Showing posts with label Humor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Humor. Show all posts

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Quotes Lost in History

Many great men and women of our past have been immortalized as famously witty, a trend that unfortunately has only survived to mock the notoriously dense (Bushisms, mainly). However, in addition to the white and the male, history favors hyperbole; many of our quotable predecessors had their fair share of off-days, as these recently exhumed quotations suggest:


“’Jews’? I said ‘juice’. I hate juice. Fruit allergy.”

-Adolf Hitler

“By the time I had graduated from high school, I had developed four new models of loop quantum gravity, I independently rediscovered the calculus, and I translated Virgil’s The Aeneid into fourteen distinct Khoisan “click” languages. It is my own burning love of knowledge that causes me so much dismay when I read that national standardized testing scores have plummeted in nearly every school district across the country. I propose that we reevaluate our core education paradigms, and really ask ourselves, ‘Is our children learning?’ Oh, I’m sorry, did I say ‘Is’? How foolish of me. Clearly my large, powerful brain is so full of complex mathematical theorems and the like that I slipped up there for a moment. Please don’t print what I said on a billion t-shirts, that’s all I ask.”

-G. W. Bush

“Oh, hello officer. Charles Manson? Yeah, I know him. He sent me a demo tape of some of his stuff, and I really liked it. In fact, I sent him a letter saying that I had talked to a producer buddy of mine and that he wanted Charlie on the label. But I guess it got lost in the mail. Why? Is he in trouble?”

-Brian Wilson

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

The Very First Known Correspondence between Thomas Edison and inventor Nikola Tesla

RE: CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS PROPOSAL

Greetings KIND SIR,

My name is Thomas Edison, founder of EDISON MACHINE WORKS. I have recently inherited a large sum of money (US $250,000) from a Nigerian nobleman who is interested in my applications for ELECTICITY. Specifically, Prince Nakambu would like to adapt my DIRECT CURRENT system for his palace, but he is WARY of DC’s inherent faults. Presently the money is frozen in an OVER-SEAS bank account until I can improve upon the DC design and make it a viable transit for electricity OVER LONG DISTANCES.

I would like you to confirm your INTEREST in working for me IMMEDIATELY via telegraph. I have heard that you have been working on a design for a system that utilizes ALTERNATING CURRENT, and I must say that I AM IMPRESSED. I have authorized my accountant to mail you a check for (US $50,000), and in return I would like to glance over your ideas. Please send your blueprints to my secure EDISON MACHINE WORKS PO Box in SWITZERLAND and after I MARVEL IN YOUR INGENUITY I will send them right back.

I am looking forward to your reply and I want to stress my desire to PROTECT YOUR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY with a secure blanket of CONFIDENTIALITY. I would never spend the rest of my life DEFAMING you.

YOURS FAITHFULLY,
PRINCE THOMAS EDISON