Monday, 21 May 2012

Beach fashion

Mrsgunka has many friends with a fine sense of humour and receives countless hilarious e-mails. I'm glad our Mrsgunka is quick to click the forward button so I can share them with you! Thank you, MrsG.

When I was young, in the 1950's, 60's & 70's, the bathing suit for the mature figure was boned, trussed and reinforced, not so much sewn as engineered. They were built to hold back and uplift, and they did a good job. 


Today's stretch fabrics are designed for the prepubescent girl with a figure carved from a potato chip.

The mature woman has a choice, she can either go up front to the maternity department and try on a floral suit with a skirt, coming away looking like a hippopotamus that escaped from Disney's Fantasia, or she can wander around every run-of-the-mill department store trying to make a sensible choice from what amounts to a designer range of fluorescent rubber bands.


What choice did I have? I wandered around, made my sensible choice and entered the chamber of horrors known as the fitting room. The first thing I noticed was the extraordinary tensile strength of the stretch material. The Lycra used in bathing costumes was developed, I believe, by NASA to launch small rockets from a slingshot, which gives the added bonus that if you manage to actually lever yourself into one, you would be protected from shark attacks. Any shark taking a swipe at your passing midriff would immediately suffer whiplash.

I fought my way into the bathing suit, but as I twanged the shoulder strap in place I gasped in horror, my boobs had disappeared!

Eventually, I found one boob cowering under my left armpit. It took a while to find the other. At last I located it flattened beside my seventh rib.

The problem is that modern bathing suits have no bra cups. The mature woman is now meant to wear her boobs spread across her chest like a speed bump. I realigned my speed bump and lurched toward the mirror to take a full view assessment.

The bathing suit fit all right, but unfortunately it only fitted those bits of me willing to stay inside it. The rest of me oozed out rebelliously from top, bottom and sides. I looked like a lump of Playdoh wearing undersized cling wrap.

As I tried to work out where all those extra bits had come from, the prepubescent sales girl popped her head through the curtain, "Oh, there you are," she said, admiring the bathing suit.

I replied that I wasn't so sure and asked what else she had to show me. I tried on a cream crinkled one that made me look like a lump of masking tape, and a floral two-piece that gave the appearance of an oversized napkin in a serving ring.

I struggled into a pair of leopard-skin bathers with ragged frills and came out looking like Tarzan's Jane, pregnant with triplets and having a rough day.

I tried on a black number with a midriff fringe and looked like a jellyfish in mourning.


I tried on a bright pink pair with such a high cut leg I thought I would have to wax my eyebrows to wear them.


Finally, I found a suit that fit, it was a two-piece affair with a shorts-style bottom and a loose blouse-type top. It was cheap, comfortable, and bulge-friendly, so I bought it. My ridiculous search had a successful outcome, I figured.

When I got it home, I found a label that read, "Material might become transparent in water."

So, if you happen to be on the beach or near any other body of water this year and I'm there too, I'll be the one in cut-off jeans and a T-shirt!

Sunday, 20 May 2012

A case of what???

Here's a short and sweet, courtesy of View_From_Here:


Mother Superior called all the nuns together and said to them, 'I must tell you all something. We have a case of gonorrhea in the convent.'

'Thank God,' said an elderly nun at the back. 'I'm so tired of chardonnay.'


Thank you, View.

Saturday, 19 May 2012

Sightseeing in the Correze

Well, my sister left for Paris this morning and will fly back to Miami tomorrow. The house feels very empty and quiet, with the cats looking at us with "question mark" faces.

I'm very lucky to have such a wonderful sister and we'll miss her very much.

The weather was very nice, apart from one dismal rainy day, so it was quite good for sightseeing. Dora (don't call her the explorer!) took some very nice photos. Living in this part of France is like living in a postcard, we're very, very fortunate!

Tulle

Tulle

Treignac

Treignac

Treignac

Treignac

Treignac

Collonges-la-Rouge

Collonges-la-Rouge

Meyssac

Le Lonzac

Le Lonzac

Arnac-Pompadour

Arnac-Pompadour

Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne

Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne

Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne

Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne

Lestards

Lestards

Monday, 14 May 2012

Old slogans with a new meaning

View_From_Here sent me this hilarious collection of "new condoms."

If advertisers took the slogans from famous brands and applied them to condom packages this is what they would look like. Each slogan gets a whole new meaning... 
















Thank you, View.

Sunday, 13 May 2012

Well, isn't that precious?

Here's a lovely joke, courtesy of Mrsgunka:

Two ladies happened to start up a conversation during an endless wait in the LAX airport. The first lady was an arrogant California woman married to a wealthy man. The second was a well mannered, elderly woman from the South.

When the conversation centered on whether they had any children, the California woman started by saying, "When my first child was born, my husband built a beautiful mansion for me."


The lady from the South commented, "Well, isn't that precious?"

The first woman continued, "When my second child was born, my husband bought me a beautiful Mercedes-Benz."


Again, the lady from the South commented, "Well, isn't that precious?"

The first woman continued boasting, "Then, when my third child was born, my husband bought me this exquisite diamond bracelet."


Yet again, the Southern lady commented, "Well, isn't that precious?"

The first woman then asked her companion, "What did your husband buy for you when you had your first child?"

"My husband sent me to charm school," declared the Southern lady.


"Charm school?" the first woman cried, "Oh, my God! What on earth for?"

The Southern lady responded, "Well, for example, instead of saying 'Who gives a shit?' I learned to say, 'Well, isn't that precious'?"

Thank you, Mrsgunka.

Thursday, 10 May 2012

Eating in Paris

Yay! I'm back from Paris, with my sister. The whole idea was to meet her there and come back together because last time she had to stay a day and a night in Paris before catching the train and had to do everything alone, including eating, not the nicest thing in the world. Some of our plans were revised. We decided that we had already seen the sites and been to all the museums on several previous occasions, so we focused on being silly together and having a gastronomic experience. We went to the Polidor on the first night and it was very enjoyable.

On the second day we went to Quartier Latin to explore the second-hand bookshops and had a look at the menus around the place. After reading at least a hundred different menus, we were confused and slightly disappointed because the vast majority of the restaurants were tourist traps, serving mediocre food as "cuisine française traditionnelle." But in the process of vetting the restaurants, our taste buds were tickled by the prospect of eating moules.

Our hotel was in Montparnasse, where there are many seafood restaurants, so we headed back to that neck of the woods, refreshed ourselves at the hotel and went out in search of our beloved mussels. I don't know if we were word blind after reading so many menus, but none of the restaurants appeared to have moules as a main course. The poshest of the lot had huge flatscreens instead of printed menus and we never managed to read everything before the page changed. We stood there waiting for the screen that interested us to return and again didn't managed to read everything and so on and so forth. Of course we were laughing like idiots all the while, but when we spotted moules on the main course menu, we decided to go in.

Best avoided!

A combination of factors conspired to put us through a very bizarre experience. My sister had forgotten to change her shoes and was wearing sneakers. We read their menu too many times. We laughed too much. Etc, etc, etc. The minute we set foot inside the restaurant, a swarm of waiters descended on us and we were informed that they had no tables and we had to sit at what they called the oyster bar. It was a high circular counter, with extremely high stools around it. We're both very short, with corresponding short legs and had great difficulty scaling such heights, especially while having fits of laughter. But we made it and the rudeness champion of the world handed us an i-pad showing the menu in German. After a while we managed to change the language to French and located our mussels, which, as part of the conspiracy to make us look bad, was the cheapest item on the entire menu. The waiter's contempt for us was palpable. We were alone in the dog house, where we could see several empty tables in the three adjoining rooms through the tanks full of handsome lobsters. We should have left at this point, but the promise of some nice, fresh mussels with lovely sauce stopped us. They arrived, plentiful, in very hot cauldron type receptacles, without any sauce whatsoever. We started eating and they weren't too bad, but quite salty. The waiter gave as glance and asked if they were ok. My sister said they were a bit salty and he dismissed her comment: "You just have to drink more."

We finished eating, he cleared the counter and handed us the i-pad again. The desserts were pretentious, very expensive and somewhat obscure, so we handed the i-pad back and asked for the bill. We paid and resisted the temptation to blow our noses in their immaculate napkins before we left to have delicious desserts in a very nice, friendly restaurant across the road.

I described this experience in detail because it was the most memorable and funny. In all the other restaurants we were treated with respect and had delicious food, as expected...


Wednesday, 9 May 2012

Safe sex

I just took a leaflet out of my mailbox informing me that I can have sex at 79.


I'm so happy, because I live at number 71. So it's not too far to walk home afterwards. And it’s on the same side of the street. I don’t have to cross the road.

Tuesday, 8 May 2012

That's when the fight started...

All these little jokes have the same punchline: "That's when the fight started..."


One year, I decided to buy my mother-in-law a cemetery plot as a Christmas gift...

The next year, I didn't buy her a gift. When she asked me why, I replied,

"Well, you still haven't used the gift I bought you last year!"

*****

My wife and I were watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire while we were in bed. I turned to her and said,

"Do you want to have sex?

"No," she answered.

I then said "Is that your final answer?"

She didn't even look at me this time, simply saying, "Yes.."

So I said, "Then I'd like to phone a friend."

*****

My wife and I were sitting at a table at her high school reunion, and she kept staring at a drunken man swigging his drink as he sat alone at a nearby table.

I asked her, "Do you know him?"

"Yes", she sighed, "He's my old boyfriend.... I understand he took to drinking right after we split up those many years ago, and I hear he hasn't been sober since."

"My God!" I said, "Who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?"

*****

When our lawn mower broke and wouldn't run, my wife kept hinting to me that I should get it fixed. But somehow I always had something else to take care of first, the shed, the boat, making beer.. Always something more important to me. Finally she thought of a clever way to make her point.

When I arrived home one day, I found her seated in the tall grass, busily snipping away with a tiny pair of sewing scissors. I watched silently for a short time and then went into the house.. I was gone only a minute, and when I came out again I handed her a toothbrush.

I said,

"When you finish cutting the grass, you might as well sweep the driveway."

*****

Saturday morning I got up early, quietly dressed, made my lunch, and slipped quietly into the garage. I hooked up the boat up to the van, and proceeded to back out into a torrential downpour. The wind was blowing 50 mph, so I pulled back into the garage, turned on the radio, and discovered that the weather would be bad all day. I went back into the house, quietly undressed, and slipped back into bed.. I cuddled up to my wife's back, now with a different anticipation, and whispered,

"The weather out there is terrible."

My loving wife of 5 years replied, "And, can you believe my stupid husband is out fishing in that?"


Monday, 7 May 2012

Sunday, 6 May 2012

Paris!

I'm off to Paris tomorrow to meet my sister. I left some posts ready and scheduled as I won't be around until Thursday. I hope there aren't any glitches with the scheduling. It has been erratic since blogger changed their interface, so if the posts don't appear, don't panic, just continue to chat on whatever post is there!



This is some coincidence, but Austin has just sent me this spectacular photo of the Eiffel Tower against the Super Moon:


We'll see the sites and explore a few restaurants.




À bientôt!