A Blog of the Ridiculous and Sublime, by Mark Sackler
“The average Thanksgiving dinner takes 18 hours to prepare and 12 minutes to consume. The average football halftime is 12 minutes long. This is not a coincidence.”–Erma Bombeck
“Most Texans think Hanukkah is a duck call.”–Richard Lewis
If all this isn’t enough, my wife is actually preparing a rutabaga as part of our dinner. After all the jokes about rutabagas herein, when I actually held one I thought it was a misshapen duck pin bowling ball. Happy Turkey Day to all.
“I wanted to be a veterinarian until I saw a video of a vet performing surgery on a dog. Then I wanted to be a pianist.”–Amy Lee
When Cheryl went to veterinary school back in the late 1970’s, it was three times harder to get into veterinary school than it was to get into Medical school. She often jokingly referred to Yale Medical School as her second choice if she did not get into Vet School. She thought that getting accepted into veterinary school was just about the hardest thing she ever did in her life.
Then she had to get through it. It turns out that was far tougher on her, at least emotionally, then getting in ever was. But have no fear, it certainly had its light moments–some of which we laughed at then, others which we can laugh at now. In the latter category was something they told her in the very first week of school.
“DVM stands for Doctor Vithout Money.” She was told.
Now I know what you are thinking. Wow, you couldn’t tell that from my vet bills. But do the math. Starting vet salaries in the early 80’s were only about $18-22K. Today, they run around $60K, but young vets come out with school loan debt load comparable to mortgage payments. I guess we can laugh about it now, younger vets though, not so much.
Here’s one that was hysterically funny then…maybe even more so than now. But it’s a story that almost never grows old. It is a supposedly true tale that was told by a guest lecturer during Cheryl’s first semester at Purdue University School of Veterinary Medicine in the fall of 1977.
It was late 1960’s and the large ungulate population at the Bronx Zoo was becoming highly inbred; some new blood was needed. The only really good source available was the native habitat in Africa. Now, these are really large animals. Bringing Mohammad to the mountain was just not possible so the reverse approach was necessary. One of the zoo veterinarians would have to go to Kenya to collect some semen for use in artificial insemination. This was really nothing new, however; it was nothing that had not been done before. One of the vets who had made this trip on many occasions was assigned the task. He dutifully packed his bags and headed to New York’s JFK International airport for the trans-Atlantic flight.
Yes, it had all been done before–there was only one tiny little new glitch. Airport security. You see, unlike the dog story in Tales of a Veterinary Spouse #6, this was not going to be a hand job. A special piece of expensive equipment was needed to complete this job, and that piece of equipment was carried on by our unsuspecting hero in a very heavy, thick steel case. Confronted with the airport security scanner for carry on luggage for the first time, he thought nothing of it, and put the case on the conveyer belt to go through. BIG MISTAKE. The steel case proved impenetrable to the X-rays. And he was asked to open the case, which he obediently did, revealing something that looked like this:
Something out of Spy vs. Spy?
“Sir, what exactly is that?” Inquired the pre-TSA security agent.
“Why, it’s an electroejaculator for a rhinoceros, of course!”
Momentary silence.
ALARM BELLS. HORNS. WHISTLES. STROBE LIGHTS.
The poor guy was pushed spread eagle against the wall, frisked and detained until somebody from the Bronx Zoo could be contacted to verify his identity and mission. Obviously, he missed his plane and some lucky rhino in Kenya got a one day reprieve.
The moral of this story? Be sure to pack your electroejaculator in checked luggage. Unless, of course, your rhino opts for a hand job.
“In my next life, I want to live backwards: start out dead ….and finish as an orgasm.”–Woody Allen
I just had to put up another Woody quote after my last post. Can you just imagine what Benjamin Button would have been like if Woody filmed it (or wrote it originally!).
OK, enough distraction; conjecture #5 is coming next. I promise.
“What’s the killer app? Making a phone call.”–Steve Jobs
“I only have dummy phones.”–Don Rickles
With the announcement of the new iPhone models 5S and 5C its time to revisit, with slight modification, the original post of this series. Appropriately enough, I now use an app on my iPhone for tracking my bicycle treks. So now I have distracted cycling to go along with distracted everything else. To paraphrase Don Rickles, we only have dummies with phones. Present company? No comment. For the original version of this post, click here.
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Don’t be deceived. It is far more complicated than it looks. Where attention to the outside world in the absence of a smart phone (Aa)equals 1, then attention to the outside world in the presence of a smartphone (As) is approximately equal to the inverse of the number of cool apps on said smartphone (n) times the I-Phone or equivalent model number (m). Yes, approximately equal to—because nothing is that precise in the quantum mechanical world of electronics, and anyway I like using that smart looking squiggly thingy over the equal sign. Taking the example of my own I-Phone 4, I have 14 apps I would describe as being “cool.” As 14 x 4 is 56, then when I am packing my phone, my attention level to the outside world is an astonishingly small 1/56th of normal. This is dangerous. As I’m reputed to be a major space shot to begin with, I should probably be banned from breathing and texting at the same time. But that calculation can wait for another day, as even the basics get much more complicated.
What will happen if I upgrade to the new I-Phone 5s and add the pernicious feature known as Siri?
It gets ugly in a hurry. The equation now looks like this:
Yikes! We now have to square the denominator and in the personal example stated above, my attention level would be 1/702of my normally spaced out self. This computes to 1/4900.
I don’t know if the Planck length applies to this, but a few more apps and new models and my attention level will certainly approach it. Also note that the “s” on the right side of the equation stands for Siri and has no numerical value. It just makes the equation appear more complex and disguises my general ignorance of advanced mathematics. Anyway, this demonstrates why I don’t yet have Siri. If I did, I would have proposed to her long ago and been off to Vegas for a quickie divorce from my wife by now. Ah, for the days when the internet was still in black and white.
Endnote: The addition of the new model 5C creates a conundrum. How should we calculate for that, and for that matter, what’s the difference? Well, C apparently stands for cheap, and that’s as in construction, not price. Any suggestions how to compute that?
“The meaning of life is a rutabaga.”–Garrison Kiellor
http://www.cartsoonstock.com
Used with permission
Here is an existential dilemma if ever there was one. I cannot stand Garrison Kiellor, but I cannot resist jokes about rutabaga. The word rutabaga itself is just too funny; I guess funny won out. Maybe ‘ol Garrison drank some rutabaga-ade before making that terrible movie a few years ago. It must have tasted like-er–well…rutabaga. 😀 For more on rutabaga, including information on national rutabaga month, check out this crazy site… The Rutabagan
“Photons have mass? I didn’t even know they were Catholic.”–Woody Allen
I’m pretty sure they aren’t Catholic even if they do have mass. Einstein was right anyway, no mass moves at the speed of light. Stay tuned, you might even see some real science soon. (If you don’t get the gag to the left, go back and review the entire Quantum Weirdness series.)
“Who’s on first.”–Bud Abbott
Note: If you have never seen Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on first?” routine, one can only draw one of three possible conclusions. You’re from a country that does not play baseball, you can’t speak English, or you’ve been living under a rock your entire life. Maybe all three. For your benefit (and I assume you speak English if you’re reading this blog) and for anyone who needs a refresher, the video link to that classic appears at the end of this article.
Storm Throne…Rougned Odor…Sicnarf Loopstok…these are only three of the 75 names entered in minor league baseball’s seventh annual Moniker Madness competition, to chose the best name (read: most ridiculous) in the game. The contest began Monday and will run through August 29. You can see the whole list, and vote for your favorites, here.
No purging of my hopelessly cluttered mind would be complete without a discussion of baseball names. Or–more specifically–funny baseball names. Abbott and Costello famously lampooned funny baseball names as far back as the early 1930’s. Back in middle school in the 1960’s, my best friend and I cataloged a list of what we called the 50 wackiest names in (up to then) Baseball history. The list included such beauts as Clyde Kluttz, Van Lingle Mungo, Orval Overall and Christian Frederick Albert John Henry David Betzel. More recently, I have profiled some of these guys as a guest correspondent on The Blog of Funny Names. But let’s get back to Moniker Madness.
Sicnarf Loopstok? Really? Is that a name or the result of an explosion in an Alpha Bits factory? Yes, it is real, and Loopstok is currently leading on the list of this year’s nominees. Some of my personal favorites on this year’s list, besides Loopstok, include Jose Jose, Storm Throne and the aforementioned Mr. Odor. (What were his parents thinking? Can you imagine the schoolyard taunts when he was a kid?).
Here’s a fun little game to play with these names. If one saw the name, and didn’t know it was of a professional ballplayer, who might you take them for instead? Here’s a few of my suggestions from this year’s MM list:
Duke Von Schamman–Baron von Richthofen’s younger step-brother.
Sicnarf Loopstok–the prime minister of Croatia. (Oops, turns out he is from Aruba, so how about the governor of Aruba?)
Storm Throne–a female porn star
Damien Magnifico–goalie for the Brazilian World Cup soccer team.
Jett Bandy–see Storm Throne
Sammie Star–see Storm Throne and Jett Bandy
Zech Zinicola–councilman from the third ward, Bayone, NJ
Delta Cleary, Jr.–a used car dealer with annoying TV and radio ads
Jose Jose–a character from a Saturday Night Live or other TV show sketch. (Can’t you just hear Bill Dana** saying “my name, Jose Jose?”)
Mookie Betts–a professional gambler
Rougned Odor–maybe a…or…er…help me out, I have no idea here. (It’s pronounced roog-ned oh-dor, accents on the first syllables)
The full current leader board can be found on the MiLB.com site. If you can come up with additions to the list above, please share them with us.
Have a great day, and don’t even think of naming any of your kids after these guys. 😀
**Like me, Bill Dana is an Emerson College grad. He went there centuries before I did, though. 😛
“I got a big mouth.”–Floyd Mayweather, Jr.
Note: This material is rated PG-13. My wife should have realized that before she retold this story to a bunch of Catholic middle-schoolers at a career night. Have you heard the phrase “he (or she) has a mouth that could make a sailor blush?” Cheryl could make Larry Flint blush.
It was the late night for office hours at the clinic–a Thursday to be specific. It was a few minutes before 8 PM closing, and the doctor undoubtedly was tired and ready to go home. But she had just come back from a seminar that focused on bonding new customers to the practice, and wouldn’t you know it, the last appointment of the day was a newbie.
The woman was in her mid 20’s or so, and the kitty she had just adopted was her first pet ever. Despite the fatigue of a long day, Cheryl was determined to execute a perfect “bonding” experience. She launched in her “new kitten” spiel, and all was going well for the first few minutes. But then the office manager stuck her head in the exam room and interrupted.
“Pat D. is on the phone, Cheryl,” she reported matter-of-factly, “he wants to know if he can bring his dog in for a semen sample.”
“What? You’re kidding me. The lab has already picked up today and I am out of gas. Tell him to bring the dog in tomorrow morning.”
So much for that, or so she thought, and immediately pushed the “kitten spiel” button and resumed the pitch.
But something had changed. The customer seemed distracted, even a bit perturbed.
“How do you do that?” The young woman asked, two minutes into the resumed talk.
“Huh, do what?”
“How do you get a semen sample from a dog.”
Cheryl is never one to mince words or be diplomatically indirect under any circumstances. At 8 PM after a 12 hour day of appointments, this was certainly not going to be an exception. Making the appropriate gesture, she curtly replied, “hand job!”
Thinking that would be the last of it, she forgot about it and resumed the kitten spiel. But the woman was still not paying attention, and two minutes later interrupted Cheryl again.
This really is how it’s done.
“C’mon how do you really do it?’
“Huh, do what?”
“How do you really get a semen sample from a dog?’
“Well,” she replied impatiently, “really, you get a cup and you stimulate the dog manually and, well, I can show it to you in a text book if you want.”
The woman frowned and Cheryl resumed the kitten talk, but it was readily apparent that the client was still not satisfied with the answer. In fact, she appeared downright angry. Within a couple of minutes, she abruptly changed the topic for a third and most emphatic time.
“You’re just goofing on me,” and by now she was almost yelling, “HOW DO YOU REALLY GET A SEMEN SAMPLE FROM A DOG?”
Cheryl had had enough.
“Look at it this way lady, I’m not gonna give him a blow job!”
That ended that. Permanently. She never saw that customer again, and to this day she reckons it was worth sacrificing one client just to have the story.
Oh, and she really did tell that story at a Catholic middle school career night. The students loved it; the nuns were horrified. She never got asked back, and I’m guessing she thinks that was worth it as well.
If you enjoyed this story, just wait for the next Tales of a Veterinary Spouse, which will deal with extracting semen from a rather larger species.
Cheers.
On twitter @MarkSackler
“Don’t know if it’s good or bad that a Google search on “Big Bang Theory” lists the sitcom before the origin of the Universe”–Neil deGrasse Tyson.
“The Big Bang Theory: When geeky scientists can be main characters in a hit prime time series, you know there’s hope for the world.”–Neil deGrasse Tyson
If there are two things I absolutely love, they are Neil deGrasse Tyson and The Big Bang Theory. They are both witty and intelligent. When you combine the two, as in the video clip below, it’s like putting hot fudge on double chocolate ice cream. Tyson has done more to popularize and promote the scientific world view than any American since Carl Sagan–and with a sense of humor. Hmmm, kinda like The Big Bang Theory (the show, not the actual theory). Carry on Dr. Tyson.
“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my works. I want to achieve it through not dying.”–Woody Allen
“I’m very pleased to be here. Lets face it, at my age, I’m very pleased to be anywhere.”–George Burns
I’ve had enough of it for now. I’m calling a moratorium on in memoriam memeranda, momentarily. (Try saying that five times fast.) So if you are planning on dying, please have the courtesy to hold off for at least a few weeks. My attention now turns back to the living, at least while I’m still breathing.
I'm not the most interesting man in the world, but I might have the most cluttered mind.
The Millennium Conjectures™ 