idiotpruf

The blog that prevents scurvy…as long as you eat orange slices while you read it.

Archive for the month “January, 2022”

Achilles Frustrated by Hole in Health Coverage

health care

The Greek warrior Achilles has recently become vocal about his dissatisfaction with his health care coverage.

“Ridiculous waiting lists, exorbitant dinars out-of-pocket, and an inexplicable hole in my coverage,” were just some of the phrases used by Achilles to describe his frustration.

It seems the trouble started when Achilles discovered, what he had previously thought to be a comprehensive policy, wouldn’t cover a simple arrow wound to the heel.

“If I get gored by a minotaur it’s covered,” Achilles said in exasperation. “Trampled by a centaur: covered. Struck down by a lightning bolt from Zeus: covered. Transformed into a goat by Hera: covered. Eaten by the Kraken: fully covered. I mean, what’s the point in that. If you get eaten by the Kraken, it’s pretty much game over at that point!”

Achilles paused to regain his composure. “Turned to stone by Medusa: covered. Mauled by wild animals: covered. Ax wound to the face: no problem. Arrow wound to the eye socket: covered. Arrow wound to the chest: covered. Arrow wound to the left forearm: very specifically covered. Arrow wound to any part of my body except my heel, and it’s covered. Erectile dysfunction: I have no idea what that is, but if I get it, it’s covered.

When pressed about the hole in Achilles coverage, Charon, the director of Styx River Health Care had the following response: “Achilles will be singing a different tune when he’s attacked by a cyclops or bitten by Cerberus. They always come crawling back…provided they can still crawl.”

“Is this how Trojan War heroes are treated?” Achilles asked in disgust. “The Trojan horse gets better treatment than I do, and he’s made of wood. I mean, look at how infected this wound is getting; it’s really starting to look nasty. I really think this wound is going to be the end of me.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Charon retorted. “I really don’t think Achilles’ heel will be his mortal weakness.”

health care

Recovering from a nasty bout of dry rot.

 

Blog-Phobia

fear

“I’m so afraid of having my picture taken.”

Here’s a bit of information: there are more than 500 official phobias.

If you have Epistemophobia, the fear of knowledge, learning that just freaked you out a tiny bit.

Some phobias are quite common:

Chiroptophobia: the fear of batsMany people perceive bats to be terrifying, blood-sucking, winged creatures of the night. Some people may wildly wave their hands and scream like a little girl when a bat flies past their head. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Nothing!

Acrophobia: the fear of heights. Some people scream like a little girl if you put them on a tiny stepladder. This behavior is ridiculous–unless there’s bats up there.

Genophobia: the fear of sex. This is an extremely common phobia; every girl I’ve ever dated has suffered from it.

Other phobias are a little more unusual:

Automatonophobia: the fear of ventriloquist’s dummies, animatronic creatures, wax statues – anything that falsely represents a sentient being. (This explains my fear of the Kardashians.)

Walloonphobia: the fear of Walloons. Walloons could burst at any moment making a loud popping sound and startling you.

(My apologies, I thought this was the fear of balloons. Walloons are the French-speaking population of Belgium; it’s perfectly normal to be startled when Walloons burst and make a loud popping noise.)

Chionophobia: the fear of snow. Snow is lovely, how could anyone be afraid of snow? Unless of course you’re referring to Jon Snow the British news presenter–he’s freaky.

Jon snow british

I find his respectability unsettling.

But I found this list to be horribly lacking. I suffer from a myriad of phobias that are not officially recognized:

Sonny-Bono-phobia: the fear of being haunted nightly by the ghost of Sonny Bono. I fear he’d hang out all night singing I’ve Got You Babe, openly questioning Cher’s life choices, and warning me of the dangers of downhill skiing.

Potato-salad-phobia: the fear of the potato salad your aunt brings to family picnics. The Salmonella is the least offensive thing in it.

Old-hag-phobia: the fear of your aunt whether she’s bearing potato salad or not.

Decimal-phobia: the fear of any number containing a decimal point. While many people have a fear of the number 13, I find numbers like 24.7, 44.6, or 58.758 to be horrifying. When I found out the average body temperature was 98.6, I stayed in a broom closet for days weeping inconsolably.

Broom-closet-phobia: the fear of broom closets. I developed this phobia after being trapped in a broom closet for days where I wept inconsolably.

Oikos-phobia: the fear of anything Greek (especially Greek yogurt) or any product that John Stamos is a spokesperson for.

Pi-phobia: fear of the Greek letter Pi. Pi represents 3.14: the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. John Stamos frequently uses Pi when he is determining the volume of the circle on the top of a Greek yogurt container. (Pi is a bucketful of issues for me.)

Ticking-time-bomb-phobia: the horrible fear that masked intruders will break into my home as I sleep, kidnap me, lock me in a room with a ticking time bomb, and bind my hands so that I must diffuse the bomb with my tongue. If they’re particularly sinister, they will slather the bomb with my aunt’s potato salad. (The potato salad really is crap.)

Kool-Aid-man-phobia: the fear that the Kool-Aid man will come crashing through the side of my home, leaving a gaping hole in the wall, and damaging the structural integrity of the entire house. He will then yell “Oh Yeah” with his big bulbous face, and behave as if the act of pouring me a glass of Kool-Aid makes up for giant mess he’s created.

Humor-blog-phobia: the fear of wasting precious moments of your life reading the moronic ramblings that some witless stooge has posted on WordPress.

While any phobia can cause issues and have ill-effect on one’s well being; it’s the last entry on the list that is especially debilitating. So watch out for it.

kool aid man

Stupid bulbous face. I’ll bet he read too many humor blogs.

Don’t Drone on About Wolves

aesop fables

“Wolf! Big freaking wolf!! I’m not kidding!”

In a controversial move, the residents of a small Greek village have replaced the boy who watches over their sheep with drones. “It really makes a lot of sense,” The village elder reported. “We’ve had a great deal of trouble maintaining the integrity of the village’s herd of sheep.”

Apparently the village has experienced some issues with sheep wandering off, attacks from predators, and what was described simply as “human error” by the village elder.

“It was that idiot kid,” a villager named Aesop finally confided. “We all knew he was trouble from the start: always fooling around, never taking his job seriously. He thought the job was boring, ‘counting sheep puts me to sleep’ he would say jokingly.” He paused for a moment before adding, “he’s the village elder’s nephew.”

According to reports, the boy would amuse himself by crying wolf, then laughing hysterically at the harried villagers who would drop what they were doing, and hurry out to the pasture with pitchforks in hand, only to find no wolf.

cartton boy

After the boy had “cried wolf” on several occasions, the villagers had had enough. “There’s a big guy in the village named Acteon,” Aesop said. “He would get really angry running all the way out to the meadow. It took three guys just to keep him from whomping that kid over the head with an ax handle.”

The boy’s false alarms would take a turn for the tragic. It seems when a real wolf threatened the herd, none of the villagers would heed his call, and several sheep were lost. It was at this point the village decided to make a change. “The drones are working out really well,” the village elder effused. “They can monitor the herd, round-up sheep that happen to stray, and we’ve weaponized them so they can eliminate any potential threat. We did have an unfortunate incident when a villager became frightened and threw his pitchfork at a drone…let’s just say, what goes up must come down.”

When asked what the boy was doing now that he no longer looked after the sheep, the village elder hesitated before answering, “evidently one of the drones deemed him to be a threat to the herd…my sister is pretty pissed.”

“There’s moral to this story,” Aesop added. “A liar won’t be believed, even when he’s telling the truth…and he might get his ass blown off by a drone.”

drone wolf

Loud-mouthed threat detected.

Lucy, Lucy, and Me

So the other day I was in Lucille Ball Memorial Park in Celoron, NY and I took a picture of the statue of Lucy and posted it on Facebook.

But as the days passed I felt a niggling. A tiny creeping feeling of guilt.

Then it occurred to me, the source of this feeling: there are two Lucys in Lucille Ball Memorial Park and completely ignored one of them.

One of the Lucy statues is far more popular than the other.

l love lucy
The popular Lucy: isn’t she lovely?

I wondered what caused me to totally ignore the less popular Lucy.

Am I just a shallow self-centered jerk? Of course I am–but I don’t think that was reason for my callous dismissal of the other Lucy.

Maybe it was time for some introspection. Maybe it was time I delved into the deepest recesses of my brain to find out what’s going on in there.

So that’s what I did.

Honestly, it more than a little unsettling…there were way more spiders in there than I would have anticipated.

I came to realization that I have far more in common with the unpopular Lucy than I would like to admit.

Scary lucy

The less popular Lucy.
  • She’s clearly drunk on Vitameatavegamin.
  • Her face is contorted in a weird way that frightens people.
  • At the sight of her, small children weep and flee into wilderness.
  • When birds crap on her, people don’t care so much.
  • She’s referred to as “Scary” Lucy. I’m referred to as “That Prick” Larry.
  • People complained about her until she was replaced with something better.

I’m practically living her life!

What Should I do about this revelation?

I can either buckle down and focus on making changes to better myself, or I can avoid Lucille Ball Memorial Park.

I guess I’ll be seeing less of the park.

Honey and Flies: Don’t Bother

honey

You’re all familiar with the following saying:

You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

But this is the question I have for you: what are you going to do with a bunch of flies?

You can’t train a fly to do anything; they’re completely stupid.

You don’t want to eat flies: you get wing stuck in your teeth, they have limited nutritional value, and they taste like fly.

And once you’ve got flies stuck in your honey, the honey is ruined; no one wants to eat honey that has flies stuck in it. Those flies were probably prancing around on a pile of dog crap before they got around to your honey.

And to that point: if you want to catch some flies, lay out a pile of dog crap; that’s what flies really want.

I understand the point of the phrase is that you get better results if you’re nice to people rather than if you’re rude.

But do you really want to walk around all day being all flowery and nice to people if your reward is a bunch of flies in your honey–it makes your honey taste like fly!

Besides, it is exhausting being nice to people: people suck. I’m not wasting good honey on flies or people who suck.

It would be a different story if you could train flies to attack people who suck. I’d be all for throwing the honey around then.

Until then, I’ll stick with the vinegar.

Pyramid

Moses: now there was a dude who knew how to use flies.

It’s Just Bad Advice

hero

I’ve seen this quote floating around recently:

My goal in 2022 is to be my best self and my own personal hero.

I have just one quick question: to whom have you been talking and what horrible lies have they been telling you.

Do you remember that time someone told you to “just be yourself” when you when on that first date?

I’m not sure if you remember how badly that went. If you don’t we can reference the police report. My favorite part is when you and your date were taken hostage by the mime.

I know you like to tell people you gave that girl the most memorable night of her life. Normally the only things you give the girls you date are crippling self-doubt and genital chiggers.

Being memorable isn’t always a good thing. Survivors of the Hindenburg would often describe escaping that harrowing inferno as the most memorable night of their life. And those people were never held against their will in a Taco Hut by a man wearing white face paint and a beret. He didn’t even a real gun, he was just miming it.

You may be the only person in history to be screamed at by a mime. (It is amazing how fast a mime will break character once you’ve peed on the back of his leg.)

My point is: your goal shouldn’t be to be your best self, your goal should be to be someone entirely different. Someone radically, unmistakably different than yourself.

As far as you being your own personal hero; there aren’t enough adjectives in the English language to express just how bad of an idea that is. I’m trying to envision the type of person who would adopt you as a personal hero. I picture one of those weirdos who writes fan letters to a serial killer who’s in prison.

If your goal for 2022 is to improve yourself, try making it through the year without being arrested for peeing on a mime, or on the back of a police car, or on the back of a policeman.

In fact, if you can make it through the year without being arrested for public urination of any kind, we’ll call that a win.

I know it’s a tall order, but I’m not completely certain you can’t do it.

Good luck.

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