Phone rings. Me: “Hello?” Spam guy: “Hello. I’m ‘Mark,’ and I’m calling from the Windows Technical Service office. We’ve detected a virus on your PC that is causing it to send multiple email...
Okay, I admit it; I watch the the TV series Bates Motel on Netflix. How else will I find out why the Psycho Norman Bates stuffed his mother and killed “loose women”? It’s not award-winning...
…and the server asks, “Just the two of you?” I never know what to say. Options include: “Why? Are we supposed to have escorts?” “Do we look like more than two people?” “Yes. It’s just the...
The phone rings. You blindly reach around until you find it, pick it up, and mumble, “Hello?” “Oh, did I wake you up?” says the cheerful voice on the other end of the line. “I can call back later.”...
The first time I heard the phrase, “You can’t polish a turd,” was in the movie Christine. The turd in question was the star of the movie – a 1958 Plymouth Fury – that, at that point, looked...
I really resent it when salespeople ask me leading questions. I looked for a long time for a quick, but polite, way to disarm them. I found it when I heard this tip from a sales workshop: If you can...
Colder than a witch’s tit, Colder than a bucket of penguin shit, Colder than a hair on a polar bear’s ass Colder than the frost on a champagne glass. — Thomas Pynchon from Gravity’s Rainbow Affiliate...
You can liven up a trip to the store considerably – and create some mental images you may never be able to get out of your brain – if, as you walk through the store, you ask yourself: What three...
English trifle. Let’s consider the word trifle. As a noun it can be either “an English dessert made of layers of custard, fruit, and sponge cake” [1] or “a thing of little value or importance.” [2]...
Why do the words flammable and inflammablemean the same thing? The dictionary at reference.com indicates that both words mean: “easily set on fire; combustible.” The prefix in- means not. The word...