Tag Archives: football

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Self-Rejection

I have been content to have been saddled with the second-most common – and boring – surname in the English language.  Others have not been so lucky, or accepting.

Many years ago, a young female co-worker had married a Lithuanian-Canadian named Butkevicius.  He felt that the name was too long – too complicated – too confusing to others – too…. European??  He wanted to change it to something shorter, easier.  In all naivety, and with no sense of irony, I suggested he change it to something like “Butkus.”  She replied, “That’s what his American cousin, the football player, did.”  They were related to Dick Butkus, but still hadn’t changed their surname, the last time I saw her.

I was hired to replace a man who had given his two-week notice.  His name was Scheibelhoffer, which, strangely, translates as someone hoping for discs.  Back in the days of paper checks, he complained that it took two, for him to sign his name.  He wanted to become simply ‘Hoffer,’ but found that government bureaucracy, with forms, and fees, and warrants, and applications, made it too expensive.  While accepted as a German name, it’s actually more likely to be Austrian, where polysyllabic names like Schwarzenegger and Lautenschlager are common.

A girl named King moved from Newfoundland to our German host city, and soon married a perpetual child named Detwiler.  Even after getting married, and siring a son, on most fair-weather weekends, he would be building and racing go-carts. She came home one Sunday evening, after a weekend visit to an aunt, to find a $3500, full-size, fully functional replica of Dr. Who’s Dalek in the living room.  The divorce could not come too soon.

She wanted to be separate, not only from him, but his name, and any impending bankruptcy, but, like the guy above, she found that going back to her maiden name through the courthouse, would cost $750.  She was already seeing a new man when she told me of her problem.  I suggested that the new romance might solve it.  Sure enough, just over two years from the divorce, she married a mature mechanical engineer who earned 2 or 3 times what we did, and got the new surname, Johnson, for the cost of a marriage license.

The German-Canadian family of a co-worker named Fischer, became an English-Canadian family named Fisher, during WW II – even here in a German city, once named Berlin.  😮

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’24 A To Z Challenge – H

GUILTY BY ASSOCIATION

I’m going to say write a word, and I want you to tell me the first thing that comes into my head.

HAVERSACK

The British equivalent of an American tote bag, or one-shoulder-strapped backpack.  I don’t know what poor Haver did that got it thrown in a sack.  Maybe it’s like a pig in a poke, or the cat that you have to let out of the bag.

HACKY SACK

a game in which a footbag is juggled with the feet.
It can be played with one person, two, or more, and one footbag, two, or more, with bags being passed back and forth among players.  It’s good practice for a possible future in soccer (British – footie) – or musical comedy.

HACKENSACK

Hackensack is a fairly large city in the State of New Jersey.  The name comes from an Otonabee Indian word meaning, “Man, what a dump!”  If this is New Jersey, what does Old Jersey look like??!

HACKNEY

A hackney is/was a single-horse-drawn carriage – or the horse that pulled one, with a small body slung between two large wheels, and the driver standing behind.  Anyone who has watched Victorian-era Sherlock Holmes movies has seen one – or many.  They were as common as air in London – or as common as Yellow Cabs in modern New York.  They were so numerous that they gave birth to a new English adjective – HACKNEYED – meaning, trite, commonplace, or clichéd.

Like the movie list of 1963, which included, Hud, The Haunting, High and Low, and The Haunted Palace, this has been another H of a post.  😀

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I Can’t Bear The Humor

One day a housework challenged husband decided to wash his sweatshirt. Seconds after he stepped into the laundry room, he shouted to his wife, “What setting do I use on the washing machine?” “It depends,” she replied. “What does it say on your shirt?”
Proudly he yelled back, “Chicago Bears!”

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Max and his wife Lola received a letter from their daughter who had gone to study Modern Biochemistry overseas:

She wrote: My beloved parents, I miss you so much and it breaks my heart to think that by the time I get back, you will be so old. Therefore, I am enclosing a bottle of a red potion that I have invented. It will make you 5 years younger and so when I return, you will be the same age as I left you. Please, take only a drop.
Goodbye I love you!”

They opened the envelope and found the bottle with the red potion.

Max looked at his wife and said. “You go first.”

Lola took a drop and when she indeed turned 5 years younger, Max immediately did the same.

Years later, the daughter returns home to find her mother, she is younger and happier and she is carrying a baby on her back. She tells her daughter how the potion worked and how it has made her look younger. The daughter is happy and she asks about her father.

“Your father? Hmmm! You know how men don’t listen! He drank the whole bottle.”

“Whaaat! Where is he?”

“Who do you think is on my back?”

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You thought that the last couple of jokes were bad??  Well, this Fibonacci joke is worse than the last two, combined.

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Two kids are arguing over whose father is the biggest scaredy-cat.
The first kid says, “My dad is so scared that when lightning strikes, he hides underneath the bed.”

The second kid replies, ”Yeah? Well, that’s nothing. My dad is so scared that when my mom has to work the nightshift, he sleeps with the lady next door.”

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A group of engineering professors are all offered a free trip to Hawaii and are aboard the plane about to depart when the pilot announces, “This trip is a gift from all your grateful students over the years, students who, by the way, built this very plane you’re about to fly in.”

The professors immediately panic and make a break for the exits, all save one who sits calmly in their seat.

“Are you crazy?” another professor asks them. “Didn’t you hear that our students built this plane?”

“What are you all even worried about?” came the reply. “It’s not like this thing is going to fly!”

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Fibbing Friday Older Than Me

Pensitivity101 says that these are recycled questions from Teresa Grabs who was the Fibbing Friday originator:

1. Jonah wasn’t swallowed by a whale…he was swallowed by an ____. Unceasing, never-ending, monsoon of useless, feel-good, corporate regulations, since Wendy Woke became head of H.R.

2. Who (or what) could make even the fiercest pirate quake in his boots?  Not ants in his pant, but termites in his wooden leg.

3. What did Huckleberry Finn have to really paint?  He had to paint over the fact that it was really Tom Sawyer, and that it was really whitewash, not paint.

4. What is the best food that can be paired with red wine?  Uber Eats.

5. What are you wearing in the sun?  Just a smile and a Jantzen.  I tried to join the local nudist colony, and just wear the smile, but management said that could cause a heart attack – mine – or someone else’s.

6. Why do dogs chase after cars?  I took my dog duck-hunting, but I couldn’t toss him high enough.  At least with cars, he thinks he has a chance to catch one.

7. What did the cat say to its kitten about the humans?  Meow, meow, meow, meow!  Meow, meow, meow, meow!  Translation here.

8. Goldfish are not fish. What are they?

Little crackers – until they get soggy.  Then they’re real fish food.

9. What would you rather do instead of sleeping?  Wanna hear a joke about sleeping?  Eight hours.  Yeah, I don’t get it either.  Jeff Foxworthy says that, when you’re young, and you have a choice between sleep and sex, you choose sex.  When you get older, and married, and have kids, you choose sleep, and just hope to have a dream about sex.  As an ever-aging senior with a wife whose CPAP machine is devil-possessed, and my own broken sleep cycle, I’d just like to have a dream about sleeping.

10. The Phantom didn’t haunt the Opera House…he haunted the ____  Super Bowl stadium to get a Taylor Swift autograph.  Personally, I don’t watch football, so I don’t know who this Taylor Swift is, but he sounds fast.

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Tweets For Twits – Just Deserts Course

If you didn’t know yet, God is on Twitter.  He has a few more things to say about the human condition, which He takes no blame or responsibility for.

In an ideal scenario, the President of The United States, and the worst person in the world, would be two different people.

I genuinely can’t remember making you all this stupid.

To paraphrase me: Being gay is not a choice.
Being an asshole is.

America: Where a black man can’t take a knee on a football field for 30 seconds, but a cop can take a knee on his neck for eight minutes.

Most people who doubt a woman’s claim of assault, do NOT doubt that I had a son who rose from the dead.

You should not vaccinate your children – unless you are absolutely sure that you want them to live.

Next time, no people.

There is life in outer space, and it is intelligent, and that’s why it is staying far from you.

If gay people are a mistake, they’re a mistake that I’ve made hundreds of millions of times, which proves I’m incompetent, and cannot be relied on for anything.

The idea that you evolved from apes is disgusting.
Isn’t it nicer to believe that you all descended from one couple and their incestuous children??!

Just because Jesus died for your sins doesn’t mean that you should keep committing them, assholes.

THE FIVE STAGES OF CLIMATE CHANGE
Denial
Guilt
Depression
Acceptance
Drowning

Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day.
Teach a man to fish and he’ll contribute to the global over-depletion of the oceans.
So give him a salad, maybe??!

The answer to the question, “Can people really be that stupid?” is always yes!

If you can’t get along with CANADA, you’re not human.

Standing up for what you believe in isn’t a virtue, if what you believe in is awful.

I am now the most unverified account on Twitter, and the biggest unverified entity in the Universe.

150 different species go extinct every day.
You keep not being one of them.

Six feet away, or six feet under.

I apologise for this virus interrupting the global catastrophe already in progress.

Saying “guns don’t kill people” is like saying “defibrillators don’t save people.”

Artificial Intelligence is not a threat to Humanity.  Natural stupidity is!

Somewhere in China, there’s a bat getting high-fives from every other animal he meets.

It’s only been a short time, but Steven Hawking has already proven, to My Face, that I don’t exist.


Fuck you!

Marriage is between a man and a woman – except gay marriage, obviously.

The people who call out my name Sunday morning aren’t as much fun as the ones who call it out Saturday night.

These are not His final words, just the last ones in this post.

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WOW #59

Here’s a soft, sweet piece of nostalgia for this week’s Word Of the Week

POTSY

Potsy means = hopscotch, and several dictionary websites have no idea why, except to say that it is an Americanism, first noted 1930 – 35.  The ‘scotch’ in hopscotch is a line – cut, or scored – made a mark.  This is why Macbeth said, “We have scotched the snake, not killed it.”  Sweet butterscotch is removed from a large, flat sheet by cutting or scoring it.  I thought that butterscotch was a gateway drug for teenage drinking.  You loved Butter Beer at Harry Potter’s, now try our single malt – Butter Scotch.

Potsy

In the popular TV series, Happy Days, Anson Williams played the character of Potsy (actually, Potsie) Weber, which matched the goofy, likable character of Skippy, in the Family Ties series.  Both nicknames may have been applied because of their nerdy, ADHD type of erratic behavior, bouncing and skipping from subject to subject.

Potsy (or Potsie) is obviously just a nickname, and not very common.  Other than the Happy Days reference, the only other ‘Potsy’ I could find was Thomas Clinton –Tom – ‘Potsy’ Jones (1909 – 1980), who played NFL football for eight years in the early 1930s, for four different teams.

Despite extensive research (alright, I Googled it and got no answer), I can’t find how/why/when he acquired it.  Now that Canada has legalized marijuana, I wonder if we’ll start hearing of more Canucks named Potsy, who are One Toke Over The Line.

It would be sweet if you’d hop back here on Monday, to see what verbal abuse I’ve inflicted on the English language, in the name of the letter F.  There’s no need for social distancing, so you won’t have to form a line.  😀

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Heads Or Tails

Ref

A guy took his blonde girlfriend to a super bowl game.  They had great seats right behind their team’s bench. After the game he asked her how she liked it. “Oh, I really liked it,” she replied.  “I just don’t understand why they were killing each other over 25 cents.”  Confused, her boyfriend asked, “What do you mean?”  “Well they flipped a coin, one team got it, then for the rest of the game, all they kept screaming was…‘Get the quarterback!  Get the quarterback!’  I’m like Hellooooo, it’s only 25 cents!”

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Donald Trump meets with the Queen.

He asks her, “Your Majesty, how do you run such an efficient government? Are there any tips you can give to me?”

“Well,” says the Queen, “the most important thing is to surround yourself with intelligent people.”

Trump frowns. “But how do I know the people around me are really intelligent?”

The Queen takes a sip of tea. “Oh, that’s easy. You just ask them to answer an intelligence riddle.”

The Queen pushes a button on her intercom. “Please send Theresa May in here, would you?”

Theresa May walks into the room. “Yes, my Queen?”

The Queen smiles. “Answer me this, please, Theresa. Your mother and father have a child. It is not your brother and it is not your sister. Who is it?”

Without pausing for a moment, Theresa answers, “That would be me.”

“Yes! Very good,” says the Queen.

Back at the White House, Trump asks to speak with Vice President Mike Pence.

“Mike, answer this for me. Your mother and father have a child. It’s not your brother and it’s not your sister. Who is it?”

“I’m not sure,” says the Vice President. “Let me get back to you on that one.”

Mike Pence goes to his advisers and asks every one, but none can give him an answer. Finally, he ends up in the men’s room and recognizes General McMasters’ shoes in the next stall.

Mike shouts, “General! Can you answer this for me? Your mother and your father have a child and it’s not your brother or your sister. Who is it?

General McMaster yells back, “That’s easy. It’s me!”

Mike Pence smiles. “Thanks!” and goes back to the Oval Office to speak with Trump.

“Say, I did some research and I have the answer to that riddle. It’s General McMaster.”

Trump gets up, stomps over to Mike Pence, and angrily yells in his face, “No, you idiot! It’s Theresa May!”

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Father: “Son, you were adopted.”
Son: “I knew it.  I want to meet my biological parents.”
Father: “We are your biological parents.  Now pack up quickly, your new ones will be here to pick you up in 20 minutes.”

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Priest

Two priests are driving down a road when they are pulled over by the cops.  The cop swings a flashlight in their faces and signals to the driver to roll down his window. “We’re searching for two child molesters,” he says.  The driver leans over to the other priest and they whisper between themselves.  Finally, he turns back to the policeman. “Ok. We’ll do it.”

 

 

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Cultural Clash

Guy Fawkes

In each minority group, there are always one or more fanatics who can lead themselves, their faction, and society, into trouble. It’s what got Guy Fawkes tortured and executed.

Here in Kitchener, in Toronto, and in many other cities, the (What are they calling themselves today?? Negroes?  Blacks?  Colored?  African- Americans/Canadians?) are upset, and calling for an end to ‘Carding,’ – random stops of people by police, to identify themselves.

Black spokesmen claim that this practice unfairly focuses on people of color, yet statistically, it is ‘people of color’ – usually young black males – who are proven to commit more crimes, especially against other Negroes, than white folks.

The Toronto Police Force has CROs – Community Relations Officers – who hang out in various schools, helping out, coaching or refereeing sports, and generally showing that the Police are ‘good guys’. Black citizens’ representatives demanded that they be removed, because black children felt threatened, harassed and oppressed.  If you don’t do the crime, you won’t do the time.

Black Lives Matter. All lives matter, including the black, and the white, cops who are trying to protect all the population.  In Toronto, a rabble-rousing female spokeswoman for BLM, has high-jacked this year’s Gay Pride Parade.  It’s unclear just how she gained control – perhaps sheer volume.

At first, she and her cabal – and these aren’t even home-grown Negroes; they’re immigrants – demanded that the police not be allowed to march in the parade. After a large public hue and cry of protest, the demand has been modified.  The police may march as a group, but will not be allowed to wear their uniforms – symbols of authority and control.  A similar ‘activist’ has exacted a similar demand in Winnipeg.

I recently took the daughter shopping. I often check out through the ‘12 Items Or Less – Express lane’.  This day, I only had 1 item, but the daughter had 16 or 18.  In all honesty and fairness, we decided to use a regular lane.  Besides the Express, there were only 2 open.  The line from one extended back into the bread department, but the other….  I could see a man at the front with 2 or 3 items.  Behind him were only two women, both like the daughter, with a few items on the bottoms of their carts.

Nearby, jammed against the rack with the gum, candy, and National Enquirers, was another, fully-loaded cart, but no-one around. I motioned at it, and raised an eyebrow.  The daughter shrugged, and we quickly got in line behind the second woman.  The man at the front cashed out.  We moved up.  When the first woman’s items were almost all scanned, the second started to unload her stuff, and we moved up again.

Now, a 20ish black football player showed up and grabbed the cart.  He started to push toward the checkout, and the daughter moved the front of her cart a bit, so that he wouldn’t drive it into her.  When we didn’t move any further than that, he looked at me, pointed to the checkout, and said, “I was there.” I replied, “Yes, you were – then you abandoned your cart, blocking people, and went away, to do some more shopping.”  “I wasn’t shopping. I just went to get some more items.”
“THAT’S SHOPPING!”

“Well, I don’t think I should have to stand and wait. Your wife was going to let me in line”  “She’s my daughter, and she’s handicapped.  She doesn’t want to stand in line and wait for you.  You’re a big, strong, healthy guy, (I pointed at his tree-trunk legs.) you can do it.

“Oh, she’s handicapped?? I didn’t notice.”  The daughter said, “And the big shiny crutch didn’t give you an idea??”, and shook it at him.  Now he tried a different tack. “I’m going to tell you something.” “No shit!  Could I stop you?” “I’m from Jamaica; you know what I’m saying?” “Sometimes!  Vaguely!”  (That went right over his head.)

“You people say, (What people?  White people?) that Canada is a welcoming country, and Canadians are kind and well-mannered, but I see people swearing at the clerk at Tim Horton’s, and arguing with the checkouts here, because there’s a back-up, and they have to wait.” I said, “That’s probably because of guys like you, who butt into line and hold things up.”  Game!  Set!  Match!

What a case of creeping entitlement! If you want to be welcomed by kind, well-mannered Canadians, you gotta show some respect and good manners of your own.  Not all of us are apologising doormats, and some of us do not suffer arrogant fools well.

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Smitty’s Loose Change #3

Smitty's Loose Change

A Provincial Liberal spin-doctor, trying to justify the amounts of money spent (wasted) by the Government, wrote, “We’ve increased Guaranteed Income Supplement payments for seniors. We’ve started building more roads, bridges and transit to create jobs, and help you get to work on time at the end of a long day.”  Would that be in a cart placed firmly in front of the horse, or is it as we go to our second job, to be able to pay the taxes to replace what they’ve frittered away?

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The above ranks right up there with the sign in the Notre Dame football locker-room that says, “Success is getting up one more time than you’ve been knocked down.” Go ahead, try that.  You haven’t been knocked down, so you only have to get up once….  This success thing is harder than it looks – especially in university mathematics.

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The term for ‘It’s been wrong so often and for so long, that now it’s right, is ‘hypercorrect incorrectness.’ All those who haven’t nodded off, can now pray to have Archon’s OCD cured.

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“The better you feel about yourself, the less you feel the need to show off.” And now I know why I’m so low-key.  I am very comfortable in my own skin.

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Did I miss a language lesson somewhere??? When the Hell did ‘chick’ become ‘chic’?  I collect the occasional misusage, to poke fun at.  This has become endemic.  I see it everywhere! Me and this chic went to a bar. Chic [sheek] means fashionable, stylish, elegant and/or attractive.

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GRAMMAR:
It’s the difference between knowing your shit, and knowing you’re shit.

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While recently celebrating Columbus Day, certain Americans discovered that Canadians were celebrating our Thanksgiving, earlier than the US, because of our shorter growing season. Considerable confusion arose. “Well, do you celebrate Christmas and Easter at the same time we do?”

MSN.ca celebrated with an article titled, ’23 things Canadians say, that Americans don’t understand.’ It included my favorite, poutine (French fries, gravy and grated mozzarella), serviette (paper napkin) and two-four (a case of beer).

I discovered another regionalism, but balked at the quote some Canuck used to explain it. “A washroom is just a polite way of saying bathroom.”  No, it’s not!  As my Grade 5 teacher explained to “that kid”, a room which contains a toilet/urinal, and a sink, is a washroom.  If instead, it contains a tub, or shower stall, it then becomes a bathroom.

‘Restroom’ is an already chi-chi way to describe a place where you can sit down, rest, and take a load off – your feet.  ‘Powder room’ has nothing to do with explosions or demolition.  It’s one of the above, full of euphemism, not powder.  As a comedienne explained, “Women don’t fart, and we don’t sweat.  If we didn’t bitch, we’d explode.”    😆

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Taken For A Ride

Mafia

I got taken for a ride recently. Fortunately it wasn’t in the trunk, and I got to go home afterwards.  After 35 years of Snap, Crackle and Popping our spines, our erstwhile Chiropractor has decided to hang up his hands.

I recently published a post about being surprised at the number of people who are so nice to me/us, when I don’t feel that we have done enough to warrant it. After handing us off like a football at the Super Bowl, Doc Bones recently contacted me to ask if he could take me (and Shimoniac) out for lunch and a beer.

I hate to admit that I am sufficiently insecure and paranoid to wonder, “What’s he up to? Does he want me to buy his collection of Elvis memorabilia?  Does he have a condo time-share that he wants me to invest in?”

A year or so ago, a group named Everclear had a bit of a hit on the radio, called, “She Likes Me For Me.” I liked the idea, but thought it was a horrible condemnation of society that so many of us are fixated on what others wear, or earn, or drive, or where they live, (Beverly Hills 90210 e.g.) rather than what we are.

The little guy in the bar, trying to pick up the statuesque blond says, “I’m not really this tall. I’m sitting on my wallet.”

Apparently the BoneShaker likes me for me, although I’m not discounting the fact that (he and) his wife babysit a granddaughter three days a week, and he has gone from having a dozen clients per day to talk with, to zero.

He just needed to get out of the house and interact with real people. There’s no sense sitting at home and going crazy with cabin fever, when he can take us to lunch and go crazy with The Bear and me.

Lancaster Smokehouse

He took us to a failed hotel and bar, which has been re-opened as a liquor-licensed Barbecue restaurant. One of several places in town which feature Blues music, its heavy planked floor has old licence plates embedded in it.

Pictures on the wall show the original hotel, when it opened in 1948, with a B/A gasoline station across the road, and a two-woman motorcycle racing team.  Tee-shirts (on the wall, for sale, and on the waitresses) say, among other things, “We have the best butts in town.”

BA Station

A good time, and a great lunch, was had by all. If ever he wants an excuse to get out of the house again, I would be willing to volunteer.  I’d like to return the favor, but, with our finances, I’d only be able to take him out to Costco for some free samples.