David Thorne

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I just discovered this David Thorne guy on the net yesterday but apparently he's been doing his thing for a long time. Wiki describes him as "an Australian humourist, satirist, Internet personality and New York Times best-selling author ... 27b/6 (his website/blog) features a collection of humorous emails and articles from Thorne's life."

The last bit is most important, as it's there that he shares humorous e-mail exchanges and the like that he has had with various people. Apparently he works or worked in an office environment as a logotype designer, and that's where much of the humor begins. I can't figure out if I would spend my day laughing working next to this guy or planning when and how to kick his ass, lol.

Some highlights from his blog that I've seen so far:

• Dear Neighbour, you are not invited to my party
  A neighbor sends out a flyer apologizing for potential noise regarding a house warming party and Thorne invites himself.
  
  
• Please design a logo for me. With pie charts. For free.
  Thorne responds to coworker's 'make it big' website schemes.
  
  
• Easter Play Permission Slip
  Thorne goes toe to toe with a 'Christian Volunteer' and eventually cracks him.
  
  
• Overdue Account
• The seven-legged spider - the one that apparently made his name for him.
  
  
• Missing Missy
  The saga of Shannon's missing cat.
  
  
• Ten F26-A Formal Complaints in six months
  Humorous back and forth between Thorne and coworker Simon. Thorne changes his business cards to read "horse whisperer," among other things.
  
  
• Justin's Floodlight
  Funny story of a neighbor with one of those big ass floodlights.

Trust me, if you've got some time to kill, this will be worth it.

 

OMG, I just read the first one and I'm worried that with my open window the neighbours will think I'm crazy hearing me laughing so loud. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of them when I get back from some errands.

 

There is some humor there but to be honest it's the kind of humor that is funny when it happens to someone else. This guy delights in just being a complete jerk. He is unnecessarily rude and insulting. I'd likely be filing complaints against him as well.

The Christian one got to me. He doesn't believe in Christianity. I get it. Such is his right. But unless I'm misunderstanding part of the context all he had to do was just say "I don't want my child participating" and leave it at that. Instead he was just insulting for no other reason than being a smug bastard. I just didn't see the point in his belaboring the issue.

 

These have been around since Jesus was a lad. Really funny, though.

 

@LKD - You know LKD, you are intelligent, have some pretty good values and are generally a pretty nice guy but sometimes you are just a Grumpy Gus!

 

Maybe, Dice, but I just don't find someone scoring points off someone just going about his normal business to be funny. It's like giving a waitress at a chain restaurant a hard time about prices that she personally has no control over.

 

I agree with LKD. I'll admit the first two Gaer listed were funny, but generally, the guy just seems like a prick. The Missing Missy one, for example, seemed totally unnecessary - the woman asks for a favor, and Thorne is a total douche about it; he whines about the fact that he's to busy to spend what would probably be a few minutes helping her, and then proceeds to waste the next 3 hours being a jerk. I almost get the feeling that one day he thought "hey, let's see how big an a$$hole I can be in responding to emails, and when I get enough material, I'll put them in a book".

 

YAH! So there Spunge and LKD!! *Dice blows a raspberry at them*

 

Ah, I get it. We're supposed to be laughing at him, not with him. It's a "look at me, I'm a gigantic idiot!" king of thing. Sort of like Jackass, except that he has to drag other people into it. So I guess it's more like a big kid sticking a smaller kid's head in a toilet, and laughing at the big kid for being a moron.

I still don't find it particularly funny.

 

Fun governors.

 

She was asking him to do her what is commonly referred to as a “favor”. This is apparently an alien concept to you, so you might want look up the word sometime; in essence, a “favor” is what friends or co-workers often do for each other, particularly if it’s not that big a deal. I’ll even make it easy for you and provide a link (this, coincidentally enough, is an example of doing you a favor); just click on the underlined part and prepare to be amazed (you might want to make sure someone is nearby when you do so, as the shock could put you in a coma):

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/favor

Maybe she’d never made a poster before and didn’t realize how easy it was, and given that there was someone in the office who knew what he was doing, she turned to him for help. Now granted, as you say, she probably should have gone to someone else when she realized that the idea of a favor was as foreign to Thorne as it was to you (before I enlightened you, that is), but that still doesn’t justify him being a tool in the first place.

 

From your reply, I guess you didn’t get the fact that I was being ironic, in that I was intentionally being a Thorne-like a-hole in my response. I guess it’s not as hilarious when you’re the target.

Anyway, to be serious for a moment regarding favors, I’m an accountant. How annoyed I get when people ask me for accounting/tax advice depends on how well I know them, and what giving the advice entails. If it’s a friend or someone I work with, then I don’t mind, but only if I don’t have to spend hours doing it. So yes, expecting a friend to pay me for a quick favor is an alien concept to me, as you state. In the Missing Missy example, since posters are easy, it wouldn’t have been a big deal for him to help out.

As for the “coming back for more” part, yes, they probably should just ignore him after a point. But I still don’t find it all that funny.

 

Same with the pie charts guy, who at various stages said "That's the final straw!" and "You've gone too far - TOO FAR!" and "Now you've crossed the line!" Then some e-mails later he was asking "So are you going to do it or not?"