I recently switched browsers. I originally was an IE user, but after I switched to Linux, I started using Firefox. Later on I discovered that Chrome worked better with many websites, so I’ve been using that for the past several years.
Recently all has not been well with the Chrome browser. My sync account hasn’t been syncing up lately, and a couple of websites wouldn’t load properly… I had to use Firefox to renew one of my domains!
Well this past week I finally did it. I switch to the “Brave” browser. It’s basically a Chrome knockoff, but those pages that didn’t work, now work just fine again. They also have some extra privacy voodoo going on, but it’s basically Chrome. You can even use the same webstore to install all your usual extensions.
So if you get a chance, check out Brave, or if you’re a Firefox lover, try Pale Moon.
Kudos
Thanks for the jokes this week, George and Glenn. If anyone has a joke to share please use our submission page or email it to flush2x@gmail.com.
“Shop the peripheries of the supermarket; stay out of the middle.” – Michael Pollan
Tom was cleaning out the attic of the house he just moved into when he found a ticket from a local shoe repair shop. The date stamped on the ticket showed that it was well over twenty years old.
Being curious, Tom took the ticket to the shoe repair shop. With a straight face, he handed the ticket to an older gentleman behind the counter.
The man behind the counter said, “Just a minute. I’ll have to look for these,” as he disappeared into the back. A couple minutes later the man called out, “Here they are!”
Tom could hardly believe it!
The man came back to the counter, handed Tom the ticket, and said, “They’ll be ready next Thursday.”
Moshe was a holocaust survivor who finally died of old age. When he got to heaven he was able to meet God, and the two of them had a nice long conversation.
At one point Moshe said, “Hey, I have a joke about the holocaust,” and then proceeded to tell it to God.
God listened to the joke and remarked, “You know, I don’t find that joke to be very funny.”
Moshe replied, “Well, I guess you had to be there.”
So back when I signed up with SiteGround web hosting, they had this quirky way of doing things. You could set up multiple websites, but they had to be under a tertiary domain. So if you had both example.com and something.com, one of them would be the “master” account, let’s say example.com, and the other was a sub account like this: something.example.com, and then you could alias www.something.com to that… Simple, no?
Anyhoo, I didn’t want to use a website I already had as the master, so I registered a new domain, DMR5.com. So at that time you could go to flushtwice.dmr5.com and this site would show up just fine. Of course you could also go to www.flushtwice.com or just flushtwice.com, and they would forward to the flushtwice.dmr5.com in such a way that you would not see it in the address bar. Personally I thought it was stupid, but they did have very fast and responsive servers… Unlike the DSL connection to a Vic 20 you get when you sign up with Dreamhost. (We still have two years left with these clowns.)
So I kept DMR5.com around after switching to Dreamhost, even though I didn’t need it anymore. I kept thinking I would do something with it… and I never did. So yesterday, dmr5.com quietly expired… which is sad… because it’s a four character dot com! Those things aren’t easy to come by. But still, it’s better this way. I mean, what was I suppose to do with it?
My registrar will keep it on hold for a few months under the false assumption that I “forgot” to renew it. After that, it goes up for grabs on the open market. GoDaddy is probably already eyeing it for a spamvertisement-landing page. Whatever happens now is no longer my concern.
Kudos
Speaking of things that no longer concern me, this week’s jokes were sent in by George and Glenn. It great when the only thing I have to do is copy and paste. Of course if you submit a joke through our submission page, I won’t even have to do that. On the other hand, sending jokes to flush2x@gmail.com does require the ol’ ctrl-c/ctrl-v.
“Distracted from distraction by distraction” ― T.S. Eliot
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.
