I am guessing that there aren’t many people who just randomly decided to buy an iPhone today. I got home and my wife and I grabbed our kids to pick up the phones.

A couple hours ago, I posted about buying 4 phones and not knowing what we would do with them. I changed my mind and only bought 2 phones. I don’t think they will completely sell out and don’t really want to spend all night finding someone to pay extra so they can use it tonight. We may just use them as separate business lines.

There they are. I don’t know what it is about them, but I couldn’t let the night go on without having a couple of them in my house tonight.

So what should I do…sell them? Switch to AT&T? Keep my current provider and get a new AT&T plan? I kinda want to open one up right now to see how cool it really is.

I am an erratically spontaneous person. I decided this afternoon to go to the Apple store to buy 4 iPhones. I don’t have AT&T cell service nor do I plan to, but I have plenty of time to figure out what to do with the phones after I get them. If it comes down to it, I’ll just sign up for a new family plan or something. I’ve been following the stock of Apple for the last few weeks. Wow, I just had my picture taken by a local newspaper. Wonder if they will put me in the paper. Anyway, I bought some shares of Apple stock in the last month and all news about the stock is related to the iPhone. So, I am buying 4 phones to do my part to help drive the stock price up.

Now, I have no plans for the phones yet, so if you are interested, send me an email to iphone@misterrandom.com. If you live within 100 miles of Seattle and offer a comparable price to what they sell for on ebay, I will drive you one tonight. Otherwise, it can be shipped overnight anywhere or picked up from me anytime this weekend. I don’t expect anyone to email me about the phone, but you’re welcome to.

Speaking of stocks, I think the stock market sucks. That’s why I have been glued to the stock charts non-stop since I started buying stocks last month. I’ve made nearly 100 trades and overall haven’t lost money yet. I intend on documenting fully all of my trades and eventually posting my trades along with my justification for each trade on my blog. No, it’s not meant to bore you (all two of you original readers plus the 10 people who googled the stupid tortilla joke). I’m giving myself the opportunity to look back at my stock buying decisions and see more clearly where I have made mistakes.

If I’m bored, I’ll post an update, otherwise I’ll post a review of the iPhone tonight.

Time again for another round of free punchlines to the $0.99 text message jokes from Last Comic Standing. I hope nobody is still paying for these.

Joke 1: Where does a general keep his armies?

Punchline: Up his sleeve-ies

Ok that one was absolutely terrible. Can this joke be fixed? If you think it can, please submit your alternative punchlines to tortilla@misterrandom.com or leave it as a comment. We’ll call it another contest but I don’t know what the prizes are at this point. Depends on the number of contest entries.

Joke 2: What do you call a fish with no eyes?

Punchline: Fsssshhhh.

That’s an old one. You shouldn’t have had to look this one up.

Joke 3: Where did the cow take his girlfriend on their date?

Punchline: To the Moooovies.

Dumb, dumb, dumb. Ok, I know we can do better than this. None of these jokes made me laugh. Ok, so maybe I laughed at Joke 2 the first time I heard it years and years ago. Now I know that the cow movie joke should be a piece of cake to come up with a better punchline. For sure leave your improved punchlines as a comment or send them as an email to tortilla@misterrandom.com. As long as I receive at least 10 entries, I will come up with a prize. Want to donate a prize? Just let me know. I will update http://tortillajoke.com before tomorrow morning as well with a recap.

First of all, let me just say that I have been up since 4 am and it is now nearly 1 am and I am just a wee bit sleepy. My ADD pills have long worn off and I am starting to halucinate. I guess things could get interesting here as I am beginning to get the TJ’s (Tired Jollies, aka the Winkies). It’s goofy hour for me.

So I finally posted the winners of the first Last Comic Standing contest on my tortilla joke page. Instead of just choosing 2 winners, I added 3 more because I can’t count (or I forgot to look at the contest details before choosing winners). One image I received is now the new banner image:

That was submitted by Lara. The other winner was from Mike:

I thought it was just a fantastic tortilla tightrope image. At the end of the contest, I was amazed that I could actually get people to send me artwork. take another look at Mike’s tortilla and even imagining it saying “tos TADA” is kinda funny. His preferred punchline was “I’m glad that giant bowl was there in queso I fell.”

The winning alternate punchline is from John E:

Whew! That might be how she fell for the bean dip, but that’s the LAST time I try to impress that hot chalupa on the trapeze.

Two runner-ups or is it runners-up? Oh crap, neither of those look right to me. Anyway, two additional winners were selected. Carl W sent the following punchline:

And now, for only 99 cents I will go back the other way.

The other runner-up was Jason R who sent this punchline:

My fajita killing me.

By going up to 5 winners, I committed $30 in cash prizes instead of the promised $15. That combined with the cost of registering two new domain names for the text message joke season: http://tortillajoke.com and http://wasteofadollar.com have started to add up. I decided if there were to be additional contests, I would need to raise cash somehow. With the websites actually getting a significant amount of traffic, I decided to put pay per click ads on the site. After 3 days and hundreds of visits to the tortilla joke site, I had a total of 1 click on my ads (whoever you are that clicked, God bless you). That one click has earned me a staggering 3 cents.

After painstakingly going over the numbers and consulting with my accountants and financial advisors (lucky 8 ball), we have come to the conclusion that pay per click may fall a little short of paying for contests, site hosting, and extra bandwidth. The ads are now gone cause they kinda bug me. I would like to repeat the contest however. For now, I am asking for alternate punchlines and more images to go with the 3 jokes that were featured in the 2nd episode of Last Comic Standing. There are no guaranteed prizes, but I am collecting cash donations to help out. I can also accept other donations for items that could be given out as prizes to this contest and future contests. Email me if you have anything. If I receive nothing, the prize might be just a congratulatory email.

Now I’m getting really tired. I can’t keep my eyes open and my hands can barely type. I think I’m getting carpal tunnel vision.

I’ll come up with the first alternate punchline to the pig joke: What do you give a pig with a sprained ankle?

An apple and some twine

We’ll see if that is still funny to me in the morning.

I want to get NBC to stop sending Text Message Jokes for 99 cents per message. Or at least get more people to get the answer to the joke for free from the blog. Those who still want to pay for the jokes, should just donate here instead. We come up with better jokes anyway. Ok, carpal tunnel vision getting pretty severe. Have a good night everybody.

Second and third stupid jokes of the night. (first joke and punchline in previous post)

Question: Why did the cowboy buy a dachshund?

Punchline: Someone told him to get a long little doggie.

Groan…

On to the final one

Question: When’s the best time to go to the dentist?

Punchline: Tooth-hurty

I will probably start up another contest this week, so if you think of any better punchlines for any of these jokes, keep them handy. Winners from last weeks contest announced shortly.

Continuing the tradition from last week’s episode of Last Comic Standing, here is the first installment of the three punchlines to the terrible jokes.

Joke 1: What do you give a pig with a sprained ankle?
Punchline: Oinkment

Stay tuned for more updates as well as winning submissions to last weeks contest. Before the end of the night, all contest entries will be posted to tortillajoke.com.

PS, sorry for being late. I know this was on 3 hours ago on the east coast.

While comparing the text message jokes from last weeks Last Comic Standing, I have realized that I have read better jokes from my popsicle sticks. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone over at NBC was eating a popsicle one afternoon when they read the joke about the the tortilla walking on the tightrope. Then came the brilliant idea: We could put the joke on the show, but not give the punchline. Everyone would be dying to know the answer. We could get people to text for the answer and get a 99 cent charge on their bill while their at it.

I hope the popsicle-eating employee got fired for the dumb idea. I am still waiting to hear from that one person who sent 3 text messages last week for punchlines, laughed at all 3, and is currently waiting anxiously for the next set of jokes so they can happily send another $3. If that person is out there, let me suggest a small investment in a box of Laffy taffy. You will have more jokes to read that are even more hilarious than the ones from the show.

To the rest of you, I sympathize. I have heard of far too many people who were suckered out of their dollars unnecessarily. I understand the dilemma. How can you go to bed without knowing first what the tortilla said at the end of the tightrope. I am making it my goal to put an end to the nonsense. When the Last Comic Standing announces their jokes, I will be typing the answers right here in as near to real time as I can. I will be awarding prizes to the Tortilla Joke Contest on Wednesday both here on my blog and at tortillajoke.com. If any money is to be spent on jokes, I think it should be for decent punchlines. Because of that, it is likely that there will be another contest for improved punchlines as well as a new contest for more images. I’ll decide on that Wednesday night.

If I thought they would be used, I’d set up separate forums and dedicated blogs (rather than just a dedicated category on my personal blog) for these stupid jokes on http://tortillajoke.com or http://wasteofadollar.com and would sell T-shirts there too. Would you go to the site to mock stupid jokes with me? Ultimately, I’d like to see people going to a source for free information rather than succumbing to the price gouging from text messages. I hate the entire practice of text messages in my TV shows. What do you think I should do with my new domains? Right now they are just set up for new punchlines and for announcing winners for contests. Got any ideas? Leave me a comment or send me a message to tortilla@misterrandom.com

Dairy Queen has this nasty practice of adding 50 cents to my bill if I pay with a debit card without notifying me in advance or allowing me to authorize the charge. I’ve become acquainted with the practice of charging for a debit card transaction at places such as Taco Bell. They give me a pin pad where I have to specifically authorize the stupid “convenience” charge. Dairy Queen just has a handwritten cardboard sign mentioning the charge. They don’t verbally mention the extra charge, just hand key in the total including the additional 50 cent fee. I suspect their practices are borderline fraudulent, if nothing else for not getting an authorization before charging more than the amount due. I know they can’t charge the extra amount for a credit card though. That’s why rather than paying cash, I make sure I pay with a credit card so they are stuck with a processing fee but they can’t pass that extra cost on to me. My little way of getting even for their unfair practices.

On Friday, I picked up a $3.59 blizzard. The total, including the 8.9% tax was $3.91. I made sure I grabbed a credit card instead of a debit card. The photo below illustrates the problem with their manual system of charging for debit purchases:

My unmistakeable CapitalOne No Hassle Platinum Credit Card was conveniently confused with a debit card. The $3.91 blizzard ended up being $4.41. I was offered a receipt and I accepted. All I got was the receipt pictured. Nice lack of detail there Dairy Queen. You defrauded me. I was even told $3.91 when I handed my card. I didn’t authorize the $4.41 nor did I sign for the purchase.

Here are a couple more images zoomed in:

An ambitious lawyer could possibly turn this sort of thing into a lawsuit. I’m wondering if Dairy Queen’s stupid practices are repeated in areas besides my local Dairy Queen’s. Do other’s charge a fee without warning? Let me know if this bothers you too or if I’m the only irate blizzard eater out there.

Ok, so 6 hours ago I struggled to stay awake to clumsily add some thoughts about the Tight Rope Tortilla joke that was on Last Comic Standing last night. For those who didn’t want to spend a dollar or scroll down to read yesterday’s post, the joke was: “What did the tortilla say when it got to the end of the tightrope?” The severly overpriced $1 punchline was: “tos-TADA!”

Out of curiosity, I checked my website statistics because I’m a geek that way. The total number of unique visitors last month was 143. As of 6 AM pacific time, that stupid tortilla joke put my unique visitor count up to 176 for the month of June. A full 135 of those visits occurred between midnight and 6 AM. To those people who have discovered my disaster of a blog (still in development), welcome. With the demand of a stupid punchline that high, I think I will take one for the team each week and post all punchlines for the stupid text message jokes on Last Comic Standing to save you money. In fact I’ll create a category just for those stupid jokes right now. The punchline each week will be here: http://www.misterrandom.com/category/bad-jokes/

Now that I’m visualizing a tortilla on a tightrope again, I would like to ask two things of you. Number one: help me come up with a better punchline than tos-TADA. I’ve seen suggestions such as “That’s a wrap” or “that was chEASY” but I think we could come up with something better about a burrito or something. Got a good punchline? Post it in my comments and if I think it’s the best, I’ll paypal you $5. The other thing I think I need is a good image of a tightrope walking tortilla. If you’re a bored artist, send me an image of the tortilla in the joke in jpg or gif format. If it’s my favorite, I’ll put it on the border of my site and will paypal you $10. Can I really use paypal as a verb? I love verbing my nouns. Anyway, just feeling generous this morning. If I get any submissions, I will post them all and announce a winner after the next Last Comic Standing post. Submissions can be emailed to tortilla@misterrandom.com. Let’s say that the deadline is before Last Comic Standing airs next week here on the Pacific Coast.  Contest information here.

One more thing, thought this was funny. Six people got to my post last night with the search term: “what did the tortilla say?” and five with the term “tortilla tightrope joke.” Before today, the most popular search term leading to my site was “mister random” and I’ll bet four of those were from me. Before yesterday’s show I’m sure there were a lot fewer people who cared enough about what the tortilla said to turn to google to find out.

UPDATE: Went a little overboard and registered two new sites. The first is www.tortillajoke.com, dedicated to the stupid tortilla joke that inspired my last couple posts. The other site is www.wasteofadollar.com which will be more about not paying for stupid punchlines in general. Both are still under development but there is a little something on each already. Can’t have too much up there yet. I do still have a day job.

So I was watching Last Comic Standing tonight and at the commercial breaks, they had these stupid jokes that they asked where you were supposed to send a text message to get the punchline. One of the “jokes” asked “What did the tortilla say when it got to the end of the tightrope?” It didn’t take more than a couple of seconds for me to realize I didn’t even care. Then it started bugging me. What is a tortilla doing on a tightrope anyway? Is this the beginning of a Taco Bell commercial or something?

So the other two jokes they had on the show were dumb and very easily googled:

What is orange and sounds like a parrot? A carrot.

How much does it cost a pirate to get his ears pierced? A buccaneer.

I just HAD to google the tortilla joke. The only result I came up with was a blog entry asking if anyone new the answer to the joke. Finally after several comments about people saying they ended on the blog because they were looking for the punchline, somebody broke down and paid the dollar to find out. What a disappointment. What an anticlimatic catastrophe. The $1 answer was “tos TADA!” That comment was followed by others who were amazed that they weren’t the only ones googling a punchline to avoid the cost of a text message. Then there were the sympathy comments for losing a dollar so tragically on a painfully stupid punchline.

So there it is. My wife write’s reviews about TV shows on her blog. I write reviews about comments from a blog entry about gimmicks from TV shows.

If there are people willing to pay a dollar for a bad punchline, I think I will try to tap into that market. I’m really good at wasting dollars. If you have ever had buyers remorse from a wasted dollar on a bad text message punchline, send me a dollar instead. Rather than just a punchline, I will gladly send you a report of exactly how I wasted your dollar. If you like the stupid jokes I will text you one of those too. All for just a dollar. I promise it will be more entertaining than the stupid tightrope tortilla joke. This idea would work better if I had more than 2 readers.

I just re-read my blog posting. What a dumb post.

UPDATE: Went a little overboard and registered two new sites. The first is www.tortillajoke.com, dedicated to the stupid tortilla joke that inspired my last couple posts. The other site is www.wasteofadollar.com which will be more about not paying for stupid punchlines in general. Both are still under development but there is a little something on each already. Can’t have too much up there yet. I do still have a day job.