• About Me
  • Writer’s Corner

Elizabeth Fais

~ Where awesome begins…

Elizabeth Fais

Category Archives: Humor

Weird things I wonder about: WHY butt pockets?!!

13 Saturday Apr 2019

Posted by Elizabeth Fais in Fun Facts, History, Humor

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

blue jeans, California, denim, Elizabeth Fais, Elvis Presley, Film, Gold Rush, Happy Days, Henry Winkler, History, Jacob Davis, James Dean, jeans, Levi Strauss, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Nonfiction, Rebel Without a Cause, Television, The Fonz, The Misfits

Wonder is the seed of knowledge.
—Francis Bacon

Well…if this is true…I’m in trouble, because I wonder about some pretty weird stuff sometimes.

Like WHY are butt pockets standard issue on jeans? Seriously, WHY??! You’re just going to sit on whatever is in those pockets…eventually. Nowdays that’s likely to be your smart phone! It makes no sense.

I must admit that wondering about the absurdity of this design decision is what prompted my research into the history and origin of blue jean pockets. So, maybe the knowledge-thing applies here after all. Francis Bacon didn’t say how valuable the knowledge had to be.

The Method Behind Butt Pocket Madness

To understand the reasoning behind (no pun intended) the nonsensical placement of jean pockets, we have to go back to when blue jeans—as we know them today—were first created.

Levi Strauss followed the Gold Rush to California in 1853, where he established a dry goods store. One of the items he carried was blue industrial strength cloth known as denim. A Nevada tailor, by the name of Jacob Davis, bought some of Strauss’s denim and put rivets at pocket corners and other stress points to make them stronger. Davis couldn’t afford to patent the idea on his own, and contacted Strauss with a business plan. The patent was granted to Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss & Company on May 20, 1873, and blue jeans were born.

Prior to Levi Strauss’s blue jeans, people wore overalls for messy jobs and manual labor, such as construction, farm work, and painting. These jobs were generally performed while standing, so pocket placement was intended to make it easy to carry and retrieve tools. Blue jeans were originally intended to be worn for the same type of work, and initially were called waist overalls.

Form follows function. No sitting on jobs, where you carry tools in your pockets. Blue jeans were solely used for doing tough jobs for 80 years, until the mid 1950s.

From Work-Horse Wardrobe to Fashion Forward Fame

What happened to change the fate of the work-horse blue jeans?

James Dean happened.

The blue jeans fashion craze caught fire with James Dean’s signature t-shirt, leather jacket, and blue jeans look in the movie Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Young men across the country copied it immediately.

How did the blue jean fad catch on with young women in a time of poodle skirts and pearls?

Marilyn Monroe started the feminine blue jeans trend when she wore them in the movie The Misfits. Her character joined up with a group of cowboys, and she sported the quintessential female version of James Dean’s Rebel Without a Cause outfit.

In the following decades, Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando, and Henry Winkler (as The Fonz in Happy Days) fanned the flame of the blue jeans fashion frenzy. A trend that’s still burning bright.

THAT my friends is WHY we wear jeans with pockets on our backside.

I wonder what Levi Strauss would think of us carrying a computer—with more power than the one that put the first man in space (and took up an entire floor of a building)—in one of his back jean pockets? I think he’d probably design a more functional garment for that purpose. But that’s just me.


How to outsmart the traps of ‘Writer’s Time’

29 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by Elizabeth Fais in Humor, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Albert Einstein, Elizabeth Fais, Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo, horrifically hard scenes, juggle, Kermit the Frog, Louis L'Amour, mire of the middle, Muppets, Ray Bradbury, Theory of Relativity, writer's life, writer's time, writing humor

Some days I wonder if Einstein set out to prove his theory of relativity after experiencing the phenomena of writer’s time:

  1. Suspension in the blissful bubble of the sparkly new idea.
  2. Trudging through horrifically hard scenes or the mire of the middle.
  3. The End…that keeps slipping away.
  4. The Wait after submission, when time freezes.

It took a couple of projects before I recognized the phenomena of writer’s time, and a few more before I learned how to sidestep the traps. The secret to managing writer’s time instead of being controlled by it is to juggle. Yes juggle.

Juggling hands

 

1. Blissful Sparkly Idea Bubble

You’ve got a sparkly new idea and you’re glowing with inspiration and so caught up in the creative process you’re not aware of time passing. You dance through the prose, and the story all but writes itself. This phase must be what Ray Bradbury was referring to when he said, “You must stay drunk on writing…” because it feels GREAT. The trap is believing that writing will always be this way. If you do, when the euphoria fades and the real work begins, you’ll quit. The secret is to enjoy the blissful bubble while lasts and accomplish as much as possible. This will help you through the other phases of writer’s time.

Creative inspiration

 

2. Horrifically Hard Scenes and the Mire of the Middle

The blissful bubble popped and you’re face with writing horrifically hard scenes or the slogging through the mire of the middle, and time crawls at a painfully slow pace. Don’t dismay. Every project this phase, to one degree or another. Trust in the process and keep writing. If the muck starts to feel like quick sand, juggle. Pick up another project for a while and rekindle the spark of inspiration. Always remember the quote by Louis L’Amour: “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”

crawling through the hard scenes

3. THE END is in Sight and Out of Reach

Time fliesTHE END is near, but as you type faster, time speeds up, flying by at a gale force velocity. It’s like being on a treadmill, running in place. Invigorating and infuriating.

You know exactly what needs to happen in your story and what to do to get there. You can taste victory, especially when chocolate is at the end of the deadline, but it’s perpetually out of reach. The secret to remember here is that time is an illusion, and in the end (pun intended) the writer always wins! Keep typing.

4. The Wait

You made your deadline with style and grace, but the excitement of sending off your ‘baby’ soon fades. You put your heart and soul into a story and now it’s gone. The Wait to hear back begins. The trap here is allowing yourself to indulge in feeling lost, or succumbing to insecurity and doubt. Don’t do it!

Instead, juggle. Start a new project, or pick up an old one you put on the shelf. Try a new genre. Write something totally different. Write anything. Keep the creativity flowing. If you don’t, you might find yourself in the same predicament as Han Solo, at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. Frozen. Insecurity, doubt, and fear are insidious. Don’t give them a chance to seep in. Keep writing. The secret to getting published (again and again) is to not give up!

Han Solo


 

NASA cats are a thing!

03 Saturday Feb 2018

Posted by Elizabeth Fais in Animals, Cats, Humor

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Ames Cat Network, California, cats, Cloud-Aerosol Transport System, Dewey, Elizabeth Fais, Feral Cats, Hemingway cats, Max the library cat, Moffett field, Mountain View, NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, outer space, Palo Alto Humane Society, polydactyl, space, space program, TNR

Cats have sailed the seven seas (like Hemingway’s polydactyl cats), managed libraries (Dewey and Max the library cat), and supervised the United States Postal System (USPS). So why not NASA? There are theories that cats came from outer space. Which seems highly unlikely, if only for lack of kitty treats. But with cats, nothing is ever what’s likely.

NASA cats logo

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research.

And…they have cats!  Why am I surprised?

The CATS space program

NASA created a Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS) that launched in 2014. CATS is a remote sensing instrument to provide range-resolved profile measurements of atmospheric aerosols and clouds from the International Space Station (ISS). In simple English, it’s technology that interprets (and helps us predict) the weather.

Does anyone else smell something fishy about all this? The CATS program could quite possibly be the brain child of ingenious interstellar felines. After all, cats are extremely finicky about exposure to rain, sleet, and snow!

cat-in-rain

Here’s the official NASA CATS brochure. Though, it might have been humanized, so we won’t realize just how in control felines are of NASA…and the world.

The REAL NASA cats & the Ames Cat Network

There are plenty of real cats roaming the grounds of NASA, at Moffett Field in Mountain View, California. Sadly, many were abandoned without even being fixed. Left to reproduce uncontrolled, the cat population boomed.

The kind folks at NASA partnered with the Palo Alto Humane Society to trap, spay and neuter, and find homes for these cats in need. The Ames Cat Network was created, and each cat is tested, altered, and inoculated before being offered for adoption.

If you or someone you know in the San Francisco area is interested in fostering or adopting a NASA cat, please contact the Palo Alto Humane Society at 650.424.1901.

Other organizations in the San Francisco Bay area that help homeless animals, and have many wonderful pets available for adoption:

  • Humane Society of Silicon Valley: 408.262.2133
  • Peninsula Humane Society: 650.340.7022
  • San Francisco SPCA: 415.554.3000

LED Sheep ~ Ewe light up my life!

08 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by Elizabeth Fais in Animals, Humor, Inspiration

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Elizabeth Fais, Fun, high-tech, LED, Philip K. Dick, sheep, sheep herding, Welsh

High-tech sheep herding

Maybe it’s the proliferation of world-wide disasters of late, both natural and man-made, but I’ve been thinking of the Welsh sheep herders and their LED sheep … a lot. Rather timely (but a total coincidence!), with the Blade Runner sequel hitting the theaters this week. The original Blade Runner was based on the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

LED sheep herding

What I love about this project is its joyful innocence and whimsy.

A lot of time and effort went into creating an image of the Mona Lisa (credited to Leonardo Baa Vinci!) with sheep wearing LED vests. For the sheer joy of it! If you haven’t seen the video (created in 2009), do it now! If you’ve seen it but need a little light in your life, watch it again. Pronto.

This video makes me wonder: What can we do today to bring a little joy and whimsy into the world around us? (LED sheep are not required, but always welcome). Pay-it-forward, except with fun.

Instigate fun today. It’s contagious!

 

Joyful whimsy and LED sheep herding


Hilarious history ~ Told by the funniest writer in fiction!

24 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by Elizabeth Fais in History, Humor, Nonfiction

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Calaveras County, Charlie Chaplin, Elizabeth Fais, Hilarious HIstory, Jumping Frog, Little Tramp, Mark Twain, Nevada, Nonfiction, SCBWI, Sid Fleischman, Sid Fleischman Humor Award, Sir Charlie, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Stephen Mooser, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Trouble Begins at 8, Virginia City

Sid Fleischman was (and arguably still is) the funniest fiction writer…ever. I’m not alone in this opinion. The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) created a Humor Sid Fleischman Humor AwardAward in his honor, and made him the first recipient. The Sid Fleischman Humor Award is an award for authors whose work exemplifies the excellence of writing in the genre of humor. 

As SCBWI President Stephen Mooser said, “Sid the Magician may not be as famous as Sid the Writer. It’s one thing to make someone laugh. But his ability to do that in so many stories with such poignancy is nothing short of magic.“ 

So it’s no surprise that the funniest writer in fiction worked his magic with hilarious history too.

The Trouble Begins at 8 ~
A Life of Mark Twain in the Wild, Wild West

Who better to tell the rambunctious tale of a young river boat pilot who gallops off to take on the wild, wild West than Sid Fleischman? The tale is all true, and told with a wit as sharp as Mark Twain himself.

The title itself signals the fun that’s to come…taken from the poster Mark Twain used to advertise his public talks: The doors open at seven, The Trouble to begin at 8 o’clock.

Fleischman takes the reins from there with hopping hilarity: “Mark Twain was born fully grown, with a cheap cigar clamped between his teeth.”

You might think (as I did) that Mark Twain began writing as a young man, while piloting river boats on the Mississippi river. Afterall, that was the stage on which his two most famous novels were set: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. But no. Those books wouldn’t come until much later. Twain’s writing career began with his adventures in the wild, wild west. Virginia City, Nevada to be exact, writing for a newspaper in a place where tumbleweeds were the biggest thing to blow through town.

The First in Fake News

It’s true. Mark Twain made his name writing Fake News. When there was no news, “Sam gave his bubbling imagination a stir and ladled out a wondrous hoax. He reported the discovery of a petrified man.”

Mark Twain at the helm of a river boatTwain created the tale to stir up trouble with the competing newspaper in town, and tickle the funny bones of the readers. In a time before television and social media this was great entertainment, and an instant success! So much so, the hoax was picked up by newspapers across the country.

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County was the tall tale that brought Twain national acclaim. The short story awarded him notoriety as a writer, but travel and lecture series would consume his time for years. It wasn’t until Twain married and settled in Connecticut that he’d write two of the most celebrated novels in fiction.

Sir Charlie ~
Chaplin, the Funniest Man in the World

Charlie Chaplin embraced the pain of his youth, played with it, then used it to become famous for being funny. He instinctively knew that what makes you laugh the most, also makes you cry the most. Sid Fleischman tells the Little Tramp’s poignant tale, matching Chaplin’s humor with heartwarming empathy.

See him? That little tramp twitching a postage stamp of a mustache, politely lifting his bowler hat, and leaning on a bamboo cane with the confidence of a gentleman? A slapstick comedian, he blazed forth as the brightest movie star in the Hollywood heavens.

Everyone knew Charlie—Charlie Chaplin.

When he was five years old he was pulled onstage for the first time, and he didn’t step off again for almost three-quarters of a century. Escaping the London slums of his tragic childhood, he took Hollywood like a conquistador with a Cockney accent. With his gift for pantomime in films that had not yet acquired vocal cords, he was soon rubbing elbows with royalty and dining on gold plates in his own Beverly Hills mansion. He was the most famous man on earth—and he was regarded as the funniest.

Still is. . . . He comes to life in these pages. It’s an astonishing rags-to-riches saga of an irrepressible kid whose childhood was dealt from the bottom of the deck. [Synopsis]

In case you’ve never seen Charlie Chaplin in action…the following is a clip from his silent movie, A Dog’s Life.


 

Mary Poppins gets a spoonful of Google Translate!

22 Saturday Jul 2017

Posted by Elizabeth Fais in Humor, Movies, Music

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

A Spoonful of Sugar, Brian Hull, Chim Chim Cheree, Elizabeth Fais, Feed the Birds, Google Translate, Humor, Jolly Holiday, Malinda Kathleen Reese, Mary Poppins, Musicals, Step in Time, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, Walt Disney, Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Studios

The Walt Disney classic film, Mary Poppins, has been translated into 20 languages. Now Google Translate makes for 21. Don’t get me wrong. Google Translate is an amazing tool! But the translation algorithms have somehow managed to develop a language all their own, that no one else quite understands.

Most everyone can recognize at least one of the Mary Poppins songs in the following medley. Many know the words by heart. But even if you’re not an MP aficionado, you’ll pick up on the oh-so unique (!) Google Translate interpretation of the lyrics.

Mary Poppins and Bert in Jolly Holiday

Compare the original lyrics to the songs (in the banner above the window) with the Google Translate version (in subtitles below), and have a jolly good time watching the brilliant video clip. In the words of Google Translate, “Oh, good night is blowing up!”

Sing it again Google Translate … or maybe not


Humor ~ the secret ingredient that keeps kids reading

16 Sunday Jul 2017

Posted by Elizabeth Fais in Humor, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Comedy, Ghost Buddy, Hank Zipzer, Henry Winkler, Humor, Lin Oliver, Marvin Terban, SCBWI, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Writing

Kids laughing and readingIf something is fun, we want to repeat the experience as much as possible. Reading is no different. It’s no surprise that for young readers, the key to keeping them reading is humor.

Marvin Terban, master of children’s wordplay and author of over 35 humorous books for young readers, explained the science of reading fun to a packed house at the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) Summer Conference in Los Angeles earlier this month.

Terban was a school teacher for decades, learning first-hand how to capture children’s interest 3 Latino children readingand keep them engaged. He was adamant:

“It’s no laughing matter if there’s no laughing matter.”

When children were asked what books they liked to read, this is what they said:

  • My favorite books are the ones I pick myself.
  • I like books make me laugh.

Recipes for laughter

“That’s great,” you say, “but what’s the secret to making children laugh?” You’re in luck! Terban shared a few of the ingredients from his recipe for humor:

  1. Use funny names, like Ralph Puken or Bob Booggensnot.
  2. Use funny words. Apparently the funniest words for young readers are: fart, poop, and underpants. In that order.
  3. Kids (and adults) laugh the hardest at the unexpected.
  4. The funniest scenes contain an element of sorrow.

Lin Oliver and Henry Winkler are also masters of writing comedy for young readers. Kids of all ages love their Hank Zipzer: World’s Greatest Underachiever series and Ghost Buddy series. At a past SCBWI conference, this awesome writing team shared a few of their secrets for writing comedy:

  1. Write what makes you laugh. If you think something is funny, someone else will think so too. Young readers know when humor is not authentic.
  2. Write from your own “most embarrassing” moments.
  3. You have to love the character you’re putting in comedic jeopardy, or else it comes off as being mean. You want your audience to laugh with the character, not at him.
  4. Specific details are almost always funnier than generalizations. For example: Principal Zumba has a mole. Or… Principal Zumba has a mole shaped like the statue of liberty that looks like it’s doing the hula whenever he talks.

Hank Zipzer and Ghost Buddy covers


WORD CRIMES: RU Guilty 2?

18 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by Elizabeth Fais in Funny Videos, Humor, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

grammar, Weird Al Yankovic, Word Crimes, Writing

Taking Down Word Crimes ! @ ; # } ?

There are no words … only snorts … for Weird Al’s war on Word Crimes.  The funniest thing I’ve seen in a long, long time.

And yes, I snorted. More than once :-O

It’s quite apparent,
your grammar’s errant.
You’re incoherant…

Sing it sister…dance it mister…

Word Crimes

It’s time to take down Word Crimes!



Geek Speak Decoded ~ Software Secrets Exposed At Last!

01 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by Elizabeth Fais in Humor, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

computer, Elizabeth Fais, engineering, geek speak, high-tech, software, technical writer

I’ve been a technical writer in the computer software industry longer than I care to admit. As in any industry, there are closely guarded secrets no one wants the unsuspecting public to know. /dev/null tells no tales, but I sure can! It’s time you learned what you never wanted to know about software, because you were afraid to ask.

CAUTION: Disturbing subject matter, could result in gut-wrenching laughter.

cat and computer

What they really mean when they say…

  • NEW — Different colors from the previous version.
  • ALL NEW — Software is not compatible with the previous version.
  • EXCLUSIVE — We’re the only one who has documentation.
  • UNMATCHED — Almost as good as the competition.
  • DESIGN SIMPLICITY — Developed on a shoe-string budget.
  • FOOLPROOF OPERATION — All parameters are hard-coded.
  • ADVANCED DESIGN — Upper management doesn’t understand it.
  • IT’S HERE AT LAST — Released a 26 week project in 48 weeks.
  • FIELD TESTED — Manufacturing doesn’t have a test system.
  • HIGH ACCURACY — It hasn’t crashed…yet.
  • YEARS OF DEVELOPMENT — Finally got one to work.
  • UNPRECEDENTED PERFORMANCE — Nothing ever ran this slow before.
  • REVOLUTIONARY — Disk drives go round and round.
  • BREAKTHROUGH — It finally booted on the first try.
  • FUTURISTIC — It only runs on the next generation supercomputer.
  • NO MAINTENANCE — Impossible to fix.
  • PERFORMANCE PROVEN — Worked through Beta test.
  • MEETS QUALITY STANDARDS — It compiles without errors.
  • SATISFACTION GUARANTEED — We’ll send you another pack if it fails.
  • STOCK ITEM — We shipped it once and we can do it again.

DISCLAIMER: I cannot take credit for this enlightening expose. This top-secret information was clandestinely distributed in the 1990s. Now that the statute of imitation has expired, the gritty truth can finally be told.


Write Word, Wrong Place ~ The Struggle is Reel!

29 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by Elizabeth Fais in English, Humor, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

A Farewell to Arms, Elizabeth Fais, English, Ernest Hemingway, Humor, language, Science

three laughing childrenLet’s take a break, for a moment, from the writer’s obsession with finding just the right words to convey voice, tone, emotion, character, pacing and the like.

Yes, we writers obsess over our words. It’s part of the job description. Ernest Hemingway admitted to rewriting the ending of a A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times! When asked what the problem was, he replied, “Getting the words right.”

But let’s ditch the obsessing—for a little while—and go back to the time when we were still trying to wrap our heads around the complexities of language, and indulge in some innocent language levity. [PC: morguefile]

Language Levity

I don’t know about you, but when I was in grade school I’d use a word because it sounded right. Back then, there were only paper dictionaries (yes, paper!), and if a dictionary wasn’t handy I’d go with what sounded right.

My “sounds right” guessing was probably as hilarious as some of the following excerpts taken from actual student science exams in the 1990s:

  • The dodo is a bird that is almost decent by now.
  • The Earth makes one resolution every 24 hours.
  • To collect fumes of sulfur, hold a deacon over a flame in a test tube.
  • The process of turning steam back into water again is called conversation.
  • The three kinds of blood vessels are arteries, vanes, and caterpillars.
  • English sparrows and starlings eat the farmers grain and soil his corpse.
  • Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the organ of the species.
  • A magnet is something you find crawling over a dead cat.
  • A triangle which has an angle of 135 degrees is called an obscene angle.
  • For head colds, use an agonizer to spray the nose.
  • For snakebites, bleek the wound and rap the victim in a blanket for shock.
  • To prevent conception, the male wears a condominium.
  • Use a turnpike on an arm or leg if there’s a bad cut to stop the bleeding.
  • Living Death is an oximormon that’s like being dead when you’re really alive.

← Older posts

Calendar

July 2022
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
« Jul    

Enter your email address to have new posts sent directly to your inbox.

Join 235 other followers

It's really me!

  • Elizabeth Fais

Life is Tweet

Follow @elizabethfais

Recent Posts

  • Wisdom of Richard Peck ~ Writing for young readers
  • The Writer and Rabbit Who Saved the Countryside
  • 3 TREE-rific Informational Picture Books
  • Musings from the Writing Cave
  • MG Review ~ HOW I BECAME A SPY
  • The “Creative High” is real!
  • MG Review: Louisiana’s Way Home by Kate DiCamillo

Past Posts

Officially SCBWI


Member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators

Reading Fun

Advice for Writers

I Write for Apples

Author Photos


Categories

Adventure Amazing but true! Animals Animation Blake Snyder Book Reviews Books Cats Character Dancing Disneyland Elizabeth Fais Fiction Fun Facts Funny Videos Giveaway Giving Back Holiday Humor Inspiration Middle Grade Movies Music Mystery Nonfiction Paranormal Reading Romance SCBWI Shakespeare Story Supernatural Thriller Winner! Writing YA YAppiest Young Adult Zombies

Keeping It Real

wordpress analytics

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Elizabeth Fais
    • Join 235 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Elizabeth Fais
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...