What made you smile today?

shoppin at the asian supermaket, it never gets old.

and when the cart girl was starin at me i couldnt help but beam..


asian ladies, you own my heart and soul

Buying a cup of kool-aid from my niece.

Hey, realjohnboy, good to hear that a) you're now able to delegate the more fidgety stuff and b) it's not like you've had to retire from the job (and the people!) altogether!

Walking down the boulevard and sidestreets, city is full of characters. Like that elderly couple in the cabrio, identical scarves tied around their head.

This young mom and husband come walking toward me, her with baby in one arm and a cig in the other hand. I know, it's bad, but it still made me chuckle. Eastern Europe.

Oh, and how they brought my tea at the Corinthia Royal without me having to ask', and with a smile. (Even if I was in old trousers with a couple of tears in 'em.)

ADD: And now, sitting in our study, windows to the lichthof/air well/air shaft* open, hearing the voice of an old Hungarian singer, from the 30s or 50s maybe, coming from a CD-player in one of the many other apartments opening up to it. So pretty. Mixed in with cartoon sounds from a TV somewhere.

*whatever you call it in English... I dont even know what they call it in Dutch, we dont have this type of courtyard-based apartment blocks.

Today, Joe Nation, Kicky, Kicky's friend, and High Seas initiated to the famous Frying Pan. Much smiling. In particular, I smiled as I laid back and wisely kept my mouth shut as open conflict broke out between HofT and Joe Nation about the finer points of Franco-German history.

But what was Kicky's analysis of the Alsatian question in historical perspective?

Saw this older woman, between middle aged and older I suppose, at the streetlights by the tramstpo, schlepping this ginormous blue Ikea-type plastic bag across the street. Thought it had wheels for a sec, but the sound didnt fit, plastic on pavement. I considered asking if she needed help, hesitated, thought maybe she's just going to the bus stop here, realised that that would have made it all the more logic to ask to help, and by then she was schlepping the bag past the bus stop. So I asked if she needed help.

We hauled the thing onto the back of my bike. She turned out to be English, had just visited her friend who was going back home (abroad) and had pleaded with her to please, take this stuff, I dont want to throw it away - hence. She was a funny person, very nice and kind of strange. She was an artist, she explained, well originally a linguist, she was a lecturer in linguistics, but now she was an artist, except that she had come to Budapest for two years and was learning chess because she wanted to become a chess player. (Yes, we have people like that in this neighbourhood.) She also turned out to know, she said, the right-hand man of mister Big Boss International of the INGO I work for, from London. When we arrived at the apartment block where she lived, she invited me up for a beer. I declined, but exchanged emails.

Also, poor woman at the cash register at the supermarket. Completely harried, end of a long day (national holiday tomorrow), she never looked up as she zipped the items past the scanner. I took care to say Good evening, and thank you and please and she smiled and in the end was putting my remaining groceries into my bag while I was getting my money (they never do that).

I feel like I've done my good deeds for the day.

On the other hand, there was a young couple by the pharmacy, brandishing two prescriptions and asking for money, just 100, 200 forint, very sick, no money at all for the prescriptions... and I said no, sorry. I feel bad about that, it felt dodgy but still, 200 forint (about 1$) woulda been peanuts.

Sitting in the McDonals, it turns out, just after the big fireworks on this national holiday have finished, is great entertainment. Place is bustling, lots of families with children, lots of teenagers, from awkward geek boys to ebullient Roma girls flaunting their stuff, and barely 20-something couples on their date for the night... real cross-section of the population too. From the high benches on the side you get the perfect overview - fascinating show.

On a related note, I just wanna say that the trend this summer (in Hungary, anyway, I'm sure it's not flying in Holland) to replace the short skirts (which were also never quite that short in Holland) with these tiny, slim-fitting shorts has my full approval... OK, you gotta be like, 20, maybe 25 to carry it off, but they got my vote.

Watching two skinny sunburned female sailors shaking the mast on their tiny boats to get first over the line and win a gold medal.

That made me more than smile.

one of Bahstin radio station 92.9's jingles is "more music, less blah-blah-blah."
this morning they played a variation of it --

"more music, less beijing smog"...

My Dolphins whackin' the Chefs.

(repeatedly, so far)

now lets see them get to the big show and do something eh?

Uhh...

We got Chad (ragarm) Pennington in Marino's shoes...

Ima cheer like hell anyway. It might surprise you how many rabid Dolphin fans there are on the prairie...

You a fish fan, Seed?

I am not. I am acutally a panthers fan when I watch football. You can find me screaming at the mets during baseball season and the hurricanes come hockey time. I dont follow football as much, but i still watch it.

btw i sent that email to you Rock

What made me smile was my mates in the pub not knowing that having the Olympics in London in 2012 is a form of pick-pocketing.

I smiled at this-

Okay - I have two really funny political cartoons to post but I can't figure out how - can someone tell me how?

But in the meantime - this made me smile the other day - we were playing catch phrase with my mother who is a wonderfully genteel and sweet aging southern belle who is slowly losing what used to be an impressively astute lucidity - we play this game with her to help her retain her memory for words and overall vocabulary.

It's really pretty fun - and can be VERY funny. So it's my sister, me, my son, and my sister's husband whose name is Patrick. Well you're supposed to say synonyms for whatever word you're presented with but my mom plays it more like fill in the blanks- she'll say: O my goodness - well this is a _________ and it has lots of ________, somehow you're supposed to figure out she means: This is a cake and it has lots of layers...and the funny thing is I can look in her eyes and concentrate and get it three fourths of the time (she and I were partners).
So she has this phrase and she says: o my goodness - last night Patrick blanked my blank...

Well we all died laughing, Patrick blushed, Joseph (my son) says - 'Okay - this is when I leave..'

What she meant us to guess was - Last night Patrick set my clock....

Open a reply box, then click on the green BBCode editor to the left right above the reply box.

Get your image url copied, then click Img from the BBCode menu.

The code for imaging will appear in your reply box, with the cursor between the two bits of code. Paste your image url in there...and hit reply.

Voila!

Yeah - that's what I initially tried, but for some reason it won't copy and paste - but I got the original from a friend of mine who sent it on my e-mail, so I couldn't copy it and there was no link - so I googled it and I came upon this literal goldmine of funny politically (liberal) inspired things that I find really funny- so I tried to go into this posters archives and find the links - which I thought I did - but when I try to post them as an image or an url - it just gives me that little box with an x in it.

hmmm...I'll keep trying because they're really funny - but thanks for trying to help me. I appreciate it.

Copy the URL up to the "image data sign" = .jpg, .bmp etc

Ot make a screen shot, store the pic on your hard drive and load it from there via imageshark or similar webside.