ivman's blague

I love coming across a funny sign. Some of my readers do too and have passed along pictures of signs they have seen personally or found while surfing. I'll start off with a warning sign I found online:

Here are several more warning signs. This sign would have been a great addition to my post Forgive us our trespasses.

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Next week in Survey of French Lit class we will be looking at some of the writings of Descartes. His famous je pense, donc je suis (I think, therefore I am) has radically changed the way many people view life, especially the French. They tend to be very skeptical and pride themselves on their reasoning abilities. However in French, just as in English, words can have two different meanings — for instance take the phrase "I rent my garments." Similarly in French je suis can mean either "I am" or "I follow", depending on the context. Sometimes I wonder how things would be in France today if Descartes had really meant, "I think, therefore I follow."

In today's iv, if you can put aside the illogic of all these philosophers, inventors, and scientific/mathematical people being together in the same café at the same time, there are some high-class puns that will definitely add a measure of "gravitas" to ivman's blague.

The Philosophers' Café

René Descartes was sitting in a café. The café owner asked if he would like another espresso. He replied, "I think not." And he vanished!

Pierre and Marie Curie sat there beaming radiantly after Descartes vanished in a puff of smoke.

The café owner then noticed Einstein was there, and he asked him what he thought of what had happened. Einstein replied, "It's all relative."

At another table, Ivan Pavlov drooled, as if Descartes' logical disappearance rang a bell.

Sir Isaac Newton pondered the gravity of the situation.
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In July I posted pictures of some inventions that showed great creativity. Today's post is the next installment of inventions. Some of these may make you wonder why anyone would even think of making something like that, but some may find you saying, "I've gotta have one of those!"

We'll start off with something that Lego fans may find irresistible — Lego earrings.

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Confusion comes in so many different forms. Sometimes we see something that we have a hard time taking in, whether it be an optical illusion or just simply a scene or situation that is complicated or contradictory. Other times we hear something that we have a hard time assimilating. I tend to be a visual learner, and so hearing something confusing causes more problems for me than seeing something confusing. If someone spells something to me aloud, they might as well be doing so with a foreign alphabet that I don't know!

A reader sent me the following the other day from Reader's Digest. The person on the other end of the phone must have been like me....

My friend opened a ministry, using a snippet from the Bible as the name. But he soon regretted his decision to order office supplies over the phone. When his stationery arrived, it bore the letterhead "That Nun Should Perish. - Tom Harrison

I can't imagine printing up a large quantity of something like that without asking for clarification first!

Whichever kind of learner you are, you might find it helpful to read the first two pieces below aloud to get the full impact.
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This past weekend a friend posted on my Facebook wall a link to an article at the Telegraph.co.uk about a new McDonald's opening at the Louvre in Paris. I experienced mixed reactions to this announcement. As a tourist, I know how nice it is to find something familiar while traveling, but as one having relatives in France, I share their disdain of the encroachment of American pop culture in their country.

A few years back we decided to go out for dinner to one of our favorite Mexican restaurants, Corona. When we arrived we saw on the sign out front that it was "Mariachi night." When we went inside, we saw that the restaurant was all decked out for St. Patrick's Day — green balloons, streamers, etc. everywhere. As we ate our dinner, we were surprised that the special music ended up not being a Mariachi band after all. It was an Oompah band! It was just too weird, sitting there eating Mexican, surrounded by Irish decorations, and listening to German polka music played by people with Southern accents and wearing Lederhosen and Dirndels!
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