Some cartoons and jokes

Some funny stories From various online sources

A few Joan Rivers jokes
My favorite, and one that I relate to, and the one that has long formed my housekeeping philosophy:
• I hate housework. You make the beds, you do the dishes, and six months later, you have to start all over again.

• People say that money is not the key to happiness, but I always figured if you have enough money, you can have a key made.
• The first time I see a jogger smiling, I'll consider it.
• When I was born, my mother asked the doctor, "Will she live?" He said, "Only if you take your foot off her throat."
• My earliest childhood memory was watching my parents loosen the wheels on my stroller.
• I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw that my bath toys were a toaster and a radio.

Q and A

Question: If you could live forever, would you and why?
Answer: I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.
Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss USA contest, selected as Miss America 1995

Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff.
Mariah Carey

Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life.
Brooke Shields, during an interview to become spokesperson for federal anti-smoking campaign

I've never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body.
Winston Bennett, University of Kentucky basketball forward

Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.
Mayor Marion Barry, Washington DC

Half this game is ninety percent mental.
Philadelphia Phillies manager, Danny Ozark

I love California. I practically grew up in Phoenix.
Dan Quayle

The word 'genius' isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.
Joe Theisman, NFL football quarterback & sports analyst

We don't necessarily discriminate. We simply exclude certain types of people.
Colonel Gerald Wellman, ROTC Instructor

Traditionally, most of Australia's imports come from overseas.
Keppel Enderbery

If somebody has a bad heart, they can plug this jack in at night as they go to bed and it will monitor their heart throughout the night. And the next morning, when they wake up dead, there'll be a record.
Mark S. Fowler, FCC Chairman

12 things that took over 50 years to learn
By Dave Barry, Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist for the Miami Herald
1. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
2. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."
3. There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."
4. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.
5. You should not confuse your career with your life.
6. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
7. The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.
8. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age eleven.
9. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of gender, religion, or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we all believe that we are above average drivers.
10. A person, who is nice to you, but rude to a waiter, is not a nice person. (This is very important. Pay attention. It never fails.)
11. Your friends love you anyway.
12. Men are like fine wine. They start out as grapes, and it's up to the women to stomp the crap out of them until they turn into something acceptable to have dinner with.

Colonoscopy Journal
By Dave Barry
I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy.
A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis.
Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner. I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, 'HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP MY BEHIND!'

I left Andy's office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called 'MoviPrep,' which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America's enemies.
I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous.
Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn't eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor. Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons). Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes - and here I am being kind - like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.
The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, 'a loose, watery bowel movement may result.' This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.
MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here, but, have you ever seen a space-shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.
After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep.

The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, 'What if I spurt on Andy?' How do you apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers would not be enough.
At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the heck the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked.
Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep.
At first I was ticked off that I hadn't thought of this, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house.

When everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere. I was seriously nervous at this point. Andy had me roll over on my left side, and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand. There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was 'Dancing Queen' by ABBA. I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, 'Dancing Queen' had to be the least appropriate.
'You want me to turn it up?' said Andy, from somewhere behind me.
'Ha ha,' I said. And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a decade. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like.

I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, ABBA was yelling 'Dancing Queen, feel the beat of the tambourine,' and the next moment, I was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood. Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent. I felt even more excellent when Andy told me that It was all over, and that my colon had passed with flying colors. I have never been prouder of an internal organ.

Shower Thoughts
From the subReddit.
• "Go to bed, you'll feel better in the morning" is the human version of "Did you turn it off and turn it back on again?"
• Even when a balloon is half inflated, it is completely full.
• Does a straw have one hole, or two?
• Nothing is on fire. Fire is on things.
• How do our brains remember that we forgot something, but we can't remember what that thing was?
• I wonder what my dog named me.
• Fire trucks are really water trucks.
• When we're young, we sneak out of our houses to go to parties. When we're old, we sneak out of parties to go home.
• If they mounted garbage trucks with cameras, you could update Google Maps street view every week.
• Math is the only place where someone would buy 60 watermelons and 40 cantaloupes, and no one asks any questions.
• Your stomach thinks all potatoes are mashed.
• In order to fall asleep, we have to pretend to be asleep.
• Someone's mom probably used you as a bad example for her kids.
• If Earth was flat, the edge would probably be a tourist attraction.
• When my dog brings me the same toy, I wonder if it's his favorite toy or if he thinks it is my favorite toy.
• Only one sock goes missing because if both did, you wouldn't notice.
• I correct autocorrect more than it corrects me.
• Painkillers are the “Turn off Notifications" option for the body.
• Theme parks can snap a crystal clear picture of you on a roller coaster at 70 mph, but bank cameras can't get a clear shot of a robber standing still.
• Which orange came first - the color, or the fruit?
• If tomatoes are fruit, then ketchup is jam.
• Why aren't iPhone chargers called Apple juice?
• Clapping your hands is just high-fiving yourself.
• Batman would look ridiculous trying to solve crimes outside on a sunny day.
• Once you have a PhD, every meeting you go to becomes a doctor’s appointment.
• Teeth are the only problem where if you ignore them, they will go away.
• Pregnant women are the only true bodybuilders.
• Searching for a new laptop online is basically forcing your current computer to dig its own grave.
• Are those who sneeze a lot the most blessed?
• While we sleep, our brains make up stories and then get scared of them.
• Turtles can never have sleepovers because they always sleep at home.
• The object of golf is to play the least amount of golf.
• Teenagers drive like they're on borrowed time. Meanwhile, elderly people drive like they've got all the time in the world.
• Every broken clock tells you the exact time it passed away.
• Most people pull their phones out of their pockets to check the time. We are reverting to the era of pocket watches.
• When you give someone food, you're feeding them. But when you give them water, you aren't watering them.
• We'll never really know what it smells like underwater.
• Remember when teachers used to say, "You'll never be walking around with a calculator in your pocket." Well, look at us now!
• The sinking of the Titanic must have been a miracle to the lobsters in the kitchen.
• Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals really put into perspective how much companies could sell items for.
• Heat, Pressure and Time. The three things that make a diamond are also the three things that make a waffle.
• I owed blockbuster late fees. My game plan of waiting them out worked, though.
• The people who need to be loved the most are often very hard to love.
• A different version of you exists in the minds of everyone that knows you.
• Someone out there vividly remembers something you said that you have completely forgotten.
• You see people every single day that you'll never see again.
• It’s likely that over 99% of the trees that you look at will be still here when you’re dead.
• Having a toddler in their "Why?" phase makes you realize how much you know and don't know about things.
• Every word in every language started out as gibberish until one person convinced enough people that what they said was a real word.
• There are half a million different occupations in the world, yet we pick our careers based on studying 10-15 subjects by age 21.
• You may have once made a decision that saved your life without knowing it.
• In every Olympic event, they should have an average person compete so we can have a point of reference and appreciate the athletes more.
• Kids are bullied for being different while adults are praised for being different.
• If money is at the root of all evil, then why do churches ask for it?
• Therapists talk you into brainwashing yourself.
• We talk about Ancient Romans like they were basically all the same, but the civilization lasted almost 1000 years. That’s like saying people in 2023 and 1023 are basically the same.
• On any given day in a hospital, you can find people having the best day of their life, the worst day of their life, the first day of their life, and the last day of their life all under one roof.
• The number of people older than you never goes up.
• Someone studying atoms is just a bunch of atoms trying to understand themselves.
• Every single human in history has witnessed the same sun and moon as you have.
• You've never seen your own face before - only in pictures and reflections.
• You've survived 100% of your worst days.
• You only have 1 birthday, the rest are congratulations for surviving each year.
• Some stranger remembers you for being kind to them.
• Most people aren't scared of being alone in the dark - they're scared of not being alone in the dark.
• How do nudists clean their glasses?
• Firefly is the opposite of waterfall.
• Being an air conditioning repair person must be hard because it's hot when you arrive and as soon as it's cools off, you leave.
• A group of squid should be called a squad.
• The first person to inhale helium was probably so relieved that the effects wore off quickly.
• Biting your tongue while eating is a perfect example of how you can still screw up, even with decades of experience.
• The internet almost killed the postal service with email and then made it more necessary than ever with online delivery.
• "Spring Forward" would be a lot more popular if we moved the clocks ahead at 2pm on a Monday.
• Coffee makes you hyper, but coffee shops are intended to make you slow down and relax.
• Alcohol is a depressant, but clubs and bars are designed for people to be lively and energetic.
• Security at every level of the airport is high, until you get to baggage claim.
• Finding worms in apples has been much less of a problem than I anticipated experiencing as a kid.
• April Fool's Day is the one day a year when people critically examine news articles before accepting them as true.
• Brushing our teeth is the closest we ever come to cleaning our skeleton.
• All of the caution messages on various products were likely put there because someone tried them out.
• The way we treat moths versus butterflies is a real-life example of pretty privilege.
• You're the only one that remembers your embarrassing experiences so vividly, because everyone's got their own to remember.
• Why don't you meet more people by the name of Elvis if Elvis Presley was so popular?
• If a morgue worker died, they'd still need to come into work one last time.
• Generally speaking, when you feel stupid, it's because you're expanding your knowledge and getting smarter.
• Why do people say "tuna fish," but they don't say "chicken bird"?
• If humans could fly, we'd probably consider it exercise and never do it.
• History classes are only going to get longer and harder as time goes on.
• Whoever created the tradition of not seeing the bride in the dress before the wedding saved husbands everywhere from hours of dress shopping.
• The asteroid that ended the dinosaurs was technically the highest ratio of killing birds to one stone in Earth’s history.
• We pass the anniversary of our death every year without knowing it.
• We're lucky blinking doesn't make a noise.
• During a nuclear explosion, there is a certain distance of the radius where all the frozen supermarket pizzas are cooked to perfection.
• Salt is the only rock that is socially acceptable to eat
• Humans advocate not judging a book by its cover, but also glorify love at first sight.
• They don’t let you smile in passport photos because they want you to look the same as if you were standing in line at customs for an hour.
• No one has ever been in a fully empty room.
• "Do not touch" must be one of the scariest things to read in braille.
• Once we have self-driving cars, wipers will no longer be essential, because the car doesn’t need a clean windshield to drive. Only humans do.
• There's no way to prove that we all actually see the same colors.
• Flipping your middle finger is halfway to giving the peace sign.
• There are two E's in bee, but they're both silent.
• Your whole life is spent gathering people for your funeral.
• The only difference between relaxation and boredom is enjoyment.
• You've never actually seen a full movie because you're always blinking.
• If a fly loses its wings, is it now called a walk?
• Finally is pronounced “final-e” and finale is pronounced “fi-nally.”

From a petite female acquaintance
• I don't trust my farts.
• My heart was hurting. I didn't know if I should go to the ER. So, what did you do? I went to the liquor store.
• When I travel to Third World countries, I want to go First Class!
• Pointing to tacky artwork on the shelf - I happen to like that piece of crap!
• I'm not answering that. She never answers my calls.
• Did he do a genealogical study? Yea, all the way back to Jesus, how the fuck do I know.
• I met him at a Truck Stop. Why a Truck Stop? Cuz he's a trucker!!

From Jim
Ugly can still bear your children.
Damn ugly can scare your children.

Its tough to pee on a moving train.
Let me clarify - I mean, on Amtrak it can be tough to walk up the aisle to the restroom at the front of the car, enter, and stay balanced.
I didn't mean to stand on the platform and pee on a moving train. That hurts, is embarrassing, and results in intense questioning by railroad authorities. Man, I'll never do that again.

Just had a good workout. Drank a Starbucks Doubleshot energy drink and about to finish eating the last Hi-Fiber bar (35% daily fiber per bar) from a box of five. Plan to have a very entertaining evening of projectile diarhea. Maybe even get in some target practice.

Hell holds no surprises for me anymore...
By Jeffrey Lambert, May 2, 2016
This is a cautionary tale and - unlike most of the other reviews on this product - this is a true story and its authenticity can be qualified by a small news item that appeared in the Toronto Star's local news section during the month of April in 2013, much to my chagrin.
I would consider myself a prudent man. Not given to bouts of outspokenness or craving attention, and certainly not one to rock the boat. On any given day I can be found reading a crime novel on a park bench in the middle of the city, soaking in the opulence of nature while nibbling on my tuna fish sandwiches and fending off the voracious gulls and squirrels that threaten to spoil my repose. This is me. Law-abiding and introspective. Which is why it came as a shock to me to find myself incarcerated because of the Devil's Confectionery, Satan's Sweetmeat, Lucifer's Lozenges - the horror that is known as 'Haribo Sugar Free Gummy Bears".
I'll set the scene: It was late winter / early spring in Toronto and the city had just been digging itself out from a late season snow-storm. I was heading to Pearson International Airport for a redeye flight to Amsterdam in order to give the Dutch arm of our company some training on the new software that had been installed (I'm deliberately being vague to prevent my place of work from being linked in any way to the incident that occurred). I had just finished packing, checked the time and found I was running late, my flight was at 7:10 PM and it was now almost 5:00 PM. Cursing softly, I ran out to the car and threw my bags in the trunk, hitting the gas a little harder than usual in my haste to make it to the Long Term Parking Lot as soon as possible. Luckily traffic was light on the 401 and I made it to the airport in record time, but knew that my chances of making the flight were still at risk if I didn't use my time wisely.
I hadn't eaten since lunch, and I was feeling a bit hungry, my stomach rumbling loudly in protestation, which caused me to look around at the other travelers rushing past me in the busy terminal, mortified that my bodily noises might be heard by others. I briskly checked my watch and decided that I had enough time to grab a quick snack before going through the baggage check and security, and would get something more substantial once I was checked through security. I spotted a vending machine nestled in a relatively low-traffic corner of the terminal and rushed over, already pulling out my credit-card and mentally assessing what I had a craving for so as to save time interacting with the machine. My eyes scanned the colorful array of confection quickly, coming to rest on a tantalizing, rainbow-colored bag of gummy bears with the simple white and red logo "Haribo" emblazoned across the bag in what appeared to be a slightly tweaked Helvetica Rounded font.
Now I'd like to pause here in the story for a moment to underscore the importance of making proper choices. I was hungry. When you're hungry, you should eat FOOD. FOOD is defined as "a nutritious substance that people consume to maintain life", this is what food is. These days, the definition of the word 'food' has been bastardized and the meaning has been broadened to include veritably any material that can be digested, or rather, chewed and swallowed without causing death or severe illness. "Haribo Sugar Free Gummy Bears" are NOT food. They aren't even from this planet. I imagine their origins being conceived in a boardroom in hell by a top team of Creative Pain Administers, with senior level Demons rubbing their hands together in ghoulish delight as Hell's Chief Chemist slowly lifts the veil on their new creation.
The point here being, I made a very, very, very poor choice. I pushed the button and the vending machine ejected the brightly colored bag into my awaiting hands. I had always liked gummy bears - they were bright but rather innocuous, they weren't overly sweet so as to become cloying and - of course - each candy came in the visage of a rather happy, docile bear reminiscent of the picture one's mind's eye holds of all anthropomorphic bears from Yogi to Winnie.
The way I figured it, I was taking a bit of a holiday from life, so I could relax my fastidiously regimented daily schedule a little to allow for some frivolity. After all, I was going to be in Amsterdam come morning with 16 hours to kill before I had to be training the Dutch employees, maybe I would take a trip down to one of the Coffee Shops in the Red-Light District and really let my hair down! No, I wouldn't do that. I would see that area of the city from the bus as I went to the hotel where I would eat at the hotel restaurant and drink sparkling water. So I'd better enjoy the gummy bears, my one extravagance to commemorate my break from routine.
I joined the queue in the KLM line, which was mercifully short, most likely because all of the passengers for my flight had already been checked through as the flight was scheduled to depart in an hour. I checked my watch again, frowned, and absent-mindedly opened the bag of "Haribo Sugar Free Gummy Bears" and began to munch on them as the line slowly advanced. To be fair, they tasted fine - just like every other manufacturer's brand of the colorful candy, and they were sugar-free to boot. This is what made the whole incident that followed so baffling - if they had tasted 'off' or 'different' I most likely wouldn't have continued to shovel them into my mouth absent-mindedly while daydreaming about what I would order to eat from room-service in my hotel in Amsterdam.
As I gave the attendant my e-ticket and she weighed my bags, the first of the pains began in my stomach. I thought nothing of it at first, chalking it up to the fact that I needed something more substantial than gummy worms to tackle my hunger, but over the course of the next five-minutes the shooting pain began to come in more rapid succession. At this point, I had my boarding pass printed and rubbing my stomach a little, I proceeded to security. I briefly entertained the thought of trying to find a restroom before going through security, but at that point my discomfort was manageable and I didn't think it was get any worse, certainly not within the amount of time it would take to clear security.
I joined the line and started fishing for my passport to present to the agent checking tickets, I felt a thin sheen of sweat break out on my forehead and underarms, and my features flushed for a moment as a wave of heat washed over me. I didn't pay it much heed as going through security always caused me great anxiety and I chalked it up to pre-flight jitters. It was only as I stood face to face with the agent and handed her my passport and ticket that I had a glimpse of the agony that was about to begin. It felt like time rippled for a moment, as if my consciousness buckled so intense was the pain that fired through my bowels. I grimaced spastically and emitted a low moan, and felt myself take an involuntary step sideways. Stars shot though my head briefly and my vision blurred and then snapped back into focus. The agent was staring at me with slight consternation and asked me if I was alright. I pulled myself together, stood up straight and declared that I was fine, mortified that I had had a lapse of decorum not only in public but at the security clearance in an airport!
As I fumbled off my belt to go through the metal detector, the pain in my stomach increased and I practically had to sit on the floor to take my shoes off, terrified of what would happen if I bent at the middle to do it. It was becoming increasingly more evident to me that this wasn't just a stomach ache. No, this was something much worse. As a child I had had a bout of diarrhea after a trip to Mexico with my family, I remember the feeling of nausea that swept through me before my child self had surrendered to the gas pains and parked myself on the toilet for an hour, shitting until I felt like I didn't have any bones left. And that was how I was feeling now, with several key differences - the pain was worse, the sense of an impending bowel movement was so formidable it gave me temporary amnesia, and it took all of my will-power, all of it, to clench my butt cheeks together to prevent my sphincter from exploding.
A sudden shock of pain racked my body, and I half wondered if I was going to give birth to a Tasmanian Devil. The crazy, fever-induced image of said cartoon animal chasing Bugs Bunny through the splashy, volcanic shit-kettle that was my stomach, caused me to illicit a short, maniacal bark of laughter as I approached the Metal detector, a wild, distant look in my eyes, sweat now beginning to poor off of my like a long-distance runner in Kenya. The security agent on the other side of the detector shot a quick glance over to her co-worker who narrowed his eyes and made a subtle movement towards his holster. My breathing became uneven as I entered the metal detector and I realized with alarm that I had taken off my socks without even registering it, and one of my shirt tails was untucked at the front. I held my breath, my eyes bulging dangerously from my head as the machine scanned me. As I shakily moved forward towards the agent for a pat down, my stomach began to illicit sounds that can only be described as otherworldly. It started off a sort-off bubbling sound heard from afar and grew in pitch and intensity at an alarming rate. My jaw dropped in shock as what I can only describe as the sound of an agonized wailing alley-cat in heat with a persistent Doppler effect added to it's voice emitted from some nether-region of my intestines. The officer's eyes widened in alarm, and she kept her eyes glued to my stomach as she thoroughly patted me down. As she reached my shins, I felt my innards suddenly expand, and plummet towards my rectum. With cat-like reflexes I squeezed my sphincter shut with what seemed like nano-seconds to spare, and I knew, I KNEW that if I didn't get the bathroom immediately I would shit myself.
With a Herculean effort and all of the strength that I could muster, I forced my butt cheeks together knowing that one false move would open the floodgates. I began to walk like a duck, trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible, not even caring now what other people were seeing in front of them - a disheveled, barefoot 40-year-old business man, red-faced and bulgy-eyed, sweating profusely, shaking slightly and walking without bending his knees. With single-minded intensity I grabbed my carry-on, shoes and socks from out of the plastic tub that had passed the x-ray inspection, and without putting anything back on, I turned on my heels with the intention of finding the nearest restroom and slowly dying there one squirt at a time.
But that's not what happened.
I turned to go and found myself staring at three armed agents who stopped me and asked if I would follow them. "Why, what's the matter?" I stammered, wincing slightly as the act of speech seemed to strain the tenuous and extremely fragile truce I had negotiated between my bowels and the tempest that raged within. "I have to go the bathroom, RIGHT NOW" I pleaded. "Just follow us please", they said, leaving no room for argument. The other travelers clearing the security check stared with curiosity and revulsion at the spectacle unfolding before them, whispering amongst themselves and hurrying to pack up their belongings and get as far away from me as possible, no doubt assuming that the airport had nabbed some sort of domestic terrorist. If I hadn't been feverishly trying to hold back the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, I likely would have died of shame.
With each step I took towards the room that they ushered me into, I felt that my legs would give way. I marveled at how strong the human will could be. Marveled at what was essentially patching a hole in the Hoover Dam with bubblegum could actually be sustained indefinitely. Maybe I would make it through this ordeal after all. The room they brought me into was an examination room. I had pretty much stopped registering details of my environment as my consciousness closed off all but the absolutely necessary functions - breathing, ability to walk - but I snapped back to reality when I heard the snap of rubber. The slow dawning of realization poked through my agony and stoic resolve as I turned to face an agent dawning rubber gloves.
"Sir, we are going to perform a cavity search on you", a young fresh-faced agent stated in a firm but emotionless voice. His short-cropped, blond hair was immaculate and for a crazy moment I wondered if he was an actor and this was all some sort of elaborate practical joke done to amuse bored kids watching Youtube. He must have taken my tortured silence for resistance because he looked at me sharply and said "Lower your pants and underwear please, and face the desk". Panic started to grip me in it's icy grasp and the sudden adrenaline threatened to destroy my sphincters bulwarks and rend my anus in two. I inhaled sharply and with a pained gasp I doubled up my efforts to clench my cheeks together. "Sir, please", I begged deferring to this kid in an act of desperation, "I have to go to the bathroom. You can follow me into the stall if you need to but I had some bad "Haribo Sugar Free Gummy Bears" and now I feel like'", but they had stopped listening and smirked at each other, two of the other agents - a tall, dark-haired female and a shorter, balding fat man - looked away from me and I could see them shaking a little as they stifled their laughs. "Sir, face the wall, put your hands on the desk and spread your cheeks" the young agent stated, a lop-sided grin on his face. "But'", I began to protest, and then a fresh shock of pain forced me to stop and lean on the table for support as an ungodly howling rose from my stomach, something between the dying moans of a Wholly Mammoth, and the sound of bubble-wrap popping underwater. I exhaled shakily and my focus began to narrow, as I rallied for the final battle. Shaking uncontrollably and sweat literally raining down onto the tabletop in from of me, I turned to face the wall and heard a meek childlike voice, pleading from somewhere in the room. "Please", it said, and then again, "Please". From somewhere within me my mind recognized that this sound had issued from me, although my consciousness had now begun to separate from my body and I held my breath and prayed to God for strength.
"He probably has some heroin or something up there that opened up", the female guard said as a part of me that hadn't escaped into the ether yet acknowledged that she was behind me to my left, "probably high as a kite, LOOK at him", she said. The shorter guard agreed with a snort, off to my right.
"Spread your cheeks" the young agent said, his voice directly behind me and lower than the other two, "and bend over".
"Pleasegodpleasegodpleasegodpleasegod", I whispered in a desperate, maniacal mantra, not even aware of my surroundings anymore. I felt like I was lost in an opium fog with half-snatched images and sounds filtering through to create a nonsensical version of reality. Another volley of pain tore through me and I involuntarily leaned forward over the desk, my focus completely narrowed now to a spot on the wall two feet in front of me, a curious imperfection in the what seemed to be white-washed stone wall. It was a dark blotch about five millimeters long and shaped like a smiling bear, a yellow dancing bear. No, a green bear. No, red. It was all the colors of the rainbow. My god, it was beautiful.
It just took something as simple as a slight breeze to trigger Armageddon. That's all. No trumpets, no fanfare, no fire raining from the heavens, no dogs and cats living together in harmony, no finger on the button, no prophet to predict it, no nothing. As I stared at the rainbow bear smiling and dancing in front of me, my mouth agape, drooling, eyes glazed and blood-shot, face coated with a sheen of sweat, I heard the softest sound, an exhalation from the young agent behind me, and then at the same instant the warm air of his breath feather across my butt cheeks. For just a moment, maybe less, maybe a split second, even a nanosecond, I felt the presence of God there with me in that room as neurons began to misfire at a blinding rate, nerve ending bristled and muscles twitched reflexively. I stood on the brink with one foot hovering over the edge, and then without taking a step, I found myself plummeting.
With a sound like an extra large plastic ketchup bottle being run over by a Mac truck, my sphincter released. The pressure of the blast pushed me hard into the desk and the legs of the desk screeched as they scraped across the floor. My body remained rigid for a moment and I experienced a relief that can only be described as orgasmic in it's purity. My eyes rolled back in my head and my tongue lolled out of my head like a half-retarded dog and I emitted a low, sustained groan that grew in pitch as the filthy torrent pushed its way out of my body. Tremors wracked my body and I must have looked like a fish out of water with an endless stream of shit firing out of its ass. Other sounds and sensations started to filter in now as my consciousness began to materialize once more. The muffled scream of a dungeon filled with prisoners near death radiated from my stomach, the rushing sound of liters of liquid trying to escape through an aperture too small to accommodate it all at the same time, the omnipresent sound of chunky liquid spattering against a hard surface with great force, the high-pitched screaming of a woman's voice calling out to God, another voice sobbing uncontrollably imploring to "make it stop!!!" and my own ecstatic, monotone wail.
When my ordeal had eventually run its course, I was left panting for breath and wobbly legged, half-crying, half-laughing with relief, barely lucid and feeling as if I had birthed an elephant. My colon felt like someone had poured chile sauce all over it and then sent in a colony of fire ants to eat it. Through my sobs I heard the sound of dripping, like when the sprinklers are eventually turned off after an office fire, or after a thunderstorm when the willow that overhangs a pond continues to rain down long after the sky has stopped. From behind me, the sobbing continued and I heard someone trying to speak into a walkie-talkie but nonsensical words were all that the man could speak, which sounded like the ravings of a lunatic.
With great relief, I slowly pulled myself off the table, legs trembling, my stomach eliciting one last sound, a loud prolonged gas bubbling that eerily resembled a pig orgasm. I slowly turned my head to survey the devastation and in that instant, if I had had a pencil or some other sharp object, I probably would have gouged my eyes out in revulsion. And the smell. The smell was enough to drive a man insane. It was the stench of rotting potatoes mixed with sulphur and ammonia, cooked in a broth of chicken feces and left to age for two weeks in a yeasty stew at the bottom of a French outhouse. After half a whiff of this ghoulish brine, I immediately stopped breathing through my nose but the taste was to remain in the back of my throat for months to come.
The young agent had taken the brunt of the foul witch's brew, and at first I couldn't process what I was seeing. I thought somehow the young blond kid had been spirited away and replaced by a brown Golem, or a ATV rider that had spent the better part of a day driving through every mud puddle he could find after a torrential downpour. With some degree of compartmentalization I came to understand that for some unfathomable reason this kid hadn't moved - or hadn't been able to move - through the entire fecal deluge. He had weathered the entire assault head-on like some sort of hero from Greek Mythology. I had given this poor schmuck a one-man shit bukkake that would make a Brazilian pornographer retch with disgust, and he was still in the same position he must have been from the moment of first impact. I tried to comprehend how he must be feeling, what he must be going through psychologically, but it became evident very quickly that he had become very broken. No doubt forced so deeply within himself once the firehose has been turned on that there was little to no hope of him ever coming back from it, certainly not without extensive psychotherapy or a lobotomy. I looked beyond his quivering, catatonic crouched form to see a perfect outline of him cutout on the white wall behind him, either side filled in with a dripping, opaque layer of alternately pulpy and runny fecal stew. I noticed two quivering masses at either extremes of the room and realized they were humanoid in form, although the caterwauling that was coming from these broken creatures was just blubbering gibberish. And this was the tableau that was burnt into my mind's eye for eternity.
Needless to say, I missed my flight.
In fact the next week is a blur. I have vague recollections of an army of Hazmat clad figures looming through the brown landscape of the soiled room, the slopping sounds of rubber boats squelching in puddles of fetid detritus, uncontrollable wailing and animal-like sounds issuing from the mouths of creatures that had been traumatized beyond their capacity for being put back together, the complete loss of sensation from my waist down as I was rolled through the room on a waterproof gurney, it's wheels struggling to surf on top of the shit-soaked floor. I spent a week or so in the hospital enclosed in a well ventilated, sealed room, with suited doctor coming in on the hour to monitor my vital signs as they tried to rehydrate my body. I had apparently expelled every available drop of water from my body that was possible to sustain life without for a short period of time. All of my clothes were incinerated in the hospital's crematorium, and the soiled bag of "Haribo Sugar Free Gummy Bears" was never recovered.
This is my story. It is inconceivable to think that this kind of product can be sold legally and be misrepresented as 'food'. I was lucky, I survived. But as for the families of the survivors, and the survivors themselves, they will forever live with the trauma of the events that took place at Pearson International Airport on that snowy day in April 2013.

An older gentleman writes:
I was in Starbucks yesterday when I suddenly realized I desperately needed to pass gas. The music was really loud, so I timed my gas with the beat of the music.
After a couple of songs, I started to feel better. I finished my coffee, and noticed that everybody was staring at me.
Then I suddenly remembered that I was listening to my iPod.

Some slightly better definitions
• Coffee: the person upon whom one coughs.
• Flabbergasted: appalled over how much weight you have gained.
• Abdicate: to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
• Negligent: describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.
• Flatulence: A smelly British apartment.
• Balderdash: a rapidly receding hairline.
• Rectitude: the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
• Pokemon: a Rastafarian proctologist.
• Oyster: a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
• Circumvent: an opening in the front of boxer shorts
Source: somewhere on the internet.

Easter morning

Two-liners
Parallel lines have so much in common.
It's a shame they'll never meet.

Women only call me ugly until they find out how much money I make.
Then they call me ugly and poor.

How many Germans does it take to screw in a light bulb?
One, they're efficient and not very funny.

What's green, fuzzy, and if it fell out of a tree it would kill you
A pool table.

Apparently, someone in London gets stabbed every 52 seconds.
Poor guy.

Wisdom from Steven Wright
• I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
• Borrow money from pessimists - they don't expect it back.
• Half the people you know are below average.
• 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
• 82.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
• All those who believe in psycho kinesis, raise my hand.
• The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
• I almost had a psychic girlfriend. But she left me before we met.
• OK, so what's the speed of dark?
• How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink?
• I intend to live forever. So far, so good.
• If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
• What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
• My mechanic told me, "I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder."
• The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.
• To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
• The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
• The colder the x-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it.
• Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don't have film.
• If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
• If your car could travel at the speed of light, would your headlights work?

Nominees for Husband of the Year

The miracle of toilet paper
Fresh from my shower, I stand in front of the mirror complaining to my husband that my breasts are too small. Instead of characteristically telling me it's not so, he uncharacteristically comes up with a suggestion. If you want your breasts to grow, then every day take a piece of toilet paper and rub it between them for a few seconds.
'Willing to try anything, I fetch a piece of toilet paper and stand in Front of the mirror, rubbing it between my breasts. 'How long will this take?' I asked.
They will grow larger over a period of years,' my husband replies. I Stopped. 'Do you really think rubbing a piece of toilet paper between my breasts every day will make my breasts larger over the years?' Without missing a beat he says, 'Worked for your butt, didn't it?'

Wisdom from Homer Simpson
"I want to share something with you - the three little sentences that will get you through life.
     Number 1, 'Cover for me.'
     Number 2, 'Oh, good idea, boss.'
     Number 3, 'It was like that when I got here.'"
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true."
"To alcohol! The cause of - and the solution to - all of life's problems."
"Ah, sweet pity. Where would my love life have been without it?"
"Marge, it takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen."
"Homer, is this the way you pictured married life?" "Yup, pretty much. Except we drove around solving mysteries."
"Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try."
"Marge, don't discourage the boy. Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals - except the weasel."
"There's no such thing as a soul. Its just something they made up to scare kids, like the boogeyman."
"But Marge, what if we chose the wrong religion? Each week we just make God madder and madder."

You're an extreme Redneck if:
• You let your 14-year-old daughter smoke at the dinner table in front of her kids.
• The Blue Book value of your truck goes up and down depending on how much gas is in it.
• You've been married three times and still have the same in-laws.
• You think a woman who is out of your league bowls on a different night.
• You wonder how service stations keep their rest-rooms so clean.
• You think Dom Perignon is a Mafia leader.
• Your wife's hairdo was once ruined by a ceiling fan.
• Your junior prom offered day care.
• You lit a match in the bathroom and your house exploded right off its wheels.
• You need one more hole punched in your card to get a freebie at the House of Tattoos.
• You think loading the dishwasher means getting your wife drunk.

You know you're from Oklahoma if
• You think that people who complain about the wind in their states are sissies.
• A tornado warning siren is your signal to go out in the yard and look for a funnel.
• You've ever had to switch from "heat" to "A/C" in the same day.
• A Mercedes Benz is not a status symbol. A Ford F350 4x4 is.
• You know that the true value of a parking space is not determined by the distance to the door, but by the availability of shade.
• Stores don't have bags, they have sacks.
• You measure distance in minutes.
• It doesn't bother you to use an airport named for Will Rogers who died in an airplane crash.
• Someone you know has used a football schedule to plan their wedding date.
• You know everything goes better with Ranch dressing.
• You are 100% Oklahoman if you have ever had this conversation:
"You wanna coke?"
"Yeah."
"What kind?"
"Dr Pepper."

Notices to Northerners moving to Oklahoma
• Just because you can drive on snow and ice does not mean Oklahomans can. Stay home the two days of the year it snows.
• If you do run your car into a ditch, don't panic. Four young men in the cab of a four-wheel pick-up with a 12-pack of beer and a tow chain will be along shortly. Don't try to help them. Just stay out of their way. This is what they live for.
• Oklahoman expressions that will creep into a transplanted Northerner's vocabulary: big ol, as in big ol truck, or big ol boy; Fixin' (as in I'm fixin' to go to the big ol store), and Y'all. Remember: Y'all is singular, All y'all is plural, and All y'all's is plural possessive.

The comics page
In 1993, I taught a Cartooning course. We explored what makes something funny, and the unique skill of communicating the maximum amount of information in a minimum amount of space. The curriculum included the development of single panel cartoons, both funny and political/editorial/timely. Students also had to develop a daily strip including the storyline, character development, unique character gestures and styles. We had a lot of fun. Below are some samples of student work.

Mitch Baker