Category Archives: funny

BOOK REVIEW: Life, the Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams

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Life, the Universe and Everything (Hitchhiker's Guide, #3)Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

My review of: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

My review of: Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Arthur Dent and company are back for a third volume, and this time they must save the universe. This installment in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (H2G2) series leaves off where the second stopped.

Readers will recall that at the end of the second volume,Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Arthur and Ford Prefect were marooned on the Earth two million years before their time (i.e. before the Earth was destroyed for a hyperspace bypass.) The two are reunited after Ford spent some time in solitude experimenting with being insane. They catch a ride forward in time on a piece of couch-shaped jetsam caught in an eddy in the space-time continuum.

Arthur and Ford are then picked by Slartibartfast, designer of fjords, who convinces them that they must go on a mission to save the universe from the inhabitants of the planet Krikkit. Actually, he can’t convince Ford of that, but he does convince him to go to the longest running party in the universe. Unknown to Ford, Slartibartfast wants to prevent the Krikkiters from attaining a requisite part that happens to be located at the party.

Arthur plays a particularly important part in this volume. After a run-in with a creature that he has killed numerous times in various bodies, the H2G2 straight man develops the knack for not hitting the ground after throwing himself downward (i.e. he can fly.) This new skill plays an important role in ultimately winning the day.

Arriving at Krikkit, the group finds that the locals aren’t much interested in destroying the universe anymore.This leads the band them to uncover a plot of intrigue and hilarity.

Given that there are two more books, you probably believe that the universe wasn’t destroyed, but I’ll avoid spoilers.

As always, Adams is the master of absurdist science fiction. Sure he gets his characters out of jams by flukes of the infinite impossibility drive or, in this book’s case, randomly appearing and disappearing couches, but it’s the wackiness that we enjoy and not the tautness or logical consistency of the tale.

View all my reviews

TODAY’S RANT: Stuck with a Bad Ending

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Bonus pages for active readers

Bonus pages for active readers

I miss the days when they put extra blank pages at the end of a book so that you could rewrite an unsatisfactory ending. (Someone once tried to tell me that the extra pages were the result of bulk paper cutting methods. They said it was cheaper to include the blank pages than to remove them. Yeah, I know. How ridiculous, right?) Of course, it wasn’t long before ads began to sully these blank pages, making them less than blank.

I’m not a fan of wastefulness, but if I have to rewrite your ending, why should I incur the cost of paper.

Being lazy, there are not many cases in which I feel compelled to rewrite someone else’s ending. Most books that manage to get published have at least a tolerable ending.

One book always springs to my mind when I think of bad endings. It’s a book called Hostage by a writer named Robert Crais. For those who saw the movie, the movie ending is vastly different–presumably because moviegoers would have insisted on their money back otherwise. While Hostage is not among Bruce Willis’s best, it’s also a prime example of the rare case when the movie is better than the book–for just this reason.

Part of the disappointment stems from the fact that the book has an outstanding premise for a thriller, and in my opinion it was carried off well until the end. (Another reason that I don’t come across too many terrible endings may be that I jettison books that aren’t so good, but this one fooled me.)  Anyway, three delinquent kids rob a house and end up with a  hostage situation with the homeowner’s two kids. The tension is ratcheted up when it turns out that the upscale home where the kids are being held up is owned by a mob accountant. Inside is evidence that could put half the mob away. The mob gets proactive by taking the police chief’s (i.e. the protagonist’s) family (ex and child) hostage and insisting that he get the evidence out before the house is stormed by the sheriff’s department and falls into an evidence locker.

SPOILER ALERT: Ultimately, our hero has no agency in the survival of himself or his family. It’s purely the decision of a mob enforcer that leaves them alive.  I guess it could have been worse. It could have ended with him awaking from a dream.

What book gets your award for “worst-ending-ever”?

The Sound of One Nub Clapping

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Taken at the Red Cross Snake Farm, Bangkok

Taken at the Red Cross Snake Farm, Bangkok

Once upon a day in February
ruminating about creatures scary
staring at a flaring cobra hood
I thought, maybe this serpent ‘s just misunderstood
I know its bad rap (wrap?) is Biblically-inspired,
but perhaps it’s time that rap be retired
if you stepped on me, I’d bite you too
well, perhaps not bite, but in the harshest tone bid you adieu

The crocodile has a snappy smile
and is always dressed in dapper style
if you evict him from his birthday suit
to suit your needs for some snazzy boots
I think we’ll all understand, if he claims as his your right hand
don’t think it’s  some vast assault on man
think of it as a reptilian guru teaching one Zen koan
and, to you, the sound of one hand clapping will be known
hint: it sounds like a bloodcurdling scream
and requires a readied surgical team

Taken at Budapest Zoo

Taken at Budapest Zoo

Your bigger tiger can be a grumpy cat
when unwise souls encroach its habitat
just don’t pitch a tent like you own the place
if you value the features on your face
think of yourself as that visiting kin
for whom “just passing through” looks like “moving in”
you don’t feel nice calling Uncle Bob a pest
think how the tiger feels ripping your heart from your chest

Taken at a "bear park" in Veresegyház, Hungary

Taken at a “bear park” in Veresegyház, Hungary

Grizzly bears’ hairiness inspires scariness
but under that fur is the motive for wariness
it may look like rolly-polly flab
but bears have muscular six-pack abs
you think you’ve got him in your trap
but wonder how your spine just snapped
a minor miscalculation on the tranq front
and your life is liquids through a shunt
can you blame him, the trap ‘s a rusty, toothy maw
that you just caused to kill his paw

Our Most Beloved and Most Deadest of Presidents

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Source: Kennedy Library

Source: Kennedy Library

Presidents live the ultimate catch-22, the only way to reliably boost their approval ratings is to shuffle off this mortal coil (i.e.become worm food.)  The more decomposed a president, the more fond our remembrances of him. The worst thing that anyone ever says about a long dead president is nothing at all. When was the last time you heard a scathing character impeachment of Millard Fillmore? (I do realize that a person with the supreme narcissism needed to be president may find silence more insufferable than being called the son of a syphilitic donkey whore.)

(Quick, without looking, name a president from the 19th century other than Jefferson or Lincoln [or Fillmore]?) FYI- there were 23 or 24 of them. If you drank your entire cup of coffee before you could come up with one of the other twenty names, congratulations you are a typical American– or an exceptional non-American.

I first noticed this phenomena when watching the Reagan funeral. Everyone from all walks of life had great things to say about our 40th president on that day. However, while I was still a minor at the time, I distinctly remember half of the country loathing the man spectacularly and engaging in ad hominem attacks against him at any opportunity. Well there was one period during which no one was saying horrible things about Reagan’s character and that was  during the brief period after the assassination attempt when his opponents thought he might die — at which point they went into dead presidents mode. Had Reagan passed away at the hands of John Hinckley, he would’ve achieved a level of freedom from being crapped upon usually reserved for a our first few (long decomposed) presidents.

Still, Reagan has achieved the broadly beloved status of being the Democrat’s “In-your-face President” just like Kennedy serves in that role for Republicans. An “In-your-face President” is one that political parties use to attempt to show that their current opposition is on the lunatic fringe by indicating that that iconic leader supported something vaguely, roughly approximal in a similar sort of way to what they are trying to do in the present day. These statements being followed by a silent, but understood, “IN YO’ FACE.”

I’m sure that when Carter dies, equally lovely things will be said about him — though never has a bigger train wreck of state been seen then the term of James Earl Carter. To be fair, some of the wheels that rolled off the RV-of-state were not his fault, but we  give all the credit and all the blame to the president. Why do you think Clinton is always grinning like he just had sex? No, it’s not because he just had sex– though he did (the speaking circuit is like fishing with dynamite), it’s because he reigned over the big bubbly part of the bubble. When we were rich because we thought we had a lot of valuable stuff, before anyone bothered to look inside and see what we had was rotten at the core.

Admittedly, Nixon’s demise did challenge everybody’s ability to grin and say nice things.  Comments were made such as, “That Checkers was a good boy, such a good boy, yes he WAS… YES he WAS. Oh yeah, and how about that China thing, that was a real work of diplomacy.”  (Checkers was one of Nixon’s dogs, made famous by a Vice Presidential speech of the same name.) The word “China” was used at Nixon’s funeral more than it was used at the Chinese Conference on China in Beijing, China. Of course, there wasn’t much nice to say about Nixon. Democrats can’t even take advantage of the fact that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was a Nixon Administration initiative. Nixon can’t be an “In-your-face President.” It’s too much like slapping your opponent with a bloated dead fish; you may hit them, but you’re going to get the stink on you never-the-less.

TODAY’S RANT: Viral Video Advertising

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I recently saw this posted on Facebook. I, being a doofus, believed I had stumbled upon the black box recording that would show archaeologists the moment it all went sour for the human race– the dawn of the rise of the apes. As soon as our self-aware brethren learn to take our technology and use it against us, we are surely doomed. Being damned dirty, the apes will own humans. [Participle dangle intended.]

Of course, I felt compelled to do a Snopes check because– believe it or not– sometimes people put things on the internet which are fake. I know, I know, hard to believe.

It turns out the video is a piece of viral advertising for the next Planet of the Apes movie. “Lesser” primate use of technology is still about right here:

Viral advertising is the latest craze. One leaks intriguing footage onto YouTube and doesn’t label it or say what it is.  Then you hope a bunch of schmucks fall for it, and they will– because that’s the defining characteristic of we schmucks. It’s tautological.  This kind of video will stick in one’s mind and get more media attention than would a regular trailer.

The problem is that movie-makers have the ability to make really convincing fakes. (That’s what they do.) My well-read reader will certainly have heard of the Orson Welles War of the Worlds incident. People who didn’t hear the beginning of the broadcast, which was formatted like a news bulletin, freaked out about the alien invasion. Some people jumped out windows (why, I have no idea. I don’t think they thought the value of that through.) Some people fled to Canada (assuming, of course, that the aliens wouldn’t be interested in that icy wasteland.)

My problem with all this isn’t that people are duped; it’s the “boy who cried wolf” effect. One day when we’re under attack by aliens, apes, or artificial intelligence, people are going to be like, “Dude, that’s a really convincing looking ray-gun… NOT!”

TODAY’S RANT: Stupid is as Cupid Does

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Attribution: Ricardo André Frantz Nothing says lovin' like a prepubescent archer.

Attribution: Ricardo André Frantz
Nothing says lovin’ like a prepubescent archer.

This isn’t a generic rant about Valentine’s Day. I am not the curmudgeon of ardor or the Grinch of St. Valentine’s Day. All I’m saying is that nothing is less sexy than a naked baby archer.

I guarantee that if you polled paramedics who’ve responded to bow-hunting accidents, none would say that their patients reported sexual arousal as a symptom of arrows sticking out of thighs. How being impaled with a razor-sharp implement came to be associated with the transmission of love, I’ll never know. Yes, little boys have been known to sock a girl they like in the deltoid, but breaking out the device single-handedly responsible for Mongol hordes sweeping across Eurasia is taking that dysfunction up a notch.

I have no problem with nudity. Nudity and erotic love is like getting your chocolate in her peanut butter– so to speak. My problem is with prepubescent nudity. All that does is remind one of the end product of amour, and that’s terrifying, not arousing. No one needs that kind of pressure in a budding relationship.

I know I said this wasn’t a blanket condemnation of the holiday, but I’ve got one more sub-rant. What is with flowers and chocolate as the iconic gifts of the holiday? Is it that nothing says everlasting love like a bouquet that will be shedding wilted petals by day’s end. And chocolate says, “I love you so much that I’ll even love you if you get fat. Furthermore, I’m willing to prove it by doing my damnedest to make you fat.”

I won’t even get into the jewelry ads. “Show her you love her by implying that you think she’s in it just for the swag.”

TODAY’S RANT: Continuity Gaffes

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For those unfamiliar, a continuity gaffe is a mistake in a movie in which something that shouldn’t change from one instant to the next does. They result from movies being shot over many days in an order unrelated to how the film unfurls before the viewer. Take an example, say a brawler is wearing a green shirt, they cut away to the other fighter, but when they flash back he’s an orangutan in a bikini. If it’s still not clear what I’m talking about, the YouTube clip below shows a horde of gaffes from the first Star Wars trilogy.

Now, from the title of this post, you probably think that I’m some sort of obsessive-compulsive nerd who catches every little niggling mistake in a movie. To this I say, I wish! I’m a not-the-least-bit-compulsive nerd. I don’t catch any movie continuity gaffes– not a single one. Sure, I can see them when they’re circled and the film is run in slow motion, but otherwise I’m clueless. This has made me wonder if there isn’t something defective with my brain. When they are pointed out they seem pretty glaring.

What really bothers me is not that I never catch a continuity gaffe in a movie, but rather that I catch them in my real life all the time. I’ll distinctly remember setting my keys down on the valet, but after a thorough search I’ll find them in the freezer. I’ll remember having written a paragraph, but when I come back to my laptop I find nothing but the cryptic message, “xzsawrwddd&&ppPPP.” I’ll put down Shakespeare’s Sonnets and when I pick the book back up, it’s a James Patterson novel.

I’ve developed two competing hypotheses to explain these gaffes. First, I’m in the Matrix, and Mr. Smith is corrupting the code. Second, my secretly super-intelligent cat is fucking with me.

A Dude’s Attempt to Master Pad Thai

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On a trip to Thailand last fall, my wife and I did a one-day cooking class in Chiang Mai. That day I made the perfect batch of pad thai. (For the uninitiated, Pad Thai is “noodles Thai-style.” It’s one of the more popular dishes at your local Thai restaurant. If you don’t believe me, go check. I’ll wait.)

Anyway, I preceded at home to make 35 batches of pad thai that bore little resemblance to food. That’s not true. Only the first five dishes were fundamentally inedible, the next thirty were tasty enough– they just didn’t taste like pad Thai. A poor cook might blame the difference on the variation in ingredients between Thailand and home. However, I have a sneaking suspicion the cooking school staff was slipping good cooking into my dish while I wasn’t looking. They’d say, “Godzilla” and point, and I’d turn (because one can’t take a chance that close to the Pacific), and when I turned back around the contents of my wok would look and/or smell better.

If making mac-n-cheese from a box, microwaving a HotPocket, or grilling a burger aren’t counted as cooking, then you might say that my experience with cooking was nothing. However through an extensive process of error and error, I arrived at delectable pad thai.

Below is what you’ll need.

Ingredients

Ingredients

First, for the anal retentive types who’ve noticed that I took this picture on top of the washing machine, that was solely for lighting purposes. This process in no way involves use of the washing machine. It’s not one of those clever recipes like cooking fish in the dishwasher. I’m serious, under no circumstances are you to attempt to use your washer in the making of pad thai.

In list form, what you’ll need is:
– 2 Tablespoons of oil (anything but olive)
– 4-ish cloves of garlic (more if you have a vampire-infestation problem)
– shrimp (several to many)
– chicken (one to two tenders’s worth; like the size of tender they give you at Applebees or Chilis– NOT McDonalds, i.e. a swanky tender)
(substitute tofu if you’re one of those quasi-vegetarians who count chicken as animal but don’t count shrimp/fish.)
– egg (1)
– 2 Tablespoons fish sauce
– 1-1/2 teaspoons sugar
– rice noodles (about 2 ramen packets worth, not that you should buy it that way)
– crushed peanuts (3 heaping Tablespoons)
– spouts (1 cup-ish. Normally this is soy or mung bean sprouts, but I’ve substituted Alfalfa sprouts because they work fine and last longer in the fridge.)
– spring onions or chives or something green and oniony (1-cup-ish)
– 1/2 a lime

Step 1: Heat your oil in a wok. Get it hot enough so that when you throw the garlic in, it’ll sizzle. This will make you feel more chef-like.

Sizzling garlic

sizzling garlic

Step 2: Add the animal stuff. Put the chicken in first, it takes longer than the prawns.  If you’re using tofu, put it in after the shrimp (tofu won’t cause you severe debilitating diarrhea if it’s under-cooked. [I don’t think, but I have no idea what I’m talking about. Although I do suspect one shouldn’t refer to diarrhea at any point in a food blog post.])

chicken and shrimp (lamest superhero duo ever.)

chicken and shrimp (lamest superhero duo ever.)

Step 3: Add the egg, fish sauce, and sugar. Scramble the egg up good, and mix everything together.

Egg, fish sauce, and sugar

egg, fish sauce, and sugar

prawn scramble

prawn scramble

Step 4: Add the noodles. This is the trickiest part of all. First, they make a lot of different types of rice noodles in different dimensions and colors, and they all cook differently. I prefer thin noodles. I must admit the noodles are the weak part of my game. In the batch I’m showing, the noodles are overcooked, but I have done them just right. (You’ll have to take my word.) It’s preferable to have them slightly under-cooked when they’re mixed with the prawn scramble (There’s usually enough moisture that they’ll continue cooking.)

At the cooking school, we put pushed the prawn scramble up to the top of the wok and tilted the wok over and put dry noodles and a cup of water in the bottom of the wok. We then cooked the noodles, and then mixed them with the prawn scramble.  If you’re an octopus or a ninja, that method works great. I, however, pour boiling water over bowled noodles when I’m putting the chicken in the wok, then I tong them into the wok and mix them right together with the prawn scramble.

overcooked noodles this time

overcooked noodles this time, so sad

Step 5: Add the vegetable stuff. First, throw in the crushed peanuts. Then stir in the sprouts and the spring onion. (These are all done last, because you want them to provide a bit of crunch. i.e. You don’t want them thoroughly cooked.)

with the veges in

with the veges in

The penultimate step is to squeeze on the lime. This can be done into the wok after it’s removed from the heat or directly on top of one’s bowl.

Step 6: Eat. I’ve included the following picture as proof that this was, in fact, edible.

last few bites

last few bites

TODAY’S RANT: Hyper-relativistic Mathematical Zones: or, When Will my Car be Done?

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Albert Einstein theorized that distance and time are relative depending upon one’s speed. In everyday life we rarely notice this because of a little-known tenet of General Relativity that says, “Whenever one attempts to approach the speed  of light, there will be an octogenarian in the left-hand lane.”

Since the early 20th century, physicists have thought they were this close (author holds up hand with thumb and index fingers about 3/4 of a centimeter apart) to being able to explain the whole shebang. Figure out why very small things behave differently from very big things, and, Bob’s your uncle, we’ve got your Eureka moment.

I, however, think physicists will find that they have yet another hurdle to solve (mixed metaphor intended, smartypants.) This has to do with certain zones in which conventional measurements of space and time break down even when one is only moving at the speed the planet is revolving (24 hours/day, I think, no that sounds wrong somehow.)

I don’t think physics is quite prepared to explain why an hour in a mechanic’s shop is equal to about 4.33 hours on the outside. We’ve all experienced the inverted time-dilation effect of the Department of Motor Vehicles. According to Einsteinian relativity, time slows as one approaches the speed of light. However, time slows even more when one is in the slowest state of movement possible, the DMV line.

I won’t go into the distance contraction effects localized to the crotch region of men who wear wife-beaters and gold hood ornaments around their necks.

Are these just zones in which bistromathics trump mathematics (Sorry only readers of Douglas Adams’s Life, the Universe, and Everything will get that reference.)

Any Unified Field Theory must explain these phenomenon before I can accept it.

TODAY’S RANT: Pronunciation Police

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Pronunciation is tricky.

Pronunciation is tricky.

If you’ve ever had someone tell you that any water can be put in a pot (for pronouncing drinking water pot-table rather that po-table), then you may be with me here. If you frequently exercise your perogative, rather than your prerogative, you may agree. Have you had sherbert, or only sherbet? Do both your eggs and oxen have yokes?

If you’re not with me, you –my friend– might be the person on the right in my little stick cartoon.

I’m as anal about language as the next writer, but let’s try to dial down the pretentiousness. The big question I have for pronunciation police is this: What in your experience with the English language has led you to believe it is a phonetic language?

For those who think English is phonetic because they learned it via “Phonics,” let me expose you to a poem that says it more eloquently than I ever could. (I would attribute the poem, but it is to my knowledge owed to that most prolific “Anonymous” chap.)

Hints on Pronunciation for Foreigners

I take it you already know
of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead-it’s said like bed, not bead.
For goodness sake, don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat.
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for pear and bear.
And then there’s dose and rose and lose
Just look them up–and goose and choose.
And cork and work and card and ward.
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come I’ve hardly made a start.

A dreadful language? Man alive,
I’d mastered it when I was five!

If you still don’t believe that the language can handle multiple pronunciations, check out what the experts say.