Joe Potts – Author, Blogger, Humor-For-Hire.

You're traveling through a wondrous dimension of humor and shadow, of imagination and mist. Welcome to my website! Wander around a bit and see what’s up. If the mists get too thick, well, some things look better in the fog anyway. So come back often to The Joe Zone – and bring your friends. That way, if you get lost, or marooned here, at least you’re together. Not that people get marooned here. Very often. For very long. Signpost up ahead, your next stop – The Joe Zone!

The Four Seasons, Part 4: Winter

As regular Zoners know, we have been toasting and roasting the arrival of each new season. We last hailed the autumnal equinox (“The Four Seasons, Part 3: Autumn Falls at Our Feet,” September 23, 2013). The series finally reaches its end (praise be!) with this fourth and final installment. So once again we fire up the Joe Zone nuclear-powered microscope, and objectively examine the hated season of winter, that abysmal time of year when death would be welcome relief, and you feel yourself curling up like one of the dry, lifeless leaves shriveling and shivering on your lawn, under six inches of ice.

Of course, winter isn’t all bad.  Some people actually like winter, and in fact look forward to it. They enjoy the cold, the snow, the lack of light, the misery, the depression, the soul-sucking numbness that winter brings. Scientific study has shown that many of these people are on hallucinogens.

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The Night the Christmas Tree Fell

Christmas memories encapsulate some of the most cherished moments of our childhood. We remember warm family gatherings, presents that delighted us, church services celebrating the Infant’s birth. Often, however, our memories also include grim tableaus seared into our brains by events gone horribly awry. These are the exclamation points rising above the landscape of periods; they are cymbal clashes in the lush, hushed strings of the soundtrack of our youth. And for me, one of the harshest, most discordant cacophonies of my childhood has to be the night the Christmas tree fell.

It began as a Normal Rockwell night. My father had come home from work in a good mood, bolstered by a wonderful hot meal prepared by my mother. Cups of steaming tea for my parents, bittersweet hot chocolate for us kids, helped us forget the December winds blowing outside. Christmas was my mother’s favorite time of year, and I could see the joy of the season in her eyes. The magic day was right around the corner, and my two sisters and I were working ourselves into a frothing frenzy of Yuletide anticipation. Ornaments! Lights! Presents! No school!

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Secrets of the Hunger Games

Catching Fire, the second movie in the Hunger Games series, is rocking the box office as expected, bringing in something like eighteen quidzillion dollars in just a few weeks. To put that into perspective, the federal government, even on a slow day, spends that much money in about eighteen seconds. And Katniss thought her Capitol was bad!

The Joe Zone, in our passion to bring you the hottest scoops and the truest truths, is bursting with pride and sickeningly smug self-satisfaction to bring you the lowest lowdown on the Hunger Games. Yes, it’s time to dust off, rev up, and shake down the Joe-ma-Tron! As regular Zoners know, the Joe-ma-Tron is a combination time machine, teleporter, dream extractor, fantasy generator, and deluxe snack and gourmet beverage machine. It is equipped with interstellar radio, back-up beepers, and a Magic All Language Translator (MALT), so we can talk to anyone (some may recall the pre-MALT Julius Caesar/Latin fiasco).

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English as a First Language – the Premier Episode

We are tingling with excitement in the Joe Zone as we launch our newest series in informative blogs (or web toots, as we call them in the JZ). Sound the trumpets and blast the bagpipes, here comes “English as a First Language” (EFL). We’re so excited, we’ve quivered our liver with a righteous shiver right out of our abdomen, and down our leg onto the floor. Hang on, I need to grab some paper towels.

In addition to the Joe Zone’s “Startling Science” series bringing you all the latest lowdown on that heady scientific jazz, we’re now also going to wake up, dust off, and polish your language skills such as you never thought possible. We’re going to clarify your clauses, pump up your participles, and juice up your gerunds into the high octane zone like you always dreamed of, but were afraid to hope for. (Holy preposition!  This is insane!)  Yes, I once had the language skills of a paramecium, but I elevated myself to at least the level of a slug, if not a sloth. And I can turn you into a sloth as well! I know it’s possible, because my pet paramecium recently signed a three-book deal with a major publisher, for a vampire protozoa series. 

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It’s our First Anniversary!

Celebration time! Heaven knows that in the Joe Zone we’ll celebrate anything, from a new tube of toothpaste to a healthy, blow-the-pictures-off-the-wall sneeze, but today we have a legitimate reason: the Joe Zone has reached its one-year anniversary.

Yes, it’s true. One year ago, the Joe Zone exploded onto the internet like a doomsday disease. The web has never been the same. Since the inaugural post on my blog page (“Reflections in a Misty Mirror”), the number of Joe Zone fans, zealots, and stalkers has increased by a factor of ten (from the initial fan base consisting of Mrs. Zone). I want to thank the loyal readers of my blog – you know who you are.

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The Four Seasons, Part 3: Autumn Falls at our Feet

Regular Zoners will recall that we have been celebrating the arrival of each new season. We last partied for the summer solstice (“The Four Seasons, Part 2: Summer Hot, Summer Hotter,” June 21, 2013). So once again we drag out the Joe Zone nuclear-powered microscope, and examine the season of autumn, which fell with a thud on the northern hemisphere September 22 at 4:44 PM. Did you hear it?

Ah, autumn! What is so fair as a midsummer night’s dream of autumn, when frost has dusted the pumpkin patch and covered the grass, which still needs to be mowed because it won’t stop growing in this cursed damp, dreary, chilly season that reminds us that death – well, maybe I’m getting carried away. Autumn, actually, is often the fairest of times, with mild weather and pleasant temperatures. Of course, occasionally Mother Nature will throw the odd hurricane or blizzard at us, but on the whole it’s a mellow time.

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Look Out! Driverless Car!

There’s been a lot of hubbub lately about driverless cars. I’m not talking about the cars that we’re dodging because some brain-dead nimrod is texting instead of driving. I’m talking about cars that are driverless on purpose. By design. Because somebody thinks it’s a good idea. Or they think that because it’s an idea that someone thought of, we should do it.  Because, if we can dream it, we can do it, and we should do it. Because that philosophy has worked out so well with nerve gas, nuclear bombs, and tofu.

At first glance, a driverless car may seem about as practical as a pilot-less plane or doctor-less brain surgery.  Of course, we already have both of those things.  Most planes take off, cruise, and land by computer these days, with the pilot only getting involved to test the scotch, tell us it will be another three hours before we’re cleared for takeoff, or to make amusing comments about the turbulent air about to be encountered.

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“Did You Notice My Hair is Different?”

The Misty Mirror is thickly fogged by feminine cleverness (or possibly masculine denseness) today. A man knows he’s stepping into quicksand whenever his wife begins a sentence with, “Did you notice.” When that sentence ends with anything pertaining to hair, well, he knows he’s about to attempt crossing that quicksand wearing a suit of armor and bowling balls stuffed in his pockets.

So when Mrs. Zone recently asked, “Did you notice my hair was different yesterday?” I immediately froze. I knew this would be a great time to be abducted by aliens. Unfortunately, you can never count on the aliens when you need them. They left me to face my fate alone.

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Area 51 is Real, Part 2

When last we peered into the Misty Mirror, the Joe Zone Bureau of Science (JZ-BS) was illuminating the murky corners of Area 51. In the second part of an exclusive interview brought to you by the JZ-BS, Dr. Miso Kooku, renowned authority and borderline schizoid, lets us in on the inside scoop.

JZ-BS: What about the aliens? The declassified CIA documents make no reference to flying saucers, aliens, or the Roswell, New Mexico incident of 1948.

Dr. Kooku: That’s because the real hub of alien activity is D.C.

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CIA Says Area 51 is Real

The Joe Zone Bureau of Science (JZ-BS) is thrilled to present perhaps the most startling science news to date: the CIA has confirmed the existence of Area 51. The long-suspected secret testing ground in Nevada (secret in the sense that Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky was secret) has finally been verified as a testing ground for advanced aircraft. Declassified documents state that the area, not far from Las Vegas, has been used as a cutting-edge aviation test ground for the U2 (the spy plane, not the Irish rock band), the SR-71 Blackbird, and stealth aircraft. No mention was made of UFO’s or aliens.

JZ-BS reporters, investigators, snoops, and busy-bodies have been constantly working tirelessly around the clock 24/7 without ceasing to break this story, and they are now definitely broken. Yes, the contributions of the JZ-BS team to the birth of this long-gestating story cannot be underestimated. One of the many truths uncovered by our tireless sleuths is that the JZ-BS and the CIA share a common motto: a half-truth is twice as good as a quarter-truth.

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