Ponder This… was started as a thinking person’s variety webzine. If you look to the left side of the home page screen you will find a link to our early issues in PDF format, which are free to download at your pleasure. Mr. Quackenbush was our resident comedian throughout the foundation years of this endeavor and was immensely popular and, at times, controversial. All-in-all, his pieces were some of the most popular in our early work.

We have decided to bring him back for his genius comedic change of pace. A good laugh is a great way to deal with the madness of the current world.

So without further adieu, here is the latest from Quackenbush (editor’s note: there may be some humor that certain individuals may find childish or offensive, but that is included in almost all comedy, so if you don’t like it, feel free to navigate throughout the rest of the site and freely pick and choose what you enjoy. There will always be plenty of quality content to peruse.)


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Yo,

All the pundits keep talking about how our current deflationary interlude is such a negative stain on society. Well last weekend I purchased a $280 white Miami Vice leisure suit on clearance at 60 bucks just for the hell of it…

What was the problem again?

Unfocused Assessments…

- I finally canceled my MySpace page. I am pretty much all grown up now… The last thing I need is for my employers to see a bunch of pictures of me in college wearing nothing but my panties doing keg stands.

- I always have to explain it to people but I enjoy referring to men’s boxers as ‘panties,’ for some reason.

- My San Jose Shark sweatshirt is ruining my life. I am not even a hockey fan. I got some free tickets to a game and was given a hoody when I got to the luxury suite.

I threw away the old sweatshirt I used to wear to the gym and have been wearing the Shark one. I love my gym because it is open 24 hours. I go pretty late and am usually one of the only people there. You can’t change the channel on the TV but there are always old Seinfeld episodes on. It is absolutely perfect.

Well the guy that owns the place likes me and must have checked out the security camera one night and seen me wearing the Shark sweatshirt. Because now whenever I am there the TV is always on the channel that replays Sharks games. I would much rather re-watch some old Seinfeld that I have seen a thousand times instead of a crappy hockey game.

To make matters worse I usually go to the Safeway right after the gym to grab stuff to put in my protein shake. Well the guy that works the register is like the worlds biggest Sharks fan. He is also a bit slow. So despite the fact that I have explained to him numerous times that I know nothing about the Sharks and don’t follow hockey at all, he insists on keeping me there holding my grocery bags as he yaks on and on about how Irbe or Cheechoo or whoever is having a hellofa season.

Normally I am a courteous guy and would indulge this gentleman but what he doesn’t understand is that my roommates imposed a ‘blender curfew’ on me. Seems I was waking up the entire house when I used to run the blender at 1am. So now I am not allowed to run it past 10pm. This means I am usually in a total rush to get the hell out of the Safeway while the guy is hammering me with hockey talk.

Anyways I hate my new Sharks hoody.

- If I had the choice between being able to fly or being invisible I would have to choose flying… mostly because if I was bored walking around invisible all day I would probably do some teeerrrrible things.

- I think the word Euthanasia is a pretty moderate word if you break it down by parts. It starts off with the word ‘youth’… that’s a good thing. But it ends with the word ‘asia’… that’s a bad thing.

- I have taken to dressing up like one of my coworkers some days just for fun. He is an old school type of guy with a family and everything. He has a pretty dry sense of humor but it isn’t very expansive. Our shifts overlap by about 6 hours. He is in the office about 2 hours before I get there. So I have someone text me exactly what he is wearing in the morning and I try to dress as similar as possible.

He just doesn’t get it at all.

I show up wearing the same color shirt and slacks and act like nothing is happening… like it is all just one big coincidence. Then one of our other coworkers will say something like, “Hey you guys are twins today!”

Then we will look each other up and down and he will immediately become disgusted.

“Aw man… that’s so gay,” he mutters under his breath. Then he quickly walks back to his desk so nobody else notices as everyone who is in on it laughs hysterically.

- Speaking of work, a little while back we had a sales trainer come out and do some seminars with us. We were all in folding chairs sitting in a semi circle around him and the white board. The guy was a total moron and I had to sit there uncomfortable for 2 straight days. Towards the end of the last day the coworker sitting next to me dropped his arm and accidentally nicked me with his ball point pen on my khaki pants.

“Oh crap sorry,” he said.

Then he licked his thumb and started wiping my pants. I was sitting there listening to this idiot sales guy drone on for the 15th hour watching my coworker rub his disgusting finger into my pants smearing ink everywhere when I finally had it. I looked at my coworker and interrupted everything by blurting out… “Do you mind?”

In conclusion…

- I called up my grandma, Mitsa, the other day. She must have had the TV at a 100 decibles. “What are you watching?” I asked.

“That purple guy with the kids.” She said.

“Barney?” I asked.

“Yeah him.”

“Why the hell are you watching Barney,” I laughed.

“You know something?” She said, “I am just so sick of seeing nothing but rears and boobs all day. You turn on the TV and this one’s a prostitute and this one’s shackin’ up with godknowswho, it’s not her kid, this one’s pullin’ her hair… I want something educational!”

Amen sister.

Quackenbush
(March 22, 2009)

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Past works:
Yo,

If you ever decide to have a really fancy dinner party at your house remember to go to Costco and buy the biggest pump of yellow mustard money can buy.

Chain it to the middle of your dining room table.

Nothing says class like yellow mustard.

Unfocussed Assessments …

-Jack Kavorkian should have changed his name once he started finishing people off. That name just sounds evil.

-If Jack Kavorkian had changed his name to Buttercup Michaels he would be a free man right now.

-How come nobody ever sacks neighboring cities anymore? I say all of us Pleasanton people band together and go sack the town of Sunol. It will be great, we can plunder and pillage… drink to our hearts fill. Maybe steal some cattle.

-The other day I went shampoo shopping at Wal-Mart. I couldn’t believe how many selections of shampoo there were. I couldn’t decide if I wanted my hair to be fuller, shinier or have more volume. Then a lady came on the loudspeaker and started talking some noise. I didn’t understand a single word she said…

So I decided to go for more volume.

-My roommate recently bought a Million candlepower flashlight. A Million candles.

Can you imagine?

-When he first got it I just had to do it once.

I took that crazy thing into the front yard and blasted a neighbor’s window down the street. I wondered what my reaction would be if I was lying in bed when that big ass light roared through my window.

“Jesus,” I would say as I sat up in bed, “Is that a million candles?”

-Do you want to know what my favorite key on my computer keyboard is?… Numlock.

-Whew, writing these things is hard work.

-Alyssa Milano was at my office the other day. She is a huge Dodgers fan and she designed a line of woman’s sports clothing. I share an office floor with the company that sells Raider Merchandise. She flew up to our headquarters to show off her clothing.

Meanwhile I had no idea this was going to happen otherwise I would have been a lot more prepared.

I was just doing my job yakking away on the phone when I thought I saw a really hot chick walk by not wearing much clothing.

“What the F was that?” I said aloud as those two beautiful, tanned legs turned the corner.

My coworker in the last cubicle on the corner watched until she was completely out of sight, then turned around and looked back with the biggest smile I have ever seen in my entire life.

Every few minutes or so we would see these two girls walk back and forth.

Also, they appeared to be changing their tight little outfits with alarming frequency.

Turns out our merchandise company didn’t know that Alyssa would be bringing along a friend and actually modeling for them.

All my coworkers and I went to the water cooler about a thousand times each because you can kinda see into the conference room where the meeting was taking place.

She was in our office for about 45 glorious minutes and then left.

Afterward I was bragging to all my friends about it on our Fantasy Football message board.

I said something along the lines of, “Samantha from Who’s the Boss is actually in my office right now modeling skimpy woman’s Raider outfits.”

Then my friend Chief responded, “Yeah, and Mona is out on the production floor at my work giving handy’s.”

-Speaking of Mona, I always loved the idea of a promiscuous grandma in those old family television sitcoms. Many laughs were induced watching the lustful pratfalls of gals like Mona and Blanche from the Golden Girls.

I know there were more promiscuous grandmas on those old shows but I can’t think of any off the top of my head.

-Did the grandma from Family Matters ever do anyone?

-How come whenever I actually decide to shave my chest I always wind up hanging out with my friends and getting made fun of? But then when I am at a really sexy pool party with cute girls I am hairy as a beast?

-I work everyday at our headquarters out on the border of Oakland and Alameda. I take a shortcut to work every morning by cutting right through the heart of Oakland… not the best part of town. At some point an entire email will need to be written about what I see every morning on my way to work.

Well the other day after I was out drinking and carousing with a female friend of mine till the wee hours in the morning. The next day I woke up and drove to work incredibly hung over. I couldn’t eat anything right when I left my house because I would have thrown up.

I also forgot that I really needed to get gasoline.

Of course I was running late so I just tried to make it with the little amount of gas I had in my tank. Once I hit Oakland I decided that stopping and getting gas would be a much better alternative than running out.

So I pulled into a random Shell station in the middle of Oakland at 9:50am.

As my car was filling up I went inside to get something to put in my stomach. I had a powerful lust for one of those yogurt drinks. I was looking around by the refrigerator when I blurted out to the large African American gentleman working the counter,

“Say man… you guys got any of those yogurt drinks?”

“What?”

“You know those…yogurt… drinks?”

“Nah man,” he said, after staring at me for about 10 seconds, “I don’t even know what you talkin’ ’bout.”

“Me neither,” I said, as I brought up a bottle of Gatorade to the counter, careful to avoid eye contact.

Me neither.

Quackenbush
(August 31, 2007)

Belts

Yo,

Now don’t get me wrong folks; I love Mandy Moore just like everyone else.

It’s just that I think she smiles a little too hard.

Take it down a half-tick baby doll…

You’re making my cheeks hurt.

Unfocused Assessments…

-That was my Mandy Moore joke.

-It’s too easy to make fun of all the other ones.

-Lindsay Lohan anybody?

-It feels like there is a booger in my nose.

-All day this has been going on.

Earlier at work I did that Kleenex thing where you just keep twisting and twisting to get all the junk out of your nose and it usually does a great job but I did it with a paper towel today because there was no Kleenex and I twisted too much and I got a nose bleed and everyone at work was wondering why, and I got a little on someone’s receipt and I didn’t want to do a whole new receipt so I just ripped off the little corner with the blood on it.

-No just kidding I printed out a new receipt.

-I’m such a good fuckin’ guy.

-In other news.

-My buddy Glenn only has one eyeball.

-Literally… he was born without his right eye.

-He beat me out for class clown in high school. I actually volunteered to help count votes for senior awards because the person who collected them was our smokin’ hot year book teacher Ms. Haire. Do you have any idea how tempted I was to accidentally “lose” some of Glenn’s votes?

I wound up finishing second.

And I really wanted to be class clown.

But then I just figured, “The guy only has one F’ing eye for christsakes.”

Anyways, he and I are good buddy’s.

A few weeks ago we went out to Walnut Creek to see the super awesome band Thriving Ivory at a bar and Glenn lost his glass eye.

I remember being wasted and thinking, “Bah… he probably has a whole suitcase full of them.”

It turns out I was actually right about the suitcase full of eyes but those were all his crappy, plastic, novelty fake eyes. You can’t wear those too long because they start to hurt.

He had lost his really expensive, custom made, $2000 dollar glass eye.

I felt so bad for him. The next day he called up the bar we were at and informed the bar lady that he “lost his eye.”

The woman that answered the phone at the bar said something along the lines of,

“Yeah right.”

He said, “No, I am being dead serious here… I was born without an eye and I lost my prosthetic in your bar at the Thriving Ivory show last night.”

She said something along the lines of,

“Whatever pal.”

And then, I swear, he said:

“Look I’m being serious here!!! I lost a very expensive glass eye, can you PLEASE keep an eye out for it?!”

I fell on the floor laughing when I heard that.

Keep an eye out for it?

He realized what he had just said, then immediately started yelling, “No pun intended!! Seriously! I need my glass eye back!!”

They never found the damn thing.

-If I ever found a glass eye on the ground at a bar I think I would put it in my mouth.

New topic.

-If you are a guy, sometimes when you stand up quickly you get a boner.

-That is a medical fact ladies.

-It’s the weirdest thing.

-There is nothing sexual about it at all. It’s just when a guy stands up quickly there is a large shift of blood in our bodies and some of the blood goes to certain places and the next thing you know… boner time.

-This can be rather embarrassing for a man.

-And please, let me reiterate… it is 100% completely out of our control.

-Yet obviously, it is unacceptable in this, the year 2007, to just go strolling down the hallway with a boner sticking through your pants.

-We could get in big trouble for something like that.

-This phenomenon has happened to all men many times. You stand up to go get a cup of water then… Yahtzee.

-But us men… we aren’t as dumb as we look.

-We have refined, ageless techniques meticulously designed to hurdle this inconvenience…

We pull our boners up and tuck them in our belt.

Works like a charm.

-It also makes the damn thing go away quickly.

-Ladies… know why you have never had your eye poked out by some dude walking around with the craziest boner sticking through his pants in the hallway at school or work?

-It is because we are tucking.

That’s right.

-Most guys don’t even think about it anymore.

-It is second nature.

-After all, unprovoked boners show up all the time… especially when you are younger.

-But still, every once in a while I will be somewhere with girls around and I will stand up quick and get a boner. Then, as always, I quickly tuck it into my belt and then walk by the girls like nothing has happened.

Then, as I am tipping my fedora and politely saying,

“How do you do Ma’am?”

In my head I am thinking,

“What would this chick say if she knew about all the noise in my panties right now?”

In conclusion…

-The last plane ride I went on there was a screaming kid. I had been on a long streak of flights with no screaming kids at all. It really, really sucks when you finally get stuck with one.

My Mom says I was quite the screamer myself as a little kid.

Anyways when I was on the plane, listening to this little bastard screeching and crying it got me to start thinking… isn’t there some sort of sedative we can give these kids?

Knock the little F’s out for a few hours so I can get some peace and quiet?

Someone take care of that.

Quackenbush