Things that make you laugh...

[Elixir]

Opoponax said something in a thread in politics:

Not to be a dick (meaning: about to be a dick),

Not necessarily.
I do love to open statements with "I don't want to sound sexist (or racist, etc.)..."

"I don't want to sound leftist, but the printshop wants you to pick up the wall charts."
"What is leftist about that? That's not leftist!"
"Great! Because I didn't want to sound leftist! God, you never listen."
"Dude! What the FUCK are you talking about?"
"Never mind, I hate having to repeat myself."

I don't want to sound sexist, but the meeting starts in ten minutes.

I don't want to sound racist, but it's raining outside.

I don't want to sound confused, but WTF are you talking about?

 

[Keith&Co.]

Opoponax said something in a thread in politics:

Not to be a dick (meaning: about to be a dick),

Not necessarily.
I do love to open statements with "I don't want to sound sexist (or racist, etc.)..."

"I don't want to sound leftist, but the printshop wants you to pick up the wall charts."
"What is leftist about that? That's not leftist!"
"Great! Because I didn't want to sound leftist! God, you never listen."
"Dude! What the FUCK are you talking about?"
"Never mind, I hate having to repeat myself."

I don't want to sound sexist, but the meeting starts in ten minutes.

I don't want to sound racist, but it's raining outside.

I don't want to sound confused, but WTF are you talking about?

USUALLY, people say, "I don't want to sound like a (fill in the blank)" right before saying something (blank)ish.

If you don't want to sound (for example) racist, then don't say racist shit. Or marginally racist shit. or explicitly racist shit.

I enjoy setting people up with the prefix, then following with a completely non-(blank)ist comment.

Mostly, I do it for the look on their face. If I say, "I don't want to sound sexist," then the average American today expects a sexist comment to follow. They're prepared to evaluate whatever follows to identify where the sexism might be. When they start that process, and they find NOTHING sexist, they bitch at me for putting that little speed bump in their mind.

 

[Wiploc]

I don't want to sound confused, but WTF are you talking about?

See, you say you don't want to sound confused, but then you go on to express your confusion. That's normal; it's expected.

Something like, "... but women shouldn't be licensed to drive," is what we expect to follow after, "I don't want to sound sexist..." Again, that's normal.

One can be funny by not following that pattern. Thus:

• I don't want to sound confused, but energy really does equal mass times the speed of light squared.

• I don't want to sound sexist but everybody should equal under the law.

Granted, it's not as funny as when Douglas Adams writes, "This is not her story," after,​

And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.

​

Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost for ever.
​

... but it's something.

 

[Angry Floof]

On Facebook today, a story of a little girl who wanted to be President. Why? Because when she is President, she will make bacon that doesn't shrink.

 

[Keith&Co.]

There are classified test berths in my building, locked by a combination padlock. People who have access to the space are given the combination.

People who use the lab regularly become familiar with the combo. Some...do not have it perfectly memorized.

Personally, if I am going to use the lab, I go to the lab coordinator and ask him to help me make sure I know the combo. Because I flat out forgot it and I do not write it down. WRiting it down is a violation of the security rules.
Some people have the combo in their phones. I know this because I was in the security office for some other issue, when someone tried to open a secure area. he tried the combo three times, then paged through screens on his phone, then opened the lock. He stood right in front of the door, right where a camera watched his every move. The security guy I was meeting had to reschedule our meeting as he ran down the hallways to kick this idiot's ass.

I tell everyone about that story. About Tim from Procedural Support getting yanked out of a lab for being stupid on camera. Lost his lab access for a while. Job impacted by not being able to do the job, that sort of thing.

A coworker took what he thought of as the important part of that story. When he couldn't get the lock to open, he WALKED AWAY from the security door, and the camera watching it, to check his phone, where he had the number brilliantly hidden in a phone number for AREA.

Thing was, he did the checking while standing in front of the security door to a completely different area... Monitored by the same guy in security office...

 

[James Brown]

That's a funny story, but the thought of access to a secure area being dependent on someone's memory?

Sounds like an invitation to cheating or the proverbial "password written on post-it notes".

 

[Keith&Co.]

That's a funny story, but the thought of access to a secure area being dependent on someone's memory?

Sounds like an invitation to cheating or the proverbial "password written on post-it notes".

well, the rooms are inside a badged-only building, (with a private pin), with constant guards, and in addition to the padlock, everyone entering the lab has to badge in again, with a separate pin for that access...

There are three levels of access. One-star, you can get in, but only when someone else has unlocked the room, two-star has the padlock combo and their pin allows them to disable the room's alarm, and no-star, needing to be escorted by a one- or two-star.

I am a two-star for several labs, but if i time it carefully, i never have to open those fiddly padlocks myself. Show up early for my shift, pretend i'm energetically offering the previous user a piss call, when i'm really lazily avoiding the whole lock/unlock process. 18 years ago no one told me that the de-alarm system would not recognize a pin that started with a zero, so i've been traumatized ever since.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Parents...god.

Dad just turned 80 today.

He has been telling me about his will since 2003.
I am his executor.
I am to be fair to my sister.
I am to take care of his cat despite my allergies.
I get the store he built with his dad.
Fair to sister.
Sell the house and be fair to the sister...
Every time i see him, at least one line about where his will is, the computer password, where the spare keyring is. (It's been on your soare keyholder since 1985, under the Union Pacific Railroad calendar that you stopped updating May, 2008 because they finally showed a place you'd been to.)

Today, he mentioned his birthday celebration, dinner with his lawyer ski-buddy.
And casually mentioned that he finished his will... the one he's been talking about for all these years.
Just.
Finalized.
Today.

What else is a lie, old man?! What other unfinished business a re you saddling me with?

I orobably have a brother out there, won't know shit about him until the funeral...

 

[Patooka]

Is there a line in the will, "be fair to your brother"? If not, you're clear.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Is there a line in the will, "be fair to your brother"? If not, you're clear.

I don't know, it'd be like him to say 'be fair to all my kids' and i think it means my sister and the cat, George, but suddenly there's this guy at the reception...

 

[Old Woman in Purple]

Possibility: You have a heretofore unknown SISTER... All those times he told you to be fair to your SISTER, are you certain he used the singular?

 

[Keith&Co.]

Possibility: You have a heretofore unknown SISTER... All those times he told you to be fair to your SISTER, are you certain he used the singular?

Certainly, i was certain.... until now....

 

[Keith&Co.]

So, my office has a copy of Farts, the Spotter's Guide.



Ten types of farts described, illustrated, and if you push the associated button, the fart sound is demonstrated.
A coworker started leafing thru it. Announced that the battery was dead.
I instantly pointed out that the button for 'silent but deadly' still worked.
He said, "Really?"
Looked at the page of contents, found SBD, pressed the button.........and the book was, indeed, silent. He nodded. "Weird, cause none of the others work."

Two hours later, different coworkers ran in to tell me about a meeting they had just left. The guy at the end of the table burst out, "Oh, it's SILENT! Motherfucker."

Not sure how they knew to come tell ME....

 

[Keith&Co.]

Doing the weekly shopping.
And older woman in produce was singing along to the song playing over the poeaker. And not softly. She clearly knew the words to Get Lucky.

As she belts out "I'm up all night to get lucky," while selecting onions, a teen girl runs up to shush her.
"Grandma! You shouldn't sing that, you don't know what it means!"

Grandma looks the teen in the eye... "Darling, you have SEVEN UNCLES! I have gotten lucky AT LEAST eight times!"

Girl blushes a deep purple... Deeper when three people in Produce laughed.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I'm not on Facebook, but several relatives emailed me a question posed by an uncle.

If we supposedly evolved from monkeys, why are we not all-over-hairy like monkeys?

My reply to all of them:

So, 'evolved' means, basically, 'changed,' right?
Howard wants to know "if we changed from monkeys, why are we different from monkeys?"

The solution to this puzzle is fairly trivial, if you understand English.

Howard used to teach English...

 

[ZiprHead]

I'm not on Facebook, but several relatives emailed me a question posed by an uncle.

If we supposedly evolved from monkeys, why are we not all-over-hairy like monkeys?

My reply to all of them:

So, 'evolved' means, basically, 'changed,' right?
Howard wants to know "if we changed from monkeys, why are we different from monkeys?"

The solution to this puzzle is fairly trivial, if you understand English.

Howard used to teach English...

You should see my brother-in-law. He's far less "evolved".

 

[Arctish]

I'm not on Facebook, but several relatives emailed me a question posed by an uncle.



My reply to all of them: Howard used to teach English...

You should see my brother-in-law. He's far less "evolved".

Some things never change.

 

[Angry Floof]

Somebody changed Brett Kavanaugh's name in Wikipedia to "Rapey McRapeface."

 

[ZiprHead]

The Fuckening

When your day is going too well and you don't trust it and some shit finally goes down...

Ah, there it is. The Fuckening

 

[Keith&Co.]

A discussion of cake-toppers reminds me of

Oh, wow, 32 years ago.

The three stores we checked did not carry individuals. They were all pairs, and our choices were white couples or black couples. No option to construct a mixed set.

I had supplies for painting role-playing figures, so we picked a couple and I painted her coloring in.

I hope to make it to my grave before the wife finds out that the best match was Werewolf Brown.