Why is is so hard to get a pearl from an oyster? Because they’re a little shellfish.

Once Upon a Time I worked in a small insurance company in Jenkintown PA.  My direct boss told me this joke, which was really quite odd.  He was an older, probably old before his time, humorless man who was extremely religious and extremely uptight. 

Aren't they all?

So, there I was standing in an over-lit computer room hearing this man tell me this joke over the fans and the printers.

I guess he wasn't really all that uptight.






Why did I get divorced?

Well, last week was my birthday.

My wife didn't wish me a happy birthday. My parents forgot and so did my kids. I went to work and even my colleagues didn't wish me a happy birthday.

As I entered my office, my secretary said, "Happy birthday, boss!" and I felt really special.

Then, she asked me out for lunch. After lunch, she invited me to her apartment. We went there and she said: "Do you mind if I go into the bedroom for a minute?" and I replied ''Okay!''

She came out 5 minutes later with a birthday cake, my wife, my parents, my kids, my friends and my colleagues all yelling,, "SURPRISE!!!" while I was waiting on the sofa... naked!!!



Only because this fits well with the next one it's Two-Fer Time!






Husband stormed to his wife in the kitchen and announced

"From now on you need to know that I am the man of this house and my word is Law.

You will prepare me a gourmet meal tonight, and when I'm done eating my meal, you will serve me a scrumptious dessert.

After dinner, you are going to go upstairs with me and we will have the kind of sex I want!

Afterwards you are going to draw me a bath so I can relax.

You will wash my back and towel me dry and bring me my robe.

Then, you will massage my feet and hands.

Then tomorrow, guess who's going to dress me and comb my hair?"

The wife replied,"The funeral director would be my first guess"

Cream Biscuits Recipe or How It Took Me Three Weeks To Make A 10 Minute Recipe

The recipe is straightforward.

2 Cups Self Rising Flour
1 1/2 Cups Heavy Cream or Whipping Cream
1 Tablespoon Sugar.

To large mixing bowl

Add 2 Cups Self Rising Flour.
Sprinkle 1 Tablespoon sugar on top and stir a little bit.
Pour 1 1/2 cups of Heavy Cream on top.
Stir until it begins to form a dough.
Continue to mix with your bare hands until it forms a "Play Doh" consistency.

The dough will go through phases where it is:

• "mealy"
• dry and lumpy
• dry on the outside but one ball
• slightly tacky and moist on the outside - STOP HERE!

Roll the dough out to 1/2 inch thickness, about the thickness of your thumb, palm down.
Use a 3 inch (about 8CM) drinking glass to cut into circles.

Cook the biscuits on a foil lined cookie sheet at 500F until tops are brown - about 10 minutes
Make sure that the biscuits are cooked fully, give them the time they need in the oven.

So my own long winded story.

I was out skating, because that is what I do.  Some of my best ideas come when my heart rate is ticking along at 173 BPM, I'm sweating like I just walked through a car wash, and I'm on eight or ten wheels.

I was thinking about getting home and having something "special" and Biscuits and Gravy came to mind.

Biscuits are one of those things that every "Good Southern Lady" has been taught how to make, and if they are successful, they do it this way because "That's How Momma Taught Me!"

Usually it takes "cutting in ice cold butter" in pea sized chunks so that the steam from the butter will help to give it height.

I'm neither Southern, nor a Woman - not that there is anything with that, nor not that there is anything wrong with not being that.

I also tend to look for shortcuts in the kitchen.

That Southern Recipe is kind of fussy and really does take practice.

The recipe up top there?  It's easy.  You just have to be patient in the oven.

That night when we went shopping I remembered I wanted the heavy cream to make these biscuits. 

Since I was going to be left alone for a couple weeks, I also had to get some ground beef for Rack, my McNab SuperDog (TM).  I ended up getting 30 pounds of ground beef which basically ate my freezer's extra space.

I never bake just one of something, and the biscuits would serve me a week of breakfasts.  But with Mr Dog's food ingredients squatting on the prime real estate in my freezer, I had to wait until the freezer drained of "extra" food.

So I watched.  Every time I opened that freezer and took something out, I did a little mental Happy Dance to think I was getting closer to being able to have those biscuits.

In later shopping trips, I did manage to over fill the house, and get some jarred gravy.  If you are reading this from outside of the US, this is not brown gravy - it's something called Red Eye Gravy, which is a white Bechamel Sauce cooked with Sausage Chunks and some black pepper to make it all savory.

This stuff is not light, it's not healthy, and it may not be something for every day, but some people do it daily, and I have seen pictures of an English Breakfast and was amazed at just how much food was on that plate!

Having been on a training diet since 1979, nobody who regularly eats an English Breakfast (Or Irish, Or Canadian, or ...) has any room to point fingers.

Once the freezer had finally been "eaten down" to creating the space for seven biscuits to go back in there, I decided it was time.

This Morning.

I made the recipe, and had the results in that picture. 

I am impatient when it comes to Biscuits.  I tend to pull them too early, and this was no different.  I did not allow them to cook the full 10 minutes, and they were raw inside.

Back in the oven you go, I ended up giving them three more minutes at 500F to get them almost perfect.

Served in a bowl with 1/4 cup of steaming hot Red Eye Sausage Gravy on top, I was in heaven.

3 weeks to get them, they had better be good!

Why should you always hang out your laundry? Otherwise it's launwet.

His Eminence

A drunk man who smelled like cheap wine sat down on a subway seat next to a priest.

The man's tie was stained, his face was plastered with red lipstick, and a half empty bottle of gin was sticking out of his torn coat pocket. He opened the newspaper and began reading.

After a few minutes the man turned to the priest and asked, "Say, Father, what causes arthritis?"

"My son, it's caused by loose living, being with cheap, wicked women, too much alcohol and a contempt for your fellow man."

"Well, I'll be hornswaggled," the drunk muttered, returning to his paper.

The priest, thinking about what he had said, nudged the man and apologized. "I'm very sorry.

I didn't mean to come on so strong. How long have you had arthritis?"
"I don't have it, Father. I was just reading here that the Pope does."

Why was the baby strawberry crying? Because his mom and dad were in a jam!

It was time for the annual bug convention

And all the bugs were getting together and having a good time. The bees were discussing pollinating flowers, the dung beetles were discussing how to properly move dung, the earth worms how to improve soil, etc.

Well, the lady bugs were having a good time when one of them noticed the house flies doing something odd. They would stand together in a group when one would fly off and return, causing the others to laugh and cheer. This confused the lady bug and so he asked the others what they were doing.

"Oh they do this every year. They're timing how long it takes to fly from one end of the building to the other," she said.

"But why are they laughing so much? What's so great about that?" the other asked.

"Don't you know?" the other ladybug began. "Flies time when they're having fun."

Debian Buster with XFCE4 Basics - Stopping the Windows From Going Full Screen on the Edges

This is basic, quick, and annoying.

While I can make my Debian Linux look like just about anything including a Mac, various versions of Windows, and more, I have a fairly lightly modified desktop.  I look for speed and flexibility and it shows. 

However sometimes things just don't go quite right.

I use a trackball, not a mouse.  I need it for graphics work both here on the blog and elsewhere.  The Hand Tremors we all have mean that sometimes something I do will jitter.

Sometimes I just get a little too close to the edges of the windows.

Either way it means now I have a window I am trying to move to a corner or a side has just exploded full screen or is strobing large and small in some fit of electronic insanity.

Lets stop that.

In XFCE 4:

• Click Applications Menu.
• Mouse over to Settings, then down to Window Manager Tweaks.
• Click on the "Accessibility" tab.
• Click the check box off on "Automatically tile windows when moving toward the screen edge".
• Click close.

That's it you're done.

Enjoy.  No more weird strobing.

If you want it back, simply reverse the steps and click the box back on.

How About a Bunch of Fifteen One Liners?

Not that this blog is setting the world on fire, but I do have some friends that keep sending me one line jokes. 

Those Dad Jokes that I use as titles for these weekend joke posts.

Suitable for all audiences.

I have a file on my desktop on my main Debian Linux Computer that I keep them and when I need one, cut, paste, publish.

I don't really understand Number 6 but here you go!




"Get Thee to a Punnery"

1. Review of the new Mary Poppins themed restaurant: Super cauliflower cheese but the lobster was atrocious.
2. Never try to teach a pig to play basketball - he'll just hog the ball.
3. I swallowed a laxative with holy water - I'm about to start a religious movement.
4. I once had a job at an eyeglass store but I quietly quit. I didn't want to make a spectacle.
5. I nearly bought a hill today, but it was a bit too steep.
6. The frog's DNA test revealed that he was a tad Polish.
7. Some people think my puns are juvenile. I prefer to think of them as full groan.
8. I didn't think wearing orthopedic shoes would help, but I stand corrected"
9. It was raining cats and dogs. There were poodles all over the road.
10. The state police highway officer worked tirelessly in the heavy rain to assist a lady whose car was stuck in a ditch. He was a real trooper.
11. What does a spy do in the rain? He goes undercover
12. I once had a job prospecting for gold, but it didn't pan out.
13. I just got a new job at a guillotine factory... I'll be headed there shortly.
14. While was sitting on a bench I noticed a really foul odor - then I realized it was a pew.
15. Athenians hate mornings because Dawn is tough on Greece.

What kind of music do mummies listen to? Wrap music.

I can remember sitting in the big chair when I was a kid and watching all those old sit-coms from the decades before.  There was a running gag in a lot of them about relationships that had me scratching my head. 

This particular joke reminds me of one of those plots.  Married couple, relationship has gone stale, and instead of talking they're using a mediator to do what they should do themselves.


With a twist.

The moral of the story?  Don't watch old sit-coms.




After thirty years of marriage a husband and wife go for counseling.

When asked what the problem is, the wife goes into a tirade listing every problem they had ever had in the years they had been married.

On and on she goes: neglect, lack of intimacy, emptiness, loneliness, feeling unloved and unlovable—an entire laundry list of unmet needs she has endured.

Finally, after allowing this for a sufficient length of time, the therapist gets up, walks around the desk, and after asking the wife to stand, he embraces and kisses her long and passionately as her husband watches with a raised eyebrow.

The woman shuts up and quietly sits down as though in a daze.

The therapist turns to the husband and says, “This is what your wife needs at least three times a week. Can you do this?”

“Well, I can drop her off here on Mondays and Wednesdays, but on Fridays, I fish.”

What Does A Lava Lamp Look Like When Shaken? A Tradition.

Way back in the day, all my hippy dippy old Boomer friends had these things. 
I liked them and I guess there may have been a little hero worship built in.

So eventually, at a scratch and dent sale in Best Products (R.I.P.) on Woodhaven Road in Bensalem, I found one. 

Yoink.  It's been mine for ... decades I guess.

I had always been told "if you shake it, it will never be right again".

Being the "curious" type, I did.  It took about a week and a half to settle back to looking normal.

I mentioned it to a friend that you can do that.  Get the light all nice and hot and vigorously shake the thing.  It will turn solid red, or whatever color the wax is, and two weeks later, you will be right back to normal.

The response "NOOOOO!  Mr Bill!  Don't Shake Me!  NOOOOO!".

Never been one to take no for an answer here. 

I responded "So, what?  This is 'Don't Shake Me Bro?".

You can see the result.

At least I got a giggle out of that comment.

Granted this is from an older picture.  Every time that friend goes away, the last night before he goes, I shake the living daylights out of the Lava Lamp

Besides, it gives me something to look at and obsess over.

My friend is going to Douglas, The Isle Of Man for three weeks.  He'll hardly know it ever got shaken.

Tradition, my man, Tradition!

What lies at the bottom of the ocean and twitches? A nervous wreck

Have you ever read something and had to read it twice before you got it?

Well this isn't one of them.  It's just a bit strange.


A boy named Tommy Bought a horse...

from a farmer for $250 and the farmer agreed to deliver the horse to Tommy the following day.

The next day though, the farmer turned up at Tommy's house and said, "Sorry son, but I have some bad news, the horse died."
Tommy replied, "Well, then just give me my money back. That's fine."
The farmer said, "Sorry, I can't do that. I went and spent it already."

Tommy then said, "Okay, then, just bring me the dead horse."
The farmer was surprised and asked Tommy, "Why? What ya gonna do with him?"
Tommy replied, "I’m going to raffle him off."

The farmer laughed and said, "You can't raffle off a dead horse! Who'd buy a ticket?"
Tommy answered, "Sure I can, just watch me. I just won't tell anybody the horse is dead."

A month later, the farmer met up with Tommy again and asked, "What happened with that dead horse in the end. Did you raffle him off?"
Tommy said, "I sure did. I sold 500 tickets at $5 a piece."

The farmer said, "Didn't anyone complain?"
Tommy smiled and said, "Just the guy who won. So I gave him his $5 back."

I make bad puns. That's how eye roll.

Ok, so if you're underaged, overly prissy, or don't like suggestive humor hand it to your kid because there are No Bad Words here.





A 50 year old guy goes to a surgeon to make himself look younger

The surgeon completes the surgery and it is a success.

"How do I look?" the man asks.

"You look 30 years young!" the surgeon replies.

The next day, the man goes to the gas station to fuel up and asks the cashier:

"Excuse me sir, how old do I look?"

The cashier responds, "You look 29 years young!"

The man is flattered and responds, "Why thank you! I'm actually 50!"

Next, the man goes to a meat market and asks the butcher:

"Excuse me sir, how old do I look?"

The butcher replies, "You look pretty young. I'm guessing about 27."

Again, the man is flattered. "Why thank you! I'm actually 50!"

The man is strolling around town looking for another pedestrian to guess his age. He comes across an elderly woman who appears to be friendly.

"Excuse me miss, I hate to bother you, but how old do you think I am?" the man asks.

The woman replies, "I'm sorry mister but I've lost my vision from old age and I could only guess your age if I felt the inside of your pants."

The man is reluctant at first. But then he decides to just go with it. He unzips his pants and lets the woman stick her hands inside. She feels around for a bit and then removes her hands from his pants.

"You're 50 years old!" she says.

The man is astonished. "What?! How did you know?!" he asks.

"I was right behind you at the meat market." She replies.