Ok, so there’s a brand of Australian matches called Redheads. And there’s an Australian entrepreneur called Dick Smith who makes products to rival Australian icons that are now owned by international companies (like Ozimite for Kraft-owned Vegemite). But I thought that someone was making a crappy joke the first time I heard Dick Smith was releasing his own range of matches called “Dickheads”.
One of my favorite books is Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. It’s set about 10-20 years in the future. (You can’t tell exactly when because the years are not numbered anymore, the government sells the naming rights to a corporation; it’s that kind of book.) At one point, there’s a detailed description (everything in this book is detailed) of what brought about the complete downfall of television. It was a particularly explicit, but effective, commercial for a tongue scraper. It was so graphic that it caused people to turn off their televisions in disgust, but it also made them want to buy tongue scrapers. Ratings went down, networks were desperate for cash, and tongue-scraper companies had money to burn for advertising, until this feedback loop caused the whole system to collapse.
Since I read that, I have seen ads for tongue scrapers.
When the Columbia broke apart there were tons of threads in every forum I frequent, many of which were locked. I had just woken up and wasn’t paying too close attention to the title and content and thought a bunch of idiots were flooding our board with sick jokes about the Challenger accident what with it recently being the anniversary of that disaster. I wish I was right.
Add me to the list of people who thought Sept. 11th '01 was a joke. I was just waking up to my alarm clock, and the station I have it set on does tasteless crap all the time - calling up two Chinese restauraunts and then combining the lines when they both answer comes to mind. So, I thought that it was a pretty fucking crass thing to do, and pressed the snooze alarm and went back to sleep. Imagine my suprise when it was still going 10 minutes later…
I first saw those in the store. I think they’re great!
When I was in year 9 I got a call Sunday night from a friend telling me that someone from our circle of friends at school had died but they didn’t have any more info. I thought it was a bad joke until the next day where I found out she’d had a massive asthma attack and died in front of her parents the night before.
When GW Bush ran for president… and then got appointed.
Ummm…TMNT were a joke – or, more precisely, a parody of four of the major comic book trends of the time: teenaged superheroes, mutants (there were heaps of X-Men spinoffs and ripoffs out at the time), Ninja comics (see, amongst others, Electra from the the Daredevil comic), and anthropomorphic animals (Cerebus and Yojimbo come immediately to mind, but there were others). So combining all four into one comic was intended as a tongue-in-cheek take on the current state of the industry.
For example (it’s been a long time, but IIRC) Electra’s mentor was named Stick. So the Turtles had a rat mentor named Splinter. Giving them names of Renaissance artists was a similar bit of OTT humor. The fact that the characters became the very thing they were parodying was fortunate for the creators in a financial sense, but a very sad commentary on the comic-buying public.
I also seem to recall that there were a couple parodies of the TMNT after they became successful. The wheel turns on…
Micheal jackson’s face
I used to work for the ambassador to Hong Kong of Hutt River Province. He was a property investor and magazine editor, and occasionally used to end up in court over some property deal or other. He used to go in his robes and ermine, and claim diplomatic immunity. I have no idea if it worked or not.
Completely barking.
Really? So this bunch actually has independence as a seperate nation from Australia?
Wow. That’s impressive.
If I had a better job, it would be cool to hook up with them in some sort of plenipotentary type job.
Well… they think they do.
A couple of years ago, i was talking to a friend in a nearby town (Cazzle’s other half actually). I figured he might have met my dad when he referred to a particular electronics shop he would go to regularly (where my dad worked). I mentioned my dad to this friend and he said, yes, indeed he had met him, and told me about a ‘story’ my father had told him about something he worked on a number of years ago - that being that my dad (most of my life he’s spent as a salesman / tv repair man) had designed some navigation and missile guidance system used in one of the aircraft used in the gulf war. Anyway. I laughed at my friend and went on to tell him how my dad was definately the kind of person to “tell stories” and it hadn’t suprised me that he’d tried to convince the friend of this.
A day or so later I was visiting my mum (parents divorced) and was telling her this funny story of how my dad had been telling stories about stuff he’d done - to my absolute shock, my mother told me it was TRUE and he’d done just that around the time i was born.
called Mummy Brown. It really was made from crushed Egyptian mummy’s.
Mothchunks-Isn’t that used to paint D&D miniatures nowadays?
When someone first told me the cash value of Bill Gates back in 1998, I choked with laughter. The idea of a human being having more wealth than a majority of countries struck me as funny.
Actual conversation I had on Saturday, July 18, 1999:
Friend: Hey, you heard what happened?
Me: No, what?
Friend: JFK’s plane has been reported missing
My brain: What is this? The President’s plane is missing? What is he talking about. JFK was killed, right? Is this the anniversary? No, he was shot and it was November. What is he talking about?
Me: What ARE you talking about?
Friend: John F. Kennedy Jr was flying a plane and it’s been reported missing.
Me: You’re kidding right.
Friend: No, I’m not.
Me: Oh yes you are.
Friend: No, it’s true
Me (desperately): PLEASE tell me your kidding.
Friend: No, I’m not. Turn on the radio or TV.
I did and almost passed out.
When I first heard there were people who wanted to teach creationism in science classes.
Alto,
I grew up in Hanover and I am nearly certain that the article WAS a joke, designed explicitly to get people like you all lathered up. Not that it was in particularly good tatse, but a joke nonetheless.
They have done similar things many times before and many times since.
When I was in high school, I went to a county fair with a few friends and some friends of said friends that I had never met before.
A few hours into our revelry, everyone but one of these 2nd tier friends (who was a laugh a minute) and myself had gone off to the restroom or wherever, leaving the two of us alone.
He was eating a big cheesesteak when suddenly he fell to the ground and started having fits. I thought he was just trying to be funny, but fortunately someone that knew what an epileptic seizure looked like walked by and probably saved his life.
It was certainly a joke in the sense that it was meant to be funny. But since all the opinions in the poem agreed with their opinions as stated elsewhere in the paper, I don’t think the whole thing could be a joke. As a joke, the only thing it could be seen as saying would be, “Look how stupid we can make our own beliefs look.”