For many years I have been saving all those "really neat" posters and the like. Now it is time to share them with ...... with YOU! I'll be adding more as I can. LOTS to do. Some are not "posters" at all, but are funny or otherwise very enjoyable. At least I think so. Hope you do too.

Actual Answering Machine Messages

(verified by the world famous International Institute of Answering Machine Answers)

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My wife and I can't come to the phone right now, but if you'll leave your name and number, we'll get back to you as soon as we're finished.

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Hi. This is John: If you are the phone company, I already sent the money. If you are my parents, please send money. If you are my financial aid institution, you didn't send me enough money. If you are my friends, you owe me money. If you are a female, don't worry, I have plenty of money.

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(Narrator's voice:) There Dale sits, reading a magazine. Suddenly the telephone rings! The bathroom explodes into a veritable maelstrom of toilet paper, with Dale in the middle of it, his arms windmilling at incredible speeds! Will he make it in time? Alas no, his valiant effort is in vain. The bell hath sounded. Thou must leave a message.

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"Hi, I'm not home right now but my answering machine is, so you can talk to it instead. Wait for the beep." "Hello. I am David's answering machine. What are you?"

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(From my Japanese friend in Toronto): He-lo! This is Sa-to. If you leave message, I call you soon. If you leave *sexy* message, I call sooner!

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"Hi! John's answering machine is broken. This is his refrigerator. Please speak very slowly, and I'll stick your message to myself with one of these magnets."

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"Hello, you are talking to a machine. I am capable of receiving messages. My owners do not need siding, windows, or a hot tub, and their carpets are clean. They give to charity through their office and do not need their picture taken. If you're still with me, leave your name and number and they will get back to you."

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"This is not an answering machine - this is a telepathic thought-recording device. After the tone, think about your name, your reason for calling and a number where I can reach you, and I'll think about returning your call."

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"Hi. I am probably home, I'm just avoiding someone I don't like. Leave me a message, and if I don't call back, it's you."

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"If you are a burglar, then we're probably at home cleaning our weapons right now and can't come to the phone. Otherwise, we probably aren't home and it's safe to leave us a message."

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"You're growing tired. Your eyelids are getting heavy. You feel very sleepy now. You are gradually losing your willpower and your ability to resist suggestions. When you hear the tone you will feel helplessly compelled to leave your name, number, and a message."

"WE TRAINED HARD....... but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized .... I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization." - Petronius Arbiter, 210 B. C.

YOU KNOW IT'S GOING TO BE A BAD DAY WHEN:

- You wake up face down on the pavement.
- You call Suicide Prevention and they put you on "hold".
- You put your bra on backwards and it fits better.
- You see a 60-Minute news team waiting in your office.
- Your birthday cake collapses from the weight of the candles.
- Your son tells you he wishes Anita Bryant would mind her own business.
- You want to put on the clothes you wore home from last night's party - and there aren't any.
- You turn on the news and they're showing emergency routes out of town.
- Your twin brother forgets your birthday.
- You wake up to discover that your waterbed broke and then realize you don't have one.
- Your horn goes off accidentally and remains stuck as you follow a a group of Hell's Angels on the freeway.
- Your wife wakes up feeling amorous and you have a headache.

Dear Bank Manager,

I am writing to thank you for bouncing the check with which I endeavoured to pay my plumber last month. By my calculations some three nanoseconds must have elapsed between his presenting the check, and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honour it. I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my entire salary, an arrangement which, I admit, has only been in place for eight years.

You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account with $50 by way of penalty for the inconvenience I caused to your bank. My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me to re-think my errant financial ways. You have set me on the path of fiscal righteousness. No more will our relationship be blighted by these unpleasant incidents, for I am restructuring my affairs in 2000, taking as my model the procedures, attitudes and conduct of your very own bank. I can think of no greater compliment, and I know you will be excited and proud to hear it.

To this end, please be advised about the following changes.

First, I have noticed that whereas I personally attend to your telephone calls and letters, when I try to contact you I am confronted by the impersonal, ever-changing, pre-recorded, faceless entity which your bank has become.
From now on I, like you, choose only to deal with a flesh and blood person.My mortgage and loan repayments will, therefore and hereafter, no longer be automatic, but will arrive at your bank, by cheque, addressed personally and confidentially to an employee of your branch, whom you must nominate. You will be aware that it is an offense under the Postal Act for any other person to open such an envelope. Please find attached an Application For Contact Status which I require your chosen employee to complete. I am sorry it runs to eight pages, but in order that I know as much about him or her as your bank knows about me, there is no alternative.

Please note that all copies of his or her medical history must be countersigned by a Justice of the Peace, and that themandatorydetails of his/her financial situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities) must be accompanied by documented proof. In due courseI will issue your employee with a PIN number which he/she must quote in all dealings with me. I regret that it cannot be shorter than 28 digits but, again, I have modelled it on the number of button presses required to access my account balance on your phone bank service.

As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Let me level the playing field even further by introducing you to my new telephone system, which you will notice, is very much like yours. My Authorized Contact at your bank, the only person with whom I will have any dealings, may call me at any time and will be answered by an automated voice. By pressing buttons on the phone, he/she will be guided thorough an extensive set of menus:
1. To make an appointment to see me;
2. To query a missing repayment;
3. To make a general complaint or inquiry;
4. To transfer the call to my living room in case I am there - extension ofliving room to be communicated at the time the call is received;
5. To transfer the call to my bedroom in case I am still sleeping; extension of bedroom to be communicated at the time the call is received;
6. To transfer the call to my toilet in case I am attending to nature; extension of toilet to be communicated at the time the call is received;
7. To transfer the call to my mobile phone in case I am not at home;
8. To leave a message on my computer. To leave a message a password to access my computer is required. Password will be communicated at a later date to the contact;
9. To return to the main menu and listen carefully to options 1 through 8 the contact will then be put on hold, pending the attention of my automated answering service.
While this may on occasion involve a lengthy wait, uplifting music will play for the duration. This month I've chosen a refrain from The Best Of Woody Guthrie: "Oh, the banks are made of marble With a guard at every door And the vaults are filled with silver, that the miners sweated for!"

After twenty minutes of that, our mutual contact will probably know it by heart.

On a more serious note, we come to the matter of cost. As your bank has often pointed out, the ongoing drive for greater efficiency comes at a cost - a cost which you have always been quick to pass on to me. Let me repay your kindness by passing some costs back.

First, there is the matter of advertising material you send me. This I will read for a fee of $20 per page flyer. Inquiries from your nominated contact will be billed at $5 per minute of my time spent in response. Any debits to my account, as, for example, in the matter of the penalty for the dishonoured check, will be passed back to you. My new phone service runs at 75 cents a minute (even Woody Guthrie doesn't come free), so you would be well advised to keep your inquiries brief and to the point. Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an establishment fee to cover the setting up of this new arrangement.

May I wish you a happy, if ever-so-slightly less prosperous, New Year.

Your humble client.

This hangs in my cabin:

Visitors are encouraged to wear noisy little bells on their clothing so as not to startle bears that aren't expecting them. It is also suggested that you carry pepper spray in case you encounter a bear. It is also a good idea to watch for fresh bear activity. You should recognize the difference between black bear poop and grizzly bear poop.

Black bear poop is smaller and contains a lot of berries and squirrel fur. Grizzly poop has little bells in it and smells like pepper spray.

BIRTH: IT'S A PAIN FOR DAD, TOO!

Let's take just a quick look at the history of baby-having. For thousands of years, only women had babies. Primitive women would go off into primitive huts and groan and wail and sweat while other women hovered around. The primitive men stayed outside doing manly things, such as lifting heavy objects and spitting.

When the baby was born, the women would clean up as best they could and show it to the men, who would spit appreciatively and head off to the forest to throw sharp sticks at small animals. If you had suggested to primitive men that they should actually watch women have babies, they would have laughed at you and probably tortured you for three or four days. They were real men.

At the beginning of the 20th century, women started having babies in hospital rooms. Often, males were present, but they were professional doctors who were paid large sums of money and wore masks. Normal civilian males continued to stay out of the baby-having area; they remained in waiting rooms reading old copies of Field and Stream, an activity that is less manly than lifting heavy objects but still reasonably manly.

What I'm getting at is that, for most of history, baby-having was mainly in the hands (so to speak) of women. Many fine people were born under this system. Charles Lindbergh, for example.

Things changed, though, in the 1970's. The birth rate dropped sharply. Women started going to college and driving bulldozers and carrying briefcases and freely using such words as debenture. They just didn't have time to have babies. For a while there, the only people having babies were unwed teen-age girls, who are very fertile and can get pregnant merely by standing downwind from teen-age boys.

Then, young professional couples began to realize that their lives were missing something - a sense of stability, of companionship, of responsibility for another life. So they got Labrador retrievers. A little later, they started having babies again, mainly because of the tax advantages. These days you can't open your car door without hitting a pregnant woman. But there's a catch; Women now expect men to watch them have babies. This is called "Natural Childbirth", which is one of those terms that sounds terrific but that nobody really understands. Another one is "Ph balanced".

At first, natural childbirth was popular only with hippy-type, granola oriented couples who lived in majestic domes and named their babies things like Peace, Love, World, Understanding, and Harrington-Schwartz. The males, their brains badly corroded by drugs and organic food, wrote articles about what a Meaningful Experience it is to see a New Life Come Into The World. None of these articles mentioned the various fluids and solids that come into the world with the New Life, so people got the impression that watching somebody have a baby was a bushel of meaningful fun. At cocktail parties, you'd run into natural - childbirth converts who would drone on for hours, giving you a contraction - by - contraction account of what went on in the delivery room. They were worse than Moonies, or people who tell you how much they bought their houses for in 1973 and how much they're worth today.

Before long, natural childbirth was everywhere, like salad bars; and now, perfectly innocent civilian males all over the country are required by federal law to watch females have babies.

Back in 1967, Canada's Centennial year, we decided on a Centennial Project: Dave. First we had to go to 10 evening childbirth classes at the hospital. Before the classes, the hospital staff told us, mysteriously, to bring two pillows. This was the first humiliation, because we had only two pillowcases, and both had cranberry juice stains. It may be possible to walk down the streets of Kuala Lumpur with stained, unmatched pillowcases and still feel dignified, but this is not possible in Grande Prairie.

Anyway, we showed up for the first class, along with about 15 other couples, consisting of women who were going to have babies, and men who were going to have to watch them. They all had matching pillowcases. In fact, some couples had obviously purchased tasteful pillowcases especially for childbirth class; these were planning to have wealthy babies. They sat together through all the classes, and eventually agreed to get together for brunch.

The classes consisted of sitting in a brightly lit room and openly discussing various parts of the human female anatomy. Now I can remember a time, in high school, when I would have killed for reliable information about these matters. The instructor told us all about the spermatozoa which are tiny, very tupid, one-celled organisms. They look all over for an ovum, but most of them would recognize one if they tripped over one. They swim around for days, trying to mate with the pancreas or whatever other organs they stumble into. Eventually, though, one bumps into an ovum and the happy couple parades down fallopian drive and becomes a baby. They showed us actual pictures of a baby before birth. They didn't tell us how these pictures were taken, but I suspect that it involved a great deal of drinking.

One evening we saw a movie of a woman we didn't even know, having a baby. No kidding. Some woman actually let some moviemakers film the whole thing. In colour. Another time, the instructor announced, in the tone of voice you might use to tell people that they had just won a free trip to the Bahamas, that we were going to see colour slides of a Caesarean section. The first slides showed a pregnant woman cheerfully entering the hospital. The last slides showed her cheerfully holding a baby. The middle slides showed how they got the baby out of the cheerful woman, but can't give you a lot of detail because I had to go out for 15 or 20 drinks of water.

When we weren't looking at pictures we practiced breathing. This is where the pillows came in. What happens is that when the baby gets ready to come, the woman goes through a series of what the medical community laughingly refers to as "contractions". If it referred to them as "horrible pains that make you wonder why you ever decided to get pregnant", people might stop having babies and the medical community would have to go into the major appliance business.

In the old days, under Prime Minister Diefenbaker, doctors avoided the contraction problem by giving lots of drugs to women who were having babies. They'd knock them out during the delivery, and the woman would wake up when their kids were entering the fourth grade. But the idea with natural childbirth is to try to avoid giving the woman a lot of drugs, so she can share the first, intimate moments after birth with the baby and the father and the obstetrician and the pediatrician and the standby anesthesiologist and several nurses and the person who cleans the delivery room.

The key to avoiding drugs, according to the natural childbirth people is for the woman to breathe deeply. Really. The theory is that if she breathes deeply, she'll get all relaxed and won't notice that she's in a hospital delivery room wearing a truly perverted garment and having a baby. I'm not sure who came up with this theory. Whoever it was evidently believed that women have very small brains.

So, in childbirth classes, we spent a lot of time sprawled on these little mats with our pillows while the women pretended to have contractions and men squatted around with stopwatches and pretended to time them. The Main Line couples didn't care for this part. They were into bringing little backgammon sets and playing backgammon when they were supposed to be practicing breathing. I imagine they had a rough time in actual childbirth, unless they got the servants to have the contractions for them.

Anyway, my wife and I went along for months, breathing and timing, respectively. We had no problem whatsoever. We were a terrific team. We had a swell time, really.

The actual delivery was slightly more difficult. I don't want to name names, but I held up my end. I had my stopwatch in good working order and I told my wife to breathe. "Don't forget to breathe", or "You should breathe, you know." She, on the other hand, was unusually cranky. For example, she didn't want me to use my stopwatch. Can you imagine? All that practice, all that squatting on the natural childbirth classroom floor, and she suddenly gets into this big snit about stopwatches. Also, she almost completely lost her sense of humour. At one point, I made an especially amusing remark, and she tried to hit me. She usually has an excellent sense of humour.

None the less, Dave came out alright, or at least alright for a newborn baby. I thought I had held up well for the whole thing when the doctor, who up to then had behaved like a perfectly rational person, said "Would you like to see the placenta?" Now let's face it: that is like asking, "Would you like me to pour hot tar into your nostrils?" Nobody would like to see a placenta. If anything, it would be form of cruel and unusual punishment. Without waiting for an answer, the doctor held up the placenta, not unlike the way you might hold up a bowling trophy. I bet he wouldn't have tried that with the people with matching pillowcases.

The placenta aside, everything worked out fine. We ended up with an extremely healthy, organic, natural baby who immediately demanded to be put back.

All in all, I'd say it's not a bad way to reproduce, although I understand that some members of the flatworm family simply divide into two.

Bread Kills!

1. More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users.
2. Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.
3. In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nations.
4. Every piece of bread you eat brings you nearer to death.
5. Bread is associated with all the major diseases of the body. For example, nearly all sick people have eaten bread. The effects are obviously cumulative:
99.9% of all people who die from cancer have eaten bread.
100% of all soldiers have eaten bread.
96.9% of all Communist sympathizers have eaten bread.
99.7% of the people involved in air and auto accidents ate bread within 6 months preceding the accident.
93.1% of juvenile delinquents came from homes where bread is served frequently.
6. Evidence points to the long-term effects of bread eating: Of all the people born since 1839 who later dined on bread, there has been a 100% mortality rate.
7. Bread is made from a substance called "dough." It has been proven that as little as a teaspoon of dough can be used to suffocate a lab rat. The average American eats more bread than that in one day!
8. Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low incidence of cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, and osteoporosis.
9. Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water to eat begged for bread after as little as two days.
10. Bread is often a "gateway" food item, leading the user to "harder" items such as butter, jelly, peanut butter, and even cold cuts.
11. Bread has been proven to absorb water. Since the human body is more than 90 percent water, it follows that eating bread could lead to your body being taken over by this absorptive food product, turning you into a soggy, gooey bread-pudding person.
12. Newborn babies can choke on bread.
13. Bread is baked at temperatures as high as 400 degrees Fahrenheit! That kind of heat can kill an adult in less than one minute.
14. Most bread eaters are utterly unable to distinguish between significant scientific fact and meaningless statistical babbling.

In light of these frightening statistics, we propose the following bread restrictions:
1. No sale of bread to minors.
2. A nationwide "Just Say No To Toast" campaign, complete celebrity TV spots and bumper stickers.
3. A 300 percent federal tax on all bread to pay for all the societal ills we might associate with bread.
4. No animal or human images, nor any primary colors (which may appeal to children) may be used to promote bread usage.
5. The establishment of "Bread-free" zones around schools.

This is a Whatchamacallit, or a Gizmo or a GrappelGrommet or a Filbertflange or whatever. I saw Adam on Mythbusters with one so I had to make one:

WARNING IN COMPUTER ROOM:

This machine is subject to breakdowns during periods of critical need.

A special circuit in the machine called a 'critical detector' senses the operator's emotional state in terms of how desperate he or she is to use the machine.

The 'critical detector' then creates a malfunction proportional to the desperation of the operator.

Threatening the machine with violence only aggravates the situation.

Likewise, attempts to use another machine may cause it to also malfunction. They belong to the same union.

Keep cool and say nice things to the machine.

Nothing else seems to work.

Never let anything mechanical know you are in a hurry!

ACTUAL BUMPER STICKERS SEEN ON CARS:

Sayings that should be on buttons...

Well, this day was a total waste of makeup.
Make yourself at home! Clean my kitchen.
Who are these kids and why are they calling me Mom?
Don't bother me. I'm living happily ever after.
This isn't an office. It's Hell with fluorescent lighting.
I started out with nothing & still have most of it left.
I pretend to work. They pretend to pay me.
If I throw a stick, will you leave?
You! Off my planet!
Therapy is expensive, poppin' bubble wrap is cheap! You choose.
Practice random acts of intelligence & senseless acts of self-control.
Bottomless pit of needs & wants.
I like cats, too. Let's exchange recipes.
Friendly checkout clerk. Thanks for keeping me that way!
If I want to hear the pitter patter of little feet, I'll put shoes on my cat.
Does your train of thought have a caboose?
Did the aliens forget to remove your anal probe?
Errors have been made. Others will be blamed.
Let me show you how the guards used to do it.
And your crybaby whiny-assed opinion would be...?
I'm not crazy, I've just been in a very bad mood for 30 years.
If only you'd use your powers for good instead of evil...
See no evil, hear no evil, date no evil.
A PBS mind in an MTV world.
Allow me to introduce my selves.
Sarcasm is just one more service we offer.
Whisper my favorite words: "I'll buy it for you."
Better living through denial.
Whatever kind of look you were going for, you missed.
Suburbia: where they tear out the trees & then name streets after them.
Adult child of alien invaders.
Do they ever shut up on your planet?
I'm just working here till a good fast-food job opens up.
Are those your eyeballs? I found them in my cleavage.
I'm not your type. I'm not inflatable.
I'm trying to imagine you with a personality.
A cubicle is just a padded cell without a door.
Stress is when you wake up screaming & you realize you haven't fallen asleep yet.
Here I am! Now what are your other two wishes?
Back off! You're standing in my aura.
I can't remember if I'm the good twin or the evil one.
Don't worry. I forgot your name, too!
Adults are just kids who owe money.
One of us is thinking about sex... OK, it's me.
How many times do I have to flush before you go away?
I just want revenge. Is that so wrong?
I work 40 hours a week to be this poor.
You say I'm a bitch like it's a bad thing.
Can I trade this job for what's behind door #2?
Macho Law forbids me from admitting I'm wrong.
Nice perfume. Must you marinate in it?
Not all men are annoying. Some are dead.
Too may freaks, not enough circuses.
Chaos, panic, & disorder - my work here is done.
Ambivalent? Well, yes and no.
You look like shit. Is that the style now?
Everyone thinks I'm psychotic, except for my friends deep inside the earth.
Earth is full. Go home.
Is it time for your medication or mine?
Did I mention the kick in the groin you'll be receiving if you touch me?
I plead contemporary insanity.
And which dwarf are you?
I refuse to star in your psychodrama.
I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted paychecks.
How do I set a laser printer to stun?
I'm not tense, just terribly, terribly alert.

"I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me" (Philipians 4:13)

"If ye have faith...nothing shall be impossible unto you" (Matthew 17:20)

"If God be for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31)

"...be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind..." (Romans 12:2)

"When I get up in the morning, I have two choices; one is to be HAPPY; the other, to be UNHAPPY. I choose the former"

"This is the day that the Lord has made; I shall rejoice and be glad in it." (Psalm 118:24)

"The way to happiness: keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much. Fill your life with love. Scatter sunshine. Forget self; think of others. Do as you would be done by. Try this for a week and you will be surprised."

"...be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind..." (Romans 12:2)

WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?

JERRY FALWELL:
Because the chicken was gay! Isn't it obvious? Can't you people see the plain truth in front of your face? The chicken was going to the "otherside." That's what "they" call it the "other side." Yes, my friends,that chicken is gay. And, if you eat that chicken, you will become gay too. I say we boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination that the liberal media whitewashes with seemingly harmless phrases like "the other side." That chicken should not be free to cross the road. It's as plain and simple as that.

KEN STARR:
I intend to prove that the chicken crossed the road at the behest of the president of the United States of America in an effort to distract law enforcement officials and the American public from the criminal wrongdoing our highest elected official has been trying to cover up. As a result, the chicken is just another pawn in the president's ongoing and elaborate scheme to obstruct justice and undermine the rule of law. For that reason, my staff intends to offer the chicken unconditional immunity provided he cooperates fully with our investigation. Furthermore, the chicken will not be permitted to reach the other side of the road until our investigation and any Congressional follow-up investigations have been completed. (We also are investigating whether Sid Blumenthal has leaked information to the Rev. Jerry Falwell, alleging the chicken to be homosexual in an effort to discredit any useful testimony the bird may have to offer, or at least to ruffle his feathers.)

PAT BUCHANAN:
To steal a job from a decent, hardworking American.

DR. SEUSS:
Did the chicken cross the road?
Did he cross it with a toad?
Yes! The chicken crossed the road,
but why it crossed, I've not been told!

ERNEST HEMINGWAY:
To die. In the rain.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.:
I envision a world where all chickens will be free to cross roads without having their motives called into question. Free range at last, free range at last.

GRANDPA:
In my day, we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Someone told us that the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough for us.

ARISTOTLE:
It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

KARL MARX:
It was a historically inevitable.

SADDAM HUSSAIN:
This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.

RONALD REAGAN:
What chicken?

CAPTAIN JAMES T. KIRK:
To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.

FOX MULDER:
You saw it cross the road with your own eyes. How many more chickens have to cross before you believe it?

FREUD:
The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.

BILL GATES:
I have just released eChicken98, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook-and Internet Explorer is an inextricable part of eChicken.

EINSTEIN:
Did the chicken really cross the road or did the road move beneath the chicken?

BILL CLINTON:
I never crossed the road with that chicken. What do you mean by chicken? Could you define chicken please? Could you define road? And what do you mean exactly by crossed?

LOUIS FARRAKHAN:
The road, you will see, represents the black man. The chicken crossed the "black man" in order to trample him and keep the brother down.

COLONEL SANDERS:
I missed one?

WE HAVE TWO CHOICES

Jerry was the kind of guy you love to hate. He was always in a good mood and always had something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, "If I were any better, I would be twins!" He was a unique manager because he had several waiters who had followed him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation. Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, "I don't get it! You can't be a positive person all of the time. "How do you do it?" Jerry replied, "Each morning I wake up and say to myself, Jerry, you have two choices today.You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood. 'I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life." "Yeah, right, it's not that easy," I protested. "Yes it is," Jerry said. "Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It's your choice how you live life." I reflected on what Jerry said. Soon thereafter, I left the restaurant industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it. Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something you are never supposed to do in a restaurant business: he left the back door open one morning and was held up at gunpoint by three armed robbers. While trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found relatively quickly and rushed to the local trauma center. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body. I saw Jerry about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, "If I were any better, I'd be twins. Wanna see my scars?" I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place. "The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door," Jerry replied. "Then, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live, or I could choose to die. I chose to live. "Weren't you scared? Did you lose consciousness?" I asked. Jerry continued, "The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the emergency room and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read, 'He's a dead man." I knew I needed to take action." "What did you do?" I asked."Well, there was a big, burly nurse shouting questions at me," said Jerry. "She asked if I was allergic to anything. 'Yes,' I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, 'Bullets!' Over their laughter, I told them, 'I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead." Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully. Attitude, after all, is everything.
Kwok Lee

A Little-Known Christmas Fact:

One particular Christmas season a long time ago, Santa was getting ready for his annual trip, but there were problems everywhere. Four of his elves got sick, and the trainee elves did not produce the toys as fast as the regular ones, so Santa was beginning to feel the pressure of being behind schedule.

Then Mrs. Claus told Santa that her mom was coming to visit. This stressed Santa even more. When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth, and two had jumped the fence and were out, heaven knows where. More stress. Then when he began to load the sleigh, one of the boards cracked and the toy bag fell to the ground and scattered the toys.

So, frustrated, Santa went into the house for a cup of coffee and a shot of whiskey. When he went to the cupboard, he discovered that the elves had hid the liquor and there was nothing to drink.

Just then, the doorbell rang and Santa cussed on his way to the door. He opened the door, and there was a little angel with a great big Christmas tree. The angel said, very cheerfully, "Merry Christmas Santa. Isn't it just a lovely day? I have a beautiful tree for you. Isn't it just a lovely tree? Where would you like me to stick it?"

Thus began the tradition of the little angel on top of the Christmas tree.

Did you know .....

• Coca-Cola was originally green.
• The amount American Airlines saved in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served first class was $40,000.
• City with most Rolls Royce's per capita: Hong Kong.
• State with highest % of people who walk to work : Alaska.
• % of Africa that is wilderness: 28%
• % of America that is wilderness: 38%
• A duck's quack does not echo and no one knows why.
• Cost of raising a medium size dog to age of 11: $6400.
• # of people airborn over US at any time: 61,000.
• % of American's who have visited DisneyLand/World: 70%.
• Intelligent people have more copper and zinc in their hair.
• The youngest pope was 11 years old.
• Iceland consumes more Coca-Cola per capita than any other country.
• The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." uses every letter in the alphabet was developed by WesternUnion to test telex/twx communications.
• In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
• Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.
• In the 1940s, the FCC assigned television's Channel 1 to mobile services (two-wayradios in taxicabs, for instance) but did not re-number the other channel assignments. That is why your TV set has channels 2 and up, but no channel 1.
• The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments.
• The only 15-letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
• Hang On Sloopy is the official rock song of Ohio.
• Did you know that there are coffee flavored PEZ?
• The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses.The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
• The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the "American Pie."(Thus the name of the Don McLean song.)
• When opossums are playing 'possum, they are not "playing."They actually pass out from sheer terror.
• The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.
• Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades - King David, Clubs - Alexander the Great, Hearts Charlemagne, and Diamonds - Julius Caesar.
• 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
• Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired."
• Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 years later.
• "I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
• The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter pilots in the Pacific.When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into thefuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target,it got "the whole 9 yards."
• Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.
  
• The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
• An ostrich's eye is bigger that it's brain.
• The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.
• The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.
• David Prowse was the guy in the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars. He spoke all of Vader's lines, and didn't know that he was going to be dubbed over by James Earl Jones until he saw the screening of the movie.
• The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for the "General Purpose" vehicle, G.P.
• The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for black and whites.
• The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
• Cat's urine glows under a blacklight.
• The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.
• Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intraveinously.
• If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.
• No NFL team which plays its home games in a domed stadium has ever won a Superbowl.
• The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver".
• The only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports games (MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL) are the day before and the day after the Major League All-Star Game.
• Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
• The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan."
• In Cleveland, Ohio, it's illegal to catch mice without a hunting license.
• It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs.
• Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
• There are an average of 178 sesame seeds on a McDonald's Big Mac bun.
• The world's termites outweigh the world's humans 10 to 1.
• Pound for pound, hamburgers cost more than new cars.
• The 3 most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.
• When Heinz ketchup leaves the bottle, it travels at a rate of 25 miles per year.
• It's possible to lead a cow upstairs...but not downstairs.
• The Bible has been translated into Klingon.
• Humans are the only primates that don't have pigment in the palms of their hands.
• Ten percent of the Russian government's income comes from the sale of vodka.
• Ninety percent of New York City cabbies are recently arrived immigrants.
• On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year.
• In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world's nuclear weapons combined.
• Reno, Nevada is west of Los Angeles, California.
• Average age of top GM executives in 1994: 49.8 years.Average age of the Rolling Stones: 50.6.
• Elephants can't jump. Every other mammal can.
• The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
• If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months, and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.
• If you fart consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.
• The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.
• Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
• Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.
• On average people fear spiders more than they do death.
• The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.
• It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
• You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.
• Americans on the average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.
• Every time you lick a stamp you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
• Did you know that your are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider?
• Right Handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left handed people.
• In ancient Egypt, Priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.
• A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.
• A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.
• The ant can lift 50 times its own weight, can pull 30 times its own weight and always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.
• Polar bears are left handed.
• The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds, that makes the catfish rank #1 for animal having the most taste buds.
• The flea can jump 350 times its body length, that is like a human jumping the length of a football field.
• A cockroach will live nine days without it's head before it starves to death.
• The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body.The female initiates sex by ripping the males head off.
• Some lions mate over 50 times a day.
• Butterflies taste with their feet.
• Starfish haven't got brains.

A Cowboy's Guide To Life...

• Don't squat with your spurs on.
• Don't interfere with something that ain't botherin' you none.
• Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
• The easiest way to eat crow is while it's still warm. The colder it gets, the harder it is to swaller.
• If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'.
• If it don't seem like it's worth the effort, it probably ain't.
• It don't take a genius to spot a goat in a flock of sheep.
• The biggest troublemaker you'll probably ever have to deal with watchesyou shave his face in the mirror every morning.
• Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.
• If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin'somebody else's dog around.
• Don't worry about bitin' off more'n you can chew; your mouth is probablya whole lot bigger'n you think.
• Always drink upstream from the herd.
• Generally, you ain't learnin' nothing when your mouth's a-jawin'.
• Tellin' a man to git lost and makin' him do it are two entirely different propositions.
• If you're ridin' ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it's still there with ya.
• Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.
• When you give a personal lesson in meanness to a critter or to a person,don't be surprised if they learn their lesson.
• When you're throwin' your weight around,be ready to have it thrown around by somebody else.
• Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin' itback.
• Always take a good look at what you're about to eat.It's not so important to know what it is, but it's sure crucial to know what it was.
• he quickest way to double your money is to fold it over and put it backinto your pocket.
• Never miss a good chance to shut up.

Cultural Differences Explained

Aussies: Dislike being mistaken for Pommies (Brits) when abroad.
Canadians: Are rather indignant about being mistaken for Americans when abroad.
Americans: Encourage being mistaken for Canadians when abroad.
Brits: Can't possibly be mistaken for anyone else when abroad.
Aussies: Believe you should look out for your mates.
Brits: Believe that you should look out for those people who belong to your club.
Americans: Believe that people should look out for and take care of themselves.
Canadians: Believe that that's the government's job.
Aussies: Are extremely patriotic to their beer.
Americans: Are flag-waving, anthem-singing, and obsessively patriotic to the point of blindness.
Canadians: Can't agree on the words to their anthem, when they can be bothered to sing them.
Brits: Do not sing at all but prefer a large brass band to perform the anthem.
Americans: Spend most of their lives glued to the idiot box.
Canadians: Don't, but only because they can't get more American channels.
Brits: Pay a tax just so they can watch four channels
Aussies: Export all their crappy programs, which no-one there watches, to Britain, where everybody loves them.
Americans: Will jabber on incessantly about football, baseball, and basketball.
Brits: Will jabber on incessantly about cricket, soccer, and rugby.
Canadians: Will jabber on incessantly about hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, and how they beat the Americans twice, playing baseball.
Aussies: Will jabber on incessantly about how they beat the Poms in every sport they play them in.
Americans: Spell words differently, but still call it "English".
Brits: Pronounce their words differently, but still call it "English".
Canadians: Spell like the Brits, pronounce like Americans.
Aussies: Add "G'day", "mate" and a heavy accent to everything they say in an attempt to get laid.
Brits: Shop at home and have goods imported because they live on an island.
Aussies: Shop at home and have goods imported because they live on an island.
Americans: Cross the southern border for cheap shopping, gas, liquor in a backwards country.
Canadians: Cross the southern border for cheap shopping, gas, liquor in a backwards country.
Americans: Drink weak, pissy-tasting beer.
Canadians: Drink strong, pissy-tasting beer.
Brits: Drink warm, beery-tasting piss.
Aussies: Drink anything with alcohol in it.
Americans: Seem to think that poverty and failure are morally suspect.
Canadians: Seem to believe that wealth and success are morally suspect.
Brits: Seem to believe that wealth, poverty, success and failureare inherited things.
Aussies: Seem to think that none of this matters after several beers.

During the New Year

GO PLACIDLY AMID THE NOISE HASTE, REMEMBER WHAT PEACE THERE MAY BE IN SILENCE. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly clearly; and listen to others, even the dull ignorant; they too have their story. * Avoid loud aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain bitter; for always there will be greater lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. * Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. * Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love for in the face of all aridity disenchantment it is perennial as the grass. * Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. * You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees & the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. * Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. * With all its sham, drudgery broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.

Found in Old Saint Paul’s Church, Baltimore, dated 1692

DEATH OF AN INNOCENT

I went to a party, Mom, I remembered what you said. You told me not to drink, Mom, so I drank soda instead. I really felt proud inside, Mom, the way you said I would. I didn't drink and drive, Mom, even though the others said I should. I know I did the right thing, Mom, I know you are always right. Now the party is finally ending, Mom, as everyone is driving out of sight.

As I got into my car, Mom, I knew I'd get home in one piece. Because of the way you raised me, so responsible and sweet. I started to drive away, Mom, but as I pulled out into the road, the other car didn't see me, Mom, and hit me like a load. As I lay there on the pavement, Mom, I hear the policeman say, the other guy is drunk, Mom, and now I'm the one who will pay. I'm lying here dying, Mom. I wish you'd get here soon.

How could this happen to me, Mom? My life just burst like a balloon. There is blood all around me, Mom, and most of it is mine. I hear the medic say, Mom, I'll die in a short time. I just wanted to tell you, Mom, I swear I didn't drink. It was the others, Mom. The others didn't think. He was probably at the same party as I. The only difference is, he drank and I will die.

Why do people drink, Mom? It can ruin your whole life. I'm feeling sharp pains now. Pains just like a knife. The guy who hit me is walking, Mom, and I don't think it's fair. I'm lying here dying and all he can do is stare. Tell my brother not to cry, Mom. Tell Daddy to be brave. And when I go to heaven, Mom, put "Daddy's Girl" on my grave. Someone should have told him, Mom, not to drink and drive. If only they had told him, Mom, I would still be alive.

My breath is getting shorter, Mom. I'm becoming very scared. Please don't cry for me, Mom. When I needed you, you were always there. I have one last question, Mom, before I say good bye. I didn't drink and drive, so why am I the one to die?

Continuing Education for Women

1. Silence, the Final Frontier: Where No Woman Has Gone Before.
2. The Undiscovered Side of Banking: Making Deposits.
3. Combating the Imelda Marcos Syndrome: You Do Not Need New Shoes Everyday.
4. Parties: Going Without New Outfits.
5. Man Management: Discover How Minor Household Chores Can Wait Until After the Game.
6. Bathroom Etiquette I: Men Need Space in the Bathroom Cabinet Too.
7. Bathroom Etiquette II: His Razor Is His.
8. Valuation: Just Because It's Not Important to You...
9. Communication Skills I: Tears-The Last Resort, Not the First.
10. Communication Skills II: Thinking Before Speaking.
11. Communication Skills III: Getting What You Want, Without Nagging.
12. Driving a Car Safely: A Skill You CAN Acquire.
13. Party Etiquette: Drinking Your Fair Share.
14. Telephone Skills: How to Hang Up.
15. Introduction to Parking.
16. Advanced Parking: Reversing Into A Space.
17. Overcoming Anal Retentive Behavior: Leaving the Towels on theFloor.
18. Water retention: Fact or Fat.
19. Cooking I: Bringing Back Bacon, Eggs and Butter.
20. Cooking II: Bran and Tofu are Not For Human Consumption.
21. Cooking III: How Not to Inflict Your Diets on Other People.
22. Compliments: Accepting Them Gracefully.
23. PMS: Your Problem . . .Not His.
24. Dancing: Why Men Don't Like To.
25. Sex-It's For Married Couples Too.
26. Classic Clothing: Wearing Outfits You Already Have.
27. Household Dust: A Harmless Natural Occurrence Only Women Notice.
28. Integrating Your Laundry: Washing It All Together.
29. Ballet: For Women Only.
30. Oil and Gas: Your Car Needs Both.
31. Learning to "Go" in Public Restrooms.
32. Appreciating the Humor of the Three Stooges.
33. "Do These Jeans Make My Butt Look Big?"-Why Men Lie.
34. TV Remotes: For Men Only.
35. Sexy Lingerie For Any Occasion.

VOLUNTARY EDUCATION CENTER: FALL COURSE SELECTION

SELF IMPROVEMENT:
SE100: Creative Suffering
SE101: Overcoming Peace of Mind
SE102: You and Your Birthmark
SE103: Guilt without Sex
SE104: The Primal Shrug
SE105: Ego Gratification Through Violence
SE106: Molding Your Child's Behavior Through Guilt and Fear
SE107: Dealing with Post-Realization Depression
SE108: Whine your Way to Alienation SE109: How to Overcome Self-Doubt Through Pretense

BUSINESS & CAREER:
BC101: How I Made $100 in Real Estate
BC102: Money Can Make You Rich
BC103: Packaging and Selling your child
BC104: Career Opportunities in El Salvador
BC105: How to Profit From Your own Body
BC106: The Under-achievers' Guide to Very Small Business
BC107: Tax Shelters for the Indigent
BC108: The Looters' Guide to Canadian Cities
BC109: Mortgage Reduction Through Arson

HEALTH:
HS201: Creative Tooth Decay
HS202: Exorcism and Acne
HS203: The Joys of Hypochondria
HS204: Advanced Pubic Hair Styling
HS205: Skate yourself to Regularity
HS206: Understanding Nudity
HS207: Tap Dance Your Way to Social Ridicule
HS208: Optional Body Functions
HS209: Dressing Right, Dressing Left, How it Can Change Your Life
HS210: Braille and the Female Anatomy

CRAFTS:
C101: Self-Actualization Through Macrame
C102: Gifts for the Senile
C103: Bonsai Your Pet
C104: Needlecraft for Junkies
C105: Drawing Genitalia
C106: Cuticle Crafts

HOME ECONOMICS:
EC401: Converting Your Electrolux to a Fully Automatic Rifle
EC402: Burglarproof Your Home With Concrete
EC403: Convert Your Family Room into a Garage
EC404: Sinus Drainage at Home
EC405: Basic Kitchen Taxidermy
EC406: 1001 Uses for Your Vaccuum
EC407: Tell them What to do With It
EC408: Repair & Maintenance of Your Self Respect
EC409: Convert your Wheelchair into a Dune Buggy
EC410: Karate and the Art of R.V. Maintenance

THE WAY TO HAVE VITAL ENERGY

MONDAY
Start by anticipating a great week. The practice of anticipation stimulates zest and the zestful person always has energy going for him.

TUESDAY
Energy sags when you thoughts sag, so on this second day pull your thoughts up to the enthusiasm level and hold them there. How to do this? Simply act enthusiastic and you will tend to be so.

WEDNESDAY
Today firmly cope with two attitudes which siphon off energy; worry and frustration. To cancel them out, think faith, practice faith, affirm faith. Replace negative with positive thoughts.

THURSDAY
Pray away the "gray sickness"; that half-awake, half-asleep, half-alive, half-dead feeling that sometimes comes to destroy our energy and force. Pray and act upon alive-type prayers of excitement, joy and gratitude.

FRIDAY
Remind yourself that as a child of God, you are the constant recipient of boundless life, health, energy and vitality. Visualize yourself as continually being re-created in body, mind and spirit.

SATURDAY
Today practice the art of slowing down. Relax and try getting yourself into the even rhythm of God who created you. Let life's basic tempo take over. Drop out worry and tension.

SUNDAY
Go to church. For "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint."

-Norman Vincent Peale

HOW TO WRITE GOOD ENGLISH:

1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)
6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Be more or less specific.
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
10. No sentence fragments.
11. Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used.
12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
14. One should NEVER generalize.
15. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
16. Don't use no double negatives.
17. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be ignored.
21. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
22. Never use a big word when substituting a diminutive one would suffice.
23. Kill all exclamation points!!!
24. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
25. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth-shaking ideas.
26. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed.
27. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what youknow."
28. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
29. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
30. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
31. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
32. Who needs rhetorical questions?
33. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
34. Avoid "buzz-words"; such integrated transitional scenarios complicate simplistic matters.
And finally...
35. Proofread carefully to see if you a

The Night Before Finals

T'was the night before finals,
And all through the college,
Students were praying
For last-minute knowledge.
Most were quite sleepy,
But none touched their beds,
While visions of essays
Danced through their heads.
Out in the taverns,
A few were still drinking,
And hoping that liquor
Would loosen their thinking.
In my own apartment,
I had been pacing,
And dreading exams
I soon would be facing.
My roomate was speechless,
His nose in his books,
And my comments to him
Drew unfriendly looks.
I drained all the coffee,
And brewed a new pot,
No longer caring
That my nerves were all shot
I stared at my notes,
But my thoughts were all muddy,
My eyes went ablur,
I just couldn't study.
"Some pizza might help,"
I said with a shiver,
But each place I called
Refused to deliver
I'd nearly concluded
That life was too cruel,
With futures depending
On grades had in school
When all of a sudden,
Our door opened wide,
And our Patron Saint
Pull It Off Ambled inside.
His spirit was careless,
His manner was mellow,
He sprawled on my bed
And started to bellow:
"What kind of student
Would make such a fuss
To toss back at teachers
What they tossed at us?
"On Cliff's Notes
On last year's exams
On Wingit and Slingit
And last minute crams!"
His message delivered,
He vanished from sight
But we heard him laughing
Outside in the night
"Your teachers have pegged you,
So just do your best
Happy Finals to All,
And to all a good test!

An Old Farmer's Advice

Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.
Keep skunks and bankers and lawyers at a distance.
Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.
A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.
Words that soak into your ears are whispered, not yelled.
Meanness don't just happen overnight.
Forgive your enemies. It messes up their heads.
Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.
It don't take a very big person to carry a grudge.
You cannot unsay a cruel word.
Every path has a few puddles.
When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.
The best sermons are lived, not preached.
Most of the stuff people worry about isn't never going happen anyway.
Don't judge folks by their relatives.
Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
Live a good, honorable life Then when you get older and think back, you'll enjoy it a second time.
Don't interfere with something that isn't bothering you none.
Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.
Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.
The biggest troublemaker you'll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every morning.
Always drink upstream from the herd.
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
Letting the cat out of the bag is a whole lot easier than putting it back in.
If you get to thinking you're a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else's dog around.
Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. Leave the rest to God.

The top 14 ways things would be different if Microsoft built cars:

1. A particular model year of car wouldn't be available until AFTER that year, instead of before.
2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you'd have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would just die for no reason, and you'd have to restart it. For some strange reason, you would just accept this.
4. You could only have one person at a time in your car, unless you bought a car'95 or car NT, but then you'd have to buy more seats.
5. You would be constantly pressured to upgrade your car... Wait a sec, it's that way NOW!
6. Sun Motorsystems would make a car that was solar powered, twice as reliable, 5 times as fast, but only ran on 5% of the roads.
7. The oil, alternator, gas, engine warning lights would be replaced with a single "GeneralCar Fault" warning light.
8. People would get excited about the "new" features in Microsoft cars, forgetting completely that they had been available in other brands for years.
9. We would still be waiting on the "6000 sux 58'" model to come out.
10. We'd all have to switch to Microsoft Gas (tm).
11. Lee Iacocca would be hired-on as Bill G.'s chauffeur.
12. The US government would be GETTING subsidies from an automaker, instead of GIVING them.
13. New seats will force everyone to have the same size butt.
14. Ford, General Motors and Chrysler would all be complaining because Microsoft was putting a radio in all its models.

EXPERTS WARN OF THREAT FROM 100GB BUG

Dateline: Firebringer News Service (FBNS)

Experts warned today of a new and deadly threat to our beleaguered civilization: the 100GB Bug.

As most people know, McDonald's restaurant signs show the number of hamburgers the giant chain has sold. That number now stands at 99 billion burgers, or 99 Gigaburgers (GB). Within months or even weeks, that number will roll over to 100GB.

McDonald's signs, however, were designed years ago, when the prospect of selling one hundred billion hamburgers seemed unthinkably remote. So the signs have only two decimal places.

This means that, after the sale of the 100 billionth burger, McDonald's signs will read "00 Billion Burgers Sold." This, experts predict, will convince the public that, in over thirty years, no McDonald's hamburgers have ever in fact been sold, causing a complete collapse of consumer confidence in McDonald's products.

The ensuing catastrophic drop in sales is seen as almost certain to force the already-troubled company into bankruptcy. This, in turn, will push the teetering American economy over the brink, which, finally, will complete the total devastation of the global economy, ending civilization as we know it, and forcing us all to live on beetles.

"The people who know---the sign-makers---are really scared of 100GB," one expert said. "I don't know about you, but I'm digging up a copy of THE FIELD GUIDE TO NORTH AMERICAN INSECTS and heading for the hills.

Kids' Letters to God

Dear God,
Did you mean for the giraffe to look like that or was it an accident?
Norma

Dear God,
Instead of letting people die and having to make new ones, why don't you just keep the ones you have now?
Jane

Dear God,
Who draws the lines around the countries?
Dan

Dear God,
I went to this wedding and they kissed right in church. Is that okay?
Neil

Dear God,
Thank you for my baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy.
Joyce

Dear God,
It rained for our whole vacation and is my father mad! He said some things about you that people are not supposed to say, but I hope you will not hurt him anyway.
Your friend (but I am not going to tell you who I am)

Dear God,
Please send me a pony.I never asked for anything before. You can look it up.
Bruce

Dear God,
If we come back as something, please don't let me be Jennifer Horton, because I hate her.
Denise

Dear God,
I want to be just like my daddy when I get big, but not with so much hair all over.
Sam

Dear God,
I think about you sometimes, even when I'm not praying.
Elliott

Dear God,
I bet it is very hard for you to love all the people in the world. There are only four people in our family and I can never do it.
Nan

Dear God,
Of all the people who worked for you, I like Noah and David the best.
Rob

Dear God,
My brothers told me about being born, but it doesn't sound right. They are just kidding, aren't they?
Marsha

Dear God,
If you watch me in church Sunday, I'll show you my new shoes.
Mickey

Dear God,
We read Thomas Edison made light.But in Sunday school, we learned that you did it.So I bet he stole your idea.
Sincerely,
Donna

Dear God,
I do not think anybody could be a better God. Well, I just want you to know that I am not just saying this because you are God already.
Charles

Dear God,
I didn't think orange went with purple until I saw the sunset you made on Tuesday.That was cool!
Eugene

Dear God,
Maybe Cain and Abel would not kill each other so much if they had their own rooms.It works with my brother.
Larry

Golden Rules for Easier Living

If you open it, close it.
If you turn it on, turn it off.
If you unlock it, lock it up.
If you break it, admit it and replace it.
If you borrow it, return it (books, tapes, disks too!)
If you value it, take care of it.
If you make a mess, clean it up.
If you move it, put it back.
If it belongs to someone else and you want to use it, get permission.
If you don't know how to operate it, leave it alone.
If it's none of your business, don't ask questions.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I AM I AND YOU ARE YOU.

I AM NOT IN THIS WORLD TO LIVE UP TO YOUR EXPECTATIONS, AND YOU ARE NOT IN THIS WORLD TO LIVE UP TO MINE.

I DO MY THING, AND YOU DO YOUR THING.

IF, BY CHANCE, WE SHOULD MEET, IT'S BEAUTIFUL.

IF NOT, PERHAPS BOTH OF US SHOULD TRY HARDER.

Are You Really the Super Being?

If you can start the day without caffeine,

If you can get going without pep pills,

If you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,

If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,

If you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it,

If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time,

If you can forgive a friend's lack of consideration,

If you can overlook it when those you love take it out on you when, through no fault of yours, something goes wrong,

If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,

If you can ignore a friend's limited education, and never correct him,

If you can resist treating a rich friend better than a poor one,

If you face the world without lies and deceit,

If you can conquer tension without medical help,

If you can live without the crutch of nicotine,

If you can relax without liquor,

If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,

If you can say, honestly, deep in your heart, that you have no prejudice against creed or colour, religion or politics...

Then, my friend, you are ALMOST as good as your dog, almost, but not quite,

Because besides not having any of your hangups and vices, he would, without hesitation, give up his life for you if need be.

INDISPENSABLE??

Sometime, when you're feeling important,
Sometime, when your ego's in bloom,
Sometime, when you take it for granted,
You're the best qualified in the room.
Sometime when you feel that your going,
Would leave an unfillable hole
Just follow this simple instruction,
And see how it humbles your soul.
Take a bucket and fill it with water,
Put your hand in it, up to the wrist;
Pull it out, and the hole that's remaining
Is a measure of how you'll be missed.
You may splash all you please when you enter,
You can stir up the water galore,
But stop, and you'll find in a minute
That it looks quite the same as before.
The moral of this quaint example
Is do just the best that you can.
Be proud of yourself, but remember,
There's no indispensable man.

WHO IS JACK SCHITT?

The Lineage Revealed
Many people are at a loss for a response when someone says, "You don't know Jack Schitt." Now you can handle the situation.
Jack is the only son of Awe Schitt and 0. Schitt.
Awe Schitt, the fertilizer magnate, married 0. Schitt, the owner of Knee-deep Schitt, Inc. In turn, Jack Schitt married Noe Schitt and the deeply religious couple produced 6 children: Holie Schitt, the twins: Deep Schitt and Dip Schitt, Fulla Schitt, Giva Schitt and Bull Schitt, a high school dropout. After being married for 15 years Jack and Noe divorced. Noe later married Mr. Sherlock and because her kids were living with them, she wanted to keep her previous name. She was known as Noe Schitt-Sherlock.
Dip Schitt married Loda Schitt and they produced a cowardly son, Chicken Schitt. Fulla Schitt and Giva chitt were inseparable throughout childhood, and consequently married the Happens brothers in a dual ceremony. The Schitt-Happens children are Dawg, Byrd, and Horse. Bull Schitt, the prodigal son, left home to tour the world. He recently returned with his new bride, Pisa Schitt.
Now, when someone says you don't know Jack Schitt, you can correct them.

Knowledge:

Do not sell knowledge short: in addition to strong intuitions and insights you need a frame of reference against which to measure them. You can obtain this by learning something new every day. Knowledge on all sorts of subjects, even those quite foreign to your job, is useful in your professional growth.

This means work. Every reputation for efficiency was built by work. Self-development is not a highly formalized activity like classroom education, but one sparked by you and carried out through reading, attending extension classes and lectures, and taking part in community projects.

Tech Support

We have not succeeded in answering all your problems. The answers we have found only serve to raise a whole set of new questions. In some ways we feel we are as confused as ever, but we believe we are confused on a higher level and about more important things.

The History of Medicine

1000 A.D. - That root is heathen. Here, say this prayer.

1850 A.D. - That prayer is superstition. Here, drink this potion.

1940 A.D. - That potion is snake oil. Here, swallow this pill.

1975 A.D. - That pill is ineffective. Here, take this antibiotic.

2000 A.D. - That antibiotic doesn't work anymore. Here, eat this root.

MEN vs WOMEN: A COMPREHENSIVE COMPARISON

Men and Women are not alike. Sure, you already knew that. But now we have conclusive proof! After countless hours of surveys and studies, these facts have emerged:

MATURITY:
Women mature faster... most 17-year-old females can function as adults.

Most 17-year-old males are still trading baseball cards and giving each other wedgies after gym class. This is why high school romances rarely work out.

COMEDY:
Imagine a small group of men and women in a room, watching television, andan episode of "The Three Stooges" comes on. Immediately, the men will get very excited, laugh uproariously, and even try to imitate the actions of Curly, Man's favorite stooge. The women will roll their eyes and groan and wait it out.

HANDWRITING:
To their credit, men do not decorate their penmanship; they chicken-scratch.

Women use scented, colored stationery, dot their "i"s with circles and hearts. Women use ridiculously large loops in their "p's" and "g's."It is a pain to read a note from a woman. Even when she's dumping you, she'll put a smiley face at the end of the note.

BATHROOMS:
A man has at most six items in his bathroom - a toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving cream, razor, a 2-gallon jug of shampoo, a bar of soap, and a towel from the Holiday Inn.

The average number of items in a typical woman's bathroom is 437. A man would not be able to identify most of these items.

MAGAZINES:
Men's magazines often feature pictures of naked women. Women's magazines also feature pictures of naked women. This is because the female body is a beautiful work of art, while the male body is hairy and lumpy and should not be seen by the light of day.

GROCERIES:
A woman makes a list of things she needs and then goes to the store and buys these things. A man waits until the only items left in his fridge are half of a lemon, and something turning green. Then he goes grocery shopping. He buys everything that looks good. By the time he reaches the checkout counter,his cart is packed tighter than the Clampett's car on The Beverley Hillbillies. Of course, this will not stop him from going to the 10-items-or-less lane.

RELATIONSHIPS:
A man does not call a relationship a relationship - he refers to it as "that time when me and she were boinking on a semi-regular basis."

When a relationship ends, a woman will cry and pour her heart out to her girlfriends, and she will write a poem titled "All Men Are Bs." Then she will get on with her life.

A man has more trouble letting go. Six months after the breakup - at 3 am on a Sunday morning - he will call and say "I just wanted to let you know you ruined my life, and I'll never forgive you, and I hate you, and you're a total floozy. But I want you to know there's always a chance for us."

This is known as the "I Hate You/I Love You" drunken phone call, that 99%of all men have made at least once. There are community colleges that offer courses to help men get over this; these classes rarely prove effective.

GOING OUT:
When a man says he's ready to go out, it means he's ready to go out.

When a woman says she's ready to go out, it means that she WILL be ready as soon as she finds her other earring, finishes putting on her makeup ...

SHOES:
When preparing for work, a woman will put on a Mondi wool suit, and then slip into Reebok sneakers. She will carry her dress shoes in a plastic bag from Saks. When she arrives at work, she will put on her dress shoes. Five minutes later, she will kick them off because her feet are under her desk.

A man wears one pair of shoes for the entire day.

CATS:
Women love cats.

Men say they love cats, but when women aren't looking, men kick cats.

MIRRORS:
Men are vain; they will check themselves out in the mirror.

Women are ridiculous; they will check out their reflections in any shiny surface - mirrors, spoons, store windows, toasters, Kojak's head...

GARAGES:
Women use garages to park their cars and to store their lawnmowers.

Men use garages for many things. They hang license plates in garages, they watch TV in garages, and they build useless wooden things in garages.

MOVIES:
For women, their favorite movie scene is when Clark Gable kisses Vivian Leigh for the first time in "Gone With The Wind."

For men, it's when Jimmy Cagney shoves a grapefruit in Mae Clark's face in "Public Enemy."

MENOPAUSE:
When a woman reaches menopause, she goes through a variety of complicated emotional, psychological, and biological changes. The nature and degree ofthe changes varies with the individual.

Menopause in a man provokes a uniform reaction. He buys aviator glasses,a snazzy French cap and leather driving gloves, and goes shopping for anexpensive foreign sports car.
 
THE TELEPHONE:
Men see the telephone as a communications tool to send short messages to other people.

A woman can visit her girlfriend for two weeks, and upon returning home, she will call the same friend and they will talk for three hours.

LOW BLOWS:
Let's say a man and a woman are watching a boxing match on television, and one of the fighters is felled by a low blow.

The woman says "Oh, gee, that must hurt."

The man doubles over and actually feels pain.

DIRECTIONS:
If a woman is out driving and she finds herself in unfamiliar surroundings, she will stop at a gas station and ask for directions.

Men consider this to be a sign of weakness. A man will never stop and ask for directions.Men will drive in a circle for hours, all the while saying things like, "Looks like I've found a new way to get there," and, "I know I'm in the neighborhood. I recognize that White Hen store."

ADMITTING MISTAKES:
Women will sometimes admit making a mistake.
The last man who admitted that he was wrong was Gen. George Custer.

RICHARD GERE:
Women like Richard Gere because he is sexy in a dangerous way.

Men hate Richard Gere because he reminds them of that slick guy who works out at the health club and dates only married women.

NUDITY IN MOVIES:
Every actress in the history of movies has had to do a nude scene. This is because every movie in the history of movies has been produced by men.

The only actor who has ever appeared nude in the movies is Richard Gere.
This is another reason why men hate him.

OFFSPRING:
Ah, children! A woman knows everything about her children. She knows about dentist appointments and soccer games and romances and best friends and favorite foods and secret fears and hopes and dreams.

A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.

DRESSING UP:
A woman will dress up to go shopping, water the plants, empty the garbage, answer the phone, read a book, get the mail...

A man will dress up for weddings and funerals.

POLITICS:
Men love to talk about politics, but they often forget to vote.

Women are very happy that another generation of Kennedys is growing up and getting into politics, because they will be able to campaign for them and cry on election night.

LAUNDRY:
Women do laundry every couple of days.

A man will wear every article of clothing he owns, including his surgical pants that were hip about eight years ago, before he will do his laundry. When he is finally out of clothes, he will wear a dirty sweatshirt inside out, rent a U- Haul and take his mountain of clothes to the laundromat, and expect to meet a beautiful woman while he is there.

WEDDINGS:
When reminiscing about weddings, women talk about the "ceremony."
Men talk about the low neckline of the bridesmaid's dress

Politics:

News item: Elinor Caplan, the Citizenship and Immigration Minister,said last week that she expects the problem of ships carrying Chinese migrants to Canadian shores will quickly solve itself -- with the arrival of winter. "Fairly soon we will not have the kind of waters that will be hospitable to boat arrivals," she said.

Memo to: All members of the cabinet
From: The Prime Minister
So finally someone has got it. So, good. A minister with a brain who knows the best way to get things done is sometimes to do not so much. It is what I have said since a long time; ignore each problem, one problem at a time ... or something like that. Donoloused to tell me. I have already talked with the people who are to be writing the Red Book No. 3 and I have told them; I said, for me this is the plan. In the next election we tell the Canadians about this plan, our new 50-50 plan: a Liberal government will have half of our problems solved by Mother Nature, and the other half of our problems solved by Father Time. Bah, so there it is. And so even before an election we can get started, to show that our 50-50 plan -- that it works, that it is to be a good plan for the Canadians. Consider all the talk about the brains draining. Bah -- everyday, the reporters they say to me, "Prime Minister, will you stop the brains from draining?" And from now on I will say, "But for me, soon it will be winter." And the highways, they will be so icy that no one with a brain will be driving on them. So, you know, anyone who is draining at that point does not have a brain, and to them we say au revoir! Problem solved. And then there is the poverty, and the homeless who don't have the homes. It is a problem, yes, but not to be a problem any more. Because for me, soon it will be summer again, and it will be nice to be in the outside. You know, some people they will pay the money to sleep outside in the tent, out in the bush where there is no civilization. And we Liberals, because we are Liberals, we will let the poor people sleep right in the downtowns, and we will not charge them the money. And all the children who are pale because they don't have the nourishment -- they will get the healthy tans, and they will look quite nice for the children of the poverty.

Quebec and the separation? For me, there have always been the floods in Quebec before and, maybe if they come again in just the right spots ... bah, problem solved. The airline merger? With this 2YK ... er, YK2 ...um, this thing with the computers and the year 2000, maybe the planes they will all be flying straight into the ground, so for me the problem will be solved. Tax cuts? You know, eventually everyone who is complaining today about the height of the taxes will be dead. Problem solved. The Indians and the land claims? For me, it will be the ice age soon enough again, and even the aboriginals they will not want to be fighting for the glaciers. Problem solved. In health care, yes, there are still problems because of the deficit that was needed to be cut, and we cut it, and it was $42-billion. So, that's good. But you know there are still the problems with the overcrowding and the waiting lists. But, for me, soon it will be winter, and soon the streets -- they will be covered with the snow. And the cities, because of the cuts in the transfers, they will have no money to pay for the clearing. So no one will be able to get to the hospitals. And the lines, poof, they will be gone. Problem solved. And then there are the people who ask, "What about the people in British Columbia? Why do they feel so isolated from Ottawa?" For me, it's a good question, sure, but you know tomorrow the Earth could quake and the whole province could go plop into the ocean. And then, for me, the problem it would not be a problem any more. And you know, the Chinese too would not be a problem any more for me, because even the Chinese -- bah, even the Chinese on the rustiest boat, they would think twice about coming ashore in Alberta.

CHRISTIAN ONE LINERS:

1.Be Fishers of Men.... You catch 'em,He'll Clean 'em.
2.A family altar can alter a family.
3.A lot of kneeling will keep you in good standing.
4.Don't wait for 6 strong men to take you to church.
5.Exercise daily. Walk with the Lord!
6.Forbidden fruits create many jams.
7.Give God what's right, not what's left!
8.Give Satan an inch and he'll be a ruler.
9.God doesn't call the qualified,He qualifies the called.
10.God grades on the cross, not the curve.
11.God promises a safe landing, not a calm passage.
12.Having Truth decay? Brush up on your Bible!
13.He who angers you, controls you!
14.He who is good at making excuses, is seldom good for much else.
15.He who kneels before God, can stand before anyone!
16.Kindness is good to give away, because it keepscoming back.
17.Most people want to serve God, but only in an advisory capacity.
18.Never give the devil a ride! He will always want to drive!
19.Nothing ruins the truth like stretching it.
20.Plan ahead. It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark.
21."Pray" is a four letter word that you can use anywhere.
22.Prayer ! - Don't give God instructions - just report for duty!
23.The Will of God will never take you to where the Grace of God will not protect you.
24.This Church is "Prayer Conditioned"!
25.To be almost saved, is to be totally lost.
26. WARNING: Exposure to the Son may prevent burning!
27.Watch your step carefully! Everyone else does!
28.If we don't change the Message, the Message can change us.
29.We set the sail; God makes the wind
30. Worry is the darkroom in which "negatives" are developed.
31.Hint: When facing the Son, you see no shadows.
32.His Glory and Grace - is your peace in the "race."
33.God loves to answer knee-mail!

Mr. & Mrs. John Wilson
R.R. 1, Site 2, Box 22
SPIRIT RIVER, AB
T0H 3G0

Dear Mr. & Mrs. Wilson;

As part of our programme for fostering, and greater world understanding, the Council has selected your family as a participating household in our new "Lend A Helping Hand Plan".

You will be pleased, we are sure, to know that you have been assigned a typical family group from Pakistan to be your guests in your home for the next few months.

These people suffered a tremendous social upheaval and it will take some time for them to adapt to our way of life. We are sure that you will do everything possible to help them make the transition as pleasant as possible, even if it means some minor reorganization in your home and in your personal habits.

The family which we have assigned to you consists of the father, mother, nine children, the mother's brother and his young wife, the grandmother and her sister, one goat, four sheep, a mongoose and six cows for their worship services. We have been informed that you have enough lawn for the animals and we feel sure that you could erect temporary quarters for them, adjoining your house.

Within the next seven days we shall be able to inform you of their arrival date and their names. We shall include some recipes for their traditional Pakistani dishes (they love rice, but not cabbage). No doubt you will wish to meet them at the Calgary airport. We suggest you rent a truck and a van for that day.

While this may seem like only a small gesture, we are convinced that it is only through such brotherhood that the world will become one big, happy family! Bless you.

Yours in friendship
CANADA COUNCIL


Secretary of Posting

P.S. After the family has been with you for a few weeks, one of our Social Workers will call on you. If all is in order, as we are certain it will be, we will begin to arrange for a second family to move in with you, provided this is convenient.

The Pillsbury Doughboy - Dead at 71.

Veteran Pillsbury spokesman, The Pillsbury Doughboy, died yesterday of a severe yeast infection and complications from repeated pokes to the belly. He was 71. Doughboy was buried in one of the largest funeral ceremonies in recent years. Dozens of celebrities turned out, including Mrs. Butterworth, the California Raisins, Hungry Jack, Betty Crocker the Hostess Twinkies, Captain Crunch and many others. The graveside was piled high with flours as longtime friend, Aunt Jemima, delivered the eulogy, describing Doughboy as a man who, "never knew how much he was kneaded." Doughboy rose quickly in show business but his later life was filled with many turnovers. He was not considered a very smart cookie, wasting much of his dough on half-baked schemes. Still, even as a crusty old man, he was a roll model for millions. Doughboy is survived by his second wife, Play Dough. They have two children and one in the oven. The funeral was held at 3:50 for about 20 minutes.

PRIORITIZE IT, by Dennis Martel

I HAVE ALWAYS EXPERIENCED considerable difficulty understanding the English language with its many complicated rules of grammar. Even now I cannot conjugate a verb properly and I continue to split my infinitives, mix metaphors and dangle my gerunds disgracefully.

I like my language like I like my Scotch - neat - somewhere between Hemmingway and Zane Grey. That's why I get so upset at what I see and hear around me. Indians have been overwhelmed by a barrage of verbal fudge emanating from all those 3rd year Sociology graduates now employed by the government. The trendy vernacular of 'problem solving', 'conceptualization', 'assessment of values' and the 'expression of felt needs', whatever that means, drip from the lips of 'facilitators' like honey. Armed with a flip chart and deadly array of felt tip pens, they help us define parameters, prioritize tasks and establish goals and objectives (long range and immediate). Their flow charts are altered from the usual lines and squares to circles so we can understand and, before you call say fried bread, the task is finished. Everything is done, everything that is, except actually doing something. The facilitator moves on to his or her next workshop (and exorbitant fee) and we are left with a sheaf of flip chart instructions to file.

It bothers me because the cutting edge of language is speech, and speech today is often less coherent than the Neanderthal grunts of our ancestors. It bothers me because Indian people are succumbing to this bafflegab, this techslang, this psychobabble. At a time when our technology is capable of turning us all into so much nuclear dust, our leaders cannot talk to us in comprehensible English. The language has been kneecapped with all the grace of Ayatollah Khomeini's hit squad.

It bothers me because words, used wisely, have considerable power. They can bring down presidents and autocrats, they can elect leaders and they can inform the public. But the mark of the power seeker is the word as smokescreen. I despise the defacing of words that eventually wind up in the arsenal of the haughty - the Alexander (I'm in charge here) Haig syndrome of word as power talisman. During the Nixon era, we found bombs described as 'anti-personal devices' and police dogs as 'crowd dispersal units'. Today it's 'parameters' istead of 'limits', 'interface' in place of 'overlap' (in the 60's, the buzzword was 'dovetail') and even worse, the dreadful appearance of nouns-on-wheels: 'conceptualize', 'concretize', and, guess what, 'interface' again, only this time disguised as a verb.

I deplore syllable inflation: 'combatative' for 'combative' and 'distinctive' for 'distinct' and I wretch at that unctious circumlocution, 'I would like to share with you my thoughts...' This is the language of the partly informed, the semi-literate (I don't mean schooled in this case. Schooling has little to do with one's education.) But it is the language of psychobabble as euphemism. It is the changing of a realistic description of something deemed unpleasant to a milder, supposedly more neutral form. Hence, we don't tell people things, we share it with them; we don't disagree with people, we have a breakdown in communications; they are simply no longer with us, or perhaps they have simply transubstantiated. In the realm of such gobbledygook, NICE reigns supreme while clarity is doomed. Meaning, except for the glib few, is virtually lost. Feeling rules over logic and in fact logic becomes identified with those academic types and is therefore suspect.

All this was predicted by the prophet, George Orwell, "...prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house." It seems that today catch phrases and buzzwords block any attempt at communication while opinion (or, as current coin has it, considered opinion) has taken the place of hard, rigorous and analytical thought.

In a society teeming with blabber - mouth illiterates, I can't help but marvel at the stark simplicity and clarity of the speeches made recently by Chief Alphonse Metallic and councillor Michael Isaac of Restigouche Reserve in Quebec. They made their points clearly and concisely and with considerable humour, considering the events swirling around them, without any'big words' or B.S. I fear such men are doomed. Not by the insidious and evil ways of the white man, but by the juggernaut of jargon manating from the lips of Indian and non-Indian politicians and bureaucrats. The leaders at Restigouche were humans dealing with other humans in a humane way.

Well, it's taken me considerable time, but I must make this perfectly clear. Not wishing to mis-speak myself, I must inform you that I have prioritized my viable options and, although I haven't yet finalized my parameters, I have, by consolidating peer group relations, productively interfaced with my staff to arrive at a solution which, to the best of my knowledge, will impact favourably with our readership.

The goals and objectives however have yet to be prioritized and therefore events cannot be definitalized, but my flip chart is indicitive that the parameters of the problem are more operational than philosophical; in terms of framework, and, once we have sectoralized the felt needs of the people we can commence with interfacing about the totality of the framework rather than the specificity of it - providing (of course) it is viable. If not we will have to prioritize a different option.

I guess I'm just going through this kind of dynamic right now and its kinda 1 where I'm at. I'm most likely ego - tripping anyway, and I haven't got a lot of psychic energy left over for social interaction. I'm sure my aura is pretty antagonistic and my psychograph has plumbed new depths. If this is where its at, where the hell are we coming from? If you ask me itsthe pits - or, whatever.

TAKE THIS JOB AND SHOVE IT

When you have had one of those TAKE THIS JOB AND SHOVE IT days, try this.

Onyour way home after work, stop at your pharmacy and go to the section where they have thermometers. You will need to purchase a rectal thermometer made by *Q-Tip. Be very sure that you get this brand. When you get home, lock your doors, draw the drapes, and disconnect the phone so you will not be disturbed during your therapy. Change to very comfortable clothing, such as a sweat suit and lie down on your bed.

Open the package containing the thermometer, remove the thermometer and carefully place it on the bedside table so that it will not become chipped or broken. Take the written material that accompanies the thermometer and as you read it you will notice in small print the statement that "every rectal thermometer made by Q-Tip is PERSONALLY tested."

Now close your eyes and say out loud five times, "I am so glad that I do not work in quality control at the Q-Tip Company."

REAL Programmers:

1. REAL programmers don't use REMarks in their programs; if it was difficult to write, it should be difficult to understand

2. REAL programmers' programs don't work the first few times. Throw them a computer and in "just a few" 30-hour sessions, they'll fix them.

3. REAL programmers don't document anything. Documentation is for simpletons.

4. REAL programmers are unmarried; prospective spouses won't allow computers in the bedroom.

5. REAL programmers can't talk; they INTERFACE.

6. REAL programmers don't play PAC-MAN.

7. REAL programmers never have enough disks.

8. REAL programmers don't flowchart. Flowcharts are for sissies.

9. Any program, when finally debugged, is obsolete.

10. If a program is useful, it has to be changed.

11. If a program is useless, it has to be documented.

12. The value of a program is inversely proportional to the weight of its output.

13. A program expands until it fills all available memory.

14. If a program is working as planned, something is wrong.

15. Variables won't and constants aren't.

16. There is always one more bug.

17. Not until a program has been in use for 6 months will the most harmful bug be discovered.

18. Interchangable disks aren't.

19. If builders built buildings the way progammers wrote programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.

20. The probability of anything happening is inversely proportional to its desirability.

21. It works better if you plug it in.

22. It won't work.

23. No worthwhile program is ever completed on time or within budget.

24. When working towards the solution of a problem, it helps if you know the answer.

25. A programming project that starts well ends badly.

26. A programming project that starts badly ends worse.

27. Whatever you programmed, that's what you wanted to program.

28. Any program should be expected to perform, at any time certain totally unexpected results, that are either totally mysterious or entirely obscure.

29. If the program looks easy, it is difficult. If it looks difficult, it is impossible.

REMEMBER ME?

My name is Gossip. I have no respect for Justice.

I maim without killing. I break hearts and ruin lives.

I am cunning and malicious and gather strength with age.

The more I am quoted the more I am believed.

I flourish at every level of society.

My victims are helpless. They cannot protect themselves against me because I have no name and no face.

To track me down is impossible. The harder you try, the more elusive I become.

I am nobody's friend.

Once I tarnish a reputation, it is never quite the same.

I topple governments and wreck marriages.

I ruin careers, cause sleepless nights, heartache and indigestion.

I spawn suspicion and generate grief.

I make innocent people cry in their pillows.

Even my name hisses. I am called Gossip. Office gossip. Shop gossip. Party gossip. I make headlines and headaches. Before you repeat a story, ask yourself, "Is it True? Is it Fair? Is it Necessary?" If not - SHUT UP!

Mr. J. Chouinard
6451 T.C. Hwy. N.W.
Salmon Arm, B.C.
V1E 4M2

Dear Sir;

Perhaps you have heard of me and my Western Canada campaign in the cause of temperance. Each year for the past 23, I have made a tour of Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver and Kelowna, elivering a series of lectures on the evils of drinking spirits.

On these tours, I have been accompanied by my friend, Clyde Lindstone. Clyde, a young man of good family and excellent background, is a pathetic example of life ruined by excessive indulgence in loose women and strong whiskey.

Clyde would appear with me at the lectures and sit on the platform, wheezing and staring at the audience through bleary and bloodshot eyes, sweating profusely, picking his nose, scratching at his private parts, passing gas and making obscene gestures while I point him out as an example of what over-indulgence can do to a person.

Last fall, unfortunately, Clyde passed on, due to liver failure and various social diseases.

A mutual friend has given me your name and I wonder if you would be available to take Clyde's place on my 2010 tour.

respectfully,


Rev. Elton Jones,
THE RESCUE MISSION

YOUR LIFE WILL BE RICHER - IF - On this day, you will make an effort to:

Mend a quarrel.

Search for a forgotten friend.

Dismiss a suspicion and replace it with trust.

Write a letter to someone who misses you.

Encourage someone who has lost faith.

Keep a promise.

Forget an old grudge.

Examine your demands on others and vow to reduce them.

Fight for a principle.

Express your gratitude.

Overcome an old fear.

Take two minutes to appreciate the beauty of nature.

Tell someone you love them.

Tell them again.

And again.

And again.

Merry Christmas Rum Cake

1 cup sugar
2 litres rum
1 cup dried fruit 2 cups brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup butter
2 large eggs
1 tsp baking powder
lemon juice
2 cups wallnuts

Before starting, sample the rum to check its quality. If O.K., proceed.

Select a large mixing bowl, measuring cup etc. Check the rum again. It must be just right. To be sure the rum is of proper quality, pour one level cup of rum into a glass and drink it as fast as you can. Repeat.

With an electric mixer, beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl. Add one seasspoon of sthugar and beat again. Meanwhile, make sure the rum is still OK. Try another acup. Open secondd litter if necessssary/.

Add egs, 2 sups dried fruit and heat until high. If fruit gets stuck in the beaters, pry looosee with a drewscriber.

Sampel the rumm again cecking for tonscisticity. Next, sift 3 cups of pepper or salt (doesnt really matter which) Sample the rum again. Sift ½ pint of lemon juiice. Fold in the choppet butter and strained nuts.
Add one babblespoon of brown shugar of whatever color you cacn find.

Wix mell.

Greadse the oven; turn the cake pan 350 degreees. Pur the whol messs into boven and ake f or 15 hourss at 455 degrees.
Cheeeeek thhhhhhhhh rrrrrrujm againn and got o bed

The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert W. Service

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee,
where the cotton blooms and blows
Why he left his home in the South to roam
'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold but the land of gold
seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way
that he'd sooner live in Hell.

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way
over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold
it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze
till sometimes we couldn't see,
It wasn't much fun, but the only one
to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight
in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead
were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and "Cap", says he,
"I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I'm asking that you
won't refuse my last request."

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no;
then he says with a sort of moan,
"It's the cursed cold, and it's got right hold
till I'm chilled clean through to the bone
Yet 'taint being dead-it's my awful dread
of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair,
you'll cremate my last remains.

A pal's last need is a thing to heed,
so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn
but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day
of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all
that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death,
and I hurried, horror-driven
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid,
because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say. "You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you
to cremate these last remains".

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid,
and the trail has its own stern code,
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb
in my heart how I cursed that load!
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight,
while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows-
Oh God, how I loathed the thing!

And every day that quiet clay
seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent
and the grub was getting low.
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad,
but I swore I would not give in;
And I'd often sing to the hateful thing,
and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge,
and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice
it was called the Alice May,
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit,
and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then "Here", said I, with a sudden cry,
"is mycre-ma-tor-eum"!

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor
and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around,
and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared
such a blaze you seldom see,
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal,
and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like
to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled,
and the wind began to blow,
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled
down my cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak
went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow
I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about
ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said,
"I'll just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked".
Then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm,
in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile,
and he said, "Please close that door.

Application to Live in Saskatchewan

Name: _________________________________
Nickname: ___________________CB Handle: ____________________
Address (miles from town/grid road):______________________________
Pa (if unknown, or list two best suspects):___________________________
Neck Shade: light red,medium red, dark red, other_________________
Number of teeth exposed in full grin: Upper_________Lower_______
Make of Pickup:_________________ Size of tire:____________"
Dogs:_________________Type (if known): __________________
How many trucks/makes in yard? _______
How many on blocks? ________
Do you think Colin Thatcher is guilty? (Circle only one)(Yes) (Probably)
How often do you write to Anne Murray? __________ times/week
How often arrested for it?_________
Do you wear (circle only one): (blue jeans)(polyester pants with snags) (other)
If other, explain:_____________________________________________________
Do you own any shoes (not boots)? (Yes)(No)
Size of belt buckle (circle only one): (football size)(deer head size) (tombstone size)
Belt buckle weight (lbs.): _________
Does your wife weigh more than your pickup (before all-you-can-eat buffet)?(Yes)(No)
After Buffet?(Yes)(No)
Can you sign your own name and always spell it right?(Yes)(No) (Maybe)(Depends)
Have you ever had more than one bath in a week? (Yes)(No)If yes, explain:
_____________________________________________________________
Medical Information:
Do you have at least two(2) of the following (circle the ones that apply);
B.O., Crabs, Gas, Bad Breath, Fleas, Tan line around collar/arms,
Crossed Eyes, Runny Nose,
Green Teeth, Brown Teeth, Any Teeth, Number of Teeth missing?
General Information:
Can you count past 10 with your shoes on? (yes)(no)
Past 21 with your fly up?(yes)(no)
Favorite Weapon (circle one): (hockey stick)(2x4)(.22)(shotgun)(rake)
Favorite Pastime: (drinkin')(gopher huntin') (other):___________________________
Truck equipped with: (gun rack)(fuzzbuster)(8-track player) (booster cables) (roll bar) (C.B)
(beer bottles)(fuzzy dice) (garter)
Favorite music(circle only one):(country)(western)
Bumper Stickers: (Let the Eastern Bastards Freeze in the Dark) (Damned Government)
(Damned Weather)(Damned Banks) (Old Fart)
Cap Emblems: (John Deere) (CAT)(POOL or Wheat Pool)(Labatt's Blue) (Old Fart)
Memberships: (Ducks Unlimited)(Legion)(4H)(Co-op)(UFA)
Your signature (one X will do):__________________________________
Date:____________ 2009

happiness is found along the way; not at the end of the road

WHERE YOU COME FROM IS NOT NEARLY AS IMPORTANT AS WHERE YOU ARE GOING

Do not pray for an easy life. Pray to be a strong person.

Bad Health Goes up in Smoke (Ann Landers)

Dear Ann Landers: A while back, you printed something about how long it takes the body to repair itself after a smoker quits. I know two people who are in the midst of quitting and thought this would encourage them to hand in there. Please print it again. Thanks for your clear and grounded advice. - Longtime reader in Montreal.

Dear Montreal: I appreciate your kind words. Here's the column you asked for. I hope it helps your friends:

Dear Ann Landers: Last fall, my 47-year-old brother was diagnosed with lung cancer. Years of smoking had finally caught up with him. The doctors have told us that my brother has maybe one or two years left at the most before the cancer kills him. My heart is broken. I am not ready to say goodbye to my bright and beautiful brother. I am enclosing an article I read recently. If you would print it in your column, it might inspire some smokers to quit. It could spare their children, parents, brothers, sisters and friends the great sorrow I am experiencing today. -Saddened in San Jose.

Dear San Jose: Here it is:
"As soon as you snuff out that last cigarette, your body will begin a series of physiological changes.

"Within 20 minutes:
Blood pressure, body temperature and pulse rate will drop to normal.

"Within eight hours:
Smoker's breath disappears. Carbon monoxide level in blood drops and oxygen level rises to normal.

"Within 24 hours:
Chance of a heart attack decreases.

"Within 48 hours:
Nerve endings start to regroup. Ability to taste and smell improves.

"Within three days:
Breathing is easier.

"Within two to three months:
Circulation improves. Walking becomes easier. Lung capacity increases up to 30 per cent.

"Within one to nine months:
Sinus congestion and shortness of breath decrease. Cilia that sweep debris from your lungs grows back. Energy increases.

"Within one year:
Excess risk of coronary heart disease is half that of a person who smokes.

"Within two years:
Heart attack risk drops to near normal.

"Within five years:
Lung cancer death rate for the average pack-a-day smoker decreases by almost half. Stroke risk is reduced. Risk of mouth, throat and esophageal cancer is half that of a smoker.

"Within 10 years:
Lung cancer death rate is similar to that of a person who does not smoke. The pre-cancerous cells are replaced.

"Within 15 years:
Risk of coronary heart disease is the same as a person who has never smoked.
And now for a word to women who are falling for the latest ploy to pull females into the ranks of cigar smoking: Your lungs are being damaged, your teeth are turning brown, and your breath smells terrible. Even you best friends won't tell you, but you can count on me for the truth. Cigars stink.

AND Ann has not even mentioned:
- the incredible property losses due to fires started by careless smoking or children playing with parents' smoking materials
- the suffering and death caused by these fires
- the terrible damage done by parents to children they claim to love, by subjecting them to second-hand smoke
- the terrible example we set for our children; if we smoke, why shouldn't they also?

THE INDIAN CHIEF AND THE BIBLE

Once upon a time a preacher, of a certain religious band,
Went forth upon a mission, out in the Indian land.
He gave the chief a Bible, and journeyed on his way;
But came back through that section at a somewhat later day.
The chief called on the preacher - whatever did give rise?
"Chief want to be a Christian - me ready to be baptized."
The preacher brought his "Jordan" - a little china bowl;
Then catechized the Indian, with reference to his soul.
The chief looked at the vessel with an apprehensive look -
"That pond he much too little, you give me wrong book."
The preacher urged and argued that a small amount would do.
But failed to turn the Indian from his much-water view.
But the preacher at last consented to let his custom slip;
He'd go down to the river and give the chief a dip.
"No, No," the chief responded, "God's laws you change,
You can't from dip get sprinkle -
Me guess you be wrong man.
If sprinkle be the order, Bible is wrong book,
If dipping be the order, sprinkler is a crook."

author unknown

Mr. Ken Lennox CMA
5704 - 34 Avenue,
Grande Prairie,
Alta. T8V 5T5

Dear Sir;

Our records show that you hold shares in the following companies:

Canadian Can Corp.
Western Water Limited
Novagas Canada Ltd.
Northern Tissue Co. Ltd.

Due to uncertain market conditions, we recommend that you sit tight on your Canadian Can, hold your Water and let your Gas go.

You will be interested to know that Northern Tissue touched a new bottom and thousands were wiped clean.


sincerely,
Squatt & Leavitt Bros.

DIETING UNDER STRESS

This diet is designed to help you cope with the stress of a busy schedule.

BREAKFAST:
Grapefruit
1 slice whole wheat toast, dry
8 oz skim milk & 1 cup herb tea

LUNCH:
4 oz lean broiled chicken breast
1 cup steamed spinach
1 oreo cookie

MID-AFTERNOON SNACK:   DINNER
Rest of the Oreos 2 loaves garlic bread/cheese
1 jar hot fudge sauce
Nuts, cherries, whipped cream

DINNER:
2 pints Nu-Maid ice cream
Large sausage, mushroom pizza
4 cans or 1 large pitcher of beer
3 Milky way candy bars

LATE EVENING NEWS
Entire frozen cheesecake eaten directly from freezer

RULES FOR THIS DIET:

- If you eat something and no one sees you eat it, it has no calories

- If you drink a diet soda with a candy bar, the calories in the candy bar are canacelled out by the diet soda.

- When you eat with someone else, calories don't count if you don't eat more than they do.

- Food used for medicinal purposes NEVER count, such as hot chocolate, brandy, toast and Sara Lee cheesecake.

- If you fatten up everyone around you, you look thinner.

- Movie-related foods, such as Milk Duds, buttered popcorn, Tootsie Rolls, etc. do not have additional calories because they are part of the entire entertainment package and not part of one's personal fuel.

- Cookie pieces contain no calories. The process of breaking them causes calories to leak out.

- Things licked off knives, spoons, and spatulas have no calories if you are in the process of preparing something. Examples are peanut butter on a knife making a sandwich, and ice cream on a spoon making a sundae.

- Foods that have the same colour have the same number of calories. Examples are spinach and pistacio ice cream, mushrooms and white chocolate. Note that chocolate is a universal color, and may be substituted for any other food color.

George Carlin talks about STUFF

"Actually this is just a place for my stuff, ya know? That's all, a little place for my stuff. That's all I want, that's all you need in life, is a little place for your stuff, ya know? I can see it on your table, everybody's got a little place for their stuff. This is my stuff, that's your stuff, that'll be his stuff over there. That's all you need in life, a little place for your stuff.

That's all your house is: a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time. A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you're taking off in an airplane. You look down, you see everybody's got a little pile of stuff. All the little piles of stuff. And when you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn't want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. They always take the good stuff. They never bother with that crap you're saving. All they want is the shiny stuff. That's what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get...more stuff! Sometimes you gotta move, gotta get a bigger house. Why? No room for your stuff anymore.

Did you ever notice when you go to somebody else's house, you never quite feel a hundred percent at home? You know why? No room for your stuff. Somebody else's stuff is all over the place! And if you stay overnight, unexpectedly, they give you a little bedroom to sleep in. Bedroom they haven't used in about eleven years. Someone died in it, eleven years ago. And they haven't moved any of his stuff! Right next to the bed there's usually a dresser or a bureau of some kind, and there's NO ROOM for your stuff on it. Somebody else's shit is on the dresser. Have you noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff? And you say, "Get that shit offa there and let me put my stuff down!"

Sometimes you leave your house to go on vacation. And you gotta take some of your stuff with you. Gotta take about two big suitcases full of stuff, when you go on vacation. You gotta take a smaller version of your house. It's the second version of your stuff. And you're gonna fly all the way to Honolulu. Gonna go across the continent, across half an ocean to Honolulu. You get down to the hotel room in Honolulu and you open up your suitcase and you put away all your stuff. "Here's a place here, put a little bit of stuff there, put some stuff here, put some stuff--you put your stuff there, I'll put some stuff--here's another place for stuff, look at this, I'll put some stuff here..." And even though you're far away from home, you start to get used to it, you start to feel okay, because after all, you do have some of your stuff with you.

That's when your friend calls up from Maui, and says, "Hey, why don'tchya come over to Maui for the weekend and spend a couple of nights over here." Oh, no! Now what do I pack? Right, you've gotta pack an even SMALLER version of your stuff. The third version of your house. Just enough stuff to take to Maui for a coupla days.

You get over to Maui--I mean you're really getting extended now, when you think about it. You got stuff ALL the way back on the mainland, you got stuff on another island, you got stuff on this island. I mean, supply lines are getting longer and harder to maintain. You get over to your friend's house on Maui and he gives you a little place to sleep, a little bed right next to his windowsill or something. You put some of your stuff up there. You put your stuff up there. You got your Visine, you got your nail clippers, and you put everything up. It takes about an hour and a half, but after a while you finally feel okay, say, "All right, I got my nail clippers, I must be okay."

That's when your friend says, "Aaaaay, I think tonight we'll go over the other side of the island, visit a pal of mine and maybe stay over." Aww, no. NOW what do you pack? Right--you gotta pack an even SMALLER version of your stuff. The fourth version of your house. Only the stuff you know you're gonna need. Money, keys, comb, wallet, lighter, hanky, pen, smokes, rubber and change. Well, only the stuff you HOPE you're gonna need." - By George Carlin

Or watch him do this one at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac

FAMOUS NUMBERS

60 S________ in a M_________

26 L________ of the A_______________

7 W_______________ of the W_______________

1,001 A_______________ N_______________

12 S_______________ of the Z_______________

54 C_______________ in a D______________ (with the J______________)

9 P_______________ in the S_______________ S_______________

88 P_______________ K_______________

13 S_______________ on the A_______________ F_______________

32 D_____________ F_____________ at which W_____________ F___________

18 H_______________ on a G_______________ C_______________

90 D_______________ in a R_______________ A_______________

200 D_____________ for P_____________ G_____________ in M_____________

8 S_______________on a S_______________ S_______________

3 B_________ M__________ (S_________ H__________ T__________ R_______!)

4 Q_______________ in a G_______________

24 H_______________ in a D_______________

1 W_______________ on a U_______________

6 C_______________ in the Canadian P_______________ C_______________

57 H_______________ V_______________

1,000 W_______________ is what a P_______________ is W_______________

29 D_____________ in F_____________ in a L_____________ Y_____________

64 S_______________ on a C_______________

365 S________ in a D________ of C________

40 D_____________ and N_____________ of the G_____________ F__________

20,000 L_______________ U_______________ the S_______________

3 C_______________ in the F_______________

12 M_______________ in a Y_______________

360 D ______________ in a C_______________

1024 B__________ in a K__________

A__________ the W__________ in 80 D__________

The 10 C____________

12 E__________ in a D____________

8 P___________ on N__________'s A____________

13 W__________ in a Q____________

16 P__________ C_________ in a D_________ of C_________

That! problem: (reply to a woman who accidentally walked into the men's restroom):

Please don't feel bad. It wasn't you entering the men's washroom that caused that guy to pee on the guy next to him. Hell, we do that all the time. It's rare us guys ever hit what were aiming for. Sometimes I go into the washroom, start to pee, and then just start spinning around; just so I'll make sure I hit something. You see, something you ladies should understand by now is that men's penises have a mind of their own. A guy can go into a bathroom stall because all the urinals are being used, take perfect aim at the toilet, and his penis will still manage to piss all over the roll of toilet paper, down his left pant leg, and onto his shoe. I'm telling 'ya those little buggers can't be trusted.

After being married 28 years my wife has me trained. I'm no longer allowed to pee like a man - standing up. I am required to sit down and pee. She has convinced me that this is a small price to pay. Otherwise if she had gone to the toilet one more time at night and either sat on a pee soaked toilet seat, or fell right into the toilet because I forgot to put the seat down, she was going to kill me in my sleep.

Now another thing us guys don't usually like to talk about, but because you and I have become such good friends and you think I'm a classy guy, I might as well be candid with you because it's a real problem, and you ladies need to be understanding. It's the dreaded "morning wood". Most mornings us guys wake up with two things. A tremendous desire to pee, and a penis so hard you could cut diamonds with it. Well, no matter how hard you try, you can't get that thing to bend, and if it won't bend you can't aim, well hell, if you can't aim you have no choice but to piss allover the wall paper and that damn fuzzy toilet seat cover you women insist on putting on the toilet.

And by the way, when you use those damn fuzzy toilet seat covers, the friggin' toilet seat won't stay up by itself. So that means we have to use one hand to hold up the toilet seat and the other hand to try to control our less than perfect aim.

Now sometimes, when you're newly married, (and I know the guys in here will back me up on this) you think you can get the toilet seat with that damn fuzzy thing to stay up. You jam it back and compress that fuzzy thing until the seat stays there. OK, so you start to pee, but then that compressed fuzzy starts to decompress and without warning that damn toilet seat comes flying down and tries to whack off your weenie: So us guys will not lift a toilet seat with a fuzzy , it's just not safe.

I tried to delicately explain this morning situation to my wife. I told her... look, it won't bend. She said, "so sit down like I told you to do all the rest of the time." OK. I tried sitting down on the toilet with "morning wood".

Well it's is very hard to get it bent under the toilet seat, and before I could manage it, I had pissed all over the bath towels hanging on the Wall across the room. Now, even if you are sitting down and you can get it forced down under the toilet seat, when you start to pee the pee shoots out from the crack between the bottom of the toilet seat and the top of the bowl. You piss all over the back of your knees and it runs down the back of our legs on to that damn matching fuzzy horseshoe rug you keep putting on the floor in front of the toilet.

I have found the only effective maneuver to deal with this morning urinary dilemma is to assume the flying Superman position laying over the toilet seat. This takes a great deal of practice, perfect balance, and split time precision but it's the only sure way to get all the pee in the bowl during the first morning pee.

So you ladies have to understand that us men are not totally to blame. We are sensitive to your concerns about hygiene and bathroom cleanliness, but there are times when things just get beyond our control. It's not our fault, it's just Mother Nature. Now, if it was Father Nature, there wouldn't have been a problem!

When is @#$% Acceptable?

There are only eleven times in history where the @#$% word has been considered acceptable for use.

They are as follows:

11. "What the @#$% do you mean, we are sinking?"
-- Capt. E.J. Smith of RMS Titanic, 1912

10. "What the @#$% was that?"
-- Mayor Of Hiroshima , 1945

9. "Where did all those @#$%ing Indians come from?"
-- Custer, 1877

8. "Any @#$%ing idiot could understand that."
-- Einstein, 1938

7. "It does so @#$%ing look like her!"
-- Picasso, 1926

6. "How the @#$% did you work that out?"
-- Pythagoras, 126 BC

5. "You want WHAT on the @#$%ing ceiling?"
-- Michelangelo, 1566

4. "Where the @#$% are we?"
-- Amelia Earhart, 1937

3. "Scattered @#$%ing showers, my ass!"
-- Noah, 4314 BC

2. "Aw c'mon. Who the @#$% is going to find out?"
-- Bill Clinton, 1998

and a drum roll please............!

1. "Yikes, I didn't think they'd get this @%#*^in g! mad."
-- Saddam Hussein, 2003

A Two-letter Word

Ever stop to think about THE WORD "UP?"

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meaning than any other two-letter word, and that is the word "UP."

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we waken in the morning, why do we wake UP?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?

We call UP our friends And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.

To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special.

And this UP is confusing:

A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.

We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!

To be knowledgeable of the proper uses of UP, look UP the word in the dictionary. In a desk size dictionary, takes UP almost 1/4th the page and definitions add UP to about thirty.

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP.

When it rains, it wets UP the earth. When it doesn't rain for a while, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is used UP, so............
I'll shut UP...


and I replied: Up with this I will not put.

What Became of a Lie

by M.A. Kidder

First somebody told it,
Then the room wouldn't hold it,
So the busy tongues rolled it
Till they got it outside;
Then the crowd came across it,
And never once lost it,
But tossed it and tossed it,
Till it grew long and wide.
This lie brought forth others,
Evil sisters and brothers,
And fathers and mothers,
A terrible crew,
As headlong they hurried,
The people they flurried
And troubled and worried,
As lies always do
So, evil-boded,
This monstrous lie goaded,
Till at last it exploded
In sin and in shame.
But from mud and from mire
The pieces flew higher,
Till they hit the sad liar,
And killed his good name.

"Why Americans Should Never Be Allowed To Travel"

The following are actual stories provided by travel agents:

I had someone ask for an aisle seat so that their hair wouldn't get messed up by being near the window.

I got a call from a woman who wanted to go to Capetown. I started to explain the length of the flight and the passport information then she interrupted me with, "I'm not trying to make you look stupid, but Capetown is in Massachusetts." Without trying to make her look like the stupid one, I calmly explained, "Capecod is in Massachusetts, Capetown is in Africa. "Her response ... click.

A man called, furious about a Florida package we did. I asked what was wrong with the vacation in Orlando. He said he was expecting an ocean-view room. I tried to explain that is not possible, since Orlando is in the middle of the state. He replied, "Don't lie to me. I looked on the map, and Florida is a very thin state."

I got a call from a man who asked, "Is it possible to see England from Canada?" I said, "No." He said, "But they look so close on the map."

Another man called and asked if he could rent a car in Dallas. When I pulled up the reservation, I noticed he had a 1-hour lay-over in Dallas. When I asked him why he wanted to rent a car, he said, "I heard Dallas was a big airport, and I need a car to drive between the gates to save time."

A nice lady just called. She needed to know how it was possible that her flight from Detroit left at 8:20am and got into Chicago at 8:33am. I tried to explain that Michigan was an hour ahead of Illinois, but she could notunderstand the concept of time zones. Finally, I told her the plane went very fast, and she bought that!

A woman called and asked, "Do airlines put your physical description on your bag so they know who's luggage belongs to who?" I said, "No, why do you ask?"She replied, "Well, when I checked in with the airline, they put a tag on my luggage that said FAT, and I'm overweight, is there any connection?" After putting her on hold for a minute while I "looked into it" ( I was actually laughing) I came back and explained the city code for Fresno is FAT, and that the airline was just putting a destination tag on her luggage.

A client called in inquiring about a package to Hawaii. After going over all the cost info, she asked, "Would it be cheaper to fly to California and then take the train to Hawaii?"

I just got off the phone with a man who asked, "How do I know which plane to get on?" I asked him what exactly he meant, which he replied, "I was told my flight number is 823, but none of these darn planes have numbers on them."

A woman called and said, "I need to fly to Pepsi cola on one of those computer planes." I asked if she meant to fly to Pensacola on a commuter plane. She said,"Yeah, whatever."

A business man called and had a question about the documents he needed in order to fly to China. After a lengthy discussion about passports, I reminded him he needed a visa. "Oh no I don't, I've been to China manytimes and never had to have one of those." I double checked and sure enough, his stay required a visa. When I told him this he said, "Look, I've been to China four times and every time they have accepted my American Express."

A woman called to make reservations, "I want to go from Chicago to Hippopotamus, New York" The agent was at a loss for words. Finally, the agent: "Are you sure that's the name of the town?" "Yes, what flights do you have?" replied the customer. After some searching, the agent came backwith, "I'm sorry, ma'am, I've looked up every airport code in the country and can't find a Hippopotamus anywhere." The customer retorted, "Oh don't be silly.Everyone knows where it is. Check your map!" The agent scoured a map of the state of New York and finally offered, "You don't mean Buffalo, do you?" "That's it! I knew it was a big animal!"

Tongue Twisters:

Betty Botter had some butter,
"But," she said, "this butter's bitter.
If I bake this bitter butter,
it would make my batter bitter.
But a bit of better butter--
that would make my batter better."
So she bought a bit of butter,
better than her bitter butter,
and she baked it in her batter,
and the batter was not bitter.
So 'twas better Betty Botter
bought a bit of better butter.

She sells sea shells by the sea shore.
The shells she sells are surely seashells.
So if she sells shells on the seashore,
I'm sure she sells seashore shells.

A Tudor who tooted a flute
tried to tutor two tooters to toot.
Said the two to their tutor,
"Is it harder to toot
or to tutor two tooters to toot?"

A flea and a fly flew up in a flue.
Said the flea, "Let us fly!"
Said the fly, "Let us flee!"
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

Mr. See owned a saw.
And Mr. Soar owned a seesaw.
Now See's saw sawed Soar's seesaw
Before Soar saw See,
Which made Soar sore.
Had Soar seen See's saw
Before See sawed Soar's seesaw,
See's saw would not have sawed
Soar's seesaw.
So See's saw sawed Soar's seesaw.
But it was sad to see Soar so sore
Just because See's saw sawed
Soar's seesaw!

I cannot bear to see a bear
Bear down upon a hare.
When bare of hair he strips the hare,
Right there I cry, "Forbear!"

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck
if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
He would chuck, he would, as much as he could,
and chuck as much wood as a woodchuck would
if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

A tree toad loved a she-toad
Who lived up in a tree.
He was a two-toed tree toad
But a three-toed toad was she.
The two-toed tree toad tried to win
The three-toed she-toad's heart,
For the two-toed tree toad loved the ground
That the three-toed tree toad trod.
But the two-toed tree toad tried in vain.
He couldn't please her whim.
From her tree toad bower
With her three-toed power
The she-toad vetoed him.

Of all the felt I ever felt,
I never felt a piece of felt
which felt as fine as that felt felt,
when first I felt that felt hat's felt.

If one doctor doctors another doctor, does the doctor
who doctors the doctor doctor the doctor the way the
doctor he is doctoring doctors? Or does he doctor
the doctor the way the doctor who doctors doctors?

I saw Esau kissing Kate. I saw Esau,
he saw me, and she saw I saw Esau.

Once upon a barren moor
There dwelt a bear, also a boar.
The bear could not bear the boar.
The boar thought the bear a bore.
At last the bear could bear no more
Of that boar that bored him on the moor,
And so one morn he bored the boar--
That boar will bore the bear no more.

If a Hottentot taught a Hottentot tot
To talk ere the tot could totter,
Ought the Hottenton tot
Be taught to say aught, or naught,
Or what ought to be taught her?
If to hoot and to toot a Hottentot tot
Be taught by her Hottentot tutor,
Ought the tutor get hot
If the Hottentot tot
Hoot and toot at her Hottentot tutor?

Ned Nott was shot and Sam Shott was not.
So it is better to be Shott than Nott.
Some say Nott was not shot.
But Shott say she shot Nott.
Either the shot Shott shot at Nottwas not shot,
or Nott was shot.
If the shot Shott shot shot Nott,Nott was shot.
But if the shot Shott shot shot Shott, then Shott was shot, not Nott.
However, the shot Shott shot shot not Shott but Nott.

There was a young fisher named Fischer
Who fished for a fish in a fissure.
The fish with a grin,
Pulled the fisherman in;
Now they're fishing the fissure for Fischer.

If you stick a stock of liquor in your locker,
It's slick to stick a lock upon your stock,
Or some stickler who is slicker
Will stick you of your liquor
If you fail to lock your liquor
With a lock!

Six thick thistle sticks. Six thick thistles stick.

A skunk sat on a stump and thunk the stump stunk,
but the stump thunk the skunk stunk.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Did Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled peppers?
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

Weird English:

How wreid is tihs? Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it
dseo'nt mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt
tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a
toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do
not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig!

Do you UNDERSTANT?

I KNOW THAT YOU BELIEVE THAT YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU THINK I SAID, BUT I AM NOT SURE YOU REALIZE THAT WHAT YOU HEARD IS NOT WHAT I MEANT!

I KNOW THAT YOU BELIEVE THAT YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU THINK I SAID, BUT I AM NOT SURE YOU REALIZE THAT WHAT YOU HEARD IS NOT WHAT I MEANT!

I KNOW THAT YOU BELIEVE THAT YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU THINK I SAID, BUT I AM NOT SURE YOU REALIZE THAT WHAT YOU HEARD IS NOT WHAT I MEANT!

We the Willing:

WE, the willing,

Led by the unknowing,

Are doing the impossible

For the ungrateful.

We have done so much

For so long

With so little,

We are now qualified to do

anything

With nothing.

WILLY'S BULL

This fellow I know, Willy Hayes, likes hunting and the bigger the game, the better. To date, the largest critter he has shot (at) is a flea - bitten coyote (he missed). But, Willy has delusions of grandeur; he knows he was meant to be a "Great White Hunter". I've hunted with Willy only once and on that trip he killed a 200 gallon fuel tank at a road construction camp with his .348 Winchester Magnum. His excuse: "I was sure it wasn't loaded!" The foreman was a bit upset, especially as his new GMC pickup was parked very close and suffered considerable damage from the resulting explosion and fire. Ever since, I've been "just leaving town on business" every time Willy has phoned to suggest a hunting trip.

Willy is no quitter, though, and last August he phoned in a state of great excitement. He was like a kid, bubbling over with enthusiasm. I finally calmed him down enough to learn that his cousin's brother - in - law knows this guy who had been on a moose hunting trip to Grande Prairie, Alberta (that's in Canada). Apparently Willy had seen their video tape. The hunter and his partner had seen some big bull moose and nearly shot one with antlers "at least six feet wide".

Willy had done his homework; he knew exactly how we could have a week of glorious, adrenalin - pumping excitement and come home with trophies as well as tons of meat. A week of pure, unadulterated sport in northern, primitive, Canada. He had already spoken to several other fellows and two of them, Jim McCord and Bob Burch had fallen prey to Willy's enthusiasm. The trip was tentatively set for November 17 - 23, 1991, and I just couldn't "pass up this chance of a lifetime", as he put it. Besides, four hunters made a perfect - size party. I owed it to myself and to them as well, to go. I told Willy I'd sleep on it and let him know. I had to admit, it did sound exciting. Sleep on it I did, except that sleep wouldn't come. By 6:00 next morning I had finally dozed off when the phone woke me up. I caught it on about the 10th ring to hear Willy's sickeningly cheerful voice yell at me, "Got your rifle sighted in yet!?" Before I could collect my senses I blurted out "Yeah, let's go!" "Whoopie!" he yelled. "We're meeting at my place tonite at 7 - see you there - late for work - gotta run ... CLICK".

It was several minutes before I decided it must have been for real and not a nightmare. I hung up the phone. Morning coffee didn't do much to wake me and I don't remember much about the rest of that day.

That nite we gathered at Willy's to plan our strategy. Willy decided we had to have every minute detail pinned right away, even though we tried to remind him that we had months before the "Big Event". But, he was undeterred; "Remember the seven P's he told us: Proper Prior Planning Prevents P..... Poor Performance". He was magnificent. Should have been an actor. Hadn't missed a trick. There was a map of Alberta on the wall, with our proposed route outlined in black felt pen, a big red bull's eye on the city of Grande Prairie, outdoor magazines scattered in simulated careless fashion all around, his collection of firearms prominently displayed, along with his collection of rifle cartridges, and, of course, the old, faded, dusty, stuffed deer head that he had inherited from some long - forgotten relative (or had he bought it at a garage sale?). By now the deer head was suffering from a severe case of cracked nose and cracked lips. Willy had pulled out all his books by Jack O'Connor and Col. Townsend Whelen, and "Hornady Handbook of Cartridge Reloading". He explained that he was going to load manually a batch of ammo just for this hunt. He had ample refreshments to get us in the proper spirits, and he made sure that the proper spirits got into us too.

If anyone ever got a real snow job, this was it. A classic. There was no backing out now, and we all agreed to go and get our Boone & Crockett Bulls during the two weeks of November 10 - 23. Willy would arrange for guides and licenses. We would drive my 1985 GMC 4 x 4 and Jim would drive his 1986 Ford 1/2 Ton. I would tow Willy's 18 foot trailer.

We had 8 or 9 more meetings before the trip, and were completely satisfied that we had not forgotten even the smallest detail. (Remember those 7 P's!) We made and re-made lists of all the things we had to bring, and Jim got into the mood to the extent where he put all the lists on his word processor and everytime we got together, he gave each of us revised photocopies. We studied road maps picked a guide from the two Willy had been able to contact, and we analyzed hunting regulations. Above all, we admired the $286.81 licenses. The cost stunned each of us and we had some difficulty in convincing Bob not to back out of the whole deal. The regulations came in a booklet of some 60 pages and needed that Proverbial Philadelphia lawyer to make any sense.

"D" day finally came (that's "D" as in "Depart"). Saturday, November 9. Our point of departure (P.O.D. as Willy called it) was carefully chosen by him to be his house. This guy was unreal! The whole neighborhood turned out to cheer us! Mothers were trying to haul their kids out of Jim's truck when Bob and I arrived and by then his flower bed had been trampled out of existence by many small feet. Dogs barked with excitement, men were eying the operation with obvious thoughts of great doubt, and one meat-head had actually called a newspaper reporter to cover the situation. The poor guy wasn't at all sure of how to cover this assignment. I could have crawled. Willy was jubilant. His wife and kids bawled as they kissed him goodbye, but an hour later we finally got the last 3-year old out of Jim's pickup and rolled proudly down the waving, cheering street. Bob and I were in the lead and I tried to hide my face by concentrating on things like my rear - view mirror. Bob slouched down in his seat and hid behind the "1991 Alberta Guide to Big Game Hunting". At one point, I'm sure he was holding it upside down.

We had gone a whole six blocks or so when I noticed that Jim and Willy were no longer behind us. Now what!? We went back and found them along the curb, out of gas. We were carrying lots of gas because we had heard that gas prices in Alberta were super high, so they had just hauled out a plastic Jerry can and were pouring it in. We were just about to head out again when there was a loud crash in the trailer. "Oh no!" wailed Willy, "I was sure I'd tied everything down tight!". He opened the door and there, on the floor, sat a small boy, covered with jam, cookie crumbs and broken dishes. Bob muttered a few unprintable phrases. It became apparent that at this moment he was not a great lover of little children. In order to save the child from an unknown but decidedly unpleasant fate, I hauled him out and suggested Willy clean up the mess while I returned the kid to the neighborhood from whence he came.

Just before the border we topped our tanks and refilled the Jerry can. Turns out that even though Alberta has the largest gas and oil reserves in the world, they charge an arm and two legs for it. And, they sell it in "litres". And then, to add insult to injury, they add 7 percent "G.S.T." ("Gouge and Screw Tax") on top of the price of everything except most foods.

We reached the border and Jim and I pretended not to know Willy who was bragging to anyone who would lend an ear about the huge bull he was very close to bringing down. I heard one customs official whisper to another, "Don't bother with that guy; he's too nuts to smuggle anything." Fortunately we had not brought any handguns as we found that they are illegal. Driving on, on Canadian soil, seemed to get into our blood, and for the next few hours Bob and I swapped hunting lies.

Strangely enough, everything went well for the next few hundred miles and then I had a blowout. We had plenty of spares with us. By late afternoon we pulled into a government campsite and cooked up some dinner. That done, we were about to hit the road again when Willy casually mentioned that he could not find his truck keys. He had been driving Jim's truck while Jim snoozed, having had to work the night shift until 6 that morning. Poor Willy felt real bad, but the truth was, they were gone. We started searching. Bob checked boxes of groceries & dishes, Jim checked the inside of his truck, while Willy and I crawled around on all fours, fingering every blade of grass and turning over every dead leaf, gum wrapper and beer can. This performance went on for 10 or 15 minutes and a small crowd gathered to watch and photograph this unique performance. I noticed at least one camcorder. One helpful tourist offered to help with his metal detector, when Willy triumphantly announced, "Got 'em!" They had fallen out of his shirt pocket. "But I never put them in there!" he told us in a feeble attempt to excuse himself. As our little convoy pulled out of that campsite I wondered what the various onlookers would tell their friends when showing the pictures of these grown men crawling in the dirt.

Aound midnite we pulled into another provincial government campsite to catch a little shut-eye. Jim decided to take his rifle into the trailer, explaining that it would be very easy for someone to steal it from the truck. Panic struck me. Where was MY rifle? My beautiful Remington ADL deluxe in 7 mm Rem. Magnum. I'd taken it in to get a few scratches re-blued and had meant to pick it up on my way to our Point Of Departure. In the excitement, I'd forgotten to pick it up! Now what!? I decided to keep quiet and figure something out. For some reason, I didn't sleep very well, and it wasn't because Willy insisted on talking "moose" all night.

Over a tasteless breakfast of waffles (pre-baked, freshly toasted) I decided to watch for an opportunity to buy another rifle if I could do it without the guys noticing. An unlikely event. I was so disgusted with myself that it never occurred to me to phone the gunsmith and have him air-freight it to Grande Prairie.

Clearly, we were going north, because there were traces of snow along the highway, and the further we went, the more snow. Traffic had kept it off the pavement, though.

By 7:00 AM we were gobbling up the blacktop again. After being stopped by the R.C.M.P. (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) who, we learned to our dismay, have VERY fast horses and love handing out speeding tickets, we hit the Peace River District by late afternoon. Near a town called Valleyview (we never did see any valley), Bob rolled down his window, pretending to be hot. It was doggone cold but the smell in the vehicle suggested that he had some stomach disorder (no doubt as a result of the excitement). Instead of getting better, the stink got worse. I felt sorry and embarrassed for the guy and found myself rolling my window down a little also; very cautiously. We suffered in silence for a mile or two when Bob asked me if I'd like to stop awhile to try and settle my stomach. "Who, me?" Then we realized the truth; the smell was Hydrogen Sulfide gas from the numerous oil and gas wells in the area!

We made Grande Prairie around midnight and took rooms at a motel. Next day being Sunday, we slept in and washed off the highway grime, and ate hearty breakfasts at a downtown cafe. After that we called our guide, Kent Lennox. Kent and his buddy Sam Lowe were to take care of us and show us some trophy moose. Two friends of theirs were guiding four hunters from Oregon in the same area we'd be hunting in. I confided in Kent about my "no rifle" problem. He offered to lend me an old 30 - 06. That suited me fine. He checked out our gear, licenses, and gave us a short sermon on the legalities and illegalities, particularly the illegality of "poaching". The penalties are extremely severe.

That afternoon we headed south of town, into the woods on roads built and used by logging and oil exploration businesses. There was enough snow, packed down on the road, that there was no problem with dust. In summer, they told us, dust is a real hazard. The road was rough, though. Maybe gravel crushers have not yet been introduced into that area, because some of the rocks on that road were the size of softballs. "Wapiti Pea Gravel" they called it, the Wapiti being the river along which the gravel pits are found.

Some twenty miles from town we passed the last farm and Kent decided we best get our rifles ready, but "nothing up the spout, and actions OPEN". The road seemed to go forever, and I figured if this kept up, we'd soon be back in the US of A.

Near dark we pulled off the road onto a trail. It was narrow, rutted and winding. Top speed 1 1/4 miles per hour, except up there, it is kilometers per hour. To top it off, it was now pretty well dark. Days are short up there at that time of year. Sunup was at about 10 to 8 and sundown near 4:30. Doesn't leave much time for hunting.

A mile or so down the trail was a small clearing wherein stood a large old tent. A lantern hung on a pole in front. On a blue crate from a dairy sat an grizzled old man wearing an apron, railroader's cap, cowboy boots, bluejeans full of holes, clearly showing his long johns, and a soggy cigarette but. Sam introduced Clem. No last name was mentioned. Clem, it appeared, had not seen a bathtub in 3 or 4 weeks, and must have had his last shave at that same time. A dog of unknown heritage lay in front of the tent and looked at us as if to say, "Why do you guys keep bringing these Yankees up here all the time?". Clem was supposed to look after camp, help butchering, and cook. The dog was known as Smoky (after the river by the same name).

We moved our gear into the tent and had some tea. The stove in the tent made things very warm indeed. Sam, about 25, took it upon himself to "Educate you Yanks". He proudly told us he had shot 14 moose to date. I did not ask how that fitted in with the illegalities of poaching. He made a point of telling us about previous hunters who had shot horses, mistaking them for cow moose. There was no cow season now, so "look for antlers". We also learned that, contrary to popular belief south of the 49th, moose do not live in water. We felt that to prevent "those guys from Oregon" from getting our moose, we should start early. As we planned our strategy, Clem served an unidentifiable supper on paper plates. Unidentifiable, but tasty.

About 1:00 AM we sacked out. Surprisingly, we all slept well. Even Willy. The alarm rudely awoke us after what seemed like minutes. It was 7 AM. After a breakfast of bacon, eggs, coffee and waffles, we loaded the rifles and headed out. It was light enough to see, and the first thing I saw was an amazing ATV. I'd seen only pictures of an ARGO until now. Kent took Willy and Jim on foot, down the trail. Sam was taking Bob and me in the Argo, down a seismograph trail, or "cutline". The Argo seated Bob and Sam in the front, while I sat in the back with a lot of ropes, chainsaw, etc. etc. On 8 very soft tires, all under power, we travelled over all sorts of terrain. Once when we got to a beaverdam, and the water was at least 3 feet deep and 20 feet wide, Sam just kept driving. I wanted to stop him; thought he'd fallen asleep. "No problem", he assured us. "Hang on". I did.

In a moment it was clear that all 8 tires were now off the ground and we were "boating". All 8 tires kept us moving slowly to the other side. When we got there, however, we had a problem. The bank was too slick for the front tires to get a grip, and we just sat there, with the wheels spinning. Once again, Sam's "No problem" reassured me. He climbed out over the front of the machine, loosened the winch cable, ran it to the nearest tree, climbed back in and winched us out, "slick as snot" as he put it.

When we got to an intersection of cutlines, Sam parked the machine and sent each of us in a different direction on foot, with clear instructions to "stay on the line; don't go into the bush". He was not taking any chances of one of his hunters getting lost in the bush. He had been lost, at 17, and never forgot that awful experience. The cutlines showed promise; tracks of deer, elk, moose, coyotes, and an occasional bear. When I suggested to Sam that there must be a lot of moose, judging by the tracks, he reminded me that one moose makes an awful lot of tracks, and anyway, "tracks make very thin soup".

At one of my many stops I saw something black far ahead, on the line. My heart skipped a beat; would I be the first of our group to bag my trophy? Visibility was poor. The trees on the line were 4 - 5 feet high. I stalked - and stalked - and stalked. Finally I was close enough to see that the black critter was indeed a moose .... BUT, no antlers! A cow!

Around noon the three of us met and ate the lunches Clem had sent with us. The others had seen a coyote but my tale of stalking a moose got the adrenalin flowing in all of our group. That afternoon we hunted in the same manner as we had that morning. No game was spotted.

Supper consisted of beans ("whistle berries" Sam called them) and hamburgers. I did not recognize the meat; hoped it was moose but was afraid to ask in case it was bear. Beans are not my favorite and sure enough, at 3:15 AM Mother Nature gave the call that could not be ignored. Sure is cold up there in November, at night, in snow, among the trees, squatting in the weeds. The guys had built a "Johnson's Bar"; a 3' piece of poplar nailed horizontally on two standing poplar trees, 3 feet high, on which you can "sit". Behind the bar was a hole about 2 feet deep. It was 100 feet from the tent and in the middle of the night, I just didn't want to go that far. On my way back to the sack I tripped over Smoky. He had been sleepng - snoring in fact - and I should have heard him. I dove headlong into Ken't cot, knocking him completely off. This, in turn, hit the table, causing several cups and an open can of coffee to clatter to the dirt floor. Everyone woke up, assuming a grizzly had come to visit. Smoky, his reverie rudely terminated, leapt to the far end of the tent and hid under a bench. Everytime he saw me after this outrage, he made a point of keeping clear.

Tuesday morning came all too soon. Tuesday was a carbon copy of Monday, with the exception that Jim and Kent saw a small black bear. Supper was also a repeat of Monday's supper. This must have been about the only thing Clem had learned to cook because we had it every day.

On Wednesday we awoke to rain. It had warmed up during the night, "Chinook" they told us, and the snow was gone. In its place was mud. Slimy, sticky "gumbo". We decided to try to get back to the main, gravelled road to get back to town for a shower. I led the way. We had not gone 200 yards before I slipped off the trail and into a very sturdy poplar tree, crunching a fender. My poor truck! Willy, always on the bright side, exclaimed, "Look at the bear claw marks on that tree!" I was impressed. How did he recognize them? Jim whispered to me that Kent had pointed out a similar tree to Willy a day earlier.

We did make it to town and enjoyed some refreshing showers at a motel.

The next few days were rather uneventful but we did see 2 more cow moose, 3 muledeer does, 4 whitetailed does, another coyote and another bear; this one was brown in color. We also saw what we thought, was a bull moose, but it was too far to see well and we could not get closer. Anxiety was haunting Bob and me; maybe we should never have listened to Willy. Then our luck changed.

All six of us headed down a cutline together. We walked about 1 1/2 miles and got to a muskeg, or swamp. Sam was a short distance ahead of us and he suddenly stopped, got down and signalled for us to get down and keep quiet. We crawled up to him, and there, 300 yards away, in the swamp, stood a large bull moose and two cows. We froze. It had been previously determined that Bob would get first shot. Willy was beside himself with excitement. "GET HIM!" he yelled as he threw up his rifle and fired two fast shots. The moose looked at us. Willy's rifle jammed. Now Bob took his shot. He took careful aim and dropped the bull with a single shot. It was dead before it splashed down into the swamp. As the air around Willy was turning blue, a second bull stepped out of the trees as the cows milled nervously around, confused.

Jim told me, "No, you go ahead" and I'm not one to turn down an invitation like that. It took me three shots to knock him down. All three were solid hits; you could tell by the echoing sound of bullet hitting. We waded to our trophies with a very embarrassed but enthusiastic Willy leading the way while he kept blaming his rifle and congratulating us.

Both moose were dead and the cows had run off. Then the work started. Sam and Kent congratulated each one of us and Kent used his portable CB radio to call Clem and ask him to bring the Argo. He arrived quickly and we skidded the two animals to dry ground. There we gutted and quartered one of them. We left the hide on because there was no snow now, and the hide would keep them cleaner. It was cold enough that we did not have to worry too much about cooling the meat fast. Our guides made sure that we tagged our moose immediately. The tag is a flat metal band which has to be fastened through the space between the bone and the tendon of a hind leg directly above the hock and around either the bone or the tendon. They also explained to us that evidence of sex had to be left attached to the same quarter to which the tag was attached. Well, we would have no problem finding some evidence of the sex of these big brutes. They were huge. We threw the quarters of one into the back of the Argo and Sam climbed on top. Willy got in the front with Sam and they headed back to camp. Then we processed number two and Sam got back before we were done. Sam hauled the second one back and the rest of us walked.

Back at camp Sam had hung all the quarters on horizontal poles and had hung tarps over them to keep the Whiskey Jacks (or "Canada Jays") off. Bob's bull had antlers 43 inches wide, and mine were 42.

Bob and I hunted with cameras the from then on, while Willy and Jim tried to get their moose. One day I went with Willy and we saw a bull moose. We came to where two cutlines intersected. As we looked to the right and left, there stood Willy's bull, only about 100 yards away, browsing on willow. "NOW!" I told him. "Oh, Man!" he exclaimed, throwing up his rifle. He fired. Nothing happened. He shot again. And again. The moose began to walk into cover. Willy fired until his rifle was empty. The moose was gone. As Willy reloaded, I rushed to where the bull had been, to look for blood. Nothing. We followed his tracks several hundred yards into the bush, but there was not a drop of blood. "I can't understand it" he moaned, "my sights must have got jarred." Back at camp we put up a target at 100 yards. He drilled it dead centre! Buck fever!

The last day came too quickly. Jim and Willy were getting panicky. Still no trophies. We left early; Sam, Willy and I in the Argo. We went several miles, parked and proceeded on foot. Jim wanted to check out an area he had a good feeling about, so he and Kent went there on foot. Ahead was a beaver dam. There are beavers all over that country. In about 3 feet of water stood a young bull. Nearby was a cow. "O.K. Willy, this is it!" I told him. Willy lined up his rifle. I could see he was tense; super tense. If he blew this one, he would be walking home and he knew it.

"There's my bull" he whispered hoarsely. I urged him to relax, breathe slowly and deeply, keep calm and aim carefully. My coaching was good, his listening was good, but his luck was not. As he started to squeeze, the cow began to move. As the shot exploded she was directly in front of the bull. For one horrifying second I thought, "Oh, no!" But, reality took solid hold. Willy's bull ran off and the cow made one terrific splash.We were too stunned to even notice the bull as he disappeared into the trees.

I don't think I will be hunting with Willy again.

THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN

Let's say a guy named Roger is attracted to a woman named Elaine. He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves.

They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

And then, one evening when they're driving home, a thought occurs to Elaine, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud: ''Do you realize that, as of tonight, we've been seeing each other for exactly six months?''

And then there is silence in the car. To Elaine, it seems like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself: Wow, I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he's been feeling confined by our relationship; maybe he thinks I'm trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn't want, or isn't sure of.

And Roger is thinking: Gosh. Six months.

And Elaine is thinking: But, hey, I'm not so sure I want this kind of relationship, either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space, so I'd have time to think about whether I really want us to keep going the way we are, moving steadily toward . . . I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy? Are we heading toward marriage? Toward children? Toward a lifetime together? Am I ready for that level of commitment? Do I really even know this person?

And Roger is thinking: . . . so that means it was . . . let's see ..February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer's which means . Let me check the odometer. Whoa! I am way overdue for an oil change here.

And Elaine is thinking: He's upset. I can see it on his face. Maybe I'm reading this completely wrong. Maybe he wants more from our relationship, more intimacy, more commitment; maybe he has sensed even before I sensed it -- that I was feeling some reservations. Yes, I bet that's it. That's why he's so reluctant to say anything about his own feelings. He's afraid of being rejected.

And Roger is thinking: And I'm gonna have them look at the transmission again. I don't care what those morons say, it's still not shifting right. And they better not try to blame it on the cold weather this time. What cold weather? It's 87 degrees out, and this thing is shifting like a damn garbage truck, and I paid those incompetent thieves $600.

And Elaine is thinking: He's angry. And I don't blame him. I'd be angry, too. I feel so guilty, putting him through this, but I can't help the way I feel. I'm just not sure.

And Roger is thinking: They'll probably say it's only a 90- day warranty. That's exactly what they're gonna say, the scumbags.

And Elaine is thinking: maybe I'm just too idealistic, waiting for a knight to come riding up on his white horse, when I'm sitting right next to a perfectly good person, a person I enjoy being with, a person I truly do care about, a person who seems to truly care about me. A person who is in pain because of my self-centered, schoolgirl romantic fantasy.

And Roger is thinking: Warranty? They want a warranty? I'll give them a damn warranty. I'll take their warranty and stick it right up their.... .

''Roger,'' Elaine says aloud.

''What?'' says Roger, startled.

''Please don't torture yourself like this,'' she says, her eyes beginning to brim with tears. ''Maybe I should never have . .Oh I feel so.....'' (She breaks down, sobbing.)

''What?'' says Roger.

''I'm such a fool,'' Elaine sobs. ''I mean, I know there's no knight. I really know that. It's silly. There's no knight, and there's no horse.''

''There's no horse?'' says Roger.

''You think I'm a fool, don't you?'' Elaine says.

''No!'' says Roger, glad to finally know the correct answer.

''It's just that . . . It's that I . . . I need some time,'' Elaine says.

(There is a 15-second pause while Roger, thinking as fast as he can, tries to come up with a safe response. Finally he comes up with one that he thinks might work.) ''Yes,'' he says.

(Elaine, deeply moved, touches his hand.)

''Oh, Roger, do you really feel that way?'' she says.

''What way?'' says Roger.

''That way about time,'' says Elaine.

''Oh,'' says Roger. ''Yes.''

(Elaine turns to face him and gazes deeply into his eyes, causing him to become very nervous about what she might say next, especially if it involves a horse. At last she speaks.)

''Thank you, Roger,'' she says.

''Thank you,'' says Roger.

Then he takes her home, and she lies on her bed, a conflicted, tortured soul, and weeps until dawn, whereas when Roger gets back to his place, he opens a bag of Doritos, turns on the TV, and immediately becomes deeply involved in a rerun of a tennis match between two Czechoslovakians he never heard of. A tiny voice in the far recesses of his mind tells him that something major was going on back there in the car, but he is pretty sure there is no way he would ever understand what, and so he figures. it's better if he doesn't think about it.
(This is also Rogers policy regarding world hunger.)

The next day Elaine will call her closest friend, or perhaps two of them, and they will talk about this situation for six straight hours. In painstaking detail, they will analyze everything she said and everything he said, going over it time and time again, exploring every word, expression, and gesture for nuances of meaning, considering every possible ramification. They will continue to discuss this subject, off and on, for weeks, maybe months, never reaching any definite conclusions, but never getting bored with it, either.

Meanwhile, Roger, while playing racquetball one day with a mutual friend of his and Elaine's, will pause just before serving, frown, and say: ''Norm, did Elaine ever own a horse?'

Who Am I?

I am the foundation of all business and the fount of all prosperity.

I am the parent of genius.

I have laid the groundwork for every fortune in Canada.

I must be loved before I can bestow my greatest blessings and achieve my greatest ends. Loved, I make life purposeful and fruitful.

I can do more to advance a youth than his own parents, no matter how rich they are.

Fools hate me. Wise men love me.

I am represented in every loaf of bread that comes from the oven, in every train that crosses the continent, in every newspaper that comes off the press.

I am the mother of democracy. All progress springs from me.

Who am I? I am WORK.

CHRISTMAS, 1996

(I wrote this one to my Mom that year - Ken L)

Another year has come and gone. Not long now and we expect to be at the end of a millennium. Happens only once every thousand years! And what about the next 1,000 ..........?

What wonders will technology bring? What things in common use today will be found to be dangerous? What wars will start? What wars will end? What will China's population be at the end of that millennium? Will the Golden Arches be able to develop a new and better hamburger? What diseases will be eradicated? Will new forms of Aids and Ebola come along? Will they find a cure for the common cold? What will cars look like in 2999? Will they find Jimmy Hoffa? Will they find that Elvis did die? Will TV and computers be combined into one? How fast will computers go? What animal species will disappear? What new islands will emerge from the deep? What lands will be destroyed by flood, earthquake or volcano? Will electronic chips be implanted in our bodies to improve our minds, facilitate communication, to replace the need for credit/debit cards or cash, or protect us? Will we be required to have "the mark of the beast" placed on our bodies before we can buy or sell? Will politicians become honest? Will we finally get serious about punishing violent criminals? Will the Russians ever realize that Communism doesn't work? Will humans walk on other planets? Will we see the edge of the universe? And, if we do, what will we see on the other side?? Will we decide that "there is a God after all?" Will we discover the secret of gravity? The secrets of matter and antimatter? What incredible video effects will we see on TV? Will we have color TV (with remote control, of course) in our wrist watches? Will Oprah lose weight? How big a fish will I catch? Will all our video tapes, taken before 2000, be completely blank by 2017? Will people still wear glasses? Will books and (cable) TV disappear? Will global warming inundate low-lying countries? Will Christmas letters disappear? Will the earth be obliterated by a huge comet? Will God stand up and make the call to end it all? Will we extract dinosaur DNA and bring a Brontosaurus back to life? Will the Titanic be raised? Will we discover who made Stonehenge, when and why? Will they leave Princess Di alone? Will we find Atlantis? Will we learn how to grow square trees? Will we see the advent of truly intelligent computers? Will we put a final end to smoking? Will cars and trucks still run on gasoline or diesel? Will they still need roads? Will we be in constant and immediate communication, with voice and video, using wrist communicators? Will we learn how to talk with animals? Will we find intelligent life on other planets and communicate with them? Will we find a way to collect solar energy out in space and beam it to collectors on earth? Will we take weekend vacations to other planets, or to the bottom of the ocean? Will everyone be on the Internet? Will the Canada Pension Plan and the Old Age Pension be nothing more than a dim memory? Will there be a single "wild" animal left which is not wearing a radio collar? Or a bird without a leg-band? Will animal parts be routinely implanted in humans to replace worn out parts? Will the hole in the ozone layer be plugged? Can we go out and enjoy the sun again? How big a deer will I bag? Will a huge asteroid crash into earth, causing an overnight ice age? Will proof come out that O.J. Simpson was guilty? Will Bill Gates become a trillionaire? Will Canada remain as one country as we knew it in 1996? How much memory will Personal Computers have? Will the "traditional" family still exist? Will icebergs be towed to the coast of Africa and melt water be pumped from them to turn the Sahara desert into lush farmland? Will we realize that not only do we need capital punishment, but that it is correct, just and scriptural? Will oriental traditional medicine cause the complete elimination of the remaining tigers, rhinos and black bears from the face of our planet? Will we put an end to the torture and slaughter of human babies, that is, abortion? Will computer keyboards and mice disappear and be replaced by a microphone? Will we discover that crop circles are made by creatures we cannot see; creatures who live in a different dimension? Will we find a way to shrink a person to the size where he/she can walk through the eye of a needle, and then restore them to normal size? Will we build microscopes so powerful that we can see sub-atomic particles? Will we find a parallel universe? Will the alchemists' dream of turning base metals into gold finally come true? Will humans quit wearing fur? Will trappers invent a perfectly humane trap that will satisfy the animal rights movement? Will we learn how to manipulate the weather? Will men have babies? Will garbage accumulate to the point where there is no room left for people?Or will we find it economical to blast garbage into outer space; perhaps into the everlasting fires of the sun? Will any of our astronauts be lost in space? How fast will jet aircraft fly? Will we learn to travel in time; "back to the future", or back in time? Will we enjoy 3-D, High Definition television? Will the crime rate make it so unsafe to go out of doors that we all will become prisoners in our own homes? Will Noah's ark be found and recovered? Will we discover too late that the pollution of our soil, our water and our air, due to pesticides, herbicides, hormones and industrial waste has doomed all of us? In what year will it be fair to say, "The Japanese have now taken over the world?" Will a cosmic visitor in the year 3000 find that the most intelligent life left on planet Earth is a cockroach? Will we learn the secrets of time and space? Will we find that sub-atomic particles are actually "universes", complete with planets populated by "people" just like ourselves? Will we discover that our solar system is only an "atom" in a speck of dust floating in some gigantic person's living room? Will the Irish quit slaughtering each other? Will the $5 bill be replaced by a coin; a "quintoonie?" Or will cash disappear altogether? Will anyone still "go to work" or will we all just "walk to the computer?" Will the male of the human species become completely sterile due to pollutants? And if they do, what will women do; mate with chimps? Will there be any "take home" pay left, after taxes? Will peace come to the Middle East? What will be the years inscribed on my tombstone? Will any part of Canada NOT be owned by foreigners by the year 2100? What are they going to refer to as "the last frontier?"

Many of these questions may have a happy answer, many an unhappy one. What can I do to make more of them "happy?"

Have a Wonderful Christmas, and all the very best wishes for a happy, healthy, wealthy 1997, from:

Ken Laninga

EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

NAME OF EMPLOYEE: ________________________ COMPANY NAME: ________________________

PLUS POINTS EARNED: _________ MINUS POINTS EARNED: _________ TOTAL POINTS EARNED: ___________

PERFORMANCE FACTORS	FAR EXCEEDS JOB REQUIREMENTS	EXCEEDS JOB REQUIREMENTS	MEETS JOB REQUIREMENTS	NEEDS SOME IMPROVEMENT	DOES NOT MEET REQUIREMENTS
POINTS	+2	+1	0	-1	-2
QUALITY	leaps tall buildings in a single bound	must take a running start to leap over building	can leap over short buildings only	crashes into building when trying to jump it	cannot recognize any buildings at all
TIMELINESS	is faster than a speeding bullet	is as fast as a speeding bullet	not quite as fast as a speeding bullet	would you believe a slow bullet(?)	wounds self while trying to shoot
INITIATIVE	is stronger than a locomotive	is stronger than a bull elephant	is stronger than a bull	shoots the bull	smells like a bull
ADAPTABILITY	walks on water consistently	walks on water in emergencies	washes with water	drinks water	passes water in emergencies
COMMUNICA- TION	talks with the Prime Minister	talks with cabinet ministers	talks to himself	argues with himself	loses these arguments
ACTIVITIES	fishes with dry flies exclusively	uses wet flies also, on occasion	has been known to use a single-hook spoon	used a treble-hook lure once	uses worms

ken@sticksite.com