Category Archives: humor

October 24, 2010 · 9:13 pm

Longuyland

Saw this t-shirt in the hospital gift shop the other day and was simultaneously enchanted and annoyed that I did not make it. I have posted about our ‘accent’ here on the Island of Long because I always get a kick out of the way people speak.

Urban dictionary has defined the word and has a great sentence as an example of how to use it, “I’m walkin’-tawlkin’-cawfee all day in Longuyland.”

When I am tired my accent is pretty bad. If you ask my brother who moved when he was 18, it is always bad.

Jana and I both thought this was sort of a weird item for a hospital gift shop, but hey, I am sure it gets plenty of laughs.

Of course it comes in black as well. But somehow I think the bright green adds to the tackiness.

Anyone interested in owning one? I would be happy to scoot back over and pick it up for you.

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October 23, 2010 · 11:15 pm

Yoga vs. Yogurt – a tale of hearing

This one can be filed under what we say and what they hear.

Tonight we were driving to a fundraiser that was based at a local Yoga Studio. Our dear friend Gail (yogamom to you who read the comments here) was kind enough to donate her beautiful space to the Port Washington Education Foundation for our first ever Amazing Race which was an amazing success.

I was telling Gary that the construction that was going on in some retail space in town was going to have a whole new row of stores facing the back parking lot. I also informed him a of a new yogurt place, that I thought was a franchise that was opening there. I said the guy already had 2 others.

Fast forward to the end of the race and poor Gail pulls me aside and says, “Gary already ruined my night so now you might as well give me all the details.” Hmmmm, I thought to myself, what the hell is she talking about. I leave him here bartending for an hour and a half and he has ruined her night? WTH.

Gail: So just give me the details and let me get this over with.

Me: Um, what are you talking about?

Gail: Gary told me a franchised yoga studio is opening in town.

Me: How would he know that?

Gail: He said you told him on the way here.

Me: (lightbulb going off in my battered brain). Not yoGA… yoGURT!

Note to self: schedule Gary’s hearing test.

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October 17, 2010 · 11:20 pm

60 Minutes and Erectile Dysfunction

Nope, they did not do a piece on 60 minutes about E.D. But they might has well have.

I was busy cooking away and more listening than watching 60 minutes tonight and first came (no pun) the new Viagra spot. It’s all Steve McQueenish with bluesy music and a classic car, the open road and a dusty gas station in the middle of nowhere. You can view it here.

I love this line: “This is the age of getting things done.” Oh jeez. Yeh baby, you can still ‘get things done’.  And then there is the bottled water spilling oh so sensually into the radiator. Yowza. But the line that got me the most was something about finding out what 20 million men already know.

Really? 20 million men have used Viagra. Damn, that’s a lot of wood! I am hard-pressed (again, no pun) to believe that all 20 mil actually suffer from E.D. What percentage do you think take it just to see… well you know.

Second spot was for Cialis. This brand has the best ‘warning’ line of all times: “To avoid serious injury, tell your doctor if you sustain an erection for more than 4 hours.’ I always wonder, ‘injury to who?’ This is Gary’s favorite. He loves how they made a warning line into a tagline.

So here is the thing. Two E.D. med ads during a single half hour of 60 minutes. Am I to believe that young guys don’t watch 60 mintues?

Yep, this is the sort of thing I think about when I am cooking.

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October 10, 2010 · 10:53 pm

Adkeeper.com, you had me at The Keep!

This one is huge. And I know you are all thinking that I am just about the hippest blogger in history that I am picking this one up just hours after the press release. Keep thinking that for now. Later I will tell you why I knew about this so soon.

So here is the deal, adkeeper.com is just what the name says. The ‘keeper’ gives you the ability to click on an online ad and save, or keep it (get it) for later when you want to engage. It lets you keep all the ads for products that you normally buy in one place. Start looking for the button at the top of this post on ads online and you can click it and start keeping. You can view the product demo here.

Simply put: you know how when you see an ad you are interested in online and then you refresh the page and you lose it and you’re really angry because they were offering a discount code for something you really wanted and you get really mad and stomp around the house, yell at your spouse and kick the dog. Well first of all, shame on you for kicking the dog and second you don’t have to worry about that anymore because now you can save it. (as far as yelling at your spouse, we all know that had nothing to do with the ad, so go resolve that please).

For you old schoolers, it’s like cutting out the ad, or offer, and putting it in a file for later. Like my mom.

To quote the CEO, Scott Kurnit (yes for all you web savvy souls out there – THAT Scott Kurnit… about.com Scott Kurnit):

For 15 years we’ve just had the IMPRESSION and the CLICK. Well, what about a KEEP? That’s it. A KEEP. Keep the ad for later, when I have the time, when I can engage.

Consumers in control. There’s an idea.

So, beginning today we’re offering a Keep Button™ for every ad and a Keeper™ to put them in. In their Keepers consumers can save, sort, sift, share, rank, review, click, print and buy. It’s “on my time advertising.”

For consumers, don’t get your panties in a knot about privacy. This is opt-in and permission based. And for you advertisers and media buyers out there, this is instantly measurable, on-demand advertising. Way coolio for everyone!

If you are still not quite clear on this check out this video. Or listen to what Scott has to say. His enthusiasm and history of how this idea came to be is infectious. And makes us all wonder, ‘Why did no one think of this before?’. It is actually so simple yet I believe this concept will revolutionize the online advertising business. Check out this super A-list Advisory Board – seems they think so too.

Ok, so full disclosure. I do not spend my Sunday nights looking for the hottest new thing to hit the interwebs. Ok, maybe I do… sometimes. But in this instance I knew about this because the babe of a COO, Todd Sloan, happens to be a dear friend.

Oh and Badger as well!

And since I have known about this for awhile and  he has not killed me yet, it is safe to say you can all trust me with your secrets.

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October 8, 2010 · 10:59 pm

The Mangler

Get ready for some really ridiculous posts. This weekend my mom and I are on a road trip. I told her we would be like Thelma and Louise. I thought it was funny until we were stuck in our 4th traffic jam on I-95 in as many hours and she told me she was going to take out a gun and shoot herself in the head. “Mom? Did you actually take me seriously and bring a gun on this trip?” I figured this one was going to be kind of hard to explain. Luckily she was only kidding.

We decided to take this trip to suburban Boston to visit my aunt (her sister) and my cousin who is like my sister. This is a very special trip as the 2 sisters have not seen each other in 5 years!

Dinner was a riot as we reminisced about our past and brought up names and stories of people long gone. Ok, who remembers Nana and Poppa’s phone number? Bang! We all recited it as if we had just called them. As my friend Joyce would say, “Just don’t ask us what we had for breakfast or what our kids’ names are.”

The most bizarre memory of the night was that of ‘The Mangler’. (my brother is going to love this as I believe it was housed in his bedroom for many of his formative years). Now wait till you hear what this thing is. It was a machine used to iron. It had knee pedals and you fed the clothing through the hot metal roller to press them. Yeh, I know, sounds like the perfect item to keep in a toddler’s room, right? And the name Mangler? Well, if you fed you fingers into that sucker instead of the clothing…

Hello Mrs. Z, this is social services! Yes, we were wondering why you thought it was ok to have this piece of equipment in the room of your young child.

Never! Remember this was the late 50s/early 60s. The era when you not only did not wear seatbelts but you let the kids hang out in the back of the station wagon on long car rides – without seats, let alone belts! When pregnant women smoked and drank coffee and lines like, “go play in traffic” were uttered when kids complained they were bored.

I find it rather funny that the helicopter generation was raised by the what the hell generation.

All kidding aside, my childhood memories are great ones. We always felt loved and secure.  There was always family around and we had a lot of laughs. Right and wrong were not so hard to distinguish. None of parents wanted to be cool; or be our friends. They were our parents, and if we screwed up, we paid for it.

And no, not with the Mangler!

 

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October 5, 2010 · 6:17 pm

Awareness Weeks

During the course of my work I occasionally get involved with creating graphics for different awareness weeks or months. Usually these are disease-related and we need to create a look and feel for these events. I love patient information work, it makes me feel like during the course of making a living I am at least helping to educate patients and families, making the navigation through the unpleasant a bit more palatable.

Ok, I recognize this is (so far) not a very funny blog post.

I always start a project by procrastinating on the internet in the name of research, or as we like to refer to it in the business – doing a search on what is currently in the market. This week was no different. Here are a few of my favorites that I thought you might find entertaining.

Handwashing Awareness Week (Dec 5-11). Funny, but a good idea. And this site called Henry the Hand – Champion Handwasher, just kills me. I love the remake of Hand Jive that they use as their sound track.

Mathematics Awareness Month (April) because you can never get too much math!

Aggressive Driving Month Hmm, I know a few people who could ‘celebrate’ this… you know who you are, I will not call you out. Looks like this one was dreamed up by a promo company, go fig. Talk about a ‘Hallmark Holiday’.

National Ethics Awareness Month (March) Note: not observed on Wall Street (oops, so sorry to my finance friends, cheap shot but you can take it)

Optimism Month (oddly the same as Ethics month in March) Pessimists need not celebrate.

But, by far the best thing I stumbled upon today was…

Rabbit Awareness Week (April 22 – May 2nd) “…because rabbits get a RAW deal”. Get it RAW… Rabbit Awareness Week. Hey, if I have to explain this to you forget it, ok? Believe it or not this is a week and a website (nicely designed BTW) dedicated to fighting what I consider to be one of the great tragedies of our time…

Rabbit Obesity.

Seriously, I have nothing more to say after that.

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September 29, 2010 · 8:50 pm

Spaghetti Muffins?

No joke, I took this picture at the store located conveniently at the end of our block, Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace. Go ahead, click that link and listen to the music on that site. Believe it or not, every time I shop there I am subjected to that! What happened to Beatles Muzak?

Back to the spaghetti muffins, at the economical price of 3.99 each. So what are these? Main course? Side dish? Hockey puck? What do you think the binding agent in these suckers are? And just for kicks, how many points on Weight Watchers? (does WW still use points?)

So, my friends, I showed this picture to Gary who told me they are just called spaghetti muffins, that is not really spaghetti in them? REALLY, hon? What would that be then, twine?

Not going to lie, I was in there again tonight picking up some ingredients and was really tempted to buy him one of these.

Anyone in PW try them yet? Please do tell!

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September 26, 2010 · 10:50 pm

From Cremation to Abscess

There is something about those old Seinfeld episodes, or more recently Curb Your Enthusiasm or even Arrested Development; you wonder how the writers think up those crazy story lines.

Honestly, I would imagine almost all of them are based, at least loosely, on the writers’ own family archives. My family is no different.

Tonight I was lucky to have dinner with my aunt and uncle who are in town from Florida. Through the years we have always laughed at the stories that come up at our family dinner tables. It never fails that there will be a story about death… we are Jews after all. If not someone recently dying there is the perpetual care at the cemetery to complain about (what the hell is perpetual care, anyway?).

Tonight did not disappoint. The evening opened with a bizarre story about a deceased overweight family member and the amount of ashes his cremation produced (I know, ew!) and ended somewhere around a story surrounding an abscess of someone I am pretty sure I don’t know.

The poor waitress was torn between staring at the accident of our conversation and wanting to run away as quickly as she could in between courses.

I for one, was little disappointed that we did not have time to cover the bodily functions topics that usually end the meal. This was in respect to my aunt who requested that we not go there with the remnants of the chocolate dessert melting on the table.

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September 25, 2010 · 4:55 pm

Cotton Sperm

As I was going to walk the dogs this morning i spotted this on the garage floor. I could not help but think, ‘hey, there is a cotton sperm’. This could be because I have spent the last few weeks working on a fertility project for work. Or I am just predisposed to seeing sperm in things…

Gary argues at first glance this is either a dead mouse or a tampon. So, since it has been a while, I thought it was time for a friendly poll. Please weigh in.

And remember to pay attention to the details of you your day. The ones that you would normally pass by make for interesting conversation (or grounds to have you committed at a later date).

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September 21, 2010 · 9:21 pm

If I was a biker chick…

… I would definitely wear this sweatshirt. I was so excited when I saw this. Not only did it sport the A2Z that I use in my email, but the flame graphic is almost identical to a really poorly rendered embroidery I did in high school.(yes I did embroidery in HS, that was back when I could friggin’ see well enough to thread a needle).

There I was at a rest stop with an eery sense of connection to this woman with the really poorly dyed hair and sort of scary doo-rag wearing boyfriend. That sweatshirt was so damn familiar I had to risk pissing off the bikers to take this shot.

Luckily, i did not.

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