Ranthology

1. I told the cashier at the express checkout, “The sign should say, ‘9 items or fewer’.” She said, “Do you have a Safeway Club card or Air Miles?”

2. Do they call it “scat” because somebody made the lyrics go away?

3. Removed because of adult content.

4. To those people who think the horse should get the award in equestrian events, rather than the rider, what would happen in downhill ski racing? The winner of the last billion Olympics would be named either Fischer or Rosignol. Wouldn’t that be fun?

5. Removed because of offensive language.

6. A few years ago, Tim Horton’s advertised a game where you rolled up the rim to win. The promotional poster also said, “No Purchase Necessary”. I think they called the game “Paradox”.

7. I was at my uncle’s funeral when I was a kid. As they were lowering the coffin I remembered the pet turtle I buried and said to my aunt, “Maybe he’s just hibernating.”

8. I was passing a young woman on the sidewalk and she stopped and yelled at me, “All men are animals!” I said, “Okay.” I mean, how do you respond to something like that? “No, we’re not.”? Then she’d just say, “Are so” and I’d say, “Are not” and so on and the bus would just go right by.

9. If what happened in Haiti was part of God’s Plan, does that make it 'premeditated' murder?

10. Removed because it wasn't funny.

11. I used to tell students who walked backwards in the hallways that, if they turned around really quickly, they would run into themselves. It made them think.

12. How come it’s a miracle when one person out of a hundred survives. What about the other 99? Where was their miracle?

13. I was worried about my carbon footprint and then I remembered Donald Trump.

14. When I look at my daughter’s iPod I wonder what the a to hPods were like.

15. I've always wanted to meet someone who worked in scatology so I could say, “No shit?”

16. My dad once ripped a book he was reading in half because my mother nagged him. He always peeked at the ending when he read so it was kind of a Pyrrhic victory for my mother.

17. I think the obits should just say what people died of. Forget all that “leaves to mourn” and “lovingly remembered by” crap, I want to know what diseases or misadventures to be wary of.

18. My parents taught me never to talk to strangers. I don’t have a lot of friends.

19. If you listen to people to get your thrills does that make you an ecouteur?

20. This homeless guy asked me for a dollar. I said, “Get a haircut.” He said, “Okay. Give me nineteen ninety-five.”

21. Removed due to expired "Best before" date.

22. I’m confused when people say my father is in a better place. He’s dead. Just about anything is better than that. Except Morinville.

23. I heard that when opera singers are doing a duet they spit all over each other. Kind of takes the charm out of things. Sorry. It’s right up there with ballerinas bleeding into their shoes. Sorry again. So these are cultured activities?

24. To those people who find joy in suffering, get a cat.

25. I’m suspicious of people who overuse the word ‘love’. It reminds me of elementary school and saying the Hail Mary so often that you could practice your times tables and think about what you wanted for dinner without missing a ‘thy womb Jesus’.

26. The number of angels that can sit on the end of a pin is a direct function of which end we’re talking about.

27. My friend Pat used to break everything he touched and now he’s world-renowned oncologist. I guess people are hoping he’ll break cancer.

28. I think that if Morpheus had offered me the red or blue pill I would have snatched them both from his hand and taken them at the same time just to see what happened. I like to have more than two choices.

29. I always ate the red Smarties last because I didn’t like the taste, not because I was saving them. Saving the best for last isn’t a good idea because you might have an aneurysm or something.

30. I voted Conservative once to get the Social Credit out of office. That’s like hiring a pedophile to whack an Irish priest.

31. see ii below.

32. I used to ride the bus home from the University and fall asleep on the way. One day I woke up with my head on an old lady’s shoulder. She’s probably dead now . . . but it wasn’t my fault.

33. I wonder if homeless people have a hierarchy of shopping carts like, “Hey, did you notice the new Sobey’s that Lloyd’s been pushing? Who’s he trying to impress?” "I don't know but I sure love that new cart smell."

34. I don’t know why networks want to capture the late night talk show crowd. Most of that viewing audience are asleep when the stores are open.

36. I think we all have severely repressed Tourette syndrome . . .; . . . okay, maybe it’s just me.

37. I quit teaching because of teenage girls. Everyday some group or other would congregate outside my classroom and scream/babble about their latest boy or toy or both while holding hands and jumping up and down. It brought me to a new appreciation of 'infectious happiness' where infections are bad things that can kill you.

38. Whoever coined the term "as the crow flies" must have seen a crow on a very good day rather than in its usual course of meandering punctuated by long periods of sitting.

39. Ambergris, also referred to as whale barf and a former a major component of perfumes which still sells for three hundred dollars per ounce, comes from sperm whales. I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere.

40. There's nothing worse than people chewing with their mouths open except if they're eating a hard boiled egg at the time. That's worse.

41. Removed for ageism.

42. Why do people talk about opening a can of worms? Do worms even come in cans? Are there recipes?

43. People used to polish their teeth with urine. Honest. And Portuguese urine was the most sought after. How could you tell it was Portuguese pee? Did it come with a certificate of authenpissity?

44. I bought one of those cardboard shades you put in your windshield in the summer. It had a disclaimer in small print that said, "Do Not Drive With Shade In Place." Another Get Out Of Jail Free card in the game of natural selection Monopoly.

45. I wrote in Brian Jacobs' religion book in Grade 9. I thought it was my book so I captioned the picture of Jesus spreading his hands to the multitudes with the quote, "Honest, it was thiisss big." When Mrs. Demers asked me if I was responsible I lied. I remembered that later when I read a book about wife killer Colin Thatcher called, "Deny, Deny, Deny".

46. When you are in an uncomfortable situation you are on TENTER hooks, not TENDER hooks. Did you think they had the pointy bit rounded off or covered with sponge rubber?

47. At the head of the guillotine there's a basket for the detached head to drop into. It is lined with barley. There's a serial killer joke here somewhere.

48. I just talked with a woman who said, "Let me play the devil's advocate." Listening to her, I knew she wasn't just playing.

49. What does 'going to hell in a hand basket' mean? Is someone going to carry you? Who dreams up these expressions?

50. When you’re a senior you don’t work anymore.

51. Removed because the word 'vomit' rarely induces even a smirk.

52. Our catechism had pictures to display the effects of sin. A white milk bottle showed your soul if you were free from sin, a bottle with black blotches among the white was venial sin, and a totally black milk bottle represented mortal sin. Of course all the pictures were in black and white so it could have been chocolate.

53. I wonder how many people have had their fingers amputated by pull-tabs or by carrying cans out to the recycle bin with their fingers in the hole left by the pull-tab. There’s not even a warning or anything!

54. I used to drink one half dozen cokes per day. When I think about how people used to dissolve nails in the stuff, I feel like apologizing to my digestive tract. I have since found that the nail thing is an urban myth. Considering that it involves nails, it's probably a rural myth too.

55. I know this sounds irreverent, but I wonder if miraculous stuff like toast in the shape of Jesus and melted candles that look like the Virgin Mary has to be made out of virtuous stuff. Like, let’s say I found a piece of doggy poo in the shape of some holy figure – would it be worth a fortune on eBay or would I just get a lot of hate mail from Alabama?

56. There are more than two sides to an argument . . . like a dodecahedron or an outdoor hockey rink or something else with more than two sides.

57. Sticking up your finger to show displeasure is called the fig (honest). If people actually had to hold up real figs there would be less antagonism in this world. And fig farmers would become very wealthy.

58. I used to sit next to this really stupid kid in Grade 6 and I would often look at his math test while we were writing it to see how ridiculous an answer he had written. On one occasion the teacher caught me looking at the kid’s test and accused me of cheating. I said it was only cheating if it gave you an advantage, not ammunition for ridicule. He said that was an advantage.

59. Why do television manufacturers run commercials that show how superior their picture quality is? A guy who’s watching on a crappy set is going to say, “Doesn’t look much better than mine.”

60. You know how people throw money into any artificial pool or fountain so they can make a wish? I’ll bet swimming pools would be treasure troves if people weren’t forced to leave their wallets in the change room.

61. In 1958, when I was in Grade 6, I prayed that my Dad wouldn’t find out that I’d played hooky from school. It was that same evening I began to mistrust metaphysics.

62. I’d like to talk to Shakespeare about his famous soliloquy. I think another interesting question is, "To be or never to have been" or "Why did I just walk into the kitchen?"

63. Dyslexics of the world UNTIE! I wrote this in my Religion book (see #45) in Junior High but most people think that Gary Larsen came up with it. I still don't know how he got his hands on my Religion book. I think Mrs. Demers was trying to get even . . .

64. I cut the crust off a piece of bread. I’m going to put it on eBay because it looks like Wyoming. Unfortunately only people from Wyoming look at rectangles and go, "Hey, that looks like Wyoming." And a lot of them don't have running water let alone an internet connection.

65. I think hockey players should use loaded rifles instead of hockey sticks. It would make stick handling harder and there wouldn’t be as many fights.

66. I got my lip cut open playing hockey. Before I got it stitched up I looked like I was smiling but I wasn’t. Seeing your teeth when your mouth is closed is no smiling matter. Unless they're in a glass. Even then it's not much to smile about.

67. I needed to have my lip sewn back together after hockey. The surgeon used a surgical drape that is normally used for circumcision. I tell people I have a kosher lip.

68. You know how some people say that they climb a mountain because it’s there? They’d never get away with that answer to a three-year-old. Or maybe they would.

69. In high school I carried around Kant’s 'Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics' but didn’t read it until 10 years later. Now the debunking of metaphysics is a big preoccupation of mine. Coincidence? I think not.

70. So “fools rush in where wise men never go”? Most of the fools I’ve met don’t do a lot of rushing. They’re more liable to be the last ones out of a burning building. Wait. That’s rushing out.

71. Another one is “you’re only as old as you feel.” These words are usually uttered by old people in denial.

72. Most of you are too young to remember Ed Sullivan. Imagine one of those Easter Island statues with scoliosis.

73. So Scientologists believe that we are alien spirits encumbered by our attachment to our physical, material being? John Travolta is closer to being an alien spirit than most people. This would be true even if there was no such thing as Scientology.

74. Don Sroka, my best friend for part of Junior High, convinced me (by using a doctored tape recording) that Edmonton mayor Elmer Roper was the Masked Destroyer - a wrestling villain of the early sixties. I told everybody at school. Elmer Roper was 200 years old and looked like he was Gollum's consumptive twin. I was a very trusting person. I didn't know what 'gullible' meant back then.

75. I saw a commercial on television the other day. It was for an antidepressant. The entire 60 second slot had a voice-over that described the various side-effects of the drug. The word ‘death’ came up more than once as a distinct possibility. I smirked all the way through so I guess the stuff really works.

76. I’m glad that the father of my country wasn’t an axe wielding eco-terrorist.

77. It's amazing how deceptively relaxed people look in coffee shops, sipping their java and giving not the slightest inkling of the quivering, hair-trigger synapses that tremble beneath the surface. With all that caffeine I’m sure that dropping a hint would be enough to result in people having to be picked off the ceiling.

78. Why are Americans supposed to remember the Alamo? Didn’t they get even with Mexico a long time ago?

79. The term ‘mechanically de-boned chicken’ has always bothered me. I think it’s the ‘mechanically’ part. It conjures up images of medieval torture chambers. For chickens.

80. Some people feed baby mice to lizards. Apart from being disgusting, isn’t that a betrayal of your fellow mammals?

81. Do people forget they have Alzheimer’s?

82. Roland Nordman asked to leave the room in our Grade 11 English class. We didn’t notice the fire he’d set in his desk until he’d left the room. How do you translate that into future career opportunities?

83. When I was two I nearly drowned in a farmer’s cesspool. Now I live in Alberta. Talk about foreshadowing.

84. The Alberta Government should promote the Tar Sands’ sludge ponds as a future tourist attraction and treasure trove for paleontologists. In a thousand years they could become Canada’s answer to the Labrea Tar Pits.

85. The reason that police aren’t allowed to go on strike is very simple: they would have to club THEMSELVES on the picket line.

86. Say the word 'flush' over and over to yourself, at the top of your voice, 10 times. Make sure you are not in a public washroom or standing behind a poker player when you do this.

87. Why do we still have expressions like ‘throwing down the gauntlet’ and ‘running the gauntlet’? Nobody wears gauntlets anymore. Especially in Canada because we often wipe our nose with our mitts in the winter.

88. Speaking of freezing stuff to iron, I never did the tongue frozen to the monkey-bars thing. There are some potentially painful life experiences like defusing bombs, free climbing and base jumping that are better left to adrenalin junkies. I’m saving my adrenalin for running away.

89. I wish Alex Trebec wouldn’t keep reminding people that he’s Canadian. Does he really think that people believe he knows the answers that contestants miss? He’s a game show host! How smart do you have to be to get that gig?

90. Why is American Football called Football? The foot and the ball rarely meet and are definitely not in a compound word relationship. They could call it ‘Tossball’ but then nobody would come to the games. Except the sexually ambiguous.

91. If a rolling stone gathers no moss, what’s that green stuff all over Keith Richards?

92. My father once told me I could find sympathy in the dictionary between ‘shit’ and ‘syphilis’. It’s a lot easier just to Google it but then it’s not as much of a fatherly advice sort of thing.

93. Some people have no sense of humour. I was the only person in the theater to laugh when Paul Newman got shot in Cool Hand Luke. Lighten up people!

94. I taught a Phys Ed class to some 8 year-olds. I had them running laps in the Gym after lunch. A number of the kids slipped on what I had presumed were raisins that someone had dropped and forgotten to pick up. Turns out one of the students had had an ‘accident’ before the rest of them did.

95. Lying to children is the worst thing that anyone can do. Unless you’re a teacher. Then it’s called ‘curriculum’.

96. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Tell that to Mrs. Lemp, my Grade 3 teacher. All the other kids thought it was funny, though.

97. I worked with a woman who kept Kleenex up her sleeve. She would blow her nose and stuff the tissue back in her sweater. I was waiting for someone to say, “I bet she’s got something up her sleeve” like she was plotting something and I would have said, “Snot’.

98. I think Ogden Nash’s poetry style was a result of his parents naming him Ogden. With that kind of start it would be hard to take anything too seriously.

99. I used to have this irrational fear of needles. Now that I have diabetes it has become a rational fear.

100. We all get to live for eternity; some eternities are just shorter than others.

101. Religion is not about giving meaning to life; if you need to search for meaning you've got too much time on your hands.

102. The question “Why?” has spawned both Religion and Science: one to maintain it has the answer and the other to keep finding more questions.

103. Comfort breeds stupidity; stupidity just breeds.

104. The dodo became extinct because of the introduction of pigs to its habitat. There’s a lesson in there for human beings.

105. Never send a boy to do a man’s work unless you’re embroiled in a war.

106. Shakespeare got it wrong when he wrote, “Kill all the lawyers.” Who’s going to defend you when you kill all the bankers and CEOs?

107. It’s hard to write a rant about grammar because no one really cares that much and they’ve heard it all before from Mrs. Simmons in Grade 5.

108. Old people don’t really experience flatulence more than young people; they just have a sense of senior gastrointestinal entitlement.

109. When people rummage through their wash and find an unmatched sock they haven’t lost one – they’ve found one and just haven’t found its mate - yet.

110. Grammar checkers don’t keep people from finding out how dumb you are - they just allow you to dig the hole a little deeper.

A. I think athletes should get the gold medal for finishing fourth. Think of the strategy involved. What would happen in figure skating?

B. I think Wiebo Ludwig should have lit the Olympic flame in Vancouver.

C. I have a friend who has been married and divorced so often that his lawyer suggested next time he forego getting married and just buy her a house.

D. How did Paul McCartney wind up with Heather Mills? Maybe it was more Beatle destiny like George dying of cancer and John getting shot in the back.

E. During the cold war, espionage agencies used sensory deprivation to brainwash enemy agents. Canada locked people in a room and played Anne Murray until they cracked.

F. I’m not surprised that Tiger crashed his SUV. Driving accuracy was always his Achilles heel.

G. Life expectancy in Canada is up to 80.4 years. Before you get all excited, you have to look back at what it was when you were born. In 1971 it was 72 years. In my case it was 67.2 which is just around a very short corner. Damn statistics.

H. I think Steven Harper looks like a mortician. Or his client.

I. Death is something that happens to other people. Until it happens to you. Then you become other people.

J. The concept of ‘Death warmed over’ has always bothered me. I mean, who would DO something like that?

K. I’m going to get one of those vanity plates that seem to say something. Mine will be ER8W1UC (which means nothing that I know of) just to watch other drivers try to figure it out.

L. Of all the euphemisms for death, ‘passed’ is one of the more intriguing. You get the sense of someone going by in a hurry or giving up their turn in Bridge or peeing. Wouldn’t it be totally ambiguous if Joe Namath passed?

M. I don’t want to will my body to science because I know the kind of sick humour that med students have. Besides, what if I wind up in the Physics or Chemistry department by accident? It’d be, “Someone get me a HUGE frickin’ Erlenmeyer Flask.”

N. My grandmother, in her early nineties, came to Canada to live with my mother. One day she confided in me that this was a strange country because the sun traveled backwards through the sky. I asked her what made her think that. She said that, in Austria, when she looked out her kitchen window in the morning, the sun was coming up. When she looked out my mother’s kitchen window she could only see the sun when it was going down. I explained that her kitchen window faced east and my mother’s kitchen window faced west. She said, no, when she walked in from her back door, the kitchen was on the left and her bedroom was on the right, just as it was now in Canada. I said, yes, but imagine that your house has been turned around. She said, the kitchen is still on the right. I said, you’re right – the sun does come up on the wrong side here.

i. I just bought some Girl Guide Cookies. I used to think girl guides actually baked them as a good deed. I thought a lot of other stupid things too.

ii. I also used to think babies came out of their mothers' belly buttons . . . kinda like puffballs but not atomized like that.

iii. My 97 year old mother says that, once you get really old, nothing pleases you any more. So I said, "How about 'being a burden on your children'?"

iv. I've never believed in God, the Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus. I still don't step on cracks in sidewalks but that's more O.C.D. than metaphysics.

v. I like spoonerisms. My favourite is wishdasher. I can't decide whether Dr. Spooner was an eccentric figurative language pioneer or just an idiot.

vi. When Romans went to the grocery store, did they ask for XII buns. Did they say "Happy XLVIIIth Birthday" to people?

vii. I watched a rather corpulent lady at a buffet in Vegas loading up her plate with a giga-calorie worth of food. Then she poured herself a diet coke. I’m wondering, was that denial or alternate reality?

viii. I don’t think that e-books will ever catch on. How would you prop stuff up and where would you keep your lottery and traffic tickets?

ix. My sister is ‘into’ mysticism. She is trying to tap into the cosmic flow of universal consciousness. I tried that in the sixties but it just made me really hungry and sensitive to bright lights.

x. Steven Harper wants to put more criminals in prison. Bankers, CEOs, and the captains of industry get a pass but environmental activists and university students had better watch what they’re smoking.

i. At the head of the guillotine there's a basket for the detached head to drop into. It is lined with barley. There's a serial killer joke here somewhere.
ii. I just talked with a woman who said, "Let me play the devil's advocate." Listening to her, I knew she wasn't just playing.
iii. What does 'going to hell in a hand basket' mean? Is someone going to carry you? Do you get to use the '5 items or less' lane?
iv. I just bought some Girl Guide Cookies. I used to think girl guides actually baked them as a good deed. I thought a lot of other stupid things too.
v. I used to think babies came out of their mothers' belly buttons . . . kinda like puffballs but not atomized like that.
vi. My 97 year old mother says that, once you get really old, nothing pleases you any more. So I said, "How about being a burden to your children or slopping on yourself when you eat soup?"
vii. I've never believed in God, the Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus. I still don't step on cracks in sidewalks but that's more O.C.D. than metaphysics.
viii. I like spoonerisms. My favourite is wishdasher. I was doing an Aesop Fable with my third graders and naively called it the Grant and the Asshopper - I spent the rest of the period trying to pick them up off the floor and trying to induce amnesia.
ix. When Romans went to the grocery store, did they ask for XII buns. Did they write "Happy XLVIIIth Birthday" on their cakes?
x. I think another interesting question is, "To be or never to have been" or "Why why did I just walk into the kitchen?"

I Think Therefore I Rant

100. We all get to live for eternity; some eternities are just shorter than others.

101. Religion is not about giving meaning to life; if you need to search for meaning you've got too much time on your hands.

102. The question “Why?” has spawned both Religion and Science: one to maintain it has the answer and the other to keep finding more questions.

103. Comfort breeds stupidity; stupidity just breeds.

104. The dodo became extinct because of the introduction of pigs to its habitat. There’s a lesson in there for human beings.

105. Never send a boy to do a man’s work unless you’re embroiled in a war.

106. Shakespeare got it wrong when he wrote, “Kill all the lawyers.” Who’s going to defend you when you kill all the bankers and CEOs?

107. It’s hard to write a rant about grammar because no one really cares that much and they’ve heard it all before from Mrs. Simmons in Grade 5.

108. Old people don’t really experience flatulence more than young people; they just have a sense of senior gastrointestinal entitlement.

109. When people rummage through their wash and find an unmatched sock they haven’t lost one – they’ve found one and just haven’t found its mate - yet.

110. Grammar checkers don’t keep people from finding out how dumb you are - they just allow you to dig the hole a little deeper.