Viewing a certain commercial this evening prompted this tongue twister--try saying it five times fast:

Even pathetic shut-ins shun John Stamos

Surely the limerick is the lowest form of humor. My first one is not dirty, though I would expect future ones to be.

Exposed to a plague rat bubonical,
A man didn't find it so comical,
When a doctor from France
Said, "Please pay in advance:
If the plague doesn't kill you my tonic'll."

Note: try as I might, I can't get the limerick formatted properly using the limited HTML allowed by slashdot. And this one is not just formatted improperly, but it's dirty.

There was a lithe young Peruvian,
With fetishes antediluvian,
He buggered women and men,
Over threescore and ten,
With a heat that was downright Vesuvian.

When segfault.org was still going, I submitted this story, which was apparently rejected. This is really old, but I thought I would preserve it here.

Vegetarian Mob Plants TVP Horse's Head in Prosecutor's Bed, FBI Says

LOS ANGELES -- Yesterday a federal prosecutor found that a horse's head made from textured vegetable protein (TVP), a meat substitute, had been placed in his bed.

U.S. Attorney Henry Chambers recently empaneled a grand jury to seek indictment of Sammy "The Vegan" Piatti on several counts of extortion and cruelty-free racketeering. Los Angeles-based FBI agent Peter McMurtry described the act of vandalism as a death threat by the Piatti vegetarian crime family.

"We've had threats from this group of criminals before; the audacity of this move just proves we're finally close to shutting them down." said McMurtry at a press conference this morning. In an unguarded moment, the obviously angry McMurtry referred to the mobsters as "f**king neatballs."

In a similar incident a year ago, a strangled Tofurky was left on the front doorstep of area lawman Frank Weller, along with a note that threatened a "falafel necktie" for the officer. The perpetrator of that threat was eventually apprehended and found guilty of peddling brown rice and hummus within 1000 yards of a school and is serving four years at Corcoran State Penitentiary.

On the Straight Dope, someone started a thread imagining what the Lord of the Rings would be like if written by another author. I made a small contribution late in the game, but I reproduce it here in case the thread gets archived or my post is taken down. Also, they won't allow me to edit posts there, and I have corrected a couple of minor mistakes.

Strider scanned the Pony quicksville, figuring the players and slotting conclusions. First conclusion: the shitstorm in the West was stirring up business for Butterbur. Foregone conclusion: Big man Butterbur was into rackets up to his eyeballs. Pipeweed, dice, renting rooms by the half-hour for farmers' sons digging halfling cooze. BIG conclusion: too much curiousity by some of the customers. BIGGER conclusion: Black Riders sniffing around. BIGGEST: Four shit-kicking hobbits from the Shire renting rooms--THEM.

He lit up his own pipe, took two quick hits and scanned more carefully this time, riding the 'weed tingle behind his eyes. Spies in the corner: too many eyes in here to take them out. Midget voices, loud: THEM, bullshitting about the Shire--THEIR home. TOO loud: eyeball men slipping out the door. Strider crooked a finger at THEIR leader: HIM. He cracked his knuckles, making fists and motioning HIM to sit down.

"I'm Strider." Hushed voice--sotto fucking voce. "Mr. Underhill"--crooked smile. The smile says "I know YOU." The smile says "I know who YOU are." The smile says "I know YOU have IT." His eyes: not smiling. Frodo's eyes: look away, can't take the heat.

"Your friends have big mouths." Strider leaned back, cracked his knuckles. "Blotto and talking is not a good combination." Frodo nodded and looked over at Sam and Pippin: one blabbing--slurred-speech stories bullshit begging for the next drink. The other one looked back at Frodo.

Strider NEW conclusion: Sam fruit-hinky on Frodo--a complication. Babysitting four midgets a BIG THING now, Strider reconsidering his deal: Gandalf, mover, shaker, shakedown artist--you bring the four halflings to Rivendell or I snitch you to Elrond for Arwen. Gandalf: big time Elf juice, one of the Wise--no way out. Arwen images floated in behind the pipeweed: forbidden fruit BIG TIME. More conclusions: Elves do not like Men getting Elf trim. Second conclusion: Elrond ran the Elf operation in the North, he ESPECIALLY does not like Men getting Elf trim. Make it three: Gandalf makes the call, two days later he is nailed to a tree with Elf arrows through his ball sack.

Three options: grab Arwen and split. No go: Elrond is Outfit, he has juice everywhere. Gandalf has juice everywhere. Second option: do as Gandalf says, hand-hold hapless homo halflings to Rivendell. Third option, VERY TEMPTING: snitch the Ring to Sauron in return for Arwen, Sauron brings the black curtain down over the West; Elrond neutralized; Gandalf neutralized; Elves neutralized. Brain jump: Sauron would promise ANYTHING for Ring. Brain jump: Arwen and Strider living the squarejohn life in Sauron territory--FUNNY.

Dig: Pippin talking too much. Dig: Frodo jumps up on the table and starts singing. Strider takes a loooooong hit. Feeling goooooood. He goofs on the dancing midget. Watch him dance! Watch him sing! Watch him FUCKING DISAPPEAR! Too stupid: Option three and a half coming into focus--Black Riders/Weathertop/Four dead midgets.

Funnily enough, since I wrote this there has been some competition. You can decide which is better. And another, of better quality.

I found a googlewhack: pusillanimous_corbels, but as soon as I submitted to googlewhack.com, it acquired a duplicate. It made googlewhack.com's cut, but it was oh so fleeting.

Thu Jan 2 22:01:42 PST 2003: Another one! This one is trappist_dystopias, and let's hope it sticks.

Thu Jan 2 22:56:55 PST 2003: Yet another: vomitus_companionways.

Fri Jan 3 18:56:29 PST 2003: And another: bathyscaphe_utterances.

Wed Jun 25 16:01:48 PDT 2003: Three more, two of which were erroneously rejected by googlewhack.com: understated_cloacae, sesquipedalians_rubric, and urethral_chirruping (Two of these now have duplicates)..

Mon Nov 20 15:32:00 PST 2002: demi writes "This is a couple of days old, but the BBC is reporting that extremely dense strange quark matter may have penetrated the earth twice in 1993. Time for the foil hat."

Mon Jan 20 12:53:17 PST 2003: A friend reminded me of this excellent article about Excite@Home; it's not timely but dead on and a great response to a lot of opinion's I've heard about the "real" problem with Excite@Home.

Wed Jul 16 13:40:35 PDT 2003 All your bass are belong to us

demi writes, "Metallica is suing a Canadian rock band for illegal use of the E and F chords (found originally on Fark). Further comment is unneeded."

The term "microconvenience" refers to a small convenience that requires a great deal of work to implement for a very small benefit. An example is the feature of my answering machine, which doesn't record a message when the caller hangs up. It would be easy for me to delete the empty messages, but someone took the time to write the firmware to determine if the message was just a dial tone and not record a message if so. A microconvenience.