• Speaking to a driving instructor in Scotland, he asked: "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?"
• After accepting a gift from a Kenyan citizen he replied, "You are a woman, aren't you?"
• "If it has four legs and is not a chair, has wings and is not an aeroplane, or swims and is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it." (1986)
• In 1966 he remarked that "British women can't cook." 
• To a British student in Papua New Guinea: "You managed not to get eaten then?"
• On a visit to the new Welsh Assembly in Cardiff, he told a group of deaf children standing next to a Jamaican steel drum band, "Deaf? No wonder you are deaf standing so close to that racket."
• He asked an Indigenous Australian, "Still throwing spears?"
  
• Said to a Briton in Budapest, Hungary, "You can't have been here that long – you haven't got a pot belly."
  
• To the President of Nigeria, who was dressed in traditional African robes, "You look like you're ready for bed!"
  
• To Lord Taylor of Warwick, who is black: "And what exotic part of the world do you come from?" Lord Taylor: "I'm from Birmingham."
  
• Seeing a shoddily installed fuse box in a high-tech Edinburgh factory, HRH remarked that it looked "like it was put in by an Indian".
• During a Royal visit to China in 1986 he described Beijing as "ghastly".
• "Aren't most of you descended from pirates?" (in 1994, to an islander in the Cayman Islands).
• At Salford University, he told a 13 year old aspiring astronaut: "Well, you'll never fly in it, you're too fat."
  

There are few things more liberating than walking away from a job that you hate.  Obviously, being in any dysfunctional environment is ruinous to one’s health and mind – poisonous relationships, miserable friendships, unpleasant homes, it doesn’t matter what is causing the problem.  If you cannot fix a problem, walk away from it.  Better yet, run!

Today is my last day at the horrible job I’ve referred to in previous postings here.  Even though I will never come back to this place, knowing that I had to return for one last day ticked off the various aches and pains that have come with this place.  And those aches and pains are all stress-induced.  I am normally in excellent health, except when I am at the job or thinking about the job.

Mercifully, a better company made me an offer and I will be joining them on September 11.  Now that’s a weird date to look forward to, no?  That company is everything this health-wrecking job is not: friendly, professional, intelligent and sincere.  I am genuinely fortunate to have secured that opportunity and I wonder if there was any divine intervention involved (I know my mother has been having some rather intense conversations with St. Joseph lately, so perhaps he thumbed through his rolodex to find a spot for me?).

Okay, this isn’t a particularly funny posting.  But if anyone should read this, I hope you get this message: there is absolutely nothing funny in being in a job that makes you physically and emotionally ill.  Yeah, stupid boss stories are funny for a while, but the daily grind of being mistreated and humiliated is anything but humorous.

Now you have to excuse me, because I need to gather my belongings together and skedaddle – Harriet Tubman is waiting for me and I need to get to freedom ASAP!

In many offices, there are birthday parties.  In many large offices, there are multiple birthday parties.  Needless to say, the excess of birthday parties comes with an excess of birthday cakes.  And if one actively participates in a year’s worth of office-related birthday parties (with their rich and gooey cakes), one can begin to resemble a late-life Marlon Brando.

Now I like birthday cake just like the next slob.  And I also like ice cream.  But I don’t like ice cream cakes.  They are not easy to enjoy, especially if you are standing around a conference room table trying to slice the ice cream cake with one hand while balancing a wobbly paper plate in the other.

One office birthday party some time back, I was given a solid slice of chocolate ice cream cake and a plastic fork.  The fork did not survive its encounter with the ice cream cake.  I obtained a second fork, waited a couple of minutes for the ice cream cake to defrost somewhat, and I did a second attack.  At this point I was back at my desk, where I could do battle from the comfort of a chair – this was not a conflict that could easily be accomplished while standing.

The fork penetrated the slice of ice cream cake and made some progress.  I emphasize the word “some,” as the fork became lodged about a quarter-inch into its target and could neither go forward nor retreat.  And, not surprisingly, this occurred when a telephone call came in.

Thus, I am sitting at my desk with a telephone balanced in one hand while I am enduring an Arthurian struggle in the other hand – but rather than extract a sword from a stone, I was extracting a plastic fork from an ice cream cake.  Or at least that was the idea – for the most part, I was waving the fork-impaled ice cream cake like a gavel, dripping bits of too-slowly-melting chocolate ice cream across the blanket of paperwork atop my desk.

Clearly the person on the far end of my phone call is realizing there is a problem at my end.  “What’s going on there?” he asks.

“I am trying to eat Three Stooges cake,” I reply.

“It sounds like you should be hitting Curly-Joe on the head with it,” he answers.

Since Curly-Joe was not available for cranium crashing, I found myself continuing the unhappy task of having my cake and eating it, too.  The fork was eventually, after several minutes of polite struggle, liberated with a bite-sized chunk.  Upon contact with my teeth, however, I felt as if I was French kissing Mr. Freeze. 

Both the ice cream cake and the valiant little fork found its way into the nearest trashcan.  Whether the ice cream cake ever melted is something I cannot answer – though I suspect even with global warming it is still sitting in a solid block in some distant rubbish dump, confounding the seagulls and rats that try to peck away at it.

 While this is not comedy, per se, it should be noted that some sick humor can be found in the furor in the Islamic world regarding Pope Benny’s decision to publicly repeat comments made by a Byzantine emperor’s notion of the violence inherent to Islam and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.

From this joker’s perspective, I would offer the following observations:

1. When freedom of religion and the right for open assemblies of non-Muslim religious gatherings can be commonplace in the Islamic world, then criticism of Pope Benny is justified.
2. When Muslim terrorists stop bombing churches in Iraq and stop harassing Iraqi Christians seeking the free exercise of their faith (particularly women), then criticism of Pope Benny is justified.
3. When the governments of predominantly Islamic nations cease their policies of persecution of non-Muslim faiths (most notably Iran’s campaigns against its Baha’i population and the state-sanctioned violence against Coptic Christians in Egypt), then criticism of Pope Benny is justified.
4. When people in predominantly Muslim countries have the right to change their religions without the risk of being arrested, tried and executed for crimes against the nation, then criticism of Pope Benny is justified.
5. When the governments of predominantly Muslim country outlaw school texts that slander Judaism and Christianity, then criticism of Pope Benny is justified.
6. When Muslims stop killing each other under the pretext of Koranic principles (Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan), then criticism of Pope Benny is justified.

Until such time, all I can say is “More power to Pope Benny!”

 The year is 1976 and I am 11 years old.  The place is my old neighborhood in The Bronx (pronounced “Da Bronx”) and it is during a lunchtime break from the torture known as sixth grade.  My pal James and I managed to sneak in through a service door to a local high-rise apartment complex with the hope of meeting its most famous tenant, baseball great Willie Mays.

This was not an original idea, as every boy in our school tried to do the same.  No one ever got to see Willie in person, but James and I seemed to get closer than most (we made it to the door of his penthouse apartment, but we were informed by a woman on the other side of that door that our intended target was not home).

As luck would have it, a fellow classmate named Philip lived in that same apartment complex.  So James and I rode the elevator down to his floor with the hope of catching him at home (and perhaps snagging some goodies from his pantry – it was lunchtime, after all).  Admittedly, it was not the most desirable consolation prize (unlike the elusive Willie Mays, we saw Philip every day), but at least it would keep us busy and perhaps well-fed.

Alas, Philip was not home.  Dejected, James and I headed to the elevators.  But for whatever reason, we opted to take the staircase.  And that’s where the trouble began.

I don’t know why (and I still can’t figure it out), but James issued me a challenge at the top of the staircase landing on Philip’s floor: he boasted that he could outdistance me in a urinating contest on the staircase.  Clearly, the idea of using a staircase as a toilet never occurred to me – but at the time, it seemed like a brilliant notion.  Hell, anyone can take a pee into a porcelain bowl.

Furthermore, my sense of adventure was piqued.  Could I pee my way down a staircase?  To the 11-year-old me, those 10 steps from top to bottom landing seemed like an Olympic ski jump.  But I thought I could outdistance James.

So James and I stood at the edge of the staircase landing, unzipped our flies, took out our 11-year-old manhoods, and did the one-two-three-go routine.  Initially James got off to a strong start, hitting the fourth step, while I was stuck at the second step.  But then I began to catch up by making an arc my urine flow.  We tied at the seventh step and went down the stairs in unison until we both hit the bottom landing.  Needless to say, the tie was a disappointment since we both wanted to secure bragging rights.

After zipping up, we remembered the elevators (the staircase didn’t seem like the best place to travel, considering what transpired) and we went downstairs and then went back out the service entrance that gave us access.  We made it to school in the nick of time.

The next day, our friend Philip confronted us in a decidedly non-friendly manner.  It seems the janitor for his apartment complex was making the rounds and came upon that staircase.  Oddly, the janitor blamed Philip for the mess and informed his parents.  Now why the janitor would blame Philip (since he lived on the floor in an apartment with a working toilet) made no sense, but Philip nonetheless added two and two and came up with the only two goofs he knew who could turn a staircase into a urinating championship forum.  Naturally, we denied everything.

Still, I look back in awe at this accomplishment.  I’ve never won any sporting trophies, so the knowledge that I could pee like a champ means a great deal to me (even more than meeting Willie Mays).

Bad writing is like bad cooking – you know it immediately upon impact and it is never tasty – unless you hold it up to ridicule, of course.

Here is an unedited text that is supposed to go into the publication where I am currently laboring.  I won’t ID the writer here, but let’s just say this is actually one of her better efforts! 

<<< 

Use and Abuse of Web Videos - Signed, Anonymous

Former presidential candidate Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” made waves this summer as both a blockbuster hit and a requiem on the state of global warming, but last week a controversy surrounding the movie surfaced, putting a public affairs/PR firm in the hot seat: A video spoof of Gore’s film shown on YouTube.com that was allegedly created by a 29-year-old Beverly Hills resident has been traced back to a computer registered with Washington D.C.-based DCI Group.  While the firm has declined to comment on why press communications with the supposed video maker appear to originate in their office, the news raised eyebrows all around, especially considering that DCI counts once-environmental-offender Exxon Mobile Corp. among its clients.

Al Gore and DCI Group do have one thing in common, though.  Both have used the Internet as a tool to position themselves in the global warming debate.  Gore and his film distributor Paramount Classics used a Web video on YouTube.com to generate word-of-mouth buzz before the release of the film, while DCI Group has used its opinion Web site Tech Central Station to raise doubts about the legitimacy of global warming.  The conclusion: Web videos are playing an increasing role in PR, adding yet another dimension to new-media channels.

>>>

Okay, now let's play the copy editor from hell and dissect this inert body:

“Former presidential candidate Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” made waves this summer as both a blockbuster hit and a requiem on the state of global warming, but last week a controversy surrounding the movie surfaced, putting a public affairs/PR firm in the hot seat”

Two clichés in one sentence (made waves and the hot seat), plus aa bizarre definition of his film (how can you have a requiem for something that is still alive?).  

“A video spoof of Gore’s film shown on YouTube.com that was allegedly created by a 29-year-old Beverly Hills resident has been traced back to a computer registered with Washington D.C.-based DCI Group.  While the firm has declined to comment on why press communications with the supposed video maker appear to originate in their office, the news raised eyebrows all around, especially considering that DCI counts once-environmental-offender Exxon Mobile Corp. among its clients.”

More clichés (the reference to “raised eyebrows all around” makes it seem like a population of Groucho Marx imitators have taken over).  And is there any importance that the spoofer was a 29-year-old Beverly Hills resident?  And how about “once-environmental-offender Exxon Mobile Corp.” (Exxon is in the cell phone business now?).

“Al Gore and DCI Group do have one thing in common, though.  Both have used the Internet as a tool to position themselves in the global warming debate.  Gore and his film distributor Paramount Classics used a Web video on YouTube.com to generate word-of-mouth buzz before the release of the film, while DCI Group has used its opinion Web site Tech Central Station to raise doubts about the legitimacy of global warming.  The conclusion: Web videos are playing an increasing role in PR, adding yet another dimension to new-media channels.”

The conclusion: if the writer of this story was the navigator on the Santa Maria, Columbus would've discovered Spain.

"SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Five people trying to sneak into the United States from Mexico became trapped in a narrow tunnel and had to be rescued Tuesday after the largest of them, a nearly 200-pound man, got stuck trying to climb out through a storm drain, authorities said.

Firefighters used jackhammers at the city's border with Tijuana to widen the opening and free the man, who had become stuck at the hips, said James Jacques, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Then they pulled out the four others who had become trapped behind him in the drainage tunnel."