Posts Tagged ‘humor’

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Proposal: The Astros’ 2013 AL DH Club

June 27, 2012

With a group of Astros fans checking in to the extreme on the move of the club to the American League next year, maybe it would be better for

Face & Uniform of the 2014 Houston Astros Official DH Club Member.

Astros management to meet the problem head on in 2013, rather than run to the risk of simply ignoring their threat to never darken the doorway of Minute Maid Park again, once the Selig bomb goes off in actuality. The hard-core opposition statement from most of the disenchanted reads something like this:

The Astros have been a National League club for fifty years. Bud Selig had no right to make their move to the American League a condition for gaining his approval on the sale of the Astros from Drayton McLane to the Jim Crane group. If any team needs to make that move, it should be Bud’s old club, the Milwaukee Brewers. After all, Selig moved the Brewers from the AL to the NL after the 1997 season to help MLB achieve the even-numbered club membership in each league that protected baseball from a practical requirement of inter-league play. Now he wants a club to move back from the 16-club NL to the 14-club AL next year so that two odd-numbered 15-club leagues then will have no practical choice but to accept full-season inter-league play. 

What’s the deal? What has happened in 15 years to reverse the general goal from protecting the separate identities of the two leagues to making sure that each league melts into a generic reflection of the other through perpetual inter-league play? – We can answer that one in two letters – “DH.” Selig wants to wear the NL down and finally into accepting the damn “designated hitter” as the rule in their league too.

We want none of it. We hate the DH because it is not real baseball. Once the Astros go to the AL next year, we are out of here. We will never attend another Astros game for the rest of our lives.

The Pecan Park Eagle would like to suggest that the Houston club should launch a programmatic attack upon the potential loss of all these seriously disenchanted Astros fans next year by establishing something we call “The 2014 Houston Astros Designated Haters (DH) Club” as a plan that is marketed for next year. It’s membership advantages should be marketed heavily as soon as the 2013-14 off-season begins.

Here are the basic features of the 2014 Astros DH (Designated Haters) Club:

(1) Eligibility: All Astros fans who have expressed hatred for either the AL move or the designated hitter rule and who also have sworn that they will never attend another Astros game once the club moves to the AL in 2014;

(2) Benefits: The advantages of joining the 2014 Astros Designated Hater Club force us to wade far into the alphabet:

(a) Uniforms: Everyone who joins will be issued an official DH Club mask and uniform, and are they super? You dad gum betcha they are! As the picture in this column shows, they are styled identically to the same face and garb that Commissioner Bud Selig wears every single time he makes a serious decision effecting the future of baseball. – Just never wear they outfit at work or home. Unless you also work for the so-called Commissioner of Baseball, you are likely to be fired and then laughed out your own neighborhood once you drive home.

(b) The DH Club Suite: Every DH (Designated Hater) will receive automatic admission to the DH Club Suite at Minute Maid Park for all 81 games of the 2014 regular season. The suite comes equipped with a dozen dart boards and a wide variety of Bud Selig 8×10 glossies for those who wish to displace their hostility in a harmless way.

(c) Special Services: Trained anger management personnel and counselors are on duty at all times. Magicians are also on duty, passing out rose-colored glasses which (thanks to the placebo effect) help some people to read the designator hitter rules and intentionality in a slightly more positive light. “After wearing these special glasses,” said one subject in our clinical tests, “I came to understand the rules section a whole lot better. We should never think of the designated hitter as a tenth player who only enters the game to bat for the pitcher. We should think of the designated hitter as the alter-ego of the pitcher – who also happens to be an alternate personality that is capable of hitting .300 – or crunching 40 homers a year – and probably even looking different from the same fellow who takes the mound to pitch when the club is in the field.”

(d) Literature: In addition to a copy of the rules on the DH and the magic glasses, DH club members will benefit from the placement of Bud’s “My Greatest Thoughts.” These copies hang by chain beside each commode in each rest room. Also included are free copies of Bud Selig’s new novel, “Gullible’s Travels,” a story which finds Bud shipwrecked in 2010 on a strange shore. While he is still unconscious, Bud is tied to the earth by a tribe of tiny baseball fans and only released when he promises to revoke his stupid rule which allows home field advantage in the World Series to go to the team representing the league that wins the All Star Game of that same season. Once he safely escapes, nothing changes. As it turns out, Bud Selig apparently lied to the tiny fans just to get away. “I had to lie,” says Bud in the analog section. “My own hide was on the line.”

(e) Food Service: Bologna sandwiches wrapped in paper that features a bust of Bud taking a big bite are the only hard food fair, but Houston tap water, spiked by a variety of whatever’s available energy drinks which are plentifully in supply during the game to meet the heavy demand for wet-washing-it-down liquids.

(f) Special Season’s End Meeting with Bud Selig: The Commissioner has agreed to attend the final game of the 2014 home season at MMP and he is prepared to harvest what he hopes will be a resolution of their resentments. Club members will have several options facing them at day’s end: (f1) They may shake hands with Bud Selig in forgiveness; (f2) they may carry resolution to a spiritual plane and make plans to join Selig for a sweat lodge healing; (f3) or the DH (designator hater) folk may simply re-tie Selig to the ground and, this time, make him not only keep his All Star Game promise to the earlier little fans in his novel, but also live up to one more new promise:

No more designated hitter here. There. Or anywhere. Not in the American League. Not in the National League. Not in the minor leagues. Not in college ball. Not at the high school level. Not in Little League. And not even in tee ball. – Got that? – Good! – ‘Cause you don’t get up til you do!

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Hell’s Big Game

June 22, 2012

Hellzapoppin Park, The Netherwprld. (Actually photographed in Colt Stadium, Houston Texas, on just about any Saturday afternoon in June 1962.

Hell’s Big Game

 

Once upon a red-sky time – in a ballpark down below,

All hell was burnin’ brimstone – as was the usual show.

They had a game a churnin’ – as they played into the last,

The Devils 3 – The Demons 3 – the 9th came hard and fast.

 

The game had much a ridin’ – as the Demons came to bat,

The Devils aimed to goose ‘em – and then to drown the cat,

By bringin’ Dolphie Hitler in – to panzerize the Demons,

Lucifer hoped to kill the need – for extra inning schemins’.

 

Old Dolphie was a cranker arm – goose-steppin’ every pitch,

But when he let each damn ball fly – many slipped a hitch,

And sailin’ wide and wild, they flew – and landed in the ditch,

And Dolphie walked four Demons – before he killed the glitch.

 

And headed for the bottom – of Lucifer’s last hope,

The Demons led the Devils – by a 4-3 Hitler mope,

Twas time for Satan’s big sticks – to show up with the soap,

And wash away disaster; – they simply had to cope.

 

But Saddam went down swinging – and Osama pulled up lame,

And Qaddafi bit the bullet – the lodged one in his brain,

And the Demons took the Devils – moved up to higher ground,

To the Underworld Series – off they go, …

 

Are the Unholy Ghosts around?

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More New TV Show Ideas

November 27, 2011

"Anything good on tonight?"

Along the line of yesterday’s foray into using old ideas for the development of new television shows, here are a few others, some with famous titles, but all with new plot lines and casts for satisfying the demand for better quality programming in 2012. Here are nine offerings that the Pecan Park Eagle has come up with on the spur of the moment:

(1) I’ve got a Secret. Politicians Bill Clinton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer, and Jim McGreevey star in a fictional account sitcom of five guys who open up a national hamburger chain. Any similarity to situations and persons in reality is strictly coincidental.

(2) My Three Sons. Former President George Herbert Walker Bush (#41) stars with George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, and Bill Clinton (again) in a re-make of the old Fred MacMurray sitcom hit. A reincarnated Andy Rooney also stars as “Uncle Bub,” the live-in house manager and wisdom dispenser. (“Does anyone ever wonder why they call bathroom tissue ‘toilet rolls?’ When was the last time they rolled far enough when you really needed them to?”)

(3) The Invisible Man. Ron Paul stars in a nighttime soap about a candidate for president who tries to run for office with good ideas, but also as one who is rarely ever seen on TV or quoted in the media. On the rare occasions he does appear for Republican Party TV debates, Paul is never asked a question or reported as present. Case Keenum also stars as Case Paul, Ron’s son and the star quarterback for the University of Houston.

(4) The Loan Arranger. In a cute little play on words, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke stars in a new reality TV pilot about a federal bureaucrat whose job it is to come up with the names of financially troubled corporations that need to be rescued with loans from the largely but mostly unemployed American taxpayers.

(5) Ozzie and Harriet. Baseball Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith replaces the late Andy Rooney on “60 minutes” with a bit entitled “Ozzie and Harriet.” It’s a one-minute weekly closing segment in which Ozzie reads selectively from the collective works of author Harriet Beecher Stowe.

(6) What’s My Line?/Where’s My Line? Charlie Sheen stars as an actor who can’t decide between a high-paying TV sitcom job or a full-time career getting high as a cocaine snorter. (Just another fictional plot line with no basis in fact comparison to any real person now living or dead.)

(7) Two and Two Thirds Musketeers. Ashton Kutcher, John Cryer, Agnus T. Jones, and Chaz Bono star in this remade song and dance musical version of the famous French swordsmen of literary fame.

(8) Dancing with the Czars. Sviatopolik the Accursed, Yaroslav the Wise, Vladimir the Great, Hollywood’s Peter Ustinov, Baseball’s Lou “The Mad Russian”  Novikoff, Restauranteur Michael Romanoff, and former Russian Premier Vladimir Putin join the first cast of this new version of the old dance show. Eligible contestants must be former czars, Russian or Soviet Rulers, Political Assassins, or celebrities of claimed Russian heritage. Tom Bergeron returns as host. The three judges will be appointed weekly by Vladimir Putin and also accountable to him fot their choices. There will be no telephone voting. The people have no say in picking a winner under the new format. Based on the field and the new format, the pre-contest favorite in Vegas is – Vladimir Putin.

(9) Debaseball. In an effort to ameliorate resistance by the National League to the designated hitter rule, and to increase interest among television viewers, Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig does away with the “DH” in its current form and then initiates a new rule that will apply to all professional leagues, including the National group. In the future, each team will have four designated hitters and no other batters. These four DH hitters will be the only hitters in the game, allowing all other players to be selected only on the basis of their pitching and defensive abilities. Even with no games played under the new Bud Selig multiple DH rule, so far, the name of the game has been changed from “Baseball” to “Debaseball.”  – If you have to ask why, you haven’t been paying attention until now.

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Down in the Dumps on Doomsday

May 21, 2011

The Astros picked Doomsday Eve to halt their 5-game losing streak.

Damnation! The world is supposed to end today!

Curtain time is 6:00 PM, but I’m not sure if that’s standard or daylight savings, Eastern or Central! All I know is that it doesn’t take me long to come up with my Top Ten Reasons that I shall personally regret that none of us will be around to see Sunday, May 22, 2011.

And here they are:

(10) My Houston Astros are going to finish last in the National League Central in this eternally abbreviated 2011 season.

(9) 2011 will go into the books as only the third time in history that the World Series has been cancelled for cause. The other two years were 1904 and 1994. The difference is: The first two cancellations came as a result of human will. This one is apparently landing upon us by the WIll of God.

(8) We just got our thirty-year home mortgage paid off last year. What was the point?

(7) I’ve been working out to get in better shape. I’m not in shape for the end of the world. For that matter, I’m not in shape for the continuation of the world, either.

(6) I think I’ve led a pretty good, decent, and productive life. I haven’t come close to perfection, but I have always tried to consider others and not do hurtful things. Still, it’s Judgment Day too – the day when God sends some of us to Heaven and others of us to Hell. Not that it matters, but I don’t think that most old people should be sent to Hell. Growing old is Hell enough.

(5) Judgment Day shapes us as the most brain-numbing day in history. Can you imagine what it’s going to be like as we all sit around and listen to everyone else go on trial before God for their past sins? How many stories of greed, obsession, and infidelity do you think its going to take before we are all bored out of our gourds from their soap opera sameness? Our human egos always want us to believe that we are all so unique. Judgment Day shall reveal that we are not. I’m not ready for that little gauntlet of purgatory today. Never will be because none of us shall ever truly be ready for anything like Judgment Day. Those who claim they are must be speaking from prideful humility.

(4) I had hoped to get back to Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame one more time before I die. It’s going to be kind of hard to get there before sundown today.

(3) I’m very attached to the life I now enjoy with my family and friends. I’m not ready to give that up by 6:00 PM today, even though I’ve sort of made my peace with the fact that I have no guarantees about any of the days I hope to think lay ahead. Age and health issues take you to those levels of reckoning, Today will be the end of the world for millions of us. It’s simply too early into Saturday’s light to know for whom those bells shall toll.

(2) I like the feeling of human love – love  for each other – and love for our various causes of expression and passion. I can’t imagine an existence or a state of being that did not include literature, art, sports, and invention. Those are the stuff that dreams are made of – and I do not want to see the pursuit of dreams disappear today, if we can avoid it.

(1) God, please don’t end the world today. We’re still looking for another bite of the real Valian’s Pizza down here in Houston. Raia’s  makes a decent tribute pizza to the great one, but it’s still a case of “close, but no cigar.”

By the way, God, will there be a food and drink concession service at the Judgment Day hearings? And will they serve Valian’s Pizza? If so, I might be willing to feel better about this being the last day in the history of the world.

See you tomorrow, everybody! – Or not.

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A Simple Explanation of Baseball

May 11, 2011

Baseball has been a game of "ins" and "outs" since before its earliest sandlot days.

Yesterday a friend of mine sent me a creative little piece on the game of baseball. Although this friend  is not a baseball fan, he passed it on to me because he knows my interests so well. Someone had sent it to him and he thought I might get a kick out of it, which I certainly did. I’d never read it prior to Tuesday. As per usual, it also perplexed and frustrated me a little that the little work came with anonymous authorship mention. I would have enjoyed giving credit to whomever wrote it.

Sans author identity, here it is:

A Simple Explanation of Baseball

Baseball is a game played by two teams, one out, the other in.
The one that’s in sends players out, one at a time,
To see if they can get in – before they get out.
If they get out before they get in, they come in, but it doesn’t count. 
If they get in before they get out, they also come in, and it does count.
When the ones who are out get three outs from the ones who are in 
Before they get in without being out, the team that’s out comes in,
And the team that was in goes out to get those going in out 
Before they get in – without being out. ….. Got that? Good! Let’s move on!
When both teams have been in and out nine times, the game is over. 
The team with the most in without being out before coming in wins,
Unless the ones in are equal on both sides. 
In these cases, the last ones in go out to get the ones now in out – before they get in without being out.
The game will end when each team has the same number of ins and outs,
But one team has more in without being out before coming in.

Thank you, humble anonymous writer. You’ve left us with a nice crunch moment in mental gymnastics about a subject that most readers of these columns and this writer hold dear. Say, anonymous author, you don’t happen to know who played right field behind Who at fist base, do you? Yeah, we know what you’re probably going to say – something like, “Who’s on first. ‘You-don’t happen-to-know’ is in right!” – Have a nice Wednesday, folks.
_______________________________________________
Availability Note: Because of a major loss of faith in Comcast, I am going through a major change of my television channels, Internet, and phone service from cable to DirectTV and AT&T over the next five days. TV is set to change by installation today; New Internet and phone service comes in next Monday, May 16th.
I’m sharing this news only because I’m not sure if the TV installation today is going to somehow knock out my Comcast Internet and phone service until next Monday. I hope it doesn’t, but if it does, that will be the reason I disappear for a few days. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

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More Plays on Words

March 5, 2011

Loss of Magnet Schools Makes H.I.S.D. Less Attractive.

In this case, the play on words for lexiphilic (new word) satisfaction only sounds funny. The loss of our magnet schools to  help balance the local budget on public spending for education is arguably a tough bad choice. To help balance things out for all of you true lexiphiles (lovers of language and the art of crisp idea expression), here are some wonderful new phrase turns I received yesterday from Larry Joe Miggins. Many of you know Larry better as either a re-enactor of the Battle of San Jacinto or as the hard-swinging first baseman of our Houston Babies vintage baseball team. Thanks, Larry, for a nice prosaic slide into the weekend.

Here they are:

To write with a broken pencil is pointless.

When fish are in schools they sometimes take debate.

A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months.

When the smog lifts in Los Angeles, U.C.L.A.

The professor discovered that her theory of earthquakes was on shaky ground.

The batteries were given out free of charge.

A dentist and a manicurist married. They fought tooth and nail.

A will is a dead giveaway.

If you don’t pay your exorcist you can get repossessed.

With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.

Show me a piano falling down a mineshaft and I’ll show you A-flat miner.

You are stuck with your debt if you can’t budge it.

Local Area Network in Australia: The LAN down under.

A boiled egg is hard to beat.

When you’ve seen one shopping center you’ve seen a mall.

Police were called to a day care where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.

Did you hear about the fellow whose whole left side was cut off? He’s all right now.

If you take a laptop computer for a run you could jog your memory.

A bicycle can’t stand alone; it is two tired.

In a democracy it’s your vote that counts; in feudalism, it’s your Count that votes.

When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.

The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine was fully recovered.

He had a photographic memory which was never developed.

Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.

When she saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she’d dye.

Acupuncture: a jab well done.

 

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Friday Morning Lights

January 21, 2011

You don't have to be an astrologist to predict the near future fortunes of the Houston Astros..

Puns are fun and today we have some good ones, thanks largely to a list sent to me last night from good friends John and Lori Crider. Except for a few amusing lines that have been resting in my mind for centuries, most of these contributions come to us today from the Criders.

It’s Friday Morning Lights time – time to sit back in lightness and light for the sake of cruising into the weekend on max-relax speed with a smile on your lips and a chicory kick in your coffee.

Roll these puns over your funny bones like warm buttered oil and prepare yourself to be fried by “we laughed til we cried” – or, at least, until we groan.

Humor is a contact sport. So, be a good sport above all. Allow the plays on words to make contact with the side of you that wants to jump for joy and happiness in the nano-second it takes to reach home plate a flick of the eye faster than that usually deadly downer throw from life’s left field. It’s like we’re up against a team of tormenting demons that are always conspiring to smash hope with the unpleasant news of life that daily assaults us through the headlines of our electronic and print-form sources – and loudly too from the screaming minds of television’s talking heads.

“You gotta accentuate the positive. Eliminate the negative. Latch on to the affirmative. And don’t mess with Mr. In Between.” – Songwriter Johnny Mercer.

Thanks again to John and Lori Crider,  here are a few offerings on the side of positive accentuation:

1. The fattest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference.  He acquired his size from too much pi.

2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian .

3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.

4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.

5. No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.

6. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

7. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

8. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

9. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.

10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

11. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

12. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: ‘You stay here; I’ll go on a head.’

13. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger.  Then it hit me.

14. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: ‘Keep off the Grass.’

15. The midget fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

16. The soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

17. A backward poet writes inverse.

18. In a democracy it’s your vote that counts.  In feudalism it’s your count that votes.

19. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.

20. If you jumped off the bridge in Paris, you’d be in Seine.

21. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons.  The stewardess looks at him and says, ‘I’m sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.’

22. Two fish swim into a concrete wall.  One turns to the other and says ‘Dam!’

23. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft.  Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.

24. Two hydrogen atoms meet.  One says, ‘I’ve lost my electron.’  The other says ‘Are you sure?’  The first replies, ‘Yes, I’m positive.’

25. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocaine during a root canal?  His goal: transcend dental medication.

26. The toilet was stolen from the small police station’s only bathroom. The cops have nothing to go on.

27. That did the number “0” say to the number “8”? … “Nice belt!”

28. She was only a stableman’s daughter, but all the horsemen knew her.

29. What do you call a previously owned Volvo? Easy one. It’s called a Revolvo.

30. There was the person who sent ten puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh.  No pun in ten did.

 

 

 

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Top Halloween Costumes: 2010

October 20, 2010

TOP HALLOWEEN COSTUMES & HOW TO DO THEM: 2010

10. THE ECONOMY. Simply mummify yourself with those unpaid bills and make sure to cover the eye-slit places so you can’t see where you’re going.

9.  BRET FAVRE. First you buy a handy little digital camera. That’s as much as I can tell you because that’s as much as any of the rest of us really want to know.

8. BP: Petition the official dictionaries of the English-speaking world into changing the definition of the word “away” into the following: “Away: that part of the oceans and gulf waters in this world that includes the first one hundred foot depth of hard or oozing substances located at the bottom of all the water.” That way, when we speak, as BP, to say that the oil in the Gulf of Mexico has gone away, we will be telling nothing but the truth.

7. NORM CHAD (Sports Columnist): Just wear a crumpled up looking sportswriter suit and answer every inane question you get from readers about your history of failed marriages with the same silly response.  Just tell ‘em: “Pay the man, Shirley.”

6. NOLAN RYAN (As a spokesperson for Viagra): I’m not sure why the “Mad Men” of Madison Avenue haven’t already come up with this one. In these Viagra ads, Nolie wears a doctor’s frock and always appears with an older man/actor who appears to be his patient. All Nolan Ryan says in these new commercials is the same thing he says in those previous baseball pitching instructional spots he’s done with kids in the past. Now he also tells the actor/patient in the Viagra ads: “You can do it. Just relax and follow through.”

5. THE HOUSTON TEXANS DEFENSE: There is a catch to the use of this costume. You have to be shaped like a colander or they won’t even rent it out to you.

4. LADY GAGA: Just go the fridge and see what is there. Then start spreading the stuff you find all over your body. Once you have all pertinent parts covered, you are ready to go trick or treating as Lady Gaga.

3. THE OCTOMOM: Since you probably can’t get pregnant and give birth to eight kids by Halloween 2010, here’s a way to mildly simulate the Octomom experience. Go out on one day and buy everything you ever wanted on credit and take it all home. And don’t worry about how you are going to pay for any of it.

2. ILLEGAL ALIEN/UNDOCUMENTED TOURIST: When you go trick or treating, only accept cash as your “treat.” Then, at the end of the day, go down to customer service at your nearest grocer and wire whatever money you got from going around the neighborhood to somebody living in Mexico.

1. CHINA: If you can’t scare everybody on your block by dressing up as the fastest and biggest growing monster economy in the world, it just means sadly that you have stumbled upon another quiet cell of sleeping Americans.

Happy Halloween preparations, everybody. Hope I didn’t hit you with any ideas that were too scary.

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A Few Paraprosdokians

October 18, 2010

From Frog to Toad, A Paraprosdokian Load

A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part from how it originally registered contextually in the brain.

A paraprosdokian is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax. As in that Top Ten Country & Western Song, “It’s Hard to Kiss The Lips at Night That Chewed My A** All Day,” each really good one always contains and delivers a mild to spicy zing or sting in the end.”

Thanks to my good friend Miriam Edelman, here are a few paraprosdokians to help make your day a little more whimsical than it will be when you finally get around to trying to figure out this year’s early Texas voting ballot

I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.

Don’t argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.

I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather.  Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.

Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it’s still on the list.

Light travels faster than sound.  This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

If I agreed with you we’d both be wrong.

We never really grow up; we only learn how to act in public.

War does not determine who is right—only who is left.

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

Evening news is where they begin with ‘Good evening,’ and then proceed to tell you why it isn’t.

To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.

A bus station is where a bus stops.  A train station is where a train stops.  On my desk, I have a work station.

How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?

Some people are like Slinkies: not really good for anything, but you can’t help smiling when you see one tumble down the stairs.

Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish.

I thought I wanted a career; turns out I just wanted paychecks.

A bank is a place that will lend you money, if you can prove that you don’t need it.

Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says “If an emergency, notify” I put “DOCTOR”.

I didn’t say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

I saw a woman wearing a sweat shirt with “Guess” on it…so I said “Implants?”

Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars, but check when you say the paint is wet?

Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.

Why do Americans choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America ?

Behind every successful man is his woman.  Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman.

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.

The voices in my head may not be real, but they have some good ideas!

Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won’t expect it back.

A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such away that you will look forward to the trip.

Hospitality: making your guests feel like they’re at home, even if you wish they were.

Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with.

I discovered I scream the same way whether I’m about to be devoured by a great white shark or if a piece of seaweed touches my foot.

Some cause happiness wherever they go. Others whenever they go.

There’s a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can’t get away.

I used to be indecisive.  Now I’m not sure.

I always take life with a grain of salt, plus a slice of lemon, and a shot of tequila.

When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the Fire Department usually uses water.

You’re never too old to learn something stupid.

To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

Some people hear voices.  Some see invisible people.  Others have no imagination whatsoever.

A bus is a vehicle that runs twice as fast when you are after it as when you are in it.

If you are supposed to learn from your mistakes, why do some people have more than one child?

Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.


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Politically Incorrect MLB Nicknames

July 28, 2010

My late dad and I used to go back and forth by US MAIL, sharing thoughts on whatever had become the latest hot topic symbol of contested political incorrectness in everyday life. It didn’t take us long to come around to sports team mascots since that jumped up quickly as a hot button for a lot of easily offended folks. We also took a little perverse pride in belonging to the only ethnic group in the world that wasn’t offended by Notre Dame University’s long ago decision to bless their athletic teams with the “Fightin’ Irish” moniker. Can you think of a single other ethnic group that would let this pugilistic assignation float on safe waters in today’s social climate?

Native Americans quickly jumped on the “we’re offended” soap box and who could blame them for the NFL’s “Redskins?” That one even gets to me, but not so “Seminoles” or just plain “Indians.” Of course, we still have Redskins and Seminoles today, but far fewer Indians. Stanford University even went so far as a switch from all the Indians of this continent to a single Cardinal as its new mascot choice.  I’ve always assumed that brainy Stanford simply jumped to the logical conclusion that a single bird, and not the whole species, would not have much of an oppositional constiuency,

Here are my current thoughts on politically incorrect major league baseball team nicknames in 2010 and the groups that each offends. Let’s start with the most obvious and work our way out from there:

(1) Atlanta Braves & (2) Cleveland Indians: Native American groups of all descriptions;

(3) St. Louis Cardinals & (4) San Diego Padres: Non-Catholic Believers & Athiests;

,(5) Cincinnati Reds: Capitalists Opposed to Communism in All Forms & FOX News;

(6) Los Angeles Angels: Believers who don’t believe in Angels & atheists;

(7) Houston Astros: Flat Earth Society, Creationists, & Foes of the Big Bang Theory;

(8) Colorado Rockies: Flat Earth Society;

(9) Washington Nationals: The America Without Borders Immigration Movement;

(10) Milwaukee Brewers: The American Carrie Nation Temperance Movement;

(11) Chicago Cubs, (12) Philadelphia Phillies, (13) Florida Marlins, (14) Arizona Diamondbacks, (15) Toronto Blue Jays, (16) Baltimore Orioles, and (17) Detroit Tigers: PETA & the ASPCA;

(18) Texas Rangers: One Group – The State of Texas Cattle Rustling and State Insurance Board;

(19) Kansas City Royals: The American Commoner and Everyday Average Joe Society;

(20) San Francisco Giants: Society for Equally Anonymous Treatment of Vertically Enhanced Americans;

(21) Minnesota Twins: Planned Parenthood & the Zero Population Growth Group;

(22) New York Yankees & (23) New York Mets: East Coast Society for the Protection of Urban Residents Living Between the Hudson & East rivers from Prejudicial Attitudes that May Otherwise Condemn Them, One and All, as Damn Whatchamacallits;

(24) Boston Red Sox & (25) Chicago White Sox: American Open Toe Sandal Manufacturers;

(26) Pittsburgh Pirates: Johnny Depp and the Pirates of the Caribbean movie copyright group because of the team’s failure to live up to their name over the past two decades; the movie people fear that the Pittsburgh version is giving pirates everywhere a bad name;

(27) Los Angeles Dodgers: The FBI and the IRS.  Federal officials clam that Dodger players and Dodger fans are prone to avoid registrations for the draft and miss timely payment of federal taxes due;

(28) Oakland Athletics: United Couch Potato League;

(29) Tampa Bay Rays: The American Dermatology Society; and,

(30) Seattle Mariners: How could anyone be offended by anything that floats, especially if it’s a sea cruise or simply a plain old good idea? If you have anything against Mariners – or if you are politically offended by any of our current MLB team nicknames for reasons we may have missed above, let us hear your own objections in the comment section that follows this subject.

Meanwhile, have a politically correct hump day, everybody!

Whoops! Can I say hump day?

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