What's In A Name?

I can't say I understand Muslim extremists who threaten death to all who disrespect their holy prophet Mohammad, but I do understand their objection to that disrespect.
     That's why I can't comprehend why so many Muslims are named Mohammad.  Wouldn't naming an unworthy human Mohammad be the most supreme of insults to said prophet?
     To be honest, I don't care for anybody naming their child after any particular deity.  I find that incredibly offensive.  Not to mention a burden.  When you name your son Jesus, for example, you've doomed him to failure.  No matter his accomplishments, he'll always be a far second to his namesake.
     Myself, I've given each of my children the first name of "Doctor."  That way they can set up a medical practice without the costly inconvenience of actually going to medical school.  They all specialize in "referrals."  For example, when a patient comes in with a medical problem, they will refer them to an actual physician who specializes in that particular condition.
     A patient may come in and tell my son:  "Doctor, my throat hurts."  My son will then shine a light down their gullet and take a look.  Then he'll order his RN to take a culture, poke and prod them a bit, and maybe take some blood or urine for good measure.
     Anything to pile on the charges.
     In the meantime, my son will tell the patient:  "I want you to go see Dr. Bombay.  He's the best in the business." 
     If Doctor Bombay cures my son's patient, it's my son who gets all the glory.  Besides the satisfaction of helping another human being, my child also benefits by being paid twice.  Once by the patient in the initial visit, and again in the form of a medical kickback from the real doctor. 
     However, if Doctor Bombay doesn't cure the patient, the patient will blame Doctor Bombay and come right back to my son for another referral and another office charge.
     Ka-ching! 
     Of course, if a patient comes in with an emergency then my son will immediately send them to the hospital ER just down the street, sometimes even driving them there himself...  for an extra fee, of course. 
     Once again, if the hospital saves their life, my child is the hero.  If not, then my child simply voids their bill.  This makes him seem caring and compassionate, thus avoiding any potential lawsuits.
     It also makes for a nice, fat deduction on his income taxes.
     But I digress from my main point, which was:  I find it surprising that Al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, or radical Islam don't have a fatwa placed upon Muslims named Mohammad, or upon the parents who had the audacity to name their children Mohammad.
     How can they tolerate such an insult to their holy prophet?
 
 

Fifty Shades of Funny

jimduchene.BlogSpot.com

RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com

@JimDuchene

 

The Trash Bag Bandit (Part Two)

I've seen the video.
     I know what it looks like, but, my friends, looks can be deceiving.  My cousin, Naomi, did not try to rob that jewelry store.  I don't care what it looks like on YouTube. 
     I'm sure she was just walking along, minding her own business, when her woman's intuition went off.  Accolades and ticker-tape parades are not her style, so she must have wanted to hide her identity.  Luckily, she and her companion just happened to have a black plastic bag with them.  They were using it to pick up litter.  She always wanted to make sure the Earth was clean and healthy.  For you.  For your children.  But not for your children's children.  She does not believe that children should be having sex.
     Let's look at the facts:  she lives right across the street from the jewelry store.  What person in their right mind would commit a crime so close to their home?  It doesn't make sense, right? 
     I'm sure she was just chipping a few golf balls, OJ-style, casually passing time until she had to leave to catch a flight.  She doesn't know how that bloody glove got on her property.  It must have been planted there.
     Hmmm...  what's Mark Fuhrman been up to these days?
     She told her companion to remain outside.  He did so, because she's always had that sense of authority about her.  As she entered the store I can almost hear her say:  "I'm here to kick ass or to chew bubblegum...  and I'm all out of bubblegum.  Everybody OUT!" 
     As everybody ran out of the store, like the cowards they were, I'm sure that whoever was going to commit the real robbery ran out with them.  Thus, her alibi was gone, like Lindsay Lohan's sobriety on a Saturday night. 
     Besides herself, there were only two people left in the store, and they misread the situation completely.  They saw a knife in Naomi's hand, but didn't know that she only had it because she was on her way to a pumpkin-carving contest for charity. 
     Naomi could probably sense that there was still danger in the air, but what?  What could it be? 
     A bomb!
     That had to be it.  She had only minutes.  Could she find the IED and defuse it in time?
     "You!" she yelled, fearing for the store clerk's life.  "Get out!"
     "What do you want?" the clerk cried out.
     "Everything!" my cousin answered.
     And by everything she meant that she wanted no child left behind.  Peace between the Jews and the Palestinians.  The Democrats to remain in power.
     And that's when she was unceremoniously tackled by the second person in the store, a lowly customer.  Naomi was stopped before she could find the bomb or discover the true villain.  "Where's the bomb?" you ask.  Obviously someone must have taken it. 
     Hmmm...  what's Mark Fuhrman been up to these days?

Fifty Shades of Funny

jimduchene.blogspot.com

RaisingMyFather.blogspot.com

@JimDuchene

 

The Trash Bag Bandit (Part One)

Yes, I must admit...  we are related.
     YouTube's infamous Trash Bag Bandit and I are cousins. 
     I know the attempted robbery of a jewelry store seems poorly thought out, and the video of the crime appears comical, but there are a few things that the general public doesn't know.
     First off, let's talk about the wheelchair that Naomi, the Trash-Bag Bandit, and Luis, her partner-in-crime, were going to make their escape in.  Everybody's been laughing at the idea of using a wheelchair as a getaway vehicle, but you wouldn't laugh if you knew that the wheelchair in question has been modified.  It can do zero to sixty in under sixty seconds, and, once that turbo kicks in, it's capable of warp speed.  It's the wheelchair that made the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs.
     The kitchen knife she welded to threaten the jewelry store employees and customers was no ordinary kitchen knife.  It was a Ginsu knife with a titanium-tipped blade.  Capable of cutting through an aluminum can, and then gently slicing a tomato into sections so thin a Hollywood starlet would be jealous.
     But wait!
     That Ginsu knife also came with a paring knife that could sever your carotid artery like it was tissue paper.  Naomi was an expert knife-thrower.  A skill she picked up in her years as a Navy Seal.  She can throw a knife into the eye of a mosquito twenty paces.  It's true!  I've seen her do it.  That lady with the taser is lucky she didn't find her body separated from her head OJ-style.  Naomi could have done it, but she chose to spare that laser-wielding lady's life.
     I know that her using a black plastic trash bag for a disguise makes the couple look so poor that they couldn't afford a decent ski mask, but what the public doesn't understand is that it's still summer.  Ski masks are hard to find.  And, again, what the public can't see in that video is that the trash bag she used was no common trash receptacle.  It was imported from Europe.  Hand-stitched from the finest plastic in all of Italy by a master tailor.
     As for that gentleman who wrestled her to the ground, my cousin, at any time, could have smashed the heel of her hand against his nose, slamming the cartilage into his brain, killing him instantly.
     But she chose to spare his life.
     And, by the way, who is that guy, and why did he want to remain anonymous?  Maybe he was the actual criminal committing the crime.  Maybe he was interrupted in his dastardly deed by my cousin, who only went into that store for some early trick-or-treating.
     I'm just speculating, but this opens up a whole new can of worms.
 
 

Fifty Shades of Funny

jimduchene.blogspot.com

RaisingMyFather.blogspot.com

@JimDuchene

 

A Dirty Little Secret (Part Three)

With the recent spat of movie-lovers showing up to The Dark Knight Rises armed to the teeth, the mass shooting at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, and another mass shooting in an Alabama strip-club*...  I'm receiving a lot of emails along the lines of, "Okay, maybe you have a point, but you still shouldn't be making fun of the size of a mass murderer's penis." 
     I know, I know.  I might have hurt James Holmes' feelings, and we now live in a society where we don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, because, after all, words and feelings are more important than actions.
     That's why it didn't surprise me when Dan Cathy, the Head Clucker of Chick-fil-A, got into trouble by simply answering a question he was asked.  Even though he and his company don't discriminate against the gay community, the gay community was outraged--OUTRAGED, I tell you--by his putting into words his belief that marriage is a sacred union between a man and a woman who no longer wants to have sex with you. 
     As a gay urban warrior straight outta Compton I was offended--OFFENDED, I tell you--by what Chick-fil-A's chicken-in-chief had to say about gay marriage.  So offended that I've decided to boycott.  However, I looove their chicken sandwich, so I'm boycotting vegetables instead.** 
     Personally, I don't know what all the hoopla is about.  The dirty little secret is that there already IS gay marriage.  And gay churches, too.  What the gay community should be fighting for is the hearts and minds of our straight brethren.  Instead of making them our enemies, we should make them dinner.  The gay community should fight for the legal rights that come along with marriage, and not marriage itself. 
     Actually, to me, even that's short-sighted.  I've always felt the gay community should come up with something better than traditional marriage.  Why are we so determined to be included in something that doesn't want to include us?  Like the great comedian Groucho Marx sort of said, "I wouldn't want to join a club that would have me as a member.  Also, I am dead."
     I solved my own personal conundrum by adopting my significant other.  This way, he's under my health insurance and the incest aspect of our relationship has really added heat in the bedroom.  But, unfortunately, small people with small minds will always get small results.  For example...
     Adam Smith, the former chief financial officer of Vante, should have shown such ingenuity.  Instead, like former congressman Anthony Weiner, he decided to film himself doing something embarrassing for the benefit of a young woman, and now finds himself without a job. 
     Smith was forced to resign after making a video of himself verbally ambushing a young Chick-fil-A drive-through employee, even though she told him that she was uncomfortable being filmed.  Smith recorded their encounter anyway, and uploaded it to YouTube.  This caused embarrassment to the company he worked for, and, ironically, Smith then learned the importance of the free speech that he wished to deny Dan Cathy. 
     Smith's video, however, was filled with personal disclaimers.
     "I don't know how you live with yourself and work here," he says to the employee, before calling himself, "totally heterosexual," and then insisting, "if you don't believe me I'll have sex with you here, right now." 
     The employee declined, and Smith had to content himself with eating a corn dog.  There's "not a gay in me," he managed to say, "just a cucumber.  It's not what you think, I accidentally sat down on it.  SIX times!" 
     Finishing the corn dog, he peeled a banana and began to enthusiastically gobble it down. 
     "I just can't stand the hate," he continued.
     The banana gone, he reached into the man-bag on his lap and pulled out a hot dog. 
     "I'm a nice guy, by the way."
     Gobble, gobble.
     In a different part of the country there was a different kind of funny business going on.  California Governor Jerry Brown's administration announced that $119 million in untapped money was found in a sweeping audit of state accounts, bringing to more than $286.5 million the sum lawmakers were unaware of as they repeatedly cut government services.
     "I don't know what that money was doing in my freezer," Governor Brown said.  "Someone must have put it there by mistake."
     Meanwhile, down in Mexico, experts have discovered that ancient Mayas may have used chocolate as a spice.  The archaeologists also believe that they may have also breathed air and worn clothes as clothing.  Also in Mexico, the humble taco is the subject of two new books.  One by Jeffrey M. Pilchen, "Planet Taco," and the other by Gustavo Arellano, "Taco USA." 
     Apparently the drug cartel wars and the continuing abductions and murders of hundreds of Mexican women are a thing of the past, and there's nothing else to write about.
     How does this all tie in?  I guess it doesn't.  I'm just sitting here, watching the Olympics on NBC (who have done a fine job, by the way***), and I guess I got distracted. 
     By the way, isn't the male diving competition the happiest of sports at the Olympics?  The divers all wear barely-there bikini bottoms, and, after they complete their dives, they pile into a hot jacuzzi, and the camera discretely cuts away from the manly frolicking that probably ensues.  An urban warrior can dream, can't he?  Speaking of dreams...
     I once had Olympic aspirations.  My dream was to compete in the winter Olympics in the luge.  I figured any sport a mannequin or dead body could do, I was sure to excel at.  All you're really doing is laying down stiff as a board.  Just like my ex-wives. 
     But, sadly, Olympic Gold was not in the cards, otherwise I'd be partying at Hugh Hefner's Playboy Mansion with a bevy of Playboy Playmates, instead of writing this blog.
     OTHERWISE, I tell you!
 
 

Fifty Shades of Funny

jimduchene.blogspot.com

RaisingMyFather.blogspot.com

@JimDuchene

    

*I refuse to make the joke that the strip club's patrons were coming and going at the same time. It's beneath me.

**Since I wrote this column, I've been threatened by those in the straight community who feel the need to defend, AND be offended for, those in the gay community (who, incidentally, could not care less), so I've had to rethink my whole boycott thingie.  I promise--PROMISE, I tell you--not to eat at Chick-fil-A ever again.

     Unless I'm hungry.

***And I'm not saying that because they paid me.

 

A Broken Little Man (Part Two)

Wow!  What a response.
     Not since The Church Of Oz (7-2-12), where I recommended Downtown El Paso be given to the gay community to keep them busy when they're not otherwise occupied asking devout Christians their opinion on gay marriage, have I received such a gaggle of harshly worded e-mails.  In the case of The Church Of Oz, it was the straight community who were offended...  on behalf of the gays!  Apparently, gay people are unable to think or speak up for themselves. 
     My gay readers, however, got the joke.
     In the case of A Pathetic Little Nobody (7-28-12), the media stepped up to, but didn't quite cross, the line of defending Aurora, Colorado's--and how I hate to use this word--alleged mass shooter, James Holmes.  The e-mails all went along the lines of:  "James Holmes is a disturbed individual.  You should feel sorry for him, and not be making fun of the size of his penis.  Please take me off your mailing list." 
     But, if there's one thing I've learned from James Holmes, it's that there's no such thing as bad press.  TWELVE dead, FIFTY-TWO wounded, ORANGE hair...  and have you seen the number of women who find Holmes sexy?  The worst thing I can say I've done is that I voted for Dukakis.  Not quite the chick magnet.
     "You should be ashamed of yourself," wrote one reader in Kaka, Arizona.  "And, believe me, living in a town called 'Kaka,' I know all about being ashamed."

     While the majority of the responses have been positive, it's been the negative responses that have made me think long and hard about what I wrote.  Was I too harsh?  Did I cross the line?  Should I get this rash checked? 
     Deciding what to do took the hardest twenty seconds of my life, but I was finally able to distill it down to this:  The media has glorified this pathetic excuse of a mass shooter, and experts agree that this glorification of losers inspires copy-cats (How many other Jokers have there already been?).  The most my story will inspire is for someone to turn off their computer and wonder what the Hell they're doing with their life. 
     You tell me, what's more offensive?

     "Never in my life have I read anything so vulgar, so poorly written, so boring," wrote E.L. James, while she was on vacation in Napoopoo, Hawaii.  "But enough about my novel Fifty Shades of Grey."

     Like the gay community, the regular people understood my point.  They were quick to write that they were tired of heartless killers being portrayed as tortured souls.  They were tired of these human monsters becoming celebrities by virtue of a single horrifyingly evil act.  They were tired of Justin Bieber constantly slapping his male employees on the face, but I don't know what that had to do with anything. 

     Dick Cheney was kind enough to send me a very nice note. 
     "You make me sick!" the former vice-president wrote from Fort Dick, California.  Which, I believe, hangs somewhere south of San Francisco.  "If I was the man I was just ten years ago, I'd take you hunting and shoot you in the face!"

     The entire reporting staff from the El Paso Times despised my story so much they took up a collection to hire a hit man,* but hired Quincy Jones by mistake.
     "I've got an album coming out in September," he told them, just before they raised the price of their newspaper again.

     Not everyone rejected me or detested my writing.
     "Great job," wrote James Frey, author of A Thousand Little Pieces.
     "Good, honest journalism," wrote Steven Glass.
     "Yeah, you should get that rash checked," wrote Gore Vidal.  His having recently died, I don't know how he found out I have a rash.

     But, in the end, it's not the positive responses that I'll think about when I go to sleep at night.  When the lights are off, and my head is on the pillow, I'll be thinking about all the death threats I've received, and wonder if that sound I heard was really just the house settling.  I'll also be going over in my mind all the insults and curses and poisonous exclamations of venom.
     For example:  "I HATE YOU!  I HATE YOU!  I HATE YOU!"
     That was from my mom.
 
 


Fifty Shades of Funny
jimduchene.blogspot.com
RaisingMyFather.blogspot.com
@JimDuchene
 

*If you're in the Gay Mafia, is being "whacked" a good thing?