Filed under: humour

CHOCOLATE By John Scalzi

Chocolate is God's way of reminding men how inadequate they are. I am
vividly confronted with this fact every time my wife and I go out to a
restaurant. When it gets to dessert, my wife usually orders the most chocolate-saturated dessert possible: It's the one called "Unstoppable Double-Fudge Chocolate Mudslide Explosion" or some such thing. 

I always wonder why anyone would want to eat anything that promises a
catastrophic natural disaster in your mouth.

The dark brown monstrosity arrives at the table, and my wife takes the first bite. Before the fork is even removed from her mouth, a small moan escapes her lips. Her eyes, previously perfectly aligned, first cross slightly and then faze completely, pupils dilating in pure
chocolate pleasure before the eyelids clamp down in ecstasy. The hand
not holding the fork clenches into a fist and starts pounding the table. The silverware rattles. After about six minutes of this, she finally manages to swallow the bite, realign her eyes, and take the next shuttle back from whatever transcendental plane she's been visiting. Slowly, her sphere of
consciousness expands to include me, her husband, her life-long mate, her presumed partner in all things ecstatic. "Hey, this is pretty good," she'll say. "You want some?" No, I don't. I want nothing to do with an object that does to my wife in one bite what I've worked for an entire relationship to achieve. It
wouldn't do any good, anyway. Men just don't have the same relationship with chocolate that women do. It's not even close. I wandered around the office today and asked men - "Chocolate. Your thoughts?" - and the result was always the same. First, a confused look as to why they're being asked about something so trivial, and
then some lame, obvious statement: "Uh...it's brown?" 

Ask women the same question, and you get responses like "The ONLY food group," "ESSENTIAL to life as we know it," and the ultimate casual swipe at every member of the Y-chromosome brigade, "better than sex." Ouch. Some women will try to make up for that last one by quickly
adding that chocolate is supposed to be an aphrodisiac. Uh-huh. Chocolate certainly increases desire; problem is the desire is usually for more chocolate. The best a guy can do is buy a box of chocolates and hope he'll be considered somewhere between the cherry truffle and the strawberry nougat. Don't get me wrong. Guys like chocolate just fine; it's just not essential to life as we know it. Respiration is essential to life as we know it; chocolate is simply one of those nice little bonuses you get. We won't usually pass it up if it's offered, but I don't know too many guys who would get substantially worked up if it were to suddenly disappear from the face of the earth (ironic in a way, as back in the days of the Aztecs, only
men were allowed to have the stuff). 

When I eat a chocolate dessert, I
enjoy it, yes. My world view doesn't narrow to include only the plate that it's on. Maybe we're missing something. On the other hand, we don't have to
pick up our silverware from the floor after we're done with our tiramisu. Life is about trade-offs like that. All I know is that come Valentine's Day, chocolate will be among the things I offer my wife. I can't truly appreciate it, but I can truly appreciate what it does for
her. Which is close enough.

Copyright © John Scalzi

John Scalzi is a columnist and humorist living in Virginia. For more
columns and essays, visit his website: www.scalzi.com

(BBC News) Embarrassing email error ends up on Welsh road sign

(BBC NEWS) When council officials requested for a sign to be translated into Welsh via email, they assumed that the email auto-reply was all they needed...

The English is clear enough to lorry drivers - but the Welsh reads "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated."


Image

Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council said in Welsh: "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated".

So that was what went up under the English version which barred lorries from a road near a supermarket.

Read the rest of this post »

You Don't Know Love from Shit

You got a snazzy new car in your driveway,
Expensive new clothes on your back,
Every tight shirt on the highway,
Has spent time in your bachelor pad.

We dance and you look over my shoulder,
And make eyes at somebody else,
You swear that you're not, But you know that's a croc,
Cause you only care for yourself.

Your attitude stinks and I hate it,
You're arrogant, cocky and rude,
You're selfish, conceited and jaded,
Everything's all about you,
You think that I'm lucky to have you,
You think you're so handsome, so what?
I'm kickin' you out cause I don't need this crap,
I'm gettin' myself outta shit.

Cause you don't know love from shigella,
With you love is not what I found,
Cause a man needs someone to hold him,
Not someone to just let him down,
I want someone I can count on,
A cool headed, warm heart and shoulder,
To cry on, rely on, today and from now on,
But you don't know love from shigella,

You don't know love...
From shigella!

Oh but I gave you love and affection,
But you never gave one iota,
It was an early detection,
That you don't know love from shigella.

You don't know love from shigella,
You don't know what true loves about.
Well you'll find your world growin' colder,
When you're alone and without,
So go on, lover boy, have a big time,
Drink up on your Pinot Grigio,
When you sober up you'll be fucked outta luck,
Cause you don't know love from shigella.

I'm in it for love, but you're just a prick,
You don't know love from shigella.

Copyright © 2010 Ryan Price & Dolly Parton. Dedicated to?!

Noteable Mark Twain Quotes

"Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for."

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."

"People born to be hanged are safe in water."

"Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."

"Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to."

"Only presidents, editors and people with tapeworm have the right to use the editorial 'we'."

"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer."

"You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."

"I don't give a damn for a man who can spell a word only one way."

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

"God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board."

"All kings is mostly rapscallions."

"It is not best that we all should think alike, it is differences of opinion that make horse races."

"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them."

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But I repeat myself."

"The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter."

"Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest."

"Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed."

"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said, "I don't know."

"Familiarity breeds contempt - and children."

"It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either."

"It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them."

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man."

"By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean."

"I have a higher and greater standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie but I won't."

"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."

"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."

"I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting."

"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."

"I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."

"Get your facts first and then you can distort them as much as you wish."

"Golf is a good walk spoiled."

"I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it."

"The Bible has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies."

"It takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."

"To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence."

"Truth is more of a stranger than fiction."

"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."

"We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read."

"There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."

"There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting."

"When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear."

"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But, when I got to be twenty- one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years."

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform."

"Let us endeavor to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."
"Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense."

"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."

"The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity."

"The principle of give and take is the principle of diplomacy - give one and take ten."

"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress."

"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them."