Often I let my inner groucho come out for a little looksee. Mostly I do it with language. So here is some thoughts for your edification on Uncle Bardie doing his Uncle Bardie thing.
Language is a wonderful thing I love to play around with. Give me a word like garbage and I am going to be doing a Norm Crosby and say garabage. It’s something I can’t resist.
Did you know there’s supposed to be a funny font? Well, I am here to tell you I don’t think Comic Sans is up to the job. Squirrelly thang, isn’t it? One thing is for sure. It ain’t no Betty White.
Do you know the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? When a pessimist is surprised, it’s a good thing. When an optimist is surprised, it’s a bad thing. Think about it.
Talk about songs. I like to take songs and throw them for a loop. Feliz navidad becomes Police-know-it-all. Don’t think so. Just try it.
And if the humor ain’t flowing. If the laughter ain’t coming out of its hole, here’s some jokes for all you discriminating readers.
Nudist woman says to her friend, “I have a blind date tonight, and I don’t have a thing to wear.”
We all know that strippers are popular for bachelor and bachelorette parties these days. My question is what does a nudist have at their bachelor or bachelorette party? A clotheser.
Nudist mother takes a look at her new born baby and says to the nurse, “He looks just like his father.”
You know what you call a private investigator among nudists? I don’t know either, but it is not a private dick.
What do you call a dad’s bike? A popcycle.
Why is the largest party day of the year in the middle of Lent? I’m talking Saint Patrick’s Day here folks. Think about it.
How do they get those bunnies to lay those Easter eggs? Think about it.
Why is it we go to doctors and lawyers who are just practicing? If you had a plumber who was just practicing, wouldn’t you get rid of him. What happened to my kidney? you ask. Oh, the doctor removed it. Why? He was just practicing. Think about it.
Did you know that Minnesota (mini soda) means little Coca Cola? Did you know that menopause means little hands? It’s pronounced mini paws. Did you know that Minneapolis means little town? Minnehaha is little laughter. Think about it.
And think about this. The Oxford English Dictionary people are thinking about adding Mx to their dictionary. It can be used as an alternative to Mr., Mrs., Ms. and Miss. So, when you get married, you will be pronounced Mx and Mx. Big question. Who will be the Mx and who will be the Mx? Puts a whole new spin on the term mxmarriage, doesn’t it?
Tae boo: to scare the pounds off of you.
Punctuation, punctuation, punctuation. What a pain. Guess that’s why it’s called punk-tuation, huh?
When I think semi-colon, I ask when is it going to grow up and become the colon it’s meant to be. I hardly ever use a colon. That way my writing doesn’t need a colonoscopy.
I do love to invent words like curioddities.
Add –licious (-icious) to a word and you have a new adjective. And it ntensifies the experience. Example: googlelicious.
incidii (pronounced en-sid-dee-eye): more than one incidious. As in: The incidii conspired to make me look like a fool.
Bet you think I am getting geniuser and geniuser. One of these days I too might be the geniusest.
And finally, what do Christmas and hip hop music have in common? Wrappers.
Now admit it. You did chuckle a little along the way, didn’t you? C’mon, adimit it. No? Then why are you smiling?
Now don’t get me wrong. I am not talking about sex. I’m talking movies. It was in the mid-1950s. The first movie I ever saw was “No Time for Sergeants” and it became the movie that I measure all other movies by. The story of a country boy who goes into the army, it was first a Broadway play where Andy perfected his art of the country boy who goes off to visit the city. He turns out to be a lot smarter than we’d want to give him credit for. Man, I loved this movie. Still do.
Part of the experience of seeing this movie, and movies like it, was going into a movie theater, getting myself a big bag of popcorn and a coke. Sitting there in front of the big screen with the actors larger than the fifty-foot woman, I was in what used to be called “hog heaven”. There was nothing like it. At least, not in my young life. It was one of the great pleasures of my life. A way to get away from all the kidding I took from other kids because I had big ears and was clumsy and a bit nerdy, though not nerdy enough to be really smart like Steve Wosniak or Bill Gates and make a fortune inventing stuff.
No matter how many movies I have seen since that first Andy Griffith moment, I will never forget the buzz I got from “No time for Seargeants”. He really made my day.
I was watching an old 1930s movie recently. A couple got married. They never had a honeymoon. The husband carried his blushing bride over the threshold, dropped her in the living room, then went off to work. The wife went shopping.
In the one scene in the bedroom, there were twin beds. Both husband and wife wore pajamas. They gave each other a good night smooch, then each crawled into their twin bed and went off to zzzz-land. No time in the movie did the couple even hint at the s-word.
Since movies are a very good reflection of real life, none of the thirties romances had sexual activity. If couples were having sex, they kept it on the q.t. Guess that was why it was called the Great Depression.
It got me thinking. How did they avoid sex? I mean, these days sex is everywhere. It’s on magazine covers. It’s in the ads. It’s in the movies. It’s on tv. It’s in the music. It’s even on the evening news. We can’t seem to get enough of it. So just how did our forefolks avoid sex? Why would they want to anyway? Why did it take a World War to bring back sex?
Big questions. Recently Uncle Bardie came across an ancient tome called “The Real Kinsey Report” that explained much that has been hidden from history. Lord Byron was one of the last two people in England in the Nineteenth Century to enjoy a ménage à duet, his female partner à duet being the other people. As the famed Lord was making a strategic withdrawal, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were engaged in hanky panky on the HMS Queen Mary. The thing is there was more hanky than panky.
Vickie and Bertie were off on their honeymoon. Of course, you do know that the origin of the word “honeymoon” was Anglo Saxon for “tiddlywinks”. As soon as Bertie showed his blushing bride his tiddly and she showed him her winkie, they both realized this would never do. She said, “Ewwww.” And she meant it. He said, “Yech.” And he meant it. That was the end of sex as our forefathers and foremothers knew it. The end of foreplay. And afterplay too.
They returned to Buckingham Palace and declared that there was to be no more sex in the land. To make sure that their command was obeyed, they proclaimed a proclamation and they decreed a decree. Every female over the age of twelve not only had to wear a girdle. She had to wear a corset, even when she went to bed. Especially when she went to bed.
Unlike Prohibition, the new regime of non-coitus dilecti was widely popular. The Germans loved it. The Russians loved it. The Chinese loved it. The Greeks loved it. The Americans loved it. The Italians, not so much. Only the French resisted. And the Canadians who were half French anyway. The Canadians just shook their heads and thought, “Are they crazy? How are we to keep warm, eh?”
Late in the century, the French came around. We all know the details. It was the Albert Dufus Affair. Seems that A D was messing around with the Can-Can. Needless to say, it was uncanny how candid the Can-Can can.
The Can-adians never came around. Oh, sure. They too had a coitus interruptus with the Yukon Gold Rush. It was a brief run. Why have all that gold and not have anything to spend it on? So it was soon back to the business of coitus-ing all over the place. Like they say, nobody can the way a Can-adian can-can. Canada, what a country.
Since men and women didn’t make whoopee during the Great Sex Out, they didn’t need to smell good either. So no one took a bath.
Talk about Weather Changes and Global Warming. For almost one hundred years, Earth was bathed in a certain smell. Scientists blamed it on the Industrial Revolution. The truth is it came from the lack of bathing. The smell almost destroyed the ozone layer. The planet was carbon dioxiding all over the place.
For ten years after the Anti-Fornication Act of 1840, there were no babies born. “Why no babies?” the Victorians queried. Everybody liked babies. Oh, sure. There was the poop. Good thing the babies outgrew that. Not the pooping. Changing the diapers they pooped in.
The Victorians did not equate pregnancy with sex. They believed babies were delivered by storks. But there wasn’t a shortage of storks. So. Why no bambinos? It just wasn’t natural. Before they could say, “We’re really screwed,” a solution appeared on the horizon. It came from a most unusual source.
The North Pole. And it was not Santa Claus who presented a solution. Everybody presumed it was Dr. Livingston. But Dr. Livingston was deep in the heart of Africa presuming.
It seems that the Sir Rutherford Rutherford returned from his Great Balloon Exploration into Wild Blue Yonders of the Outer Atmosphere with an amazing artifact. You’ve heard of the iPod. He brought back an ePod.
A what? Yes, you heard me right. I said an Extraterrestrial Pod, known as an ePod. Extraterrestrials were born from ePods and it had been going on for centuries.
When ePods were first introduced to the rest of the planet, people were very skeptical. Some even afraid. Here is some footage taken at one of the first Royal Society meetings:
Soon the Victorians calmed down and realized this was the answer to a prayer. No sex and beaucoup babies. Before you knew it, most families were raising a crop of ePods in their backyards.
There were those who resisted like Abraham Lincoln. “Fourscore and seven years ago” was not about the Declaration of Independence. Abe was talking about the wild sexcapades our forefolks had back in the Olden Days. The Boston Tea Party was a protest, not over a tax on tea, but a tax on condoms.
I bet you thought Manifest Destiny was about increasing the size of the United States westward. It was not. It was about spreading the ePod Gospel. Custer and his Cavalry were taking a wagonload of ePods into Indian country. Sitting Bull had seen the future and he wanted none of it. It was every Indian’s right to have babies the organic way. None of that genetically modified babies for the Sioux.
Despite the resistance, the ePods became the way children came into this world by the beginning of the twentieth century. Oh sure, there were rebels without a cause like D. H. Lawrence and his Lady Chatterley. FDR was rumored to have said to Eleanor on their first night as a married couple, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
This was the way of things until World War II. The War destroyed most of the ePods. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, they wiped out the ePod Supply of the entire United States. FDR wasn’t kidding when he spoke before Congress and said, “This is a Day that will live in Infamy.” He really meant it. By the end of the war, the Atom Bomb radiated the few ePods left.
For the next few years, the world was in despair. What to do? What to do? The Korean War was fought because the Allies believed the North Koreans were hoarding ePods. They weren’t. So the Allies lost interest and declared a Truce.
No one seemed to know what to do. Then Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr parted the waters.
Burt and Debbie showed us the way. Sex was back. And this time it was here to stay.
There is some concern that Americans just don’t read enough. As a way to encourage reading, major companies are coming out with a line of products, featuring literary characters and other literary vehicles. Here is some of the upcoming products:
1. Jeeves-and-Wooster Stiff Upper Lip Gloss.
2. Jabberwocky Translators: We translate your gobblelygook into their gobblelygook.
3. Mary Poppins’ Silverware: To make the medicine go down.
4. Macbeth’s Kilts: (With and without) to bring out the ambition in your man.
5. Hercule Pierogies: You haven’t tasted a pierogi until you’ve tasted Hercule’s.
6. Achilles’ Heels: Socks that won’t separate during laundry. So no use to wonder what happened to that lost sock.
7. Dorian Gray Mirrors: Now forever isn’t just a word.
8. Daisy Buchanan Diapers: Once your child starts using these, their poop won’t smell.
9. Dark and Stormy Bras: The pushup bra that keeps on pushing when all other bras give out.
10. Holden Caulfield Skateboards: We show you what a smartass you can be, riding our boards.
11. Frank ‘N’ Steiners (Odor Eaters): Your stink don’t have to be monstrous.
12. Captain Ahab-o-mobile: Lets you own the road.
13. Ebenezer Scrooge Investments: We squeeze every dollar we can out of your investments.
14. Dracula Dental Repair: Get your bite back.
15. Oliver Twisteds; The pretzel that will leave you begging for more.
16. Charlie Brown Noses: We train the professionals.
17. Sherlock Homes: You won’t need a Doctor Watson for your retirement here.
18. Hannibal Lector’s: The finest liver products anywhere.
19. Gatzby Underpants: Guys, you will be the cat’s pajamas in the bedroom.
20. Madame Bovary Scotch: The drink that will bring out the adulteress in you.
21. Rhett Butlers: The best erectile dysfunction treatment on the market.
22. Portnoy’s Non-Complaints: The condoms that never fail.
Around my house, there are two kinds of time. Regular Time reserved for such trivialities as getting to work, watching the news, going to church, eating dinner, sunrise and sunset. Stuff like that.
The second kind is Cat Time. For those who are owned by a cat, you know what I mean. There’s the come-and-see-what-I-caught-you’ll-be-proud-of-me time when you are right in the middle of finding out who murdered Grandma on your favorite tv show.
There’s the I-want-to-sit-on-your-lap time. I am sitting there in my comfy chair, zoning out on that new episode of “The Marvelous Mrs Maisel”. The bowl of popcorn rests on my lap, all buttery and salted the way I like it. Kitty wants on my lap right where that big bowl of popcorn sits. For the last six weeks, I have tried to persuade her that I have a nice lap. Now she has taken me up on my offer. Of all times.
I move the popcorn out of the way and she jumps up on the lap. Now you would think she would lay down and leave well enough alone. Oh no. She has to make sure I know who is in charge. She starts kneading. Talk about pain.
The time I hate the most is the I-want-out-I have-to-go-chase-something time. This usually occurs at 4 am around my house. I say, “Go ‘way. Let me sleep.” I hear this retort, “You don’t want me to go way. I know how to miss the litter box.” When the god speaks, I must respond. No matter what.
In most religions, there is a place for repentance. Cat owners know that does not hold with kitty. No matter how much I beg for forgiveness for that one time that I did not respond to kitty, there is no repentance on earth that will be accepted. I broke The Commandment: Cats rule. Even if I wear sack cloth and ashes and present kitty with special treats for months on end, kitty shall always hold it over me. Lest I transgress a second time. God help me if I transgress a second time.
I have come to one conclusion about cats and their times. This is their revenge for that moment of weakness we called them the one word they truly hate. And believe me. There is no revenge quite like Cat Revenge. So what is The Word? Cute as in “Honey, we just have to have him. He’s so cute.”
If you didn’t say it, you thought it. Cats know. They read minds.
Uncle Bardie's Stories & Such 