A pithy comic strip about life, love, lust and puthy cats.

Est. 1985

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Clear as Mud

By Jimmy Johnson


Buy the new book, "Beaucoup Arlo & Janis!"Today's "Arlo & Janis!"
There’s nothing wrong with a good pun. The reason puns are thought of as lowly, or cheap, is because truly good puns are very difficult and very rare. They are not a pointless scrambling of words and letters, and they should not be so obvious–or so reaching—as to elicit nothing but groans and rolling eyes. In fact, puns are so difficult, an entire sub-genre of humor has grown up around them: jokes about how bad puns are. (See Pearls before Swine.) I’ve done maybe two or three good puns in my entire career. I count the above as one of them.

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281 responses to “Clear as Mud”

  1. Jerry in Fl Avatar
    Jerry in Fl

    Rise and shine folks. Last nights storms were really strong and we have some clean-up to do.

  2. Debbe Avatar
    Debbe

    Good morning Villagers….

    I’m up Jerry, and have been for some time.

    Went to sleep too early last night. Tired and stressed from work and my husband’s idiot family. Damn drunks. Seems Andrew spoke with his dad (the BIL who stayed with us during the winter) and wanted the $500 for punching Ian. BIL said what are you talking about….my husband told me this when he got home at 11:30 last night. I asked him, what the ^%$#!!!! was there a bounty on Ian. Damn drunks.

    Then the issue of this Avian virus…..the teens did put on their white ‘suits’, complete outfit with soled feet and a hood, they had to take a ‘selfie’ of themselves dressed. They are hot, and the boys had to take their shirts off and they tied the arms of the suite around their waists…they were cleaning curtain backs free of manure buildup…nasty, sweaty and hard job.

    The Boss stopped by yesterday too, did not enter building, but did a ‘speech’ from the from the entrance door to the teens regarding the seriousness of this virus…and it’s not to be taken lightly. My one teen has a friend whose family is in the turkey business. The protocol they have to follow is equally as stressed as it is in the poultry business.

    GR 😉 you and I may have read the same article on Sunrise Farms in Iowa….what a tragedy. I personally do not like C02…I’ve watched them die thru the window on the top of the ‘kill’ box. It is not a pretty site to see them gasping for breath. Basically, it suffocates them. I prefer a quick twist to break the neck. It’s instant. But when you have 3.5 million hens, load ’em up, and gas ’em up. I actually tried to break a small, distressed hen’s neck the other day, I felt it give and I just couldn’t continue through with it.

    I found this interesting: http://www.trust.org/item/20150425225618-z9u8k?view=print on the new strains and such…some over my head.

    Denise….thank you so much for asking how Ian is doing….he is struggling. Tries not to show it, and I know he is in pain. Still doesn’t want to go to the doctor. He had yesterday off, and yes, he’s like me and works 6 days a week to get 40 hours.

    later…..gonna check out some U tube tunes….are you up for it Mark? Wait. I need to go back and check out the tunes you posted the other day…….

    later………………..

    GR 😉

    later

  3. Debbe Avatar
    Debbe

    …and there are days that when I get out of the car at work, I sing the opening of this song:

    “Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends, so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VsifANR96s

  4. domaucan1 Avatar
    domaucan1

    Debbe,
    Why not try out Jimmie Durante’s “You’ve gotta start off each day with a song!” “Even when things go wrong”! It’s really great!

    Prayers and blessings for everyone.

  5. Ruth Anne in Winter Park Avatar
    Ruth Anne in Winter Park

    Debbie, There’s always the Monty Python anthem “Always look on the bright side of life”, but you do that already. Hang in there!

  6. Denise in Michigan Avatar
    Denise in Michigan

    Jimmy, I’m going to laugh over today’s real-time strip each time I plant something for the rest of my life! That’s a lot of laughs! (I also talk to bees, worms, slugs, spiders, and insects, as well as birds and beasts.) (Oh, and weeds, too, but I would blush to repeat what I say to them.)

    Thank you for the link, Mark. I look forward to reading their conclusions.

    Are you folks okay, Jerry?

    Debbe, I remember reading about bird viruses in the past, but this one seems to have much more potential for spread and damage to the industry. Is this the most serious incidence of avian virus you can recall? Or have there been worse ones?

  7. Trapper Jean Avatar
    Trapper Jean

    Maybe I should set a trap in my back yard to catch a turkey and fatten it up over the summer for Thanksgiving. Then again, it’d probably become a family pet and we’d not be able to kill, cook, and eat it for dinner.

    I see a ham in our future for Thanksgiving dinner.

  8. Debbe Avatar
    Debbe

    Denise…see the link I posted on the mutations of strains….I am very much involved in this enhanced bio-security. I leave my work shoes at work, change into my Eastland’s, and dip them in the chlorine dry\foot bath entering and leaving before my shoes touch the concrete floor of the packing room! I told the teens, I don’t care if they have to dip their feet 50 times a day and use the hand sanitizer 50 times a day…you will NOT enter my henhouse. I spray Lysol disinfectant on the packing room floor twice a day…It’s not going to happen here, and I can say that because I monitor the kid’s and fellow employees. They open the door to get in and they cannot help but step in the chlorine foot bath and a spray can of Lysol to saturate their shoes.

    Oh, and this is not transferable to humans…for now.

    I found a bird’s nest under the bubble top of the propane gas tank on Friday. They were very diligent about building that nest….packed with feathers and twigs and 5 small blue eggs…I had to destroy them….I disinfected every thing with Lysol…even the the gas tank.. Put the egg nexs in a bag…sprayed it and brought it home to burn.

  9. Jerry in Fl Avatar
    Jerry in Fl

    Denise, thanks for asking. My mother is going home Wednesday at her insistence. She will have in-home care, at least at first. I say that because she has had it before and stopped it. She doesn’t like strangers in her home. Neither do I, but sometimes it’s necessary. She won’t tell them what she wants done in the home and says they should know. For various reasons I can only be there Wednesday so at least I can take her home and get things started. We won’t be moving into our new home until the end of June, but we love to visit it and the new grass and landscaping are thriving with this rain.

  10. Debbe Avatar
    Debbe

    domaucan1…thanks….will pull that up later…I am due for a nap, auger out at #1 and the denester (which drops the flats) is in not doing it’s ‘job today…feeding hens right now is more important…I don’t care how many eggs come in tomorrow. “Skittlels” got po’d and left, after just 32 cases of eggs, compared to the 190 we bring in each day…

    Dang, can hardly wait for Monday morning…………………..

  11. Debbe Avatar
    Debbe

    I love this Village….thanks for letting me vent.

  12. sandcastlerâ„¢ Avatar
    sandcastlerâ„¢

    Debbe, keep the vents open, else the hens become broilers. Disregard Loon, she was just jerking around the turkey; too much time around school kids this weekends.

  13. Debbe Avatar
    Debbe

    Sandcastler….I have a static control board…I faithfully watch that black arrow in-between the read lines. I have access to physically opening opening windows, and the other side is mechanical. My ideal hen house temp is 75 degrees. Because, lately I’ve been inside the house much more lately, I can smell if the airflow is too low…thus opening widows and turning on fans.

    Gosh, I love my job………………

    Loon..:)

  14. sandcastlerâ„¢ Avatar
    sandcastlerâ„¢

    GR6 will love this tale. I was just permitted entry into the Texas Capital building carrying both my Leatherman PST and a Buck folding knife. The Texas DPS is more enlightened about well dressed gentlemen than the TSA. Both items, along with pocket contents had to be scanned, but could be picked up on the otherside.

  15. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Debbe 😉 Yes, hon, that was the article about Sunrise Farms I read also. Serious business…their 3.8 million hens are 10% of those grown in the entire state of Iowa. And I cannot even imagine the possible impact on the economies of many Southern states where chickens raised for major food processors constitutes a vital cash crop. (If you want to know what money smells like, drive through most any part of the rural Deep South in the summer, lower your windows, and take a deep breath. You’ll find it smells remarkably like chicken $#!+.)

    I assume that crop insurance will be in play, with all its attendant benefits and pitfalls. Some years ago, I attended the 3-day course and took (and passed) the state exam for insurance agent. (And yet, I am not, and never have been, an insurance agent. Long story.) The instructor, himself an experienced agent, told us that a problem had previously developed with commercial catfish growers, to wit that if algae began growing in their ponds, giving the catfish flesh a musty flavor and rendering it worthless as a food product, the aerator pumps that kept the oxygen levels in the densely populated ponds high enough to support the catfish would mysteriously fail. All the fish in that pond would then die and an insurance claim would be filed.

    From the Department of Ironic Irony: A few years back, with revenue from pond-raised catfish operations suffering due to import competition, someone came up with the idea of leasing catfish ponds (themselves mostly built on repurposed cotton field land) and repurposing the ponds to grow…you guessed it…algae, as biomass for manufacturing biofuels. I’ve not checked to see if that idea flew or went over like the heavy-metal flatulence Debbe mentioned. (BTW, if anyone starts farting lead, they should see their physician immediately.)

    From the Department of Deliciously Ironic Irony: I recently read an article about methods of life-support in deep space habitats, and one of the ideas was to produce food stocks from…you guessed it…habitat-grown algae.

  16. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Yes, sand, as someone said when one of the recent “uninvited guests” at the White House was found to be a Texan “armed” with a pocket knife, “In Texas, a man with a pocket knife is not armed, he is merely *dressed*.” That said, eyebrows would perhaps have been raised if I’d gone through the checkpoint with the four knives I often carry in addition to my Dad’s Schrade “Old Timer” pocket knife and the keychain tool that includes a craft-knife blade. (I love my cargo pants.)

    The TSA, of course, would probably deem the craft-knife blade alone a deadly weapon, notwithstanding that the most dangerous weapon in the world is the human brain. Perhaps they are even now working on a way to make us check our brains at the gate before boarding an aircraft. And perhaps that’s what we already do when we allow unelected bureaucrats to control so many facets of our lives.

  17. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    I have seen a lot of people griping about the TSA and their methods. Did any of you see the story about the gay TSA agent who was doing body searches on men he found attractive? The agent had worked out a system with his female coworkers who ran the scanning machine. When he saw someone he wanted to “check out”, he signaled the scanner operator. She then adjusted the machine so it gave an anomalous reading, giving him a reason to do the body search. This had gone on for a couple of years before one of the higher-ups caught them at it.

  18. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Someone told me of a TSA agent that was at least a hundred pounds overweight and using a cane she recently saw at an airport security checkpoint. She commented that if an emergency should arise, his best and most appropriate use would be as a ballistic shield.

    Not to denigrate anyone with weight or physically-challenged issues, but this person is manning a checkpoint at which quick and decisive action might be required at any moment. Really?

    Perhaps a more accurate name for that Federal governmental agency would be the Transportation Job Corps Administration.

  19. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    Ghost, remember that FDR was paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair, but was elected President multiple times. That is also a job where quick and decisive action might be required, just not necessarily physical action.

    The flip side of everyone’s gripes about the TSA: who, how and why screened, must be put down to the bureaucrats who decided that putting all airport security under their oversight would result in a better security. While the agents are made to follow directives which make no law enforcement or terror-preventive sense in the name of political correctness.

  20. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Guilty. I meant “quick and decisive” physical action, of course. I wouldn’t presume to forecast that persons ability to take quick and decisive cognitive-based action, as I do not know him personally. But that job environment could easily require both types of action, and simultaneously.

  21. Jerry in Fl Avatar
    Jerry in Fl

    Having recently looked over a large selection of ballpoint pens/knives, I was wandering if anyone has had their pocket pens or pens in a briefcase checked. Of course a normal pen or pencil can easily be a lethal weapon.

  22. Jerry in Fl Avatar
    Jerry in Fl

    I think that OF is erupting, but it’s hard to tell because the camera lens is covered by raindrops.

  23. John in Richmond Texas Avatar
    John in Richmond Texas

    I almost hesitate to read the latest from Debbe and Mindy. I’ve had really bad work stuff but all decades in the past and nothing like their stuff. It was over 25 years ago when a whack job female (whose gun in her purse was spotted by another woman in the restroom) accused me and another guy of wanting to kill her, told a black guy he didn’t like her because she was black and we had many other fun times for months. It was obvious the large Japan electronics firm cared less about our dead bodies than a discrimination lawsuit and it had to get just short of all of us simply refusing to come to work before they got rid of her. Today I almost feel guilty getting paid for about an hour of work a day, but my current employer is happy for me to become action paperwork man when Baker, Halliburton or Schlumberger ever place another order