Sound familiar?
I think the second and fourth panels on this excellent comic strip by Scott Meyer can easily be applied to Internet trolls — you know, the dickwads who always have something nasty to say in online forums and in comment threads. Do read the whole thing to get the full message.
Image embedded with the author’s permission.
Well, maybe it wasn’t April Fool’s day, but it was a good joke.
All the April Fools stuff going around the Internet today got me thinking about some of the jokes I’ve played on people in the past. This one came to mind and I thought I’d share it.
Back in the mid 1980s, I worked for the New York City Comptroller’s Office, Bureau of Financial Audit. I was a Field Audit Supervisor, with a cubicle on the 22nd floor of the Municipal Building.
In my cubicle, I had a small basket filled with hard candies. I didn’t eat them very often and didn’t recall seeing any of my cubicle visitors eat them very often. Yet the supply of candies was steadily declining. I realized that someone was pinching candies when I wasn’t around.
That made the culprit eligible to be a victim.
I went to a gag shop in Queens, NY, where I lived at the time. I bought a small package containing four garlic-filled hard candies. They were individually wrapped with shiny gold paper and cellophane — very easy to distinguish from my other candies. I brought them to the office and dropped them in the bowl.
Time went by. Every morning, I’d peek into the bowl and count the gold-wrapped candies. Four. Four. Four. More time passed. Four. Four. Three.
The day I arrived and found only three candies in the basket, I knew the trap had been sprung.
I never did find out who was pinching the candies…but they did stop disappearing.
Start the New Year with a laugh.
I got this from a relative of mine who occasionally sends funnies in e-mail. I thought I’d reproduce it here. I have no idea what the source is, but if you know or if it’s yours, let me know. I’ll either properly attribute it or remove it as required. (Unlike other Web site owners out there, I comply with copyright law.)
A Spanish teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine.
House for instance, is feminine: la casa. Pencil, however, is masculine: el lapiz.
A student asked, “What gender is computer?”
Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether computer’ should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.
The men’s group decided that computer should definitely be of the feminine gender (la computadora), because:
- No one but their creator understands their internal logic;
- The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;
- Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and
- As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.
The women’s group, however, concluded that computers should be Masculine (el computador), because:
- In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;
- They have a lot of data but still can’t think for themselves;
- They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and
- As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.
The women won.
Apologies to the men out there.
And to keep thing straight, I need to point out that my computer’s built-in translator claims computer, in Spanish, is el ordenador.