Baldwin on Occupational Secrets
From Matthew Baldwin of the Morning News comes this fun collection of little-known facts from various lines of work: Tricks of the trade.
One example to tease you:
Balloon-Twister
When you’re twisting balloons for children, never tell them what you’re making. The majority of the finished products–despite your best attempts–almost always look like a dog, a blastula, or something vaguely phallic. If you identify what you’re actually attempting to make, the children will respond to your finished product with, “That doesn’t look like a [insert animal name]…” But if you make the animals and then ask, “What does it look like to you?” the child’s imagination will take over, turning the blue, four-legged balloon into Blue from Blue’s Clues, the blastula into a Pokemon, and the phallic object into an elephant. You’ll also get bonus points because you were so cool for making exactly what they wanted.
August 27th, 2004 at 9:07 pm
He has tons of great little snippets of comedy and what not on his personal blog as well–
http://www.defectiveyeti.com
I’m a regular reader over there.