24 posts tagged “funny”

You may have seen some of these before - they just came over the email transom and they made me laugh.

"Thank you for calling Legacy Billing Services. You may stay on the line for the next available representative, or you may press 2 to leave your name and number for one of our customer care professionals to return your call, or stay on the line for the next available representative. Thank you."

- The on-hold message of Legacy Billing Services

So you think you had a rough childhood?  Check out these pics and THEN tell me you had a rough childhood!

Of course, first, I had professional photographers constantly documenting my "chubby baby syndrome".

And then, pretty much as soon as I could stand, my parents put me to work.  Don't be fooled by my cheery expression.  I was told that I would not get my daily ration of Spaghetti-O's if I did not smile for the camera.

My parents were always dressing me up in silly costumes to entertain the throngs of the people at the local parks.  After I'd put on a performance, I'd wander through the crowd, passing a hat for spare change.

When I became too old to be cute during these performances, I was conscripted in a theme-based child-labor factory manufacturing cheap Native American knockoff goods.  We had to dress in costumes for the tour groups that came by every half hour.  Sometimes I would smuggle out a single feather or bead, and slowly built my own set of bongo drums that I then sold on the black market to pay for my raging Pixy Stix habit.

I had to take all my baths in the kitchen sink.  I didn't even get the whole sink to myself; I had to share it with one of my two brothers.

And finally, when my youngest brother was old enough to handle the guitarrón (acoustic bass), we three brothers were forced to start our very own mariachi band to entertain at the neighborhood synagogue.  Unfortunately, we could not afford the traditional charro outfits, and instead had to adorn ourselves in the cast-offs of the local children.  Our band's name, of course, was Vlad and the Transformer Tigers.  Unfortunately, the infighting began during post-production of our first record album, and it never saw the light of day.

So now you've seen the sordid truth of my youth.  I'm actually not out to find out who had the worst childhood, but I am curious - what was YOUR childhood like?  Bonus points if you post pictures of your own, or link to ones you've already posted in the past...

[NaBloPoMo 2008 - #17 / 30]

Some lists of 5ives, inspired by Merlin Mann's site 5ives.com.

Five Signs You Never Want to See Posted at Your Gym

1. "Due to the rash of recent infections in the locker rooms, please wear flip-flops in the shower.  Better yet, please wear your tennis shoes in the shower."
2. "Until we can get the CD player fixed, the PA system will be stuck playing Madonna's album "Ray of Light" on repeat.  Sorry for the inconvenience."
3. "Any individual seen taking pictures in the locker rooms should be reported to the front desk at once."
4. "We have now opened up a new session of the pole-dancing class SPECIFICALLY for those 55 and older.  All others should continue to take the Wednesday morning class."
5. "Mandatory drug testing will begin on Monday morning.  Please show up hydrated and ready to 'go'."

Five Things You'd Be Better Off Doing Than Posting on Vox on Saturdays (and Sitting Around, Hoping for Comments)

1. Organizing your CD collection chronologically by when you purchased the albums
2. Scrubbing out your toilets with an old toothbrush
3. Trying to convince someone of another political party that your chosen candidate is better than theirs
4. Watching 12 straight hours of QVC or equivalent programming
5. Calculate the average number of minutes in a given week you waste online

Five Reasons Merlin Mann Hasn't Posted Any New 5ives Recently

1. He's spending all his time blogging about blogging better
2. He has been secretly recruited by Barack Obama to implement a Getting Things Done system for the new administration (and everyone will have Hipster PDAs!)
3. He just doesn't care anymore.  And he likes to see you cry about it.
4. He's secretly hoping you'll post some lists to fill the void.  Then he plans to steal them from you and repost under his own name.
5. He's too busy talking into a vaguely cell-phone-like object. (Be sure to check out the one entitled "Solid State" - it's funny)

Five Signs You May Want to Get a New Roommate

1. You wake up to find your current roommate measuring your inseam.
2. You walk in one day to find your roommate guiltily stuffing something large and furry down the garbage disposal.
3. You think that your roommate believes the phrase "April showers" describes how often a year they should bathe
   
4. When perusing the cookbooks in the kitchen, you come across A Cookbook for Cannibals
5. Your roommate and his/her pet owl keeps you up all night with their incessant hooting

Five Reasons I Should Have a Fifth 5ive Here, But Don't

1. It's almost midnight when I'm typing this, and I need to get some shuteye
2. I ran out of good ideas for another list
3. My tumblr addiction is getting out of control
4. My dog ate my computer
5. Ok, technically I do have a fifth 5ive now.  Do I have to go back and change the title?  Ah, screw it.

[NaBloPoMo 2008 - #8/30]

Conversations you may have heard at my house in the past week:⁺

1) The Purse

Dee: Mmm...my pretty new purse - it's so niiiice...
Me: Huh?
Dee: Honey, right now I feel just like you do, when you get a nice new electronic gadget.
Me: *lightbulb comes on* Ahhh, I see!  I'll stop giving you the strange looks then - you put up with me spending 2 hours configuring my phone a few months back.

---

2) The 3rd Grade Sense of Humor

Me: Violet, guess what?
Violet: What?
Me: CHICKEN BUTT!
Violet: *hysterical laughter*

Me: Violet, guess why?
Violet: Why?
Me: CHICKEN THIGH!
Violet: *hysterical giggles*

Dee: Violet, guess where?
Violet: ...??
Dee: CHICKEN HAIR!
Violet: *even more hysterical giggles*

Violet: Mommy, Daddy - Guess why?
Me: Why?
Violet: CHICKEN LEG!
*hysterical laughter from all of us*

---

3) The Infant With a Newly-Discovered Sense of Mobility

Me: No Rosie, don't put that dust bunny in your mouth.
Me: No Rosie, don't try to climb up on the fireplace.
Me: No Rosie, don't grab the lamp cord, that's not for babies.
Me: No Rosie, don't crawl under the coffee table, you'll bump your head.
Me: No Rosie, don't eat that paper, that's yucky.
Me: No Rosie, don't pull Violet's hair.
Me: No Violet, don't push Rosie for pulling your hair.
Me: No Rosie, don't try to pull that basket of toys over onto yourself.
Me: No Rosie, don't eat that crayon, that's yucky.
(Repeat ad nauseam)

---

4) Television Priorities

Me: Violet, this is football.  See the team in blue?
Violet: Yeah! That is football!
Me: That team in blue is called the Panthers.  Can you say "Go Panthers!"
Violet: Go Pan...Panfe.... I can't say it.
Me: Pan-thers.
Violet: Pan-thers.
Me: Go Panthers!
Violet:Go Panthers!  Yay!  Go Panthers!
Me: Yeah, good job!  Go Panthers!
Violet: No, I want to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

---

5) The Ideal Marriage is Based on Equality

Me: Honey, since you're going to Vegas with your friends right before Thanksgiving, if I hypothetically had to go to a seminar in Vegas for a couple days later this week, you wouldn't have any grounds to complain, right?
Dee: Honey, I love you dearly, but I will ALWAYS have grounds to complain if you pull something like that.

---

⁺If you were a fly on the wall.^*
*You don't want to be one of the flies that was on my wall.  They met with a horrible demise over the weekend, courtesy of my flyswatter.

I forgot to recount an actual conversation I had with a McDonald's serf employee a few weeks back while I was on an inspection trip.  I walked up to the counter where she stood attentively, awaiting my order.  Then the following mind-bender occurred:

Me: Yes, hello, this is a to-go order.  May I please have a bottle of water and one apple pie?

Employee: Do you want two pies?  It's cheaper...

Me: Two pies is cheaper than one pie?

Employee: Well, you get two for a dollar.

Me: And just how much is one pie?

Employee: Um, ninety cents.

Me: [Pauses to wonder how two pies are "cheaper"] I think I'll go with just the one pie I wanted, and save the ten cents, thank you very much.

Employee: OK.  And is this for here or to-go?

You don't have to be an electrical engineer to find these funny, but it helps.

Cribbed from Toothpaste For Dinner:

I forgot to mention this back when it occurred and someone may have posted it in the meantime - but did anyone else watch the Jeopardy episode where they had the Best Buy Geek Squad reading questions in a tech category, and then during the break they defined the origins of the term "Pwn"?

Well, in case you missed it, here it is.  Pretty funny stuff.  Thank you, Internet, for providing me with backup blog fodder.

Just discovered what I want for Father's Day.  Now how do I go back in time and tell my wife two weeks ago so it'll be here on Sunday?

Show us a great April Fools' Day joke.

I'm not a big one for practical jokes.  In Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, humor is codified, for the sake of an intelligent computer's understanding, as "Funny Once", "Funny Always", and "Funny Never". Some things are funny only the first time, some are always funny no matter what, and some things just aren't funny at all.  For me, practical jokes usually fall in the "Funny Once" category, although if they're mean-spirited or cause stress for the person being pranked, they immediately go in the "Funny Never" bucket.

 

WARNING: The rest of this post is sort of geeky.  If you don't consider yourself kind of geeky, you may find it funny.

That being said, I do appreciate when an April Fool's joke doesn't harm anyone AND manages to be "Funny Always".  One example that I recall is when a former boss of mine sent me some cut-sheets for some new electrical components he was thinking of buying, and asked me to review and provide my input.

Yes, these are cut-sheets for "Write Only Memory".  Just as you'd infer, where "Read Only Memory" devices have data on it that can only be read (and not written to), "Write Only Memory" devices can only be written to (and not read from).  Some of the uses suggested on the cut sheet for Write Only Memory:

• Don't Care Buffer Stores
• Least Significant Control Memories
• First-In, Never-Out (FINO) Asynchronous Buffers
• Post-Mortem Memories (Weapons Systems)

 

It took me a little while to figure out what the hell the stuff was supposed to be, but I chuckled quite a bit as I started reading the descriptions and looking at all the hard work that was put into these cut sheets.