That Wednesday Thing

An oldie but a goodie, especially with Hurrican season here and NOLA still rebuilding and recovering from Katrina, and even more, this being an election year:

How many zeros in a billion?
This is too true to be funny. The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money.
A billion is a difficult number to comprehend,but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of it's releases.

A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes,

at the rate our government is spending it.

While this thought is still fresh in our brain...
let's take a look at New Orleans ...
It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division.
Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D) has asked Congress for
250 BILLION DOLLARS
to rebuild New Orleans . Interesting number...
what does it mean?

A. Well... if you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans
(every man, woman, and child) you each get $516,528.

B. Or... if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, your home gets $1,329,787.

C. Or... if you are a family of four... your family gets $2,066,012.

Washington, D.C.
HELLO!
Are all your calculators broken??

Accounts Receivable Tax

Building Permit Tax

CDL License Tax

Cigarette Tax

Corporate Income Tax

Dog License Tax

Federal Income Tax

Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)

Fishing License Tax

Food License Tax

Fuel Permit Tax

Gasoline Tax

Hunting License Tax

Inheritance Tax

Inventory Tax IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)

IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)

Liquor Tax

Luxury Tax

Marriage License Tax

Medicare Tax

Property Tax

Real Estate Tax

Service charge taxes

Social Security Tax

Road Usage Tax (Truckers)

Sales Taxes

Recreational Vehicle Tax

School Tax

State Income Tax

State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)

Telephone Federal Excise Tax

Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax

Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax

Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax

Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax

Telephone State and Local Tax

Telephone Usage Charge Tax

Utility Tax

Vehicle License Registration Tax

Vehicle Sales Tax

Watercraft Registration Tax

Well Permit Tax

Workers Compensation Tax

STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?
Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago...

and our nation was the most prosperous in the world.
We had absolutely no national debt...
We had the largest middle class in the world...
and Mom stayed home to raise the kids . What happened?
Can you spell 'politicians!'

And I still have to press '1' for English.

~~~~~~~~~~

Clay Balls

A man was exploring caves by the seashore.

In one of the caves he found a canvas bag with a bunch of hardened clay balls.

It was like someone had rolled clay balls and left them out in the sun to bake.

They didn't look like much, but they

intrigued the man, so he took the bag out of the cave with him.

As he strolled along the beach, he would throw the clay balls

one at a time out into the ocean as far as he could.

He thought little about it, until he dropped

one of the clay balls and it cracked open on a rock.

Inside was a beautiful, precious stone!

Excited, the man started breaking open the remaining clay balls.

Each contained a similar treasure.

He found thousands of dollars worth of jewels in the 20 or so clay balls he had left.

Then it struck him.

He had been on the beach a long time.

He had thrown maybe 50 or 60 of the clay balls

with their hidden treasure into the ocean waves.

Instead of thousands of dollars in treasure,

he could have taken home tens of thousands,

but he had just thrown it away!

It's like that with people. We look at someone, maybe even ourselves,

and we see the external clay vessel It doesn't look like much from the outside.

It isn't always beautiful or sparkling, so we discount it.

We see that person as less important than someone more beautiful or stylish

or well known or wealthy. But we have not taken the time to find the

treasure hidden inside that person.

There is a treasure in each one of us. If we take the time to get to know that person,

then the clay begins to peel away and the brilliant gem begins to shine forth.

May we not come to the end of our lives and find out that we have

thrown away a fortune in friendships because the gems were hidden in bits of clay.

I am so blessed by the gems of friendship I have with each of you.

Thank you for looking beyond my clay vessel.

~~~~~~~~~~~

For our wordsmiths.....

Homonym Humor

1. He who jumps off a bridge in Paris is in Seine.

2. A man's home is his castle, in a manor of speaking.

3. Dijon vu - the same mustard as before.

4. Practice safe eating - always use condiments.

5. Shotgun wedding: a case of wife or death.

6. A man needs a mistress just to break the monogamy.

7. A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

8. Dancing cheek-to-cheek is really a form of floor play.

9. Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

10. Condoms should be used on every conceivable occasion.

11. Reading while sunbathing makes you well red.

12. When two egoists meet, it's an I for an I.

13. A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two tired.

14. Definition of a will: a dead give away.

15. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

16. In democracy your vote counts. In feudalism your count votes.

17. She was engaged to a boyfriend with a wooden leg but broke it off.

18. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

19. If you don't pay your exorcist, do you get repossessed?

20. With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.

21. When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds.

22. The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.

23. You feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.

24. Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN down under.

25. Every calendar's days are numbered.

26. A lot of money is tainted - it taint yours and it taint mine.

27. A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.

28. A midget fortune-teller who escapes from prison is a small medium at large.

29. Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.

30. Once you've seen one shopping center, you've seen a mall.

31. Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.

32. Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.

33. Acupuncture is a jab well done.

~~~~~~~~~~

If you have ever had a colonoscopy, you will enjoy this....Dave Barry's Colonoscopy Journal

I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy. A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis.

Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner. I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, quote, 'HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!'

I left Andy's office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called 'MoviPrep,' which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America's enemies.

I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous. Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn't eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor.

Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons.) Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes - and here I am being kind - like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, 'a loose watery bowel movement may result.'

This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground. MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here, but: have you ever seen a space shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep.

The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, 'What if I spurt on Andy?' How do you apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers would not be enough.

At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the heck the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked.

Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep. At first I was ticked off that I hadn't thought of this, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house.

When everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere. I was seriously nervous at this point. Andy had me roll over on my left side, and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand. There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was 'Dancing Queen' by Abba. I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, 'Dancing Queen' has to be the least appropriate. 'You want me to turn it up?' said Andy, from somewhere behind me. 'Ha ha,' I said. And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than decade.

If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like. I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, Abba was shrieking 'Dancing Queen! Feel the beat from the tambourine...' and the next moment, I was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood.

Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent. I felt even more excellent when Andy told me that it was all over, and that my colon had passed with flying colors. I have never been prouder of an internal organ.

ABOUT THE WRITER: Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning humor

~~~~~~~~~~

and to end with even more humor:

Little Carol came into the kitchen where her mother was making dinner. Her birthday was coming up and she thought this was a good time to tell her mother what she wanted. 'Mom, I want a bike for my birthday.'

Now, Little Carol was a bit of a troublemaker. She had gotten into trouble at school and at home. Carol's mother asked her if she thought she deserved to get bike for her birthday. Little Carol, of course, thought she did.

Carol's mother, being a Christian woman, wanted her to reflect on her behavior over the last year, and write a letter to God and tell him why she deserved a bike for her birthday. Little Carol stomped up the steps to her room and sat down to write God a letter.

LETTER 1:

Dear God:

I have been a very good girl this year and I would like a bike for my birthday. I want a red one.

Your friend,
Carol

Carol knew this wasn't true. She had not been a very good girl this year, so she tore up the letter and started over.

LETTER 2:

Dear God:

This is your friend Carol. I have been a pretty good girl this year, and I would like a red bike for my birthday.

Thank you,
Carol

Carol knew this wasn't true either. She tore up the letter and started again.

LETTER 3:

Dear God:

I know I haven't been a good girl this year. I am very sorry. I will be a good girl if you just send me a red bike for my birthday.

Thank you,
Carol

Carol knew, even if it was true, this letter was not going to get her a bike. By now, she was very upset. She went downstairs and told her mother she wanted to go to church. Carol's mother thought her plan had worked because Carol looked very sad.

'Just be home in time for dinner,' her mother said.

Carol walked down the street to the church and up to the altar. She looked around to see if anyone was there. She picked up a statue of the Virgin Mary, slipped it under her jacket and ran out of the church, down the street, into her house, and up to her room. She shut the door and sat down and wrote her letter to God.

LETTER 4:

I GOT YOUR MAMA. IF YOU WANT TO SEE HER AGAIN, SEND THE BIKE.

Signed,
YOU KNOW WHO