Shaggy Dog Stories
From Wikipedia:
In its original sense, a shaggy dog story is an extremely long-winded tale featuring extensive narration of typically irrelevant incidents, usually resulting in a pointless or absurd punchline. These stories are a special case ofyarns, coming from the long tradition of campfire yarns. Shaggy dog story has come to also mean a joke where a pun is finally achieved after a long (and ideally tedious) exposition. This is also called a feghoot. The humor in the punch line may be due to the sudden, unexpected recognition of a familiar saying, since the story has nothing to do with the usual context in which the phrase is normally found, yet the listener is surprised to discover it makes sense in both situations. Therefore, if the audience is not already familiar with the phrase used in the punch line, or is not aware of the multiple meanings of the words in the phrase, the surprise ending of the joke cannot be recovered by explaining the joke to the audience.
Isaac Asimov, whose specialties included both science fiction and humor, wrote a short story called “Shah Guido G.,” referring to the story’s Atlantean ruler. The story ends on an anticlimax, and when a reader protested that it was “nothing but a shaggy dog story,” Asimov pointed out that the title “Shah Guido G.” could also be read as “Shahgui [i.e. shaggy] Dog,” indicating this had been his intention.
I prefer the ones with a familiar punch line so I have been collecting them. On with the show.
In its original sense, a shaggy dog story is an extremely long-winded tale featuring extensive narration of typically irrelevant incidents, usually resulting in a pointless or absurd punchline. These stories are a special case ofyarns, coming from the long tradition of campfire yarns. Shaggy dog story has come to also mean a joke where a pun is finally achieved after a long (and ideally tedious) exposition. This is also called a feghoot. The humor in the punch line may be due to the sudden, unexpected recognition of a familiar saying, since the story has nothing to do with the usual context in which the phrase is normally found, yet the listener is surprised to discover it makes sense in both situations. Therefore, if the audience is not already familiar with the phrase used in the punch line, or is not aware of the multiple meanings of the words in the phrase, the surprise ending of the joke cannot be recovered by explaining the joke to the audience.
Isaac Asimov, whose specialties included both science fiction and humor, wrote a short story called “Shah Guido G.,” referring to the story’s Atlantean ruler. The story ends on an anticlimax, and when a reader protested that it was “nothing but a shaggy dog story,” Asimov pointed out that the title “Shah Guido G.” could also be read as “Shahgui [i.e. shaggy] Dog,” indicating this had been his intention.
I prefer the ones with a familiar punch line so I have been collecting them. On with the show.
There was a giant living on the top of a mountain. The peaceful Trid people lived in the valley below. Unfortunately, they had to climb the mountain to go to the next town for supplies. Whenever they did, the giant would kick them off the mountain. In desperation, they called the Rabbi (the closest thing to a holy man they knew) from the neighboring town for help. He climbed the mountain without any problem. He asked the giant how come he didn’t get kicked off. The giant said:
Silly Rabbi, kicks are for Trids
There was a Hawaiian king who decreed that every year his people give him a new throne, grander than the previous year. He would take the old one and put it in his attic. Eventually, the ceiling collapsed and crushed him. Moral:
People who live in grass houses shouldn’t stow thrones.
A man was shipwrecked on an island. Unfortunately, the only inhabitants were a huge flock of terns. Their squawking kept him awake day and night. Finally, he threw rocks at them and thought he had killed them all. He went to sleep on the beach and the last one poked his eyes out with his beak. Moral:
Never leave a single tern unstoned.
All the top chess players show up at a hotel for an important international tournament. They spend the first hour hanging around the lobby telling each other of their recent victories. Their crows get progressively louder and louder as each one tries to outdo the others. The hotel manager gets tired of this, so he throws them out of the lobby and tells them to go to their rooms. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand,” he says:
“it’s chess nuts boasting by an open foyer.”
You'd never believe it, but I bumped into a famous stuntman in a motorcycle shop the other day.
He was complaining because he couldn't decide whether to buy a bike with a high top speed but poor acceleration, or one with lots of torque and a fast acceleration but a poor top speed.
Eventually he decided on the second one because it cost a lot less because…..nuts boasting by an open foyer.”
After all, torque is cheap
A certain lawyer was quite wealthy and had a summer house in the country. Each summer the lawyer would invite a different friend to spend a week or two. On one occasion, he invited a Czechoslovakian friend to stay with him. The friend, eager to get a freebie off a lawyer, agreed. Early one morning, the lawyer and his Czechoslovakian companion went out to pick berries for their breakfast. As they went around the berry patch gathering blueberries and raspberries, along came two huge bears, a male and a female.
The lawyer, seeing the two bears, immediately dashed for cover. His friend, though, wasn’t so lucky. The male bear reached him and swallowed him whole. The lawyer ran back to his Mercedes, tore into town, and got the local sheriff. The sheriff grabbed his shotgun and dashed back to the berry patch with the lawyer. Sure enough, the two bears were still there. “He’s in that one,” cried the lawyer, pointing to the male, while visions of lawsuits from his friend’s family danced in his head. He just had to save his friend. The sheriff looked at the bears, and without batting an eye, leveled his gun, took careful aim, and shot the female. “What did you do that for?” exclaimed the lawyer. “I said he was in the other one!”
“Exactly,” replied the sheriff:
“Would you believe a lawyer who told you the Czech was in the male?”
During Desert Storm, an American Air Force officer met a Saudi Air Force officer. They began to make small talk, and after the discussion had been carrying on for a little while, the Saudi officer decided to pull out his wallet and show pictures of his family to the American. When the American saw the picture of the Saudi’s family, he was shocked. “Hey, that looks like my son,” he said, referring to one of the Saudi officer’s children. “That looks just like my Juan!” The Saudi officer explained. “About 15 years ago, I went to Mexico to drill from oil. While I was there, my wife and I decided to adopt a young boy. We named him Amal and he’s grown up with us.” The American said, “Well, about 15 years ago, my wife and I were stationed at the Mexican embassy. We adopted Juan and now he’s in high school. I wonder if your boy and mine are twins!” Sure enough, the boys had the same birthday and they agreed that the two boys must have been twins. After the war ended, they agreed to meet inLos Angeles and have a big reunion. Of course, the news media received word of this and were eagerly anticipating the arrival of the young boy from the Middle East.
However, to the disappointment of the crowd that had assembled, it was announced that the plane would be over four hours late. Juan’s mother said to the media, “You might as well go home. There’s no point in waiting here.” “Why would we want to do that?” asked a reporter.
“Well,” she replied, “they’re identical twins:
If you’ve seen Juan, you’ve seen Amal.”
Some friars wanted to do more for their flock but their vow of poverty, simple lifestyle and lack of gainful employment meant that their supply of available funds was, to say the least, meager. Nevertheless, they put their collective heads together and came up with the idea of opening a small florist shop. They reasoned that they could grow most of the flowers on the church grounds, and what they couldn’t grow, they could likely pick from the surrounding countryside.
As you can probably guess, everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God and their little business flourished. So much so that the rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close their little shop, but their flower business was providing them with much-needed funds for their good works and they refused. He went back time and again, finally begging the friars to close. By this time, they had tired of the florist’s constant whining and they ignored him. The florist even asked his mother to go and ask the friars to get out of the flower business, but they ignored her, too.
By this time, the florist was nearly bankrupt and in desperation hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town, to “persuade” the good friars to close. Being a man of few morals and even fewer religious convictions, Hugh had no ethical problems with his assigned task and promptly gave the friars a thorough beating and trashed their store. He departed with a stern warning that he’d be back if they didn’t close the shop. Terrified, the friars did so immediately, thereby proving that:
Only Hugh can prevent florist friars.
Ghandi walked barefoot everywhere, to the point that his feet became quite thick and hard. Even when he wasn’t on a hunger strike, he did not eat much and became quite thin and frail. He also was quite a spiritual person. Furthermore, due to his diet, he ended up with very bad breath. He became known as:
A super-calloused fragile mystic plagued with halitosis.
Mercy Hospital in Chicago is run by a group of nuns who came from Australia. Through the years the years they have gone out of their way to maintain ties with their native land—putting up a large map of the country in the reception area, and serving Australian tea from tins decorated with koala bears. One night a patient calls a nun into his room and tells her how much he likes the hospital and the care. But he has one small complaint: he found some leaves in his tea.
“Oh,” the nun says:
“the koala tea of Mercy is not strained.”
There was a man who wanted to help out at his local church. The priest said that the biggest chore that needed doing was painting the inside of the church. The man was quite willing but the priest said there was a bit of a problem. They could only afford 5 gallons of paint for the whole church so he would have to water to it. Skeptical, the man started painting with the watered down paint. Part way through, he told the priest that there still wasn’t enough paint. He was told to add more water. This went on several times and the results were as expected – it looked awful. Once the man completed the job and was showing the results to the priest, there was a clap of thunder, a flash of light. 20 gallons of paint appeared on the floor and a booming voice said:
Repaint thinners and thin no more!
Three explorers had arrived in Africa to explore territory that had never been seen by Europeans before. Immediately upon arrival, they enlisted the services of a native to translate for them and another native to act as a guide. After a few days, they had organized their supplies and secured the services of porters. They were ready at last!
Off they went into the jungle! They had a few days of travel before they got to the area they wished to explore. The travel went smoothly and uneventfully.
The day dawned when they began to travel into the unknown jungle. After a few hours travel, their guide got very excited upon seeing something on the ground. The three explorers and their translator hurried over to see what was the matter. The translator explained, “He says that this is the mark of the Fabulous Foo Bird! They are very rarely seen! They are very lucky!”
The explorers chuckled to themselves at the natives’ superstitions and the safari moved on. After awhile, they heard a horrible squawking from the air above them. As they looked up to see what it was, the sun was briefly hidden as an enormous bird flew overhead. As they were staring, there was a loud squelching sound, followed by cries of disgust from the senior explorer. The other turned to see that he was covered with bird poop. The guide got even more excited when he saw this and began gesturing frantically at the explorer. The translator said, “That was the Fabulous Foo Bird! He says you must not wipe this off! If you leave it on and do not wash it off, you will receive untold wealth and fortune. But he says if you wipe it off, you will die horribly!”
“Nonsense!” said the explorer. He disgustedly cleaned himself up, all the while grumbling about superstitions. The natives began murmuring. They were very nervous. A short time later, the senior explorer was clean and still very much alive. “There! You see? Nothing to worry about!” he said. Three steps later he fell over dead, his body rotting away.
After the shock died down, the guide looked somewhat smug.
The next day, the same squawking was heard, followed by the appearance of the bird. This time, the second explorer was coated in gunk. Once again, the guide issued his hysterical warning. “Poppycock!” said the second explorer. “That was a coincidence. I am not going to trek through Africa coated in bird droppings because of some silly superstition!” He proceeded to clean himself off, but wasn’t even finished before he collapsed dead into a pile of dust.
After the shock died down, the guide again looked somewhat smug.
The next day, the same squawking was heard, followed by the appearance of the bird. This time, the youngest (and only remaining) explorer was coated in gunk. Once again, the guide issued his hysterical warning. The nervous young explorer decided to play it safe and continue the exploration in his filthy state. This met with great approval by the natives.
The expedition continued and proved to be a smashing success, with great discoveries. The young explorer received incredible accolades and lived a very long and wealthy life.
From then on, enterprising explorers were always given this sage advice:
If the foo shits, wear it.
High in the Andes, there are huge, fierce birds called Rarris that have the absolutely best tasting eggs in the world. One brother wanted to show his younger brother how to harvest the eggs without getting hurt. The two of them snuck up on a nest, the older brother gave the surprised female a shove and then grabbed two eggs and ran. The younger brother wanted to try it so they found another nest. He snuck up on the female, gave a shove and she wacked him on the head with her beak and slapped him with her wings. The older brother pulled him away from the beating and told him:
That’s the wrong way to tip a Rarri
Once upon a time there was a large and prosperous Kingdom run by a wise and powerful King. Then disaster struck in the form of a strange plague, which caused people to sicken and die horribly within a few weeks. The population of the Kingdom was declining rapidly. All the physicians in the land were called to the Kingdom, but none of them had any idea of what to do about this new disease.
The oldest of the physicians said that he had once heard that many years ago, when his grandfather was a boy, the Kingdom had been struck by just such a mysterious sickness. The pestilence had been ended with a magic potion prepared by an old sorceress. It was said that she was still alive, but her home was in the middle of the Dark Forest.
“The Dark Forest!” everyone gasped. They all knew that the Dark Forest was the most dangerous place in the region. Perhaps the most dangerous place in the entire world, for in the Dark Forest lived the Yellow Fingers, which grabbed any traveler who entered and would squeeze him to death. But no one could come up with another plan to save the Kingdom, so it was decided that someone had to defy the Yellow Fingers and find the ancient sorceress in the middle of the Dark Forest.
The King called his bravest Knight and explained the situation. Without hesitation, the brave Knight marched off into the forest ... and was never heard from again.
The King then called his second bravest Knight. The second bravest Knight hesitated for a moment before going into the fatal forest. But once he went in ... and was never heard from again.
So the King called his third and fourth bravest Knights, who took a bit more persuading. None of them ever returned from the forest. Finally the remaining Knights, who were not very brave at all, went into hiding.
The King was reduced to a state of despair. Then one of the King’s young pages, came to him and offered to go into the Dark Forest and get the magic potion from the old sorceress.
The King was touched by the boy’s foolish bravery, but he said, “Don’t you realize that the Dark Forest is the home of the Yellow Fingers, and that many of my bravest Knights have perished there?”
The boy said that he knew all about it, but he was still quite sure that he would be able to accomplish his mission. In the end the King reluctantly agreed to let the page go. He was so desperate that he didn’t know what else to do.
The Page walked off into the Dark Forest, and the King confidently expected never to see him again. Therefore the King was not merely surprised but very nearly hysterical with joy when, two days later, the Page came walking out of the Dark Forest clutching the formula for the magic potion that would save the Kingdom.
“How did you do it?” cried the King
The page just smiled, and said:
“From now on let your Pages do the walking through the Yellow Fingers.”
I remember it was about that time that Jim Sloane used to work in our Finance Branch. Now that was a character. He was, in my opinion, an unusual individual who was interested in some rather exotic subjects. The most unusual thing about him was his pet, (rumored to have been captured somewhere in Africa) which reminded me of a piece of granite with eyes, which he called Teddy. Teddy typically just sat there, doing nothing, but sometimes it lifted a lower edge and sucked in powdered sugar. That was all it ate. No one ever saw it move, but every once in a while it wasn’t where people thought it was. There was a theory that it moved when no one was looking.
Bob Laverty, a Management Services employee, constantly ridiculed poor Teddy, saying mean and nasty things about it. Laverty’s pet looked like an iguana, and to me, at least, was the ugliest looking thing that you would ever want to see. He called this ‘iguana’ by the unlikely name of Dolly.
Well, one day Sloane had had enough of these comments, and challenged Laverty to a race. His Teddy against Laverty’s Dolly. And to make things a bit more interesting, he suggested a rather hefty wager on the outcome, which Laverty quickly agreed to. Soon everyone got into the act. Every one of them bet on Dolly. At least it moved. Sloane covered it all. He’d been saving his salary for some time (for some exotic project, no doubt) and put every penny of it on Teddy.
The race course was set in the basement garage. At one end, two bowls were set out, one with powdered sugar for Teddy, and another with ground meat for Dolly. Dolly started off at once and began moving along the floor slowly toward the meat. All in attendance cheered it on.
Teddy just sat there without budging.
“Sugar, Teddy. Sugar.” said Sloane, pointing. Teddy did not move. It looked more like a rock than ever, but Sloane did not seem concerned.
Finally, when Dolly had ‘ran’ half-way across the garage, Sloane said casually to Teddy, “If you don’t get out there, Teddy, I’m going to get a hammer and chip you into pebbles.”
That was when people realized how truly different Teddy was. Sloane had no sooner made his threat when Teddy just disappeared from it’s place and re-appeared smack on top of the sugar.
Sloane won, of course, and he counted his winnings slowly and luxuriously.
Laverty said bitterly, “You knew the damn thing would do that.”
“No, I didn’t,” said Sloane, “but I knew he would win. It was a sure thing.”
“How come?”, said Laverty.
“It’s an old saying everyone knows:
Sloane’s Teddy wins the race.”
Freddy Fish and Sam Clam were the best of friends, and did everything together. One day, though, both perished in a freak mishap. Freddy Fish went to heaven, and immediately looked around for his best friend. Not finding him, he asked St. Peter where Sam was.
“Sorry, he didn’t make it in.”
“You mean he’s down there?” asked Freddy.
“Yes.”
“Well, I want to go see him!”
“This is highly unorthodox,” said St. Peter. “I’ll ask the big guy.”
Moments later St. Peter returned and said:
“You can go, but you can only stay for one hour.”
“Great!” said Freddy, and grabbed his harp before anyone changed their minds. He went to the elevator, and went down.
When the elevator doors opened, Freddy saw a huge sign:
SAM’S DISCOTHEQUE
He went in, and discovered that it was run by his old friend. They sat down and reminisced about old times, and had a few drinks. Time flew by, and when Freddy noticed his watch, he saw that he had fifteen seconds left to return. He jumped out of his chair, yelled a goodbye to Sam Clam, and raced to the elevator.
The elevator doors opened in heaven with only one second to spare. St. Peter was standing there with a stopwatch.
“You just barely made it,” said St. Peter.
“I know,” panted Freddy, out of breath. “But I have to go back there!”
“What do you mean!?!” asked an incredulous St. Peter.
So Freddy Fish says (* groan *):
“I left my harp in Sam Clam’s Disco!”
The armies of Alexander the Great were greatly feared in their day, but there was one problem that they had that almost defeated them. Alexander could not get his people to staff meetings on time. He always held the meetings at 6:00PM each day after the day’s battle was done, but frequently his generals either forgot or let the time slip up on them and missed the staff meeting. This angered Alexander very much, to say the least!
So he called in his research guys and set up a project to come up with a method of determining the time at 6:00PM each day. There were no clocks in those days, at least none that could be carried around. (The smallest was a giant water clock) “Find a way my staff can determine the hour of the day, or at least when it gets to be 6 o’clock!”, he said, “Cost is no object.”
A study was instituted and, with several brain-storming sessions, came up with the following idea. In a land some distance away, there grew a bush whose berries contained a type of dye that changed color at 6 each evening. They found that by dyeing strips of cloth and issuing them to the generals, they could see when it was 6 by the color change, and could get to the meetings on time. Needless to say this pleased Alexander very much.
It was then turned over to the marketing group to come up with a name of this new invention as Alexander saw definite market potential in the strips. “It can be worn on the wrist and can be easily watched for the color change”, said one junior executive. “I therefore propose to call it the wrist watch.” This name was immediately hooted down as being too bland and obvious. Another man suggested it be worn in the navel and could be observed by looking down, therefore it should called the Navel Observatory. This idea was rejected out of hand as being too weird and too technical sounding for the general public.
Finally the senior vice president, who up to now had been silent, spoke and rendered his decision. “We shall call it a Timeband, and in honor of the Great Alexander, it shall be known as:
‘Alexander’s Rag Timeband!’
A doctor was just starting out on his own, when he found that he just had too much work to do. Now this man was brilliant, and had particularly good people skills. Once he got a patient, they would just not see anyone else.
It seems that this man had been reading recently about the advances in cloning, and decided to have a clone made of himself to do his work.
For years it worked perfectly. His clone took care of all his patients, and he got to relax. However, the clone began to have some personality disorders. it would insult patients, and treat them very badly. It got so bad that business was suffering. The doctor decided that he just had to get rid of the clone or loose his business.
So......one morning on their morning jog.... they jogged right over a bridge. The doctor pushed the clone over to his death.
The doctor again began seeing his old patients, and things were going exceptionally well, until a fisherman “caught” the dead clone body in the river. When the police found that the real doctor was still, in fact, alive, and that this was a clone, they didn’t know just what to charge the doctor for doing wrong. After much deliberation, they decided to charge him for:
Making an obscene clone fall.
There was this western town whose ranchers were being bothered by a cougar. This cougar had attacked the ranchers livestock on many occasions. The ranchers in this town hired the famous Roy Rogers to lead a posse to track down this cougar and kill him.
Roy lead this posse wearing his brand new alligator skin boots. he had just acquired them as was very proud of the way they looked.
After tracking the cougar for a number of days, they finally came upon him. Roy took a shot but missed, letting the cougar get away. That night the posse set up camp. While everyone was sleeping, the cougar attacked the campsite, but was chased off without anyone getting hurt. Unfortunately in the foray, the cat did destroy Roy alligator skin boots.
Roy was very upset about losing his new boots. He rode back to town (which was painful without boots), got an old pair of boots, and went out after the cougar by himself. After a few days of tracking, he caught up with the cougar. He picked up his rifle, aimed, and with one shot, killed the cougar.
He placed the cougar on the back of the horse and rode back to town with it. As the ranchers in town saw the carcass on the back of the horse they came out and cheered Roy’s success. As he rode up in front of the hotel, surrounded by cheering ranchers and townfolk, Dale Evans came out of the hotel and asked:
“Pardon me, Roy, is that the cat that chewed your new shoes?”
A giant panda escaped from the zoo in New York. Eventually, he found his way downtown and walked into a restaurant, where he found a seat at an emptey table. The maitre d’, being a native New Yorker figures he’s seen stranger things than this so he sends over a waiter to take the panda’s order. In due course the panda’s meal arrives and he eats. After he finishes his dinner he stands up, calmly pulls out a gun from God-knows-where he had it hidden, and blows away several customers and a couple of the waiters. Then he turns around and walks toward the door. Naturally, the maitre d’ is horrified. He stops the panda and demands an explanation, at the very least.
The panda says to him, “What do I look like to you”? The maitre d’ answers, “Well, a giant panda, of course.” “That’s right,” says the panda, “Look it up,” and he walks out. The maitre d’ calls the police. When they arrive the maitre d’ relates the whole story to them, including the panda’s comment about looking it up. So the chief detective sends a rookie out to get an encyclopedia. He eventually returns with the Encyclopedia Brittanica, Volume P. The detective looks up “panda”, and there’s the answer:
“Giant panda, lives in China, eats shoots and leaves.”
There was a snake called Nate. His purpose in life was to stay in the desert and guard the lever. This lever was no ordinary lever. It was the lever that if moved would destroy the world. Nate took his job very seriously. He let nothing get close to the lever. One day off in the distance he saw a cloud of dust. He kept his eye on it because he was guarding the lever. The dust cloud continued to move closer to the lever. Nate saw that it was a huge boulder and it was heading straight for the lever! Nate thought about what he could do to save the world. He decided if he could get in front of the boulder he could deflect it and it would miss the lever. Nate slithered quickly to intersect the boulder. The boulder ran over Nate, but it was, in fact, deflected, leaving history to conclude:
That is was better Nate than lever.
There were 3 pregnant squaws who slept on animal skins. One slept on a deer skin, one on an elk skin, and one on a hippo skin.
The first two squaws had sons. The squaw on the hippo skin had twin sons.
What does this prove?:
The squaw of the hippopotamus are equal to the sons of the squaws of the other two hides.
Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, was innocently leaping from tree to tree one fine day, when a band of crazed cannibals ambushed and killed him. They devoured him almost immediately, except for the lining of his stomach which they stretched over a hollow log to make a bongo drum, and gave it to the son of the chief cannibal. The boy was delighted with his new drum and played it constantly for weeks. Until one day, he came crying to his father the chief. “Daddy,” he whimpered, “my bongo drum rotted away.” “Son,” replied the chief:
“You can’t play ‘Tarzan’s Tripe Forever.’”
One hot and dry day in the Wild West, this dog walks into a saloon and says, “Gimme a beer”. Evidently this type of thing wasn’t too rare ‘round those parts because the bartender said, “I’m sorry, but we don’t serve dogs here.” The dog then took out a silver dollar, dropped it on the bar, and said, “Look, I got money, and I want a beer.” This scene had the potential to get ugly. The bartender, getting a little irate, said one more time, “We do not serve dogs here. Please leave.” The dog growled, so the bartender pulled out a gun and shot the dog in the foot! The dog yelped, and ran out the door.
The next day, the swinging bar doors were tossed open and in walks the dog that had been in the saloon the day before. He was dressed all in black. A black cowboy hat, a black vest, three black cowboy boots and one black bandage. The dog looks around, waits for the talking to quiet down, and says:
“I’m lookin’ fer the man who shot my paw.”
Buford, a fairly handsome Southern Bullfrog, hops into a bank lobby one day, brief case neatly tucked under his right foreleg. Buford hops up to the first open teller window and sits down in front of a teller, Miss Mary Greene. He announces, “I need a loan.”
Miss Greene, not wanting to look too uncool with this frog talking to her, pauses only briefly to reflect on this situation, then says, “Well, the Everglades Savings and Loan doesn’t usually give loans to amphibians.” Quickly opening the brief case, Buford produces construction permits and blueprints. Showing them to Miss Greene, he says, “But I need a loan. You see I have this construction project in mind. Down in the swamp, we need affordable housing for all my in-laws and out-laws. I have the permits. Freddy, an architect newt friend of mine has drawn up the plans. Everything is approved and in order. So you see, all I need is the financing.”
For Miss Greene, this is getting stranger by the moment. It isn’t enough that there is this talking frog only inches in front of her, but now he is talking about plans, permits and a newt architect. Just before she loses it completely, Miss Greene blurts out, “I can’t help you. You must see our loan officer, Miss Black. Wait here for a moment and I’ll get her.”
Miss Greene is gone for a while. After several minutes of animated conversation at the other side of the bank she returns with the loan officer. “Hello, I’m Miss Patricia Black, the Loan Officer here. How can I help you?” Well, Buford goes through his speech once again, tells her about the plans and permits, about the housing and his friend Freddy the newt architect. Thinking she could put an end to this foolishness quickly, Miss Black asks, “What do you have to put up for collateral for a loan? You must have something of value to mortgage against a loan like this.”
Buford digs into his brief case once more. “I have this!” he exclaims as he draws forth a crystal trinket on a silver chain. “I can’t give you a loan based on this THING,” Miss Black says, pointing at Buford’s treasure. Buford begs. He pleads. Finally, Buford demands to see the bank manager. Miss Greene, the teller, leaves for a moment to get the bank manager. Another animated conversation ensues at the other side of the bank. The manager comes over and asks “What’s the problem, Miss Black?” “Well, Mr. Brown...” and the Loan Manager explains that the frog wants to take out a loan, to construct housing in the swamp for his in-laws and out-laws and he has plans and permits, but all he has is this trinket as collateral. The manager bemused by this whole situation, takes the trinket in hand, examines it carefully, then hands it back to Buford saying:
“It’s a knick knack, Patty Black. Give the frog a loan.”
OR……
Mick Jagger’s dog goes into a bank to apply for a loan. The loan officer, Patricia Wack, is an open minded person so she figures, ‘why not?’ She explains to the dog that he will need collateral for the loan – something of value that the bank would own if he defaults on the loan. He puts a small ceramic guitar on her desk. She is in the middle of explaining that the guitar is not sufficient collateral when the bank manager stick’s his head in her office and says:
It's a knick knack, Patty Whack. Give the dog a loan. His old man's a rolling stone.
So the Soviets got sick of buying wheat from the Americans and began to spend millions on research into grains. Finally U.S. intelligence found out that the Soviet scientists had developed a new grain that yielded twice the harvest of conventional wheat and grew in half the time. Several agents died before it was discovered that the new grain was called “Krilk”. The CIA was panicked! Without the Soviet dependency on American grains the security of the West could be forever compromised.
Congress quickly convened and appropriated several hundred million dollars for the CIA to send up spy satellites over Russia to learn the secrets of Krilk. Finally, after several years, the satellites began to send back images of the factory deep in the Soviet Union that was processing the Krilk. The CIA sent in over a hundred agents. None returned. The process remained a secret. The satellites were next to useless because they could only see the outside of the building, not the actual milling of the harvests. Finally the Soviet Ambassador in Washington sent a message to the President of the U.S.to let him know that all further attempts to learn the secrets would be futile.
The message read....”You are wasting your money….
Everyone knows that it’s no use spying over milled Krilk!”
It came to pass that a very poor peasant was down to his last meal.
Deciding he could no longer live in squalor, he decide to sell the only thing he owned... his talking mule. This was no ordinary Francis type of talking mule, this one could tell jokes and sing and keep the local townspeople very happy. With much regret, the peasant sets off to the big city to sell his mule.
He sets up on a street corner and the mule draws an immediate crowd. The mule is so funny that the crowds can’t remain standing because they’re laughing so hard. Finally, a man comes up to the peasant and says “I’m a talent scout for The Tonight Show. I MUST have your mule for our show.” Unfortunately, the talent scout had just been pickpocketed, and had lost his wallet. The only thing of value he had was a subway token. He convinced the peasant to trade the mule for the “Magic Token of Good Fortune” and secured the mule.
On the way home, the peasant realized that he had been taken, and he was broken hearted. He used his subway token to get him to the edge of the city. When he put the token in the slot, alarms went off and he was notified that he was the 1 billionth rider of the subway, and that he just won 50 million dollars.
Meanwhile, the Mule was so funny that he took over Jay’s job, and eventually put Dave, Conan, John and every other late nighter out of business. The Morale of the story:
A Mule that is funny is soon bartered.
There once was this man who was looking for a job. He applied for a bus driver’s job at the county board of education. The head of the school board granted him an interview. During the interview the man was told there was only one bus driver job left, the one that drove the special education bus. The man said he would take the job but the school offical asked that he look at the bus first. They went outside down a row of yellow school buses and at the end was a small van with Seasame Street characters painted all over it. The man was a little reluctant at first but the official told him all the kids would be at the bus stops and all he had to do was pick them up in the morning and take them home in the evening. The man need the job badly so he took it.
The first day on the job he comes to the bus stop and there is a little girl standing there who is very fat. She gets on the bus and the driver says, “Hi! What’s your name?” The girl replies, “My name is Patty” and takes a seat. He comes to the next stop and there is another little girl there who is fatter than the first. She gets on the bus and the driver asks, “What your name?”. She says “My name is Patty” then takes a seat by the first girl.
At the next stop there is a little boy standing there. When he gets on the bus he says, “Hi I’m Ross and I’m special.” At the next stop there is another little boy standing there and when asked his name he says, “Hi I’m Lester Cheatum”. Lester takes the seat behind the driver, pulls off his shoes. He starts picking the loose skin on his bunions and throwing it at the driver. This being the last stop, the driver takes the group of special kits to school.
This same scene happens every day for a week. On Friday the driver goes into the superintendent’s office and say, “I quit! I can’t take it anymore!”
When asked why the driver says, “Every day it’s the same thing!:
Two obese Patty’s, special Ross, Lester Cheatum picking bunyons on a Seasame Street bus”.
During the French Revolution, the “common people” were intent on ridding themselves of all vestiges of the Royalty and nobility. The Reign of Terror ensued and all nobility was hunted down. Some were allowed to leave the country, however most were executed at the guillotine. One nobleman in particular had sent his family into hiding in hopes of saving them. Soon he was caught. The crowd searched in vain for his family, but they were well hidden. Threats were made but he always replied, “I’ll never tell!”. Finally the crowd dragged him to the guillotine and offered to let he and his family leave the country if he would only disclose their location. Again he replied “I’ll never tell!”. They dragged him up onto the platform next to the horrible machine and asked him again. Still he replied “I’ll never tell!”. They laid his neck across the cutting board and asked him once more. Again he replied “I’ll never tell!”. They slowly hoisted the blade and again asked for the location of his family. Weakly he replied “ I’ll never tell”. They waited to see if his resolve would fail, he remained silent. Just as the executioner pulled the release and the blade began to fall the Count called out “Wait, I’ll tell, I’ll t.....” The moral to this story:
Don’t hatchet your Count before he chickens!
King Arthur sends Sir Lancelot out on an important mission to deliver a message to the king of Spain. It is a long distance, and Lancelot looks in the Kingdom for a good horse to take him there. His own horse is sick, and all he can find is an old mare, but, since he has to leave quickly, he takes the mare. About 3 days out of the Kingdom, Lancelot realizes his mistake. The horse gets tired and appears to be going lame. He finally makes it to a small village and gets to the Inn. He goes up to the Innkeeper and explains his problem. That is, he needs a good horse so that he can fulfill his mission to deliver the message for the king. The Innkeeper replies that this is only a small village, and most of the horses around are not up to the task. He is welcome to look around, however, and if he can find anything, he is certainly welcome to it.
Lancelot looks around the village, and true as the Innkeeper has said, no good horse is to be found. As Lancelot is about to give up, he comes across a stable boy carting some feed. He asks the stable boy if there is any beast of burden in the village that he can use to fulfill his mission. The stable boy thinks for a minute, and starts to reply no, but then says, go see if Old Mange in the barn can help you.
Lancelot goes over to the barn expecting to find a horse. What he finds is a very large dog: almost as large as a pony. The dog is a mess, however. It is mangy, parts of its fur are falling off, and it is full of fleas. Lancelot is desperate at this point, and he looks it over carefully. It does, however, appear to be strong enough to take him to Spain (which is only 3 days away at this point).
Lancelot goes back to the Innkeeper, and acknowledges that he cannot find a horse in the village that he can use. He says, however that this dog, Old Mange, might be able to take him most (if not all) of the way to his destination. The Innkeeper hears this, stiffens up, and says :
Sir. I wouldn’t send a Knight out on a dog like that.
Outside a small Macedonian village close to the border between Greece and strife-torn Yugoslavia, a lone Orthodox nun keeps quiet watch over a silent convent. She is the last caretaker of a site of significant historical developments spanning more than 2,000 years. When Sister Maria Cyrilla of the Order of the Perpetual Vigil dies, the convent of St. Elias will be closed by the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Macedonia. However, that isn’t likely to happen soon, as Sister Maria, 53, enjoys excellent health. By her own estimate, she walks 10 miles daily about the grounds of the convent, land which once served as a base for the army of Attila the Hun.
In more ancient times, a Greek temple to Eros, the god of love, occupied the hilltop site. Historians say that Attila took over the old temple in 439 A.D. and used it as a base for his marauding army.
The Huns are believed to have first collected and then destroyed a large collection of Greek legal writs at the site. It is believed that Attila wanted to study the Greek legal system and had the writs and other documents brought to the temple. Scholars differ on why he had the valuable documents destroyed - either because he was barely literate and couldn’t read or because they provided evidence of democratic government that did not square with his own notion of rule by an all-powerful tyrant.
When the Greek Church took over the site in the 15th Century and the convent was built, church leaders ordered the pagan statue of Eros destroyed, so another ancient Greek treasure was lost. Today, there is only the lone sister, watching over the old Hun base, amidst the strife of war-torn Yugoslavia, and when she is no longer, the story will be over. That’s how it ends:
No Huns, no writs, no Eros, and nun left on base.
An old man lived with his hound-dog, Mace, in a run-down shack on the outskirts of town. He had no family and only a few meager possessions: a table and chair, a bed, a bag of hand tools, and his dog. He used the tools to do odd jobs in town, for which he usually would be paid enough to get food for the next day. Mace and his master lived from one day to the next on what little these jobs would bring in. The dog was just a normal hound, with one exception: while most dogs like to chew on grass occasionally, Mace loved it. When the old man was in town, Mace would spend the day in the yard in front of the house, chewing away on the lawn.
One bright, sunny day the old man said goodbye to his dog and headed into town to work. He had a plumbing repair job in one of the homes there that would take him most of the day and would probably pay enough for food for the remainder of the week, if he managed the money carefully. He headed for town with a spring in his step and a whistle on his lips. Inside the house and ready to start, the old man reached in the bag for his wrench.
To his surprise, he didn’t feel it. He dug around again, but there didn’t seem to be any wrench. He looked in the bag, then dumped its contents on the floor, but still no wrench. Reality set in. Without a wrench he couldn’t finish the job, and without the pay he couldn’t even buy food for that night’s supper, let alone for tomorrow. When he finally came to grips with reality, he told the lady who hired him what the situation was. While she sympathized with his situation, the job needed to be done. If the old man couldn’t do it, she would have to hire someone else.
The old man packed up his tools and headed home, head bowed and shoulders stooped. The whistle was gone and no longer was there a spring in his step. A walk that normally took 15 minutes seemed to last forever. But finally the old shack came into view, and there was Mace in the distance, munching away as usual on the lawn. When the dog saw his master, he came running, tail wagging, telling the old man how glad he was to see him. Kneeling beside the hound, the man began to pet him, and through tear-filled eyes told the dog that there would be no supper tonight and no food for tomorrow. What’s more, without money to buy a new wrench, he had no idea what the future held. It was the loneliest, most helpless feeling he ever had! Then he caught a glimpse of something shining in the grass. As the old man went over to see what this piece of shining material was, his despair turned in an instant to joy! It was the wrench! The old man had dropped it on his way out that morning, and it would have been lost forever had Mace not been eating farther away from the house than he usually did! The old man grabbed the dog, gave him a hug that almost suffocated him, and ran into the house. Reaching for a stub of pencil and the only piece of paper he had, he wrote a moving tribute to his canine companion. Few people have ever heard these words...until now, that is. One man who did happen to read them changed them a bit and has his name recorded in music history. The old man never did get the credit he deserved. But now you are privileged to read the beginning line of his original poem, which went:
“A grazing Mace, how sweet the hound that saved a wrench for me.”
There were a group of scientists who were researching extending life, a noble cause. They had great success with porpoises in particular. They found that if they were fed baby seagulls, the aging process stopped completely. Unfortunately, this was depleting the seagull population and the animal rights people tried their best to stop it. Finally, they got two lions to protect the local seagull population. Not to be stopped with this monumental research, the scientists got a tranquilizer gun and shot the lines. They were caught red-handed with the baby gulls and were charged with:
Transporting underage gulls across sedate lions for immortal porpoises.
On a bright and sunny morning in May, Farmer Jones went out to plow his fields. He led old Bessie, his plow horse, out of the barn and hitched her up to the plow. The aroma of newly plowed earth wafted behind him as he produced a ruler straight furrow across the field. Suddenly his reverie was broken as a strong earthquake struck. As the ground shook beneath his feet, he fell to his knees. His plow fell over almost on top of him, as did old Bessie. But, beyond the fence in the next field, the bull remained standing.
Farmer Jones stood, dusted himself off, and grabbed the reins to right old Bessie. He pulled the plow upright, hitched up the horse again and began to plow. Shaken somewhat by the strange experience, the furrow began to zig a little from side to side as Bessie pulled the plow blade through the fertile ground. After only a few seconds a strong aftershock rolled through the farm. Again it was strong enough to knock Farmer Jones from his feet, topple his plow, and with a loud protest, drive old Bessie to the ground. This time the farmer looked back across the field toward the house and noticed that the goats and cows had fallen over, too .... But, beyond the fence in the next field, the bull remained standing.
Shaken and puzzled, Farmer Jones picked himself up and dusted off his overalls. Righting the horse and plow, he quieted old Bessie as best he could. She seemed more rattled by all this that he was. As strong as the two earthquakes were, Farmer Jones could not understand how the bull remained standing. So he started toward the other field to see if he could find out what was going on with the bull. As he crossed the field, and climbed through the fence into the field where the bull stood, a very strong aftershock struck—much worse than either of the preceding earthquakes—putting him on the ground flat on his face. Looking behind himself he saw Old Bessie and the plow had fallen down again. Down toward the house the goats and cows had fallen down again. In fact, this aftershock was so strong that the chickens had fallen over as well. The front porch on the farmhouse had crashed down and the walls looked as though they would not last much longer. But, only a few feet away from him, the bull remained standing.
He picked himself up, dusted off, and without bothering to right either horse or plow, marched toward the bull. Shaken to the core, puzzled and angry, Farmer Jones shouted, demanding to know why everything on the farm had been knocked over by the earthquakes and the bull had remained on his feet. Much to Farmer Jones’ astonishment, the bull replied,
“We bulls wobble, but we don’t fall down!”
There was a man on an extended business trip who developed an embarrassing problem. Every time he passed gas, the noise sounded like ‘honda’. Finally he had to cut the trip short because it was disturbing his meetings. His wife was thrilled to see him home early but every time they tried to get amorous, he would pass gas and she would start laughing hysterically, ruining the moment. Having had enough, he went to see his doctor and the doctor told him it was easy to fix, after all:
Abstinence makes the farts go Honda.
It seems there was a friendly little bar right next to a medical training hospital in the big city. Many of the doctors and nurses would stop in there on their way home, after long shifts in the hospital. One day, a local college student named Gina, intent on earning book money for the next term, came into the bar looking for a job as an evening bartender. As it happened, one of the bartenders had just quit, providing the needed open position. The owner was quite happy to give her the position and began her training that evening.
As she was being briefed about the "regulars", the subject of one of the more unusual doctors came up. Every day, at the end of his shift, one particular Doctor Avery came in for a rather unusual drink. He always ordered a Walnut Daiquiri. A Walnut Daiquiri is a strange drink -- not the kind of fruity drink one would expect. It was thought the good doctor must have invented it for himself, finding some special pleasure in the taste of walnuts.
A few days later Doctor Avery arrived just as the new bartender, Gina, was going on duty. When queried as to his desired libation, as expected, the doctor ordered a Walnut Daiquiri. The bar tender set about making the daiquiri, and discovered to her horror that there were no walnuts to be found. She quickly searched behind the bar, the refrigerators and in the back room. Nothing! She was in a fix -- she wanted to keep Doctor Avery as a good customer, and didn't want him to complain to her boss. Thinking quickly, she searched once again for something to substitute. Finding another nut ... figuring that this was a weird drink to begin with, and after a long day, the doctor wouldn't notice, anyway.
Setting the drink before the doctor, she could see a certain relief come over the him, as at the end of a hard day, he anticipated the refreshment that awaited him. The doctor raised the glass to his lips, took a big swallow, and coughing and sputtering, demanded to know if she were attempting to poison him. "Young lady, exactly WHAT is this you have just given me?" he demanded. Putting on her best innocent face, Gina the new bartender replied,
"Well, that's a Hickory Daiquiri, Doc!"
OK, you know that in Hollywood, every movie producer has his "Yes Man" whose job is to follow the producer around and say, "Yes, CB", "Right, CB" and so on. Well, one of these Yes Men got depressed, so down in fact that he was unable to function. So he consulted a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist quickly determined the problem, and told the Yes Man that he just had to find a release for his negative feelings, and say "No."
"But if I said 'no' I'd get fired!" The yes man protested.
The psychiatrist said, "Oh, I don't mean on the job, I mean go out to the Grand Canyon and find a ledge off the trail, and there you can yell 'NO!' to your heart's content and no one will be the wiser."
Well, the Yes Man decided to try it. He went to the Grand Canyon and found a spot off the trail, and stood there and very timidly said, "no." It felt good, so he tried it a little louder, "No." Even better! soon he was shouting "NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!!!!" at the top of his lungs and feeling great.
He went back to work a changed man, and said "Yes!" with all the proper enthusiam, because on the weekend he could escape to the Grand Canyon and say "NO!" Other Yes men decided to try this also, and soon every weekend the Grand Canyon was crammed with Yes Men shouting "NO!"
A new Yes Man came to Hollywood, and he too felt the need of such a release, but when he tried to find a ledge in the Grand Canyon, all of them seemed to be taken. He hunted and hunted, but everyplace he found was already taken by another Yes Man.
Finally he found a small ledge which had been overlooked because of its size. Thankfully he scurried out on it and stood there and said "No." It felt great! So he wound up and released an enormous "NO!" and in so doing lost his balance and fell to his death. Which just goes to prove that:
a little No Ledge can be a dangerous thing.
Ft. Worth - The Ft. Worth Zoo today has an animal which may be the rival of Co-Co the gorilla. Maddie the Gnu was to be moved to her new home in the Zoo this morning, but until the Gnu's Pen could be readied, Richard Leak, the Zoo's African Fauna expert, advised leaving Maddie in the bathroom. The bathroom had been almost complete except for tiling the floor. This morning the floor was completely tiled.
Zoo officials insist that no one was in that bathroom all night except the wildebeast. If that is true, the Wildebeast managed to tile 350 sq. feet of public bathroom in one night.
"These animals have capabilities we simply cannot know," was Richard Leak's comment on the subject.
Leak also lent some insight on the circumstances of the animal's arrival: "[The Fort Worth Zoo] had recently been given a large donation to make 'real wildlife' accessible to the public, so I was asked to find ... perfectly average animals for the zoo. This was supposed to be an absolutely typical wildebeast."
The bathroom mentioned is a large public bathroom adjacent to the gnu's living area. The new marble tiling for which Maddie is purportedly responsible was described as "excellent, an incredible job" by the professional tiler who arrived today to do the job.
Both the new bathroom and the new animals are being funded by the same grant from Telco Corporation's president and CEO, Linda Skarst. Ms. Skarst is a wildlife activist and felt that exposure to real animals in their natural environments would encourage children to become comfortable with wild animals.
When asked if Maddie could still qualify as an average representative of her species after this incident, Ms. Skarst replied, "Oh, yes! This just proves that Maddie is:
a typical gnu and a tiler, too."
It seems there were two frogs sitting on a lily pad, when all of a sudden, a fly came along. One frog put out his tongue, ate the fly, and started laughing hysterically. Soon the other frog joined in the laughter.
Later in the day, the other frog ate a fly and the two frogs burst out in laughter. As time went on, the frogs enjoyed the flies so much that the sight of a fly would cause them to double up with pleasure (if it's possible for frogs to double up!). But of course, the most pleasure came when the fly was actually eaten.
A third frog hopped up to the first two and asked what was so funny. The first frog answered "Time." "Huh?" asked the third frog. The second frog explained:
"Time's fun when you’re having flies."
An anthropology grad student discovered a remote tribe of very tiny people, only 6 inches tall, known as the Putz. Knowing that nobody would believe him otherwise, he decided to capture some of them and bring them home. So he put several of them in a shoe box and brought them back to the US.
When he got the building where he was to meet with his professor, he decided that the Putz needed some fresh air and sun (after being cooped up in a shoe box for several days) so he left them on the steps to bask in the sun. Wouldn't you know, shortly after he went in, there was a fire in the building, and the alarms went off. All the people came stomping out of the building and smashed all the Putz. Moral:
Don't bask all your Putz in one exit.
Have you heard the one about the tribe of Basques who lived in this valley? They heard that barbarian hoards were approaching, so they decided to lay a trap. They all waited in the hills at the entrance to the valley. When the barbarians passed by, they descended on them. Unfortunately, the barbarians had a lot more experience at warfare than the Basques did, and the Basques got slaughtered. The moral:
Don't put all your Basques in one exit.
A butcher got along great with everyone in the neighborhood except a mysterious Swami. They hated each other! One evening, the Swami's pregnant wife had intense cravings for liver, and the Swami had to go into his enemy's shop. "Give me a pound of liver," he said to the butcher's clerk. The butcher whispered to the clerk from the back of the shop, "Here's our chance to get that no-good bum." Pointing to the clerk's thumb, he said,
"Weigh down upon the Swami's liver!!!"
A king carried environmentalism too far when he prohibited hunting of any kind. Soon the realm was overrun with lions and tigers and bears.
"Oh My!" shouted the people. They revolted and threw the king out of the country.
It was the first time the reign was called because of the game.
There was a Babylonian General who was declared a traitor for leading a revolt. He escaped one night and hid in an old Babylonian ziggurat, or temple, where he expected to find some of his associates.
He searched all over, but couldn't find them! So he figured he had better burn all the secret plans that were hidden in the ziggurat. As soon as the fire was going he threw in the first papers, and he was then promptly discovered and captured.
The moral of the story:
WARNING! The searchin' General has determined that smoking ziggurats may be hazardous to your stealth!
The great German actress Zelda had done everything but for one thing; she'd never won an Academy Award. She was known for being terribly temperamental and choosy about her parts, but was also known to soften for the promise of the elusive award.
One day she was called by the great director, Meyer Schmidt, and asked to review a new script he had. She read the script and immediately rejected it. "Iss Nicht my type of script, Meyer, and I'll NOT do it."
"But HONEYKINS," he cried, "It's a WONDERFUL script."
"I didn't say it wasn't Vunderful or goot, but I'll not do it."
"But Sweetiekins, " Meyer continued, "with my direction and your acting and name, it will make us MILLIONS."
"More Geldt I don't need. Ich do nicht like the script."
"But, DARLING, don't you see, with my connections, I can almost GUARANTEE you an Academy Award with a good performance."
Zelda thought a moment then agreed and said:
"Oh, I'd LUFF to be an Oscar Veener, Meyer ..."
The financial situation had been very bad for several months. Because he was out of work and destitute, a young man decided to rob a bank. After days of observation, he chose a small satellite bank facility across the metropolitan area from where he was living. He spent several days planning every move. Late one dark moonless night he picked the lock on the rear door of the bank without difficulty.
He stealthily crept through the bank to the place where he knew the safe stood. Then his troubles began. While trying to pick the lock on the safe, he set off the burglar alarm, but his careful preparation paid off. He had brought along a furniture dolly. He quickly loaded the small safe onto the dolly and rolled it out to his van.
He drove to a friend's house and explained his problem. He asked if, in exchange for some of the loot, he might store the safe in the friend's garage for a few days. His friend assured him: "You can rest assured, your safe is secret with me!"
When Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb, he had trouble selling it. People just didn't trust this "new" way of making light. In order to promote his idea he decided to go around the country installing lights in different towns in order to drum up publicity. While in Oklahoma, Edison stopped by an Indian reservation and offered to put lights in any building they wanted. After much thought the Indian chief decided that he wanted lights in his outhouse, so he could see what he was doing at night.
This made him the first man to wire a head for a reservation!
The curator of the Madrid Zoo was particularly interested in endangered species. He was so interested that he had acquired, through legal and sometimes shady dealings, several endangered species for the zoo. The people that visited the zoo were all very intrigued by these animals. Through the curator's efforts, people were becoming much more interested in saving endangered species.
It came to pass that the curator read in the zoological trade journals that there were only 34 Whooping Cranes left in all the world. He was instantly determined that the Madrid Zoo must have at least one before the breed became extinct. By some bribery or other, a Whooping Crane was located and dispatched via air freight, destination the Madrid Zoo. Upon hearing the good news, the curator sent his Special Assistant In Charge of Endangered Species to the Madrid Airport to retrieve the Whooping Crane. Alas, when the bird arrived at the airport, it refused to leave the plane. No amount of coaxing with food would cause the Crane to leave the plane. And so, the broken-hearted Special Assistant In Charge of Endangered Species returned empty-handed to the Madrid Zoo and reported to the curator,
"Cranes in Spain stay mainly on the plane."
This all reminds me of the unfortunate story of the British entrepreneur John Tate and his compasses. Sometime back in the mid-1800s a small-time British manufacturer named John Tate decided to go into the business of making compasses. He set up a factory, installed the machinery, hired some workers, and began turning out his first compasses. He had just completed his first batch of 500 compasses when someone finally pointed out that he had forgotten to mark which end of the compass was north. The compasses worked fine; you just didn't know which way was north and which was south. Needless to say poor Mr. Tate's compasses didn't sell; Tate went bankrupt, the factory closed, and the workers were laid off. But his memory lives on, since that time any compass where you're not sure which end is north and which is south has been known as a 'Tate's compass'. The moral of the story, of course, is that:
He who has a Tate's is lost.
Once there was this Indian who found that every time he bent over to pick up the paddle for his canoe, he'd get this terrible crick in his back. He went to see the doctor the next time he was in town, and the doctor said, "If this happens to you again, simply grasp the paddle with both hands, shove the bottom of the paddle into the ground, and pull yourself up." The next day the Indian was reaching for the paddle when he once again got the crick in his back. Remembering what the doctor had told him, he grabbed the paddle and managed to slowly work his way up it. When at last he was able to stand up again, he was very surprised to find himself:
Up a paddle without a crick.
Mother Lion and Father Lion had gone off hunting, and had told their two children not to wander away. However, a couple of small gnus wandered by, and the baby lions could not resist the temptation to try out their own hunting skills. They ran out, chased after the gnus, killed them, and started eating them.
Just as the baby lions were reaching the end of their meal, the parents appeared in the distance. One of the baby lions turned to the other, and said:
"That is the end of the gnus. Here again are the head lions."
Remember Mark Hamill from Star Wars? He doesn't like to eat in Chinese restaurants. He likes the food fine, but has a lot of trouble using chopsticks. Just when he starts to get really frustrated, this voice whispers in his ear,
"Use the Forks Luke."
The recent lock-out of the Major League umpires was making them all grumpy. After a tough day of walking the picket lines, one umpire returned home to find that his young boy wanted to play with him. As the tired ump was sitting in his favorite easy chair, the lad kept trying to crawl onto his lap. The umpire snapped, yelled at the boy and boy ran away crying.
This proves the old adage:
The Son Never Sits on the Brutish Umpire.
A few years ago the nuclear aircraft carrier Enterprise was returning to its base at the Oakland-Alameda Naval Base when the ship's captain, misreading the tides, managed to run the carrier aground on the mudflats of San Francisco bay. True story. This event went down in history as being one of the finest examples of:
Grounding the warship you walk on.
Dick Whittington was investigating warring factions of a Chinese secret society. Suddenly, his pet was taken hostage! When Dick reported the abduction to the police, the officers were unsympathetic. "What's the matter," they teased,
"Tong got your cat?"
Billy, a nine year old, took up the hobby of collecting stamps. He was very enthusiastic about it until one day his neighbors' kid saw his impressive collection and took up the hobby.
Billy complained to his Dad: "I don't want to collect stamps anymore! Andy has every stamp that I have!"
"Don't be stupid, son", his dad said.
"Don't you know that imitation is the best form of philately."
There was a small African tribe that had a terrible problem. Every morning a neighboring herd of Wildebeasts would stampede through the village, knocking down cooking pots, smashing water jugs and trampling the vegetable gardens. The Chief had tried everything, with no success. He built fences, but the Gnus ran right through them. He tried having his men scare the herd away but they always came back.
Finally, one morning the Chief woke up and didn't hear the thunder of hooves. He went out, and the Gnu herd was nowhere to be seen. They were gone at last! So, the Chief called all the people of the tribe together, and announced,
"NO GNUS IS GOOD NEWS!"
Two workmen were sitting in a pub drinking and arguing about which pub they should visit next. "The Rose and Crown's the closest," said the first workman. "No, the Elephant and Castle is closer!" said the second workman. So they decided to go to the Elephant and Castle. On their way to the pub in question, a ferocious lion, which had escaped from the zoo, lunged at them, but was killed by anti-aircraft fire from a search plane overhead. Stepping over the beast's body, they went on to the Elephant and Castle, thereby proving that:
The shortest distance between two pints is a strafed lion.
A witch doctor kept the members of his tribe in virtual subjugation by means of powerful magic. Whenever one of the tribesmen tried to overthrow him, he would be turned into an apple! One night a group of tribesmen sneaked into his hut, opened his book of magic, learned the apple spell, and turned the witch doctor into an apple!
But the book warned that if the apple ever dried out and changed significantly in weight, it would turn back into the witch doctor, more powerful than ever! So every day the tribesmen placed the apple on a scale to make sure that its weight remained the same. Moral:
A weigh a day keeps the doctor an apple.
Once there was this cattle rancher who, after 3 years, finally found a buyer for his oldest steer Caesar. This new owner happened to be the rancher's closest neighbor, who lived on the other side of the river valley. "Men" the rancher said to his cowhands, "it's time to say our good-byes to this bull, and take him across the river". So the men roped Caesar, and walked him down to the river. They were about to put him on the boat to take him across, but the rancher's youngest nephew, who helped to raise Caesar, said, "Can we take him out for one last munch in his favorite meadow?", with a tear in his eye. The other hands said sure, and led him just off the riverbank for a snack. Well, with the day as nice as it was, all of the hands took a quick nap. 4 hours later, the rancher saw that the bull was still on his property and ran down into the valley. He shouted and cursed at the men to wake them up. Once everyone was standing, he said the beast should have been across long ago,
"We've come to ferry Caesar, not to graze him!"
I heard about a horrible river dragon that lurked in the waters under the old London Bridge and destroyed passing boats, eating the crews and passengers. Finally, a group of brave knights lured it up onto the banks and, with great loss of life, managed to slay the horrible beast. While After the conquest, Sir Newt suggested that they grind up the foul beast and use it for food in the local orphanage to cut down on the wasteful cost of gruel. Thus Dicken's opening line...
"It was the beast of Thames, it was the wurst of Thames."
A German farmer with relatives in the US sent them a package consisting of some pork sausages made from his old pig. When they complained that the package had not yet arrived, he wrote:
"Cheer up. The wurst is yet to come."
This psychic is jailed for false prophecies, but because he is only 4'7" tall and extremely slender, he is able to slip under the bars and make his escape. Newspaper headline the next day?
"SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE"
The psychic is really happy he escaped, and it back in business in a new location. This first customer, however is a plainclothesman who is looking for him. Before the psychic could do anything about it, the plainclothesman hit the psychic with his fist in order to subdue him. The plainclothesman was reprimanded for:
Striking a happy medium.
Fred Herring's best friend was Waylon Whale. They always played together. Their friendship was well known all over the ocean. One day Waylon decided that he would like to take a trip to the Gulf of California, but Fred, fearing earthquakes, decided not to go with him but to stay in Puget Sound.
A few weeks later in school, an angel fish class mate of Fred's asked "Do you know what Waylon Whale is doing down there in granola land (land of fruits, nuts, and flakes)?"
"No" replied Fred Herring,
"I'm not my blubber's kipper."
A symphony was performing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and things were getting a bit crazy. In the fourth movement, the lead violin player got some string and tied the conductor's music to the stand. Meanwhile, the basses had been sneaking shots of whiskey through the entire performance and were completely plastered by this point. The bass trombone player looks up from his latest issue of Field and Stream to ask his neighbor what in the world was going on. The guy turns to him and says
"Well, it's the bottom of the ninth, the bases are loaded and the score is tied."
There was a movie director who wanted to create a movie about his 3 favorite composers: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven. He always felt that composers were not portrayed manly enough and decided to change that once in for all. He invited some of the toughest actors to play the composers. He called Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Sylvester Stallone. They all met and approved of his plan. Jean-Claude said he wanted to play Mozart. Stallone wanted to be Beethoven. And of course, Arnold said:
I’ll be Bach
There was this haunted house on the outskirts of the town which was avoided by all the townfolk - the ghost which `lived' there was feared by all.
However, an enterprising journalist decided to get the scoop of the day by photographing the fearsome phantom. When he entered the house, armed with only his camera, the ghost descended upon him, clanking chains et al. He told the ghost "I mean no harm - I just want your photograph". The ghost was quite happy at this chance to make the headlines - he posed for a number of ghostly shots.
The happy journalist rushed back to his dark room, and began developing the photos. Unfortunately, they turned out to be black and underexposed.
So what's the moral of the story?
The spirit was willing but the flash was weak.
Once upon a time, there was a farmer who had a donkey. The donkey was always too tired to do any farming. The farmer tried everything to get the donkey to do work but the donkey would just sit down and fall asleep - right in the middle of plowing.
The farmer finally took the donkey to the local wizard for help. The wizard thought about the problem and looked over the donkey. He decided the best course of action would be to partially change the donkey into an animal with more energy.
The farmer was worried because he liked his donkey but the wizard seemed to know what he was doing. With some spells and muttering, the changed creature appeared......
The farmer brought the donkey to the fields but nothing had changed. The donkey still sat down and fell asleep at a moments notice.
The local witch wandered by and laughed. She said this must be the work of the wizard and it was clear that he would never see any productive work. "Why not?" asked the frustrated farmer. "Because, you fool....."
"Your ass is dragon!"
http://www.awpi.com/Combs/Shaggy/
http://www.badpuns.com/list.php?section=shaggy
Silly Rabbi, kicks are for Trids
There was a Hawaiian king who decreed that every year his people give him a new throne, grander than the previous year. He would take the old one and put it in his attic. Eventually, the ceiling collapsed and crushed him. Moral:
People who live in grass houses shouldn’t stow thrones.
A man was shipwrecked on an island. Unfortunately, the only inhabitants were a huge flock of terns. Their squawking kept him awake day and night. Finally, he threw rocks at them and thought he had killed them all. He went to sleep on the beach and the last one poked his eyes out with his beak. Moral:
Never leave a single tern unstoned.
All the top chess players show up at a hotel for an important international tournament. They spend the first hour hanging around the lobby telling each other of their recent victories. Their crows get progressively louder and louder as each one tries to outdo the others. The hotel manager gets tired of this, so he throws them out of the lobby and tells them to go to their rooms. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand,” he says:
“it’s chess nuts boasting by an open foyer.”
You'd never believe it, but I bumped into a famous stuntman in a motorcycle shop the other day.
He was complaining because he couldn't decide whether to buy a bike with a high top speed but poor acceleration, or one with lots of torque and a fast acceleration but a poor top speed.
Eventually he decided on the second one because it cost a lot less because…..nuts boasting by an open foyer.”
After all, torque is cheap
A certain lawyer was quite wealthy and had a summer house in the country. Each summer the lawyer would invite a different friend to spend a week or two. On one occasion, he invited a Czechoslovakian friend to stay with him. The friend, eager to get a freebie off a lawyer, agreed. Early one morning, the lawyer and his Czechoslovakian companion went out to pick berries for their breakfast. As they went around the berry patch gathering blueberries and raspberries, along came two huge bears, a male and a female.
The lawyer, seeing the two bears, immediately dashed for cover. His friend, though, wasn’t so lucky. The male bear reached him and swallowed him whole. The lawyer ran back to his Mercedes, tore into town, and got the local sheriff. The sheriff grabbed his shotgun and dashed back to the berry patch with the lawyer. Sure enough, the two bears were still there. “He’s in that one,” cried the lawyer, pointing to the male, while visions of lawsuits from his friend’s family danced in his head. He just had to save his friend. The sheriff looked at the bears, and without batting an eye, leveled his gun, took careful aim, and shot the female. “What did you do that for?” exclaimed the lawyer. “I said he was in the other one!”
“Exactly,” replied the sheriff:
“Would you believe a lawyer who told you the Czech was in the male?”
During Desert Storm, an American Air Force officer met a Saudi Air Force officer. They began to make small talk, and after the discussion had been carrying on for a little while, the Saudi officer decided to pull out his wallet and show pictures of his family to the American. When the American saw the picture of the Saudi’s family, he was shocked. “Hey, that looks like my son,” he said, referring to one of the Saudi officer’s children. “That looks just like my Juan!” The Saudi officer explained. “About 15 years ago, I went to Mexico to drill from oil. While I was there, my wife and I decided to adopt a young boy. We named him Amal and he’s grown up with us.” The American said, “Well, about 15 years ago, my wife and I were stationed at the Mexican embassy. We adopted Juan and now he’s in high school. I wonder if your boy and mine are twins!” Sure enough, the boys had the same birthday and they agreed that the two boys must have been twins. After the war ended, they agreed to meet inLos Angeles and have a big reunion. Of course, the news media received word of this and were eagerly anticipating the arrival of the young boy from the Middle East.
However, to the disappointment of the crowd that had assembled, it was announced that the plane would be over four hours late. Juan’s mother said to the media, “You might as well go home. There’s no point in waiting here.” “Why would we want to do that?” asked a reporter.
“Well,” she replied, “they’re identical twins:
If you’ve seen Juan, you’ve seen Amal.”
Some friars wanted to do more for their flock but their vow of poverty, simple lifestyle and lack of gainful employment meant that their supply of available funds was, to say the least, meager. Nevertheless, they put their collective heads together and came up with the idea of opening a small florist shop. They reasoned that they could grow most of the flowers on the church grounds, and what they couldn’t grow, they could likely pick from the surrounding countryside.
As you can probably guess, everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God and their little business flourished. So much so that the rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close their little shop, but their flower business was providing them with much-needed funds for their good works and they refused. He went back time and again, finally begging the friars to close. By this time, they had tired of the florist’s constant whining and they ignored him. The florist even asked his mother to go and ask the friars to get out of the flower business, but they ignored her, too.
By this time, the florist was nearly bankrupt and in desperation hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town, to “persuade” the good friars to close. Being a man of few morals and even fewer religious convictions, Hugh had no ethical problems with his assigned task and promptly gave the friars a thorough beating and trashed their store. He departed with a stern warning that he’d be back if they didn’t close the shop. Terrified, the friars did so immediately, thereby proving that:
Only Hugh can prevent florist friars.
Ghandi walked barefoot everywhere, to the point that his feet became quite thick and hard. Even when he wasn’t on a hunger strike, he did not eat much and became quite thin and frail. He also was quite a spiritual person. Furthermore, due to his diet, he ended up with very bad breath. He became known as:
A super-calloused fragile mystic plagued with halitosis.
Mercy Hospital in Chicago is run by a group of nuns who came from Australia. Through the years the years they have gone out of their way to maintain ties with their native land—putting up a large map of the country in the reception area, and serving Australian tea from tins decorated with koala bears. One night a patient calls a nun into his room and tells her how much he likes the hospital and the care. But he has one small complaint: he found some leaves in his tea.
“Oh,” the nun says:
“the koala tea of Mercy is not strained.”
There was a man who wanted to help out at his local church. The priest said that the biggest chore that needed doing was painting the inside of the church. The man was quite willing but the priest said there was a bit of a problem. They could only afford 5 gallons of paint for the whole church so he would have to water to it. Skeptical, the man started painting with the watered down paint. Part way through, he told the priest that there still wasn’t enough paint. He was told to add more water. This went on several times and the results were as expected – it looked awful. Once the man completed the job and was showing the results to the priest, there was a clap of thunder, a flash of light. 20 gallons of paint appeared on the floor and a booming voice said:
Repaint thinners and thin no more!
Three explorers had arrived in Africa to explore territory that had never been seen by Europeans before. Immediately upon arrival, they enlisted the services of a native to translate for them and another native to act as a guide. After a few days, they had organized their supplies and secured the services of porters. They were ready at last!
Off they went into the jungle! They had a few days of travel before they got to the area they wished to explore. The travel went smoothly and uneventfully.
The day dawned when they began to travel into the unknown jungle. After a few hours travel, their guide got very excited upon seeing something on the ground. The three explorers and their translator hurried over to see what was the matter. The translator explained, “He says that this is the mark of the Fabulous Foo Bird! They are very rarely seen! They are very lucky!”
The explorers chuckled to themselves at the natives’ superstitions and the safari moved on. After awhile, they heard a horrible squawking from the air above them. As they looked up to see what it was, the sun was briefly hidden as an enormous bird flew overhead. As they were staring, there was a loud squelching sound, followed by cries of disgust from the senior explorer. The other turned to see that he was covered with bird poop. The guide got even more excited when he saw this and began gesturing frantically at the explorer. The translator said, “That was the Fabulous Foo Bird! He says you must not wipe this off! If you leave it on and do not wash it off, you will receive untold wealth and fortune. But he says if you wipe it off, you will die horribly!”
“Nonsense!” said the explorer. He disgustedly cleaned himself up, all the while grumbling about superstitions. The natives began murmuring. They were very nervous. A short time later, the senior explorer was clean and still very much alive. “There! You see? Nothing to worry about!” he said. Three steps later he fell over dead, his body rotting away.
After the shock died down, the guide looked somewhat smug.
The next day, the same squawking was heard, followed by the appearance of the bird. This time, the second explorer was coated in gunk. Once again, the guide issued his hysterical warning. “Poppycock!” said the second explorer. “That was a coincidence. I am not going to trek through Africa coated in bird droppings because of some silly superstition!” He proceeded to clean himself off, but wasn’t even finished before he collapsed dead into a pile of dust.
After the shock died down, the guide again looked somewhat smug.
The next day, the same squawking was heard, followed by the appearance of the bird. This time, the youngest (and only remaining) explorer was coated in gunk. Once again, the guide issued his hysterical warning. The nervous young explorer decided to play it safe and continue the exploration in his filthy state. This met with great approval by the natives.
The expedition continued and proved to be a smashing success, with great discoveries. The young explorer received incredible accolades and lived a very long and wealthy life.
From then on, enterprising explorers were always given this sage advice:
If the foo shits, wear it.
High in the Andes, there are huge, fierce birds called Rarris that have the absolutely best tasting eggs in the world. One brother wanted to show his younger brother how to harvest the eggs without getting hurt. The two of them snuck up on a nest, the older brother gave the surprised female a shove and then grabbed two eggs and ran. The younger brother wanted to try it so they found another nest. He snuck up on the female, gave a shove and she wacked him on the head with her beak and slapped him with her wings. The older brother pulled him away from the beating and told him:
That’s the wrong way to tip a Rarri
Once upon a time there was a large and prosperous Kingdom run by a wise and powerful King. Then disaster struck in the form of a strange plague, which caused people to sicken and die horribly within a few weeks. The population of the Kingdom was declining rapidly. All the physicians in the land were called to the Kingdom, but none of them had any idea of what to do about this new disease.
The oldest of the physicians said that he had once heard that many years ago, when his grandfather was a boy, the Kingdom had been struck by just such a mysterious sickness. The pestilence had been ended with a magic potion prepared by an old sorceress. It was said that she was still alive, but her home was in the middle of the Dark Forest.
“The Dark Forest!” everyone gasped. They all knew that the Dark Forest was the most dangerous place in the region. Perhaps the most dangerous place in the entire world, for in the Dark Forest lived the Yellow Fingers, which grabbed any traveler who entered and would squeeze him to death. But no one could come up with another plan to save the Kingdom, so it was decided that someone had to defy the Yellow Fingers and find the ancient sorceress in the middle of the Dark Forest.
The King called his bravest Knight and explained the situation. Without hesitation, the brave Knight marched off into the forest ... and was never heard from again.
The King then called his second bravest Knight. The second bravest Knight hesitated for a moment before going into the fatal forest. But once he went in ... and was never heard from again.
So the King called his third and fourth bravest Knights, who took a bit more persuading. None of them ever returned from the forest. Finally the remaining Knights, who were not very brave at all, went into hiding.
The King was reduced to a state of despair. Then one of the King’s young pages, came to him and offered to go into the Dark Forest and get the magic potion from the old sorceress.
The King was touched by the boy’s foolish bravery, but he said, “Don’t you realize that the Dark Forest is the home of the Yellow Fingers, and that many of my bravest Knights have perished there?”
The boy said that he knew all about it, but he was still quite sure that he would be able to accomplish his mission. In the end the King reluctantly agreed to let the page go. He was so desperate that he didn’t know what else to do.
The Page walked off into the Dark Forest, and the King confidently expected never to see him again. Therefore the King was not merely surprised but very nearly hysterical with joy when, two days later, the Page came walking out of the Dark Forest clutching the formula for the magic potion that would save the Kingdom.
“How did you do it?” cried the King
The page just smiled, and said:
“From now on let your Pages do the walking through the Yellow Fingers.”
I remember it was about that time that Jim Sloane used to work in our Finance Branch. Now that was a character. He was, in my opinion, an unusual individual who was interested in some rather exotic subjects. The most unusual thing about him was his pet, (rumored to have been captured somewhere in Africa) which reminded me of a piece of granite with eyes, which he called Teddy. Teddy typically just sat there, doing nothing, but sometimes it lifted a lower edge and sucked in powdered sugar. That was all it ate. No one ever saw it move, but every once in a while it wasn’t where people thought it was. There was a theory that it moved when no one was looking.
Bob Laverty, a Management Services employee, constantly ridiculed poor Teddy, saying mean and nasty things about it. Laverty’s pet looked like an iguana, and to me, at least, was the ugliest looking thing that you would ever want to see. He called this ‘iguana’ by the unlikely name of Dolly.
Well, one day Sloane had had enough of these comments, and challenged Laverty to a race. His Teddy against Laverty’s Dolly. And to make things a bit more interesting, he suggested a rather hefty wager on the outcome, which Laverty quickly agreed to. Soon everyone got into the act. Every one of them bet on Dolly. At least it moved. Sloane covered it all. He’d been saving his salary for some time (for some exotic project, no doubt) and put every penny of it on Teddy.
The race course was set in the basement garage. At one end, two bowls were set out, one with powdered sugar for Teddy, and another with ground meat for Dolly. Dolly started off at once and began moving along the floor slowly toward the meat. All in attendance cheered it on.
Teddy just sat there without budging.
“Sugar, Teddy. Sugar.” said Sloane, pointing. Teddy did not move. It looked more like a rock than ever, but Sloane did not seem concerned.
Finally, when Dolly had ‘ran’ half-way across the garage, Sloane said casually to Teddy, “If you don’t get out there, Teddy, I’m going to get a hammer and chip you into pebbles.”
That was when people realized how truly different Teddy was. Sloane had no sooner made his threat when Teddy just disappeared from it’s place and re-appeared smack on top of the sugar.
Sloane won, of course, and he counted his winnings slowly and luxuriously.
Laverty said bitterly, “You knew the damn thing would do that.”
“No, I didn’t,” said Sloane, “but I knew he would win. It was a sure thing.”
“How come?”, said Laverty.
“It’s an old saying everyone knows:
Sloane’s Teddy wins the race.”
Freddy Fish and Sam Clam were the best of friends, and did everything together. One day, though, both perished in a freak mishap. Freddy Fish went to heaven, and immediately looked around for his best friend. Not finding him, he asked St. Peter where Sam was.
“Sorry, he didn’t make it in.”
“You mean he’s down there?” asked Freddy.
“Yes.”
“Well, I want to go see him!”
“This is highly unorthodox,” said St. Peter. “I’ll ask the big guy.”
Moments later St. Peter returned and said:
“You can go, but you can only stay for one hour.”
“Great!” said Freddy, and grabbed his harp before anyone changed their minds. He went to the elevator, and went down.
When the elevator doors opened, Freddy saw a huge sign:
SAM’S DISCOTHEQUE
He went in, and discovered that it was run by his old friend. They sat down and reminisced about old times, and had a few drinks. Time flew by, and when Freddy noticed his watch, he saw that he had fifteen seconds left to return. He jumped out of his chair, yelled a goodbye to Sam Clam, and raced to the elevator.
The elevator doors opened in heaven with only one second to spare. St. Peter was standing there with a stopwatch.
“You just barely made it,” said St. Peter.
“I know,” panted Freddy, out of breath. “But I have to go back there!”
“What do you mean!?!” asked an incredulous St. Peter.
So Freddy Fish says (* groan *):
“I left my harp in Sam Clam’s Disco!”
The armies of Alexander the Great were greatly feared in their day, but there was one problem that they had that almost defeated them. Alexander could not get his people to staff meetings on time. He always held the meetings at 6:00PM each day after the day’s battle was done, but frequently his generals either forgot or let the time slip up on them and missed the staff meeting. This angered Alexander very much, to say the least!
So he called in his research guys and set up a project to come up with a method of determining the time at 6:00PM each day. There were no clocks in those days, at least none that could be carried around. (The smallest was a giant water clock) “Find a way my staff can determine the hour of the day, or at least when it gets to be 6 o’clock!”, he said, “Cost is no object.”
A study was instituted and, with several brain-storming sessions, came up with the following idea. In a land some distance away, there grew a bush whose berries contained a type of dye that changed color at 6 each evening. They found that by dyeing strips of cloth and issuing them to the generals, they could see when it was 6 by the color change, and could get to the meetings on time. Needless to say this pleased Alexander very much.
It was then turned over to the marketing group to come up with a name of this new invention as Alexander saw definite market potential in the strips. “It can be worn on the wrist and can be easily watched for the color change”, said one junior executive. “I therefore propose to call it the wrist watch.” This name was immediately hooted down as being too bland and obvious. Another man suggested it be worn in the navel and could be observed by looking down, therefore it should called the Navel Observatory. This idea was rejected out of hand as being too weird and too technical sounding for the general public.
Finally the senior vice president, who up to now had been silent, spoke and rendered his decision. “We shall call it a Timeband, and in honor of the Great Alexander, it shall be known as:
‘Alexander’s Rag Timeband!’
A doctor was just starting out on his own, when he found that he just had too much work to do. Now this man was brilliant, and had particularly good people skills. Once he got a patient, they would just not see anyone else.
It seems that this man had been reading recently about the advances in cloning, and decided to have a clone made of himself to do his work.
For years it worked perfectly. His clone took care of all his patients, and he got to relax. However, the clone began to have some personality disorders. it would insult patients, and treat them very badly. It got so bad that business was suffering. The doctor decided that he just had to get rid of the clone or loose his business.
So......one morning on their morning jog.... they jogged right over a bridge. The doctor pushed the clone over to his death.
The doctor again began seeing his old patients, and things were going exceptionally well, until a fisherman “caught” the dead clone body in the river. When the police found that the real doctor was still, in fact, alive, and that this was a clone, they didn’t know just what to charge the doctor for doing wrong. After much deliberation, they decided to charge him for:
Making an obscene clone fall.
There was this western town whose ranchers were being bothered by a cougar. This cougar had attacked the ranchers livestock on many occasions. The ranchers in this town hired the famous Roy Rogers to lead a posse to track down this cougar and kill him.
Roy lead this posse wearing his brand new alligator skin boots. he had just acquired them as was very proud of the way they looked.
After tracking the cougar for a number of days, they finally came upon him. Roy took a shot but missed, letting the cougar get away. That night the posse set up camp. While everyone was sleeping, the cougar attacked the campsite, but was chased off without anyone getting hurt. Unfortunately in the foray, the cat did destroy Roy alligator skin boots.
Roy was very upset about losing his new boots. He rode back to town (which was painful without boots), got an old pair of boots, and went out after the cougar by himself. After a few days of tracking, he caught up with the cougar. He picked up his rifle, aimed, and with one shot, killed the cougar.
He placed the cougar on the back of the horse and rode back to town with it. As the ranchers in town saw the carcass on the back of the horse they came out and cheered Roy’s success. As he rode up in front of the hotel, surrounded by cheering ranchers and townfolk, Dale Evans came out of the hotel and asked:
“Pardon me, Roy, is that the cat that chewed your new shoes?”
A giant panda escaped from the zoo in New York. Eventually, he found his way downtown and walked into a restaurant, where he found a seat at an emptey table. The maitre d’, being a native New Yorker figures he’s seen stranger things than this so he sends over a waiter to take the panda’s order. In due course the panda’s meal arrives and he eats. After he finishes his dinner he stands up, calmly pulls out a gun from God-knows-where he had it hidden, and blows away several customers and a couple of the waiters. Then he turns around and walks toward the door. Naturally, the maitre d’ is horrified. He stops the panda and demands an explanation, at the very least.
The panda says to him, “What do I look like to you”? The maitre d’ answers, “Well, a giant panda, of course.” “That’s right,” says the panda, “Look it up,” and he walks out. The maitre d’ calls the police. When they arrive the maitre d’ relates the whole story to them, including the panda’s comment about looking it up. So the chief detective sends a rookie out to get an encyclopedia. He eventually returns with the Encyclopedia Brittanica, Volume P. The detective looks up “panda”, and there’s the answer:
“Giant panda, lives in China, eats shoots and leaves.”
There was a snake called Nate. His purpose in life was to stay in the desert and guard the lever. This lever was no ordinary lever. It was the lever that if moved would destroy the world. Nate took his job very seriously. He let nothing get close to the lever. One day off in the distance he saw a cloud of dust. He kept his eye on it because he was guarding the lever. The dust cloud continued to move closer to the lever. Nate saw that it was a huge boulder and it was heading straight for the lever! Nate thought about what he could do to save the world. He decided if he could get in front of the boulder he could deflect it and it would miss the lever. Nate slithered quickly to intersect the boulder. The boulder ran over Nate, but it was, in fact, deflected, leaving history to conclude:
That is was better Nate than lever.
There were 3 pregnant squaws who slept on animal skins. One slept on a deer skin, one on an elk skin, and one on a hippo skin.
The first two squaws had sons. The squaw on the hippo skin had twin sons.
What does this prove?:
The squaw of the hippopotamus are equal to the sons of the squaws of the other two hides.
Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, was innocently leaping from tree to tree one fine day, when a band of crazed cannibals ambushed and killed him. They devoured him almost immediately, except for the lining of his stomach which they stretched over a hollow log to make a bongo drum, and gave it to the son of the chief cannibal. The boy was delighted with his new drum and played it constantly for weeks. Until one day, he came crying to his father the chief. “Daddy,” he whimpered, “my bongo drum rotted away.” “Son,” replied the chief:
“You can’t play ‘Tarzan’s Tripe Forever.’”
One hot and dry day in the Wild West, this dog walks into a saloon and says, “Gimme a beer”. Evidently this type of thing wasn’t too rare ‘round those parts because the bartender said, “I’m sorry, but we don’t serve dogs here.” The dog then took out a silver dollar, dropped it on the bar, and said, “Look, I got money, and I want a beer.” This scene had the potential to get ugly. The bartender, getting a little irate, said one more time, “We do not serve dogs here. Please leave.” The dog growled, so the bartender pulled out a gun and shot the dog in the foot! The dog yelped, and ran out the door.
The next day, the swinging bar doors were tossed open and in walks the dog that had been in the saloon the day before. He was dressed all in black. A black cowboy hat, a black vest, three black cowboy boots and one black bandage. The dog looks around, waits for the talking to quiet down, and says:
“I’m lookin’ fer the man who shot my paw.”
Buford, a fairly handsome Southern Bullfrog, hops into a bank lobby one day, brief case neatly tucked under his right foreleg. Buford hops up to the first open teller window and sits down in front of a teller, Miss Mary Greene. He announces, “I need a loan.”
Miss Greene, not wanting to look too uncool with this frog talking to her, pauses only briefly to reflect on this situation, then says, “Well, the Everglades Savings and Loan doesn’t usually give loans to amphibians.” Quickly opening the brief case, Buford produces construction permits and blueprints. Showing them to Miss Greene, he says, “But I need a loan. You see I have this construction project in mind. Down in the swamp, we need affordable housing for all my in-laws and out-laws. I have the permits. Freddy, an architect newt friend of mine has drawn up the plans. Everything is approved and in order. So you see, all I need is the financing.”
For Miss Greene, this is getting stranger by the moment. It isn’t enough that there is this talking frog only inches in front of her, but now he is talking about plans, permits and a newt architect. Just before she loses it completely, Miss Greene blurts out, “I can’t help you. You must see our loan officer, Miss Black. Wait here for a moment and I’ll get her.”
Miss Greene is gone for a while. After several minutes of animated conversation at the other side of the bank she returns with the loan officer. “Hello, I’m Miss Patricia Black, the Loan Officer here. How can I help you?” Well, Buford goes through his speech once again, tells her about the plans and permits, about the housing and his friend Freddy the newt architect. Thinking she could put an end to this foolishness quickly, Miss Black asks, “What do you have to put up for collateral for a loan? You must have something of value to mortgage against a loan like this.”
Buford digs into his brief case once more. “I have this!” he exclaims as he draws forth a crystal trinket on a silver chain. “I can’t give you a loan based on this THING,” Miss Black says, pointing at Buford’s treasure. Buford begs. He pleads. Finally, Buford demands to see the bank manager. Miss Greene, the teller, leaves for a moment to get the bank manager. Another animated conversation ensues at the other side of the bank. The manager comes over and asks “What’s the problem, Miss Black?” “Well, Mr. Brown...” and the Loan Manager explains that the frog wants to take out a loan, to construct housing in the swamp for his in-laws and out-laws and he has plans and permits, but all he has is this trinket as collateral. The manager bemused by this whole situation, takes the trinket in hand, examines it carefully, then hands it back to Buford saying:
“It’s a knick knack, Patty Black. Give the frog a loan.”
OR……
Mick Jagger’s dog goes into a bank to apply for a loan. The loan officer, Patricia Wack, is an open minded person so she figures, ‘why not?’ She explains to the dog that he will need collateral for the loan – something of value that the bank would own if he defaults on the loan. He puts a small ceramic guitar on her desk. She is in the middle of explaining that the guitar is not sufficient collateral when the bank manager stick’s his head in her office and says:
It's a knick knack, Patty Whack. Give the dog a loan. His old man's a rolling stone.
So the Soviets got sick of buying wheat from the Americans and began to spend millions on research into grains. Finally U.S. intelligence found out that the Soviet scientists had developed a new grain that yielded twice the harvest of conventional wheat and grew in half the time. Several agents died before it was discovered that the new grain was called “Krilk”. The CIA was panicked! Without the Soviet dependency on American grains the security of the West could be forever compromised.
Congress quickly convened and appropriated several hundred million dollars for the CIA to send up spy satellites over Russia to learn the secrets of Krilk. Finally, after several years, the satellites began to send back images of the factory deep in the Soviet Union that was processing the Krilk. The CIA sent in over a hundred agents. None returned. The process remained a secret. The satellites were next to useless because they could only see the outside of the building, not the actual milling of the harvests. Finally the Soviet Ambassador in Washington sent a message to the President of the U.S.to let him know that all further attempts to learn the secrets would be futile.
The message read....”You are wasting your money….
Everyone knows that it’s no use spying over milled Krilk!”
It came to pass that a very poor peasant was down to his last meal.
Deciding he could no longer live in squalor, he decide to sell the only thing he owned... his talking mule. This was no ordinary Francis type of talking mule, this one could tell jokes and sing and keep the local townspeople very happy. With much regret, the peasant sets off to the big city to sell his mule.
He sets up on a street corner and the mule draws an immediate crowd. The mule is so funny that the crowds can’t remain standing because they’re laughing so hard. Finally, a man comes up to the peasant and says “I’m a talent scout for The Tonight Show. I MUST have your mule for our show.” Unfortunately, the talent scout had just been pickpocketed, and had lost his wallet. The only thing of value he had was a subway token. He convinced the peasant to trade the mule for the “Magic Token of Good Fortune” and secured the mule.
On the way home, the peasant realized that he had been taken, and he was broken hearted. He used his subway token to get him to the edge of the city. When he put the token in the slot, alarms went off and he was notified that he was the 1 billionth rider of the subway, and that he just won 50 million dollars.
Meanwhile, the Mule was so funny that he took over Jay’s job, and eventually put Dave, Conan, John and every other late nighter out of business. The Morale of the story:
A Mule that is funny is soon bartered.
There once was this man who was looking for a job. He applied for a bus driver’s job at the county board of education. The head of the school board granted him an interview. During the interview the man was told there was only one bus driver job left, the one that drove the special education bus. The man said he would take the job but the school offical asked that he look at the bus first. They went outside down a row of yellow school buses and at the end was a small van with Seasame Street characters painted all over it. The man was a little reluctant at first but the official told him all the kids would be at the bus stops and all he had to do was pick them up in the morning and take them home in the evening. The man need the job badly so he took it.
The first day on the job he comes to the bus stop and there is a little girl standing there who is very fat. She gets on the bus and the driver says, “Hi! What’s your name?” The girl replies, “My name is Patty” and takes a seat. He comes to the next stop and there is another little girl there who is fatter than the first. She gets on the bus and the driver asks, “What your name?”. She says “My name is Patty” then takes a seat by the first girl.
At the next stop there is a little boy standing there. When he gets on the bus he says, “Hi I’m Ross and I’m special.” At the next stop there is another little boy standing there and when asked his name he says, “Hi I’m Lester Cheatum”. Lester takes the seat behind the driver, pulls off his shoes. He starts picking the loose skin on his bunions and throwing it at the driver. This being the last stop, the driver takes the group of special kits to school.
This same scene happens every day for a week. On Friday the driver goes into the superintendent’s office and say, “I quit! I can’t take it anymore!”
When asked why the driver says, “Every day it’s the same thing!:
Two obese Patty’s, special Ross, Lester Cheatum picking bunyons on a Seasame Street bus”.
During the French Revolution, the “common people” were intent on ridding themselves of all vestiges of the Royalty and nobility. The Reign of Terror ensued and all nobility was hunted down. Some were allowed to leave the country, however most were executed at the guillotine. One nobleman in particular had sent his family into hiding in hopes of saving them. Soon he was caught. The crowd searched in vain for his family, but they were well hidden. Threats were made but he always replied, “I’ll never tell!”. Finally the crowd dragged him to the guillotine and offered to let he and his family leave the country if he would only disclose their location. Again he replied “I’ll never tell!”. They dragged him up onto the platform next to the horrible machine and asked him again. Still he replied “I’ll never tell!”. They laid his neck across the cutting board and asked him once more. Again he replied “I’ll never tell!”. They slowly hoisted the blade and again asked for the location of his family. Weakly he replied “ I’ll never tell”. They waited to see if his resolve would fail, he remained silent. Just as the executioner pulled the release and the blade began to fall the Count called out “Wait, I’ll tell, I’ll t.....” The moral to this story:
Don’t hatchet your Count before he chickens!
King Arthur sends Sir Lancelot out on an important mission to deliver a message to the king of Spain. It is a long distance, and Lancelot looks in the Kingdom for a good horse to take him there. His own horse is sick, and all he can find is an old mare, but, since he has to leave quickly, he takes the mare. About 3 days out of the Kingdom, Lancelot realizes his mistake. The horse gets tired and appears to be going lame. He finally makes it to a small village and gets to the Inn. He goes up to the Innkeeper and explains his problem. That is, he needs a good horse so that he can fulfill his mission to deliver the message for the king. The Innkeeper replies that this is only a small village, and most of the horses around are not up to the task. He is welcome to look around, however, and if he can find anything, he is certainly welcome to it.
Lancelot looks around the village, and true as the Innkeeper has said, no good horse is to be found. As Lancelot is about to give up, he comes across a stable boy carting some feed. He asks the stable boy if there is any beast of burden in the village that he can use to fulfill his mission. The stable boy thinks for a minute, and starts to reply no, but then says, go see if Old Mange in the barn can help you.
Lancelot goes over to the barn expecting to find a horse. What he finds is a very large dog: almost as large as a pony. The dog is a mess, however. It is mangy, parts of its fur are falling off, and it is full of fleas. Lancelot is desperate at this point, and he looks it over carefully. It does, however, appear to be strong enough to take him to Spain (which is only 3 days away at this point).
Lancelot goes back to the Innkeeper, and acknowledges that he cannot find a horse in the village that he can use. He says, however that this dog, Old Mange, might be able to take him most (if not all) of the way to his destination. The Innkeeper hears this, stiffens up, and says :
Sir. I wouldn’t send a Knight out on a dog like that.
Outside a small Macedonian village close to the border between Greece and strife-torn Yugoslavia, a lone Orthodox nun keeps quiet watch over a silent convent. She is the last caretaker of a site of significant historical developments spanning more than 2,000 years. When Sister Maria Cyrilla of the Order of the Perpetual Vigil dies, the convent of St. Elias will be closed by the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Macedonia. However, that isn’t likely to happen soon, as Sister Maria, 53, enjoys excellent health. By her own estimate, she walks 10 miles daily about the grounds of the convent, land which once served as a base for the army of Attila the Hun.
In more ancient times, a Greek temple to Eros, the god of love, occupied the hilltop site. Historians say that Attila took over the old temple in 439 A.D. and used it as a base for his marauding army.
The Huns are believed to have first collected and then destroyed a large collection of Greek legal writs at the site. It is believed that Attila wanted to study the Greek legal system and had the writs and other documents brought to the temple. Scholars differ on why he had the valuable documents destroyed - either because he was barely literate and couldn’t read or because they provided evidence of democratic government that did not square with his own notion of rule by an all-powerful tyrant.
When the Greek Church took over the site in the 15th Century and the convent was built, church leaders ordered the pagan statue of Eros destroyed, so another ancient Greek treasure was lost. Today, there is only the lone sister, watching over the old Hun base, amidst the strife of war-torn Yugoslavia, and when she is no longer, the story will be over. That’s how it ends:
No Huns, no writs, no Eros, and nun left on base.
An old man lived with his hound-dog, Mace, in a run-down shack on the outskirts of town. He had no family and only a few meager possessions: a table and chair, a bed, a bag of hand tools, and his dog. He used the tools to do odd jobs in town, for which he usually would be paid enough to get food for the next day. Mace and his master lived from one day to the next on what little these jobs would bring in. The dog was just a normal hound, with one exception: while most dogs like to chew on grass occasionally, Mace loved it. When the old man was in town, Mace would spend the day in the yard in front of the house, chewing away on the lawn.
One bright, sunny day the old man said goodbye to his dog and headed into town to work. He had a plumbing repair job in one of the homes there that would take him most of the day and would probably pay enough for food for the remainder of the week, if he managed the money carefully. He headed for town with a spring in his step and a whistle on his lips. Inside the house and ready to start, the old man reached in the bag for his wrench.
To his surprise, he didn’t feel it. He dug around again, but there didn’t seem to be any wrench. He looked in the bag, then dumped its contents on the floor, but still no wrench. Reality set in. Without a wrench he couldn’t finish the job, and without the pay he couldn’t even buy food for that night’s supper, let alone for tomorrow. When he finally came to grips with reality, he told the lady who hired him what the situation was. While she sympathized with his situation, the job needed to be done. If the old man couldn’t do it, she would have to hire someone else.
The old man packed up his tools and headed home, head bowed and shoulders stooped. The whistle was gone and no longer was there a spring in his step. A walk that normally took 15 minutes seemed to last forever. But finally the old shack came into view, and there was Mace in the distance, munching away as usual on the lawn. When the dog saw his master, he came running, tail wagging, telling the old man how glad he was to see him. Kneeling beside the hound, the man began to pet him, and through tear-filled eyes told the dog that there would be no supper tonight and no food for tomorrow. What’s more, without money to buy a new wrench, he had no idea what the future held. It was the loneliest, most helpless feeling he ever had! Then he caught a glimpse of something shining in the grass. As the old man went over to see what this piece of shining material was, his despair turned in an instant to joy! It was the wrench! The old man had dropped it on his way out that morning, and it would have been lost forever had Mace not been eating farther away from the house than he usually did! The old man grabbed the dog, gave him a hug that almost suffocated him, and ran into the house. Reaching for a stub of pencil and the only piece of paper he had, he wrote a moving tribute to his canine companion. Few people have ever heard these words...until now, that is. One man who did happen to read them changed them a bit and has his name recorded in music history. The old man never did get the credit he deserved. But now you are privileged to read the beginning line of his original poem, which went:
“A grazing Mace, how sweet the hound that saved a wrench for me.”
There were a group of scientists who were researching extending life, a noble cause. They had great success with porpoises in particular. They found that if they were fed baby seagulls, the aging process stopped completely. Unfortunately, this was depleting the seagull population and the animal rights people tried their best to stop it. Finally, they got two lions to protect the local seagull population. Not to be stopped with this monumental research, the scientists got a tranquilizer gun and shot the lines. They were caught red-handed with the baby gulls and were charged with:
Transporting underage gulls across sedate lions for immortal porpoises.
On a bright and sunny morning in May, Farmer Jones went out to plow his fields. He led old Bessie, his plow horse, out of the barn and hitched her up to the plow. The aroma of newly plowed earth wafted behind him as he produced a ruler straight furrow across the field. Suddenly his reverie was broken as a strong earthquake struck. As the ground shook beneath his feet, he fell to his knees. His plow fell over almost on top of him, as did old Bessie. But, beyond the fence in the next field, the bull remained standing.
Farmer Jones stood, dusted himself off, and grabbed the reins to right old Bessie. He pulled the plow upright, hitched up the horse again and began to plow. Shaken somewhat by the strange experience, the furrow began to zig a little from side to side as Bessie pulled the plow blade through the fertile ground. After only a few seconds a strong aftershock rolled through the farm. Again it was strong enough to knock Farmer Jones from his feet, topple his plow, and with a loud protest, drive old Bessie to the ground. This time the farmer looked back across the field toward the house and noticed that the goats and cows had fallen over, too .... But, beyond the fence in the next field, the bull remained standing.
Shaken and puzzled, Farmer Jones picked himself up and dusted off his overalls. Righting the horse and plow, he quieted old Bessie as best he could. She seemed more rattled by all this that he was. As strong as the two earthquakes were, Farmer Jones could not understand how the bull remained standing. So he started toward the other field to see if he could find out what was going on with the bull. As he crossed the field, and climbed through the fence into the field where the bull stood, a very strong aftershock struck—much worse than either of the preceding earthquakes—putting him on the ground flat on his face. Looking behind himself he saw Old Bessie and the plow had fallen down again. Down toward the house the goats and cows had fallen down again. In fact, this aftershock was so strong that the chickens had fallen over as well. The front porch on the farmhouse had crashed down and the walls looked as though they would not last much longer. But, only a few feet away from him, the bull remained standing.
He picked himself up, dusted off, and without bothering to right either horse or plow, marched toward the bull. Shaken to the core, puzzled and angry, Farmer Jones shouted, demanding to know why everything on the farm had been knocked over by the earthquakes and the bull had remained on his feet. Much to Farmer Jones’ astonishment, the bull replied,
“We bulls wobble, but we don’t fall down!”
There was a man on an extended business trip who developed an embarrassing problem. Every time he passed gas, the noise sounded like ‘honda’. Finally he had to cut the trip short because it was disturbing his meetings. His wife was thrilled to see him home early but every time they tried to get amorous, he would pass gas and she would start laughing hysterically, ruining the moment. Having had enough, he went to see his doctor and the doctor told him it was easy to fix, after all:
Abstinence makes the farts go Honda.
It seems there was a friendly little bar right next to a medical training hospital in the big city. Many of the doctors and nurses would stop in there on their way home, after long shifts in the hospital. One day, a local college student named Gina, intent on earning book money for the next term, came into the bar looking for a job as an evening bartender. As it happened, one of the bartenders had just quit, providing the needed open position. The owner was quite happy to give her the position and began her training that evening.
As she was being briefed about the "regulars", the subject of one of the more unusual doctors came up. Every day, at the end of his shift, one particular Doctor Avery came in for a rather unusual drink. He always ordered a Walnut Daiquiri. A Walnut Daiquiri is a strange drink -- not the kind of fruity drink one would expect. It was thought the good doctor must have invented it for himself, finding some special pleasure in the taste of walnuts.
A few days later Doctor Avery arrived just as the new bartender, Gina, was going on duty. When queried as to his desired libation, as expected, the doctor ordered a Walnut Daiquiri. The bar tender set about making the daiquiri, and discovered to her horror that there were no walnuts to be found. She quickly searched behind the bar, the refrigerators and in the back room. Nothing! She was in a fix -- she wanted to keep Doctor Avery as a good customer, and didn't want him to complain to her boss. Thinking quickly, she searched once again for something to substitute. Finding another nut ... figuring that this was a weird drink to begin with, and after a long day, the doctor wouldn't notice, anyway.
Setting the drink before the doctor, she could see a certain relief come over the him, as at the end of a hard day, he anticipated the refreshment that awaited him. The doctor raised the glass to his lips, took a big swallow, and coughing and sputtering, demanded to know if she were attempting to poison him. "Young lady, exactly WHAT is this you have just given me?" he demanded. Putting on her best innocent face, Gina the new bartender replied,
"Well, that's a Hickory Daiquiri, Doc!"
OK, you know that in Hollywood, every movie producer has his "Yes Man" whose job is to follow the producer around and say, "Yes, CB", "Right, CB" and so on. Well, one of these Yes Men got depressed, so down in fact that he was unable to function. So he consulted a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist quickly determined the problem, and told the Yes Man that he just had to find a release for his negative feelings, and say "No."
"But if I said 'no' I'd get fired!" The yes man protested.
The psychiatrist said, "Oh, I don't mean on the job, I mean go out to the Grand Canyon and find a ledge off the trail, and there you can yell 'NO!' to your heart's content and no one will be the wiser."
Well, the Yes Man decided to try it. He went to the Grand Canyon and found a spot off the trail, and stood there and very timidly said, "no." It felt good, so he tried it a little louder, "No." Even better! soon he was shouting "NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!!!!" at the top of his lungs and feeling great.
He went back to work a changed man, and said "Yes!" with all the proper enthusiam, because on the weekend he could escape to the Grand Canyon and say "NO!" Other Yes men decided to try this also, and soon every weekend the Grand Canyon was crammed with Yes Men shouting "NO!"
A new Yes Man came to Hollywood, and he too felt the need of such a release, but when he tried to find a ledge in the Grand Canyon, all of them seemed to be taken. He hunted and hunted, but everyplace he found was already taken by another Yes Man.
Finally he found a small ledge which had been overlooked because of its size. Thankfully he scurried out on it and stood there and said "No." It felt great! So he wound up and released an enormous "NO!" and in so doing lost his balance and fell to his death. Which just goes to prove that:
a little No Ledge can be a dangerous thing.
Ft. Worth - The Ft. Worth Zoo today has an animal which may be the rival of Co-Co the gorilla. Maddie the Gnu was to be moved to her new home in the Zoo this morning, but until the Gnu's Pen could be readied, Richard Leak, the Zoo's African Fauna expert, advised leaving Maddie in the bathroom. The bathroom had been almost complete except for tiling the floor. This morning the floor was completely tiled.
Zoo officials insist that no one was in that bathroom all night except the wildebeast. If that is true, the Wildebeast managed to tile 350 sq. feet of public bathroom in one night.
"These animals have capabilities we simply cannot know," was Richard Leak's comment on the subject.
Leak also lent some insight on the circumstances of the animal's arrival: "[The Fort Worth Zoo] had recently been given a large donation to make 'real wildlife' accessible to the public, so I was asked to find ... perfectly average animals for the zoo. This was supposed to be an absolutely typical wildebeast."
The bathroom mentioned is a large public bathroom adjacent to the gnu's living area. The new marble tiling for which Maddie is purportedly responsible was described as "excellent, an incredible job" by the professional tiler who arrived today to do the job.
Both the new bathroom and the new animals are being funded by the same grant from Telco Corporation's president and CEO, Linda Skarst. Ms. Skarst is a wildlife activist and felt that exposure to real animals in their natural environments would encourage children to become comfortable with wild animals.
When asked if Maddie could still qualify as an average representative of her species after this incident, Ms. Skarst replied, "Oh, yes! This just proves that Maddie is:
a typical gnu and a tiler, too."
It seems there were two frogs sitting on a lily pad, when all of a sudden, a fly came along. One frog put out his tongue, ate the fly, and started laughing hysterically. Soon the other frog joined in the laughter.
Later in the day, the other frog ate a fly and the two frogs burst out in laughter. As time went on, the frogs enjoyed the flies so much that the sight of a fly would cause them to double up with pleasure (if it's possible for frogs to double up!). But of course, the most pleasure came when the fly was actually eaten.
A third frog hopped up to the first two and asked what was so funny. The first frog answered "Time." "Huh?" asked the third frog. The second frog explained:
"Time's fun when you’re having flies."
An anthropology grad student discovered a remote tribe of very tiny people, only 6 inches tall, known as the Putz. Knowing that nobody would believe him otherwise, he decided to capture some of them and bring them home. So he put several of them in a shoe box and brought them back to the US.
When he got the building where he was to meet with his professor, he decided that the Putz needed some fresh air and sun (after being cooped up in a shoe box for several days) so he left them on the steps to bask in the sun. Wouldn't you know, shortly after he went in, there was a fire in the building, and the alarms went off. All the people came stomping out of the building and smashed all the Putz. Moral:
Don't bask all your Putz in one exit.
Have you heard the one about the tribe of Basques who lived in this valley? They heard that barbarian hoards were approaching, so they decided to lay a trap. They all waited in the hills at the entrance to the valley. When the barbarians passed by, they descended on them. Unfortunately, the barbarians had a lot more experience at warfare than the Basques did, and the Basques got slaughtered. The moral:
Don't put all your Basques in one exit.
A butcher got along great with everyone in the neighborhood except a mysterious Swami. They hated each other! One evening, the Swami's pregnant wife had intense cravings for liver, and the Swami had to go into his enemy's shop. "Give me a pound of liver," he said to the butcher's clerk. The butcher whispered to the clerk from the back of the shop, "Here's our chance to get that no-good bum." Pointing to the clerk's thumb, he said,
"Weigh down upon the Swami's liver!!!"
A king carried environmentalism too far when he prohibited hunting of any kind. Soon the realm was overrun with lions and tigers and bears.
"Oh My!" shouted the people. They revolted and threw the king out of the country.
It was the first time the reign was called because of the game.
There was a Babylonian General who was declared a traitor for leading a revolt. He escaped one night and hid in an old Babylonian ziggurat, or temple, where he expected to find some of his associates.
He searched all over, but couldn't find them! So he figured he had better burn all the secret plans that were hidden in the ziggurat. As soon as the fire was going he threw in the first papers, and he was then promptly discovered and captured.
The moral of the story:
WARNING! The searchin' General has determined that smoking ziggurats may be hazardous to your stealth!
The great German actress Zelda had done everything but for one thing; she'd never won an Academy Award. She was known for being terribly temperamental and choosy about her parts, but was also known to soften for the promise of the elusive award.
One day she was called by the great director, Meyer Schmidt, and asked to review a new script he had. She read the script and immediately rejected it. "Iss Nicht my type of script, Meyer, and I'll NOT do it."
"But HONEYKINS," he cried, "It's a WONDERFUL script."
"I didn't say it wasn't Vunderful or goot, but I'll not do it."
"But Sweetiekins, " Meyer continued, "with my direction and your acting and name, it will make us MILLIONS."
"More Geldt I don't need. Ich do nicht like the script."
"But, DARLING, don't you see, with my connections, I can almost GUARANTEE you an Academy Award with a good performance."
Zelda thought a moment then agreed and said:
"Oh, I'd LUFF to be an Oscar Veener, Meyer ..."
The financial situation had been very bad for several months. Because he was out of work and destitute, a young man decided to rob a bank. After days of observation, he chose a small satellite bank facility across the metropolitan area from where he was living. He spent several days planning every move. Late one dark moonless night he picked the lock on the rear door of the bank without difficulty.
He stealthily crept through the bank to the place where he knew the safe stood. Then his troubles began. While trying to pick the lock on the safe, he set off the burglar alarm, but his careful preparation paid off. He had brought along a furniture dolly. He quickly loaded the small safe onto the dolly and rolled it out to his van.
He drove to a friend's house and explained his problem. He asked if, in exchange for some of the loot, he might store the safe in the friend's garage for a few days. His friend assured him: "You can rest assured, your safe is secret with me!"
When Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb, he had trouble selling it. People just didn't trust this "new" way of making light. In order to promote his idea he decided to go around the country installing lights in different towns in order to drum up publicity. While in Oklahoma, Edison stopped by an Indian reservation and offered to put lights in any building they wanted. After much thought the Indian chief decided that he wanted lights in his outhouse, so he could see what he was doing at night.
This made him the first man to wire a head for a reservation!
The curator of the Madrid Zoo was particularly interested in endangered species. He was so interested that he had acquired, through legal and sometimes shady dealings, several endangered species for the zoo. The people that visited the zoo were all very intrigued by these animals. Through the curator's efforts, people were becoming much more interested in saving endangered species.
It came to pass that the curator read in the zoological trade journals that there were only 34 Whooping Cranes left in all the world. He was instantly determined that the Madrid Zoo must have at least one before the breed became extinct. By some bribery or other, a Whooping Crane was located and dispatched via air freight, destination the Madrid Zoo. Upon hearing the good news, the curator sent his Special Assistant In Charge of Endangered Species to the Madrid Airport to retrieve the Whooping Crane. Alas, when the bird arrived at the airport, it refused to leave the plane. No amount of coaxing with food would cause the Crane to leave the plane. And so, the broken-hearted Special Assistant In Charge of Endangered Species returned empty-handed to the Madrid Zoo and reported to the curator,
"Cranes in Spain stay mainly on the plane."
This all reminds me of the unfortunate story of the British entrepreneur John Tate and his compasses. Sometime back in the mid-1800s a small-time British manufacturer named John Tate decided to go into the business of making compasses. He set up a factory, installed the machinery, hired some workers, and began turning out his first compasses. He had just completed his first batch of 500 compasses when someone finally pointed out that he had forgotten to mark which end of the compass was north. The compasses worked fine; you just didn't know which way was north and which was south. Needless to say poor Mr. Tate's compasses didn't sell; Tate went bankrupt, the factory closed, and the workers were laid off. But his memory lives on, since that time any compass where you're not sure which end is north and which is south has been known as a 'Tate's compass'. The moral of the story, of course, is that:
He who has a Tate's is lost.
Once there was this Indian who found that every time he bent over to pick up the paddle for his canoe, he'd get this terrible crick in his back. He went to see the doctor the next time he was in town, and the doctor said, "If this happens to you again, simply grasp the paddle with both hands, shove the bottom of the paddle into the ground, and pull yourself up." The next day the Indian was reaching for the paddle when he once again got the crick in his back. Remembering what the doctor had told him, he grabbed the paddle and managed to slowly work his way up it. When at last he was able to stand up again, he was very surprised to find himself:
Up a paddle without a crick.
Mother Lion and Father Lion had gone off hunting, and had told their two children not to wander away. However, a couple of small gnus wandered by, and the baby lions could not resist the temptation to try out their own hunting skills. They ran out, chased after the gnus, killed them, and started eating them.
Just as the baby lions were reaching the end of their meal, the parents appeared in the distance. One of the baby lions turned to the other, and said:
"That is the end of the gnus. Here again are the head lions."
Remember Mark Hamill from Star Wars? He doesn't like to eat in Chinese restaurants. He likes the food fine, but has a lot of trouble using chopsticks. Just when he starts to get really frustrated, this voice whispers in his ear,
"Use the Forks Luke."
The recent lock-out of the Major League umpires was making them all grumpy. After a tough day of walking the picket lines, one umpire returned home to find that his young boy wanted to play with him. As the tired ump was sitting in his favorite easy chair, the lad kept trying to crawl onto his lap. The umpire snapped, yelled at the boy and boy ran away crying.
This proves the old adage:
The Son Never Sits on the Brutish Umpire.
A few years ago the nuclear aircraft carrier Enterprise was returning to its base at the Oakland-Alameda Naval Base when the ship's captain, misreading the tides, managed to run the carrier aground on the mudflats of San Francisco bay. True story. This event went down in history as being one of the finest examples of:
Grounding the warship you walk on.
Dick Whittington was investigating warring factions of a Chinese secret society. Suddenly, his pet was taken hostage! When Dick reported the abduction to the police, the officers were unsympathetic. "What's the matter," they teased,
"Tong got your cat?"
Billy, a nine year old, took up the hobby of collecting stamps. He was very enthusiastic about it until one day his neighbors' kid saw his impressive collection and took up the hobby.
Billy complained to his Dad: "I don't want to collect stamps anymore! Andy has every stamp that I have!"
"Don't be stupid, son", his dad said.
"Don't you know that imitation is the best form of philately."
There was a small African tribe that had a terrible problem. Every morning a neighboring herd of Wildebeasts would stampede through the village, knocking down cooking pots, smashing water jugs and trampling the vegetable gardens. The Chief had tried everything, with no success. He built fences, but the Gnus ran right through them. He tried having his men scare the herd away but they always came back.
Finally, one morning the Chief woke up and didn't hear the thunder of hooves. He went out, and the Gnu herd was nowhere to be seen. They were gone at last! So, the Chief called all the people of the tribe together, and announced,
"NO GNUS IS GOOD NEWS!"
Two workmen were sitting in a pub drinking and arguing about which pub they should visit next. "The Rose and Crown's the closest," said the first workman. "No, the Elephant and Castle is closer!" said the second workman. So they decided to go to the Elephant and Castle. On their way to the pub in question, a ferocious lion, which had escaped from the zoo, lunged at them, but was killed by anti-aircraft fire from a search plane overhead. Stepping over the beast's body, they went on to the Elephant and Castle, thereby proving that:
The shortest distance between two pints is a strafed lion.
A witch doctor kept the members of his tribe in virtual subjugation by means of powerful magic. Whenever one of the tribesmen tried to overthrow him, he would be turned into an apple! One night a group of tribesmen sneaked into his hut, opened his book of magic, learned the apple spell, and turned the witch doctor into an apple!
But the book warned that if the apple ever dried out and changed significantly in weight, it would turn back into the witch doctor, more powerful than ever! So every day the tribesmen placed the apple on a scale to make sure that its weight remained the same. Moral:
A weigh a day keeps the doctor an apple.
Once there was this cattle rancher who, after 3 years, finally found a buyer for his oldest steer Caesar. This new owner happened to be the rancher's closest neighbor, who lived on the other side of the river valley. "Men" the rancher said to his cowhands, "it's time to say our good-byes to this bull, and take him across the river". So the men roped Caesar, and walked him down to the river. They were about to put him on the boat to take him across, but the rancher's youngest nephew, who helped to raise Caesar, said, "Can we take him out for one last munch in his favorite meadow?", with a tear in his eye. The other hands said sure, and led him just off the riverbank for a snack. Well, with the day as nice as it was, all of the hands took a quick nap. 4 hours later, the rancher saw that the bull was still on his property and ran down into the valley. He shouted and cursed at the men to wake them up. Once everyone was standing, he said the beast should have been across long ago,
"We've come to ferry Caesar, not to graze him!"
I heard about a horrible river dragon that lurked in the waters under the old London Bridge and destroyed passing boats, eating the crews and passengers. Finally, a group of brave knights lured it up onto the banks and, with great loss of life, managed to slay the horrible beast. While After the conquest, Sir Newt suggested that they grind up the foul beast and use it for food in the local orphanage to cut down on the wasteful cost of gruel. Thus Dicken's opening line...
"It was the beast of Thames, it was the wurst of Thames."
A German farmer with relatives in the US sent them a package consisting of some pork sausages made from his old pig. When they complained that the package had not yet arrived, he wrote:
"Cheer up. The wurst is yet to come."
This psychic is jailed for false prophecies, but because he is only 4'7" tall and extremely slender, he is able to slip under the bars and make his escape. Newspaper headline the next day?
"SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE"
The psychic is really happy he escaped, and it back in business in a new location. This first customer, however is a plainclothesman who is looking for him. Before the psychic could do anything about it, the plainclothesman hit the psychic with his fist in order to subdue him. The plainclothesman was reprimanded for:
Striking a happy medium.
Fred Herring's best friend was Waylon Whale. They always played together. Their friendship was well known all over the ocean. One day Waylon decided that he would like to take a trip to the Gulf of California, but Fred, fearing earthquakes, decided not to go with him but to stay in Puget Sound.
A few weeks later in school, an angel fish class mate of Fred's asked "Do you know what Waylon Whale is doing down there in granola land (land of fruits, nuts, and flakes)?"
"No" replied Fred Herring,
"I'm not my blubber's kipper."
A symphony was performing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and things were getting a bit crazy. In the fourth movement, the lead violin player got some string and tied the conductor's music to the stand. Meanwhile, the basses had been sneaking shots of whiskey through the entire performance and were completely plastered by this point. The bass trombone player looks up from his latest issue of Field and Stream to ask his neighbor what in the world was going on. The guy turns to him and says
"Well, it's the bottom of the ninth, the bases are loaded and the score is tied."
There was a movie director who wanted to create a movie about his 3 favorite composers: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven. He always felt that composers were not portrayed manly enough and decided to change that once in for all. He invited some of the toughest actors to play the composers. He called Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Sylvester Stallone. They all met and approved of his plan. Jean-Claude said he wanted to play Mozart. Stallone wanted to be Beethoven. And of course, Arnold said:
I’ll be Bach
There was this haunted house on the outskirts of the town which was avoided by all the townfolk - the ghost which `lived' there was feared by all.
However, an enterprising journalist decided to get the scoop of the day by photographing the fearsome phantom. When he entered the house, armed with only his camera, the ghost descended upon him, clanking chains et al. He told the ghost "I mean no harm - I just want your photograph". The ghost was quite happy at this chance to make the headlines - he posed for a number of ghostly shots.
The happy journalist rushed back to his dark room, and began developing the photos. Unfortunately, they turned out to be black and underexposed.
So what's the moral of the story?
The spirit was willing but the flash was weak.
Once upon a time, there was a farmer who had a donkey. The donkey was always too tired to do any farming. The farmer tried everything to get the donkey to do work but the donkey would just sit down and fall asleep - right in the middle of plowing.
The farmer finally took the donkey to the local wizard for help. The wizard thought about the problem and looked over the donkey. He decided the best course of action would be to partially change the donkey into an animal with more energy.
The farmer was worried because he liked his donkey but the wizard seemed to know what he was doing. With some spells and muttering, the changed creature appeared......
The farmer brought the donkey to the fields but nothing had changed. The donkey still sat down and fell asleep at a moments notice.
The local witch wandered by and laughed. She said this must be the work of the wizard and it was clear that he would never see any productive work. "Why not?" asked the frustrated farmer. "Because, you fool....."
"Your ass is dragon!"
http://www.awpi.com/Combs/Shaggy/
http://www.badpuns.com/list.php?section=shaggy