Daily Dose - 010422 - John from Qatar's collection
The boss of a big company needed to call one of his employees about an urgent problem with one of the main computers. He dialed the employees home phone number and was greeted with a child's whispered, "Hello?"
Feeling put out at the inconvenience of having to talk to a youngster the boss asked, "Is your Daddy home?"
"Yes", whispered the small voice.
"May I talk with him?" the man asked.
To the surprise of the boss, the small voice whispered, "No."
Wanting to talk with an adult, the boss asked, Is your Mummy there?"
"Yes", came the answer.
"May I talk with her?"
Again the small voice whispered, "no".
Knowing that it was not likely that a young child would be left home alone, the boss decided he would just leave a message with the person who should be there watching over the child. "Is there any one there besides you?" the boss asked the child.
"Yes" whispered the child, "a policeman".
Wondering what a cop would be doing at his employee's home, the boss asked, "May I speak with the policeman"?
"No, he's busy", whispered the child.
"Busy doing what?" asked the boss.
"Talking to Daddy and Mummy and the Fireman", came the whispered answer.
Growing concerned and even worried as he heard what sounded like a helicopter through the earpiece on the phone the boss asked, "What is that noise?"
"A hello-copper", answered the whispering voice.
"What is going on there?" asked the boss, now alarmed.
In an awed whispering voice the child answered, "The search team just landed the hello-copper"
Alarmed, concerned and more than just a little frustrated the boss asked, "What are they searching for"?
Still whispering, the young voice replied along with a muffled giggle: "Me."
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A man was walking home alone one night when he hears a.......
BUMP...
BUMP...
BUMP... behind him.
Walking faster he looks back, and makes out the image of an upright coffin banging its way down the middle of the street towards him
... BUMP...
..BUMP...
..BUMP...
Terrified, the man begins to run towards his home, the coffin bouncing quickly behind him ...
faster...
faster...
BUMP...
BUMP....
BUMP.
He runs up to his door, fumbles with his keys, opens the door, rushes in, slams and locks the door behind him.
However, the coffin crashes through his door, with the lid of the coffin clapping ...
clappity-BUMP...
clappity-BUMP...
clappity-BUMP...
clappity-BUMP...
on the heels of the terrified man....
Rushing upstairs to the bathroom, the man locks himself in. His heart is pounding; his head is reeling; his breath is coming in sobbing gasps.
With a loud CRASH the coffin breaks down the door. Bumping and clapping towards him.
The man screams and reaches for something, anything....
... but all he can find is a bottle of cough syrup!
Desperate, he throws the cough syrup at the coffin....
.... the coffin stops.
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Coma
A pregnant Irish woman from Dublin gets in a car accidentand falls into a deep coma. Asleep for nearly 6 months, when she wakes up she sees that she is no longer pregnant and frantically asks the doctor about her baby.
The doctor replies, "Ma'am you had twins! a boy and a girl.Your brother from Cork came in and named them."
The woman thinks to herself, "Oh No, not my brother... he's an idiot!" She asks the doctor, "Well, what's the girl's name?"
"Denise."
"Wow, that's not a bad name, I like it! What's the boy's name?"
"Denephew. "
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OK - don't all you Americans get up in arms over this one... Wait until you see the response below.
Are You an American?
1. You decide that the relationship with your partner is over. How do you break the news you are leaving?
(a) Leave a tearful note on the table and slip quietly away
(b) Calmly discuss the reasons with your partner for your decision
(c) Attack them with a chair in front of a rabble of cheering pumped-up inbreds on national television.
2. You and your mates (that's friends) decide to have a game of football in the park. What do you need to take?
(a) A ball
(b) A ball and 2 coats
(c) A ball, 50 crash helmets, 4 tons of body armour, 20 cheerleaders, a marching sousaphone band with a grand piano on a trolley, and a team of orthopaedic surgeons specialising in spinal injuries.
3. You are driving along a country road when you accidentally run over an animal. What do you do?
(a) Stop and see how badly injured it is, taking it to a vet if it is still alive
(b) Carry on driving, but hope it is still alive, or if not, that it died quickly
(c) Strap it across the bonnet of your car and drive home hollering, whooping and throwing empty Budweiser cans out of the window.
4. You wake up in the morning with a stiff neck after sleeping in an awkward position. What do you do?
(a) Ignore it. It will probably loosen up as the day progresses
(b) Take a couple of aspirins and get on with things.
(c) Take yourself to a prostitute-addicted TV evangelist faith healer in an ill-fitting wig, who will lay his hands on you head, whilst screaming about the devil in front of an audience of gibbering inbreds, and give him all your money.
5. What do you have for breakfast?
(a) A bowl of Cornflakes, slice of toast and a mug of tea
(b) Glass of orange juice, croissant and a cup of coffee
(c) A bag of donuts with ice cream, a 32 ounce steak with six eggs sunny side-up, fifteen pancakes with maple syrup, ten waffles, five corn dogs and a diet root beer.
6. You and your partner decide to take the plunge and get married. What sort of ceremony do you have?
(a) A quiet party with a few friends in a registry office
(b) A church service followed by a traditional reception at a hotel
(c) A minute long mockery at a 24 hour drive-through chapel in Las Vegas, presided over by a transvestite vicar dressed as Elvis.
7. Your 14-year-old son is going through a difficult phase, becoming disruptive at school and reclusive at home. What do you do?
(a) Don't worry. It's just a phase and will pass.
(b) Encourage him to get out more, get involved in team sports or join a youth club.
(c) Take him to an armoury and buy him an arsenal of semi-automatic weapons and enough ammunition to slaughter a small town.
8. You fancy a night in watching something funny on TV. What kind of comedy do you choose?
(a) A sitcom like Fawlty Towers or Father Ted
(b) A sketch show like the Two Ronnies or the Fast show
(c) A thinly disguised morality play set in a massive lounge where the audience whoop for ten minutes every time an overpaid actor with a superglued grin on his face makes an entrance to deliver a lightweight wisecrack.
9. Whilst getting ready for bed, you stub your toe on your wife's dressing table. What do you do?
(a) Shout and swear a bit, after all, it did hurt
(b) Make a mental note to move the table so it doesn't happen again
(c) Immediately call a hotshot lawyer with an uptown reputation, and sue your wife's ass.
10. There are peace talks in another part of the world. What do you do?
(a) Let them get on with it
(b) Let them get on with it but offer help and advice to both sides
(c) Ignore all parties wishes and protests and take over the talks.
11. There are global concerns about the emissions from cars, do you:
(a) Introduce incentives to switch to cleaner cars
(b) Invent a new cleaner fuel
(c) Continue to drive the biggest big-ass fuel burner you can lay your hands on, preferably with the emission rate of a small power station.
12. There is a war in another part of the world, do you:
(a) Monitor to see if human rights are being infringed
(b) Monitor to see if human rights are being infringed and bring the culprits to justice
(c) Invade the country flattening all buildings, fire at all allied and enemy airplanes killing people no matter which side they're on; after all a kill is a kill.
13. Your city has been the victim of a terrorist attack. You should:
(a) Treat victims, clean up and take further preventative measures
(b) Treat victims, clean up and find those responsible and bring them to justice
(c) Treat victims, clean up and find those responsible, but increase funding to the 'friendly' terrorist whose activities are solely abroad.
14. You're on holiday abroad, do you:
(a) Make the most of the local culture and food
(b) Enjoy the local culture and food but look forward to getting home
(c) Complain and whinge about the country that you are visiting and that everything is bigger back home.
Answers...
If you answered mostly (a)'s & (b)'s then you are a normal well balanced individual.
If you answered mostly (C)'s then sorry, you are an American.
*********
An American's response...
Dear Revolutionary LOSERS,
In light of our mutual political troubles and terrorist risk, it cuts me to the quick that you would take the "stick" (I'll type slowly in gutter launguage so all you "Austin Power" teeth brits can follow) out of the minority SUPER POWER members of the club. However, you have .....as the great American Icon, Rambo, once said, "drawn first blood." As such, (slap, slap across your faces with a glove) prepare your selves, sirs!
True British (Irish, too) Answers if the "American Test" were not multiple choice.
Are You a Brit?
1. You decide that the relationship with your partner is over. How do you break the news you are leaving?
Tell the dog, who will speak to the cow, who will whisper it to the pig, who understands and will console the lamb on her loss.
2. You and your mates (that's inbred friends) decide to have a game of football in the park. What do you need to take?
A ball and 500 on the dole and registered soccer (thats right ...soccer) hooligans with gay scarves and 50 unarmed and ineffectual bobbies.
3. You are driving along a country road when you accidentally run over an animal. What do you do?
Nurse it back to health and take it on a shopping spree at Ann Sommers. See question #1.
4. You wake up in the morning with a stiff neck after sleeping in an awkward position. What do you do?
Pull my head out of my ass and take a Brufen.
5. What do you have for breakfast?
The same fare Americans eat for lunch on the 4th of July........beans and franks. (BTW, that's our Independence Day.....What do you guys celebrate then.....Still Dependent Day?)
6. You and your partner decide to take the plunge and get married. What sort of ceremony do you have?
I don't know about this one.......I'll get back with you after Stuarts and Sarah's (2 cool Brits) wedding Thursday.
7. Your 14-year-old son is going through a difficult phase, becoming disruptive at school and reclusive at home. What do you do?
Nothing, the world can always use more soccer hooligans and labor party members.
8. You fancy a night in watching something funny on TV. What kind of comedy do you choose?
Why that pinnacle of thespian comedy, Mr. Bean..........of course. I'd say The Big Breakfast but its not funny.
9. Whilst getting ready for bed, you stub your toe on your wife's dressing table. What do you do?
Stay perfectly quite because she might wake up and ask for a shag which will piss the lamb off again.
*** Side note **** Its "while".... not "whilst"....Are you fucking Shakespeare? (Our second most popular Brit after Maggie)
10. There are peace talks in another part of the world. What do you do?
Nothing..........and thank God the Americans will handle it.
11. There are global concerns about the emissions from cars, you:
Tax fuel to the point where nobody can afford to drive then only run trains to limited destinations with no weekend or late evening service.
12. There is a war in another part of the world, do you:
See Question #10 as long as the basic human right to skip bathing is not infirnged.
13. Your city has been the victim of a terrorist attack. You should:
Ask the French the going rate to get them to stop then pay it.
14. You're on holiday abroad, you:
Find the nearest Rugby Club......if you stay by the bar its like you never left.
If you answered any of these .......congratulations, you can read. If you laughed, even better ...you have a sense of humor. If you were offended, how do you Brits say?........SOD OFF!
God Bless America and vote Republican Please!
Kurt "Wide Open Flanker" Anhalt
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A man went to a strip club. When he got inside he noticed a seat conspicuously unoccupied in the front row. Seizing the opportunity, he took the seat.
As soon as the first dancer walked out, the guy directly behind him yelled, "Yeah baby! That's what I've been waiting for!" The man in the front row turned around and gave him a dirty look. A few minutes into the show, the dancer did a move and snatched off her top, revealing a skimpy bikini top. The guy behind our friend goes off again. "Yeah baby! Shake those things."
Our friend turned around and said, "Hey buddy, calm down!" After a few moments, the dancer did another move, and snatched off her dress, revealing a very thin G-string. Again the man behind our friend yelled out, "Oh baby! You're almost there!" Our friend again turned around and said, "Hey buddy, shut the hell up, will ya!"
A few minutes later, the dancer stretched out on the floor and snatched off her bikini top and the G-string, and the whole club went wild, except for the man behind our friend. Curious, our friend turned around and asked,
"Say buddy, where's your enthusiasm now"?
The guy responded, "It's on your back, dude."
____________________________
An old man and his wife have gone to bed. After laying in bed for a few minutes the old man lets out a loud fart and says "one-nil."
His wife rolls over and asks, "What in the world was that?"
The old man says, "A goal. I'm ahead one-nil."
A few minutes later the wife lets one go and says, "Goal! One all." The old boy farts again. "Goal! I'm ahead 2-1."
Now starting to get into this the wife quickly farts again and says, "Goal! 2 all."
The old man tries to fart again, but cannot.
Trying desperately not be out done by his wife, he gives it everything he has to get out just one more fart.
He strains a little too hard and shits in the bed. The wife asks, "Now what in the world was that?"
The old man replies, "Half-time, switch sides!"
____________________________
The Sons
An Englishman an Irishman and a Scotsman were in a pub, talking about their sons.
"My son was born on St George's Day," commented the Englishman. "So we obviously decided to call him George."
"That's a real coincidence," remarked the Scot. "My son was born on St Andrew's Day, so obviously we decided to call him Andrew."
"That's incredible, what a coincidence," said the Irishman. "Exactly the same thing happened with my son Pancake."
____________________________
Overheard in a Newfoundland Bar
Customer: ``Whiskey and ice, please, bartender.''
Bartender: ``Sorry, Mate, no ice.''
Customer: ``O.K., I'll have it with water.''
Bartender: Sorry, Mate, the waters all frozen.''
____________________________
John's Interesting Trivia
The north west highlands of Scotland contain some of the most awesome peaks in Britain, stretching over 100 kilometres just north of Fort William to Ullapool on the west coast. They are modest compared with the Himalayas, the Andes or the Swiss Alps -- but can you imagine the engineering effort it would take to build such a range, starting from plains as flat as Holland?
Worse still -- imagine trying to raise the highlands to the same level as the Alps.
The human race has done this already, says Roger Hooke of the University of Maine in the journal Geology1.
He estimates the total amount of earth and rock shifted by people is equivalent to a mountain range 4,000 metres high, 100 km long and 40 km wide.
This makes human beings potentially the most active landscaping agent in the world.
Our hypothetical mountain range pales compared with the world's real earth-moving power -- of which the Himalayas is perhaps the most dramatic example.
But nature has been working on that for well over ten million years.
People have only been shaping our surroundings for the past several thousand -- and only on a massive scale for the past few centuries.
Hooke considered how humans have been digging, excavating and generally altering the land since 3000 BC.
Excavations before then were sometimes of surprising extent -- mineshafts over 10 metres deep are known -- but the iron tools and machinery of ancient civilizations allowed them much greater ambition.
The Egyptians constructed a canal linking the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, for example, and the Romans paved nearly 300,000 km of roads.
But only in the Industrial Revolution did the earth really begin to move.
One of the major motivations for shifting soil was to find fuel: three million tons of coal was mined in England in 1700, rising to 17 million tons by 1825. High explosives, like Alfred Nobel's gelignite in 1875, made it much easier to remove large quantities of rock in the late nineteenth century.
As Hooke points out, agriculture is one of the largest contributions to human earth movement.
When trees and shrubs are removed to expose soil for cultivation, ground erodes more easily and irrigation makes this worse.
And though farming practices are improving, more mouths to feed means more agriculture and greater overall damage.
The overall trend, then, is sobering. As late as 1700 the amount of earth moved globally was barely a billion tons per year; it is now about 37 billion tons per year and most of that increase came in the twentieth century.
"One may well ask how long such rates of increase can be sustained, and whether it will be rational behaviour or catastrophe that brings them to an end," Hooke says.
*********
Elaborate and wondrous sexual ornaments abound in the animal kingdom.
The peacock's tail and the nightingale's song both advertise their bearer's quality as a mate.
Now we must usher a female trait into this gallery of marvels ? the baboon's rear end.
Leah Domb, of Harvard University, and Mark Pagel, of Britain's University of Reading, have found that the degree to which a female baboon's bottom swells up when she is sexually receptive is a good guide to her reproductive potential.
Females with larger swellings begin breeding at a younger age, and breed more frequently. They also have more offspring, a higher proportion of which survive.
Males compete with each other more fiercely to mate with large-bottomed females, incurring more injuries in the process, suggesting that the best females are trying to attract the best males.
This is the first time that sexual advertisements have been discovered in a female mammal.
It is a surprise that female baboons need to advertise, says Kristen Hawkes, an anthropologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, as "the assumption is that getting male attention is not a problem".
Domb and Hawkes both believe that adverts might have evolved because males weigh the costs of mating - more fighting, for example ? and measure out their effort accordingly.
This would drive females into competing indirectly with each other.
Producing a swelling, comments Hawkes, is "clearly a very expensive thing to do".
Swollen females' body weight rises by about 14%, swellings hamper movement, are vulnerable to infection or parasites, and are probably uncomfortable to sit on. "It really interferes with how you would normally spend your day," says Hawkes.
It's important that these signals should be expensive to produce, as otherwise low-quality females could cheat the system, and flashy advertisements wouldn't be a reliable guide to reproductive potential.
So how do you measure a baboon's backside? Domb and Pagel analysed videotapes of female baboons in Gombe National Park, Tanzania, where the baboons have been studied since 1967, enabling them to match the size of a baboon's behind to her breeding history.
Robin Dunbar of the University of Liverpool, who studies decision-making in humans and other primates, thinks that more studies are needed to confirm that all primate swellings are advertisements.
"One would like to see more data for other species before jumping onto that particular bandwagon," he says.
About 10% of primate species have sexual swellings. They seem to have evolved at least three times, and tend to be found in promiscuous species.
The rears of human females don't swell up when they are at their most fertile, but the bustles beloved of Victorian and Edwardian fashion might be seen as an artificial means to a baboon-like end.
And some researchers believe that characteristics of human females, such as large breasts or waist/hip ratio, might signal reproductive quality.
So do human males read these signs? Perhaps, the Kipsigi of East Africa pay more for a bride who began menstruating young. They have no direct knowledge of this, but use qualities such as plumpness and skin tone as a guide to their prospective bride's potential.