Category Archives: words

The blathering idiot’s dream

The blathering idiot was visiting his shrink one day and started talking about his attempts to write and why he wasn’t successful. The shrink asked why he, the blathering idiot, thought he wasn’t yet published in a magazine like The New Yorker?

The blathering idiot said, “I asked myself that question almost every morning when I looked in the mirror. ‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall,’ I said, ‘will The New Yorker come my way?’

The blathering idiot's dream

Doc, I asked myself that question every morning when I looked in the mirror.

“And one day a New Yorker was delivered to my house by mistake, and from then on, I quit asking. I don’t even look in that mirror any more, for fear it might read my thoughts and make something else come true in its twisted way.

“But I fear it may have already happened, for I once asked it to make me wealthy beyond my wildest dreams … and from then on I didn’t dream any more.”

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Puns for the educated mind

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 Novocain during a root canal?
His goal: transcend dental medication.
26.
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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A sign of the times

I went to the store the other day,
and it wasn’t in a place very far away.
While going through the checkout line
the bagger asked me if I’d mind
spending a dollar to support a charity.
I said yes, how fine that would be.
He then asked for my name
Saying he’d put it in the window for a little fame.
I said I didn’t need the notoriety.
He said that just could not be,
and he would write “lowel customer.”
Though his accent was a bit tough to be sure,
I said “Loyal Customer” was fine with me.
He then wrote it on the window slip for all to see.
Lowel Customer now hangs on the glass
with all the other names that you pass.
But if Lowel Customer you happen to see,
give him a pleasant hello from me.

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Filed under humor, poem, poetry, Random Access Thoughts, story poem, true story, words, writing

The Org Over Easy

The blathering idiot sat in the diner trying to figure out the organization of the company that had hired him and where he fit into things. He had the organizational chart “Org chart” of the company and the menu of the diner out on his table. He also had a glass of water that he had already spilled once and was still wiping up when the waitress approached.

She asked the blathering idiot what he wanted for breakfast.

“Org Over Easy,” the blathering idiot said.

She stared over the top of her glasses at him and canted her hip slightly. “Sir, that’s not on the menu.”

“Yes, it is. Over Easy or Sunny Side Up.”

“Org?”

“Yeah.”

She sighed. “That won’t be available until 8 o’clock.”

The Org Over Easy

The Org Over Easy

“Eight o’clock. That’s outlandish.”

“And they’ll be a Sir charge.”

“A surcharge?!” The blathering idiot felt the heat rising to his ears. That always happened when he got embarrassed or angry. He felt a little of both now.

“Yes, sir, a charge on top of our normal Over Easy price.”

“Why?”

“Because orgs are always hard to get over easy.”

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And you know something…

There were things the blathering idiot understood and there were things he didn’t. Sometimes, he tried to understand the things he didn’t. One day, he tried to understand why man was here. What was human kinds purpose on this earth? Were we here to glorify a god or gods? Were we here to glorify gold? Were we here to learn all we could learn and then leave it behind when we die? Were we here to love and laugh, or suffer and cry?

I not only don't know why we're here

"And you know something else. I not only don't know why we're here, I'm sure I don't want to know."

He even asked the bartender, who offered him one or two words, but mostly grinned and grunted noncommittally. The bartender tried changing the subject by asking a sports question or two, but the blathering idiot would not change the subject, even when the bartender changed the channel on the TV and turned up the sound.

The blathering idiot tried and tried to tease an answer out of the question. Finally, after having written for an hour on bar napkins and then thrown away all the answers he’d come up with, he picked up his root beer, took a swig, and proclaimed to the bartender while tapping on the bar, “And you know something else. I not only don’t know why we’re here, I’m sure I don’t want to know.”

He wasn’t sure, but the blathering idiot thought the bartender was happy with that answer.

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Reform, it’s not what you think

It was a cold day and the wind was blowing. The Blathering Idiot and his friend, Gary, were walking to take place in a protest against some change they knew little about but felt had to be protest because somebody on the radio had told them so.

The Blathering Idiot turned to his friend and said, “You know, Gary, the biggest problem with reform is that it requires you to think.”

Gary paused for a minute, then said, “I hadn’t thought about that.”

BlatheringIdiot_Reform

"You know, Gary, the biggest problem with reform is that it requries you to think."

They stopped and looked at each other. First one minute passed. Then another, and another, each looking at the other.

“I think we’ve discovered something profound,” Gary said.

Finally, they decided to turn around and go back home, where at least they could think in a warm place.

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So, you want to be a writer? Watch and learn

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Filed under agents, editor, humor, novel, Perils of writing, pitches, publishers, Random Access Thoughts, words, writing, writing tip

The Job Application

A new year had begun, and the blathering idiot resolved to find a job.

Help Wanted sign

The blathering idiot applies for a job

He saw a Help Wanted sign in the window of a building and went inside to apply.

He sat at the table with the form and did his best to fill it out. The first line said: Name.

He wrote: I have one.

Sex.

He wrote: Yes

Place of birth.

He wrote: A hospital, though I don’t remember the exact event. This is what I have been told.

Put your hometown here:

It won’t fit.

References:

Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, Gregg’s Reference Manual, Chicago Manual of Style.

What attracted you to this position?

The sign in the window.

Salary expectations:

To get paid regularly.

What sort of challenges are you looking for?

I am not looking for challenges. I am looking for a job.

When he was finished, the blathering idiot looked over the questionnaire one last time. There was one question he had skipped, and he still did not have an answer for it. He looked at it again, first staring at it and then looking away. He felt he should write something, but what?

The blathering idiot was about to give up and return the form incomplete, when it struck him what he should write. He had seen this exact wording on similar pages in other documents. He had never fully understood what it meant until now.

The question was: Use the blank side of this form to provide any additional information.

To which the blathering idiot wrote: This side intentionally left blank.

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Filed under blathering idiot, Job Hunting, satire, word play, words, writing

A flightless mind in a myopic world

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/books/07huck.html?_r=1&nl=books&emc=booksupdateemb5

January 6, 2011

Light Out, Huck, They Still Want to Sivilize You

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI

“All modern American literature,” Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “comes from one book by MarkTwain called ‘Huckleberry Finn.’ ”

Being an iconic classic, however, hasn’t protected “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from being banned, bowdlerized and bleeped. It hasn’t protected the novel from being cleaned up, updated and “improved.”

A new effort to sanitize “Huckleberry Finn” comes from Alan Gribben, a professor of English at Auburn University, at Montgomery, Ala., who has produced a new edition of Twain’s novel that replaces the word “nigger” with “slave.” Nigger, which appears in the book more than 200 times, was a common racial epithet in the antebellum South, used by Twain as part of his characters’ vernacular speech and as a reflection of mid-19th-century social attitudes along the Mississippi River.

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Filed under Huckleberry Finn, insanity, Mark Twain, Perils of writing, publishers, Random Access Thoughts, story, words, writing

The All-American Chef

For Christmas, the blathering idiot received a BBQ mitt and a cooking apron. Across the front of the apron, above three embroidered stars was the phrase, also embroidered and in all capital letters: ALL AMERICAN CHEF.

The blathering idiot was happy to receive such a gift. He prided himself on his outdoor grilling skills, and after all an All American Chef should have all-American tools to help him create his all-American dishes. He tried on the mitt: it fit great with plenty of room. The apron was adjustable and the red color pleasantly suited him.

Though the weather was a winter cool, he decided to grill out. What better way to show off that he was an ALL AMERICAN CHEF? He pulled out his grill, poured in the charcoal briquettes, and was ready to start the fire.

All American Mitt and apron made in China

All American mitt and apron made in China

But before he started, the blathering idiot wanted to make sure he took good care of this apron and mitt, so he turned over the tag to see how to care for these new tools. After all, a good chef always takes care of his tools. And in all caps, he read that his ALL AMERICAN CHEF mitt and apron had been MADE IN CHINA.

The blathering idiot didn’t feel so ALL AMERICAN any more.

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