The PublicLens Proverbs #1

So I've got this follower on Twitter, and I know she's an Internet Marketing Guru Genius®. How do I know this? Because I've read a good deal of the stuff they sell to each other ("Make $3500 a day just tweeting the Gettysburg Address!!").

One of the "Hot Exclusive Tips!!!" these marketers pay each other buttloads of money for is that you have to appear "real" on Twitter. Emphasis on the appear part. You don't have to be real (i.e., actually interact with people). You just need to appear that you are.

A consistently recommended method for appearing "real" without the effort it takes if you actually are real is to mine online listings of famous quotations and cutesy aphorisms and tweet them in between your "U WON'T BELIEVE HOW EZ IT IS TO GAIN 30000 FOLLOWERS IN JUST 2 WEEKS!!!" tweets.

So that's how I know this follower of mine is one of "them." She has a consistent dance step on Twitter: three folksy aphorisms and then a "U WON'T BELIEVE...." tweet.

That and the fact that I've been making fun of her all day and she's never responded or unfollowed. That's because she never reads anything responding to her.

So what kind of fun have I been having? I've been retweeting most of her little sayings, adding on a little commentary of my own. I enjoy "riffing" off of others material, and here was a perfect opporunity to hone my craft. In the list below, her tweets (with her username blocked out) are first, followed by my added comments in bold yellow. Enjoy!

RT @*****: Opportunity dances w/ those ready on the dance floor. // For me Opportunity sprained its ankle & went home early

RT @*****: Nothing focuses the mind better than the sight of a competitor who wants 2 wipe U off the map.// Umm, a charging rhino?

RT @*****: A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds. // I would worry about the effects of opportunity inflation.

RT @*****: Entrepreneurs are the forgotten heroes of America. // This may be because no one can spell entrepreneurs

RT @*****: He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how. // It's the who, what, & where that might kill you.

RT @*****: Debt is a willing servant but a cruel master. // Debt needs counseling. It sounds schizo.

RT @*****: Knowledge is an antidote to fear. // Unless its knowledge of....ZOMBIES!!

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FUN INTERACTIVE ACTIVITIES to REINFORCE this LESSON!!!

1. Click Share This button below and send this post to your friends!
2. Go to the Fan Box in the sidebar and follow PublicLens on Facebook, Twitter, or Friendfeed
3. Right below the Fan Box, subscribe to PublicLens in your favorite Feed Reader.
4. Leave a comment with a better caption than ours. Then go get your own humor blog and never come here again.
4. Foolproof investment scheme: Purchase an Internet Marketer's Guaranteed Twitter Cash Extravaganza Success Program. Wait two weeks, change the title, and offer to sell it to him at 20% over what you paid for it (of course, not mentioning it is exactly the same course). Emphasize that your course contains the very LATEST foolproof techniques. You will be wealthy beyond your dreams.

If Traffic Signs Were Brutally Honest

The world has become a scary place when the voices I hear in my head during my morning commute have also possessed the construction signs.

Photo source: http://twitpic.com/17c6f

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FUN INTERACTIVE ACTIVITIES to REINFORCE this LESSON!!!

1. Click Share This button below and send this post to your friends!
2. Go to the Fan Box in the sidebar and follow PublicLens on Facebook, Twitter, or Friendfeed
3. Right below the Fan Box, subscribe to PublicLens in your favorite Feed Reader.
4. Leave a comment with a better caption than ours. Then go get your own humor blog and never come here again.
4. Shake it like a Polaroid. Then shake it like a Kodachrome. Finally, shake it like Fujifilm 400 Speed 25 Exposure APS Film. Compare and discuss.

Google Street View Reveals LOTR Battle Location

 Who knew? Looks like the location of the Battle of Helms Deep has been captured by the roving Google Street View cameras. (Click pic for full-size view.) Turns out it was at 8 Sampsonia Way, Pittsburgh, PA. Now we know the secret behind the Steelers awesome defensive line back in the day: Orcs.

(HT for link to @WhatChrisLikes)

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FUN INTERACTIVE ACTIVITIES to REINFORCE this LESSON!!!

1. Click Share This button below and send this post to your friends!
2. Go to the Fan Box in the sidebar and follow PublicLens on Facebook, Twitter, or Friendfeed
3. Right below the Fan Box, subscribe to PublicLens in your favorite Feed Reader.
4. Leave a comment with a better caption than ours. Then go get your own humor blog and never come here again.
4. Enter your address in Google Maps and select Street View. Go outside, run around your front yard, then run back inside and see if you're still in the view.

How to Be Outstanding in Your Class

Knowing that the tight job market would soon be flooded with thousands of recent graduates, Denise did everything she could think of to be outstanding among her peers.

(Picture source)

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FUN INTERACTIVE ACTIVITIES to REINFORCE this LESSON!!!

1. Click Share This button below and send this post to your friends!
2. Go to the Fan Box in the sidebar and follow PublicLens on Facebook, Twitter, or Friendfeed
3. Right below the Fan Box, subscribe to PublicLens in your favorite Feed Reader.
4. Leave a comment with a better caption than ours. Then go get your own humor blog and never come here again.
4. Ponder this: What possessed Eli Whitney to think he could make gin out of cotton?

If the Simpson's Springfield Police Department Were Real

This just might be Chief Wiggum's idea of heaven.

Location, location, location they say in real estate. The Massachusetts State Police obviously have a top-notch real estate agent.

(Picture originally posted at funniest-videos.net)

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FUN INTERACTIVE ACTIVITIES to REINFORCE this LESSON!!!

1. Click Share This button below and send this post to your friends!
2. Go to the Fan Box in the sidebar and follow PublicLens on Facebook, Twitter, or Friendfeed
3. Right below the Fan Box, subscribe to PublicLens in your favorite Feed Reader.
4. Leave a comment with a better caption than ours. Then go get your own humor blog and never come here again.
4. Print out a random picture of a cat and write $500 REWARD! across the top and nothing else. Make hundreds of copies and post them all over your town.

So How Do You Know Which Beach Umbrellas Are the Ones That Can Kill You?

Public lens is mostly about the bizarre and the befuddling, but every so often we like to do the beautiful. Today is the Sabbath Day so we thought we'd start off with beautiful. Of course, Sunday has only been the sabbath since the early Christian era; before that it was Saturday. Even God gets bored of the same old same old.

In fact, we've come to the conclusion that in 2012 when the Mayan calendar runs out, it won't be the end of the world. What will happen is God will shift the Sabbath to Monday.

Oh, the picture? Yeesh, almost forgot there was a picture up there. It's from our long-time Internet friend and aspiring photographer, @joshbobbitt. Click it to go to the original on Twitpic. We think it's of beach umbrellas in a jungle somewhere, but we're not sure.

FUN INTERACTIVE ACTIVITIES to REINFORCE this LESSON!!!

1. Click Share This button below and send this post to your friends!
2. Go to the Fan Box in the sidebar and follow PublicLens on Facebook, Twitter, or Friendfeed
3. Right below the Fan Box, subscribe to PublicLens in your favorite Feed Reader.
4. Leave a comment with a better caption than ours. Then go get your own humor blog and never come here again.
4. Google the word 'recursive' and see what Google asks that you might have meant.

Defensive Driving = Always Be Aware of Hidden Hazzards

Thanks for the warning! Phew!

Have a better caption? The comments await you!

FUN INTERACTIVE ACTIVITIES to REINFORCE this LESSON!!!
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2. Go to the Fan Box in the sidebar and follow PublicLens on Facebook, Twitter, or Friendfeed
3. Right below the Fan Box, subscribe to PublicLens in your favorite Feed Reader.
4. Hide under your desk for several minutes. Slowly...ever so slowly...peek above the edge. OH MY GOD THE PICTURE IS STILL THERE IT'S STILL THERE AAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

World War II Explained in One Picture

OK, so this isn't a phone cam photo. What if I told you I posted this from my phone after I took a photograph of the poster with my phone? Up to you if you want to believe a man who lives inside a cell phone costume.

I posted this because sheer comic genius trumps cell phone cam purity every time. It's true. It's in the list of humor hierarchy on Wikepedia.

FUN INTERACTIVE ACTIVITIES to REINFORCE this LESSON!!!
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2. Go to the Fan Box in the sidebar and follow PublicLens on Facebook, Twitter, or Friendfeed
3. Right below the Fan Box, subscribe to PublicLens in your favorite Feed Reader.
4. Call your mother and describe every post on PublicLens to her over the phone. She'll just be glad you called.

Hellooooooo Kitty!

Impossible to use a computer with a cat around. They're always wanting to lie across your keyboard.

FUN INTERACTIVE ACTIVITIES!!!
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4. Print out this post and fold it into one of those triangle desktop footballs and relive the glory that was ninth grade.

Take That, Pink Floyd!

Flying inflated pigs are so 1977.  Proving that they are indeed the all-time, undisputed, without-a-peer, most-pretentious-band-from-a-country-that-speaks-English-with-an-accent, U2 is currently touring with a giant four-legged pink crab. Rumor has it that Bono upon returning to the UK, Bono will attempt to fly the crab over Battlesea Power Station, provided he can get a release signed by Charles Widmore.

A Brass Figlagee with Bronze Oak-Leaf Palm will be awarded to the first faithful reader leaving a comment correctly explaining why Charles Widmore was included in the above chain of pop culture references. [UPDATE: That one has been solved; see Clare's comment below. But what about...] And excelsior to anyone who knows about brass figlagees!

(Photo by Samuel Sutter [source])

If you like what you see on PublicLens...or even if you don't but want to show everyone what's put you in such a bad mood...click that Share This button below and, well, "share this."

Diaper Food: It's Not Just for Desert Anymore

Yesterday we broke the alarming (to us) news that people were creating cakes out of diapers. We were quickly informed by our female-type friends on Facebook that not only were such unthinkable creations common, they are beloved by said female types. Our ignorance of this phenomenon had the odd result of making us feel more manly than we had since that time we blew up an entire Lego city in our friend's back yard invaded Poland.

Now alert PublicLens reader Cayce has informed us that when it comes to culinary innovation, diapers are the chief ingredient.

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you (click "Read more"):

Hell: Fire and Brimstone? No. It Will Be This in Your Face for All Eternity

Horror movies? Sort of creepy.

Being stalked by a Walmart greeter? Creepier.

But creepy never got truly creepy until this.

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FUN INTERACTIVE ACTIVITIES to REINFORCE this LESSON!!!

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2. Go to the Fan Box in the sidebar and follow PublicLens on Facebook, Twitter, or Friendfeed
3. Right below the Fan Box, subscribe to PublicLens in your favorite Feed Reader.
4. Leave a comment with a better caption than ours. Then go get your own humor blog and never come here again.
4. Have you thought of something creepier than that website yet? Stop trying. You never will.

Diaper Cake - Just Needs Some Chocolate....ewww!!!

Real cake is fattening. For your next major event, love your guests and serve diaper cake. Now let's see, if we're using diapers for the cake, what would be appropriate to represent chocolate icing? Let's not even think about the punch to go with it. Nope. Won't go there.

If you like what you see on PublicLens...or even if you don't but want to show everyone what's put you in such a bad mood...click that Share This button below and, well, "share this."

Tajik Jimmy: The New Susan Boyle?

Move over Susan Boyle. "Tajik Jimmy" didn't need Simon Cowle's approval to become Internet famous.

Baimurat Allaberiyev, a diminutive native of Tajikistan who has herded sheep, picked cotton and toiled in construction, hardly looks like Russia's latest musical sensation.

But Allaberiyev has remarkable talent sets him apart from the millions of Central Asians who come to Russia to escape crushing poverty at home.

A musical prodigy, he can perform Bollywood show-stoppers as a one-man band, equipped with nothing but an uncanny falsetto and a metal bucket.

That -- and the miraculous star-making powers of the Internet -- have turned this 37-year-old into a cult celebrity here.

Allaberiyev won fame after shaky videos shot with mobile phones surfaced on the Internet that showed him performing songs like "Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aaja" from the 1983 Bollywood classic "Disco Dancer".

Set against grim backdrops like a construction site or a storeroom full of boxes, the videos became a viral sensation. They have now been viewed more than 400,000 times on YouTube, the movie-sharing website.

Read the rest of this remarkable story.

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Homeland Security

Well, it just makes sense, doesn't it? If a scarecrow can keep pesky birds out of a farm field, surely a mannequin with a machine gun can ward off pesky terrorists. Although, I think the red mask might do that all by itself.

Like what you see at PublicLens? Help a fella out and click that Share This button below and let your friends in on the fun. Coolness by association is the best most of us can ever hope for in this life.

(HT for photo to @jimgaffigan http://twitpic.com/irhkq)

The Whopper Will Need a New Name

There would be a caption here, but I've already left to see if my local Burger King has these on the menu yet.

Eve Put Up with a Lot of Bull

OK, not really a phone cam picture...but you couldn't ask me to pass this up, could you? Saw it on someone's Facebook wall.

So this appears to be the classic story of Adam and Eve, except Adam's a bull? Are we hinting that perhaps the Original Sin was *gasp* bestiality?? Perhaps the artist just got his Bible and his Greek mythology mixed up (witness the Grecian column in the background). So maybe this is Venus and the Minotaur...with a snake.

And is that a sewer grate at the bottom of the snake's tree?

Now before any of you protest that this picture is not suitable for your very young children whom you've allowed to surf the 'net unattended, let me point out that there is a very adorable bunny rabbit in the lower right corner. I think that balances the picture to at least PG-13.

(All fun aside, the drawing is the work or North Carolina artist Fred Wise (on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/fredericwise), whose work I truly love.)

UPDATE: From artist Fred Wise: "It's actually Europa and Zeus. The serpent represents healing, as in that funky symbol you might see doctors use. There's other stuff in there too: benzene molecules. It could also be queen Pasiphae and the bull of Poseidon in their prelude to a minotaur. People want to go the Adam and Eve route, for whatever reason, despite the presence of the fluted greek column in the background, the tortoise, the hare, the drainage grate. Admittedly, the female figure is surrounded by stars, which typically signifies the virgin of the immaculate conception, but here could stand for her iconographic predecessor, Aphrodite - stella maris."

Amish Roller Derby

Go ahead. Laugh at the silly, Luddite Amish and their technology-despising ways. She's ahead of you!

Life may be sad enough in Lancaster County, PA, but when the Amish are cooler than you are...well, it just got a little sadder.

(Thanks to my friend Brian Allain, who took the picture. It appeared on his blog Ramblings and Such in the post "More Living with the Amish." Bryan lives in Amish Paradise but not this one: )

I Have No Problem with Sobriety Tests, But This?

Couldn't he just walk a straight line? Blow into a breathalizer? Dial his girlfriend's number and show he doesn't end up with his ex on the line?

Art? Look on the top shelf by the cottage cheese

@caitlincaggiano posted this striking example of finding art in the commonplace.

All You Admin Area Are Belong to Us

Would you enter a password into this site? Really??

Flight School

Crap! Failed parallel parking AGAIN! Gotta get my jumbo jet license before the prom so I can pick up Krystal in style...

App Store, App Store or...App Store?

Apple would be happy to have you shop anywhere...as long as it is in their App Store. Guy who took this iPhone screen shot tweeted that it happened after a software update.

Rainbow Warrior

First post...and already I'm paying homage to peopleofwalmart.com. This perhaps displays why the words "rainbow" and "pride" don't really belong together.

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