Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Humor
Speaking of religion . . .
Props to Jellio at YesButNoButYes for finding this campaign site for Jonathon “The Impaler” Sharkey, candidate for Governor of Minnesota in 2006:
I am a Satanic Dark Priest, Sanguinarian Vampyre and a Hecate Witch. My Magikal Path name is: Lord Ares.
Thanks for sharing.
I despise and hate the Christian God the Father. He is my enemy.
Hmm. That’ll win you some votes.
Why does he call himself “The Impaler”? From his platform:
Any one found committing an act of terrorism in Minnesota will be IMPALED by me at the State Capital. If the US DOJ wants to prosecute me for it, then I will take my chances in Court, for I do not believe an American Jury will convict me of brutally killing a terrorist!
I think this fellow is for real. The site goes on too long, with far too much unfunny material, for it to be anything but real.
So: Kate might give you fur burgers and camel toes this morning, but only I give you vampiric politicians!
Then again, you could just turn on CSPAN.
D.
There are blonde jokes, and then there are blonde jokes
But this one is the best ever. Make sure you read it to the very end.
Oh. My. Gawd.
D.
It’s bloody sacrilege!
“Defamer” at Yahoo! News reports, “Bloody Mary” Episode Ensures South Park Guys a Bungalow in Hell:
Perhaps the most outrageous and offensive South Park episode of all time (and that’s really saying something), “Bloody Mary,” which first aired Dec. 7 as this season’s finale, was pulled from the network schedule last night.
Its plot involves a statue of the Virgin Mary, which appears to be miraculously bleeding from its rectum.
Pope Benedict XVI is called in to investigate, and upon discovering the statue is instead hemorrhaging from its vagina, says, ahem, “A chick bleeding out her vagina is no miracle. Chicks bleed out their vaginas all the time.”
Quoting from the E Online article,
Somewhat predictably, the Catholic League was incensed by the satirical portrayal of the Virgin Mary and the pope and by the fact that the episode aired on the day before the Catholic Church celebrated its Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
The conservative group demanded an apology from Viacom, Comedy Central’s parent company, to Roman Catholics everywhere and “a pledge that this episode be permanently retired and not be made available on DVD.”
The Catholic League succeeded, apparently. We may never see this episode again.
Was it tasteless? Yeah. South Park often is. Can I see how this would offend devout Catholics? Sure, but . . . why the hell are they watching South Park in the first place? And is Defamer right that this is “Perhaps the most outrageous and offensive South Park episode of all time”?
Max from PGNX.net says it well:
South Park lambasts homosexuals, transsexuals, Scientologists, vegans, Jews, Mormons, atheists and everyone else under the sun. But suddenly the Catholics are off limits?
They’ve nailed the Catholics before; in “Red Hot Catholic Love,” Trey and Matt skewered the Church on their hypocrisy vis a vis pedophilia. But they don’t pick on the Catholics — that’s Max’s point. They pick on everyone.
My Japanese-American wife isn’t offended by the Chinpokomon episode. I’m not offended by the fact Cartman slams Kyle for being Jewish in every single episode. In “Ike’s Wee Wee”, the writers dealt with circumcision, while in “Jewbilee”, they misrepresented the whole religion. (Jews worship Moses, who appears in the sky as a spinning draedel and demands sacrifices of macaroni art.)
God Himself shows up from time to time on South Park. In case you haven’t seen Him, He looks like this:
Devout Jews (like Moslems, too, if I’m not mistaken) don’t want to see images of God (or Moses, for that matter), so any image is sacrilegious. Depicting God as a freak of genetic engineering? Well, that’s just icing on the cake.
Jesus is a regular character on the show, and (in “Red Sleigh Down”) once used automatic weapons to gun down a bunch of Iraqis who had kidnapped Santa Claus.
AND don’t forget Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo.
There’s something in South Park to offend everyone. Is there anyone in the English-speaking universe who doesn’t already know this? I’ve been offended by them, too — not for any of their Jewish jokes, but for their occasional support of questionable political positions. (For example, if I remember correctly, their “Rainforest Schmainforest” episode got my goat.)
Usually, but not always, South Park is funny as hell. That buys them a lot of mileage in my opinion. Tasteless and humorless media deserves the fate it gets — a rapid fall into a cultural black hole. (Does anyone but me remember Joan Rivers’ movie Rabbit Test?) But if you’re funny, hey, I’ll cut you some slack.
It’s not the first thing that comes to mind when I watch South Park, but the show is also a wonderful demonstration of the First Amendment in action. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Do we really need another voice to say, “If you don’t like it, don’t watch it”?
D.
*Maureen, to answer your question: since now.
My life in baseball
Before I get rolling, will some legal-type person tell me if I can get in trouble for writing a fake Alan Rickman blog?
I know, I know — I’m ruining the magic. But this way, I do get credit for convincing Maureen to take her clothes off.
My hatred for team sports is deep and abiding.
Wait, let me qualify that. I used to enjoy watching team sports. As a ten-year-old, I liked going to high school football or basketball games, for I had discovered that I was the perfect height to collide with shorter high school girls’ breasts. Crowds, man. They’re a bitch.
Participation, that’s what got me down. I grew up at a time when sports defined the boy, and I had a narrow definition indeed. To appreciate my problem, one needs a sense of proportion.
Yes, I had a bat, and yes, my teensy mitt swam over my teensier fingers. Maybe my dad or my brother taught me how to hit and catch, but if they did, I don’t remember it. I do remember being the last kid picked for a team, always, regardless of the sport — even kickball. And I wasn’t even half bad at kickball.
Elementary school softball: nearly every time at bat, I would strike out. I’d pray the ball would hit me, because then I’d get the walk. Invariably, the team captains made me an outfielder. The other outfielder knew that if the ball popped my way, he would have to catch it or there would be a home run for sure.
That went on all through elementary school and junior high school. In high school, we had several options for physical education. I took weight training every time, which allowed me to hang out with the stoners and the cholos and the ninja-wannabes — other guys who hated team sports as much as I did. My people.
I thought I had escaped the horrors of baseball, but in 10th grade I became involved in the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization. Our parents thought BBYO was a youth group designed to help nice young Jewish boys meet nice young Jewish girls. In reality, BBYO helped me meet other nice young Jewish boys who shared my burgeoning interest in pot and alcohol. But, wouldn’t you know it, the bastards liked to play baseball on the weekends.
Week after week, I dodged the invitation, and they would manage to round out their numbers by asking cousins, little brothers, or that kid across town who did pretty good in the Special Olympics. But one weekend, I couldn’t escape; they made it a point of honor. I’d be letting my brothers down.
And I thought: You’re going to guilt trip me? You sons of bitches. I’ll teach you what it means to let you down.
They figured it out by the end of the first inning. By the third inning, their oft-repeated refrain had become music to my ears. I’ve repeated it to my son and my OR nurses — it never fails to get a laugh. Thanks guys. I can still hear your warm words of encouragement.
D.
A singular lack of faith
Here’s how my mind works.
I’m thinking about all the various spoof blogs I know: Madonna’s Personal Blog, Harriet Miers’s Blog!!!, and Mel’s Musings (Mel Gibson’s Blog), and I’m wondering, what other famous people have fake blogs in their honor?
If anyone deserves a Harriet Miers-style blog, it’s George W. Bush. Google George Bush’s Blog and you’ll get this defunct site (last update, June 6, 2001). Then there’s Bush Blog!, which at least updates a bit more regularly (last entry, December 17, 2005). GOP.com, the Republican National Committee’s official blog, is the funniest of the three. With a headline like Economy Continues to Thrive, you know they have writers who will give The Daily Show a run for its money.
After that, I get the bright idea of looking for God’s blog. Turns out, He has several, like this one, or this one, which I rather like. Maybe I just dig the idea of God singing a Barry Manilow song for Jesus’ birthday.
He wore a diamond
He was escorted to his chair
He saw Lola dancing there . . .”
But what really gets me is this one, called Godblog. On June 3, 2002, someone named Steve Jones set up Godblog on Blogspot. His tag reads,
Some of the amazing stories that people have told me or I have experienced about God doing stuff.
and his one and only entry reads,
No link. Nada. Talk about a let-down.
So, Steve? Put up or shut up. If you don’t want to run Godblog, that’s cool. It’s easy as pie to destroy your blog — believe me, I know. But leaving up a blog that reads
Some stories of God’s amazingness
with nothing else to back it up depresses the hell out of me, and I’m agnostic.
Anyway, what we really need is for one of the God’s Blog guys to start leaving entries on George Bush’s blog. You know, to mess with his mind.
GEORGE
(the Lord, like Death in Terry Pratchett’s novels, should always write in caps)
YOU’VE DONE QUITE ENOUGH, GEORGE. TIME TO STEP DOWN NOW, BEFORE LUCIFER AND I ARE FORCED TO FIGURE OUT SOMETHING WORSE THAN HELL.
J.
Yeah, something like that.
D.
I love Jeff Corwin
. . . with a quiet, manly kind of love. You know, the way John Ireland loved Montgomery Clift in Red River — no, wait, that’s not quite right. I dig Corwin the way Sal Mineo dug Jimmy Dean in Rebel Without a Cause . . . no, no, no, that’s not it either.
Maybe I love him the way Claude Rains loves Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca — hey, wait, you mean that’s gay, too? (See David Thomson’s essay, Film Studies: Gay films? Well there’s ‘Raging Bull’ and ‘The Godfather’ for starters…)
Well, I certainly don’t love him the way Laurence Olivier loves Tony Curtis in Spartacus, or the way Jake Gyllenhaal loves Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain. Damn it all, aren’t there any role models in Hollywood for good, beefy, MASCULINE love?
Hmm. Maybe I love him the way Jake Barnes loves his fishin’ buddy Bill Gorton in The Sun Also Rises. I can always count on Papa Hemingway for confidently heterosexual male-male bonding, right? Right.
Anyway, I owe this gush of enthusiasm for Jeff Corwin to my son, who found this repository of Jeff Corwin video clips. They’re all great, but we especially enjoyed Jeff’s “Never before seen movie segments!”
So, Jeff, I love ya ‘cuz your heart is in the right place, you care about animals, you’re a ham like me, and you’re funny as hell.
That and the fact you’re so damned hawt.
Jeff, I wish I knew how to quit you.
D.
P.S.: If you want a serious treatment of the history of gay themes in Hollywood cinema, you can do no better than The Celluloid Closet, 1995. Great stuff.
Ear wax for Candy
Ear wax may be good for some things*, but it doesn’t provide the most fertile ground for humor. Four times a day, sometimes more, I’ll be cleaning someone’s ear and the patient or his spouse will say, “Ooh, can you see through to the other side?” Gawd, I hate that joke. It ranks right up there with “Huh?” in response to, “How’s your hearing?”
However, I do have one good ear story, which I dedicate to the lovely Candy for thinking of me today, even if you don’t think enough of me to enter Kate’s contest. Grumble.
In college, I racked up enough credits to take time off for an internship. I thought I wanted to be a chemist, so I opted for a six month organic chemistry fellowship at Stauffer Chemical Company in Richmond, California. Stauffer manufactured herbicides. Most likely corporate mission statement: Stauffer. We take all the lovely green things in the world and kill them. The State of California owns that place now; it’s part of the Department of Toxic Substances Control. Ironic, eh?
One of the PhD chemists was a grizzly old man who would have made a damned good Scrooge. This guy was filthy — physically, morally, and spiritually filthy. Why, he was so filthy the Mitchell Brothers gave the guy an honorary chair at their theater. With his name on it. In gold lettering.
It’s what you would call a well endowed chair.
I suppose he might have landed himself in a world of trouble for sexual harassment, but the women he worked with didn’t take him seriously. A day or two in his presence and you became calloused to his bottomless pit of linguistic ooze. Even Maria, a sweet Catholic woman in her late 20s, tended to smile at his profane stories and look the other way.
One day, he launched into some weird diatribe about one of the new Vietnamese PhDs down at the chemical engineering end of the building. He had seen shoe-prints on the toilet seat — that’s what set him off — and, yes, you can add racism to his list of sins. After the thirtieth or fortieth “fuckin’ this fuckin’ that,” Maria said, “Oh! My virgin ears.”
To which our hero replied, “Wassamatter? Ain’t you never got it in your ear before?”
See, Candy? You never can tell what will jog my memory.
D.
*True fact: some heroin addicts use ear wax to grease their syringes. Now, that’s American ingenuity in action!
I’ll give her toys
Mom, Dad, do you really want to know why I never dated Jewish girls? Because I never met one like Sarah Silverman, that’s why.
All I ever met in the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization were girls who couldn’t stop talking about how much their dads made or how much their homes were worth. A BBG girl’s idea of teen success: hearing that someone half the valley away said something nice about her, and she doesn’t even know me! They were the Typhoid Marys of niceness.
Whereas Sarah, bless her heart, is nasty and funny and oh my god I need another fix of Sarah . . .
Ah, that’s better.
My eternal thanks go out to YesButNoButYes for the next two links. Don’t mean to kvetch, but this has been a mighty depressing Hannukah. Not even our temple’s Hannukah party could perk me up. I can’t do parties without Karen. Cannot, cannot, cannot. I only get more depressed. Anyway, thank you, YBNBY, for giving me a much needed laugh.
On to the linkage. If you click on nothing else, check out Sarah’s video, Give the Jew Girl Toys. I used to be a big fan of Adam Sandler’s Hannukah Song, but Adam? Sorry, bro. That animated Hannukah movie you did, it sucked big ones. Sarah’s my home girl now.
After you’ve watched Sarah dish it to Santa, if you still can’t get enough of her, check out this interview in which Sarah plays with a dreidel and eats latkes. (Thank YesButNoButYes for this one, too.)
Excuse me. I need to go search the web for all things Sarah.
D.
Fun stuff over at Kate’s place
I have to give this one a shout:
Kate, you may have my babies any time you want. You too, Maureen.
D.