There’s a little game I’m rather keen on playing. I don’t have a name for it, but it works more often than statistically likely.
Let’s say you’re driving down the road. You’re going the traditional 5 miles over the limit, but then you find yourself behind a car that is going at or below the speed limit. For whatever reason, you can forget about getting around this car. What do you do?
After I’ve had enough of this jerk, I’ll look ahead to the next intersection. Long before I get there, I’ll turn on my turn signal. Chances are better than 80/20 they will turn on their turn signal and turn whichever direction I signaled. Then I turn mine off and keep driving straight.
I’m not exactly sure why this works so well, but it kinda makes me wonder about the nature of reality. So far my best guess is that there’s a secret government program that pays people to go out and drive in a legal but irritating fashion. Why? Who knows. It’s stupid conspiracy theory I made up to amuse myself as to why turning on my turn signal tends to make the car in front of me spontaneously decide they want to turn down that road. If you got a better theory that doesn’t just dismiss my experience as some kind of cognitive bias, then lay it on me.
The teacher asked the class what their parents did for a living.
One little girl said her father was a doctor, another said her mother was an engineer. When it was Little Johnny’s turn, he stood up and said, “My mom’s a whore.”
Naturally, after that remark, he got sent off to the principal’s office, then 15 minutes later, he returned.
So the teacher asked, “Did you tell the principal what you said in class?”
Johnny said, “Yes.”
“Well, what did the principal say?”
“He said that every job is important in our economy, asked for my phone number, then gave me an apple.”
A man returned home a day early from a business trip. It was after midnight while en-route home, and he asked the cab driver if he would be a witness, because the man suspected his wife of having an affair, and he wanted to catch her in the act.
For $100, the cabby agreed.
After quietly arriving home, the husband and cabby tip toed into the bedroom. The husband switched on the lights, yanked the blanket back and there before them was his wife, naked as a jay bird, with a man who was also totally nude.
The husband put a gun to the naked man’s head as the wife shouted, “Don’t do it! I lied when I told you I inherited money.
“HE paid for the Porsche I gave you.
“HE paid for your new 25 ft. Ranger Fishing Boat.
“HE paid for your Football season tickets.
“HE paid for our house at the lake.
“HE paid for your Golf Trip to St Andrews and your new 4 x 4.
“HE paid for our country club membership and he even pays the monthly dues.
“And because of HIM, I can put an extra $2,000 in our checking account each month.”
Shaking his head from side-to-side, the husband lowered the gun. He looked over at the cabby and said, ‘What would you do’?
With an understanding look, the cabby replied, “I’d cover him with that blanket before he catches a cold.”
A farmer bought a cute little filly that he planned to race next season, but when he got her home, his old stallion got her scent and wanted her. He started kicking up dust and tried to get to her. The farmer didn’t want her pregnant because she wouldn’t be able to race, so he called the vet.
The vet told him to tie a bed sheet around the filly’s rump to keep the stallion away. So that day, the farmer did just that.
The next day, the farmer went out to the corral to make sure the vet’s solution worked, but the filly was nowhere to be found. The farmer followed her hoof trail to the neighbor’s farm and saw the neighbor’ kid out by their barn.
“Hey boy, did you see a filly run by with a bed sheet tied around her rump?” the farmer asked.
The kid replied, “No sir, but one dashed past here early this morning with a handkerchief sticking out of her butt!!”
So yeah, I like R&M, but this time of year is always a pain for me. Ever since I quit smoking back in 2010 (thanks to vaping) my seasonal allergies have been much worse. (And yes, that’s one of the few weird benefits you can get from smoking… It tends to drag down your immune system and suppress other environmental allergies… but I digress.)
Every day I have to take Sudafed (or rather the generic Wal-Phed) to keep the sinus pressure down to tolerable levels. This is not an ideal situation since merely buying the stuff puts you on a government watch list, and it’s not really advised for people who have to take thyroid medication (also a daily pill) due to a potentially dangerous drug interaction. Of course all the other alternatives are essentially non-starters for alleviating the sinus pressure, and that pressure does build into becoming a full blown migraine headache if I don’t address it in a timely manner.
Ever have a migraine? Well, for those of you you haven’t had one before, think about that last time you got an ice cream headache or brain freeze from drinking a frozen smoothie too fast. Those things are excruciating, right? Now imagine that pain lasting for a day and a half or longer. That’s what a migraine feels like, and I get them. It also leads to some secondary ailments like nausea and other unpleasant shit, but I think I’ve horrified enough kids for one day.
So right now, I feel a little like Mr. Meeseeks after he’s been around for a while, but instead of generating an army of myself and going on a rampage, I usually just curl up into a fetal position and pray that it goes away.
I suppose I should start by telling you how it happened. It was an otherwise nondescript day back in February. I went to get out of my rocker-recliner and when I scooched forward to get up, the front armrests bottomed out on the floor as they always do. Unbeknownst to me, Alex just happened to be laying down there that fateful day, and his left arm managed to get pinched.
Of course he yowled the loudest I'd ever heard him yell in his entire life and shot off into the basement. I felt terrible about it, but then I had no way of knowing he was down there when I went to get up. After a short while, Alex came back upstairs, and I was able to check for injury.
Shockingly, there were no broken bones, no blood, and Alex was able to walk just fine. It almost seemed cartoonish at the time, but down the left side of his left arm was a ribbon of flattened fur. He seemed somewhat indifferent to this, and acted like he just wanted to put the whole thing behind him. Seeing as Alex didn't appear to be in immediate danger, I took a "wait and see" position.
Over the next month, the "ribbon" began to shrink inward towards his elbow. I took this as a good sign that his injury was healing naturally and everything would be fine... But things were not fine. After a month and a half, his elbow began to swell. By mid-April I had to take him in to the vet for an exam.
The vet did a fair bit of Hmmm'ing and scrunched her face a lot. She didn't want to poke it with anything for fear it might introduce something. She took some measurements and expressed a "wait and see" attitude. I then scheduled a follow up appointment two months out.
Only a month later in mid-May, the swelling on his elbow had increased to the point that it started to ulcer. I called the vet and got him in immediately. This time they tried to drain it, but it went horribly. After the first stick, Alex started squirting blood all over the place, and the vet and technician freaked out and were running around looking for towels while I had to hold my cat down in a growing pool of his own blood.
After they got things back under control, she tried again with a larger needle, and went in from a different direction. After plunging to the center of the mass, she remarked that it was solid and that the fluid had probably dispersed into the surrounding tissue. She then went on to suggest that it might even be "malignant" and recommended a biopsy. They gave me an estimate for the procedure that ran from $500 to $800. I immediately left and made an appointment with another vet that I had gone to in the past.
The next day, my alternate vet didn't have any good news. By now, Alex's arm was very infected. At first he suggested that the arm would have to come off, but after noting Alex's age, he pulled back and recommended palliative care. I pushed for a quote on the cost of an amputation, and he informed me it would be around $3500 at the lowest, and that at his age, Alex would only live another 6 months after the surgery, and to just stick with palliative care.
They gave Alex a shot of antibiotics, a shot for long term pain management, prednisolone tablets and a liquid antibiotic, along with an appointment to come back about a month later.
Over the memorial day weekend, I cleaned Alex's wound and administered his meds. Alex was still Alex though. He obviously wanted to live, so I began making phone calls. Eventually I got in touch with the Humane Society. It took week and a half to finally get in, but after looking at Alex's arm, their surgeon said that the arm was "not compatible with long term survival" and agreed to amputate it... in two weeks.
That was the longest two weeks of my life.
Every day that thing on his elbow grew bigger and bigger. In the final week, it started to split open. It looked like something out of a horror movie. The outer layer of skin died off and eventually I had to cut the hard chunk of dried flesh off with scissors. Fortunately the antibiotics prescribed by the second vet kept the wound site free from infection.
And through all of this, Alex was still Alex. He just kept on living his life like nothing was wrong. Even with that thing on his arm, he still walked normal, climbed up and down the stairs, jumped on the bed, table, dresser, et cetera. Part of me knew this cat was gonna make it, but part of me was scared that his arm was going to go septic and Alex would die.
I felt relieved on the day of the surgery. We made it through to this day! Alex would be a tripod, but he was going to live! I dropped Alex off at the Human Society and went to work expecting to pick him up between 4:00 pm and 5:00 pm.
My phone rang a little before noon. The voice on the other end informed me that the surgery had gone fine, and they didn't notice anything wrong during the procedure, but in the recovery room, Alex's heart rate began to drop, he went non-responsive, and his pupils dilated. The surgeon explained that sometimes a blood clot will break free during the surgery and make its way into the brain. Alex had had a stroke. There was nothing more they could do.
Moments later, Alex died.
Usually I show off pictures of Gail here, (she's doing find by the way). Gail is a fun dog who loves to constantly run and play, but Alex was the one that I could really count on for affection. He would hop up on my chest when I was resting in my recliner and purr. He would be there at the door to greet me when I came home. He would keep me company when I pooped. He would wake me in the morning, and insist I gave him a thorough petting before I went to sleep at night. He talked to me with his incessant meows, and made sure I never left the house without filling the food and water bowls. Alex loved to get his "full kitty massage" complete with belly rubs, and he was the kind of cat that would walk up and headbutt me to let me know I was his as much as he was mine.
Flush Twice has been around since May of 2003. It started out as a JOTD (Joke of the Day) website. New jokes were published every weekday. Over the years, good jokes were increasingly hard to come by, and eventually they got so rare that I just stopped trying to publish them.
Since 2004 there has also been an eponymous comic. I still occasionally publish a new one on Saturdays. It’s also rare anymore, but sometimes it happens.
Here lately I’ve been posting a “Link of the Day”. For the time being, I will be featuring a new website from my enormous collection of bookmarked websites every weekday. None of it is solicited promotions, and no one is paying me to feature their site. These are just websites that at one time I thought were interesting enough to add to my bookmarks folder.
I highly encourage using some kind of ad blocking extension before clicking on any of these links. You’ll also hear me say this phrase a lot about these posts: “They can’t all be winners.” But it’s better than just leaving the site abandoned.
The jokes were generously provided by friends and visitors such as yourself. I want to express my eternal thanks to everyone over the years who helped contribute to the collection.
So what is it that makes a joke funny?
It all boils down to a sudden shift in perception. The story starts you thinking one way, then the punchline turns that thinking on its ear. The art of the joke is to craft a short story that isn’t overly contrived, then deliver a punchline that suddenly shifts your perception about the story you were being told.
Many of the jokes on this site are offensive, and I make no apologies for it. Offensive jokes work by making the reader uncomfortable through the use of a taboo subject thus enhancing the underlying humor. Without the offensive element, the joke would simply not be as funny.
