I love this saying from one of my colleagues in the National Security field about the Middle East:
If you aren’t invited for dinner, you’re likely on the menu!
Oh how true it is.
It reminds me of a mother-in-law joke my father used to tell about this guy telling his friend:
Yeah, we had my mother-in-law for dinner. And boy was she good!
Anyway, no one can tell a joke like he did.
Last thing you want to be is on the menu. 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
So true story…
One of my collegues was giving me a status on an IT problem in the office.
With a very straight face, he goes, “Yeah, it was an I.D. 10 T error!”
I’m just looking at him with a sort of blank face (I must have been emanating something like, “What are you talking about Willis?”)
And he repeats, “An I.D. 10 T error…uh?”
Ok, one more time, I haven’t had my coffee yet.
So he goes dotting his head, “What you haven’t heard about an I.D. 10 T error?”
“All right, you got me…What is an I.D. 10 T error.”
And as I’m saying it out loud and visioning it on paper, his little joke is out of the box.
Hey cut me some slack, I’m a Jewish kid from the Bronx and so I innocently say, “An IDIOT Error?”
Now he’s nodding his head up and down in excitement, “An end user–IDIOT–error!”
And he starts laughing his head off.
Ok boys and girls in IT…rule #16 of office etiquette, please don’t call the end-users, idiots.
Back to customer service (and sensitivity) training for some of the jokesters on the team… 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
So on the way home from synagogue today, my wife and I are talking about what happened to the renown Harvard constitutional and criminal lawyer, Alan Dershowitz.
He was accused of having repeatedly had sex with an underage woman (while he was married with children and grandchildren).
I explained to my wife not to believe these accusations, that in my mind, Dershowitz was upstanding and completely innocent, and that this could happen to anyone.
And I went on to tell a funny story from a day earlier…
I was at a retirement party for one of my staff who served the country for 51 years.
At the party, I am going around talking with people and helping to make everyone comfortable–until I didn’t.
One guy who was a retired manager and had come back to work as a contractor calls me over to his table to introduce me to his wife.
He’s motioning to her and saying how she is his most beloved wife.
And just joking around trying to keep a straight face, I say, “Hmm, she’s a lot different than the other woman I see you with every day.”
[Yeah, I don’t know what came over me (maybe a little too much drink–any drink is too much for this dry mouth).]
His wife, is like, “Ah ha! Some other woman in the office…”
And he’s leaning back, waving his hands and mouthing to me, “Shut up Andy!”
He goes, “Okay Andy, you just wait until I meet your wife!”
Then, we all broke out laughing…just Andy being a wise guy again!
So, I said to my wife, you see how easy it is for someone to make a false accusation (and how quickly people can be to think the worst of others).
It really is important to treat people as “innocent until proven guilty.”
As for Andy’s hijinks…I’m banned from any more parties for the next few weeks. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
This was funny at CVS today.
The “value size” extra strength Tylenol (equivalent)–1000 pills!
Think about it that’s something like 500 headaches…
It reminded me when I worked in the financial service industry in New York City.
The Comptroller of the corporation has a mega size bottle of aspirin right on the front of his desk when you walked in.
It was clear he was quite S~T~R~E~S~S~E~D out.
From a personal branding perspective (my wife is the expert at this), I would imagine that this is not the image you would want people to have of you all the time.
Anyway, pain relief for some is a very big bottle of Tylenol and for others a nice bottle of wine or some time at the beach.
My father used to tell me the joke, “If I have to give up wine, women, or song…I’ll give up singing!” 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
My elderly father retold a funny joke to us yesterday when we visited him at his assisted living home.
It goes like this…
A teacher in school asks the classroom of children, “Who killed Abraham Lincoln?”
One little child in the front of the room meekly raises his hand, and when called on by the teacher answers,”I didn’t do it!”
The teacher is taken aback at the response, and after class calls the child’s father and tell him to come in after school to discuss this.
After school, the father shows up and sits down with the teacher, and listens to him repeat the story about what happened in class.
The father is visibly annoyed, and when the teacher is done staunchly says, “If my son says he didn’t do it, then he didn’t do it!”
Ah, I suppose one could take this as a sad commentary either generally-speaking on the state of our education system or in particular of this family that is quite clueless–and where it’s clear that the apple does not fall far from the tree. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Short story…so this nice gentleman came from the house of worship to visit my dad in assisted living over the holidays.
The man talked about the speeches the clergy gave and how he only understood the basics, and the rest was sort of over his head (hey, I can definitely relate to that too…we all can).
Perhaps, this points to how important it is to talk to the people (and not over the people)–making it relevant and stirring–although it’s probably not easy to give a speech that resonates well with everyone.
Anyway, there are good speeches, and then let’s face it, there are speeches that could be better.
Afterward, my dad and this man joked about how they’ve seen some people actually fall asleep during the clergy’s speech…yes, this is obviously not very respectful, but sometimes people just doze off perhaps because it’s hot inside with all the people, and they work so hard during the week that they just are relaxed and off they go.
My dad goes on to tell this joke:
The clergyman is giving a speech from the pulpit.
All of a sudden he notices this guy sleeping in one of the pews.
The clergy says to the man’s neighbor sitting next to him, “Can you please wake him up?”
The worshipper responds, “You put him to sleep, you wake him up.”
Then my dad let out a really nice, healthy laugh…it was good to hear (the other guy was laughing with him).
On a side note, my dad said something else funny and insightful today:
“It’s not easy getting old…it takes many years!”
Amen to that. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
I remember as a kid, when I was around 10 years old, we moved, and I had to change schools, and there was an adjustment period.
My father used to tell me a joke in the morning before school about these two grandmothers kibbitzing.
And one tells the other about how her grandson hates going to school.
She goes on to say, “The students hate him, the teachers hate, it’s just horrible.”
The other grandmother replies, “Well then, why doesn’t he just tell the principal?”
The first grandmother answers, “He is the principal!”
So this was a lesson to me about how no one has it so perfect in life–whether you’re the kid, teacher, or even the principal, everyone has their challenges (and they may actually not look all that differently in the larger context of things).
Basically, in life we must work to make things better where we can, but also have to accept the things we cannot change (and thank G-d, people are pretty adaptable, expecially given some time).
While, we can try to divine the future by asking “What’s going to be?”
Generally speaking, we can’t fully know the answers in life before we even have the questions.
We’ve got to take it as it come, where we can–do our best to make a tangible, positive difference in the world–and with the rest, “let it be.”
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
My dad told me this joke over the weekend.
It’s about the Rabbi who asked the little boy in school…
“WHERE do you find G-d?”
Raising his voice again…
“Where do you find G-D?”
Stretching out his arms to the heavens….
“Where do YOU find G-d?”
The boy rushes outside, nearly in tears, and finds his little brother and says:
“The Rabbi thinks we stole G-d.”
I’m not sure if the joke itself is really funny or just the way my dad tells it.
But I can almost see that child panicking and thinking he was being accused of something terrible.
Anyway, as we all know G-d is everywhere and most importantly inside all of us.
That’s the spark that burns–our soul from above.
(Source Photo: adapted from here with attribution to Kigaliwire)
This is one of those unbelievable stories that you have to pinch yourself to see if you are dreaming or is it real.
An intern over at the National Transportation Safety Board provided KTVU a list of pilot names for the Asiana plane that crashed in San Francisco last week.
Only…the pilot names weren’t real but a spoof making fun of the airline pilots, their race, and the crash.
With three people dead (including two 16-year old girls) and 200 wounded (with 2 still in critical condition) this really isn’t a laughing matter.
But the gall of this intern to pass these names off to the news, and then the TV stations blind acceptance of these as fact, plus the newscaster reading them aloud and still apparently not realizing what she was saying…is completely crazy!
Don’t believe everything…look closely, listen carefully–is it a joke, an agenda, brainwashing, or maybe at times, some genuine facts you can actually count on. 😉
Many people worry–they are afraid of all sorts of bad things that can happen.
And they ruminate on what ifs and what they can do about it–if anything.
The more people feel they have no control over a negative situation, the more they worry about it–they can feel helpless and hopeless–and this may even lead to depression.
I remember as a kid my dad telling me a story/joke about this–it went something like this:
One grandmother is talking to another.
She complains how her grandson always worries about going to school.
The other grandmother says, “Oh really, why?”
The first grandmother tells her that her grandson is worried because “The kids hate him. The teachers hate him. And everyone gives him a hard time.”
The other grandmother says, “So why doesn’t he go talk the principal?”
The first grandmother answers, “Because he is the principal!”
The moral of the story is that everyone has problems, and has worries, and it doesn’t matter who you are–whether you’re a kid in school or the principal in charge, a worker in the company or the CEO, and so on.
I think sometimes we lose sight of the frailty of all human beings and we think mistakingly that just because someone is successful or high up on the totem pole of life that they don’t have worries and problems.
Which reminds me of something else my grandfather used to say: “G-d doesn’t let any tree grow into the heavens.”
No matter how big a person gets, G-d reminds us of who is really boss–so chop chop on the tree and watch that big ego–we’re just people. 😉
(Source Photo of picture: Andy Blumenthal)
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