Joke 686

Use colons correctly in headlines. (Photo credit: alphalim)

Punctuation Parable

Dear John,

I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior.
You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy – will you let me be yours?

Gloria

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Dear John,

I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior.
You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we’re apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?

Yours,

Gloria

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From villanova

Out Of The Office******

I will be taking a short blogging break this week.  Viv and Pseu, instead of giving me what I thought would be about a two-week break from Apartheid’s All Right…,  must have sat up for several long nights, trawling through my book.

The results are in and they approve enough that I only need to take a shortish sabbatical from my first love (you), to fix daft mistakes (page number, anyone?) and wean myself from my favourite punctuation mark: the semi-colon (the colon is my second favourite).

Thank you again, Viv and Pseu, for doing this.  And for your efficiency.  

I suppose.

While AAR... was being critiqued, I had intended to work on my poo collection* but that will have to wait a bit longer.

*Don’t panic, New Subscribers; you haven’t signed up to some weird, kinky blog by accident.  I’m talking about a book of poems about poo (okay, maybe a little bit weird) that I am going to use as a practice run for publishing my own e-book. It will be available to download for free.  It can’t be kinky if it’s free on the internet, can it?

While I’m at it: (hmm…maybe my first- and second-placed punctuation marks are in the wrong order; like my favourite top two films of all time** they are almost interchangeable).

**Terminator 1 and 2; I can never decide which one I love more.  You can see why I might love them both, just like the colon and semicolon: the second stems from the first; has a similar function; but works brilliantly on its own.

Where was I?  Oh, yes: while I’m at it: apologies to New Subscribers (assuming you’re still here at this point) for abandoning you so soon after we’ve just met.  I will only be gone a few days.  A week at the most.  A month, tops.***

***Who am I kidding?  A few days away from the blogosphere and my head threatens to explode.  My regular readers know that, which is why I didn’t bother apologising to them for my absence.****  They know there will barely be one.

*********Viv, I hope you appreciated that full stop/new sentence; I can take criticism and learn from it.

*****Because I have overdosed on the asterisks (try saying that when you’ve had a few; I couldn’t manage it sober), I have colour-coded the remarks so that you don’t get confused.  That’s much easier to read, isn’t it?

However long I am gone, you will still have your daily joke.  Enjoy them but, most of all, miss me.  My ego can’t handle indifference.

******I say ‘Out Of The Office’ but I won’t be, of course.  I don’t have an office.  I have a living room with an untidy desk (the Hub’s) and computer (the Hub’s). If I want to be like Virginia Woolf (I don’t) and have ‘a room of one’s own’ in which to write (I do), I will either have to wait five years while Spud finishes school and university (he will be going into the small room when he moves out but his bedroom has been earmarked – by me – for the Hub and his messy desk and his computer and his stuff), or sell a lot of free e-books.

Joke 452

 

 I got this one from Facebook. 

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Knock!  Knock!

……………………..Who’s there?

To.

……………………..To who?

To whom.

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Oops! And Other Things

A Letter From The Editor

Dear Subscribers,

Today you have received two Joke 182 emails.  This is not due to a technical hitch or over-enthusiasm on the part of WordPress or because the moon is in the seventh house.

It is because I am a dopey mare.  I forgot to check my scheduled posts last night before preparing today’s joke. 

You may also have received two other posts from my drafts.  Please ignore.  I have had four hours’ sleep and my brain has forgotten how to operate a blog.  [I had just typed that last sentence when I noticed a new email had come in; it is from Pun of the Day and I swear this is the actual joke: Sleeping comes so naturally to me, I could do it with my eyes closed.]

Apologies for two jokes; apologies for two posts sent in error; apologies that this is the fifth email you have received from me today; apologies that for some of you, it’s more.

The Management take such matters seriously so be assured I will punish myself by…took me a while to think of something, I nodded off; but here it is – and it’s about as painful a punishment as I’ll ever get:

I will post this post with all errors still in place.  No proofreading.  No editing.  No checking for mistakes three times, go to the toilet, three times more.

I don’t think punishments come harsher than that, do you?

Yours truly,

Dopey Mare.

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What’s In A Name?  Mother Is Not Impressed

Last week a number of you voted on Tory Boy’s new name, having first suggested them all.  From this I learned:

• My readers do not always have the courage of their convictions – eight of the suggested names received no votes, not even from their suggesters.
• You like polls.  No one voted for Another poll? Do you think I have time to waste reading all the options? I could be slumped in front of the tv.
• 23% of you dislike change.  Wait until your purse is permanently empty and then tell me you dislike it: there is no sight so beautiful as a handful of coppers when you’re nine pence short of the price of milk.
• My son is an idiot.

It was Tory Boy who suggested a name change in the first place.  It was Tory Boy who suggested asking my readers to come up with his new name.  It was Tory Boy who voted for Tory Boy.

More apologies, therefore, for wasting your time with a redundant poll: Tory Boy remains Tory Boy.  My new name is Rollinmyeyesindespair.

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The Sky Is Falling!  The Sky Is Falling!

A satellite is due to fall on our heads tomorrow.  Time to buy a hat.  Or 26 hats, to be precise: according to The Huffington Post:

An estimated 26 pieces – representing 1,200 pounds – are expected to survive.

But don’t worry:

re-entry will occur over the Pacific late Friday afternoon, Eastern Time. But that’s give or take 14 hours.

I’m no scientist, or even good at maths, but isn’t fourteen hours more than enough time to cross the Pacific in a rowing boat, never mind a whacking great chunk of metal hurtling through gravity?

Maybe a bowler hat?

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I Did Not Have Punctual Relations With That Exclamation Mark…Semi-Colon

I tried; I really did.  But the addiction has gone too deep with me: I confess…I proofed this post; and then I proofed it some more.  I guess I’ll have to give up Maltesers for the day instead.

Don’t be impressed; it won’t be that difficult: I don’t have any in the house at the moment.

Looks like I can’t give up honesty, either.

On a related point, thank you to everyone who told me to ignore that spam fiend, Helen Keller.  I appreciate the support, I really do.  Now I have to go back to Writing School to re-take the Make It Absolutely Clear Your Tongue Is Firmly In Your Cheek class that I failed last year.

I have the best readers in the blogosphere.

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Related articles

• Sir Stuart Bell: Britain’s laziest MP or just the unluckiest? (politicsontoast.com)

A Public Service Announcement

Image by DavidErickson via Flickr

Do NOT – I Repeat – Do NOT Read My Previous Post

It contains a glaring error of such magnitude that, when I realised my mistake, had me charging down the stairs, bath robe flapping in the wind, terrifying my adult son.

The mistake does at least give me the opportunity to share these maxims, sent by a friend, now I have discovered their truth for myself:

• Hartman’s Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation states that any article or statement about correct grammar, punctuation, or spelling is bound to contain at least one eror.
• Muphry’s law states that if you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written

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Gasp!

I’ve just received this message in my spam box:

Of course I like your web-site, but you have to check the spelling on several of your posts. A number of them are rife with spelling issues and I find it very silly to tell you.

It’s like I’ve been stabbed in the heart with an exclamation mark.

If you are new here, you might not know that I am a nit-picker among nit-pickers when it comes to punctuation.  I have been known to wake up screaming in the middle of the night, because my subconscious suddenly realised I used a semi-colon instead of a colon in a post three days previously.

Spammers are mean. 

The really weird part, however, is how did she know?  This comment came from Helen Keller. 

Today is My One Year B***********

The Doctor was beginning to regret getting so many pets….

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Today is my one-year *l**********.  When I told the Hub, he insisted that I can’t use the word ‘**o*********’ because it’s just too naff and he doesn’t want to be known for having a naff wife using the word ‘***g********.’  As this blog is mostly about him, I had to listen to his argument.  Especially as he had me pinned to the floor with a knee across my larynx at the time.

I decided to celebrate my ****i******* by taking a look at my statistics (as if I don’t look at them every day, drooling with excitement that three people linked from Writer’s Island and the two-hundred-and-eighty-ninth person accidentally found me by typing in ‘your old as woman feel’) .   I would tell you all about it but I can’t help feeling that a) it’s dull and b) it would be rather like swapping salary stories; I just don’t think it’s the done thing in the blogosphere.  I can tell you, because I have a little stat counter on my home page so it’s something you can check for yourself, that my target of 10,000 hits for the end of the year – 2010; not the year since I started blogging, which is today.  Did I mention it was my *****v******? – will be reached sometime in the next ten days.  I hope.

Now I have to set a new target.  That involves looking at statistics.  Umm…  2782 in my first half and 7016 in my second half which is an increase of something percent so if I factor in my poor maths skills and multiply that by my one year *****e*****, take away the number I first thought of and stop for a chocolate break, my new target will be 17,000 hits by 31 December.  (Don’t let the science fool you; this is what’s technically known as a ‘thumbsuck figure.’)  And look at that!  I finally managed to legitimately pull together three punctuation marks.  Go me!*

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I have a bit of a problem: I set myself today’s target of writing the word (though it’s not really a word and in the opinion of the Hub is a bit naff; did I say that already?) ‘*******r****’ twelve times in this post so that anyone who’s a bit clever, like, could crack the code and discover for themselves what the word is (it’s ‘********s***’).  Thus, I would be obeying the Hub’s diktat not to say ‘*********a**’ but subverting it at the same time.  I’m too smart for him.  Trouble is, I’ve run out of things to say.

Oo!  Oo!  Just had a **********r* flash of genius – isn’t it ironic that the first anniversary of a blog (wink wink) – an electronic media (medium?) – should be paper? Why?

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Today is Rallentanda’s POW prompt day.  The prompt is to write a Who Am I?  poem.  The first was written in response and is easy; the second was written about eighteen months ago and is more difficult if you are not interested in Royal history – which, inexplicably, many people aren’t. 

Answers on a postcard please; or in the comment box.

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Who Am I?

I’m craggy but handsome; fecund but cute. 
I look good in blue or my birthday suit. 
I act; I direct; sometimes I produce. 
I had a great wife but I played fast and loose. 
Dad wanted his son to avoid Vietnam:
I’m Aussie; I’m Yank; I don’t give a damn.
Famously Catholic, I’m hypocritical. 
I’m occasionally drunk and anti-semitical. 

Who am I?

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Mother Knows Best

There is so much angst at home
when your Mum sits on the throne.
She says it is my duty
to wed for State, not booty.
I know that I can’t fight her:
she’ll pull her corset tighter
and declare she’s not amused;
I must consent to being used.
Avoiding war is wiser:
I’m off to raise a Kaiser. 

*

 

 

*Sorry, I’m excited.  Today is my ***********y.  

 

Ha!**  You thought I couldn’t do it, didn’t you?   

 

**Will somebody please close the exclamation mark factory door before I overdose?

 

 

My Pedantic Heart

I was going to leave this post until tomorrow, but I can’t.  I have to tell you that the apostrophe in the previous title’s post is deliberate; it can be broken down as Day Has Gone By.  I wanted the play on words but it has niggled at me all day.  I am afraid someone might think I don’t know my plural from my possessive or contracting punctuation mark.  I’m scared Lynne Truss might seek me out and beat me with my own copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

Bless me Reader, for I have mis-punctuated.