Category Archives: Humor
If A Lumberjack Disappears In A Forest For 102 Years, And Nobody Is There To See Him…
Earlier this week, we wrote that Swedish taxation authorities reportedly took 102 years to declare a missing lumberjack to be dead.
3 Philosophical Questions That Arise From This News Story
1. If a lumberjack disappears in a forest, and nobody is there to see him, is it really that surprising they can’t see him, since he “disappeared.”
2. If a lumberjack disappears in a forest, is he really a magician? What if he makes a bunch of trees fall silently with his magic, but has no audience to hear them fall because everybody is watching the Celebrity Apprentice on TV? How does that impact his magic and the entire field of philosophy?
3. If a magician disappears in a forest, is that magician Penn Teller, and does this mean he is going to lose on tonight’s season finale of the Celebrity Apprentice? And did he lose because country singer Trace Adkins fairly bested him, or because show host Donald Trump is hoping for more country voters in case he ever runs for election, and less Las Vegas magic voters? (Because getting those votes might require magic when Trump branded casinos dominate Atlantic City, not Vegas! Oh, and also Donald Trump has probably weakened his popularity in often Democratic Nevada with rants about college transcripts and birth certificates.)
Gawker Trying To Raise $200,000 To Buy Video Of Toronto Mayor Smoking Crack… Why Does Your Sandwich-Making How-To Video Only Have 3 Views On YouTube And No Offers To Buy It?
As we wrote yesterday, a report indicated Gawker had been shopped a video of Rob Ford, the Mayor of Toronto, Canada, allegedly smoking crack cocaine.
Gawker is currently asking readers to donate money to support buying this video to post it on its web site, as the video’s owners want $200,000. The good news: if Gawker raises the money, and the deal goes awry, they will donate the money to charity. Currently Gawker has raised $45,000.
3 Questions That Arise From This News Story
1. Why would a mayor allegedly smoke crack while someone is recording it? Oh, right, because their decision-making ability was allegedly impaired by allegedly being on crack.
2. Will someone publish this video, and the Mayor tell the alleged truth of what’s going on in it so we can stop the word “allegedly” from ruining the flow of our alleged jokes?
3. What will the owners of the video do with the $200,000 if they get it? Buy 200,000 ninety-nine cent breakfasts at IKEA? As furniture store food products remain a constant source of worthy news material for this web site, we have our fingers crossed!
Blast From the Past: Alleged Video Of Toronto Mayor Returns Relevance Of Phrase “Are You On Crack?!”
According to the Huffington Post, reports in the Toronto Star and Gawker indicate that sources at those media outlets have been offered a video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford allegedly smoking a crack pipe.
3 Worse Things A Toronto Mayor Could Allegedly Be Caught Smoking In A Video
1. A crack pipe filled with crack and clippings from Toronto Star articles alleging he smoked from a crack pipe. Burning and smoking articles with bad publicity might seem like a good way to make the problem go away, if you were on crack, however in any other case it would be sadly ironic.
2. Money spent by the Toronto Blue Jays to try to buy a World Series team this year, that has so far lead to the worst team in the American League East. And crack. Because remember, this is an article about “worse” things he could be smoking than just crack!
3. A biography of former Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry in a crack pipe with crack and broken glass. We haven’t read one and doubt the whole book would fit in a crack pipe. But we bet it would recommend against allegedly using cocaine-based products while in office. Either way: read biographies, don’t smoke them with crack, peeps!
President Gives Press Conference… In Rain… Under Umbrella-ella-ella!
Today, U.S. President Barack Obama held a press conference, in which a marine held an umbrella over his head. According to CNN, this is rarely done. Presumably because the President of the United States rarely speaks outside in the rain, because he can watch weather forecasts on CNN and stay inside when there’s a chance of rain, rather than get blown around in a hurricane like Anderson Cooper or former CNN reporter Ali Velshi.
3 Other People We’d Like To See Hold An Umbrella For The President
1. Jay-Z and Rihanna. Because if the image of the President with an umbrella is worthy of front page news on the Fox News site, then why not make it bigger news! The kind of big news like, “Ah, man, I just got this song unstuck from my head after five years and here it is on every cable news program!”
2. The Bee Girl from the Blind Melon Video. She’s good at dancing around to promises of no rain, and as we wrote last year, we hear she’s looking for work!
3. An Umbrella Salesman Selling “Made In America” Umbrellas To Protect The President From Polluted Rain Made In Southeast Asia.
That would be a rare sight indeed! Rarer than a new episode of the Office, as the final episode airs tonight on NBC. Farewell to the Office from Not The Worst News!
Sorry For The Confusion, Ma’am, But It’s Not Called “American Idol Airlines!”
When people follow us, we try to follow back* and read their blogs. And today, we were quite pleased to see a news story from Ken Hegan, who reported for MSN that an American Airlines jet from LAX to JFK had to make an emergency landing… because a woman wouldn’t stop singing Whitney Houston songs. So check out the original link, because it features a passenger-shot video of the incident, with the woman singing “I Will Always Love You.”
3 Worse Artists A Passenger Could Imitate On A Plane, Forcing You To Waste Time During An Emergency Landing
1. Dolly Parton. Not only would you have to endure “I Will Always Love You,” which Parton actually wrote, but if the passenger was behaving this way due to too much alcohol before boarding the plane, you can certainly expect a request that you play the role of Kenny Rogers in a karaoke duet of “Islands In The Stream.” Not only would this be the wrong time for this sort of social behavior, singing about islands in streams is totally inappropriate when flying out of LAX over the Nevada desert!
2. Nickelback. There is never a right time for singing Nickelback, including at Nickelback concerts, even if you are on stage, and you’re Nickelback.
3. Don McLean. Singing his hit “American Pie,” which is about other great musicians dying in a plane crash is hardly going to be a crowd-pleaser on a flight. Especially if other drunken passengers join in singing hits from Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. And if some drunk teenager re-enacts the pie scene from the movie American Pie, in response, you have a reason for once to be happy your flight is not serving any dessert trays.
*If we didn’t follow you back, it’s because WordPress only shows the latest new followers, and we missed your follow notification, so blame the machines!
Swedish Newspapers: Always The Place We Can Find The Most Current Breaking News!
The Local reports that the Swedish National Tax Agency has declared a lumberjack who has been missing for 102 years to be dead. If alive, he would have been 139 years old, which would be older than the oldest person recorded in human history, who incidentally died at age 122.
Way to keep on top of things, Sweden!
3 More Things We Wonder If Sweden Will Declare To Be Dead
1. IKEA breakfast. Because now that McDonald’s may be moving into the all-day-breakfast market, people will no longer have to travel miles to pretend they want to buy furniture to get cheap eggs, that they ironically could have gotten for even less money if they splurged on a fridge from IKEA.
2. Jokes about IKEA on this web site! Although we’d wager furniture stores that sell food are more likely to recall the joke for being mislabelled as “elk meat” than actually declare the joke to be dead.
3. Disco. Sure, the rest of the world might have been saying “Disco’s Dead” around the 1980s, but we understand, Sweden, you had your major export ABBA to protect. It’s okay!
That’s So Not Raven! Disney Reportedly Applied To Trademark “Day of the Dead!”
CNN reports that the Walt Disney Company ”filed an application to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to secure the phrase ‘Día de los Muertos,’ or ‘Day of the Dead,’ across multiple platforms.”
More from the article, followed by original comedy:
“Día de los Muertos is a traditional holiday celebrated on November 1 and 2 in Mexico and across Latin America. People honor the lives of lost family members or friends by building altars, holding processions, decorating gravesites and placing offerings for loved ones.”
Following a backlash, Disney reportedly withdrew the application.
3 More Potentially Unpopular Things For A Family Entertainment Company To Try To Trademark
1. Mother’s Day. Sorry folks, we’re going to have to wish you a happy “Person-Who-Lugged-You-Around-For-Nine-Months-Prior-To-Birth” Day to avoid paying royalties.
2. The Word “Trademark.” Just try to write news stories like this ever again for free, CNN! And kids may find a movie about trademarks as magical as movies about death.
3. “Brunch.” Yeah, we’ve got more bad news, kids. Now that “Brunch” has been trademarked, you’re going to have to take out your mother for “Fast-Lunch” to celebrate ”Person-Who-Lugged-You-Around-For-Nine-Months-Prior-To-Birth” Day. And because the restauranteurs take the idea of “Fast-Lunch” literally, the whole meal has to last under ten minutes, nine minutes of which your mother will remind you is significantly less time than she spent in labor.
Good Will Haunting
Earlier this week, funny blogger Diatribes & Ovations nominated this blog for the WordPress Family Award.
That blog has a tagline: “Because RantsAndRaves was already taken.” And we would like to give an ovation to the person who thought of that name first, because they obviously know what’s in demand. And we would like to start a diatribe about how easy it is for anyone to currently buy the domain VisitThisSiteAndYouWillBeHaunted.com, when that is obviously an awesome web site name, too. See, we just gave you a good idea for a web domain – that’s good will, friends!
To receive the award all we have to do is name 100 blogs we like, 300 blogs we think are just okay, and twenty blogs we accidentally hit “follow” on while reading news about Sweden. Then we just have to post a logo for the award and then keep our fingers crossed that this award actually exists, and isn’t a ghost that lives at the haunted web site we could have bought moments ago.
Of course, we sincerely appreciate these nominations whenever we receive them, and then ignore the rules and immediately proceed to the nominator’s blog and write an entry about their blog.
And accomplishing that has never been so easy, because an entry this week that you can read here, is about funny news headlines!
And one of those headlines was about a man who reportedly accidentally shot his cousin in the shoulder at a Halloween hide-and-seek party gone awry. She was dressed as a skunk, and the shooter’s mother had seen a skunk at the party earlier and asked him to shoot it, which apparently didn’t help matters, when she was hiding on the “ground.”
And you thought you were having a bad day!
3 Worse Halloween Costumes To Wear At A Party Where People Will Also Be Hunting
1. The U.S. Constitution. Nothing’s more embarrassing or ironic than accidentally shooting someone right in the second amendment part of their costume.
2. A Copy of the DVD Good Will Hunting. Okay, shooting a DVD isn’t exactly showing good will, especially if you’re holding apples and the shooter quotes the movie “How you like them apples,” after shooting the apples, leaving you with hands full of apple sauce.
3. Bullet-proof Body Armor Salesman. Wearing the body armor would be a good idea at such a party. Carrying it door-to-door in a briefcase, not so much.
“Every 105-Year-Old’s Doing It, Why Can’t We?” We’d Imagine 1990s Rockers The Cranberries Might Say.
Yahoo reports that a 105-year-old woman from Texas proudly eats bacon every day!
3 Additional Seemingly Unlikely Things Someone Could* Do To Live To Be A Hundred Instead Of Eating Bacon Every Day
1. Smoke bacon-wrapped nicotine-filled cigarettes, then eat the second-hand smoke-covered bacon.
2. After a life of smoking bacon-wrapped cigarettes, get a lung transplant, replacing your lung with bacon strips formed into the shape of a lung. Mmmmmmmmmmmm… the sweet smell of bacon with every breath!
3. Instead of exercising, watch a pig on a treadmill at your local gym, while you eat bacon-wrapped-bacon. We’re guessing the pig will want to get as far away from you as possible, but may not realize the treadmill is not the best way to accomplish that goal. Still, more fun and better exercise than a trip to a pork-rendering plant!
*Not a recommendation! Consult your doctor before doing any ridiculous things involving bacon! Maybe if you bring your doctor some bacon they will be especially happy to prescribe you with “More bacon!”
Gerbil Beauty Pageants: Better Than Other Trump Organization-Affiliated Pageants?
The Associated Press reports that the American Gerbil’s Society recently held its annual pageant in Massachusetts to determine “top gerbil.”
3 Pageants We’d Less Like To Judge
1. New York City’s Top Rat. Our reluctance to judge such a competition has less to do with fear of cat-sized rats, and more to do with fear that our top choice for co-judge, a.k.a. “America’s Top Gerbil” may be inadvertently eaten by one of the rat contestants.
2. Australia’s Top Stinger. While possibly less dangerous than “Australia’s Top Biter,” we don’t want to have to disappoint a pageant full of Man Of War jellyfish that they failed the swimsuit part of the completion. Also if you really want to convince judges at a pageant that you are sincere about world peace, you might want to change your name to something more pacifist than “Man Of War.”
3. Maui’s Top Fruit Fly. This pageant would be over before it started. By the time the fruit flies’ owners filled in our 50 page applications, and boarded a ten+ hour flight to Hawaii, many fruit flies would be middle-aged to retired. And it their average 24 hour lifespans didn’t do them in, then the Department of Agriculture would probably deny them admission to the state, making for a weak slate of contestants.
