Tag Archives: comedy

NASA Saved by Comedy Writer

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The other day I was giving one of my comedy cave tours at Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park. I average one joke every 30 seconds on my tours.

I pointed to a gaggle of stalactites on the ceiling and said, “Take a picture of these, save the photo, and turn it upside down. You will see a city on Mars.”

As I stood back and observed, the “ooohs” and “aaahs” erupted with timed precision.

When they died down, I said, “Now I want you to email your photos to NASA, and have their marketing department overlay them on those boring pictures of Barstow, California they keep sending out.”

Laughter.

Apparently, one little girl did just that.

NASA took the photo and did the overlay.

Then NASA set up a press conference, and announced to the world that they had discovered signs of past life on Mars.

“Speaking on condition of anonymity,” one NASA official said that they even found an empty Starbucks coffee shop in every building.

In a genius publicity move, NASA did what they learned from National Geographic. Remember when National Geographic had a picture of a fossil “lizard-bird” on their front cover a few years ago?

The “lizard-bird” fossil turned out to be a fake from China, and they had a small retraction later on. But by then it was too late. Millions of museums around the world will refer to that photo as a proof of evolutionary transition.

So NASA has proof of past life on Mars even though it was retracted in a small statement on page 7 of the Wakarusa Tribune’s annual “Best of Hog Prices” edition.

Intelligent life in outer space.

NASA is raking in the bucks now that it is piquing the interest of the public. The federal budget for NASA has increased 380% per year, compounded daily, for the next 50 years.

The Space Program can breathe easy and coast for a while.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I gotta go screw some loose stalactites back onto the ceiling.

Dopes at the Grocery

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Is our local grocery store now run by aliens?

Last night Caleb my son said “Dad, get the green peppers. They’re only 99 cents per pound.”

“No, that can’t be right,” I retorted. “They’re supposed to be 99 cents each.”

“Well, the cardboard sign above says 99 cents per pound, even though the plastic sign on the rack says 99 cents each, so get ‘em,” Caleb insisted.

I looked at him and smiled. We had a situation similar to this with Wheaties a year ago (See my blog “How to Leverage Wheaties”). So I let him get a bag full.

We went to the self checkout where you can have the most fun, because people don’t expect you to move fast, have a clue what you are doing, or put 19 dollars worth of nickels in the “Money Sucker” machine.

When the computer rang up 99 cents each, I brought it to the attendant’s attention. She said “They’re 99 cents each.”

“The sign on the produce rack says 99 cents per pound,” I responded innocently.

She called for a “price check” and after a bit of discussion, the guy came back with “They’re 99 cents each.”

With feigned disgust (I was beginning to have fun playing with the system) I insisted that he accompany me to the produce rack where I pointed to the sign that said 99 cents per pound.

“I was going by this,” he said, as he pointed to the tiny 1 inch sign on the produce rack at the bottom.

“I was going by this,” I said as I pointed to the 8X10 inch colored sign above the produce.

The “price checker” guy told the attendant to give us the cheaper of the two prices. After whispered exchanges between employees, frustrated looks, and an apology or two, City Market in Carbondale gave us the peppers for free. They didn’t have a store manager who could override the computer. A wise choice on their part.

“Shrink” comes in all forms at a grocery store. The one that apparently isn’t  addressed at all is “stupidity.”

They should’ve hired me last year when I applied for the manager position in the produce department.

When My Joke Backfired

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Many years ago, our family went to the World’s Fair in Montreal, Canada. I was a semi-little guy, but a budding young smartaleck  nonetheless.

My mom had a genius: Have shirts custom made for the family, so that all eight of us would walk around the World’s Fair looking alike. There might have been a safety side to the plan, but I never knew.

So mom had eight shirts made by the Dutch Made company. All of the shirts were an itchy short sleeve with cuffs. The women folk all had red and white checkers and the men all had blue and white checkers. This was a highly embarrassing way to cruise around the world’s most prestigious fair.

Being the frugal truck driver-type family we were, mom and dad decided we should save money by taking our lunch in with us. But the days being what they were, mom had no way for us to carry the sandwiches around with us. No picnic basket. No backpack.

Finding an opportunity to insert a smart comment I piped up with “We could put it in Dad’s suitcase!”

Mom looked at dad and they both smiled. Dad raised his eyebrows. I knew we were about to enter a new era of family embarrassment.

The sandwiches, carrots, and pudding were loaded into dad’s metal truck driver suitcase (the one that had seen “one million miles”), and off we went for the entrance gates.

If we had done this in 2012, our entire family would have been suspected of being terrorists, detained in a dank little side room, and our suitcase blown up in the “bomb bin”.

As it turned out, we turned a blind eye to the show stopping presence of the Begly family in Montreal, and had a great visit.

I think it’s time to pass on the “embarrassment”  torch to my children…

How to Leverage Wheaties at the Grocery Store

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Leveraging Wheaties is a lost art form.

One evening Caleb and I stopped  by the store for a few groceries.  We noticed that there was a pallet of the new Wheaties “Fuel” cereal on sale, at a substantial discount. We grabbed two boxes, and a few other items and proceeded to the self checkout. When we scanned the boxes of Wheaties, an automatic coupon popped out. “$2.00 off on your next grocery store purchase” read the coupon.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s pretty good.”

“You know if you hit the ‘BACKSPACE’ button on the screen now, you could use that coupon, Caleb said.”

“That can’t be right,” I replied. “You could forget these other groceries, and buy a $4.27 box of Wheaties for only 87 cents.”

“Correct,” said Caleb.

We stared at each other for a moment. Then we tested the system. Sure enough, Caleb could buy one box of Wheaties, use the store discount, manufacturer’s coupon, plus the auto coupon, and buy a box of Wheaties Fuel for only 87 cents. The catch? You had to buy exactly 5 boxes at a time.

Being 8:30 at night, not having anything else to do, and having a pocket full of cash, we began a very strange process: Caleb brought 5 boxes of Wheaties to the self checkout, performed the weird purchase, and I took the cart out to the Subaru, and loaded it up. I was running carts as fast as I could.

As first, we tried to be discreet. But cashiers being who they are, they noticed me on about the 3rd or 4th trip I took out the door. After answering their question about the quantity of purchases with “We really like Wheaties,” we decided to go into overdrive and pretty much clear out the store as fast as possible.

Caleb was loading up carts as fast as he could, and I was running them out the door.

Did I mention that blueberries were on sale at a substantial discount, too? We pretty much cleaned out the blueberry section. I believe I commented to the store clerk how much we like blueberries on our Wheaties Fuel.

Then the store Manager showed up.

Caleb heard the clerk ask a distressed looking manager, “Can they do this?” The store manager wasn’t exactly sure at that moment. Meanwhile Caleb  smiled at him while I ran Wheaties out the front door like a squirrel tearing across the lawn with a wad of nuts in my mouth.

When it was over, we had collected 100 boxes of Wheaties. And cases of blueberries.

We set the Wheaties up like dominos at home and played with them. The blueberries ended up on cereal, and a thousand smoothies.

Next time we might try Snickers bars…