A travel agent looked up from his desk to see an older lady and an older gentleman peering in the shop window at the posters showing the glamorous destinations around the world.
Having had had a good week, the agent experienced a rare feeling of generosity towards the dejected looking couple outside his window.
He called them into his shop and explained, “I know that on your pension you could never hope to have a holiday, so I am sending you off to a fabulous resort at my expense, and I won’t take no for an answer.”
The travel agent then had his secretary to write two flight tickets and book a room in a five-star hotel. The two gladly accepted the opportunity, and were on their way.
About a month later the little lady came into his shop.
“And how did you like your holiday?” the agent asked eagerly.
“The flight was exciting and the room was lovely,” she said. “I’ve come to thank you. But, one thing puzzled me. Who was that old guy I had to share the room with?”
A nursery school teacher was delivering a station wagon full of kids home one day when a fire truck zoomed past. Sitting in the front seat of the fire truck was a Dalmatian dog.
The children fell to discussing the dog’s duties.
“They use him to keep crowds back,” said one youngster.
“No,” said another, “he’s just for good luck.”
Then a third child brought the argument to a close. “They use the dog,” she said firmly, “to find the fire hydrant.”
A farmer in Alabama was driving across a bridge in his pickup truck when he noticed a man standing on the rail of the bridge ready to jump to his death in the river below.
The farmer stopped his truck, ran up to the man and said, “Hey, why are you doing this?”
The man replied, “Well, I have nothing to live for.”
The farmer replied, “Well, think of your wife and children!”
The jumper replied, “I have no wife or children.”
“Well, then think of your mother and father!”
The man replied, “Mom and Dad passed on many years back.”
The Alabama man then said, “Well, think of General Robert E. Lee!”
The would-be jumper replied, “Who?”
With that the farmer said, “Jump you damn Yankee, jump!”
So in my continuing operating system saga, I have once again returned to the Linux Mint Debian Edition (aka LMDE). On March 20, version 4 was released. Being the sentimental type, I just had to try it out.
Debian is one of the greatest distros out there, but getting it installed and correctly configured can be quite the hassle. LMDE is much easier to install and is essentially a Debian box with all the bells and whistles preconfigured.
My biggest beef with LMDE is that they no longer provide a version that comes with the MATE desktop environment. The Cinnamon desktop is now the only option, and quite frankly I don’t like it very much.
For those who don’t know, the desktop environment is what you see on your computer. It provides the look and feel, and is one of the most important aspects of a Linux system. If a distro doesn’t support your preferred desktop environment, it’s a definite deal breaker! That’s why last time I jumped ship from LMDE (Debian) to Linux Mint (Ubuntu).
Now don’t misunderstand- You can install whatever desktop environment you want on any distro, but if your distro doesn’t “support” it, you’re on your own, and things might not work like they’re supposed to.
Fortunately this time around there is an EASY fix. After installing LMDE (which only comes with Cinnamon), I opened the terminal and typed the command “sudo tasksel”. It’s like a one-stop-wonder for installing preconfigured software. I selected the MATE option and it did all the work for me!
Once MATE was installed, I logged out, switched to the MATE desktop, logged back in, and used the software manager to delete Cinnamon. Now I’m back home again, and everything works like it’s supposed to!
I realize that Linux is not for everyone, but I’ve just become really comforable and accustomed to the MATE desktop environment. Windows kept changing their layout from 7, to 8, to 10, and now there is another version of 10 again. Meanwhile, MATE kept everything the same, and I like that kind of stability in my life.
While looking though an old photo album of relatives long gone, the young lady asked, “Grandma, do you ever think about the hereafter?”
“I think about the hereafter every day,” the grandmother replied. “Every time I walk into a room or open a closet door, I think, ‘Now what was I here after?;”
A preacher on his deathbed summoned his doctor and lawyer. The two came, and he asked them to sit on either side of his bed and hold his hands.
They sat for a long while until the doctor quietly said, ”You don’t have long on this earth, Reverend. Shouldn’t you tell us why you asked us to come.”
The old preacher wheezed and said ”Well, Jesus died between two thieves, and that’s the way I want to go too.”
After his exam, the doctor said to the elderly man, “You appear to be in good health. Do you have any medical concerns you would like to ask me about?”
“In fact, I do,” said the old man. “After I make love to my wife, the first time I am usually hot and sweaty, and then after we make love the second time, I am usually cold and chilly.”
After examining his elderly wife, the doctor said, “Everything appears to be fine. Do you have any medical concerns that you would like to discuss with me?” The lady replied that she had no questions or concerns.
The doctor then said to her, “Your husband had an unusual concern. He claims that he is usually hot and sweaty after making love with you the first time, and then cold and chilly after the second time. Do you know why?”
“He’s being a silly old fart,” she replied. “The first time he makes love is in August, and the second time is in January!”
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.
