Tom got a new job. He worked Tuesday through Friday, but on Monday he would call the boss and say, “I can’t come in today. I’m sick.”
The same thing happened week after week. The boss was quite irritated, but he didn’t want to fire Tom because he was really good at his job. Instead he called Tom into the office and said,, “Listen, you’re a good worker, and I’m glad I hired you, but you keep calling in sick on Mondays. Will you tell me what the problem is? Do you drink a lot, do you take drugs?”
“I don’t drink at all, and I don’t do drugs,” explained Tom. “You see my sister is married to a guy who drinks every weekend. and then he beats her really badly. I go to visit her every Monday to make sure she’s OK. She starts crying on my shoulder, then one thing leads to another, and we start fucking.”
Everybody who has a dog calls him “Rover” or “Boy”, I call mine “Sex”. He’s a great pal, but he has caused me a great deal of embarrassment.
When I went to City Hall to renew his dog license, I told the clerk I would like a license for Sex. He said, “I’d like one too!” then I said, “But this is a dog.” He said he didn’t care what she looked like. Then I said, “You don’t understand, I’ve had Sex since I was 9 years old.” He winked and said, “You must have been quite a kid.”
When I got married and went on my honeymoon, I took the dog with me. I told the motel clerk that I wanted a room for my wife and me and a special room for Sex. He said, “You don’t need a special room. As long as you pay your bill we don’t care what you do.” I said, “Look, you don’t seem to understand, Sex keeps me awake at night.” The clerk said, “Funny–I have the same problem.”
One day I entered Sex in a contest, but before the competition began, the dog ran away. Another contestant asked me why I was just standing there, looking disappointed. I told him I had planned to have Sex in the contest. He told me I should have sold my own tickets. “But you don’t understand,” I said, “I had hoped to have Sex on TV.” He said, “Now that cable is all over the place it’s no big deal anymore.”
When my wife and I separated, we went to court to fight for custody of the dog, I said, “Your Honor, I had Sex before I was married.” The judge said, “This courtroom isn’t a confessional. Stick to the case, please.” Then I told him that after I was married, Sex left me. He said “That’s not unusual. It happens to a lot people.”
Last night Sex ran off again. I spent hours looking around town for him. A cop came over to me and asked, “What are you doing in this alley at 4 o’clock in the morning?” I told him that I was looking for Sex.
There was once a small boy who banged a drum all day and loved every moment of it. He would not be quiet, no matter what anyone else said or did. Various attempts were made to do something about the child.
One person told the boy that he would, if he continued to make so much noise, perforate his eardrums. This reasoning was too advanced for the child, who was neither a scientist nor a scholar.
A second person told him that drum beating was a sacred activity and should be carried out only on special occasions. The third person offered the neighbors plugs for their ears; a fourth gave the boy a book; a fifth gave the neighbors books that described a method of controlling anger through biofeedback; a sixth person gave the boy meditation exercises to make him placid and docile. None of these attempts worked.
Eventually, a wise person came along with an effective motivation. He looked at the situation, handed the child a hammer and chisel, and asked, “I wonder what is INSIDE the drum?”
When I first started Flush Twice back in 2003, I was hosting the site on a very simple web server in my basement. Because my internet connection was a dynamic IP address, I had to use a rapid DNS updater. This was a manual process that I had to go through whenever my IP address changed. Typically, my IP address changed on a random day every other week or so. I also hand coded the HTML, and manually updated the pages via FTP every single day.
As some of my long time visitors might recall, in 2005 I ran away from home and joined the circus. (Actually, it was the Army, but same concept.) Since I was no longer at home, I was not able to keep updating the DNS server. Flush Twice quickly went offline, but a couple months later I shelled out the money for a web hosting provider. Now the site would reliably remain online without my constant hovering, but the pages still had to be manually updated.
My original web server in the basement didn’t support PHP or MySQL, but now that I was paying a web host for my server needs, I felt it was time to make use of the added benefits. That is why in 2008, I installed Movable Type to my site. That lasted only a few months before I switched it over to WordPress, and that’s how I finally entered into the world of “Content Management Systems”.
The stock install was not very attractive, so to make WordPress look better I had to install a theme. I honestly don’t remember the name of it, but I really liked the way the sidebar overlaid on the header. I really miss that detail. That theme got an update, which kind of broke a few things, then something else went wrong with it, and finally the author abandoned it. Long story short, I had to switch to a new theme.
Another feature of WordPress is the plethora of plugins. These are “extra features” written by independent programmers to add more functionality to WordPress. I think I originally started out with about 4 or 5 plugins, but today I have about 32. Things like posts in the sidebar? That’s a plugin. The submission page that no one uses? That’s a plugin. Lazy loading images (images don’t actually download till you scroll down the page to where they would be visible) is a plugin.
Most of the plugins are more for back-end stuff. There’s a backup and migration plugin, an XML sitemap plugin, a plugin to clean up the database, a plugin to prevent brute force attacks, and a plugin to remove the privacy invading Google fonts that WordPress insists on using. Heck there’s even a plugin to automatically update the plugins when updates are available… And that’s where things get dicey.
So every now and again, an author of a plugin sees dollar signs. The plugin updates, and now the latest version is… something else. The plugin becomes bloated and intrusive. It has slick, eye-catching graphics that persist on all the admin screens, and encourages you to upgrade to their “Pro” package, and install their “other” plugins. It also comes with new terms and conditions that feel a little invasive as well.
Of course I don’t frivolously install plugins, so when a plugin goes rogue like that, it really hurts. There’s a trust violation. The scary truth no one talks about is that the author could upload something outright malicious, so when they upload something vaguely “spammish”, you really want that shit off your site ASAP.
Fortunately in this instance, I had a backup of the offending plugin. I was able to delete the bloatware and upload an older version from before it all went pear-shaped. I then had to tell the auto-updater not to update that hot mess.
Unlike the various star rating plugins, this is an essential back-end component, and there is no immediate substitute. It does look as though the backup is of a manageable size, so one option is to go through every file and gut the all references to original author from the plugin. It ain’t easy, but I have done this before.
In the meantime I have to look at that ugly red circle notification whenever I log in, taunting me that there’s an update available… An update that is toxic and would poison my site.
Kudos
OK, so we have reached the point where I say thanks to Glenn and George because they email jokes to me, and then I beg for viewers like you to visit our submission page and drop off a joke or two. You could also email jokes to me at flush2x@gmail.com.
“Coding, like poetry, should be short and concise.” ― Santosh Kalwar
A carpet layer had just finished installing carpet for a lady. He stepped out for a smoke, only to realize that he had lost his cigarettes.
In the middle of the room, under the carpet, was a bump. “No sense pulling up the entire floor for one pack of smokes,” he thought to himself. He got out his hammer and flattened the bump.
As he was cleaning up, the lady came in.
“I think these are yours,” she said, handing him his pack of cigarettes. “I found them in the hallway. Now if only I could find my parakeet!”
A duck hunter was out enjoying a nice morning on the marsh when he decided to take a leak behind a tree. He walked over to a tree and propped up his gun. Just then a gust of wind blew and knocked the gun over. To his horror, it discharged, shooting him in the crotch.
Fortunately for him, another hunter nearby heard his scream and called an ambulance. Several hours later, he was lying in a hospital bed talking to the doctor after his surgery.
“I have some good news and some bad news. Which would you like to hear first?”
“Tell me the good news first, please,” said the hunter.
“The good news is that you are going to be OK. The damage was localized to your groin, and there was very little internal damage. We were even able to remove all of the buckshot.”
“What’s the bad news>” asked the hunter.
“The bad news is that there is some pretty extensive buckshot damage to your penis. I’m going to have to refer you to my brother.”
“Oh no, I mean, at least I’m alright, I feared the worst. I guess it could be worse,’ the hunter replied. ‘Is your brother a plastic surgeon?”
“Not exactly”,” answered the doctor delicately. “He plays the flute for the local symphony. He’s going to teach you where to put your fingers so you don’t piss all over the bathroom.”
While playing in the backyard, Little Johnny killed a honeybee.
His father saw him killing the honeybee and angrily said, “No honey for you for one month!”
Later that afternoon, Johnny’s dad caught him tearing the wings off a butterfly.
“That’s it! No butter for you for one month!” said his dad.
Later that evening as Johnny’s mother was cooking dinner, a cockroach ran across the kitchen floor. She jumped and stomped on it in front of Little Johnny and her husband.
Little Johnny looked at his father and said, “Are you going to tell her, or do you want me to?”
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.
