Hindsight is 20/20

(Editor’s note: We at Burnside are proud to bring you our new Comedy Section. What that means is, Aaron Donley and Chad Gibbs are our comedy editors, and they’ll be handling our more humorous articles. On top of that, Aaron Donley has also launched a new daily comic, which will consist of his popular “Bits of Life”.)

1.) Regrets…

If you are a powdered wig distributor in the fading days of the Whig party, you have got to ask yourself, what are you going to do with an entire warehouse full of these powdered wigs?! I mean, can you sell them back to the French or what? Because they’re starting to look so incredibly freaky even just sitting there in the warehouse. Why did you get in this miserable business in the first place?

2.) ‘Knowing’ eye contacts in history.

Nepal: May 29th, 1953.

Tenzig Norgay turning to Edmund Hillary (After several hours of searching through pockets for car keys): “Now, retrace your steps…did you go anywhere where you were doing a lot of excited jumping around and they could have fallen out-“

They pause and make the dreadful ‘knowing’ eye contact before turning once again to Everest.

3.) Recent discoveries.*

King Arthur (upon the event of their first meeting): “It’s called a ‘nook.’”

The knights stand awkwardly, looking at each other for several moments.

King Arthur (hurredly): “I know, I know. I…I’ll get a round table. I know. You don’t have to say it already. I know.”

After several more moments of tense silence Arthur furiously draws his sword and smacks the table.

(*It was recently discovered King Arthur originally had indeed ordered a round table, but received a java house breakfast nook instead, and did not keep his receipt so he was stuck with it.)

4.) The grind.

Consider the guy during the Spanish Inquisition who had the job of being in charge of purchasing and procurement for all the torture devices they needed. The endless hours of letting out bids, analyzing trends, making graphs and pie charts about possible number of new heretics to be tortured, the exhausting traveling to check quality control of the torture devices…now who was really being tortured here?

5.) First phone call in history

BELL: “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.”

WATSON: “What, we have to call ahead now before stopping by? Whatever happened to the pop-in? Are you telling me the pop-in is dead?”

Second phone call in history

BELL: “Watson stop fooling around!”

WATSON (sarcastically): “Who is this?”

Third phone call in history

BELL: “Watson!”

WATSON: (In an Arabic accent.): “Ali Baba’s house of noodle. Ali speaking.”

6.) Only in America.

Just to break up the seriousness of the moment, occasionally the Union army would shoot one of their men out of a cannon into the Confederate ranks. He’d land on some old mattresses they had prepared for him, jump up and say, “ta-da.” Everyone would have a good laugh and say, Only in America!

Then they’d make him a slave. (As a lone Confederate trumpeter played, “wa-wah.”)

7.) Excerpt from Gandhi’s private journal:

Dang, this fast is going by slow.

( I still got it.)

Gandhi

Sept. 15, 1932

8.) Bright idea.

When Thomas Edison first got the idea for the light bulb I wonder if a candle went on over his head.

9.) Holy mackrel.

In hindsight, probably the largest weapon of Mass destruction was the Protestant Reformation.

And the largest weapon of bass destruction? The ‘Super Lure 2000.’

10.) Not bloody likely.

Brady asked his Scottish commander who was sending him into battle, “Are the chances of not getting bloody, likely?”

“Is not getting bloody likely? Not bloody likely! Now get in there and fight!”

Brady took one look at the battle and yelled, “Not bloody likely!!” and ran away.

But then, as he was running, his longtime friend, John “Bloody” Likely was shot down in front of him.

“Not Bloody Likely!!” Brady yelled, holding his dead body.

11.) True American History.

The story of how we got our American Flag is an interesting one. The first flag was actually an old sock. Yep, that’s right. An old sock. A commander in the Revolutionary War thought it would be a sign that we were really gonna ‘sock it’ to those old British.

Then, when General Washington came to the camp he yelled at the commander for being an idiot. So, a nationwide contest was put out for everyone to submit their ideas for the new flag. But wouldn’t you know it? The people sent in hundreds of socks. Some embroidered, some old, some new…all with the same recurring theme, ‘socking it’ to the British. In disgust Washington canceled the contest and stole our current flag design from the Native American’s…I think. Actually, I just made all of this up.

The real story is actually pretty interesting for all those who don’t know. The story stems around a common militia man named George Wellington.

Originally the American flag consisted of only the thirteen stars placed against a solid blue background. But in the heat of the very first battle in the Revolutionary War the flag was stolen by the British forces. Rather than see his flag degraded, Wellington ran onto the battlefield and courageously wrested the flag out of the British soldier’s hands. Tragically, Wellington was shot down while trying to return the flag, blood-staining the white shirt he bore and becoming the first US casualty in our fight for independence. Upon hearing this story, General George Washington commissioned the flag to be changed to include red and white stripes in memory of Wellington’s sacrifice. It remains that way to this day.

Ok, so none of that is true either. But not bad, eh?

12.) Forehead-slap history.

Probably during time trials in the early Olympics, inevitably some idiot with a fat head would walk in front of the sun dial and totally ruin everything.

13.) Hindsight history.