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Things that make you laugh...

I've had a cough for two days. Fever, running nose, headaches, general nausea...
My throat doesn't hurt, but my abdominal muscles ache from the coughing.
I started to fart a minute ago. There was no one around me, so i squeezed tight to force the gas out quickly, before anyone wanders closely.
I squeezed with muscles already aching. That was stupid.
And then i got a cramp in my diaphram. Holy shit what agony.
And there's just no positoin to assume that'll relieve that cramp.

But i tried. I writhed a bit in my desk chair, trying to find an angle that didn't hurt so badly... And sucked in a gasp of air which started me coughing again.

When i could breathe and no longer had dots swimming before my eyes, i looked up to see three coworkers at the mouth of my cubicle.

Staring.

"what?" I asked.
"Well, i was thinking you were doing yoga," one said.
"Bellydancing," another said.
"I thought it was charades," one said confidently.
"FOR WHAT?"
"'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves, Did gyre and gimble in the waves: All mimsy were the borogoves, and that's all i can remember. But you had 'gyre and gimble' down PERFECT!"

I just sank back in my chair, able to breathe...
Oh, and i farted again.
 
I am SUCH a good husband.

My wife teaches 10th grade English and has often fantasized about tossing string cheese to some of her students. "Some cheese to go with your whine," she'll say. Or 'A whine and cheese party."
I was looking at string cheese at the local Target tonight. Then i realized, that's not what she wants.

I found something else, near the corkscrews and wine glasses.

"I am SUCH a good husband!" i said when i got home. "I heard your wish and got you something you REALLY need."

"You mean my wish is not your command?" she asked, accusingly.

"It is, but i went above and beyond your simple fantasy to something superior. What you actually want, if you take a moment to think about it."

"Yes, but we both know they don't sell claymore mines in Massachusetts."

"Tut, tut," i pshawed. And i tossed her a small package with a colorful item. "This is actually USEFUL!"

"What is it?"

"You wave it at your student. And while they shut up for a second, trying to decipher your behavior, you say, 'It worked! It really IS a whine stopper!' "

She liked it so much she may allow me to retain a few of the covers tonight. No guarantees, of course. If it's below 20 she's going to roll up the fabric like a capstan, but if she's got a choice to make, it MAY be in my favor.
 
Keith&Co. said:
I am SUCH a good husband.

My wife teaches 10th grade English and has often fantasized about tossing string cheese to some of her students. "Some cheese to go with your whine," she'll say. Or 'A whine and cheese party."
I was looking at string cheese at the local Target tonight. Then i realized, that's not what she wants.

I found something else, near the corkscrews and wine glasses.

"I am SUCH a good husband!" i said when i got home. "I heard your wish and got you something you REALLY need."

"You mean my wish is not your command?" she asked, accusingly.

"It is, but i went above and beyond your simple fantasy to something superior. What you actually want, if you take a moment to think about it."

"Yes, but we both know they don't sell claymore mines in Massachusetts."

"Tut, tut," i pshawed. And i tossed her a small package with a colorful item. "This is actually USEFUL!"

"What is it?"

"You wave it at your student. And while they shut up for a second, trying to decipher your behavior, you say, 'It worked! It really IS a whine stopper!' "

She liked it so much she may allow me to retain a few of the covers tonight. No guarantees, of course. If it's below 20 she's going to roll up the fabric like a capstan, but if she's got a choice to make, it MAY be in my favor.
Click to expand...

And people say we don't live in a matriarchy. Harumph!
 
I was reminded today, at work, of having been a nuclear weapon security guard from time to time.
A really finicky job. You have an area, a list of people allowed in the area, and you have to closely scrutinize people and their IDs to match the details on the access list or they don't go in the area. I've denied entry to a superior officer because two numbers on his ID card were transposed on the list. I've denied one guy who's card said he was 6'1", but i'm 5'10" and he was shorter than me. I've turned back an admiral because though his card was on the list and the list was accurate, our commanding officer hadn't cosigned the admiral's signature on his own access list. Infuriated him, but the weapons officer congratulated me for being a tight-assed son of a bitch.

Well, one day, we had a drill. We were in port and they pretended to ahve a spill of nuclear fuel. Everyone topside evacuated, except for the guards watching one of our nuclear weapon procedures. I and another sailor were tasked to dress out in anti-contamination clothing and relieve the guys who were up there.

Crosby was a black sonar tech who used to make his own fireworks. He stopped doing that the day that one firework didn't light off. So he looked down the tube to see what was going on. That's when it went off, blasting burning gunpowder into his face. So when Crosby said 'I am Crosby, I'm here to relieve you,' the watch looked through the face of his gas mask, counted little blue freckles and said, "Yep. Positive ID," and left the area.
I have a partial amputation of the last knuckle on the middle finger of my right hand. I offered my hand to the guy i relieved, wearing two layers of gloves to prevent contamination. "I'm &co, here to relieve you. " Odonnell pinched my fingers, felt the gap, declared a positive ID and retired below.

The drill monitor was livid. He'd been expressly looking to see if we'd remembered to keep our ID cards out when we dress in the Anti-C's, and question the offgoing guards 'how di dyou know it was the man on the card?' He was so angry he charged down to control and told the Captain that we'd screwed up. Cap looked at Weps.
"What do you mean, my men screwed up?"
"Well, one guy, he just looked his relief in the eye and said, 'Yeah, it's you!'"
"Was that Crosby?" Weps asked, familiar with the fact that some of us were a little non-standard. THe monitor checked his notes. "Um, yeah, how did you know?"
"Because that's all you need to know it's Crosby. What'd the other guy do?"
"He just shook his relief's hand! It wasn't even a secret handshake, so don't try to gimmee that! He grabbed his hand,-"
"That must have been &Co."
"How do you know?"
"He's my weps," Captain said. "It's his job to know." Then he kicked the drill monitor off his boat for false alarms.

After the drill, we were introduced to the CO, so Weps could explain the sordid details and convince the CO that we hadn't failed, even slightly.
"Okay," CO said. "But what if a terrorist had cut his fingertip off to infiltrate the unit?"
"Sir, when i cut this finger off, i screamed loud enough to shatter glass. Anyone wants to be me THAT badly, i'll hold the door for him."
"Guess so..." the CO shrugged.
 
Keith&Co. said:
Crosby was a black sonar tech who used to make his own fireworks. He stopped doing that the day that one firework didn't light off. So he looked down the tube to see what was going on. That's when it went off, blasting burning gunpowder into his face. So when Crosby said 'I am Crosby, I'm here to relieve you,' the watch looked through the face of his gas mask, counted little blue freckles and said, "Yep. Positive ID," and left the area.
Click to expand...

Sounds a little careless to be doing nuke security.
 
Loren Pechtel said:
Keith&Co. said:
Crosby was a black sonar tech who used to make his own fireworks. He stopped doing that the day that one firework didn't light off. So he looked down the tube to see what was going on. That's when it went off, blasting burning gunpowder into his face. So when Crosby said 'I am Crosby, I'm here to relieve you,' the watch looked through the face of his gas mask, counted little blue freckles and said, "Yep. Positive ID," and left the area.
Click to expand...

Sounds a little careless to be doing nuke security.
Click to expand...
Well, his accident was a real eye opener. Actually, it was an eye closer, first, THEN an eye opener. By the time he was enlisted, he was more scrupulous about procedures than i was. And they thought i had OCD.
 
When i reported to my fourth submarine, i'd been in the Navy for 18 years. I'd been sea to shore to sea a few rounds.
So the first training session we had, i was quite pleased to see that the guy chosen to give the instruction put time into his presentation. In the course critique, i wrote that it was far better than the usual stultifying divisional training.

When the XO got the training critique, he called me into his office. He didn't like my use of 'stultifying.'
"You shouldn't use a thesaurus to write you commentary."
"Please!" I protested. "Sir, i haven't opened a thesaurus since high school." During writing, anyway. Sometimes i just open them to read them, but i didn't tell him that.
"Okay," he said with a dismissive wave. "Then you shouldn't use commentary to show off how much college you've had."
"I haven't had ANY college, sir."
He waved that off, too. "Okay, maybe you didn't attend college, but you've completed the courses in order to..." He paused, noticing my expression. "What?"
"Sir, i've never done a single college course. I just have a large vocabulary."
Then everything stopped until the yeoman could bring him my service record, where it was confirmed that i had no college credits, none at all. While he searched through my file, for something to explain my word use (he was one of those officers who had a pretty dim view of the mental capacities of any and all enlisted. They figured if i'd been capable of college, i'd have gone to college and become an officer. So if i wasn't an officer it was a lack of ability, not a lack of a rat's ass for being one....)
Anyway, while he was searching the YN stood next to me. "So, did you explain that word he had to look up?"
XO slammed my file shut and yelled for both of us to get out of his office.

_I_ did not gossip. But suddenly, 'stultifying' was the word of the day for about a month. If there were no sonar contacts, the ocean was stultifying. If there was no important message, the traffic was stultifying. We stood a stultifying watch. In the middle of a fire drill, people yelling everywhere, someone prepared to go to periscope depth and reported 'a stultifying weather pattern' overhead.

My weapons officer, who hated the XO with a passion, giggled with glee every time he was me...."Never a stultifying day, eh?"
 
Engler did not attend the most recent RomantiCon, an annual convention held in Ohio for employees and fans of Ellora’s that features vendors hawking sex products, stripteases by male dancers who double as Ellora’s cover models, and much-needed workshops on feasible sex positions—too often Engler has given edit notes explaining that a woman cannot be bent over a horse unless her partner is very tall or the horse is very short.
Click to expand...
--- Phoebe Reilly, Slate Magazine, "Did Amazon Sink the Queen of Online Erotica?"[/h]
 
explaining that a woman cannot be bent over a horse unless her partner is very tall or the horse is very short.
Click to expand...
Yes. We cannot depend on writers of erotica actually having performed a fraction of the acts they describe (esp. the virgin authors of erotica), but too often someone needs to at least pose some action figures and poke around the scene with a tape measure and a copy of Grey's Anatomy.
"Maybe....if she's a cyclops and he's part octopus...."
"No.... Unless the pirate ship has artificial gravity..."
"Good god, it's not self-lubricating!"
 
Medicare - Part G - Nursing Home Plan

If you're an older senior citizen and can no longer take care of yourself. The government says there's no Nursing Home care available for you. So, what do you do? You opt for Part G.

Our plan gives anyone 65 years or older a gun (Part G) and four bullets. You are allowed to shoot four politicians. This means, of course, that you'll be sent to prison where you'll receive three meals a day, a roof over your head, central heating and air conditioning, cable TV, library and all the Health Care you need. Need new teeth? No problem. Need glasses? That's great. Need a hearing aid, new hip, knees, kidney, lungs, sex change or heart? They're all covered.

As an added bonus, your kids can come and visit you at least as often as they do now!

And, who will be paying for all of this? The same government that just told you they can't afford for you to go into a home. And....you can get rid of 4 useless politicians while you're at it. And now, because you're a prisoner, you don't have to pay any more income taxes.

Is this a great country or what?

Now that we've solved your senior financial planning, enjoy your week ..
 
We invented a game in Sub School that we called 'Saluting.'

As new submarine sailors, we were still recently out of Boot Camp, where you had to salute pretty much everything that moved and a few things that didn't. That sort of made it like being a white-belt Karate student. You knew the forms, but couldn't be held responsible for thinkng things through.

So when i was at sub school, the enlisted dining facility was about halfway up a hill.
The junior officer version of sub school was at the bottom of the hill. Officer barracks were at the top of the hill. So we'd be coming out of breakfast every morning as a continuous string of officers would be biking down the hill to their school. So we'd salute them.

Now, the junior officers were fresh out of Officer School, like us out of our Boot camp. So they had been conditioned, like us, in giving and returning salutes. You salute with your right hand. But if your right hand is unavailable, you can salute with your left. If both are unavailable, you just nod or otherwise acknowlege the salute you were supposed to make or return.

The officers on the bikes usually had a big stack of technical manuals under their arm, their homework from the previous day's lessons. So they'd be cruising down the hill when an enlisted man would pop up out of the bushes and salute. Three times out of five (on Tuesday), they'd let go of the bicycle handle to return the salute. We'd award points for how far apart the officer and his books ended up in the spill.

One time out of five, they knew that if their right hand was busy, they could use the other hand. And drop their stack of tech manuals. Points were awarded for the spill.

One officer in five would have enough self-control to not reflexively try to kill himself returning a salute.

By Thursday of the week, they were five for five not returning the salute. That was about the time that the memo from Officer Sub School would be read in our classroom, telling us not to tease the junior officers. Well, the game was over, anyway.

Every Monday, though, a new group of officers would class up, be issued their tech manuals and told where to find bicycles to get back and forth with.

On Tuesday, the games begin....
 
So, a friend at work mentioned that his daughter is training to be a therapist.
I started laughing. And it's impossible to explain why.

See, i made rather a few patrols on submarines. We tend towards self-abuse on those things. And we all know that everyone does it, so there's no point in being coy. We're rather open. Sometimes even competitive.

We used to joke that if we had to get a sperm count, where other people might ask the clinic receptionist for a private room, or a bathroom with a lock on the door, or 'do you have any porn?' We'd be more likely to ask 'Are you using this corner of your desk right now?'

So when i was at the suicide hotline, one of the other volunteers was there to get college credit in the therapy degree she was pursuing. She stood an evening watch with me, and decided to use me as an exercise for another course. She was supposed to practice getting people to talk about difficult subjects. Death was one that was suggested, but she rejected it as being too on-point in the crisis center. I forget the other choices she turned down. She chose sex. Specifically, masturbation. Evidently her instructor insisted it was the one topic most difficult to get honest answers about.

"So, Mr. &Co? Do you ever....masturbate?"
"At least daily, yes. Depends on how boring work is, really. And whether or not there's a class in the classroom next to the one-toilet bathroom on our floor. Sometimes it depends on what shows were on TV the night before. The morning after Miami Vice, i'm very likely to grab the single bathroom, even if there's a class in session. I just really like Olivia Brown. Um.... Are you okay?"
"Fine," she gasped, scribbling notes like mad, blushing like a charcoal ember.
 
Sara Barron, in her book "The Harm In Asking:"

"...freshman year of high school. I had been encouraged by my parents to join an extracurricular club. .... The purpose of the Student Coalition for Awareness was to allow its members a sense of superiority to all non-members."
 
For some reason, hard though it is to believe, the subject of Henrik Ibsen just never came up in Southern Idaho when i was a kid. There was a comedian, Henry Gibson, on Laff-In. For years upon years, whenever there was a reference to Henrik Ibsen, i honestly thought they were talking about Gibson. I seldom 'got' the reference. Anyway, years and years passed before i found out my error.

Tonight, my Youngest is back from College for Spring Break. He reports that he needs to read an Ibsen play for one of his classes. His mother, Mrs. &Co. teaches English and they discussed Henrik and his influence. Tallest son is into theatre and became interested when someone said 'Play.' So that end of the table was having a nice discussion about Ibsen.
All i could say was 'He was funny on Laff-In.'

Youngest started throwing things at me. Violently.
"I don't know what joke you're making, but i'm pretty sure if i understood it, i'd hate you!"

I'm not sure how it's MY fault that he doesn't know any more about Gibson than i knew about Ibsen, but i'm apparently to blame.
 
So, last month, three of my wife's students handed in their vocabulary homework and for their definition of 'Consolidated' all three wrote 'untied.' She gave them zeroes and wrote in the margins that it was rather easy to detect cheating when they all made the same mistake.

One of them has protested before that no one needs spelling, the computer checks that for you.

This month, the same three students showed some originality. For their examples, 'use this word in a sentence' they didn't copy directly. For Scholar:
"He was a collage educated scholar."
"He became a scholar in collage."
"The collage hired him to scholar for them."

This time, three zeroes, she wrote: "I assume this passed spell-check..."
 
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