Our friends send us 300 jokes a week.
We want to share a few of the best ones with you, to tease your mind and soul, as
well as your funnybone. We will be frequently adding to this page, so come back and
visit often. More importantly, send us some global jokes: advisors at
beecom.net.
150. New
York Times Goes Plastic
Frank Prial, wine writer at the Times, comes out strongly for synthetic corks.
See "Plastic Beats Cork at Its Own Game," August 8, 2001, p. B15.
Still, we only have to put up with 300 million plastics a year versus 13 billion real
corks used each year. We anticipate a campaign for Real Corks, just as the English
have a campaign for Real Ale. The food section at the Times has been
declining, so this corker should not surprise us.
149. Creativity
Defined
In the seventies, a creative person wrote a novel. In the eighties, he or she worked
on a screenplay. But, in the nineties, the focus was on drumming up an expensive
Internet business plan. What now?
148. Why
Bateleur?
Laurance Allen calls his new enterprise "Bataleur Media." Why?
"The Bateleur is an African eagle. ... Its very short tail means its
distinctive flight involves 'canting' to change direction. This put the Frenchman
who named it in mind of a tight-rope walker...." Mr. Allen, we guess, has
become a high-wire act.
147. Passing
Gas
Here's a little selection from Gary Gladstone's Passing Gas and Other Towns on the
American Highway--to be published someday.
Looking at the pictures during the edits
after the trips, I saw that I had failed as a warrior satirist. Try as I did to put people
into “funny” situations, their warmth just kept showing through. My subjects
were sweet and earnest and funny and even zany. They seemed to like me. I know I liked
them. I enjoyed their humor and sense of community. These folks are my partners in a
struggle to make the most of what we’ve been dealt.
Oh, there are jokes in the interplay
between the names and faces, but they don’t necessarily have the punch lines I
thought they would. Every time I hear someone comment, chuckle or sigh at one of the
photographs, it’s a surprise. I am astonished at what my camera saw while I was busy
with another agenda.
What else did I learn?
People in Texas stop on the yellow light;
it does not signify a grace period.
Every motel towel in a room priced below
$60 can be used to strip furniture.
Pedestrians in San Francisco scowl meaner
than New Yorkers when you invade their crosswalk with your bumper.
Scenery in Oregon, Washington and Idaho is as beautiful as advertised
... and then some.
Waitresses are sweet but never seem
to marry the right guys.
There isn’t one good cup of real
coffee within ten miles of any Interstate in America.
For breakfast, Denny’s rules.
Period.
If you’re lost in middle
America, people will treat you like a neighbor.
When you stay in a different motel room every night for 16
consecutive nights, always leave the bathroom light on when you go to sleep. Since every
room has a different layout, this will save you a late night visit to the closet.
Truck drivers do not know where to
eat.
Cooking grease is a national
condiment.
It is required by most local governments that everything on the
menu of the only restaurant open after 7:00 p.m. be fried food.
Most Americans do not believe that anyone actually lives in
Manhattan.
And I learned to always place the motel’s plastic bathroom
drinking cup in the corner of the sink counter and weight it with the toothpaste tube and
toothbrush. Otherwise, it’ll get knocked into the toilet many times.
And to hold the bottles that are inside the cooler chest firmly
when tipping the cooler to empty melted ice onto the sidewalk. Otherwise, the bottles fall
out, break and send grapefruit juice into my shoes.
Finally, I learned that I really love
this kind of work. It makes me smile.
Oh,
yeah ... for those of you going there, Hell isn’t so bad.
146. Hot
Dog
Takeru Kobayashi of Japan ate fifty hot dogs in twelve minutes in a Fourth of July contest
dating back to 1916. He doesn't seem to gain weight, even consuming Nathan's
indigestibles.
145. Talk
About the Poor; Dream About the Rich
Forbes just did its issue on billionaires, unabashedly picturing a world grown
fat and happy. But everyday journalists--print and broadcast--usually like to talk
more about the poor, for a short while, and then live vicariously through the rich.
The poor, you see, are boring, even to themselves. We were most reminded of this in The
Economist, June 16-22, 2001. It does a page-and-a-quarter of
moralizing--"Does Inequality Matter?"--on pages 9-10. But look for the fun
stuff after page 54, where it provides an 18-page special on the new rich, entitled
"The New Wealth of Nations." Gilt is a lot easier than guilt.
144. leavingcal.com
Personally, we still love California. But then, we love most places. However,
to drive people away from California there's now a site to tell you why to leave or never
to come to the Tarnished State. So if you have a taste for the bleak, take a look at
this downer. Well, this will give Marvin K. something to do, now that he has become
the prime defender of California's many sins.
143. Quack, Quack
You've always known that the medical establishment is dangerous for your health. Don't go
to the hospital if you can help it, for instance: you are at a very high risk of
dying. We spotted this gem below by David Grann in The New York Times Sunday
Magazine, June 17, 2001, p. 54:
"The scientific world, of course, has
always been consumed by feuds. In the 19th century, the Hungarian physician Ignaz
Philipp Semmelweis was eviscerated by the medical community for his seemingly obvious
recommendation that physicians sterilize their hands before treating patients. The
simple gesture, which would have saved thousands of lives, implied that doctors had
already caused the death of untold numbers by infecting them with their germs -- an
indictment that was too great for the establishment to accept."
142. Health Just Ahead of Illness
Seeking helath information is the third most common reason people go online--after weather
and sports, and just ahead of pornography." We have been focusing on "all
other," thank you. See "Best of the Web," Forbes, June 25,
2001.
141. Fear, Loathing, and Despair in
Dallas
One of our favorite bear market websites (www.prudentbear.com)
is in Dallas. But, better yet, so is Despair.com.
As one wag puts it, "Dallas is where the East peters out; Fort Worth is where
the West begins." So why shouldn't Dallas be the capital of downers?
Despair.com offers pessimist mugs; under-performance awards; 36 posters, such as "Failure," "Burnout," and "Apathy"; DespairWear; and an
unending array of objects to bring you down--or perhaps confirm the reason you're down in
the first place. Now we know why Dallas is the Big D.
140. "See the U.S.A. in a ...
Hyundai?"
This chart headline appears in Jerry Flint's column in Forbe's magazine, June 11,
2001, p. 84. In April, the American car industry surrendered to foreign brands, only
accounting for 49.4% of U.S. sales. In twenty-five years, it seems, we have given up
30% of the marketplace. What was the name of Churchill's book--While England
Slept? Flint can call his "While America Snored."
139. G-Men
Years ago we met a man on the Staten Island Ferry who joked, "I'm a G-Man. Do
you know what that is?" Well, he was not a government agent, but a garbage man.
That was when garbage was garbage, and we did not cover up the mess with terms like
Environmental Protection Agency at the federal, state, and local levels. When we
begin to use fancy euphemisms, you know that image has won and substance has gone.
Now the National
Association of Purchasing Management is becoming (January 1) the Institute for Supply
Management. The darn thing is based in Tempe, Arizona--far from the heart of
industrial America--so you can tell this organization has checked out anyway. That's
equivalent to the financial analysts who have located their group in Charlottesville,
Virginia. Supply Management's chief executive Paul Novak opines, "Some people
say 'institute' connotes an insane asylum.... Institute, in fact, connotes an
organization that is both educational and research-oriented." (See the Times,
June 3, 2001, Section 3, p. 2.
138. "Tractors and Pickup Trucks Cause Asinine
Unemployment"
Or so says the New York Times, May 26, 2001, p. A4. In Brazil, the donkey
has moved from its role as centerpiece of village life to an emblem of disdain.
Worth up to $100 a head just a decade ago, young males can now be bought for less than $1,
"compared with $3 for chickens." One retired animal husbandry professor
claims donkey fortunes will only be reversed "if Brazil's worsening energy crisis
brings a donkey revival." Perhaps some of Brazil's two million donkeys can take
up service in third-world California.
137. No End in Sight
Lady Astor was one of a group of eminent English visitors to Russia in 1931. Never
one to mince her words, she asked Stalin, “How long are you going to go on killing
people?” “As long as it is necessary,” replied Stalin.
136. Global Golf Bubbles
You thought financial bubbles only affected stock markets, the tulip trade, and Bordeaux
wines. But there's a worldwide golf bubble, as sports journalists are discovering:
a. Thomas L. Friedman, quoting J.L. Koo Jr. of the Taiwan
Golf Association: "'There are too many courses.... Look, they may have 1.2
billion people, but they only have a few hundred golfers. ... First, [the Chinese]
have to get cars, then they can play golf.'" See "Fine China," Golf
Digest, June 2001, pp. 182-86.
b. David Owen: "My trip was ... a junket--a
journalistic outing whose putative subject is also its financial sponsor. In this
case, however, the host was ... a developing country whose place in the world has been
influenced for decades by its unlikely relationship with the game of golf. Hassan II
viewed golf not only as a palliative to the tedium of absolute power but also as a means
of ingratiating his small country with the United States." See Swinging in
Morocco: Golf Diplomacy and the Last North African Kingdom," New Yorker, May
21, 2001, pp. 52-58. Owen is a great writer, incidentally. See, for example, My Usual Game:
Adventures in Golf and The Making of
the Masters: Clifford Roberts, Augusta National, and Golf's Most Prestigious Tournament.
135. Nothing By Halves
"If it's almost right, it's wrong."
134. Less Is Quality
"A red lacquer dish needs no decoration." Japanese proverb
133. Soul Wit
"Brevity is the soul of lingerie." -- Dorothy Parker
132. Middle of the Roaders
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get
run down." -- Aneurin Bevan
131. Things You Can Learn at the Movies
We were just sent 37 new Hollywood myths (bad plotlines). We repeat a few for you
here:
Large, loft-style apartments in New York City are well
within the price range of most people--whether they are employed or not.
One of a pair of identical twins is always born evil.
If you are blonde and pretty, it is possible to become a
world expert on nuclear fission at the age of 22.
All grocery shopping bags contain at least one stick of
French bread.
It's easy for anyone to land a plane providing there is
someone in the control tower to talk you down.
The Eiffel Tower can be seen from anywhere in Paris.
A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious
beating but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.
A detective can only solve a case once he has been
suspended from duty.
Television news bulletins usually contain a story that
affects you personally at that precise moment you turn the television on.
130. Bear Market Vocabulary
Now that the stock market is so messy, a whole new vocabulary has sprung up:
Momentum Investing - The fine art of
buying high and selling low.
Value Investing - The art of buying low and selling lower.
Broker - Poorer than you were in 1999.
Stock Analyst - Idiot who just downgraded your stock.
Stock Split - When your ex-wife and her lawyer split all your assets
equally between themselves.
Market Correction - The day after you buy stocks.
Cash Flow - The movement your money makes as it disappears down the
toilet.
Yahoo - What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $540 per
share.
Windows 2000 - What you jump out of when you're that sucker who bought
Yahoo for $540 per share.
Profit - Religious guy who talks to God.
Bill Gates - Where God goes for a loan.
Alan Greenspan - God.
129. Finally, Real Performance Pay
"John Nash ... a Nobel laureate in economic science in 1994, had a habit of leaving a
'negative tip' for bad service; he would pocket the gratuity left by fellow diners."
Taken from a book review of Jeremy Bernstein's The Merely
Personal: Observations on Science and Scientists. See New York Times Book Review, April
22, 2001, p. 28.
128. Cheaters Unite
www.tradimenti.it is Italy's website for marital
cheaters; it suggests places for trysts and has sundry other advice. See Business Week, April 23, 2001, p. 16.
127. It's a Crock
In the April 16, 2001 Business Week,
one Stan Crock writes an editorial titled "Bush's Tricky High-Wire Act."
Since his commentary does not soar, his name, unfortunately, is witty commentary on his
words.
126. Casketware
Casketfurniture.com sells cabinets, coffee
tables, etc. that double as caskets when you decide to pass from the scene. See
"You Can Take This Furniture With You," Business Week, April 16, 2001, p. 16.
125. Another Management Consultant Joke
One detective to another at the murder scene: "From the violent nature of the
multiple stab wounds, I'd say the victim was probably a consultant." The New Yorker, March 26, 2001, p. 66.
124. Behan on Being
We just received a few chestnuts from the works of the Irish playwright Brendan Behan
(1923-1964). To wit:
"When I came back to Dublin, I was court-martialed in
my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my
absence."
"It's not that the Irish are cynical. It's
rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody."
123. Out for a Spin
In the 1930s, when the American pilot Amelia Earhart landed in Ireland, she asked:
"Where am I?" The Irish burgher she first encountered said: "You're
in Ireland. Have you come far?" Amelia: "From America."
122. Yogi Berra's Slim Diet
Apparently, Bartlett's
Book of Anecdotes has been re-issued with 700+ new entries. According to
the Times (Week-End Section, March 11, 2001,
p. 7), Yogi Berra still comes out on top: "Having ordered a pizza, Berra was asked
whether he would like it cut into four or eight pieces. 'Better make it four,' said
Yogi. 'I don't think I can eat eight.'"
121. Flippant Nobelist
"In 1978, Herbert Simon was awarded the Nobel prize for economics. ...
The Swedish judges at the presentation ceremony were a touch hurt to hear that artificial
intelligence had been his central interest." See The Economist, Feb. 24, 2001, p. 91. Of
course, he was involved with the invention of the computer, too, so economics was almost a
sideline.
120. Leadership Is Leading
Deng Xiaoping on the Tiananmen protests: "Dialogue is fine, but the point is to solve
to the problem. We can't be led around by the nose." In other words, lead
or be led. See "The Tiananmen Papers," Foreign Affairs, January/February 2001.
119. Scotia Nostra
This is what some of the bigwigs of Scottish multinational life call themselves, as told
to us by one of their number. Of course, to hear them talk, they could also be known
as Big Fish or Roughlinks.
118. Ray DeVoe's Redhead
"At the final session the instructor showed slides of many types of communications
equipment that we would encounter, giving the specifications of each along with its
benefits and diadvantages. ... Towards the end of the session a slide was
projected on the screen for a fraction of a second. It showed a stunning nude
redhead lying with her head over the side of the bed, looking upside down directly at the
camera, her hair cascading to the floor. The instructor asked the class 'Alright,
what type of telephone did she have and what was the color?' Telephone? I
didn't see any telephone. One had went up, 'It was a pink Princess phone,' answered
the only woman in the class of 40 people."
From "The DeVoe Report," Feb. 9-12,
2001, p. 4.
117. Taiwanese Take Tumble
"An example of a celebration getting a bit out of hand, a couple in southern Taiwan
ended up tumbling from their seventh-story balcony while drinking and celebrating
Valentine's Day...." See "When Love Comes to Town: China Gets Its
Valentine's Day Groove On" at www.chinaonline.com
for Feb. 15, 2001. Either the U.S. is exporting or China is importing Valentine's
Day, Hip Hop, and other influences at a maddening rate.
116. No More Greenspun
Wall Street pundit Ray DeVoe on his resignation from the Economic Club of New York because
of Chairman Greenspan: "I was getting mad--wasting time at dinner with nine strangers
and then having an hour listening to a speech that told nothing, followed by a lengthy
question and answer period that obscured everything."
115. The First Great Column from Gail
Collins
Sometimes a space-filler at the Times,
Collins put forward a terribly witty "Elba on the Hudson," February 9, 2001, p.
A27. "New York's greatest resource has always been the waves of refugees who
come here, fleeing disaster and seeking to build a new life. We've had Irish, Jews,
Asians, Africans, Latin Americans. Now we've got Washington Democrats."
Listen here for Bill Clinton and Al Gore self-destructing in New York City.
114. First Movers
I know this sounds something like a child's first visit to the toilet bowl. But,
instead, we are talking about jargon. "First Mover" roughly means getting
market-share before the other guys. See "Of Fallacies and First Movers," Financial
Times, February 1, 2001, by Charles Leadbeater. "First movers do not
always have the advantage. ... [T]he dotcom experiment has been a massive
exercise in First-mover disadvantage." We learned of this article from a wily
international investor who has achieved superior returns in Asia, not because he was a
first mover, but because he has had a staying power out there for decades and decades.
113. 1970 vs. 2000
Have we advanced or gone backward? Here's how one contributor views our march from
1970 to 2000:
1970: Long Hair
2000: Longing for Hair
1970: KEG
2000: EKG
1970: Trying to look like Marlin Brando or
Elizabeth Taylor
2000: Trying not to look like Marlin Brando or Elizabeth Taylor
1970: Rolling Stones
2000: Kidney Stones
1970: Peace Sign
2000: Mercedes Logo
1970: Killer weed
2000: Weed killer
112. History Still in the Making
Lots of dictums got unmade last year. But Walt Crowley of HistoryLink in Seattle assures us in this press
release that history will be around for a while:
HistoryLink.Org Fails to Lay Off Workers or
Lose Money for Third Straight Year.
HistoryLink.Org, the nation's pioneering
online encyclopedia of community history, reported today that it had once again fallen
short of dot-com industry standards by not laying off people, hemorrhaging money, or
filing for bankruptcy. A deeply embarrassed Walt Crowley, HistoryLink CEO, blamed
the organization's failure on its "venture socialism" business plan.
"We just keep on adding content,
serving more people, raising money, building partnerships, retaining staff, and paying our
bills. It's really getting hard to hold my head up on the Internet," Crowley
explained. HistoryLink staff in Seattle would not comment because they are
prohibited from discussing the persistence of their gainful employment with outsiders.
HistoryLink reported one bright spot: it
once again failed to make a profit. Unfortunately, as a not-for-profit organization,
it's not supposed to.
111. Lap It Up
Morris Lapidus, the architect of fun, kitsch hotels has just departed to that great inn in
the sky. See "Morris Lapidus," The
Economist, January 27, 2001, p. 88. "To Mies van der Rohe's dictum,
'Less is more,' Morris Lapidus responded, 'Too much is never enough.'" Or he
could have said, "Anything worth doing is worth overdoing." Naturally he
laughed--at the architectural profession--all the way to the bank.
110. Taboo
Something is taboo in Hollywood. Not morally wrong, since, after all, ethics are not
the focus of Beverly Hills. Just taboo. According to The Economist, "Vladimir Nabakov, who
understood Hollywood's appetite for happy endings, once remarked that there were
nevertheless two plot-lines that it would not tolerate. One was the marriage of an
inter-racial couple who live happily ever after. The other was the story of a
confirmed atheist who dies painlessly in his bed at the age of 102 after a full and
fruitful life, surrounded by children and grandchildren. The great writer could have
easily added a third Hollywood taboo: the gainfully employed drug taker who does so
because he likes to, and isn't either cured of his habit of punished for it by prison,
disgrace or ill health." See "A Long and Winding Trip," The
Economist, January 27, 2001, p. 83.
109. Clay Lancaster Lives!
Clay Lancaster passed away in December. (See New
York Times, February 9, 2001.) He was influential in Brooklyn Heights'
preservation, the restoration heart of America's most 19th-century city. But he was
an important commentator on other architectural worlds as well. Some of his books
include:
Old Brooklyn
Heights: New York's First Suburb
Antebellum
Architecture of Kentucky
The Japanese
Influence in America
Nantucket in
the Nineteenth Century
The American
Bungalow, 1880-1930
Lancaster is also remembered for a witty
conversation about the gardens at Versailles at the time of Louis XVI. Over a
dinner, he and a lady friend spoke in the present tense, as though they were with
Louis. If, in his mind, Lancaster lived in the 18th century, surely he can't really
have passed away in the 20th. Maybe he's in Argentina.
Update. To our great annoyance, we forgot to
mention
Architectural Follies in America, the book by Lancaster that most
explains what he was about. He was the most serious of witty architectural
critics, well remembered for work about Brooklyn brownstones, Los Angeles
bungalows, and the mansions of his native Lexington, Kentucky. Warwick,
built between 1809 and 1811 in Kentucky, became his own special folly, and
we can call him the master of charming, playful architecture. You can read
about this in “In Praise of Follies,” in The New York Times Home Design
Magazine, October 12, 2003, pp. 26-34. For the first time, we
discovered that this copiously imaginative man also authored books for
children, such as The Periwinkle Steamboat. You can learn more about
Warwick and other interests of Lancaster that are memorialized at The
Warwick Foundation (www.warwickfoundation.org),
which you can read about at
www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/living/home/6855154.htm. Any serious
student of Lancaster should try to get a copy of Mary Vance’s Clay
Lancaster: A Bibliography (now out of print).
Probably,
we suspect, you cannot understand Lancaster without understanding the
history and culture of Lexington, to which the National Park Service
provides an introduction at
www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/lexington/index.htm. On the one hand, it is
the heart of horse country. But it has also been home to several
interesting, genial talents to include the Great Compromiser himself, Henry
Clay, whose home Ashland employed the designs of the noted Benjamin
Latrobe. Even today other “follies,” spring from Lexington. J Peterman has
originated a catalog that is long on romance and tall tales, surrounding
even the most banal of merchandise with imaginative conceits. See
www.jpeterman.com and
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34932-2004Jan21.html. Likewise,
James B. Sherwood, proprietor of Orient Express (luxury hotels and fabled
passenger trains) hails from Lexington. Read more about Sherwood and his
Venice glass bridge project at
www.jeremyjosephs.com/orientexpress.htm.
108. Fiscal Restraints
Cartoonist Ross MacDonald shows that the downturn in the economy is hitting WASP
princesses hard in New York City. He notes "more gore-tex, less fur," a
"decline in personal trainers," "chauffeurs out, taxis in," etc.
See The New York Times, January 27,
2001, p. A27. It's a little humor about a recession people are still in denial
about, except for laid-off employees.
107. Learning at the Feet of the
Master
Katherine Lindsay Lake, in her eulogy of her father, former Mayor John V. Lindsay,
recalled that "he had tried to introduce his children to opera on lazy Sunday
afternoons. "'We learned to appreciate the Italian masters,' she said, 'while
he slept on the sofa covered with newspapers.'" See "Thousands Pay Their
Respects to Memory of Mayor Lindsay," The New
York Times, January 27, 2001, p. A12.
106. Brass Monkey Technology
Every sailing ship had to have cannons for protection. Cannons of the times required round iron cannonballs.
The master wanted to store the cannonballs such that they could be of instant use when
needed, yet not roll around the gun deck. The
solution was to stack them up in a square-based pyramid next to the cannon. The top level of the stack had one ball, the next
level down had four, the next had nine, the next had sixteen, and so on. Four levels would
provide a stack of 30 cannonballs.
The only real problem was how to keep the bottom level from sliding
out from under the weight of the higher levels. To do this, they devised a small brass
plate (“brass monkey”) with one rounded indentation for each cannonball in the
bottom layer. Brass was used because the cannonballs wouldn’t rust to the “brass
monkey”, but would rust to an iron one.
When the temperature falls, brass contracts in size faster than
iron. As it got cold on the gun decks, the indentations in the brass monkey would get
smaller than the iron cannonballs they were holding.
If the temperature got cold enough, the bottom layer would pop out
of the indentations spilling the entire pyramid over the deck.
105. Refolding Redux
"After the publication of one of my books, The Mapmakers, a friend enthused,
'You have told me everything I ever wanted to know about maps, except how to refold
them.'" In a witty celebration of the reissue of his book in a second edition,
John Noble Wilford circles around the folding problem, noting that mapmaking and map-using
are all electronic now, so the refolding is a thing of the past. Of course, the
snarled maps in my car pocket belie him a bit. But, increasingly, we pull down
point-to-point directions from Yahoo
for trips around the country, So Wilford has a point. When we recently bumped into
each other at a luncheon club in New York, I noticed that he was having a hard time
steering a straight course, befuddled by the winds of at least three different
conversations. See "Fold--No, Click--Here," New York Times Book Review,
November 26, 2001, p. 35. See also two entries for Wilford on The Infinite Bookstore (Science and
Technology #6 and Reference #3).
104. Another Bad Florida Polish
Joke
Tired of the jeers about Florida's chad coming from the nation's second-guessers, one
Florida vote inspector is reputed to have said, "Well, if they don't like the way we
count here, they can just go live in one of the other 56 states."
103. How Do Porcupines Make Love?
Well, we’re not going to tell you how, but we have discovered a vast store of
porcupine sex literature on the Internet, which obviously serves as a counterweight to all
the pornography out there in virtual space. We cite the important conclusions of a
paper by Wendy Cooper of the Australian National
University below. Go to the full text at www.improbable.com/sharewair/porcupine.html
if this snippet pricks your fancy:
Conclusions:
1. Young children should be banned from university library basements.
2. Sometimes the most improbable science is also the truest.
3. Never stand too close to a cage which contains courting porcupines.
102. Making Anagrams
Type in a word and see what comes out. At www.anagramfun.com, you can insert word or two, and this magic site
will juggle the letters and give you a few words back.
101. Financial Newsletter Redux
David Martin of Ottawa has done a masterful parody for the Op-Ed page of The New York
Times. See “Just Zig When I Zag,” The New York Times,
December 8, 2000, p. A3l. It mocks all the stock newsletters and just about every
investor guru--all of whom are wrong more than they are right. In fact, notice even
now how most of the analysts are missing the progress of the Bear throughout our financial
markets. Martin says, “David Martin doesn’t predict the future trends
in the marketplace. He inadvertently signals the end of current ones.”
Martin loves to poke fun at investing’s wise men who are best at predicting
yesterday, rather than tomorrow.
100. The Cult of Personality
Commenting on an award he received, the late Rupert Barneby, the New York Botanical
Garden’s most esteemed curator, remarked, “It’s part of the dismal cult of
personality that started in Hollywood and now has infected the entire planet.”
And this is how mankind is becoming all sizzle and no steak. See The
New York Times, December 10, 2000, p. 61.
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