A high level administrator at the Transportation Security Administration responded to criticism when an agent recently confiscated a cupcake from an airline passenger in December because the food product in question exceeded the maximum quantities for liquid, gels, and aerosols. A detailed explanation of the situation was posted on the official TSA blog, ending with:
“And really, nobody is going to care about this whole cupcake fiasco in a few months once we instruct all of our agents to feel up women if the agent suspects her bra is constructed with more than three ounces of gel enhancing material.”
An older man is sitting in an over-sized chair. “My name is Steve, and I am the product manager here at the Select Comfort’s Sleep Number bed product line. While our product line has been an amazing success over the years, we are always looking for new ways to improve our customer’s sleep experience. I recently received a letter in the mail that pointed out a way in which we can improve our award-winning beds.”
My husband and I both love our sleep number bed. I keep my side at 25 and he sets his side at 85. We both sleep well all the time. The only problem is that sometimes at night we like to play some “adult” games, and having both sides set to the same number for a short time would really help. Can you help us out here?
“I understand your problem. Suppose you are playing a game of ‘duck, duck, goose.’”
Switches to a shot of a man and a woman on their bed in their pajamas. The husband is sitting in the middle of the bed and the wife is behind him touching him on the head saying “duck” each time. Suddenly she yells “goose” and starts running in a small circle on the bed. The husband gets up to chase her, but once he steps on the soft side of the bed he losses his balance and flies off the bed at a 45 degree angle.
“Now who wants that to happen to them when they are getting goosed?” The man in the chair asked.
“To solve this problem we have added additional buttons to the sleep number controllers which we have called the ‘duck’ buttons. Once configured, the ‘duck on’ button will bring both sides of the bed to the same preset pressure.”
The woman and man are in bed. The man is asleep. The woman reaches over and touches him gently on the shoulder. He wakes up and looks at her. She smiles and ever so slightly raises her eyebrow. He smiles back at her. She reaches for something under the covers and pulls out a game of Jenga. They both jump out from under the covers and start setting up the game in the middle of the bed. They are about to start playing, and then she remembers to hit the ‘duck on’ button.
A different woman is sleeping in her bed. A man comes into the room. He is unshaven, has a significant pot belly, and has just finished a can of beer. The throws the empty can in the corner of the room and gets into bed. He looks over at his wife and grabs his controller to hit the ‘duck on’ button. The wife wakes up and realizes what is going on in the bed. She reaches over to her controller and hits the ‘duck off’ button. The bed returns to the original settings.
“Hitting the ‘duck off’ button can be used to express an unwillingness to play games in bed, in addition to resetting the bed at the end of the game.” the man in the chair explained. “So from everyone here at Sleep Number, have a good night sleep after you get ducked.”
So, it is New Year’s Eve and the clock says 9 PM (mountain standard time, for those who need to know) and I’m sure that everyone expects me to be heading out the door with the wife, kids, and dog out to experience the legendary Loveland clubbing scene. But no, I’ve got other plans. For example, just to get the evening ball rolling, I have upgraded WordPress on my newfunny.com website from version 3.2 to version 3.3. Next on the agenda, view the annual stats WordPress was nice enough to send me.
So, according to WordPress, my website was viewed roughly 8,200 times in 2011. Now don’t get me started about how to measure how many people visit your website in a given time period. OK, you talked me into it– you see, I could log onto my goDaddy account and download every single http request and tell you that number is how many people looked at my site, but that would count a whole bunch of stuff (like automated processes that are looking to index information on my site) that has nothing do with actual people looking at my site. As far as I can tell, WordPress seems to give a more accurate gauge of actual people. And really, there are more methods of calculating web traffic than there are ways to deep fry a Snickers bar, so take anything anyone says about it with a grain of salt. And then, of course, then you can try sprinkling it on your deep fried Snickers bar, which I hear is surprisingly tasty.
“Omar, what are the top viewed posts on your website in 2011?” you were probably just thinking to yourself. Well, here is the top 5:
1 The Dukes of Hazzard August 2009 2 Funny and Sexy– Is it possible? August 2009 3 Come on Holmes February 2010 4 Back to the Future, Part 4 October 2010 5 Thank you letters January 2011
I’m pretty happy with these results, but I do want to give a shout out to a few of my long time favorites that don’t get as much traffic as I think they deserve.
Iron Chef Amsterdam This Old Crack House I Should Be an SNL Writer
That is the most interesting information from the WordPress report. A little known fact about the “Dukes of Hazzard” and “Iron Chef Amsterdam” is that I was approached by an editor of an out-of-state Marijuana magazine about republishing these stories due to their pro-pot themes. I gave them permission, but then they went out of business. As far as I know they weren’t ever published in any magazines, but since I wasn’t going to get any money for it either way I didn’t really look too hard.
That about wraps things up. One more thing now that I remember we are back to “standard time”: although I have decided that part of my 2024 Congressional campaign is going to include a push for moving to daylight savings time all year round. Mostly because I hate delivering packages at UPS in the dark in December when I see the sunrise an hour before I go to work. I think there is a better chance of getting Congress to change the system of time than to get UPS to change the times it flies all their planes around the country. Although now I think about it, maybe it seems like a 50/50 proposition. But in the end, the only people who benefit from the current system are peppy morning people, and nobody likes those types– especially when sunlight is in short supply. So full time daylight savings time it is!