Category Archives: Humor

Universal Truths

Posted on by The Old Wolf

These have been floating around the Internet for a while, but they gave me a smile.

1) Triangular sandwiches taste better than square ones.
2) At the end of every party there is always a girl crying.
3) One of the most awkward things that can happen in a bar is when your beer-to-toilet cycle gets synchronised with a complete stranger.
4) You’ve never been quite sure whether it’s ok to eat green potato chips.
5) Everyone who grew up in the 80’s has entered the digits 55378008 into a calculator.
6) Reading when you’re drunk is horrible.
7) Sharpening a pencil with a knife makes you feel really manly.
8) You’re never quite sure whether it’s against the law or not to have a fire in your back yard.
10) Nobody ever dares make cup-a-soup in a bowl.
11) You never know where to look when eating a banana.
12) Its impossible to describe the smell of a wet cat.
13) Prodding a fire with a stick makes you feel manly.
14) Rummaging in an overgrown garden will always turn up a bouncy ball.
15) You always feel a bit scared when stroking horses.
16) Everyone always remembers the day a dog ran into your school.
17) The most embarrassing thing you can do as schoolchild is to call your teacher mom or dad.
18) The smaller the monkey the more it looks like it would kill you at the first given opportunity.
19) Some days you see lots of people on crutches.
20) Every guy has at some stage while taking a pee flushed half way through and then raced against the flush.
21) Old women with mobile phones look wrong!
22) Its impossible to look cool while picking up a Frisbee.
23) Driving through a tunnel makes you feel excited.
24) You never ever run out of salt.
25) Old ladies can eat more than you think.
26) You can’t respect a man who carries a dog.
27) There’s no panic like the panic you momentarily feel when you’ve got your hand or head stuck in something.
28) No one knows the origins of their metal coat hangers.
29) Despite constant warning, you have never met anybody who has had their arm broken by a swan.
30) The most painful household incident is wearing socks and stepping on an upturned plug.
31) People who don’t drive slam car doors too hard.
32) You’ve turned into your dad the day you put aside a thin piece of wood specifically to stir paint with.
33) Everyone had an uncle who tried to steal their nose.
34) Bricks are horrible to carry.
35) In every plate of french fries there is a bad fry.

The Old Wolf has *snrk* spoken.

GIF files that made me laugh

Posted on by The Old Wolf

“Nine out of ten voices in my head tell me that life lived without laughter is a sin. The other one is just crazy.”
-Wolfington X. Analemma

This guy just learned the meaning of Karma.

Instant comfort.

Attack Roomba™

Bang!

Unclear on the concept.

Again. And Again. And Again.

I can relate to this. What’s more, we have a kitten and that’s just about right.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

The Lost Cartoons: Most found, one still elusive.

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Edited to reflect the fact that all the lost cartoons but one have been located.

The New Yorker was a constant guest in my home as I was growing up in New York City in the 1950’s. My parents were both actors, and it seemed like it was always there, along with Variety and any number of other publications. Of course, at that age, I was interested in the cartoons most of all, and developed a deep and abiding love for the work of Charles Addams, although there were others I became familiar with as well, including W. Steig, O. Soglow, Jules Feiffer, to name just a few.

I have this picture in my mind. I can see it as clearly as if it were on the desk in front of me. It’s done in that pen-and-ink with grey wash style so popularized by Addams, and it shows the interior of a warehouse at the Heinz factory. A worker on a ladder way, way up at the top of a rack finds a single lonely can, the shelf lovingly labeled “58.” I don’t think I’m making this up, but I have never, ever, been able to find that cartoon anywhere – even with the miracle of the Internet.

I came close, though. Gluyas Williams, a wonderful cartoonist in his own right, depicted the scene in his series of industrial crises, but it’s just not the picture I had in mind.

Click the image for a larger size.

Closeup of the offending product!

Yes, this was funny. But it’s not what I had in mind. If anyone out there knows what I am talking about, or has seen or has a copy of the panel I have described, drop me a comment here. I’ve already had success with one or two other “lost” cartoons, including this gem by Howard Shoemaker (thanks to Mark Breeding for the awesome find):

My favorite Jerry Amerongen of all time (thanks to Mark Stanley for knowing the artist and the collection it was found in):

(I love the old lady strung up by her thumbs, it cracks me up ever time I look at it. Banks are really like this…)

And the iconic “retching jackal” by Al Jaffee, recently found in his wonderful biography after decades of wishing I could find a copy.

Yeah, it’s twisted – but then so is MAD Magazine, and I loved it as a kid.

There’s one more. This one I know exists, because I used to have it in my collection, but what happened to it I’ll never know. It would have been in Datamation, or one of the other comparable trade pulps, in the mid-1980’s. (See edit below)

This is a Xerox series 2700 laser printer, but when attached to a Wang OIS word processor, it was OEM’ed as an LPS-12 or an LPS-24, depending on the engine speed.

EDIT: On February 2, 2018, the Internet finally disgorged the cartoon I had been chasing for decades. Found in PC Magazine, November 15, 1988:

Laser Printer Mr. Bond

EDIT: This one surfaced thanks to reddit. It’s not really off-color, but perhaps just a bit risqué: another one that I had remembered for decades and never been able to find again, located for me by redditor /u/Haze793:

Tulane or Yale found by Haze793

Bloodsoaked flawless fatal victory (translation version)

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Translation can be funny. Spend a career in and around the industry, and you hear all the jokes. The disasters. The catastrophes.

Translation students invariably hear the story of the interpreter (or the computer, depending on which version of the apocryphal story is told) who rendered “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” into Russian as “The wine is good, but the meat is rotten.”

Some bad translations have long passed into legend: “The lift is being repaired today. During this time we regret you will be unbearable.” – supposedly seen on an elevator in Hungary, or Japan, or any number of other places. One can find endless lists of these on the internet, and while some are obvious fabrications, others are true because one does see such abominations out there; assembly instructions for products from the Orient used to be notoriously bad back in the 70’s, and engrish.com is still a font of amusement if you want to see bad translation work.

Let a computer do your translation for you, and you can embarrass yourself and your entire nation:

If you don’t understand the results you’re getting, it’s dangerous to use automated translation – what the original restaurant name was supposed to be, no one will ever know.

The same goes for emails, if you don’t speak the language you’re dealing with:

This particular sign didn’t last long, as soon as the city council members discovered what had happened.

And then, in the midst of all the hilarity, one encounters brilliance.

Now, since I use Firefox with Adblock Plus and F.B. Purity, I never see ads on the Internet, but many folks aren’t so lucky.

I’ve got more to say about the Açaí berry scam (stay tuned), but you still see these ads, and thousands like them, all over the internet. And, these ads need to be translated for other language markets. Given that the preponderance of these Facebook and Google ads are 100% bullcrap, it’s easy to see why an ethical individual would soon tire of committing electronic fraud. One Finnish translator decided to go out in a blaze of glory.

Here’s what the ad looked like:

But if you’re Finnish, this is what you’d be seeing:

Like a boss!

The Old Wolf has spoken.

What it was like when I scraped my knee

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Happened all the time. Skating, climbing trees, those deadly playground implements of destruction. And depending on what was in mom’s medicine cabinet (or even worse, if I was visiting my cousins in the country,) the cure was often worse than the injury.

Mom used Mercurochrome, until I begged her to start using Bactine™ (“Psst! Goes the Bactine™, and down go the mean old germs,” said the TV commercial, and I was all over anything that was pain-free.)

But Aunt June, for all her sweet kindness, was a closet sadist: she used merthiolate in her home, and woe unto the child who came in with a cut.

The chart below shows my impressions as a child of what various remedies were like; the pain scale images are from the inimitable Hyperbole and a Half.

Nowadays, I just wash an owie with soap and water (yeah, it stings a bit, but suck it up), slather on some Neosporin™ or other antibiotic cream, and call it good. But as a kid, my pain threshold was  lot lower. Sucks to be a kid.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

On occasion I stumble across things on Facebook or reddit or elsewhere that are relevant and which deserve to be shared. Here is one such example:

Alternate Pain Scale 1

The Old Wolf has edited.

Technological Prejudice

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Steve Mann, called by some “The Father of Wearable Technology,” was hungry in Paris. Instead of stopping in at a local boîte, he and his family (inexplicably – this is Paris, after all) chose to dine at McDonald’s. It turned into something of an incident, which he also reported on his blog. Despite being shown a doctor’s note that explained his wearable eyepiece (a PARC1-esque precursor to Google Glass,) the staff at McDo had reservations.

Steve Mann with his EyeTap device

I imagine something like this taking place:

Staffer 1: Excusez-moi, monsieur, qu’est-ce que c’est on your face there?

Mann: It’s a wearable eyepiece. I need it. Here’s a note from my doctor.

Staffer 1: (reads.) (sniffs.) Hmp. D’accord, monsieur. For now. (Returns to work, muttering Gallic imprecations under his breath.)

[In the kitchen]

Staffer 2: What did he say?

Staffer 1: He says it’s technology. He says he needs it. He showed me a note from his doctor.

Staffer 2: And you believed him? Crétin! All américains sont des liars! He is doubtless a spy for le Wendy’s, or un Borg, or un observeur from the 7th dimension, or worse, from le CIA!

Staffer 3: Oui! We must throw him out before he begins to throw caca on les clients of our fine establishment!

All: Allons, enfants de la patrie!

Staffer 1: Monsieur! You must leave! You may not wear Borg technology in our store!

Mann: But it’s just an eyepiece…

Staffers (together): Non! Hérétique! You will burn for your blasphemy! Away avec toi! (staff hustles Mann and his family out of the restaurant, trying to rip off his eyepiece which is rather bolted to his head)

Staffers: Voila! The pûreté of our établissement has been restored! Vive la France! And stay out, or next time we will not be so charitable, cochon américain!

Of course, all révolutions begin en France, and then migrate to other shores. Perhaps a dark time will fall upon our own nation, with gangs of thugs roving the streets yanking hearing aids out of the ears of the elderly, but after the population has been decimated by the technology wars which ensue, equilibrium will be established, and portable technology will be accepted by the remainder.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go polish my optical implants.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

1PARC, or the Palo Alto Research Center of XEROX, developed the technology that has now become ubiquitous as the Macintosh, and marketed it as the 8010 STAR system and the subsequent 6085 Desktop Publishing System. They invented the desktop metaphor, with documents, folders, trashcans, windows, raster font design, and a whole host of other things… and did it in 1985, long before Windows was even a bad mushroom dream in Bill Gates’ mind.

Disclaimer

A webcomic worth reading: Wapsi Square

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Webcomics have been good to me.

They found me my eternal sweetheart, kept me sane in the midst of storms, and filled my circle of friends and acquaintances with some of the best people I’ll ever know. There are thousands of them out there, so I’ve had to be selective; they can also be a terrible time-sink.

That said, I’d like to periodically recommend the strips that have meaning for me in one way or another. Today, one that sits at the top of my must-read list: Wapsi Square, by Paul Taylor.

From Wikipedia, “Wapsi Square is a slice of life/fantasy webcomic set in modern Minneapolis, “a world almost exactly like the one you want to believe you live in.” It also includes multiple supernatural elements, including a psychic and a god, which contrasts with its soap opera nature.The name derives from the Wapsipinicon River.

The story starts following the mundane life of main character Monica Villarreal and focuses prominently on her interactions with her friends. She works as an anthropologist dealing with artifacts for museum and the strips are mostly of the gag-a-day form. This changes, however, with the introduction of the character Tepoztecal, an Aztec deity, which marks the beginning of a change in tone, including longer story arcs involving mythological creatures, forgotten civilizations, gods and the end of the world.

What I love about Wapsi is more than just the stunning artwork and the captivating storyline – it’s about the inner journey of discovery that each of his dominant characters is taking. Whether the interactions are the day-to-day ones with friends and associates, or the “holy crap it’s a sphinx get in the car!” ones that happen along the way, these people fight every day with those internal demons that live within each of us: doubt, shame, guilt, insecurity, fear, prejudice, Harry the Worm, you name it. And sometimes they win, and sometimes they lose, and it’s a wonderful romp; even the demons have demons – nobody in this strip is exempt from the struggle.

Prominent among the issues Paul’s characters deal with is body image; Monica is a tiny Latina with a brobdingnagian bustline, and this provides ample fodder for both humor and introspection. Paul will often step outside the fourth wall on his blog to spotlight real-life women who personify the essence of a “Wapsi Girl”: strong, feisty, accomplished, and full of can-do attitude. If you’re wondering where the strong men are in the Wapsi World, they are there, but they tend to hide in the shadows for the most part. I for one would love to know more about Daren the bartender and his background – he reminds me a lot of Star Trek’s Guinan… a wise listener who somehow has a way of seeing into the soul.

Outside of the strip, Paul does some really nice artwork – you can see many of his pieces here, and most of these have been offered for sale at eBay, along with the original bristol-board artwork for the daily strips as well. I confess to having a rather substantial collection.

Wapsi can be lighthearted, but it can also be very dark. It would get at least a PG-13 rating, with an occasional “R” word thrown in, but adult themes are never tossed around gratuitously.

As long as it’s around, I’ll be reading Wapsi; it’s more than just entertainment for me, but also a daily reminder that all of us are fighting an uphill battle, and that we need to be there for one another. It has evolved mightily since it was started, both in storyline and artwork; the only thing I can guarantee is that nobody knows what is waiting around the next corner.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

WGASA?

Posted on by The Old Wolf

When the San Diego Zoo opened a second, larger branch called the San Diego Wild Animal Park, built around an enormous open-field enclosure where the animals roam free, visitors would ride on a monorail called the Wgasa Bush Line which circles the enclosure.

They wanted to give the monorail a jazzy, African sounding name. So they sent out a memo to a bunch of zoo staffers saying, “What shall we call the monorail at the Wild Animal Park?” One of the memos came back with “WGASA” written on the bottom. The planners loved it and the rest is history. What the planners didn’t know was that the zoo staffer had not intended to suggest a name. He was using an acronym which was popular at the time. It stood for “Who Gives A Shit Anyhow?”

Bohica!

The Old Wolf has spoken.