Random Thursday: Silly Cephalopods

There’s no real reason for any of this, except I like octopuses* and it’s my blog.

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Soliloquy Octopus Hams it Up

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What does Sir Octopus wear when it gets cold?

 

A coat of arms.

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Octopuses have three hearts and their blood is blue.

I don’t know whether to attempt a poem about this or try an undersea crime piece about a vulgaris private-eye who falls in love with the society Octopoda who hired him to find out who turned her beloved father into sushi:

“Hold me!  Hold me in all your arms until we drift someplace far away from here . . .”

“I’m no good for you, Cirrina.  I’m from the wrong side of the genus.”

“Forget about all that, Sam!  Your blood is as blue as mine . . . “

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How do you make a baby octopus laugh?

Ten-tickles!

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Slightly More Adult Joke**

A guy walks into a bar with an octopus. He sits the octopus down on a stool and tells everyone in the bar that he’ll bet anyone $50 that this octopus can play any musical instrument.

A guy walks up with a guitar and sets it beside the octopus. The octopus starts playing better than Kirk Hammett and the guitarist pays up. Another guy walks up with a trumpet. The octopus plays the trumpet better than Louis Armstrong, so that man pays up.  Everyone else who tries to stump the octopus loses fifty bucks—it can play everything.

Finally, a Scotsman walks up with a set of bagpipes. He sits them down and the octopus fumbles with them for a minute before putting them down with a confused look.

“Ha!” the Scot says. “Can’t you play them?”

The octopus looks up at him and says, “Play it? I’m going to mate with it as soon as I figure out how to get its pajamas off.”

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SWF?

I can’t decide whether this is obscene or just really, really cool:

Maybe both?  But I’m fascinated with the way it blooms into its own colors.

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*The plural, or so I’m told, isn’t octopi—supposedly, that word came into use because several people mistakenly thought octopus was one of those Latin words that declench, or whatever it is Latin words do, squeezing  -us into -i in the process—which to my unsophisticated mind seems a bit backwards when I am clearly fewer than us.  But it isn’t one of those.  And as someone once told me, why would you ever give up the opportunity to say octopuses in public, anyway?

**I said adult, not mature.

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Further Conversations with Cha-Cha: Wordify In the Ranchlands

My friend Cha-Cha, regularly beats  me at Words with Friends with her skill, sophisticated vocabulary, and the diabolical ability to place her words exactly where I was about to put mine.

I still think frumptery should be a word.*

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Cha-Cha: I am definitely coming down with something.

Me: Ennui?

Cha-Cha: I wish.

Me:  I don’t know. . . it’s kind of a boring condition.

Cha-Cha: Har.  More head-coldy.

Me:  Sorry.  If you’re well, wanna lunch tomorrow?  I’m off.

Cha-Cha:  Sure.

Me:  Cool.  You pick, since I’m not on a schedule and the restaurants I know around you are sit-down time-wasters.

Cha-Cha:  How about Noodles?

Me: Okay.  Never been

Cha-Cha:  I love their pesto.

Me:  Oooo.  Pesto.
I crockpotted a garlic turkey breast yesterday—so, so good.

Cha-Cha: I think you just violated the laws of the English language.

Me: To quote Bucky Katt, “You can wordify anything if you just verb it.”**

Cha-Cha:  I got into an argument with a high school English teacher over my made-up word “ranchlandish.”

Me: I LOVE THAT WORD.
Thank you for my Friday post.  Got any more?

Cha-Cha:  I’ll have to think about it.
I won the argument on the grounds of Jabberwocky and the like.

Me:  It is for land?  Or salad dressing?  Or both?

Cha-Cha: We had to write a short story set out west.

Me: Cool.  Though if a dressing is really, ridiculously good, ranchlandish works!

Cha-Cha: Or, if it’s a dish that harkens from the ranchlands.

Me: With radishes.

Cha-Cha: I can see the cowboys now, high on their horses, lassos slicing through the air, hunting down those wily radishes.

Me: What’s red and hums?

Cha-Cha: An Irish schoolchild?

Me: Electric Radish.

Cha Cha: Nice.  I still like the image of the radishes running from cowboys on their white spindly roots.

Me: I was thinking of them spinning like tops . . .

Cha-Cha: You could catch them in the lasso, wind the rope, put your foot against the radish, and yank.  They’d spin so fast they’d sing!

Me: Or hum.

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Got any wordifications to share?

Maybe a corny—or radishy—joke or two?

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*Definition:  Where Sarah keeps her clothes.

**From  Say Cheesy, a Get Fuzzy collection by the talented, hilarious, and non-litigious Darby Conley.

Random Thursday: Glass Engines of the Ninja Challenge . . . and some other stuff

Engineering can be beautiful

Janie and I kept wincing, sure this was going to break— but it didn’t.

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Janie’s current favorite joke

What’s orange and sounds like a parrot?

A carrot.

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This. Doesn’t. Suck.

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Sunny’s current favorite joke

What’s brown and sticky?

A stick.

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Even knowing what I know . . . I’d accept.

You?

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Don’t forget to write your limerick for this month’s Super Amazing Poetry Wednesday Contest!

Rules (and a story about my misspent youth) are here. Potential choices of prize are here.

Random Thursday: Footnoteless Frivolities and Questionable Jokes

And now, for something completely different . . .
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This makes me happy.

I’m not sure why.

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The past, present, and future walk into a bar.

It was tense.

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My husband has played in an Adult Sandlot Baseball League for two seasons, and a few days ago they played an evening game in a real baseball stadium.

Looks good, doesn’t he? And his team won by eight.

Janie took this photo—note the absence of my right thumb—because, naturally, it was my one late night this month at the library, so I missed the whole thing.

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Knock Knock.

Who’s there?

To.

To who?

Tsk, tsk . . .   To whom.

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Spike heels, for reals:

What are the odds I could wear these for more than three minutes without twisting an ankle, snapping a calf muscle, or perforating something vital?

Yeah . . . that’s what I thought.

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Fifty-one jokes in four minutes.

You have four minutes to spare, right?

The management is not responsible for any further time lost by viewing any (or all) of the vlogbrother’s joke marathons.

But try the nerd one next.

Random Thursday: Dinosaur vs. Bridge Traffic

Remember my complaint about the bridge traffic Monday?  Here’s one of the photos Janie took while hanging out of the window.*  Please note the bridge in the left distance and the single, lonely car approaching from the other direction.

To add to the joy, here’s a word problem:

Sarah has to get her daughter Janie to school on time, and then drive to work.  She has allowed forty-five minutes for this which is approximately twenty minutes longer than is usually necessary.

The bridge is about 2  miles (3.218 km) past the merge arrows.  Janie’s school is about a quarter mile (402.3 m) from the other end of said bridge, which is a little more than half a mile (.8 km) long.    It will take twenty-five minutes (1500 min.) at the traffic’s current speed to reach the school.

How far will Sarah be able to drive from this point without giving her daughter an impromptu vocabulary lesson? 

In approximately one third of a mile (531 m), Janie will suddenly remember that she didn’t have breakfast.   How far will Sarah we able to drive without offering a detailed and highly graphic explanation of the DOT’s collective genealogies?

Please show your work.

Extra credit:  In what way would your calculations change if this is Sarah’s view for 2.25 miles (3.62 km)?

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A skeleton walks into a bar.   “Bartender,” he says, “give me a beer.  And a mop.”

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Small Victory:

Two of my, um, foundation undergarments, long past retirement age, recently self-detonated, leaving nothing but stray underwire and a pile of exhausted elastic.  The second one gave up the ghost last week—in the dryer, thank heavens, so there were no casualties—leaving me with an, ah, understaffed support system, and no time to get to the nearest Intimacy store,** which is more than three hours away.

So for the first time ever, I ordered replacements online, including a style I’d never tried in a size I was hoping would work because the color I wanted in my usual style wasn’t available.*** 

I sprang for three-day shipping—lest the stress on the few remaining survivors hasten their own tragic deaths—and received them yesterday.

They all fit.  I repeat:  They all fit.

I can’t manage that on my first trip to the dressing room of a physical store.

On second thought, this is more of a miracle than a small victory.

My question is this:  should I buy a lottery ticket now or assume I’ve used up all my good luck^ for a while?

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Literary Death Match

It should be clear by now that I am a complete video thief and that SBSarah over at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books   is one of my favorite sources. 

This is Bob Shea’s  contribution to the Literary Death Match at  last year’s Texas Book Festival.  His first reading selection was good, but his second is priceless:

 

Show of hands:  who is going to look for his books now — and who really wishes the second one was for sale?

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And one last Douglas Adams quote:

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

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*She managed two before I realized the flash was coming from the outside of the car.  It’s a wonder sometimes that my heart still beats . . .

**Which I recommend to anyone, of any size, shape, placement, or problem.  Historically, I would rather wrap my torso in razor wire than go bra shopping (don’t ask me about swimsuits).  But Intimacy has fitters, who fit you and stick with you until you’re comfortable and everything’s exactly where you want it.  Pricey?  A bit, even if you don’t have to use a whole tank of gas to get there.  Worth it?  Absolutely.

***Note to my male readers, should you exist: if you don’t understand why this is a risky move, you’ve just defined male privilege—congratulations.

^Or, rather, the good luck MacDougal Street Baby so generously shared with me last Monday.