comedians – interested in new material? contact me!
cartoonists – want to form a partnership? contact me!
actresses – “Substitute Teacher from Hell” is a one-woman show, any length you want; also check out the monologues from This Will Not Look Good On My Resume (great for auditions), “Balls” (which could feature a slide show component), and “Adverse Reactions”
mugs, t-shirts, cards, posters, magnets, and other funny stuff – search for “Jass Richards” at cafepress.com and zazzle.com, or just check out my card collection (milestone birthday cards and miscellaneous) or my psych mug collection and make your own! (So you’re turning 50. Boo hoo. You can still walk, can’t you?)
funny bits – that keep on coming – one a day – sort of –
5/17/2012
In Italy, the street people don’t ask you for money exactly – they pray for it. Literally. They kneel on the sidewalk with their little cup in front of them and pray. Hands pressed together, eyes closed, the whole bit.
So when you give them money, you’re validating their belief in – no, wait a minute, that was me who put the dollar in your cup, not God! Thanks be to me! I’m God!5/13/2012
What is this obsession with taking pictures of everything?
If you want pictures of these places, why not just buy the book?
I swear some people took pictures of the postcards.
‘Course why not – the postcards always looked better than the real thing.5/7/2012
As a species, we are so in love with ourselves, aren’t we? Almost every painting and certainly every sculpture I saw featured human subjects.
I saw a few horses, a rabbit or two, and an antelope. But they were usually dead.
Or dying a very horrible death.
‘Course it could just be that animals won’t sit still long enough.
That could also explain why they were usually dead.5/1/2012
I don’t think I was in the right mood for the Louvre. I saw this one really famous painting of a shipwreck, the main figure is on the beach, dramatically draped over crates and sails, in a pose of utter exhaustion.
And all I thought was “Oh get a grip!”4/25/2012
I got lost a lot. Even before I got to Amsterdam, I mean.
I got lost getting from the train stations to the hotels. I got lost getting from the hotels to the museums. Then I started getting lost in the museums.
It’s true. You can spend days in the Louvre.4/17/2012
I noticed there were no garbage cans along the Champs D’Elysees – anywhere.
And I thought “That’s wishful thinking.” It’s nonstop tourists.
A block later I realized they’d just said “The hell with it,” given a woman a go-cart, put a vacuum cleaner on it, and made it a full-time job.4/10/2012
Copenhagen is made for pedestrians. It has lots of pedestrian-only spaces, the streets have these really wide sidewalks, and in Copenhagen, pedestrians always have the right of way. You can be crossing the street anywhere and the cars will stop for you.
They’ll do that in Amsterdam too. Though that could be because you’re apt to be crossing the street backwards. And giggling.
But in Paris, cars always have the right of way. Even if the little green man says it’s okay to cross. Actually, in Paris, the little green man says “Okay – you can try – but –”
Florence is rather like Paris in its attitude toward pedestrians, because in Italy there are no sidewalks at all. Well, there are – but apparently they’re for cars.4/2/2012
Europe doesn’t have the junk food we do. I had a heck of a time finding Doritos.
Especially in, of all places, Amsterdam.3/25/2012
One of the shops on the Champs D’Elysees is a travel agency for Iran Air – “The Airline of the Islamic Republic of Iran”.
I’ll bet they’re not doing much business these days.
Given the tendency of Islamic pilots to fly into buildings.3/22/2012
Remember Jules Verne? The guy who went around the world in 80 days?
He didn’t have to deal with airports and train stations and ferries.3/14/2012
People in business class and first class need to feel important and special.
So they get to board planes ahead of the rest of us.
Along with the other infants and small children.3/9/2012
Half the world’s population is under twenty-five. The ones who aren’t undernourished are crack babies or fetal alcohol syndrome babies or AIDS babies or babies who for no good reason reached adolescence and graduated from high school but can’t spell ‘graduated’.
Makes you want to go right out and buy one of those ‘Children are Our Future’ posters.3/1/2012
A site chosen for a nuclear power plant is two miles from an active fault line, and the blueprints for the reactors got mixed up, so the earthquake fault supports were installed backwards.
Oh yeah-–we’re definitely ready for that anti-matter stuff.2/19/2012
If you’re so proud to be American, why do you wear a Canadian flag when you travel?2/11/2012
Many men express surprise and puzzlement upon hearing the words “I’m pregnant.”
Apparently many of us still haven’t connected having sex with having babies.2/5/2012
There have been over 1900 tests of nuclear weapons since World War II. You’d think we’d get it right after, say, the first couple hundred.
And we haven’t figured out yet what to do with the leftover stuff. We have enough radioactive waste to contaminate all of the Earth’s lakes and rivers – twice. Canada alone has enough to stack a six foot high pile along the TransCanada Highway from coast to coast. We don’t know what to do with the stuff. But we keep making it.
We tossed some of it into the ocean. But apparently it doesn’t just dissolve. We launched some of it into outer space. But now the insurance companies won’t cover our space shuttles for collision. We buried some of it in containers–that clearly won’t last as long as the stuff itself. And we used some of it to build schools and kitchen tables. Call it recycling. Our favourite way to get rid of it, however, seems to be sneaking into some other country’s back yard late at night, dumping it, and then running away.1/26/2012
We do heroic things to save whales caught in the ice with insufficient oxygen.
Otherwise, they would never get the chance to experience a long, slow death from PCB poisoning.1/18/2012
I used to run a support group for people in denial.
But no one ever came.1/12/2012
The team of genetic researchers that successfully cloned a sheep from a single adult cell named the sheep “Dolly”, after a certain large-breasted country singer, because the cell had come from a mammary gland.
Grown men, brilliant men, men on the cutting edge of science, men who become headline news, are quite likely still forcing farts at the dinner table and snickering about it.1/5/2012
In the spring of 1991, Fred Turner set out from Beaufort, South Carolina, to walk across America in order to prove that most people are good.
He got as far as the state line before he was robbed and pushed off a bridge.12/31/2011
Another reason we’re too stupid to visit…
We make toy guns, encouraging our kids to play at killing each other.12/24/2011
I don’t do Christmas.
As Zoe Fairburns points out, “The birth of a male who thinks he’s god isn’t such a rare event.”12/15/2011
The Training Center for Subversive Warfare teaches that “Torture must be kept clean, it must not be carried out in the presence of those with sadistic tendencies, it must be carried out by some responsible person, and above all, it must be humane.”
Otherwise, it would be, what, wrong?12/7/2011
The economic system used for decision-making by the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and national governments considers only cash-generating activities to be productive.
So Tendai, who lives in Zimbabwe and spends eighteen hours a day providing food, clothing, and shelter for herself and her children, is unproductive.
But Bubba, who sits on a nuclear missile for eight hours a day waiting for an order to push a button and destroy the planet – he’s productive.11/27/2011
Lieutenant General Daniel Graham once said ‘If a one megaton bomb was about to explode over this building and you had the good sense to start walking and get behind a lilac bush, that bomb would not hurt you.’He was later chosen to be the Senior Military Advisor to the President.
11/21/2011
Women, as a matter of routine, redden their lips, ornament their ears, push up their breasts, display their legs, and arch their feet.
Then they get pissed off if you see them as sex objects.
And they get really pissed off if you then tell they’re being irrational.11/14/2011
North Americans spend five billion dollars each year on special diets.
When it would be far cheaper to just move to Africa.11/2/2011
When AIDS became an epidemic, a certain company recalled the condoms not up to their new standards, claiming ‘a certain social responsibility’.
Apparently they were unaware that people had been using their condoms not only to prevent the transmission of disease, but also to prevent the transmission of sperm.10/28/2011
Being male is very much about being in control.
One has to wonder, therefore, why they hang their entire ‘manhood’ on some one thing over which they biologically have no voluntary control whatsoever.
(And they say they’re the logical ones.)10/19/2011
In Saudi Arabia, a woman must be accompanied by a man whenever she appears in public; otherwise, she is subject to torture.
Otherwise?10/14/2011
In our species, sexual desire seems to induce a state of temporary idiocy. Which is why it is not particularly encouraging that the male half of the species actually brags about being in a constant state of sexual readiness.10/7/2011
The U.S. continues to puzzle over the persistence of racism.
It also continues to call the official residence of the President “The White House.”10/5/2011
Some of our best and brightest philosophers have spent years trying to convince us that time doesn’t exist.10/1/2011
A sign on a community bulletin board saying “Learn to read English–Classes held Monday nights!” was posted by the Board of Education.9/26/2011
The Annual Turing Test Competition is an event in which a panel of experts asks questions from a remote location of a bunch of computers and a bunch of people. If they can’t tell that a computer is a computer, it passes the Turing Test – it is deemed able to think.
In a recent competition, some of the people failed the test.9/22/2011
A worker, no doubt somebody’s kid, accidentally dropped a socket wrench down a silo – it hit a missile causing an explosion that launched a nine megaton hydrogen bomb into a field several hundred yards away. Oops.
Because of naval mishaps, there are now nine nuclear reactors and fifty nuclear warheads on the ocean floor. Mishaps.
A nuclear bomb fell out of a U.S. bomber and landed in a Carolina swamp. It has not yet been found. Perhaps the localized proliferation of two-headed alligators should be considered a clue.
The U.S. dropped four plutonium bombs on Spain by mistake. I have to ask: four at once or on four separate occasions?9/18/2011
Many of us are too unimaginative–or too lazy–or both–to make our lives worthwhile. So we have kids. That’s our contribution to society. Genetic replications of our deficiency.
This inability to find fulfillment in the here and now is shared by those who set their sights instead on some heaven. No surprise, they’re the ones with the most kids.9/16/2011
In a recent experiment involving monkeys, 13% pulled a chain electroshocking an unrelated monkey whose agony was in plain view. In a similar experiment conducted with humans, 65% administered the shock, to the point of fatality.
Much to do was subsequently made about the ethics – of the experimenters.9/12/2011
We came up with the concept of ‘garbage’: stuff we don’t want here – so we put it there. All gone!9/10/2011
McMaster University initiated a research project to study the health effects of war.
Perhaps some genius hypothesized that it causes death.9/6/2011
Two bombs in a building were set to go off an hour apart, and the Mayor of the City said, “The second bomb was clearly designed to hurt the rescue workers coming to assist, so we’re dealing with a warped mind here.”
Um, wouldn’t the first bomb kind of establish that?8/31/2011
It costs more than $115,000 to create a job in crude oil production. It costs only $20,000 to create a job in solar energy production. We have an unemployment problem. We have an energy problem.
And we have a math problem.8/25/2011
Over half of our planet’s scientists and engineers work for the military.
The other half work for Pizza Pizza.8/21/2011
Men pride themselves on being objective, they champion the impersonal.
And yet they’ll do anything to win. To be, personally, number one.8/20/2011
Most men generally don’t think much of most women.
And yet, they continue to prohibit them from joining the military, where they could easily get killed.8/14/2011
We distinguish males from females. Before we do anything else. And before we do everything else. For example, ‘Mr. Smith’ really means ‘Penis-Person Smith’. The use of such sex-identifying prefixes is considered polite.
The use of ‘Penis-Person’ – or ‘Dickhead’ – is not. Apparently.8/9/2011
We’re still trying to get our whites whiter.8/4/2011
We sentenced Socrates to death and let a number of serial killers live.8/1/2011
We put tons of carcinogens into our food, water, and air.
And then spend millions of dollars looking for the cure for cancer.
Oh where oh where could it be.7/27/2011
If the history of the Earth were a year, life would not appear until March, multi-cellular organisms not until November. Dinosaurs would show up on December 13, and mammals on December 15. On December 31, we’d show up. By late evening, we’d have well-developed brains.
And then it’d take us 60 seconds to thoroughly trash the place.7/23/2011
Most of us still think there’s a god.
Well, okay, maybe that’s not really a problem.
We still think it’s an all-wise and all-good god.7/20/2011
Are there intelligent life forms out there in the universe?
Well yeah. No one’s visited us yet.7/16/2011
Have you noticed that more and more athletes are saying a quick prayer at the starting line?
A clear admission that you can’t possibly win without divine intervention, yeah, that’ll really psych out your opponents.7/4/2011
A contraceptive pill designed for men was rejected because of the negative side-effect of reducing their sex drive.
Given the reason for taking the pill, wouldn’t that have been a positive side-effect?
