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| "AMERICA'S FUNNIEST HUMOR"TM
SHOWCASE
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October/
November 2008
Humor Writing Contest Results! |
Congratulations to
the Winners of our
October/
November 2008 Humor
Writing Contest!
New U.S. Citizenship Test: The Version You Didn't See
By Joel Schwartzberg, New Jersey
This month, a new U.S. Citizenship test goes into effect that includes
100 new questions covering American government, American civics, and
American history. (Given the general level of civic education in the
U.S., it's surprising the project hasn't been outsourced to India.)
When the new questions were unveiled last year, they were extensively
covered by the media. But receiving no attention was a surprising
earlier version of the test that was proposed not only to keep up with
modern times, but also to root out potential terrorists.
Now, for the first time, a partial look at the U.S. Citizenship Exam,
Version 1.5
MULTIPLE CHOICE SECTION
1) Which of the following is an official language of the United States?
a. English
b. Spanish
c. Spanglish
d. Ebonics
e. Pilates
f. Teleprompter
2) How unlikely is it that you are not a terrorist?
a. Highly not unlikely
b. Pretty unlikely
c. Somewhat not likely
d. Likely unlikely
3) What is a mortgage-backed security?
a. A bank guard
b. An asset-backed security whose cash flows are backed by the principal
and interest payments of a set of mortgage loans
c. A football position
d. No clue.
d. B and D
4) When in a bathroom stall, if you block the door, tap your foot, and
touch your shoe to the shoe of the person in the next stall, which of
the following are you asking for?
a. More toilet paper
b. Sex
c. Votes
5) Identify and briefly describe the contributions of at least three of
the following four influential Americans:
a. SpongeBob Squarepants
b. Tony Soprano
c. Ronald McDonald
d. Paula Abdul
6) To the best of your knowledge, please list the average purchase price
of each of the following domestic items
a. One quart of lactose-free milk
b. One loaf of whole wheat bread
c. One pound of enriched, weapons-grade uranium
7) An American is only allowed to vote when which of the following
conditions are met?
a. He or she is over 25
b. He or she has a driver's license
c. All the contestants have finished singing
8) Complete the sentence: Trans fat is...
a. Good for you
b. Bad for you
c. An airline for obese people
9) In which of the following moments is it appropriate to make a racist,
homophobic, or anti-Semitic remark?
a. On the radio
b. As you're being arrested
c. During a push poll
d. As you're accepting an Emmy Award
e. In front of your kids
10) Which of the following notable Americans has had his or her own
reality show?
a. Tori Spelling
b. Scott Baio
d. Dina Lohan
e. George W. Bush
f. All of the above
11) Who are Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae?
a. Popular television morning show hosts
b. Paris Hilton's dogs
c. Beloved characters from "The Beverly Hillbillies"
d. Disgraced home loan mortgage companies
OPEN-ENDED SECTION
1) Hey, ummm, are you a terrorist?
2) What's the maximum number of items allowed in a supermarket "express
line"?
3) Please define "Mission Accomplished." Now define it another way.
4) Name four television channels that come included in a basic, but not
premium, cable package.
5) What's the practical purpose of an "appetizer?"
6) What's the difference between TiVo and a DVR?
7) Would you consider running for Vice President of the United States if
asked?
8) No, really, are you a terrorist?
9) Name 12 things a cell phone should do besides send and receive phone
calls
10) Paper or plastic?
11) Is it kind or unkind to rewind?
12) In 50 words or less, please fix our health care system.
www.jesttokill.com
© Copyright
by author, used with permission by Humor Press. No unauthorized reproduction or redistribution is allowed.
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 Invasion
Of The Body-Hair Snatchers
By Anna Lefler, California
[When a wife and mother of two in the prime of her life makes the
shocking discovery that she is descended from Methodist werewolves, she
seeks a mythical device that will help hide her gruesomeness from her
family and the world at large.]
So I'm driving the other day with the sunroof open (in keeping with
California state law) and, having just polished off a lemon poppy seed
muffin, I'm checking in the rear view mirror to make sure my teeth
aren't riddled with little black seeds. All of a sudden, the sunlight
hits my face at just the right angle and [cue slasher theme from
"Psycho"] I make the grisly discovery that I am the fourth member of ZZ
Top.
Where...the HELL...did all that face fuzz come from? I used to be a girl
with the usual, factory-installed amount of hair with typical default
settings for location and density.
But THIS? This was outside the limits of an occasional
wax-the-downy-soft-peach-fuzz-from-my-upper-lip-type situation. My
cheeks and jawline looked like an old tennis ball.
Benefits to having robust facial fuzz:
• Helps preserve body heat if you get lost while glacier-climbing
• Auto mechanics take you seriously
• Children's friends aren't sure who you are, but they friggin' mind you
• Going to a wedding? You can braid celebratory baby's breath all along
your jaw
I tried plucking. I tried waxing. They were not getting it done. It
quickly became apparent that I had no choice but to employ superior
firepower.
Thus, I purchased a rechargeable hand-held epilator.
How hard could it be, right? I've been through childbirth twice. I've
had food poisoning. I've worked in PR. I've known agony.
[cue Vincent Price-ish maniacal laughter]
You start, say, next to your right ear. Bzzzzz. The tiny metal wheels
turn furiously, grabbing those fuzzy hairs by the throat and yanking
them out of your face at the rate of, I don't know, a thousand per
millisecond? (I'm just ballparking here.)
You can do this. A slight sting, maybe a prickle. But totally worth it,
right? I mean, somewhere under that turf is your old face. (Hmm, that
didn't come out quite right but you know what I'm saying.)
You move onto the cheek. BZZZZZZZ. It sounds different now, like maybe
it's kicked into a lower gear. You're glad you spent the extra on the
turbo model. Your eyes are starting to water a bit, but by God, you're
no wuss. You keep your mind's eye fixed on what you used to look like
before you started channeling Burl Ives.
The chin. A veritable thicket. BZZZZZZZ. You smell burning hair. Die,
little hair bastards, DIE! Ha-ha! You swear you can hear them screaming
as they are ripped out. Oh, wait. That's you.
The upper lip: last remaining fuzz outpost. Coincidentally, also the
repository of approximately 8.2 gazillion nerve endings, each with its
own, personal fuzzy hair holding onto it for dear life. You pause,
blowing the smoke and singed hair from the end of your appliance as you
give the stinkeye to the little hairs in the mirror. You look very
badass indeed in your woven serape, your hat pulled low over your eyes
and that little brown stub of a cigarillo screwed into the corner of
your mouth. You are no stranger to torment, my friend. Only one shall
leave the bathroom today. The other shall perish, living on only in
children's folk songs and Etch-A-Sketch art.
It happens now.
:: click :: BZZZZZZ.
The appliance surges and bucks but you hold on, pushing again and again
into the plush frontier of your upper lip. You try to wave the smoke and
burning hair away from your teared, bloodshot eyes as you release a
primal shriek, but it's coming in waves now, like grass clippings
shooting out the side of a lawnmower. Just before you black out, you
have a vision of what you will encounter when you come to, splayed on
the bathroom floor in the super-high-waisted jeans that you wear only
while doing chores around the house, surrounded by a couple of stray
dogs and a circle of neighborhood children who are staring at the
hair-removal appliance hopelessly snarled in the underbrush of your
upper-lip fuzz.
Your secret is out. Soon everyone in the public school will know that
you are...
THE WEREWOLF.
http://www.lifejustkeepsgettingweirder.blogspot.com
© Copyright
by author, used with permission by Humor Press. No unauthorized reproduction or redistribution is allowed.
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 A
Tryptophanian Thanksgiving
By
Chad
Hatfield,
Washington
Tryptophan—an amino acid found in turkey that purportedly makes
people tired.
Scientists have repeatedly asserted that the drowsiness frequently
experienced on Thanksgiving can be attributed to the eating of a big
meal and not specifically to eating turkey. Still there are some who
continue to believe that eating turkey makes a person tired. (See
wikipedia – tryptophaniacs). I’m with them. It’s true. I’ve experienced
it. I offer a summary of my day’s happenings as living proof.
This morning I was in bed dreaming about turkeys, and I didn’t fully
wake up until all the cleaning around the house was done and the real
turkey was prepared and in the oven.
And then the smell of the turkey cooking made me so tired that I
couldn’t even help set the table and prepare the side dishes that I
insisted that no one else make but me.
Then came actually eating the turkey. I was so sleepy during the meal
that even though I honestly wanted to go back to the kitchen for
seconds, I had to settle for just swiping things off the plates of those
around me. I know that my behavior was not following proper Thanksgiving
Day etiquette to the tee, but you can’t tell me that there weren’t some
days that the pilgrims were so exhausted that they too had to rest their
heads on the table and then use a fork to scrape the food off the side
of their plate into their opened mouths.
Then after the turkey dinner, I barely had enough energy to ask someone
to bring me a turkey sandwich, while I sprawled out on the couch
watching the game. Truth be told, I couldn’t even stand up when my team
scored a touchdown. I had to just raise my two hands above my head—then
fold them back behind my head. I was asleep by the time the extra point
went through.
I probably should not have had that last turkey sandwich. My drowsiness
got so bad that I could not even control what I was saying or doing.
There’s no way that I normally would have kept asking Aunt Gilda to loan
my thirty-five dollars. And I certainly wouldn’t have slipped her a note
that read: put the cash on my plate or a Pilgrim gets it.
I was so tired from all that turkey that there was no way I could help
with the dishes or even tell anyone that I had put my dirty plate under
the couch because I was too sleepy to take it to the sink. It took all
my energy just to shout to my wife in the kitchen from the other room to
come join me and I would do the dishes later. Although, I think that
last part was the turkey talking. I meant to say the dishes would get
done later.
At one point my mother pulled me aside and said she needed to talk to me
about something really important. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she
drew me close. I could smell the turkey on her breath, and I was asleep
by the time she could control her tears enough to start talking.
As our guests were leaving, I didn’t even have the ambition to tell them
to come again sometime or even to give Uncle John his coat back—even
after he asked for it a couple of times. Give it a rest John. Man, give
that guy some more turkey.
Then before dozing off for my third nap, I thought about all the
pilgrims and why they were so set on eating turkey all the time. Were
they having trouble sleeping? Did they want their Native American guests
to do the dishes? Was that really “so rude and embarrassing?”
Before crashing for the evening, I complained to my wife about the
effects of all this turkey on my system. She said that she didn’t notice
anything out of the ordinary in my behavior today. I guess maybe she
wasn’t quite as sharp as usual; she did have a little turkey herself.
Well, when all is said and done, maybe I still haven’t convinced you of
the effects of tryptophan. But at least, I can leave you all with
this—the pilgrim’s Thanksgiving prayer:
A happy turkey to all, and to all a good gizzard. Gobble, gobble. Amen.
http://chadhatfield.blogspot.com
© Copyright
by author, used with permission by Humor Press. No unauthorized reproduction or redistribution is allowed.
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 Praise
The Lord And Pass The Snake
By William Schmitt, New York
One
of my English learning students from France opened up our conversation
with the question “Have you ever ate a snake?” Now I've been around for
56 years, but it didn't take too long to check through the memory files
and get back to him on that one.
“Uh, can't say that I have.”
“Would you like to know how to cook one?” he quickly added. I glanced at
the clock to see how much longer we had in the lesson, and seeing that
only 30 seconds had elapsed, I could tell that this was going to be 30
minutes of my life I was never going to get back again.
“Sure” I fired back, somewhat short in the enthusiasm department, “Go
ahead,” all the time wondering why anyone who lives in a country with
ready access to Pop Tarts would want to eat a snake.
I mentally couldn't get past the picture he painted by telling me that
you had to boil the snake first like a lobster, before adding garlic and
parsley and baking it at 325 degrees for fifteen minutes.
“Bet it tastes like chicken” I weakly added. Of course, since this was
an English lesson, I had to tell him that “Have you ever ate a snake?”
was bad English, unless you live in the part of the country where they
actually eat snakes. Afterwards, I decided to be a little more
adventurous and look up on the Internet to see how we prepare your basic
reptile dish here in the good old U. S. of A. It turns out it does taste
like chicken. And there are several websites that are devoted to
providing a myriad of mouth-watering recipes.
Step one in the process is - “Acquiring a dead snake”. I assume this is
the hard part. The snake used in this instructional piece was a
three-foot long “Black Rat Snake “, (which conjures up two succulent
tastes in one) that had just been hit by a car. The author noted that
“its heart was still beating.” This must be the equivalent of checking
the freshness date on a box of donuts. The instructions didn't note if
he tried applying a little mouth-to-mouth in an attempt to resuscitate
the poor creature.
The main ingredients in this recipe were listed as:
1 dead snake (If you can't kill it yourself, shopping at the roadside
supermarket is the next best thing.)
1 box of Jiffy Cornbread mix (I like where this is going)
Egg whites
Pepper. I'm guessing lots of pepper.
Now, before you put together this delicious concoction you have to know
how to skin and clean a dead snake. I swear the next two steps were to
“find the snake's anal vent” and “check the tread marks.” At this point
I knew that I would never get to the Jiffy Cornbread stage.
It brought back to mind my days as a Holy Roller when I read about
churches that used actual live, poisonous snakes in their worship
services. We were big into faith at the time, but using a rattlesnake as
a musical instrument never appealed to me. Now, after reading about
people eating these things, it makes me wonder; I bet their church
dinners were a lot more exciting than ours.
“What's that in the Jello Ruth?”
“Oh, just a little fruit and water moccasin mixture I threw together. It
tastes like chicken.”
Pass the Pop Tarts.
http://thehermitcrabspeaks.blogspot.com
© Copyright
by author, used with permission by Humor Press. No unauthorized reproduction or redistribution is allowed.
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 Car
Wars
By
Dan McGinley,
Connecticut
I knew a guy who said cars reflect our
identity. He arrived to work full of swagger and bravado, driving a
massive, powerful Dodge Magnum pickup truck. Bit by bit I saw him
emasculated by people who were more adept at getting things done, and
his confidence faded like Sarah Palin on election night. Eventually he
downsized to a used Toyota, and left for a smaller company. Now he’s
biking to work.
I have two cars that are complete opposites, sending very mixed signals.
My commuter car is a light blue Hyundai Accent with four doors and four
cylinders that cries “grandmother of ten” on my daily commute. You have
to rev the hamster wheel hard to hear if it’s running, and hope for a
long downhill run to pass anything larger than a salad crouton. Every
morning I dutifully warm it up and go into ultra conservative mode,
whispering along at 35 mpg, moving aside for anything faster than Dutch
Elm disease. I’m doing my part. Shame on you heathens, cruising in gas
guzzling luxury.
The other car damns me to hell. It’s a 1986 Z28 Camaro stuffed with a
520-horsepower NASCAR engine and a suspension built for launching John
Glen. It can surpass 200 miles per hour, and people move over from the
approaching sound. It’s registered in Maine because Connecticut put an
emissions facility in lock down after their computer screamed “burn this
car and kill the owner.”
So what does all this say about me?
Schizophrenia?
Bi polar?
Physically insecure?
I’m thinking frugal and understated yet vengeful and nostalgic. Maybe a
little Clark Kent as Superman meets Speed Racer meets Saturday Night
Fever era meets a Korean health bar.
“I really hate that race car,” my wife likes to say. “Every time you
take it out, the house shakes and I say a rosary.”
“But it’s once a week during the summer,” I retort. “If the weather’s
nice.”
She smiles. “More reasons to sell it.”
She kicks a tire and stalks off. “My car needs an oil change,” she
mumbles. “And you’re polishing chrome.”
I ignore another blatant metaphor and retrieve the oil filter wrench.
How did things get so crazy? Where is the justification for such a
beast? Who am I?!
I guess it started in high school during the mid-seventies, a very
opportune time for gear heads pumping gas and saving money for used
muscle cars, which were cheap and readily available. I had two friends
and a nerdy math teacher with Shelby Cobra Mustangs. Mark the Shark had
a ‘69 Charger, and the infamous Barsano brothers ran a ’57 Chevy. Hemi
Harrington had a Road Runner and was legendary. One afternoon he
test-drove a Pantera and lost control on Nobscot Mountain, launching it
into the woods. What a fun guy! Neilbo had the sweetest ride of all, a
dual-quad 427 AC Cobra. During senior year, I weighed-in with a ’67
fastback Mustang GT. Instant Steve McQueen -- Hello chicks, bye-bye
college. We laughed when Arty opted-out with a VW bug, but he’s now a
multi-millionaire. In retrospect, my wife had a very valid point. Also,
our carbon footprints humbled the Grand Canyon. Paleontologists built a
museum around them.
But there were times my friends, there were times: Bruce Springsteen was
singing “Thunder Road” on a hissing 8-track, the girl and sun were both
hot, the Mustang was running sweet, and Officer Dudley looked dashing in
reflective shades, explaining how one more ticket would get me an army
gig down in Fort Benning, where most sport vehicles had 50-caliber guns
attached. Ha-ha! What a great dude!
Now there’s the daily commute, where a boring ride is often a good
thing. But hey, go ahead and giggle when the wind pushes my little
Hyundai around, and discarded cigarette butts knock it off course. I’m
doing my part, moving over as you smirk and bull rush the tiny rear
bumper. Go ahead and have your brief moment of gas guzzling
testosterone. Tomorrow, I may rumble up the middle lane as a fuel hungry
predator cruising schools of helpless guppies, and ye shall tremble! Ye
shall know me by the sound of sick and brutal horsepower! Amen, brothers
and sisters, pay homage to the rebirth of a terrible thundering
dinosaur, and quiver upon my passing!
What’s that? My wife just got home? Ha-ha! Excuse me while I go do some
dishes and . . . er . . . vacuum.
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