Category: Pop Culture

Zombie jokes

It’s Hallowe’en, and Amy, the parish minister here in Palo Alto, is going to preach on the zombie apocalypse this Sunday. All this means it’s time for more zombie jokes:

What does the dyslexic zombie eat?
BRIANS!

What did the large animal vet zombie eat?
MurRAINS!

What does the zombie of Fantasy Island shout?
Da PLANES! Da PLANES!

What does zombie Mitt Romney say?
I was CEO of BAIN!

A zombie walks into a bar, and the bartender says, “Hey, we have a drink named after you, want to try it?” The zombie says, “Sure, give me a Charles.”

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The Cup Game

The Cup Game is a staple of church summer camps, youth conferences, and retreats. There are several variants, and this variant comes from Ferry Beach. I know it’s stupid and pointless; that’s what makes it fun.

(You can find online videos which purport to show you how to play the Cup Game, but these videos are all shot facing someone who is playing it. It is much easier to learn if you can look at it from your own perspective, so that the right hand of the person you’re watching is on the same side as your own right hand; my video shows you how to play from your own perspective.)

Here’s a printable cheat sheet that may also help you learn:

The Cup Game

Shower planter

We had to trim our pothos plant. Rather than compost the trimmings, Carol decided to make a home for them in the shower. She got me to cut a big round hole in the side of a plastic soda water bottle using my pocket knife; then she got me to drill two holes at the top of the bottle so we could hang it; I drilled those two holes using the awl in my pocket knife. She attached the bottle to the shower rod using a big twist tie left over from something, added some water, and put the pothos cuttings through the big round hole.

Over the next few days, the pothos cuttings twisted towards the light, and their butt ends pulled out of the water. So I drilled two small holes about an inch back of the big round hole on either side, above the water level, and threaded a piece of straight brass wire through; the wire keeps the pothos cuttings aimed down at the water.

Our shower planter has been up for a month now. Here’s what it looks like:

Easy bubble juice

I’m going to be leading a workshop tomorrow at the “Pot of Gold” religious education conference. For the workshop, I’ll be demonstrating bubble juice that makes medium (9-12 in.) soap bubbles. Below is a recipe, and instructions for making a bubble wand.

Easy bubble juice for 9-12″ bubbles

Ingredients:

4 oz. very hot (not boiling) water

3 oz. Dawn brand Ultra Concentrated dishwashing detergent

3 oz. personal lubricating jelly (K-Y Jelly or any generic brand)

water to make up approx. 1 quart, about 22 oz.

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It’s that time of year

It’s that depressing time of year. The Red Sox not only just got their butts whipped by our local American League team, the A’s — the Sox are also 15 games back in their division with little hope of even breaking .500 this year. To make matters worse, the SF Giants have been rocked by yet another PED scandal, so that every time I see orange and black I think it’s an ad for steroids.

The baseball season is coming to another sad, wheezing end for me. Sadly, baseball teams keep trading players so fast I can’t even keep track of who is on the team, which means I’m merely depressed by the abysmal performance of the Red Sox without the luxury of enjoying watching longtime favorites like Yaz, Jim Rice, and Tim Wakefield. And do I want to invest any time into following someone like Daisuke Matsuzaka, knowing that the Sox will probably trade him just when I’m beginning to like him?

Worst of all, football is beginning to take over the front page of the sports section. Why would I want to look at steroid-enhanced, brain-damaged football players, when I can look at a bunch of steroid-enhanced — oh, never mind.

Funeral etiquette

Bill “Spaceman” Lee, famed left-handed pitcher who played with the Boston Red Sox for many years, and now 65, was on the mound yesterday pitching for the minor league San Rafael Pacifics. He not only won, he pitched a complete game: 94 pitches, with 69 strikes and a fastball clocked at 70 m.p.h.

Daniel Brown, a sports writer for the San Jose Mercury-News, reported that Lee came to the Bay Area immediately after a trip to Boston. There Lee attended the funeral of Johnny Pesky, who played second base when Lee was with the Sox. This was back in the days when baseball players actually stayed with a team for more than half a season, so they got to know each other, and we got to know them, and they and we were all loyal to the local team.

Anyway, back to Johnny Pesky’s funeral service. I’ll let Daniel Brown tell the story from here:

Lee said that when his cab from Fenway Park pulled up curbside for services, he noticed a New York Yankees fan in the car behind him.

“So I flipped him off,” Lee said.

Wait. At a funeral?

“Johnny would have wanted it that way,” Lee explained.

[Daniel Brown, “‘Spaceman’ touches down in Marin,” San Mateo County Times, p. 1,3.]

So you can add this to your funeral etiquette book: when in Boston attending a funeral of a Red Sox player, can you give the bird to someone wearing Yankees paraphernalia? Heck, yeah. Bill Lee said so.

Stupid geeky joke with a religious twist

One Sunday morning the Higgs Boson walked into a Catholic mass. The service is about to start, and the Higgs boson shouts, “Stop!”

The priest turns to look at him, and says, “Why should I stop?”

The Higgs boson says, “Because you can’t have mass without me.”

(This joke appears to have been told first by science comedian Brian Malow.)