July 2002

Separation	Long Distance?	The Interview
Guilty Dog	Brewster the Rooster	Pricing Glasses
Maneuvers	How Is She?	Walked Out
...I Thee Wed	A Texan in Ireland	Out Of Control
What Hurt?	Thanks With Humor	My Dad...
First Choice	Are You Prepared?	Just Checking
Finding a Cancer Cure	Beauty is in the eyes...	Communications
Southern Help	Pills	Mal & Mel

Undertakers Mal and Mel were storing embalming fluid. It was considered appropriate to place it in an area out of sight.

Mel had his share stored promptly but there was still a good portion left for Mal to take care of.

When asked why he had not just stored it all, Mel said, "The rest is for Mal to hide."

A resident in a posh hotel breakfast room called over the head waiter one morning and said with a wonderful and cheerful smile.

"Good Morning sir. What a wonderful morning I'd like two boiled eggs, one of them so under cooked it's runny, and the other so over cooked it's tough and hard to eat. Also, grilled bacon that has been left out so it gets a bit on the cold side; burnt toast that crumbles away as soon as you touch it with a knife; butter straight from the deep freeze so that it's impossible to spread; and a pot of very weak coffee, lukewarm."

"That's a complicated order sir," said the bewildered waiter. "It might be quite difficult."

The guest replied, "Oh? Why? -- that's what I got yesterday!"

A farmer in his pickup truck in the south was driving across a bridge when
he noticed a man standing on the rail of the bridge ready to jump to his
death in the river below. The man stopped his truck ran up to the man and
said, "Hey, mind if I ask why are you doing this?"

The man replied, "Well, I have nothing to live for."

The Southerner replied, "Well, think of your wife and children!"

The jumper replied, "I have no wife or children."

The Southerner then said, "Well, then think of your mother and father!"

The man replied, "Mom and Dad passed on many years back."

The Southerner then said, "Well, think of General Robert E. Lee!"

The would-be jumper replied, "Who?"

With that the Southerner said, "Jump, you stupid Yankee, jump!!!"

An expert on whales was telling friends about some of the unusual findings he had made. "For instance," he said, "some whales can communicate at a distance of 300 miles."

"What on earth would one whale say to another 300 miles away?" asked a sarcastic member of the group.

"I'm not absolutely sure," answered the expert, "but it sounds something like 'Can you hear me now?

A class from a nearby university was visiting a major drug manufacturer. The tour guide led the students to a glass-enclosed room. They could see several people in white lab coats. With her back to the glass, the guide announced: "In this room researchers are actively searching for a cure for cancer."

She stopped short as the group broke out laughing. Puzzled, the guide turned to look.

Through the glass she saw three scientists in animated debate, flipping through the Yellow Pages.

Soon after our last child left home for college, my husband was resting next to me on the couch with his head in my lap. I carefully removed his glasses.

"You know, honey," I said sweetly, "Without your glasses you look like the same handsome young man I married."

"Honey," he replied with a grin, "Without my glasses, you still look pretty good too!"

Before performing a baptism, the priest approached the young father and said solemnly, "Baptism is a serious step. Are you prepared for it?"

"I think so," the man replied. "My wife made appetizers last night and we have a caterer coming this morning with roast beef, fried chicken and potato salad."

"I don't mean that," the priest responded. "I mean, are you prepared spiritually?"

"Sure," came the reply. "I've got a keg of beer and a case of bourbon."

During my brother's wedding, my mother managed to keep from crying---until she glanced at my grandparents. My grandmother had reached over to my grandfather's wheelchair and gently touched his hand. That was all it took to start my mother's tears flowing.

After the wedding, Mom went over to my grandmother and told her how that tender gesture triggered her outburst. "Well, I'm sorry to ruin your moment," Grandmother replied, "but I was just checking to see if he'd fallen asleep."

"Well," a little old lady said to a local politician running for office, "you're my second choice."

"Why, thank you, ma'am," he said, smiling. "But may I ask - who's your first?"

"Oh," she said casually, "anybody else who's running."

Three boys are in the school yard bragging about their fathers. The first boy says, "My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper and he calls it a poem, they give him $50."

The second boy says, "That's nothing. My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a press release, they give him $100."

The third boy says, "I got you both beat. My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a sermon, and it takes eight people to collect all the money!"

For a while my husband and I had opposite schedules. He worked during the day, and I worked at night. One morning I noticed he had left a not to himself on the kitchen counter that read, "STAMPS!" As a helpful surprise, I bought him some at the post office and put them on the counter before going to work.

The next morning I found the same note. "STAMPS!" was crossed out. Underneath it he had written, "ONE MILLION DOLLARS!"

When my wife quit work to take care of our new baby daughter, countless hours of peek-a-boo and other games slowly took their toll.

One evening my wife smacked her bare toes on the corner of a dresser and, grabbing her foot, sank to the floor.

I rushed to her side and asked what she had hurt.

She looked at me through tear-filled eyes and managed to moan, "It's the piggy that ate roast beef."

A man was called into his bank to discuss his accounts. "Your finances are in terrible shape," the banker stated. "Your checking account is overdrawn, your loan is overdue."

"Yes, I know." said the man. "It's my wife, she is out of control."

"Why do you allow your wife to spend more money than you have?" asked the banker.

"Frankly," replied the man with a deep sigh, "because I'd rather argue with you than with her."

A Texan walks into a pub in Ireland and clears his voice to the crowd of drinkers. He says, "I hear you Irish are a bunch of drunken' fools. I'll give $500 American dollars to anybody in here who can drink 10 pints of Guinness back-to-back."

The room is quiet, and no one takes of the Texan's offer. One man even leaves.

Thirty minutes later the same gentleman who left shows back up and taps the Texan on the shoulder. "Is your bet still good?" he asks.

The Texan says yes and asks the bartender to line up 10 pints of Guinness. Immediately the Irishman tears into all 10 of the pint glasses drinking them all back-to-back.

The other pub patrons cheer as the Texan sits down in amazement. The Texan gives the Irishman the $500 and says, "If ya don't mind my askin', where did ya'll go for that 30 minutes you were gone?"

The Irishman replies, "Oh...I had to goo to the pub down the street to see if I could do it first."

As a new commercial pilot, I found that most of my time and energy was put into learning how to fly a jet. I could see that my fianc�e's patience was wearing thin because I had little time to spend with her. It became even worse when our spring wedding clashed with a new series of required training flights that would take me abroad for more than a month. At my suggestion we decided to marry sooner.

The day was perfect, with no talk of flying. My heart melted as I watched her walk up the aisle to stand next to me. But as we recited our vows, I looked into her eyes and said, "With this wing, I thee wed."

"I hope you didn't take it personally, Reverend," an embarrassed woman said after a church service, "when my husband walked out during your sermon."

"I did find it rather disconcerting," the preacher replied.

"It's not a reflection on you, sir," insisted the church goer. "Ralph has been walking in his sleep ever since he was a child."

Worried that they hadn't heard anything for days from the widow in the apartment next door, the mother said to her son, "Tony, would you go next door and see how Old Mrs. Pierpoint is?"

A few minutes later, Tony returned.

"Well, is she all right?" asked the mother.

"She's fine, but she's rather annoyed with you," remarked Tony.

"At me?" the mother exclaimed. "Whatever for?"

Tony replied, "Mrs. Pierpoint said it's none of your business how old she is."

After a day of grueling maneuvers under the blazing Texas sun, the platoon stood in front of the barracks. "All right, ladies, think about this," bellowed the drill instructor. "If you could have ten minutes alone, right now, with anyone in the world, who would it be?"

Amid much mumbling, one voice was heard from the back row. "My recruiter."

The proprietor of a successful optical shop was instructing his son on how to charge a customer.

"After you have fitted the customer's glasses," he said, "and he asks you what the charge will be, you say, '$10.' Then see if he winces.

"If the customer doesn't wince you say, 'For the frames. The lenses will be another $10.'

"If he still doesn't wince you say firmly, 'Each.'"

My uncle John was in the fertilized egg business when I was young. He had several hundred young layers, called pullets, and 8 or 10 roosters whose job it was to fertilize the eggs.

My uncle kept records and any rooster or pullet that didn't perform well went into the pot and was replaced.

Now this took an awful lot of time. So my uncle got a set of tiny bells and attached them to his roosters. Now he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report by listening to the bells. My uncle's favorite rooster was old Brewster. A very fine specimen he was but his bell had not rung all morning. Uncle John went to investigate.

Several roosters were chasing pullets, bells a-ringing. Brewster had his bell in his beak so it couldn't ring. He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one. Uncle was so proud of Brewster he entered him in the county fair.

Brewster was an overnight sensation. The judges not only awarded him the No Bell Prize, but also the Pullet Surprise.

It was the end of the day when I parked my police van in front of the station. As I gathered my equipment, my K-9 partner, Jake, was barking, and I saw a little boy
staring in at me.

"Is that a dog you got back there?" he asked.

"It sure is," I replied.

Puzzled, the boy looked at me and then towards the back of the van. Finally he said, "What'd he do?"

Reaching the end of a job interview, the human resources person asked a young engineer fresh out of MIT what kind of a salary he was looking for.

"In the neighborhood of $140,000 a year, depending on the benefits package."

"Well, what would you say to a package of 5-weeks vacation, 14 paid holidays, full medical and dental, company matching retirement fund to 50% of salary, and a company car leased every 2 years...say, a red Corvette?"

Brad and Mike are two old retired widowers who reside close to each other and do constant welfare checks on each other. Much of their relationship is based on pragmatism rather than real friendship or personal affection.

One day, as he drinks his morning coffee, Mike opens the morning paper and turns to the obituaries page.

He gets the shock of his life when he sees his own obituary in the column. He realizes that the query for info on him by the local newspaper several months earlier, was in preparation for this event. He correctly surmises that it is a mistaken entry from their database. It still excites and rankles him, so he calls Brad up.

"Hi Brad. Open the newspaper to page 31."

"Why, what's in the paper?"

"Brad, get the paper and open it to page 31 NOW!"

"All right, don't be such a pain so early in the morning already. So, what's on page 31 that's so important?"

"Brad, look at the bottom of column 4."

"Why? What's that story on?"

"Brad, read the story on the bottom of the column already!"

"OK, OK, I'll start reading the column if you stop yelling in my ear!"

The paper rustles for a few seconds, then a long silent pause ensues. Finally, Brad comes on the line quietly and fearfully asks, "So Mike, where are you calling me from right now?

Roger was fed up with his wife, so he packed up his stuff and moved into the garage. Although the couple seldom spoke, he continued to mow the lawn, take out the garbage and fix the car, while she cooked the meals, vacuumed and did the laundry.

Months later, Roger met his friend Don for drinks. "Things don't seem to be working out any better," Don remarked. "Why don't you just move out?"

"Well, if you really want to know the truth," Roger explained, "she makes such a good neighbor."