Article 168914 of rec.humor:
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From: cate3@netcom.com (Henry Cate)
Subject: Life 2.8
Message-ID: [cate3D43nHE.C6y@netcom.com]
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Thu, 16 Feb 1995 15:39:13 GMT
Lines: 499
Sender: cate3@netcom10.netcom.com
Date: 31 Aug 87 10:15:48 PDT (Monday)
Subject: Life 2.8
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During the Six Day War, this division of Arabs is making its way across the
burning desert sands towards Israel, when the Arab commander, bouncing along
in his jeep, spots an aged Israeli on top a distant sand dune. The commander
drops his binoculars and shouts orders to a foot soldier to run up ahead
and kill the infidel Israeli. The soldier sprints ahead of the advancing
troops, and soon disappears over the sand dune. The general stops the troops
and waits to see what happens.
Nothing happens. The commander sends a whole platoon of soldiers to investigate.
All twelve Arabs disappear over the sand dune, never to be seen again. The
now-slightly-anxious commander dispatches 3 tanks to find out just what in
the heck is going on, and they disappear over the dune, too. Sweat pours
down the commander's forehead as he orders his entire division to overrun
the solitary Israeli behind the sand dune.
But just then, the first soldier reappears on the distant sand dune and cups
his hands to his lips. "Go back!" he shouts. "Go back! It's hopeless-- there's TWO of them!"
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In a survey taken several years ago, all incoming freshman at MIT were asked
if they expected to graduate in the top half of their class. Ninety-seven
percent responded that they did.
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Two drunks are stumbling along a railroad track which happens to go up a
mountain. The first drunk says, "These are the lousiest steps I ever tried
to climb!" The second, who is bent over, replies, "You think that's bad,
wait till you try to hold the handrail!"
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From the Illinois Central Magazine of February 1947
Knowing that the minister was very fond of cherry brandy, one of the church
elders offered to present him with a bottle on one consideration - that the
pastor acknowledge receipt of the gift in the church paper.
"Gladly," responded the good man.
When the church magazine came out a few days later, the elder turned at once
to the "appreciation" column. There he read: "The minister extends his thanks
to Elder Brown for his gift of fruit and for the spirit in which it was given."
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As the White Queen pointed out to Alice, "You've got to go as fast as you
possibly can just to stay in one place; to get anywhere, you got to go faster than that."
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Quote for the Day -- On being Well Rounded
"And every spring, a new graduating class enters the workforce. Some have
a well-rounded view of operating systems, but for many there is only Unix."
- Gord Campbell, InfoAge editorial, Nov 84
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Subject: You Deserve a Break Today
San Francisco (UPI)--In what legal observers are already calling a landmark
decision in the case of Jackson v. California, the California Supreme Court
has recognized for the first time a constitutional right to chicken done right.
The high court held that under the the due process clause and the constitutional
prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, Joseph Jackson, a prisoner at
the California Men's Correctional Institue at Camarillo, is entitled to food
"of fair average quality," or "comparable to the fare at a modest restaurant
or fast-food chain."
Mr. Jackson had complained of the poor quality of the prison kitchen's Coq au Vin ....
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[From Forbes]
When Apple IIc was introduced, the informative copy led off with a couple
of asterisked sentences: "It weighs less than 8 pounds.*" "And costs less than $1,300.**"
In tiny type were these fabulous "fuller explanations":
*Don't asterisks make you suspicious as all get out? Well all
this means is that the IIc alone weights 7.5 pounds. The power
pack, monitor, an extra disk drive, a printer and several bricks
will make the IIc weigh more. Our lawyers were concerned that
you might not be able to figure this out for yourself.
**The FTC is concerned about price fixing. You can pay more if
you really want to. Or less.
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From Harper's Magazine:
Amount of pizza eaten each day in U.S. (acres): 75
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From Dear Abby Dec 12, 1984:
Dear Readers: If You can use a few good laughs today, try these quotes:
"Eighty percent of married men cheat in America. The rest cheat in Europe." -Jackie Mason
"Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is
not original, and the part that is original is not good." -Samuel Johnson
"A man is incomplete until he is married. After that, he is finished." -Zsa Zsa Gabor
"A critic is a man who knows the way, but can't drive the car." -Kenneth Tynan
"France is a country where the money falls apart but you can't tear the toilet
paper." -Billy Wilder
The above quotes are from the book "The Other 637 Best Things Anybody Ever
Said" by Robert Byrne (published by Atheneum). It's $10.95, and worth every cent.
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Found on the seal of a bag of bagels:
NEW
IMPROVED
Made the old
fashioned way
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On a story about the discovery of a 20-million-year-old bear-dog den:
"Den of Antiquity Uncovered"
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Did you hear about the gallant lady in Peru who saved a pulled a drowning
man from a lake, fell in love and got married before the Inca was dry.
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RESPONDING TO A READER WHO COMPLAINED that his radio had been in a repair
shop for two years, the "Action Line" reporter for an Ottawa, Canada,
newspaper, \The Citizen/, claimed it had taken another area resident seven
years to have a black-and-white television set repaired.
According to the story, the set was stolen from the repair shop, then had
to be held as evidence in the thief's trial. After it was returned to the
repair shop, the shop owner died, and while his funeral was going on,
thieves broke into the store and stole the set again.
After being recovered by the police once more(!), the TV was
returned to the original owner, who took it to another repair shop, but
that business went bankrupt, and the receivers liquidating the shop's
assets sold the set accidentally. After being informed of their mistake,
the liquidation company bought the set back and was delivering it to
its owner when it accidentally rolled onto its face and the picture tube
broke.
After a lengthy debate over responsibility for the accident, the liquidating
firm finally agreed to pay, but by then the original manufacturer of the
set had gone out of business and replacement parts were hard to find.
Nevertheless, seven years after it first broke down, the set was finally
repaired. However, on his way home with the TV in the trunk of his
car, the owner was struck from behind by a careening pickup truck. The
set was demolished. (contributed by R. J. Lemaire)
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From Robert C. Cumbow's "Pardon Me Roy, and Other Groaners":
A publisher was dismayed at the manuscript for Robert Louis Stevenson's "A
Child's Garden of Verses." He'd contracted for a children's book, of course,
but he was appalled that Stevenson had delivered a volume of poetry. "It'll
never sell," said the publisher, and informed Stevenson that he was backing
out of the contract. Stevenson, however, gently reminded him that he had
no leg to stand on. "After all," said the author, "I never promised you
a prose garden."
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GET OUT YOUR 'PORTABLE HAND-HELD COMMUNICATIONS INSCRIBERS'
WASHINGTON - When is a pencil not a pencil? When it's on a Pentagon
shopping list - then it's a ''portable hand-held communications
inscriber,'' says a Republican senator.
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Not far from Rank Xerox's office in Welwyn, England, there is a town called
Hitchin. On one of the commonly used routes into Hitchin, there was a junction
which often confused travellers, causing them to make a wrong turn. The
resulting route was nine miles longer than the correct route into Hitchin.
This common mistake was sufficiently irritating that the local people waged
a campaign to have a new signpost erected at the junction. After due process,
the signpost was installed, and the local people showed up for the installation,
holding a sort of mini-festival of celebration.
The local newspaper reported the event with the following headline:
"A Hitchin Sign Saves Nine"
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Sign in a restaurant:
"We reserve the right to serve refuse to anyone."
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According to "The Australian," an airliner recently encountered severe
vibration in flight. The captain decided to make an emergency landing, and
switched on the seat belt sign. The vibration stopped immediately.
A passenger emerged from a lavatory and explained that he had been jogging in
place inside.
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NOBODY EVER HAD A RAINBOW WITHOUT A LITTLE RAIN
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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (The Times of London)
Dear Sir,
I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the
home or to the office, We have more than enough of them foisted upon
us in public places. They are a disgusting Americanism, and can only
result in the farmers being forced to grow smaller potatoes, which in
turn will cause massive unemployment in the already severely depressed
agricultural industry.
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Q: What's the difference between Xerox and the Titanic?
A: The Titanic had a band.
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NO ZAMBODIANS, PLEASE: Judge Rules Out Prince Mongo's Costume
MEMPHIS, Tenn. - A judge has ruled that a defendant can't show up
for trial wearing fur, bones, goggles and pale green body paint, even
if he is from the planet Zambodia. But an attorney for the man who
calls himself Prince Mongo wants to make a federal case out of his
client's 10-day jail sentence for contempt of court. Slug PM-Prince
Mongo. New, may stand. Federal court hearing starts at 1 p.m. EDT.
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Scene on the rear mud-flaps of a large truck
left mud-flap right mud-flap
Passing Side Suicide
/| |\
/ ------ ------ \
\ ------ ------ /
\| |/
El Paso El Cruncho
(spanish) (spanish)
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There is no statute of limitations on stupidity
The average nutritional value of promises is roughly zero
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Re that garbage barge that can't find a home - Heard on the radio as I drove
to work this AM "why don't we ship the garbage barge to Iran and "accidently"
sink it off their coast."
OR
send that barge over, put an American flag on it and wait till THEY sink it.
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Re the statistics..... The best rebuttal to this kind of statistical argument
came from the redoubtable John W. Campbell: The laws of population growth
tell us that approximately half the people who were ever born in the history
of the world are now dead. There is therefore a 0.5 probability that this
message is being read by a corpse.
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1 Billion dollars of budget deficit =1 Gramm-Rudman
6.023 x 10 to the 23rd power alligator pears = Avocado's number
2 pints = 1 Cavort
Basic unit of Laryngitis = the Hoarsepower
Shortest distance between two jokes = A straight line
6 Curses = 1 Hexahex
3500 Calories = 1 Food Pound
1 Mole = 007 Secret Agents = 25 Cagey Bees
1 Dog Pound = 16 oz of Alpo
1000 beers served at a Twins game = 1 Killibrew
2.4 statute miles of surgical tubing at Yale U. = 1 I.V.League
2000 pounds of chinese soup = 1 Won Ton
10 to the minus 6th power mouthwashes = 1 Microscope
Speed of a tortoise breaking the sound barrier = 1 Machturtle
8 Catfish = 1 Octo - Puss
365 Days of drinking Lo-Cal beer. = 1 Lite-year
16.5 feet in the Twilight Zone = 1 Rod Serling
Force needed to accelerate 2.2lbs of cookies
to 1 meter per second = 1 Fig - Newton
one half large intestine = 1 Semicolon
10 to the minus 6th power Movie = 1 Microfilm
1000 pains = 1 Megahertz
1 Word = 1 Millipicture
1 Sagan = Billions & Billions
1 Angstrom: measure of computer anxiety = 1000 nail-bytes
10 to the 12th power microphones = 1 Megaphone
10 to the 6th power Bicycles = 2 megacycles
The amount of beauty required launch 1 ship = 1 Millihelen
Things to be aware of:
The number of feet in a yard is directly proportional to the success of the barbecue.
1 Bananosecond is the amount of time between slipping on the peel and landing
on the pavement.
The amount of weight an evangelist carries with the almighty is measured
in Billigrahams.
If a can of Alpo costs $.38 in our rate of exchange, would it cost $2.50 in
Dog Dollars.
The rate at which a disease spreads through a corn field - the speed of Blight
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Copied from the Sunday Daily Breeze-
Take heart, America. Three monkey wrenches have been thrown into Japan's
well-oiled economic machine. It's only a mater of time before that powerful
engine of productivity begins to sputter and fail.
What could cause such a sharp turnaround? High interest rates? Increased
unemployment? Lower productivity? No, it's something much more economically
debilitating - and permanent.
Three American lawyers have become the first foreign attorneys permitted
to practice law in Japan. What's more, two of them are from New York!
The decline has begun.
Japan has one attorney for every 10,000 residents, compared to the U.S. ratio
of one attorney for every 390 residents. For every 100 attorneys trained
in Japan, there are 1,000 enginerrs. In the United States, that ratio is reversed.
But a law that became effective on April 1 permits foreigners to practice
in Japan for the first time since 1955. Already, an additional 20 American
and six British lawyers have applied for permission to open practices in Japan.
If anything can slow the Japanese economy, it's the presence of American
attorneys. What better way to even our balance of trade than to send Japan
our costliest surplus commodity?
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A chauffeur worked for a woman who took her cat with her on rides.
During one trip, the driver droped her at a mall before he gasing up. The
cat remained in the car, laying down on the top of the limousine's back seat.
The service station's attendant often glanced at unusual passenger. Finally
he asked: "Sir, is that cat someone important?"
Working at a theater box-office ticket window poses many challenges
in dealing with people. When a disgruntled customer at a window exclaimed,
"No Tickets?" What do you mean NO TICKETS?" the women waiting on him smiled
sweeting. "I'm terribly sorry, sir," she replied. "Which word didn't you understand?"
A normally sweet Great Dane Psil has one quirk: she hates United Parcel
Service drivers. While walk Psil one day, around the corner of a house came
a UPS man. Struggling to keep hold of Psil, the owner tried to ease the
situation said, "As you can see, he just loves UPS men." "Don't you feed
her anything else?" he responded.
One student fell into a cycle of classes, studying, working and sleeping.
Didn't realize how long he had neglected writing home until he received
the following note:
"Dear Son, Your mother and I enjoyed your last letter. Of course, we
were much younger then, and more impressionable. Love, Dad."
One women is never happy when she has to wait in line, and people who
try to squeeze in front are a special sore point.
One day a young man at the supermarket stepped up to her just as she
reached the checkout counter. "Mind if I go ahead?" he asked. "I just have
this one can of dog food."
"Goodness, no," she roared, "If you're that hungry, go right ahead!"
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Guidelines for good writing from a recent Omni article:
- Subject and verb always has to agree.
- Do not use a foreign term when there is an adequate English quid pro quo.
- It behooves the writer to avoid archaic expressions.
- Do not use hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it effectively.
- Avoid cliches like the plague.
- Mixed mataphors are a pain in th eneck and should be thrown out the window.
- Placing a comma between subject and predicate, is not correct.
- Parenthetical words however must be enclosed in commas.
- Consult a dictionary frequently to avoid mispelling.
- Don't be redundant.
- Don't repeat yourself or say what you have said before.
- Remember to never split an infinitive.
- The passive voice should not be used.
- Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed.
- Don't use no double negatives.
- Proofread carefully to see if you have any words out.
- Hopefully, you will use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
- Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
- Avoid colloquial stuff.
- No sentence fragments.
- Remember to finish what
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Quite a number of years ago, the Seattle Symphony was doing Beethoven's Ninth
under the baton of Milton Katims.....
Now at this point, you must understand two things:
(1.) There's a quite long segment in this symphony where the bass violins
don't have a thing to do. Not a single note for page after page.
(2.) There used to be a tavern called Dez's 400, right across the street
from the Seattle Opera House, rather favored by local musicians.
It had been decided that during this performance, once the bass players
had played their parts in the opening of the Ninth, they were to quietly
lay down their instruments and leave the stage, rather than sit on their
stools looking and feeling dumb for twenty minutes. Well, once they got
backstage, someone suggested that they trot across the street and quaff
a few brews.
After they had downed the first couple rounds, one said, "Shouldn't we be
getting back? It'd be awfully embarrassing if we were late."
Another, presumably the one who suggested this excursion in the first place,
replied, "Oh, I anticipated we could use a little more time, so I tied a string
around the last pages of the conductor's score. When he gets down to there,
Milton's going to have to slow the tempo way down while he waves the baton
with one hand and fumbles with the string with the other."
So they had another round, and finally returned to the Opera house, a little
tipsy by now. However, as they came back on stage, one look at their
conductor's face told them they were in serious trouble. Katims was furious!
And why not? After all...
It was the bottom of the Ninth,
the basses were loaded,
and the score was tied.
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--
Henry Cate III [cate3@netcom.com]
The Life collection maintainer, selections of humor from the internet
"The Greatest Management Principle in the World" by Michael LeBoeuf:
The things that get rewarded, get done.
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