Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Getting older
Found this funny list by being on West Seattle's Moreah Veston's Funny Yahoo Group Mailing list.
As I Get Older, I Ponder...
1. Now that food has replaced sex in my life, I can't even get into my
own pants.
2. Marriage changes passion. Suddenly you're in bed with a relative.
3.. I saw a woman wearing a sweatshirt with "Guess" on it. So I said,
"Implants?" She hit me.
4. I don't do drugs. At my age I get the same effect just standing up
fast.
5. Sign in a Chinese Pet Store: "Buy one dog, get one flea..."
6. I don't approve of political jokes. I've seen too many of them get
elected.
7. There are two sides to every divorce: Yours and Doody-head's.
8. I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person
you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
9. Isn't having a smoking section in a restaurant like having a peeing
section in a swimming pool?
10. Why is it that most nudists are people you don't want to see naked?
11. A good friend will come and bail you out of jail...but, a true
friend will be sitting next to you saying, "Man...that was fun!"
12. I signed up for an exercise class and was told to wear loose-fitting
clothing. If I HAD any loose-fitting clothing, I wouldn't have signed up
in the first place!
13. When I was young we used to go "skinny dipping," now I just "chunky
dunk."
14. Wouldn't it be nice if whenever we messed up our life we could
simply press "Ctrl Alt Delete' and start all over?
15. Just remember...if the world didn't suck, we'd all fall off.
16. Wouldn't you know it...Brain cells come and brain cells go, but FAT
cells live forever.
###
As I Get Older, I Ponder...
1. Now that food has replaced sex in my life, I can't even get into my
own pants.
2. Marriage changes passion. Suddenly you're in bed with a relative.
3.. I saw a woman wearing a sweatshirt with "Guess" on it. So I said,
"Implants?" She hit me.
4. I don't do drugs. At my age I get the same effect just standing up
fast.
5. Sign in a Chinese Pet Store: "Buy one dog, get one flea..."
6. I don't approve of political jokes. I've seen too many of them get
elected.
7. There are two sides to every divorce: Yours and Doody-head's.
8. I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person
you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
9. Isn't having a smoking section in a restaurant like having a peeing
section in a swimming pool?
10. Why is it that most nudists are people you don't want to see naked?
11. A good friend will come and bail you out of jail...but, a true
friend will be sitting next to you saying, "Man...that was fun!"
12. I signed up for an exercise class and was told to wear loose-fitting
clothing. If I HAD any loose-fitting clothing, I wouldn't have signed up
in the first place!
13. When I was young we used to go "skinny dipping," now I just "chunky
dunk."
14. Wouldn't it be nice if whenever we messed up our life we could
simply press "Ctrl Alt Delete' and start all over?
15. Just remember...if the world didn't suck, we'd all fall off.
16. Wouldn't you know it...Brain cells come and brain cells go, but FAT
cells live forever.
###
Monday, February 06, 2006
Meat me in St Louis
great story - and one i connect with !
The New York Times
Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By
February 5, 2006
The Funny Pages | True Life Tales
The Meat Raffle
By ELIZABETH GILBERT
My 93-year-old grandmother has been feeling poorly recently, so I took a trip out to Minnesota to visit her. Unfortunately, I don't know my Minnesota relatives that well; my mother moved East as a young woman and pretty much stayed East. So I cherished this opportunity to spend time not only with my grandmother but also with my aunts and my passel of predominantly female cousins. And, as always, staying in their homes, I was instilled with such a profound respect for how capably and calmly these women embody their traditional female duties — knitting, crocheting, gardening, cooking, caretaking, nourishing.. . .
Then they took me out drinking.
It was Saturday night. We (everyone but Grandma, that is) went to this place called the Tiki Hut, which is a tiny Polynesian-themed roadhouse on the highway outside Brainerd. Enter the Tiki Hut, and you are transported to a land far, far away from the sleet and winter wind outside. You are taken to a land of bamboo bar stools and thatched-grass roofs and a daiquiri-mixing young bartender with a bare midriff. If you shut your eyes and ignore the jukebox, the video-poker games, the burly deer hunters and the pool table, you can almost imagine that you are actually in the South Pacific.
My cousins and aunts plopped themselves down and then, in unison, whipped out from five purses five previously hidden packs of cigarettes, while simultaneously ordering shots and pitchers and flirting with the burly deer hunters. "You got any dice back there?" my cousin Melissa asked the bartender. "You guys wanna play a wicked fun drinking game?" Suddenly it was as if they had never really meant all the crocheting.. . .
My lovely female relatives steadfastly drank me under the table. They drank me, in fact, under the green plastic fake-grass rug under the table. And so I wasn't at all certain I was hearing things correctly when a man in a plaid flannel shirt approached us and asked, "Would you ladies care to participate in my meat raffle?"
The ladies reached for their purses again — not for guns, as I would have imagined, given the man's question — but for wallets. They were each peeling one cool dollar bill off their private stashes as I stammered: "Wait! His what? His what raffle?"
"It's just a meat raffle, Liz," Aunt Luana explained. "We always have meat raffles around here."
"But what do you win?"
"Meat."
The bartender reached into a freezer and produced for my benefit the evidence: several giant packages of, indeed, meat. Frozen meat. A stunning pack of pork chops and a handsome four-pound chuck roast. These were the prizes of the night — beautiful meat to be sweepstaked off to some lucky drunk! Saloon meat! Chance meat! Destiny's meat!
You know you're an outsider when something that seems perfectly normal to everyone else is impenetrably bizarre to you. I was dizzied with a thousand questions. (Where does this meat come from? Why is the meat-raffle game board imprinted with an official stamp of the Minnesota State Gambling Control Board? Is that an official Minnesota State Gambling Control Board chuck roast? Is it unsanitary to consume pork that you found in a bar?) But there was no time for questions because, lo, the meat raffle was quick approaching, and there were only a few tickets left. I announced, "Mr. Meat Raffle Man, I shall buy all your remaining tickets!"
"You really want to win." He gazed at me with masculine compassion.
I gazed back with feminine yearning: "I really want that chuck roast."
At midnight, Mr. Meat Raffle Man selected the lucky number while we all clung to ourselves in panicked anticipation. No. 115! My cousin Melissa! WHOOOO!!! We shrieked and wept for Melissa, like beauty-pageant contestants who had come to truly love the girl who was ultimately crowned queen. Melissa selected the pork chops. We crowded around and examined the pork, which was pink and healthy and cute. Like a new baby. Except frozen. The label said "Shwiky Meats," from right there in Brainerd, so you just knew it was good.
Was I happy for Melissa? I was. Or, rather, I tried to be. I love my cousin Melissa. She deserves all the free pork chops in the world. On the other hand, I was totally smashed, and drinking always clouds my virtues, so let's be honest — I sort of couldn't believe I hadn't won the meat raffle myself. Actually, I was dying inside.
But then I felt a warm arm drape around my shoulders. It was Mr. Meat Raffle Man himself. He said: "I'm leaving now. But I want you to have this." He laid before me the frozen chuck roast. His offering, his love. Before I could even respond, he was walking away. He didn't look back.
I never even knew his name.
The rest of the night was a blur of beer, cigarettes and bamboo. I could have stayed at the Tiki Hut forever, lost in this Midwestern-Polynesian debauchery. But it was my second cousin Gladys (an eminently practical woman who makes lovely craftwork angels and snowmen to sell around Christmastime) who finally called us all back to reality. She reached across the bar and poked one calm, competent finger into my chuck roast. Then she announced: "Her meat's thawing, girls. It's time we went home."
Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of "Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia," which will be published this month. Her last True-Life Tale was about doing yoga in Tennessee.
###
The New York Times
Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By
February 5, 2006
The Funny Pages | True Life Tales
The Meat Raffle
By ELIZABETH GILBERT
My 93-year-old grandmother has been feeling poorly recently, so I took a trip out to Minnesota to visit her. Unfortunately, I don't know my Minnesota relatives that well; my mother moved East as a young woman and pretty much stayed East. So I cherished this opportunity to spend time not only with my grandmother but also with my aunts and my passel of predominantly female cousins. And, as always, staying in their homes, I was instilled with such a profound respect for how capably and calmly these women embody their traditional female duties — knitting, crocheting, gardening, cooking, caretaking, nourishing.. . .
Then they took me out drinking.
It was Saturday night. We (everyone but Grandma, that is) went to this place called the Tiki Hut, which is a tiny Polynesian-themed roadhouse on the highway outside Brainerd. Enter the Tiki Hut, and you are transported to a land far, far away from the sleet and winter wind outside. You are taken to a land of bamboo bar stools and thatched-grass roofs and a daiquiri-mixing young bartender with a bare midriff. If you shut your eyes and ignore the jukebox, the video-poker games, the burly deer hunters and the pool table, you can almost imagine that you are actually in the South Pacific.
My cousins and aunts plopped themselves down and then, in unison, whipped out from five purses five previously hidden packs of cigarettes, while simultaneously ordering shots and pitchers and flirting with the burly deer hunters. "You got any dice back there?" my cousin Melissa asked the bartender. "You guys wanna play a wicked fun drinking game?" Suddenly it was as if they had never really meant all the crocheting.. . .
My lovely female relatives steadfastly drank me under the table. They drank me, in fact, under the green plastic fake-grass rug under the table. And so I wasn't at all certain I was hearing things correctly when a man in a plaid flannel shirt approached us and asked, "Would you ladies care to participate in my meat raffle?"
The ladies reached for their purses again — not for guns, as I would have imagined, given the man's question — but for wallets. They were each peeling one cool dollar bill off their private stashes as I stammered: "Wait! His what? His what raffle?"
"It's just a meat raffle, Liz," Aunt Luana explained. "We always have meat raffles around here."
"But what do you win?"
"Meat."
The bartender reached into a freezer and produced for my benefit the evidence: several giant packages of, indeed, meat. Frozen meat. A stunning pack of pork chops and a handsome four-pound chuck roast. These were the prizes of the night — beautiful meat to be sweepstaked off to some lucky drunk! Saloon meat! Chance meat! Destiny's meat!
You know you're an outsider when something that seems perfectly normal to everyone else is impenetrably bizarre to you. I was dizzied with a thousand questions. (Where does this meat come from? Why is the meat-raffle game board imprinted with an official stamp of the Minnesota State Gambling Control Board? Is that an official Minnesota State Gambling Control Board chuck roast? Is it unsanitary to consume pork that you found in a bar?) But there was no time for questions because, lo, the meat raffle was quick approaching, and there were only a few tickets left. I announced, "Mr. Meat Raffle Man, I shall buy all your remaining tickets!"
"You really want to win." He gazed at me with masculine compassion.
I gazed back with feminine yearning: "I really want that chuck roast."
At midnight, Mr. Meat Raffle Man selected the lucky number while we all clung to ourselves in panicked anticipation. No. 115! My cousin Melissa! WHOOOO!!! We shrieked and wept for Melissa, like beauty-pageant contestants who had come to truly love the girl who was ultimately crowned queen. Melissa selected the pork chops. We crowded around and examined the pork, which was pink and healthy and cute. Like a new baby. Except frozen. The label said "Shwiky Meats," from right there in Brainerd, so you just knew it was good.
Was I happy for Melissa? I was. Or, rather, I tried to be. I love my cousin Melissa. She deserves all the free pork chops in the world. On the other hand, I was totally smashed, and drinking always clouds my virtues, so let's be honest — I sort of couldn't believe I hadn't won the meat raffle myself. Actually, I was dying inside.
But then I felt a warm arm drape around my shoulders. It was Mr. Meat Raffle Man himself. He said: "I'm leaving now. But I want you to have this." He laid before me the frozen chuck roast. His offering, his love. Before I could even respond, he was walking away. He didn't look back.
I never even knew his name.
The rest of the night was a blur of beer, cigarettes and bamboo. I could have stayed at the Tiki Hut forever, lost in this Midwestern-Polynesian debauchery. But it was my second cousin Gladys (an eminently practical woman who makes lovely craftwork angels and snowmen to sell around Christmastime) who finally called us all back to reality. She reached across the bar and poked one calm, competent finger into my chuck roast. Then she announced: "Her meat's thawing, girls. It's time we went home."
Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of "Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia," which will be published this month. Her last True-Life Tale was about doing yoga in Tennessee.
###
