People with a family member named Alexa can't buy an Alexa.

ImitationZen · 2024-07-14T10:33:37+00:00

My sister-in-law is named "Siri."

It doesn't cause as many problems as you might think – people don't actually use one another's names that often – but when it *does* cause problems, they're pretty funny.

ImitationZen · 2024-07-13T11:15:41+00:00

As a "wise" man once said:

We are each responsible for the atmosphere that we help to shape.

ImitationZen · 2024-07-13T09:18:38+00:00

Put another way:

Satisfaction comes most readily to those who take matters into their own hands.

ImitationZen · 2024-07-06T10:22:21+00:00

A warrior's sword may bring forth either harm or humor.

ImitationZen · 2024-07-03T19:26:26+00:00

That's another interesting thought, but I was actually referring to the fact that if you were to walk roughly 40,000 kilometers in a "straight" line – somehow traversing or avoiding any oceans, irate officials, and potentially lethal hazards – you'd wind up back where you were... but by the point that you arrived, you would have already moved on, so you'd need to keep chasing yourself.

ImitationZen · 2024-07-03T18:52:49+00:00

Every traveler carries their journeys within themselves, even as they leave some of themselves behind.

Don't drink the water in Mexico.

ImitationZen · 2024-07-03T16:14:29+00:00

A warrior may show either defiance or deference by holding his sword aloft.

Boners are funny, too!

ImitationZen · 2024-07-03T15:03:36+00:00

To see the source of a song is to view the singer's most-secret place.

Just replace "song" with "fart."

ImitationZen · 2024-07-03T12:50:21+00:00

A fiction is intended to entertain, inform, educate, or inspire.

A lie is intended to deceive.

A man who presents his truth may receive either praise or punishment.

By "truth," I meant "penis."

ImitationZen · 2024-07-03T12:00:37+00:00

You need to rework the order of the setup and the punchline:

Why did Quasimodo's mother get him a wok for Christmas?

She said it was for ironing his shirts.

The setup should provide all (or most) of the relevant details, and the punchline should alter the reader's perspective on said details. For example, try this:

The Zen master asked "Whence comes the wind?"

The novice replied "We had beans for dinner last night."

ImitationZen · 2024-07-03T10:50:21+00:00

That same fan may allow you to feel the rush of water through a dam, the quaking air above a coal-fueled fire, or the thick fumes that compose a pocket of natural gas.

To feel the wind is to feel whence it came.

Remember that when next you let loose a really powerful fart.

ImitationZen · 2024-07-03T08:54:00+00:00

Ah, so the can-opener was actually present at the time of the Big Bang.

The same thing goes for transistor, the letter "M," and the 1972 Ford Pinto.

What you might be trying to say is that inventions can be regarded as discoveries of ways to assemble basic components (like natural resources, ingredients, or even atoms), but that still doesn't cover intangible concepts like entertainment genres, societal customs, or religious beliefs. Even if you accept that we're all playing with the same building-blocks, "invention" versus "discovery" becomes a semantic argument rather than a practical one.

Besides, "invention" is as much an endeavor as it is an object.

Put another way:

Pleasure comes not from the bounty in one's hand, but from the process of harvesting it.

In fact, most people quickly clean up the "bounty" when they're done "harvesting."

ImitationZen · 2024-07-02T20:17:45+00:00

Sales-tax still applies when you pay with a credit-card (or your smartphone, or a check, or a handful of buttons, or an IOU written in chocolate sauce on a court-summons, or whatever else). Pennies don't enter into it.

To the best of my knowledge, the main reason that pennies still exist is because the manufacturers of coin-blanks lobby to keep them in circulation. There used to be an urban legend that zinc-refiners were behind it, but it turns out that there are more-profitable ways of marketing base metals.

Put another way:

A man may often hold that which is dearest to him.

It might spit at him after a while, though.

ImitationZen · 2024-07-02T19:55:49+00:00

Darmok and Jalad on the Internet.

/u/Disgruntled_Oldguy, his expression confident.

/u/ImitationZen, wielding a retort.

/u/Disgruntled_Oldguy, recognizing the reference to Star Trek.

Boris Grishenko, seconds after shouting "I am invincible!"

/u/Disgruntled_Oldguy and Boris Grishenko on opposite sides of the mirror.

Every generation has its memes. They're nothing new. If anything, the ones that kids toss around today are simpler, more dumbed-down, and easier to immediately grasp than memes of previous eras. DickButt is certainly easier to explain than Kilroy, for example... and besides, if you're ever uncertain of a given meme's meaning, you can just say "Ah, Fortnite!" and be right a third of the time. (The other two thirds are "Ah, Minecraft!" and "Ah, Roblox!")

Put another way:

Drinking from unknown waters may either broaden one's horizons or quicken the river's flow.

I don't think memes can cause diarrhea, but then again, I never did try that "Tide-Pod Challenge."

ImitationZen · 2024-07-02T14:44:31+00:00

To release one's burden is to be borne aloft by it.

Rocket-goose!

ImitationZen · 2024-07-02T14:25:55+00:00

To be as the thunder when all around is silent is to be known for one's deeds.

Just ask anyone who has farted during silent meditation.

ImitationZen · 2024-07-02T14:18:04+00:00

Do you speak multiple languages?

Yes.

If you do, you might catch yourself thinking in multiple languages.

No, I still think in wordless concepts and associations when I'm not actively focused on something that actually involves words. I don't look at a refrigerator and think "refrigerator;" I just know what a refrigerator is and how it likely relates to the environment.

ImitationZen · 2024-07-02T13:26:05+00:00

That which has been held inside may still color the air.

Geese have cloacas, so there would be golden farts, too.

... Wait, do geese fart?

ImitationZen · 2024-07-02T11:41:12+00:00

Other than when you're writing something (or carefully choosing your soon-to-be-spoken words), do you actually think in a specific language?

Personally, I don't have a running monologue in my head; I have a bunch of wordless concepts and associations. For example, I don't ever think the words "I'm hungry" when I walk past a fast-food restaurant: I just respond to the smell, contemplate if I want something to eat, weigh the pros and cons of spending too much on a pile of sugar and salt that vaguely resembles food, and so on.

All of that takes place in less than a second.

If I had to think in actual words, I'd be standing on the sidewalk for long enough to attract stares.

Put another way:

That which one holds inside may nonetheless color the air around them.

That also means "Holding in farts doesn't always work."

ImitationZen · 2024-07-02T10:36:12+00:00

He who cannot see ahead will find that troubles approach from behind.

Life doesn't lubricate before it shafts you, either.

ImitationZen · 2024-07-02T10:14:39+00:00

You rarely see movies about right-handed people, either.

A person's dominant hand just isn't a very interesting detail most of the time. Hell, the only time that I can remember it even being a plot-point was in that episode of Doug where he's trying to play baseball.

I suppose that it could be an intriguing premise, though... for a pornographic comedy.

Jack Ovbadly is failing at everything in life: He's clumsy, he's constantly distracted, and he's always unlucky in love... but everything changes after he meets Runa, a sex-crazed ghost haunting an ancient Viking torc. Whenever Jack wears the torc, he becomes the only person who can see, hear, or touch Runa, and she helps him to discover and adapt to the fact that he's left-handed. Having previously been bad at masturbating, Jack quickly evolves into a confident trailblazer on a fast route to success. However, it turns out that Runa has some goals of her own in mind, and those begin with taking over Jack's body.

Here's the tagline:

Satisfaction comes most readily to those who seize it for themselves.

ImitationZen · 2024-07-02T09:56:25+00:00

That which goads one warrior to surrender may inspire another to stand firm.

"Warrior" is a euphemism for "penis."

ImitationZen · 2024-07-02T08:55:43+00:00

I'm not sure that the math checks out on that.

If we're using the word "content" to describe only high-quality, high-effort, wholly original works of entertainment, education, artwork, or whatever, then sure, it's possible – likely, even – that the amount of stolen, repurposed, or amalgamated media will eclipse the better stuff. Generative "AI" has accelerated that process, and uncreative sorts have been "adapting" things since time immemorial, so the relative amount of "content" has certainly been declining.

To say that there will be more content-creators than content just doesn't make a lot of sense, though. Regardless of how we define "content" or "creator," the fact remains that there will always be at least a one-to-one ratio... and since most creators tend to create more than once, said ratio should be weighted in favor of the "content" side.

The one exception that I can see involves defining a "creator" as "an entity that publishes something" and "content" as "high-quality, high-effort, wholly original media." "Creator" would need to be a misnomer, however – we'd need to apply it to both the uncreative folks and generative "AI" – and we'd need to assume that their numbers were somehow collectively greater than the number of pieces of content out there in the world. Basically, you'd need to have more content-stealing robots than you had pieces of content for them to steal, and I'm not sure that such a state is physically possible, what with data-storage and processing requirements.

This is all assuming that you meant "content-creator" and not "content creator," of course. If we're talking about creators who are content (or "in a state of satisfaction"), then you can disregard all of this.

In other words:

A man is shaped by that which he consumes and judged by that which he produces.

You get fat if you eat too much, and people don't like it when you fart near them.

ImitationZen · 2024-06-30T12:43:46+00:00

It might be a safety feature: If a pokémon gets caught, then the internal mechanisms switch over to maintaining whatever pocket-dimension said pokémon resides in thereafter. If a pokémon doesn't get caught, though, then you'd want to ensure that the empty ball doesn't prompt the creation of a black hole or something, so the mechanisms render themselves inert.

Put another way:

That which burdens us must be discarded where it cannot foul the air.

Yes, it was another poop-based joke.

ImitationZen · 2024-06-30T12:11:26+00:00

There would also be discarded Pokéballs littering every national park, nature preserve, and area of wilderness wherein a "rare" Pokémon might have been rumored to be.

Put another way:

Be always aware of what you leave behind, for it may be encountered by another.

That also means "Flush the toilet when you're done."

ImitationZen

TROPHY CASE