As my pointy-eared elven colleague reminded us last week “While Kendall’s away, the elves may play.” It’s time to lighten up around here before summer flits away!
Yes, the world news is grim, but Proverbs 17:22 reminds us “A cheerful heart is good medicine”, so please take a few minutes to share something that’s made you laugh in recent days:
– a good (clean) joke you’ve heard;
– a limerick;
– a funny video or picture;
– an amusing story
Elves, will there be prizes? Recently MCJ [url=http://themcj.com/?p=47744]held a humor contest[/url], and [url=http://themcj.com/?p=47926]gave out prizes.[/url] It’s only fair that you do the same at T19!
I’m not much of a limerick writer. But here goes:
There once was a blogger named Kendall
Whose blog, T-1-9, was a marvel.
But when he was away,
The elves, they did play,
And the once-famous blog became dreadful.
Dear Elves, I promise I’ll take it all back and write something wonderful about you if you assure us there’s a prize!
A blogger named Kendall did wander,
leaving regular readers to ponder:
“the blog’s not the same –
the elves they seek fame!
Let’s build an elf barbeque over yonder!”
For this joke, you’ll need to know that the British slang term “hoover”
means “vacuum cleaner”. From the recent Fringe Festival in
Britain …
“I got rid of my hoover because it was just collecting dust”.
I think it was voted best joke of the festival.
Oh ho! Two can play this game!
The elves held a council of war.
Karen B’s rude comments to deplore.
“Yes, prizes we’ll give,
but as long as we live
there’ll be none for Miss B., that’s for sure!”
Alarmed at being proposed as food
The elves sought to prove “we are good!â€
“Much fun we adore.
We’ll give prizes galore.
But exclude those whose words are so rude!”
And two other favorite quotes of humor …
1. “They laughed when I said I was going to be a comedian. – Well,
they’re not laughing now.” (Bob Monkhouse, British comedian)
2. “Total non-retention has kept my education from being a burden
to me.” (Flannery O’Connor, American author)
#6, those are excellent!
Elves, my apologies…. just having a little fun! I’ll try to control myself now and come up with some elfless humor.
Given that I’m counting down the days to the release of the next book in Jan Karon’s Mitford series, how about a classic “Uncle Billy joke” from one of the earlier books in the Mitford series.
There once was a busload of patients from a psychiatric hospital that went on an outing in the countryside in spring. They stopped to take photos of a farmer working in his strawberry field. “Can you explain to us what you’re doing?” asked the woman leading the expedition. “I’m putting manure on these here strawberries” the farmer replied. On hearing this, one patient commented to another patient standing next to him “Gee, they call us crazy, but at least we put whipped cream on our strawberries!”
Ok, one last entry from me before I call it a night.
Seeing the picture of Archbishop Foley Beach in the blog entry below, has reminded me of an absolutely hilarious comment made by Eric Metaxas when he spoke at the ACNA Assembly gathering shortly after Abp. Beach was elected.
The Rev. David H. Roseberry [url=https://twitter.com/DHRoseberry/status/481872448779223040]tweeted about Metaxas’ comment[/url] as follows: [blockquote]@FoleyBeach, be advised. Archbishop Duncan’s eyebrows were NOT like that five years ago. So says @ericmetaxas. #eyebrows #Assembly2014[/blockquote]
Here’s the response of Archbishops Duncan & Beach.
http://t.co/214tPGxhzS
And here are the famous ++Duncan eyebrows captured well on film:
https://twitter.com/The_ACNA/status/481843892569260032/photo/1
To hear Eric Metaxas’ joke first-hand, you can listen to Eric Metaxas’ speech to ACNA assembly here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fObMxX_XUJM
(the eyebrow joke is at 45:30, but actually Metaxas’ whole talk is full of humor. If Metaxas ever gets tired of writing biographies, he could go into stand up comedy. I love his joke in the first few minutes about JI Packer… 🙂 )
I was there; I heard that comment! A hoot, indeed.
What a gathering – was able to shake hands, chat briefly, with many luminaries of whom I had only heard previously – too many to list here, and I don’t want to sound as though I’m dropping names!
We have friends here at home who attended Falls Church; the wife was on their vestry. I was able to meet John+ Yates, who, with the help of some of his FC staff did a marvelous organizing job of the entire gathering, and film a very short greeting from him to our mutual friends, and email it to them right then and there. That was really fun.
I had read Eric Metaxas’ book, “Seven Great Men,” – a great treat to him speak both to the entire group and his small group talk.
Happy to hear of ++Foley’s recognition of our bishop, +Bill Atwood, as Dean, International.
A golden oldie [author unknown]:
[b]Hermeneutics in Everyday life! [/b]
Suppose you’re traveling to work and you see a stop sign. What do you do?
That depends on how you exegete (interpret) the stop sign.
1. A post modernist deconstructs the sign (knocks it over with his car), ending forever the tyranny of the north-south traffic over the east-west traffic.
2. Similarly, a Marxist refuses to stop because he sees the stop sign as an instrument of class conflict. He concludes that the bourgeois use the north-south road and obstruct the progress of the workers in the east-west road.
3. A serious and educated Catholic rolls through the intersection because he believes he cannot understand the stop sign apart from its interpretive community and tradition. Observing that the interpretive community doesn’t take it too seriously, he doesn’t feel obligated to take it too seriously either.
4. An average Catholic (or Orthodox or Anglican or Methodist or Presbyterian or whatever) doesn’t bother to read the sign but he’ll stop the car if the car in front of him does.
5. A fundamentalist, taking the text very literally, stops at the stop sign and waits for it to tell him to go.
6. A seminary educated evangelical preacher might look up “STOP” in his lexicons of English and discover that it can mean: 1) something which prevents motion, such as a plug for a drain, or a block of wood that prevents a door from closing; 2) a location where a train or bus lets off passengers. The main point of his sermon the following Sunday on this text is: when you see a stop sign, it is a place where traffic is naturally clogged, so it is a good place to let off passengers from your car.
7. An orthodox Jew does one of two things: a) Take another route to work that doesn’t have a stop sign so that he doesn’t run the risk of disobeying the Law; b) Stop at the sign, say “Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, king of the universe, who hast given us thy commandment to stop,” wait 3 seconds according to his watch, and then proceed. Incidentally, the Talmud has the following comments on this passage: Rabbi Meir says: He who does not stop shall not live long. R. Hillel says: Cursed is he who does not count to three before proceeding. R. Simon ben Yudah says: Why three? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, gave us the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. R. ben Isaac says: Because of the three patriarchs. R. Yehuda says: Why bless the Lord at a stop sign? Because it says, “Be still and know that I am God.”
8. A scholar from the Jesus Seminar concludes that the passage “STOP” undoubtedly was never uttered by Jesus himself because being the progressive Jew that he was, He would never have wanted to stifle peoples progress. Therefore, STOP must be a textual insertion belonging entirely to stage III of the gospel tradition, when the church was first confronted by traffic in its parking lot.
9. A NT (New Testament) scholar notices that there is no stop sign on Mark street but there is one on Matthew and Luke streets, and concludes that the ones on Luke and Matthew streets are both copied from a sign on a street no one has ever seen called “Q” street. There is an excellent 300 page doctoral dissertation on the origin of these stop signs, and the differences between stop signs on Matthew and Luke street in the scholar’s commentary on the passage. There is an unfortunate omission in the dissertation, however; it doesn’t explain the meaning of the text!
10. An OT (Old Testament) scholar points out that there are a number of stylistic differences between the first and second half of the passage “STOP.” For example, “ST” contains no enclosed areas and five line endings, whereas “OP” contains two enclosed areas and only one line termination. He concludes that the author for the second part is different from the author on the first part and probably lived hundreds of years later. Later scholars determine that the second half is itself actually written by two separate authors because of similar stylistic differences between the “O” and the “P.
11. Another prominent OT scholar notes in his commentary that the stop sign would fit better into the context three streets back.(Unfortunately, he neglected to explain why in his commentary.) Clearly it was moved to its present location by a later redactor. He thus exegetes the intersection as though the sign were not there.
12. Because of the difficulties in interpretation, another OT scholar amends the text, changing the “T” to “H”. “SHOP” is much easier to understand in context than “STOP” because of the multiplicity of stores in the area. The textual corruption probably occurred because “SHOP” is so similar to “STOP” on the sign several streets back, that it is a natural mistake for a scribe to make. Thus the sign should be interpreted to announce the existence of a shopping area. If this is true, it could indicate that both meanings are valid, thus making the thrust of the message “STOP (AND) SHOP.”
13. A “prophetic” preacher notices that the square root of the sum of the numeric representations of the letters S-T-O-P (sigma-tau-omicron-pi in the Greek alphabet), multiplied by 40 (the number of testing), and divided by four (the number of the world-north, south, east, and west) equals 666. Therefore, he concludes that stop signs are the dreaded “mark of the beast,” a harbinger of divine judgment upon the world, and must be avoided at all costs.
not original — source unknown
This is a true story that I sent to Readers’ Digest, which never printed it. About 9 years ago I was in Atlanta for a meeting with an insurance client. We broke at lunch time and I took an executive from the company’s office in Hartfort, Connecticut to California Pizza Kitchen. When the waiter asked what we wanted to drink, I got a Diet Coke. My companion said “I know this is sacrilege in the South, but I would like unsweet tea.” The waiter, pointing to the sweeteners said, “No ma’am, we have sacrilege right there on the table.” We both bit our tongues for about 5 seconds until he scurried off, and then laughed until we almost fell out of the booth. I guess you just never know where you’ll find good, old fashioned sacrilege!
OOPS–Hartford, Connecticut.
At the risk of telling this, I’ll tell it anyway. A friend of mine went through the drive through lane of a local fast food establishment and placed an order. My friend asked if there were any condiments available and the astonished team member replied, “Oh, no! We don’t have those here!”
Cat Lady, Speaking of drive thrus, I was in the bank drive through several years ago and the guy next to me had a large dog that jumped over the seat and climbed in the man’s lap, hanging out the drivers side window. The man said the the teller, “I’m sorry ma’am. He thinks he’s at McDonalds.”
Karen B. sent an elf into a snit
By suggesting it be put on a spit
And covered with sauce
Now we’re at a loss
Cause roasted elves taste like…
…grit
#10 William, yours wins the prize, whatever it is! 🙂 Probably it will be the realization of Eric Metaxes’ threat on his blog to translate his Bonhoeffer biography back into English. 😉
#15-#16: Pewster too too funny! I’m cracking up here! :->
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=EVwlMVYqMu4&vq=medium#t=125
When picking up some prescriptions at the local pharmacy, the technician asked, “Do you have any questions ?” Ever the smart aleck,
I said, “Uh, yeah,uh, what’s the meaning of life ?” She shot back, “Hey,
if I knew that, do you think I’d be working here ?”