Blog Index

For a quick introduction to the blog, click here. If you would like to have entries in the blog mailed to you, click here to learn more. I have also begun posting these as audio "podcasts", for those who like all humor squeezed out of their humor essays by hearing them read in a droning monotone, the feed is at:

http://www.switchpod.com/users/liam-humor/feed.xml

Index of prior posts, by type. Items marked "NEW" are new within one week of the date this index was last published. (NEW INDEX POLICY: I will try to keep the blog index as the SECOND post, so that a new reader's first introduction to the blog is a column, not the index.)

Most Recent New Column:

Wanted: Dead or Alive (5/30/2010)

Essays Only Available On-Line:

Oracle User Conference series:

It's A Small World, But an Expensive One (intro) (5/6/2005, only in the book)

IOUG-A Live! 2005 (Day One) (5/2/2005)

IOUG-A Live! 2005 (Day One, Continued) (5/2/2005)

IOUG-A Live! 2005 (Day Two, Morning) (5/3/2005)

IOUG-A Live! 2005 (Day Two, Afternoon) (5/3/2005)

IOUG-A Live! 2005 (Day Two, Evening) (5/3/2005)

IOUG-A Live! 2005 (Day Three, Morning) (5/4/2005)

IOUG-A Live! 2005 (Day Three, Afternoon) (5/4/2005)

IOUG-A Live! 2005 (Final Thoughts) (5/4/2005)

Hoist the Sales Matey! 'Tis Black Friday! (12/2/2006)
But Soft, What Brick Through Yonder Window Breaks? (12/9/2006)
Only the Fifth Day of Christmas? I Can't Take All Twelve! (12/29/2006)
Across The Atlantic... On Half A Battery (2/28/2007)
Mmmmmm. Spicy! (3/4/2007)
Really? So That’s What a "Tranny" Is? (6/14/2008)
We'll Leave The Light On For Ya... It Makes The Roaches Scatter (6/21/2008)
Diagnosis: Over 40 (6/30/2008)
Senators, Out Standing In Their Field (7/7/2008)
That Surgeon Really Has Gall(bladder) (7/18/2008)
I’m Not Single, But I Sure Am Swingin’ (8/12/2008)
The Rope Wasn't Hemp, But I Got High on It Anyway (8/23/2008)
STUFFED: A Thanksgiving Tale of Weight Loss and Bodily Function (11/28/2008)
Flightmares (4/2/2009)
Positively Liam (4/9/2009)
A Taxing Essay (4/15/2009)
Yule Never Believe What I Did Today (4/23/2009)
Well Now, Isn't He Special (4/28/2009, special extra essay)
When Pigs Fly: Swine Flu (4/30/2009)
Nailed It! (5/7/2009)
It's a Car, Not a Crisis! (10/14/2009)
All Dressed Up and Nowhere to ... Go (10/25/2009)
On Firetrucks, Floods and Other 'F'-Words (10/31/2009)
Vacation Vignettes (1/22/2010)
A Hair of the Dog, or "Take Two WHAT and Call You In The Morning?" (4/12/2010)
Wanted: Dead or Alive (5/30/2010)
On Stereotypes (6/14/2010)
P.S. Daddy, I Love You (6/28/2010)
Cute Story (not humor) (7/8/2010)
My Car Doesn't Corner Well (7/17/2010)
15 Essays in 30 Days (12/6/2010)
15 Essays in 30 Days (12/13/2010)
Drink? Yes, Please, But Something Stronger Than Holiday Cheer (12/20/2010)
Yule Be Happier Staying At Home (12/27/2010)
Hey, Universe, Stop Throwing Things At Me! (1/3/2011)
Shingles? But I Have a Metal Roof! (1/10/2011)
Memory-Rolled (1/17/2011)
The Germ of An Idea (1/24/2011)
Visions of Meconium Dancing in My Head (1/31/2011)
Mr. Love Pickle (2/7/2011)
Open Mouth, Insert Foot (10/15/2011)
A Tale of Two Liams (10/16/2011)

Essays Available in my book, "Cue Ball City":

Sleep Study Trilogy:

Modern Medicine: Takes My Breath Away (2/17/2005)

Mr. Vader... Paging Mr. Vader (2/19/2005)

Who Was That Masked Man? (2/22/2005)

Tragedy Strikes Musicians (2/27/2005)More Harmony, Less Hardware (3/4/2005)Guilty? Me? (3/11/2005)Cue Ball City (3/18/2005)Prius? You Don't Even Know Us (3/25/2005)We're All Going To Play Bruise Cruise (4/1/2005)Ahhh!!! I'm Bleeding! (4/8/2005)

Van from South Carolina series:

Vanward Ho! (4/15/2005)

Leave the Driving to Us. (4/29/2005)

There's No Place Like Home. (5/13/2005)

Atonal, Arrhythmic, Aaaaaaaaa! (4/22/2005)

It's A Small World, But an Expensive One (intro) (5/6/2005)
Building a Baby. (5/20/2005)Not the Compact Disk I Was Looking For. (5/27/2005)Cell Phone? Or a bottle of Thunderbird. (6/3/2005)What Do You Get For Their Anniversary? Depends... (6/10/2005)Got a Sticky Situation? Buy Something Useless! (6/17/2005)Sure as Death and Taxes. (6/24/2005)A Snowball's Chance in... New Hampshire? (7/1/2005)The Bonds of Holy...MOLY, is that guy HUGE! (7/8/2005)The Plaquo-Terrorist Threat. (7/15/2005)No, Officer. She's just a little Tipsy. (7/22/2005)How Can I Get That Prescription? (7/29/2005)Hairy Situations. (8/5/2005)Liam: Mountain Man (8/12/2005)Caution: Terrorist on Board (8/19/2005)Sleep? It's Overrated (8/26/2005)Labor Day (9/5/2005 (Posted late due to hurricane Katrina))Business Travel Ranting (9/13/2005 (Posted late because I'm a forgetful bonehead))Fashion Plate Barbie and Homeless Ken (9/16/2005)Momma, He's Lazy! (9/30/2005)Field Trips: Not Just For Students Anymore (10/9/2005)Hamming It Up (11/27/2005)Globally Warm This (3/4/2006)Beans Beans... woot (3/10/2006)Underpants and Stolen Jokes (3/29/2006)Ah Uh Goo (4/25/2006)One of Those Days (5/31/2006)1/4 of July, You Can Keep The Other 3 (7/2/2006)So THAT'S Why They Call It 'The Old Country' (11/8/2006)Payback is Hell (11/17/2006)Musing Unconsciously (11/25/2006)


"Cue Ball City (and other bald musings)" can be purchased directly from the publisher at:

http://stores.lulu.com/liam-humor

It will also be available (after mid-January 2007) from Amazon.com, BN.com, Borders.com and other national booksellers.

15 in 30 Update

Well, I seem to have failed to consider something: My regular case of post-Christmas blues. The combination of daylight hours of shorter duration than your average sneeze and the departure after an all-too-brief visit by my children always puts me into a funk that can last for days... and which isn't particularly conducive to being funny.

So while I still have 4 more days, I have 5 essays to write in that time, and I'm not sure I'm going to make it.

I'll try to pick up the slack, but we may end up with only 11 or 12 in 30 days.

15 In 30 Progress

This is the progress report on the status of "15 Essays in 30 Days". If I have properly set up the parameters on the mailing list, it shouldn't be e-mailed to everyone every time I update it. If you want to keep track of my writing progress, please check back to the blog.

Because I am starting on 12/10, the first essay is "due" on 12/11. Each entry will take the following form:

Essay # - Due date - Completed date - title

So for instance, if this was one of them, it would look like this:

1 - 12/8/10 - 12/8/10 - 15 In 30 Progress


And so, without further ado, the chart:

1 - 12/11 - 12/10 - The Realization of Years of Teen Aged Fantasies
2 - 12/13 - 12/11 - Something untitled about the Shingles.
3 - 12/15 - 12/11 - Drink? Yes Please, But Something Stronger Than Holiday Cheer!
4 - 12/17 - 12/14 - Hey, Universe! Stop Throwing Things At Me!
5 - 12/19 - 12/20 - A Germ of An Idea
6 - 12/21 - 12/20 - Unnamed essay about my failing memory
7 - 12/23 - 12/22 - Private (not for publication)
8 - 12/25 - 12/25 - Unnamed Christmas Travel Essay, Part 1
9 - 12/27 - 12/26 - Unnamed Christmas Travel Essay, Part 2
10 - 12/29 - 12/28 - Visions of Meconium Dancing in My Head
11 - 12/31 - 1/4 - Mr. Love Pickle
12 - 1/2 -
13 - 1/4 -
14 - 1/6 -
15 - 1/8 -

Notes:

"The Realization of Years of Teen Aged Fantasies" (unless I can come up with a better title) is scheduled to post on 12/13.

The second essay is not currently good enough to post. It's got potential, but I got bogged down in facts and got away from humor, so for now, it's not scheduled. UPDATE: This is now called "Shingles? But I Have a Metal Roof!" and is scheduled to post on 1/3 1/10.

"Drink? Yes Please, But Something Stronger Than Holiday Cheer!" (ditto on the title) is scheduled to post on 12/20.

"Hey Universe!..." is currently scheduled to post on 12/27 1/3, although I'm thinking of writing something in a Christmas theme, and if so it will make more sense for it to post in the Christmas week and push everything else back a few weeks.

"A Germ..." is being reviewed by someone I trust. I was pretty tired as I wrote it, and I'm not sure if it's worth posting. UPDATE: Because I do not wish to post two essays about being sick in a row, this is now scheduled to post on 1/17 1/24.

The one on failing memory is, I think, pretty good, but I need a title. It is currently scheduled to post on 1/10 1/17. Update: It is now called "Memory-Rolled". You'll probably understand why when you read it.

The private one is just that. It is not humor, but it is an essay, and since the rules don't TECHNICALLY say they have to be humor essays, I'm going to count it. As with some of the introductory ones, if I can finish all 15 as humor essays, I'll drop this one from counting. But it's an essay and I spent several hours on it today, so I'm going to count it, even if no one outside of immediate family will ever see it.

The Christmas travel essay is now scheduled to post on 12/27, pushing everything back by a week. Likely the second part of it will post on 1/3, pushing everything else back by ANOTHER week, but as it isn't written yet, I don't want to assume part two will turn out good enough to post.

The second half of the Christmas travel essay was... not good. The first half wasn't my best work, so you can imagine. The second half will not post, unless I at some future point do some serious reworking of it and make it post-worthy.

The "Visions Of" essay, although it will be sadly out of date by then, is scheduled to post on 1/31.

"Mr. Love Pickle" is scheduled to post on 2/7.

Bad Jokes

My daughter is reading a list of riddles and bad jokes, and I'm having fun coming up with better answers.

Of particular joy was "How is a crossword like an argument?"

The "right" answer is "one word always leads to another."

My kids preferred mine: "If you don't have a clue, you can't finish either..."

Two Recent Headlines

I occasionally see humorous headlines, but rarely two really good ones in such a short time period, so I thought I'd share them.

First, when Olympian Walter Dix runs in a race with Tyson Gay and the result is close, you end up with this gem: "Tired Gay succumbs to Dix in 200 meters" (link to article at Reuters for as long as it lasts).

The other one is actually old, but I was only pointed to it two days ago. Back in 2008, in a Colorado State Senate election that seemed more like a competition between breakfast vs. lunch, multiple sources had "Bacon Beats Fries!". Here is a link to one site that has a screen shot of the results.

Both amused me, so I thought I'd share.

Quickie...

I just wanted to put in my guess for the name of one of Angelina Jolie & Brad Pitt's twins, now that they're born and before the names are widely publicized.

I'm going with "Shiesoh" (pronounced "Shee-so"). Because we already know how wonderfully cruel they were to their eldest daughter, giving her a name (Shiloh Pitt) which spoonerizes so crudely, why not continue the tradition?

Follow Up

I just wanted to throw out this follow up to last week's essay. This isn't really funny, I just wanted to give a quick plug to the people that helped us.

The Mechanic we worked with is a gentleman named "Danny" at "Dee's Service Center" in Bloomfield, NJ, in a gas station just a spit in a good wind off of the exit of the Garden State Parkway.

We were absolutely stuck, and I think I've made it clear that they could have told me the "frambulator" was "discombobulated" and that it was going to cost $2500 to fix and I would have bought it, and yet Danny and Dee's charged us a reasonable and fair price, did good work, and generally were kind and helpful.

The thing that made me decide to post this was when we got back, there was a flat tire in addition to everything else. Danny took a break from his work and found the hole and plugged it and didn't add anything to our charge.

When you're driving in a place like NJ (trust me, I grew up there) and you have an auto emergency and go to the kind of little garage we ended up at, you sort of expect to be taken advantage of. It's so very pleasant that we weren't.

So if you ever happen to have a car problem near the "Brookdale South" rest area on the Garden State Parkway, go to Dee's. They're good people.

Liam.