…from Today’s Star Tribune:
Diane Ruffcorn, Audio Darts aficionado and Lead Economist for the Obama Administration.
That Explains It
15
Category Archives: HUMOR
All Wheel Drive Anxiety
I apologize.
You see when it snows like this – you know, constant, fine, light snow, the roads get slippery and when you hit the gas you slip and slide.
You sit and spin.
The thing is…ever since I got this car with all-wheel-drive, when I hit the gas, I just go.
Rain, snow, small animals, volcanic ash. Nothing can stop me!
Yes!!! It’s like I’m a God!!!!!
Lord of the Lanes! Baron of the Boulevard! Potentate of the Interstate!
Four-wheeled power – an advantage, right?! Sure…if you’re not in front of me when the light turns green.
And when you are, I get so very anxious. I’ve become an all-wheel-drive snob and I’m not proud of it.
“C’mon! Letsgo letsgo letsgo letsgo letsgo letsgo letsgo letsgo letsgo! What?! Are you paid by the hour!!!”
(not that there’s anything wrong with that)
It’s like being the guy that gets frustrated and everyone thinks is so annoying because his Mensa IQ affords him the luxury of “getting” things so much quicker, but then he has to wait until everyone else catches up while he rolls his eyes.
He’s not the one that gets the girl, is he.
Like that insipid commercial for AT&T where the portly passenger with the fastest network gets the download quicker than everyone else in the car, and laughs out loud. Thirty more seconds go by and the rest of the passengers get the download and do the same.
They’re the popular ones. They’re late, but having all the fun.
It’s lonely at the top.
This winter we’ve had way more than our share of snow and as a result we’ve been sitting in lines, three lanes wide, like cattle in a slaughter line, waiting waiting waiting to get to the office or home.
And there I sit, with the power to go go go!!! …if it weren’t for the 1985 Crown Vic in front of me.
It’s like a curse.
God I miss my Harley.
Ohio’s Cinderella Man
By now you’ve seen the viral YouTube video and the media darling it made of Ted Williams.
But is this a true story of redemption or a soon-to-be cautionary tale?
Only time will tell. I’m rooting for him. This guy not so much.
What do you think?
Don We Now…
Jamie Lee: You Lie!
I know this is a bit off the radar for SITD but I don’t know of many television commercials more absurd; more ridiculous; more annoying than those yogurt commercials where Jamie Lee Curtis pounces on chipper but apparently constipated passers by all too willing to sample yogurt that’s way too yummy to be formulated to assist you in “cleaning our your accounts payable.”
(…and yes, that’s an arrow pointing to a woman’s crotch)
As if the spots weren’t aggravating enough, it turns out they were bogus. Who can imagine a world where a delicious magical milky pudding that helps you “drop off the kids” and keeps you safe from the common cold…is just a fairy tale?
The U.S. unit of French food giant Danone S.A. agreed to settle state and federal investigations into alleged false advertising about the health benefits of its Activia yogurt and DanActive dairy drinks for $21 million, federal officials announced Wednesday.
The Federal Trade Commission said Dannon, a unit of French food and bottled waters company Danone, will drop claims that its Activia yogurt and dairy products will help prevent colds or alleviate digestive problems. The company wasn’t immediately available for comment.
Well we know it’s not because they were in the bathroom.
Good to know the FTC has the time and resources to care…let alone investigate the claims that Activia helps you “lay down the law.”
I would expect no less than ten additional references to “boweling for dollars” in the comments section. Thank you in advance.
And now, something totally different:
I’m just saying…
With All Due Respect Mr. President
I thought this was amusing and I hope we’re on the same page. I wanted to take a moment to step out of the box and socialize this theme and seek synergies even though this post probably isn’t mission-critical so we’re not going to expend a lot of our bandwidth on it.
You say, “I love my job.”
You really mean, “I need my job.”
Get Out of the Way
"Oops. Gotta go dearie. I crapped myself."
Just what we need…
To reach the older market, wireless carriers are offering lessons in how to text, introducing phones with oversized buttons and fine-tuning their marketing strategies.
…octogenarians texting behind the wheel…how much slower could they go in the left lane with their turn signal on for the last ten miles?
Why Gift Cards Were Invented
If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding, how can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat!
Does Bill Cosby Know This?
the substance used to make Jell-O, as well as many gummy candies, marshmallows, puddings and taffies – is often made from the skin, bone and tendons of animals, usually cows or pigs. The manufacturer grinds up these animal parts, treats them with a strong acid or base for a few days to help release the collagen, then boils the mixture. Then, they scrape the gelatin, which rises to the top of this boiling mixture, from the vats. One big user, Kraft, sells 300 million boxes of Jell-O in the U.S. each year and offers 158 products under the Jell-O brand name. (Jell-O is even the “Official State Snack” of Utah.)
“I am proud to be an American. Because an American can eat anything on the face of this earth as long as he has two pieces of bread.” Bill Cosby
That Little Bit Of Wind In My Morning Sails
A few months ago, I attended a get-together with a few candidates.
Now, the upside of a huge surge year like this is that you get a lot of people who are taking their first run at politics, and miiiiight need a little polish to their presentation skills.
But I can feel good that not a single Republican candidate I met came across quite like this.
No, I’m feeling pretty good now.
Dear State Of New York
Dear New York State: your rent is too damn high.
He can be your Jesse Ventura.
He’d actually do less damage than Andrew Cuomo…
Opportunity Lost
I almost hoped Queen Elizabeth would come out the door of the palace…
…but apparently the Royals don’t have the keen eye for comedy that the rest of us do.
Orville Freeman Would Be Proud. Or Sad.
I’m proud to announce the winners of the “Write Lori Sturdevant’s GOP Conventi0n Column” contest!
It was the tightest contest in the history of Shot In The Dark, with my evil twin brother Jed’s “Anger Close” barely tipping Dave from Mound’s “A Tale Of Two Cities“, by a total of two votes. Speed Gibson’s “It’s The GOP’s Turn To Unify” came in a close third.
Thanks to everyone for participating!
Help! I’m Being Repressed!
I just got a message:
I am [name redacted]: I am a big DFLer, who was a key player in our 2008 legislative landslide, and who is working on one of the front-running DFL gubernatorial campaigns. I am on a first-name basis with every single DFL leader; I am welcomed into every DFL legislator’s and candidate’s office with my first name. I am, in DFL terms, the shizzle.
I hate you, Merg, and I am going to kill you; I am going to shoot you in the face as your friends and relatives look on in mute horror. And then I’m going to steal a helicopter and drop a huge firebomb on the Tea Party, killing all you Teabagger wingnuts.
By the way, hundreds of my public-employee union friends helped me write this email, and want you to know they’ll be there to defile the corpses afterward.
Please don’t print my name.
Since this key DFL player (seriously! That’s what his message said!) asked me not to print his name, I must respect his wishes.
But wow – it’s a threat! Honest! From someone claiming to be a huge DFL organizer! At the head of an angry mob!
Wow.
So will the DFL and all liberals repudiate this violent threat? Or do they approve of death threats?
Hey, if Andy Birkey can impugn an entire movement based on his blithe assurance that a crank caller claimed to be a key Tea Partier, really, what’s the problem with the above?
[Note to the dense; the above is pure satire; unlike Steny Hoyer, Reps. Lewis and Cleaver, I make no claim that these slandrous claims are true. And unlike Andy Birkey, I’m not going to insult your intelligence by asking you to generalize about an entire party, union or movement based on – let’s be bluntly honest – transparent bullshit).
Put Me In Coach!
Michael Moore is pledging to whip Obama and Democrats in Congress into shape – liberal shape – if he is named the next White House chief of staff. And Moore vows to sleep in the White House basement and work for $1 per year if the president hires him.
“Now, don’t get too giddy with excitement over my offer, because you and I are going to be up at 5 in the morning, 7 days a week and I am going to get you pumped up for battle every single day,” Moore writes in a letter posted on his Web site that he said was sent to Obama. “Each morning you and I will do 100 jumping jacks and you will repeat after me: “THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ELECTED ME, NOT THE REPUBLICANS, TO RUN THE COUNTRY! I AM IN CHARGE! I WILL ORDER ALL OBSTRUCTIONISTS OUTTA MY WAY! IF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DON’T LIKE WHAT I’M DOING THEY CAN THROW MY ASS OUT IN 2012. IN THE MEANTIME, I CALL THE SHOTS ON THEIR BEHALF! NOW, CONGRESS, DROP AND GIVE ME 50!!”
Okay, put aside for a moment the unrestrained use of all-caps…and the call for a dictatorship…before Michael Moore orders congress to do 100 jumping jacks and 50 push ups, I’d like to see Michael Moore do…just one…of either.
Just one.
One floppy man-boobs jumping jack.
“With or without Michael Moore, Democrats are in for a rude awakening in November”
…but with Michael Moore they’d be in for a rude awakening when they find two years’ worth of chicken wing bones and empty Snack Pack Pudding cups in the basement of the White House.
It’s Science, Dammit
Look – I have utmost respect for the ideals of the scientific method; the rigor and skepticism that one must bring to genuine inquiry.
And so while I’m the last person in the world to try to turn the recent revelations that Dr. Bruce Ivins – the FBI’s prime suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five Americans, who killed himself as the investigation closed in – was a cross-dressing …:
After the Department of Justice last month formally closed its probe of the 2001 anthrax attacks, the FBI released the first batch of documents detailing the years-long investigation that ended with officials concluding that Bruce Ivins, a government scientist who committed suicide in July 2008, was responsible for the mailings that killed five victims. The records, released pursuant to Freedom of Information Act requests, portray Ivins as becoming increasingly unhinged as it became clear that he was the principal target of the FBI’s “Amerithrax” probe. Additionally, the memos–a selection of which you’ll find on the following pages–reveal how agents examined every aspect of Ivins’s life, monitored his e-mails, searched his trash, and were even surveilling his Maryland home at the exact time he was inside overdosing. Despite being an FBI target, Ivins was often forthcoming about the details of his strange obsessions and private life. For example, as seen below, when agents executed search warrants in late-2007, an FBI supervisor asked Ivins if he was worried about those raids. Ivins said he was, noting that he did things a “middle age man should not do,” adding that his actions would “not be acceptable to most people.” He then noted that agents searching his basement would find a “bag of material that he uses to ‘cross-dress,'” according to an interview report.
…stolen-panty-sniffing…
Three months before his suicide, surveillance agents sifted through trash Ivins left at his curb and discovered that the beleaguered scientist was disposing of pornographic magazines, fetish titles, and 15 pairs of stained women’s panties. When an FBI lab analysis of the underwear showed that semen was detected on 14 of the garments, a grand jury directive was issued to obtain DNA from Ivins.
…Obama supporter…
In a July 2008 e-mail, Ivins wrote that “Dick Cheney scares me. The Patriot Act is so unconstitutional it’s not even funny.” He added, “I’m voting for Obama!”
…with an odd sense of priorities…:
A laboratory co-worker reported that Ivins hated the New York Yankees and thought New Yorkers were “elitist.”
…into some elaborate generalization about people with whom I disagree about politics, my respect for science means I have to admit I have no evidence that says I should discount the theory, either.
It’s science. Just saying.
Mystery
Bob Collins broke the story; the mystery billboard is not only real, it’s in the ‘burbs of the Twin Cities:
National Public Radio is on the case; dissidents must be rounded up:
At first glance, it would seem to be from some person or group who isn’t thrilled by President Barack Obama’s performance so far — unless it’s a more ironic message from those who didn’t think too much of Bush and want to remind voters about him.
Anyone out there know anything about where it came from? Tell us and we’ll pass the word to Bob. As he says, we could do a little crowdsourcing.
Or, as we who remember the Clinton years refer to it, “scouting for the IRS”.
Daddy?
Today former cover girl and presidential candidate John Edwards admitted that he is in fact the father of Rielle Hunter’s 2-year old daughter. However, it is being reported that Edwards needed proof first.
So he asked former aide Andrew Young to perform above and beyond the call of duty.
The results? Conclusive. The diaper was full of shit, just like her father.
Eat Dirt
Vegetarians choose not to eat meat for a variety of reasons. Some cite the lower fat and cholesterol and higher fiber on their plates. Others for more emotional reasons: they don’t want to eat anything that smiles back at them. Hypothetically at least.
I stopped eating pork about eight years ago, after a scientist happened to mention that the animal whose teeth most closely resemble our own is the pig. Unable to shake the image of a perky little pig flashing me a brilliant George Clooney smile, I decided it was easier to forgo the Christmas ham.
George Clooney’s political bent certainly qualifies him as a pig, but I hardly think he looks like one. Or vice versa.
If God didn’t want us to eat animals, why did he make ’em smell so good when they’re cookin’?
Now scientists (possibly those furlowed in the recent Global Warming controversy) are telling us that vegetables should be off the table too.
we might consider that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas clay pot.
Plants are lively and seek to keep it that way.
It’s time for a green revolution, a reseeding of our stubborn animal minds.
Sorry, what? I couldn’t hear you, I was trying to bite off a chunk of my laptop battery. I think I chipped a tooth.
When plant biologists speak of their subjects, they use active verbs and vivid images. Plants “forage” for resources like light and soil nutrients and “anticipate” rough spots and opportunities. By analyzing the ratio of red light and far red light falling on their leaves, for example, they can sense the presence of other chlorophyllated competitors nearby and try to grow the other way. Their roots ride the underground “rhizosphere” and engage in cross-cultural and microbial trade.
Maybe so, but can they dance?
Plants can scream though. Sort of.
Some of the compounds that plants generate in response to insect mastication [that means chewing gutter-huggers-JR] — their feedback, you might say — are volatile chemicals that serve as cries for help. Such airborne alarm calls have been shown to attract both large predatory insects like dragon flies, which delight in caterpillar meat, and tiny parasitic insects, which can infect a caterpillar and destroy it from within.
So dragon flies can eat delicious caterpillar meat but I can’t?
It’s a small daily tragedy that we animals must kill to stay alive.
If that’s not a bumper sticker yet, it should be.
Plants are the ethical autotrophs here, the ones that wrest their meals from the sun. Don’t expect them to boast: they’re too busy fighting to survive.
Well then, why didn’t the Democrats include plants in the health care bill? Don’t they care?
So as you sit down to your bountiful (hopefully) table later this week, have compassion. Remember: you can’t eat animals; you can’t eat plants. Merry Christmas!
Not True
Stimulus funding a Shot in the Dark
We are self funded, thank you very much.
To Good To Be True
Is Barack Obama from another planet?
Mystery as spiral blue light display hovers above Norway (while Obama was in Norway?)
The mystery began when a blue light seemed to soar up from behind a mountain in the north of the country. It stopped mid-air, then began to move in circles. Within seconds a giant spiral had covered the entire sky.
The light bears some resemblence to Obama’s logo!
Are his people trying to beam him back home?
Is there a way we could assist them?
Extraterrestrial citizenship would certainly play into the Birthers argument.
Purple Jesus
Evidently Adrian Peterson fears Brad Childress more than the Edina Police Department having been clocked on his way to practice at 109 MPH in his Purple BMW 7-Series [Ugh!-JR] on the Crosstown Highway 62.
Minnesota Vikings All-Pro running back Adrian Peterson – or “Purple Jesus” as he’s known to Vikings fans
[sound of record scratching fading to tires screeching]
“Purple Jesus” ?
– is one of the fastest men in the NFL. Turns out, he’s also one of the fastest men on a certain suburban Minnesota freeway, where police clocked him and his (model unknown) BMW going 109 mph in a 55 mph zone.
I’ve watched or listened to most of every Vikings game this season and haven’t once…not once…heard the moniker “Purple Jesus” let alone heard it applied to Adrian Peterson.
Have you?
Riddle me this:
What Would Jesus Do if he was late to practice?
Would he even need to practice?
Would Jesus be a first-round draft choice?
Would he have to wear a helmet?
Would he drive a BMW?
All crucial questions for our time, indeed.
In any case, sounds like our “Purple Jesus” will need to get a ride from Steve Hutchinson from now on.
Ditto
Transcript: President Obama’s Call to Afghan President Hamid Karzai
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama greeted Hamid Karzai’s election victory with as much admonishment as praise on Monday, pointedly advising America’s partner in war he must make more serious efforts to end corruption in Afghanistan’s government and prepare his nation to ultimately defend itself.
Shot In The Dark exclusively obtained the transcript from US President Barack Obama’s telephone call to Afghan President Hamid Karzai today:
[sound of technician pushing start button on teleprompter]
Obama: I want to emphasize that this has to be a point in time in which we begin to write a new chapter.
Karzai: Let me offer you assurances that a new chapter that we will begin at this point in time will be one like which you have emphasized.
Obama: The proof is not going to be in words. It’s going to be in deeds.
[sound of Karzai’s hand covering mouthpiece of reciever and muffled sounds of snickering and then laughing audibly; mockingly]
Obama: Karzai! What are you doing?!!
Karzai: [chuckles] I’m sorry…uh…Mr. Obama, did you…Barack Obama…say….[chuckles] words [chuckles]…not deeds?!
Obama: Yes, make no mistake. The proof –
Karzai: [chuckles] I’m sorry. Are you serious? “Click”
[sound of dial tone]
Obama: [pretends to still be in conversation for the benefit of adjacent staff members]
[sound of technician pushing stop button on teleprompter, snickering]
Bill Clinton: See? I toldja Barry. Let me call ‘m next time.
Hillary Clinton: Guys! I’m still on the speakerphone…I heard that!
[sound of former President Clinton hanging up on former first lady and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton]
[sound of Vice President Joseph Biden awakening from catnap on Oval Office couch]
–end of transcript–