As we come out of our food induced coma, we ask two things — did I really eat all that food and does Andrew really make up all those jokes he posts? The answers are Yes, and no. I figure I won’t need to eat again until next Tuesday and today’s one-liners were sent to me by a friend. This proves, that I don’t make this stuff up and there are other minds like mine out there. That might worry some of you …
Which side of a turkey has more feathers? The outside. Why did the banquet turkey come with a microphone? He was ready for a roast. Turkey pickup line: Is that your pop-up timer or are you just happy to see me? What do you get when you cross a turkey with a centipede? Drumsticks for everyone! Why did the turkey stand on stilts? Because nobody eat flamingoes for Thanksgiving dinner. I went out to the ranch to get some wild turkey for dinner, but they carded me. What did the turkey say when they bumped into the president? Pardon me. Turkeys always travel in luxury. Yeah, they ride the gravy train. What do you call a turkey the day after Thanksgiving? Lucky! My real estate agent is great to work with this time of year. They specialize in turn-key sales. What’s a turkey’s favorite month? Any month that’s not November! What sound does a turkey’s phone make? Wing-wing. What did the turkey say to the turkey hunter on Thanksgiving Day? Quack, Quack! Why did the farmer have to separate the chicken and the turkey? They sensed fowl play. What key has wings and can’t open a door? A tur-key. We let the turkey join our band in high school because he had his own drumsticks. I actually lost weight at Thanksgiving. I got in a fight with my family and got the stuffing knocked out of me. Turkeys have a different view of the tradition of pulling on the wishbone.
Well, it’s almost time for that great American holiday, Thanksgiving. If you want to over analyze it, it’s basically a pagan harvest festival co-opted by Christian Americans to have an excuse for recreational overeating. Yeah, yeah, it’s supposed to be about giving thanks and all that, but come on, it’s about eating foods that you don’t eat any other time of the year in larger quantities than medically advised and getting annoyed with those aunts and uncles you only see once a year. Here’s what I really know about the holiday:
On my way back home from last year’s Thanksgiving dinner I was pulled over by a police officer. I got a ticket for exceeding the feed limit …
Did you hear of the turkey who joined a rock and roll band? Yes, he had his own drum sticks.
My wife asked me to make cornbread. I told her that I thought that was a crummy job.
In my town we’re all about safety. We only let little pumpkin pies cross the street where there’s a crossing gourd.
I tell people to never tell secrets in the kitchen on Thanksgiving day … the corn has ears …
I just witnessed a turkey in a fight with and eagle … the turkey got the stuffing knocked out of him.
I’m writing a country song about thanksgiving, here’s one line I’m working on, “you turned my cranberries into blueberries the day you walked out on me …”
When my father was dating my mother he noticed my mother’s family love of pies. All pies, peach, apple, cherry — if it was in a pie crust they eat ate it. Pies were always in the house. Pies, plural, never just one. My father carefully observed the rules for cutting and eating pie at mother’s home. Here are those rules as father told it:
If there are two people, one pie is cut into four pieces and each person gets two pieces.
If there are three people, one pie is cut into three pieces and each person gets one piece.
If there are four people, the pie is cut into four pieces and each person gets one piece.
Last week I talked about our time in Madrid. This was the longest visit we had to any city on the cruise and was an add-on. It did highlight for me the difference in travel modes. When you stay for a few nights in one place you get a more in depth experience of the place. On the cruise ship, you stop for a day in a city and just get a quick look or a taste of the city. It’s a tradeoff – travel on the ship lets you visit more places and see more things while staying in once place lets you experience that place more deeply, but you don’t get to many places.
Having the Madrid add-on before joining the cruise ship let us have a little bit of both.
We had one full day and two nights in Madrid and then we were off to Barcelona. We took the high speed train. The cruise line had arranged all the transportation for us so in the morning we got on busses to the train station where one of the guides walked so fast that they lost half their group, which included us. Good thing there were two guides, and second guide had a more realistic idea of how fast a group of senior tourists could walk.
I should point out at this point, that we traveled on Viking Cruise Line and their catalog of cruises and styles of travel seems to appeal most to us older types. While there were people under 50 on the trip, most were over 50 and many over 70 so in many places there were conversations about mobility, stairs, cobblestones and exactly how far were we going to walk that day.
And the first question asked on most outings was, “Where will the restroom stops be?”
We were loaded into the first class compartment and were served a Spanish style breakfast that lacked bacon – crispy or otherwise. The interesting thing to me was how much Spain looked like California. Expect for the Spanish style farm buildings, it could have been a train ride from Sacramento to Los Angeles. It’s no wonder that the Spanish decided to colonize California.
In fact, a lot of the Mediterranean looked like California.
We got to our ship, the Viking Saturn, about mid-day and were told that we could access our cabins after 3:00 pm so we went up to the buffet to get something to eat and find a place to hang out until we could get into our cabin. After we’d been sitting a few minutes a waiter told us that there had been an announcement and that all cabins were now open. It was nice to get into the cabin earlier than we had expected.
Viking does things a bit different that other cruise lines. First their ocean ships are smaller than most cruise ships. The average cruise ship accommodates between 3,000 and 4,000 guests, while the Saturn only takes 930. This is nice as the ship doesn’t feel crowded and you got lots of attention from staff. The ship did have a lot of amenities like nice restaurants, a bar, swimming pool, theater, and even a nice place for afternoon tea. It didn’t have water slides or activities for kids.
There were two main choices for dining, the buffet and the restaurant (sit down full service) that you could just show up for. There were two speciality restaurants that you’d have to book a table at. More about that in a later post. Mostly we ate at the buffet on deck 7. We did eat in the full service restaurant once, but most times preferred to graze at the buffet. The food was great. There was wait staff in the buffet area to get drinks, clean up and generally help where requested.
The day after getting on the ship we had a walking tour of Barcelona. It wasn’t exactly the tour we wanted, but it was all that was available when we were able to pick our outings. Turns out that while the cruise boasts a lot of great, interesting tours, there is limited availability. You pick your tours a couple of months before the cruise, but it turns out that people in the higher price cabins get to pick first and us folks in the cheaper cabins get last choice, so Heather and I were disappointed that many of the good tours were unavailable to us.
The most interesting part of our Barcelona tour was seeing the architecture of Antoni Gaudi and getting a walk around Sagrada Famila, the basilica they’ve been building since 1882. Yes, it’s been under construction for over a hundred and forty years. Gaudi was appointed Architect Director in 1884 and worked on it until his death in 1926. It’s still under construction using Gaudi’s design concepts and is expected to be completed in 2026.
Here’s a picture:
The place is massive and there is no way to get it all in one picture. The other thing to mention is that the place is crowded. Barcelona is a crowded city, and the ships full of tourists just add to the congestion on the streets.
After our walk around the construction, we were bussed across town to a medieval section of town for a little sight seeing. I don’t want to sound like a cynic, but it looked a lot like all the other medieval walled cities we saw. I’ll show some pictures in another post.
We then were taken back to the ship where we had our dinner, listened to the port talk for the next day and went to bed. The port talk was an important part of each day. Normally given at 4:30 and recorded for those of us still out on tour to view in our staterooms later. The cruise director gave all kinds of information for the next day’s activities. Things like weather, history of the area, interesting facts, and notes about crime in the area (like pickpockets, scams, etc). Then the tour manager would go through all the tours for the next day with times of departure, the physical difficultly of the tour, what to expect, any special things happening like shuttle busses to port and so on. We always listened to these as they often gave info not in the printed documents we had.
It didn’t take long to fall into a daily rhythm of activity – breakfast, tour, port talk, dinner, and collapse into bed while the ship cruised to the destination.
Our next stop was Marseille, which will be the subject of my next post.
While I like one liners, I do share my father’s taste for the old fashion shaggy dog story. Basically a one liner joke tacked on to the end of a very long story. The shaggy dog story has fallen out of fashion in our rush, rush world where the average attention span in 10 seconds, but I thought I’d change things up a bit with a few one-liners followed by a shaggy dog story (a short one, not the 20 minute version father told). and yes, the original shaggy dog story was about a shaggy dog …
In my youth, I spent a lot of time and energy in my search for the meaning of life. I often asked that question of teachers, preachers, and random adults. I learned a lot. Here’s what I’ve learned:
The best way to kill a ChatGPT AI bot is to ask it, what is the meaning of life?
I started writing a joke about life but then found it had no meaning.
Did you know that Kierkegaard thought omelettes gave meaning to life? Yes, because they’re eggs essential.
I was in Germany standing outside a famous baroque composer’s house thinking about the meaning of life. It’s called thinking outside the Bach’s.
I found it!!! The meaning of life … on page 932 in the dictionary between lie and lifeboat.
Once there was a man who really wanted to know the true meaning of life. He studied every book he could find in his American midwestern home town. He asked teachers, doctors, clergy, philosophers and all the great thinkers he could find. None could answer his question to his satisfaction.
One day the man heard of a wise guru living high the Himalayas who know the true meaning of life. The only way to reach the guru was to climb the mountain to the guru’s cave. So the man decided he needed to speak with this wiseman.
Now the man wasn’t rich so he had to sell all he owned to get enough money to make the journey. Before he went he took mountain climbing lessons, bought outdoor gear, ropes, packs, good shoes … everything he’d need to climb to the guru’s cave. But despite all the hardship, the man knew he had to ask his question of the guru.
Well, it’d didn’t go well. When he landed in India he discovered that the airline had lost half his climbing gear, which he had to replace, further depleting his few resources. Then on the train journey north to the Himalayan village where he’d start hiking out of, the train derailed and the man was badly injured. After many weeks recovering from a broken leg the man again had to buy more equipment as much of what he was traveling with was lost or damaged in the train wreck.
Finally the man arrived in the village and learned from the locals how to get to the guru’s cave. They warned him that it was a dangerous journey and that it would be best to wait a few months until there was better weather in the area. The man couldn’t wait. He was running out of money and was becoming more impatient to get his answer.
So one cloudy, wind morning the man set out to climb the mountain. It didn’t go well. A thunderstorm soaked him to the bone, a strong wind blew away his pack with all his food, his stove refused to light and then in the darkness of the storm he got lost. He wandered lost for days in the cold and wet.
Just when all seem lost and the man was near death due to hypothermia and lack of food, he saw a small light on the mountain. At last he found it, the guru’s cave. He entered and the guru gave him a blanket, food, water and let him rest by a warm fire. Then the man asked his question, “Guru what is the meaning of life?”
The guru considered the man for a moment and then said, “Life is a fountain.”
“What!?!” replied the man, “I traveled thousands of miles, was almost killed and you tell me life is a fountain!!!”
The guru looked puzzled and answered, “What? Do you mean life isn’t a fountain?”
Andrew's View of the Week 