Actual Signs
Yes, these are real
On a plumber's
truck: "We repair what your husband fixed."
On an electrician's van: "We'll remove your shorts!"
In a veterinarian's office: "Back in 15 minutes. Sit! Stay!"
On the door to a proctologist's office: "To expedite your visit, please back in."
At a tailor shop: We give our customers the lowest prices and workmanship
At a Pennsylvania cemetery: "Please do not hunt during daylight"
On a septic tank business: "We're #1 in the #2 business"
At a photo studio: "Have your kids shot while you wait!"
In a cafeteria: "Shoes are required to eat in the cafeteria."
On an electrician's van: "We'll remove your shorts!"
In a veterinarian's office: "Back in 15 minutes. Sit! Stay!"
On the door to a proctologist's office: "To expedite your visit, please back in."
At a tailor shop: We give our customers the lowest prices and workmanship
At a Pennsylvania cemetery: "Please do not hunt during daylight"
On a septic tank business: "We're #1 in the #2 business"
At a photo studio: "Have your kids shot while you wait!"
In a cafeteria: "Shoes are required to eat in the cafeteria."
In a clothing store: "Wonderful bargains for men with 16 and 17 necks."
At a teriyaki restaurant: "$3.99 Chicken Bowel!"
In a Vermont men's store: "25 men's wool suits, $10. They won't last an hour!"
On a shopping mall marquee: "Archery Tournament - Ears pierced"
In a Mall: "Ears pierced, while you wait"
In a New Jersey store: "Why go elsewhere and be cheated when you can come here?"
Seen on a Taco Bell sign in Coralville, Iowa: "Everyday low value"
In a Maine restaurant: "At your service: Open 7 days a week and weekends."
On a radiator repair garage: "Best place to take a leak."
In the vestry of a Westminster church: "Will the last person to leave please see that the perpetual light is extinguished."
Outside a country shop: "We buy junk and sell antiques."
In an Ohio cemetery: "Persons are prohibited from picking flowers from any but their own graves."
In Vancouver, British Columbia, on a folding sign in front of a small language school: "English Tootering"
On a roller coaster: "Watch your head."
On the grounds of a public school: "No trespassing without permission."
On a Tennessee highway: "When this sign is under water, this road is impassable."
In a New Hampshire car wash: "If you can't read this, it's time to wash your car."
On a fixit-shop: We can fix anything! (Please knock loudly, doorbell broken)
Merged Books
From the Washington Post Invitational contest
Merge-Matic Books: Combine the
works of two authors, and to provide a suitable description of the merged book.
"Machiavelli's The Little Prince" - Antoine de Saint-Exupery's classic children's tale as presented by Machiavelli. The whimsy of human nature is embodied in many delightful and intriguing characters, all of whom are executed.
"Green Eggs and Hamlet" - Would you kill him in his bed? Thrust a dagger through his head? I would not, could not, kill the King. I could not do that evil thing. I would not wed this girl, you see. Now get her to a nunnery.
"Where's Walden?" - Alas, the challenge of locating Henry David Thoreau in each richly-detailed drawing loses its appeal when it quickly becomes clear that he is always in the woods.
"Catch-22 in the Rye" - Holden learns that if you're insane, you'll probably flunk out of prep school, but if you're flunking out of prep school, you're probably not insane.
"2001: A Space Iliad" - The Hal 9000 computer wages an insane 10-year war against the Greeks after falling victim to the Y2K bug.
"Rikki-Kon-Tiki-Tavi" - Thor Heyerdahl recounts his attempt to prove Rudyard Kipling's theory that the mongoose first came to India on a raft from Polynesia.
"The Maltese Faulkner" - Is the black bird a tortured symbol of Sam's struggles with race and family? Does it signify his decay of soul along with the soul of the Old South? Is it merely a crow, mocking his attempts to understand? Or is it worth a cool mil?
"Jane Eyre Jordan" - Plucky English orphan girl survives hardships to lead the Chicago Bulls to the NBA championship.
"Looking for Mr. Godot" - A young woman waits for Mr. Right to enter her life. She has a long wait.
"The Scarlet Pimpernel Letter" - An 18th-century English nobleman leads a double life, freeing comely young adulteresses from the prisons of post-Revolution France.
"Lorna Dune" - An English farmer, Paul Atreides, falls for the daughter of a notorious rival clan, the Harkonnens, and pursues a career as a giant worm jockey in order to impress her.
"The Remains of the Day of the Jackal" - A formal English butler puts his loyalty to his employer above all else, until he is persuaded to join a plot to assassinate Charles deGaulle.
"The Invisible Man of La Mancha" - Don Quixote discovers a mysterious elixir which renders him invisible. He proceeds to go on a mad rampage of corruption and terror, attacking innocent people in the streets and all the while singing "To Fight the Invisible Man!" until he is finally stopped by a windmill.
"Of Three Blind Mice and Men" - Burgess Meredith has his limbs hacked off by a psychopathic farmer's wife. Did you ever see such a sight in your life?
"Planet of the Grapes of Wrath" - Astronaut lands on mysterious planet, only to discover that it is his very own home planet of Earth, which has been taken over by the Joads, a race of dirt-poor corn farmers who miraculously developed rudimentary technology and regained the ability to speak after exposure to nuclear radiation.
"Paradise Lost in Space" - Satan, Moloch, and Belial are sentenced to spend eternity in a flying saucer with a goofy robot, an evil scientist, and two annoying children.
"The Exorstentialist" - Camus' psychological thriller about a priest who casts out a demon by convincing it that there's really no purpose to what it's doing.
"Fahrenheit 451 of the Vanities" - An '80s yuppie is denied books. He does not object, or even notice.
"Singing in the Black Rain" - A gang of vicious Japanese druglords beat the sh*t out of Gene Kelly.
"Fiddlemarch" - Emotionally dessicated medievalist Dr. Casaubon is transformed when everyone in the town reveals that they are Jewish and start to dance and sing a lot.
"A Time To Kill A Mockingbird" - The Alabama KKK, outraged at Atticus Finch for defending a black man in an Alabama rape trial, get revenge by abducting and molesting Scout. Jake Brigance and his lovely law student assistant Ellen Roark arrive from Mississippi to take over defending the case for the distraught Finch, and later defend sharpshooter Finch for taking revenge on the KKK members.
"Nicholas and Alexandra Nickleby" - Having narrowly escaped a Bolshevik firing squad, the former czar and czarina join a troupe of actors only to find that playing the Palace isn't as grand as living in it.
"Tarzan of the Grapes" - The beleaguered Okies of the dust bowl are savedby a strong and brave savage who swings from grapevine to grapevine.
"Curious Georgefather" - The monkey finally sticks his nose where it don't belong.
"The Hunchback Also Rises" - Hideously deformed fellow is cloistered in bell tower by despicable clergymen. And that's the good news.
"The Silence of the Hams" - In this endearing update of the Seuss classic, young Sam-I-Am presses unconventional foodstuffs on his friend, Hannibal, who turns the tables.
"Portnoy's Choice" - A man is forced to choose between his right and left hand.
"Machiavelli's The Little Prince" - Antoine de Saint-Exupery's classic children's tale as presented by Machiavelli. The whimsy of human nature is embodied in many delightful and intriguing characters, all of whom are executed.
"Green Eggs and Hamlet" - Would you kill him in his bed? Thrust a dagger through his head? I would not, could not, kill the King. I could not do that evil thing. I would not wed this girl, you see. Now get her to a nunnery.
"Where's Walden?" - Alas, the challenge of locating Henry David Thoreau in each richly-detailed drawing loses its appeal when it quickly becomes clear that he is always in the woods.
"Catch-22 in the Rye" - Holden learns that if you're insane, you'll probably flunk out of prep school, but if you're flunking out of prep school, you're probably not insane.
"2001: A Space Iliad" - The Hal 9000 computer wages an insane 10-year war against the Greeks after falling victim to the Y2K bug.
"Rikki-Kon-Tiki-Tavi" - Thor Heyerdahl recounts his attempt to prove Rudyard Kipling's theory that the mongoose first came to India on a raft from Polynesia.
"The Maltese Faulkner" - Is the black bird a tortured symbol of Sam's struggles with race and family? Does it signify his decay of soul along with the soul of the Old South? Is it merely a crow, mocking his attempts to understand? Or is it worth a cool mil?
"Jane Eyre Jordan" - Plucky English orphan girl survives hardships to lead the Chicago Bulls to the NBA championship.
"Looking for Mr. Godot" - A young woman waits for Mr. Right to enter her life. She has a long wait.
"The Scarlet Pimpernel Letter" - An 18th-century English nobleman leads a double life, freeing comely young adulteresses from the prisons of post-Revolution France.
"Lorna Dune" - An English farmer, Paul Atreides, falls for the daughter of a notorious rival clan, the Harkonnens, and pursues a career as a giant worm jockey in order to impress her.
"The Remains of the Day of the Jackal" - A formal English butler puts his loyalty to his employer above all else, until he is persuaded to join a plot to assassinate Charles deGaulle.
"The Invisible Man of La Mancha" - Don Quixote discovers a mysterious elixir which renders him invisible. He proceeds to go on a mad rampage of corruption and terror, attacking innocent people in the streets and all the while singing "To Fight the Invisible Man!" until he is finally stopped by a windmill.
"Of Three Blind Mice and Men" - Burgess Meredith has his limbs hacked off by a psychopathic farmer's wife. Did you ever see such a sight in your life?
"Planet of the Grapes of Wrath" - Astronaut lands on mysterious planet, only to discover that it is his very own home planet of Earth, which has been taken over by the Joads, a race of dirt-poor corn farmers who miraculously developed rudimentary technology and regained the ability to speak after exposure to nuclear radiation.
"Paradise Lost in Space" - Satan, Moloch, and Belial are sentenced to spend eternity in a flying saucer with a goofy robot, an evil scientist, and two annoying children.
"The Exorstentialist" - Camus' psychological thriller about a priest who casts out a demon by convincing it that there's really no purpose to what it's doing.
"Fahrenheit 451 of the Vanities" - An '80s yuppie is denied books. He does not object, or even notice.
"Singing in the Black Rain" - A gang of vicious Japanese druglords beat the sh*t out of Gene Kelly.
"Fiddlemarch" - Emotionally dessicated medievalist Dr. Casaubon is transformed when everyone in the town reveals that they are Jewish and start to dance and sing a lot.
"A Time To Kill A Mockingbird" - The Alabama KKK, outraged at Atticus Finch for defending a black man in an Alabama rape trial, get revenge by abducting and molesting Scout. Jake Brigance and his lovely law student assistant Ellen Roark arrive from Mississippi to take over defending the case for the distraught Finch, and later defend sharpshooter Finch for taking revenge on the KKK members.
"Nicholas and Alexandra Nickleby" - Having narrowly escaped a Bolshevik firing squad, the former czar and czarina join a troupe of actors only to find that playing the Palace isn't as grand as living in it.
"Tarzan of the Grapes" - The beleaguered Okies of the dust bowl are savedby a strong and brave savage who swings from grapevine to grapevine.
"Curious Georgefather" - The monkey finally sticks his nose where it don't belong.
"The Hunchback Also Rises" - Hideously deformed fellow is cloistered in bell tower by despicable clergymen. And that's the good news.
"The Silence of the Hams" - In this endearing update of the Seuss classic, young Sam-I-Am presses unconventional foodstuffs on his friend, Hannibal, who turns the tables.
"Portnoy's Choice" - A man is forced to choose between his right and left hand.
True Human Body Facts
Facts - moving, incredible, intriguing
As you age, your
eye color gets lighter.
There are 206 bones in the adult human body, but 300 in children (some of the bones fuse together as a child grows).
The human eye blinks an average of 4,200,000 times a year.
The longest living cells in the body are brain cells which can live an entire lifetime.
There are more living organisms on the skin of a single human being than there are human beings on the surface of the earth.
Marilyn Monroe had six toes on one foot.
Lorne Greene had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator while he was host of "Lorne Greene's Animal Kingdom".
Life expectancy for Russian men has actually gone down over the past 40 years. A Russian male born today can expect to live an average 58 years.
In 1985, the most popular waist size for men's pants was 32. In 2003, it's 36.
Seven percent of Americans claim they never bathe at all.
In 2004, one in six girls in the United States enter puberty at age 8. A hundred years ago, only one in a hundred entered puberty that early.
Newest trend in the Netherlands: Tiny jewels implanted directly into the eye.
A British gymnast survived a fall from a fourth story window because he went into a somersault and came down on two feet.
Jeffrey and Sheryl McGowen in Houston turned to vitro fertilization. Two eggs were implanted in Sheryl's womb, and both of them split. Sheryl gave birth to two sets of identical twins at once.
In 1991, the average bra size in the United States was 34B. Today it's 36C.
The average North Korean 7-year-old is almost three inches shorter than the average South Korean 7-year-old.
Every year, 2700 surgical patients go home from the hospital with metal tools, sponges, and other objects left inside them. In 2000, 57 people died as a result of these mistakes.
We forget 80 percent of what we learn everyday.
Pain is measured in units of "dols". The instrument used to measure pain is a "dolorimeter".
The Amish a diet high in meat, dairy, refined sugars and calories. Yet obesity is virtually unknown among them. The difference is since they have no TVs, cars or powered machines, they spend their time in manual labor.
As of January 1, 2004, the population of the United States increases by one person every 12 seconds. There is a birth every eight seconds, an immigrant is added every 25 seconds, but a death every 13 seconds.
Astronauts cannot burp in space. There is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in their stomachs.
The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as a substitute for blood plasma.
Fidgeting can burn about 350 calories a day.
Wearing headphones for an hour increases the bacteria in your ear 700 times.
It takes approximately 12 hours for food to entirely digest.
A baby is born without kneecaps. They appear between age 2 and 6.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
In a recent survey, Americans revealed that banana was their favorite smell.
The arteries and veins surrounding the brain stem called the "circle of Willis" looks like a stick person with a large head.
Brushing your teeth regularly has been shown to preventheart disease.
Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear better.
Your nose and ears never stop growing.
Men get hiccups more often than women.
Human teeth are almost as hard as rocks.
Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
The average person has over 1,460 dreams a year.
Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.
Your ribs move about 5 million times a year, every time you breathe.
One quarter of the bones in your body are in your feet.
Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.
Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails.
Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day.
There are 206 bones in the adult human body, but 300 in children (some of the bones fuse together as a child grows).
The human eye blinks an average of 4,200,000 times a year.
The longest living cells in the body are brain cells which can live an entire lifetime.
There are more living organisms on the skin of a single human being than there are human beings on the surface of the earth.
Marilyn Monroe had six toes on one foot.
Lorne Greene had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator while he was host of "Lorne Greene's Animal Kingdom".
Life expectancy for Russian men has actually gone down over the past 40 years. A Russian male born today can expect to live an average 58 years.
In 1985, the most popular waist size for men's pants was 32. In 2003, it's 36.
Seven percent of Americans claim they never bathe at all.
In 2004, one in six girls in the United States enter puberty at age 8. A hundred years ago, only one in a hundred entered puberty that early.
Newest trend in the Netherlands: Tiny jewels implanted directly into the eye.
A British gymnast survived a fall from a fourth story window because he went into a somersault and came down on two feet.
Jeffrey and Sheryl McGowen in Houston turned to vitro fertilization. Two eggs were implanted in Sheryl's womb, and both of them split. Sheryl gave birth to two sets of identical twins at once.
In 1991, the average bra size in the United States was 34B. Today it's 36C.
The average North Korean 7-year-old is almost three inches shorter than the average South Korean 7-year-old.
Every year, 2700 surgical patients go home from the hospital with metal tools, sponges, and other objects left inside them. In 2000, 57 people died as a result of these mistakes.
We forget 80 percent of what we learn everyday.
Pain is measured in units of "dols". The instrument used to measure pain is a "dolorimeter".
The Amish a diet high in meat, dairy, refined sugars and calories. Yet obesity is virtually unknown among them. The difference is since they have no TVs, cars or powered machines, they spend their time in manual labor.
As of January 1, 2004, the population of the United States increases by one person every 12 seconds. There is a birth every eight seconds, an immigrant is added every 25 seconds, but a death every 13 seconds.
Astronauts cannot burp in space. There is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in their stomachs.
The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as a substitute for blood plasma.
Fidgeting can burn about 350 calories a day.
Wearing headphones for an hour increases the bacteria in your ear 700 times.
It takes approximately 12 hours for food to entirely digest.
A baby is born without kneecaps. They appear between age 2 and 6.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
In a recent survey, Americans revealed that banana was their favorite smell.
The arteries and veins surrounding the brain stem called the "circle of Willis" looks like a stick person with a large head.
Brushing your teeth regularly has been shown to preventheart disease.
Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear better.
Your nose and ears never stop growing.
Men get hiccups more often than women.
Human teeth are almost as hard as rocks.
Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
The average person has over 1,460 dreams a year.
Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.
Your ribs move about 5 million times a year, every time you breathe.
One quarter of the bones in your body are in your feet.
Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.
Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails.
Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day.
