“I spin my little dreidel
Without a whim or care
No truer words were spoken
Than “A great thing happened there”
I had a little dreidel
I made it out of clay
But the clay came from a golem
Whom the rabbi made obey
Sure, the golem was defeated
By the townspeople of Prague
And the streets were free of evil
Though the sewers all did clog
From the blood of all the victims
That the mighty golem slew
The lesson you should learn
Is to not piss off a Jew”
Rebecca smacked her husband.
“Did you teach him that?”
Tag: silly
One Two
When I was a kid, I used to count out time using Mississippi.
One Mississippi… Two Mississippi…
Every kid in our town counted using Mississippi.
But kids in other towns counted out with Hippopotamus.
One Hippopotamus… Two Hippopotamus…
“It’s Hippopotami!” We’d tell those kids.
“No it ain’t!” they shouted back. “And besides that, there only be one Mississippi!”
We’d shout back and forth, sometimes a scuffle would break out.
These days, strolling through the Jackson Zoo, I like to visit the pygmy hippopotamus pond and watch them play in the reeds and mud.
I count them:
One Mississippi… Two Mississippi…
Fast As Molasses
It used to be that people would say “slow as molasses.”
But not any more.
Just like all those rare plants in the Amazonian jungle yielding cancer-curing wonderdrugs, there’s a compound in molasses that, when properly refined and then hit with a particle accelerator, can be used to fuel a faster-than-light spacecraft.
That’s right. You heard me correctly.
Warp speed. Hyperspace.
And even with all that particle-accelerator science mumbo-jumbo, it’s still cheaper and more stable than what dilithium crystals would cost.
If they existed.
Just make sure you keep the molasses bottles well-marked.
Pancakes make such a mess in hyperspace.
Closing and Opening
Once, when I was young and foolish, I heard slamming noises coming from a church.
I walked in to see the bizarre sight of a priest running around, closing doors and windows.
And whenever the priest closed a door, a window opened.
Then, when the priest closed a window, a door opened.
He kept at this for a while until he fell down to the floor, panting.
“Whenever God closes a door, he opens a window?” I asked the priest.
“Yes,” he said. “But does he pay the heating bill in Winter or the cooling bill in Summer? Hell no!”
Itchy Trigger Finger
Stone Ridge needed a doctor, so I hopped on the first train out.
When I arrived, sheriff welcomed me, pointed out some sights, and warned me about Bobcat Murphy: “He’s got an itchy trigger finger.”
Oh. Good.
A client.
I grabbed my bag and headed to the Murphy Ranch.
Bobcat put a gun to my head and said “What do you want, stranger?”
“Doctor,” I said. “Doctor Roberts, and I have a cream for your itch.”
Bobcat sighed. “Great,” he said. He put down the gun and dropped his pants.
Curing his jock itch cured the itchy trigger finger, too.
Pitchman
The drill sergeant shouted that he wanted the floors so clean, he could eat off of them.
So, we invented a brush and solvent that cleaned the floors perfectly.
We came back two weeks later to clean the floors… and were promptly arrested by MPs.
We were charged with going AWOL.
“But we did what the sergeant told us to do,” I said. “R&D ain’t instant. Heck, that stuff can clean just about anything.”
We were dishonorably discharged from the Army, but made a fortune with the brushes and solvent.
Heck, the sergeant is our pitchman in the informercials now.
Stretching It
The day before a pirate raid, you can go down to the beach and watch the men doing their pre-raid warm-up exercises and stretching.
It’s very important to limber up before shivering any timbers, keel-hauling, or walking the plank.
Nobody wants to be in the middle of a raid and then suddenly get a sprain or a charley-horse, dropping their cutlass from a twisted wrist.
And then there’s the basics: port, starboard, bow, stern.
No landlubber mistakes here, mateys.
Is that a stuffed parrot?
Argh. Go requisition a real one.
Either straighten up, boy, or we’re all in deep poopdeck.
Antidepressors
My doctor’s a little weird.
Instead of using tongue depressors, he calls them tongue anti-depressors.
“Because nothing’s more sad than an unhappy tongue,” he says. “I want my patients to be happy, and that includes their tongues! A happy tongue doesn’t mind being held in the face of rumor, and it certainly doesn’t wag along, let alone get gotten by a cat!”
It took a minute to digest all that before I had the nerve to ask “So, what makes them anti-depressors instead of depressors?”
“I soak them in tequila,” he says.
Which explains the lime and salt, I suppose.
The Rock
I bought her a drink, and she told me to go crawl back under the rock I crawled out from under.
I told her that I crawled out from under that rock long ago, and I was much younger and smaller back then. I don’t think I can fit under it.
And to tell you the truth, I’m not quite sure the rock is still there. For all I know, there’s a Starbucks there now.
So, I smiled.
She tossed the drink in my face.
The bartender tapped me on the shoulder. “Three’s your limit, pal. Hand me your keys.”
Linguists
I said I worshiped the ground she walks on, but I didn’t worship her.
She said she hated my ass for that, but she didn’t hate me.
“My ass or my guts?” I asked.
“Guts,” she said. “Ass was yesterday.”
“Ah, ok.”
We always go back and forth like this, engaging in silly examples of symbolism and metonymy until someone gives in, but there’s only so many representations of the whole you can come up with before you run out.
She waves her scepter. “The crown commands the Royal Linguists to come up with more funnies!”
The cunning linguists bow.