Fortune Cookie Humor

A fortune cookie

If your friend wants to learn to drive, don’t stand in the way.

For the first time in a long, long time, I got a funny fortune cookie.

Siri Dictation

Shouldn’t that be, “…a short list of subs”? Oh, Siri!

Here’s something you won’t find on my business blogs where I have to be more … businessy.

For those of you using screen readers, here’s a transcript of the Messages screenshot. And it makes it look like I put more effort into his post.

Them: Do you use big name foundation companies for slab work?

Me: [Basically, once].

Them: I have a carpenter … and a shirt lust if dubs.

Me: Siri dictation?

Potty Humor

Look how Mail abbreviated “Association.”

Funny is where you find it.

 

Visual Irony

Who will save your soul when it comes to the flowers now

Huh huh who will save your soul after all the lies that you told, boy

And who will save your souls if you won't save your own?

—Jewel Kilcher

It’s no secret I’m an HP Lovecraft fan—the mythos so many writers play in much more than his bloviated text. I even named a series of phones the NecronomiPhone [variable here] in honor of the fictional text that underlies the mythos, The Necronomicon. So I had to share this lovely photo when the song came up randomly in my music rotation.

 

It’s Not a Thin Lizzy Song

“If you can read this, roll me over”
This Jeep is bluffing!

Roll me over and turn me around.

Let me keep spinning ’til I hit the ground.

—Phil Lynott and Brian Downey

I saw this Jeep parked at Costco. Given the amount of spit and polish it evidences, I think the owners are daydreaming. Their concept of offroading must include a heavy dew on pavement.

The Snicker Test

I can’t tell if this is brilliant marketing or if it fails the snicker test. Both?

What was I thinking?

What was I blind?

When I bought this outfit I must have been

Temporarily out of my mind

—Christine Lavin

My work friend, Jonathan Edwards, says every company needs a 14-year-old boy on staff to test their product and marketing ideas. If the boy can’t make an innuendo, it’s not a bad idea. (Yes, the double-negative is intentional.)

I stopped at Buc-cee’s to refuel on the way to look at an apartment community today and found this product. My first reaction was, “WTF! What were they thinking?” I even heard Four Bitchin’ Babes start singing in my head.

My second thought was that Jonathan is right.

Punctuation Interlude

If you think quotation marks add emphasis, you really, really need to read today’s post.

This post originally appeared in the now-defunct Central Texas Instructional Design blog on this date.

Let’s take a break from multiple choice questions to revisit punctuation—quotation marks, in particular. When not setting off quoted text, what do they do?

One of my clients asked for my opinion on a marketing brochure. Marketing isn’t my specialty, but I agreed to look it over. One of the first things I noticed was an abundance of quotation marks bracketing single words and a couple of phrases. I asked, “When describing your new product, why is new in quotation marks? Why are so many other words in quotation marks?”

“I want to emphasize those words. The quotation marks will call the reader’s attention to those words.”

True enough, but what kind of attention do quotation marks draw? I told a story that one of my undergrad technical writing profs related in class. I wish I could take credit for it, but here is a short version of the story:

An editor and a writer were arguing over the use of quotation marks in a headline. The editor said they emphasize the meaning of the quoted word. The writer said they call the word into question. After much arguing, the writer said, “I can make my point if you give me control over tomorrow’s headline.” The overly-confident editor agreed. The next day, the banner headline read:

Editor Seen Leaving Motel with “Wife”

The next draft of the marketing brochure I saw had replaced the quotation marks with boldface type.

A Shot of Something

A single shot of cola is enough to start the day?

Gimme a shot of faith, a shot of confidence, a shot of something

A shot of something

—Manic Eden

TubaBoy was a hoot this morning. We were running late getting out of the house. He and Beccano were as sleepy as I still remember being on early-morning school days. When they both hollered that they were ready to leave, I exited the study to get my road cup. There was TubaBoy with a two liter Pepsi One in one hand and a shot glass full of black liquid in the other. As I realized what I was seeing, he tossed back the shot of cola and banged the shot glass down with a satisfied exhalation.

When I started laughing, he said, “Sorry. I needed some caffeine—not too much, not too little.”