Professional Funny Quotes

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I came from a real tough neighborhood. Once a guy pulled a knife on me. I knew he wasn't a professional, the knife had butter on it.
Rodney Dangerfield
Politics and prostitution have to be the only jobs where inexperience is considered a virtue. In what other profession would you brag about not knowing stuff? “I’m not one of those fancy Harvard heart surgeons. I’m just an unlicensed plumber with a dream and I’d like to cut your chest open.” The crowd cheers.
Tina Fey (Bossypants)
Tobin," Mom said disapprovingly. She wasn't a particularly funny person. It suited her professionally - I mean, you don't want your cancer surgeon to walk into the examination room and be like, "Guy walks into a bar. Bartender says, 'What'll ya have?' And the guy says, 'Whaddya got?' And the bartender says, 'I don't know what I got, but I know what you got: Stage IV melanoma.
John Green (Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances)
Most of the people you see going to work today are LARPing (live-action role playing) an incredibly boring RPG (role-playing game) called "professionalism" that requires them to alter their vocabulary, posture, eating habits, facial expressions--every detail all the way down to what they allow themselves to find funny.
Cory Doctorow (In Real Life)
Besides my professional goals, I have a couple of private ones, my man. One of those is to pet a kangaroo before I leave Australia. I understand there's lots of Eastern Grays around this area. What do you say? Are you in?' Bergman looked at him like he'd just made the worst financial investment of his life. 'Kangaroos are wild animals. I've heard they claw like girl fighters and kick like jackhammers. You're going to get your skull crushed.' Cole held up a finger. 'Or I'm going to pet a kangaroo. How cool would that be?
Jennifer Rardin (Bite Marks (Jaz Parks, #6))
A professional headshot in front of a bookshelf says you're an intellectual. A professional headshot peeking though a bookshelf says you're probably under a restraining order.
Ryan Lilly
And it was kind of funny to see all these professional fighters unwilling to get within a mile of the female. Then again, if you wanted to survive doing the work they did, accurate risk assessment was something you developed early -- and even Qhuinn, who was the object of the protective instinct the Chosen was rocking, wouldn't have dared touch her.
J.R. Ward (Lover at Last (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #11))
Then this," Grimm said, "is what I believe professional inquisitors refer to as a clue." "In my considered judgment as an occasional inquisitor for the Spirearch," Benedict said, "I believe you may be correct.
Jim Butcher (The Aeronaut's Windlass (The Cinder Spires, #1))
Comedy is hard work. People expect you to be funny 24/7. So if you're not constantly cracking up your friends, it can hurt you professionally. They may not read your book or come to your show. 'She's a comedian? She's not that funny!' It's unfair 'cause when cardio surgeon friends say they cut chests open and hold hearts in their hands, everyone just takes their word for it.
Judy Balan
She wasn't a particularly funny person. It suited her professionally - I mean, you don't want your cancer surgeon to walk into the examination room and be like, "Guy walks into a bar. Bartender says, 'What'll ya have?' And the guy says, 'Whaddaya got?' And the bartender says, 'I don't know what I got, but I know what you got: Stage IV melanoma.
John Green (Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances)
I came from a real tough neighborhood. Once a guy pulled a knife on me. I knew he wasn’t a professional, the knife had butter on it.” – Rodney Dangerfield
Saeed Sikiru (Funny Quotes: 560 Humorous Sayings that Will Keep You Laughing Even After Reading Them)
Good job remaining professional, Aetos.' Xaden scratches the relic on his neck I'm all but certain doesn't actually itch. 'Really shows those leadership qualities to their best advantage.' One of the riders down the table whistles. 'Do you boys just want to whip it out and measure? It would be faster.
Rebecca Yarros (Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1))
Things hit a limit, though, when I was set upon by a pickpocket in a baker's shop. I didn't notice that I was being set upon by a pickpocket, which I am glad of, because I like to work only with professionals.
Douglas Adams (Last Chance to See)
These are icebreakers. You’re not supposed to break the ice, you’re just supposed to coat your voice with as many layers of confidence as possible so that they don’t hear your voice shake when it’s your turn to speak. Idiot.
Kristian Ventura (The Goodbye Song)
It may not be as dramatic or funny to make a movie about a woman who loves both her job and her family, but that would be a better reflection of reality. We need more portrayals of women as competent professionals and happy mothers—
Sheryl Sandberg (Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead)
I wish to acquaint your face with a pointed object. Repeatedly.
Grace Gotesky (How to Professionally Deal with Assholes)
The funny part is my gut reaction is to come up with something to say next that won't make him uncomfortable. What would I do otherwise? Cause a scene? Claim harassment by a man who likely helped pay for the open bar I'm drinking at because he tapped my hip and clavicle? I hate myself a little for the passivity of it, but in professional situations like this, with my literal livelihood at stake, I revert to a sacred little girl who has internalized that under no circumstances should she ruffle affluent society's feathers.
Clare Gilmore (Love Interest)
People go funny in the head when talking about politics. The evolutionary reasons for this are so obvious as to be worth belaboring: In the ancestral environment, politics was a matter of life and death. And sex, and wealth, and allies, and reputation... When, today, you get into an argument about whether "we" ought to raise the minimum wage, you're executing adaptations for an ancestral environment where being on the wrong side of the argument could get you killed. Being on the right side of the argument could let you kill your hated rival! [...] Politics is an extension of war by other means. Arguments are soldiers. Once you know which side you're on, you must support all arguments of that side, and attack all arguments that appear to favor the enemy side; otherwise it's like stabbing your soldiers in the back—providing aid and comfort to the enemy. People who would be level-headed about evenhandedly weighing all sides of an issue in their professional life as scientists, can suddenly turn into slogan-chanting zombies when there's a Blue or Green position on an issue.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Liza considering back-peddling but thought about her empty bank account. “That’ll be fine, sir. I don’t wear skirts anyway.” He hmphed as though he suspected she might also be inclined to burn her bra on the courthouse steps and snapped, “No jeans either, this is a professional establishment.
Gwenn Wright
It’s no one’s fault really,” he continued. “A big city cannot afford to have its attention distracted from the important job of being a big city by such a tiny, unimportant item as your happiness or mine.” This came out of him easily, assuredly, and I was suddenly interested. On closer inspection there was something aesthetic and scholarly about him, something faintly professorial. He knew I was with him, listening, and his grey eyes were kind with offered friendliness. He continued: “Those tall buildings there are more than monuments to the industry, thought and effort which have made this a great city; they also occasionally serve as springboards to eternity for misfits who cannot cope with the city and their own loneliness in it.” He paused and said something about one of the ducks which was quite unintelligible to me. “A great city is a battlefield,” he continued. “You need to be a fighter to live in it, not exist, mark you, live. Anybody can exist, dragging his soul around behind him like a worn-out coat; but living is different. It can be hard, but it can also be fun; there’s so much going on all the time that’s new and exciting.” I could not, nor wished to, ignore his pleasant voice, but I was in no mood for his philosophising. “If you were a negro you’d find that even existing would provide more excitement than you’d care for.” He looked at me and suddenly laughed; a laugh abandoned and gay, a laugh rich and young and indescribably infectious. I laughed with him, although I failed to see anything funny in my remark. “I wondered how long it would be before you broke down and talked to me,” he said, when his amusement had quietened down. “Talking helps, you know; if you can talk with someone you’re not lonely any more, don’t you think?” As simple as that. Soon we were chatting away unreservedly, like old friends, and I had told him everything. “Teaching,” he said presently. “That’s the thing. Why not get a job as a teacher?” “That’s rather unlikely,” I replied. “I have had no training as a teacher.” “Oh, that’s not absolutely necessary. Your degrees would be considered in lieu of training, and I feel sure that with your experience and obvious ability you could do well.” “Look here, Sir, if these people would not let me near ordinary inanimate equipment about which I understand quite a bit, is it reasonable to expect them to entrust the education of their children to me?” “Why not? They need teachers desperately.” “It is said that they also need technicians desperately.” “Ah, but that’s different. I don’t suppose educational authorities can be bothered about the colour of people’s skins, and I do believe that in that respect the London County Council is rather outstanding. Anyway, there would be no need to mention it; let it wait until they see you at the interview.” “I’ve tried that method before. It didn’t work.” “Try it again, you’ve nothing to lose. I know for a fact that there are many vacancies for teachers in the East End of London.” “Why especially the East End of London?” “From all accounts it is rather a tough area, and most teachers prefer to seek jobs elsewhere.” “And you think it would be just right for a negro, I suppose.” The vicious bitterness was creeping back; the suspicion was not so easily forgotten. “Now, just a moment, young man.” He was wonderfully patient with me, much more so than I deserved. “Don’t ever underrate the people of the East End; from those very slums and alleyways are emerging many of the new breed of professional and scientific men and quite a few of our politicians. Be careful lest you be a worse snob than the rest of us. Was this the kind of spirit in which you sought the other jobs?
E.R. Braithwaite (To Sir, With Love)
You know, you spend your childhood watching TV, assuming that at some point in the future everything you see there will one day happen to you: that you too will win a Formula One race, hop a train, foil a group of terrorists, tell someone 'Give me the gun', etc. Then you start secondary school, and suddenly everyone's asking you about your career plans and your long-term goals, and by goals they don't mean the kind you are planning to score in the FA Cup. Gradually the awful truth dawns on you: that Santa Claus was just the tip of the iceberg — that your future will not be the rollercoaster ride you'd imagined, that the world occupied by your parents, the world of washing the dishes, going to the dentist, weekend trips to the DIY superstore to buy floor-tiles, is actually largely what people mean when they speak of 'life'. Now, with every day that passes, another door seems to close, the one marked PROFESSIONAL STUNTMAN, or FIGHT EVIL ROBOT, until as the weeks go by and the doors — GET BITTEN BY SNAKE, SAVE WORLD FROM ASTEROID, DISMANTLE BOMB WITH SECONDS TO SPARE — keep closing, you begin to hear the sound as a good thing, and start closing some yourself, even ones that didn't necessarily need to be closed.
Paul Murray (Skippy Dies)
Antidepression medication is temperamental. Somewhere around fifty-nine or sixty I noticed the drug I’d been taking seemed to have stopped working. This is not unusual. The drugs interact with your body chemistry in different ways over time and often need to be tweaked. After the death of Dr. Myers, my therapist of twenty-five years, I’d been seeing a new doctor whom I’d been having great success with. Together we decided to stop the medication I’d been on for five years and see what would happen... DEATH TO MY HOMETOWN!! I nose-dived like the diving horse at the old Atlantic City steel pier into a sloshing tub of grief and tears the likes of which I’d never experienced before. Even when this happens to me, not wanting to look too needy, I can be pretty good at hiding the severity of my feelings from most of the folks around me, even my doctor. I was succeeding well with this for a while except for one strange thing: TEARS! Buckets of ’em, oceans of ’em, cold, black tears pouring down my face like tidewater rushing over Niagara during any and all hours of the day. What was this about? It was like somebody opened the floodgates and ran off with the key. There was NO stopping it. 'Bambi' tears... 'Old Yeller' tears... 'Fried Green Tomatoes' tears... rain... tears... sun... tears... I can’t find my keys... tears. Every mundane daily event, any bump in the sentimental road, became a cause to let it all hang out. It would’ve been funny except it wasn’t. Every meaningless thing became the subject of a world-shattering existential crisis filling me with an awful profound foreboding and sadness. All was lost. All... everything... the future was grim... and the only thing that would lift the burden was one-hundred-plus on two wheels or other distressing things. I would be reckless with myself. Extreme physical exertion was the order of the day and one of the few things that helped. I hit the weights harder than ever and paddleboarded the equivalent of the Atlantic, all for a few moments of respite. I would do anything to get Churchill’s black dog’s teeth out of my ass. Through much of this I wasn’t touring. I’d taken off the last year and a half of my youngest son’s high school years to stay close to family and home. It worked and we became closer than ever. But that meant my trustiest form of self-medication, touring, was not at hand. I remember one September day paddleboarding from Sea Bright to Long Branch and back in choppy Atlantic seas. I called Jon and said, “Mr. Landau, book me anywhere, please.” I then of course broke down in tears. Whaaaaaaaaaa. I’m surprised they didn’t hear me in lower Manhattan. A kindly elderly woman walking her dog along the beach on this beautiful fall day saw my distress and came up to see if there was anything she could do. Whaaaaaaaaaa. How kind. I offered her tickets to the show. I’d seen this symptom before in my father after he had a stroke. He’d often mist up. The old man was usually as cool as Robert Mitchum his whole life, so his crying was something I loved and welcomed. He’d cry when I’d arrive. He’d cry when I left. He’d cry when I mentioned our old dog. I thought, “Now it’s me.” I told my doc I could not live like this. I earned my living doing shows, giving interviews and being closely observed. And as soon as someone said “Clarence,” it was going to be all over. So, wisely, off to the psychopharmacologist he sent me. Patti and I walked in and met a vibrant, white-haired, welcoming but professional gentleman in his sixties or so. I sat down and of course, I broke into tears. I motioned to him with my hand; this is it. This is why I’m here. I can’t stop crying! He looked at me and said, “We can fix this.” Three days and a pill later the waterworks stopped, on a dime. Unbelievable. I returned to myself. I no longer needed to paddle, pump, play or challenge fate. I didn’t need to tour. I felt normal.
Bruce Springsteen (Born to Run)
And somebody might now want to ask me, “Can’t you ever be serious?” The answer is, “No.” When I was born at Methodist Hospital on November eleventh, 1922, and this city back then was as racially segregated as professional basketball and football teams are today, the obstetrician spanked my little rear end to start my respiration. But did I cry? No. I said, “A funny thing happened on the way down the birth canal, Doc. A bum came up to me and said he hadn’t had a bite for three days. So I bit him!
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Armageddon in Retrospect)
It’s funny to me that most of the cooking in the world is done by women, and yet when you look at modern Western cuisine, it’s largely based on what a few dead Frenchmen have opined to be the correct way of doing things. It’s funny how these old European men used a label like “mother sauce” when there were no women to be found anywhere near those old professional kitchens. Cooking was something women did to nourish and nurture their families, whereas for men it was largely something they did professionally to gain money and status.
Padma Lakshmi (Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir)
Without being aware of it, Carlos was making a distinction in relationships that Aristotle had made more than two thousand years earlier in his Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle wrote that there is a kind of a friendship ladder, from lowest to highest. At the bottom—where emotional bonds are weakest and the benefits are lowest—are friendships based on utility: deal friends, to use Carlos’s coinage. You are friends in an instrumental way, one that helps each of you achieve something else you want, such as professional success. Higher up are friends based on pleasure. You are friends because of something you like and admire about the other person. They are entertaining, or funny, or beautiful, or smart, for example. In other words, you like an inherent quality, which makes it more elevated than a friendship of utility, but it is still basically instrumental. At the highest level is Aristotle’s “perfect friendship,” which is based on willing each other’s well-being and a shared love for something good and virtuous that is outside either of you. This might be a friendship forged around religious beliefs or passion for a social cause. What it isn’t is utilitarian. The other person shares in your passion, which is intrinsic, not instrumental. Of
Arthur C. Brooks (From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life)
Jase and I asked Mia what she wanted to do before her surgery. “How about a family party?” she suggested. So the invitation went out. It’s interesting when you mention to family members that they are going to be on TV--schwoom, they are there. As Willie said, “I didn’t know we had this much family.” Mia had always heard the funny stories about Jase wrestling with his brothers and cousins growing up, particularly how cousin Amy beat up Willie, so that’s what she requested for the special entertainment. As Jase said, “It’s the ultimate redneck dinner theater.” A wrestling ring was delivered, and the warmup act was the Robertson boys clowning around, performing their best wrestling moves. Willie surprised everyone with guest professional wrestlers, including Jase’s favorite, “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan. I felt kind of bad for them, wearing only their little wrestling pants, while the rest of us were bundled up in winter coats. Yes, it was January, but it was unusually cold in Louisiana--about twenty degrees. The wrestlers had to keep moving fast; otherwise, they would have frozen to death! At the end of the party, Mia took the stage between Jase and Willie, thanking everyone for coming and then sharing from her heart: “My favorite verse is Psalm 46:10: ‘Be still, and know that I am God!’ God is bigger than all of us, and He is bigger than any of your struggles, too.” I think I can say that there was hardly a dry eye in the crowd. Going into her surgery, Mia was being brave for all of us. In the end, seeing the final version of the episode, I thought the network did a great job of including enough humor to make people laugh but also providing a tender glimpse into the love our family shares with one another and the love we all have for Mia. When Duck Dynasty fans saw it on March 26, 2014, they agreed completely!
Missy Robertson (Blessed, Blessed ... Blessed: The Untold Story of Our Family's Fight to Love Hard, Stay Strong, and Keep the Faith When Life Can't Be Fixed)
Here’s another example. One of the central observations of myopia theory is that drunkenness has its greatest effect in situations of “high conflict”—where there are two sets of considerations, one near and one far, that are in opposition. So, suppose that you are a successful professional comedian. The world thinks you are very funny. You think you are very funny. If you get drunk, you don’t think of yourself as even funnier. There’s no conflict over your hilariousness that alcohol can resolve. But suppose you think you are very funny and the world generally doesn’t. In fact, whenever you try to entertain a group with a funny story, a friend pulls you aside the next morning and gently discourages you from ever doing it again. Under normal circumstances, the thought of that awkward conversation with your friend keeps you in check. But when you’re drunk? The alcohol makes the conflict go away. You no longer think about the future corrective feedback regarding your bad jokes. Now it is possible for you to believe that you are actually funny. When you are drunk, your understanding of your true self changes.
Malcolm Gladwell (Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know)
Recently, I was in New York with most of the Robertson family promoting the season-four premiere of Duck Dynasty. We were staying at the Trump International Hotel, which is a really nice place near Central Park. I was already uncomfortable being in the big city. I don’t like traffic or concrete, and there are a lot of both in New York. After we checked in, we gathered downstairs to go to a Broadway musical show. I know it might seem bizarre for me to be going to a musical, but my very attractive wife can be mightily persuasive, especially when I have nothing else to do. As we were waiting or the others in the lobby, I asked a doorman if there was a nearby bathroom. He gave me directions to the nearest restroom, which included a walk through the hotel restaurant. As I entered the restaurant, a well-dressed staffer offered his assistance. I informed him I was only going to the restroom. But he very nicely continued to offer assistance and took the role of my escort, which I thought was quite courteous and professional. At his direction, we took a quick left turn and walked out of the hotel. Befuddled, I asked him, “Where is the bathroom?” He painted down the street or maybe toward Central Park and said, “Good luck to you, sir. Have a nice day.” I circled back around to the main entrance of the hotel, where I found Missy, who had witnessed the entire episode. “I thought you had to go to the bathroom,” she said. I laughed and told her I had been escorted out of the hotel because of the way I looked. It was no big deal to us, and I laughed about the incident later that night with my family over dinner. I shared the story the next day with Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan on Live! with Kelly and Michael because I thought it was funny. Well, the story went viral and was all over the news and Internet the next few days. My phone wouldn’t stop ringing and various media outlets were trying to contact me. I’d jokingly labeled the incident “facial profiling” because in my mind that’s exactly what it was. People were surprised that it didn’t bother me, but my family and I have endured those kinds of things our entire lives. I figured the hotel employee was only trying to protect other hotel guests. The incident culminated with a call from Donald Trump’s office. They offered an apology for any inconvenience. I assured them that no apology was needed, and I asked them not to punish my courteous escort.
Jase Robertson (Good Call: Reflections on Faith, Family, and Fowl)
It’s so funny you should say this, because if you were one of my students, you’d be wearing your pain like a badge of honor. This generation doesn’t hide anything from anyone. My class talks a lot about their traumas. And how their traumas inform their games. They, honest to God, think their traumas are the most interesting thing about them. I sound like I’m making fun, and I am a little, but I don’t mean to be. They’re so different from us, really. Their standards are higher; they call bullshit on so much of the sexism and racism that I, at least, just lived with. But that’s also made them kind of, well, humorless. I hate people who talk about generational differences like it’s an actual thing, and here I am, doing it. It doesn’t make sense. How alike were you to anyone we grew up with, you know?” “If their traumas are the most interesting things about them, how do they get over any of it?” Sam asked. “I don’t think they do. Or maybe they don’t have to, I don’t know.” Sadie paused. “Since I’ve been teaching, I keep thinking about how lucky we were,” she said. “We were lucky to be born when we were.” “How so?” “Well, if we’d been born a little bit earlier, we wouldn’t have been able to make our games so easily. Access to computers would have been harder. We would have been part of the generation who was putting floppy disks in Ziploc bags and driving the games to stores. And if we’d been born a little bit later, there would have been even greater access to the internet and certain tools, but honestly, the games got so much more complicated; the industry got so professional. We couldn’t have done as much as we did on our own. We could never have made a game that we could sell to a company like Opus on the resources we had. We wouldn’t have made Ichigo Japanese, because we would have worried about the fact that we weren’t Japanese. And I think, because of the internet, we would have been overwhelmed by how many people were trying to do the exact same things we were. We had so much freedom—creatively, technically. No one was watching us, and we weren’t even watching ourselves. What we had was our impossibly high standards, and your completely theoretical conviction that we could make a great game.
Gabrielle Zevin (Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow)
I made no difficulty in communicating to him what had interested me most in this affair. It seemed as though he had a right to know: hadn’t he spent thirty hours on board the Patna — had he not taken the succession, so to speak, had he not done “his possible”? He listened to me, looking more priest-like than ever, and with what — probably on account of his downcast eyes — had the appearance of devout concentration. Once or twice he elevated his eyebrows (but without raising his eyelids), as one would say “The devil!” Once he calmly exclaimed, “Ah, bah!” under his breath, and when I had finished he pursed his lips in a deliberate way and emitted a sort of sorrowful whistle. ‘In any one else it might have been an evidence of boredom, a sign of indifference; but he, in his occult way, managed to make his immobility appear profoundly responsive, and as full of valuable thoughts as an egg is of meat. What he said at last was nothing more than a “Very interesting,” pronounced politely, and not much above a whisper. Before I got over my disappointment he added, but as if speaking to himself, “That’s it. That is it.” His chin seemed to sink lower on his breast, his body to weigh heavier on his seat. I was about to ask him what he meant, when a sort of preparatory tremor passed over his whole person, as a faint ripple may be seen upon stagnant water even before the wind is felt. “And so that poor young man ran away along with the others,” he said, with grave tranquillity. ‘I don’t know what made me smile: it is the only genuine smile of mine I can remember in connection with Jim’s affair. But somehow this simple statement of the matter sounded funny in French... “S’est enfui avec les autres,” had said the lieutenant. And suddenly I began to admire the discrimination of the man. He had made out the point at once: he did get hold of the only thing I cared about. I felt as though I were taking professional opinion on the case. His imperturbable and mature calmness was that of an expert in possession of the facts, and to whom one’s perplexities are mere child’s-play. “Ah! The young, the young,” he said indulgently. “And after all, one does not die of it.” “Die of what?” I asked swiftly. “Of being afraid.” He elucidated his meaning and sipped his drink.
Joseph Conrad (Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels)
But if the same man is in a quiet corner of a bar, drinking alone, he will get more depressed. Now there’s nothing to distract him. Drinking puts you at the mercy of your environment. It crowds out everything except the most immediate experiences.2 Here’s another example. One of the central observations of myopia theory is that drunkenness has its greatest effect in situations of “high conflict”—where there are two sets of considerations, one near and one far, that are in opposition. So, suppose that you are a successful professional comedian. The world thinks you are very funny. You think you are very funny. If you get drunk, you don’t think of yourself as even funnier. There’s no conflict over your hilariousness that alcohol can resolve. But suppose you think you are very funny and the world generally doesn’t. In fact, whenever you try to entertain a group with a funny story, a friend pulls you aside the next morning and gently discourages you from ever doing it again. Under normal circumstances, the thought of that awkward conversation with your friend keeps you in check. But when you’re drunk? The alcohol makes the conflict go away. You no longer think about the future corrective feedback regarding your bad jokes. Now it is possible for you to believe that you are actually funny. When you are drunk, your understanding of your true self changes. This is the crucial implication of drunkenness as myopia. The old disinhibition idea implied that what was revealed when someone got drunk was a kind of stripped-down, distilled version of their sober self—without any of the muddying effects of social nicety and propriety. You got the real you. As the ancient saying goes, In vino veritas: “In wine there is truth.” But that’s backward. The kinds of conflicts that normally keep our impulses in check are a crucial part of how we form our character. All of us construct our personality by managing the conflict between immediate, near considerations and more complicated, longer-term considerations. That is what it means to be ethical or productive or responsible. The good parent is someone who is willing to temper their own immediate selfish needs (to be left alone, to be allowed to sleep) with longer-term goals (to raise a good child). When alcohol peels away those longer-term constraints on our behavior, it obliterates our true self. So who were the Camba, in reality? Heath says their society was marked by a singular lack of “communal expression.” They were itinerant farmworkers. Kinship ties were weak. Their daily labor tended to be solitary, the hours long.
Malcolm Gladwell (Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know)
My brother is a professional boxer. Heavyweight? No, featherweight. He tickles his opponents to death!
Various (LOL: Funny Jokes, Comedy, Humor, One-Liners, Puns, and Witty Remarks)
I hate watching people blow all operational security, and spew their guts like a teenage burglar, drunk in a bar. We're professionals, for Christ's sake, and she's just a prole.
Bruce Sterling (Heavy Weather)
Mr. Acme comments that the new foodservice professionals in the cafeteria are two-headed carnival escapees and probably also wanted convicts. He expresses his deep conviction that the names they gave him are aliases and promises that if he finds one more cat whisker in his chicken almandine, he will hand them over to the police, whom, he is sure, will be glad to have them back.
Molly Meadows (Welcome to Acme)
I am I, I am he. We are, but I am I, first I am I, I will defend being I until I am unable to fight any longer. I am I, Atalia. Ego. Yo. A professional degree, an Argentine, a scarlet fingernail, pretty sometimes, big dark eyes, I. Atalia Donosi, I. Yo. Yo-yo, windlass and hawser. Funny.
Julio Cortázar (Hopscotch)
One of Betty’s friends turned and tossed a shot of cayenne and lemon juice in the face of a bookstore supporter, who cried, “My eyes,” and staggered backward. Another ball of ice cream arced overhead and nailed one of the cops, who didn’t take it very well. Nina turned to see who was throwing the frosty artillery just as another scoop glanced off her head and hit Betty, this time in the face. Betty stomped her foot. “I. Am. Lactose. Intolerant!” she cried. “No, you’re just completely intolerable,” replied the Reader, and pushed her. Nina reached up and felt her head, which was sticky. She heard giggling. Lydia was amused. “You’ve got a little . . . something something . . .” Lydia wiped a little drip from Nina’s forehead and tasted it. “Huh,” she said. “Mint chip. Surprising.” She opened her mouth to continue and took a gluten-free cupcake right in the cake hole, which was also surprising. She sputtered. Nina grinned. “Don’t talk with your mouth full, Lydia.” A mini cupcake—or it might have been a brownie; it was moving too fast to tell—whizzed by and knocked off the Reader’s glasses. The cops, who had been well trained (though, admittedly, not for a food fight), started pushing through the crowd, looking for the troublemakers. This made the people on the outside of the crowd, who couldn’t see very well, assume something more serious was going on. They started to run or, at least, move swiftly away. This was Larchmont, after all; no need for unseemly panic. The ice cream bandit sent a last volley over the heads of the thinning crowd, and both Nina and Lydia were in the line of fire. Professional hit, double scoop. Lydia, who had decided to see the funny side of it, clutched her arm, which was covered in sprinkles. “I’m hit,” she cried, and staggered backward. “Cold . . . so cold . . .” said Nina, channeling the heroic death of so many matinee idols. She made it to the bookstore front door and did a creditable death slide down it. Then she remembered why she was there.
Abbi Waxman (The Bookish Life of Nina Hill)
I worked in the Bush campaign, and some of us would darkly joke, “Anybody can become president when you get more votes. To lose by half a million and become president takes professionals.” It seemed funny at the time. Less so now.
Stuart Stevens (It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump)
Elizabeth Green’s New York Times article “Why Do Americans Stink at Math?” is funny and not so funny. In it, she recounts how, in the 1980s, A. Alfred Taubman, owner of the A&W chain, attempted to win over customers from McDonald’s. To lure customers from McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburger, he advertised the A&W better-tasting burger that was, in contrast to the McDonald’s Quarter Pounder, a full one-third pounder. One-third of a pound versus one-quarter of a pound and at the same price! Great idea, right? Well, not if you don’t know one-third is more than one-fourth! Taubman called in his cutting-edge marketing firm, Yankelovich, Skelly & White, to find out why the A&W campaign was failing. A study had shown that, without question, respondents preferred the taste of A&W’s burger over McDonald’s. Except for one small glitch. “Why,” respondents asked, “should we pay the same amount for a third of a pound of meat at A&W as we do for a fourth of a pound at McDonald’s?” Since three is less than four, reasoned more than half of those questioned, A&W was really ripping them off! And the problem is not confined to hamburger connoisseurs. Medical professionals, it turns out, aren’t immune to fallacious math either. Doctors and nurses have also been known to err when calculating dosages for medications. The problem is prevalent enough, in fact, to support services that help simplify math for doctors and nurses, including Broselow.com, whose tagline is “Taking the math out of medicine.
Dana Suskind (Thirty Million Words: Building a Child's Brain)
His name is Colin Boddie. And yes, I know, that’s not funny. Only it is; of course it is. He’s heard the gags so many times he’s developed his own brand of pathological humour to go with it. It can sound crass, if you don’t know him, but it’s just a form of carapace. A way to keep the horror at bay. And what they’ve got here – despite the daylight and all the busy professional apparatus – is still the stuff of nightmares.
Cara Hunter (In the Dark (DI Adam Fawley, #2))
Yo mama is so ugly… when she joined an ugly contest, they said, “Sorry, no professionals.”   Yo
Johnny B. Laughing (Yo Mama Jokes Bible: 350+ Funny & Hilarious Yo Mama Jokes)
That’s so funny. Personally, I, too, have always found my swagger coach to be more skilled at providing treatment than an accredited medical professional.” Nicole,
Jen Lancaster (Here I Go Again)
List your ten favorite comedians and humorists, and search for jokes, tweets, or quotes by each of these individuals. After you amass twenty jokes, identify the subject or target of the joke, and explain why you think the joke is funny. This exercise will help you become aware of the format of successful jokes and provide you with insight into your own comedic preferences. Collect ten to fifteen cartoons or comics. As you did with the jokes, identify the target of the humor and describe why the cartoon is funny to you. You may find it helpful to continue building a file of jokes and cartoons that appeal to you. In addition to building a joke and cartoon file, you’ll need to find new material to use as the building blocks for your humor writing. Most professional humor writers begin each day by reading a newspaper, watching news on TV, and/or surfing the Internet for incidents and situations that might provide joke material. As you read this book and complete the exercises at the end of each chapter, form a daily habit of recording odd and funny news events. Everyday life is the main source for humor, so you need to keep some type of personal humor journal. To facilitate psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud had patients complete a dream diary, and he encouraged them to associate freely during therapy. To be a successful writer and to tap into the full potential of your comic persona, you should follow an analogous approach. Record everyday events, ideas, or observations that you find funny, and do your journaling without any form of censorship. The items you list are not intended to be funny, but to serve as starting points for writing humor.
Mark Shatz (Comedy Writing Secrets: The Best-Selling Guide to Writing Funny and Getting Paid for It)
About 41 percent of mothers are primary breadwinners and earn the majority of their family’s income. Another 23 percent of mothers are co-breadwinners, contributing at least a quarter of the family’s earnings.30 The number of women supporting families on their own is increasing quickly; between 1973 and 2006, the proportion of families headed by a single mother grew from one in ten to one in five.31 These numbers are dramatically higher in Hispanic and African-American families. Twenty-seven percent of Latino children and 51 percent of African-American children are being raised by a single mother.32 Our country lags considerably behind others in efforts to help parents take care of their children and stay in the workforce. Of all the industrialized nations in the world, the United States is the only one without a paid maternity leave policy.33 As Ellen Bravo, director of the Family Values @ Work consortium, observed, most “women are not thinking about ‘having it all,’ they’re worried about losing it all—their jobs, their children’s health, their families’ financial stability—because of the regular conflicts that arise between being a good employee and a responsible parent.”34 For many men, the fundamental assumption is that they can have both a successful professional life and a fulfilling personal life. For many women, the assumption is that trying to do both is difficult at best and impossible at worst. Women are surrounded by headlines and stories warning them that they cannot be committed to both their families and careers. They are told over and over again that they have to choose, because if they try to do too much, they’ll be harried and unhappy. Framing the issue as “work-life balance”—as if the two were diametrically opposed—practically ensures work will lose out. Who would ever choose work over life? The good news is that not only can women have both families and careers, they can thrive while doing so. In 2009, Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober published Getting to 50/50, a comprehensive review of governmental, social science, and original research that led them to conclude that children, parents, and marriages can all flourish when both parents have full careers. The data plainly reveal that sharing financial and child-care responsibilities leads to less guilty moms, more involved dads, and thriving children.35 Professor Rosalind Chait Barnett of Brandeis University did a comprehensive review of studies on work-life balance and found that women who participate in multiple roles actually have lower levels of anxiety and higher levels of mental well-being.36 Employed women reap rewards including greater financial security, more stable marriages, better health, and, in general, increased life satisfaction.37 It may not be as dramatic or funny to make a movie about a woman who loves both her job and her family, but that would be a better reflection of reality. We need more portrayals of women as competent professionals and happy mothers—or even happy professionals and competent mothers. The current negative images may make us laugh, but they also make women unnecessarily fearful by presenting life’s challenges as insurmountable. Our culture remains baffled: I don’t know how she does it. Fear is at the root of so many of the barriers that women face. Fear of not being liked. Fear of making the wrong choice. Fear of drawing negative attention. Fear of overreaching. Fear of being judged. Fear of failure. And the holy trinity of fear: the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter.
Sheryl Sandberg (Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead)
As a professional speaker, my facial expressions are essential for effectively telling stories, engaging audiences, fostering involvement, and connecting on a personal level. One day I decided to get Botox in my forehead to erase a few wrinkles and signs of aging. Much to my surprise and disappointment, I could no longer raise my eyebrows. My face was stuck in a heavy-browed expression, which is the polar-opposite of my joyful spirit and enthusiastic nature. It makes a funny story, but it taught me that authenticity wins over vanity any day!
Susan C. Young (The Art of Body Language: 8 Ways to Optimize Non-Verbal Communication for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #3))
Expand Your Repertoire . . . Professional humorists and comedians, like Jeanie Robertson, maintain joke files filled with assorted topics, anecdotes, and titles. When something outrageously funny happens, she makes a note of it, puts it away, and saves it for the day she can integrate it into her hilarious presentations.
Susan C. Young (The Art of Connection: 8 Ways to Enrich Rapport & Kinship for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #6))
When I had been around Harlem long enough to show signs of permanence, inevitably I got a nickname that would identify me beyond any confusion with two other red-conked and well-known “Reds” who were around. I had met them both; in fact, later on I’d work with them both. One, “St. Louis Red,” was a professional armed robber. When I was sent to prison, he was serving time for trying to stick up a dining car steward on a train between New York and Philadelphia. He was finally freed; now, I hear, he is in prison for a New York City jewel robbery. The other was “Chicago Red.” We became good buddies in a speakeasy where later on I was a waiter; Chicago Red was the funniest dishwasher on this earth. Now he’s making his living being funny as a nationally known stage and nightclub comedian. I don’t see any reason why old Chicago Red would mind me telling that he is Redd Foxx.
Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X)
The most important mystery of ancient Egypt was presided over by a priesthood. That mystery concerned the annual inundation of the Nile flood plain. It was this flooding which made Egyptian agriculture, and therefore civilisation, possible. It was the centre of their society in both practical and ritual terms for many centuries; it made ancient Egypt the most stable society the world has ever seen. The Egyptian calendar itself was calculated with reference to the river, and was divided into three seasons, all of them linked to the Nile and the agricultural cycle it determined: Akhet, or the inundation, Peret, the growing season, and Shemu, the harvest. The size of the flood determined the size of the harvest: too little water and there would be famine; too much and there would be catastrophe; just the right amount and the whole country would bloom and prosper. Every detail of Egyptian life was linked to the flood: even the tax system was based on the level of the water, since it was that level which determined how prosperous the farmers were going to be in the subsequent season. The priests performed complicated rituals to divine the nature of that year’s flood and the resulting harvest. The religious elite had at their disposal a rich, emotionally satisfying mythological system; a subtle, complicated language of symbols that drew on that mythology; and a position of unchallenged power at the centre of their extraordinarily stable society, one which remained in an essentially static condition for thousands of years. But the priests were cheating, because they had something else too: they had a nilometer. This was a secret device made to measure and predict the level of flood water. It consisted of a large, permanent measuring station sited on the river, with lines and markers designed to predict the level of the annual flood. The calibrations used the water level to forecast levels of harvest from Hunger up through Suffering through to Happiness, Security and Abundance, to, in a year with too much water, Disaster. Nilometers were a – perhaps the – priestly secret. They were situated in temples where only priests were allowed access; Herodotus, who wrote the first outsider’s account of Egyptian life the fifth century BC, was told of their existence, but wasn’t allowed to see one. As late as 1810, thousands of years after the nilometers had entered use, foreigners were still forbidden access to them. Added to the accurate records of flood patters dating back centuries, the nilometer was an essential tool for control of Egypt. It had to be kept secret by the ruling class and institutions, because it was a central component of their authority. The world is full of priesthoods. The nilometer offers a good paradigm for many kinds of expertise, many varieties of religious and professional mystery. Many of the words for deliberately obfuscating nonsense come from priestly ritual: mumbo jumbo from the Mandinka word maamajomboo, a masked shamanic ceremonial dancer; hocus pocus from hoc est corpus meum in the Latin Mass. On the one hand, the elaborate language and ritual, designed to bamboozle and mystify and intimidate and add value; on the other the calculations that the pros make in private. Practitioners of almost every métier, from plumbers to chefs to nurses to teachers to police, have a gap between the way they talk to each other and they way they talk to their customers or audience. Grayson Perry is very funny on this phenomenon at work in the art world, as he described it in an interview with Brian Eno. ‘As for the language of the art world – “International Art English” – I think obfuscation was part of its purpose, to protect what in fact was probably a fairly simple philosophical point, to keep some sort of mystery around it. There was a fear that if it was made understandable, it wouldn’t seem important.
John Lanchester (How to Speak Money: What the Money People Say — And What It Really Means)
The Secret on How to Write Comedy In a fashionable context, comedy is a subjective element. Making humans funny is an incredibly difficult job and developing a chunk of comedy is even more difficult. If you are an aspiring comedy writer, there is loads to be found out and Filipino concert in Las Vegas( ticklemecomedy.com) in case you lack that writing skills, there's no way you may produce an excellent comedy piece. So how do you write stuff that is actually funny and will make everyone roll round in laughter? Are there definitely techniques on how to write comedy or steps with a view to decorate your comedic writing? Maybe these are the questions rambling around your thoughts now. Well, happily, there are some easy strategies on for writing humorous cloth. Tips on How to Write Comedy Like all different forms of writing, comedy writing is no one of a kind. It additionally takes exercise to get it right. Some comedic writers might also master the artwork of comedy writing with only a little exercise while a few conflict lots before getting Filipino show in Las Vegas to know it. With that being said, every person who wants to realize the secret to writing high-quality comedy need to consider some easy pointers. Whether you come to be being funny or no longer, the most essential element is which you have discovered how to excellent write comedic cloth and are capable of produce quality comedy pieces. To assist you emerge as a very good comedic writer, beneath are some guidelines. • Choose the type of comedy - One tip on how to write comedic portions is to pick out the type of humor you need to exhibit. There are various forms of comedy along with slapstick, parody, dark humor, edgy humor, own family humor, dry observational humor, and plenty of others. You simply need to select one in your comedy piece and paintings on it. Failure to consciousness on one sort of humor will end result on your audience being careworn. • Use warfare - Another golden rule is to discover the battle in anything and play on the boundaries. Professional comedic writers say that anger is frequently the middle of all comedy. But this doesn't suggest however that you need to be a raging psycho simply so one can realize the way to write comedy. This virtually approach that you got to have the ability to address a conflict in a humorous manner. • Carefully choose your words - Successful comedic playwrights realize nicely the way to maximize the comedic impact. Obviously, they are experts in finding the funniest in everything. Choose phrases that sound funny and discover ways to tweak your paintings to give you actual funny piece. • Know how and whilst to magnify - In comedy, "extra" is generally better. Think approximately conditions that might be funnier if things have been exaggerated a chunk. Something mildly humorous can quickly Las Vegas Filipino shows become hilarious with a little bit of embellishment. • Timing - In comedy, timing is the whole thing. It is a totally critical component in writing comedy. You want to inject the proper joke inside the proper location and in the right time. This is in which your punch traces ought to appear. This also manner understanding whilst to end. But take word that timing depends significantly at the sort of comedy you're pursuing. Practice makes best After being given these few hints on how to write comedy, you need to have a terrific begin composing fine, comedic work. But as the famous adage says "Practice makes best" so preserve to exercise and work at your stuff. You don't always want to be intrinsically humorous to study comedic writing but it'll help.
Saima Mir
Once the run was over, however, something funny would happen. No matter how fast or far any of us had gone, everyone was exhausted. Spent. Keeled over. That’s when the backslaps and high fives would happen. We were bonded in our fatigue, whereas a moment before we were separated by our giftings. Physically drained but emotionally fortified, we laughed and kidded around, talked about how hard it had been. The feeling was always positive. Our shared limitation brought us closer together. A theologian might say that God has given everyone different gifts and abilities, yet similar weaknesses. This is one of the great insights of the Christian faith. The world runs after success and strength and perfection and finds that the track only gets longer, the runners more spread out. The Christian considers weakness the location of grace and unity, not evidence of their absence. You might say, then, We are separated by our virtues but united in our distance from virtue. We are divided by the specifics of our political or aesthetic ideals but united in the fact that we fall short of those ideals. We are separated by how and whom we love but united by our failure to love perfectly. We are separated by the career paths we’ve taken but united by the ubiquity of regret, both professional and otherwise. We are separated by how much we’ve gained or accrued but united in the experience—somewhere along the line—of loss (and the fear of loss). We are stratified according to how we live but re-democratized by the fact of death. If you want to find common ground with someone, then don’t start with what they put on their résumé. Start with what they leave off.
David Zahl (Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others (and Yourself))
I’m sorry,” he says. For what? I think. For feeding into the intense, unrealistic fangirl fantasy that I’d built up in my head? For being too good to be true and also human and fallible, which only made it harder to dislike you? For the seemingly unending ripple effects that our interview has had on my life—both professionally and personally? For all the moments I’ve replayed in my brain hundreds of times and all the things I’m unable to forget? For all the things I don’t want to forget? For my stupid, traitorous heart that hasn’t learned a single goddamn lesson in ten goddamn years?
Elissa Sussman (Funny You Should Ask)
Become the Jedi against assholes, you shall!
Grace Gotesky (How to Professionally Deal with Assholes)
How Explainer Videos Work For Your Business If you wonder how to take your business to the next level, then explainer videos could be your answer. A short, crisp, informative piece of explainer video is the ultimate key to reach your ideal business leads. Henceforth, you need not worry about keeping your profits high. All you have to do is to invest a part of your money in getting quality, professional explainer videos to boost up your rankings on search engines. Google’s algorithm for search engine rankings includes a part that quantifies the amount of time spent by the visitors to your website. The longer time they spent, the higher will be your ranking. This is why your site needs an explainer video to keep the clock ticking for you. These videos are great ways to get the attention of your visitors; it really keeps them engaged for a long time, provided the videos are interesting. It has been found out that a human brain is more attentive to visuals rather than mere phrases. As readers spend only a few seconds to minutes on each site, quality content with a catchy title would grab their attention, but not always. On the other hand, if they confront an interesting and funny video, they will be attracted and urged to watch the content. That is why explainer videos are smart marketing tools. According to top marketing firms, websites with explainer videos rank higher than others in Google universal searches. In a business, an explainer video offers you a smart platform to reach your ideal customers and introduce your services to them with the reasons for them to choose you over your competitors. What could it be? An explainer video could be anything. You can share your identity, ideas, concepts, issues, solutions, products, services and even arguments. You can bring them all up with videos in just a few seconds. How long could it be? The shorter, the better. Videos more than a 90 seconds could be boring to your visitors. Keeping them short and engaging is the trick to make the visitors stay on your page, which in turn fetches the ranking. Here are a few reasons to justify the need for explainer videos for your business. 1. Creates a virtual connection: The most important aspect of online marketing is to showcase your personality in a smart manner. Your customer is with little or no contact with you in online business. So it is crucial to build a trustworthy bond with your customer to maintain a strong relationship. Explainer videos do this job for you; they offer you an identity that is recognized by your customers which wins their trust. 2. Gains popularity: A good and attractive explainer video is extremely contagious. It is not restricted to your website alone and can be shared with other video hosting sites like YouTube. This means your site gains popularity. People share videos on a higher scale rather than sharing web pages. Moreover, free video hosting sites like YouTube can be accessed even on a Smart phone which is an added advantage. 3. Holds all in one: Website clutter is a serious mistake that directly affects the rankings of a website. With the intention to hike rankings and boost sales, many website owners clutter their site with loads of images, colorful fonts, flash pictures and pop boxes. This could only have adverse effects on the site. It increases the load time of the website and leaves the visitors confounded that they wonder what your site conveys. On the contrary, an explainer video is can be designed to comprise all such smart aspects squeezed into a single video. 4. Resurrects your identity: PPT slides and pop up ads are obsolete and they don’t belong to this era of online business marketing. A colorful, funny and informative video with great visuals can do the magic; it grabs the attention of the audience. This is particularly suitable for multifaceted businesses with multiple products and services. You can create customized videos for each product and
mahalingam
The woman looked like she was starving, her ribs thrusting out from her sides, her legs so thin that Tally wondered how they didn’t snap under her weight. Her elbows and pelvic bones looked sharp as needles. But there she was, smiling and proudly baring her body, as if she’d just had the operation and didn’t realize they’d sucked out way too much fat. The funny thing was, her face was closer to being pretty than any of the rest. She had the big eyes, smooth skin, and small nose, but her cheekbones were too tight, the skull practically visible beneath her flesh. “What on earth is she?” “A model.” “Which is what?” “Kind of like a professional pretty. I guess when everyone else is ugly, being pretty is sort of, like, your job.
Scott Westerfeld (Uglies (Uglies, #1))
(Investigating was the professional word for snooping.)
Jane O'Connor (Nancy Clancy, Super Sleuth (Nancy Clancy Chapter Books #1))
Title: Professional Bridesmaid for Hire—w4w—26 (NYC) Post: When all of my friends started getting engaged, I decided to make new friends. So I did—but then they got engaged also, and for what felt like the hundredth time, I was asked to be a bridesmaid. This year alone, I’ve been a bridesmaid 4 times. That’s 4 different chiffon dresses, 4 different bachelorette parties filled with tequila shots and guys in thong underwear twerking way too close to my face, 4 different prewedding pep talks to the bride about how this is the happiest day of her life, and how marriage, probably, is just like riding a bike: a little shaky at first, but then she’ll get the hang of it. Right, she’ll ask as she wipes the mascara-stained tears from her perfectly airbrushed face. Right, I’ll say, though I don’t really know. I only know what I’ve seen and that’s a beautiful-looking bride walking down, down, down the aisle, one two, three, four times so far this year. So let me be there for you this time if: — You don’t have any other girlfriends except your third cousin, twice removed, who is often found sticking her tongue down an empty bottle of red wine. — Your fiancé has an extra groomsman and you’re looking to even things out so your pictures don’t look funny and there’s not one single guy walking down the aisle by himself. — You need someone to take control and make sure bridesmaid #4 buys her dress on time and doesn’t show up 3 hours late the day of the wedding or paint her nails lime green. Bridesmaid skills I’m exceptionally good at: — Holding up the 18 layers of your dress so that you can pee with ease on your wedding day. — Catching the bouquet and then following that moment up with my best Miss America–like “OMG, I can’t believe this” speech. — Doing the electric and the cha-cha slide. — Responding in a timely manner to prewedding email chains created by other bridesmaids and the maid of honor.
Jen Glantz (Always a Bridesmaid (For Hire): Stories on Growing Up, Looking for Love, and Walking Down the Aisle for Complete Strangers)
It will not work on every asshole, as every asshole is unique and capable of assholery we can only dream of.
Grace Gotesky (How to Professionally Deal with Assholes)
Yo Mama’s so ugly, when she joined an ugly contest, they said, “Sorry, no professionals.
Oliver Oliver Reed (155 World's Funniest YO MAMA Jokes (World's Funniest Jokes))
Based on the findings of a recent qualitative survey carried out in Switzerland, in fact, most of us have up to ten discreet interdependent social identities—identities, the study concludes, which are often in conflict.16 Let’s imagine a middle-aged bank teller living in Pensacola, Florida. He is a father, a son and a husband. He is a Floridian. He is a bank employee. He is also a bicyclist and a recreational runner, and at night, drinking with his friends, he is “the funny one.” He is also a vegetarian, an amateur guitarist, and on weekends he helps coach soccer at his daughter’s high school. Then there are his online identities, including his Facebook, Twitter and Instagram selves. Most surprising is that the man’s ethical mind-set, honesty, sociability and even level of social engagement changes from personality to personality. Imagine that in his professional role, for example, he may be primed to dissembling, or outright deceit, while simultaneously, as a dad, he finds dishonesty repellent.
Martin Lindstrom (Small Data: The Tiny Clues That Uncover Huge Trends)
Yo mama is so ugly… they had to feed her with a Frisbee! Yo mama is so ugly… when she watches TV the channels change themselves! Yo mama is so ugly… she looks like she has been bobbing for apples in hot grease! Yo mama is so ugly… they passed a law saying she could only do online shopping! Yo mama is so ugly… she looked in the mirror and her reflection committed suicide! Yo mama is so ugly… even homeless people won’t take her money! Yo mama is so ugly… she’s the reason blind dates were invented! Yo mama is so ugly… even a pit-bull wouldn’t bite her! Yo mama is so ugly… she scares the paint off the wall! Yo mama is so ugly… she scares roaches away! Yo mama is so ugly… she looked out the window and got arrested! Yo mama is so ugly… she had to get a prescription mirror! Yo mama is so ugly… bullets refuse to kill her! Yo mama is so ugly… for Halloween she trick-or-treats on the phone! Yo mama is so ugly… when she plays Mortal Kombat, Scorpion says, “Stay over there!” Yo mama is so ugly… I told her to take out the trash and we never saw her again! Yo mama is so ugly… even Hello Kitty said goodbye! Yo mama is so ugly… even Rice Krispies won't talk to her! Yo mama is so ugly… that your father takes her to work with him so that he doesn't have to kiss her goodbye. Yo mama is so ugly… she made the Devil go to church! Yo mama is so ugly… she made an onion cry. Yo mama is so ugly… when she walks down the street in September, people say “Wow, is it Halloween already?” Yo mama is so ugly… she is the reason that Sonic the Hedgehog runs! Yo mama is so ugly… The NHL banned her for life. Yo mama is so ugly… she scared the crap out of a toilet! Yo mama is so ugly… she turned Medusa to stone! Yo mama is so ugly… her pillow cries at night! Yo mama is so ugly… she tried to take a bath and the water jumped out! Yo mama is so ugly… she gets 364 extra days to dress up for Halloween. Yo mama is so ugly… people put pictures of her on their car to prevent theft! Yo mama is so ugly… her mother had to be drunk to breast feed her! Yo mama is so ugly… instead of putting the bungee cord around her ankle, they put it around her neck. Yo mama is so ugly… when they took her to the beautician it took 24 hours for a quote! Yo mama is so ugly… they didn't give her a costume when she tried out for Star Wars. Yo mama is so ugly… just after she was born, her mother said, “What a treasure!” And her father said, “Yes, let's go bury it!” Yo mama is so ugly… her mom had to tie a steak around her neck to get the dogs to play with her. Yo mama is so ugly… when she joined an ugly contest, they said, “Sorry, no professionals.” Yo mama is so ugly… they had to feed her with a slingshot! Yo mama is so ugly… that she scares blind people! Yo mama is so ugly… when she walks into a bank they turn off the surveillance cameras. Yo mama is so ugly… she got beat up by her imaginary friends! Yo mama is so ugly… the government moved Halloween to her birthday.
Johnny B. Laughing (Yo Mama Jokes Bible: 350+ Funny & Hilarious Yo Mama Jokes)
This is what happened when I cofounded LinkedIn. The key business model innovations for LinkedIn, including the two-way nature of the relationships and filling professionals’ need for a business-oriented online identity, didn’t just happen organically. They were the result of much thought and reflection, and I drew on the experiences I had when founding SocialNet, one of the first online social networks, nearly a decade before the creation of LinkedIn. But life isn’t always so neat. Many companies, even famous and successful ones, have to develop their business model innovation after they have already commenced operations. PayPal didn’t have a business model when it began operations (I was a key member of the PayPal executive team). We were growing exponentially, at 5 percent per day, and we were losing money on every single transaction we processed. The funny thing is that some of our critics called us insane for paying customers bonuses to refer their friends. Those referral bonuses were actually brilliant, because their cost was so much lower than the standard cost of acquiring new financial services customers via advertising. (We’ll discuss the power and importance of this kind of viral marketing later on.) The insanity, in fact, was that we were allowing our users to accept credit card payments, sticking PayPal with the cost of paying 3 percent of each transaction to the credit card processors, while charging our users nothing. I remember once telling my old college friend and PayPal cofounder/ CEO Peter Thiel, “Peter, if you and I were standing on the roof of our office and throwing stacks of hundred-dollar bills off the edge as fast as our arms could go, we still wouldn’t be losing money as quickly as we are right now.” We ended up solving the problem by charging businesses to accept payments, much as the credit card processors did, but funding those payments using automated clearinghouse (ACH) bank transactions, which cost a fraction of the charges associated with the credit card networks. But if we had waited until we had solved this problem before blitzscaling, I suspect we wouldn’t have become the market leader.
Reid Hoffman (Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies)
Jon Rubinstein: It was a beautiful service. Clearly it had been stage-managed by Steve from beyond the grave. John Markoff: Yo-Yo Ma played first and wonderfully. Andy Hertzfeld: It was really deep, just heartbreakingly beautiful, one of the most emotional pieces of music I’ve ever heard. John Markoff: Afterward he briefly introduced the event and told a short, funny story about how Steve had wanted him to play at his funeral and how he had asked Steve to speak at his. As usual, he noted, “Steve had gotten his way.” Mike Slade: So then Laurene spoke and had written this beautiful speech about Steve that was surprisingly analytical. Ron Johnson: She’s just a very professional, poised, intelligent, articulate person who had a long time to prepare for this. She had a message to convey, and she delivered it very gracefully. Mike Slade: She was like, “Look, if you guys think he was a dick, it’s because he was in pursuit of beauty, and that sort of trumped everything, and most people didn’t really get that about him.” And so almost everything that was dickish—she didn’t use those words—was because he was in pursuit of beauty. I’ve been to lots of funerals where the grieving widow was the grieving widow, and that’s not what she did. So it was wonderful—really brilliant, and I actually learned a lot from it—but it was surprising, right?
Adam Fisher (Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom))
Yo mama is so ugly… when she joined an ugly contest, they said, “Sorry, no professionals.
Johnny B. Laughing (Yo Mama Jokes Bible: 350+ Funny & Hilarious Yo Mama Jokes)
It’s all very clever, all very droll, it may even be true, it may even be deserved, but it’s still criticism. Do you think those folk down there really want to know that the Seven Servants are nothing but a pack of computer-run, money-grabbing, capitalist leftovers from an unhappier age; that the Polytheon is nothing but a jumble of corporate-personality simulation programs that got out of hand; that their beloved Elector is just a crazy athleto who got pulled out of a gym one night and stuck on the Salamander Throne; that the Ministry of Pain is run by professional incompetents who got promoted beyond their natural ability because the Compassionate Society wants everyone to do the job which makes them happiest, irrespective of whether they are any good at it? You think that would make them any happier, no matter how funny you make the faces or the walks or the words?
Ian McDonald (Out on Blue Six)