The Stinker

How. (That is Native American way of saying “Hey, y’all.”)

Me Chief Engineer of Stinker Industries. (”Chief Engineer,” get it? Ha! I slay-um myself, big heap.) Guest poster for today because paleface CEO too busy to post. He just return from travel, now has over 200 emails waiting for him to answer. Tells me guest posting falls under category of “other duties as assigned.” Typical white man trick.

Real name is Running Tab. Running Tab is not only Chief Engineer of Stinker Industries, but is also Chief of the Skwats-To-Pee tribe of the Shawnee. Running Tab’s wife, Partly Cloudy, is from sister tribe, Slap-A-Ho.

Running Tab’s family tries hard to fit into Midwestern paleface culture. Soccer, t-ball, PTA meetings, you name it. Running Tab’s daughter Dances With Emo’s competed in national dance competition just last week. All day for 3 days at big paleface theater center. Many hundreds of young dance girls and their moms, wall-to-wall. Enough estrogen in the air to cause a warrior’s testicles to retract halfway to his chest cavity. Dances With Emo’s dance studio team did well in tap and ballet, but Dances threw in an impromptu ceremonial Shawnee dance halfway through jazz dance act and caused rain in auditorium. Judges not happy. Nobody happy. Hundreds of dance girls with makeup running. Bring-um big heap embarrassment to Running Tab and Partly Cloudy. Dances With Emo’s grounded to her tee-pee for a month.

Also, Running Tab’s son, Light In His Moccasins, went on spirit quest last week. Part of coming-of-age ritual for Shawnee. But instead of completing spirit quest, Light In His Moccasins arrested for peyote possession. White man rules always confound us. Hard to understand. Fine and dandy for paleface to take-um spirit quest to nowhere, sitting in easy chair drinking twelve-pack of Bud while watching Redskins or Braves on boob tube, but not okay for REAL redskins and braves to take REAL spirit quest like our ancestors did. Running Tab not understand.

White man laws should include-um grandfather clause for those of us who were here first. Just sayin’, is all. (See? Running Tab is learning the Midwestern lingo!)

That is all Running Tab has for today. Running Tab directs you here for more funny stuff.

Tags: Chief Engineer Running Tab, Humor, Satire // 5 Comments »

Dear Blogosphere,

I could really use your advice.

The government of Palau just contacted me about an opportunity to lead their fledgling space program. They want to interview me for the position of Administrator of the Palau Indigenous Space Service (PISS) — Palau’s equivalent of NASA. They are a pretty ambitious bunch of people for a country that has only existed as a nation since 1994. They plan on developing tropically-themed tourist locations in earth orbit, on the moon, and eventually throughout the solar system.

Palau is a very backwards nation, but it’s also a tropical paradise, which wouldn’t suck too bad. But PISS’s hiring rep said I would have to pass a pretty tough initiation ritual to become a Palau citizen. We had a bad phone connection, so I couldn’t catch all of it — something about a spear fight on hot coals while wearing full ceremonial garb. Or did he say “queer night at Fat Joe’s, wear your crotchless bull riding chaps?” I couldn’t tell for sure.

Anyway, I could at least go to an interview, it’s an all-expense paid trip to a tropical paradise, right? But then I would feel like I was “cheating” on my new neo-Amish disinventionist friends. Is this wrong? Shouldn’t I explore all of my options before making such a major life change? I’m sure Jebediah would understand. Although, I don’t think the world needs to see me in crotchless bull riding chaps.

Any advice appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

The Stinker

p.s. The really funny stuff, as usual, is here.

Tags: Flight of Insanity, Humor // 14 Comments »

I’m on travel for work, so probably no posts for a couple of days. In the mean time, go here for funny stuff.

Tags: Miscellaneous // 2 Comments »

Make sure to go here for more funny stuff!

Tags: Motivational Poster Parodies, Humor, Parody, Satire // 2 Comments »

Dear Blogosphere,

Well, poopy-doo. I can’t figure out how to make a web widget for my new Blogway™ idea. All this “Web 2.0″ crap just baffles me. Ask me to write some FORTRAN or C++ code and I’m off to the races, but a web programmer I’m not.

Really, I’m sick to death of the whole concept of technology. My gig as CEO of Stinker Industries — not to mention acting Chief Techologist of our Stinker High Intelligence Technologies (SHIT) business unit — just hasn’t turned out to be what I thought it would. Oh sure, I get to order around junior engineers and design all kinds of cool top secret military robots, brain implant devices, telerobotically operated sex toys, and some other classified things I can’t talk about. But the technology changes so fast I just can’t keep up. Every day there are twenty new buzzwords and acronyms to learn about.

We are drowning in a sea of technological complexity here. I’ve become convinced that this exponential rate of technological advancement is one of the root causes of many societal problems, leading to technophobia and making those unable to keep up feel alienated from society. Like all those people in Indiana, where they don’t even have self-serve gas pumps yet.

Technology is causing society to change faster than humans can adapt, and is therefore destructive and evil. So, after much soul-searching, I have decided to become a Luddite. I am convinced that this is the right and proper path.

I have found an enclave of militant neo-Amish disinventionists who will accept me and my family into their ranks, if we renounce modern science and embrace their secret plan to drag society back to 18th century levels of technology. I will be relocating to a cooperative farm at a secret location in Montana, and consequently I may not be posting much for the next week or two. Yes, they do have internet access — they are neo-Amish, after all, not full-on medieval Amish. But I will be restricted to using a computer no more capable than an i486 or a new Mac.

Wish me luck.

Yours Anabaptistically,
StinkerYoder

p.s. Oh yeah, one other thing…

Jebediah, my sponser at the enclave, just emailed me. He says I need to provide three letters of reference attesting to my honest moral character and newfound aversion to technology. Any takers? I’d rather not forge them myself, as I’m very busy this afternoon transitioning some of my magneto-hydrodynamic plasma containment field research to my successor. Man, that is really cool stuff, and we are very, very close to sufficient field strength for nuclear fusion containment. Anyway, Jebediah is on travel today but will be monitoring his blackberry for a reply.

Please let me know if you can help.

Thanks,
StinkerYoder

p.p.s. And one more thing… while I’m gone, you can go here for more funny stuff.

Tags: Flight of Insanity, Humor, Miscellaneous // 4 Comments »

Many weeks ago, Brent Diggs (of The Ominous Comma fame) offered to record one of my song parodies. And now he’s done it! In spite of having to cope with the recent loss of Dr. Toboggans, Brent managed to find time to finish the recording this week!

Click here to listen to Brent’s rendition of “Extreme Hay Fever,” my parody of The Monkee’s “Daydream Believer.”

For those of you who live under a rock in a deep cave on a deserted island, and consequently remain unaware of this, let me inform you that Brent Diggs is not only a hell of a nice guy and a great musician (check out his band DangerCouch) but is also one of the most talented humorists in the blogosphere. His blog The Ominous Comma (in my blogroll) is one of my daily reads and should be one of yours too.

I am truly humbled and honored that a real pro like Brent would deign (I had to look that word up, but I’m pretty sure I’m using it correctly) to help out a novice humor blogger like me. Thanks, Brent! You are the GREATEST BLOGGER EVAR!!!!!one!11!!!!!1!!!!eleventyone!!!

And don’t forget to check out the other 980 (yes, really!) humor bloggers on Humor-Blogs.com.

Tags: Song Parodies, Humor, Parody // 12 Comments »

My apologies, faithful readers and commenters. It appears that Wordpress has stopped sending me automated email notifications when comments are posted by a first-time poster on The Stinker. Consequently, several pending comments have been languishing in my “waiting for moderation” queue, unbeknownst to me until just a while ago. (Non-first-time posters get their comments posted immediately without the need for moderation.)

I’ll make a point of checking manually every so often until the problem hopefully goes away (?).

Tags: Miscellaneous // Add Comment »

I mentioned a while back that I had the seed of an idea for how to increase my blog traffic. Since then, the idea has evolved somewhat, and I am now ready to unveil it.

First, a bit of background. The idea was prompted by the fact that roughly half of my regular readers are other humor bloggers. This led to the realization that humor blogging is, in many ways, like an unstructured version of Amway. In turn, this realization made me remember this post, wherein I accepted the Excellent Blogger Award granted to me by Truckindog. It occurred to me then that the award itself was similar to Amway’s multi-level network marketing strategy, because you give the award to ten bloggers, each of whom gives the award to ten other bloggers, and so on, just like a pyramid scheme. A brilliant strategy on the part of Shannon, who initiated this award, because now about a zillion bloggers (including me) are linking their awards back to her blog.

That’s when the epiphany struck me: Since humor blogging is practically like an informal version of Amway already, why not formalize it?

I give you:

It would be similar to a web-ring, but rather than a ring it would be a multi-level network, just like Amway. To become a member of Blogway™, you have to join somebody’s network. That person is your “parent” in the multi-level network. Each person gets up to 5 people to join their network, and then each of those 5 people get 5 people to join their networks, and so on. The intent is to refer traffic to both your “parent” and to the 5 “children” in your network by means of a cool little graphic/widget that would look something like this:

I’m the top dog, since it was my idea. Everyone else’s widget would show their “parent” and their 5 “children” network members. I probably need to come up with a more compact widget that takes up less screen space, but you get the idea how it would work. The widget would be clickable so you could go to any other blog in the network as well as go to The Stinker’s Blogway™ home page by clicking on the Blogway™ logo. Pretty clever, eh?

There’s probably a lot of ways to spin this idea. Maybe you earn points by referals to other blogs, and you automatically move up (or down) the network hierarchy based on your current point score? Not that I’m trying to replace humor-blogs.com here as a humor blog rating system, mind you. Perish the thought.

So c’mon, bloggers! Who wouldn’t like to get some trickle down traffic from The Stinker? My five spots go to the first five humor bloggers to ask for them — just post a comment.

ADDENDUM: Okay, I posted this kind of half-jokingly, but since there seems to be at least mild interest… does anybody know how to program web widgets?

ADDITIONAL ADDENDUM (or should that be ADDENDI?):  The five spots are now filled. Assuming I can get this widget thing worked out, the rest of you should be sucking up to my five Blogway™ “children”: Colby, Leigh, Andy, Wolf, and Jovanka, to see if they’ll adopt you into their networks.

Tags: Observational Humor, Humor, Miscellaneous // 20 Comments »

In this post I mentioned that the Stinkermobile was closing in on 200,000 miles. Well, yesterday was the day. w00t! w00t! The Stinkermobile broke 200,000 miles on the way home from work! The Stinkermobile is a tricked-out ‘94 Honda Accord, the 4-door LX model. And by “tricked-out,” I mean it has a variety of special accouterments developed by Stinker Labs to assist in my secret crime fighting career. And also a hella good after-market stereo system.

Here is the Stinkermobile in “stealth” mode, with all its special crime fighting paraphernalia hidden away:

I’d post a pic with its crime-fighting gear in fully deployed mode, but it would be poor operational security for me to needlessly reveal its capabilities, and anyway none of you have the proper security clearance to see that. Suffice to say, it’s badass. Criminals literally shit themselves in fear when they see me coming.

Speaking of shit, that reminds me of the time way back in the early 80’s when I was a burger flipper at Wendy’s. (The one on Tylersville Road in West Chester, Ohio, if anyone cares.) It was a slow part of the day and the only people in line were a lady and her little toddler. While the lady was placing her order, the little lad, standing unseen behind her, removed his pants and diaper. He squatted down right there in line and dumped a big load. It was a really huge pile for such a little guy, too; I was impressed. Mommy, however, was not impressed; she was epically embarrassed. She grabbed her order and her little boy and high-tailed it out of there without bothering to scoop up her son’s load. Uh-oh. That meant either I or the guy running fries was going to be cleaning it up. I immediately asked the manager (who was over at the drive through window and as-yet unaware of the incident) if he wanted me to do a trash run (i.e., empty all the garbage cans) since we were slow, and he said go ahead. So now hapless fry guy — his name was Jim, as I recall — would get stuck with the dirty duty. I emptied the cans in the back room and then went out into the dining area to empty the trash out there, and I saw Jim trying valiantly to broom the toddler droppings into a long-handled dustpan. But it just smeared all over the floor. I remember to this day the look of sublime chagrin on Jim’s face. Fun times, those.

And I have one other random subject for today’s post. I’ll call this segment “Stupid People Say The Darnedest Things.” Hell, this could be a new regular feature here on The Stinker, because there are lots of stupid people out there, and they like to say a lot of stupid things.

Today’s stupid person had this to say…

In response to the question “Should Congress continue to fund national public radio?,” here’s the response from one Richard Guess of Charleston, SC:

Congress should continue paying for it because if they don’t, the taxpayers will end up paying for it.

If you don’t understand why this is a stupid thing to say, please leave me your comments. That’ll give me fodder for my next issue of “Stupid People Say The Darnedest Things.”

And make sure to go here for lots more funny stuff.

Tags: Stupid People, Observational Humor, Humor, Miscellaneous // 5 Comments »

Special geek edition!

And now, some non-geeky ones:

Make sure to visit here for more funny stuff!

Tags: Motivational Poster Parodies, Humor, Parody // Add Comment »