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Tag: April Fool’s Day

Never Again Shall We Worry About The Great Text-Replacement Theory

5 Min Read

It was the greatest prank–hah! I summed it up in less than 2 sentences!

But I bragged about it, and now? Oh the never-ending consequences…


“Oh, crap. Not again!”

Just a few weeks ago, I had regaled y’all with one of the best pranks I’ve ever come up with, The Great Text Replacement Theory. That was pretty good, right?

And of course I followed that up with how Karma gave me a proper swift kick in the ass a few years later when my own progeny weaponized my greatest creation against me.

If you haven’t read all about those shenanigans, go ahead and take a quick minute or two to follow the links above and catch up. As always, I’ll patiently wait for you to absorb the proper context for what comes next…

Alright, ya back and well informed? Great! Let’s get on with the show then.

So, the problem is, you see, that in order to visually demonstrate how I pulled the stunt off, I had to go back and change the settings on my phone in the same manner I had done to my dear mother’s phone.

“So…what’s the problem with that?” you may be asking no one in particular.

Well–fun fact–the time that I typically find myself composing these masterpieces (such as the one you’re reading now) is around 1 am on a Saturday night/Sunday morning, and once I’ve put the finishing touches on it–witty and optimized title with my trademark cadence, stupid little graphic with googly eyes and my caricaturized luscious lips, opening blurb comprised of two rhyming lines and ending with an ellipsis, and similarly structured FaceBook promo ending with aforementioned title1This is a dead-on accurate description of my workflow once I’ve finished writing the main text–and takes up at least half of my time invested in each post.–I’m dead-ass tired and just want to pass out in bed.

Therefore, you can imagine how I might forget to, um…”undo” any changes that I might have made in the process of researching and producing the latest post.

And it’s always fun to discover such minor oversights well after it’s too late.

For example, the day after dropping the f-bomb post, I had to go pick up my dear ol’ mom from my sister’s, where she had been enjoying Spring Break. Naturally, with it being Spring Break and what-not, she went buck-wild…and somehow ended up with 75 pounds of salt that she needed to transport home. Seriously…it’s best not to ask any follow-up questions about that situation.

Anyways, I get this text from Mama that morning:

As you can see, I was well-justified in exclaiming aloud to myself, “Oh, crap! Not again!” It seems it’s always at the most inconvenient times, like going to pickup my online grocery order, when I realize that I’ve once again forgotten to dispose of the deceased sex workers in my trunk.

Just kidding. The ‘again’ is of course referring to having my ‘Xo’ involuntarily replaced a split microsecond before sending an otherwise clean and sincere text to my momma.

So what else could I do? I had to go into Cleaneup Mode:

Hopefully, she would naturally understand my predicament and automatically censor out my potty-words as she read the errant text. Or maybe not…

Welp, there’s not really much more profuse apologizing one can do–I mean, I’ve included the pinnacle of digital apologies: the Double Embarassed Emoji Face. What else could be expected of a son?

Oh, yeah, I guess I better reassure her that there wouldn’t be any hookers taking up her precious salt cargo space:

Having put that to bed, I promptly went and reverted my settings so that I would never accidentally cuss at my mother in my texts again…


“Oh, crap. Not again!”

Sunday morning was not the time to be making such an unpleasant discover.

A few good weeks after the previously described (and corrected) snafu, Dear Mother had absconded off to church with our younger daughter when this message from her pops up on my laptop’s Message app:

Honestly, I prefer when I get messages from other Apple users when I’m on my laptop; it’s just so much easier to type out a reply on a keyboard rather than my tiny little phone screen, amiright? Lemme just tap out a reply lickity-split and hit send!

EGADS! Unfortunately, I was little too lickity on that split and didn’t catch that tiny text at the end before I hit “send”. That’s right: on my laptop, the whole “There’s-no-better-way-to-say-Xo-than-oh-holy-f**k!” setting somehow persisted, though I had clearly turned that off on my phone (which is where I had turned it on in the first place!). And yes, I of course hit send before realizing what was happening.

Welp…time to go into full-on recover mode. Fortunately (maybe), I discovered that I could right-click and choose to “unsend” the message:

I could only pray to the Southern Baptist gods that that foul message got properly aborted before she had the chance to read it while sitting in the house of the Lord…


“Oh, crap. Not again!”

Yes, again. And the worst part is that this just happened. That’s right, in the middle of composing this very missive, I get this message–on my laptop, of course–from my maternal figure in regards to dropping off my elder daughter off at a friend’s house:

Good lord, will I ever learn my lesson? (For the record, I still can’t find any settings on my laptop where this little booger might be lurking about).

Well, at least I’ve learned that if I’m quick enough, I can unsend the message! As you can see, I corrected my mistake:

Wait–again?!? Jeez, I guess there’s only one phrase that’s appropriate for this situation: “Xo”.

(And by ‘Xo’, I mean…well, you know what I mean, wink wink…)


Content created on: 19 April 2024 (Friday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

How To Fool Your Mom Into Dropping Ye Old F-Bomb

4 Min Read

Have you ever caught yourself daydreaming about your clean-cut mom or dad suddenly cussing like a sailor?

Then today’s your lucky day, sir…


“Are you sick and tired of waiting around for your prim and proper elderly parent to start cussing? Well, today’s your lucky day…”

Yes, I know it sounds like the beginning of your archetypical 90’s late-night infomercial, but unlike those scams, you’ll see soon enough that I’ll actually deliver on my promises.

You see, if you’re anything like me, you can relate to the adult children in this Onion news article, in which their mother seems to have taken up swearing in her elderly years. I remember reading this article back in the day and thinking to myself, “Hmmm…maybe it’s possible that one day my mother will drop a cuss word or two. That would be a decent consolation prize, seeing as how getting her intoxicated is pretty much out of the question.”

Now, this thought was all mirthful and cheeky until it was pointed out to me–by my mom, nonetheless–that this is actually quite common…in loved ones suffering from dementia.

*gulp!*

Umm…on second thought, maybe having a neophyte cussing mother wouldn’t be the unexpected delight that I had always dreamt it to be. And if you, Dear Reader, have any type of soul at all, you, too, will agree that we need a Plan B…


This April Fool’s Day, have I got just the prank for which you’ve been waiting most of your adult life!

Now, this prank is not for everybody, but that is because of logistics and not morality or taste in humor or any nonsense like that. This, my friend, is objectively funny, guaranteed. Let’s review the key ingredients needed to successfully pull this off:

  • A parent with an iPhone. This might work for other phones, but that exercise is left to the reader.
  • A parent who uses that phone to text. They need to text, and not just text you–that’s not nearly as fun.
  • Ideally, they end all their texts with a ‘sign-off’ phrase. In absence of this, other common phrases can be substituted.
  • Access to said phone. Sadly, this requires geographic proximity to your target–er, I mean ‘parent’. Also, if you don’t know their PIN, you better get on figuring out how to acquire that info. Alternatively, you might be able to unlock their phone with FaceID while they sleep.

Okay, so hopefully you’ve been able to go ‘check…check…check…CHECK!” right on down that list. Perhaps, though, you got a little stuck on the 3rd item, the ‘sign-off’ phrase. It could be something as basic as, ‘Love, your dad’ or (if you’re extremely lucky) ‘In Christ’. In my case…well, I’ll let you take a look at this recent sample conversation with my dear mum:

Did you perhaps notice anything overly consistent about that conversation? Ding ding ding! That is correct: every thought must be ended with ‘Xo’:

Fun fact: the ‘Xo’ also serves as a way to tell whether the other is in distress and/or a kidnapper or other bad actor has the phone and sending the texts: “If there’s no ‘Xo’, then we’re calling the po-po!”

Anyways, so now that you understand what kind of common and recurring phrase we’re after–ideally tacked onto the end of their texts–we can now proceed to fulfilling our profane April Fool’s fantasy.

Step One: After successfully stealing a few moments with the phone and getting into it, go to Settings.

Step Two: Tap on the General sub-menu.

Step Three: Tap on Keyboard.

Step Four: Go to Text Replacement.

Step Five: Tap on the ‘+’ icon to add a new entry.

Step Six: In the Shortcut field, type their beloved sign-off phrase, or any other bit of text you want to auto-magically turn in to potty words. In the Phrase field, type the profanity-laden phrase of your choice. Feel free to be as subtle or as offensive as you desire. In my case, I was inspired by the ‘o’ in ‘Xo’, and felt that it naturally lent itself to ‘Oh, holy fuck!’

Step Seven: Be sure to hit Save, exit out of the Settings app, and return the phone to its original location.

Step Eight: Sit back and enjoy the show! Here’s an example of what might transpire between your parent, and say, another one of your siblings (note: this is a dramatic recreation, as sadly, the original texts have long been deleted for obvious reasons):

You get the idea.

Anyways, the point of the story is:


Content created on: 29/30 March 2024 (Fri/Sat)

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