Music Monday

7 million viewers can't be all wrong, can they? Note that this one isn't tagged as 'Music'.

The 'Songified' video makes her look pretty crazy, but not as crazy as the REAL video!

Cats on Whidbey Island.

Music Monday

Something appropriate for the 4th - the wonderful Albert Brooks reworks The National Anthem.

Celebrate Whidbey Island.

High School Yearbook Follow-up

Remember all the meaningless platitudes you wrote in high school yearbooks? One guy decided to follow through with some of the notes, and have some reunions with old friends. Very funny.

Found at Bits & Pieces

High School on Whidbey Island.

Turkey?

Technically this is a Christmas story, but it's appropriate for today.

Found at Bits & Pieces

Turkeys on Whidbey Island.

Comic Tuesday

My First Dictionary is a daily blog which features a word of the day, with a cute illustration. It's definitely not meant just for kids, as you'll see. The implications are usually disturbing, if not outright disturbed. Enjoy!

Found at J-Walk Blog

Learning about Whidbey Island.

My Hospital Adventures

Many of my friends know about my recent surgery. I got to spend two days in the hospital, and all things considered it wasn't entirely unpleasant. The nurses were awesome! They were always there with a friendly smile and great care and concern, as well as lots of encouragement.

One of the most uncomfortable things about abdominal surgery is gas. In my case, my gut shut down for about 24 hours after the surgery, and the gas just builds up. The doctors and nurses are aware of this, and make sure they get you up and moving around as soon as possible after your surgery. With this in mind, you would think they would feed you foods that were low on the gas-producing scale of things.

So what did I get to eat, you ask? The first real meal was a lunch; broiled fish, cabbage, and rice. Next? There was corned beef with broccoli, and potatoes, The rest, I can't recall specifically (after all, I WAS on drugs!) But the vegetables we all of the gas-producing varieties...broccoli, cabbage, and beans! oh my! Needless to say, gas was clearly an issue!

Obviously, I survived the efforts of the kitchen staff to make me explode, and returned home to my convalescence.

hospital stays on Whidbey Island.

April Fool's Day

when I was a kid my father used to play the worst pranks on us. We never did top him. My favorite and one my sister and I still laugh about was the time my dad turned our horses loose.

We lived on Mt. Spokane and owned 17 acres. Right next to our house was a 10 acre alfalfa field. Now this field was never really a problem until the alfalfa started to bloom and then the horses just had to have some... Usually they would find a way to break through the electric fence and they were on their way.

Well it was the end of March and the neighbors came to tell us that thier bee hives had been severely damaged by a black bear. It was about this time that we heard that another neighbor had shot a black bear that was trying to break into his house through a window. He was sure he hit it but didn't think he killed it. GREAT! a wounded blackbear roaming through the woods was not a nice thing to find!

So April Fool's Day rolls around and well we are all a little jumpy about the bear that may or may not even be around us! and the horse's get loose. Dad comes in and tells my sister and I to go get the horse's and he will go find where they got out and repair the fence.

So Shan and I take off (la te dah) and we are just walking along when all of a sudden in the bushes we hear this growling and see the bushes move. Both of us thought it was the end. I yelled at Shan and she yelled at me and we both did a 180 and ran for home. After a few feet, Shan tripped over a log and fell. My thought was "well at least the bear will stop for her." I later found out that her thought was if she laid still maybe the bear would go after me. (So much for sisterly love!)

Anyway, when I hit the road that was right by our house I suddenly hear this very deep voice laughing to high heaven. Dad was the bear and us girls were the bait!

My brother's great April Fool's Day joke was to call my great aunt who was over 80 years old and pretend to be an irate neighbor who was calling because Aunt Ella's chickens were in his yard. Would she please come get them? Aunt Ella didn't have chickens and what was worse was Aunt Ella did not recognize Dean's voice until he started giggling. Have a great April Fool's Day and here is some pranks you might enjoy reading about.

Clooney's Kind Gift to a Friend

One day driving around Los Angeles, George Clooney spotted in the trash a hideous painting of a naked woman. He took it home and started plotting his evil plan. George began telling his friends, including longtime pal Richard Kind ("Spin City" and "Mad About You"), that he had developed a newfound love of art, that he was taking painting classes, and that he thought he was quite gifted. George dragged Richard to galleries and craft shows to ensnare his victim deeper into his web. Then one day he showed up at Kind's home with, you guessed it, the dumpster art. He had signed the painting and said he was so proud of it he wanted to give it to his friend. A horrified Kind felt he had no choice but to display the art in his home. Clooney let it hang for a few weeks before confessing his prank.

This next one is a classic: Except I thought the nomination of Palin was the April Fools. The fact that she was on the recieving end of a prank only proves that we were the fools because we actually thought she was a legitimate candidate. I am still laughing at how we were fooled.... oh wait She really was a candidate and Ronald Reagan really was a president? Say it aint so Joe!

Sarah Palin Chats with French President Sarkozy

At the height on the 2008 Presidential campaign, Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin was the subject of the best political practical jokes EVER. Palin enthusiastically took a call from French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who proceeded to tell her in a very heavy accent that he'd like to hunt in a helicopter with her and that he could see Belgium from his house. A nervous Palin replied tentatively, saying we all need to live next door to different countries we need to work with and that if the two of them were to hunt and work at the same time they could kill two birds with one stone. In true Palin form, she flailed until the bitter end, when a Canadian comedian revealed he was pulling a prank. We were just relieved she never had the chance to tell the real Sarkozy, "I love you guys!"

Pranks on Whidbey Island.

Phonetic Punctuation

Rene and I were fortunate enough to see Victor Borge in concert some years ago. He passed away in 2000, but this clip preserves his excellent 'Phonetic Punctuation' routine for posterity.

Here Victor is again, sharing his system with Dean Martin.

Found at Amygdala

Punctual Whidbey Island.

That's a Lot of Frogs

I could have sworn I posted this video already, but I couldn't find it on the blog, so here you go. This young girl has discovered a handy way to carry some frogs.

Reminds me of Rene, who just loves frogs. Although I'm pretty sure she's never carried them in her pants!

Frogs on Whidbey Island.

The Wall St. Bailout

I found this excellent summary of the Wall St. Bailout at Grow-a-brain:

Once upon a time a man appeared in a village and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.

The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and, as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort.

He next announced that he would now buy monkeys at $20 each. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms.

The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so scarce it was an effort to even find a monkey, let alone catch it! The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50 each! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would buy on his behalf.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers: ‘Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has already collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.’ The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys for 700 billion dollars.

They never saw the man or his assistant again, only lots and lots of monkeys.

Monkeys of Whidbey Island.

Maxie Hates Snow

I occasionally indulge in the Lol cats phenomenon, notably here. Today Ms. Kitty posted a great photo of her cat Maxie the Magnificent, documenting his reaction to our 7+ inches of snow. I couldn't resist adding an appropriate caption!

Snow at Christmas on Whidbey Island.

Winter in the Northwest

The other day I was driving down the road. Admittedly, I had only been awake for about 15 or 20 minutes, and may not have been wide awake. The road made a sharp curve to the right and I saw in the ditch a strange object. My thoughts went: "What is that in the Ditch?? Some black thing... Not a trash bag, doesn't look like a dead animal..." As I drove closer I suddenly realized, to my chagrin, it was the shadow from the road sign!!

Just goes to show how quickly we shift our perspective to the dark and cloudy days of winter! It was a bright sunny day, not the usual dark, overcast sky of the past week or so. I laughed all the way into town!

As we head into the darkest days of Winter, remember to keep a smile on your face. It may brighten up someone's dreary day!

Winter on Whidbey Island.

Uh-Oh!

I tink my tung ith thuck to de indow.

Bunnies on Whidbey Island.

Adventuring Party Politics: The Campaign is Getting Ugly

This is just great. Here's the presidential candidates, sitting around a table, playing a role-playing game. Absolutely nailed it. I particularly like Kucinich's non-sequiturs.

Found at Debgpi

Role-playing on Whidbey Island.

Lessons from History

Who would be foolish enough to fall for the old "Trojan Horse" trick, in this modern day and age? You'd be surprised!

Found at Bits & Pieces

Wooden Horses on Whidbey Island.

Hilarity from the Candidates

I'm struck by how funny both candidates are in these videos. They spoke at the annual Al Smith memorial dinner in New York, this last week. The speeches haven't received much publicity, but they are truly wonderful. I think McCain was even funnier than Barack. Enjoy these great videos. We start with McCain, and both candidates speeches are split into two parts.

Found at Othercrap

Humor and politics, on Whidbey Island.

The Great Escape

The Great Escape, a film by Bob the dog. Too cute!

Escape to Whidbey Island.

Useful Quiz

I could survive for 1 minute, 25 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

Velociraptors on Whidbey Island.

Oops!

When you pick a picture off the internet to use as a backdrop for your candidate's acceptance speech, it might be a good idea to check that it's really what you think it is. That's a picture of Walter Reed Middle School, in California, behind McCain, not Walter Reed Army Hospital.

Midway through his speech, someone noticed the error, and replaced the image. Now the campaign is claiming that they planned the whole thing. Right -- your candidate is talking about his support for veterans (see David's post re: McCains veteran support), and you are purposefully showing a picture of a middle school that just happens to have the same name as Walter Reed army hospital. Some mistakes are so obvious that even a political campaign's professional spin-meisters can't weasel out of them, guys.

It's kind of sad that the McCain campaign thinks the average American is dumb enough to believe they used this image on purpose. It's even sadder that most people will probably take them at their word.

Middle schools on Whidbey Island.

Videos of Cats Swimming

I found this blog post at Neatorama, it's 10 videos of cats swimming. You can watch them all, if you like, but I've posted here the two I consider the best. Truly laugh-out-loud funny!

This one is great for the underwater view of the 'cat-paddle'.

This one might be cruel if it wasn't so funny.

Swimming cats on Whidbey Island.