Tag Archives: humour

A dose of humour

I’ve been sharing a few funny posts on Twitter recently. I don’t mean to make light of a serious situation, and I’m sharing messages from experts too…


But I don’t see a need to preach here, and I’d rather people pay attention to experts, not just misguided leaders, but actual experts.

Yes, the Coronavirus pandemic is serious. Yes it likely will get more serious before it gets better. But we can’t spend our time in constant stress, in a continual state of heightened concern. We also need time to laugh and have fun.

Here are a few laughs I’ve shared recently:


In the coming days, remember to find time for (harmless) humour and fun!

5 ways people are coping with a pandemic on social media.

Just a quick observation about the way people are coping with the Coronavirus pandemic via social media sharing:

1. Complaining/Blaming.

2. Oversharing bad news.

3. Using humour.

4. Sharing the struggle.

5. Sharing ideas, and resources.

The first 2 ways accomplish nothing, except to build anger, excite fear, and actually reduce the ability of others to cope well. What wasn’t done before isn’t as important as what can be done now. I’m not saying everything needs to be positive, but rather that some thought should be put into how much energy is spent spreading negative things that do not contribute to a more positive outcome.

Humour can be a wonderful escape and it can also be biting commentary that invites as much anger as laughter. I’ve caught myself reading some of the commentary on funny tweets and can tell that the joke isn’t always seen as funny. That said, I’ve been sharing some very clever jokes that I think can help us see that we are all in this together.

I’ve also seen some people sharing their struggles and others wrap around them for support. This is really beautiful to see.

Finally, I’ve seen some very informative posts that actually help people cope.

More than ever, it’s a good time to pause and think before you post.

Sometimes features are actually bugs

I am not a fan of vertical (portrait) video. It’s not just an aesthetic, it’s wasted real estate. Seldom does more room above and below a subject being filmed give you as much information as more room to the left and to the right. That said, we will end up watching vertical videos that people choose to take. If you are one of these people taking vertical video, please do me a big favour: Do NOT use the Apple iMovie ‘feature’ that fills the black sidebars on a vertical video viewed horizontally with a magnified, blurry copy of the video.

This is a bug, not a feature. It actually takes away from the video. It’s a distraction. Worse yet, it creates a horizontal video with the side bars out of the vertical video so that even if you watch the video vertically, then the video is even smaller.

Here is a vertical music video:
Billie Eilish – bad guy (Vertical Video)

It was an intentional choice to film the video this way. Here is a horizontal screenshot of the video:

And since she left the video as vertical and didn’t fill the sides, or worse fill the sides with distractions, here is a screenshot of the video viewed vertically:

And here is the video vertically if she had forced the video to be horizontal after the fact:

I didn’t share any images with the sides blurred, but just know that this is even worse. Sometimes features that are added are actually bugs, they don’t make things any better no matter how they are used.

Here are some public service announcements regarding the tragedy and horror of using vertical videos! 😜

And one more short one, but the cover image has a swear word not seen in the video, so I’ll just link to it.

Fun with words

I remember going shopping for a fishing rod with two friends, when I was in my early teens. My buddy Dino picked a rod up, shook it in his wrist and said, “I like this one, it has good grippage. We instantly knew what he meant. It was years later, when I used this word at university that another friend said, ‘That’s not a word.’ We argued about this, and I was so convinced, I recall that there was a wager made. I lost the bet, but it wasn’t until days later when we found a big enough dictionary that I was satisfied that I had lost. (We can sometime forget that Google wasn’t always there to help us.)

Last night, after responding to a comment by Aaron Davis on my blog post We need a new word: Memidemic, (where I was having fun creating a new word), I was on Twitter and came across this post:

Which shared the following 4 words:

I retweeted this with the comment:

Dr. Kay Oddone quickly responded:

To which I responded:

While I think that internest is rather punny, I don’t think of it as having much utility. However, I love when new words make it easy to say something precise and poignant, needing little explanation. My attempt with memidemic is to express something spreading virally, without the negative connotation of a virus or an epidemic… good things can be spread too, why can’t we have a word that expresses that?

Textrovert, cellfish, and nonversation are brilliant! They need little explanation, and they say in a single word what would normally take at least a sentence. I could use all of these tomorrow and, with a little context, people whom have never heard the words before would understand what I was trying to get across. I think in their own way, these words have grippage, and they are probably going to stick around for a while… I’m pretty sure I’ll be using them!

 

I am…

I am not a slam poet,
too many stutters and ‘ummms’ would I make,
I could never recite this all in. Just. One. Take.

I am not a storyteller that captivates,
enthrals, excites, and engages,
I don’t have audiences that applaud me,
on pedestals and stages.

I am not an actor,
I don’t dream of the limelight,
I’d rather be the stagehand
working out of sight.

I am not, I am not,
I am not all of these things,
I can’t dance, I can’t play an instrument,
can’t hold a note when I sing…

It would be easy to go on.
To cut myself up critically.
It’s what ‘most’ people do,
and we all know ‘most’ is at least 51% statistically.

But for everything that I am not,
there is yet something that I am.
For every I can’t,
there are things that I can.

I can write a blog post,
and share it each day.
I can develop my ideas,
and put them on display.

I am creative,
I am thoughtful, and reflective,
I may not alway be right,
but I’m not afraid to share my perspective.

I am a writer, not a poet
though I may try,
I can still be witty, sarcastic,
and sometimes even wry.

I can share my thoughts,
I can express what I think,
For I am artist of words,
typing digital ink.

I am the thinker and creator
of this rhyming verse,
Somewhat embarrassed,
though I know it could be worse.

I am a blogger,
I express ideas our loud,
I am a digital writer,
often humbled, yet proud.

For I am a writer, daily,
and I publicly share,
My words start of private,
until I put them ‘out there’.

Out in the ether
goes my digital text,
and you’ll have to wait until tomorrow
to see what’s next…

Poor Visibility

Our destination was 40 feet away, we just couldn’t get there.

I was in Montreal for a water polo tournament, and three of us decided to stay an extra couple nights, so that we could ski at Mont Tremblant. When the ski day arrived, we woke up early and began the drive to the mountain. Unfortunately the snow started around the same time and visibility was horrible.

The Honda Accord I was driving was good in the snow, but my windshield wipers were on their last legs, and I had to constantly use the washer fluid to help with visibility… then we ran out of this fluid and things got bad. Visibility was awful, but the snow wasn’t wet enough, and my wipers smeared the dirty windshield and the wipers started to tear. Visibility was so bad that I had to pull off the highway.

This was not an era of cell phones and GPS, and the map we had was a brochure, with basic highway instructions, which didn’t include the small exit we just took. We had no idea where we were or where we needed to get to in order to remedy our visibility problem.

Then we got lucky. The first road we took ended at a ‘T’ intersection and as we were pondering which way to go, we saw a Honda dealership just to the right of the intersection. What luck! We drove in and picked up new windshield wipers, but they didn’t have windshield wiper fluid. We asked directions to the nearest gas station and used a few plastic cups of water from their water fountain to help us clean the windshield. It also stopped snowing so other than very slippery roads, our situation was much improved. At least we could see!

It only took us about 5 minutes to get to the intersection of the gas station, and that’s when the trouble started. The gas station was at the top of a very small hill, but the grade of the hill was pretty steep and I couldn’t get the Honda up it. My all-season tires were no equal to this snowy incline.

My friends got out and pushed. No progress. I gave one of my friends a chance at the wheel and I pushed. No success. My other friend took a turn. The gas station remained 40 feet away. We weren’t going to get the car there.

We weren’t going to get the car there… That was my defeated sense, before the very simple realization that you, the reader, have probably already come to. But for me it was both a stroke of insight and also a moment to laugh at myself and my dejected friends.

I walked 40 feet up the hill, purchased the windshield wiper fluid, and brought it to the car. Minutes later we were on our way to the mountain with new windshield wipers and a full talk of washer fluid.

Sarcasm, even spelt right too!

2011-06-20_07

I think Cassie was only 3 years old when she started asking me, “Dad, are you being tar-tas-tic again?”
This is from her Father’s Day card.
It’s interesting but I really don’t think that my sarcasm plays out online. I tend not to use it as it is too easily interpreted as rude or at times even scathing. So instead I barrage my kids with it. I’m sure as they get older their eyes will role-over as I embarrass them in front of their friends, (the eye-rolls have already started), but my editing filter shuts off at home. So, my girls will just have to put up with me… even with my sarcasm. 🙂