Sunday Funnies 140608

The Sunday Funnies word of the week is doughnut:
dough-nut |ˈdōˌnət| (also donut)nouna small fried cake of sweetened dough, typically in the shape of a ball or ring.• a ring-shaped object, in particular a vacuum chamber in some types of particle accelerator.

"Why doughnut?" you ask.

It's simple. I like doughnuts; and, unlike last week's tardy submission, this week's selection is freshly fried and glazed to perfection for maximum enjoyment. Coffee is optional.

1. Isn't that just peachy?

Freud would have a field day with rich, white, Republican men who write misogynistic laws while glorifying the phallic firearm.

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2. At The End Of A Recent, Republican Training Session...

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3. What happens in the protective enclave is supposed to stay there.

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4. Mixing Religion and Politics? - no problem in the Sunday Funnies.

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5. Mixing Religion and Sports? - Whoa! No way! That's scary, man!

I always wondered what they were talking about

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6. Mixing Religion with Biology? - Things can get really mixed up.

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7. Grammar Break: "ie" or "ei"? Sometimes it makes a shload of difference.

In German, "ie" is always pronounced like the English letter "E" and "ei" is always pronounced like the English letter "I." 

People who pronounce Leonard Bernstein's last surname as Bernsteen apparently never got the memo.

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8. Memory is not an elephant's problem. Getting him to learn something new is.

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9. Then again, his memory doesn't seem to be quite what it used to be.

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10. You can trust members of Congress. They know all about hot air and wind.

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11. The GOP Support Our Troops Welcoming Committee.

They don't need another former POW. They still have John McCain.

John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn’t return home. The American Conservative, July 1, 2010

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12. Makes A Lot Of Sense

Sure, you're up to your eyeballs in dung, but the health care plan, the perks, and the pension make it all worthwhile. And when you leave, there's always lobbying for the companies your committee was supposed to regulate.

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13. ...and to make it a baker's dozen, this just in from Afghanistan:

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Sunday Funnies 140601

The Sunday Funnies theme of the week is makeup.

No, this is not a cosmetic post. I'm making up for my failure to post these comics on June 1.

1. This seems like a good one to start off the makeup edition.

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2. Here's one for readers who want to lecture me about my tardiness.

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3. An Old Joke (from the olfactory, of course)

Q: Why do farts stink?

A: So deaf people can also enjoy them. 

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4. Multiple Personality Disorder - Starbucks Style

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5. Let's all sing a chorus of Under The CFL!

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6. The Price Of Self Governance - American Style

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7. Organic Baggage?

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8. Fill in your own example.

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9. A Polarizing Array of Professional Symbols (The last one is the wurst.)

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10. Discord among the conservative minions?

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11. Radiation Therapy- Capitalism Style

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12. When scientific facts don't fit the ideology...

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Bikes Trump Blogs

In case you're wondering why I haven't posted anything since Sunday Funnies 140525, it's because I've been two tired. That's a pun, not a typo.

For the past two weeks, my wife, Pat, her brother Bob, and I have been having a great time riding bicycles, first along the Allegheny Gap Bike Trail in Pennsylvania and then on various rail trails in Ohio.

I'll probably get around to posting last week's Sunday Funnies in a day or two; but, for now, I'll share how bikes trump blogs.

* * *

But Nobody Took Any Pictures

Riding the Little Miami Bike Trail last week provided an adventure we hadn't planned on. Our plan was to ride from Morrow to Corwin and back on Friday, stay overnight in the area, and ride from Loveland to Morrow and back on Saturday. That's upstream (and uphill) outbound and downstream (downhill) on the way back. We're not dummies. 

We might have had lunch in Loveland at the end of our ride if we had been able to start after breakfast as planned, but we got a late start. Pat’s bike had a problem. It was either come up with a fix; or, cancel the Saturday ride, pack up the bikes, and head home. As it turned out, I was able to fix Pat’s bike, but it delayed our starting time by about two hours.

The set screw that holds the 3-speed Shimano shifter on the rear hub of Pat’s bike had stripped the threads in the housing, and it fell off of the hub Friday with three miles left in our return to Morrow from Corwin. Luckily, Pat's brother, Bob, discovered that a screw holding a bike bag on one of the other bikes was just big and long enough to hold the unit on the hub until we got back to Morrow, where the shifter fell off again.

Montgomery Cyclery in Loveland sells and services the Electra Townie bike Pat rides, so we went there to see if they could fix the shifter. It’s a fantastic shop with a huge selection of bikes and a large repair area. Unfortunately, they had no replacement 3-speed unit and nothing that would fix the problem. The young man who helped us and I looked all through the shop's box of spare parts for a screw big enough to grab inside the housing but came up empty.

Plan B was for me to either fix the darned thing or split the cast aluminum housing with a larger, self-tapping screw to rethread the hole.

Now, I needed a hardware store.

Luckily, Loveland Hardware is a stone’s throw away from Montgomery Cyclery.

The manager of the store and I looked, but all of their self-tapping screws were either too small, too short, or too large. Then I found a metric, hex-head bolt that was slightly larger than the original and also the right length, but with a more coarse threading. The manager, whose name I neglected to get, let me turn it into a self-tapping screw. She took me into the workroom in the back of the store, where, with a hacksaw and a vise, I cut an angled groove into the end of the threads to create a tapping edge.

One hand-made self-tapping screw, a 91 cent hex wrench, a bit of elbow grease and sweat produced the desired result. The handmade self-tapping bolt threaded the housing and held the unit securely on the hub.

Pat’s bike was fixed, and we set off for Morrow a few minutes after noon.

FYI: Plan C involved buying a roll of duct tape and... 

Sunday Funnies 140525

The Sunday Funnies word of the week is means:

means |mēnz|plural noun1 [usu. treated as sing. ] (often means of something or means to dosomething) an action or system by which a result is brought about; a method :these pledges are a means to avoid prosecution | resolving disputes by peaceful means.2 money; financial resources : a woman of modest but independent means | prospective students without the means to attend Cornell.• resources; capability : every country in the world has the means to make ethanol.• wealth : a man of means.PHRASESbeyond (or within) one's means beyond (or within) one's budget or income : the government is living beyond its means.by all means of course; certainly (granting a permission) : “May I make a suggestion?” “By all means.”by any means (or by any manner of means) (following a negative) in any way; at all : I'm not poor by any means.by means of with the help or agency of : supplying water to cities by means of aqueducts.by no means (or by no manner of means) not at all; certainly not : the outcome is by no means guaranteed.a means to an end a thing that is not valued or important in itself but is useful in achieving an aim : a computer is merely a means to an end.ORIGIN late Middle English : plural of mean 3 , the early sense being‘intermediary.’mean 1 |mēn|verb ( past and past part. meant |ment|) [ trans. ]1 intend to convey, indicate, or refer to (a particular thing or notion); signify : Idon't know what you mean | he was asked to clarify what his remarks meant | I meant you,not Jones. See note at intend .• (of a word) have (something) as its signification in the same language or itsequivalent in another language : its name means “painted rock” in Cherokee.• genuinely intend to convey or express (something) : when she said that before, shemeant it.• ( mean something to) be of some specified importance to (someone), esp. as asource of benefit or object of affection : animals have always meant more to him thanpeople.2 intend (something) to occur or be the case : they mean no harm | [with infinitive ] it was meant to be a secret.• ( be meant to do something) be supposed or intended to do something : wewere meant to go over yesterday.• (often be meant for) design or destine for a particular purpose : the jacket was meant for a much larger person.• ( mean something by) have as a motive or excuse in explanation : what do you mean by leaving me out here in the cold?3 have as a consequence or result : the proposals are likely to mean another hundred closures| [with clause ] heavy rain meant that the ground was waterlogged.• necessarily or usually entail or involve : coal stoves mean a lot of smoke.PHRASESI mean used to clarify or correct a statement or to introduce a justification or explanation : I mean, it's not as if I owned property.mean business be in earnest.mean to say [usu. in questions ] really admit or intend to say : do you mean to say you've uncovered something new?mean well have good intentions, but not always the ability to carry them out.ORIGIN Old English mænan; related to Dutch meenen and German meinen, from an Indo-European root shared by mind .

1. Learning to become a man of means...

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2. He's a man of means by all means...King of the Load.

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3. Ways and Means

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4. By All Means

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5. Just Plain Mean

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6. An Exchange of Means

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7. This Means War!

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8. The Means To An End

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9. He means to take the easy way out.

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10. Say What You Mean And Mean What You Say

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11. He Means Business

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 12. He Means Well

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