Arlington Jokes / Recent Jokes
Warning Labels
The Washington Post: Sunday May 14, 1995, Final Edition
Report from Week 110, in which we asked you to come up with absurd warning labels for common products. We loved one particular entry for its wonderful idiocy:
On a cardboard windshield sun shade: "Warning: Do Not Drive With Sun Shield in Place." We were going to make it a winner, until we discovered that it wasn't made up.
Fourth Runner-Up -- On an infant's bathtub: Do not throw baby out with bath water. (Gary Dawson, Arlington)
Third Runner-Up -- On a package of Fisherman's Friend(R) throat lozenges: Not meant as substitute for human companionship. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg)
Second Runner-Up -- On a Magic 8 Ball: Not advised for use as a home pregnancy test. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge)
First Runner-Up -- On a roll of Life Savers: Not for use as a flotation device. (Jean Sorensen, Herndon)
And the winner of the Power Ranger pinata -- On a cup of McDonald's coffee: more...
Early TV news (late 1940's - early 1950's) was highly experimental, broadcast "live," and plagued with unforeseen on-the-air foul-ups.
David Brinkley writes in his new autobiography, "David Brinkley - A Memoir," of a particular incident he endured in the pre-Huntley days - one of those things you can laugh at later, but seems like a nightmare when it's happening. (Printed without permission:)
"One of Brinkley's first regularly-scheduled NBC TV news reports was five minutes of air time at 6:00 p.m. filled with scraps of film gathered during the day by a single cameraman, George Johnson, a nice young man totally inexperienced and untrained in journalism, working with a handheld, spring-wound silent-film camera, a Bell and Howell Filmo, wandering alone around Washington during the day looking for something, anything, to put on the air that night.
Whatever he brought in was broadcast while I sat in a tiny studio out of sight of the audience looking at more...