But when I told Clinton jokes, they were about semen, cigars, and dresses.

There was no fodder for jokes like this one (again, I steal from my favorite internet guy over at Polka Boy).

RIDDLE:

Q: How many five-week vacations did FDR and Winston Churchill take during WWII?

A: Fuck Bush!

Then one of the commenters at his blog shared this joke:

How many members of the Bush Administration does it take to change a light bulb?

1. One to deny that a light bulb needs to be changed.
2. One to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the light bulb needs to be
   changed.
3. One to blame Clinton for burning out the light bulb.
4. One to tell the nations of the world that they are either responsible for changing the light bulb or for darkness.
5. One to give a billion dollar no-bid contract to Haliburton for the new light bulb.
6. One to arrange a photograph of Bush, dressed as a janitor, standing on a stepladder under the banner: Lightbulb Change Accomplished.
7. One administration insider to resign and write a book documenting in detail how Bush was literally in the dark.
8. One to viciously smear #7.
9. One surrogate to campaign on TV and at rallies on how George Bush has had a strong light bulb changing policy all along.
10. And finally one to confuse Americans about the difference between screwing a light bulb and screwing the country.

But the biggest laugh of all was B2’s presidential mailbag! “Thanks for writing, ‘mom’!”

And to prove that I laugh at people from any political party, and that I can take it as well as I can dish it out…

(more…)

Kids these days know way too much about the world, at an inappropriately young age.

Not that it’s better to be blindly naiive, the way I was until my 20’s.

Here’s an example: I didn’t know what a “boner” was until I was 14. I had just moved to Wichita, Kansas from a very small baptist town in Oklahoma. Sex was never, ever talked about. No one had it. (Except cousins; it WAS Oklahoma, after all! Hee!)

I knew it took a man and a woman to have a baby. I didn’t know the engineering behind how that happened. I had some idea that something had to be inserted somewhere. But I didn’t know that something else became hard and grew in size, like it was a Saturday morning cartoon super hero with amazing abilities so it could fight crime! (”Wonder Twin powers — ACTIVATE!”)

I finally learned about boners from a friend during the first week of Catholic high school. A group of us girls were gathered around Terry, fixated and repulsed as she explained what a “boner” was. We almost didn’t believe her. But she spoke with such authority, it had to be true.

I remained naiive (read: stupid) for many many years. In 1989, I was 21 and in an EMT class at college. There were 50 students, 42 of them male. (YESSS! THANK YOU, JESUS!)

But one day during a class lecture, I totally humiliated myself. We were in a big lecture hall, the kind you can joke around in and the teacher wouldn’t hear you. My instructor Craig was in the front of the classroom teaching about emergency response to hemorrhagic shock.

Now Craig had “been there, done that”. He came from the “Mother, Juggs and Speed” days of EMS. He had a story for everything, so of course he had a story for non-traumatic hemorrhagic shock.

Craig told us about a patient who wanted to refuse treatment. He was an alcoholic transient staying in a run-down hotel. Craig said it was lucky he and his partner hung around, because the patient finally agreed to go to the hospital. Little did they know, the patient had a GI bleed just cookin’ away inside him. (That’s where either the esophagus, stomach or the intestines is bleeding. If it’s bleeding a lot, it can be fatal very fast).

So Craig is talking to us (the class) about how he and his partner and the cops got the patient and loaded him into the elevator. And the patient started having “the worst flatulence” on the way down.

I was shocked he was telling us this! He went on and on about how everyone noticed the patient’s flatulence, tried to pretend they didn’t, and how Craig was getting sick because of the flatulence.

I was shocked, but started rolling with laughter. Others thought the story was funny, but I was freaking out! Laughing, saying “oh my God”, everything. Poor Craig, having to be in the elevator with this guy and his blatant flatulence!

Did I mention I thought “flatulence” meant a raging, hard-on BONER? (I think I had “flatulence” confused with “priapism“.)

So 49 students and Craig think they’re partaking in a story about heinous farts. I’m the only one in the room who thinks Craig is bragging about a transient having a hard-on over him.

Some guys around me asked me what my problem was, and when I told them my take on the story, they nicely explained to me what flatulence REALLY meant. When I said, “Oh, I thought it meant boner!” that whole corner of the room started laughing. So, as Craig went on with the story about how the flatulence got worse when the patient was in the ambulance, and about how it was brought about by a condition that caused a loss of blood volume, everyone around me was now picturing the transient dying from hypovolemic shock because all his blood was diverted to his penis. The entire corner of the room was laughing hysterically, and Craig just thought it was because he was a master storyteller, so no harm done.

And that, my friends, is how at the age of 21 I learned the difference between farts and boners.

Epilogue: The story did end with the patient surviving, despite shitting blood and feces all over the back of the ambulance and the paramedics, in case you’re wondering how things turned out. A happy ending.

Could this possibly be the subconscious root of my deeply-seeded Greg Brady resentment?

Naah. It’s that goddamn song.

“Clowns never laughed before…”

OH MOTHER OF ALL FUCK!

“Clowns never laughed before
Beanstalks never grew
Ponies never ran before
‘Til I met you!”

Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP! Get out of my head!

Why God, why did I channel surf past TV Land during an episode of the Brady Bunch when Greg was singing this stupid song whilst he was also engaging in the epic intellectual battle between peer pressure, smoking, and doing what’s right?

It took years of hard drinking to get this song out of my head, and now it’s back.

Fuck you, Greg. Fuck you right in your ear.

I’m exhausted from my first day at my new job, so I’m posting a story from my olden blog days. Even my old readers will want to read it again, because it’s so fucking awesome.

Part I - The Origins of Blue Thunder

I went to a Catholic high school and graduated in 1986. It was the first year they tried “Project Graduation,” a poorly disguised plot to keep us seniors from killing ourselves while driving drunk. The night of the last day of school, we all came back to the school for “Project Graduation”. They locked us in the school until four a.m., in a completely alcohol-free and unwanted-pregnancy-free environment. Nuns, priests and teachers supervised us. It was OK, kinda lame. But what made us participate, and what kept us there? They were GIVING AWAY A CAR AT THE END OF THE NIGHT! Yippee!

Now, my family was dirt poor when I was in high school. This sweet nun, Sister Mary Catherine, knew of my poverty. She was the one who drew the name of the winner of the car at the end of the night. We were all assembled in the auditorium. Everyone was excited because they heard it was a used Camaro they were giving away! So when Sr. Mary Catherine drew my name, I was SO HAPPY! She hugged me and said, “I prayed for you to win!”

Or maybe she said this. My memory is a bit murky.

Anyway, the point is, I couldn’t believe it! My own CAMARO!

My friends and I rushed out to the parking lot to hop in my new Camaro! Only it wasn’t a Camaro. It was a baby-blue, 1974 Chrysler Newport 4-door. It’s back seat was so big, it could sleep 8. It had it’s own zip code. It was the type of vehicle you could sublet out to a trucking company for the purpose of transporting large quantities of interstate commerce. It was fucking huge.

My friends and I cracked up laughing. The car died like 3 times as I was trying to drive it out of the parking lot.The car had glass packs in the muffler, so it was LOUD. Some grandma really must’ve had wild times in that car.

Because of the glass packs, the car came to be known as . . . BLUE THUNDER!

An artists’ recreation of what Blue Thunder looked like.

Part II - Revenge of Blue Thunder

So, after I won Blue Thunder, I tried to drive it for a couple months. But it was so HUGE! (Aah, there’s a phrase I don’t get to say very often). ANYway, when I started college in August I had enough scholarships to cover the tuition, so I used my student loan money for the educational purpose of buying a 1976 Datsun 280Z. I gave the Newport to my parents, who gave it to my brothers, who refused to give me a ride to work in it when my Datsun was broken down. (They didn’t have jobs, so it wasn’t like they didn’t have time…. OH CRAP, there goes my issues again. Sorry, I’ll get to the point).

The point was: MY BROTHERS WERE SPOILED FUCKING ROTTEN BRATTY ASS SPELUNKERS! Uh, no, that wasn’t my point….

Oh yeah, Blue Thunder’s Drive of Doom.

Anyway, my brothers ended up with the car. They had a lot of fun in that car.

One day, they had a great idea. My brothers Mark and Mike, and their friends Billy, Joe and James all decided to take the car down to an area of the subdivision that already had the roads and driveways built, but no houses yet. They decided to take the boys old go-cart (see? SPOILED!) that they had broken trying to “tinker” with the motor. Their plan involved tying a rope to the back of Blue Thunder, have some idiot sit in the go-cart and hang onto the rope.

As Blue Thunder rounded the curve to the left, at maximum 74 Chrysler Newport speed, the idiot holding the rope would let go and steer the go-cart to the right and into the paved driveway of a vacant lot. There, within the line of trajectory, they had built a ramp from the driveway off into the lot. The go-cart (and accompanying idiot) would then become airborne and land in the dirt of the vacant lot. Please consult the professionally drawn map to help you visualize the situation.

(more…)

When my little brother Mike was in 7th grade, we were looking at baby pictures of him. Like many newborns, he had a “conehead” in his newborn pic.

My mother had let it slip a few months earlier that she had gotten pregnant with Mike, even though her and dad had used a condom. She made me swear not to tell him.

*insert evil, foreshadowing laugh here*

I was teasing Mike about his “conehead”, and it seemed to bother him, which to siblings is always a signal to tease more.

Me: “You know why you have such a pointy head in those pictures, don’t you?”

Mike (growing even more visibly upset): “Um, no…”

Me: “Because mom and dad had used a condom, but the sperm went through a hole in the condom, which made a pointy baby, because the sperm had to be pointy to squeeze through the condom hole!”

Then the big surprise — my 7th grade brother not only believed this ridiculous joke, but started crying!

Sorry, Mike. You’re 34 years old now. Hope you’re over the trauma I inflicted!