64 Comments

I and my 2 housemates all got it at Christmas (end of my big family Christmas reunion; guests are fled to hotel and B&Bs.) We had considered ourselves immortal. ...With the new meds plus the shots,

we were all up and about (and testing negative) in about 4 days, and we aren't young..

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Sending healing vibes.

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Paxlovid. Get is ASAP

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Not really. You think of myths, myths involving flies, you think of Aeschylus (or I do, anyway). And I’d forgotten, if I ever knew, that Pence won’t have lunch with any woman not his wife. But no one could possibly forget The Fly. It won the debate.

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I guess being the richest man in the world (at the time) comes with the license to mess with your kids' lives by naming them X AE A-XII (originally X Æ A-12, but “Æ” and “12” violated California law, so had to be dropped ) known as "X" and, Exa Dark Sideræl Musk ("Y"). No Billy or Betty for Elon. Clearly too common. Better to name your bouncing baby girl after the supercomputing term exaFLOPS, or the ability to perform 1 quintillion floating-point operations a second. That way, she can cause hundreds of eyes to glaze over during her lifetime with the explanation not only of her name, but of what a quintillion and floating point are. Now that he's focused on making another name for himself (delicacy prevents me from uttering it here...), there apparently won't be a "Z." Although with 10 kids (at last count), maybe he'll just start at the beginning of the alphabet for convenience sake.

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I’m a longtime collector of bad names that I see in the news, or (from very, very long ago) run across while taking sports scores for the agate. Dorcas and Scholastic are positively melodic. How about Vegina and Philandrea?

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I'm noticing your hair style (I use the term loosely) and I'm wondering if this is a choice, or did your head get caught in the elevator doors or something. Hmm. I guess this is more of a question, you can ignore it if you wish. Curious in Pennsylvania.

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Well of course the name "Clisty" sounds yucky. It suggests "clyster." Did you not know that word or were you being uncharacteristically shy of anal humor?

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I better start reading the other comments first.

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Regarding great-great aunt Clisty's name, and its vaguely medical sound, "clyster" is a rather old word for "enema". So there's that.

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As someone who follows developments in medicine maybe only slightly more than Gene, I'm a bit embarrassed to admit I completely missed the initial announcement of the Kourtney Kardashian breakthrough in vaginal health and sweetness. Yes --- there is now "Lemme Purr" gummies, consisting of pineapple, vitamin C and probiotics to target vaginal health and pH levels that “support freshness and taste.” As the reality TV personality-cum-gynecologist puts it on her Instagram channel: “Give your vagina the sweet treat it deserves (and turn it into a sweet treat).” Yum!

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I went to Carnegie Mellon University, and being a design student, had some of the same professors that Andy Warhol had when he was there. One told us that the first indication that he was weird, was when he presented a painting of a man picking his nose.

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"Anyone who tells you each day how many steps he has taken will find that in hell, his Fitbit resets to zero every night at 11:59 p.m. (Karen Lambert) "

I think it should revert to zero after every 10th step.

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Gene, you may be right about "Dorcas" being THE worst name. It's godawful. "Scholastica" is right up (or down) there too. Maybe my #2, "Blois," isn't that bad after all. Hmm. After trying to say it out loud, spit it, actually, I'm thinking, "Yes it is that bad."

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Everyone I know (which isn't many people) with that name is not American. I'm sure it's perfectly fine in the Philippines and similar countries.

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In French, Blois is a normal place name. Of course, spelling the sound in English would be blwah, which doesn't run trippingly off the anglophone tongue. On the other hand, there is a town far in the east of France with the lovely name of Montbéliard. It has a German name, too: Mömpelgard. I find that hilarious, but I'm like that.

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I too have always found that funny. How lyrical the French pronunciation of a name will sound, but our translation resembles cursing. The two versions of Gilbert crack me up. Blois pronounced her name Blow•is, like Lois with a B.

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And the worst pronunciation would be Bee-Lo-is, although I suppose in junior high, the Blow-is version would have been begging for abuse.

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My uncle hated “Bertha”. I couldn’t disagree. And what’s with Armgard?

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Okay, I feel compelled to tell the story about a bunch of diplomats. An American says to a Spanish-speaker, "One of your most beautiful words is 'mariposa'." The latter says, "Or in French, 'papillon'." And the German says, "Und vat is wronk mit 'Schmetterling'?"

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Eek, neither can I. Isn't Armgard a Goa'uld on Stargate SG-1? It's hard to tell until their eyes glow or they use that kidnapper telephone voice.

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If evacuation is required, the toiled is conveniently nearby and unobstructed, at least by a door

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"...a bear that was killed after eating a human." Lead-in to a joke:

Two friends, one from Russia and one from the Czech Republic, were hunting bears. They surprised two bears, who attacked the hunters and ate them. The bears were then tracked and killed by government agents. In the autopsies, it was discovered that while the female bear had eaten the Russian, the Czech was in the male.

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Sorry Dave, as the self-appointed Referee of Puns and Other Crimes Against Humanity, I will unfortunately, as they do for a serious foul in the "Beautiful Game," have to give you a red card and send you off.

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If I'm getting a red card, I'll leave you with another. This is a true story.

A friend lives in a flat on an old wharf on the Thames River in London. She once found an injured duck on the shore, took it home and nursed it back to health. The duck ended up following her around her flat and quacking. I told her, some people think ducks don’t make good pets, but that’s just an evil canard.

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I THINK I would have gotten the first runner-up if the punishment had been worded slightly differently. "Fly" instead of "Flies."

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I got it right away snd chuckled.

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I agree, although eternity with one fly on your head is a less than half-assed punishment. How about eternally reliving that dastardly lunch with one fly on his head? And each time he asks for the check, what comes out instead is, "Waiter, there's a fly in my coup." Nah, still far from Hell-worthy.

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I took it to mean that because he got one fly before dying he has at least done it once already

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LOL, as they say.

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Maybe if he'd said "In your silver hair" instead of all over your body? Or "who is not your wife [whom you call "Mother"]. I dunno.

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What can I say? As it happened, I thought of Aeschylus.

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You are clever indeed, and my suggestions are from an ignoramus [me] who just missed the boat. :)

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If Rhymes-with-Dense had lunch alone with a woman, he would be commiting matricide in his heart.

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