Three things that are funny, but not laugh out loud funny

1. A year ago I wrote in this blog about my girlfriend's grandson and his first year of T-ball. This past summer, her granddaughter signed up too. Unlike last year, I managed to avoid going to any games this year, but GF shared her granddaughter's first T-ball baseball card with me anyhow.

Like most cards, it featured a picture of the player on the front in full T-ball regalia. A righty, she gripped the bat cross handed, hands spaced apart like Ty Cobb. That made me wonder what humor I might have found in attending one of her games. But in any event, what I enjoyed most was the flip side of the card--the statistics side. It read, in part:

Age: 4

Height: 3 feet

Weight: 30 pounds

Team: Giants

Now, that's funny. Perhaps not laugh out loud funny, but funny nevertheless.

B. I'll tell you what else is funny. DTE Energy, formerly known as Detroit Edison is funny.

Like most old farts, I used to pay my utility bills with a check. Back in the day, we could count on a lag time--a float, if you will--between the time we mailed out our check and the time the check finally cleared our bank. That doesn't happen any more. So like a good little consumer, I decided I'd do what everybody else does--pay online. What I didn't know is that my bill would also come online. They never bothered to tell me that.

The email address I gave them is one I've had since Al Gore invented the Internet. Yes, I do get about four hundred spam messages every day. So it was altogether too easy for me to delete my energy bills along with the emails that promised me a larger penis with more volume in my ejaculations, bigger breasts or a small fortune in Nigeria. Ultimately, that resulted in my missing two months of payments, a circumstance that DTE Energy did not find amusing.

"This is not a problem," I said to them. "Change the email addy to my gmail account and send me the hard copy bills too.”

Well, it seems that they could only do one or the other. In other words, I couldn't pay the bills on line unless I received the bills on line. So I caved. I let them do both via gmail.

Finally I got my first DTE bill on gmail. I reviewed it and checked the box that said "pay now." It asked me for my password. Now, all this crap had taken several months so there was no way I remembered my password. I clicked the box that said "if you don’t' remember your password click this box." It emailed me the standard security question: "What was the name of your first turtle?" I entered the proper answer "Snorkel" and waited for them to send me my password. They never did.

Or maybe they did. Maybe they sent it to that address where I get 400 spam email messages every day. I dunno. But then I got to thinking--why does DTE Energy care so much about protecting my password? Are they afraid somebody's going to hack into my account and pay my bill?

And then I thought, that's funny too.

III. MisterBastard. Not laugh out loud funny, but funny enough to laugh at.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and for all you atheists out there, Happy Nothing!