Archive for December, 2025

1. Louis XIV Presents: Jerk du Soleil
2. Just Jest I Guess
3. Surely You Joust (And stop calling me Joust…I mean surely)
4. Clowns to the Left of Me Jokers to the Right, Here I am Stuck in the middle with me
5. Oh how we love whatever God, our King tells us to Worship: And other ways to avoid beheading
6. Taylor Swift CPA: The IRAs Tour (Not a show, but a symposium on how peasants can retire early)
7. I Dream of Smallpox: Where to turn when the Plague is getting you down
8. Take My Common-Law Wife, Please!
9. J’ever notice how everybody’s starving cuz there’s no food: And other Silly Observations
10. Vlad the Impaler really Skewers his audience (not suitable for the blood averse)
11. “I can Sever that Head in 3 Whacks” Things frequently said on the “Name that Executioner” show
12. Soot: It’s NOT a Performance in Black Face, it’s just that our faces are so dirty. Soap has not been invented yet.

1. There shall be established one approved name for all grandmothers, and it shall be Nonni.
2. The Olsen Files to be released: It shall be publicly posted why Susan Olsen (little Cindy Brady) did not participate in the first Brady reunion movie. It’s been 38 years. The public has waited long enough.
3. Ken Burns shall make a 30 hour 10-part documentary on the history of balloon animals
4. Airport Lactation Stations shall time-share as Adult Visitation Cubicles
5. If you think it’s butter, but it’s snot…It’s Chiffon
6. Those who delayed the manufacture of mustard and ketchup bottles from being made in the handier cap side down manner, shall be brought to justice. If found guilty, they shall be hung by their feet…till all the fluid rushes to their heads.
7. The Road to Hell shall henceforth be paved with Amazon gift cards

In Order to Form a More Perfect Onion

8. Young people must experience one day per year where they become their 80-year-old self. Until age 60. Then they get one day at 20.
9. It shall be understood that the use of lead pipes caused the downfall of the Roman Empire. So too shall it be recognized that the advent of the Toaster Pastry has done similarly toWestern Civilization
10. In order to strengthen the moral fiber of this country, all thong bikinis are hereby outlawed (unless you happen to be walking by me)
11. Performative tests will be undertaken to determine if “Visine really does get the Red out.”
12. Henceforth, the word “performative” shall be outlawed
13. Be it known, Peeps may be classified as Service Animals and brought aboard hovercraft or other marine conveyances
14. All Bitcoins shall be filled with chocolate and covered in gold foil and given to nephews by uncles

Edited out Dirty Ones:

8. All men shall be barred from saying to any woman, “I’d really like to get to know your inner circle.”
9. Similarly, all women shall be barred from saying to any man, “I’d really like to help me lift your manhole cover.”

1. Nomads excel at anger management
2. Czechs use Venmo
3. The Assyrians were just regular Syrians, but with really big asses
4. The Finnish are done
5. In Warsaw they Pole dance
6. The Sea Anemone is the enemy of the Yemini
7. Q: If you go into a bathroom an American, and come out an American, what are you when you’re in there?
    A: European
8. There was a time all Cavemen lived in Man Caves, but not by choice
9. Loony people from the Amazon are called Brazil nuts
10. Loony people from Wales are called Walnuts

<You deserve a break>

11. People from Wales who don’t repay money they owe, Welsh on their loans
12. Japanese, Chinese and American knees all operate the same way.
13. Bedouins love mattress sales
14. In Kashmir they buy cashmere with mere cash
15. Swedish people are so saccharine. And I think that’s kinda sweet-ish
16. Is Israel really real? It is real. I mean, it Israel.
17. Never take Stonehenge for granite
18. Romans are now stationary. And yet they’re always roamin’
19. We could go, or we Kuwait. Your choice
20. Islamabad, and it’s not getting any better

<One more pit stop>

21. ♫Here’s to the New Delhi…Same as the Old Delhi♫
      Well at least the New Delhi has vegan options.
22. Newfoundland. “Hey look, we found new land. Great. Let’s pronounce it ‘New Findland.’”
23. Yukon be serious. I’ll have Nunavut.
24. Iraq my brain and I still can’t figure an easy way to say, “I’ve jogged?” “Well, how about Iran?”
25. No one stops talking in Babylon. They just babble on and brook no nonsense.

Not part of the list, but I understand sometimes rust does sleep.

When you’re voluntarily imprisoned in an airliner – buckled up and cinched in, seatback and tray table in the upright and locked position – one’s prevailing reality can change quickly. While you’re optimizing the miserly 11 cubic feet of space you’re allotted, seemingly trivial matters can swell into a wave of overwhelming stuff – a tsunami of tstuff that’s difficult to tsurf. Normally, a stable mentality can calmly navigate these matters. Then there’s me. Who, in this instance, managed to elevate what should’ve been a trivial custodial chore (tossing away a sliver of trash) into a Force 5 psychotic event.

My Tale of Airborne Angst

There’s something pacifying about having limited choices when airborne. You understand and are even comforted by these boundaries – like how a dog feels in its crate. I’m content to inhabit this space where you don’t have to contend with nagging nuisances. You’re just flying from point A to point B. There’s nothing to fuss over as you relax into your airborne limbo. And due to these pleasantly straitened circumstances, your life becomes simpler and naturally decluttered – like a cerebral cleansing where all the detritus of the day is blown away into the purifying Jetstream.

In these high-flying situations of clarity, little things mean a lot – a whole lot. And, in this case, a whole lot became way too much. At least it did for me. Because within this soothing swirl of airborne simplification I began hatching conspiracies where none existed. My susceptible mind became perturbed and, much to my chagrin, a bite-sized quibble, grew into an inedible hunk-a, hunk-a burnin’ hysteria. Allow me to explain.

Either I’m getting older or the flight attendants are getting younger. Here is a picture of my FA Gale. Was she “fer me” or “agin’ me?” Let’s examine the situation.

Once upon a time, on a long flight to Maui, I had finished my Snyder’s Pretzel snack (good) and now I had that nasty little bag to discard (bad). Somehow, I failed to notice my flight attendant’s garbage run, as Gale darted down the aisle like a speedy donation collector at a big box church. How could I miss her billowing white Hefty bag signaling it’s time for the flock to donate their wretched refuse? Then again, maybe it was a Glad bag and not a Hefty bag. It all happened so fast I couldn’t be sure, and lord knows I have enough baggage of my own to deal with. Of course, the need for certainty on such a piddling issue like this Glad vs. Hefty baggage meant only one thing: I was deep down a rabbit hole, and my susceptible mind was now officially perturbed. For all I know, the garbage bag Gale whisked by me could’ve been a Kirkland brand. Yup, I was down a rabbit hole deeper than Alice in Wonderland. Pull up Hardiman, pull up!     Read the rest of this entry »

Disclaimer/Preamble/Full Disclosure: In this mostly fictionalized account of his life and times, I do little justice to William of Occam. But the present need for necessary distraction being so great, combined with my desire to provide such vital distraction; a gathering storm has arisen, and the approaching precipitate is set to rain all o’er you. And while I may deceive myself into believing I write these stories for some higher purpose, they usually end up triggering the same pleasure centers in the brain that are fired by cat videos. So although I do aim high, I generally hit rather low and end up hitting the funny bone in such a way that it gets tickled. To wit:

Billy of Occam. He was the life of the party. Problem was there were no parties in the 14th century.

The Duke of Occam was a real guy who lived from 1287-1347, or should I say subsisted from 1287-1347 – it still being quite primitive in the last decades of the Dark Ages. In those bleak times a streaming service meant paying someone to ferry you across a river. It was a benighted time – I mean the spatula hadn’t even been invented yet, and people were so dumb, sometimes they forgot how to exhale and would die from asphyxiation. The breathing-challenged were advised, “Help is coming, but don’t hold your breath.” And the help finally did come in the form of Rudolph Heimlich of Nuremberg, who saved thousands by imparting his now famous maneuver for combatting “stuck diaphragm.”

Set against this squalid backdrop, the Duke of Occam managed to enjoy his life as a celebrated philosopher, as well as a despotic landowner. Remember, the idea of “benevolence” didn’t really develop until the arrival of the Renaissance in the 15^th century, and “despotic” had not yet become a disparaging term. It was just a standard issue descriptor of all landlords in that era. If you were a landlord in the 14^th century, the only template available was to act despotically. There was no room for wannabe despots in the cozy little Landlord’s Guild – unless you wannabe drummed out for lack of depravity.

If you yearned to behave benevolently in the 1300s, you’d be best advised to ferment mead in a monastery or spend 3 weeks trying to artistically compose a calligraphic “G” at the beginning of a Bible manuscript. Help was on the way here too, courtesy of another German polymath named Johannes Gutenberg who invented the printing press round about 1440. So, while the Duke of Occam’s full-time job may have been to despotically oppress the faceless masses he lorded over, he also had an emerging benevolent side that expressed itself through philosophy; and that’s how he came to formulate the clunky principle eponymously referred to as Occam’s Razor – more on that later. Read the rest of this entry »