Category Archives: Funny

Coffee Talk

I don’t know how many of you remember “Coffee Talk with Linda Richman,” but it was a sketch performed by Mike Myers on  Saturday Night Live. It ran from October 12, 1991, until October 15, 1994, although Myers (who had since left the show) reprised the role once more on March 22, 1997.

In the sketches, Myers plays a stereotypical Jewish middle-aged woman named Linda Richman with an exaggerated New York accent who sports long, painted fake nails; lots of gold jewelry; gaudy sweaters; large dark glasses; and big hair, which she constantly adjusts. This character was a spoof on his real-life mother-in-law, Linda Richman.  The above clip is a classic skit with Mike Myers, Madonna and Roseanne Barr as their characters.

Richman’s hero was Barbra Streisand. She constantly “dedicated” the show to her, often claiming her to be the greatest actress in all of history.

In what could be considered to be the sketch’s most memorable moment, Myers was joined on February 22, 1992, by special guests Madonna and Roseanne Barr as other stereotypical Jewish women. Madonna also lampooned herself by having her character attack Madonna as a bad example for teenage Jewish girls (“She is such a tramp. Please! Every week with the different boyfriend already!”). They discussed Streisand’s film The Prince of Tides (1991) on the show.

Whenever Richman would get upset, she would put her hand on her chest and say “I’m all verklempt” or “I’m a little verklempt.” Then she would say, “Talk amongst yourselves,” sometimes waving her hand in a dismissive gesture toward the audience. She would often follow this with an example by saying, “I’ll give you a topic.” The topic would usually follow this format: “[two- or three-part phrase] is neither [first part] nor [second part] (nor [occasional third part]). Discuss.” (Or: “Discuss amooangst yooaselves”).

The one that I will always remember is “The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. Discuss.” (This quote is based on a famous comment by Voltaire.)  By the way, I always use this in class when I discuss the Holy Roman Empire, but few of my students ever get the reference, because they are too young to remember Mike Myers on SNL.

This is a roundabout way of doing what started as a short post, but believe it or not there was a point, and it had nothing to do with cross-dressing comedians, gay icons Barbara Streisand or Madonna.  By the way, I never understood Streisand as a gay icon. I, personally, never liked her that much, to which some of you might get upset about and get “all verklempt”  in which case I am going to give you the following quote (the real reason I started this post before I decided that I might need to explain Coffee Talk):

These names: gay, queer, homosexual are limiting. I would love to finish with them. We’re going to have to decide which terms to use and where we use them. For me to use the word “queer” is a liberation; it was a word that frightened me, but no longer.
Derek Jarman

Discuss amooangst yooaselves.
By the way, as a post that started out as a way of just have a discussion about a quote, I think I have made a darn good post, LOL–not to brag on myself or anything.  Y’all might think this is a crappy post. 

Exams, Exams, Exams

It’s the end of the semester and it is time for exams again.  My college exam is tonight, I know my students are dreading it, but it shouldn’t be that bad.  I will be reviewing with my high school kids on Monday and Tuesday for their exams which will be Wednesday through Friday.  Then Friday, I will be off work for two weeks for Christmas and New Year’s.  I can’t wait.

With exams coming up, I thought I would share a list of unintentionally funny exam answers on history exams.  I’ve never gotten these answers before, but I have had a few funny ones.  My all-time favorite that I received was that “There was nothing to do before the Industrial Revolution but hand jobs.”

1. Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics.They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere.
2. The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible,Guinessis, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children,Cain, asked, “Am I my brother’s son?”
3. Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread which is bread made without any ingredients. Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. He died before he ever reached Canada.
4. Solomom had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines.
5. The Greeks were a highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn’t have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a female moth.
6. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.
7. Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.
8. In the Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java.
9. Eventually, the Romans conquered the Greeks. History calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long.
10. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Dying, he gasped out: “Tee hee, Brutus.”
11. Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his subjects by playing the fiddle to them.
12. Joan of Arc was burnt to a steak and was cannonized by Bernard Shaw. Finally Magna Carta provided that no man should be hanged twice for the same offense.
13. In midevil times most people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the futile ages was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verses and also wrote literature.
14. Another story was William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son’s head.
15. Queen Elizabeth was the “Virgin Queen.” As a queen she was a success. When she exposed herself before her troops they all shouted “hurrah.”
16. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented removable type and the Bible. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes and started smoking. And Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper.
17. The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He wrote tragedies,comedies, and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Romeo’s last wish was to be laid by Juliet.
18. Writing at the same time as Shakespeare was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.
19. During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe.
20. Later, the Pilgrims crossed the ocean, and this was called Pilgrim’s Progress. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.
21. One of the causes of the Revolutionary War was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps. Finally the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis. Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared, “A horse divided against itself cannot stand.”. Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.
22. Soon the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.
23. Abraham Lincoln became America’s greatest Precedent. Lincoln’s mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposedly insane actor. This ruined Booth’s career.
24. Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltaire invented electricity and also wrote a book called Candy.
25. Gravity was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the autumn when the apples are falling off the trees.
26. Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German half Italian and half English. He was very large.
27. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.
28. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened and catapulted into Napoleon. Napoleon wanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn’t have any children.
29. The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is In the East and the sun sets in the West.
30. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. She was a moral woman who practiced virtue. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.
31. The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts and inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machine. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of river to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men.
32. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species. Madman Curie discovered radio. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx brothers.
33. The First World War, caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by an anahist, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.


Bob Smith

The church says we should get down on our knees and repent. Well, excuse me, but didn’t being on my knees cause most of my sins? — Bob Smith

My high school had a Head Start program for homosexuals, it was called Drama Club. — Bob Smith

In college I experimented with heterosexuality: I slept with a straight guy. I was really drunk. — Bob Smith

Bob Smith is an American comedian and author. Smith, born in Buffalo, New York, was the first openly gay comedian to appear on The Tonight Show and the first openly gay comedian to have his own HBO half-hour comedy special. Smith, along with fellow comedians Jaffe Cohen and Danny McWilliams, formed the comedy troupe “Funny Gay Males” in 1988.

With Funny Gay Males, Smith is the co-author of Growing Up Gay: From Left Out to Coming Out (1995). Smith is also the author of two books of biographical essays. Openly Bob (1997) received a Lambda Literary Award for best humor book. Way to Go, Smith! (1999) was nominated for a Lambda in the same category. Smith published his first novel, Selfish and Perverse, in 2007.


Happy Halloween: Cheap Costume Idea

My favorite holiday of the year is Halloween. It’s the day when we don’t have to wear our masks anymore. I think that this is the reason why it has long been a favorite holiday for gay men. Happy Halloween…I hope you get a TRICK and a TREAT.

If I were dressing up for Halloween (I’m teaching tonight, so no partying), my cheap costume might have been “Safe Sex Worker.”

I’d raid my home improvement tool box for tool belt, knee pads and hard hat. I’d raid my bedside table toy box for dildo, condoms and lube. Mark the dildo with 1″ increments and put in hammer strap of tool belt. Other pockets hold condoms and lube.

Then print up business cards:

JOE BLOW
Safe Sex Worker
Hand Jobs – Blow Jobs
Pay by the inch or by the job
FREE ESTIMATES

I’d dress in a blue collar shirt, jock, jeans, knee pads, tool belt and boots.

I’d pass out the cards. Use my measuring dildo for estimates. Where I would go from there is up to how the night progressed. Keep it safe.

What are you going to be for Halloween? (By the way, I actually went as the devil this year.)

CHEAPEST, GAYEST, MOST OUTRAGEOUS HALLOWEEN COSTUMES BY: JOE THOMPSON


SPECIAL NOTE TO ALL THOSE WHO HAVE LEFT COMMENTS/SENT EMAILS IN THE LAST WEEK OR SO:  I have to apologize for not answering comments and/or emails in a while.  I have been incredibly busy for the past week or so and basically just doing my best to post something each day.  My free time has been spent trying to get a little rest.  Hopefully, things will start to settle down a bit and I can answer all the comments that have been left.  Please keep the comments coming, I read each and every one of them, and eventually, I will respond to all of them.


How To Explain Sexuality Using Pens

For the rest, please click “more” below.


LOL

This cartoon really did make me laugh out loud, and I thought I would share it with you guys.  At 3pm today, my first week back teaching will be over.  So far, it has been a good week; I am enjoying my students much better this year, since some of my trouble students have either graduated or moved on to grades that I don’t teach.  I am going to do my best to make sure that this continues to be a good year.  I want my positivity to rub off on my students.

I have to apologize for not answering comments yet.  This has been a busy week, but I will get to the comments this weekend.  I prefer to answer all comments.  I love your comments and discussions on this blog, so I like to respond to the comments to show my appreciation.  I read all of my comments, and I do eventually respond to all of them.

Thanks for reading.


Exam Howlers

If you have ever taught and given any type of essay test, then you will recognize what I am talking about in this post.  Students sometimes come up with the most inadvertently funny answers on exams.  My all time favorite is in an essay discussing the Industrial Revolution, a student wrote, “The only thing to do before the Industrial Revolution were hand jobs.”  Although the student meant manual labor, that is not what they said. Times Higher Education each year posts the THE’s “exam howlers” competition. These are the “best” inadvertently funny answers that were given in the yearly exams in Britain.

Vicious substances and Nobel savages abound in this year’s exam howlers

The student who wrote in a semiotics exam that “language is a system of sins” could well have been referring to this year’s Times Higher Education “exam howlers” competition.

That entry, submitted by Daniel Chandler, lecturer in media and communication studies at Aberystwyth University, was one of scores sent in to the annual contest, in which lecturers are invited to share their favourite mistakes and misunderstandings.

In a paper marked by Karen Devlin of the University of Hull, a student translated the phrase “pash of tallow” – meaning “head of wax” – in Seamus Heaney’s poem Strange Fruit as “having a crush on a fatty substance”.

Helen Steele, tutorial assistant at Swansea University, entered several howlers from a “Europe of Extremes” history module. According to one student, “the Sixth Army became trapped in a huge pocket during their attempts to take the city”. Whether a tiny army or a rather large item of clothing was envisaged is not clear.  (I have to explain that a pocket is actually a military term, and the student quite possibly knew exactly what they were talking about on this one.–Joe)

Another, perhaps suffering the after-effects of one too many BBC costume dramas, confidently stated: “The third estate caused tension to arouse between the bourgeoisie and the nobles.”

This was not the only example of inadvertent sexual innuendo.

Ann Wood, of the department of biochemistry at King’s College London, had a student on a food science and technology course who advised using a “genital mixing action”.

“I think the student meant ‘gentle’,” Dr Wood writes. “But it was wrong anyway.”

Peter J. Smith, reader in Renaissance literature at Nottingham Trent University, was warned by one student that “premature ejaculation could be a touchy subject” in an essay on John Rochester’s poem The Imperfect Enjoyment.

Two howlers gave life to traditionally strictly theoretical subjects.

Eileen Reid, widening outreach officer at the Glasgow School of Art, recalls marking an essay on Jean-Jacques Rousseau that referred to “Professor Nobel Savage”.

And the student who simplified a subject by writing about it “in Lehman’s terms” baffled Iain Woodhouse, senior lecturer in the School of Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh, until he read the phrase aloud (“layman’s terms” was intended).

Pity, too, the poor interviewing techniques of a man of the cloth cited in an exam paper marked by Gary Day, principal lecturer in English at De Montfort University, which said that “the priest killed her so he could get information from her”.

David O’Connor, professor of microbiology in the Centre for Biological Sciences, University of Southampton, was party to the startling claim that a runny nose may be more to worry about than it seems, as “mucus is a vicious, thick substance”.

While students have provided much merriment, it is to be expected that some academics take such errors as an affront to their skills as lecturers.

But after reading the statement that “American power is based on superheroes”, Jason Dittmer, lecturer in human geography at University College London, lamented: “I clearly need to teach this material better.”


Frolic like an Egyptian

funny pictures history - Frolic  like  an  Egyptian.
see more Historic LOL

I never have been much for Eighties music, but I always loved the Bangles song, “Walk Like an Egyptian.”  I don’t know why, because it was always kind of goofy, but that’s me I guess.  I saw this picture on Historic LOLs and it made me laugh, maybe you will too.

Is there a goofy song from your past that you always loved, but hate to admit?

You may have noticed that I changed my blog layout a little.  Part of that is because of a few new features that I have added.  One of those features is a list of suggested readings that are listed on the right.  All are available from Amazon.com.  

Also, on the left, I added some polls.  I have been running this blog for over a year now and though I have gotten to know some of you, I know that most of you do not comment, so I haven’t had a chance to get to know you.  There are two polls I have added so that I can get to know you better.  One asks what your profession is.  I really wanted to know how many teachers and students that I have reading my blog, but I thought I might try to be more inclusive.  The other poll is for those teachers and students of the humanities.  I would like to know what your discipline is.  I hope you will take a second to click on your answers and submit.  I would greatly appreciate. 

One last thing, I am just a few votes shy of being featured on Best Male Blogs‘ Top Rated Up and Coming Blogs, so if you haven’t voted, I hope you will consider voting for me. I hope you enjoy this blog enough to vote 5 starts.  

Best Male Blogs - naked men, gay porn, homo culture, queer blogs


Feel free to tell me what you think of the new layout.  Thanks for reading, thanks for voting, and thanks for stopping by.  I hope you guys have a wonderful day.


Friday Funny

This just makes me giggle.

To see what this painting is really all about, Click “Read More” below.


Les Glaneuses (The Gleaners) by François Millet, 1857

Introduction

In this depiction of the rural life of nineteenth century France, we see three female figures gathering the leftovers after the harvest. This practice – known as gleaning – was traditionally part of the natural cycle of the agricultural calendar undertaken by the poor, and was regarded as a right to unwanted leftovers. Although the practice of agricultural gleaning has gradually died away due to a number of historical factors (including industrialisation and the organisation of social welfare for the poor), there are nonetheless still people in the present day that we might understand to be gleaners.
The Painting

When The Gleaners was first exhibited in 1857 it met with mixed reviews within the art world. Some commentators attacked its depiction of the rural poor, which on the one hand served as an unwelcome reminder of the marginalized poor (who were taken to be a threat to society), and on the other hand were consider the kind of grotesques who had no place within the artistic realm. The comments of one critic named Paul de Saint Victor might be taken to illustrate such an attitude:
His three gleaners have gigantic pretensions, they pose as the Three Fates of Poverty … their ugliness and their grossness unrelieved. (in Griselda Pollock, Millet, London 1977, p.17)
Part of the shock value of Millet’s painting was undoubtedly due to the fact that in the past gleaning had usually been represented in art through the Old Testament tale of Ruth the gleaner, in which Ruth is characterised as a modest and virtuous example of the way to God, and not – as it was now – a statement on rural poverty. 

Take the Test

 
I got:

Score:
84
Gay gay gay.
You’ve earned your Card. Carry it proudly, you fine queen.

I don’t tend to think of myself as “Gay gay gay” but who knows, LOL.

Take the test and see what you get: http://getyourgaycard.com/.