The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

On the way to get my 3rd term grades

I discovered this joke from the head of Duke's CCMBA IT department:

An accountant is having a hard time sleeping and goes to see his doctor. "Doctor, I just can't get to sleep at night."

"Have you tried counting sheep?"

"That's the problem - I make a mistake and then spend three hours trying to find it."

And 24 hours from now, I'll be somewhere over Minnesota on my way to Shanghai...

Episodes V and VI

Before continuing yesterday's list of Star Wars lines that only a 14-year-old could love, I need to tip my hat to reader AS who found this sparkling diamond of a list. Change one word in a Star Wars quote to "pants" and you get, for example, "I find your lack of pants disturbing," or, "In his pants you will find a new definition of pain and suffering." Fascinating that the list includes lines from all six movies, and yet only lines from the first three made it into the top 20.

Here's a clue. Here are the top 10 lines from The Empire Strikes Back:

  1. "And I thought they smelled bad...on the OUTSIDE!"
  2. "Possible he came in through the south entrance."
  3. "I must've hit it pretty close to the mark to get her all riled up like that, huh, kid?"
  4. "Hurry up, golden rod..."
  5. "That's OK, I'd like to keep it on manual control for a while."
  6. "But now we must eat. Come, good food, come..."
  7. "Control, control! You must learn control."
  8. "There's an awful lot of moisture in here."
  9. "Size matters not. Judge me by my size, do you?"
  10. "I thought that hairy beast would be the end of me!"

And from Return Of The Jedi:

  1. "I need more men."
  2. "Our instructions are to give it only to Jabba himself."
  3. "Thanks for coming after me."
  4. "Rise, my friend."
  5. "I can't do it, R2."
  6. "Look, I want you to take her."
  7. "I'm endangering the mission. I shouldn't have come."
  8. "General Solo, somebody's coming."
  9. "I have felt him, my master." "Strange that I have not."
  10. "Back door. Good Idea!"

Further evidence that Lucas lost his art when he did the first three.

Star Wars Episode 4: A New Misunderstanding

Did you ever wonder about these lines from the original Star Wars?

  1. "She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid."
  2. "Curse my metal body, I wasn't fast enough!"
  3. "Look at the size of that thing!"
  4. "Sorry about the mess..."
  5. "You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought."
  6. "Aren't you a little short for a storm trooper?"
  7. "You've got something jammed in here real good."
  8. "Put that thing away before you get us all killed!"
  9. "Luke, at that speed, do you think you'll be able to pull out in time?"
  10. "Get in there, you big furry oaf, I don't care what you smell!"

Looked at a certain way—i.e., like a 14-year-old would—they're kind of funny.

Bonus 11th line, from reader SSH: "Take care of yourself, Han. I guess that's what you're best at, isn't it?"

Reconnected

Diane and I completely unplugged this weekend so I'm spending the evening catching up. I'll have photos probably Tuesday, depending how crazy tomorrow goes for me. Meanwhile, a joke from one of my clients:

A noob used the following password: "MickeyMinniePlutoHueyLouieDeweyDonaldGoofySacramento" When asked why he had such a long password, he said he was told that it had to be at least 8 characters long and include at least one capital.

Great moments in trivia contests

A bunch of people went over to Ruckus Pizza on Wednesday for their weekly trivia contest. I do much better at College Bowl-type quizzes, and this one was all pop culture, but that didn't diminish the company and the pizza. All good.

The second round featured advertising slogans. See if you can find one product for which all these slogans work beautifully:

  • "The quicker picker-upper"
  • Two for me, none for you
  • Get up to four hours longer
  • Makes mouth happy
  • Stress stinks, ____ works
  • Any time's a good time for ___

We thought "Viagra" was a pretty good answer...