Paul's blog

Archive for the ‘Funny’ Category

 

… just not one of mine …

… but it certainly and easily could have been one!

The following is a quote from a book I just finished (and recommended earlier: this is how chapter 21 starts in “The Black Hole War” by the renowned theoretical (theoradical!) physicist Leonard Susskind).

I post it here, because this is a perfect example of the type of conversations my wife and I sometimes have.

One morning, when I went down to breakfast, my wife Anne, remarked that my T-shirt was on backwards; the V shape woven into the fabric was in the back. Later in the day, when I came home from a jog, she laughed and said: “Now it’s inside out.” That set me to thinking: how many ways are there to wear a T-shirt? Anne mockingly said, “That’s the sort of stupid thing you physicists are always thinking about.” Just to prove my superior cleverness, I quickly declared that there are 24 ways to wear a T-shirt. You can stick your head through any of 4 holes. That leaves 3 holes for your torso. Having picked a neck hole and a torso hole, that leaves 2 possibilities for your left arm. Once you decide where your left arm goes, there is only one choice for your  right arm. So that means 4 x 3 x 2 = 12 ways to choose from. But then you can turn the shirt inside out, giving another 12, so I proudly announced that I had solved the problem: 24 ways to wear a T-shirt. Anne was not impressed. She replied, “No, there are 25 ways. You forgot one.” Puzzled I asked, “What did I miss?” With a look that would freeze hell, she said, “You can roll it in a ball and shove it …” You get the idea ¹.

¹. Since writing this, Anne has discovered at least 10 more ways to wear a T-shirt.

Sometimes … you just can’t win.

Online casino Golden Palace.com gets a chance to extend their collection of Holy Apparitions (they were the ones who purchased the ‘St Mary-In-The-Cheese-Sandwich’ artifact for $28,000 – link -): This time Jesus Himself appeared … but it’s not exactly the booming voice from the sky … you need an electron miscroscope to see His image on a 4 Gig flash memory chip from Samsung.

Don’t you agree with me that Jesus REALLY looks like Osama Bin Laden!

Scary, isn’t it?

(“Jesus appears in Samsung Flash memory chip” – link -)

When I grew up there was this thing called Judo.
It was a form of martial art where two combattants would grab eachother by the lapels of their special white pj’s, followed by some pushing and pulling and then the tallest and heaviest guy would win.
There was also a far less popular form of martial art called Jiu Jitsu.
Since martial arts were basically taught, at that time, as a form of self defense, I must say that, to me, pj-pulling Judo was far less effective than Jiu Jitsu, which involved, amongst other things, poking your finger in your opponent’s eye and breaking his fingers.
Then Karate became popular and was soon followed by a whole gamut of martial art forms, some more bizarre than others: from hitting eachother over the head with a cane stick to kicking eachothers shins to a bloody pulp.
Most, if not all, involved unpronouncable names, lots of yelling and screaming, and jumping around a lot.
And none of them was as effective as a method of unarmed self defense as the much more down-to-earth ‘western’ method of firmly planting ones fist in ones opponent’s face, better known as boxing. But I don’t think boxing is considered a martial art.
Which, then, leaves us with the question ‘which is the most effective form of martial art?’.
This is, of course, a hotly debated topic amongst martial artists, and I’d like to introduce to you a case where a representative of one form challenges one of another.
This is about a Kiai master who wagers $5000 on a claim that he can beat ANY MMA master.
An MMA master accepted the challenge and I’ll point you to a video of the match.
But let me first explain the two different forms of martial art.
Kiai is fairly hard to explain, because there’s a lot of mumbojumbo involved about breathing, silent yelling, reflection and energy concentration.
Let me describe it this way: the Kiai master attacks (and defeats) his opponents by ‘manifesting, emitting and projecting his internal energy’ onto his opponents by waving his arms around, but without touching his opponents (the video starts with a demonstration of this!).
The MMA master (MMA stands for Mixed Martial Arts) on the other hand, has no qualms whatsoever when it comes to touching his opponent.

Watch the video of this challenge, and be amazed. Be VERY amazed.

See the video here: link

I’m watching my two cats, Bonnie and Clyde (you may remember him from this story: link).

They are laying in the windowsill at the open (but screened) window, engaged in their bird watching hobby.

And then suddenly Clyde starts to make one of his spurious sexual advances to Bonnie, by trying to “mount” her. Let me emphasize the word ‘trying‘ here, because Bonnie is having none of this nonsense. You’d think he would learn, because everytime he pulls this stunt, he gets his ears boxed. But the instincts are probably stronger than his common sense. In the mean time Bonnie angrily turns her face to him with an expression of “you‘ve got some balls“.

This, however, is based on an anatomical misconception. He doesn’t! Just like Bonnie is an ‘altered’ female, Clyde is a thoroughly ‘altered’ male. No balls whatsoever. None. Empty sack. Nada huevos. Zero. Nothing there.

Which makes his behavior even more remarkable.

It’s actually quite funny to see, I should video it some day .. it’s this half-baked and ill-advised effort, one paw on her back, then one or two thrust-like movements with his back end, and then he starts watching the ceiling with this puzzled look, as if saying “uhm.. uh.. now what? What am I supposed to do next, how did this work again?“.

This is where Bonnie usually jumps up and pops him one. After which vicious attack he runs away (not seldomly chased after by an angry Bonnie) and hides behind the stereo 5.1 channel receiver/amplifier.

It’s not always easy to be male …

 

Dear Mr. Claessen;

Thank you for inquiring about the activities of the celebri-cat Mr. Clyde Claessen, Himself.  What follows is a summary of the activities of Himself on the 20^th of February, 2007 as of 1400 (east coast time):

0900 – Himself is nestled down inside an eiderdown comforter in the middle of a king sized bed, sound asleep.

1000 – Same as 0900 – no visible signs of life.

1030 – Himself opens his eyes and yawns

1031 – Himself regrets opening his eyes and closes them again.

1100 – Himself thinks he might be getting hungry.

1115 – Himself is hungry enough to leave the big bed and visit the dish. While there, Himself decides to visit the box. He makes a mess with litter.

1120 – Himself coughs up a giant hairball on the living room rug … and then looks at mama as if to say ..THIS IS JUST FOR YOU!

1121 – Himself feels the need for a bit of variety – so he goes to the guest room and nestles down in the blankees and goes to sleep in the middle of a queen sized bed.

1230 – Himself hears mama making her lunch in the kitchen so he comes to investigate. Mama does not share, so Himself stalks off in a huff.

1235 – Himself visits the box and makes the stinkiest poop the world has ever known and then gets a drink of water and has two bites of the dry food.

1239 – Himself makes one last attempt on mama’s lunch – and manages to stick his stinkee butt in mama’s face in the process

1242 – Himself realizes it is nap time. He goes back to the big bed, which mama has conveniently made up just for him.

1243 – Himself nestles down inside the eiderdown comforter in the middle of the big bed and goes back to sleep.

1330 – Himself awakens, visits the dish, checks out the kitchen counter for crumbs or leavings and then goes to the guest room and nestles down in the blankees for another nap.

1400 – Himself is sleeping deeply and snoring!

Dawnell K. Claessen

I recently sent youtube video links to a good friend of mine.

It was about music we listened to in the sixties (yes, we’re that old, even though the friend in question is in denial).

One of the clips was of a studio rehearsal of the band “Ten Years After” with our then-God Alvin Lee on guitar.

My friend pointed out one of the comments. It was a short, one sentence, very simple comment. But I laughed my ass off!

It simply stated: “The bass player needs to switch to decaf”

For maximum effect, turn OFF your sound (play it again WITH sound, it’s GOOD!) and play the clip with this comment in mind (the organ player is “on something” too, as my wife pointed out).

Update:
The clip I had here doesn’t work anymore. I found a link to the same session, but it takes a bit longer before it gets to the part of the over-enthousiastic bass-player.
Find it here: link

The other night, right after work, my wife went for a nice cool-down swim in our pool.

While happily splashing around she suddenly noticed she wasn’t alone in the pool.

Calmly and quietly she left the pool and called me at work, asking me to come home and escort the intruder off our premises.

Which I did.

Here’s a link to a picture I took of the intruder prior to urging him to leave.

(Disclaimer: my description of the manner in which she left the pool may be slightly in conflict with reality)

 

Every year the bi-monthly magazine Annals of Improbable Research awards the so called Science Ig Nobel Prizes for ‘results that cannot, or should not, be reproduced‘

The purpose of this post is to invite you all to read the list of prizes awarded so far, and leave a comment here indicating your favorite(s).

The list can be found here.