Recently in the Funny Category

As noted in my main blog, I've been clearing out my spam mailbox lately.

Here are some of my favorite subject lines from spam messages I've seen recently. I'm especially amused by some of the creative euphemisms that spammers come up with for "penis," but I've mostly left those out of this entry, except for a couple I particularly liked.

• You can't rent a big friend in your underwear but you can gain it forever.
• Barak Obama is a woman!
• Weeding invite [I'm pretty sure this was meant to say "Wedding invite," but I like the idea of sending out weeding invites.]
• Obama Proposes Trade of AIG Executives in Primitive Swaps
• Maybe Spam I am missing you [OR MAYBE NOT!]
• Smoking ruins! And if you desire to stay alive,ask us for our help. [Now I see that this is meant to be an anti-smoking ad, but on first reading I thought "ruins" was a noun.]
• No Jail Time For Man Arrested In Capptain America Costume
• Empower your pollinator
• Terrorists used cats! Iraq

Someone recently linked to the Verbs Bad manifesto, a verbless argument against the use of verbs, written by Miranda Tedholm, age 17; it apparently won a Scholastic "Art and Writing" award in 2001, but the Scholastic page where it used to live is no longer there.

It's a fun piece. There are several bits I would have recommended tweaking a bit for improved phrasing, and she slips back and forth between sounding very natural ("No more erudition, no more delicacy in language!") and sounding like she's leaving out words ("erudition possible without verbs"); still, it's an impressive effort.

Saw this sign on a streetcorner outside a store recently:

Used babies, $500 and up

The store was, of course, a piano store.

Y'all may have seen the Powerthirst video. (If you haven't, then the following probably won't make any sense.)

Well, now there's Powerlatin!!!

MORE PRONOUNS THAN YOUR MIND HAS ROOM FOR!!!

As reported by Womzilla, via Supergee on the cranky_editors LiveJournal community:

Several groups trying to re-ignite New England's faith are theologically conservative, such as the Southern Baptists [and others]. They say a reason for the region's hollowed-out faith is a pervasive theology that departs from traditional Biblical interpretation on issues such as the divinity of Jesus, the exclusivity of Christianity as a path to salvation and homosexuality.

—from an AP article, "Evangelists target spiritually cold New England," as published at Yahoo! News

Best spam subject line of the week:

RE: BE CAREFUL OF THE HUDLOOMS

I thought perhaps a HUDLOOM was a weaving device containing a Heads-Up Display. Or perhaps some kind of magical thingy from a Harry Potter book.

Sadly, it appears to be simply a misspelling of "hoodlum." Still, I was entertained, and thought you might be too.

Also of note is this line from the body of the message, which caught my eye during the two seconds in which I briefly glanced at the email looking for more hudloom info:

The above listed names are been traced/investigated by our team and some of them have elope the country[....]

A nicely poetic way of describing someone fleeing the law, I guess.

I know it's not good form to mock non-fluent English speakers. But I sometimes can't resist.

I saw a billboard advertising the new Droid cell phone yesterday. It had a hard-edged and manly sort of high-tech industrial look to it, and it said:

A BARE-KNUCKLED BUCKET OF DOES.

Now, the Droid ad campaign has centered around the idea that there's lots of stuff that the iPhone doesn't do, but that "Droid Does."

So the advertisers can perhaps be forgiven for assuming that everyone would see the word "DOES" as a verb and pronounce it like "duzz."

But for just a moment, as I glanced at the billboard, I saw the word "DOES" as a plural noun, and pronounced it like "doze."

And I wondered: a bare-knuckled bucket full of female deer? Huh?

I've never previously read A Christmas Carol. Happened across it in an iPhone edition recently, discovered that it's quite short (about 30,000 words—I had always assumed it was hundreds of pages), and started reading it. And I'm struck, as I was years ago when I finally read Oliver Twist, by the moments of charming humor.

I was also struck by a particular phrase when I came across it last night:

Old Fezziwig [...] rubbed his hands; adjusted his capacious waistcoat; laughed all over himself, from his shoes to his organ of benevolence; and called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice[....]

"Organ of benevolence" sounded like some kind of a euphemism, so I went and looked it up. Turns out it was one of the organs recognized by phrenology: it was "at the top of the forehead, near where the hair commences" (according to the Graham journal of health and longevity), and the size of one's organ of benevolence determined how benevolent one was (unless overridden by other factors, such as phrenology being meaningless).

My Google search also turned up a use of the phrase in Frederick Marryat's 1836 novel Mr. Midshipman Easy:

"Surely, sir, you would not interfere with the organ of benevolence."

"But indeed I must, Jack. I, myself, am suffering from my organ of benevolence being too large: I must reduce it, and then I shall be capable of greater things, shall not be so terrified by difficulties, shall overlook trifles, and only carry on great schemes for universal equality and the supreme rights of man. I have put myself into that machine every morning for two hours, for these last three months, and I feel now that I am daily losing a great portion."

Turns out Mr. Easy's invention pushes on or sucks on various parts of the skull in order to reshape the phrenological organs therein. I would call that science fiction, of a sort, but it was clearly presented as satire.

I'm pretty sure that I already knew that the Western Gorilla has the taxonomic name Gorilla gorilla (genus + species).

But I don't think I knew until now that the Western Lowland Gorilla has the taxonomic name Gorilla gorilla gorilla (genus + species + subspecies). (Also known as G. g. gorilla.)

I'm sure that to scientists, this is a perfectly ordinary name. But I'm tickled by it.

And it makes me think that Buffalo buffalo buffalo ought to be the taxonomic name for the Midwestern Lowland Buffalo.

(See also Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo in Wikipedia.)

And perhaps Badger badger badger ought to be some kind of taxonomic name as well.

Note that in Badger, MN, they allow badgers to create and provide badges, so those are Badger badger badgers; I hear that Badger badger badgers Badger badger badgers badger badger Badger badger badgers.

Now I want to start putting together sentences like "Buffalo buffalo Gorilla gorilla gorilla buffalo buffalo Gorilla gorilla gorilla."

Or maybe "Gorilla gorilla gorilla Buffalo buffalo buffalo badger Badger badger badgers."

(I'm assuming that Gorilla gorilla gorilla can be used as a plural, which may be grammatically dubious but makes for funnier sentences.)

Headline today on the BBC website:

Pope could make Birmingham visit

Birmingham hasn't visited in months, and I was beginning to think it never would. So I'm pleased to see that the Pope has the ability to force it to visit. I only hope he chooses to exercise that ability.

Another entertainingly harsh movie review:

There's nothing wrong with "All About Steve" that a rewrite couldn't fix, as long as the rewrite involved a different writer, a different character and a different story.

—Michael Phillips on All About Steve

A few weeks back, I heard a country song on the radio in which the singer sang:

I smell T.R.O, you B.L.E.

I puzzled for a while over what T.R.O. and B.L.E. were before I got it.

It may be more obvious in print, but if you don't see it, say it aloud a couple of times. And/or Google [Travis Tritt T.R.O.], which will also reveal the name of the song.