What normal people think
E-book Guy: “Hey, did you see this headline? Amazon Beats Penguin!”
Normal Guy: “Of course! Why, those birds can swim, but that’s like 7,000 kilometers! Was he trying to swim it upstream or down?”
EBG: “No, no, not like that. Not an actual penguin.”
NG: “Oh, sorry…like the bad guy? Ah, and that would make the Amazon Wonder Woman, right? Well, that makes sense, too. I mean, she’s got that invisible plane, and the magic lasso. He’s just got those tricky umbrellas…how bad was the beating?”
EBG: “Not that kind of beating…”
NG: “What was it, a foot race? No news there. Let’s see…he might beat her at…I don’t know, poker?”
EBG: “Let’s start over. Penguin is a publisher–“
NG: “Bird-watching guides, I presume?”
EBG: “Um…maybe, I don’t know. They do publish books.”
NG: “What do books have to do with Wonder Woman? Oh, do they publish comic books?”
EBG: “Um…I don’t think so. They publish, like, classics and stuff.”
NG: “Then why do I care?”
EBG: “Well, you couldn’t get them for awhile. Isn’t that terrible?”
NG: “Uuuuhhhh…I guess.”
EBG: “See, Amazon sells e-books.”
NG: “Who sells the rest of the alphabet?”
EBG: “No, electronic books.”
NG: “Like how to fix your 8-track?”
EBG: “What century are you from?”
NG: “Um, Walkman? CD player?”
EBG: “No, these are books in electronic form…files.”
NG: “Ooh, do they make cookbooks?”
EBG: “Probably…why?”
NG: “I could send one to my brother in jail, so he could escape.”
EBG: “You cou—huh?”
NG: “That’s how people break out, right? You send them a file with a cake in it.”
EBG: “I think you mean a cake with a file in it.”
NG: “Oh, that’s no good, then. He doesn’t need to break into jail.”
EBG: “Um, right. So, you can buy Penguin e-books from Amazon again.”
NG: “Yay?”
* Okay, I know this one won’t be popular with some of you, but I had fun. 😉 It was inspired by a comment that Preston Nevins made in the Amazon Kindle forum.
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
I Love My Kindle 
May 27, 2010 at 4:36 am |
😀 Well I enjoyed it. But then I wrote Pyramid Scheme (which is just about a solid pun/misinterpretaiton/play on words from one end to the other.)
May 27, 2010 at 1:14 pm |
Thanks, Dave. 🙂
Well, I love that kind of thing! I always empathized with Professor Wogglebug in the Oz stories, who made puns no one else got (the Ozians aren’t very intellectual, as a group), and that they sort of pitied him for making.
Oh, and my kid could do the Who’s on First? routine with me at about…something like six years old. 😉
Is there a place I can read Pyramid Scheme?
May 27, 2010 at 2:59 pm |
Loved it Bufo! My neighbors looked baffled/frightened when my son said that he would kill Jane if I didn’t let him go to Sweden with his Dad. We lived there for 5 years and he and his Dad are going back for work/vacation this summer. I told him I wouldn’t let him go if he continued to blow off his chores around the house. That’s when he threatened to kill Jane in front of our neighbors! No one knew who Jane was but thought something horrible was about to happen! Jane Austen is my Kindles name;) Happy Ending, he is doing his chores and I’m reading ‘The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest’. That’s as close to Sweden as I’m going to get this summer. The best part is that Lisbeth is in Sahlgrenska Hospital in Goteborg. I had several excellent surgeries there so it bodes well for her:)!!!!!
May 27, 2010 at 11:32 pm |
Thanks for writing Bernadette…cute story. 🙂
Of course, they were right…that would have been something horrible. 😉 That wouldn’t get rid of your books, naturally, but still…