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
Flush Twice is a JOTD (Joke of the Day) website. New jokes are published every Monday through Friday (midnight EST). There is also a comic and a personal blog in the sidebar that updates on the weekends. We’ve been operating since May of 2003.
Jokes are generously provided by friends and visitors such as yourself. If you would like to contribute, please check out our submission page, or e-mail flush2x@gmail.com. If you know anyone who constantly e-mails you jokes, forward them to us! We’ll take what we can get!
So what 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 we 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.
