16 giggle-bytes of them to be exact
Dad: "What does USB stand for?" Me: "Universal Serial Bus." Dad then throws the USB stick he was holding up in the air and catches it as it falls. Dad: "Does that mean that I just caught the Bus?"
USB Flash Drive
I was lying in bed last night, completely exhausted, eyes closed. My wife got up to get something, and I cracked open my eyes to see what she was doing just as she was turning on the light, which utterly seared them. I let out a loud groan of pain.
Later that night, we were talking about it, and I said that it hurt just to think about. "Oh," she said. "Are you having a flashback?"
In the not too distant future, web censorship is pervasive; speech and freedom are strangers to one another; while pirates sail the seas with impunity, digital pirates are incarcerated by the busload.
Anyone who speaks out against this ban on open-dialogue or the free-sharing-of-ideas is ground down and hidden away, and the resistance is loosing its will.
A small group of contributors to reddit, huddled together in a bunker beneath barely-waving flags of Snoo, worked tirelessly to repost new ideas from around the internet, to release ideas from their chains, and make speech free ... again!
But it was not to be - a gang of the governments anti-piracy enforcers descended on this, the last bastion of humankind's will to share-freely. Arriving in an armored bus, ten shock-troopers breached the bunker and it looked like the day was lost.
Fortunately for us all, one brave redditor led the collective out a back entrance and they circled to the driveway. This leader told the other redditors to wait in the bushes while he overpowered the one soldier left guarding the transport. There was a flash of movement, a crack from a fallen branch as it struck the guard, and then, stolen keys in hand, the hero revved the engine and told the redditors to pile in.
He had to will himself ignore the gas gauge as he floored the accelerator on the 25,000 pound ticket to freedom - there was only survival or defeat, and nothing in between. Sirens came alive behind him as he rushed for the border to the promised land, to the Free-North.
As the engine begins to cough, the titanic weight of the transport cleaves the barricades asunder and the pursuing vehichles have to hard-brake to avoid skidding beyond their corrupt jurisdiction. Both exhausted and elated, the redditors follow their hero to the freedom promised by their new surroundings ... but their peril is not yet passed.
Though most of the pirate-hunters glower from the south-side of the border, one special agent has crossed over and is speaking with the border guards. The tension is thick. A long-faced guard turns to the newcomers, clearly troubled by what he must do.
"Folks," he says, a pained look on his kindly face, "I'm sorry, to do this, don't cha' know, but I got no choice, eh!"
Confused, the redditors look to one another, and tremble as they notice the agent's smug expression, greedy eyes fixed on the leader of the exodus.
"Look here, now, you are all welcome here, of course, and since speech is free here, we are
... keep reading on reddit ➡The guy driving behind me even got the sirens & flashing lights to go with his cop costume. Good job stranger, but you can stop following me now...I'm getting a little creeped out....
When I was younger and in the car with my dad, we'd be driving normally then say an Ambulance would zoom past with it's lights flashing and sirens going off, he'd always turn to me and laugh and say "They're never going to sell Ice cream at that speed".
I honestly just had a dream that belongs here. At the start of the dream, I meticulously engraved the word "Over" into a knife when I started getting all these friends and old contacts telling me to leave them alone and blocking me... when I didn't say shit. I finally notice somebody is going through my contacts on all social media one at a time and just ruining friendships sending lewd photos of their junk.
I realize it's coming from my computer at home and I can't get remoted into it so I start driving home... only to get caught in a bunch of tornados. One smaller one picks me up and throws my car about 20ft knocking my wheel loose.
I limp my car away from that tornado only to find another doing like a Mexican standoff with me on the highway. I turned to the random person in my passenger seat holding up the knife and said "Wind or Loose, it'll be Over in a Flash" and I woke up. Now I feel the need to change all my passwords...
Back in the late 80's, my dad had a joke he loved to tell everyone he met. It went something like this:
I was driving down the road and ended up behind this ambulance with its rear door open. I tried honking and flashing my lights to get their attention about it, but they didn't seem to notice. As they turned the corner away from us, a small cooler fell out. I pulled over to rescue the cooler, and when I opened it, I found a human toe, on ice.
At this point, the victim of the joke is supposed to ask what he did with the toe. He responds with "I called the Tow Truck!" and hearty laughter.
Being the 1980's, e-mail wasn't prevalent, and calling long distance could get expensive, so he communicated with his out of state family primarily through mailed letters. He wrote this joke (sans punchline) in a letter to his mom. Not knowing it was a joke, she told the story to her friends and family. My aunt heard this story, and told it to her classes (she's a teacher) and one of her students actually got in a fight with his mom who said that could never happen.
A month or two later, we were getting together for a holiday and the toe story came up in conversation. My dad replied that he called the tow truck, and his laughter was met with horrified stares. By this time, nearly everyone in the small town was enthralled with this amazing story that my grandma had told about her son who lived in the city. She was imagining all of the people she had to contact to tell the real story to. Many took it in stride, but others were quite annoyed. Especially my aunt, who had to apologize to every one of her classes at school.
TLDR: A dad joke with no punch line doesn't belong in a letter.
I was in the car with with both my parents, turning into Starbucks where we see an ambulance parked with its lights flashing. As we get closer, two paramedics come out of the store with a man on a stretcher. My dad drives up to order from the drive thru and says...
"So I heard you guys have some killer coffee."
My dad was in my car today and saw my USB storage drive in my stereo. The drive has a little blue light that blinks rapidly whenever there's data transferring, so it's constantly blinking if I'm playing music from it. My dad asked what it was, and I explained. He said, "I guess that's why it's called a flash drive!"
My dad and I were driving to pick up some pizza the other day, and drove by the local community college. They have one of those new HD billboards, which was flashing garish advertisements for their classes and programs.
"That's a terrible sign," my dad remarked.
"Yeah, those things are distracting and annoying," I agreed. "The things flash too fast for you to really read it, and the color contrast makes it hard to read while you're driving late at night. It's not like the sign in front of my school at all (I'm a teacher). My school has slow transitions and clear lettering that makes things easy to read. It's what makes our billboard auspicious."
My dad frowned. He could tell something was coming. "Why's yours auspicious?"
"Because it's a good sign."
So I'm driving home after picking my son up from school when a firetruck passed us lights flashing, sirens blaring.
Me: Oh no, your Mom's cooking again..
(Pun in title. Did ya get it?)
