Post stuff that makes me smile

I’m smiling a lot because some very nice things have happened to me yesterday:

I won two awards at work.
My wife’s business is going very well.
And my mother did something extremely nice for us, financially.

It feels like things are coming together and we won’t have to worry quite as much about money, and can get away from the whole paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle.

Thank you, God. And Mom.

While in Iowa on Monday visiting relatives, we stopped by a local shoe store and found the greatest walking shoes on sale. They’re so darn comfortable, I’m going to take a walk!

This weekend we watched The Night Listener with Robin Williams and Toni Collette. It’s based on a true story by Armistead Maupin. A well-done film, Hitchcockian in places.

In the DVD extras, Maupin says this:

“We live in a world today where people are in virtual relationships all the time, and have constructs about the other person that are often more about what we need than what that person actually is. And we fool each other by mutual consent in order to get what we want.”

It made me think about all my virtual relationships here at 43T, and I smiled.

I was looking at some historical materials, and smiled when I saw that near the end of Prohibition, there was a sign in my town that said:

“What this country needs is good beer and confidence.”

75 years later, its still generally true, though I fear some of our leaders have a bit too much confidence in the rightness of their cause.

I love my Onion. It always makes me smile. Here’s today’s chuckle:

Study: 38 Percent Of People Not Actually Entitled To Their Opinion

CHICAGO—In a surprising refutation of the conventional wisdom on opinion entitlement, a study conducted by the University of Chicago’s School for Behavioral Science concluded that more than one-third of the U.S. population is neither entitled nor qualified to have opinions.

“On topics from evolution to the environment to gay marriage to immigration reform, we found that many of the opinions expressed were so off-base and ill-informed that they actually hurt society by being voiced,” said chief researcher Professor Mark Fultz, who based the findings on hundreds of telephone, office, and dinner-party conversations compiled over a three-year period. “While people have long asserted that it takes all kinds, our research shows that American society currently has a drastic oversupply of the kinds who don’t have any good or worthwhile thoughts whatsoever. We could actually do just fine without them.”

In 2002, Fultz’s team shook the academic world by conclusively proving the existence of both bad ideas during brainstorming and dumb questions during question-and-answer sessions.

Professor Sees Parallels Between Things, Other Things

AUSTIN, TX—University of Texas professor Thom Windham once again furthered the cause of human inquiry in a class lecture Monday, as he continued his longtime practice of finding connections between things and other things, pointing out these parallels, and then elaborating on them in detail, campus sources reported.

“By drawing parallels between things and other, entirely different things, I not only further my own studies, but also encourage young minds to develop this comparative methodology in their own work,” said Windham, holding his left hand up to represent one thing, then holding his right hand up to represent a separate thing, then bringing his hands together in simulation of a hypothetical synthesis of the two things. “It’s not just similarities that are important, though—the differences between things are also worth exploring at length.”

Fifteen years ago, Windham was awarded tenure for doing this.

At a meeting this afternoon, my boss kept making jokes about sandwiches. Seems another office in my company provided sandwiches for some rescue workers, which is usually nothing to laugh about, but it is somehow if you know the people in the other office.

Item by item as we went through the meeting, he kept mentioning sandwiches until the joke got really old.

But I kept smiling with each sandwich joke. Because whenever somebody says sandwiches, I think of something else worth smiling about.

I have no idea where they came from, but I’m happy to have them.

I’ve been hovering in the lower to mid 30s for quite some time, but never higher than 35 until today. Now I’m at 37.

(Small potatoes compared to some of you, but I’ll take all I can get.)

I got this in an e-mail from a friend, and it made me smile.

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Once again, The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly neologism contest in which readers are asked to supply alternate
meanings for common words.

The winners are:

1. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.

3 . Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.

6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absent-mindedly answer the door in your nightgown.

7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle (n.), olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), (back by popular demand): The belief that, when you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. Circumvent (n.), an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

The Washington Post’s Style Invitational also asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are this year’s winners:

1. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

2. Foreploy (v): Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

3. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

4. Giraffiti (n): Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

5. Sarchasm (n): The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.

6. Inoculatte (v): To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

7. Hipatitis (n): Terminal coolness.

8. Osteopornosis (n): A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

9. Karmageddon (n): It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.

10. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

11. Glibido (v): All talk and no action.

12. Dopeler effect (n): The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

13. Arachnolepticfit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.

14. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

15. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a grub in the fruit you’re eating.

And the pick of the literature:
16. Ignoranus (n): A person who’s both stupid and an asshole

From Garrison Keillor’s newspaper column today:

“I see in the paper that the U.S. Department of Education laid out $750,000 for a study that shows that going to art museums and looking at art is good for schoolchildren, which I would have been happy to tell them for, say, $500 and a nice lunch. I also have some thoughts about the defecation habits of bears, if the forestry service is interested. If the government is paying large sums of money to have the obvious pointed out, then I am your man. Ask me about this war and I’ll tell you for free.”