"Yo momma so fat when the doctor wanted to measure her waist he told the nurse, "Cancel my morning appointments and get my hiking boots, this will take a while."

Yo momma jokes were a Saturday night staple in my neighborhood when I was a kid. I was never very good going up against my friends. You had to be quick, original, and funny. I wasn’t.

The rules were few and well understood:

• You couldn’t crack on someone’s real problem
• Nothing said should be taken personally
• The winner, if there was one,  was usually the guy who got on and maintained a roll (a string of jokes without a challenge or reply)

Everything else was fair game.

"Yo momma so stank her underarms are classified as biological weapons!"

I had thought yo momma jokes was a thing of the past. I thought wrong. Apparently The Dozens (I have no idea where that name came from. It was never called that in my hood. We called it ’cuttin’, which comes from the notion of cutting up your opponent) are alive and well and is the center of a new MTV comedy series called, appropriately enough, ’Yo Momma’.

"Yo momma so stupid her SAT score was a single digit,
but she can’t tell you what it is cuz she can’t count that high."

I don’t know. It seems to me that MTV is getting desperate for original programming if this is all they can come up with. In the show they pit two groups against each other. First they have a yo-momma-off within the group, the winner represents the group in a one-on-one yo-momma-off against the representative of the other group. The winner walks away with one thousand dollars. Big winnings. I guess you get what you pay for.

"Yo momma breath so stank she’s on a liquid diet cuz solid food refuses to enter her mouth."

Hmmm, maybe I should get on that show. Maybe not.

In my never-so-humble opinion the laughs are few, but it’s interesting to see cuttin’ in action if you’ve never seen it before, even if it is a bit staged.

An episode of Yo Momma is one of this week’s free downloads from the iTunes Store.

"Yo momma so fat when she sneeze every sailor in the room yells, "Thar she blows!"

OK, enough of the yo-momma jokes, time to travel to a galaxy far, far away.

Star Wars fans are a happy clan right now, George Lucas recently had a special  called Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed that aired on The History Channel. Books and games based on Star Wars characters are still selling well, and there’s hints of another movie or TV show.

If you haven’t been in touch with Star Wars, but would like to take a peek, you might be interested in one of this week’s freebies on the iTunes Store. There’s a free excerpt from the audiobook Star Wars: Legacy of the Force #5: Sacrifice. As you might have guessed, Legacy of the Force is a series of books based in the Star Wars universe and centers on Luke Skywalker.

I’ve not read any of the books in this series, but I am a Star Wars fan, so I was anxious to see (hear) what I’ve been missing.  

The problem with excerpts, this one in particular, is that they jump right in the middle of a story -- in this case, an action sequence -- and you don’t have a clue just what the heck is going on. The Sacrifice excerpt is well read, however, and the music and sound effects give it an atmosphere similar to watching a movie.

If you’re a Star Wars fan, or just looking for some light listening over the Summer, check out Sacrifice. It might pique your interest in the whole series.

If you like your entertainment a little closer to home you might check out the sneak-peek of the new USA Networks show, The Starter Wife, starring Debra Messing.

The sneak-peek is kind of a Reader’s Digest version of the premier episode, highlighting major events and funny moments.

It’s not half bad. Not something I would want to watch on a regular basis, but I’m sure there are a bunch of folks, women mostly, who will find The Starter Wife right up their alley.

The last thing on my list of freebies this week is the Steve Jobs and Bill Gates interview at the D5 Conference. You can either watch or just listen to these two industry leaders as they comment on the state of technology, their past, and hints of what’s in store in the future.

You know, more than any other group of industry leaders, these two have the most to say about the present state of computing technology; they pretty much made personal computing as popular as it is today. It is likely that their visions will help shape the immediate future of consumer and business technology.

Both audio and video downloads are almost an hour and a half long, but I think it’s worth the time to listen or watch. It’s far better entertainment than watching Pirates of Silicon Valley for the ump-teenth time, in my opinion.

OK, one more Yo-Momma joke: "Yo momma so gassy the National Hurricane Center names her farts!"

Don’t like that one? How about, "Yo momma so fat when her stomach rumbles everybody yells, "Earthquake!!!"

That’s it, no more.

Here’s more freebies on the iTunes Store:

Vern Seward is a writer who currently lives in Orlando, FL. He’s been a Mac fan since Atari Computers folded, but has worked with computers of nearly every type for 20 years.