My son and I were texting today about lanternflies - he's got a bunch at his work and I do a lap around the house and kill what I can each morning.

At one point, he texted to say "We're going to lose this war. There are hundreds in the parking lot."

Maybe a bit of hyperbole, but I took recycling to the landfill and the Japanese Knotweed (the original invasive species in W PA) lining the hillside to the dump was covered in thousands of them.

I spend most of my free time outdoors and have never seen anything like this.

Anyone else seeing them in large numbers?

ETA - my son sent a video on his lunch break. One parking spot in the lot looked like a barn cat covered in fleas - there had to be 50-75 flies crawling around in that space. He said the entire back lot looks like this spot and reiterated that we're going to lose this war.

https://www.theonion.com/smiling-fetterman-asks-oz-if-he-d-mind-slowly-repeating-1849763117

PITTSBURGH–Speaking to the Republican candidate over the phone early Wednesday morning, a smiling John Fetterman reportedly asked Mehmet Oz if he would mind slowly repeating his concession for the fifth time. “I don’t know if you knew this, but I’ve been experiencing some auditory processing difficulties–would you mind repeating yourself again?” said Fetterman, who settled into an armchair as the phone call with his defeated opponent passed the 45-minute mark. “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite get that. A little slower please. You said something about losing? I just want to be absolutely certain I’m hearing this right.” At press time, Fetterman suggested that perhaps he could accept the concession in person if he were ever in New Jersey.

Wasn't sure if this was posted earlier, but it's one of the funniest things I've seen all year - and a giant FU from The Onion to Dr. Fraud.

(eta content from the link - it's only one paragraph but can remove if it's improper to post the entire content.)

We've been telling the same jokes for years and have gotten to the point where we only need to say the punchline - and we laugh like idiots.

For instance, tonight he mentioned a car wreck at the bottom of the hill from his house. All I said was "wrecked 'im, damn near killed him" and we're back to laughing.

On vacation, he said he might go fishing and I responded "you might, rabbit, you just might" (from Bugs Bunny). The two of us are at the kitchen table repeating that line for 5 minutes and laughing while our wives are wondering what's in the water.

I thought creating a thread with just punchlines might be funny (for me anyway).

So knock yourself out and, if necessary, throw the joke in the message text box.

So, I woke up at the crack of 8:30 today and decided to go birding with my wife.

We live in W PA and lots of ducks are moving through on their trek north. After a late morning with a few ducks and lots of rain/snow/sleet, a nice lunch with a good local beer (hat tip to Cellar Works Brewing), a few more stops, and a trip to the grocery store, we decided on one last stop at a county park with a small lake - where we spotted two lovely Wood Ducks (who floated their way within 10 yards and didn't seem to care about our presence).

During our walk, an older gentleman stopped to ask if the foot bridge we were standing on was new. He said I should jump on it and test it out. We laughed, then he said, maybe you can figure out how to keep Putin from puking on Ukraine. I replied that it's over my pay grade and he launched in to a Sleepy Joe tirade about sanctions and how keeping Disney films out of Russia wasn't cutting it.

My wife walked away at Sleepy Joe, so I knew I'd have to duke it out on my own.

I responded with something like - maybe if TFG had done a better job of extorting Ukraine, everything would be ok. Not expecting to hear from a librul, he said he didn't know about that. I commented further - that was the reason for his first impeachment, extorting Ukraine over $75m in military aid for "information" to help him beat Sleepy Joe.

He said something about dipshit liberal policies and walked away.

My wife came over and suggested that I might have ruined this guy's evening.

After seeing multiple Karen meltdown videos posted here this week, I wondered what would be the best music to play in case I was witness to one of these events.

I remember seeing a tuba player who played March of the Elephants while following some white supremacists and thought that was great. Pink Elephants on Parade seems like it would be fun too.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

With COVID and working from home, I haven't spent a lot of time out and about over the last 18 months; however, over the last few weeks, this has started to change. Being exposed to several of my pet peeves raised my blood pressure and I wanted to hear your thoughts on pet peeves and how you'd punish the offending party.

The easy answer for punishment is a horrible death - so I'm thinking we should be creative and less violent. So I'll start:

1) Pet Peeve - Sitting in your car, in a parking lot, with the engine running. I've seen spouses/children sitting in a running car while the other adult is grocery shopping and people sitting in a running car on their lunch breaks. This makes me absolutely nuts - walk around outside and get some fresh air.

My punishment would be that you have to lay under your car while it's running in August for the same length of time you offended me.

2) Pet Peeve - Driving diagonally through a parking lot. No one pays a lick of attention while driving in a parking lot and cutting across lanes to save 4 seconds is going to cause an accident.

My punishment is driving the perimeter of the same parking lot with your 93 year old uncle behind the wheel. He's not tall enough to see over the steering wheel, he's half blind, and he's driving 3 mph. You're never going to make it to the food court alive.

Now it's your turn.