humor
Mandatory post.
A Cheap Pun for your Wednesday
Growing up in the church as I did, and appreciating wordplay and humor, I’m of course familiar with most of the Bible-related puns that float around such circles. For instance:
Q: Who was the shortest man in the Bible? A: Bildad the Shuhite (shoe-height!)
and
Q: What’s the only American state mentioned in the Bible?
A: Arkansas. You know, in Genesis “Noah looked out of the ark and saw…”
and the ever classic
Q: Did you know that Honda was mentioned in the Bible?
A: Yeah, in Acts it says they were “all together in one Accord”!
Yesterday I was listening to a recent episode of Nomad Podcast, though, and they in passing had a one that I hadn’t heard before and so as a service to my loyal readers I will pass along.
Q: Who was the greatest financier in the Bible?
A: Pharoah’s daughter. She went to the Bank of the Nile and collected a profit (prophet)!
You may groan now.
(I have a sister-in-law who calls these “Hubbs jokes”, and while I think the appreciation of cheap puns surely extends outside my family, I’m proud to carry on the tradition.)
Antihistamine Money
Years ago when my family first got a VCR and started renting movies, my dad made a beeline for all of the Rocky and Bullwinkle titles he could find. And for good cause: they are full of the corny jokes and clever puns that my family’s humor has revolved around for years.
(Today all the Rocky & Bullwinkle episodes are available to stream on Hulu. But I digress.)
Out of all the amazing and lame and cheesy puns and jokes from Rocky and Bullwinkle, there was one that has stuck with me to the point that I now use it in every day conversation. The joke goes something like this:
Bullwinkle: Twenty dollars?!? That’s antihistamine money! Rocky: Antihistamine money? Bullwinkle: Yes. It’s not to be sneezed at. Get it? Not to be sneezed at? Rocky: I get it. Bullwinkle: Thousands won’t.
So there you go.
Antihistamine money.
You’re welcome.
Imagining a different narrator for a favorite song
A couple of nights ago I had the classic Veggie Tales' Silly Song Dance of the Cucumber pop into my head. (Don’t even bother asking why.)
And after reciting a few lines, I had a wild idea pop into my head. Imagine if Dance of the Cucumber, instead of being interpreted by Bob the Tomato, were interpreted by…
… William Shatner.
Imagine his trademark delivery of the classic lines:
“Watch the cucumber… oh, how smooth his motion… like butter… on a bald… …monkey.”
“Listen to the cucumber… hear his strong voice… like a lion.. …about to eat.”
And the closing line of the verses: “dancing cucumber… dancing cucumber… dancing cucumber… dance, dance… YEAH.”
Personally, I think it’d be awesome. The more I think about it, I wonder if Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki didn’t have Shatner in mind when they did the song… but I may just be humoring myself with that thought.
What do you think?
Phrases that stick with you
Most of what I remember from Rocky & Bullwinkle is cheesy puns (which are AWESOME, by the way), but there is one phrase that has stuck in my vocabulary: “antihistamine money”. An example of usage:
“Wow, $100? That’s antihistamine money.”
“Antihistamine money?”
“Not to be sneezed at.”
I remain easily amused.
More Ketchup!
Our little Addison (age two and a half) caught a low-grade stomach bug earlier this week. She wasn’t notably ill or uncomfortable, just sleeping more than usual and not wanting to eat much of anything. That it was, in fact, a stomach bug became clear on Wednesday morning when she threw up. Still, she was running around like normal, and talked more and faster than an overcaffeinated chipmunk for the first ten minutes after I got home from work.
Later on Wednesday, with church activities canceled due to other folks being sick, we decided to go drive through Culver’s and bring some burgers home. (Oh, and some cheese curds… yum yum.) Addie wanted to eat, so we went ahead and gave her a quarter of a cheeseburger and a few fries. And I tell you: that girl went to town.
She ate the first few fries in no time flat. She asked for more. What the heck, we said. If she’s hungry and wants to eat, she can have all the fries she wants. So she ate a couple more fries, then started in on the burger. She had eaten probably half the burger, and had the rest of it half-chewed when I saw her make a gagging face. I warned Becky and she grabbed Addie’s plate (by now empty except for a few fries) and up came the burger. After a couple more heaves she was done, and her determination was remarkable. Without even sparing a second, two words came out of her mouth.
“More ketchup.”
See, it didn’t matter that she’d just thrown up her entire dinner back on to her plate. What mattered was that there were three unscathed french fries left on that plate, and there wasn’t enough ketchup left for those fries. That, my friends, is focus.
While she didn’t get the rest of those fries, she did start managing to keep food down Wednesday night, and by Thursday afternoon she was eating another cheeseburger, and more french fries, and feeling fine.
[Disclaimer so I don’t feel like a bad parent: yes, we regularly feed our kids stuff healthier than cheeseburgers. The end.]
...with some frosting...
One of the things that just fascinates me is observing the girls' learning - not just what they learn but how they learn. Sure, I’m a nerd, but thinking not just that “hey, she used a funny word” but realizing how that particular word reflects the fact that she’s learning about verb tenses (without even knowing it!) just blows me away.
Recent highlight: Laura, looking at a book of nursery rhymes in the van yesterday on our way home from the mall. It’s not a book we’ve read to her very many times. And she’s not reading yet, so what she does is look at the pictures in the book, recite from memory as much as she can, and then improvise based on what she understands from the pictures. So Becky and I are sitting in the front seat talking, and soon we hear this:
“Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker man, bake me a cake as fast as you can. Pat it, and roll it, and mark it… um… with some frosting…”
Hilarity ensued.