Joyce and Be Glad

So I knew this young woman who's name was Joyce. She was quite candid about disliking her own name.

I thought this was unfortunate, even though there are plenty of people on this planet who aren't crazy about their names.

But in this case, I thought her protest was misguided. Joyce. It's a great name.

I mean...

It's like people rejoycing, but they're rejoycing for the very first time...

Queen's Court

So I once dated this court stenographer. We would have some great dinner conversations.

But when we started IMing, I got really insecure.

I mean...

She was rattling off entire paragraphs and I could barely muster an emticon :-/

Calculating a Prognosis

Maybe all you guys know this, but I just found out. Are you ready?

The pregnancy doctors - the OMG-whatevers - they ask the expectant mothers when they think the baby was conceived.

Then they add nine months and that's how they get the due date.

I mean...

I thought there was some sort of intensive medical examination involved. Checking the relative swelling and positioning of the doohickeys and doodads down there. Maybe shine that little flashlight in the ear canal. Blood pressure. Blood pressure is important in any prognosis.

But no, it pretty much all hinges on if the woman remembers when she had sex. Or, if there were multiple times, when she thinks the torpedo sunk the submarine.

Some women don't even know who the father is. So how is it that this high-stakes profession relies so heavily on the speculation of these promiscuous, hormonal morning-pukers?

No wonder it's so rare that the baby arrives exactly on time. A couple days late...a few weeks early... They break everything into thirds and call them "trimesters."

The pregnancy doctors know they're screwed to begin with, so they ask the lady to just pick a date. Because it's pointless. And eventually she'll come back, a lot bigger. He'll stick her with a few things, and then he'll squat down and catch whatever comes out.

Or he'll send her back home.

You see? Is this medicine or witchcraft??

Atrocity Fatigue

A moment of honest lamentation as I turn the corner into joke #26.

All these really really bad news stories and the so-called news outlets who love them. It's like they're sitting around a campfire, each one trying to one-up the last grotesque monstrosity of a tale. Well they've finally done me in. Even if they are true, they are so over-the-top I just can't sweat it anymore.

Call it "atrocity fatigue."

Like that Canadian bus ride from hell last week. Stabbed to death, says the first camper. Unprovoked, completely random, says the second. Decapitated, says the third with a smirk on his marshmallow-and-chocolate-covered face...

When they added cannibalism, the whole thing finally jumped the shark

I mean...

Even the word "suspect" in the headlines is a source of high comedy.

It makes it...like the worst murder mystery ever staged.

A young man is gutted and decapitated on a bus. Is it the man in the green sweatshirt covering his five-year-old daughter's eyes?

Probably not.

Is it the bus driver, who was driving at the time?

I don't think so...

Or is it the guy with the Army knife locked inside the bus, covered in blood and eating from what remains of the beheaded corpse?

My inclination is that he's the guy, but there's always some sort of a twist with these...