Please Read This First

Ah now, lookit. If you’re easily offended or of tender years, please turn away now. On the other hand, if you enjoy classic jokes that are intended for an adult audience, then you’re in luck! 😉

Please feel free to leave a comment (be nice!) or like a post. You can also share any of the jokes here on social media. And I’d encourage you to follow the blog (see Follow widget in right sidebar). You will receive an email notification whenever a new post is published. Lastly, don’t hesitate to contact me by email or on Twitter (see Contact widget).

Christmas Countdown

Irish actor Frank Kelly passed away earlier today at the age of 77. His most famous role was Father Jack Hackett in the classic sitcom, Father Ted. But Frank enjoyed a long and varied career spanning nearly 50 years.

Tiffany Mistakenly Thinks David Gest Is Dead

Surreal and darkly farcical scenes on Celebrity Big Brother unfolded last night when Angie Bowie broke the news of the death of her ex-husband, David Bowie, to Tiffany Pollard.

Dubious Distinctions: Prize Boobs of 1992

The following article was originally published in the Sunday Express with the above title on December 20th, 1992, and was written by Matthew Norman It went viral on email and acquired the subject line gongs for bongs somewhere along the way. A Google search found over 100 results.

A big thank you to Ian Moore of the British Library for tracking down the date of publication and author for me, and best wishes for a happy Christmas to all my readers! 🙂

Star Wars and Me

The Force Awakens went on general release here in Ireland at midnight and brought the Star Wars universe to a whole new generation. There are still some people, however, old enough to remember the original films from the 70s and 80s.

People like comedian David O’Doherty. In this blog post, he recounts how as a young boy in the 1980s, he desperately wanted Star Wars action figures for Christmas. His wish was granted, but not in the way he expected…

The Pigeon

New York-based singer/songwriter Jeffrey Lewis published his brilliant parody of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven on YouTube yesterday.

Lewis has substituted the raven of ill-omen for an ill-mannered pigeon, relocated the scene to an apartment on the Lower East Side, and taken poetic licence with the verse by sprinkling it with dozens of Yiddishisms.

The result is one of the funniest things I’ve heard in a long while! XD

How to Sing the Blues

Blues guitar legend B B King died recently at the age of 89. He truly lived the blues: he had two failed marriages; 15 children by several women; played 250 shows a year into his 70s; and still found time to record 43 studio albums. In true blues style, even his death has been mired in controversy.

Which only goes to show why the item below is so funny. It’s riddled with cliches and totally ott, but there’s more than a grain of truth to it.

First posted by Jay Kahrs on the rec.audio.pro newsgroup 15 years ago today. It quickly spread, picking up modifications along the way. It’s interesting to compare the differences between the original and the version presented here.

more »

Google Pac-Man

On this day five years ago, Google changed the logo on its home page to a fully playable version of Pac-Man to mark the iconic video game’s 30th birthday. It proved so popular that worldwide productivity dipped. An estimated 4.8million work hours were lost.

The game is a faithful rendition of the original. Great effort was put into making the graphics and sound as authentic as possible, down to the classic theme tune. Start the game by clicking on the Insert Coin button and use the arrow keys to guide Pac-Man around the maze. There’s even an Easter Egg! 😎 Press the Insert Coin button a second time and Ms Pac-Man joins in, allowing two people to play simultaneously. Use the W/S keys to move her up/down and A/D for left/right.

Pac-Man starred on the Google home page for only a weekend, but you can still play the game by going to the 30th Anniversary of Pac-Man post on the Google Doodles blog. Irritatingly, however, you’re redirected to a page of Pac-Man search results after just one game! 😡 Fortunately, web developer Paul Macek created a page on GitHub with a copy of Google Pac-Man you can play as often as you like. 🙂

Goat Prefers Taste of Nicotine to Grass

The Chinese Year of the Goat begins today. Traditional fortune tellers predict setbacks in the areas of love, wealth and career in 2015. On a happier note, people born in the Year of the Goat are said to be gentle, mild-mannered and generous.

Traits that definitely do not apply to the goat described in the item below. The story was first published in India Today in February, 1994, but the article was later rewritten. What follows is the only copy of the original (and funnier) text anywhere on the web… afaik. Kudos to the Bull for this exclusive! 🙂

more »

Phlegmenco Dancer

January 26th is Australia Day, and much as I’d like to invite you all back to mine for some tinnies and a barbie, I’ll have to settle for sharing a classic antipodean anecdote with you instead.

The following article was written by James Young and published in Melbourne-based Inpress Magazine in 1996. The author assures me his sister-in-law was a witness to the events described below and that he merely wrote up her account of what happened.

An engrossing read… in more ways than one. The stomach-churning dénouement will stay with you long after reading. 😈

more »

Calvin’s Snowmen

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany. In many countries, today is the day children receive their presents from St Nicholas, or the Magi, or a witch called Befana…

Anyways, the point is, as it’s the Twelfth Day of Christmas, here’s a present for you in the form of 12 Calvin and Hobbes cartoons by Bill Watterson featuring Calvin’s weird and wonderful snowmen creations. Enjoy! 🙂

Btw, at one time, Calvin’s snowmen as well as 40+ Christmas-related humorous images (not all suitable for children) were hosted by the now defunct attrition.org, but can still be viewed via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

more »

Elf Bowling

And now it’s time for a slightly surreal, simply outrageous, and child-inappropriate festive treat! 😈

In November, 1999, NStorm (defunct?) released Elf Bowling (824k Windows zip file). The game was passed around by email and became a smash hit. Many sequels followed, but the original is the best… Not to mention the funniest and rudest! 😉

Jo’s Guide for Americans Visiting Britain

The web page linked to above is 18 years old today… which is appropriate because it should come with a Strictly Over 18s warning! 😉

Often circulated with the spurious claim that:

This wind-up article appeared recently in an American magazine under the headline, “Advice For Tourists.” By all accounts it was taken seriously by a lot of people…

I could find no evidence to back this up.

Jo Miller, the original author, also wrote 25 Things AboutYou, which is a parody of the Facebook 25 Random Things About Me meme that went viral in January, 2009. Worth a read, but again, adults only!

Psychiatric Hotline

World Mental Health Day was first celebrated in 1992 and is observed on the 10th of October every year with the aim of raising awareness of mental health issues around the world.

The Day provides an opportunity for mental health stakeholders to talk about their work, and what needs to be done to make mental health care a reality for everyone…

It’s also a poor excuse for me to post a link to a transcript of an alleged psychiatric hotline that’s been floating around in various forms for nearly 20 years. The Trust Me, I’m a “Psychologist” website has the most complete version I could find. Christmas Carols for the Psychologically Challenged can also be found there.

In questionable taste, perhaps, but the comments on the Hotline and Christmas Carols pages were mostly positive. And a good sense of humour is a sure sign of a healthy mind. 😉

Mouse Found on Mars

India’s Mangalyaan spacecraft reached Mars and successfully went into orbit today. The probe will scan the Martian atmosphere for methane, an indicator of life.

The mission cost $74 million—less than the Hollywood movie Gravity, and a mere 11% of the $672 million spent on NASA’s Maven probe which took up orbit around the Red Planet on Monday.

And speaking of inexpensive discoveries to do with Mars, here’s a visual gag that dates back to January, 2000. The punchline is a simple image comprised of everyday objects, but arranged in such a daft way, you can’t help but laugh!

more »

Mossie Quinn’s Enigmatic Grin

Kerry defeated Donegal by 2–9 to 0–12 in the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final today at Croke Park to win the title for the 37th time. 😡

The other 31 counties’ only consolation in the face of the Kingdom’s footballing hegemony is to make Kerrymen the butt of our jokes. The following is a prime example. It’s been floating around since early 2003 and made me laugh out loud all over again when I dredged it up from the archives. XD

more »

Saturday Morning Shakespeare

Isn’t Wikipedia amazing? You can look up just about anything you can think of. For instance, did you know that Scooby-Doo is a Great Dane, that Shaggy’s real name is Norville Rogers, and that the show first aired on US television on this day in 1969?

What Scooby’s Wikipedia entry doesn’t tell you, however, is that in 1993, writer Michael S. Schiffer made the shocking claim that a recently-discovered folio of Shakespeare’s Hamlet features a dramatic intervention by Scooby and the Gang in the climactic Act V, Scene II.

The link to the original page is broken, but kudos to Susan Stepney for preserving a copy of this wonderful parody and other classics.

Related Posts

• The Pigeon: New York-based singer/songwriter Jeffrey Lewis brilliantly parodies Poe by substituting the raven for a pigeon and sprinkling the updated verse with Yiddishisms.

School Answering Machine Message

Labor Day falls on the first Monday of September and is a public holiday in the United States and Canada. In many other countries, however, today has an altogether unpleasant connotation: back to school. 😥

To cheer up any schoolgoers (and teachers) out there, here is the transcript of an automated message supposedly placed on the telephone answering system by the teachers at Palisades Charter High School back in 2002.

It all started when the teachers were prevented from failing students for chronic absenteeism, despite the school’s strict attendance policy. The putative answering machine message was a reaction to the fiasco, as well as a general expression of the frustration experienced by teachers when dealing with students and parents. This snopes.com article separates the facts of the story from urban legend.

more »

The Prejudice Song

The 5th annual Irish Redhead Convention starts today in Crosshaven, Co Cork, and runs until Sunday. Themed events include the carrot tossing championships and the most freckles per square inch contest. The organisers will also be raising money and awareness for the Irish Cancer Society throughout the weekend.

I wish all involved the best of luck. They’re going to need it. Because life as a redhead isn’t easy, if The Prejudice Song by Australian comedian Tim Minchin is anything to go by. 😉

PS: You might also like to watch Tim Minchin perform his 9-minute beat poem Storm which describes his heroic but doomed efforts to explain his rational outlook to a hippy at a dinner party.

A Mass of Contradictions

Oxford Dictionaries issued a press release today announcing the latest update to its free online dictionary of English available at OxfordDictionaries.com. Reflecting current language usage trends, new entries include:

• adorbs, adj: adorable
• binge-watch, verb: to watch a whole season of a TV show in one sitting
• icymi, abbrev: in case you missed it
• listicle, noun: an article on the web presented in the form of a list
• humblebrag, verb: to make an obstensibly modest statement whose actual purpose is to draw attention to something of which one is proud

Which segues nicely to a collecction of over 160 oxymorons I’ve assembled for your perusal. And I am a little bit proud of them, tbh. 😉 Although I must admit I plundered many of them from oxymorons.info, but by no means all! There are explanatory links to some of the more obscure entries, and no, they’re not all to Wikipedia. 😛

more »