Category Archives: Funny Stuff

What Happens When News Anchors Don’t Listen

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Things went awry for Headline News from the very beginning as they put together a piece on Edward Snowden. First, they contacted the wrong person to interview; they thought they were interviewing journalist John Hendren, but instead they were actually interviewing Jon Hendren. A simple mistake, but one that led to an embarrassing on-air interview (see below) that was exacerbated by the anchor’s inability to actually listen to Hendren’s answers. Had she listened she would have quickly figured out that he wasn’t talking about Edward Snowden, rather he was talking about Edward Scissorhands.

Oh, and one clue they might have had that they were interviewing the wrong guy was that his Twitter handle is @fart. Seriously.

The Make Me Barf League

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This might be the single most nauseating thing I’ve seen in recent memory. It’s a Business Insider story about something called The League and as I read it I kept trying to find the “Parody” sign, both for the story’s subject matter and writing that’s so bad you want to believe it’s purposeful. Sadly, I suspect it’s real. Here’s a taste:

The League, a selective dating app for successful people, launched in San Francisco earlier this year, and a few months ago it launched in New York City.

Stanford graduate Amanda Bradford founded The League and raised $2.1 million to match up highly motivated and interesting single professionals.

The League founder Amanda Bradford, pic from Business Insider

On July 31, The League held a party out in Montauk, exclusively for its selective group of New York users. Actress Mischa Barton was among the party’s attendees…

The attendees had a lot in common — good schools, similar jobs — so conversation came easy for them…

During the first hour of the party, League guests were given an open bar. This undoubtedly made people loosen up…

So what does it take to get into The League? Its users often hold degrees from prestigious schools…

To get in, The League uses a secret algorithm that looks at both your LinkedIn profile and your network of friends.

Secret algorithm? Good Lord, all you have to do is check out the article and its accompanying pics to figure out that the service’s secret sauce is based on a time-tested recipe concocted eons ago by a bunch of teenagers. I suspect the algorithm involves a bunch of perfectly coiffed folks sifting through profile pics and saying, “She’s, like, hideous. Oh, he’s dee-lish. OMG, look at that hair!”

I wish I could find something redeeming here, but honest to God it makes me want to move to a desert island.

#Dadbod

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Suddenly me and my ilk – middle aged guys with semi-maintained middle aged bodies – are trendy, at least according to this item from The Atlantic:

Is “dadbod” a hashtag joke or a social-sexual movement? A bit of both, probably. A month ago at The Odyssey, Clemson sophomore Mackenzie Pearson explained that this “new trend” had “fraternity boys everywhere” rejoicing. “In case you haven’t noticed lately, girls are all about that dad bod,” she wrote. “The dad bod is a nice balance between a beer gut and working out. The dad bod says, ‘I go to the gym occasionally, but I also drink heavily on the weekends and enjoy eating eight slices of pizza at a time.’” In the time since, #dadbod has gone viral on social media, to the cheers of Jason Segel lookalikes everywhere.

It ain’t much, but I’ll take it. #Dadbod owners of the world unite and rejoice!

Questions from Every Q&A You’ve Ever Suffered Through

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Like many of you I’ve had to sit through an astounding number of presentations followed by Q&a sessions. That’s why I find this list of the questions asked at every Q&A ever to be so funny, and kind of depressing. Here’s a nice selection you should all recognize:

1. “I’d like you to know that I’m particularly smart. Here are some subjects I consider myself to be very smart about. There is no question.”

2. “Can you explain why I didn’t understand this presentation?”

10. “I used to like your work, but I don’t now. Have you considered doing the things I like again?”

14. “Someone else already asked my question. Make them give it back.”

18. “I drifted in and out during the middle of whatever it was you were talking about. Could you please revisit that entire topic? I will not be more specific, thank you for your time.”

Ever Wished You Could Just Crap Money?

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If you’re really healthy you might be able to make a pretty penny selling your poop:

Some people with Crohn’s disease also benefit from fecal transplants. So a company called Open Biome has been facilitating fecal transplants to patients in need, and paying healthy poopers a hefty sum for their services.

Fecal matter is transferred either through endoscopy or swallowed capsules, and Open Biome has already shipped about 2,000 treatments to almost 200 hospitals, according to theWashington Post. They’ll pay you $40 per sample, plus an extra $50 if you come in 5 days a week (the donations have to be made on-site.) The only thing is, you have to be super-healthy: only about 4% of prospective donors make the cut.

As someone with a decidedly juvenile sense of humor I found this next part to be particularly good:

Open Biome gives their anonymous donors names like Vladimir Pootin, Albutt Einstein, and Dumpledore

Personally I prefer Sir Poopsalot or The Godfather of Poo.

The Memo

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I’ve worked for quite a few organizations over my career and while they were all unique they all had two things in common – the Personal Usage Memo and the Hygiene Memo. I’m fairly confident everyone has seen these, but if you haven’t here’s the overview of each:

Personal Usage Memo
This memo is sent by the boss to the entire company/department/team to remind them that company property (phones, computers, mobile devices, etc.) are not to be used for personal business. The memo almost always starts with, “It has been brought to may attention that…” and it’s sent to the entire group even if only one person is violating the policy, purportedly to remind everyone of the policy but realistically because the boss doesn’t have the balls to confront the violator one-on-one.

Hygiene Memo
This is my favorite, mainly because it is almost always necessary and it also almost always overwrought. Basically it comes down to this: people are slobs and they’re lazy. They don’t clean up after themselves and, like in most of our households, one or two people end up cleaning up after the rest. There’s also the matter of cluttered desks, which is less a problem for co-workers but can be an issue for companies that might have policies related to security, privacy, etc. So this particular memo is necessary, but when it’s written the boss almost always gets too specific and then defensive about the remedies being sought. It should be as simple as, “Dear everyone, we’re all adults here and as adults you should know our company’s policies related to how your work space is to be kept. In all of our common areas like the kitchen you should know to clean up after yourselves so that you don’t gross out everyone else. Please act like the adult you are.”

Unfortunately offended bosses can’t help themselves and go into excruciating detail about what they perceive as the problem and what they’d like done about it. Those are the memos that tend to make their way into the public realm and open the authors up to some pretty good teasing. Best example of late is this memo from Wired’s editor to his staff and the dramatic reading of it in the video below. Enjoy.

International Flocculent Society

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You may have heard about the Rob Lowe commercial for DirecTV in which “cool” Rob Lowe is a DirecTV subscriber and “painfully awkward” Rob Lowe is a cable subscriber. You may have also heard that the folks at the International Paruresis Association aren’t too happy that the commercials take aim at painfully awkward Lowe’s shy bladder issues. To them it’s okay to have a little fun with shy bladder syndrome, but they don’t like the idea of sufferers being equated to losers.

I was thinking of this when I saw the Crazy Hairy Rob Lowe commercial. Same format, but instead of being painfully awkward the cable TV Lowe is ridiculously hairy.

As someone who frightens small children at the pool if I haven’t been properly manscaped I have a slight issue with hairiness being equated to loser-dome, so I waited with great anticipation for whatever association represents hairy dudes to come out in my defense. That never happened. I can only surmise that no such organization exists. What a travesty! So I’ve decided that there’s an opportunity to get the word out that we hairy dudes aren’t losers – that in fact we’re positive contributors to our society. Thus, in the near future you’ll soon hear about a grand event – the creation of the International Flocculent Society (IFS).

The IFS will be dedicated to helping hairy men everywhere overcome the stigma that confronts us at every pool, hot tub, beach or shirts/skins basketball game. We’ll have a Hall of Fame – I’m thinking Tom Selleck could be our initial inductee – annual education conferences and a trade show. We should probably look into funding research for hair removal that doesn’t involve lasers, wax or chemicals since I’m sure many of us would jump at the chance to be denuded if for no other reason than we’re sick and tired of cleaning the damn shower after every use.

Whatever. It’s time for the well-haired of the world to be represented and I’m gonna do it!