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Sunday, January 20, 2019

Adventures on the Portland Streetcar, 2018 edition, part 2


Sept. 21:  My working evening climaxed at the Pearl Party with the Just Friends Band playing Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind & Fire, and other funk tunes on a loading dock right next to and above/behind our table on NW 13th between Hoyt and Irving. I was part of a team that staffed an info table about streetcar and gave out various door prizes.
7:58pm -- A woman is thrilled to win a Portland Streetcar coffee mug and says “I’ll drink coffee out of it every day, and it’ll remind me of Portland ’cause I’m only here three months.” Where are you from? I asked. Amsterdam, she said. I told her my favorite place in the Netherlands was Madurodam (the miniature city). She admitted she had never been there. What about Delft, I asked (a beautiful, canaled town that’s world-famous for its porcelain). No. What is wrong with you? I thundered; you have a beautiful country and you’ve never seen some of its best parts?

Sunday, January 13, 2019

Adventures on the Portland Streetcar, 2018 edition, part 1



Time to round up the best tales of my activities and observations working for Portland Streetcar the past year. . . . 

Jan. 5:  “I finally got into housing!”
He’s a regular rider who always greets me warmly and sometimes makes a gruff joke, whether we we meet aboard a train, on the street, or at the library.
We chatted about the brutal weather hitting the East Coast, and I told him I’d been in Boston for the Blizzard of ’78. He remembered spending last year’s Portland snowstorm in warming shelters.
How long you been outside, I asked. Since I came to Portland, he replied. How long ago did you move here, I continued. Seventeen years.

Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Oh my god . . . it's another round of Loftus puns (2018 edition)


You know we have to get this over with: the best (or worst) Loftus puns of 2018. . . .


Jan. 10 Whenever I hear about censers operating freely in churches, I can’t help but feel incensed.

Jan. 15:   I’m trying to establish whether “The Beverly Hillbillies” ever had an episode in which the family patriarch has a sleepover at the hospital in preparation for an early-morning corneal transplant. Because if that would have been the very first Jed-Eye Night!

Jan. 22:  I’m not terribly drawn to wealthy people. For one thing, they have a habit of putting on heirs.

Jan. 30:  Yep. I hate to say it, but it seems as if our country is going from bard to verse. . . .

Apr. 5:  [Preparing another dinner side by side...]
Carole: I think this is far more carrots than we need.
David: Then I'll be a carrot-er actor.

Apr. 16:  I stopped hanging out with the entomologists.
They spent too much of their time in tic talk.

June 7:  The Athenian husband gave his wife an apologetic look as he left a track of muddy footprints across the floor.
“I got caught in a sibyl rites marsh,” he explained.

June 9:  Pharaohs who didn’t get their way could be subject to spells of ankh wish.

June 29:  We loved our meal at the Chinese restaurant, and told the staff we wished to pay our respects to the master who had prepared it.
So the chef came out.
And took a bao.

July 7:  The master chef insisted that applicants to work under him take a manual dexterity test as well as demonstrate their knowledge of various dishes and cuisines.
He wished to preserve a galoot’n-free kitchen, you see.

July 10:  My wife was sure she’d seen the movie “Gaslight” at some point, but I managed to convince her otherwise.

July 31:  He didn’t just write up the rules for card playing. He also did a manual for bullfighters.
That’s why he’s sometimes known as “Hoyle of OlĂ©.”

Aug. 7:  The ER patient suffered a series of convulsions that ended with him in much better condition than when he had been admitted.
Mystified, his physicians decided just to call it a Hale Seizure.

Aug. 11:  Carole: [reading aloud over dessert from The One Percent Solution: how corporations are remaking America one state at a time by University of Oregon prof Gordon Lafer, p. 121] “In Missouri too, business organizations lobbied both to make discrimination harder to prove and to limit employer liability.”
David: “I think their lie ability was pretty good, actually.”

Aug. 20:  Since chief petty officer Jones had a hang-dog look and was deeply tanned, but mainly because he insisted on asking the reason for everything, his shipmates referred to him as “a Why-mariner.”

Aug. 24:  No dried bread crumbs in my salad, please . . . I’m on a crouton-free diet.

Aug. 24:  I called up the medical marijuana dispensary because I wanted to know whether they offered reefer-als.

Aug. 24:  It wasn’t really a proper chamber of its own through the door off Room 15, but only a couple of closets. However, since all the other workrooms in the arts center were booked and occupied, the wood crafters claimed these spaces for their own and tackled their work in them.
Eventually, everyone referred to them as “Suite Whittle Sixteen.”

Aug. 28:  As we drove up the Old Columbia Gorge Highway from Corbett to Bridal Veil Falls, I kept seeing signs that said, “Produce Stand Ahead”
. . . but try as I might, I could never do it.

Sept. 21:  I can’t sleep in the same bed as my wife, Henrik said . . . she’s Norse.

Sept. 24:  Oliver Hardy’s longtime partner, Mr. Laurel, was a quiet soul, and usually did his own stunts.
He never saw any need for a Stan din.

Sept. 29:  If you go camping and fry a dish lightly then stew it in a slow cooker . . . does that make you a trail braiser?

Sept. 29:  Nancy worked as an RN on the chronic diseases ward.
She spent her days treating people with TB.
Her patients were all into conspicuous consumption.

Oct. 1:  The crime involved the theft of several trays of valuable, antique fonts from a print shop and museum that specialized in traditional printing with movable type.
The star witness, a printer’s devil employed at the business, testified:
“I slot the serifs . . . so I knew where they were kept, you see.”

Oct. 7:  There was a Congressman who kept a bathroom scale in his office and obsessed about creating photos with catchy slogans which he posted on social media.
The general suspicion was that he was angling for a seat on the House Committee on Weighs and Memes.

Oct. 9:  George removed the long green insect he found on the pile of discarded vegetable matter in his backyard and placed it in a jar, because he preferred a non-compost mantis.

Oct. 15:  There seems to be a rock-bottom plurality of Americans -- between 39 and 43 percent -- who continue to support the Incumbent no matter how vulgar, racist, and mendacious he gets.
Might we term this fishy stew of “Mar-sayers” the president’s “Booyah Base” ?

Oct. 15:  Testifying under oath, the bloodhound insisted he had only been following odors.

Nov. 2:  Herb’s dog caught a strange disease that caused its hair to fall out, leaving huge bald spots, and its bare skin turned a pale white, like pudding.
The vet diagnosed blank mange.

Nov. 3:  They offered me cookies.
I looked down and saw a box of those Girl Scout treats of traditional shortbread stamped with the logo of several scouts in profile.
“Curses,” I said. “Trefoiled again!”

Nov. 6:  If a critic writes a review of a classical Japanese musical drama performance, might that be regarded as a . . . Noh weigh ?

Nov. 7:  Something tells me that come January, House Democrats will be looking for some action and are gonna start whipping out their subpoenas.

Nov. 10: “Because you’re Mayan . . .
I wok the Lion.”
-- Shawnee cache

Nov. 19:  The little toy Chinese dog was compelled by circumstances to wear a Star of David on a chain which it used to ward off attacks.
This method of self-defense became known as “Jew Shih Tzu.”

Nov. 20: [in response to breaking news of an FDA warning of an E. coli outbreak] When in Rome, don’t do like the romaines do. . . .

Nov. 20:  Harvey was convinced his mountain bike was making him sick, but the doctor assured him that theory was merely cycle semantic.

Nov. 22:  Mom said that since the night temperatures in Ashland are expected to be cold, the board of Trinity Episcopal Church decided to open the building for 25 people living on the streets to sleep overnight on the premises, as some of the other local churches do on other nights of the week.
Me: So, if they’ve opened the main chamber of the church for charitable purposes, could it be termed the Nave of Hearts?
Carole: Don’t you have something to do now?
Me: This is what I do, honey.

Nov. 24:  Victor supported himself between free-lance voiceover work and buying and selling collectibles on eBay.
In other words, he had everything, including the kitsch and synch.

Dec. 18:  Plains Indian tribes usually hired a Sioux chef to chop the buffalo meat and divide it fairly before a feast.

Dec. 19:  The victim was rushed to the emergency room with several broken bones, scrapes, and contusions after someone hit him with multiple volumes of Catholic liturgy.


According the police report, this was clearly a case of a missal attack.


Dec. 31:  My friend Elizabeth Garrett set me up perfectly tonight. She posted a note about the kind of drinks she wanted served at her funeral - - fancy, precise, champagne-style mixed cocktails.
To which I responded: “I’ll probably just have a cold bier.”


If you didn’t get enough above, you can risk an overdose by looking at the roundups of Loftus puns of 2017, Loftus puns of 2016, and Loftus puns of 2015.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you.