Archive for November, 2017

1. Guardian Angel Waitress Pays for Homeless Veteran’s Lunch: Next day he brings in 5 friends and orders Lobster
2. Barking Up the Wrong Headstone: Grief-stricken Dog Sleeps Atop Grave of a Guy with Same Name as his Owner Who’s Still Alive.
3. Hack of Adoption Records Reunites Mother and Son 33 years after she put him up for adoption. Son’s Reaction: “Great. Now I’m stuck buying Christmas presents for 2 mothers. Thanks a lot Global kOS.”
4. Unbelievable Canine Loyalty: Tearful Spalding family puts ailing Fido to sleep before vacationing in Hawaii. One week later guess who shows up on their lanai in Maui soaking wet with a few questions.
5. Joan Rivers daughter Melissa Told Her Mother’s Grave Will Have to be Moved: “She Just Won’t Shut-up. She’s disturbing the other corpses,” says superintendent.
6. Flint, Michigan Losing its Spark.
7. After Democrats Demand to see Mitch McConnell’s Birth Certificate, the Kentucky Senator Admits: “Alright! I’m A Sea Turtle. I never knew my mother. I was hatched. Thank God I had an egg tooth.”
8. Men Vote “The eyes” 4^th Favorite Female Body Part. Wait till you see what number 1 is.
9. Meta-Spoof Headline Makes No Sense: So Much Time to Waste. So Little Time to Do It In.
10. Shakespeare was a Great Playwright: Wait Till You See What He Looks Like Now!
11. What a Dog is Really Saying When He Sniffs Your Crotch.
12. Even Trivia Feels Trivialized By Tsunami of Bullsh*t

The siren call of microbrewed grains knows no bounds. Thank you for your service little yeast creatures.

We, the privileged gentry, have become a sophisticated lot. We no longer drink a cup of Joe. We imbibe a half-caff soy latte purchased with Apple Pay at a drive-thru window while listening to Enya in our self-driving Teslas. We don’t smoke anymore. We vape or grow hipper still in hookah lounges. And we certainly don’t swill beer from inelegant pop top cans. Instead we quaff artisanal craft beers in boutique microbreweries while pretending to enjoy Manchester United’s 1 – nil football match played on the pitch at Portsmouth.

And that’s our jumping off point. No, not English soccer, but the American craft beer craze. Amidst a flood of competing suds, many are good, some are great and a few are outstanding – not for their herbaceous bouquets or notes of barley malt, but for the eccentric names they’ve appended to their particular brew. Bursting with foamy delight, these quirky and sometimes pretentious names enhance the ordinary experience of drinking fermented cereal grains from an outsized tankard. In a charmingly retro way we’re captivated by these arresting monikers. A kind of appellation chic has taken hold (this is not to be confused with the grunge clothing fad of the 90’s known as Appalachian Chic). It seems we’re intoxicated by both our foamy beers and their frothy names.

So between reading Cigar Aficionado Magazine and visiting my esophageal oncologist, I’ve compiled a list of these jaunty and kitschy names and present them below:

1. Sierra Fail Ale
2. Downward God: Dyslexics Delight
3. I Can’t Believe It’s Not Urine
4. Twist and Stout
5. A Larger Lager
6. McConaughey’s Alright, Alright, Alright
7. Finally Got My GED
8. Not Quite Blotto
9. Olde English Cockblocker
10. Yeast of All Evils
11. And I’m Drinking This Warm Yellow Fluid Because…?
12. McBeer
13. Yup, Passed My High School Equivalency Exam (a sister brew to Finally Got My GED)
14. Wasted Away Again in My Mother’s Basement

It has been said by critics more attuned to the zeitgeist than I, that you can never be too thin, too rich or too hip. They’re wrong of course, but that’s what they say.

God Accused of the Nonconsensual and Unwelcomed Relocation of Vulnerable Souls from their True Home in Fabulous Heaven to the Crude Habitat of Problematic Earth

“Am I really that asleep whereby I can’t sense this stuff” I asked?
“Yes, you are that asleep” said my soul.

Is this just another case of soulful harassment so prevalent these days? Well, as we’ll see it may depend on your perspective.

The Dam Breaks

A trickle of repressed memories bravely voiced by a few earthbound souls has led to a torrent of recovered memories by other souls who’ve come forward to corroborate disturbing accounts of being forcibly evicted from their lofty perch in fabulous heaven and relegated to the surly confines of problematic earth.  

And even though she’s not been asked, attorney Gloria Allred has agreed to represent the entire human race of 7.5 billion people in a class action suit of Everyone vs. The All-Being. She seeks to restore her would-be clients to their former heavenly station, including the wings, halos and the ecstatic drama-free environment they were accustomed to. “We know of no compelling reason why the Almighty chose to arbitrarily cast out his adoring flock into a far flung Earthly outpost devoid of the unity, love and clarity so abundant in their rightful home. His capricious action is doubly painful because he seems to be doing it simply for his own amusement,” offered the well-intentioned Allred. Read the rest of this entry »

The first vial has only a little powder. The second one is virtually empty. Both are lethal doses. Vile indeed.

By all accounts the opioid crisis is intensifying and the country’s failure to address it has less to do with its lethality and everything to do with the weird optics of the word opioid. Who can relate to an opioid that sounds more like the kid on The Andy Griffith Show than a serious public health issue? If 4 of the first 5 letters weren’t vowels we might not be ankle deep in overdoses and the opioid crisis may have gone the way of smallpox, polio and disco. Instead this deadly wave has become a tsunami and all because the public at large can’t warm-up to the word opioid. The same thing happened with the word Hillary in the last election. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Thank You for Your Service: A Shout Out to Crash Test Dummies
2. “I Didn’t Sign Up for This”: Complaints by People Who Signed-up for Things They No Longer Like
3. The Politicization of Baloney: The Right Claims It, But Isn’t it Really a Left-Wing Meat?
4. Are Toadstools and Frogchairs the Same Thing?
5. Coping with Coping Saws
6. Not in My Backyard: A Short History of Above Ground Pools
7. Too Many Colons::::: A Tubular History of Diacritical Marks
8. “Absolutely no one in my entourage may ever take drugs.” “Hello, Offshore Pharmacy, send me 1000 vials of Fentanyl.” The Hypocrisy of Prince in a Book Title that Doesn’t Even Fit on the Book Cover
9. Dan Quayle: Not Looking So Bad These Days
10. George W Bush: Oh How We Miss Thee
11. Joseph Stalin: No, He Still Sucks
12. Old School: A Misplaced Appreciation of When Things Were Even Stupider
13. Having Said That: Things that People Have Already Said
14. “No, not quite. The cheese itself isn’t grilled. The bread surrounding the cheese is.”: The Genesis of the Grilled Cheese Sandwich
15. Harvey Weinstein’s Prison Experience: “OK. Enough. I get it! Can I please leave?”
16. How Grover Cleveland Got His Groove Back and Other Stories of Presidential Redemption
17. Subway Franchisees: They’re Not All From India
18. “No, not Cool-aid, but Kool-Aid.” How an Intentional Misspelling Made Kraft a Fortune
19. Google to Partner with Titleist to Research Self-driving Golf Balls (Really a headline and not a book. So sue me.)
20. “Can I pay someone to do yoga for me?” and Other Questions from the Wealthy