This is the curator’s corner; a place where I express my own thoughts about whatever crosses my mind. The jokes are much more fun to read. This section of the site can safely be ignored.
I have an error page report on the back end of this site. It can be useful when tracking down errors or seeing the trail of a botnet attack. It’s also a place where search engines continually remind me that I changed or deleted something.
I would have forgotten about it. It’s been such a long time now. Back in 2011, I decided to play around with the tag taxonomy in WordPress. The three tags I put out there were “banned jokes”, “evil jokes”, and “burn in hell jokes”, and they were attached to the “Rape Jokes” post. The idea was that perhaps the tags would get Flush Twice a higher ranking in these search results.
Well, it sort of but not really worked. Instead of directing visitors to the pages labeled with the tag, they were directed to a tag handling page that listed the post with those particular tags. It was a very ugly and clumsy looking page, and I didn’t like it at all.
So I removed all the tags from the site, and permanently shelved the idea of ever using them again. When people come to the site, I want them to land on one of the posts, not some procedurally generated search page! Unfortunately, Bing didn’t share my vision.
An even longer time ago, I had an issue with Google searching for the “bigass.jpg” file on this site. It took a few years, but Google finally stopped. On the other hand, Bing seems to still be fixated on finding those tags. A taxonomy that I deleted over 5 years ago continues to be Bingbot’s primary objective when scraping my site, and that’s kind of sad.
I just wish there was a way to get it through to the dumbass Bingbot that the tags are gone, they aren’t coming back, and even if they did I wouldn’t use those particular tags ever again. Then I wouldn’t have to see the same repeated errors pop up day after day after day.
Pax,
-f2x
PS: I already know what some of you might be thinking, and no, the 301 redirect won’t work in this case. The bot is looking for a URL with a ‘?’ in it, and that just creates a whole lot of ugly.
I just wanted to give the regular viewers and contributors a heads up. While most of the jokes published here will still contain “mature” or “offensive” themes, there have been and will continue to be fewer jokes of a sexual nature. This is not because I don’t like sexual humor, nor am I being pressured by feminists. The simple fact is, the sexual jokes are getting boring.
While you could write volumes of jokes about infidelity, impotence, and incest, eventually they all just start to blur together. That’s why I’ve been really trying to tone it down. About once per week is OK, but there for a while I was posting nothing but sexual jokes five days a week.
It’s important to note why I was posting so many jokes regarding sex in the first place: Those are the jokes you (my contributors) have been sending me! At risk of alienating some (or even all) of you, I’m going to stop using most of them. I know that’s a risky move for a site called “Flush Twice”. Believe it or not, I only called it that because there were so many jokes being sent to me that you’d have to “flush twice” to get them all to go down, and not because we’d specialize in toilet humor.
So in this open letter, I’m asking you nicely to please send jokes other than the sexual ones. Religious, political, and racist jokes are also offensively funny ways to make us all laugh, and I’d really like it if you’d start sending a few “clean” jokes once in a while. They don’t have to be that clean, but make it something you could at least tell the boss’s boss without risking your promotion.
No matter what you do, some people will never be happy.
For a few years now, my dad (who leans further to the right than Pinochet) has been using store bought almond milk. His reasoning was that he could buy it in bulk at Costco, and it stayed fresh much longer. I get that. Neither one of us are big milk drinkers but, when you need milk, you need it. After a couple weeks in the fridge, regular cow’s milk will wrinkle your nose, but an unopened carton of almond milk will taste just fine. Even if the flavor tends to be a little “woody”, almond milk makes good smoothies and works in most cooking and baking recipes.
Of course neither my dad nor I are lactose intolerant. We are neither environmental hipsters, nor do we give a rats ass about being politically correct, but pragmatism is a conservative quality that we highly prize. Money doesn’t grow on trees, so when you find a better deal, go with it.
And here I was thinking it’s one less thing that some neerdowell would attack me for, but I was wrong. Apparently “almond milk” is terrible for the environment. It’s also nutritionally deficient, contains chemical additives, and probably makes the baby jebus cry. Seriously?! WTF!
Of course if you take even a moment to fact check, you’ll see that none of the criticisms are really worth the time it took to fact check. Almond milk naturally contains less nutrition than cows milk, but so what? It still contains more nutrition than water. So now many brands contain chemical additives because people wanted more nutrition and flavor. It’s not like we don’t already fortify a shit-ton of foods anyway, but god forbid we put anything extra in a packaged product. Bad for the environment?! Now they’re bitching because the trees are bad because the farmers have to water them! So wake up sheeple! Trees are bad for the environment now!
Oh, and let’s not forget about those poor bees they bring in to pollinate the trees. They eventually die because the area contains pesticides. While that’s true, the fact is they buy the bees from bee keepers in other parts of the country who grow bee colonies specifically for exporting. Basically, it’s not actually contributing to the issue of “colony collapse” that plagues honeybees around the world, but trying to explain why bee farming is a good thing to these morons is a waste of time and energy.
So is almond milk really that good? Meh… It’s nice if you need milk occasionally, but fresh cows milk does taste a little better IMHO. Is it bad for the environment? Compared to what? Let’s face it, human existence and everything connected to it is bad for the environment. If you’re so concerned about it, go kill yourself! I hear suicide is making a comeback these days. But almonds and almond milk aren’t any worse for the environment than your typical overzealous vegan.
Next thing you know they’ll be protesting vegeburgers. Oh wait… they already are.
Sometimes I worry about it, but for the most part, these things have a way of working themselves out. For instance, one of the most egregious pieces of legislative manure, the DMCA, has yet to actually shut down the internet. While it has made life harder for people and has slapped various YouTubers with illegitimate automated take downs, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has neither stopped online piracy, nor completely destroyed the internet. On the other hand, the powers that be simply cannot stop coming up with “new rules” for Congress vote into laws with the intent to control what people cannot put on the internet.
One day, even the jokes I’ve been posting here might somehow become illegal. I imagine at some point every thought and expression will be owned by various corporate interests, and end users will no longer be permitted to post anything on the Internet for fear it may infringe on an agency’s intellectual property. Even then, people will still manage to express themselves in ways that displease their clandestined masters. More rules. More controls. Every color trademarked. Every vibration an infraction.
In the end, I imagine the public will be oblivious to the concept of living any other way. They will accept the new rules begrudgingly at first, but affectionately after a while. The future dark ages will further wipe any memory of a time when people imagined they could communicate freely.
“Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?” – George Orwell, “Nineteen Eighty-Four”
Over a decade ago the good people of Ohio received a choice in who they get to pay for the energy that comes from their local power company. Of course it’s all a fanciful scam, because rather than just figure out what would save you the most money, they throw a bunch of these so called “deals” in front of you, each with various terms that make direct comparison rather tricky.
Of course energychoice.ohio.gov makes the bold statement that it’s “Apples to Apples”. It’s more like comparing Apples to random junk in the garage. Of course they all have different rates, but then some are only introductory rates, then switch to variable rates after a couple months. Some come with contracts that have early termination fees. Some have monthly fees that literally cost more than my electric bill already costs. They all come with a variety of gimmicks. What a great way to save money! /s
See, none of them can just compete by offering the lowest price per kilowatt hour, because then you have price wars and companies tend to lose money when those happen. Instead they have to invent a slew of different terms and conditions that consumers have to carefully weigh and analyze to see if it would be worth it or not. (Hint: It’s usually not.)
In the end it’s just another stupid game with stupid prizes. They figure if they give the peasants a choice about which company is fleecing them, they’ll be more inclined to accept that they were ultimately the ones responsible for being screwed on their monthly utility bill instead of the double dealing politicians and businesses who concocted this idiotic scheme.
So this was the Memorial Day weekend here in the U.S., and it’s basically a holiday that either you don’t give a damn about, or you impose way too much significance. When I was a kid growing up in Ohio, it was the day my mom took fresh cut peonies to the cemetery, and us kids got to take off the day from school. As I got older, it was a day I got off from work. When I got in the military I found out for the first time that it was a day to remember those who died in the service of our country.
Now it’s back to just being a day I get to stay home from work. BFD, right? pretty much. Here lately my shoulder has been giving me trouble. I was hoping this long weekend would give me a chance to give it enough rest so it would self-heal. Needless to say, it’s not really getting any better. I guess I’m getting too old for the body’s magical regenerative properties to work effectively.
Oh, did I mention I got that promotion I was talking about? No, not that one, the one after. It seems I get to be group leader ahead of schedule. Can you imagine that? Me, a wisecracking smartass who operates a joke of the day site, gets to command a bunch of temps on a newly re-opened 2nd shift. Now that’s a twisted sense of humor!
The worst part is, I can’t keep anyone. They all keep quitting on me… Well, some of them weren’t worth a damn, and since a group leader can’t actually fire anyone, I just made sure they didn’t hurt themselves until management could fire them. The ones that actually put in a half-hearted effort simply found better jobs that paid better and moved on.
So that’s about it. No illustration this week. My shoulder hurts too much. Until next time.
So a few weeks back, I was talking about the “janky-net” that I had set up at home. There’s been a slight upgrade. I now have a Netgear LB1120 instead of a hotspot and bridge. It’s much less “janky” now, but there’s still the little teensy problem of finding a wireless data plan that doesn’t suck.
So there are basically 4 networks. Sprint/Verizon and AT&T/T-Mobile. These are “the big four”. I’ve paired them up based on compatible technologies. Everything else is an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) that runs off the other four. MVNO’s are almost as good at their parent provider, but they get deprioritized and that basically means slightly slower speeds. Since I can get a good signal for any of the big four at my house, they would all work just fine as an ISP. The only real considerations I need to have are the terms and monthly costs.
Since wireless data is a completely different animal to hardwired ISP’s, it’s important to know about how it’s sold. First of all, you’re not only paying for speed, you’re also paying for how much data you use, and how you may use it. “Unlimited” plans are never truly unlimited, no matter what the advertisement says, and the terms they use to describe their services can be confusing.
So let’s look at a few terms:
First there’s tethering and/or hotspots. This is where you can connect other devices to your phone, or use a device that lets you connect various other devices to the network. This is the most useful feature on a data plan and an absolute must if you plan on using a wireless carrier as your home ISP. For this reason, the big four like to place heavy restrictions on their plans with regards to tethering and mobile hotspots. MVNO’s are usually (not always) more lax.
Then there are the speed terms: 4G/LTE, 3G, and 2G. Let’s look at each of them one at a time.
First let’s take a look at 3G since it is almost never used anymore. 3G speed is very nebulous. It’s defined as being at least 144Kbps up to 4Mbps. That’s a hell of a lot of wiggle room, and can mean the difference between not even playing low quality videos and easily watching DVD quality videos. You’ll never see any MVNO offer these speeds, and it usually requires a contract or a credit check to get something that even mentions 3G speeds from the big four.
Next, there is 2G speed. This is about 128Kbps, and even though it’s more than twice the speed of dial-up, it is pretty much worthless. You will not be able to stream even the lowest quality videos. If you are using one of the big four, you might be able to stream audio, but if it’s an MVNO, you are probably gonna have a bad time no matter what you are trying to use it for.
The one to look for is 4G/LTE speed. This is basically mobile broadband. This is typically between 5 and 15Mbps, but can achieve speeds up to 50Mbps. This can easily stream a NetFlix video. For typical web browsing, it’s indistinguishable from a hard wired connection, but watch out! You can go through a Gigabyte (GB) of data very fast at this speed. When you think about it, a typical internet user goes through about 1 to 2GB every day without even thinking about it!
So tell me, How many Gigabytes of 4G/LTE data does your mobile provider give you for the whole month? Do they let you tether it? How much do they soak you for it? These are the important questions.
I used to be with Consumer Cellular. They are an MVNO through AT&T. Their best deal on data was $40 for 10GB of 4G/LTE, but that was on top of the voice plan. Still, it was $4/GB of 4G/LTE. The downside was that additional data was charged at a much higher rate, and at some point they would drop you down to 2G speeds.
T-Mobile did a bait and switch on me. I went into one of their stores to get their Unlimited plan that would give me 10GB of 4G/LTE followed by unlimited 3G speeds for $50/month. It turned out that it wan’t 3G after all. It was 2G, and like I mentioned above, 2G is basically worthless. $5/GB wasn’t really all that cost effective either. To be fair, they also had a 22GB plan for $95, but that’s still $4.32/GB… Still worse than Consumer Cellular.
So far, it looks like Mint Mobile is the better choice. The plan is 10Gb of 4G/LTE followed by unlimited 2G for $25/month, and hotspot/tethering is 100% fine. This amounts to $2.50/Gigabyte, and sadly, that’s the price to beat. Seriously, I can’t find anyone who can even come close to touching it.
There are some downsides to Mint Mobile. For one, the biggest plan they offer is 10GB, and I need at least 20GB/month. To get around that, I had to buy two separate SIM cards and swap them twice a month. Initially, they each cost $75 and were good for three months of service. Unfortunately, to continue getting the 10Gb of 4G/LTE for $25/month you have to enroll in the 12 month renewal for $300. With two SIMs, that comes to a whopping up front cost of $600! CHA-CHING!
So I’m still looking for that perfect data plan. I really think a metered plan that charged about a $1/GB for tethered 4G/LTE data would be amazing. With a rate that low, I wouldn’t really have to budget my internet usage, and the more I used it, the more my provider would get paid.
You know what the best part of a plan with terms like that would be? It would end a lot of the ranting you hear from people sick of the monopoly broadband providers. Just pay a fair fee for each gigabyte of data transferred through the internet at a usable speed. Why the fuck is that so hard?
Oh well, enough about mobile plans. I could rant and rant on the subject all day, and you dumb fuckers will still walk into a mobile phone store to sign up for a sucker’s deal. “But I get free HBO for $75/month!” Yeah… On your PHONE.
As we all know, terrorist organizations around the world kidnap and slaughter children 10 and under every day. But by submitting jokes to Flush Twice, you can help put an end to those evil doers. Thanks to submitters like you, we’ve managed to stop dozens of these fiends, but it’s not enough.
I’m sure I’ve tried this before with lackluster results, but this time it’s more elegantly implemented. Even if it doesn’t bring in all of the jokes necessary to keep those terrorist organizations from slaughtering thousands of innocent children, it doesn’t look like a badly designed kludge slapped on by the dimwitted hack who runs the place.
Seriously though, even if you normally don’t like to get involved in contributing to save the lives of defenseless children, it’s worth trying out the submission form to see if you can’t get me to greenlight your comedic talents.
After every 50 approved jokes, you may be eligible to receive a free T-shirt from Flush Twice. (Void where prohibited. Some restrictions apply.*) Unlike those other ripoff deals, I won’t even bother to clutter it up with some cheap and tacky logo and artwork that advertises this site. No, I’ll send you a genuine shirt of a random size and color picked up from a Goodwill store down the street from my house. It will even be sealed in a ziplock back to preserve that fresh Goodwill smell.
So let’s get crackin! I need to queue a few thousand jokes so I can take a much needed vacation.
Pax,
-f2x
* Yeah, this is pretty much just a hoax offer. I’m not actually gonna send you shit. Besides, in order for me to send you something, you have to tell me where you live… Do you really think that’s such a good idea? OK, I know I went a little dark with this rant, but I hope you got a laugh out it anyway. I’m done ranting now. Have a cool day.
From time to time, you might have heard be mention making or updating the templates. Today I thought I’d share with you what one of my “templates” actually looks like. Mind you, the actual template is quite a bit higher in resolution. This image is only 500×270, but the actual template is more like 7500×4000.
Because using the rotate tool creates “jaggies” and other artifacts, the limbs on the template are at commonly used positions. I select the body parts I need for the character, and discard the rest. I then have the move those pieces into position and cajole them until they look just right.
While I use several tricks to get the most out of this technique, it still has some serious limitations. One of the most frustrating aspects is that sometimes I’ll make a template for a character and then never actually use that template because I end up upgrading the template before the character comes up in one of my arcs.
But when I’ve come up with a script, and it’s time to get crackin’, I break out the templates, sets, speech bubbles, and tails. Hundreds of hours of handcrafted templates allows me to make a great looking panel in under an hour.
Is it ever really that simple? No. Never. In real life the template method I boxed myself into never works like I’d hoped. Last minute custom art has to be forged, and even then it never looks quite right. Then there’s the back and forth decisions and trying to get the phrasing just right (only to later discover a serious typo)… Well you get the idea.
So I hope you enjoyed a little peek behind the scenes. Thanks for stopping by, and as always…
So lately the rants have been a little depressing. It’s not like they were ever meant to be uplifting, but it was meant to be a place for me to vent and get shit off my chest; not a place for me to get in touch with myself. That’s what porn is for.
OK, so I’ve got to sort through some medical bills. You better believe I’m going to be cussing and bitching about that, but not here.
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.
