Fun with Business Cards

This is our special customer care. As it is known that one minute of laugh can extend your life for a year, we hope that this collection will make you laugh. Please keep smiling with us :)

I always carry a special business card in my wallet when I'm in a pub or at a party. The text reads “Om du vill ha sex med mig, bara le.” Which translated to English reads “If you want to have sex with me, just smile.” I have yet to use it successfully. I've gotten a smile and even a laugh the few times I've managed to gather enough courage to actually use it, but neither of those girls honored the card. To my great disappointment. Amazingly enough I've never been slapped for showing it.

So, in our group of friends we have one person who two years ago was bragging about how he had never been fooled in April Fool's day, and how he would never be. “The trick is to be suspicious of everything”, he said. He was, as only he can sometimes, very annoying.

So last year we decided to test him. We know he is crazy about caviar (I don't know why, but he is, I guess he must have some problem with his sense of taste). Anyhow, we thought that caviar might be a weak point of his that we could attack.

I know a “crazy Russian” guy (he is actually an university professor, and quite crazy indeed). We made up a business card in just a question of minutes in which you could read: “Markus Morsikov, International Caviar Trade Inc.”, 'If you want the best caviar, we have it...' , ended by a real address in a crappy industrial area in Memphis.

The crazy Russian professor and I managed to have a 'casual' encounter with my “I will never be fooled” friend early in April Fool's morning. As soon as I presented the Russian professor as an important salesman of caviar, my friend's eyes popped out and almost yelled that he loved caviar so very much. The Russian professor (alias Markus Morsikov by now) handled the faked business card and told my friend that he was very very lucky indeed (with his deep Russian accent). There was a shipment of caviar leaving Memphis that same day. If my friend was able to pass by the address indicated in the business card 'Markus' would easily take a 2-pound can of caviar (that is a lot of caviar) out of the shipment and give it to my friend for free. Right after saying that, 'Markus' said that he had to hurry to start preparing the shipment, so we left.

Some of my friends and I met in the “caviar address” (really a crappier area than we thought it would be), and waited there around four hours, just drinking beer and hoping that noon would kill us. We were really thinking that our friend had realized that all the caviar thing was just a sophisticated joke when we saw his car slowly approaching and finally stopping by us. There was a surprise look on his face that lasted maybe two seconds, then he realized that he had actually be sophisticatedly fooled. Because we are friends after all, I approached him and handled him a very tiny can of caviar (the smallest, and cheapest I must say, that I could buy; I am quite poor after all). On his face appeared the best smile I have ever seen.

A magician by the name of Michael Close does an amazing trick with this business cards. While working at a restaurant he will visit a table and begin the trick by asking where on the street the people live — on a corner or cul-de-sac, in the middle of a block, near a fork, etc. Then he draws a picture on the back of one of his business card depicting their house and the road they live on.

Next he describes problems he has had with potholes he had on his street. And by way of illustration uses a hole punch to punch a hole through another business card right in the middle of the drawing of the street in front of this house. Then Michael will demonstrate how a magician might deal with problems such as potholes — he literally grabs the hole punched through the card and visibly drags it down the street and leaves it in front of his friend's house. All the time you can see through the hole punched in the card and out the other side. Next the magician down the street will transport the pothole back to in front of Michael's house, etc.

Then Michael gets the idea to move the pothole to someone else's street. So he picks up the card with the drawing of the street of the audience member and he drags the hole off of the first card and onto the the second card down their street and leaves it in front of their house. The spectator gets to then keep this card as a souvenir.

The best part is that after the performance Michael would check with the reservation system of the restaurant he was working and call the audience member's home pretending to be a city sanitation worker apologizing for the pothole in front of their home and assuring them it would be repaired promptly. You can bet that after that trick, and the hilarious follow-up call, that those people will never give up that card. One of the best uses of business cards in magic I've ever seen.

Most people don't realize that business cards have a more significant raison d'etre than picking your teeth or introducing yourself to folks at a bar. Business cards are 2 inches high by 3.5 inches wide, and, with a few in you wallet or purse, you can measure just about anything. I was on a job consulting on some corporate signage and found myself in need of a means of measuring an elevator sign without a tape or ruler. with just 3 business cards I was able to determine that the sign was 5 wide (3.5 + 3.5 - 2) by 9 high (3.5+3.5+2). I was also able to measure the exact location of the Braille “Up” and “Down” notations. So, you see, business cards do measure up (and down).

Other uses for business card:

• Place in bicycle spokes for realistic engine sound.
• Makes a great substitute for roofing shingles.
• Shred and use as salad or casserole garnish.

In Japan the giving and receiving of business cards is a big deal. I was living and teaching there and had to get my very first set of business cards. One night I was bored and decided to turn 52 of the cards into a deck of cards so I could play solitaire. I drew the cards on the back of the business cards. After a few hands I realized they didn't shuffle well so I threw them away (I thought) and resolved to buy a real deck of cards the next day.

Weeks passed and I was meeting with a potential new student and passed him my business card. He turned it over (In Japan, if you are an English speaker, your cards would typically be printed in English on one side and Japanese on the other, mine were Japanese only) and laughed and asked why I had a Q and a Heart on the back. Somehow I had picked up one of the old deck when refilling my card case. After a brief moment of panic I smiled and said it was because I was such a kind teacher that my students said I was the Queen of Hearts. He thought that was funny and he signed up right away. And I went home and made sure I had destroyed the remaining “playing cards”

Well, he went and told one of his friends (another potential student) about it and I when I met with him, he was disappointed not to get one of my “special” cards, I told him I had run out and would be getting a fresh batch. That day I went to the printer and had a whole new set of cards made with my information in Japanese on one side and a big red Q and a Heart on the other.

It became one of the great word of mouth selling points of my classes.

I recently met a patient in the office for a new eye examination. After the examination, he asked for my business card. I obliged. He then asked me if I wanted one. I said, “Sure.” He handed me a business card — it was blank on one side and said my card on the other. We both had a great laugh. He then asked if wanted more of them. I replied, “Sure, why not.” He laughed and I thought that was the end of it.

Two weeks later, I receive a UPS box in my office. I open the box and it is a box of new business cards — each saying — my card.

Materials collected by Helen Nersesova