50 Cent’s “Good Name”

Posted on: 07/24/08 9:06 AM | by Jonathan McKee

Sorry… I just find this really funny.

50 Cent is mad at Taco Bell for “diluting the value of his good name.” LOL. (Apologies… I had to pick myself up off the floor for that one.)  Bottom line: he’s suing Taco Bell. (It’s the American way!)

Rueters reports:

The lawsuit accuses the chain of disseminating a letter, addressed to 50 Cent, that encourages the rapper to change his name to “79 Cent,” “89 Cent” or “99 Cent.”

The letter was designed to promote the company’s “79-89-99 Cent Why Pay More” campaign, while avoiding the multimillion-dollar fee the rapper might have charged to use his name, the lawsuit said.

Rob Poetsch, a spokesman for Taco Bell Corp, said, “We made a good faith, charitable offer to 50 Cent to change his name to either 79, 89, or 99 Cent for one day by rapping his order at a Taco Bell, and we would have been very pleased to make the $10,000 donation to the charity of his choice.”

Click here for the entire article.

Sorry… I’m unable to write more at the moment. I’m still laughing about “diluting the value of his good name.”

My timing is uncanny…

Posted on: 07/15/08 5:54 AM | by Jonathan McKee

Okay… this is trippy.

For years I’ve used a short talk where I tell a modern day version of “The House on the Rock” story from Matthew chapter seven. I talk about two guys building a house off the coast of Florida, soon to be visited by a hurricane… and the aftereffects. This story was one of the talks I included in my new book 10-Minute Talks.

I wrote that story about two years ago, turning in the draft of this entire book to my editor about a year and a half ago. The book finally printed last month and I just received a shipment of copies fresh off the printer- so my people who pre-ordered the books priority mail will be seeing their copies in the next week.

So what’s so bizarre? I was just speaking on the New Jersey coast and we heard warning that the effects of Hurricane Bertha might move up there later this week. When I first heard this… I stopped dead in my tracks. “Hurricane who?!!”

Turn with me in your copies of 10-Minute Talks to page 164 (I’m sure you’ll be keeping it right next to your Bible). 🙂

Yeah… I wrote that two years ago. And people will be getting their copies in the next week!

LOL.

Don’t worry… I’m not going to get weird on ya and try to start predicting catastrophic events now. I just think that was a pretty funny coincidence. The timing of this whole thing was uncanny!

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Snake-handling Pastor Arrested

Posted on: 07/13/08 12:05 PM | by Jonathan McKee

No wonder people think Christians are weird!

A “snake-handling” pastor in Kentucky was one of 10 people arrested in a crackdown on the venomous snake trade. CNN reports…

More than 100 snakes, many of them deadly, were confiscated in the undercover sting after Thursday’s arrests, said Col. Bob Milligan, director of law enforcement for Kentucky Fish and Wildlife.

Most were taken from the Middlesboro home of Gregory James Coots, including 42 copperheads, 11 timber rattlesnakes, three cottonmouth water moccasins, a western diamondback rattlesnake, two cobras and a puff adder.

Sigh.

Click here for the entire article.

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Death by Hide-a-Bed

Posted on: 07/11/08 9:49 AM | by Jonathan McKee

I’m traveling with my family this week and we’ve opened up a hide-a-bed almost every night of our trip so far. My kids will attest to the fact that I’ve been known to fold up the bed while they’re still in it! (Yes, I’m careful… my 10 year old loves it!) So I found this story particularly funny… uh… disturbing… er… I don’t know. But classic!

A Russian woman in St Petersburg killed her drunk husband with a folding couch, Russian media reported on Wednesday.

St Petersburg’s Channel Five said the man’s wife, upset with her husband for being drunk and refusing to get up, kicked a handle after an argument, activating a mechanism that folds the couch up against a wall.

The couch, which doubles as a bed, folds up automatically in order to save space. The man fell between the mattress and the back of the couch, Channel Five quoted emergency workers as saying.

The woman then walked out of the room and returned three hours later to check on what she thought was an unusually quiet sleeping husband.

Police refused to comment.  (Reuters)

So will I.  🙂

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Dumb Jokes That Are Funny

Posted on: 06/14/08 9:35 AM | by Jonathan McKee

Ashley (my 10-year-old) told me a joke this week that actually made me laugh audibly. I don’t know what’s funny about this joke… but it got me:

Two muffins were sitting in an oven. One muffin said to the other, “Is it just me, or is it getting hot in here?”

And the other muffin said, “Aaaaugh! A talking muffin!!!”

Dumb… but funny. Show me what you got!

(added later: Ha… we’ve already got some good ones coming in. I love Lane’s “seal” joke… that’s awesome!)

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Holy “YouveBeenLeftBehind” Batman!

Posted on: 06/4/08 7:15 AM | by Jonathan McKee

In a world where only 16% of 16 to 29-year-old non-Christians express favorable view of Christians (Barna, 2007) , and only 3% of 16 to 29-year-old nonChristians express favorable views of evangelicals… we Christians should try to avoid doing stupid stuff like this!

Yes, this ridiculous website seems to be real: YouveBeenLeftBehind.com. For just $40 a year, believers can arrange for up to 62 people to send a final message exactly six days after the Rapture.

Sigh.

Wired.com offers pretty good commentary about this. They think most nonbelievers will be too busy freaking the hell out to check their e-mail. But if they do log in, now they can be treated to some post-Rapture needling from their missing friends and loved ones, courtesy of web startup YouveBeenLeftBehind.com.”

In the YouveBeenLeftBehind.com services overview section of their website they explain:

We have set up a system to send documents by the email, to the addresses you provide, 6 days after the “Rapture” of the Church. This occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail safe any false triggering of the system.

Wow. My first thought is… whatever imbecile subscribes to this site doesn’t HAVE any unbelieving friends anyway! So who are they going to put on their list? (Probably family members that they have already repelled and alienated by condemning them their whole lives)

Hello people. Let’s model the “Christ” that gave us the name “Christians. Our actions speak volumes.

Authentic lives lead to authentic conversations.

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Yo Mama Showdown and Other Rejected Games

Posted on: 05/23/08 9:53 AM | by Jonathan McKee

As most of you know, our website has a huge collection of free game ideas for youth ministry. Many of these are submitted by youth workers around the world, screened, and added by us.

Have you ever wondered what the reject pile looks like?

We receive new game submissions almost daily. 50% of them are games we already have on our site. 30% just don’t make the cut. 10% are ludicrous… and we use that remaining 10% that are good.

The ludicrous category can be pretty funny. Years ago I shared a hilarious idea submitted from New Zealand that will make your insurance agent crease his seat! I’ll let you use the link to read it… but the title of the game is: Fireball Soccer.  I even posted a funny response from another Kiwi who actually played the game, only getting mild burns. I used that as an opportunity to create a hypothetical Top 10 list of games that your insurance won’t cover. Then a couple years later, in the aftermath of the WORLD Magazine’s rediculous thrashing of our website, I shared some other hilarious game additions and submissions.

This week we received another submission that won’t make our page- for obvious reasons… but a funny idea none-the-less. The idea is called the Yo Mamma Joke Showdown.

Yo Mama Jokes Showdown
Choose 2 volunteers to play who are ‘good at telling jokes’.  Have both volunteers leave the room for 2-3 minutes.  During that time each contestant will be given a sheet of written ‘Yo Mamma’ jokes.  Contestants will study sheets preparing for the showdown.  Once contestants are called back in, they will get up on stage and take turns telling ‘Yo Mama’ jokes. The first person who runs out of jokes loses.  The last one standing gets a prize.  I used the game as an intro to a teaching on the power of our words.

Yo mama so fat when her beeper goes off, people think she’s backing up.
Yo mama so fat she went to the movies and sat next to everyone.
Yo mama so fat last time she went to the beach people started running around yelling ‘Free Willy’.
Yo mama so fat that if you stand on her belly your ears pop!
Yo mama so fat she had to go to Sea World to get baptized.
Yo mama so fat she’s gotta iron her pants in the driveway.
Yo mama so fat she put on her lipstick with a paint-roller.
Yo mama so fat when she wears a yellow shirt, people start callin “Taxi!”
Yo mama so fat she goes to a restaurant looks at the menu and says “okay!”
Yo mama so fat she fell in love and broke it.
Yo mama so fat when she gets on the scale it says, ‘not for livestock’.
Yo mama so fat her neck looks like a pair of hot dogs!
Yo mama so fat she’s got her own area code!
Yo mama so fat that her senior picture had to be taken from a helicopter!
Yo mama so fat the animals at the zoo feed her.
Yo mama so fat they use the elastic in her underwear for bungee jumping.
Yo mama so ugly when she joined an ugly contest, they said “Sorry, no professionals.”
Yo mama so ugly the government moved Halloween to her birthday.
Yo mama so fat that when she heard it was chilly outside, she ran into the backyard with a spoon.
Yo mama so fat that she sat on a Nintendo Gamecube and it turned into a gameboy.
Yo mama so fat she fell into the Grand Canyon….and got stuck!
Yo mama’s so ugly when I took her to the zoo they said, “Thanks for bringin’ back our lost chimp!”
Yo mama’s is so fat she they had to make her car out of spandex.
Yo mama’s so fat she sweats mayonnaise!
Yo mama’s so fat, her belly button has an echo.
Yo mama’s so fat, when she wore a red sweater all of the kids pointed at her and said, “It’s the Kool-Aid Man!!!!”.
Yo mama’s so fat, that she has to put her belt on with a boomerang…

Hmmmmmmm.

Fear of the Crosswalk Lady

Posted on: 04/4/08 5:11 PM | by Jonathan McKee

What’s your biggest fear? Shark attack? Hurricane? Spiders?

If you asked me that question I wouldn’t even hesitate to answer: I’m scared of the crosswalk lady at my daughter’s school!

That’s right, the crosswalk lady. To the innocent passerby she might seem nice and sweet. But really she’s just waiting to pounce on someone and inflict her justice! She’s a mall security guard gone bad!

My daughter’s school has numerous volunteers that help guide traffic in and out of the parking lot, stopping traffic as needed for the children to cross the crosswalk onto the school campus. Some of the volunteers are nice soccer moms. Some are men. But one of them is a woman with an agenda. She’s gonna clean up this school by kicking butt and taking names!

The school has a routine in place of how parents should drop off their kids. It’s a little tricky for new parents, but once you get it down it’s easy. This school is a special school that brings kids from all over town. There are no busses, so the “car” traffic is pretty busy on any given morning. No worries. All a parent needs to do is wait in the line of cars, pull in the long circular driveway, stop when traffic stops, and drop off your child.

Where’s the problem?

That’s what I’m still wondering.

Here’s what seems to be the problem:

  I didn’t pull up far enough.
  I pulled up too far.
  I didn’t stop soon enough.
  I stopped too soon!
  I dropped her off to early… no…. I dropped her off too late!

Aaaaauuugh! I feel as if I’m being followed by a police car in a 55 zone and he’ll pull me over for speeding at 56, but he’ll cite me for obstructing traffic at 54. “Please little foot… be strong and sure! Maintain that 55!”

My wife Lori and I “rock-paper-scissors” who gets to drop off Ashley each morning. We don’t mind dropping off Alec. Heck, I’ll carry Alyssa on my BACK to her school! Just DON’T make me have to go and face that NAZI at Ashley’s school.

So if you ever see me in the corner of my office, crouched in fetal position, sucking my thumb and mumbling, “Mama… mama…” you’ll know that I just dropped off Ashley.

Oh how I loathe that crosswalk lady!

Ministry in Wide Open Places

Posted on: 03/31/08 5:28 AM | by Jonathan McKee

I just finished speaking at an event in South Dakota this past weekend. On Saturday night I spoke with a challenge to reach out beyond our church walls, and on Sunday afternoon I did a workshop for parents.

Saturday evening was a lot of fun. It was a hard speaking venue because I followed a really funny comedian (which made my “serious” talk quite the contrast. It worked… but it was tough. But I have to brag about this comedian. His name is  Tim Hawkins and this guy was one of the most hilarious guys I’ve ever seen.

Let me be clear. This isn’t a youth speaker who uses a little bit of humor. This is a guy who plays comedy clubs around the country (trust me- he ain’t cheap). But this guy had everyone crying they were laughing so hard.

Here’s a sample:

He uses a guitar for about a third of his act doing takeoffs of popular songs. Again- hilarious! Here’s his video, “Cletus Take the Reel.”

You’ll see other clips of him on YouTube- I love his Homeschool video too. You can find some other clips of him on his site.

The weekend was really fun, until trying to get home. My flight from Sioux Falls was delayed last night (Sunday)and I got stuck in Denver (missing my layover). I’m at an airport hotel right now about to catch a shuttle back to the airpot and fly home. I hope to catch up today and blog more tomorrow.

I wanted to take a second and make a few comments about the people of South Dakota. Great folks. I was in Huron. A lot of farmers and ranchers. I spoke for a youth network that brought together people from churches of all denominations. We had Methodist, Baptists and Catholics all in the same room. Great fun.

Gotta run!

Thanks for your prayers.

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