Practical Jokes

During my days with the electric company, I had a supervisor who was a master at pulling off practical jokes. Mark might make it very simple -- say, pouring all of those little paper pieces from the paper punch machine onto a map, then folding the map back up, then waiting for someone to open the map, only to have thousands of little circular pieces of paper fall all over the place. Or he could be more elaborate and evil -- like the time he had one of our student interns convinced that the intern would have to reimburse the company for all his pay and benefits for the past 10 months because he didn't meet the definition of "student," as described in the fake document that Mark produced as part of the practical joke. Poor guy, I thought he was going to cry...and I still have the videotape of that one.

One day he left for a week-long vacation, and we decided it was time to get him back. We had already pulled a few small pranks on him, such as the time we filled out a job application at the Catawba Island McDonald's in his name. His wife asked him one day if everything was OK at work, and Mark said, yes, why? She said he received a call that day from McDonald's and they wanted him to come in for an interview. It took him days to convince her that he had not filled out the application in the first place.

But now is was time for the mother of all practical jokes.

We worked at a nuclear power plant, and Mark was a bit paranoid about one particular employee. He simply did not trust her, and he thought it possible that she was undercover, working for some anti-nuclear group. Fortunately, that was not the case, but we took advantage of his paranoia to set up the prank.

We prepared fake news releases and TV news scripts which made it clear that someone had infiltrated the nuke plant and was making accusations about safety violations and other bad stuff. When Mark returned from vacation, I got the ball rolling by mentioning that I had overheard the employee talking on the phone, and that she whispered a lot and tried to cover the mouthpiece so no one could hear what she was saying. Throughout that first day, several other conspirators would make mention of something suspicious that they had seen or heard, and by the end of the day, Mark was convinced that we had a spy in our midst.

The next morning, Mark's boss had his weekly staff meeting. Looking very somber, he leafed through the fake news releases and TV scripts, and read parts of the reports. Mark's eyes grew to the size of dinner plates, and he looked over at me as I took note of how red his face was getting. Here was the proof, the irrefutable evidence that one of our employees was selling us down the river. And Mark was livid.

We went together into his boss' office after the staff meeting. Mark suggested that security be brought in to escort the spy off the premises. He wanted to call the Sheriff to see if there were anything that could be done. He wanted to call the county prosecutor. But mostly, he wanted her dead.

We convinced Mark that we needed more evidence before we could bring any law enforcement or internal security people into it. We let this joke go on for a few hours, but things began to go out of control, and it was just a matter of time before Mark would get outsiders involved -- and that was the last thing we needed. So I was elected to tell him that it was a joke, but I was going to get one more jab in first. I went into his office with another fake news release, in which the spy accused Mark of playing golf instead of going to the county courthouse as he was supposed to do once a week. Mark jumped out of his seat, slammed the top of his desk with his fist, and screamed, "Golf? I only played golf twice last month!"

I could not contain my laughter. I said, "Mark, you've just been hosed," which was my way of saying that this had all been a joke. He said, "Yeah, we're all hosed! This stuff's in the papers and on TV!" Through my laughter, I was finally able to persuade him that this was all a joke.

Once convinced, he immediately came up with a way of turning the tables. He walked over to the offices of some of the people who perpetrated the prank. grabbed his chest and fell to the floor. He started moaning and begging for someone to call 911. One of my coworkers looked at me and asked if he was serious, but I couldn't keep a straight face long enough to fake an answer. So Mark got up, dusted himself off, and went back to work.

The Car Phone Warehouse Guy

I tried to post a You Tube link last week, but the link failed for some reason. So I'm trying again, this time with a link to the British (original) version of American Idol.

This gave me goose bumps...

It All Adds Up

If you've ever assembled a bicycle or a toy that was made in Asia, you've probably had the experience of trying to decipher the instructions. What is one to do when step #4 says: In place other nut stay on wheel.

But our Asian friends are learning. They are now including very specific illustrations with the instructions, so that you cannot possibly make a mistake. These drawings came with a calculator, making it much easier for English-speaking customers to understand the limitations of the calculator:




Now it all adds up.

Bran Flakes or Beer?

About 40 years ago, someone discovered that eating lots of bran might reduce the risk of colon cancer and heart disease. Next thing you knew, Euell Gibbons was doing commercials for Grape Nuts cereal and enlightening us about the coffee-like qualities of chickory.

Then they told us that artificial sweeteners would cause cancer. Never mind that the amount of sweetener ingested by the lab rats was the equivalent of a human eating 125 pounds of cotton candy each day for 600 years.

Then they said salt consumption increased the risk of high blood pressure. Now, they're not so sure.

The bran findings were based on the low incidence of colon cancer among some bran-eating tribesmen in some God-forsaken part of the world, where a cheeseburger would be considered a week on the town. What they didn't tell you was that the average life expectancy of the tribe was something like 35 years. If we all died at 35, there would indeed be a low incidence of colon cancer. And heart disease. And macular degeneration. And Alzheimer's disease. And so on.

I take all of these warnings with a grain of salt, so to speak, because I subscribe to the Benjamin Franklin theory of well-being: all things in moderation. If you eat a balanced diet, a little salt won't kill you. And if you get a little exercise, a cheeseburger is not going to cause cardiac arrest. And it was Franklin himself who said that beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

I don't get it...

Urban Art

Fascinating...and it's all gone with the next rain.






Funny Videos

Politics

This is not a political blog; the last thing this world needs is another political blog. But politics is a big part of my life, and it does take some discipline on my part to avoid political topics when posting.

So this post is not "political" in the partisan sense of the word. But it is about politics.

Probably my earliest memory of politics is a rally that was held in my little home town of Bellevue, Ohio, in 1960. I remember being the only 4 year old kid who could spell Kennedy. I also remember that I had a crush on Caroline.

I remember a particular joke that was going around school during the 1964 election: Lyndon Johnson is so rich that he has Goldwater in his toilet.

In the 1968 election, Eugene McCarthy ran against the war in Viet Nam, and my sister Linda had McCarthy posters hanging on her bedroom walls. He lost in the primary election, which was marred by the assassination of Robert Kennedy and the mayhem of the Chicago convention.

And so on...



By the time I had completed my enlistment in the Air Force, I was fairly sure that I wanted to do something in the political realm. And four years later, as I was nearing the completion of my degree, I was certain it was what I wanted to do. As graduation approached, I applied for only one job - a 12 month internship with the Ohio Legislative Service Commission.

The internship didn't pay much, and I had to sell my car and stereo to be able to afford the move to Columbus, but it put me on a path and opened lots of doors. I worked for 5 different Senators, one of whom was the Minority Leader, and he offered me a permanent position 6 months into the internship. I worked hard on several Senate campaigns in 1983 and 1984, and I met many interesting people. One was former Delaware Governor Pete DuPont, who was exploring a Presidential run at the time. He was the first of many people I met who were involved in one way or another with national politics. I also met Lynn Nofziger (an aide to Ronald Reagan), Art Laffer (creator of the Laffer Curve), Woody Hayes (possibly the greatest college football coach of any era, and very active in Republican politics), and many, many other lesser known elected officials and political operatives.

And now we are in another Presidential election year. The only one of the major candidates whom I've met -- Fred Thompson -- has dropped out. (I do not count Dennis Kucinich among the major candidates.)

In this 1998 photo, Fred Thompson was spellbound as I laid out my economic proposals. Or maybe he was just trying to figure out how to get a Dewars on the rocks without offending the Teetotaller-In-Chief, Governor Bob Taft, who drank punch and tailed Thompson all night. I'll never know.

R.I.P. - Johnny Cochran

The obit says a lot. A great man.


As with all images on the blog, just click on it to get a better view.

Pun Perfection

We all have opinions, but this is the greatest pun I know.

A beef rancher was getting ready to retire, and wanted to give the ranch to his three sons, who had worked on the ranch since they were young boys.

He wanted to give the ranch a name before he gave it to his boys. And he decided on a name: The Focus Ranch.

Why Focus?

Because it's where the sons raise meat.

Golf Truisms

No matter how bad you are playing, it is always possible to play worse.

Don't buy a putter until you've had a chance to throw it.

Always try to keep fewer than 300 swing thoughts in your mind while addressing the ball.

When your shot has to carry over a water hazard, you can either hit one more club or two more balls.

If you're afraid a full shot might reach the green while the foursome ahead of you is still putting out, you have two options: you can immediately shank a lay-up or you can wait until the green is clear and top a ball halfway there.

The less skilled the player, the more likely he is to share his ideas about the golf swing.

The inevitable result of any golf lesson is the instant elimination of the one critical unconscious motion that allowed you to compensate for all of your many other swing faults.

A golf match is a test of your skill against your opponents' luck.

Counting on your opponent to inform you when he breaks a rule is like expecting him to make fun of his own haircut.

Nonchalant putts count the same as chalant putts

The shortest distance between any two points on a golf course is a straight line that passes directly through the center of a very large tree.

You can hit a two-acre fairway 10% of the time and a two-inch branch 90% of the time.

It's not a gimme if you're still away.

If you really want to get better at golf, go back and take it up at a much earlier age.

Since bad shots come in groups of three, a fourth bad shot is actually the beginning of the next group of three.

When you look up, causing an awful shot, you will always look down again at exactly the moment when you ought to start watching the ball if you ever want to see it again.

Every time a golfer makes a birdie, he must subsequently make two triple bogeys to restore the fundamental equilibrium of the universe.

If you want to hit a 7 iron as far as Tiger Woods does, simply try to lay up just short of a water hazard.

There are two things you can learn by stopping your back swing at the top and checking the position of your hands: how many hands you have, and which one is wearing the glove.

Hazards attract; fairways repel.

A ball you can see in the rough from 50 yards away is not yours.

If there is a ball on the fringe and a ball in the bunker, your ball is in the bunker. If both balls are in the bunker, yours is in the footprint

It's easier to get up at 6:00 AM to play golf than at 10:00 AM to mow the yard.

If there's a storm rolling in, you'll be having the round of your life.

Golf balls are like eggs. They're white. They're sold by the dozen. And you need to buy fresh ones each week.

If your opponent has trouble remembering whether he shot a six or a seven, he probably shot an eight (or worse).

It is surprisingly easy to hole a fifty-foot putt. For a 10.

Karaoke, 1970's Style

Y'know, I should have just left those photo albums in the closet where they belong...

While on one of my trips to Luxembourg, I met a young lady who was later to become my wife (now my ex-wife). She had a studio apartment in the Bonnevoie section of Luxembourg City, just a mile or two south of the city center. And we had a few parties there.

If karaoke existed back in those days, I was not aware of it. We had air guitars and such, but not an actual soundtrack with the vocals removed.

No, we were reduced to using umbrellas as microphones...