Upon reflection the Council agreed that the “Hug a Bobby” campaign had been ill-conceived and badly mismanaged.

In an age of suicide bombers and rampant oral sex, the very act of hugging strange Londoners involved a great deal of danger for the police constables, both moral and physical. The city’s population had not responded with much enthusiasm anyway.

Of course, it didn’t help that their promotional poster showed Constable Berty Righnworm, standing in a pool of his own urine.

[From the Toulouse Le Grandfig Collection]

Alltop and humor-blogs.com think incontinence is not a laughing matter. Originally published March 2006.

Their coworkers at the Fun-Time-Happy-Japanese-Kobe Beef Slaughter- and Tea- House had been fools not to spot the signs sooner.

Bob always had that insane grin on his face as he cut through the flesh.

And Simon, well, first of all there was the mustache. And then what reasonable person would whistle Pachabel’s Wedding March while using a bonesaw?

[From the Toulouse Le Grandfig Collection]

Alltop and humor-blogs.com have both tried their hands at amateur butchery. Originally published February 2006.

It’s nearly the end of the year, and you know what that means: lists. And ferret-wrestling matches, though I don’t want to get into that now. No, the end of the year is a time when we look back, and compile lists of things. And happenings. And celebrity deaths. Usually ordered backwards, though in the case of the famous the lists are usually ordered by cultural importance or the number of original teeth the celebrity had at their death.

This year there is an extra impetus for list making, as we reach the end of (what many people consider to be) the end of a decade. I still think the first decade of this century should be called the “naughties”, but I’m willing to admit it never caught on, even if it’s brilliant, and the World Wide Ferret-Wrestling Federation (WWFWF) endorsed its usage.

However, this surfeit of lists is a little trying for those of us who are tired of them, and I would like to suggest that in lieu of having to look at many different lists, we all just agree on one super-list to which we can refer if we feel like looking at a list. It will save time and money.

More importantly, I think we can all agree the proliferation of lists is annoying, and here is why:

10 ) Lists are incapable of expressing irony.
9 ) Making other people feel they should read Ulysses is pretentious and may lead to the reading of Proust.
8 ) Actually reading Ulysses is even worse.
7 ) Counting backwards is difficult.
6 ) Lists lead to people compiling books of lists, which is doubly annoying.
5 ) Is always filler.
4 ) Too many sentence fragments.
3 ) Countdowns lead one to expect that a rocket will be launched. But no rocket is launched.
2 ) Casablanca.
1 ) Is usually a huge letdown.

Now we can all concentrate on the ferret wrestling. Go Bitey “The Tongue” Joe!

Alltop and humor-blogs.com prefer rat wrestling. Low class. Photo of Bitey “The Tongue” Joe by Bronia Sawyer.

His twelve hundred unsuccessful attempts had led to a fused neck, six back surgeries, and three failed marriages.

Many felt that Gunter was a pervert, but some secretly admired his persistence…

For her part, Eustace loved him for his plimsoles.

[From the Toulouse Le Grandfig Collection]

Alltop and humor-blogs.com have also tried this. Originally published January 2006

Alonsy had spent the better part of the morning trying to get the tortoise to turn around and perambulate in the right direction.

Then it struck him. Even if he did, he was never going to make it in time!

They would have to start the opera without him.

[From the Toulouse Le Grandfig Collection]

Alltop and humor-blogs.com both like hearing the fat lady sing. Originally published December 2005.

Thag presents “Less darky!” (circa 11,564 BC) –> Only slide

• Shortest day in year
• Less darky after this
• More light good
• Pass mammoth rib please!

Catullus presents “Saturnalia ho!” (circa 69 BC) –> Slide 6

• gifts
• gambling
• tomfoolery (masters serve the slaves, nudge, nudge)
• public nudity
• the best of times!

Snagur Snarfasson presents “Yule be guessing” (circa 215 AD) –> Slide 3

Julebukking is the best:

• Disguise ourselves in masks and costumes
• Carry dead goat’s head in honor of Thor
• Visit neighbors
• Scare shit out of them ’till they give us mead.

Origen presents “Nativity schmativity” (circa 245 AD) –> Slide 1

• Christ is not like some pharaoh
• Only sinners celebrate birthdays
• Do you want to be a sinner?

King Richard II presents “Pig out with the Plantagentents!” (circa 1377 AD) –> slide 12

Christmas feast includes:

• 28 oxen
• 300 sheep
• 2000 chickens
• 1 Yule boar.

Thomas Nast presents “Fat Santa” (circa 1863) –> slide 3

• Harper’s wants a Santa Claus illustration
• Everyone else draws him like some emaciated string bean
• I’m going to make him a fat jolly bastard.

Beautiful photo by Peter Bowers. He has nothing to do (that we know of) with humor-blogs.com or Alltop. Originally published December 2007.

Dr. Maximilian Tundra was heading home again for the holidays, dread clutching his heart like an iron fist. He’d managed to avoid Thanksgiving, but there was no escape from The Feast.

The Feast, as it was known amongst Clan Tundra, was a toxic stew of carbs, fats, and pharmaceuticals that had a tendency to drive the family bonkers.

Not that they weren’t certifiable to begin with.

Dr. Tundra’s sister, Eugenie, was a brilliant “installation” artist, who was nevertheless, seriously bi-polar. His younger twin brothers, Xavier and Xenophon, had never really recovered from their childhood “incident” — as the family called it — following a plane crash in the Andes. His Da, Dr. Halvard Hemming Tundra, seemed perfectly normal; of course, the Great Danger of attending the Feast was that Dr. H. H. Tundra didn’t attend, and that he sent his doppelganger, Mr. Angry McBucktooth in his stead. His Mum, Beatrice Pelagia Tundra (nee Sweeney) was in denial, but otherwise safe to be around.

And that was just the nuclear family. Getting the extended clan together required a number of court orders, insurance waivers and to be on the safe side, Da usually hired off-duty members of the SWAT to patrol the grounds.

Perhaps it was for that reason, or perhaps it was the family’s iconoclastic nature, but The Feast was never celebrated on Christmas. It always happened on the Solstice.

The darkest day of the year. Of course, it also marked the start of days getting brighter and brighter. The rebirth of the sun, his Da called it. But when it came to the holiday, his family and The Feast, Dr. Tundra was definitely a glass-is-half-empty kind of guy.

The policeman checked his ID, and waved him past the checkpoint, a set of gates loomed ahead, which would let him into the Tundra compound. A high fence, razor wire atop, surrounded the area. Guards and German shepherds patrolled the grounds, checking the fenceline for weak points.

It would do no good. It never did.

He parked, put on his flak jacket and entered the Tundra mansion. The smell of roasting turkey and peyote stuffing filled the house, and Dr. Tundra shuddered.

An outside observer would wonder if that was a shudder of anticipation, excitement, or perhaps the thrill of visceral familiarity that we get when we return to our childhood places.

But no, it was dread.

Alltop and humor-blogs.com freebase their turkey. The reasons why festive feasting can cause family fracases.. Thanks to ckirkman for the turkey pic. Originally published December 2005.

This piece of hackery is most often heard in business settings, but I’m afraid it has even crept into the hallowed halls of academe, where one is as likely to hear Latin freakery such as sui generis.

It tends to be used in one of two ways, both of which are like dragging a mailed glove over a blackboard (see video below).

The most common use is to say something like, “moving forward, this project will take us into the future, where happy unicorns and horny leprechauns will help us impact the bottom line, probably more than we’d like.” (We shall discuss “impact” in another column .) Like, at this point in time, this is an extremely silly phrase because its saying, really, moving forward in time.

But until we have invented a working time machine, we have NO CHOICE but to move forward in time. Moving backward (in time) is not an option people! And really, what self-respecting person wants to move backward, unless it’s away from some kind of danger, or an abhorrent phrase like “it is what it is”.

The other use is to segue from one topic of conversation/item in an agenda, to the next. Let’s just all agree not to do this anymore, okay? It’s torture!

Almost as torturous as this (slide forward to the 8:53 mark):

You can find it at YouTube if the embedded thingy doesn’t work.

So this one gets seven out of ten gobsmacks:

Like me, alltop and humor-blogs.com both pretend to understand Latin phrases too.

An interesting question. Because my planet is so far advanced of yours, we experienced our major climate changes about a millennia ago.

Like you are currently experiencing, on Neecknaw we discovered that our oil and coal-based economy increased the carbon dioxide load in our atmosphere past the point of the planet being able to deal with it. (Unlike Earth, the main culprit was not the car but our massive fez and tutu industries.)

As is happening here on Earth, the primitive nation-states of Neecknaw were unable to agree on ways to reduce the carbon emissions and so, ameliorate the changes. We did use a few mitigation strategies, such as seeding the atmosphere with sulphur dioxide to block solar radiation, but this had the effect of killing many of our freshwater lakes and waterways with massive storms of acid rain. The acid rain also played hell with everyone’s tutus and fezzes, which meant that we had to produce more tutus and fezzes, resulting in an unforeseen positive feedback loop.

So we all agreed that seeding the atmosphere with SO2 was a bad idea. (You must understand how attached the average Neecknabian is to their fez/tutu.)

But we didn’t ever tackle the CO2 problem, and the warming continued.

Eventually, there was a massive spike in temperatures, which happened very quickly. Most of our coastal cities drowned, the equatorial regions became uninhabitable, and even then, most of our resources went into fez and tutu construction. Roughly ninety percent of the Neecknabian population died, civilization collapsed, and the scarcity of food resulted in a somewhat loose interpretation of cannibalism. (These are sometimes referred to as the “Tasty Ape Age”, though I would never be so crass.)

Luckily, this die-back had the effect of weeding out the weakest of our species, and when Magnok the Foot-Eater conquered the continent of Floog, he was able to quickly rebuild society. Eventually, a brilliant gorilla invented fusion and our economy was based on that power source instead of carbon.

But you know, even though everyone understood the fez and the tutu were the cause of this disaster, Neecknabians are still devoted to the sartorial splendor they impart; however, a series of brutal conquerors have reserved these items of clothing for only the most elite troops.

Next time: Is it possible to hot-wire a faster-than-light vehicle with a tube of toothpaste?

Alltop and humor-blogs.com wear beanies and kilts.

A public service announcement from The Skwib

This time of year can be troubling for bloggers; the days get shorter, the holiday season has its own particular stresses, and for those running weblogs, there are the dangers of SAD.

Statistical Affective Disorder (SAD) is caused by an abrupt and inexplicable drop in the visitor statistics to your blog. Early symptoms include:

• sudden weeping
• shout at the ceiling: “why, why, gods of blog … why?”
• desperate attempts/plans/Fred Flintstone-like schemes to boost readership including:
• massive increase in Tweets
• hyper-active friending on Facebook
• increased meme generation.

As the disorder progresses, you may find yourself:

• bitter
• angry
• drunk.

And in the final stages, SAD can even lead to:

• apathy
• self-loathing
• watching TV and reading books.

If you have any of these symptoms you may have SAD, and should seek qualified psychiatric help at the first opportunity. Alternatively, you could just turn off your damned computer.

Alltop and humor-blogs.com both suffer from FUN (Frequent, Uncomfortable Noobishness). Originally published in December 2005.)