The Best Medicine

Once in a while, we here on the Far Side like a good laugh or two just to keep things light.  What follows is the actual joke noted in the famous Monty Python skit, "The Funniest Joke Ever Written."  Fair warning, you will want to have a bottle of oxygen and a defibrillator on-hand, just in case.
=================

Recently, ol' Frank from back East was visiting friends down Texas way.  He was a bit of a celebrity because foreigners didn't often make it to these parts, being somewhat isolated in the Big Thicket, as it were.

Anyway, ol' Frank was asked to be a judge in the annual chili cook-off.  Now folks 'round these parts didn't think nothin' of it.  In fact, it was an honor to put him in there, since usually the folks selected only the most experienced tasters for this very serious event.

Well, as part of ol' Frank's obituary, we thought we'd publish his last words as a celebration of his life, especially since we don't get much interesting stuff happen around here.

Here are the scorecards from the event:

CHILI # 1: MIKE'S MANIC MONSTER CHILI
JUDGE ONE: A little too heavy on the tomato for the palate. Amusing kick in the finish with an interesting nose.
JUDGE TWO: Nice, smooth tomato flavor. Very mild, velvety palate with a smooth finish.
FRANK: Holy shit, what the hell is this stuff? You could remove asphalt from your driveway with this stuff. I needed two beers to put the flames out. Hope that's the worst of it. These Texans are crazy.

CHILI # 2: RICK'S RADICAL ROADKILL CHILI
JUDGE ONE: Smokey, with a hint of pork. The armadillo might have sat out a bit longer. Slight Jalapeno tang.
JUDGE TWO: Exciting BBQ flavor. The dried 'coon was an exciting touch.  Needs more peppers to be taken seriously.
FRANK: Keep this out of reach of children! I'm not sure what I am supposed to taste besides pain. I had to wave off two people who wanted to give me the Heimlich manoeuvre. They had to call in three extra beers when they saw the look on my face. And that rice looked more like maggots!

CHILI # 3: FRED'S FAMOUS BURN DOWN THE BARN CHILI
JUDGE ONE: Excellent firehouse chili! Great kick. Needs more beans.
JUDGE TWO: A beanless chili. A bit salty. Good use of red peppers.
FRANK: Call the freaking EPA!!, I've located a uranium spill. My nose feels like I have been snorting Drano and my esophagus is so raw I'm hacking blood. Everyone knows the routine by now: Sally the barmaid pounded me on the back till my backbone became my breastbone. I'm getting positively shit-faced putting out the fire!

CHILI # 4: BUBBA'S OL' BLACK MAGIC
JUDGE ONE: Black Bean chili with almost no spice. Disappointing and drab.
JUDGE TWO: Hint of lime in the black beans. Good side dish for fish or other mild foods. Not much of a chili.
FRANK: I felt something scraping across my tongue, but couldn't taste it. Sally the barmaid was standing behind me with fresh refills; that 300-lb bitch is starting to look HOT, just like this nuclear-waste I'm eating.

CHILI # 5: LINDA'S LEGAL LIP REMOVER
JUDGE ONE: Meaty, strong chili. Cayenne peppers freshly ground, adding considerable kick. Very impressive.
JUDGE TWO: Chili using shredded beef; could use more tomato. Must admit the cayenne peppers make a strong statement.
FRANK: My ears are ringing, and I can no longer focus my eyes. I farted and four people behind me needed paramedics. The contestant seemed offended when I told her that her chili had given me brain damage. Sally saved my tongue from corroding by pouring beer directly from a pitcher into my mouth. It really pisses me off that the other judges asked me to stop screaming. Freakin' Rednecks! ! !

CHILI # 6: VERA'S VERY VEGETARIAN VARIETY
JUDGE ONE: Thin yet bold vegetarian variety chili. Good balance of spice and peppers.
JUDGE TWO: The best yet. Aggressive use of peppers, onions and garlic.
FRANK: My heart stopped twice in the past 10 minutes.  My intestines are now a roiling sewer pipe filled with gaseous, sulphuric flames. No one seems inclined to stand behind me except that slut Sally.  I'm sure I've got permanent damage to my intestines. I need to wipe my ass with a snow cone!

CHILI # 7: SUSAN'S SCREAMING SENSATION CHILI
JUDGE ONE: A mediocre chili with too much reliance on canned peppers.
JUDGE TWO: Ho Hum. Tastes as if the chef literally threw in a can of chili peppers at the last moment. I should note that I am worried about Judge # 3.He's had to be resuscitated three times and there's some kind of noxious gas coming from his orifices.
FRANK: You could put a freaking grenade in my mouth, pull the goddam pin, and I wouldn't feel a damn thing. I've lost the sight in one eye and can hardly see out of the other, and the world sounds like it is made of rushing water. My shirt is covered with chili, which fell out of my goddam mouth, which is insensate at this point. My pants are full of a lava-like substance.  I can't really tell, but it looks like buzzards are circling overhead, but it could also be spots in front my my eyes. At least during the autopsy they'll know what killed me. I've decided to stop breathing, it's too painful. I'm not getting any oxygen anyway. If I need air, I'll just suck it in through the four inch hole in my abdomen.


CHILI # 8: HELEN'S HEAP O' HELL CHILI
JUDGE ONE: A perfect ending. This is a nice blended chili, safe for all; not too bold, but spicy enough to declare its existence.
JUDGE TWO: This final entry is a good balanced chili, neither mild nor hot. Sorry to see that most of it was lost when Judge #3 passed out, fell on the chili pot and pulled the whole thing on top of himself. Not sure if he's going to make it. Poor Yank.
FRANK: - - - - - Urk...

Frank's funeral will be held at 3p today at the Bethany Grace Baptist Church, with Rev. Billy Joe officiating.  There won't be a casket, since we sent what little we could salvage back East to his family before the dogs ate it all.  The family asks that in lieu of flowers, folks make a donation to the Rockefeller Center for Congenital Diseases.

The mayor has declared that next year, the chili festival will be called the Frank Memorial Cook-Off and Clean Up.

The Spark Of Life

Every now and then, you just gotta laugh.  Things are so danged crazy anymore, it helps to pull back a little and get a perspective on things.  So today, I'm putting up a story I got in email about three years ago.  I nearly fell out of my chair reading it, and it hasn't lost a bit of the magic since then.  This is why God loves Texas and Texians, because we know how to laugh.

Be warned: this is adult humor, so if you're under 30, or you think Political Correctness is a 501(c)(3) religion, or you believe 'diversity' means 'group think,' then you probably won't enjoy it.  The writer is anonymous, so if it's you, let me know so I can put a by-line on it, because you're in line to take Will Roger's place.

Without further ado:

Thought y'all should read this in case you're thinking of installing an electric fence!

We have the standard 6ft. fence in the backyard, and a few months ago, I heard about burglaries increasing dramatically in the entire city.

To make sure this never happened to me, I got an electric fence and ran a single wire along the top of the fence. Actually, I got the biggest cattle charger Tractor Supply had, made for 26 miles of fence.

I then used an 8 ft. long ground rod, drove 7.5 feet into the ground. The ground rod is the key, with the more you have in the ground, the better the fence works.

One day I'm mowing the back yard with my cheapo Wal-Mart 6hp big wheel push mower.... The hot wire is broken and laying out in the yard. I knew for a fact that I unplugged the charger. I pushed the mower around the wire and reached down to grab it, to throw it out of the way. It seems as though I hadn't
remembered to unplug it after all.

Now I'm standing there, I've got the running lawnmower in my right hand and the 1.7 gigavolt fence wire in the other hand. Keep in mind the charger is about the size of a marine battery and has a picture of an upside down cow on fire on the cover. Time stood still. The first thing I notice is my balls trying to climb up the front side of my body. My ears curled downwards and I could feel the lawnmower ignition firing in the backside of my brain.. Every time that Briggs & Stratton rolled over, I could feel the spark in my head. I was literally at one with the engine.

It seems as though the fence charger and the POS lawnmower were fighting over who would control my electrical impulses.

Science says you cannot crap, pee, and come at the same time. I beg to differ. Not only did I do all three at once, but my bowels emptied 3 different times in less than half of a second. It was a Matrix kind of bowel movement, where time is creeping along and you're all leaned back and BAM BAM BAM you just crap your pants 3 times. It seemed like there were minutes in between but in reality it was so close together it was like exhaust pulses from a big block Chevy turning 8 grand.

At this point I'm about 30 minutes (maybe 2 seconds) into holding onto the fence wire. My hand is wrapped around the wire palm down so I can't let go. I grew up on a farm so I know all about electric fences.... but Dad always had those POS chargers made by International or whoever that were like 9 volts and just kinda tickled. This I could not let go of. The 8 foot long ground rod is now accepting signals from me through the permadamp Ark-La-Tex river bottom soil. At this point I'm thinking I'm going to have to just man up and take it, until the lawnmower runs out of gas.

'Damn!,' I think, as I remember I just filled the tank!

Now the lawnmower is starting to run rough. It has settled into a loping run pattern as if it had some kind of big lawnmower race cam in it. Covered in poop, pee, jizz, and with my  " boys" on my chest I think 'Oh God, please die... pleeeeze die'. But nooooo, it settles into the rough lumpy cam idle nicely and remains there, like a big bore roller cam EFI motor waiting for the go command from its owner's right foot.

So here I am in the middle of July, 104 degrees, 80% humidity, standing in my own backyard, begging God to kill me. God did not take me that day... he left me there covered in my own fluids to writhe in the misery my own stupidity had created....

I honestly don't know how I got loose from the wire.... I woke up laying on the ground hours later. The lawnmower was beside me, out of gas. It was later on in the day and I was sunburned. There were two large dead grass spots where I had been standing, and then another long skinny dead spot were the wire had layed while I was on the ground still holding on to it. I assume I finally had a seizure and in the resulting thrashing had somehow let go of the wire. Upon waking from my electrically induced sleep I realized a few things.

1- Three of my teeth seem to have melted.

2- I now have cramps in the bottoms of my feet and my right butt cheek (not the left, just the right).

3- Poop, pee, and semen when all mixed together, do not smell as bad as you might think.

4- My left eye will not open.

5- My right eye will not close.

6- The lawnmower runs like a sumnabitch now. Seriously! I think our little session cleared out some carbon fouling or something, because it was better than new after that.

7- My  "boys "  are still smaller than average yet they are almost a foot long

8- I can turn on the TV in the gameroom by farting while thinking of the number 4 (still don't understand this?)

That day changed my life. I now have a newfound respect for things. I appreciate the little things more, and now I always triple check to make sure the fence is unplugged before I mow.

The good news, is that if a burglar does try to come over the fence, I can clearly visualize what my security system will do to him, and THAT gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling all over, which also reminds me to triple check before I mow.