Revisiting Randy the Guinea Pig Ten Years Later
Laughing Stalk by Erik Deckers
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4d ago
In June 2014, a rather impressive male impregnated 100 females in just a few short weeks. Randy the guinea pig was a resident at Hatton Country World in Warwickshire, England when he somehow found his way into a females-only pen filled with 100 female guinea pigs. He lived there undetected for a few weeks until Hatton staff discovered that all 100 female guinea pigs were pregnant. And in the corner, wearing a smug grin was one very exhausted male guinea pig chugging a Gatorade. I had a chance to catch up with Randy, a few weeks before the ten-year anniversary of his astounding —  some ..read more
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Will AI Replace Husbands? One Artist Says Yes
Laughing Stalk by Erik Deckers
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1w ago
When the automotive industry first introduced robots to their factories, factory workers yelled about robots taking their jobs.  And when artificial intelligence exploded onto the scene a year ago — after several years of operating without notice — creative professionals screamed about robots taking their jobs. Now a Spanish artist living in the Netherlands, Alicia Framis, wants to marry an AI hologram and no one is saying a word. Of course, there are people who complain that robots are taking their jobs, but what about taking their relationships? Some people are already in relationshi ..read more
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I'm a Bad Hoosier: I Don't Grow Tomatoes
Laughing Stalk by Erik Deckers
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2w ago
One of my great shames as a Hoosier is that I have never had a vegetable garden of my own. We had one every year when I was growing up in the '70s and '80s, but I have fallen short as an adult. Nearly every family in my neighborhood had a backyard garden filled with tomatoes, green beans, and squash. One year, my parents even planted a few stalks of corn. Every spring, we dreamed of eating garden-fresh tomatoes as big as a baby's head and barrels of green beans. We told stories about tomato sandwiches of years past and zucchinis you could carve into a canoe. But by the middle of August, we w ..read more
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Experts Need a Past Littered With Mistakes
Laughing Stalk by Erik Deckers
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3w ago
When it comes to experts who teach us how to improve our lives, they should have real-world experience in the things they're teaching us. The guy teaching your kid how to hit a baseball needs to be a former player who could turn on a 90-mph sinker and send it into the left-field bleachers.  Your marriage counselor should be happily married. And your financial advisor had certainly better be rich. These people not only need a lot of knowledge, they need a wide variety of experiences with plenty of screwups and recoveries. They should have a long trail of mistakes behind them because th ..read more
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It Takes Dark Magic to Fix Your Wifi
Laughing Stalk by Erik Deckers
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1M ago
You almost didn't get this column this week. That would have been a shame because this is my 1,500th newspaper column. One thousand and five hundred weeks ago, I started writing a newspaper humor column, and my streak was nearly broken by a faulty computer. This morning, my computer wouldn't connect to the wifi. Not a problem; that happens once in a while, but it's easy to fix. Usually. I did everything you're supposed to: Turn your computer's wifi off and on. Reboot your router. Swear at the cable company. Make sure your bill is paid. Make sure there's not an outage. Swear some more. Reboo ..read more
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Shakespeare Invented "All of a Sudden"
Laughing Stalk by Erik Deckers
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1M ago
Most people don't realize a lot of words and phrases we use come from William Shakespeare. According to the nerds who study this sort of thing, Shakespeare created 1,700 new words compared to the 265 that Charles Dickens invented. Some of the words ol' Bill just outright invented, others he created just by adding a prefix or suffix to an existing word. Many of them never caught on, but hundreds more still live on, and we use them today in the 21st century. For example, Shakespeare was the first to use the word "alligator" in Romeo and Juliet when Romeo said, "And in his needy shop a tortoise ..read more
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Love Letters and Mixtapes: What Happened to Romance?
Laughing Stalk by Erik Deckers
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1M ago
"Hey, Kid, do you have any love letters?" asked my friend Karl. Why, are you lonely? I asked. Do you want me to write you a mash note? "Don't flatter yourself. They're not for me," he said. Karl and I were at First Editions, our favorite literary-themed bar, for lunch — cheeseburgers and Cokes, because my wife and his daughter weren't around. But if they ask, we had salads and mineral water. Do you mean real love letters? Like the notes we passed around in grade school? I said with a laugh. I remember those things. God, we were so dumb back then. "No, not those. I mean—" I remember tryi ..read more
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Canoeing Down the River IKEA
Laughing Stalk by Erik Deckers
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2M ago
Which has strained more relationships, canoeing or IKEA? That's a tough one because both of them will cause at least one party to consider beating the other with a canoe paddle or three-seat sofa. No one who has a successful marriage has ever both visited IKEA and taken a day-long canoe trip. My wife and I recently celebrated our 30-year anniversary, and when someone asked me what our secret was, I said, "We went to IKEA once, but we've never gone canoeing." Visiting IKEA starts out great. Everyone is full of good intentions and looking forward to the day. You're just there to buy a new c ..read more
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No-Fun Feds Tell States 'No More Humor'
Laughing Stalk by Erik Deckers
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2M ago
Writing jokes is hard. I should know: I've spent the last 15 years writing good jokes for this newspaper column, which I've had for 28 years. Being able to write jokes is a talent that not many people have. Just ask "That '90s Show." Or look at the electronic highway signs the next time you're out driving. Except those things will become a thing of the past. That's because the U.S. Federal Highway Administration (FHA) hates jokes or having fun of any kind. They're the Grinch of freeway frivolities. The Tipper Gore of highway humor. If the FHA was in a movie, they'd be the guy who wants to ..read more
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Wayne State University Brings Back Forgotten Words
Laughing Stalk by Erik Deckers
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2M ago
Michigan has a way with words.  For the last 19 years, I have written about Lake State Superior University's List of Words Banished for Misuse, Overuse, and General Uselessness. Last week, I wrote about how LSSU wants to banish ten problem words like "cringe-worthy" and "rizz." And if that's the only language-related news coming out of Michigan, you'd be justified in thinking that Michigan is a linguistic poopy-pants. Except, not all of Michigan is a crotchety old linguist shouting at clouds. While LSSU (go Lakers) wants to banish useless words, Wayne State University (go Warriors) wan ..read more
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