BS: Very hard things to do

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 08:13 PM

"Very hard things to do" for a politician..


Say anything in public... or even in semi-private... that is not being recorded by someone- usually someone they'd rather didn't. Thank goodness most of them never learn!

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: frogprince
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 07:49 PM

I'm not positive, without doing more backtracking than I'm going to bother with, if Gfs specifically said that he, personally, could "cure" gays, but he at least came very close to it. He very definitely cited, and linked to, those whom he lauded for "curing" gays.

Hard to do? Carry on a constructive exchange with someone (Mitt Romney for example) who majors in "I never said that" as if plain recordings of his prior statements weren't readily available.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 06:45 PM

Don't worry GFS, Musket is a creative paraphraser. He's not saying what you said, just what he assumed you said. And he is just doing that to wind you up. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Musket
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 03:47 AM

Unless he posts in your name, you said it.

Mind you, I don't blame you for back-pedalling. Snag is, your chain came off years ago.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 02:05 AM

Hey Musket...find where I ever said that!..I never did...that was Don's spin, distorting a post of mine.
Funny, I guess 'so-called liberals' believe each others spin, more than facts.....why does this not surprise me...

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 05:59 PM

It is impossible to get a quart of water into an empty pint pot. So why, do you think, do businessmen, economists and politicians all try to run the world as if it was possible?

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Musket
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 05:11 PM

Hey Goofus !

As you seem to be leading up to it, why don't you remind us of how you can "cure " being gay?

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 04:50 PM

Touch your elbow with the hand on the end of the same arm...

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 04:48 PM

Eliza's comments reveal two things: that English humour developed among a circle of boozers in the late 16th Century (Robert Armin, Foole upon Folie, being the birthplace) and so never made it to the Continent until afer WWII (Astérix in French setting a decent norm, far better than the English translations), and that it never made it into female circles either - it requires timing in the punchline. Learn your jokes like you would a song, with beat and emphasis to misdirect until you strike mercilessly in the punchline. Don't empathise with the audience too much or you'll signal the punchline irrecoverably. It's all about the "how the hell did I miss that one?".
Like telling the jack-the-lad who routinely pursues anything in skirts that he should polish the body-armour he sometimes wears (for reasons) - that way he can claim to be her knight in shining armour, and then follow up by offering to show her his helmet...

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 04:19 PM

I seem to have lost control of my thread. Sometimes expected creep goes weirdly awry- and it always seems to involve the same bunch.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Ed T
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 04:02 PM

Do you hold something against the objects under side discussion, gfs. :)

Losing one and growing one back is surely a notable nature happening worth sharing information on-nothing deep, anal, gritty, rooty, or girthy about that?

:)

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Don Firth
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 01:21 PM

Simply following your lead, Goofball.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 12:46 PM

Musket, Steve and now you, Ed, are all about penises recently...while Don is yappin' about goin' to the shitter...Now we're getting to the root of their fascinations and depth of their goals!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Ed T
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 07:52 PM

grow penis 


Since Rap brought it up, what seems hard to do, IMO, is to ""spontaneously cast off of a penis after each copulation and 'regrow it to copulate again within 24 hours.""

Maybe some of you have done it on a regular basis, (no, I am not singling you out Musket), but surely not me.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 05:21 PM

"Perform autocopulation"

You mean all that money I spent on Yoga & Kama Sutra lessons was wasted?

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: GUEST,achmelvich
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 04:09 PM

when cooking, and cutting up a pepper it is impossible to keep all the wee white seeds inside on your chopping board. very bouncy things indeed. for a vegetable.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 11:16 AM

Perform autocopulation, as I have been told to do numerous times.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Musket
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 07:49 AM

Performing a set after eight pints. Used to be easy (obligatory..) Not fair on the audience nowadays.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 04:31 AM

It is very difficult to resist posting . . .


100

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 04:30 AM

It used to be said "A Scout smiles & whistles under all difficulties".
Simultaneously smiling & whistling is very hard to do.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 09:07 PM

... get a HUMAN at a public works phone #. They all have voice mail, and almost never return calls.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Ed T
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 05:53 PM

Find a public payphone, or a telephone book.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 12:59 PM

Know who all those people mentioned in the newspapers at the supermarket checkout are. Kim, Tom...I don't know who they are and I suspect that no one else will a couple of years hence.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 12:56 PM

getting the leg over anything other than a bicycle

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 12:28 PM

These stores need to take a lesson from the COSTCO warehouse stores in the US. They accept only cash, American Express or direct debit cards. The lines move VERY fast (unless someone who speaks poor English doesn't understand the rules... but that seems pretty rare, as it is all explained when you join.)

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Musket
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 11:08 AM

I had to send a letter by special delivery yesterday, as solicitors still live in the last century.

First time I have been in a post office in years. Fuck me...   I was once in Russia and a bloke in the hotel joked that we taught the Russians how to queue.

Now 30 years later, I see the joke.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 10:01 AM

One of the hardest things to do these days, in the UK, is to buy a newspaper (!) Go into any newsagents and the idiot in front of you in the queue is bound to be fiddling about with f**ing lottery tickets! And each transaction seems to take hours!! Is that because lottery players are extra-specially thick or the lottery is so complicated it takes an inordinate amount of time to either buy or to check a ticket?

Some people also seem to find it hard to buy a bus ticket. These days, every time I go into town, my heart sinks when I see a big queue at the next bus stop - because I know that each would-be passenger is going to need to arrange to pay his/her fare via banker's draft, negotiate an international peace treaty, translate the collected works of Aristotle from the original ancient Greek into Finnish and write a thesis on quantum indeterminacy. Meanwhile, I'm on the top deck screaming silently to myself: "Just get on the f***ing bus!!!!"

Is it just me?

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Ed T
Date: 16 Jul 14 - 02:43 PM

Have empathy for those who hurt a child.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Midchuck
Date: 16 Jul 14 - 02:21 PM

I go along with Ed T about starting the day without coffee, but I think the ultimate was one from the lamented H. Allen Smith, many years back:

"Trying to shove butter up an eel's ass with a red-hot awl."

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 07:24 PM

GfS.. I haven't heard that smarmy euphemism for 40 years. I could happily have gone 40 more.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Rapparee
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 07:21 PM

Putting up with the unaware.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 01:49 AM

Choking your chicken while tightrope walking.

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Ed T
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 02:29 PM

-talk during a dental procedure

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 02:09 PM

awww.. dentists & freeway driving are a lot easier for ME than tolerating enduring impolite idiots on cell phones. Even harder is restraint when friends do it near me.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: GUEST,Guest - Lin
Date: 13 Jul 14 - 10:22 PM

1. Getting up early in the morning -which for me is not only a hard thing to do - but EXTREMELY hard thing to do. Thank goodness I don't work at a regular job anymore and only work one or two days a week so usually sleep until 11:00 AM or 11:30AM.   

2. Driving on a freeway - scared to do this anymore.

3. Going to a dentist for anything!

4. Having to listen to people talking on mobile phones wherever I go. Restaurants, buses, trains, grocery stores, malls. It is hard for me to listen to so many people (all ages) talking so loud on the mobile phones. For goodness sakes - even in the library.
Years ago, the librarians used to enforce it - when cell phones started to become popular but now they rarely ask the person not to talk on the phone, even inside the library unless the person is talking extremely loudly. Otherwise they ignore it and say they are not "the library police." :-(((

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Jul 14 - 10:47 PM

Oh my, Eliza.. I think that his sense of humor, as a product of his culture, would strain MY ability to conduct a conversation with him. I now see why people who travel a lot, or become diplomats, need guide books and/or extensive training in order to avoid serious awkwardness.

What people find funny is a major way we have of selecting those we keep company with.

----------------------------

Patsy- one of my interests/hobbies is 'honing' jokes and puns...etc. I HATE "Readers Digest Condensed Jokes" where one hurries to get to a just barely recognizable punch line. One of the problems with the internet/WWW is that there are WAY too many people who post distorted, silly, weak forms of good jokes... which are then copied & pasted by hundreds of others until the original, elegant form is buried under a deluge of bad examples.

Here on Mudcat, Uncle Dave O. posts some of the best examples of good jokes..

When telling a joke 'live', one first needs to not be afraid to TELL it ... to build it up properly using the best phrases & 'set-up'... if one telegraphs the punchline or censors it, it can fall flat.

It is not a skill that one picks up over night...but it is well worth a bit of practice on a few select ones.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Ed T
Date: 07 Jul 14 - 08:24 PM

Hurricanes with female names more deadly than male-named storms:

hard to figure out? 

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Ed T
Date: 07 Jul 14 - 07:17 PM

Some folks find public speaking very hard to do.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 07 Jul 14 - 07:10 PM

The hardest thing for me to do is tell jokes at all. It is something that I am just not blessed with unfortunately when I try to deliver the punchline it just falls flat. It reminds me of a Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoon when Daffy was trying to upstage Bugs and to entertain an audience and all he got was complete silence apart from the odd cricket chirping. That would be me! And yet in general conversation I can come out with something quite innocently that has people in fits of giggles.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 07 Jul 14 - 04:07 PM

1, Remembering names.
2, Remembering faces.

Neither of those do I find particularly difficult.



3, Correctly matching names to faces.
. . . Ah, now you come to the tricky bit!

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 07 Jul 14 - 12:15 PM

Well, Bill, my husband loves an African series which he accesses on his laptop called 'Moussa le Malhonnete'. It appears to be about a man with an enormous, grotesque hernia (actually a football) under his baggy African trousers, who beats his wife and causes trouble in the village by suspecting other men of adultery with his wife. My husband laughs like a drain at all this. The actor who plays Moussa is actually a real hunchback into the bargain. It's knockabout slapstick stuff. The more screaming, abusive women come out of their huts to shout at Moussa, the more my husband laughs. I don't get it really, but it's funny to see him roaring his head off. He doesn't 'get' puns, verbal jokes or wordplay. He now finds some teasing funny as he's learned my ways after all these years, but it's heavy-going I can tell you! He has a bit of a pot belly now, and I ask him when the twins will be born. He giggles at that, but at first, he replied, "Men can't have babies, you know. How can this be twins?" Talk about comedians 'dying the death!'

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Jul 14 - 11:35 AM

I'm just curious, Eliza... what does your husband... and by extension, many other Africans... find to be amusing? Do they tell 'jokes'? Are certain situations or malapropisms funny?

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 07 Jul 14 - 03:43 AM

Musket!! Let me guess! You were debugging the dog and it bit your bum!!
LOL!!

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Musket
Date: 07 Jul 14 - 03:40 AM

Something else that is hard to do..

Put a sticking plaster on your arse with the aid of a mirror.

I find white spirit cleans the sticky residue off the mirror...

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 07 Jul 14 - 02:20 AM

Chaffing and teasing, irony and 'having a laugh' is indeed the norm here in UK. I suppose it's what is known elsewhere as 'the British sense of humour'. Socially speaking, I reckon it's a way of actually blurring or softening direct criticism or disapproval. My friend Ronda had a German male friend, and when he visited from Munich he was horribly 'direct' in his utterances. He'd tell her, if she asked him for an opinion, that her dress wasn't attractive, that her figure was a bit fat, that the new sofa was a horrible colour etc. If she winced, he'd be amazed and say, "But...you asked me!" The humour approach backfires with Africans. If you 'joke' and say, for example, "Good grief! This spicy food will blow my head off!" they'll look horrified and reply quite seriously, "No, it is not dangerous. Please do not be afraid. Your head will not blow up." I often tell my husband that in the dark all you see of him is a set of white teeth coming towards you. He'll say, "But you know that the rest of me is there too!" It is very hard to make him understand one is joking or teasing.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 07 Jul 14 - 01:50 AM

Huh, and then some complain when I advise you to keep banging the rocks together...

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Ed T
Date: 06 Jul 14 - 08:21 PM

A good perspective, Bill D. While there are benefits to workplace humour, it is wise to tread carefully- there are clear dangers, that can only be safely overcome through a good knowledge of the people and culture involved.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Jul 14 - 08:03 PM

In the US "winding people up" is best reserved for those who know each other and share the same history & jokes. There's just too many different regions & cultural histories with different ideas of what passes for 'friendly' humor.

In the UK, it may be taken for granted by almost everyone, but it doesn't always translate well here.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Ed T
Date: 06 Jul 14 - 07:08 PM

"""What's extra hard is watching them do it wrong while knowing that you are going to be the one who has to fix it."""....and, they will likely take, or be given, the credit for a job well done.

Subject: RE: BS: Very hard things to do
From: Musket
Date: 06 Jul 14 - 06:41 PM

I have been lucky in being in a position where I could praise people and give them recognition, but like Eliza, I have to try and ensure it doesn't come over as patronising.

I find it rather hard to swap styles. In business, I used to spend about a third of my time in The USA. When I was at the UK factory, it was almost expected that you would have a laugh, wind people up and get all shouty without any malice or ill intent. Mmm. In Illinois, such an approach had people wondering what they were doing wrong. Generally speaking, they took you more at face value. (A sales office in Boston however was far more like The UK in how the staff treated each other and I felt at home when I was there. Ditto Italy, whilst Germany - back to saying what you mean unequivocally.

I actually see that to a degree on Mudcat. It is rather fascinating, the face value comments on subjects where the invitation to make light of it is irresistible. After all, it is sometimes impossible to have an earnest chat when the other person makes no sense whatsoever.

Anyway, to bed. I have err.. oh. Nothing in the diary tomorrow.

Hang on. Yes. Debug the dog.