Saturday 29 April 2017

Star Wars jokes (part 3)

This week's blog post features secret sith, expensive light sabres and yodelling jedi masters.

Darth Vader: "Luke, I am your father."
Icelandic Luke: "Well the surname was kind of a giveaway."
That's because it's the official Star Wars Day next week (May 4th), so in honour of George Lucas the out of touch writers at Disney, here's another selection of Star Wars jokes...

1) Why is Han Solo the only one who can understand Chewbacca?
Because that's the way the wookie mumbles.


2) After the first read through of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Mark Hamill pulled JJ Abrams to one side and said, "Can I have a word?"


3) Under the Icelandic naming system, Luke Skywalker would have been called Luke Vaderson, which would have kind of spoilt the big plot twist for Icelandic viewers.

Saturday 22 April 2017

Today is Honesty Day

Caution: If you're a liar, then please don't read the following information!

"Come on in! The water's perfectly safe!"
According to a poll conducted by the London Science Museum, the most common lie told by men is...

'I didn't drink that much'

...and the most common lie told by women is...

'I'm fine. Nothing's wrong.'

Today is officially Honesty Day* so hopefully today there won't be any lies told. However, here's an account of a falsity themed incident which happened when I travelling on a tour in Africa several years ago.

* Or is it?**

** Update: Actually, it's next week.  Never trust anything you read on the internet! Apart from on the Charles Fudgemuffin blog of course, where I always own up to my bluffery.


The tour had taken us to the Ssese Islands*** in Uganda, and on one swelteringly hot day, several of us wanted to go for a swim to cool off. However, the water by the shore was filled with reeds, and the tour guide had warned us that the presence of reeds could potentially mean a possible risk of catching bilharzia.

*** That's not a spelling mistake.  That is actually how you spell it.

For anyone who isn't an expert on horrible tropical diseases, bilharzia is a chronic disease caused by parasitic worms released from infected snails. I'm no expert, but my non-expert advice would be 'try not to catch it'.

Saturday 15 April 2017

The truth is stranger than fiction

There's a famous saying, "The truth is stranger than fiction," and my own experience would agree with this. On a number of occasions I've encountered strange conversations and events in real life which would seem ridiculous if an author had included them in a fictional story.

Here are a few of those conversations and to make things a bit more challenging, I've made it into a quiz. See if you can guess what actually happened in each of the following situations...

"Please note, customers will be charged extra if we get your order wrong."

1) Curry Confusion


While on holiday one year, I went to a restaurant and ordered a chicken curry. However, unfortunately they messed my order up and mistakenly brought me a prawn curry.

Can you guess what the waitress said when I mentioned this error?

A) "I do apologise. I'll get your correct order brought out straight away."
B) "I do apologise. As a token of apology we'll knock twenty percent off the bill."
C) "Oh, well the prawn curry is more expensive, so do you mind paying a bit extra?"

Saturday 8 April 2017

April Fools' Day pranks (2017 edition)

It's that time of year where I round up a selection of some of the April Fools' Day jokes that were found on the internet to celebrate April Fool's Day last week.

1) Russian hacking services


The award for the most unexpected April Fool's Day prank had to go to the Russian Foreign Ministry who posted their apparently updated answering machine message on their facebook page. The message advises callers:

As unbelievable as it seems,
facebook deleted the link,
but you can still read the transcript.
"You have reached the Russian embassy. Your call is very important to us. To arrange a call from a Russian diplomat to your political opponents, press 1. To use the services of Russian hackers, press 2. To request election interference press 3 and wait until the next election campaign."

For legal purposes, they add:

"Please note that all calls are recorded for quality improvement and training purposes."


You can listen to the prank answering machine message below:

Update: Sadly, in an extremely uncharacteristic move ** shifty eyes**, facebook have now deleted the prank answering machine message, so unfortunately you can't listen to it anymore. I'm afraid you'll just have to take my word for it!

Saturday 1 April 2017

Silly job titles (part 3)

"Would you like me to facilitate ketchup
on your mobile sustenance?"
I've mentioned before on the Charles Fudgemuffin blog that modern society seems to have an increasing obsession for replacing straight forward traditional job titles with fancy long-winded descriptions.

I was reminded of this the other morning when I noticed a van parked outside our neighbours' house with the slogan...

'Height Safety Solutions'

Or in other words...

'Scaffolding'

On the face of it, 'height safety solutions' would seem a logical, if unnecessarily wordy, way to describe scaffolding.  However, surely the safest way to achieve height safety is to stay on the ground!

Anyway, once again it's time for another quiz based on confusing job titles, so see if you can guess what jobs the following list of jargon actually refers to. To start you off, the first job title may be familiar*...