Eideard

Their vacation trip to Los Angeles came to a screeching halt

Holidaymakers have been warned to watch their words after two friends were refused entry to the US on security grounds after a tweet.

Before his trip, Leigh Van Bryan wrote that he was going to “destroy America”. He insisted he was referring to simply having a good time – but was sent home…

Trade association ABTA told the BBC that the case highlighted that holidaymakers should never do anything to raise “concern or suspicion in any way”. Don’t even fart out loud if you’re passing through the TSA.

The US Department for Homeland Security picked up Mr Bryan’s messages ahead of his holiday in Los Angeles.

The 26-year-old bar manager wrote a message to a friend on the micro-blogging service, saying: “Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America.”

The Irish national told the Sun newspaper that he and his friend Emily Bunting were apprehended on arrival at Los Angeles International Airport before being sent home. “The Homeland Security agents were treating me like some kind of terrorist,” Mr Bryan said…

In another tweet, Mr Bryan made reference to comedy show Family Guy saying that he would be in LA in three weeks, annoying people “and diggin’ Marilyn Monroe up”…

After the interview, Homeland Security’s reported: “Mr Bryan confirmed that he had posted on his Tweeter website account that he was coming to the United States to dig up the grave of Marilyn Monroe.

The fact remains that TSA and Homeland InSecurity not only are missing a sense of humor – they have few if any brains. The same people who learn to read and write based solely on phonics appear to have learned what they know of civil liberties at the white American Legion bar on a Friday night.

Santa Claus has been canned from Macy’s, and he’s anything but jolly about it. His fans aren’t happy, either. And there are many.

John Toomey, known for 20 years at the Union Square Macy’s in San Francisco as “Santa John,” was told Saturday he’ll have to take his “ho, ho, hos” elsewhere because an adult couple complained about a joke he cracked.

The joke has been in his Santa bag for decades. But after thousands of tellings, the 68-year-old retired caretaker for the elderly finally hit the wrong recipients – apparently an older woman and her husband, who considered it inappropriate…

The kids who sit on his lap, he said, get only his trademark laugh and questions about what toys they want…

But several workers used words including “devastated” and “overreaction” to describe their take on Santa John being booted from his throne at Santaland on the seventh floor. They all asked not be named because store policy forbids them from speaking publicly about such matters, but their un-yule-ish gloom was palpable…

There’s no doubt Toomey takes seriously the responsibility that comes with the red hat.

“With the children, it’s important to listen carefully to them and make sure they’re doing things properly, like brushing their teeth, helping Mom around the house, things like that,” Toomey said. “Then when they tell you what they want, repeat it loudly enough so the parents can hear, and tell the child you’ll talk it over with Mrs. Santa and the elves. That way you leave it up to the parents…

“I’ve got my Social Security and some savings, so I’ll be OK,” he said. “But I sure do miss being Santa.”

You expect to run into a certain percentage of stiffs in this land. Rightwingers hate to admit it’s their kith and kin who work hardest at cluttering up our liberties with nanny-state ideology. But, here we go again – trying to get a job back for a Santa with a sense of humor. RTFA for his mild humor.

Next week, someone will probably accuse him of being the AntiChrist – even though holiday theft worked the other way round.

A Muslim man who told his wife “I divorce thee” three times in an online Skype messenger conversation has been told the separation stands.

The ruling, made in an online fatwa by the Darul Uloom Deobandi seminary in northern India, regarded as one of Islam’s leading authorities on religious law said that the woman would have to first marry another man before she could remarry her first husband.

The man, from Qatar, wrote to the seminary following his Skype joke to seek clarification.

“Jokingly typed ‘talak, talak, talak’ (I divorce thee, I divorce thee, I divorce thee) to my wife on Skype chat. I don’t understand Islam very much and did not know about how talaq works. We love each other very much and want to be together but right now [we are] caught in this thing. Want to know a way out,” he wrote.

His hopes of a “way out” were dashed when the seminary issued a fatwa confirming his wife must first remarry another man, consummate the marriage, and then divorce him before she could be allowed to remarry her first husband.

“When you gave three talaqs, your wife became “haram” (forbidden) for you. Neither you have the right to take her back nor solemnise a new “nikah” (marriage) without a valid “halalah” (second marriage). After the completion of “iddah” (a three month waiting period following a divorce), the woman can marry whomever she wishes except you,” the fatwa stated.

Har! Or he could just tell the Imam and his Fatwa to screw off – and live a perfectly happy life.

I know, I know. He isn’t any more likely to do that than an Orthodox Jew or a Catholic.

An airliner travelling from Taiwan to China made an emergency landing after a passenger jokingly claimed he had a bomb on board, officials say.

The Taipei-Shanghai flight of Taiwan’s China Airlines landed safely in Hangzhou, eastern China, and the passenger was held for questioning.

Police then checked the man’s luggage and found no explosives.

The man – identified only as Lin – later admitted he made the comment as a joke, the officials said.

China Airlines spokesman Bruce Chen said the passenger was travelling on a US passport, the Associated Press reports.

He did not appear to have been drinking excessively, the spokesman added.

So, uh, maybe he was just drinking “enough”?

A Qatari diplomat who was questioned by federal investigators after an in-flight disturbance has been released and will not face charges, officials said.

Mohammed Al-Madadi has “been given clearance to travel back to Washington,” said Alison Bradley, a spokeswoman for the Brown Lloyd James public relations firm, which represents the Qatari Embassy. A federal law enforcement official told CNN Al-Madadi will not face charges…

The passenger was in a lavatory for a long time and may have been smoking, a U.S. official told CNN. He also may have made an “unfortunate comment” referring to a shoe bomb when questioned on the plane, the official said.

Fran Townsend, a homeland security official in President George W. Bush’s administration, told CNN that the person involved was a Qatari diplomat and that her sources said the incident may have been a misunderstanding. She said law enforcement officials examined the man’s shoes and were satisfied there were no explosives.

Dealing with an uptight air marshal in the middle of a flight – and making a smart-ass joke about how “I couldn’t get my shoe to ignite” is not the brightest decision – even with a diplomatic passport.

Police in Hong Kong are trying to trace members of a group on the social networking site Facebook which appeared to call for a mass suicide.

Nearly 190 people joined group, which allegedly urged them to kill themselves on 21 December, said Chinese media.

Attention was first drawn to the site by a student who told social workers about it after attempting suicide.

The South China Morning Post said the person who started the group had written that it was “meant to be an inside joke”, where people talked humorously about ways to take their lives.
But some of the 188 people who joined it had reportedly written posts in which they shared possible suicide methods and asked for people to join them in dying.

The group has been since taken down but police said they were trying to contact all members and its creator…

Chinese state media reported that photographs had been posted on the site of a female member of the group attempting to kill herself at school.

If we were to make jokes about a topic like this – and I guess pretty much anything is always a potential topic for a joke – I guess I’d try to set up a site for TeaBaggers to commit mass suicide at a Sarah Palin rally.

Nah. Too bad that suicide is still an acceptable solution to emotional and sociological quandaries for religious cultures. Sad.

Click the photo for a chuckle.

Punchline NSFW

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it. It’s dead, that’s what’s wrong with it.”

For those who believe the ancient Greeks thought of everything first, proof has been found in a 4th century AD joke book featuring an ancestor of Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch where a man returns a parrot to a shop, complaining it is dead.

The 1,600-year-old work entitled “Philogelos: The Laugh Addict,” one of the world’s oldest joke books, features a joke in which a man complains that a slave he has just bought has died, its publisher said on Friday.

“By the gods,” answers the slave’s seller, “when he was with me, he never did any such thing!”

In a British comedy act Monty Python’s Flying Circus sketch, first aired in 1969 and regularly voted one of the funniest ever, the pet-shop owner says the parrot, a “Norwegian Blue,” is not dead, just “resting” or “pining for the fjords.”

The English-language book will appeal to those who swear that the old jokes are the best ones. Many of its 265 gags will seem strikingly familiar, suggesting that sex, dimwits, nagging wives and flatulence have raised laughs for centuries.

The world’s oldest recorded joke has been traced back to 1900 BC and suggests toilet humor was as popular with the ancients as it is today.

It is a saying of the Sumerians, who lived in what is now southern Iraq and goes: “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.”

It heads the world’s oldest top 10 joke list published by the University of Wolverhampton…

The oldest British joke dates back to the 10th Century and reveals the bawdy face of the Anglo-Saxons — “What hangs at a man’s thigh and wants to poke the hole that it’s often poked before? Answer: A key.”

“What jokes all share however, is a willingness to deal with taboos and a degree of rebellion.”

I agree.