Bizarro has been cracking me up.

Our paper has a darn good comic section. I read a lot of the comics on the 2-page spread, but last week Bizarro was funny.

This first one made me laugh because when I was young and Speak and Spells were popular, we had one. I was a bit hopeless at it, and had endless troubles with “Level One”

“Spell Angel.” It would say.

“A-N-G-L-E” I would type in every time.

“In-cor-rect.” If you had a Speak and Spell, you know what it sounded like. “Try a-gain.”

I would furrow my brow and type again. “A-N-G-L-E.”

The Speak and Spell never got tired of my continued misspelling of this word. It would just continue on, “In-cor-rect. The cor-rect spelling of Angel is. A-N-G-E-L.” And it would move on. After all these years, I still pause and visualize the word “angel,” or “angle” before I write them.

Note. If you clicked on that Speak and Spell link, you may have been as delighted as I was to see the box. “Makes spelling what it should be–fun!” What an hopeful slogan that was. Advertisers. So jaded on the inside and optimistic on the outside.

The humor of this comic depends on if you have a “Friendly Retired Guy” in your life:
I actually laughed out loud on the train when I read this. My father was a friendly retired guy long before he was retired. I have several memories of him going out on a walk after dinner and returning ninety minutes later to report that he’d been talking with the guy 15 minutes down the street for an hour or so. He can start a conversation with anyone, anywhere.

Robert Slack has had enough.

I found this sign on the door of an apartment building downtown. It made me laugh. I can relate to the huffy nature of this memo. Get it together, people!


It says:
Attention all residents
If you have lost your fob it is not Mary’s responsibility to let you in the building. I have told her not to let anyone in that doesn’t have a fob. You will need to contact one of your friends if you need to be let in or purchase a new fob for $10.00. Kevin will not be letting people in that doesn’t have a fob either. If you need to have your fob replaced please see me in the office and you must have the $10.00 at the time of purchase.

Isn’t that what answering machines are for?

One of the messages on the answering machine today was the following:

“Hi this is Justina, I’m sorry I didn’t find you at home. I was just calling to share a comforting thought with you from the Bible. I can try another time. Thank you.”

Um, Justina. Why not just leave the comforting thought on the machine? Then you won’t have to call back. And are you just calling random people in the phone book? And why?

I was oddly charmed and confused by this message. It’s sort of the answering machine version of those prayers to St. Jude that are sometimes in the classified ads.