber and Tito the Builder can't really do there, I think needing to do that isn't tapping into what Americans are needing also," she said.