Joe Potts – Author, Blogger, Humor-For-Hire.

You're traveling through a wondrous dimension of humor and shadow, of imagination and mist. Welcome to my website! Wander around a bit and see what’s up. If the mists get too thick, well, some things look better in the fog anyway. So come back often to The Joe Zone – and bring your friends. That way, if you get lost, or marooned here, at least you’re together. Not that people get marooned here. Very often. For very long. Signpost up ahead, your next stop – The Joe Zone!

Putting the “Awe” in Colonoscopy

Getting a colonoscopy is a simple way to head off colon cancer at the pass, or possibly at the bend before the pass. Why aren’t they more popular, then? Why do people hesitate? I suppose colonoscopies have a bad reputation, but is that reputation worse than colon cancer’s?

I recently decided to forego a vacation to a soothing warm climate, and have a colonoscopy instead. Seemed like a no-brainer. A cost/benefit analysis revealed the truth: a colonoscopy’s potential benefits are much greater, and it’s a lot cheaper than a vacation, if you have medical insurance, and possibly if you don’t. Some may argue that it’s not as much fun. I say it depends on the vacation. I have had some miserable vacations that I gladly would have traded for a colonoscopy.

It would be interesting to ask the people on one of the recent “revolting stomach virus” cruises if, in retrospect, they would take what’s behind door number two instead. And I have no doubt that the Costa Concordia passengers would prefer many medical procedures to their ship hitting a reef, capsizing, and sinking.

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Valentine’s Day Special: Male-Female Communication, and How to Survive It

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, the Joe Zone is taking the plunge into the treacherous but vital subject of male-female communication.

One of the most difficult and dangerous tasks in life is traversing the minefield of communication with members of the opposite sex.  Given that the same language is being spoken, that there is a shared cultural environment, and the joint objective is clarification rather than obfuscation, one might think it would be as easy as falling off a cliff.  Unfortunately, it is not, but the results are often the same.

My wife and I have worked at it for some years.  Granted, for me it’s more work, since women are by nature the better communicators.  And therein lies the heart of the problem.  Women are so adept are packing dense meanings into compact phrases that the male often is in the dark as to the meaning of the conversation in which he has just participated.  This female skill extends to wresting every color of meaning from the most brief and apparently simple male response.  As an example, consider the following recent exchange:

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Gas Station Apocalypse

We all have times when we begin to lose faith in our fellow man, and even in our felonious women. In my experience, though, whenever I’m about to give up on mankind, my opinion is changed by the act of a single individual. When my outlook is most dismal, someone will always step up and prove that I have not set the bar low enough.
An obliging boob made himself known the other day at a large multi-pump gas station. Let’s call him Clem.
The pumps all had cars waiting in line, and additional vehicles were buzzing around like 747’s stacked up waiting to land at Atlanta. So when I saw Clem move up to the pump as I drove into the station, I figured, “Great!” I pulled in behind him and thought I was one lucky jasper.

Clem’s car sat there for several minutes with no activity. I got a little worried. What if Clem was having a cardiac event? Would anyone notice? I was to eventually realize that your average person having a cardiac event moves much faster than Clem.

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Ahoy! Who’s Calling?

Scenario 1:

Phone: Ring! Ring!

     Joe: “Hello?”

     Unfortunate Caller “Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…”

     Joe: “Geeeeez!! My boring greeting put someone to sleep again.”

Scenario 2:

Phone: Ring! Ring!

     Joe: “Ahoy!”

     Thrilled Caller “I’m tingling all over! Thank you!”

     Joe: “All part of the service.”

Which scenario is more pulse-pounding? Do we need to change the way we answer the phone? And why do we answer with “hello” in the first place?

In 1877, inventor extraordinaire Thomas Edison wrote to the president of the Central District and Printing Telegraph Company in Pittsburgh.  The CDPTC (in P) was preparing to introduce telephone service to the city. In his letter, Edison expressed the opinion that the word “hello” would be a more appropriate greeting than “ahoy” when answering the telephone.  Evidently Thomas had some street cred, because the Telegraph Company president took his advice, Pittsburghers answered the phone with “hello,” and people have been following that lead ever since.

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Teaching Manners with Sports?

The world has changed in many ways over the last few generations. Some of those changes are good, such as smartphones, and some are bad, such as smartphones with annoying ringtones in public places. One of the negative differences is the decline of civility in our society. We see evidence in the news almost daily of people who don’t know the proper way to conduct themselves during a simple road rage incident, much less a drive-by shooting or bomb threat evacuation.

Etiquette is nearly a relic of the past. A recent survey of millennials, conducted in my head, revealed that 85% of them think Emily Post was the inventor of Post Raisin Bran. All of Emily’s wisdom and practical tips, so valuable to previous generations, are now dust in the wind, and we wayward sons and daughters must carry on as best we can, and hold on before we reach the point of no return.

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High-Tech Blather Whips Me into a Lather

Have you noticed that in smartphone commercials, everything performs perfectly and with lightning speed? No device ever freezes, is maddeningly slow, or explodes in your hand. Then you buy the product, and it’s as if the phone is immersed in a bucket of molasses. You could get faster results using a toy phone with painted-on keys. It’s a classic case of the tortoise lapping the napping hare.

Internet service providers are just as guilty, with their 3G or 4G or 44G cell phone service ads. Their networks are always available, incredibly fast, and capable of instantaneous downloads. Somehow these companies never got the word on “truth in advertising.” A special “exaggeration in advertising” law must apply to high-tech items. 

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America Needs New Sports

Americans crave new sports. I came to this conclusion recently when it became apparent some people were actually excited about soccer.
Baseball, football, basketball, hockey, golf – all fine sports. Americans have become a bit jaded about them, however. The bloom is off the rose (if we can talk about roses in connection with any sport except horse racing.) America is ripe to be taken by storm by something new.
Not mixed martial arts, which isn’t much more than the boxing pig with lipstick. And I’m certainly not talking about that snooze-a-lose we call soccer (and the rest of the world calls football, except for those who call it futbol). 

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If They Can Do That…

History, literature, and the daily headlines are filled with examples of noble people being corrupted by power. Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Moe Howard – the list is long and depressing. Recently, many voices have expressed concern over a perceived tipping of the scales of power, over one entity acting unilaterally to achieve controversial objectives, over a dangerous concentration of authority where it was never meant to be. I am referring, of course, to the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

Several years ago, the IAU reclassified the once proud planet of Pluto as a dwarf planet. Every citizen of planet Earth should be concerned.  If they can demote Pluto out of its planethood, what else can they do? Deciding the fate of astronomical bodies smacks of tyranny and megalomania. Do these despots reside on Mt. Olympus? Do they hang out with IRS commissioners?
Prior to the IAU’s action in 2006, the only known way of removing a planet from the universe was by using the Death Star. The IAU is, therefore, the only known superpower to have Death Star capability, surpassing the destructive capability of the U.S., Russia, China, and Godzilla combined, and with no radioactivity.

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No Gibberish in These Parts, Pardner!

A quick follow-up on the recent “blog hop” that brought a number of fresh, uninitiated tourists to the Joe Zone. At times, a new visitor was spotted browsing around a bit, then wandering off shaking their head and muttering, “Some kind of gibberish is being spoken here.”

 
Gibberish? Harrumph! Gibberish, sir? We don’t speak gibberish around here. No, this is the Joe Zone, and we speak Joeberish.  That’s right, 100% pure Joeberish. 

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Blog Hop Takes Over Joe Zone in Bloodless Coup

This special edition of the Joe Zone comes courtesy of author Karen Malena (more on her later). Karen graciously asked me to be part of a “blog hop,” which helps readers hop from blog to blog, and discover new writers. Blog hops can have different formats, and in this one, you will find out a bit about me as I answer specific questions. Welcome, blog hoppers!

Joe’s in the hot seat – let’s get started!                                                          

 

Some Joe Bio Info:

Hello, my name is Joe Potts, and I am the proprietor of the Joe Zone.

I was born and raised in the previous millennium in Pittsburgh, primarily on Mt. Washington. I am a Carnegie Mellon University graduate, with a degree in mechanical engineering (I know, I’m surprised, too), and an “unofficial” minor in English. It gives me great joy to say I am semi-retired. I have lived in Westmoreland County, Pa., for most of my adult life. I’m now in Harrison City with my young wife of forty years, Susan.

I am an animal lover, and Susan and I have had cats most of our lives, but not at the moment (and, no, you can’t dump off a kitten on my doorstep). In fact, my first published piece was about the disintegrating social structure of our five cats.

I enjoy playing guitar at church for our Praise Team. I also like to read, including archaic media such as newspapers and magazines. I especially enjoy biographies. I am a fan of James Thurber, James Bond, Perry Mason, Dave Mason, Mason Williams, William Shatner, Sherlock Holmes, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Floyd the barber, Chet Atkins, Les Paul, and William Shakespeare’s contribution to American cinema, Forbidden Planet. Wyatt Earp was OK, too.

I began writing while in the fifth grade, when I composed a parody of Longfellow’s “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” which featured the first appearance in history of a Corvette.  I’ve dabbled a bit in science fiction, and occasionally write a serious (harrumph!) piece, but I mostly hang with the humor crowd these days.

And now, a mysterious disembodied voice will ask me four questions about my writing:

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