Amphigouri: varnished nonsense

My dad has a weird sense of humor.

This was the opening line for one of my college application essays, written ’bout 15 years ago, give or take a couple years. It was not a particularly well-written discourse; I rambled on about some words of wisdom my father used when we were young, a phrase I found highly amusing at the time, and the actual merits of the words (I suspect the essay was something along the lines of ‘tell us about a time when you learned a lesson’ or some such). Despite the questionable quality of my writing, the opening sentence is quite true. My dad does have a weird sense of humor. As kids, we were often subjected to what many other people consider to be one of the lowest forms of humor [or so I gather from their reactions ]: the pun. Unfortunately for others, I have inherited this sense of humor (or have merely been brainwashed - you decide), and it is often with what can only be described as perverse glee that I read these “jokes.” Increase this glee five-fold to measure my delight in inflicting the pain of a particularly nasty pun on friends, acquaintences, and coworkers. There’s nothing remotely so satisfying (ok, so I exaggerate. slightly.) as sharing a particularly wretched turn of phrase and having it met with under-the-breath curses, groans, and an immediate acknowledgement that it will be passed on to several other unsuspecting “victims”.

I’ve collected many puns over the years, many of which I also found listed at
http://www.ahajokes.com/funny_puns.html . Below I’ve included the best renditions of three of my favorites. Read at your own risk, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.

You know that all potatoes have eyes.
Well, Mr. and Mrs. Potato had eyes for each other and they finally got
married and had a little one — a real SWEET POTATO whom they called “Yam”.
They wanted the best for little Yam, telling her all about the facts of
life. They warned her about going out and getting half baked because she
could get Mashed, get a bad name like, “Hot Potato”, and then end up with a
bunch of Tater Tots.

She said not to worry — no Mr. McSpud would get her in the sack and make a
Rotten Potato out of her! But she wouldn’t stay home and become a Couch
Potato either. She would get plenty of food and exercise so as not to be
skinny like her Shoestring cousins.

Mr. and Mrs. Potato even told her about going off to Europe and to watch out
for the Hard Boiled guys from Ireland and even the greasy guys from France
called, French Fries. They also said she should watch out for the Indians
when going out west because she could get Scalloped.

She told them she would stay on the straight and narrow and wouldn’t
associate with those high class Blue Belles or the ones from the other side
of the tracks who advertise their trade on all the trucks you see around
town like Frito Lay.

Mr. & Mrs. Potato wanted the best for Yam, so they sent her to Idaho P.U. –
that’s Potato University where the Big Potatoes come from and when she
graduated, she’d really be in the Chips.

But one day she came home and announced she was going to marry Walter Cronkite.
Mr. and Mrs. Potato were very upset and said she couldn’t marry him because
he’s just a COMMON TATER!

Bell Ringer

A priest puts an add in the newspaper for a new bell-ringer and
the only applicant to reply is some fellow with no arms.

“You realize what this job requires,” asks the priest.

“Sure do,” replies the no-armed man, and I can assure that I am
the best man for the job.”

The priest is perplexed. “How do you plan to ring the bell with
no arms?”

The no-armed man, of course, cannot pull the bellrope and instead
he rushes to the top of the bell tower and proceeds to dive
head-first into the side of the bell. The bell peals beautifully.

The alarmed priest rushes to him. “My God, man, if you can do
that every hour your hired!”

And so every day, on every hour, the no-armed man dives at the
bell and smashes it head-first. Until one day he misses and flys
out of the belltower, falling 300 feet to his death. On the
ground a crowd gathers and one of the onlookers rushes to the
side of the fallen man.

“Dear Lord!” he screams to the gathered throng, “does anyone know
this poor fellows name?!”

From the crowd, the priest says, “Well, I don’t know his name,
but his face rings a bell!”

The day after the tragic accident, the priest put another ad in the
paper requesting applicants for the job. Shortly thereafter, a man
came to his door to ask about the ad.

“Father, I’ve come to ask a favor. It was my brother who was recently
your bellringer and met with his untimely death. I would like
very much to be allowed to ring the bell in his honor today.”

The priest, being very sentimental, of course agreed, and led the
man to the belltower. Wanting to ring the bell just as his brother
had done, the man took a running start and collided with the bell
head-first. Unfortunately for him, he had not the same constitution
as his sibling and was knocked quite senseless by the blow;
in a dazed state he stumbled around the belltower and accidentally
fell out the tower window to his death.

The crowd once again gathered around the fallen bellringer, a concerned
onlooker once again wondering aloud who might _this_ fellow be.
The priest replied,

“I don’t know his name, but he sure is a dead ringer for his brother!”

Hale

One day, an elderly woman was walking along the street, coming home from the supermarket. Her bag of groceries was especially heavy
that day, and as she passed Nathan Hale’s Used Cars, she got an idea that she could drive herself to the store and save a lot of shoe leather, time and aching muscles. She walks into the car dealership and, as it just so happens, gets the owner himself. He asks her what kind of car she wants and she replies,

“Well, sonny, I can’t remember the name exactly, but it has something to do with hate or anger.”

The owner replies, “Well, let’s see… Oh yes, you want a Plymouth Fury! We have a couple on the lot. What color do you prefer?”

The lady has some trouble explaining the exact color to him, so she reaches into her shopping bag, takes out an ear of corn, strips
down the shucks and says, “I want this color sonny.”

To which Nathan replies, “Ma’am I’m sorry, but we don’t have any in this color. Could I show you a nice blue one?”

“No son, I want this color.”

“But ma’am, they didn’t make that color! Maybe a cherry red one would suit you?” says the owner, obviously worried about losing a sale.

By this time, the old lady gets mad, and starts throwing things at the owner, thereby chasing him out of the office and into the lot. One of the salesmen, coming into the office from the back door, notices the disruption and asks the secretary what the old woman was so upset about.

The secretary replies, “Apparently, Hale hath no Fury like the woman’s corn!”

When I was selecting a name for this site, I’d forgotten about Edward Gorey’s Amphigorey-
a wonderful collection of some of his works. I, myself, am only vaguely familiar with his stuff, but Husband is a big fan. I’ve gotta say, who wouldn’t love a book like The Gashlycrumb Tinies, in which you’ll find passages such as:

??

We’re also both owners of t-shirts bearing his artwork:

which is highly appropriate, given the number of cats and books that can be found in our house, and our fondness for both.

Yay, our wedding pictures recently arrived from our photographer! Now begins the task of selecting the right ones for reprints, for our album, and for scanning to post here.
Stay tuned! I should also be posting a few from the disposable cameras soon.

Double-yay, our thank-you notes are almost in the mail, at longlong last! Apologies to any readers who have been awaiting our notes; I am notoriously bad at thank-yous, particularly at getting them in the mail (when cleaning house prior to my most recent move, I discovered a box that had 2 years’ worth of thank-you notes that I actually *wrote* but never took to the post office. Quelle Horreur! I decided it would be even further mortification if I put them in the mail 2 years late, so they never made their destinations. Bad Beth, no biscuit). Husband and I have shared the note-writing duties, each of us responsible for writing to our own families. Husband is also a procrastinator when it comes to this task, and actually tried to foist some of his onto me with the reasoning that because I’m a girl the writing of the thank-yous comes more naturally to me. I’m not buyin’ it. :-> [hee! Husband asserts he was just kidding!] So, just a few envelopes left to be addressed and stamped, a recheck of our list, and we’re done!

Uneventful weekend, this weekend past, which was nice. The weekend prior we entertained my folks (and took them to dinner in exchange for Mum helping make bedroom curtains [is it wrong to use the word 'helping' when I really mean 'doing all the work while I just ironed and watched her' ??] ). That was nice, because it was the first time they’d seen our house in the year+ that we’ve been here. We managed to make most of the main rooms [mostly] tolerable for visitors, and, surprisingly enough, we haven’t *entirely* negated the efforts with further clutter.

This weekend we took time to read at Starbucks (yay, Caramel Apple Cider!), nap, watch our Sunday evening HBO, and work on our notes. I also made one of our favorite beef curry recipes in the crock-pot, along with some oatmeal-raisin cookies (not in the crock pot - though that’s an intriguing idea). I’ve never been very good at cookie-baking - even the drop cookies that require no rolling pin seem to give me troubles (I wonder if I can blame our ancient oven that has one heating element broken). These came out reasonably well, if a little crumbly and overly done. Must practice a bit more, methinks. Also need to hunt up some new crock-pot recipes, as they’re great for us - low maintenance cooking, mostly, and they often make tons so we have plenty of leftovers (perfect for me, as I often loathe the idea of arriving home after 6:30 or 7pm to face another hour or two of dinner prep - why we so often have the Lean Cuisine from the freezer instead). Let me know if you have some good ones!

Days like yesterday are additional reasons I’m so glad to be back in New England.

October is generally my favorite month. Typical October weather has been a little slow in getting here, but yesterday was the Perfect Day: sunny and bright, mid-to-upper 50s for temperatures. Many trees are showing their colors now; it’s like they changed overnight Sunday as a consolation to those of us who didn’t have Columbus Day off and had to commute. I missed this while in Virginia and North Carolina; leaves did change there, but they were, to this native New Englander, abnormally late. I can remember griping well into November about how the trees just turned *brown* there, and then saying “Ooh.” when I realized that I just needed to wait a month or two longer. I don’t remember the trees looking quite as vibrant in the south (ok,ok, I know Northern VA isn’t *exactly* “south”), though, and I don’t remember feeling quite as alive on autumn mornings as I do in NE. Here you can take a deep breath of air and feel the cleansing chill deep in your lungs, which has always put me in a happier mood. I like coming in from outside with the cold on my cheeks and nose; I love the apple cider season, the sound of leaves crunching underfoot, the late afternoon sun low in the sky, the simple smell of the air around here. These things may not be strictly New England phenomena (an aside: this word always reminds me of the Muppet Show skit, in which Animal sings “mah-na, mah-nah.” (mp3) … just thought I’d share), but in my mind New England’s fall season is the Real Deal.

wish my camera weren’t still broken. :-/

<rant>

I dislike Microsoft.

There are many reasons why, but this is one of my current peeves: Outlook’s Recall Message Feature.

In the last few days, I’ve received several emails with the body text of “<sender>would like to recall message <subject of earlier message sent by same sender>”. This generally causes my blood pressure to rise and sends me into an irrational snitfit (in the grand scheme of things, this is NoBigDeal. But it’s Microsoft, so I often feel at least *somewhat* justified in my snits…). Apparently a “feature” in Microsoft’s Outlook email software is the Recall This Message tool, which is intended to be used when a person sends an email “accidentally” and wishes to retrieve it, as if it were never sent.

This is ridiculous.

According to Microsoft’s Knowledge Base article:

Now, I am willing to wager that general users of Outlook are not aware of these limitations, and see this as a tool that should work most any time they try to use it. Unfortunately, this feature will *not* work if the recipient receives mail on a unix system (my case). This will also not work if the recipient has set up automatic filters that pre-filter incoming mail to designated folders (also my case). When an Outlook user tries to recall an email that was sent to me, all that happens is that I receive *another* message stating that they’ve tried to recall it. I’m not a special case in this regard, either - there are probably 2000-3000 non-Outlook users in my company that would not be affected by this (not to mention the many Outlook users for whom this feature also wouldn’t work because of reasons stated above, as well as the large number of email recipients outside our corporate environment who don’t use Outlook).

Mucking about with email messages once you’ve clicked that SEND button should be prohibited. Just like with snailmail, if it’s been put in the mailbox, kiss it goodbye. If you’ve made a mistake, just send another message with an apology. Microsoft has customized their mail clients/servers with a non-standard “feature” which gives many users the impression that it’s something that will work when they want it to. This is not the case, and should never be the case - I don’t want to give anyone the ability to delete messages that are already in my mailbox, or sitting on my mail server. This strikes Husband (and me) as a huge potential security problem as well - anyone know how hackable this feature is? What’s the likelihood that someone could use this to delete random messages from other inboxes??

*grumblings* Bloody Microsoft. *grumblings*

</rant>

Or maybe they don’t. The BBC recently reported on a German study:

Erm. Right.

Update (thanks, L): story debunked
at Washington Post. Gotta love part of their headline: Media Fail to Check Root of ‘Study’.  Ha! Root!

As for *this* natural blonde, things haven’t been that fun lately. I think I broke my new toy. Picking up stuff last weekend resulted in my accidentally dropping it on the floor. It now refuses to turn on, even with freshly charged batteries. Alas. Turns out there *are* times when I kick myself for not buckling under sales pressure and purchasing the extra warranty from Best Buy. Anyone know of a decent Nikon repair shop in the Boston area?

Fortunately, I still have a cache of pics on my hard drive.

Word of the week: dysphoric.

On another somber note, my college advisor passed away last week. He was one of the primary reasons I decided to go to Colby and was a *wonderful* instructor and a wonderful person. He was remarkably patient in the classroom, and I found that he was equally so outside the department - I did some house-sitting for him one summer when I was working on campus and he was on vacation, and it was from him that I first learned to drive stick, well enough to use his old car to get between my campus job and his house. He took an active interest in our education and our all-around campus lives - he was often seen in attendance at our basketball games, and frequently made a point of saying hello to my family when they were there. He cared.
He will be sorely missed.

This past weekend I stumbled upon BookCrossing.com (via a series of links which I’ve since forgotten). I kinda dig the concept:

I think I’m going to try this with one of the books I’m currently carrying around, Driving Mr. Albert: A trip across America With Einstein’s Brain. I may even try it with some of my other books, but there could be problems.

You see, I’m a something of a Book Hoarder.

Bookstores are often Traps for me; I find great difficulty in wandering into one without emerging with at least two or three (or more) new purchases to add to my ever-growing to-read pile.

I think this coveting of books started when I was little. According to family members, I didn’t play with the dolls I was given, but my books…. my books I loved. This hasn’t changed - I still love books (and still don’t play with dolls). The majority of the books I now acquire and read are fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, and lots of tech books ( particularly O’Reilly) dealing with unix system administration, various programming lanugages, and web development. Husband has similar reactions in bookstores, and though our tastes overlap considerably, there aren’t many duplicates in our individual collections. Unfortunately, this means my to-read pile at home is actually double or triple what it was a year ago. And still I bring more home.

Years ago I belonged to Columbia House, primarily to take advantage of their initial “9 CDs for only $.01!” offering. I quickly discovered that I often forgot to return the “do not send monthly selection” cards, and once the selections arrived I almost always forgot to return them, even if I hated the music. Evenutally these CDs were given away or tossed, and I cancelled my membership after I fulfilled their requirements.

A few years after this, I joined the Quality Paperback Book Club, which has a similar deal - they send monthly selections unless otherwise directed, and offer reasonable discounts on most of their books. I do occasionally order specific books from them, but I’ve found that, as with the CD club, I frequently neglect to decline the monthly shipment. The difference here, however, is that I have never even *wanted* to return one of the monthlies, even when the subject matter isn’t of much interest or the author is a complete unknown. “Ooo, new books!” I tear into the packages when they arrive as though it were Christmas, and with glee I add the newcomers to the bookcase.

I’ve also subscribed to a book discussion mailing list, BibliaFiles, maintained by a college friend of mine. This has fueled a number of impulse Amazon orders, and is yet another reason my “must read” list has grown by leaps and bounds.

For folks who can’t quite comprehend the desire to obtain books and/or the enjoyment to be had from curling up on a rainy afternoon with a fantastic story, or the comfort and pleasure of sitting in a room full of books, perhaps the following will help. It’s actually a fairly accurate description for both Husband and myself (minus the lying and stealing bits, o’course. scheming, however….):