Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

Thursday Thirteen #19: 13 Malaprops From Grade School, High School, and College Examinations

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1. Louis Pasteur invented a cure for rabbis.

2. The walls of Notre Dame Cathedral are supported by flying buttocks.

3. Sir Francis drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.

4. Moses led the Hebrews to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread without any ingredients.

5. Protons are found in both meat and electricity.

6. The bowels are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y.

7. He worked in the government as a civil serpent.

8. The flood damage was so bad they had to evaporate the city.

9. A horse divided against itself cannot stand.

10. Homer wrote The Oddity.

11. Flying saucers are just an optical conclusion.

12. Socrates died from taking a poison called wedlock.

13. Be sure and put some of those neutrons on my salad.

From 1001 Dumbest Things Ever Said, ed. by Steven D. Price


Links to other Thursday Thirteens!


Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

Blog Fodder #7

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Which is more important: intelligence or common sense?

In my opinion, I think you can get in trouble if you go too far to the extreme in either direction. Here’s what I mean.

One day I was talking to a friend of mine who is very smart. During the conversation I mentioned to him that I consider myself to be kind of a “Renaissance Woman” in that I have a lot of different talents and interests. He replied that women didn’t actually do anything during the Renaissance. After gasping so hard that I nearly inhaled the contents of my entire office, I gently suggested that women might possibly have had more of a role in the shaping of our history than would be suggested by the traditional, “accepted” texts, and he went off on a rant against “revisionist” history, where clearly “revisionist” was a code word for “fascist, communist, anti-American, mother-hating, puppy-killing, Nazi brainwashing propaganda.”

So intelligence? Sure. But spouting remarks that will alienate half of the world’s population, especially when you are a single guy looking for a girlfriend? Not really that smart. [Read more…] about Blog Fodder #7

Attracting Like-Minded Souls

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

“Isn’t ‘hiney’ a fun word?”, my trainer asked me this morning as she ordered me to perform infinity reps of hamstring raises, abductor raises, and straight leg raises, all the while exhorting me to “squish” mine.

That really wasn’t what I had in mind when I dreamed about finding other people who share my love of all things “ass”.

You Know You’re a Grownup

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when this story that you’ve heard for years from a relative around the holiday dinner table

“…So they were sitting on the couch, smoking, and then they would turn around and blow smoke at the cat who was sitting on the back of the couch, and then eventually the cat just fell on the floor…”

is finally told in its “adult” version in front of you at Christmas dinner.

“…So they were sitting on the couch rolling joints, and then they would turn around and blow the smoke at the cat who was sitting on the back of the couch, and then eventually the cat fell off the couch because it was stoned.”

I Just Don’t Get It

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Lately my husband has started playing a new video game, and while normally I enjoy watching him play, this game is really making my head hurt.

See, they trick you. Because they’ll be going along, telling a story that is more or less believable, and then they’ll just throw in some random, goofy-ass twist. Not so much as to completely derail the main storyline, but enough to trick you into thinking that, “I know I can MAKE this make sense if I just think hard enough.” But you can’t, because it’s things like this:

-Europe in WWI, OK, officer of the German army teaming up with an emissary from the Vatican, yeah, have to track down a special tool to exorcise all the demons they will be meeting on their quest, I can live with that, finally obtain the Special Exorcising Tool which turns out to be The Giant Ivory Tusk Of The Holy Mistletoe. “Yes, ha ha, I will slay all evil forces with the universal symbol of ‘gettin’ some’ at Christmas!” Wait-what?! [Read more…] about I Just Don’t Get It

The Rest Of The Story

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A few people have wondered about the rest of the “poo” related story from Saturday. And since I can’t think of a compelling topic for a Thursday Thirteen today (“Thirteen Theories On Why My Head Produces So Much Snot When I’m Sick”, “Thirteen Different Ways To Describe The Fiery Sore Throat Of Death”), I thought I’d write about this instead.

The friend who told us this story has recently become friends with a local police officer, and it was he who told her this story.

Apparently this police officer was called to be backup at an arrest. The subject in question was not happy about being arrested, and was also worried about what the police might find should they choose to search all of his stuff. So, in move that probably explains why he was being arrested in the first place, the subject decided to distract the police and came up with the brilliant plan of pooing on their shoes.

This, of course, only angered the police further, ensuring that they went over all of his stuff with a fine-toothed comb, and led to the discovery of many illegal substances.

When the subject was brought before the judge, in addition to all of the other charges that resulted from his possession of illegal substances, the officers tried to get him charged with aggravated assault, on account of the whole poo-ing thing. The judge would not give them that, since “poo is not a deadly weapon.” But he did give them felony battery because, as we would all most certainly agree, “that is just really gross.”

“And now,” to quote Paul Harvey, “you know the rest of the story.”

Keeping Myself Entertained

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Right now I am supposed to be coming up with a 2-hour lesson plan for a new Spanish class I’ll be teaching starting tomorrow. Unfortunately, I can only write about verbs and vowels for so long before I start getting antsy and looking around for something else with which to occupy myself, and then before you know it my husband has come home to find that I’ve given away all our pots and pans because they weren’t “pretty enough”.

So in order to keep myself entertained and to circumvent any boredom-inspired domestic disasters, I have been reading back through some of the funny spam messages I’ve gotten recently. Such as,

“fortuitous amputee”: (Really? Because I seriously doubt that’s how they’d describe their situation.)

“thousandth madhouse”: (Yep, that could just be a synonym for “Jenny’s Mind”.)

“hardcore pregnant”: (Is there any other way to be pregnant? Half-assed? Not totally committed yet?)

And in the category of, “If I Never Saw These Words Combined Again, It Would Still Be Too Soon”:

“mother’s soapy enema”, and

“mature grandma”

Blog Fodder #6

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What is your most memorable meal? Why?

My most memorable meal was one that I did not actually attend in person. But I still ended up with a great story.

Back in November of 1996, five months after my husband and I got married, our families decided to have Thanksgiving together honor our new union. At the last minute the two of us ended up not being able to go because I got sick. But our families had dinner together anyway.

Included in the invitation was my husband’s eighty-something-year-old grandmother, who when greeting my twenty-year-old brother (whom she had only seen once before, at our wedding, decked out in full wedding regalia) said, “Well hello there. I didn’t recognize you with all your clothes on!”

Read more responses here.