I was watching some Get Smart last night.

In one episode, Cutback at Control, a Senate sub-committee is seeking to de-fund Control. Siegfried of KAOS knows of Control’s financial troubles and recruits Max to join KAOS. When Max meets him to discuss his defection, Siegfried informs he needs to undergo training. There’s dialog that goes like this:

Siegfried:… either you graduate or we shoot you.
Max: Graduations must be confusing, you don’t know whether to bring a cap and gown or a blindfold.

I’m guessing that at Hamas graduations, they bring both.

Apparently Hamas folks don’t just learn to fight, they also learn to dance. First there was Riverdance: Gaza. Now there’s Twinkletoes.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

for Meryl.

h/t Instapundit

Saw a license plate in the supermarket parking lot today: “ARRRM8E”

Busy working when I wasn’t recovering from a stomach bug. But I found this on Hot Air:

Effing hilarious, even if you haven’t seen the movie.

Go here. Wait. First, put down everything you are drinking, and do not be eating. Trust me. (H/T: Stretch.)

Okay. Now click.

This story is as funny as one of Harrison’s. (This one is one of my favorites, one that caused me to almost break a rib trying not to laugh out loud at work.)

This story happened in Ukraine during the Soviet times and has two protagonists:

• Jewish Professor of psychiatry, a diminutive man widely known for his knowledge, professionalism, ornery character and a compassion toward his patients.
• Ukrainian Patient who got into a totally catatonic state for more than a year, without any cure in sight. Fed via a tube and slowly wasting away in a Soviet psychiatric hospital.

The doctor responsible for the Patient was totally despaired. Every known drug and every known therapy failed. Relatives visited the patient from time to time, talked to him to no avail, and, after shedding some tears, left without receiving any response. There was no hope.

And then our Professor came into the picture. He even made a bet with his colleague on success of his way of treatment. You see, he counted on the power of suggestion. Hearing and vision of the Patient were not impaired - he heard and saw everything, but apparently didn’t respond to it, living deep inside his shell. Professor also counted on the ingrained discipline of an army veteran - Patient served in the army for a very long time.

The only thing to do was to prepare Patient for the appearance of a person whose voice would penetrate Patient’s soul to the maximum imaginable depth. To this end, twenty or more times a day nurses, doctors and even some volunteer patients told Patient about a legendary Professor and his wizardly powers. Yes, Professor will definitely come, it is only that he is too busy at the moment, teared apart by the incessant demands of his other patients and other commitments. Of course, the whole brainwashing procedure was orchestrated by Professor, building up hope in the mind of the Patient. This centuries old remedy: belief-based cure - worked this time perfectly as well. With a small detail that is the reason for the story.

Well, after ten or so days of the brainwashing, Patient was told that tomorrow Professor will definitely stop by. And the patient started showing some signs of excitement that developed towards dawn into a fever of anticipation.

Come morning, about six doctors in white smocks burst into the room and promptly sorted themselves in a line which would have mollified even a drill sergeant. Patient started sweating and his eyes became almost clear. And then Professor - a small, white-haired and power-exuding figure - came into the room, approached Patient and barked: “Stand up!”.

And Patient sat up in his bed and, with some assistance, stood up!

Then, jabbing his finger in the Patient’s stomach (because of Professor’s puny height), Professor barked again: “Do you know who I am?”.

And, as if there were no year long stretch of catatonic state and muteness, the Ukrainian licked his dry lips and obediently answered:

“A kike.”

This wonderful bitter-sweet story was translated (poorly, I am afraid) by me from a book Walks Around The Barracks : Autobiographical Novella by Igor Guberman, an outstanding poet/philosopher, an ex-Soviet dissident, a Jerusalemite, a mensch. I hope Igor doesn’t mind this rip-off. Maybe it will be another tiny push to translation of this (and many other Igor’s books) into English.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Yes, really. (H/T: My brother Eric.)

BERLIN - An American hiker stranded in the Bavarian Alps for nearly three days was rescued after using her sports bra as a signal, police in southern Germany said Monday.

Berchtesgaden police officer Lorenz Rasp said that he helped lift 24-year-old Jessica Bruinsma of Colorado to safety by helicopter on Thursday after she attracted the attention of lumberjacks by attaching her sports bra to a cable used to move timber down the mountain.

[...] Rasp said the cable was only within reach because the timber transport system was out of service. When a repairman restored the line on Thursday, the cable car started moving up the mountain and Bruinsma’s bra reached the worker at the base. He knew of the missing hiker and immediately called police.

Now that’s one smart cookie. I take my bra off to her.

Steven Colbert had a hilarious segment on Israel’s national bird, and the recent decision that giraffes are kosher.

Spit-monitor warning is in effect. Absolutely priceless video of Colbert drinking Manischewitz. The grape concord, if I’m not mistaken.

I think it’s time for some different news items.

You’ll never get me to talk, Copper: A lost parrot wouldn’t talk to the cops, but he talked to a vet.

Police rescued the African grey parrot two weeks ago from a neighbor’s roof in the city of Nagareyama, near Tokyo. After spending a night at the station, he was transferred to a nearby veterinary hospital while police searched for clues, local policeman Shinjiro Uemura said.

He kept mum with the cops, but began chatting after a few days with the vet.

“I’m Mr. Yosuke Nakamura,” the bird told the veterinarian, according to Uemura. The parrot also provided his full home address, down to the street number, and even entertained the hospital staff by singing songs.

Get your ass out of jail: In America, we jail Mexicans. In Mexico, they jail donkeys.

A Mexican donkey has been freed from jail after doing time for assault and battery. The Televisa network on Wednesday showed “Blacky” gobbling food from a bucket after spending three days in a jail that normally holds people for public drunkenness and other disturbances.

Blacky was jailed for biting and kicking two men near a ranch outside Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas state.

Officials freed the donkey after its owner paid a fine of $36 and the $115 hospital bill of the men, who suffered bites to the chest and a broken ankle. Authorities say he also must pay $480 to each man for missed work days.

Zimbabwe economics: How to get a million the wrong-way. Ready for this? Inflation in Zimbabwe is now at one million percent. How do you even manage to set prices when inflation is that high? Can you imagine being the price-setter in a grocery store? Talk about your nightmare job!

Now there’s a headline you don’t see every day: Kasparov silenced by unidentified flying penis.

Yes, really.

While making a public plea for unity against nemesis Vladimir Putin, a mysterious dangling object from the ceiling distracted the room: an airborne penis with a helicopter attached to its testicles [video via sharenator].

Pictures at the link.

Yes, really.

Penis museum gets new members: Hey, don’t blame me. They wrote the headline. Apparently, you can find a lot by putting the word “penis” into the search box at Google News. Hell, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a penis museum. Pictures at the link.

Yes, really.

You know, I get most of the spam products. Blahblahblah, enlarge your youknowhat. Blahblahblah, cheap meds. Blahblahblah, credit!

But you know what I don’t get? What’s with the watches? I mean, you can get cheap watches anywhere. You can get expensive watches anywhere. You can get cheap watches pretending to be expensive ones anywhere. Why on earth would spammers think this is a lucrative market? Is it a lucrative market? Because if it is, wow, people are even dumber than I thought.

Sarah tipped me off to this video. The lyrics may not be so great, but the concept is a hoot. Especially for Meat Loaf and Rocky Horror fans.

The story of Max. It’s four and a half minutes long, and it’s hilarious.

Via Gerard Vanderleun, with whom I shared Chinese food in San Diego a few years back.

Merci, Max.

And this is far too funny to pass up. Although the one on the pole is a trifle disturbing.

see more crazy cat pics

Via Sarah.

In honor of Women’s History Month at work, we were given a talk on women in computing. Part of the presentation was playing this YouTube video of the late Rear Admiral Grace Hopper on Late Night with David Letterman. It was extremely entertaining. Letterman seemed a bit unsure of the technical side of Adm. Hopper but he was a gracious host.

Admiral Hopper was known for many things including writing the programming language COBOL. She also found the first computer bug. (Go to the bottom of the page.)

Moth found trapped between points at Relay # 70, Panel F, of the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator while it was being tested at Harvard University, 9 September 1945. The operators affixed the moth to the computer log, with the entry: “First actual case of bug being found”. They put out the word that they had “debugged” the machine, thus introducing the term “debugging a computer program”. In 1988, the log, with the moth still taped by the entry, was in the Naval Surface Warfare Center Computer Museum at Dahlgren, Virginia

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Here are a couple that Paul Simon didn’t think of.April Wormly threatened to blow up the plane her (soon to be ex-)boyfriend was boarding.

A woman who called in a bomb threat to an airport in an attempt to break up with her boyfriend was sentenced to two years in prison, the U.S. attorney’s office said Wednesday.April Wormly, 36, of Hobbs, N.M., also was ordered to pay $19,761 in restitution for phoning in the threat to San Antonio International Airport.

(h/t Betsy’s Page)

Finland’s PM text messaged his “Dear Susan” note.

It was a Nordic fairytale that began with an internet date, developed between the shelves of Ikea, and ended when the Finnish Prime Minister texted “that’s it” to his lover on his Nokia.Now it is payback time for Susan Kuronen, a 36-year-old divorcée. Only days before the Finnish general election on Sunday, she has published a kiss-and-tell book designed to embarrass Matti Vanhanen, who was once dubbed “the sexiest man in Finland” by Jacques Chirac.

BTW, those Finns are really handy with text messaging, they’ve written novels with them and unlock public toilets too!

Consequences: jail time and tell all book. No wonder Paul Simon didn’t recommend them.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Accompanying this headline:
Bush’s brief Egypt visit shows up cooler ties

was this picture:

In typical news organization fashion, AFP got a major element of the story wrong. President Mubarak’s tie is decidedly not cool. It appears to be brick red with some yellow and, perhaps, navy blue diamonds. Not cool at all.

There’s someone in my shul (synagogue) who has the coolest ties. You know where he gets them? He gets them from Nordstrom Rack. So two weeks ago, when I was in Nordstrom Rack, I got myself a cool tie too.

I guess the moral of the story, is that if they want to get cooler ties in the Middle East they really need a Nordstrom’s Rack. (Syms also has some pretty cool ties.) Maybe then cooler ties will prevail.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

My six year old decided to dress Clifford up.

In a skirt and blouse.

Who knew?

Maybe he found Emily Elizabeth’s clothes.

Maybe it’s a John Ritter thing.

Crossdressedposted at Soccer Dad.

If you haven’t been following this story, it’s pretty funny.

Dear Iranian Mullahs! While our satirical website and your Propaganda Directorate deal in the same trade of making up facts and exaggerating reality, we are different in that we can recognize a spoof - but you apparently can’t. On Dec. 27, 2007 you used our spoof image on your propaganda website to illustrate a “true” statement that Jews are welcome in Iran and that Western reports about mass emigration of Iranian Jews are “lies spread by the Zionist hegemony.”

The spoof image in question first appeared in 2005, in our parody called Israel Dismantles; World’s Problems End, which revealed the absurdity of demands to dismantle Israel, with various nations, including Iran and Germany, celebrating the return of their long-missed Jews.

It gets better. Our Iranian friends tell us that the original Farsi-language placard says “Nuclear power is our absolute right,” which means that you, dear Mullahs, used that image as a propaganda tool to advance your nuclear program - so you could threaten and maybe even annihilate the Jews in Israel. In our spoof, we changed the message of the placard to the complete opposite, making it appear improbable. To be fair, your story about Iran’s love for the Jews was just as improbable, so it would seem only logical to put them together. It would, we repeat - if your goal were to publish a self-parody. That wasn’t your intention, however. You only did it because you didn’t know better.

Let’s call it self-inflicted poetic justice.

Click on the link to see the pictures. Really, really funny.

Follow some excerpts from a unique manuscript that was intercepted by our agents. Its state was extremely poor - our lab* reported later that it was thoroughly chewed by a dog of indeterminate breed who destroyed more than half of it and left a good part of the rest unreadable. Besides, the little that could be deciphered is obviously written under strong stress in a state close to a nervous meltdown. Nevertheless, the author was clearly under heavy pressure from a third party (further in the text you shall see mentions of a mysterious group named “Agents of the State Department”).

It is a sunny da.. in 1956 in LA [Latin America?]. I, a three ..r old little girl, am sitting with my Mo… in a playgrou… Jimmy Bohunk, our neighborhood bull… is beating up little Moshe Schneider, the son of our local rab… “Why, mommy?”, I am asking, “Why is it that Moshe cannot be like all other boys and not stand out with his funny glasses, his big no… and his little pee…?” Mommy doesn’t answer, dragging me away to change my nap…

My Mom and Dad are very progre… They want everyone to love everyone and are members of everyt… And everyone loves them, even the Cold Wa… Russians. But they are Zionists and keep a frightening picture of an old scary lady named Golda Me… on the mantelp… When I ask my mommy “Why, Mommy, do we have to have this scary pi..”, mommy sa… “Shh, meidaleh, do not ask, or the bad Uncle from AIPAC will co… and take you awa…”.

And then Mom and Dad took me to Israe… A guide shows us the spanking new tennis courts in Kiriat Shmona donated to reward the brave Joo… and I ask Mommy “Why, Mommy, do these Joo… perpetrate such acts of vio…? Why couldn’t they be like every… around, like all these nice Ara… peop… from Syria, from Egyp…, from Ira…?” “Sha, meida..”, my Mom answers, “Do not ask such ques…, or the Agents from State Department** will ta… you away”.

And while we stroll around Kiriat Shmo…, a scary air raid siren goes off, and we rocket out of there in a jiffy, and Dad curses these darn Zion… all the way to the airp… And I ask “Why, Mom, why do these Israe… sound that sca… siren, cannot they just die quie…?” And Mom starts yakking again about the Agents from Sta.. Dep… And when we come back hom.. Dad takes the picture of Gold… and throws it away into the tras…

And now I understand that these bad J… just don’t want to be like everyone and die qui… And I talk about it to a Senat… Wax.., but he says, just like Mo… “Shhh, meidaleh, don’t say it or these bad Sta.. D… agen…” And indeed, since then I see the Agents follow… …where I am… It is very scary and my Mommy doesn’t wa… to hel… I think she is afraid of the Age…

Then Mom and Dad bought me a dog, they call it Watchdog Spark… and it comes with a muzzle. And they bo… a muzzl… for me too, Mom says it is to make the scary Ag.. of S… go away and leave me alo… and I should wear it all the time not to say anything stu…

But as I am writ… these words I swea.. that the day will co… when I shall throw aw… that muzzle that they put on my mo… And I want to call upon all of you peop… with muzzl… on your mou… - tear them away! Speak out! Tell all th… viole… Isra… to go away some… for example to LA [Latin America?] where they will not bother anyon… and be a part of the domina… culture and, like me, just hang little red and green lights on plastic Chri… trees…

(At this point our Chief of Signals was taken away with a nervous breakdown, so we have decided to go ahead with this fragment, seeing as to add anything will be simply redundant).

More on the same delicate investigation here.

(*) The lab report also states that any similarity of the manuscript to the one that could be found on the Internet under URL inpursuitofjustice.wordpress.com/2007/12/19/jews-who-dare-to-speak-out/ is purely coincidental

(**) The Mom’s expression “Agents of State Department” has naturally attracted our attention, since being in the spying business from times immemorial we have never heard it before. It appears again and again in the text we have received, and we are investigating. Most probably, though, the subject’s Mom used it too frequently to impress some rules of behavior on the girl… Just a childhood trauma, like everything else…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

I know it’s after the holiday, but I found a new menorah picture that I thought you’d get a kick out of.

While Tom is putting the podcast up, here’s a preview of something that I, er, borrowed from for my podcast. It’s funny, and language warnings are in effect. Not safe for work. But very funny.

The original episodes of Sesame Street have been issued on DVD. But our children better not watch them. It wouldn’t be right.

Just don’t bring the children. According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”

Virgina Heffernan explains in Sweeping the Clouds away:

Live-action cows also charge the 1969 screen — cows eating common grass, not grain improved with hormones. Cows are milked by plain old farmers, who use their unsanitary hands and fill one bucket at a time. Elsewhere, two brothers risk concussion while whaling on each other with allergenic feather pillows. Overweight layabouts, lacking touch-screen iPods and headphones, jockey for airtime with their deafening transistor radios. And one of those radios plays a late-’60s news report — something about a “senior American official” and “two billion in credit over the next five years” — that conjures a bleak economic climate, with war debt and stagflation in the offing.The old “Sesame Street” is not for the faint of heart, and certainly not for softies born since 1998, when the chipper “Elmo’s World” started. Anyone who considers bull markets normal, extracurricular activities sacrosanct and New York a tidy, governable place — well, the original “Sesame Street” might hurt your feelings.

What?

Well for one thing, there was Cookie Monster doing his Allistair Cooke impersontation:

I asked Carol-Lynn Parente, the executive producer of “Sesame Street,” how exactly the first episodes were unsuitable for toddlers in 2007. She told me about Alistair Cookie and the parody “Monsterpiece Theater.” Alistair Cookie, played by Cookie Monster, used to appear with a pipe, which he later gobbled. According to Parente, “That modeled the wrong behavior” — smoking, eating pipes — “so we reshot those scenes without the pipe, and then we dropped the parody altogether.”

Cookie Monster? wrong behavior?

As for Cookie Monster, he can be seen in the old-school episodes in his former inglorious incarnation: a blue, googly-eyed cookievore with a signature gobble (“om nom nom nom”). Originally designed by Jim Henson for use in commercials for General Foods International and Frito-Lay, Cookie Monster was never a righteous figure. His controversial conversion to a more diverse diet wouldn’t come until 2005, and in the early seasons he comes across a Child’s First Addict.

No we wouldn’t want our children to follow his example.

Unfortunately one of the examples does strike as a reason to be careful.

Back then — as on the very first episode, which aired on PBS Nov. 10, 1969 — a pretty, lonely girl like Sally might find herself befriended by an older male stranger who held her hand and took her home. Granted, Gordon just wanted Sally to meet his wife and have some milk and cookies, but . . . well, he could have wanted anything. As it was, he fed her milk and cookies. The milk looks dangerously whole.

Some of the reasons why Sesame Street isn’t fit for children sound like warmed over political correctness. The last one mentioned here, though, reflects the our society’s loss of innocence. At the same time that our society has become overprotective of children in silly ways, in other ways new hazards have appeared that we must protect them from.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll adds:

Forty years from now, when the current season of Sesame Street is being assembled for release on whatever the successor format to the successor format of DVD is, how much of it will have to be reshot to comply with how much further the nanny state is sure to have expanded further?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

From the creator of “The Internet is a Series of Tubes” PowerPoint comes:

A Thanksgiving Story.

A truly hilarious, deliberate mistranslation of an Indian pop song.

Note: Absolutely NOT safe for work. And more than a little risque. Language and dirty joke warnings.

Via Charles.

Very, VERY funny. Thanks to Allahpundit.

The rest are at the link.

I love elephant jokes, as I’ve said before.

Anyone have any new ones? Or at least, ones that haven’t been posted in the comments here before?

I blame the seventies. Most of these shows were on in the seventies. Go. Click the link. Cringe. Laugh.

Now go here to see the best ones.

Jackie Mason has jumped on the “Candidate X Girl” YouTube bandwagon.

He says: Vote Republican, or he’ll take off all his clothes.

It’s hilarious. Spit-monitor warning, and oh yeah, not safe for work. (They’ll think you’re nuts for watching it.)

Via Hot Air.

File this under: Never underestimate the power of a Trekkie to write yet another treatise on an aspect of Star Trek (TOS) that you never really thought about. This guy has analyzed the statistics on the Red-Shirt Phenomenon in Star Trek.

The basic stats:
The Enterprise has a crew of 430 (startrek.com) in its five-year mission. (Now, I know that the show was only on the air for 3 years, but bear with me. 80 episodes were produced, which gives us the data to build from.) 59 crewmembers were killed during the mission, which comes out to 13.7% of the crew. So, that will be our overall conversion rate, 13.7%.

Data Segmentation:
However, we need to segment the overall mortality (conversion) rate in order to gain the specific information that we need:

• Yellow-shirt crewperson deaths: 6 (10%)
• Blue-Shirt crewperson deaths: 5 (8 %)
• Engineering smock crewperson deaths: 4
• Red-Shirt crewperson deaths: 43 (73%)

So, the basic segmentation of factors allows us to confirm that red-shirted crewmembers died more than any other crewmembers on the original Star Trek series.

Please do follow the link. It’s funny, entertaining, and informative.

Hat tip: Janet P.

Longtime readers of my blog may remember my discovery and disclosure of the diary of Iseema bin Laden, Osama’s half-brother. They have the same father, different mothers, but are nearly identical in appearance. They also spent their youths in a similar fashion, although Osama is older by ten years. Shortly after 9/11, Iseema was kidnapped by his brother’s henchmen and has been forced to travel with Osama ever since. I’ve had the occasional letter, but had heard nothing in the last three years. But now, Iseema has broken the silence.

Iseema’s latest message reveals the secrets behind his brother’s strange freeze-frame speech. Here now, the letter:

My dear friend,

My deepest apologies for not writing to you. I know it has been a very long time. Between constantly moving and constant suspicion by the mouth-breathers who guard my brother, may his life grow ever shorter, I have had few chances to correspond. Osama’s men have gotten very good at finding the papers I secrete in various places. If they were physicians, I wouldn’t need another proctology exam for the next ten years. Not that I hide my papers there. No, that’s the first place they look. Really. They need wives. And I mean, REALLY. In any case, I found the perfect courier. Let’s just say that Adam Gadahn can’t hold his liquor to save his life. Two drinks and he’s a sloppy drunk, whining about how much he misses California and all the babes he was stringing along there.

As if. I’ve seen his wives without their burqas. Let’s just say that they’re the perfect wives for the self-described “revolting geek of mass proportion.”

Anyway, I just wait for Adam—excuse me, Azzam the American—to pass out from his usual two shots, and then I give him a present. He’s never quite figured out exactly why young Ahmed hugs him so tightly every time they meet. That reminds me, I owe the boy ten riyals. I don’t suppose you could send me pictures of Sanjaya? You have no idea how angry they make Azzam, and, well, one has to find one’s amusement where one can, when one is stuck in the mountains of NowhereIstan with a group of the most joyless men on the planet.

One thing I do get from time to time is the news. We’ve been reading about your puzzlement over why my benighted half-brother dyed his beard. And I understand your analysts are debating the way Osama’s image stopped and then stayed at freeze-frame for most of the video. I’ll tell you why. It’s because that isn’t Osama in the video. Those sons of harlots made ME sit there and read the speech. Really. Osama’s sick as a dog. He can’t read a speech that long. He’s lucky if he manages to get through one entire reading of “My Brother the Goat.” But his people can’t afford to let the world know how weak Osama is. So they made me the puppet and him the voice.

It was horrible. They beat me when I didn’t get the lip-synching right. But they weren’t too smart about it. Did you see my droopy eye? That’s Omar the Idiot’s fault. He hit me in the face. Brilliant move, moron, put a bruise on the face you want seen around the world. My face bruised so badly they decided to use just the beginning and end of the earlier takes and freeze-frame the middle.

That’s the explanation. Stupid, but true. And here’s one more piece of information for you: I helped write it. All those parts about the Democrats and global warming? My ideas. Blaming the corporations? That was me egging on Gadahn the Moron one night while he was in that shot-and-a-half drunken stupor. He still thinks he thought them up himself. Mentioning Noam Chomsky, I think, was genius, though I say it myself.

As I said, one must find one’s amusement where one can, when one is stuck with the most boring, stupid, brutish men on the planet. Once again, I find myself longing for Kandahar, even if the bombs were dropping all around me.

I hope this letter finds you well, and in the immortal words of Bugs Bunny from the moon:

GET ME OUTTA HERE!!!

Editor’s Note: This is the script for my contribution to this week’s Shire Network News. See what you’ve been missing?