Erie “Zoo Guy” Scott Mitchell has emerged from his months-long hibernation just in time to oversee the zoo’s spring re-opening. “I’m fully rested and ready to go” said Mitchell as he emerged from the red panda exhibit where he spent the last three months. Mitchell admits that there were some breaks in his hibernation, as […]
Inspired by the Millcreek School District’s decision to issue miniature baseball bats to its teachers, the Erie School District is now providing lacrosse sticks to its teachers for classroom defense. “We saw what Millcreek did, and we are taking it a step further,” said ESD spokesperson Kate Schellenbach. “Baseball bats are OK, but we feel […]
via Erie School District to Arm Teachers with Lacrosse Sticks — gooferie
The horror.
It seems some deplorable person has absconded with Willard #6, the neighbor’s mooning garden gnome.
A quick recap of the previous Willards:
The first Willard met an untimely demise at the hands of some maniac with a shovel.
Willard #2 was also smashed with a shovel.
Willard #3 was backed over with a car and smashed with a shovel.
Willard #4 was unexpectedly hit with a brick, peed on, and smashed with a shovel.
Willard #5 was pulverized with a sledgehammer and set on fire. (Shovel broke while smashing something.)
Your wondering how I have such intimate knowledge of the tragedies that have befallen the Willards if I had nothing to with it–you ask to many questions.
I don’t even own a sledgehammer. (Apart from that delightful Peter Gabriel song from the 80’s.)
After comfortably adorning the neighbor’s lawn for consecutive summers without incident, it seemed Willard #6 was safe from any acts of malfeasance. But sometimes a neighbor will get a bit too cocky and then unfortunate things happen. Not in this case–but sometimes.
There are some who credit the motion activated lighting and camera the neighbor had installed in his yard for the lack of incidents over the previous two summers. Utter nonsense, whoever disabled the camera before they took Willard #6 could have done so two years ago.
Any number of things could have happened to Willard #6.
He may be decorating the lawn of a thief. He may now be in the possession of some rapscallion children. Maybe he’s being held for future ransom. Perhaps he’s sprung to life and just wandered off.
It’s entirely possible he’s resting at the bottom of Lake Erie because his loudmouthed owner can’t keep his opinions to himself…but I’m just guessing.
If you see this mooning garden gnome somewhere, just keep it to yourself.
My apologies to David Letterman.
I stumbled upon this post, one of the very first of this blog, from many years ago. Do you remember when the world was supposed to end?
In my previous post, I detailed my displeasure with the fact that the world didn’t come a cataclysmic end on December 21st. Not only did nothing cool happen, but even worse, I was forced to finish my Christmas shopping.
I’ve discovered after doing some exhaustive research (Google) there were a myriad of things the Mayans got wrong.
Top Ten Other Things The Mayans Got Wrong
10) Caddyshack 2 will be just as funny as Caddyshack.
9) A man named Isaac Newton will be resting under an apple tree when an apple will fall on his head. He will become so irate that he invents a machine that will be used to systematically destroy all apple trees, ridding the land of the scourge of falling apples.
8) Queen Anne is so taken with Newton’s apple tree destroying prowess, she has him knighted. Although a great honor, he is hampered by the fact that he can now only move two spaces forward and one space over on a chess board.
7) The common folk of 18th century England become so enraged that they can no longer obtain apples, they form a mob and throw Sir Isaac Newton over a cliff. On the way down he has a fleeting thought about something called gravity. Alas, it perishes with him.
6) Without the foundation of Newtonian physics to expand upon, Albert Einstein never leaves his job as a patent clerk. He does however patent the Sham-wow and he becomes filthy rich.
5) In the early 20th century a majestic ship called the Titanic is built, it traverses the seas for centuries. However, the movie Titanic, about a ship where nothing ever goes wrong, completely flops.
Note: The Mayans also go on and on about Siskel but say nothing at all about Ebert. Two thumbs down Mayans.
4) A man named J.R.R. Tolkien will write a few simple stories about some hobbits; nothing much will come of them.
3) A mighty force called the Cleveland Browns will arise. They will win many championships called Super Bowls. At about the same time, there will be a record cold snap in Hell.
2) The shoreline in a place called New Jersey, will become the epicenter for culture and wisdom in the western world. This will happen in the early 21st century and be a clear sign that the end is near.
1) Those Spaniards seem like nice fellows; nothing bad could ever come of our relationship with them.
Mighty warriors of the 21st century.
“Excellent!”
The following happened while I was employed as a quality control inspector at a steel coating plant outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
It was about 6:15 AM as I crossed the plant floor toward the offices. The lights weren’t turned on yet, and though the sun was rising outside, the interior of the building was still a dark tangle of shadows.
In the distance I could see a short stumpy figure climbing the ladder to where the cranes and catwalks are.
I wondered why Jim, the crane operator, would be climbing into the crane so early, and thought it peculiar that he was doing it in the dark. As I looked more closely, I realized that it wasn’t Jim at all; it was the biggest raccoon I had ever seen. (Yes, I mistook a huge raccoon for Jim, if you had ever met Jim, you would understand.) The raccoon then disappeared into the darkness of the rafters and catwalks.
“I’ve seen that raccoon,” Ken, one of the private inspectors, told me. “It comes up from the Ohio River at daybreak and just disappears into the building somewhere.”
Suddenly Rick the foreman, who was sitting at his desk, jumped up, twirled around, and yelled at us, “they ain’t clean.”
“What?” Ken said slightly startled.
“People think that raccoons are clean, but they ain’t clean. People think that raccoons are clean because they wash their food. They wash their food because they ain’t got no saliva; they don’t wash their food because they’re clean.” He stood glaring at us in silence for a moment before punctuating his tirade: “They ain’t clean!”
“Well..” was all that Ken got out.
“And they ain’t smart. People think they’re smart because they’ve got little people hands, but they ain’t smart. They ain’t clean and they ain’t smart.” He then stormed from the office as if he had been horribly offended.
Ken and I stood in a state of bewildered silence. Although neither of us said anything, we knew what each other was thinking: what the hell?
After a few moments, Ken broke the silence,”Wow, Rick really !#@$%# hates raccoons.”
We speculated about what frightful trauma must have occurred to instill such a level of hatred for a furry animal. Maybe as a small child he was attacked by a racoon. Maybe as a teen, a pack of racoon toughs bullied and taunted him. Maybe they knocked the books from his hands as he awkwardly made his way through the school hallway. (Rick had the physical presence of Ichabod Crane, without the grace.)
This is what I think happened: it was prom night, the night Rick had dreamed of since he was a little boy. He had his tuxedo. He had the corsage that he would tenderly pin to her gown. It was his night to shine.
She was a little late, but that’s fashionable right? He paced impatiently as the minutes stretched into hours. Periodically he’d stop to check his watch as he would mumble under his breath, “she’ll be here any minute now.”
“Don’t ask a raccoon to the prom,” his friends had advised. “They’d rather scavenge through garbage cans than slow dance to Bryan Adams songs.”
But Rick was infatuated.
The night came and went without a word from her. Rick’s never gotten past the heartbreak and devastation. Now he has an irrational hatred of all raccoons.
The source of Rick’s heartbreak.
Erie SeaWolves mascot C. Wolf is resting comfortably tonight after being shot while making a promotional appearance in West Springfield. Mr. Wolf was posing for a photograph near a wooded area off Route 20 when a single shot, fired by hunter Hunter Danovitch, grazed his tail. Mr. Wolf immediately returned fire with his T-shirt gun, […]
via Erie Baseball Mascot C. Wolf Shot by Overzealous Hunter — gooferie
Sydney, Australia: a lovely sister city.
North East, Pennsylvania–The residents of the small village of North East, Pennsylvania received a dose of bad news upon discovering their sister city wasn’t what they believed it to be.
The village was ecstatic when it received a sister city request from Sydney, Australia. “We couldn’t believe our good fortune,” the mayor of North East said.
Upon traveling to Australia to accept the sister city request, officials from North East (the mayor and his life partner Bruce) discovered the request came not from the city of Sydney but from a guy named Sydney who lives in a shack at the bottom of a pit in the desert.
“The disappointment is bitter,” Bruce said of the development, “Sydney, Australia is a metropolis with renown architecture and a thriving art world; Sydney from Australia is a filthy foul-mouthed little man who lives in a pit and scratches his testicles far more than should be necessary.”
“I have genital chiggers,” Sydney explained, “they bite.”
The mayor and Bruce gave Sydney a case of the world-famous Welch’s grape jelly, produced right in North East from local concord grapes.
Sydney reciprocated with a half-full can of Foster’s beer that he poured back into the can from the dog bowl.
“Everything in Sydney’s shack is sticky,” the mayor commented, “absolutely everything.”
While Bruce has returned home from the disastrous trip, the mayor remains in Australia recovering from bites from a highly poisonous eastern brown snake and three types of poisonous spiders.
Sydney keeps poisonous spiders as pets; the snake was just bad luck.
“A kangaroo kicked me in the nuts,” Bruce said upon his return, “it was the best part of the trip.”
Presque Isle Downs and Casino announced today that a blackjack dealer broke his leg during a game and had to be humanely euthanized. The dealer slipped on an errant ice cube and fractured his ankle, necessitating the on-call medical staff to erect a curtain behind which the employee was put down to end his suffering. […]
Even the cows think you’re an idiot.
Never had greater words of wisdom passed over human lips: Don’t pee on the electric fence.
Well, maybe not great words of wisdom, but to a bunch of young boys about to go ramming through a cow pasture on their way to the woods, they seemed like great words of wisdom. After all, he was an old guy, and old guys know stuff.
Of course, to a group of young rapscallions, this was practically a dare to pee on the electric fence.
Note: As it turned out, far more useful words of wisdom would have been: don’t pee close enough to the electric fence that your friends can shove you into it. Don’t trust your friends: another solid piece of advice.
They may not be words that hold the eloquence of the Gettysburg Address or the weight of Churchill’s address to a joint session of Congress upon the United States entrance into the war, but if you had ever been shoved penis first into an electric fence, you would appreciate their significance.
He also told us not to eat any mushrooms growing on cow crap. He was evidently unconcerned with the myriad of poisonous mushrooms growing everywhere else.
The point is: a few short words of wisdom can save a young man from a lot of misery. Words of wisdom such as:
Don’t eat these mushrooms. Leave the cow crap alone too.
One bright day in late autumn, a family of Ants was bustling about in the warm sunshine, drying out the grain they had stored up during the summer, when a starving Grasshopper, his fiddle under his arm, came up and humbly begged for a bite to eat.
“If you play The Devil Goes Down To Georgia one more time…”
idiotpruf 