The Schtick Comic #48 – What I’m Afraid Of

Hail fellows well met, (Sorry ladies, its the old english.  You don’t count.)

Have you ever read Grimm’s Fairy Tales?  They’ve inspired a number of Disney fairy tales but they are some of the most disjointed, nonsensical pieces of literature I’ve ever experienced.  Here’s an example.  This is an excerpt from “The Adventures of Chanticleer and Partlet” part one of three.  You don’t find out until much later that Chanticleer and Partlet are some kind of married bird couple but I’m telling you now because otherwise this will make even less sense.

Chanticleer and Partlet went up the mountain to eat nuts.  They don’t want to walk back so they make a carriage out of the nut shells (ridiculous) to ride back down in but neither will pull it so they sit there until a duck attacks them.  Chanticleer defeats the duck and forces it to pull the nutshell carriage.  On their way home they meet a needle and a pin that had too much to drink and give them a lift.  Late that night they stop at an inn.  Partlet laid an egg to pay for the room.  We join the story now…

“Early in the morning, before it was quite light, and when nobody was stirring in the inn, Chanticleer awakened his wife, and, fetching the egg, they pecked a hole in it, ate it up, and threw the shells into the fireplace: they then went to the pin and needle, who were fast asleep, and seizing them by the heads, stuck one into the landlord’s easy chair and the other into his handkercheif; and, having done this, they crept away as softly as possible.”

What?! Did I read that right? Cannibalism in a Fairy Tale? That’s messed up. This comes from the same dude that wrote Rapunzel.  True.  I’m sure it will be a delightful film once Disney gets ahold of it though.  I can hardly wait for Disney’s “Chanticleer and Parlet”.

Grimm’s Fairy Tales: honestly, I don’t know why I keep reading them.  Somebody stop me!

Thanks for listening,

Ben

The Schtick Comic #47 – Self Defense for Grannies

Before I say hello this time I need to define a few things:

d = day of the week (Sunday = 1, Monday = 2 … Saturday = 7)
w = week of the year (This is week #28)
y = year of the century (2012 = 12)
c = unnecessary for most of you
! = not a factorial symbol, just punctuation

Those of you who will be surviving this century are going to have to find yourselves a new equation for calculating what day of the year it is, sorry.  I’m just joking, those of you who are going to be alive in 2100 can just change ‘y’ to equal ‘year of the millenium’ and you’ll be good to go.

Ok.  I think I’m ready now.

Happy day of the year number d + 7 * ( w – 1 ) + 6 – [ y + ceiling ( y / 4 ) + 5 ] mod 7!

How exciting.  That equation will work until the last day of 2099.  Think about that for a second.  If you are having a baby this year sometime your child will turn 87 before this equation expires.  That should be mildly comforting for any autistic readers and just a little bit disturbing to the rest of you.  Sucks to not be autistic sometimes.

NOTES:
Ceiling means to round up no matter what, ex. ceiling ( 5.2 ) = 6
Mod is the remainder of a number when divided by another number, ex. 25 mod 7 = 4

The Schtick Comic #46 – Massage

How are you doing?

The other day, (3 and a half months ago), I was trying to figure out why the sky is blue.  I didn’t come up with anything new.  It is just regular old boring science.

Just now though, I was thinking.  “Blue” wavelength light comes from the direction of the sky but it is the light that is blue, not the sky.  The sky might not have changed at all but depending on where the sun is positioned, the sky “changes” “color”.  Nonsense.  The sky stayed the same.  The sun moved. different wavelengths of light gently stabbed you in the eyes.  Saying the sky changes color is like saying you are more rain absorbent when you run through a rainstorm while carrying an umbrella than you are while walking.  You might be wetter but you are just as much of a water sponge as you were when you were walking under your umbrella like a normal person.  So, what I’m trying to say is, get hooked on semantics.  You can make a good conversation out of just about any boring old topic if you can get two people to disagree about the meaning of the same word without them realizing it.  They’ll argue for minutes on end, maybe hours, come to some kind of a precarious agreement that neither of them are happy with, feel misunderstood, and both walk away thinking the other person is a bit of a dummy and wonder how they ever made it through school.

I don’t like regards,

Ben