1) We need to write funny death remembrances in the English tabloid style for Elden, he deserves them and he’ll love them. 2) There is a clock museum benefit event run by my friends in Bristol CT, Gene and/or Pat is invited whenever it is, I’m not serious but I’ll find out what and when it is.
“Yeah, gonna be visiting my son at the penitentiary. He’s doing 25 to life for murder.” EDIT: "...for murdering a Tech Support operator for wasting his entire morning."
The definition "at any moment" isn't exactly a good one for "momentarily". At any moment to me means it could have happened 40 million years in the past or will happen between now and infinity.
In response to the idiot who said current technology is superior--I'm currently looking at a digital clock on my wall that is now 32 minutes off since setting for daylight savings time. It is definitely NOT superior technology despite having spent over $100 dollars for the piece of shit.
Here's a belated pet peeve: people pronouncing words such as "processes" and "biases" as "processēs" and "biasēs." These are perfectly ordinary plurals like buses and boxes and churches, not Latin words like menses or appendices or indices or crises.
I observe some benign grousing about Pat and Gene's Really Swell Invitational seeping into the exchange here. To head off what could become a tectonic upheaval (and a grave loss of lunch money), I suggest Pat and Gene seriously consider breaking up the Really Swell Invitational into several "leagues." Something along the lines of the British football (soccer) system. It's not as if they have anything better to do. The Premier League would be open only to the usual suspects or Pat and Gene's love children and those who win or ink a sufficient number of times as a runner-up. The other leagues would be populated using arbitrary qualifications of Pat's and Gene's choosing ("Still sexually active," "Ambidextrous," and the like). There would be at least one for people with no sense of humor, and game to prove it. In keeping with the model, there would also be arbitrary promotion and relegation, up and down the leagues, based on ink and bribes.
I submit that "ahold of" is Southern idiom, common where I live. As for pronouncing the "h" in historic, I used to believe that it was only Brits who made it silent, but they now seem to be reversing this (cf. "herb"). I was taught that saying "an historic" was pretentious hyperurbanism.
As for meaningless pleasantries, I used to have a client, of an older generation, who evidently didn't understand that our phone conversations were business transactions. I'm sure I was regarded as abrupt and impolite when I wanted to get right down to business. In similar fashion, if I went to his house to deliver work I'd done for him, he would invariably invite me in and offer me refreshments. I was never sure whether I was meant to accept or decline (that is, whether it was an empty gesture), but I invariably declined.
"Taylor and her attorney told “Good Morning America” it’s unclear how the boy got ahold of the gun, but it was secured in her home. " “Ahold?”
":A: To be fair, it is a direct quote.. . "
No Gene, it is NOT a direct quote, unless you mean the questioner was quoting the WaPo, because it's the author of the article -- not Taylor and/or her attorney -- who said/wrote "ahold."
I do wish editors would correct misspellings, wrong word usage, etc., in obituaries submitted by grieving families. Just this morning: (She) never shared a burden or pain that she couldn't bare herself." C'mon, the guy is grieving - help him out!
Oh, come on. We say "beef" because the Norman invasion was successful and Britain therefore had two words for every thing. The French nobility ate beef from the cows that the Anglo-Saxon serfs herded.
another week, another week with no ink. I find it amusingly parallel that years ago, I got ink my first time submitting to the Invitational in the WaPo and then never again, and so far it's been the same here. *shrug*
We have an old Seth Thomas mantle clock, inherited by my husband from his grandmother. I don't know how old it is, but my husband is 71 years old, so we know it's been around a while. On the back panel is the date of every repair and the signature of the horologist. (I'd check to give you the dates, but I'm 71 as well, it's on a high shelf, and I know for sure I dassn't drop it!) It needs some TLC - it used to need winding every eight days and now it's about two days. We're having trouble finding someone to work on it. If I could only save one object if the house was burning down, it would be this clock.
Am I the only one who didn't get "Elliot Nescafe x Vulveeta = The Undouchables"? PLEASE don't tell me someone has actually advocated douching with instant coffee. I don't want to know.
Michael, one thing about the Grandfoals contest in particular is that most of the names are already puns that combine two different elements. So in this case we have four elements plus their hybrids: Vulva, Velveeta, Vulveeta; Eliot Ness, Nescafe, Eliot Nescafe. It's almost impossible to produce a funny name that incorporates all of these things. And so we've always used names that combined some of the elements but not others.
So here we have Eliot Ness x Vulva = The Undouchables. It's not quite as satisfying as the hybrids in the first round, but I still found it funny. If you were to analyze each of today's inking entries (NOT RECOMMENDED FOR HUMOR PURPOSES), you'd find similar cases in most of them.
I was going to explain this in the introduction to the contest, but it was dull and confusing.
Hi Pat! Thanks for pitching in. Yeah, I finally get it... but see the back-and-forth in the rest of the comments on this thread for why I didn't get it, at first. Trying too hard to look for something that wasn't there, when the whole point was just a funny-sounding and slightly risque pun.
Huh? Yes, okay. I've seen the film. I know who Eliott Ness was, in real life. I'm also old enough to have watched the show when it was on TV in the 1960s. I read, then scanned with the "Find" function, the Wiki article you linked. It does not contain the word "douche" or even the first few letters of that word, anywhere, or a reference to coffee, instant or otherwise.
So although I appreciate the effort, I'm afraid your reply misses the point. I still do not get the connection between the names in the Grandfoal entry.
I shall explain. Elliot Nescafe is a reference to Elliot Ness, and the Untouchables. Vulveeta is a reference to a woman's external sex organ. It is this organ that -- unwisely -- is sometimes subject to a douche.
If I may inquire further (my second reply, here): is it truly a woman's EXTERNAL sex organ that, as you write, is sometimes (unwisely) subjected to a douche? Somehow I was under the impression that this sketchy form of feminine hygiene was usually performed on her INTERNAL sex organ, using a medieval torture device that resembles the kind used to deliver an enema. (And, perhaps, sometimes the very same device.) Asking for a friend.
Yes, Gene, I knew all that stuff. What I didn't get (and still don't) is how the concepts come together to form a joke. Unless the joke is playing off the ORIGINAL parts of both sire names -- rather than off of the punning parts. Is that what you think it does? Okay then, I guess to me it just isn't very funny. Ness+Vagina = a lame pun substituting "douche" for "touch" in "Untouchable."
I kept looking for something far more sophisticated (and worthy of the caliber of humor often found among present company), involving literary allusions to some obscure narrative in which instant coffee was being used as a rinsing solution for a lady's nether cavity (and perhaps involving Gwyneth Paltrow). But sometimes the only thing funny about a douche joke is the word "douche." Touche.
You know -- I was looking for something requiring droll esoteric knowledge of "in" cultural tropes and decoding of subtle references to famous works. Despite all the poop jokes, we DO see a lot of that here. Shakespeare jokes, Beyonce jokes, we run the gamut, but that's the idea.
Example: "Crash Test Dummy x Stumped = Hmm Hmm Hmm Hmm" requires indie-rock chops (or at least, ability to follow a link) to connect the facts that "CTD" is also the name of an indie rock group, and "Hmm ... (etc)" is the name of one of their songs. And of course, "Hmm" is what you say when you are stumped.
As I apparently was, over the joke about douche. Hmm.
Or the alternate explanation of Vulveeta as a play on "Velveeta," the processed cheese, which with the coffee, make an undesirable pair of genital rinses.
One can be Christian and atheist. Christ was at least likely a man. One can believe in Christ and not in God. Also, a-theism is the lack of a central God (theism). One can believe like the Sikhs in gurus or the Buddhists in the evolution of self (don’t “Weingarten” me here) and not believe in a central God.
1) We need to write funny death remembrances in the English tabloid style for Elden, he deserves them and he’ll love them. 2) There is a clock museum benefit event run by my friends in Bristol CT, Gene and/or Pat is invited whenever it is, I’m not serious but I’ll find out what and when it is.
“Yeah, gonna be visiting my son at the penitentiary. He’s doing 25 to life for murder.” EDIT: "...for murdering a Tech Support operator for wasting his entire morning."
The definition "at any moment" isn't exactly a good one for "momentarily". At any moment to me means it could have happened 40 million years in the past or will happen between now and infinity.
In response to the idiot who said current technology is superior--I'm currently looking at a digital clock on my wall that is now 32 minutes off since setting for daylight savings time. It is definitely NOT superior technology despite having spent over $100 dollars for the piece of shit.
Here's a belated pet peeve: people pronouncing words such as "processes" and "biases" as "processēs" and "biasēs." These are perfectly ordinary plurals like buses and boxes and churches, not Latin words like menses or appendices or indices or crises.
I observe some benign grousing about Pat and Gene's Really Swell Invitational seeping into the exchange here. To head off what could become a tectonic upheaval (and a grave loss of lunch money), I suggest Pat and Gene seriously consider breaking up the Really Swell Invitational into several "leagues." Something along the lines of the British football (soccer) system. It's not as if they have anything better to do. The Premier League would be open only to the usual suspects or Pat and Gene's love children and those who win or ink a sufficient number of times as a runner-up. The other leagues would be populated using arbitrary qualifications of Pat's and Gene's choosing ("Still sexually active," "Ambidextrous," and the like). There would be at least one for people with no sense of humor, and game to prove it. In keeping with the model, there would also be arbitrary promotion and relegation, up and down the leagues, based on ink and bribes.
I submit that "ahold of" is Southern idiom, common where I live. As for pronouncing the "h" in historic, I used to believe that it was only Brits who made it silent, but they now seem to be reversing this (cf. "herb"). I was taught that saying "an historic" was pretentious hyperurbanism.
As for meaningless pleasantries, I used to have a client, of an older generation, who evidently didn't understand that our phone conversations were business transactions. I'm sure I was regarded as abrupt and impolite when I wanted to get right down to business. In similar fashion, if I went to his house to deliver work I'd done for him, he would invariably invite me in and offer me refreshments. I was never sure whether I was meant to accept or decline (that is, whether it was an empty gesture), but I invariably declined.
"Taylor and her attorney told “Good Morning America” it’s unclear how the boy got ahold of the gun, but it was secured in her home. " “Ahold?”
":A: To be fair, it is a direct quote.. . "
No Gene, it is NOT a direct quote, unless you mean the questioner was quoting the WaPo, because it's the author of the article -- not Taylor and/or her attorney -- who said/wrote "ahold."
True!
I do wish editors would correct misspellings, wrong word usage, etc., in obituaries submitted by grieving families. Just this morning: (She) never shared a burden or pain that she couldn't bare herself." C'mon, the guy is grieving - help him out!
Oh, come on. We say "beef" because the Norman invasion was successful and Britain therefore had two words for every thing. The French nobility ate beef from the cows that the Anglo-Saxon serfs herded.
another week, another week with no ink. I find it amusingly parallel that years ago, I got ink my first time submitting to the Invitational in the WaPo and then never again, and so far it's been the same here. *shrug*
You do realize that you're competing with Gene and Pat's love children, do you not ?
This keeps up, there will be no point in you me anteing up next year.
alas. such is life.
USS Constipation x Unplugged = Metamissile
Fonzie Scheme x C-Note Evil = Ayyyyy Sharp
127 Hours x Stumped = What's Left
Founding Farter x Shit Show = Shart Your Engines
Vulveeta x Why an Apostrophe? = Yeast Inflection
Bard the Door x Strongarm = Pursued by a Baer
Deputy Seraph x Walk = Wing Dinged
Coriolanus Effect x Etude Brute = Rome If You Want 2
Willie Maze x Wedgie Jackson = Who Moved My Dweeb
Porn to Run x Wanks a Million = Oh Come On
GanDolphini x WhoSlicedTheCheese = Orcarino Romano
Seth, there were more than 1,300 entries. If it's any consolation "Pursued by a Baer" was on my shortlist and strongly considered.
We have an old Seth Thomas mantle clock, inherited by my husband from his grandmother. I don't know how old it is, but my husband is 71 years old, so we know it's been around a while. On the back panel is the date of every repair and the signature of the horologist. (I'd check to give you the dates, but I'm 71 as well, it's on a high shelf, and I know for sure I dassn't drop it!) It needs some TLC - it used to need winding every eight days and now it's about two days. We're having trouble finding someone to work on it. If I could only save one object if the house was burning down, it would be this clock.
I will!
Send me a picture at the "send me questions" buttons in the Gene Pool.
Am I the only one who didn't get "Elliot Nescafe x Vulveeta = The Undouchables"? PLEASE don't tell me someone has actually advocated douching with instant coffee. I don't want to know.
Michael, one thing about the Grandfoals contest in particular is that most of the names are already puns that combine two different elements. So in this case we have four elements plus their hybrids: Vulva, Velveeta, Vulveeta; Eliot Ness, Nescafe, Eliot Nescafe. It's almost impossible to produce a funny name that incorporates all of these things. And so we've always used names that combined some of the elements but not others.
So here we have Eliot Ness x Vulva = The Undouchables. It's not quite as satisfying as the hybrids in the first round, but I still found it funny. If you were to analyze each of today's inking entries (NOT RECOMMENDED FOR HUMOR PURPOSES), you'd find similar cases in most of them.
I was going to explain this in the introduction to the contest, but it was dull and confusing.
Hi Pat! Thanks for pitching in. Yeah, I finally get it... but see the back-and-forth in the rest of the comments on this thread for why I didn't get it, at first. Trying too hard to look for something that wasn't there, when the whole point was just a funny-sounding and slightly risque pun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Untouchables_(film)
Huh? Yes, okay. I've seen the film. I know who Eliott Ness was, in real life. I'm also old enough to have watched the show when it was on TV in the 1960s. I read, then scanned with the "Find" function, the Wiki article you linked. It does not contain the word "douche" or even the first few letters of that word, anywhere, or a reference to coffee, instant or otherwise.
So although I appreciate the effort, I'm afraid your reply misses the point. I still do not get the connection between the names in the Grandfoal entry.
I shall explain. Elliot Nescafe is a reference to Elliot Ness, and the Untouchables. Vulveeta is a reference to a woman's external sex organ. It is this organ that -- unwisely -- is sometimes subject to a douche.
If I may inquire further (my second reply, here): is it truly a woman's EXTERNAL sex organ that, as you write, is sometimes (unwisely) subjected to a douche? Somehow I was under the impression that this sketchy form of feminine hygiene was usually performed on her INTERNAL sex organ, using a medieval torture device that resembles the kind used to deliver an enema. (And, perhaps, sometimes the very same device.) Asking for a friend.
Yes, Gene, I knew all that stuff. What I didn't get (and still don't) is how the concepts come together to form a joke. Unless the joke is playing off the ORIGINAL parts of both sire names -- rather than off of the punning parts. Is that what you think it does? Okay then, I guess to me it just isn't very funny. Ness+Vagina = a lame pun substituting "douche" for "touch" in "Untouchable."
I kept looking for something far more sophisticated (and worthy of the caliber of humor often found among present company), involving literary allusions to some obscure narrative in which instant coffee was being used as a rinsing solution for a lady's nether cavity (and perhaps involving Gwyneth Paltrow). But sometimes the only thing funny about a douche joke is the word "douche." Touche.
> I kept looking for something far more sophisticated
Are you sure you're in the right substack?
HAHAHAHA! Yep.
You know -- I was looking for something requiring droll esoteric knowledge of "in" cultural tropes and decoding of subtle references to famous works. Despite all the poop jokes, we DO see a lot of that here. Shakespeare jokes, Beyonce jokes, we run the gamut, but that's the idea.
Example: "Crash Test Dummy x Stumped = Hmm Hmm Hmm Hmm" requires indie-rock chops (or at least, ability to follow a link) to connect the facts that "CTD" is also the name of an indie rock group, and "Hmm ... (etc)" is the name of one of their songs. And of course, "Hmm" is what you say when you are stumped.
As I apparently was, over the joke about douche. Hmm.
Or the alternate explanation of Vulveeta as a play on "Velveeta," the processed cheese, which with the coffee, make an undesirable pair of genital rinses.
There's that! Ewwww....
You do know what a vulva is, right?
Doh. (See my reply to Gene, on this same thread)
Wth was testicle tanning all about? Was that Tucker’s “5th Ave.” dare to get fired?
Why was Stumpy stumpy? Swam there before.
He was stumped by being used as a crash test dummy.
People use cash, and blame cashiers, who have to stand through their shift at unfair minimum wage? That kind of complaint is so pre-Covid.
The whole theme of that conversation was petty pet peeves. That is, things you know you shouldn't get upset about, but you do anyway.
One can be Christian and atheist. Christ was at least likely a man. One can believe in Christ and not in God. Also, a-theism is the lack of a central God (theism). One can believe like the Sikhs in gurus or the Buddhists in the evolution of self (don’t “Weingarten” me here) and not believe in a central God.
Well, one can believe in JESUS and not in god, but if you believe in CHRIST, then you have religion there. There's a difference.
Fun Fact: In Islam, Jesus is considered a prophet https://muslimunitycenter.org/how-is-jesus-perceived-in-islam/
I would argue that the common definition of "atheism" suggests a denial of the existence of any god or gods.