Maladjusted Mondays, Week 18

NOT Linda.

Hail and Farewell!* I’m Janice Johnson. Thanks for joining the fun here on Maladjusted Mondays. Linda heroically offered to host this collection of scathing exposés in which I rat out my uncooperative appliances. I originally published these posts on my blog, Joywriting: Everybody Has a Story, where I do occasionally write about something besides my appliances. You can visit me there any time by clicking here.

* This week, I changed my usual “Greetings!” to “Hail and Farewell!” — because today’s is the last appliance-wars post I currently have to offer. This, of course, does not mean that my appliances intend to live meekly ever after. With Linda’s permission, I will submit reports on any new uprisings or shenanigans that may occur in the future.

And now for the 18th post in the series, which first appeared on my blog June 5, 2018.

Pandora FAIL

How do you fail at Pandora?

To be clear, I’m talking about the online-radio app, not the charm bracelets.

Technically, it’s just an app, not an appliance… but I shouldn’t have been surprised.

Sunday evening, we had our Liberian friends and several friends from church at our house for a potluck dinner. I set Pandora on an uplifting worship music station and put it through the speakers. Everyone arrived, we set up the food, and people visited while munching chips and salsa. Then it was time to start eating in earnest.

We bowed our heads for prayer, and Brent thanked the Lord for the friends and food. He had barely started speaking when I heard a feminine voice say, “Uh-ohhh…” Thinking something had spilled, I glanced around to see whether anyone needed a towel or mop.

No, all heads were bowed.

That’s when I heard the voice again. This time I realized it was coming from the speaker above my head.

It was a commercial…

… a commercial for diarrhea medicine.

Could there be a more ominous start to a meal?

We got through the prayer with only a few snickers. Now we’re all thankful, not only for friends and food, but for laughter.

And the fact no one needed any medication after dinner.

 

Thanks for read– Wait! NEWS UPDATE!

The Very Next Day after this post went live on my blog, I got an email from LinkedIn, touting several job openings they thought would interest me. The first one was for a marketing copywriter.
The company?
“Poo-pourri” bathroom air freshener.

Just thought you’d breathe a little easier knowing that…

Thanks for reading,
Jan

PS: NO, I did NOT apply for the job. Thank you.

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Guest in Jest #53 TheWebWeavers

This week’s  “Guest in Jest” guest is:  TheWebWeavers

My Strange Sense of Humor

 

It is nearly impossible for me to write or say something without at least a twinge of humor in it, but it is quite possible for this subtle humor to fly over someone’s head due to the strangeness of it [joke]. For this post, in every sentence that I write something funny, I will add “[joke]”, so you can be sure you know when to laugh [joke].

Many of my jokes rely on the fact that they make no sense. For example, “The graduating carrot ate a rutabaga the size of a football field” [joke]. (I am figuratively dying of laughter at my own joke right now [joke].) [joke] (The previous joke was the punctuation if you didn’t catch it [joke].) [joke]

Since most of my jokes are ununderstandable [joke], many people in real life, with the exclusion of Spinette, don’t get it, and therefore, don’t laugh at the proper cues.

On the flip side, I usually don’t comprehend their jokes and I don’t laugh at the appropriate times either.

On the other flip side [joke], sometimes I laugh at unintentional jokes, and in these instances, I am the only one laughing. For example, once, in geometry class long ago, we were reviewing volume. The math teacher related the volume of an object to packing boxes and he mentioned that a one-inch squared packing box would be fairly useless. A kid next to me said that one could ship a sugar cube.

I burst out laughing/snorting. Of course, the rest of the class was dead silent and I think the person who said it was dead serious [joke] because he didn’t laugh either. Not even a chuckle.

I, of course [joke], found this to be the funniest thing ever due to the impracticality of shipping a single sugar cube in a one-inch squared packing box and burst into random fits of giggles for the rest of class.

P.S. Something that I find enormously hilarious is saying “Have fun” when someone says that they have to go to the bathroom. It earns me strange looks, but it is great on my part. It’s even funnier when, due to habit, people say, “I will”.

*Maniacal laughter*

Guest in Jest and Weekly Request #53

Please join us tomorrow…

This week’s  “Guest in Jest” guest is:  TheWebWeavers

 

Now it is time for my shameless begging.  I’ll add a little pleading if it will help.  I will add larger fonts to grab attention.  REALLY large fonts…to the point of obnoxiousness!  Perhaps a bit of color will make a difference.

Join us in our Guest of Jest series

 

Please submit your guest posts to mainepaperpusher@yahoo.com and they will be published in order of submission every Friday here at Everyone Else Has the Best Titles

 

Here are the rules:

Give us some info about your blog.  Make sure to add a link to it.

Write up something amusing.  It doesn’t have to be “laugh out loud” funny, but a bit of humor would be great.

Pictures optional, but encouraged.

The post can be one that has been posted before.

Multiple submissions are encouraged!

The piece can be anything that is humorous.  A story, a recollection, even something as simple as a joke.

 

C’mon, you know you want to!  Why should we have all the fun?

A Critter Quiz

Who knows what this is?

Sorry, I know it’s fuzzy.  I need a macro lens for my iPhone.

 

Stuff

No, not the ‘right’ stuff, just plain old ordinary stuff.  Mostly.

First off, I want to apologize for not keeping up with comments and emails and other stuff.  See?  It’s all about the stuff!  I think I’m caught up…maybe…sorta. I’ve been pretty disjointed so I never know what I’ve answered and what I haven’t.  I keep feeling that I’m missing things.  If I’ve missed something you wanted me to see and I ‘ignored’ it, just push me forcefully in the right direction.  Be like Walter and push me from behind.  No, that is probably not a good idea because Walter does it by using his nose to push me along.  Someone might get the wrong idea so a good shove using another part of my anatomy would be just fine.

Lots of people are keeping up on the Greta/Walter sitch.  Better, much better, but still a ways to go.  They went days with no incident but last night there was a very short skirmish and two seconds later they were licking each other’s faces.  Stay tuned.  Right now Greta is using Walter’s leg as a pillow.  Baby steps.

For the first time in my life, I think I have an allergy to something other than a med.  I have the coughing and a throat tickle.  But no cold symptoms.  The field was hayed yesterday and today.  Coincidence?

Got a health newsletter in the mail yesterday from my insurance company that sort of made me take notice.  It was talking about SUDEP.  I had no idea what that was but was rather unhappy to see that it stands for Sudden Unexpected Death in EPilepsy.   Oh great!  I knew that epileptics had a shorter lifespan but unexpected?  Sigh…

Old flip-phone Bill has bitten the bullet.  His old relic of a phone finally pushed him over the edge.  Texts would come through with the first paragraph missing.  He had to text back to ask what the sender was he/she was saying and then the answer he got back was also truncated and I watched as he went into meltdown when trying to explain his plight to the very nice foreign customer service fellow.  Bill does very poorly with foreign accents and this poor man was unintelligible, even to me.  Texts wouldn’t come through until another text “pushed it through.”   Arggggh!!!  SO!  The big news is that Bill is the not-so-intrepid owner of an iPhone.  That’s BIG stuff!

That’s pretty much all the stuff in a nutshell.  I’m not sure what kind of shell it’s in but ‘nut’ is the operative word here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maladjusted Mondays, Week 17

NOT Linda.

Greetings! I’m Janice Johnson. Thanks for joining the fun here on Maladjusted Mondays. Linda heroically offered to host this collection of scathing exposés in which I rat out my uncooperative appliances. I originally published these posts on my blog, Joywriting: Everybody Has a Story, where I do occasionally write about something besides my appliances. You can visit me there any time by clicking here.

And now for the 17th post in the series, which first appeared on my blog May 15, 2018.

Cat-and-Mouse

Here’s a riddle:

What gets underfoot, completely ignores humans,
carries filthy things in its mouth,
and generates a steady supply of hairballs?

In our case, it is not a cat.

No, it’s the Roomba that Brent gave me this past Christmas. It’s been in our house four months, and I’m still trying to figure it out.

Correction: I should say “her.” Because we named it Hazel, after the old-school TV comedy starring Shirley Booth.

Anyway, Hazel does a creditable job of dusting the floors. She glides under the furniture with ease and bumps her way around obstacles.

But she isn’t all diligence and efficiency.

A diligent appliance? At our house?

Don’t be silly.

One evening, Brent could only find one sock of a pair he’d left on the floor. Hazel had done her rounds, so of course he asked me whether she’d eaten it.

“I don’t think so. She worked until her battery ran down, then went back to the docking station like normal.”

But the sock was nowhere else, so I went and turned Hazel over. Sure enough, she had picked up the sock–then dusted half the floors with it hanging out of her mouth.

Eeewwwww.

I wrestled the sock away from her, only to find she had also coughed up a hairball. Or more accurately, crafted one out of someone’s long grey hair.

Can I help it if I shed?

A few minutes with the kitchen scissors took care of it, but I’m betting this hairball won’t be her last.

Just yesterday, I put Hazel in our bedroom and shut the door so she wouldn’t wander out into the living room, which was already clean. Half an hour later, I realized I didn’t hear her high-pitched humming.

I went to the bedroom door and listened. Nothing.

“Hazel? Everything all right in there?” Nothing. (Really, did I expect an answer??)

So I turned the knob and pushed the door open. Half an inch. Then something blocked it and three beeps sounded.

“Hazel. Move!” (Tries again)

“Beep-beep-beep!”

The door was blocked, but good. Fortunately, our room has a door out to the patio…

I had to go find my house key, people!

And there she sat, right in front of the closed door, not doing a single thing.

I still don’t know why she stopped, but after I opened the door, pointed her out, and pushed the “Home” button, she was able to find her way back to the docking station.

Believe me, I followed her every step of the way.

And people wonder why I don’t program the thing to work while I’m away from home.

Thanks for reading!
Jan

 

The Reason I’m Wearing My Party Hat Is Revealed

That’s it…I guess I have to tell you.

No more stringing you along.

I’ll just put my Jester party hat on and….

 

 

 

 

Ta Da!!!

 

Novus was the first guesser and she was the closest!  It’s not an anniversary for the blog but… if you look closely at today’s post, you will see that it is the 52n’d week for Guest in Jest.  Yes!  Guest in Jest is a year old!

When you all started to mention puppies and hot tubs I thought “Oh no, they are going to be so let down.”  Even so, this is a big milestone for me, especially since we came so close to ending the series before its first birthday. So thanks to everyone for guessing, but thanks even more for being part of this series.  Whether you read, comment or write for it, you are all part of the craziness!  I’d throw in a little shameless begging here, but you’ve probably had quite enough of that this week already.  😉      💕❤️💕❤️

 

 

Guest in Jest #52 A Tale Unfolds

This week’s  “Guest in Jest” guest is:  A Tale Unfolds

 

The Lighter Side of ‘Born Again’. Part 1.

One of my friends – she would say she is my only friend –has been the inspiration behind the title of at least one of my books and also a character in another – a brothel owner. Yesterday, she came up with another gem that could well become another book title. All I have to do is find around 60,000 words to put between the covers. But more of that a bit later.

In days of Yore, which is almost as old as Days of our lives, when The Ark was a pseudo-atheist: still believing in the historicity of the likes of Moses and Jesus, even if I didn’t buy any of that Parting of the Red Sea, or Walking on the Water bumph –I may have still been a bit damp behind the ears but I wasn’t soaking wet.

I had been to see the movie, Jesus, starring Robert Powell. You see, I enjoy history, and especially Roman History (yes, I have watched Gladiator around a bizillion times)

So, there was moi, the day after seeing the movie, in a large, national book store where a particular book display caught my eye. Robert Powell’s face was emblazoned on the cover of a hardcover book called, yes, you guessed, Jesus.

So over I wander, pick up a copy and begin to read.

Almost immediately I was engrossed. So much so that I failed to notice the arrival of a very tall, vicious-looking bloke, built like a brick sh…oops, sorry, outhouse.

I felt this heavy hand upon my left shoulder and a booming voice close to my left ear:

“Brother, I am so happy. Like me, you have found the Lord.”

I sh…kid you not!

Now I am not a small feller in stature, but this bloke was big, with a capital ‘B’ and as I turned my head I realised he had had to bend down to utter his refrain.

Gulp! Picture David and Goliath….got it? Good!

Without waiting for a response from moi, he got down on one knee and launched into a eulogy about how he was once a sinner and a bouncer at a club etc, etc ,used to hit people….blah, blah, did drugs, yadder, yadder, did booze…yak, yak, yak.  Sheesh! Then he found the Lord.  Although I am reliably informed by my reborn friend that he probably said the Lord found him. Who am I to argue with god, right? It was a long time ago. I have occasionally wondered where he found god or god found him; in an ally probably.

Anyhow, back to the eulogy.

The scene must have looked like a cross between a gay marriage proposal and a rapid Rottweiler trying to hump its master’s leg.

And although I tugged…believe me, did I tug! I couldn’t break free.

Eventually the sermon was over and the cousin of WWF’s Undertaker climbed to his feet, patted me on the shoulder, said “Praise the Lord” and walked off – just like that- leaving me standing with ‘Jesus’ in my hand felling bloody stupid and all and sundry in the store giving me some very strange looks.

I put the book back on the shelf as if I’d been holding a viper, bought a newspaper and sodded off.

 

Bloody Christians – Sheesh!

 

 

 

 

 

Guest in Jest and Weekly Request #52

Please join us tomorrow…

This week’s  “Guest in Jest” guest is:  A Tale Unfolds

 

Now it is time for my shameless begging.  I’ll add a little pleading if it will help.  I will add larger fonts to grab attention.  REALLY large fonts…to the point of obnoxiousness!  Perhaps a bit of color will make a difference.

Join us in our Guest of Jest series

 

Please submit your guest posts to mainepaperpusher@yahoo.com and they will be published in order of submission every Friday here at Everyone Else Has the Best Titles

 

Here are the rules:

Give us some info about your blog.  Make sure to add a link to it.

Write up something amusing.  It doesn’t have to be “laugh out loud” funny, but a bit of humor would be great.

Pictures optional, but encouraged.

The post can be one that has been posted before.

Multiple submissions are encouraged!

The piece can be anything that is humorous.  A story, a recollection, even something as simple as a joke.

 

C’mon, you know you want to!  Why should we have all the fun?

 

Everyone Else Has The Best Titles Is Celebrating

This is a very special time here at Everyone Else Has The Best Titles.  If I were a really nice person I would tell you why I am so excited, and that would be that.  But we all know that I’m not.  A really nice person, that is…nope, not even close.

So here’s the deal.  You all get to guess why I’ve got my party hat on and my drink raised.  Yeah, it doesn’t take much to get me to raise a glass, but you’ve got to know it’s big if I have my party hat on!

If you are the lucky winner, you will be highly praised for your great skill in the guessing world. That place must exist, right?  Plus, I will promote your blog and tell everyone how cool I think you are.  That is if you are cool.  Wait!  All of my followers are cool, so strike that last bit.

Yup, the successful guesser will not only get my take on your blog, but you will be able to say anything you like here.  Yes…anything!  I’m eying a few of you especially, but I won’t name names.  I can see the disclaimers now!

One guess per person!

Let the guessing commence!