Monday, July 8, 2013

NO CAPTIONS NEEDED

Well, that was the title on the incoming email.  And for many of them I agree.  But there were a few where I just couldn’t resist.






Nope!  Too big!




Turn left at the next corner.












Perfect!




Whee!












Whatcha got there?








Humor --

THE ANSWER: Grape Nuts 
THE QUESTION: What are Ernest and Julio Gallo?  

THE ANSWER: Igloo  
THE QUESTION: What do you use to keep your ig from falling off?  

THE ANSWER: Gatorade  
THE QUESTION: What does an alligator get on welfare?  

THE ANSWER: Supervisor  
THE QUESTION: What does Clark Kent wear to keep the sun out of his eyes? 


Saturday, July 6, 2013

CREATIVE ENGINEERING

Humans are a creative bunch.  Have a look at some of these widely varying ideas.



Believe it or not, here's a unit that is beds for three.




I think this is pretty clever.




Fit for a pro -- 2 ovens, 6 burners, I think.




That looks pretty handy.




Mercedes-Benz concept car.  I think the front end is to the right.




VW Camper with extension




A wooden bathtub, yet.  Doesn't look like we'd have to worry about splinters.



Fun --

THE ANSWER IS: OPEC         
THE QUESTION: What does an Irish chicken do?  

THE ANSWER: Hi Diddle Diddle  
THE QUESTION: What's the first thing you say in the morning to your diddle diddle?  

THE ANSWER: Skalliwags      
THE QUESTION: What does your skalli do when it's happy?  


Friday, July 5, 2013

AMAZING ANIMALS

One of my blog followers, after viewing the posts about dogs, asked, “Can I add one to the dogs?”  She has a Border Collie named Pippa. Sure, why not?  At that point I was out of dog pics, so I had to come up with a way to include Pippa.  Here she leads off some other amazing animals of various kinds.


Pippa after her bath.  She mushed up the carpet to make a fine place
while she rested and dried off.




Here she is again in a better pose.




A picture of this beautiful strange-eyed kitten, taken in  Lovech, Bulgaria
in the summer of 2009, by Bobby Pfeiffer.




This horse breed, Akhal-Teke from  Turkmenistan was announced the most beautiful horse in the world.




Einstein - The World's Smallest Horse.  If I'm reading that ruler
correctly, Einstein is about 30 inches tall.




California Red-Sided Garter Snake.




Unbelievable Camouflage by Satanic leaf-tailed gecko.
This gecko from Madagascar is a master of disguise, but that's not the only way it avoids an attack from predators. It flattens its body against the leaves to reduce its shadow, and opens its jaws wide to show an intimidating, bright red mouth. Like many other lizards, it can also shed its own tail to distract a predator.




This is how Giraffes drink water.



Humor --

HOW TO CLEAN THE HOUSE

1. Open a new file in your PC.

2. Name it "Housework”.

3. Send it to the RECYCLE BIN.

4. Empty the RECYCLE BIN.

5. Your PC will ask you, "Are you sure you want
to delete ‘Housework’ permanently?"

6. Calmly answer, "Yes," and press mouse button firmly.

7. Feel better? Works for me!



Thursday, July 4, 2013

FROM THE BULWER-LYTTON BAD WRITING CONTEST.

Ok, here are a few more winners from the Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest --

The stifling atmosphere inside the Pink Dolphin Bar in the upper Amazon Basin carried barely enough oxygen for a man to survive – humid and thick the air was and full of little flying bugs, making the simple act of breathing like trying to suck hot Campbell’s Bean with Bacon soup through a paper straw.

She slinked through my door wearing a dress that looked like it had been painted on … not with good paint, like Behr or Sherwin-Williams, but with that watered-down stuff that bubbles up right away if you don’t prime the surface before you slap it on, and – just like that cheap paint – the dress needed two more coats to cover her.

The brazen walls of the ancient city of Khoresand, situated where the mighty desert of Sind meets the endless Hyrkanean steppe, are guarded by day by the four valiant knights Sir Malin the Mighty, Sir Welkin the Wake, Sir Darien the Doughty, and Sir Yrien the Yare, all clad in armor of beaten gold, and at night the walls are guarded by Sir Arden the Ardent, Sir Fier the Fearless, Sir Cyril the Courageous, and Sir Damien the Dauntless, all clad in armor of burnished argent, but nothing much ever happens.

The “clunk” of the guillotine blade’s release reminded Marie Antoinette, quite briefly, of the sound of the wooden leg of her favorite manservant as he not-quite-silently crossed the polished floors of Versailles to bring her another tray of petit fours.

Primum non nocere, from the Latin for “first, do no harm,” one of the principal tenets of the Hippocratic oath  taken by physicians, was far from David’s mind (as he strode, sling in the hand, to face Goliath) in part because Hippocrates was born about 100 years after David, in part because David wasn’t even a physician, but mainly because David wanted to kill the sucker.

Corinne considered the colors (palest green, gray and lavender) and texture (downy as the finest velvet) and wondered, “How long have these cold cuts been in my refrigerator?”


Snoopy‘s Novel, 12 July 1965
Part I  
It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed.  Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon!  While millions of people were starving, the king lived in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was growing up.

Part II
  A light snow was falling, and the little girl with the tattered shawl had not sold a violet all day.  At that very moment, a young intern at City Hospital was making an important discovery. The mysterious patient in Room 213 had finally awakened. She moaned softly.

Could it be that she was the sister of the boy in Kansas who loved the girl with the tattered shawl who was the daughter of the maid who had escaped from the pirates?  The intern frowned.

“Stampede!” the foreman shouted, and forty thousand head of cattle thundered down on the tiny camp. The two men rolled on the ground grappling beneath the murderous hooves. A left and a right. A left. Another left and right. An uppercut to the jaw. The fight was over. And so the ranch was saved.

The young intern sat by himself in one corner of the coffee shop. He had learned about medicine, but more importantly, he had learned something about life.

THE END

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

BULWER-LYTTON WRITING CONTEST, part 1

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is a tongue-in-cheek contest that takes place annually and is sponsored by the English Department of San Jose State University in San Jose, California. Entrants are invited "to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels" – that is, deliberately bad.
The contest was started in 1982 by Professor Scott E. Rice of the English Department at San Jose State University and is named for English novelist and playwright Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, author of the much-quoted first line "It was a dark and stormy night", which is also quoted by Snoopy in the cartoon strip Peanuts.  Here is the opening, from the 1830 novel Paul Clifford:

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

The first year of the competition attracted just three entries, but it went public the next year, received media attention, and attracted 10,000 entries. There are now several subcategories, such as detective fiction, romance novels, Western novels, and purple prose. Sentences that are notable but not quite bad enough to merit the Grand Prize or a category prize are awarded Dishonorable Mentions.
Here are some examples --

“Your eyes are like deep blue pools that I would like to drown in,” he had told Kimberly when she had asked him what he was thinking; but what he was actually thinking was that sometimes when he recharges his phone he forgets to put a little plug back in but he wasn’t going to tell her that.

Tucked in a dim corner of The Ample Bounty Bar & Grille, Alice welcomed the fervent touch of the mysterious stranger’s experienced hands because she had not been this close with a man in an achingly long time and, quivering breathlessly, began to think that this could be the beginning of something real, something forever, and not just a one-time encounter with a good Samaritan who was skilled at the Heimlich Maneuver.

They still talk about that fateful afternoon in Abilene, when Dancing Dan DuPre moonwalked through the doors of Fat Suzy’s saloon, made a passable reverse-turn, pirouetted twice followed by a double box-step, somersaulted onto the bar, drew his twin silver-plated Colt-45s and put twelve bullets through the eyes of the McLuskey sextuplets, on account of them varmints burning down his ranch and lynching his prize steer.

He got down from his horse, which seemed strange to him as he had always believed that you got down from a duck or a goose.

Her skin was like flocked wallpaper and her eyes had seen better days, but when her bloodless lips murmured “Hi, Sailor,” my  heart melted from the inside out like one of those chocolate-covered ice cream bars on a summer day that runs down your arm and gets all over your new shirt.

The highlight of a weekend in the nation’s capital was unwrapping that weirdly light packet, revealing the tri-colored brick within.  It had the consistency of Styrofoam and left a strange slick film on the back of your teeth; even at that age, if pressed, I would have had to admit that regular, Earth ice cream was in every way superior. But astronaut ice cream came with the ultimate added-value, better than hot fudge or peanuts: I was eating what astronauts ate!

***

Surprise! This last one is not from the Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest. It is, word for word, taken directly from the June, 2013 issue of Smithsonian Magazine, page 58, should you care to check it out.

More tomorrow - promise!

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

DOGS, part 2

Another group of pooches we can enjoy.


I'se hungr...shleepy.







 We're breakin' outta here!



Well, I'M comfortable!



They oughta make one of these big enough for me.




Ah! Solid comfort!




We're gonna teach the kids how to swim.




You don't LOOK like my ma.




Warmest place I could find.



Oh, that was a funny one! Tell me another joke.



Fun --

When everything is coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.

What do you call an economist with a prediction?  Wrong.

Be really nice to your family and friends; you never know when you might need them to empty your bedpan.

I’m not over-weight; I’m size small.

You are never completely worthless. You can always serve as a bad example.




Monday, July 1, 2013

GONE TO THE DOGS

A short while ago we had a look at cats and their antics.  Now it’s time for the canine side to be presented.
No comments necessary.  Well, maybe just a few.









Dinner time!






And I though they were gonna put in a slide for me.















Smile!











You really think I need a bath?



It's the way I landed when I jumped up here.




As long as we’ve gone to the dogs, we might as well add this cartoon --