The Amish Wasp

Posted on 26 September 2020 by Larry Russwurm

The wasps in my area changed rather suddenly. I am used to the yellow and black wasps which have lived in my area of Southern Ontario all my life. Last month I saw my first black wasp while on my balcony. And since then all the wasps that I have seen have been black. They have taken over in my area.

I looked them up. After all it is 2020 and these wasps are bigger than the old wasps. Their sting is supposed to be more painful but causes less swelling. But mostly they are named sphex pensylvanicus because they have come from our southern neighbours in Pennsylvania. I hadn’t heard anyone say “Don’t go to Pennsylvania because the wasps are huge and can kill you.” So I now presume they can be lived with.

These great black wasps I would like to call Amish Wasps. I have three reasons for this. The first reason is that they are dressed in black all the time. A bit obvious perhaps but sometimes I’m not that much of an original thinker.

The second reason that I would like to call them Amish wasps is that they have immigrated from Pennsylvania. This follows the path of the Amish people who were originally offered lands in Pennsylvania to practice their religion in peace. They have pushed out into Ohio and Ontario and other places just like the great black wasps. Besides, as a group, Amish and Mennonites are known as the Pennsylvania Dutch. So the Amish sometimes have Pennsylvania in their name just like the wasp.

The third reason for wanting to call them the Amish wasp is the punniest. Just last month when I first spotted one, I said to myself, ‘something is Amish (amiss) here’.

And to the poor yellow and black wasps that have been losing territory to the Amish wasp, something indeed is Amish here.

Posted in Geography, History, Humour | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Maybe a Leap Day Could Help Canadian Politics

Posted on 19 September 2020 by Larry Russwurm

We hear the same refrain from western Canada every election. They already know the results before they are finished voting. Mostly it gets decided in Eastern Standard Time because of Quebec and mostly Ontario. Ontario has one third the population of Canada and Quebec has almost a quarter giving the pair a clear majority over the other provinces.

We’ve tried staggering the voting time in different provinces. But this could lead to confusion depending on what time zone you are in and where you get your information from. There just has to be a better way.

So I propose a unique solution. We could have a leap day for the province of Ontario. When we have the leap day could be at the end of any month. We could just make it February 29th 2021. After that Ontario would be about a day behind the rest of the country. This is not as weird as it sounds. Australia is mostly a day ahead of the Americas. Or the Americas are about a day behind Australia.

Then we could vote in the next election at the normal times and on the same numbered day. Western Canadians would be done voting long before Ontario had voted. This would leave some mystery in the relationship. No longer would there be spoilers for Western Canada.

Ontario would be happy with this because they could now strategically vote the hell out of the election. And most of us think Ontario loves to strategically vote. Look at the way Ontario votes for a different federal and provincial leader almost every chance it gets. When the Progressive Conservatives win provincially, Ontario’s federal vote usually goes to the Liberals. When the Conservatives have Ontario’s federal votes, the provincial government voted in is usually Liberal.

However, I feel that Ontario isn’t really strategically voting for the federal/provincial split. I think it’s more a “I can’t believe the monsters we have federally! Can’t have that provincially!” and “I can’t believe what monsters we have provincially! Can’t have that federally!”

But I live in Ontario and I love to imagine the possibilities to strategically vote. With 33% of the vote we could really sway the election if we already knew how the two thirds of the rest of Canada voted. It’s just too bad that the province seems to be divided between city (Liberal voters) and rural (Conservative voters).

Maybe then the rest of Canada could have its revenge. It might end up with the rural part of Ontario hating the city part of Ontario.

If you can’t beat them, divide them.

Posted in Humour, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Everything Bagels

Posted on 12 September 2020 by Larry Russwurm

“Look at that sign at that restaurant,” said Matt, one of my group of four friends that were wandering around looking for something to do in our boring little city. “It says ‘our everything bagels truly have everything’. No way that that’s true.”

“Let’s go in and confront them on that,” said Lyle who was always the group’s shit disturber.

“I’m in,” said Wayne.

“Me too,” said Matt.

I guess I’m the cautious one because I was last to agree as our group was already headed into the front door.

Lyle headed up to the counter. “Where are your everything bagels? They can’t possible have everything on them. I demand you take your sign down right now!”

“Here are the everything bagels,” said the elderly, refined looking woman who was behind the counter. She took a couple steps further down the counter and waved at some bagels. “Look, they have all the ingredients our other bagels have on the top.”

“Just like everyone else’s everything bagels,” said Wayne. “I think you should take the sign down. You are misrepresenting things and if you don’t I will sue.”

“I think I know what your problem is,” said the woman. “Your problem is you think the bagel ends at the usual spot. No, no. Everything the bagel touches is part of the everything. It touches the cabinet, which touches the floor, which touches everything in the restaurant, which touches the street, which touches the whole Earth. Indeed it is really everything. You just choose to stop eating at the usual boundary of the bagel.”

“Wait a second,” said Wayne. “If everything else is truly attached to this one everything bagel, I should be able to take anything from anywhere in the world and put it on the normal bagel part of the everything bagel and eat that.”

“Alright,” said the woman, “I will allow you to take something from anywhere you like and I will put it on the normal bagel part of the everything bagel.”

“Now we’re talking! I’d like the finest caviar on mine,” said an excited Wayne.

“It will cost you your soul,” stated the woman.

“Something I can’t see, hear or touch. Give it to me.”

The woman put one of the everything bagels on a plate and went to the kitchen. She came back a minute later with what must have been caviar. It looked spreadable and indeed there was a butter knife on the plate which could do just that.

Wayne opened the bagel and spread the caviar on both sides. “Mmmmm. That’s really good.”

“My turn,” claimed an excited Matt. “I want an everything bagel with a dinosaur egg.”

“Oooh you drive a hard bargain but if the price is your soul, I will get it for you.”

“Sure, sure.” Matt nodded.

The woman went into the back with the plate with an everything bagel. She came back with two hands holding the plate that had the everything bagel and a huge egg barely balancing on top of the bagel.

“Wow,” said Matt. “I’ll put it in a hatchery and Jurassic Park, here we come.”

“I thought your plan was to eat it. It’s an unfertilized egg.”

“I want another everything bagel, then,” said Matt.

“Sorry, but you only have one soul to pay with.”

Lyle had a smirk on his face. “I want an everything bagel with a microscopic black hole.”

“You know the price?” asked the woman.

Lyle nodded.

The woman returned from the back with the everything bagel. She could still hold the plate with one hand. “You can tell the microscopic black hole is there because the bagel is at least twice as heavy.”

“Shouldn’t the black hole have sucked you in then fallen through the floor to the centre of the Earth?” asked Lyle.

“You should read up on microscopic black holes,” said the woman who now turned to me.

“We pay you our souls as soon as we’re given our bagels?” I asked.

“Right,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

I sighed. “I want an everything bagel with all our four souls on top.”

“Dammit!” she yelled. “All this work for nothing.” She got the bagel on a plate and passed it to me.

“Grab your souls back,” I ordered my friends. I don’t think they believed but they wanted to humour me so all made the motion of grabbing something from my bagel and putting it in their bodies.

Well we all got a bagel and Wayne even had his with caviar. The egg? We decided to sell it to a museum. Splitting the profits of course.

Posted in Humour, Language | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

3 Ninja Fight

Posted on 5 September 2020 by Larry Russwurm

It happened almost a week later when both the Fairway Mall was closed and Near Absolute Hero was away fighting a fire. Tail and Modern Ninja waited less than a block away from the mall, with Mother Earth on the car display. Mother Earth had access to all the video from the mall.

They talked about the plan and other things. Finally, Mother Earth could show an SUV pulling up to the mall with three ninjas getting out of it. Tail at the wheel, they raced to that place. In a moment they pulled up to the SUV. Just before the pair of physical superheroes were told by Mother Earth, “I’m guessing you have a minute and a half.”

Tail worked on the SUV. He had been practicing his break in skills for months now. It only took him half a minute to get the door open. It then took him a full 45 seconds to hot wire the car. He breathed a sigh of relief as he drove off with it to the far end of the parking lot.

Modern Ninja was set up beside the doors of the  mall waiting for a ninja or two or three to come out. While Tail was still moving the SUV, one of the ninjas came out. Modern Ninja figured this was the lead one and decided to leave this one be as he ran after the SUV.

It was a toss up in Modern Ninja’s mind and indeed her crime fighting allies if the next ninjas would come out one at a time or in tandem.

They came out in tandem and went parallel to each other, running after the SUV like their friend. Modern Ninja ran with them and used her invisibility to remain unseen. She tripped and kicked the closest one. The other one looked over and realized what had happened. He tried to speed up but wasn’t fast enough for Modern Ninja. She tripped him as well.

Before she could get to him, the ninja threw three throwing stars where he guessed Modern Ninja was. But Modern Ninja was in none of those places and kicked his head which made him fall backwards and hit his head again.

Tail was with the SUV still and the first ninja had caught up to the now not moving vehicle. The ninja thought about it for a moment. But then decided that he was up against a superhero. So Tail was unlikely to use the SUV to drive over or kill him. The ninja continued his approach.

That Ninja was kicked in the back of the head by Modern Ninja, such that his head hit the metal of the SUV. After that it was just a couple moments of handcuffing. Mother Earth alerted the police and the superheroes loaded into their car and were off.

It was another successful moment for the Mother Earth Force.

Posted in comics, Wry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

3 Superheroes and 3 Supervillains

Posted on 29 August 2020 by Larry Russwurm

“Modern Ninja, Tail,” started Mother Earth, “I’m glad we’ve got the three of us here. There’s something that we can do together.”

“What about Near Absolute Hero?” asked Tail.

“He fought a fire all last night and is wiped out. Besides, I have a feeling he’ll be out of commission for what I have in mind.

“First of all, did you all hear about the escape of our three ninjas from Montreal?”

“Yes,” said Tail.

“Yes,” said Modern Ninja. “But certainly they aren’t causing such a hubbub in Montreal that we have to go back there?”

“I’d be tempted to leave them be, too. Except for last night they were robbing a mall in the Big Smoke itself.”

“Here? But they must know that things are more dangerous with us on the case, here. Without the Flame Tosser, they should be even easier to take down than in Montreal,” said Modern Ninja.

“Which is why I think they will wait till there’s a major fire to do their dirty work.”

“Which puts Near Absolute Hero out of the picture,” said Tail. “Smart.”

“What did they take from the mall?” asked Modern Ninja.

“They robbed all three jewellery stores that were there. They left the jewellery kiosk alone because it had lower value jewellery.”

“I hate thieves that are too good for similar but lower value wares,” stated Tail.

“I just hate thieves,” said Modern Ninja.

“There were cameras all over the mall so I can play you the entire robbery. Modern Ninja,” said Mother Earth, “I want you especially to take a close look at how this was done.”

The video evidence showed the three ninjas stealing from the three jewellery stores and going from point to point. The moves at the jewellery stores were expected. What was not expected was how the trio moved from point to point in the mall.

Two of the ninjas were on the edge of the mall halls moving parallel with each other. But they looked sideways so they were watching each other the whole time. The third ninja was ahead of the other pair in the middle of the hallway.

“What do you think of their formation, Modern Ninja?” asked Mother Earth.

“The only reason I can get two ninjas in a fight is because I can line up with the two I want, on the same straight line we three make but outside the two ninjas. That way I stay invisible for both of them. In the mall I can’t do that.”

“I can get one,” said Tail.

“Which still leaves us one short. So let’s see their weak point – outside.”

The askew ninja got to the door first and ran outside to the waiting SUV which he drove right up to the mall doors. Only then did the other two break their formation and go outside into the waiting SUV. They were away in seconds.

“There’s only one more mall big enough in town to have multiple jewellery stores, too,” informed Mother Earth.

“Fairway Mall,” said Tail. “Is there a way for one of us to take out two ninjas? There will only be us two with boots on the ground.”

“I think I can make up for my physical uselessness with planning,” said Mother Earth.

And so they planned.

Posted in comics, Wee Bit O' Humour | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Third Strike

Posted on 22 August 2020 by Larry Russwurm

My news sites were polluted this week with Rush Limbaugh. Some of you may know that I’m Canadian and don’t actively seek out anything with the Rush Limbaugh name. Since he has polluted my life yet again, I am reposting my Rush Limbaugh political cartoon which can be used for most circumstances of Rush.

This time he thought it was so funny to apply his name to the Democratic candidate team which is “Joe and the Hoe” (Rush Limbaugh has a radio show – I can spell any name he uses however I want.) And I hope that the Hoe can uproot vile weeds like Rush Limbaugh and just let them wither away. But if not, I still have my Rush Limbaugh political cartoon I can use.

Posted in Cartoon, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Three Ninjas in Jail

Posted on 15 August 2020 by Larry Russwurm

Despite being put in the same jail at the same time, the experiences of the 3 ninjas, who battled against the Mother Earth Force in Montreal, were different. The other criminals were suspicious of what had taken down the trio. The trio answered honestly.

“But why are these superheros named after a female?” Was the first question they got.

The trio tried to explain it was a mixed male/female crime fighting team.

“So who was captured by a male crime fighter?” someone asked.

Immediately one hand shot up. “I fought Tail. Look him up. He’s a musclebound lunkhead with an extra tail to spoil all my martial arts moves.”

The other two were quieter about what happened. Still it got drawn out of them slowly. They thought Modern Ninja had captured them but weren’t quite sure. She had used invisibility they thought. They were just looking at normal scenery when all of a sudden they were decked. The other criminals found that ‘Eagle’, the first ninja taken, was knocked out with no warning. ‘Nuclear Submarine’ was the second ninja that saw his partner taken down by Modern Ninja. He just said that suddenly Eagle was down. He saw nothing after that until he, himself, was rendered unconscious.

“So you both got taken down by a woman superhero?” asked a particularly large man listening to the goings on.

“She was invisible.” The duo defended.

“I’m sorry, Nuclear Submarine. But you had warning and it was a female that beat you up. That makes you the weakest.” A couple of the men crowded Nuclear Submarine and then the fists began to fly. Nuclear Submarine was ably defending himself when the guards came in with a water cannon and broke up the fight. They took Nuclear Submarine and two other men to cool down in the hole.

Afterwards one of the men beside the ninja that attacked Tail, said “You’re cool! What do we call you?”

“Traditional Ninja is good enough.” He was left alone after that exchange. The same could not be said for Eagle.

The other criminals seemed to alternate between Nuclear Submarine and Eagle when starting fights. 2 or 3 would start the fight but the guards were quick with their water cannons and the hole punishment.

No one was getting seriously hurt but it still bothered Traditional Ninja. How could he arrange for the escape of the three of them when Eagle or Nuclear Submarine were perpetually in the hole. After a few weeks the fights (finally!) seemed to die down and Traditional Ninja got in touch with the Ninja League.

The league was a loose association of ninjas. There were only a few things it wouldn’t tolerate and the jailing of ninjas was one of those. It led to a daring and wild helicopter flight above the yard where the three scaled the rope ladder and were whisked away to freedo,m.

Posted in comics, Wee Bit O' Humour | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Our Favourite Comedians Have No Sense of Humour

Posted on 8 August 2020 by Larry Russwurm

Who’s your favourite standup comedian? Or sitcom comedian? Or skit comedian? Ellen Degeneres? Jerry Seinfeld? Kate McKinnon? All of them do not have a sense of humour. First of all let’s look at why.

Our society likes to pride itself on the modesty of society. ‘Look at that bad comedian – he’s laughing at his own jokes.’ Laughing at your own jokes is just too prideful a thing. So a successful comedian cannot laugh at their own jokes.

The theory goes that a comedian will just have to repeat their jokes enough so they are no longer funny to themselves and they can give that deadpan delivery.

Well who can give a deadpan delivery every time? Someone with no sense of humour – that’s who. As a comedian all they have to do is memorize the jokes. They don’t need to deaden themselves to the humour.

I can tell now that some of you are beginning to accept the lack of humour amongst your favourites. So let’s look at how they do it. Someone has to have a sense of humour on the team and that usually falls to the behind the scenes writers. See that standup comedian, it looks like they are the whole show. But there are agents, promoters, managers and of course writers backing them up.

Behind the scenes writers can laugh at their own jokes. They can laugh and guffaw all they like, nobody is going to see them do it. Yes, they can laugh out loud. Yes, they can roll on the floor laughing. It’s even rumoured that once, on the Monty Python set, that a writer even laughed himself to death. But that is just a rumour. He actually just laughed hard enough that he had a heart attack. Thanks to modern medicine he lived to write another joke.

But wait, you say, having a comedian who has no sense of humour, is like having a politician without empathy!

There it is. The realization that politicians never empathize with their constituents. That’s why they never deliver on their most important promises. Even though they wax on about how much they would like to.

So John Cleese has no sense of humour. Bob Newhart definitely had no sense of humour. Bill Cosby …

Those rare times when live shows were taped and the comedian(s) start to burst out laughing – that simply means that the comedian has an ever so slight sense of humour that is usually not activated. Tim Conway and Harvey Korman on the Carol Burnett used to sometimes begin to get jokes. They snickered for a few seconds and then got back to the performance.

Even today there are some slip ups on Saturday Night Live where the performer might begin to laugh or snicker. So perhaps the players just have a small, undeveloped sliver of a sense of humour. And they are only getting the jokes now, while it is all being acted out in front of them.

I’ve known all about this secret writer conspiracy of standup comics for years now. I’ve put my name out there but no one wants to hire me as a writer. They say that I have too much empathy for the scammed. Which is why I have decided to publish this tell-all about the industry.

Posted in Humour, Stage and Screen | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Birth Control for Werewolves

Posted on 1 August 2020 by Larry Russwurm

It is said that all a werewolf needs to do is bite you for you to become a werewolf. Indeed most sources seem to think all a werewolf needs to do is break your skin and their saliva will transfer the curse to your bloodstream as well. All that remains is to figure out how many humans a werewolf will infect in each full moon.

Our era is called the Anthropocene. This is because humans affect almost every aspect of the earth these days. So almost any werewolf is going to be near humans. They hunt all night by the full moon – which lasts the whole night. That’s a lot of hunting. Let’s say each hunt lasts about an hour. That makes about 12 large creatures hunted. I’m going to say that one of them is a human.

Humans are usually around other humans. And that is what the werewolf is for 29 days of the moon’s 29.5 day cycle. So that places the werewolf near humans when the change comes. Obviously it will attack humans in its 12 hours of being a beast.

So if 1 werewolf bites 1 human, it will lead to 2 werewolves by the next full moon. The third full moon will see 4 werewolves and the fourth will see 8. This is an exponential progression.

So let’s look at the calculations we made in The Case for Vampires Staking Vampires with its similar exponential progression. There we figured out that weekly vampire killings led to a 34th week when all the people in the world have become vampires.

With the werewolves, it is easy to see that the 34th full moon will lead to the entire population of the world becoming werewolves. This is roughly 2 years and 9 months after the first werewolf arrived on the scene. Naturally the werewolf doesn’t want this because there will be next to nothing left to hunt (remember each full moon we said there are 12 hunts and only one of them is a human).

So werewolves will hunt the most dangerous prey – werewolves. But they will cheat. When they turn back to humans they will use their guns loaded with silver bullets and track the very same prey they bit during the full moon. They will exterminate it with their silver bullets.

So, of necessity, a werewolf will be a successful hunter in both forms. It will hunt then hunt again.

So if you’re worried that someone you know has become (or always was) a werewolf, don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Worrying about how to find silver bullets or even possibly having to make them yourself is a nonstarter. All you need to do is root through the werewolf’s things and you will find silver bullets.

That is step one in killing a werewolf. Godspeed in pulling off the rest by shooting it with those very same silver bullets.

Posted in Humour, Science | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Quiet Place!

Posted on 25 July 2020 by Larry Russwurm

There’s one thing that librarians all over the world have had to do every day at work. It’s just never ending. They have to hush their patrons from time to time. Most people need a quiet environment in order to read well. Librarians are simply trying to provide that environment.

They’ve had to do this from as far back as I remember and I bet for many more lifetimes this has been a small but important part of the job. Yet the public never seems to learn. I think I know of a way to accelerate the learning curve for the public.

The monsters from A Quiet Place hunt you down and kill you if you make noise. Sure that’s scary, you might say, until some pistol packing citizen gets accosted. You would be wrong. The monsters are also bullet proof.

So what if some librarian in a labyrinthine library gets a hold of one of these creatures? They could set it loose in the louder parts of the library where the public is known to be more likely to talk.

Can you imagine how quickly the patrons would catch on and how quiet that library would become? Next time you’re in a library ask a librarian if they have fantasized about such a quiet place. Undoubtedly they have, as bloodthirsty as that may seem.

But wait. The monsters from A Quiet Place are believed to have come from outer space and are in fact aliens. Can you imagine the planet they came from? Their libraries would never have needed librarians that hushed patrons. Patrons would have been able to hear themselves think so well. No wonder this species beat Earthlings to interstellar travel.

Maybe they wish to spread their gifts across the galaxy. A quiet place for all to think on whichever planet they set foot on. They might even gift their technology of interstellar travel to us if we continue to be quiet for long enough.

Indeed, maybe the monsters are really a race of super powerful librarians who are dead serious about their quiet policies. Oh I’m sorry. I forgot to say spoiler alert. After all this is the obvious and most likely ending to the A Quiet Place series.

Posted in Humour, Science Fiction | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment