Heard a good one lately? No, not a joke - but a conversation that had you in splits?
Just travel in any local train: Commuting for an hour can make you bored enough to hang on to every word a fellow passenger says, even if he isn't saying it to you.
Does that make us eavesdroppers? Nah, that's too ugly an appellation for us! But we do listen in, anyway, and sometimes hear things so funny that we just have to spread them around.
When you do hear something worth sharing, visit In Passing and post it. Yes, they've actually devoted the whole site to snatches of overheard conversation. Readers can then add their own comments - jokes, ridicule or even similar experiences they've had.
Sample this:
"Last year in computer class we made Web sites, and I made one about Brandon. But then he found it, and we broke up."
-- A teenage girl talking on a cell phone on Hearst
Now here's a sarcastic comment: "If she made a Web site about him for her class, I doubt it would be about how much she "Luvvvvvvs BrAnDon OXOXOXOX". Just a thought."
"Just goes to show, flattery gets you nowhere..." adds another. "It's her own fault for putting a journal of their relationship on the Web for all to see," opines a third.
Another reader goes on to comment about her own break-up over a Web site on her boyfriend, while someone else supposes the site contained embarrassing pictures of 'Brandon'.
Here's a stereotypical husband-wife sort of conversation that may sound familiar to many:
"Sometimes when we go out I just feel like you're more excited about the thing that we're doing, camping, shopping, skydiving, than the fact that you're doing it with me."
"See, this is exactly why I didn't want to tell you this."
-- A man and a woman in Safeway
And here's how some couples carry on with their obsessions:
"But she said she's not going to stop buying clothes because I'm not going to stop smoking weed."
"Fair's fair, man. One vice for another."
-- Two guys crossing Telegraph Avenue
What could be more embarrassing that finding something you said posted on the Web? Discovering that somebody has scanned a private object you lost and placed it online!
Doing so has become a very popular pastime on the Net, and people who indulge in this like to regard it as art … Or 'Found Art'.
"We collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles- anything that gives a glimpse into someone else's life. Anything goes..." declares Found Magazine, unambiguously.
Their finds, so far, include a child's imposition written with a word misspelled, points that someone intended to bring up in a subsequent argument, a list of inane grievances, a drawing to someone's mother, and a weird list of things to do.
One wonders if guys who upload these notes are at all hindered by ethical constraints. For some of the objects contain people's names and as they are scanned, their handwriting is also exhibited. A case in point is a note peppered with four-letter-words from a woman named Amber, to her beau, Mario, that says 'I hate you. You said you had to work, then why's your car HERE at HER place? You're a liar. I hate you.'
Found Magazine also has sections for photographs, audiotapes and 'Find of the week'.
The site encourages you to 'find stuff on the city bus, at Kinko's, on the street, in restaurants, in the waiting room, in the bowling alley parking lot, in the woods, in the prison yard,' title it 'as you would a piece of art' and mail it along with details of where you found it and your take on its meaning.
Royal Journal is another site promoting found art. Its collection includes 'a note telling people to not urinate on the note writer's doorstep,' another that claims to know 'what's going on in your mother's bedroom' and one that simple states 'Eugene, keep away from my maid. You are a married man.'
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While the sites mentioned above contain people's conversations and exhibit personal items, slipups.com keeps a record of bloopers in the media: 'They can be inconsistencies in movies, like an actor wearing something in one shot, and it's missing in the next shot. Or they can be funny errors in books,' the site explains. Accordingly, there are sections for slip-ups on the big and small screen, funny errors in books and goofs in speeches by celebrities. You can send in your own submissions, if you know of any.
Among movies, The Matrix has the most number of bloopers submitted - 132. Users have also noticed many in The Wizard of Oz; Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope, where 'C3P0's head moves to watch, even though he's supposedly switched off'; and Titanic: 'Watch closely for the part where Jack prepares to meet Rose's family at the party. In front of the room is a glass door. If you pause there and look closely at the glass door, you will see a cameraman and his camera!!'
Slipups.com also records George W Bush's "I am responsible for all of my mistakes. And so are you," and "Families is where we find hope, where wings take dream."
Of course, the site also allows readers to rate each blooper, so if you can give it 0 (This is fake), 1 (What a nit-picker), 7 (Pretty big mistake) or even 10 (They don't get any worse).
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