From the Borowitz Report:

In the first two weeks since the election, President-elect Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the past eight years through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers say.

“Every time Obama opens his mouth, his subjects and verbs are in agreement,” says Mr. Logsdon.  “If he keeps it up, he is running the risk of sounding like an elitist.” More…

Story via, picture from jmtimages.

Whose Library Is It Anyway?: A Visit to the Lenox

[tags]library, libraries, humor, lennox library[/tags]

THE LENOX LIBRARY

What is this?

This, dear, is the great Lenox Library.

What is it for?

Nobody knows.

But I thought you said it was a library.

So I did.

Then there must be books in it

Perhaps.

Why is it called the “Lenox” Library?

Because it was founded and given by Mr. James Lenox.

Given to whom?

To the city of New York.

Oh! then it is a public library?

Yes, dear.

How delightful! Why it must be very useful to students and the reading public?

Very.

But why are the doors locked?

To keep people out.

But I thought you said it was a public library?

So I did.

Then how can they keep people out?

By locking the doors.

But why?

To keep the pretty books from being spoiled.

Why! Who would spoil the pretty books?

The public.

How?

By reading them.

Gracious! What are all those brass things on the roof?

Cannon, dear.

What are they for?

To blow the heads off students who want to get in.

Why! and see those gallows!

Yes, dear.

And people hanging!

Certainly, sweet.

Who are they?

Students who got in.

But is there no way of getting into the library without being shot or hanged?

Yes, sweet.

How?

By writing an humble letter of application to the kind Lord High Librarian.

Well?

He will refer you to the 1st Assistant Inspector of Character.

And then?

It will go to the Third Deputy Examiner of Morals.

Next?

He will pass it on to the Comptroller of Ways and Means.

And he?

He will, after mature deliberation, send it to the Commercial Agency.

What for?

To get a proper understanding of the applicant’s solvency.

Well?

Then it comes back for the monthly meeting of the Sub-Committee on Private Inquiry.

Why?

To ascertain if the applicant has any real necessity for consulting any particular book in the library.

And suppose he has?

Why, then the paper goes to the Sub-janitor.

And what does he do?

He finds out if the Astor or the Mercantile Libraries have the book.

And if they have?

He tells the applicant to go there and consult it.

But if they have it not?

Then the application goes to the Commissioner of Vital Statistics.

For what purpose?

To ascertain if the applicant is still living.

And if he is?

At the next annual meeting of the Board of Directors, if there is a quorum present, which sometimes happens, he will get a ticket entitling him to admission between the hours of two and three on a specified day.

But if the applicant is busy on that day at that hour?

He forfeits his ticket.

But how’s the public benefited by this “public” library?

Ask the Trustees.

Source: Life, 17 January 1884. Reprinted in Harry Miller Lydenberg, History of the New York Public Library (New York: New York Public Library, 1923), 113–115.

Beginning of a bad day…

I rear-ended a car this morning. I knew it was going to be a really bad day!

The driver got out of the other car and I looked down and realized he was a dwarf!!!

He looked up at me and said “I’M NOT HAPPY!”

So I said, “Well then, which one are you?”

And that’s how the fight started.

Our diets, our health

A doctor was addressing a large audience in Tampa. “The material we put into our stomachs is enough to have killed most of us sitting here, years ago. Red meat is awful. Soft drinks corrode your stomach lining. Chinese food is loaded with MSG. High fat diets can be disastrous, and none of us realizes the long-term harm caused by the germs in our drinking water. But there is one thing that is the most dangerous of all and we all have, or will, eat it. Can anyone here tell me what food it is that causes the most grief and suffering for years after eating it?”

After several seconds of quiet, a 75 year-old man in the front row raised his hand, and softly said “wedding cake.”

Because I’m a man…

Because I’m a man , when the car isn’t running very well, I will pop the hood and stare at the engine as if I know what I’m looking at. If another man shows up, one of us will say to the other, “I used to be able to fix these things, but now with all these computers and everything, I wouldn’t know where to start.” We will then drink a couple of beers and break wind, as a form of holy communion.

Post hoc disclaimer: people forward me some strange stuff, sometimes it gets posted. It’s all in the tradition of casual Fridays here.

casual fridays, casual friday, joke, humor, funny, bad jokes

Some are calling it the Jesus phone, but Jason Chen calls it a moral quandry, Gartner Group is telling IT to avoid it (really, because iTunes is scary to enterprise), Business 2.0’s Joshua Quittner is reminding the peeps it’s just a regular phone, and Wayne Smallman is whining that it doesn’t have a flash or telephoto lens. (Humor alert: one of those is supposed to be funny, and another is supposed to be hilarious.)

Analysts who claim “It doesn’t have any features that would make it successful as a business tool” must surely be on the pay of competing manufacturers or networks. The promise here is that the phone is an incredibly rich and portable network device; businesses that can’t find value in that are probably in decline anyway. Still it is expensive, and it is subject to all the vagaries of cell phone service, and it doesn’t have a laser.

iPhone, haters, criticism, humor

I got tipped to this geeky-funny comic that deserves reposting here for casual friday:

sysop, humor, linux, sudo, make me a sandwich, sandwich, cartoon

I always get a laugh out of Cops, and an even bigger laugh out parodies of the show. So I have to thank Cliff for finding this animated video of Santa getting pulled over.

cops, santa, christmas, sleigh, parody, satire, tv, tv show, cops tv show, humor, animation

“I eated the purpleberries” (groaning).

“How are they Ralph…. Good?”

“They taste like…burning.”

More goodness at the Ralph Wiggum Soundboard, via InformationNation. More quotes, like “Oh boy, sleep! That’s where I’m a viking!,” at TheDotDotDot.

tags: funny, goodness, humor, laugh, quotes, ralph, ralph wiggum, ralph wiggum quote, ralph wiggum quotes, ralph wiggum soundboard, simpsons, the simpsons, thesimpsons

While following the story about bad teachers, found the Mathcaddy blog. The only relation Mathcaddy has to the other story is that Steve, the unfortunate student runs his blog on a subdomain there. The post that got me interested at Mathcaddy was I Walked on Water… I Think I Can Walk to the Door:

In one of his forty-eight dozen interviews about The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson said there have been more than a hundred films made about the life of Jesus. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that these didn’t crack the top ten.

Voicing over the original dialogue, Klauss Vlaudenhoover (not his real name… okay, it is) took some pretty poor Jesus films and turned them into comedy gold! At least bronze.

For those of you about to be mildly offended, take note that a church used these in a series on the life of Jesus to portray classic stereotypes about him. And for those of you who are dissuaded because they were used in church, take note that my sides hurt.

In case you missed the link above, the videos are here (direct links to vids one, two, three, and four). And, yes, they are funny.

Update: these sites have been seriously changed/updated. The story at Mathcaddy is moved, and Vintage21, where the films are hosted, has been… Well, it’s just not what it was. All that remains are some directory indexes. The video can be found, here are some new direct links:

• One
• Two
• Three
• Four

Enjoy!

tags: comedy, evangelical, funny, humor, jesus films, mel gibson, poor jesus, serious, the life of jesus, the passion of the christ, wwjd