See my sack

I very much enjoy Scott Simpson's tumbleblog ("tumblblog"?). He probably has the perfect sense of humor. This post, for instance, made me laugh more than anything I've read in this godforsaken second half of the aughts:

Pronounced “EYE-lins,” I.Y.L.N.S. is a failsafe mnemonic device I use to remember my passwords:

It’s
Your
Last
Name,
Silly!

If you found this tip useful, let me know!

Now, all the finest bits of humor are funny for a whole wad of reasons simultaneously, but this little gem takes the cake on that front. Just to name a few of the angles that rise with haste to the top of my head:

1. The supposed "mnemonic device"'s acronym is confusing and outwardly meaningless
2. He attempts to imbue it with memorability by way of a pronunciation that makes it more confusing
3. He implies that not one but all of his passwords are his last name
4. By presenting this tip as "useful," he flatly assumes that everyone, without exception, does this
5. The "Silly!" at the end, while endearingly goofy, also smacks of a word one would add to a mnemonic device simply in order to form a recognizable acronym — i.e., "Keep It Simple, Stupid" — but here the "S" makes it even less like a real word
6. The device is more complicated than the password itself

Much of this comes to what I call the humor of the "unanswered why." Another example of this is when a friend proposed something of an internet practical joke along these lines: put a link up that says "see my sack." Assuming that you mean your scrotum, people will eagerly click. But then they'll only find pictures of your backpack! All the laughs I got from this — for they were many and intense — were triggered by the unanswered why, to wit: "Why would anyone want to follow a link that actually did offer pictures of some stranger's scrotum?"

Comments

[LOUBOUTIN]

2The scene when air support pulls out