Fishlike Men Are Not Scary, She Wrote -- The Colonel Carries On #46

By Danish O'Pear and Robert "Ratty" Rhadamanthus

As midsummer weather refuses to wane, the mind decomposes. You are reading the result.

You may be able to Google some of the following clickbait. No guarantees.

The secret Jews of The Hobbit

Is there such a thing as a "neutral" American accent?

How big is a fart?

Is light pollution hiding the stars and hurting our souls?

Bad lip reading at the Democratic National Convention.

Man trying to impress date gets stuck between two buildings.

This five-second video could be the start of a new religion.

Has the KFC secret chicken recipe been revealed?

Hundreds of drunk Americans wash ashore in Canada because of strong winds.

Why do we hate certain words?

This dog just wants to help.

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I like clickbait -- reading it, not clicking it. I have been conditioned to associate actually clicking on clickbait with disappointment as bitter as the blood of a goat that's been eating copper pennies for a year. Don't you hate that? Me, too.

If you're lucky, it's as good as being nimble:

Being born on third base is as good as hitting a triple: useless by itself.

Being born with a silver spoon in your mouth is God's way of giving you the wherewithal to tip the doctor who delivered you.

"Hi, Doc! Thanks for delivering me! Here's a silver spoon! Keep the change! You will now forget that you heard me talk, and you will find the spoon in your pocket later and wonder how it got there. Capeesh? Now when I start screaming you will wake up refreshed and feeling half your age. Waaaaaaaaah!"

“Tom Swift and the Mantle of Anger”

The sense of a casual, zonked-out acceptance of creeping authoritarianism grows.

It's poor form to end an argument by bringing up Hitler and the Nazis. What’s even worse is doing it when you're in the process of losing the argument on the merits.

It's like overthrowing the chessboard when you're losing and then insisting that your opponent did it because he was on the verge of losing to you.

"To be free, you need deep roots."

“Memories are the fuel some people burn to stay alive.” --Haruki Murakami

"A lot isn’t always enough."

"I sold my vacuum cleaner. It was just gathering dust." --Steven Wright

"Everybody wants to be the Rebel Alliance. Nobody wants to the the Galactic Empire." --Jim Geraghty

"Every candidate is now selling a new, different, fanciful reality, without any trade-offs, compromises, costs or consequences." --Id.

Ukrainian woes: Crimea River.

Looting: "undocumented shopping."

Stupidity kills, just too slowly.

Californians bring seriousness to subjects that don't deserve it. Like blowing bubbles. --Calvin Trillin (?)

Sayings: "Daft as a brush." "Daft as a wagon horse." I approve.

"He's so nonviolent he's against opposable thumbs." (Breaks them off every chance he gets?)

Pokemon Go started as a plot to Preoccupy Wall Street. The unintended consequence is that Pokemon have been hunted to extinction.

I wish they would hurry up and discover the new Ninth Planet, so I can figure out what My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine of.

I don't care whether it's a gas bag, a rock ball, or some combination, because I won't be going there unless there are dramatic developments in the Pokemon Go world.

A child's breakup with an imaginary friend can be sad. "I like you, just not the way you like me."

"Ostracize" means “avoid, blackball, blacklist, cold shoulder, embarrass, exclude, ignore, hold (or keep) at arm's length, reject, shun, snub, spurn, turn one's back on.” It doesn't mean "blend to a smooth consistency."

Buyer’s remorse: buyer again taps out the dots and dashes.

Vladimir Putin speaks fluent German, but uses an interpreter when speaking with a Ukrainian. Can’t figure out if there’s irony there or not.

Not too bright: “a slice of cheddar short of an cheese-egger”; “took a gap year and never came back.”

Singing with just ukelele accompaniment is like delivering the skeleton of the song with nothing on it. --Amanda Palmer

When Bertie asked Jeeves to agree with something inaccurate, Jeeves was too polite to contradict him. His response was "Up to a point, sir."

Does the Japanese version of the witness's oath differ in any shade of nuance from the Anglo-Saxon one? "I will tell the truth, adding nothing and subtracting nothing."

For a while I thought the Japanese version didn't require "the whole truth," but that requires deciding whether "the truth" is less than "the whole truth," and that's too deep for humid August.

"I want the truth."

"You can't handle the truth."

"Maybe I can't handle the whole truth, but I can handle the truth."