ivman's blague

My wife Becka sent me a link to The 50 Most Perfectly Timed Photos Ever (Not all of the pictures may be to your liking.) I'm wondering if it's not more a matter of camera angle than timing in at least some of those pictures. Many times things in our lives look a certain way because of how we're viewing them from our particular perspective, which may be faulty or limited.

Today's blog post is five stories which each highlight how one person's perspective makes things look quite different.

Two elderly sisters donated money to a charity and, to their surprise, won tickets to the Super Bowl! Since they had never seen a live football game before, Madge thought the free tickets would provide an excellent opportunity for doing so.

"I think so, too," said Mabel. "Let's go!"

They soon found themselves high in a noisy stadium overlooking a large, grassy expanse. They watched the kickoff and the seemingly endless back-and-forth struggles that comprised the first half. Then they enjoyed the halftime performance that followed.

Now it was time for the second half.... when the teams lined up for the second-half kickoff, Madge nudged her sister.

"I guess we can go home now, Mabel," she said. "This is where we came in."
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Readers have been keeping me supplied with signs of all sorts. Here are the ones that have accumulated since my last post of funny signs.

Here's one of those happy coincidences where two things are in perfect alignment to cause confusion.

Here are a couple of signs that were unfortunate mistakes made by the painters.

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Yesterday, April 30, 2013, was the 20th birthday of the World Wide Web's going public. Since my day to post is Wednesdays, my birthday wishes had to be belated. I once asked in a store if they sold boxes of belated birthday cards.... Anyway, we're glad the WWW is here. Otherwise, we wouldn't be reading this right now.

Here's a picture of the first website (You can click on the picture to go to the actual site.)

It was certainly barebones compared to the graphics-rich content we're used to today. You can read about it on the main page of that site — http://info.cern.ch.

Today is the last day of final exams. This Friday afternoon is graduation at BJU, and then this weekend our son Mark will be graduating from Furman with his Master of Arts in School Leadership. We're proud of all his hard work that got him to this point, pretty much a course at a time evenings as a full-time teacher, husband, and dad. Having taken the same route myself, I know just how hard that is!

In honor of exams, I have a couple of jokes either about tests, intelligence, ... or the lack thereof.
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We're in that happy time of year with its characteristic "roller coaster weather." On my drive to school yesterday morning, I must have been quite a sight. I was wearing sunglasses because the sun was so bright and gloves because the steering wheel was so cold. Both were easily visible to other drivers. Then on the way home yesterday afternoon, I had the AC on in my pickup. Since I have planted some things in my garden, I'm hoping that we are at least past the threat of frost or freeze. Ah, the viscissitudes of weather!

When I was in fifth and sixth grade, my math and spelling teacher Mrs. Byerly had some great ways to help us remember things. For instance, she taught us a little song that ended with the words "we will weather the weather, whether we like it or not!" I often think of that, not only in connection to the homonyms, but also in regards to the weather itself.

I never have trouble knowing whether it should be "ei" or "ie" because Mrs. Byerly taught us to remember lice. When a word contains either of those vowel combinations, the letter l will be followed by i and the letter c will be followed by e. Therefore the correct spellings will be believe, relief, receive, deceit, etc. Lice may seem like a lousy way to remember something, but it works! Great teacher, that Mrs. Byerly, that I still remember those things 50 years later!

Today's post is weather-related bits of humor ... whether you like it or not!

Farmer Brown: "Did you lose much in that last tornado?"

Farmer Jones: "Lost the henhouse and all the chickens. But that's okay, 'cause I ended up with three new cows and a pick-up truck."

Two Viking invaders are trudging up the beach in the pouring rain.

One looks skywards and says, "So this is England. What's the rest of it like?"

The other snarls, "Well, if you like the weather, you'll love the food."
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My German students are currently learning to give and receive directions for finding places. My mind, of course, seeks to find humor in most situations. Therefore, I thought of some sign pictures that I thought would go together well in one post.

These are all pictures of the humor of two streets intersecting.

I'm told that the next four intersections are in Atlanta. They apparently had a shortage of names for streets there since so many seem to be variations on a theme.

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