From: Thaddeus Federman, CEO, Acme Office Supplies To: All employees Subject: New Restroom Visitation Policies It has come to our attention that employees have been wasting an inordinate amount of time visiting the restroom during business hours. Up until now, Acme Office Supplies has allowed unlimited visits, with no accounting for lost work time while using the facilities. That’s about to change. Beginning on Monday, visits to the restrooms will be limited to a maximum of two, ten-minute visits per visit per employee — one visit in the morning and one in the afternoon. Each visit begins the moment the employee leaves their desk and ends when they return. It…
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Before a Night of Fripping Spittlestoat, catenaliggette and other secrets behind mastering the new age of contemporary writing
Five minutes after signing the contract, I dropped to the floor, gasping for air. Next to being waterboarded as a Vietnam POW, I could tell that editing this manuscript was going to be the most horrendous experience of my life: Inquiring my well-wishers, which is the deadliest mistake as inherently scheduled to jealousy or hawk eyesight on your wardrobe waiting for the garment to vomit out as not fitting towards them or due to impaired vision, will tell you a lie. After I stopped hyperventilating, I thought, well the next chapter can’t be that bad. It wasn’t. It was worse: Emotional detachment between us during manifested harmony in relationships was…
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I’m Pretty Sure This Will Be a Great Article But you’ll have to read it to find out
I hate commercials. Thirty seconds after you watch them, you can’t remember who made them or what they were for. But I do have to admit that Rocket Mortgage™ has me hooked. The mortgage company’s recent spate of commercials featuring actor/comedian Tracy Morgan touts, “When it comes to home buying or refinancing, ‘pretty sure’ isn’t sure enough.” I’m pretty sure I can come up with a slew of other uses for the riff: Clothing & Fashion · I’m pretty sure your nipples won’t show in that bikini. · I’m pretty sure I can give you a tattoo. · I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to wear underwear on the inside. ·…
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Where’s Your Sense of Humor? An award-winning author shares how to find humor in everything you write
Every year after winning the Pulitzer Prize for humor, I’m besieged with questions from new writers about how I went about writing my award-winning humor pieces. They run the gamut from “What in the world were you thinking?” to “Were you drunk when you wrote that?” So, to clear up the confusion, I thought I’d take a moment to offer a few suggestions on how to write stunning humor pieces, unlike anything people have seen before. What most non-writers don’t know is writing brilliant humor pieces is infinitely harder than writing non-fiction. The best humor pieces are steeped in research. For instance, my article, The Greatest Stories Never Told was…
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We’ve Become Too Politically Correct! How Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs have pushed us over the edge
My tenth-grade science teacher was a short, ugly, middle-aged junkie who lived in the slums on the wrong side of town. But I’m not allowed to say that anymore. Instead, political correctness dictates that I write something like, “My high school pedagogue of advanced scientific theories was an unconventional-looking, vertically, and chronologically challenged male with a substance abuse dependency who lived in an economically deprived part of the propinquity. There. Does that sound better? Hmmm… Not to me. What set me off on this ridiculous diatribe was the deflating news that my favorite California ski resort is succumbing to pressure to change its name.[1] By the start of the next…