The Stuff You Always Wanted to Say Game
 

Through a series of events too long to recount here, I stumbled onto a site (http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_revenge.shtml) that tells stories about how ignorant some people are about computers. One story is the following:

Customer: "Can I ask you a really stupid question?"
Tech Support: "Yes. And history will bear me out on that."
Needless to say, that user was also a friend. I have always wanted to say this to someone, and there he was!

So, the game is, what phrases have you waited to say? Stuff you've read someplace and wanted to show off. Obscure puns you've wanted to repeat. Absolutely horrible groaners that you've wanted to inflict on an audience. We can also extend this to lines that we like to use, even though they are only amusing to ourselves.

Now I'll start of with my own examples:

I like to use the phrase "ciao for now" expressly because it is corny.

My brother once inadvertanly created one of the funniest and most horrible puns ever invented in my presence. He said that his role model was the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Get it? My sister and I still laugh over that one.

One time I actually said Shazam as an expletive, and even I immediately winced.

As for what I've always wanted to say, the answer is simple. I've been waiting for years for someone to ask what the meaning of life is, just so I can say 42. Horribly retreaded, overused, beaten to death, resurrected, then beated to death again joke, but I still love the idea of it. It cheers me up at times when little else will.

Somebody stopped me on the street in Manhattan once and asked me how to get to Chelsea Piers.

I looked him dead in the eye and said "Practice, practice, practice."


(then I gave him directions. But it was too perfect of a setup not to do it.)

That looks like the kind of unintellible joke that one would be better not to understand. Ignorance is bliss.

The word you're looking for is "unintelligible", I think, and the joke to which evay was alluding has been around just about as long as has Carnegie Hall, if not longer. If you want to pretend that it's too cryptic, well, then... that's up to you.

It's all Greek to me. You guys are my gyros. ;)

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Exactly *eyeroll* ;)

Don't worry Nate, I didn't get it either :P But then again, I live in a box.

I don't really have anything I've always wanted to say, probably because I tend to just say things as they pop into my head. Rarely an unvoiced thought.

Yes, this does get me into a whole lot of troube :P ;)

Well, Chelsea is also a (rather naff) first name, so...

@Derek: lipon? En arche en ho logos!

No clue what lipon means.

It's the opposite of lipoff.

Don't be so lipy :p

It means something like 'well' or 'so', IIRC...

I'd wonder what it's like to live in a box, but I basically do also. I mean, my room is only eight by ten, and it's bedroom, living room, den, yadda yadda.

So is no one going to lynch and/or exalt me for my gyro/hero joke?

I don't get the joke. However, I vote for lynching because it sounds like a bad one.

I don't have anything I want to say that I don't. Probably because I always say what I feel like saying no matter how bad an idea it is. Which it often is. It's a miracle no one's killed me yet.

After being told time after time that you don't say gyro like it's short for gyroscope, most people around here tend to overpronounce it, transforming into something more closely resembling "yeer-oh." This sorta, vaguely, obscurely rhymes with hero.

We were on a vaguely-Greek topic, so I decided to make an awful pun.

at work people ask all the time, "Do you work here?"

I've always wanted to say, "No i just wear the vest and straighten the shelves for the fun of it."

I feel for ya. In high school and college I tended to go around in polo shirts and khakis, just because I thought that they looked more professional without having the high cleaning bills or monkey suit factor of more formalwear. And yet people were ALWAYS asking if I worked whereever I was, no matter what the official employee shirt color was. I guess that people just have a natural predilection that tall clean-cut guys with glasses will invariably end up in retail. That's just weird.

I suppose it could be considered a compliment, but always considered it an insult to their intelligence. Genuine retail employees generally have nametags and aren't wearing sneakers. Did anyone notice this? Nope. Never.

For some bizarre reason, when I ring up people on the phone, they generally assume I'm about 95...It may not help that I usually begin with 'Oh, err, hello...'.

In bookshops, I also tend to open with 'Err, hello. I'd err, I'd like err, err, to buy a book."

I tend to get the 'you-are-a-retard' look/voice back, but it's worth it straining their patience.

Especially when it's something pseudo-obscure...

Having known my share of bipolar people, I will stay out of this one. It's a hornet's nest that I'd really not step into.

Pseudo-obscure? How does that work? Either it's obscure or it's not. Not much middle ground there. Or do you mean that it's probably obscure to the other person, but not to you?

Bipolar? Who mentioned bipolar disorders? O_o

As for pseudo-obscure- things like a direct translation of Book X of the Aeneid would count as pseudo-obscure.

I really, REALLY hate the terms "retard" and "retarded." Not for vulgarity reasons per se, more like "horribly imprecise." Some people use them as shortcuts to avoid using more accurate terms that could actually give hints as to how to interact with the sufferers. I jump to "bipolar" as the easiest catchall term that doesn't have negative connotations for me. Besides, most of the "three fries short of a Happy Meal" people I know are bipolar, so that's what I use.

And I really, really hate other terms used similarly, but let's not get into that. What and why is obvious if you know me.

Pseudo-obscure is what I use to describe things that I think are or should be obscure, then I find out they're not.

There are a lot of things that should be obscure, no question.

I work in a post office, but people are always asking 'Do you sell stamps here?' There's always the urge to respond with the long, drawn out, dripping with sarcasm 'Noooooooo'.

But they frown on that - something about customers not coming back.

Last year though, one of our 'regulars' started getting money orders for an international competition, you know the ones that say 'send us this once only payment and go into the draw for X dollars!'? For legal reasons we couldn't advise her not to, and in the end, when her nephew heard about it, I think she'd spent at least $800 on the stupid things. You have to wonder how stupid people are that they actually fall for these things though.

PLEASE PEOPLE, DO NOT SEND MONEY TO RANDOM INTERNATIONAL COMPETITIONS

Okay, first off, absolutely awesome avatar, AKA.

Oh, and I'd say, "Well, I don't, but that machine over there does. I'd be careful, though. You might get stamped out."

Update: There are many non-polite things I would like to say to people. However, they would get me fired.

I think that that's a universal. I refer you to the quote that started this whole thing off. If the other person wasn't a good friend, you'd never say, "Yes, you can ask a stupid question, and I think history will bear me out on that."

We hear so many loaded-bullet questions that good humor really is the only way to deal with it. "What's wrong with me?" comes to mind. The number of times that an honest answer is wanted must be below ten percent.

Here's a subcategory: what hand or facial gesture would you like to make if you could ever pull it off? On a show (maybe more than one) a character got rid of an annoying idiot by shaking an open fist as though there was a ball in there, then "throwing" the "ball" off into the distance so that the idiot would follow it and go away. I've long wanted to do something of that sort, but I've never met someone that dumb.

Personally, I'd just say, "No." And then turn away from them and get on with what ever it is I was doing.
If a person needs to ask if a post office sell stamps, then they proberly shouldn't be sending letters on their own.

Yeah, the whole 'losing your job for pointing out a customer's obvious stupidity' thing is annoying.



Nate: Thanks! But I can take no responsibility for it - I stole it from someone on deviant art, but i don't know who. I'd like to think if I had the least idea how to make something like this then it would be just as pretty, though!

I'm glad that the original avatar maker remembered that there are in fact nine chevrons on a Gate. Two of them are always hidden so the casual viewer might forget.

You could say, "Well, it's against the law for ME to sell stamps, but that machine over there could fence some for you."

You know I had no idea what you were talking about, but... stamps in the USA are sold by MACHINES out the front of shops? or some kinda machine anyway... we just sell them over the counter here.

Uh, yeah, we have stamp vending machines. They tend to stink, though, because of course the value of one stamp does not divide nicely into any reasonable multiple of a dollar, so either you're sticking in random amounts of change, or you get tons of leftover one cent stamps or some such.

Oh, and not the front of stores, at least in Minnesota. The front of the post office, and maybe in some of the larger public libraries and city halls.

It seems quite strange to me that you would get stamps from a library. It's like going to a liquor store and asking for milk or something.

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention. In Minnesota the larger libraries are usually part of larger government complexes. For example, my local public library is the library, some public conference rooms, the local courts, the driver's license/boating license/change of address place, and so on. More multipurpose, and as such there are (I think) four mailboxes right out front. A real hub of government activity.