Oxymoronic Drivers

I'm thinking of adding "turn signal" to my collected oxymora. Drivers (here in California, at least) invariably only ever use them if it's already obvious which way they're headed, yet fail to use them when it would actually help. Take lunchtime yesterday, for example. I was waiting to turn right out of a parking lot, but there were 7 cars approaching from my left. I sat there watching as every single one of those drivers slowed down and pulled into the parking lot before they got to me. Thus, had I known, I could have exited at any time. Did any of those drivers signal to let me know that? No! Not a one.

My Fibonacci Joke

An infinite number of mathemeticians walk into a bar. The first mathemetician says, "I'll have one beer, please." The second mathemetician says, "I'll have one beer, please." The Nth mathemetician points to N-2 and N-1 and says, "I'll have what those two are having."

Trashy Entertainment

I sure get good value for my city taxes. Not only do they haul away my garbage, but the entertainment of watching them do it with those robot-armed trucks is bonus material.

A Man Walks Into a Bar...

One of my clients is a connoisseur of "A man walks into a bar..." jokes. I made this one up for him, and he thought it was funny enough to share:

A cartoon character named Sam bellies up to the bar and orders a yard of beer.

The barkeep asks him, "Are you sure you want a whole yard now? It'll get warm before you finish."

Sam replies, "Yes, I'm sure. I've got a 2-dimensional gullet, so this beer will disappear in nothing, flat."

Foolish Anagrams

Several years ago, my office mate, Jeff Davidson, and I got on a word-puzzle kick and we discovered an anagram engine on the web (now located at http://wordsmith.org/anagram). April 1st was coming up and we decided it would be fun to replace the nameplate of everyone in the office (about 35 people at the time) with an anagram of their name for the day -- a nice, clean practical joke. It took a little doing, even with help from the engine. For some people we had to try different variations like using Dave instead of David, including their middle initial, and/or adding a title like Mr., and so forth.

JARGON SLICE
Craig L. Jones

SONIC GERM JAR
Mr. Craig Jones

Then, it was just a matter of printing them up on card stock (we used something like 72pt type for the anagram with the original name centered underneath it in 18pt) and swapping them out for the real nameplates the night before.

INVADE MY FJORD, SERF?!?
Mr. Jeffrey Davidson

Of course, we stashed the real nameplates in Walter’s office along with other incriminating evidence. (Walter, you see, was even more famous for wordplay than the two of us.)

LET WAR RISE!
Walter Reis

Well, the joke was on us, because nobody saw them. One of the first people to arrive in the office that morning was a V.P. with a bug up his butt who didn’t think the anagrams were funny. (I’m sure he didn’t even recognize them for what they were.) He promptly tore them all down and put the real nameplates back up, mumbling about the company expecting visitors in the office that day (not true). Eventually, someone rescued the torn-down anagrams out of the trash and Jeff and I saw a number of them taped to people’s monitors by the end of the day. Oh, well.

If you try this yourself, you’re bound to get a better reception than we did. If, in your efforts, you come up with any real gems, please post a comment here. I can always use a good laugh.

Levels of Indirection

Smokebreak TV is responsible for the best laugh I've had in a long time. It goes like this:

A group of my coworkers in the Tucson office started a cable access show called Smokebreak TV and released their first episode last week. My friend, Vlad, a coworker with me in the local office, reviewed the episode in his blog, offering up an E-for-effort appreciation of the show and noting the potential bulldada factor. Being unfamiliar with the term, bulldada, I tried looking it up on Merriam-Webster as well as doing a "define:"-style Google search. Both turned up empty. I then tried a regular Google search on "buldada means" and got a hit on a book review that defined the term. The book in question was "Galaxy 666" by Pel Torro, which Ken DeVries called the worst science fiction novel ever written. He said that it "does for literature what Plan 9 From Outer Space did for the cinema." Reading the quoted passages is what sent me reeling. So, thanks guys. I owe you one.

iPod Race movie

I just discovered the iPod Race (quicktime) movie from last December. If you are an iPod user and you haven't seen it yet, you gotta check it out.