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Star Wars merchandising.

This has definitely gone too far. My kids eat breakfast cereals containing free Star Wars plastic figures, at school they write in Star Wars binders using Star Wars pencils. At break they eat Star Wars chocolate and drink Star Wars cola. They're begging for Star Wars duvet & pillow covers to sleep in at night. The shops are full of expensive Star Wars toys - no, I take that back, they're not all expensive, some are extortionate.

At least it's only kids stuff, I thought. Until last night. I went to my local take-away for a kebab and was asked "Do you want a doner kebab or a Star Wars kebab?"

I enquired as to the difference: "Well," said the guy behind the counter. "This one is a Star Wars kebab - meat & salad in a pitta with chili sauce, 4 quid, whereas that one is a pitta bread, stuffed with meat and vegetables in a chili sauce, 4 pounds fifty."

"That's exactly the same thing apart from the price!" I argued.

"No," he said, holding up the Star Wars kebab. "The sauce is strong in this one..."

I can already see it coming: First they'll start letting people clone their family pets, then some owners will be unhappy with the results, and the next thing you know, we'll have a bunch of copycat killings........

Nelson Mandela is sitting at home watching TV and drinking a beer when he hears a knock at the door. When he opens it, he is confronted by a little Chinese man, clutching a clip board and yelling, 'You Sign! You sign!! Behind him is an enormous truck full of car exhausts. Nelson is standing there in complete amazement, when the Chinese man starts to louder. 'You Sign! You sign!' Nelson says to him, 'Look, you've obviously got the wrong man',and shuts the door in his face.

The next day he hears a knock at the door again. When he opens it,the little Chinese man is back with a huge truck of brake pads. He thrusts his clipboard under Nelson's nose, yelling, 'You sign! You sign!' Mr Mandela is getting a bit hacked off by now, so he pushes the little Chinese man back, shouting: 'Look, go away! You've got the wrong man! I don't want them!' Then he slams the door in his face again. The following day, Nelson is resting, and late in the afternoon, he hears a knock on the door again. On opening the door, there is the same little Chinese man thrusting a clipboard under his nose, shouting, 'You sign! You sign!' Behind him are TWO very large trucks full of car parts.

This time Nelson loses his temper completely, he picks up the little man byhis shirt front and yells at him; 'Look, I don't want these! Do you understand? You must have the wrong name! Who do you want to give these to?' The little Chinese man looks at him very puzzled, consults his clipboard, and says:

'You not Nissan Main Dealer?'

In Plymouth there was a large aquarium, it was the pride of the town and had a worldwide reputation. Despite the decline in the fishing industry the tourism from the aquarium had bolstered the economy and prevented the town from slipping into the local recession that had struck many places along the same stretch of coast.

There were long halls full of crabs and eels and creatures from the deep of every description. All these long halls converged to a large central tank that contained the centre piece of the entire aquarium. Living within this vast tank were some of the oldest and rarest creatures housed anywhere on earth. There was a dolphin with 3 dorsel fins, a large walrus with tusks in the shape of the last 2 popes, a thin frail porpoise that was said to be 250 years old, and a giant squid that was every colour of the rainbow.

It was just last year that a startling thought came to the mayor of the town. He had been on his annual tour to show his appreciation for the aquarium when it dawned on him that there was little or no security overseeing the towns aquatic asset.

During a hurried conference with the directors overseeing the facility he demanded that more stringent measures be put in place to safeguard this hub of the tourist industry.

The scheme was an all round winner as not only did it provide the much needed security, it also gave the directors a chance to get themselves in the papers yet again. The mayor turned the whole thing into a political publicity coup by ensuring that five local fisherman who had lost their jobs through the fishing decline all became the new security force at the aquarium.

And so it was that Bob, Jim, Geoff, Bernard, and Sid all regularly patrolled the empty halls of the aquarium to ensure that no intruders ever made their way in to steal, disturb or damage the livestock.

A few weeks into the scheme, the tourists began to complain of small bags and wrappers on the floor and left on the edges of the tanks each day. Fearing any bad publicity, the directors quickly hauled in all five security guards and asked them to be extra vigilant in ensuring no people left any litter behind. The guards said that they would do their best.

The problem persisted and so the directors secretly installed security cameras in order to track down the culprits. The first morning that the tapes were viewed quickly established that it was the guards themselves that were the secret litter bugs.

In a heated meeting, the directors banned all food being brought onto the premises by any staff and the guards had a weeks wages docked from their pay.

Sleeping through the hot summer days and going hungry through the long nights soon began to became a drag. One particularly long night all five guards met near the central tank - hungry, tired, and exhausted.

"I need food," whimpered Bob.
"We could always eat the fish," suggested Sidney.
"Don't be stupid," said Geoff.
"Lets all stay calm," said Bernard.
"I've been thinking," said Jim, thoughtfully.
"Haven't we all," responded Geoff, "there's nothing else to do round here but think. I'm all thunk out."
"No, Look," continued Jim. "Here we all are famished, and there's a snack machine just over there."
"Oh, security guards vandalising the snack machine, that'll go down a treat," said Bob, sarcastically. Jim sighed. "No one need ever know."
"And what about the camera pointing straight at it?" asked Bernard.
"Aha, but there's no camera pointing at the back of it!" announced Jim.
Sidney looked on in despair. "Do you not think that has something to do with the fact that you would have to walk across the water of the main tank in order to reach the back of it? You idiot!"
"And what would we do with the wrappers?" Said Bob nervously. "There's talk of them searching us all soon, every morning!"
Jim smiled a long cunning smile. "As I said, I've been thinking. We can drop the wrappers into the tank itself, no one will ever see them."
Geoff was only half convinced. "There's still the matter of getting across the water without getting completely soaked."
"I've thought of that, watch this..." Jim walked over to the tank and splashed the water while listening.

As the others all watched in amazement, the prize animals of the aquarium all swam to the surface and made their way over to the crowd of men. Without even blinking, Jim removed his shoes and socks, rolled up his trousers, and then climbed aboard the walrus with the papal tusks. A difficult journey across the tank then ensued, followed by the even more difficult task of unscrewing the back of a snacks machine whilst astride a large walrus.

The pair were soon back safely across and the walrus was rewarded with a Crunchie, which it seem to enjoy. The men all enjoyed a feast of snacks and fizzy drinks and slipped the rubbish into the tank to sink out of view.

The next night, Bob said he would perform the ride as it looked like fun. He rippled his hand in the water and all the animals swam over with a look of pining on their faces. Bob chose the triple-finned dolphin and made his way to the machine. He selected a range of snacks for his colleagues and the dolphin chose a Twix.

The next night was more of the same with Sidney opting to perform the ride and the multi-coloured giant squid choosing a Snickers ice cream.

The following night, Bernard decided to give it a go and took the orders off all his colleagues. He was about to sit on the small frail porpoise when Geoff grabbed him back.

"Don't sit on that ancient thing" snapped Geoff. "What?" asked Bernard. "He's right" said Jim. "That creature is over 250 years old and very weak, if we were to kill it by riding it, that would ruin the little scheme we have going here. I say we never use this creature, the others are all strong enough anyway." So Bernard rode across on the walrus and everyone was happy.

Several months later, after a set of extraordinary circumstances, David Attenborough was sitting in the offices of the aquarium directors. The directors apologised for disturbing his busy schedule and explained that they had discovered something amazing and he was the only man on earth that might be able to explain the event.

They explained at how concerned they had become that the level of outgoing snacks had risen sharply and yet the financial takings from the machines had dropped significantly. They had also noticed that the animals in the central tank had become increasingly tired and their appetites had dropped.

They had not connected the two at all at first. However, when they reviewed the footage of the security cameras, they found that nothing out of the ordinary seemed to be happening to any of the machines. Then one of the directors suddenly noticed that during the night something funny seemed to happen near the machine by the central tank. Although nothing seemed to happen to the machine itself, there were signs of large ripples in the water nearby just in view at the corner of the screen. A quick check of that stock record showed that this was the machine that had lost the most stock out of them all.

"And this is why we have called you in Mr. Attenborough, the only explanation we have is that the animals in the central tank are actually stealing snacks from the rear of the snacks machine. We even found that they have hidden the rubbish in the bottom of their tank."

David Attenborough agreed that it was all very exciting and that he would love to help out in any way he could. The directors said they were planning to open up 24 hours so that people could visit at night and watch the amazing creatures perform their daring raids.

Mr. Attenborough wasn't so sure. Too much human attention straight away could frighten the animals and make them stop their nightly snack swims. He suggested that the best idea would be to set up a hidden BBC film crew to film the animals at work. It could be broadcast live across the world and so give the directors the publicity they sought. if the animals slowly got comfortable witha human presence then night opening could follow later.

The directors thought this was brilliant. They also decided not to tell the security guards as the idiots would probably get a bit camera hungry and try and hog the limelight. It was thought best to just to leave the guards to wander round as normal, oblivious to the global spotlight suddenly focused on the central tank.

And so it was that on the fateful night that over a billion people worldwide tuned in to stare at the grainy night vision camera shots as the world waited to witness the moment the animals would display their dazzling intelligence tricks in order to find food.

The directors all sat round a TV with the champagne nearby, all ready to toast the 8th wonder of the world right here in their aquarium in Plymouth.

Words like shock, disgust, and outrage don't nearly go far enough in describing what the directors felt when they witnessed the hulking fat form of Bernard slump himself onto the rarest dolphin in existence and proceed to waggle the creature across the water before performing a blatant act of vandalism mixed with insider company theft.

David Attenborough was deeply disappointed and annoyed at someone of his age and standing being made to hide in the cold darkness for nothing. The world watching at home found the whole thing to be very funny, but the amusement would only last for one night and it certainly wasn't going to pull the crowds in.

The very next morning, all five guards were summoned to hear of their instant dismissal and to explain/plead why the company shouldn't have them all locked up on criminal charges.

The guards selected Jim as their spokesman, as he was the most clever, and besides which, he'd got them all into this mess in the first place. The directors took several minutes to calm themselves down before oen of them spoke.

"How? just How? how... How could you?" he finally exploded.
"We're all very sorry. Really, we are." Jim hesitantly replied.
"Sorry? you humiliate this company in front of the entire world and you say you're sorry!"
"Yes. We cannot say how sorry we are."
"We hired you to keep the place nice and you just littered it!"
"We're sorry about that."
"So we take away your messy snacks and you go behind our backs..."
"We're sorry about that as well."
"...And, without a care, you steal from this company..."
"And we're very sorry about that."
"And you selfishly drop your grubby litter into the main tank of the aquarium..."
"Ah, yes, we're sorry about that, too."
"...And you intentionally put the animals at risk. Yes! You deliberately gambled the well being of all five of our rarest specimens, all for your own greed. We could have lost all five of our prize collection through your own very stupid and very deliberate actions!"
"Actually sir, that isn't quite true..."
"What?"
"We didn't do it on porpoise."

1) Two antennas meet on a roof, fall in love and get married. The ceremony wasn't much, but the reception was excellent.

2) Two hydrogen atoms walk into a bar.
One says, "I've lost my electron".
The other says, "Are you sure?"
The first replies, "Yes, I'm positive..."

3) A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says "I'll serve you,but don't start anything."

4) Two peanuts walk into a bar, and one was a salted.

5) A dyslexic man walks into a bra.

6) A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm and says: "A beer please, and one for the road."

7) Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: "Does this taste funny to you?"

8) "Doc, I can't stop singing 'The Green, Green Grass of Home.'"
"That sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome."
"Is it common?"
"It's Not Unusual."

9) Two cows standing next to each other in a field, Daisy says to Dolly, "I was artificially inseminated this morning." "I don't believe you," said Dolly. "It's true, no bull!" exclaimed Daisy.

10) An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing to look at either.

11) Deja Moo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before.

12) A man takes his Rottweiler to the vet and says, "My dog's cross-eyed, is there anything you can do for him?" "Well," says the vet, "let's have a look at him." So he picks the dog up and examines his eyes, then checks his teeth. Finally, he says "I'm going to have to put him down." "What? Because he's cross-eyed?" "No, because he's really heavy."

13) Apparently, one in five people in the world are Chinese. And there are five people in my family, so it must be one of them. It's either my mom or my dad, or maybe my older brother Colin or my younger brother Ho-Cha-Chu. But I'm pretty sure it's Colin.

14) I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn't find any.

15) I went to the butcher's the other day and I bet him 50 bucks that he couldn't reach the meat off the top shelf.
He said, "No, the steaks are too high."

16) A man woke up in a hospital after a serious accident. He shouted, "Doctor, doctor, I can't feel my legs!"
The doctor replied, "I know you can't - I've cut off your arms!"

17) I went to a seafood disco last week... and pulled a mussel.

18) Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly but when they lit a fire in the craft, it sank, proving that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

19) What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh.

20) Two termites walk into a bar. One asked, "Is the bar tender here."

Sam the clam and Max the mussel were best friends. They spent hours playing on the sea bed and had known each other for years. Sam was very naughty and was always getting his friend Max into trouble. One day a huge tidal wave hit and they were both killed.

Max the mussel awoke in heaven where St. Peter gives him a harp and shows him which cloud to sit on. After a while Max wonders where his pal is and makes inquiries. It seems that as Sam was not a good clam when he was alive he has not made it into heaven. Max is devastated and pleads for an opportunity to see his friend again. Eventually, St Peter relents and gives Max 24 hours to visit his friend in hell. If Max is not back within the time he must stay there forever.

Max goes to visit his friend and finds him running a nightclub in downtown hell. The guys get together and go for beers, dancing etc, and generally have a terrific time. At last, Max realises his time is up and he dashes back to heaven.

Once there he goes straight to St. Peter and pleads to let him go back to his friend. St. Peter is very insistent in saying no. Max pleads and pleads but it is no use St. Peter still says no.

Finally St. Peter asks why Max wants to go back to hell. Max replies "I must go back, I left my harp in Sam clam's disco"

Not so long ago a thousand year old Viking was found frozen in a glacier high up in the mountains. He was brought back in a block of ice to the British Museum, where it was decided that the ice should be thawed and scientific experiments could then be carried out on the Viking.

Upon thawing him out, to the amazement of all the scientists, his heart began to beat. This was amazing, blood was flowing through his veins, he began to breathe. But no response could be illicited from the mighty warrior.

There was one chance though.....He was immediately rushed to the world famous brain surgeon Dr. Felix Walker, who attempted to make the Viking's brain function.The good Doctor worked for two weeks, but alas, all efforts failed.

Which only goes to show........You can take a Norse to Walker but you can't make him think!

This guy walks into a bar, orders a drink and sits down. As he sits down he hears someone say, "That's a nice suit, sir". He looks around and there is no-one there. Then again he hears, "That's a nice suit, sir" and he looks down and it is one of the peanuts in the tray speaking to him.

Intrigued, he goes to the cigarette machine, puts in his money, when the machine says to him, "F*#@ off". The guy tries once more but again the machine tells him to f*#@ off!

The guy goes to the barman and says "Your bar is weird mate. The peanuts say how nice my suit is but the cigarette tells me to get lost! What sort of establishment are you running here?"

The barman replies "Oh no sir, it's not what you think.

The peanuts are complimentary, but the cigarette machine is out of order."

A friend of mine once spent a night in an old house that reputedly was haunted by the spirit of Sir John de Birmingham. He did this for a bet. He was armed only with advice on what to do should he encounter Sir John: he must hum a certain passage by Mozart, but under no circumstances leave it unfinished or the wretched wraith would then wreak terrible vengeance.

Should he succeed in completing the passage, Sir John would leave him in peace.

All went well until the stroke of three. Suddenly, the phantom appeared! Prepared for this, my friend began to hum quietly but precisely the passage, as he had been taught. Nearing its end, he was relieved to note that Sir John's features were placid. Suddenly, however, a second spirit appeared over Sir John's head! This caused my friend to lose his concentration and leave the passage unfinished. An unearthly snarl burst from the ethereal lips of Sir John followed by a stream of curses. In terror, my poor friend fled from the house.

I paid a visit recently to see him. He is now bald and toothless, wasted and bedridden. Curiously, as I was going into his house, I met at his gate the man who had been the other party to the bet on that fateful night. After, being shown into our friend's room, we both leaned over his bed to catch the wheezed greeting.

"Tell me, "pleaded the poor soul, "What did I do to deserve this?"

The other man thought for a moment and then asked gently, . . .

Did your shooing hum lose its quaver on the dead ghost over knight?

On the farm lived a chicken and a horse, both of whom loved to play together. One day the two were playing, when the horse fell into a bog and began to sink. Scared for his life, the horse whinnied for the chicken to go get the farmer for help! Off the chicken ran, back to the farm.

Arriving at the farm, he searched and searched for the farmer to no avail, for he had gone to town with the only tractor. Running around, the chicken spied the farmer's new Harley. Finding the keys in the ignition, the chicken sped off with a length of rope, hoping he'd be in time to save his friend's life.

Back at the bog, the horse was surprised, but happy, to see the chicken arrive on the shiny Harley, and he managed to get a hold of the loop of rope the chicken tossed to him. After tying the other end to the rear fender of the farmer's bike, the chicken then drove slowly forward and, with the aid of the powerful bike, rescued the horse!

Happy and proud, the chicken rode the Harley back to the farmhouse and the farmer was none the wiser when he returned. The friendship between the two animals was cemented: Best Buddies, Best Pals!

A few weeks later, the chicken fell into a mud pit and soon, he too began to sink and cried out to the horse to save his life! The horse thought a moment, walked over, and straddled the large puddle. Looking underneath, he told the chicken to grab his hangy-down thing and he would then lift him out of the pit. The chicken got a good grip, and the horse pulled him up and out, saving his life.

The moral of the story? (Yes, there's a moral!)
"When You're Hung Like A Horse, You Don't Need A Harley To Pick Up Chicks."

Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him .........

A super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

A World renowned expert in the sounds of European Wasps is walking down the High St. one day when he spots an advert in his local record shop for "Wasp sounds from around the Globe". On further enquiry he discovers that a vinyl recording of this subject has just been released and a few copies are available in store there and then.

Naturally, being a World renowned expert in the sounds of European Wasps he is curious and asks the young chap behind the counter if he can have a listen to "Wasp sounds from around the Globe".

A few seconds later the World renowned expert in the sounds of European Wasps is standing at one of those little sound stations with his headphones on and a puzzled expression on his face. He removes the Headphones, walks back to the counter and catches the young sales persons attention. "Excuse me" he says, "I'm A World renowned expert in the sounds of European Wasps and I've just been listening to "Wasp sounds from around the Globe", and I must say, there appears to be some mistake. Those are no Wasp sounds with which I am familiar". The young man dutifully checks the recording in question and assures the World renowned expert in the sounds of European Wasps that he is indeed listening to "Wasp sounds from around the Globe".

Puzzled, the World renowned expert in the sounds of European Wasps returns to the headphones and once again begins to listen. After a few seconds he once again returns to the counter and accosts the young fellow there. ""Excuse me" he says, "As I mentioned before, I am a World renowned expert in the sounds of European Wasps and I've just been listening to "Wasp sounds from around the Globe" and I have to say again, those are no Wasp sounds with which I am familiar. Are you certain I have been listening to the correct recording?" Slightly exasperated by now, the young man checks the disc currently playing and with a slightly sheepish grin confesses:
“Oops, sorry Sir, I seem to have played you the Bee side"

There's these two French Legionnaires in the desert, and they've been separated from their unit and are lost. The've been wandering for several days without food and water, and are nearly resigned to the fact that they will soon die from dehydration, when as they reach the top of a sand dune, they see a big, bustling market laid out before them.

Naturally, they can't believe their eyes and think it's a mirage, but as they draw closer, they can hear the stallholders' cries, and they eventually reach the market and realise that it's really there.

So the legionnaires rush up to the first stall they can and cry to the stallholder, "Stallholder, we have been travelling in the desert for many days, and have had no food or water. We shall surely die soon unless you have some you can sell us - tell us, do you have any sustenance for us?" The stallholder shook his head and replied "I'm sorry, french legionnaire type people, but all I have to sell is a load of bowls full of jelly,topped with custard and cream, and lovingly sprinkled with hundreds and thousands."

The legionnaires look at each other, mildly surprised, and move on to the next stall, where they ask the stallholder, "Mr purveyor of fine foodstuffs and the like, we have been travelling through the desert for days, deprived of the necessary beverages and foodstuffs which are required for survival. We shall surely die soon, unless you can sell us some skins of water."

The stallholder looked at them embarressed, and confessed "Gentlemen, tragic as I admit it is, I have none of the ingredients necessary to life for which you ask me...all I have to sell is this large bowl of jelly topped with custard and cream and sprinkled with hundereds and thousands, with a little cocktail cherry in the middle at the top - there," he said, pointing out the glace cherry. "I cannot help you.."

The legionnaires look at each other in desparation, and run on to the next stall, where they demand of the stallholder, "Look mate," (cos they'd stopped talking funny all of a sudden) "we need water or we'll die. We've been travelling without water for days and need some now. Do you have any you can sell us?"

The stallholder looked at his curl-ended shoes in shame as he confessed, "Sorry, fellas, all I have to sell you is a bowl of jelly, with custard, cream and hundreds and thousands. I can't help you. I'll have to condemn you to a long and lingering death through dehydration."

The legionnaires were really worried by this point, and they went through the market, stall by stall, asking each stallholder whether they had any water they could sell them, and thus save their lives, but each stallholder gave the same reply, all they had to sell was a bowl of jelly with cream, custard and hundreds and thousands.

Dejected and resigned to their grim fate, the legionnaires left the desert market and walked off into the setting sun. As they did so, one turned to the other and said, "That was really odd - a big market in the middle of nowhere, and all they sold was bowls of jelly with custard, cream and hundreds and thousands." The other turned to face his companion and replied, "Yes, it was a trifle bazaar"

Little Green Squid

Man goes into a seafood restaurant and asks to see the dishes of the day.

The waiter wheels over a trolley and the man examines the dishes.

"I'll have the little green squid with the hairy lip please" says the man.

"O.K." replies the waiter and calls out "Gervais!!"

A little French chef appears with a large knife, the waiter instructs the chef to kill the little green squid with the hairy lip. Gervais is just about to slice at the poor squid when he notices a tear running down its face. Gervais is touched, and admits that he hasn't the heart to kill the squid.

"Not to worry" says the waiter, and calls out "Hans!!" at which an enormous German bloke comes out of the kitchen.

"Sir", says the waiter, "this is Hans, the dishwasher. Hans, kill that squid!"

The dishwasher wields a huge rolling pin and is just about to bludgeon the little green squid with the hairy lip when it cringes back and gives a little cry.

"I am sorry sir, I just cannot kill the squid" Hans admits, his lower lip trembling.

"Well sir," says the waiter, "it just goes to show.

Hans that do dishes, can be soft as Gervais with mild green, hairy lip squid.

Julius Caesar was addressing the crowd in the Coliseum. "Friends,Romans Countrymen, lend me your ears. Tomorrow I take our glorious army to conquer Northern Europe and I shall start with France. We shall kill many Gauls and return victorious." The crowd are up on their feet

"Haaiiiil mighty Caesar".

Brutus turns to his mate and says "Caesar doesn't half talk some crap, eh? He couldn't fight his way out of a wet parchment bag."

Six months later, Caesar comes back having conquered France and addresses the crowd in the Coliseum. "Friends, Romans and Countrymen, I have returned from our campaign in France and as I promised, we killed 50,000 Gauls". The crowd stand and cheer.

"Haaiiiil mighty Caesar".

Brutus once again turns to his mate "I'm sick of his bull. I'm off to France to check this out." So Brutus sets off for France. Three weeks later he comes back to Rome,just as Caesar is addressing the public in the Coliseum again. Caesar is giving his usual patter to the assembled throng, "Friends,Romans Countrymen, tomorrow we set off for Britain and we are going to sort those b*stards out!" The crowd roars,

"Haaiiiil mighty Caesar".

Brutus jumps up and shouts, "Caesar, you are exposed as a liar. You told us that you had killed 50,000 Gauls in France but I've been there to check it out and you only killed 25,000!"

The crowd is stunned and all sit down in silence. Caesar gets up and looks slowly round the Coliseum then across at Brutus and says:

"Brutus, you are forgetting one thing... away Gauls count double in Europe."

The first manned expedition to Venus had finally returned. The leader of the expedition, Captain JayHoe the Rocket, was making his report to the admiral in charge of Star Fleet. "So, J, did you find any life on Venus?"

"Yes sir. Intelligent life, if fact. And what's more, they were almost identical to humans." "Almost? What do you mean?" "Well admiral it was kind of strange, they have one less joint in their arms." "I see. So I suppose you could say that..."

"Yes sir. The natives are wristless."

The Red Knight

For this joke you will need the following props:

Two halves of a hollowed out coconut
A chain
A large book
3 pints of beer
Anything else you can tie into the story
and finally:
A pair of running shoes.
Use of props:
Coconut - Sound of horses hooves
Chain & Book - Noise of drawbridge coming down
Beer - to be drunk whilst telling joke at the appropriate times
Running shoes - see below
Special effects are in square brackets, for example, [coconuts].

This joke has a warning that goes with it. Make sure you are wearing your running shows whilst telling the story, as I once got chased out of the Puband down the road. Whereupon my capture I was thown in the river !

You have been warned.

>>>>>>>>>>

The Saga of The Red Knight (with the yellow shield with the little blue stars on).

- The Village and The Gypsies.

Once upon a time, long long ago, but not too long ago as to make it ancient, there lived a Knight. Now whenever this Knight went out on his travels he always wore his red armour and carried his yellow shield with the little blue stars on. This earned him the name of 'The Red Knight with the yellow shield with the little blue stars on'. Of this name he was very proud.

One fine spring morning the Knight decided he would find himself a wife. Sohe put on his best red armour, picked up his sheild, the yellow one with the little blue stars, and walked down to the stables. Once there he saddled his horse - who's name was Silver, being that he was a magnificent white stallion. He rode out of his castle and across the drawbridge [coconuts].

Now the Knight's castle was on the edge of a large forest, and not long into his quest the Knight came accross an old woodcutter called Eugene.

'Greetings. How are you today?' said the Knight.
'Very well, thankyou Sir.' replied the woodcutter.
'Jolly good. Goodbye then, and by the way, be careful with that axe, Eugene'.

Carrying on through the forest [coconuts] the Knight soon came a small village, so he decided to stop and get something to eat. Stopping outside atavern, the Knight dismounted Silver and tethered him to a post. He enteredthe ale house and walked up to the bar.

'Greetings landlord, a pint of your finest ale, a bowl of that lovely smelling beef stew and some bread please.' said the Knight. 'Certainly, Sir. If you would like to take a seat I will bring to you.' replied the barman. 'I'd like to sit outside with my horse, is that okay?' 'No problem at all Sir, would you horse like some oats' 'Yes. Thankyou.'

So off went the Knight to sit in the sun. Whilst sitting there drinking, [beer] an old man came up to him and said 'You are The Red Knight with the yellow shield with the little blue stars on. The quest you have started will be a long one, but you will find a wife at the end of it.'

Amazed the Knight said 'I'm amazed, How did you know about my quest?' 'Never mind.' said the old man, 'I'm just here to keep the plot going!'. 'Before you leave the village, pick up some cooking apples and take some bottles of beer with you.' And so saying, he left.

A few minutes later the barman arrived with the food, more drink and oats.'My, what a magnificent stallion.' he said. 'Yes, his name is Silver, feed him if you wish.' replied the Knight as he drank his beer. [beer] 'Oh yes, while I remember, can I have some bottles of this execellent beer to take with me.' [beer] 'Of course, Sir. I'll bring some out for you.'

So the Knight sat and eat his meal, and drank his beer. [beer] Upon collecting the bottles from the barman he asked the whereabouts of the fruit shop. 'Where is the Fruitshop?' he asked. 'Just go down this road and turn left, it's on your right as you leave the village' replied the barman.

And so off he went and bought some apples and left the village [coconuts] feeling very puzzled about the old man.

After a relaxing ride [coconuts, beer] he came to the opposite edge of the forest.

'Whoa there Silver.' he said, 'Is that music I can hear?' Silver didn't say anything - because although he was a magnificent stallion, he was still only a horse and couldn't talk. He just nodded his head. 'Come, my friend. Let us go and see what we can find.' So of he rode [coconuts] towards the music.

After a few minutes he came across a tribe of gypsies.

'Hello.' he called, 'May I join you?' 'Why yes of course you can.' said there leader, whose name was Gary. 'You are The Red Knight with the yellow shield with the little blue stars on. Wehave been expecting you. Did you bring the apples?' Amazed the Knight said 'I'm amazed, How did you know who I was?'. 'Well' said Gary. 'Apart from the fact that your wearing red armour and carrying that yellow sheild with little blue stars on, an old man told us that you would be coming!' 'Oh' said the Knight.

- The Castle.

After a long night of singing, dancing and drinking [beer] the Knight prepares to leave the village. 'Good afternoon, Sir Knight. I hope you slept well.' said Gary, the leader of the tribe. 'Before you go I have a message for you from the old man.' 'Very well thankyou. What's the massage?' asked the Knight. 'He said that you are to head other to the castle, yonder', he pointed at acastle which the Knight could have sworn was not there the day before, 'Once there go and see the King and ask him for his eldest daughter's hand in marriage'. 'Okay, I'll do that. Thankyou for your hospitality.'

As he approached the castle [coconuts] a guard jumped out in front of him, and called 'HALT!' 'Greetings guard' said the Knight. 'Who are you, and what business do you have here?' the guard asked, in a very guard like manner. 'I am The Red Knight with the yellow shield with the little blue stars on' replied the Knight. 'I'm here to see the King to ask him for his eldest daughter's hand in marriage, let me pass' 'Oh. Go on through when the drawbridge comes down. Park your horse in the stables and walk over to the main building, someone will show you the way from there.' 'Thankyou.' said the Knight, because he a polite Knight.

He sat and waited for the drawbridge to lower, which it did with amazing speed. [rattle chain] [slam book on table].

He rode over [coconuts] and into the castle and headed for the stables. Where he saw a young boy.

'Boy' he called to the boy.
'Who the hell are you?' said the boy

The Knight dismounted and gave the boy a clip around the ear. He may have been a polite Knight but he wasn't going to take any cheek of a young boy. 'I am The Red Knight with the yellow shield with the little blue stars on' said the Knight. 'I'm here to see the King to ask him for his eldest daughter's hand in marriage, now take my horse, Silver, to the stables and see that he is properly looked after.'

And with that he stormed over to the main building. There was another guardon the door.

'Good day, Knight' said the guard. 'Are you being funny, I've had enough cheek from that stable boy' asked theKnight. 'No, Sir. I was just being polite. How may I help you?'. 'I am The Red Knight with the yellow shield with the little blue stars on' said the Knight. 'I'm here to see the King to ask him for his eldest daughter's hand in marriage. Can you take me to him?' 'Yes, Sir. Please follow me'

They walked into the building and down several corridors until they came toa large ornate door at which the guard stopped and said 'I'll go though andannouce you.'

The guard entered and said: 'Your majesty, may I present The Red Knight with the yellow shield with thelittle blue stars on.'

'Bring him here' said the King.

The Knight entered and bowed.

'Let me guess.' the King said 'You are here to ask my permission to marry my eldest daughter, am I right?' 'Why, yes. Who did you know?' asked the Knight. 'That isn't important.' said the king, 'You can marry her on one condition,kill the dragon that lives under the hill behind the castle. Many have tried, but all have failed. Go now we'll talk later if you succeed'

The guard showed the Knight to the backdoor of the castle and said: 'Just over there is the hill, you'll find a large cave arounf the other side. Be careful the dragon doesn't like people disturbing the evening sleep.'

- The Dragon

The Knight tried to walk up to the cave quietly but his armour made to muchnoise. As he reached the entrance the Dragon appeared and roared, 'WHO IS THAT OUT THERE DISTURBING MY SLEEP?'

The Knight stepped out in front of the cave. 'It is I' said the Knight.

'YES, I CAN SEE THAT BUT WHO ARE YOU?' interrupted the Dragon.

'I am, The Red Knight (with the yellow shield with the little blue stars on). I have come here to kill you so that I'll be able to marry the King's eldest daughter. Prepare to die.'

At this the Dragon laughed 'HA HA HA HA' he went. 'That's is almost as funny as one of Squiffy's jokes! You would never be able to kill me.'

'What' said the Knight. 'Not The Squiffy, famed in legend and song thoughout the land?' 'Yes, the very same. Do you know any of his jokes?' said the Dragon gettinginterested in the conversation.

'But of course' replied the Knight 'All Knights get taught them at Knight School. Do you wish to hear some?'

'Okay go ahead, but be warned. If they aren't good ones I shall eat you.'

'Okay, this one is called The Undertaker' said the Knight nervously

--------------------

An undertaker was laying out the body of a dead husband, but the corpse's toupee kept falling off. Eventually he asked the highly distressed widow if she could find some glue. So off she went and after about ten minutes returned with a pot of glue.

"Oh it's alright" the undertaker told her, "I've found a nail."

--------------------

With this the Dragon roared with laughter, the Knight seeing his chance lunged at the Dragon and cut off his head.

Smiling to himself, the Knight picked up the Dragons head and carried it back to the castle, where the guard was waiting at the back door.

'Well done' said the guard 'We knew you could do it.'

'Come this way. I've been instructed to take you to the guests quarters, where you will be staying until the King has his breakfast. Do you have anyother clothes with you?'

'Er, no.' replied the Knight. 'All I have with me is my red armour and my yellow shield with the little blue stars on.'

'That's okay, we'll arrange something for you.'

By now they had reached the guest quarters and the guard showed the Knight his room.

'Here you are Sir, sleep well.'

- Breakfast !

It was soon morning and the guard woke the Knight and gave him some clothesto wear for breakfast.

'I'll be back in half an hour to take you down to meet the King, Queen and there daughter's for breakfast.' said the guard.

The Knight got up, washed, cleaned his teeth and got dressed.

There was a knock on the door and the guard enter again.

'Ready Sir?'

The Knight said that he was and the guard escorted him to the dining hall where the others were waiting.

'Come sit here beside me.' said the King 'This is my wife, the Queen'.

The Queen smiled and said 'Hello'

'And these are my lovely daughter's' continued the King. 'Ah, here comes the Chamberlain, lets see what for breakfast today.'

The Knight looked up and saw the Chamberlain, who he instantly recognised as the old man from the village. He was about to say something when the Chamberlain smiled at motioned him to keep quiet.

'Your Majesty' said the Chamberlain 'Today we have either Cornflakes or Toast for breakfast. What would you prefer?'

'Ask the ladies first, Chamberlain' said the King

'Okay my Queen, Princess's what do you want?' asked the Chamberlain.

'I'll have Cornflakes' said the Queen.
'I'll have Cornflakes' said the 1st Princess.
'I'll have Cornflakes' said the 2dn Princess.
'I'll have Toast' said the 3rd Princess.
'I'll have Cornflakes' said the 4th Princess.
'I'll have Cornflakes' said the 5th Princess.
'I'll have Toast' said the 6th Princess.
'I'll have Cornflakes' said the 7th Princess.
'I'll have Cornflakes' said the 8th Princess.
'I'll have Cornflakes' said the 9th Princess.
'Well,' said the Chamberlain, 'That just goes to proves that 8 out of 10 women prefer Cornflakes to Toast!'.

And so saying he ran out of the room.

A famous Viking explorer returned home from a voyage and found his name missing from the town register. His wife insisted on complaining to the local civic official who apologised profusely, saying, "I must have taken Leif off my census."

Zebediah was in the fertilized egg business.

He had several hundred young layers, called pullets, and eight or ten roosters, whose job was to fertilize the eggs.

Zeb kept records, and any rooster that didn't perform well went into the soup pot and was replaced.

That took an awful lot of Zeb's time; so, Zeb got a set of tiny bells and attached them to his roosters.

Each bell had a different tone so that Zeb could tell, from a distance, which rooster was performing.

Now he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report simply by listening to the bells.

Zeb's favorite rooster was old Brewster. A very fine specimen he was, too but on this particular morning, Zeb noticed that Brewster's bell had not rung at all!! Zeb went to investigate.

The other roosters were chasing pullets, bells a-ringing! The pullets, hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover.

BUT, to Zeb's amazement, 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.

Zeb was so proud of Brewster that he entered him in the county fair.

Brewster was an overnight sensation.

The judges not only awarded him the No Bell Piece Prize but also the Pulletsurprise

Two lobsters were in the fish tank in the seafood restaurant. The male lobster put the hard word on the female lobster. "Yes", she said, "but will you still respect me in the mornay?"

Steven Spielberg was busy discussing his new action adventure about famous classical composers. Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger were in the room.

"Who do you want to play?" Spielberg asked Bruce Willis.

"I've always been a big fan of Chopin," said Bruce. "I'll play him."

"And you, Sylvester?" asked Spielberg.

"Mozart's the one for me!" said Sly.

"And what about you?" Spielberg asked Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"I'll be Bach," said Arnie.

A husband and wife had a human cannonball act in the circus. One day the wife ran off with the lion tamer. The husband was extremely dejected. The strong man asked him what he was going to do.

"This is a disaster," the husband answered, I don't know where I'm going to find another woman of her calibre."

After Quasimodo's death, the bishop of the Cathedral of Notre Dame sent word through the streets of Paris that a new bell ringer was needed.

The bishop decided to conduct the interviews personally and went up to the belfry to begin the screening process.

After observing several applicants he decided to call it a day when, an armless man approached him and said he was there to apply for the bell ringer's job.

The bishop was incredulous. "You have no arms!"

"No matter," said the man. "Observe!"

And he began striking the bells with his face, producing a beautiful melody on the carillon. The bishop listened in astonishment; convinced he had found a replacement for Quasimodo.

But suddenly, rushing forward to strike a bell, the armless man tripped and plunged headlong out of the belfry window to his death in the street below. The stunned bishop rushed to his side.

When he reached the street, a crowd had gathered around the fallen figure, drawn by the beautiful music they had heard moments before.

As they silently parted to let the bishop through, one of them asked, "Bishop, who was this man?"

"I don't know his name," the bishop sadly replied, "BUT HIS FACE RINGS A BELL"....

WAIT! WAIT! There's more.............

The following day, despite the sadness that weighed heavily on his heart due to the unfortunate death of the armless campanologist, the bishop continued his interviews for the bell ringer of Notre Dame.

The first man to approach him said, "Your Excellency, I am the brother of the poor armless wretch that fell to his death from this very belfry yesterday. I pray that you honour his life by allowing me to replace him in this duty."

The bishop agreed to audition him, and, as the armless man's brother stooped to pick up a mallet to strike the first bell, he groaned, clutched at his chest, twirled around, and dead on the spot.

Two monks, hearing the bishop's cries of grief of this second tragedy, rushed up the stairs to his side. "What has happened? Who is the man?" the first monk asked breathlessly.

"I don't know his name,"sighed the distraught bishop, but............."

HE"S A DEAD RINGER FOR HIS BROTHER"...

On the banks of a river sat three Indian women, sitting on three different animal skins. On a deer skin was a woman with her son, and the son weighed 140 pounds. On a buffalo skin was another woman, and her son who weighed 160 pounds. And, on a hippopotamus skin sat an Indian woman, who weighed 300 pounds by herself.

A native American mathematician saw this and noted that the squaw on the hippopotamus was equal to the sons of the squaws on the other two hides.

Two men walking their dogs through a graveyard, one says to the other
"morning", second guy responds "nope, just walking my dog"

Sterile Couple

The couple left the gynecologist's office with the wife in tears. They were just told that she could never become pregnant. They would never have the family they both desired so fervently.

Suddenly, a masked man appeared before them. "I think I can help you," he said, handing them a card.

"Why are you masked?" the husband asked.

"Because the government has declared our activities illegal. Go to the address on this card. The doctor will take a scrapping from one of your mouths and culture it. In less than a year, we will have your baby for you."

"This is the answer to our prayers!" the wife exclaimed.

Then she turned to thank the stranger but he was gone. "Who was that masked man?" she asked her husband.

He answered, ... "That was the Clone Arranger."

Me and my mates

A group of clowns rent furnished flats in a block, but are annoyed to discover they haven't been provided with ironing boards. So they go to complain to their landlord, pointing out that all the other tenants have ironing boards except them.

"It's in the contract," says the landlord. "You lot have to use your window sills. Every clown has a sill for ironing."

Spring of 1778

I remember well the spring of 1778. I had just received my degree from Oxford and was ready to take my place as a partner in my father's shipping and trading company. Father had made his fortune trading along the St. Lawrence Seaway and the new colony of Newfoundland.

I had joined Father for less than a week, when he had a visit from his old friend, James Cook. Cook, who had been instrumental in starting our family business, had just returned from a voyage to the South Pacific where he had discovered a new group of islands that he claimed for England and named after the first lord of the British Admiralty, the Earl of Sandwich, in honor of the Earl's contribution to sea faring in discovering a new way to feed the sailors without their having to leave their posts by serving their meals between two slices of bread.

Cook told us the he had landed at the southernmost and largest of the Sandwich Islands where a peaceful tribe of natives who called themselves Hawaiians had treated him like royalty. In fact, his sailors stated that the natives thought James Cook was God. In spite of their reverence for Cook, he could not interest them in trade as they were set in their primitive ways and interested in the gifts Cook had brought.

However, they spoke of the tribe of Waikikians on an island to the north who had mastered sailing and traded frequently with remote islands to the west. Cook was certain that we could duplicate our success in Newfoundland by expanding to Waikiki.

Father agreed to accompany Cook on his next trip to the Sandwich Islands provided I could accompany them so that I could learn first hand how to develop business in virgin territories. Thus, it came about that my first ocean voyage was around the Cape of Good Horn and to the tropical splendors of the Sandwiches.

The voyage was very rough having to go through a severe cyclone around the Cape, and the seamen were very restless when we landed on the beach at Waikiki. Several left the ship shortly after landing and unfortunately drank too much and ended up ravishing several of the native women. A riot ensued and several natives and crew members were killed in the battle.

Now the Waikikians had a strong judicial tradition and held the leader responsible for the actions of his crew. So the ship was boarded by a group of Waikikian soldiers, James Cook was arrested and tried for rape and murder. He was convicted and was sentenced to die by boiling with his remains to be served to the families of the departed.

We were all required to be present while this inhumane punishment took place. I turned to my father and asked him how something like this could ever happen. I'll never forget his answer. He turned to me and said, "Let this be a lesson to you, one man's meat is another man's poi, son.

The Yeti

An English explorer was taking part in an expedition to the Himalayas. Led by a grizzled local guide, they ascended one of the less frequently climbed peaks. Roughly half way up the side of the mountain, one of the expedition came across a set of large manlike tracks in the snow.

"Yeti tracks" the guide said with a gruff voice as he passed them, "One thing you must know before we proceed; Do not, under any circumstances, touch the yeti."

The expedition heeded his warning and continued to climb the slope. Night fell and the explorers set up their tents. In the dead of night the Englishman awoke to the sound of his tent entrance un- zipping!

Half asleep, he looked up to see an enormous eight foot yeti standing above him. In fear for his life, the explorer jumped up and ran out of the tent, banging into the yeti in the process.

The yeti, after being touched by the explorer, let out a deafening howl and began to chase the explorer down the slope.

The explorer ran away from the camp as quickly as his legs could take him. After he rounded a corner, he looked behind him to see the bounding form of the yeti still chasing him.

So the explorer continued to run, reaching the bottom of the mountain in just two days. Exhausted, he paused to rest awhile. After just a few moments, the explorer began to hear the soft 'thud thud thud' of yeti feet on snow. He looked up the slope to see the yeti still chasing him and only moments away.

The explorer took off again, reaching a supply shack a couple of miles away, once there quickly buying a mountain bike and pedalling his way to the nearest town, some fifty miles away. The journey took him several days over the rough terrain and after his arrival he checked into a hotel to recuperate. Two days later, the man left his hotel to see about booking transport back to England. As soon as he turned around, though, he saw the form of the yeti on the horizon, bounding towards him at great speed.

Mortified by this sight, the explorer hurriedly bought a car and drove it away from the village all the way to Delhi. Once he arrived, the man wasted no time in getting on the next plane to London.

After his arrival back in London, the man went back to his flat to recover and to plan his next expedition. He had been there less than two weeks when, gazing out of a window he saw a familiar, large, bounding, manlike creature running down his street; the man couldn't believe it: somehow the yeti had followed him to England!

The man had little choice but to run away again, using any means he could, bike, car and on foot to try to escape the yeti. But each time he looked behind him, it was just moments before the yeti came into view.

Eventually the man made it all the way to Edinburgh and from there ran into the open Scottish countryside. He continued to run but the yeti just kept getting closer and closer. In the end the man could run no more.

With the yeti less than a minute away from him, the man finally stopped and turned around to face the oncoming creature. With the last of his strength he stood up straight as the yeti caught up with him.

The eight foot tall yeti towered above the man, who could only stare in terror. The yeti extended his hand, poked the Englishman squarely in the chest with one long finger and with a low, rumbling voice the yeti spoke: "Tag! You're it!"

At The Asylum

A psychiatrist is doing rounds in his asylum with a couple of students. They look in on one patient and the psychiatrist says to his students, "Sometimes this fellow thinks he's a temptress in a Bizet opera, but today, as you can see from his goose stepping, he thinks he's the World War II head of the Nazi Luftwaffe. What condition do you think he's suffering from?"

The first student replies, "Is he a paranoid schizophrenic with a multiple personality disorder?"

The second student says, "No, I think he just doesn't know whether he's Carmen or Goering."

Biofuels

Biofuels have recently become big news, but the concept has been around for many years.

People long ago figured out a way to run engines on almost any organic matter. Corn, leaves, even spices.

The most public use of biofuels occurred over 60 years ago when Mussolini made the trains run on thyme.

Dromedary

There was one a dromedary whose fur was an amazingly close match in colour to the desert sand, and he was almost impossible to see.

Some called him 'the invisible dromedary', but in reality he wasn't invisible; he was just really well camelflaged.

Venus Return

The first manned expedition to Venus had finally returned. The leader of the expedition, Captain Squiffy the Rocket, was making his report tothe admiral in charge of Star Fleet. "So, Squiffy, did you find any life on Venus?"

"Yes sir. Intelligent life, if fact. And what's more, they were almost identical to humans." "Almost? What do you mean?" "Well admiral it was kind of strange, they have one less joint in their arms." "I see. So I suppose you could say that..."

"Yes sir. The natives are wristless."

Tailess Dog

The landlord was sat alone in his pub late one night, all his customers had gone after he'd called time, when suddenly the ethereal spirit of a large tail-less dog appeared before him.

'What to do you want?' Asked the landlord.

'Freedom from my pain of having no tail,' growled the ghostly canine, 'and for which I wander these spirit paths in search of a kindly soul that can make me whole once more.'

'I'm sorry, Fido. You're out of luck.' Said the landlord. 'As I ain't licensed to re-tail spirits at this time of night.'

Laundry

The other day I was eating in an Italian restaurant when I accidentally spilled some spaghetti sauce on my favorite white sweater. I wasn't too distressed, though, because Mr. Wong down on the High Street has been doing my laundry for years and I knew that he could take just about any stain and get it out like it'd never been there.

So I took the sweater down to Wong's Laundry and dropped it off; Mr. Wong said he'd probably be able to have it cleaned by Thursday. So on Thursday afternoon after work I stopped by Wong's again. Mr. Wong looked quite distressed when he saw me. He brought out the sweater and, apologizing profusely, explained that somehow this stain was beyond even his power to expunge. And sure enough, though fainter than before, there was still a distinct red stain on the sweater.

In an attempt to make up for his failure, Mr. Wong offered to send the sweater to his brother across town, who had been in the laundry business for even longer, and might have a clue as to the method of removal of this extraordinarily persistent stain. The elder Wong brother would rush it through at no extra charge and should have it looking as white and clean as new by Friday.

So on Friday I went back to Wong's to pick up my sweater, but when I arrived, Mr. Wong regretfully informed me that his brother, too, had failed to remove the red blotch. "No charge," said Wong, "but you must take sweater elsewhere to clean. Two Wongs cannot make white."

K'aark

This story was told to me by Nyahururu, and old man from the Bamangwatu tribe. The Bamangwatu people live on the edges of the flood-plains where the Ngwaa river runs into the Okavango. The story concerns K'aark a little orphaned bushman boy. He had been found one day wandering aimlessly in the bush by a matronly and generously proportioned Bamangwatu woman called Malindi. She had lost several of her sons to crocodiles during a cruel canoeing accident a couple of years back and eased her grief by looking after the little bushman boy. He remembered that his name was K'aark. The storyteller, Nyahururu, explained to me that in the bushman tongue K'aark meant "snotty-nose" and, in fact, his playmates often called him by their nickname for him, Kakamega which means ‘number eleven'.

Now the Bamangwatu people held the bushmen in great awe as hunters and it was assumed that K'aark would grow up to be one. In fact, he was inept at everything that he ever turned to and, when he came home empty-handed, as he inevitably did, he always blamed it on bad spirits or wind blowing in the wrong direction. Because the Bamangwatu people were a trusting people, by and large, they accepted his stories at face value. One day K'aark left the village and headed off into the bush to hunt game. His tracking ability was little better than useless and the animals heard him and ran away long before he was even aware that they were there. He trudged on through the morning, musing at the paucity of wildlife. He sat down under an Msasa tree to rest. Unfortunately he plonked himself down unknowingly onto his quiver of poisoned arrows. Into one of these he induced an imperceptible but aerodynamically significant curve.

By and by, K'aark wend his weary way home. As he neared the village he came across an ill-fortuned Ostrich, which had fallen down a steep slope as a chick and hit its head on a stone which had left it deaf, it did not hear the clumsy approach of our erstwhile hunter. K'aark selected by chance the modified arrow and let it fly from his bow. It winged its way from him like frightened bird, but winged its way in a gentle curve into some bushes.

All of a sudden there was a great roar and a commotion followed by silence. K'aark rushed into the bushes to see what had happened and came across a dead lion, poking out of the buttocks of which was K'aark's wayward but adequately venomous arrow. But more to the point, just beyond the lion was the sleeping form of Oluwarukeri, the chief of the village, whom the lion had been stalking for supper.

There was great rejoicing in the village. Now, it so happened that Oluwarukeri was not just chief of the village but was, in fact, the Great Paramount Chief of All the Bamangwatu people and he was greatly pleased with K'aark.

Oluwarukeri called his people together in a great Ndaba. Now an Ndaba is a kind of Baraza which is to say that it is like a Durbar which is a congregation, a coming together or gathering. Oluwarukeri declared before his assembled people from that day forwards, K'aark would be his son. But more significantly that when Oluwarukeri left this world and his spirit joined the spirits of his ancestors on Menengai, the Mountain of God, K'aark would be the new paramount chief, his anointed successor. A great shout went up, there was much rejoicing and feasting and drinking of Chibuku, fermented millet which, when distilled, comes out at about 50 over proof.

All of this was none to the liking of Olo-ololo who was the chief's biological son. Olo-ololo had left the village as a child, gone to school and college and had returned a fully trained architect. But the villagers laughed at his new ideas and he was the only one to build a two-storied mud, wattle and thatch hut. Olo-ololo had much to be resentful about and this last event had tipped the balance.

It was the tradition of these people that when the old chief had decided who was to be his successor, usually his son, then he would pass on to them the great limestone seat upon which the new king would be crowned. It was the custom that the coronation could only take place upon the sacred stone and whoever had the stone had the rights to the tribal crown and the accolade, and I might add, the wealth of the people.

Olo-ololo hatched his dastardly plan. If he were to steal the sacred block he could recover his inheritance and his pride. Stealing the thing was no great problem. But where to keep it until an opportune moment arose? He decided that the safest place was upstairs in his two-storey hut.

Alas, the block of limestone proved a heavier proposition than Olo-ololo had catered for and during the night it came crashing down through the flimsy floor of his hut. It fell upon the hapless Olo-ololo striking him instantly dead. The following morning they found him in his misery of just desserts.

There is a moral to this story. People in grass houses shouldn't stow thrones.

Fear

I really need to confront my phobia of German sausages, but I fear the wurst.

On The Moon

The astronauts in the Sea of Tranquility were amazed to discover that the moon actually did contain large underground deposits of cheese. Once outside the LEM, they climbed into the LTV and drove across the lunar surface to obtain samples.

In one location they discovered a large deposit of brie and collected 25 pounds to bring back to earth.

They drove to a second location and collected 50 pounds of camembert.

In a third location they hit a vein of cheddar and collected another 50 pounds of samples.

Mission Control crackled through their headsets that it would not be satisfied unless they brought back at least another 25 pounds of brie. The astronauts turned their LTV around and proceeded to the first location where they collected another 25 pounds of the cheese.

The astronauts were almost back to the LEM when Mission Control radioed that it wanted another 25 pounds of brie.

Disgruntled, one of the astronauts sarcastically snapped into his microphone, "Have you ever seen such a site in your life as brie mined thrice?"

My Brother

My brother is an artist and he goes on cruises as a guest speaker, where he holds forth about art, in the open air. He's a painter and deck orator.

Mace

A mechanic who worked out of his home had a dog named Mace. Mace had a bad habit of eating all the grass on the mechanic's lawn, so the mechanic had to keep Mace inside. The grass eventually became overgrown.

One day the mechanic was working on a car in the backyard and dropped his wrench, losing it in the tall grass. He couldn't find it for the life of him, so he decided to call it a day.

That night, Mace escaped from the house and ate all the grass in the backyard. The next morning the mechanic went outside and saw his wrench glinting in the sunlight.

Realizing what had happened he looked toward the heavens and proclaimed, "A grazing Mace, how sweet the hound, that saved a wrench for me!"

Meanwhile...

There once was a medieval village named Trinsic. This village was being terrorized by a vile monster, the Medicrin. Each night, the Medicrin would stalk down from the hills, and devour one of the villagers.

The terrified villagers called a meeting, and decided to pool their money together to hire the great hero Erik.

Erik came and listened to the complaints of the villagers. He consulted his Great Hero's Book of Vile Monsters, and learned that Medicrins love to eat Loons.

So Erik hunted high and low to find a loon. He found one, captured it, tiedit up, and brought it back to the village. He then had the villagers dig a deep pit. Erik threw the loon into the pit, hoping to capture the Medicrin,and slay it.

That night, the Medicrin came...

It smelled the loon...

But it also smelled DANGER, and it ran off, devouring one of the villagers on the way out.

After calming the villagers, the next day, Erik again consulted his Great Hero's Book of Vile Monsters, and learned that Medicrins also love sugar.

So Erik gathered up all of the sugar in the village, and threw it into the pit. The loon, not having eaten in days, devoured all of the sugar in a single gulp. Erik was struck with panic, and ran to and fro trying to figure out what to do next, but night had fallen, and the Medicrin would bethere soon, so Erik crossed his fingers, and hoped for the best.

That night, the Medicrin came...

It smelled the loon...

It smelled danger...

But it also smelled the sugar, and the Medicrin dived into the pit, and devoured the loon. The villagers swarmed over the Medicrin, and slew it.

The moral of the story:

"A loon full of sugar helps the Medicrin go down."

I woke up laughing; I must have slept funny.

Fisherman

An ailing fisherman traded a seabird for a sausage. Yes. He took a tern for the wurst.

Pirates

The Pirate ship had been sailing around the coast of Scotland for many months looking for other ships to attack. But the pickings had been lean, and they had captured no booty. And they were running very low on food. So the pirate captain ordered the men to land on a nearby island where they could see sheep.

The pirates rowed ashore and began killing the sheep. After accumulating 25 they started to load the sheep into the row boat, when one soft-hearted pirate said 'Look men, we only want the meat... we don't need the sheep skins and the poor farmer can certainly use them. So lets cut off the skins and leave them for him'.

The other pirates agreed to this plan and took just the meat back to the ship.

Thus proving the old saying that some times 'Booty is only skinned sheep'.

Spotty

A young man could not resist doughnuts. He couldn't get enough of them. The trouble was, they brought him out in spots. Not just spotty spots, but massive throbbing green protuberances all over his face which would periodically erupt in pus-riddled explosions.

Eventually, as young men do, he fell in love. His fiancee laid down only one condition. No more doughnuts. Torn between the first love of his life and the most recent, the young man agreed. Never again would a doughnut pass his lips.

All was well with the marriage for the first year. And then came the terrible day of the bus-strike when the young man had to walk home on a route which took him past three bakers shops. He could not pass a bakers shop without buying half a dozen doughnuts. He could not pass three without buying eighteen.

Still, he thought, one little lapse, one minor slip. She need never know. Carefully he destroyed the evidence, disposing of the bags and wiping every trace of sugar and jam from his mouth and hands.

Yet the moment he entered the front door she screamed. "You have broken your promise. You have lied to me. You have eaten those terrible things again."

"How did you know?" he wailed.

"Doughnuts force acne oh my darling."

Roy Rogers And A Cougar

Some years ago, Roy Rogers bought a very expensive, exquisitely-tooled pair of cowboy boots. He wore them for the first time and was caught in a rainstorm, getting his new boots muddy. Because it was late in the day when he returned to the ranch house, he left his new, muddy boots on the back porch, thinking that he would clean them the next morning. When he went out on the back porch the next morning to clean his boots, he found that they weren't there. He looked out to the yard and saw animal tracks everywhere. There, over by the fence, were his boots. They had been chewed badly, and it was obvious that no amount of effort could repair them. Roy looked carefully at the animal tracks and easily determined that they had been made by a cougar. He immediately saddled Trigger, got his rifle, and took out after the cougar, following the tracks. It was almost mid-day before he found the cat, in a thicket of small trees on the side of a mountain. Still incensed about the loss of his boots, he shot the cougar, put it in front of the saddle on Trigger, and started riding home. It was late afternoon as he came riding in to the back yard of the ranch house with the cougar still in front of him on Trigger. Dale Evans saw Roy riding up and went out on the back porch. When she saw the cougar, she said, "Pardon me Roy, is that the cat that chewed your new shoes?"

Twins

Soon after a woman gave birth to identical twins she gave them up for adoption. One was adopted by a couple from Spain and named Juan and the other went to a family in Egypt. They called him Amal.

Years passed, and the boy from Spain discovered his real mother and sent her a picture of himself. The woman remarked to her husband that she wished she also had a photo of ther other son. "Well", he replied, "if you have seen Juan you have seen Amal."

Horsey horsey

A horse goes into a saloon bar in an old Wild West town. He's having a quiet drink, when all of a sudden a gun battle ensues. So the horse quickly hides behind a table to protect himself. But, unfortunately, his tail is showing and a stray bullet shoots his tail off. The sudden shock of being hit makes the horse jump up and another stray bullet kills him.

Well, the poor horse's ghost is queueing outside the Pearly Gates of heaven, waiting to go in. When his turn arrives, Peter asks for his name etc and then notices his tail is missing.

"You can't come in without your tail I'm afraid. You have to be complete to come in. You'll have to go back down to earth and get it.", says Peter

So the horse's ghost goes back to the saloon bar to get his tail, but the saloon is closed. So he knocks on the door and the bartender comes downstairs and opens the door.

"Excuse me", says the horse's ghost, "I'm not sure if you remember me, but I was shot dead in your saloon earlier today. I also had my tail shot off.I've just been up to Heaven, but Peter says that I can't get in without my tail. Can I have it back please."

"I'm sorry", replies the bartender, "you'll have to come back tomorrow, I'm not allowed to re-tail spirits after hours."

The King......

MANY, many years ago, far away in a land where royalty was still an acceptable fad, THE KING determined that he had to leave the country for an extended business trip, to do whatever it is that kings do. (n.b. "THE KING" is capitalized in this narrative, so as to not confuse this august personage with Elvis.)

Such a prolonged absence, of course, requires considerable planning for the orderly continuance of the country's business, so THE KING called into court three of his closest, most trusted noblemen. They were the Count of Amalgam, the Count of Whizzee, and the Count of Basie (they are identified here, so you can keep count).

"I am going out of the country for the next few months on KINGly business, and I am entrusting you with the keys to the treasury, so that regular country business can continue. I will require a complete accounting upon my return, and you will be severely thrashed about the head and ears with the executioner's axe if anything is awry!" (One of the early executive management incentive programs, one assumes.)

So THE KING went away on his kingly business, doing whatever it is that kings do, and came back several months later. After verifying the status of the Queen's chastity belt (one assumes), THE KING called his three trusted counts to detail the royal spending. Down they all trooped to the castle's basement, down past the dungeon, down past the ghouls and ogres, down past those idiot gamesters picking up boxes and lockets and carrying wooden swords and poison charms, etc, finally down to the treasury.

"Open the door, Count Amalgam" ordered THE KING. And so, Count Amalgam opened the door, and, lo and behold, the treasury was EMPTY! Not even a bit of gold dust in the corner!

"WE ARE NOT AMUSED!" shouted THE KING, in a preview of a later monarch's comments in 19th century Britain. "Guard! Take these counts to the executioner! OFF WITH HIS HEAD!"

After the executioner sharpened the axe, he raised it in a mighty swing, and as the fearsome blade was descending, the first Count to receive the low neck shave shouted "WAIT! I'll tell where th......ARRRGH"

Oops.

THE KING was in a serious rage by now. "Let's torture the Count of Whizzee -- maybe we can get him to talk and tell where the treasury went. Well, with several days of the most excruciating torture, including hearing fingernails scraping on chalkboards, being forced to use towels without fabric softener, and even worse, there was no progress, so the Count of Whizzee was taken to the chopping block.

After the executioner sharpened the axe again, he raised it in a mighty swing, and as the fearsome blade was descending, the Count of Whizzee also suddenly cried out "WAIT! I can tell where th......ARRRGH"

Oops.

Again.

Now, THE KING was REALLY worried. His impetuosity in head-chopping had lost two out of three chances for locating the treasury, and only the Count of Basie was left. Again, more questioning, more torture, (I think they even made him ride in the back seat of a Yugo wagon!) and finally THE KING lost patience -- "OFF WITH HIS HEAD!!!!"

The executioner sharpened the axe a third time, he raised it in a mighty swing, and as the fearsome blade was descending, the Count of Basie also suddenly cried out "WAIT! I can tell where th......ARRRGH"

Oops.

Again.

"Oh, me, oh, my. What shall I do?" cried THE KING.

Just then, a magic wizard appeared from out of a cloud of smoke. "I may not be able to help you, your majesty, in your immediate problem, but I have a bit of advice for you in the future."

"Don't hatchet your counts before they chicken!"

Whiskey

Whiskey from the Isle of Mull is quite dangerous to drink. It can cause Mull tipple injuries.....

2022 World Cup

2022 World Cup in catarrh. S'not funny! Infact we should take up the tissue with someone who nose!

Big Cheese

I'm a big cheese in the dairy products market, but i need to find a new whey to make money..

Meanwhile In The Gulf

Near the shores of the Arabian Gulf, a businessman's helicopter descended to his home early from a company meeting. Surprised by the sudden noise, his wife let out a terrified sheik.

Arizona Vacation

A man was driving through the Arizona countryside when he saw a middle-aged smiling squaw standing by a Native American goods shop by the roadside.

She was surrounded by sixteen happy laughing children, ranging in age from toddler to teenager. The man stopped to visit the shop and see what was for sale. While looking around, he asked the woman, "Are these all your children?"

"Oh, yes," she replied, smiling, while simultaneously trying to sell him blankets and other relics on display in her shop.

"How do you handle them all?" he asked. "With such a huge family, don't you have lots of fights and arguments?"

"Oh, no," the woman declared with a chuckle, "We're just one great big Hopi family!"

Bullying At School

I was badly bullied at school.

Every day big boys would smother me in chocolate and stick cherries on my head....

I must admit, life was tough in the gateaux..........

Budgies

In a budgie cage there are three budgies on three perches. The perches are on three different levels. Which budgie owns the cage ?

The budgie at the bottom of the cage. The others are on Hire Purchase.

Quit My Job

I recently quit my job as a butler at a stately home. I refuse to be ordered around in that manor...................

Funeral

I went to a funeral in a mausoleum where everyone was dressed to the nines and acted super classy. It was a very fine couthed tomb.............

The Pub Dog

In a small country pub, all the patrons became quite used to the pub owners little dog being around the bar, so were quite upset when one day the little dog died.

Everyone met to decide how they could remember the little dog. The decision was to cut off his tail and stick it up behind the bar to remind everyone of the little dog's wagging tail.

The little dog went up to heaven and was about to run through the pearly gates when he was stopped by Saint Peter, who questioned the little dog as to where he was going.

The little dog said "I have been a good dog - so I am going into heaven where I belong!".

Saint Peter replied "Heaven is a place of perfection, you can not come into heaven without a tail, where is your tail?"

The little dog explained the what had happened back on earth. St Peter told the little dog to go back down to earth and retrieve his tail. The little dog protested that it was now the middle of the night on earth, but St Peter would not change his mind.

So the little dog went back down to earth and scratched on the door of the pub until the bartender who lived upstairs came down and opened the door.

"My goodness, it is the spirit of the little dog. What can I do for you?" said the bartender. The little dog explained that he wasn't allowed into heaven without his tail, and he needed it back.

The bartender replied "I would really like to help you, but my liquor license doesn't allow me to retail spirits after hours!"

Arizona Vacation

A man was driving through the Arizona countryside when he saw a middle-aged smiling squaw standing by a Native American goods shop by the roadside.

She was surrounded by sixteen happy laughing children, ranging in age from toddler to teenager. The man stopped to visit the shop and see what was for sale. While looking around, he asked the woman, "Are these all your children?"

"Oh, yes," she replied, smiling, while simultaneously trying to sell him blankets and other relics on display in her shop.

"How do you handle them all?" he asked. "With such a huge family, don't you have lots of fights and arguments?"

"Oh, no," the woman declared with a chuckle, "We're just one great big Hopi family!"

Nice Day

"Such a nice day out today," a woman thought to herself as she took a walk through the park.

Everyone was out. People were sunning themselves, reading books and having picnics.

Eventually she came to a spot where the proprietor of the Chinese restaurant in the high street had set up shop outside.

He was preparing food to sell right there in the park.

The woman walked up to him and asked, "Why are you cooking foodoutside today?"

"Why not?" the man replied, "It's a great day for a wok in the park!"

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens goes into a bar: "I'd like a martini, please."

Bartender: "Certainly, sir. Olive or twist?"

Bedtime

What do frogs drink at bedtime?

Croako.................

Trying

I spent a lot of time trying to come up with a pun about limousines, but I have nothing to chauffeur it

Fishing

I went fishing the other day and I caught a conger eel. Reeling him in was easy, but getting him in the net was a different story. The thing wouldn't stop dancing.

In Prison

Several years ago, John was sentenced to prison. During his stay, he got along well with the guards and all his fellow inmates. The Governer saw that deep down, John was a good person and made arrangements for John to learn a trade while doing his time.

After 3 years, John was recognised as one of the best carpenters in the local area. Often he would be given a weekend pass to do odd jobs for the residents of the community, and he always reported back to prison before Sunday night was over.

The Governer was thinking of remodeling his kitchen and in fact had done much of the work himself. But he lacked the skills to build a set of kitchen cupboards and a large counter top which he had promised his wife. So he called John into his office and asked him to complete the job for him. But, alas, John refused.

He told the Governer, 'Sorry, I'd really like to help you but counter fitting is what got me into prison in the first place.'

Feng Shui

I had my house inspected by a feng shui expert. She told me that the whole house was fine, apart from the room at the top of the house in the loft.

I think it might be a little problem attic.

At The Pawnbrokers

A middle eastern king was down on his money and began to sell off his valuables. The last of these was the Star of the Euphrates, at that time the most valuable diamond in existence. He went to a pawnbroker who offered him 100,000 rials for it. "Are you crazy?", said the king. "I paid one million rials for this gem! Don't you know who I am?"

The pawnbroker replied, "When you wish to pawn a star, makes no difference who you are."

Larry Lobster and Sam Clam

Larry Lobster and Sam Clam were best friends. They did everything together. The only difference between them was that Larry was the nicest lobster ever, and Sam, well let's just say he was not so virtuous. Larry and Sam did so much together that they even died together. Larry went to heaven and Sam went to hell.

One day Saint Peter came up to Larry and said, "Larry, you know you are the nicest lobster we ever had up here. Everyone likes you, but you seem to be a bit depressed. Tell me what's bothering you. Maybe I can help."

Larry replied, "Well, don't get me wrong, Pete. I like it up here and everything, but I really miss my good friend Sam Clam. We used to do everything together."

Saint Peter pitied Larry and said, "I tell you what. I can arrange it so that you can go down to hell tomorrow and visit Sam for twenty-four hours. How does that sound?" This made Larry very happy.

He rose bright and early the next morning and grabbed his wings, his harp, and his halo and got on the elevator to hell.

When the doors opened, he was met by Sam. They hugged each other and off they went You see, in hell Sam owned a disco. They spent the day there together and had a great time. At the end of the day, Larry and Sam said their good-byes, and up Larry elevated.

When he stepped off the elevator, he was greeted by Saint Peter, who blocked the doorway to Heaven. "Larry Lobster," Saint Peter asked, "Didn't you forget something?"

Larry looked around and said, "No, I don't think so. I have my halo and my wings."

"Yes, but what about your harp?"

Larry gasped and said, "Oh dear, I left my harp in Sam Clam's disco!"

Dog

Paddy: "Would you like to buy my dog?"
Mick : "What kind is it?"
Paddy: "It's a Dalmatian."
Mick : "Is it clean?"
Paddy: "Spotless."

Animal

If I could be an animal, I'd be a mongoose called Hugh.
Then I'd be Hughmongoose.

The Tramp

There was this tramp. One cold winter's morning he was walking along a country road, when he heard a cry for help from a nearby lake. He turned to see a little girl struggling in the broken ice in the middle of the lake. She'd been skating and had fallen into the icy water. Without a moment's hesitation the tramp ran onto the ice and slipped and slided over to the little girl. He managed to pull her out without breaking the ice further and he carried her back to the road. He took off his coat and wrapped the little girl in it and began looking for a car to flag down. A few moments later a huge chauffeur-driven limo pulled up, and who stepped out but the little girl's father - the mayor of the nearby town and a multi-millionaire. "How can I ever thank you sir?" says the father after putting his daughter into the warmth of the limo. "Just name your price - I'm a wealthy man." "Ahem, well ..." stammered the tramp "...eh I'm a little short of cash, perhaps you could help me out" "Certainly" says the girl's father and he pulls out his wallet. "Oh dear" says the father, "I don't carry much cash with me, I only have ten dollars - but come home with me and I'll get more from the safe" "No! No!" says the tramp, "Why ten dollars is more money than I've seen in my whole life - that will be plenty". "Well, if you insist" says the father - "now what will you do with your money?" "Oh that's easy" says the tramp "I've not had a rest in 20 years. I think I'll buy myself a holiday (vacation)" "Well good luck" says the father, and he gets into the car and signals his chauffeur to drive home.

"Ten Dollars" thinks the tramp, "I'm rich! I'm rich!", and off he goes to the town, to buy himself a holiday. He finds a travel agent, walks in - much to the disgust of the staff - and goes up to the desk. "I'll have one holiday please!" "Ahem, which holiday would sir like" asked the girl at the desk, forcing a smile "Oh, any holiday I don't mind" replied the tramp. "Well how much money does sir have to spend on sir's holiday?" "Oh lots - anything up to ten dollars" "TEN DOLLARS!! You'll *never* get a holiday for ten dollars" says the girl incredulously. "Oh dear" said the tramp, "and I was so looking forward to a holiday - I'll probably never get another chance - isn't there anything you can do?" "Well I don't think so sir, but hold on and I'll check" The girl goes into the back of the shop, and searches in the deepest, dustiest filing drawers she can find. There - to her amazement - she finds an old file. "Well you'll never believe it" she says to the tramp, back in the shop. "I've got you a holiday - its a super-duper, ultra-hyper, mega-economy class round the world cruise - and it costs ten dollars" "Yippee", exclaims the tramp, "I'll take it" The tramp takes the tickets and, shouldering his dirty old pack, he heads out the door to hitch-hike to the port where the ship is waiting.

A few days later he arrives at the port, and there in the dock is the most beautiful, most elaborately decorated, most expensive looking ocean- going liner he has ever seen. Amazed at his luck and good fortune, he slings his pack over his shoulder, and marches up the gangplank. "Get off my ship ye dirty bum!" shouts a voice, and an irate captain storms down the gangplank and kicks the tramp down onto the dockside. "But I've got my ticket!", responds the tramp, "Super-duper, ultra-hyper, mega-economy class, and I want on!" Hardly believeing his eyes, the captain examines the ticket and admits that our man the tramp is correct. "Ahem, well O.K.", says the captain, "But you can't come on just now, I don't want my first-class passengers seeing you. Come back at midnight when it's dark and I'll let you on then." So the tramp finds himself a quiet spot among some cargo cases on the dockside, and he falls asleep. "Psst", says a voice, waking him with a start. It was the captain. "Hurry up, it's midnight, let's get you to your cabin" The tramp toddles after the captain, along the dockside, up the gangway, and onto the ship - and what a ship! The tramp had *never* in his wildest dreams imagined luxury like this. First they went down though the first class level: Oriental carpets - 6" pile. A genuine Rembrahndt on every wall. Leave your shoes outside for cleaning, and the steward brings a new pair. 24 ct gold trim everywhere. Then the second class: As above, but perhaps the carpets were only 3" deep. and so on... 3rd, 4th, 5th class, down past the casinos, and the ballrooms, down through the crew's quarters, down through the galleys, and the engine rooms, until finally, at the lowest point in the ship, against the very hull, the captain opens a watertight door into a tiny 7' x 4' cabin, with a hammock, a bedside table, and an alarm clock. "Sheer luxury!" exclaimed the tramp, "A room of my very own." "I'm glad you like it" replies the captain, "but there is one more thing..." "Your class of ticket only allows you to use the facilities of the ship, at night - when all the other passengers are asleep. So that's what the alarm clock is for. Enjoy your cruise."

Well the cruise began, and the tramp had a whale of a time. Sleeping by day, and up on deck at night - he loved it. One-man-tennis, clay pigeon shooting, more food than he'd ever seen... Then one morning, a week or so into the cruise, the tramp decided he'd have a go on the diving board of the pool. He had just enough time for one dive before he had to go below. He climbed up the ladder, stepped onto the board tip, bounced, and dived.... ...and what a dive...! Perfectly poised in the air, he hit the water without so much as a ripple. Now unknown to him, the captain - who'd grown rather fond of the poor old tramp - was standing watching this. "That was amazing!" exclaimed the captain, "Where did you learn to dive like that?" "Eh, well I've never actually dived before" replied the tramp. "Well that's incredible!" says the captain, "I've never seen ...."> He broke off. "Hey, I've an idea", he started again. "How would you like to train a bit, and we'll put on a show for the other passengers. I'll pay you, and you can then afford to go first class!" "It's a deal!" says our man. For the next 3 weeks the tramp practices like he's never practiced. Back-flips, front-flips, triple-back sideways axled dives, you name it he tried it. Then one morning the captain came to talk. "O.K. I'd like you to stay in your cabin for the next 2 days. We're going to erect a high diving board for you." "O.K." agreed the tramp. Two days passed, and the big day arrived. The ship was humming with excitement. Everyone wanted to see the mystery diver. The captain had provided the tramp with a new pair of swimming trunks and he wore these as he stepped out onto the sun-beaten deck.

Gasps of astonishment from the crowd, and a hushed awe. Then the tramp turned to regard the diving board. Higher than the eye could see, towering up and up, rose a slender column of metal. "Well tramp" said the captain, shaking his hand, "Let's see what you can do." And with that the Captain handed him a walkie talkie. And the tramp began to climb.... up and up ....
up and up ...higher and higher ...
. below him the ship grew smaller ....
up and up ....
on and on ....
past a solitary albatross ....
and still higher, till the ship was but a speck on the ocean below ....
on and on still further, till the ocean grew dim, and the earth itself began to shrink....
and higher, ever higher ....
on and on .....
past our moon ....
and on ....
and mars ....
and on ....
higher, and higher , through the asteroid belt, and on and on towards the diving board, ... past the outer planets, until... ... finally ...... on the outermost reaches of the Solar System ... ... he reached the board.

He climbed on top and radioed the captain .... and he jumped . . slowly at first but speeding up faster, and faster speeding past Pluto and the other outer planets through the asteroid belts past Mars, and the moon, faster, and faster, faster - ever faster, and by now the earth was growing large in the distance, the oceans and land masses grew clear, faster, and faster...past the albatross, faster double-back somersault, and he could see the ship, tiny in the distance, hurtling down now, he posed, ready for the final 500 feet, Down on the ship the crew strained their necks, "I CAN SEE HIM!" yelled a passenger, "LOOK!!" The tramp streaked down towards the pool, did a last triple flip, and dove... NOT A RIPPLE ON THE SURFACE! DOWN THROUGH THE WATER! SMASHED THROUGH THE POOL BOTTOM! DOWN THROUGH THE FIRST DECK! SMASHING THROUGH THE SECOND! DOWN! DOWN! THROUGH THE CREW'S QUARTERS! THROUGH THE ENGINE ROOMS! SMASHING THROUGH HIS OWN LITTLE CABIN! AND DOWN THROUGH THE STEEL HULL OF THE SHIP! STILL DOWN...! DEEPER, DEEPER INTO THE MURKY DEPTHS, TILL..........

SMASH! into into the sea bed, sinking a 37' shaft in the process.

Desperate for air he struggle out of the shaft, his lungs bursting he swam frantically for the surface. Up and up, desperate, gasping.... Out of the water, up the ladder onto the deck of the ship, into a throng wild with acclaim. HERO! WONDERFUL! AMAZING! BLOODY GOOD SHOW WHAT! And handing him a heated towel the captain spoke, as a hush fell over the crowd. "Well tramp, I have *NEVER* seen anything like that, *EVER*. That was the most *STUPENDOUS* piece of diving I have ever seen" The tramp blushed. The captain went on: "But tell me; most amazing of all is how you survived smashing through this boat after you dived - how did you do it." And the tramp looked at the captain, and the crowd and replied modestly:

"Well you see.....
.I'm a poor tramp....
.so you must understand ....

I've been through many a hardship in my life"

Dinowrite

What did the dinosaur use to write it's sedate victorian novels?

A Bronte Thesaurus

Seance

I went to a seance in a probiotic yoghurt factory the other week. Scared me to death. That'll teach me to dabble with the Yakkult.

Squiffy The Clown

Squiffy the Clown worked in a circus. Although he made everybody laugh, because he was a very funny clown, inside Squiffy was sad. He was sad because he loved Mimi the trapeze artiste, but she was in love with Bruno the strong man. Squiffy knew he stood no chance against the big strong and handsome Bruno, who could bend iron bars with his bare hands and catch bullets in his teeth. So Squiffy was very, very sad and had a big clown’s tear painted on his face.

One day Mr Mungo, the circus owner, called everybody together to tell them that the Circus had been engaged for a six month tour of the USA and that they would all be leaving on the boat to sail across the Atlantic next week. Everybody was very excited of course, except Squiffy, for he pined after the love that could never be his.

The Circus had been at sea for several days when Mimi and Bruno had a terrible row. Mimi had found out that Bruno was having an affair with Mystic Mavis the fortune teller and he had decided to move in with Mavis. Mimi was distraught at the thought of loosing Bruno and she ran up on deck and threw herself into the swirling waters.

Luckily, Squiffy was also on deck practising his routines and had seen Mimi jump. Without a second thought, Squiffy dived into the water after Mimi still wearing his entire clowns outfit. His big shoes acted like flippers and he soon caught up with Mimi in the water.

“Oh Squiffy” Mimi said “what have you done, now we will both drown.” But Squiffy said that without Mimi, his life was not worth living and anyway he had an idea.

Quick as a flash, Squiffy pulled a cord in his costume and a large shiny inflatable raft appeared and they both clambered aboard.

“That’s amazing” said Mimi “how did you do that?”

“Easy” said Squiffy, “haven’t you heard that every clown has a silver Lilo.”

Telecomunications

I tried to send a document via telecomunications technology, but it came out all wonky at the other end.....

I've gotta get my fax straight.

10 Words

Ten words , two commas, a punctuation mark and a full stop all appeared in court yesterday.......they're due to be sentenced next week

Diversifying in the downturn

The credit crunch is tough but we’ve diversified. We are renting out a marquee for raves. We started in the summer and it was hard, but now is the winter of our disco tent.

Speciality spliffs

Three men are sitting in a room smoking cannabis. After a few spliffs they run out of gear. One of the men stands up and says:

'Look, we've got loads more tobacco, I'll just nip into the kitchen and make one of my speciality spliffs.' Off he goes into the kitchen where he takes some Cumin, Turmeric and a couple of other spices from the spice rack, grinds them up and rolls them into a spliff.

On his return he hands it to one of his smoking partners who lights it and takes a long drag. Within seconds he passes out. Ten minutes go by and he is still out cold, so the others decide to take him to hospital. On arrival the nurses immediately take him to intensive care. A doctor returns to the friends and asks 'So what have you been doing then? Smoking cannabis?'

'Well sort of', replies one of the guys, 'But we ran out of gear, so I made a home-made spliff.' 'Ahh' replies the doctor, 'And what did you put in it?'

'Oh, just a bit of cumin, some turmeric and a couple of other spices.'

The doctor sighs. 'Well that explains it.'

'Why, what's wrong with our friend?' asks one of the men.

'He's in a korma' replies the doctor.

Tibet

I've just come off the phone with the spiritual leader of Tibet. He sent me a large goat with a long neck. Turns out I phoned Dial-a-llama.

Flour Sifters

When the Homepride flour sifters start their shift they say a prayer - "For what we are about to re-sieve ..."

Circus

My mate has just joined the circus , he has a fantastic act- he eats hammers. He's not a professional though , he's an 'ammer chewer'

Art Collection

As you all know, American millionaires have a tendency to become avid collectors, often of the strangest things. This was certainly true of one particular millionaire whom I shall call John.

John collected impressionist paintings, but not the ones you might think. He specialised in Eastern Bloc artists, being especially fond of those from Bohemia. Over the years, he accumulated hundreds of such paintings. Individually they weren't that valuable, but as a collection they were of considerable interest to art historians.

Realising this, he many years ago altered his will so that all of his collection was to be presented to the museum in the town where he had grown up. Also included was a quite handsome sum to cover security and display costs.

Time passed, as it always does, and last year, John died peacefully in his sleep.

What John hadn't foreseen was the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the opening up of the former communist countries to Western eyes. The value of John's collection had shot through the roof, in comparison with what he had considered its monetary value, and his surviving relatives began to cast envious eyes on the artwork.

The situation was made considerably worse when, during cataloguing, it was discovered that the collection included a long lost work by a famous French impressionist, with a value commensurate with its creators fame.

All the relatives screamed loudly, and demanded that the will be contested in court. Some of them wanted all the paintings for themselves, but most were willing to allow the museum to have all except the French example and maybe even that one, as long as the museum was willing to pay a "reasonable price" for them.

As with all such cases, the more money involved, the faster the case is heard, and the longer it takes to hear it. Thus, it was only last week that the judge handed down his decision.

He found that the provision in the will was clearly stated, and perfectly reasonable. He therefore awarded the paintings to the museum, doing so in the clearest terms he could find. Indeed, his summation is a masterpiece of clarity.

"From the terms of this will it is plain to see you get your Monet for nothing, and your Czechs for free."

New Year's Present

I got my wife one of those things for sifting garden soil this December 31st.

It was a New Year Sieve

The Idol

In 1873, a team of German explorers and their three dogs decided to penetrate the heart of the South American jungle. After twelve years, they had set up a fort in an Incan town, the centerpiece of which was a large idol with a huge ruby for an eye.

The German church had sent out their best man, Friar Wilhelm Werks three times to check on the progress of the fort, and each time the appearance of the idol had sent him into fits of screaming, complete with shouts, curses, and rending of garments. Each time, he screamed so loud that he sent the dogs running for cover. And each time, he left with a warning that the next time he visited, the idol had better be torn down.

The commander of the fort, Hans Brickner, received a message that Werks would be coming to visit again in a fortnight. He quickly called a meeting with his top commanders. All five agreed that the Friar would explode when he saw the idol still standing.

"But," said Commander Brickner, "there's nothing to be done. If we take down the idol, we will anger the local tribe, and without their cooperation we're dead."

His second-in-command, Herr Kommandant Wagner said, "In that case, we'd better make sure we put the dogs away."

"Why?"

"You know how scared the dogs get when Friar Werks goes off on the Fort of Jewel Eye."

Extreme Sports

Two Irishmen walk into a pet shop in Dingle. They head to the bird section and Gerry says to Paddy, "Dat's dem."

The owner comes over and asks if he can help them.

"Yeah, we'll take four of dem dere little budgies in dat cage up dere," says Gerry.

The owner puts the budgies in a paper bag. Paddy and Gerry pay for the birds, leave the shop and get into Gerry's truck to drive to the top of the Connor Pass.

At the Connor Pass, Gerry looks down at the 1000-foot drop and says, "Dis looks like a grand place." He takes two birds out of the bag, puts them on his shoulders and jumps off the cliff.

Paddy watches as Gerry falls all the way to the bottom, killing himself stone dead.

Looking down at the remains of his best pal, Paddy shakes his head and says, "Feck dat. Dis budgiejumping is too fook'n dangerous for me!"

Moment's later Seamus arrives up at Connor Pass. He's been to the pet shop too and walks up to the edge of the cliff carrying another paper bag in one hand and a shotgun in the other.

"Hi, Paddy. Watch dis," Seamus says. He takes a parrot from the bag and throws himself over the Edge of the cliff.

Paddy watches as half way down, Seamus takes the gun and shoots the parrot.

Seamus continues to plummet down and down until he hits the bottom and breaks every bone in his body.

Paddy shakes his head and says, "And I'm never trying dat parrotshooting either!"

Paddy is just getting over the shock of loosing two friends when Sean Og appears. He's also been to the pet shop and is carrying a paper bag out of which he pulls a chicken.

Sean Og then hurls himself off the cliff and disappears down and down until he hits a rock and breaks his spine.

Once more Paddy shakes his head - Feck that Lads. "First der was Gerry with his budgie jumping, den Seamus parrotshooting and now Sean Og and his feck'n hengliding!"

Chef

I ran across a man in the park. He was sitting on a park bench wearing a chef's hat and a white uniform. He looked sad.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I haven't worked in two years." he said. "My brother is in jail, and people think that because he's a thief, I must be a thief too."

He took a moment to stare off into the distance. He looked back at me and said, "I really wish people wouldn't judge a cook by it's brother."

A Compass Point

Back in the 1800s the Tates Watch Company of Massachusetts wanted to produce other products and, since they already made the cases for watches, they used them to produce compasses.

The new compasses were so bad that people often ended up in Canada or Mexico rather than California.

This, of course, is the origin of the expression, "He who has a Tates is lost!"

The Assault

Dracula has just spent the night drinking Bloody Marys in various clubs and biting on unsuspecting women's necks. Feeling intoxicated, he begins heading for home sometime before sunrise. Suddenly he is hit on the back of the head. He turns around and sees no one. He looks down and sees a small sausage roll.

A few yards further and thud ... smacked on the head again! He whirls round as quickly as he can. No one! As he looks down, there is a small triangular sandwich lying on the ground.

A few yards further along the street and whack ... smacked on the back of the head a third time! He whirls round as quickly as he can and still sees no one. Looking down, there is a cocktail sausage lying on the ground. He's getting really confused and angry now.

He stands and and waits a few moments, peering into the darkness of the night. Feeling it's now safe to continue his journey home. He walks a few yards further when he gets a sudden tap on the shoulder. With a swirl of his cape and a cloud of mist, he turns as fast as he can. He feels a sharp pain in his heart. He falls to the ground clutching his chest, which is punctured by a small cocktail stick laden with a chunk of cheese and a meatball. On the ground, dying, he looks up and sees a young female. With his dying breath, he gasps, "Who are you?"

The girl smiles and replies, "My name is Buffet, the Vampire Slayer!"

Star of the Euphrates.

King Ozymndias of Assyria was running low on cash after years of war with the Hittites. His last great possession was the Star of the Euphrates, the most valuable diamond in the ancient world. Desperate, he went to Crosus, the pawnbroker, to get a loan.

Crosus said, "I'll give you 100,000 dinars for it."

"But I paid a million dinars for it," the king protested. "Don't you know who I am? I am the king!"

Crosus replied, "When you wish to pawn a Star, makes no difference who you are."

Friar

There was a friar who decided to open a florist shop to help raise money for his church. The shop was an instant success. But the friar grew to like being a florist and spent less and less time at his church and more and more time at the florist shop.

The church protested and asked the friar to spend less of his time at the shop. But the friar wouldn't listen and now spent all of his time at the florist shop. He'd grown very fond of being a florist.

The church decided to act. So Hugh the Ogre was sent to the friar. Hugh the Ogre placed a very powerful spell on the friar and the friar, accordingly, returned to the church.

The moral of the story is "Only Hugh can prevent florist friars".........

Mountain Climber

A mountain climber had a very harrowing experience while caught in an unexpected blizzard -- barely escaping with his life, he was finally rescued and brought down the mountain. Examination showed that both legs were severely frostbitten and some amputation would have to be performed.

After surgery, he was sorely disappointed to receive a note from his fiancee instead of her physical presence. Seems she couldn't marry him due to his condition. She was "lack-toes" intolerant.

Max.

My friend Max hates going up steep hills.
He's always been a bit of an anti-climb Max.

Old Clock

Mike's grandfather clock suddenly stops working right one day, so he loads it into his van and takes it to a clock repair shop.

In the shop is a little old man who insists he is Swiss, and has a heavy German accent. He asks Mike, "Vat sims to be ze problem?"

Mike says, "I'm not sure, but it doesn't go 'tick-tock- tick-tock' anymore. Now it just goes 'tick...tick...tick.'"

The old man says, "Mmm-Hm!" and steps behind the counter, where he rummages around a bit. He emerges with a huge flashlight and walks over the grandfather clock.

He turns the flashlight on, and shines it directly into the clocks face. Then he says in a menacing voice, "Ve haf vays of making you tock!"

Two Brooms

Two brooms were hanging in the cupboard and after a while they got to know each other so well, they decided to get married.

One broom was, of course, the bride broom, the other the groom broom.

The bride broom looked very beautiful in her white dress. The groom broom was handsome and suave in his tuxedo. The wedding was lovely.

After the wedding, at the wedding dinner, the bride-broom leaned over and said to the groom-broom, "I think I am going to have a little whisk broom!!!"

"IMPOSSIBLE !!" said the groom broom.

"WE HAVEN'T EVEN SWEPT TOGETHER!"

Night Out

This guy goes out with his buddies for a night on the town and they cap off the festivities by going to a house of ill repute.

A week later, the guy visits his doctor complaining of a large green lump on the end of his penis.

The doctor does a thorough exam, then pulls down a weighty medical book and flicks through it till he finds what he's looking for. He looks up and says, "I'm afraid this is serious. We'll have to operate!"

"Operate?", exclaims the fellow, "Why, Doc? What's the problem?"

"Well, you know how boxers can get a cauliflower ear? You've developed the same sort of thing. You've got a brothel sprout."

Pie

I baked a meat pie the other day and then travelled with it to Milton Keynes, Birmingham and Lambeth, because my old maths teacher always used to tell me to take pie to three dismal places...............

Fonts

Two fonts walk into the bar, and the barman says, "sorry lads, we don't serve your type".

Passionate Love

A young couple were making passionate love in the guy's van (you know, shag carpets, big double mattress in the back ...all that) when suddenly the girl, being a bit on the kinky side, yells out "Oh big boy, whip me, whip me!" The guy, not wanting to pass up this unique opportunity, obviously did not have any whips on hand, but in a flash of inspiration, he opens the window, snaps the aerial off his van and proceeds to whip the girl until they both collapse in sadomasochistic ecstasy.

About a week later, the girl notices that the marks left by the whipping session are starting to fester a bit so she goes to the doctor. The doctor takes one look at the wounds and asks, "Did you get these marks having sex in a vehicle?"

The girl is a little embarrassed but admits that, yes, she did. Nodding his head knowingly the doctor exclaims,

"I thought so, because in all my years of doctoring..... You've got the worst case of van aerial disease that I've ever seen."

Ghandi

Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath.

This made him a super callused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis...

At An Irish Pub

One dark night, as a group of American tourists huddled in Nelly's, a well-known pub in Killarney, Ireland, a local Irishman sidled up to one of them and proposed a sleazy scheme to sell a cure for leprosy.

"I'm sorry," said the American stiffly, "I'm not Irish. I don't believe in leper cons."

Butlers

One armed butlers can take it but can't dish it out.......

Friend

I've got a friend whos fallen in love with two school bags.......

He's Bi-Satchel....

Anarchy

Q: Why do anarchists only drink herbal tea?

A: Because all proper tea is theft.

Question

Is it better to have loved a short person than never to have loved a tall?

Pay Phone

I tried to call someone the other day from a pay phone but I inserted my donor card instead of my calling card. That call cost me an arm and a leg.............

Who To Marry?

A young man was in love with two women and could not decide which of them to marry. Finally he went to a marriage counseller.

When asked to describe his two loves, he noted that one was a great poet and the other made delicious pancakes.

"Oh" said the counselor, "I see what the problem is. You can't decide whether to marry for batter or verse."

Squiffy

Squiffy went to a very exclusive restaurant dressed in a clown suit. The whole regalia: big floppy shoes, a red ball nose, Bozo-type hair, the whole schtick.

The Maitre D' siad, "I'm sorry, sir, I can't let you in dressed like that. Our dress code is very strict. Gentlemen must wear a jacket and tie."

Squiffy says, "Please, sir, let me explain. I am a prominent business man in town here. My name is Rich Bigbucks. I am the Chief Executive Officer of Greed.Com. I am dressed like this because I was one of the volunteers that went to Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital today to help cheer up the sick and injured children. We do this every month or so.

The Maitre D' said, 'Well, sir, it is highly irregular. But having listened to the circumsatnces, I will let you in.

But a warning: don't try anything funny!"

Novice Nun

The young novice nun soon realized that the absence of sex in the convent was a problem. She confessed to Mother Superior that it was unhealthy and she was restless. "Comfort yourself with a candle," she was advised. "I've tried that," she said, "But you get tired of the same thing wick in and wick out."

The Inheritance

Bjorn Swensen opened his mailbox to find a letter from a law firm.

Since the young man could not remember doing anything worthy of a lawsuit and as he was too desperately poor to be worth suing, he opened the envelope. Inside, he found notification that his Uncle Juan had died, and the will mentioned Bjorn.

The will stipulated that if Bjorn changed his name and became old Juan's namesake, he would inherit millions.

The young man was stymied. He was already named after an uncle who he loved and respected.

Bjorn went to his loving girl friend, and the two tried to decide what was the moral, ethical and sane thing to do.

Together, they went to a judge to find out if a name change could be temporary, and discovered it could. The young man decided he would temporarily become "Juan."

The judge officiated the name change, and that evening the young man and his love went to dinner with her parents, whom he had never met.

She introduced the young man to her mother and father, who seemed puzzled to be meeting "Juan," instead of the Bjorn they had heard so much about.

"Don't worry," his girl friend explained quickly, "He was Bjorn yesterday, and he'll be Bjorn again next week."

Her father replied, "Well, at least it was good that they made him keep the name for a week. I'd hate to think that there was Juan Bjorn every minute!"

New York Visit

On a recent trip to New York, I was walking near a small courtyard and heard voices murmuring. So I looked in and saw an altar with a large zero in the middle and a banner that said "N I L".

White-robed people were kneeling before the altar chanting hymns to "The Great Nullity", "The Blessed Emptiness", and "The Big Zero in the Sky". I approached one of the white- robed cult members and asked, "Is Nothing Sacred?"

Why? Why don't oysters give to charity???

because they are shellfish............

Brooms

Two brooms were hanging in the closet and after a while they got to know each other so well, they decided to get married.

One broom was, of course, the bride broom, the other the groom broom.

The bride broom looked very beautiful in her white dress. The groom broom was handsome and suave in his morning suit. The wedding was lovely.

After the wedding, at the wedding dinner, the bride-broom leaned over and said to the groom-broom, "I think I am going to have a little whisk broom!!!"

"IMPOSSIBLE !!" said the groom broom.

"WE HAVEN'T EVEN SWEPT TOGETHER!"

Birthday

He loved her very much.

He wanted her Birthday to be special, So he had ordered a bottle of her favorite liquer imported from France and it had arrived in time for the occasion.

On his way home, he stopped at the local florist. He had planned to have a bouquet made with her favourite flower, white anemones. But to his dismay, he found that the florist had sold all her flowers and had only a few sterns of feathery ferns left for decoration.

In a moment of inspiration, he had the answer. He asked the florist to make a bouquet using the bottle of liquer instead of flowers and what she produced was magnificent well beyond his expectations. He added a card, and proceeded home.

When he arrived, his wife was beautiful in her most elegant gown, and it was apparent that she had spent much of the day preparing a romantic candlelight dinner for the two of them.

He presented her with his gift, and she opened the card to read, "Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder."

With a tear in her eye, she whispered to him lovingly, "Yes, and with fronds like these, who needs anemones."

Three Blind Mice

Once there were three blind mice who lived in a museum. One evening after the museum had closed and it was very quiet, the first mouse crawled into a huge suit of armour.

Before he knew it, he was lost.

"Help!" he shouted to his friends,"Help me make it though the knight!"

Injured skier

Peekaboo Street, the Olympic skier, broke her leg and after she recovered she was so pleased with the treatment she received at the hospital that she decided to make a donation so that the hospital could build a new wing. They are going to name it the Peekaboo ICU.

The Granite Humanoid

One day a planet is discovered out Antares way whose sole inhabitant is an enormous humanoid, three miles high and made of granite.

At first it is mistaken for an immense statue left by some vanished race of giant, for it squats motionless on a yellow plain, exhibiting no outward sign of life.

It has legs, but it never rises to walk on them.

It has a mouth, but never eats or speaks.

It has what appears to be a perfectly functional brain, the size of a condominium, but the organ lies dormant, electrochemical activity at a standstill.

Yet it lives.

This puzzles the scientists, who try everything they can think of to get some sign of life from the behemoth--in vain.

It just squats, motionless and seemingly thoughtless, until one day a xenobiologist, frustrated beyond endurance, screams, "How could evolution give legs, mouth and brain to a creature that doesn't use them?"

It happens that he's the first one to ask a direct question in the thing's presence.

It rises with a thunderous tumble to its full height, scattering the clouds, thinks for the second, booms, "IT COULDN'T," and squats down again.

"Migod," exclaims the xenobiologist, "of course! It only stands to reason!"

French Cafe

Guy goes in to a cafe, sits down and orders two boiled eggs.

5 minutes later, the waiter brings one egg to his table.

"Excuse me, I ordered two eggs."

"Indeed, but un oeuf is enough."

Birds

John James Audubon, pursuing an intense interest in the genetic traits of birds, raised a colony of European crows. One day, he met a friend who inquired, ... Bred any good rooks lately?"

Basques

A fire broke out one evening in a Basque movie theater and all of the Basques in there hustled to escape out of an emergency exit.

In the hurried process, two were trampled to death. This recalls an ancient bit of wisdom: Don't put all of your Basques in one exit!!!

Label Of Honour

London Dying

By the 15th century, the Templar Knights had disappeared, but deep in the bowels of the British Museum in a case well-sealed and protected lies a strange memorial to their impact on the city of London.

London of the early 12th century was on its way to becoming an impressive city, but its life and its blood was the Thames River. Without the river commerce would grind to a halt as the people of London discovered to their horror in 1216.

The first ships seemed simply to have disappeared, but the monster wasted little time in this caution. Soon, many Londoners had seen the gaping maw licked by flames dragging a hapless crew to its death. It was a fire salamander, and in the fall of 1216 it was estimated to be 40 feet long with jaws that gaped 10 feet wide.

By the spring of 1217, the monster was no longer a nuisance, it was a deadly plague. No boat could navigate the Thames... no raft was small enough, no ship was large enough to resist the demon of the Thames. Worse, the beast was growing! The latest reports called it 70 feet long with jaws opening 15 feet. Our instinct is to discount this absurd growth, and yet few could impeach its source.

Honorus Prepares

He, our source, enters the story in August of 1217. London had begged, prayed, blasphemed, and killed in desparate attempts to exorcise or appease their curse; to no avail. On June 14, four men painted themselves with the Devil's Cross and proclaimed themselves the Dark Priests of the Beast. They built a ship and doused it in oil; then, they sailed it down the river...

Dark Priests they may have been, but they died screaming like any man. On July 28, London sent three virgins (the youngest not yet 13) down the Thames to the monster. It was thought that this would appease the evil god: the monster's hunger exceeded even this atrocity.

On August 23, our source received his summons. His given name is lost in his chosen name: Honorus. He was a Templar Knight and possibly a saint.

That morning, he was commanded to destroy the beast.

London in fear and desparation had turned to their most jealous weapon, the Templars... warrior-monks who fought with the fierce, perhaps fanatic, frenzy of the devout. The city had exhausted all other options; the monks were its last hope, and Honorus was the greatest of the Knights.

The battle was truly a footnote to his preparation... Honorus ventured into the woods upstream from London. He forsook shelter, clothing, food, and sleep for four days, meditating on the coming struggle. When the four days ended, he stalked and killed a stag without weapon or aid. With the skin of the stag he made clothing; from its flesh he regained his strength; and with its guts, he lashed five logs into a raft fit for his purpose.

Battle and Death

Honorus set the raft in motion. He had outfitted himself with the only item he would use in this fight which had not come out of the forest with him. A sword of Spanish steel, blue with the sky, lay in his lap. Soon, he felt the swell of the water disturb his raft: the monster was coming, yet he sat unmoving.

The beast broke the surface.

No human is perfect; a splinter of the collapsing raft clipped Honorus' left foot as he leapt into the water. He had timed his jump slightly too late, but no matter, the injury will not be important until after the battle.

The monster was above the water only momentarily; time enough for Honorus to drive his sword between two of its scales. The monster thrashed in pain, turning its exposed flesh from the steaming water. Honorus was lifted from the water as the beast rolled. He gauged his stroke and leapt, striking the monster's eye.

Angered and half-blinded, the beast threw Honorus into the river and grasped him in its immense jaws. Honorus swam quickly past the teeth into the monster's mouth. Inside, the questing tongue scalded his feet as he searched for purchase; again, Honorus and we shall ignore this injury for now.

Once he had braced himself inside the beast's mouth, pushing with all his strength against the slowly rising tongue, he took aim. Honorus had time to make only one thrust.

An Interlude: And Who Fought the Battle

When his journal recalls these events, it attributes Honorus' "luck" in this battle to aid from the Divine. We do not wish to detract from the glory of God, but surely He will not envy His servant. Is it coincidence that Honorus' blade struck true to the brain? Honorus had already studied carefully the anatomy of the salamander a week before he was summoned to fight the beast. Did Honorus not know that the water's rush against the beast's exposed flank would cause it such pain? In his journal, "August 24 : And once I am atop the beast and it has rolled from the water, where then to strike?"

A Solution Breeds More Questions

Two weeks after Honorus was told to lift the curse of London, the beast was dead. The next day London celebrated Honorus; the town would live because of him. Three days later, gratitude had disappeared.

The body of the beast had lodged itself firmly in the mire less than half a mile downstream of London. Although it was yet intact (perhaps due to it’s incredible armor), it would surely soon rot. While not so great a terror, the rotting beast would be almost as dangerous as the live beast, attracting disease and scavengers. No ship could move the carcass. The people of London called upon Honorus.

Honorus' solution was difficult but practical, and he began as soon as he had retrieved his sword. He fasted for two days; then, he ate the cooked meat of the huge salamander and fasted for a third day. When he suffered no ill effects, Honorus began dissecting the beast. With the help of London, Honorus soon had all the usable meat and intestines of the dead beast transformed into sausage.

A Solution Breeds New Solutions

A bizarre solution it was, but a good one. The sausage was soon discovered to be excellent and to keep easily for very long periods of time. Even more important, the sausage fast became incredibly popular throughout England and much of Europe. It began to reestablish the fame of London's trade after the Hiatus of the Beast.

Still, Honorus has one final contribution to this history... It became vital that everyone knew from whence the incredible sausage of London came, and thus we return to Honorus's injuries.

After the battle with the live beast and the crisis of the dead beast, Honorus took time to recover. Six weeks after he was first summoned, he was dressing the injuries on his feet. The problems of London were known to him. As he dipped a strip of paper-like gauze into a healing salve, he had a thought.

One week later, each sausage shipped from London carried a fascinating new development: a label. Just as the gauze dried and closed on Honorus' foot, the parchment around these sausages was attached; and all would know the fame of London from each link she sold.

A Simple End to a Strange Adventure

In the end, despite all his other feats, it was this idea, the product label, that survived Honorus. In tribute to this advance, the British Museum houses the only known surviving label from Honorus' sausages. And although even the tough gut of the Beast has long since faded to dust, the label may still be read. If our reader could go to the Museum and enter the Medieval wing's most treasured collection, she could still read, in faint letters, the Label of Honour:

It Was The Beast Of Thames, It Was The Wurst Of Thames

Moon Cheese

The astronauts in the Sea of Tranquility were amazed to discover that the moon actually did contain large underground deposits of cheese. Once outside the LEM, they climbed into the LTV and drove across the lunar surface to obtain samples.

In one location they discovered a large deposit of brie and collected 25 pounds to bring back to earth.

They drove to a second location and collected 50 pounds of camembert.

In a third location they hit a vein of cheddar and collected another 50 pounds of samples.

Mission Control crackled through their headsets that it would not be satisfied unless they brought back at least another 25 pounds of brie. The astronauts turned their LTV around and proceeded to the first location where they collected another 25 pounds of the cheese.

The astronauts were almost back to the LEM when Mission Control radioed that it wanted another 25 pounds of brie.

Disgruntled, one of the astronauts sarcastically snapped into his microphone, "Have you ever seen such a site in your life as brie mined thrice?"

Pies

William Penn, the founder and mayor of Philadelphia, had two aunts: Hattie and Sophia, who were skilled in the baking arts. "Big Bill" was petitioned by the citizens of his town because the three bakeries in the town had during the Revolution raised the price of pies to the point that only the rich could afford them.

He turned to his aunts and asked their advice. The wonderful old ladies were so incensed over this situation that they offered to bake 100 pies and sell them for 2 cents lower that any of the bakeries were charging.

They were not only successful in bringing the price of pastry down in Philadelphia, but they established an historical item for the reference books.

To this day, scholars still talk about the remarkable pie rates of Penn's aunts.

The Glug Maker

One day,long,long ago,a young man decided to pursue a military career. His preference from the three services was the Air Force. When he went to the recruiting office,the officer in charge asked him if he had a profession or trade.

"I am a Glugmaker",the young man replied. The officer,who had never heard of a Glugmaker,looked up his book of aviation trades but could not find any Glugmakers listed. "I'm sorry" he said to the young man,"we don't appear to have any vacancies for Glugmakers at the moment,why don't you try the Army or the Navy ?"

So the young man,disappointed at the news,went around to the Army recruiting office.The recruiting officer asked him if he had a profession or trade, to which the young man replied "I am a Glugmaker". The officer,who had never heard of a Glugmaker,looked up his book of Army trades but could not find any Glugmakers listed. " I'm sorry" he said to the young man," we don't appear to have any vacancies for Glugmakers at the moment,why don't you try the Air force or the Navy ?"

"I've already tried the Air Force" said the young man,by this time feeling very exasperated,"I guess I'll have to try the Navy",and off he went to the Navy recruiting office. When he arrived,the officer in charge asked him if he had a profession or trade.

For the third time he responded,"I am a Glugmaker" The officer,who had never heard of a Glugmaker,looked up his book of naval trades but could not find any Glugmakers listed. Not wanting to appear a fool in front of a civilian for not knowing what a Glugmaker was,he decided to call his superior for advice. Unfortunately,his superior also did not know what a Glugmaker was and so he told the recruiting officer to advise the young man to try one of the other forces.

"But I have already tried them both and they do not have any vacancies" said the young man,"it's a very specialised trade you know" On hearing this,the officer decided,just in case,to contact his superior again.On learning of the very specialised nature of Glugmaking,the superior,who was only a Captain, decided to take the matter to an even higher level.In the meantime,he instructed the recruitment officer to send the young man away until they had obtained further advice from higher echelons of the Navy.The young man,after leaving his name,address and telephone number,returned to his home to await further developments. Meanwhile, the Navy Captain, who was looking to further his career, organised a team to investigate what a Glugmaker did. His team could not, however,find any records of Glugmaking in any of their files. He telephoned one of his aquaintances in the Air Force to see if he could obtain the information, but , when he asked, the aquaintance, never having heard of a Glugmaker and not wanting to seem stupid, replied "I'm very sorry, but that is classified information and so I am not allowed to tell you"

Feeling by now very desperate, the Captain called another aquaintance in the Air Force. Again, when he asked the question, he received the same reply "I'm sorry, but that is classified information and I am not allowed to tell you"

With that, the Captain decided that he would really have to take the matter to higher authorities.He called his superior, a Vice Admiral and explained about the Glugmaker wanting to enlist and how he could not find out what a Glugmaker did. The Vice Admiral, not wanting to be bothered with what he considered to be a trivial matter, said to the Captain, "Why don't you send him away to the Army or Air Force recruitment centre and get rid of him ?"

The Captain explained that the Glugmaker had already tried both of the other forces and found that they did not have any vacancies.On hearing this, the Vice Admiral replied "Well, if they don't want him, why should we take him ?"

The Captain then told the Vice Admiral of his calls to his associates in the Army and Air Force. "When I called them" he said, they both told me that information about Glugmakers was classified and that they could not tell me anything about it" "The Glugmaker also told me that his was a very specialised trade" he added, "The Army and the Air Force obviously must already have one and so don't need another and that is why they sent him to us" On hearing this, the Vice Admiral responded "Well, if they already have one, and the trade is so specialised, why don't we have one?"

The Captain of course, did not have an answer to this and could only apologise to the Vice Admiral for his lack of knowledge."Should I contact the Glugmaker and sign him up ?" he said. The Vice Admiral, being very careful of his position,replied "Not yet, I will have to run this past the Admiral of the fleet before we make a final decision"

The next day, the Vice Admiral called the Admiral of the fleet and told him the whole story. The Admiral, who considered that the Navy was the cream of the armed forces, willingly agreed with the Vice Admiral that the Navy should have it's own Glugmaker, so much so that he instructed the Vice Admiral to not only recruit the Glugmaker, but to base him exclusively on the pride of the fleet, the Admiral's own battleship. The Vice Admiral called the Captain, who, in turn, called the recruiting officer and instucted him to enlist the Glugmaker as soon as possible and have him report to the Admiral's vessel with all his equipment.The recruiting officer contacted the Glugmaker and advised him of the good news.

A few days later, after the Glugmaker had been enlisted and issued with his kit, he turned up at the wharf together with a very large truck. "Glugmaker reporting for duty, sir" he said to the officer of the watch. "Welcome aboard" said the officer, "We have been expecting you, what do you have in the truck ?" "That is all my gear and equipment" replied the Glugmaker, "I will need some help getting it on board" The officer arranged a work party to carry all the equipment aboard and stow it in a lower hold,the only place large enough to hold all the gear.

The next day, the battleship left port for sea manouvres and, once safely at sea, the Admiral called the Glugmaker to the bridge. "Now, Glugmaker, when are you going to start work ?" he said. "I will have to start right away" said the Glugmaker. "It is very time consuming and I must have complete privacy until everything is ready"

The Admiral instructed all his officers to make sure that the Glugmaker had everything he needed, a spacious area to work, and told them to ensure that the Glugmaker had complete privacy.

With that, the Glugmaker departed to the lower hold where his equipment had been stored and began work.

For the next few days, except for a few occasions when he sent for the odd tool or two, or maybe some additional materials, nothing was seen of the Glugmaker except at meal times.He kept hard at work and didn't even issue progress reports.

After he had been working for a week, the Admiral called him once again to the bridge. "How is your work going down there ?" he asked. "Very well indeed sir" replied the Glugmaker."Well, when are we going to see some results ?" asked the Admiral. "It's difficult to say at the moment sir" replied the Glugmaker, "but it should not be too much longer" The Glugmaker then returned to work.

Another week went by and by this time the Admiral was becoming quite upset by the delay and so ,once again, he called the Glugmaker to the bridge."Look here my man, this Glugmaking has been going on for far too long,when is it going to be finished ?" he said. The Glugmaker replied "Just a couple more days sir, and then it will be ready" "Very well" said the Admiral, "I will give you until Thursday at 1700 hours to complete your task"

"Oh, I promise it will be completed by then sir" replied the Glugmaker, and then returned to work.

He worked far into the night for the next two days to ensure thet his work would be finished on time.

At 1700 hours on the Wednesday, the Admiral called the Glugmaker to the bridge once again and asked him if his work was finished. "Yes sir" the Glugmaker replied, "It is at last finished and ready to be put into action"

"What do you need then" asked the Admiral. "All I need for the next few hours sir, is a work crew to help bring the equipment on deck and assemble it, we could then have a demonstration first thing in the morning when it will be daylight" replied the Glugmaker.

The Admiral arranged for the work party and the Glugmaker led them into the hold to start work.

The first piece that was brought onto deck was an enormous box, which the Glugmaker very carefully had set in place and aligned exactly in the centre of the deck. The next piece was a box of similar design but a little smaller which was placed on top of the first box, again exactly in the centre.

All throught the night, the work crew kept bringing up boxes, each one a little smaller than the previous one, and all of which were stacked onto each other, exactly in the centre.

At about 0500 in the morning, the Glugmaker said " O.K. crew, that's the final one,let's knock off and get some sleep before daylight when we have the demonstration" With a sigh of relief, they all went to their bunks where they fell asleep immediately.

When daybreak came, the Glugmaker was awoken and told to report to the Admiral. When he reported, the Admiral aked him if he was ready for the demonstration. The Glugmaker replied, "Well sir, I would appreciate some breakfast first as the crew and I worked all night getting things ready". The Admiral agreed and ordered the Glugmaker to report an hour later, ready to go to work.

An hour later, feeling much refreshed after a hearty breakfast, the Glugmaker reported once more to the Admiral. "Well sir",he said, "Everything seems to be in order and I am ready to go" "At last" said the Admiral "We have waited a long time for this, what do we need to do now?".

"To take full advantage of this" said the Glugmaker, "I need every member of the crew, with the exception of people who cannot really leave their posts, assembled on deck to await instructions"

The Admiral issued the order to have all non critical personnel assemble on the deck near the structure built by the Glugmaker and , when they were assembled, he and the Glugmaker went to the assembled crew. The Glugmaker adressed the crew and explained what was needed to be done when he gave the order. "Immediately when the order is given" said the Glugmaker, " I will need the entire crew to run right around the deck from stem to stern, until the order is given to halt" He emphasised the criticality of all personnel starting and stopping at the same time until he was satisfied that the crew fully understood.

Finally, he turned to the Admiral and said "Sir, would you do the honours and give the order ?" The Admiral gave the order and the crew immediately started running around the deck.Once he was satisfied with the speed of the runners, the Glugmaker went to the stern of the ship and, taking out a hole saw, he cut a hole right in the centre of the stern scuppers. When he was satisfied with the size and smoothness of the hole, he went to the base of the structure he had erected the previous night and began to climb.

Up and up he went until he got to the very top. Pausing there, he surveyed the length and breadth of the ship and the crew running around the deck.

Satisfied with their progress, he reached into his pocket and took out a golf ball. With great care, he placed it on top of the highest box in the structure which was just the right size to enable the Glugmaker to balance the golf ball on the top.

Returning to the deck where the Admiral was waiting, he once more surveyed the situation.

Due to the number of crew running around the deck, the ship was developing quite a roll, obviously caused by the weight of the crew as they went from one side of the ship to the other.The roll caused the towering structure to move from side to side and the golf ball at the very top to roll around on the very topmost box.When the ball had developed a smooth roll, the Glugmaker turned to the Admiral and said,"Sir, on the count of three, please order the crew to halt". "Very well",said the Admiral. At that, the Glugmaker counted, "One, Two, Three". At the count of three, the Admiral, in his loudest voice, called "Halt". The crew, being extremely well disciplined, came to an immediate stop, all on one side of the ship.

This caused the ship to list all to the one side and of course, the towering structure also leaned to the same side.

With the crew coming to such a sudden stop, and because of the list to one side, the golf ball, which had been smoothly rolling around the top of the uppermost box,suddenly popped over the rim of the box and started bouncing down the tower. Down and down it came, bouncing from one level to the other until it reached the deck. Once on the deck, because of the angle of the deck, the golf ball ran straight into the scuppers and started rolling towards the stern. Everyone's gaze was fixed on the golf ball as they watched it gather speed. It rolled and rolled until it reached the very stern and, because of the hole that the Glugmaker had made, it shot straight out over the sea. Out and out it went until, because of it's lack of speed and the law of gravity, it fell
down,
down,
down
into
the
sea
and
went
...............GLUG !

Desert Crossing

It was a summer night in 1942 when we landed in a small inlet on the coast of the Red Sea. Our orders were clear. Dressed as Bedouins we were to cross the Arabian Desert to meet our contacts near the Nile where we were to obtain vital information regarding Rommel's forces.

We were given a map showing each rivulet and creek as we could carry only a limited amount of water. We had to travel primarily at night because of the extreme heat. Each time we reached another creek on the map, we would find only a wadi, totally dry this time of the year.

In spite of extreme thirst and dehydration, we finally staggered to our assigned destination where we were met by Arab nomads loyal to the Allied cause.

We explained that we had crossed the desert without water as every river bed was dry.

"Of course," we were told, "you went from one ex-stream to another."

Cooking a Sloth

How To Prepare Sloth Meat...

A rare delicacy is Sauteed Sloth.

Using the middle toe of the great Australian three-toed sloth, the only edible part of that large, furry, indolent creature, the careful chef debones it, pounds it as with veal,and sautes it briefly over a hot flame with shallots, carrot circles, and just a touch of Tabasco. Prepared in this fashion, sloth is an excellent main course, not unlike alligator in texture and taste.

Many people are under the false impression that sloth does not make a good meal, but this is because they've eaten it improperly prepared. It can only be sauteed, a fact unappreciated in culinary circles. Too many cooks boil the sloth.

Milk

There once was a poor shepherd named Yorgi. The only food he had to sustain himself on was the milk he got from the sheep, and it tasted so bad that he could barely drink it. As a result, Yorgi became thin and sickly.

One day, he met his friend Vladimir. Vladimir was a poor shepherd like himself, but he was hearty and healthy.

Vladimir told him that he had to live on sheep's milk too, but he let him on a secret: a witch in a nearby village taught him a magic spell that makes sheep's milk taste as sweet as the richest cream.

Yorgi begged Vladimir to teach him the spell, which his friend did willingly.

Sure enough, Yorgi's sheep produced the most delicious milk he ever tasted. Yorgi loved it so much, that he drank it by the litre. He milked his sheep so much that they cried out in pain.

Yorgi realised that he couldn't make his sheep suffer like that, so he reversed the spell and resigned himself to drinking normal sheep's milk.

Now, there's no ewes crying over spelled milk.

Burial

I was in a church meeting where the topic was "Burial or Cremation?" two of the people got rather worked up. One said to the other, "If you have yourself cremated, all you will be doing is making an ash of yourself!" The other replied, "Well, I'm told that petroleum comes from fossilized bones, so if you have yourself buried all you will be doing is making a fuel of yourself!"

Good Man

A McCains Chips decided to create a novel form of chips by frying them in goose fat. Unfortunately, one day a few goose feathers accidentally fell into the frying vat. However, a veteran inspector discovered the batch before any of it reached the public. When told of the mishap and the outcome, his boss remarked happily, "He's a good man to have around when the chips are down!"

Sir Lancelot

When he retired, Sir Lancelot took the bag of gold that King Arthur gave him and invested it in a women's sleepwear company. Thereafter he was known as the Nightie Knight.

Two Mexican detectives were investigating the murder of Juan Gonzalez.
"How was he killed?" asked one detective.
"With a golf gun," the other detective replied.
"A golf gun? What is a golf gun?"
"I don't know. But it sure made a hole in Juan."

Green Witch

Once upon a time in England, a very mean witch was terrorizing the local population, and a delegation finally went to see the local wizard to ask what could be done about her. The wizard gave them a potion that would turn the witch into a statue.

It wasn't easy, but the townspeople managed to sneak the potion into the witch's food. When she found out about this, she turned green with rage, but it was too late and the potion worked as expected. The jubilant population had a big celebration and parade, and placed the petrified witch in a park as a public example.

Pretty soon, people discovered that the witch had been frozen in a position that made her a perfect sundial and started using her to tell the time of day. The custom grew and even today, people often refer to "Green Witch Mean Time."

Mollusc Research

Then there is researcher Peter Fong, who has given new meaning to the expression "happy as a clam." The Southampton University biologist stumbled onto the fact that molluscs reproduce at 10 times their normal rate if Prozac is dumped in the water.

Fong was pursuing research on the basic nervous system of fingernail clams when he discovered that if he dumped the antidepressant into the water, the clams would start reproducing madly.

"It's a piece of wonderful science and it sounds utterly ridiculous at the same time," Abrahams said.

Traffic was backed up almost to a standstill this morning as I drove to town. I turned on the radio to listen to my favourite station but they were playing Rock-a-billy which I absolutely detest.

So I decided to change over to Radio 4 and happened to tune in as the show host was complaining about Government waste of funds on useless research projects. He was objecting to the Government funding to a team in Southampton Uni , that was feeding clams and other molluscs large doses of Prozac to determine its effect on these sea dwellers. He cited this as an example of Government waste.

I immediately phoned him and found myself on the air. The host was very unhappy when I told him that this research was very important as it was essential to determine if Prozac was effective as a mussel relaxant.

Custard

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were dining at an exclusive New York restaurant. It was the place to be seen and both were dressed up for the occasion. Ginger looked superb in a white ball gown and diamond tiara while Fred wore his smartest morning suit. Unfortunately the evening was spoilt when the waiter bringing dessert tripped and covered poor Fred from head to toe in treacle sponge and custard.

"Terribly sorry, sir" said the waiter trying to wipe the mess off with a cloth. "So you should be" said Fred, " Thanks to you I've pudding on my top hat, pudding on my white tie, pudding on my tails."

Good Advice

A boy strolls into his house with a chair under each arm and a sofa balanced on his head.

"Where did you get that from?! asks his dad.

"Off an old man in the park" replies the boy.

"Never EVER do that again" shouts the father. "What have I told you about taking suites from strangers?"

Noah

Noah is standing outside the ark checking the animals in 2 by 2.

"2 chickens, yum, lovely roast chickens"

"2 sheep, yum, yum, lovely lamb chops, delicious"

"2 pigs, aaah, succulent roast pork, I love it"

Noah's wife turns to one of the sons.

"There's Noah counting for taste"

New Cheese Product

Man went into his bank to tell them of his plans for a new business: "I'm thinking of starting up in the cheese business", he says.

"Yes?", says the bank manager, "What are you thinking of calling the cheese?" "Don't know", says the man. "Try the name of a place" After a long thought, the businessman says "Cheddar"! "Nope", replies the bank manager. "There's already a cheese from that place. Try again". The man goes away.

Three months later, he's back: "I've thought of a name" "What is it?" "Wensleydale" "Nope: there's already one from there too". The man goes away.

Six months later, he's back again: "Leicester" "Sorry: there's one from there too. Try another place." The man goes away.

Nine months later, he's back. More adventurous this time. "Edam", he says "Sorry: better, but there's one from there too. Try further afield." The man goes away.

A Year later, he's back again. "Nazareth", he says "Excellent", says the bank manager. "It's a place name. And it hasn't been used by anybody else in the industry. Brilliant, that's the product sorted out. Now what are you going to call the company?" And the man replies ...

"Cheeses of Nazareth"

Douglas The Fisherman

Douglas the fisherman is out in his boat one day when he sees a tug on fire, smoke billowing out of the portholes and the crew trapped inside.

Without a thought for his own safety, he pulled up alongside and with his trusty axe, hacked down doors and through the bulkheads to reach the men. After what seemed like hours in the blistering heat, he managed to free the men and drag them out and onto his fishing boat.

By some strange twist of fate, it turned out that one of the men on board the tug was Prince Andrew (possibly cadging a lift back from somewhere). When the Queen heard of the heroic rescue of her favourite son, she pulled all sorts of strings to get Douglas a knighthood for his deed.

Come the day and Douglas and his family are awaiting his meeting with the Queen. Unbeknown to him, there is consternation in the Palace as they cannot find the ceremonial sword used on these occasions. In desperation, they send one of the butlers out to get a replacement, thinking that no-one would notice the difference.

Unfortunately, Jeeves can only find a theatrical costume and props shop, where they have a fake sword made from a kind of bendy stuff.

The ceremony goes ahead and Douglas emerges with his knighthood.

The headlines, the next day, read :

"Rubber dubbed Dug freed men in a tug...."

Coal

A steam locomotive passing through Poland one night was running low on coal. The engineer said to his fireman, "We're coming to a town, let's stop and send the porter out to get more coal. Can you see the name of the town on the depot sign?"

The fireman replied, "It appears to be Danzig in the dark."

And the engineer shouted, "Buy coal, Porter!"

Prawns

Far away in the tropical waters of the Caribbean, two prawns were swimming around in the sea - one called Justin and the other called Christian.

The prawns were constantly being harassed and threatened by sharks that inhabited the area. Finally one day Justin said to Christian, "I'm fed up with being a prawn, I wish I was a shark, then I wouldn't have any worries about being eaten."

A large mysterious cod appeared & said, "Your wish is granted", and lo and behold, Justin turned into a shark. Horrified, Christian immediately swam away, afraid of being eaten by his old mate.

Time passed (as it invariably does) and Justin found life as a shark boring and lonely. All his old mates simply swam away whenever he came close to them. Justin didn't realise that his new menacing appearance was the cause of his sad plight.

Whilst swimming alone one day he saw the mysterious cod again and he thought perhaps the mysterious fish could change him back into a prawn. He approached the cod and begged to be changed back, and lo and behold, he found himself turned back into a prawn.

With tears of joy in his tiny little eyes Justin swam back to his friends and bought them all a cocktail. (The punch line does not involve a prawn cocktail - it is much worse).

Looking around the gathering at the reef he realised he couldn't see his old pal. "Where's Christian?" he asked.

"He's at home, still distraught that his best friend changed sides to the enemy and became a shark,"was the reply.

Eager to put things right again and end the mutual pain and torture, he set off to Christian's abode. As he opened the coral gate, memories came flooding back. He banged on the door and shouted, "It's me, Justin, your old friend, come out and see me again."

Christian replied,"No way man, you'll eat me. You're now a shark, the enemy, and I'll not be tricked into being your dinner."

Justin cried back "No, I'm not. That was the old me. I've changed..."

"...I've found Cod. I'm a Prawn again Christian".

Girl On A Beach

A couple lived near the ocean and used to walk the beach a lot.

One summer they noticed a girl who was at the beach pretty much every day. She wasn't unusual, nor was the travel bag she carried, except for one thing; she would approach people who were sitting on the beach, glance around furtively, then speak to them.

Generally the people would respond negatively and she would wander off, but occasionally someone would nod and there would be a quick exchange of money and something she carried in her bag.

The couple assumed she was selling drugs, and debated calling the cops, but since they didn't know for sure they just continued to watch her.

After a couple of weeks the wife said, "Honey, have you ever noticed that she only goes up to people with boom boxes and other electronic devices?"

He hadn't and said so.

Then she said, "Tomorrow I want you to get a towel and our big radio and go lie out on the beach. Then we can find out what she's really doing."

Well, the plan went off without a hitch and the wife was almost hopping up and down with anticipation when she saw the girl talk to her husband and then leave.

The man walked up the beach and met his wife at the road.

"Well? Is she selling drugs?" she asked excitedly.

"No, she's not," he said, enjoying this probably more than he should have.

"Well? What is it, then? What does she do?" his wife fairly shrieked.

The man grinned and said, "She's a battery salesperson."

"Batteries?" cried the wife.

"Yes," he replied.

"She sells C cells by the sea shore."

AWOL

A sailor was caught AWOL as he tried to sneak on board his ship at about 3 a.m.

The chief petty officer spied him and ordered the sailor to stop.

Upon hearing the sailor's lame explanation for his tardiness, the officer ordered the sailor, "Take this broom and sweep every link on this anchor chain by morning or it's the brig for you!"

The sailor picked up the broom and commenced performing his charge.

As he began to sweep, a tern landed on the broom handle.

The sailor yelled at the bird to leave, but it didn't.

He picked the tern off the broom handle, giving the bird a toss.

The bird left, only to return and light once again on the broom handle.

The sailor went through the same routine all over again, with the same result.

He couldn't get any cleaning done because he could only sweep at the chain once or twice before the blasted bird returns.

When morning came, so did the chief petty officer, to check up on his wayward sailor.

"What in the heck have you been doing all night? This chain is no cleaner than when you started! What have you to say for yourself, sailor?" barked the chief.

"Honest, chief," came the reply, "I tossed a tern all night and couldn't sweep a link!"

Haydn

Frans Joseph Haydn (1732 - 1809) was a renowned and prolific composer, famous for his many symphonies. He was born in Austria. He is credited with establishing the string quartet and perfecting the classical symphony.

His worldly experience and his esoteric and eclectic tastes are not common knowledge today; in fact, he was an experimenter with music much in the way Edgard Varese, Steve Reich, Paul Simon and Gabriel Byrne are regarded in the modern era: "pushing the envelope" and blending some "world music" into the mainstream.

Haydn's success at merging the musical moods and motifs of the different continents prompted Mozart to say of him, "There is no one who can do it all - to joke and to terrify, to evoke laughter and profound sentiment - and all equally well, except Joseph Haydn."

Haydn's interests took him to other parts of the world, considered quite risky during that period. He traveled to the New World and to the Asian Sub-Continent, always taking time to listen to the music characteristic of those regions.

His students learned a great deal from him, but as is often the case in such learning experiences, some of his pupils went off in their own new directions rather than following on in their teacher's footsteps.

Two such pupils were the young fellow Austrian, Frederic der Wiesel, and the Frenchman Papgeau. These two troublemakers were to cause Franz such consternation that he was to shred his ground-breaking new symphony to bits moments after its first performance and forever abandon the thought of composing anything other than "conventional" classical music again.

Musicologists continue to search for remains of the manuscript, but only a few scribblings in his journal regarding the melodies he notated during an expedition to India are all that remain of the composition.

The Haydn Sikh Symphony was only performed once, at the same venue as the premiere of the new composition of his pupils (and the source of Haydn's outrage), the comic Papgeau- der Wiesel Suite.

Bondage!

A Wisconsin trapper came to town to buy a case of soft drinks and a copy of "Of Human Bondage." He left both on a table in a lunchroom and wandered about for a while. When he came back, the book had disappeared. "You having some trouble?" asked the proprietor. "I sure am," answered the trapper. "I've found my pop but I've lost my Maugham!"

K'aark (thanks to Wizard@Cix for this one)

This story was told to me by Nyahururu, and old man from the Bamangwatu tribe. The Bamangwatu people live on the edges of the flood-plains where the Ngwaa river runs into the Okavango. The story concerns K'aark a little orphaned bushman boy. He had been found one day wandering aimlessly in the bush by a matronly and generously proportioned Bamangwatu woman called Malindi. She had lost several of her sons to crocodiles during a cruel canoeing accident a couple of years back and eased her grief by looking after the little bushman boy. He remembered that his name was K'aark. The storyteller, Nyahururu, explained to me that in the bushman tongue K'aark meant "snotty-nose" and, in fact, his playmates often called him by their nickname for him, Kakamega which means 'number eleven'.

Now the Bamangwatu people held the bushmen in great awe as hunters and it was assumed that K'aark would grow up to be one. In fact, he was inept at everything that he ever turned to and, when he came home empty-handed, as he inevitably did, he always blamed it on bad spirits or wind blowing in the wrong direction. Because the Bamangwatu people were a trusting people, by and large, they accepted his stories at face value.

One day K'aark left the village and headed off into the bush to hunt game. His tracking ability was little better than useless and the animals heard him and ran away long before he was even aware that they were there. He trudged on through the morning, musing at the paucity of wildlife. He sat down under an Msasa tree to rest. Unfortunately he plonked himself down unknowingly onto his quiver of poisoned arrows. Into one of these he induced an imperceptible but aerodynamically significant curve.

By and by, K'aark wend his weary way home. As he neared the village he came across an ill-fortuned Ostrich, which had fallen down a steep slope as a chick and hit its head on a stone which had left it deaf, it did not hear the clumsy approach of our erstwhile hunter. K'aark selected by chance the modified arrow and let it fly from his bow. It winged its way from him like frightened bird, but winged its way in a gentle curve into some bushes.

All of a sudden there was a great roar and a commotion followed by silence. K'aark rushed into the bushes to see what had happened and came across a dead lion, poking out of the buttocks of which was K'aark's wayward but adequately venomous arrow. But more to the point, just beyond the lion was the sleeping form of Oluwarukeri, the chief of the village, whom the lion had been stalking for supper. There was great rejoicing in the village. Now, it so happened that Oluwarukeri was not just chief of the village but was, in fact, the Great Paramount Chief of All the Bamangwatu people and he was greatly pleased with K'aark.

Oluwarukeri called his people together in a great Ndaba. Now an Ndaba is a kind of Baraza which is to say that it is like a Durbar which is a congregation, a coming together or gathering. Oluwarukeri declared before his assembled people from that day forwards, K'aark would be his son. But more significantly that when Oluwarukeri left this world and his spirit joined the spirits of his ancestors on Menengai, the Mountain of God, K'aark would be the new paramount chief, his anointed successor. A great shout went up, there was much rejoicing and feasting and drinking of Chibuku, fermented millet which, when distilled, comes out at about 50 over proof.

All of this was none to the liking of Olo-ololo who was the chief's biological son. Olo-ololo had left the village as a child, gone to school and college and had returned a fully trained architect. But the villagers laughed at his new ideas and he was the only one to build a two-storied mud, wattle and thatch hut. Olo-ololo had much to be resentful about and this last event had tipped the balance. It was the tradition of these people that when the old chief had decided who was to be his successor, usually his son, then he would pass on to them the great limestone seat upon which the new king would be crowned. It was the custom that the coronation could only take place upon the sacred stone and whoever had the stone had the rights to the tribal crown and the accolade, and I might add, the wealth of the people. Olo-ololo hatched his dastardly plan. If he were to steal the sacred block he could recover his inheritance and his pride. Stealing the thing was no great problem. But where to keep it until an opportune moment arose? He decided that the safest place was upstairs in his two-storey hut.

Alas, the block of limestone proved a heavier proposition than Olo-ololo had catered for and during the night it came crashing down through the flimsy floor of his hut. It fell upon the hapless Olo-ololo striking him instantly dead. The following morning they found him in his misery of just desserts.

There is a moral to this story. People in grass houses shouldn't stow thrones.

Herbs

A man went into a garden centre to buy some herbs to put in the "kitchen garden" his wife had asked him to set up.

Parsley, no problem.
Chives, fine, over by the onions.
Mint, at least three different kinds.
Rosemary, under shrubs rather than herbs, but what the heck.
Dill, a few rather weedy looking specimens.

In fact they had just about everything he wanted.
But could he find any thymus praecox?

No!

He looked under herbs, and thought he saw some, but it turned out to be just an empty seed packet.

He looked in the rockery section, and saw similar plants, but not the one he sought.

He looked in the seed racks, and they had everything from Acaena (New Zealand Burr) to Zantedeschia aethiopica, but no Thymus praecox.

He went and asked the man at the enquiry desk.

"I thought I saw some last week over there by the sheds. Have you looked there?"

So he went and looked over by the sheds.

No Thymus praecox.

He went and asked the girl at the till.

"We had some in the rockery section, have you looked there?"

"Yes, but there isn't any there"

He asked the man wandering round watering things.

"Try with the alpine plants, sir".

But it wasn't among the alpines.

Eventually he went and asked the assistant manager of the department. "I thought I saw some last..."

At that point, the department manager piped up. "Yes, a lot of people think they see it, but there is never any there, and for a very good reason."

"Why? Is there a shortage? Is it all diseased?"

"Not at all sir. You are forgetting the obvious..."

"Thyme is an illusion"

Art Collection

As you all know, American millionaires have a tendency to become avid collectors, often of the strangest things. This was certainly true of one particular millionaire whom I shall call John.

John collected impressionist paintings, but not the ones you might think. He specialised in Eastern Bloc artists, being especially fond of those from Bohemia. Over the years, he accumulated hundreds of such paintings. Individually they weren't that valuable, but as a collection they were of considerable interest to art historians.

Realising this, he many years ago altered his will so that all of his collection was to be presented to the museum in the town where he had grown up. Also included was a quite handsome sum to cover security and display costs.

Time passed, as it always does, and last year, John died peacefully in his sleep.

What John hadn't foreseen was the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the opening up of the former communist countries to Western eyes. The value of John's collection had shot through the roof, in comparison with what he had considered its monetary value, and his surviving relatives began to cast envious eyes on the artwork.

The situation was made considerably worse when, during cataloguing, it was discovered that the collection included a long lost work by a famous French impressionist, with a value commensurate with its creators fame.

All the relatives screamed loudly, and demanded that the will be contested in court. Some of them wanted all the paintings for themselves, but most were willing to allow the museum to have all except the French example and maybe even that one, as long as the museum was willing to pay a "reasonable price" for them.

As with all such cases, the more money involved, the faster the case is heard, and the longer it takes to hear it. Thus, it was only last week that the judge handed down his decision.

He found that the provision in the will was clearly stated, and perfectly reasonable. He therefore awarded the paintings to the museum, doing so in the clearest terms he could find. Indeed, his summation is a masterpiece of clarity.

"From the terms of this will it is plain to see you get your Monet for nothing, and your Czechs for free."

Van

A young couple was making passionate love in the guy's van when suddenly the girl yelled, "Whip me. Whip me!"

The guy, eager to please, obviously didn't have a whip, but, in a flash of inspiration, opened his window, snapped the radio antenna off his van, and they shared it until they both collapsed in sadomasochistic ecstasy.

A week later, the girl noticed that the marks left by their lovemaking session were starting to fester, so she asked her doctor to check them out.

The doctor took one look and asked, "Did you get these marks having sex?"

Embarrassed, she admitted that she did.

The doctor nodded. "I thought so. In all my years of doctoring ... this is the worst case of Van Aerial Disease I've ever seen!"

Zero

A zero walked into a bar one day and went right up to the counter and asked the bartender for a whiskey sour. "I want a whiskey sour, please," said the zero.

The bartender replied, "Look, buddy, we don't serve zeros in this bar, so either get out or I'm going to kick you out."

The zero got angry and shouted, "I WANT A WHISKEY SOUR, AND I WANT IT NOW!!!!" banging the counter top for emphasis and dramatic effect.

The bartender, thinking it more like comic relief, retorted, "I told you, no zeros in this bar. NOW GET OUT OF HERE OR ELSE!!"

The zero promptly left the bar.

On the way out, he noticed headlines about a local university professor doing all kinds of experiments with the effects of atomic rays on growth and metabolism.

The zero headed to see the Prof, and got accepted as a subject in a series of experiments with alpha, beta, and gamma rays.

Two days later, now a huge, strong, powerful zero glowing, a bright electric blue, he wandered by the bar again.

He decided to go back in for a drink. He went straight up to the bar and asked, "I'd like a whiskey sour, please."

The bartender did a double take, and said, "Hey, aren't you the zero that came in just a couple days ago?"

And the zero said: "No, I'm Alpha-rayed Naught."

Refrigerators

As Johann looked out across the verdant Iowa River valley, and beyond to the low hills capped by the massive refrigerator manufacturing plant, he reminisced on the history of the great enterprise from its early days, when he and three other young men, all of differing backgrounds, had only their dream of bringing refrigeration to America's heartland to sustain them, to the present day, where they had become the Midwest's foremost group of refrigerator magnates.........

Wayne The Painter

There was a tradesman, a painter named Wayne, who was very interested in making a penny where he could, so he often thinned down his paint to make it go a wee bit further.

As it happened, he got away with this for some time, but eventually the Baptist Church decided to do a big restoration job on the painting of one of their biggest buildings. Wayne put in a bid, and because his price was so low, he got the job.

And so he set about erecting the scaffolding and setting up the planks, and buying the paint and, yes, I am sorry to say, thinning it down with turpentine.

Well, Wayne was up on the scaffolding, painting away, the job nearly completed when suddenly there was a horrendous clap of thunder, and the sky opened, the rain poured down, washing the thinned paint from all over the church and knocking Wayne clear off the scaffold to land on the lawn among the gravestones, surrounded by telltale puddles of the thinned and useless paint.

Wayne was no fool. He knew this was a judgment from the Almighty, so he got on his knees and cried: "Oh, God! Forgive me! What should I do?" And from the thunder, a mighty voice spoke...

"Repaint! Repaint! And thin no more!"

Strike

Due to poor annual profit management at the local crisp factory in the north of England decided to bring in new practices and methods of work.

Part of the manufacturing process involved the transportation of the crisps around the factory in purpose made metal bins. Ever since anyone could remember the materials for the bins had been supplied by a local sheet metal manufacturer with final construction of the bins carried out by the workers within the factory. The bins were hand crafted with neatly soldered seams they were a true work of art.

As a cost saving measure management made the decision to replace the costly hand crafted bins with cheaper ready made plastic bins. Not only would material costs be reduced but also staff levels within the factory could be reduced.

This proposal angered both the workers within the factory and the local union. A vote was taken and strike action was unanimously agreed. As part of the action a locally rally was organised with a march taking place from the factory to the rally.

To lift the workers spirits as they marched with their banners they sang.....

Onward Crisp Bin Solderers.

Masked Man

The couple left the gynecologist's office with the wife in tears. They were just told that she could never become pregnant. They would never have the family they both desired so fervently.

Suddenly, a masked man appeared before them.

"I think I can help you," he said, handing them a card.

"Why are you masked?" the husband asked.

"Because the government has declared our activities illegal. Go to the address on this card. The doctor will take a scraping from your mouth and culture it. In less than a year, we will have your baby for you."

Turning to her husband, the wife exclaimed,

"This is the answer to our prayers!"

Then she turned back to thank the stranger but he was gone.

"Who was that masked man?" she asked her husband.

He answered, "That was... the Clone Arranger."

Winter

One winter, Omar and Hector built a skating rink in the middle of a pasture. A shepherd leading his flock decided to take a shortcut across the rink. The sheep, however, were afraid of the ice and wouldn’t cross it. Desperate, the shepherd began tugging them to the other side. “Look at that,” remarked Omar to Hector. “That guy is trying to pull the wool over our ice!”

There was this guy and he had a girlfriend named Lorraine who was very pretty and he liked her a lot. One day he went to work and found that a new girl had started working there. Her name was Claire-Lee and she was absolutely gorgeous.

He became quite besotted with Claire-Lee and after a while it became obvious that she was interested in him too. But this guy was a loyal man and he wouldn't do anything with Claire-Lee while he was still going out with Lorraine. He decided that there was nothing left to do but to break up with Lorraine and get it on with Claire-Lee.

He planned several times to tell Lorraine but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Then one day they went for a walk along the riverbank when Lorraine slipped and fell in to the river. The current carried her off and she drowned.

The guy stopped for a moment by the river and then ran off smiling and singing...

"I can see Claire-Lee now Lorraine has gone"

Skeptical anthropologist

A skeptical anthropologist was cataloging South American folk remedies with the assistance of a tribal brujo who indicated that the leaves of a particular fern were a sure cure for any case of constipation. When the anthropologist expressed his doubts, the brujo looked him in the eye and said, "Let me tell you, with fronds like these, who needs enemas?"

Too Much

A friend of mine, not being able to decide between reed and stringed instruments, recently purchased an alto saxophone and a couple of fiddles. He lives in a small apartment and doesn't really have a good place to keep them so he built a rack that fits over the television set. His wife, however, won't let him keep them there.

She says that there's already too much sax and violins on TV.....

Fanatic

There was this fellow who was in love with tractors. He had shelves of books on the subject as well as models and posters etc. One day, while reading the paper, he noticed that there was going to be a big agricultural fair being held on the other side of the city, and he decided to go and see some of his favourite tractors in person.

When he arrived he was pleasantly surprised to see that several manufacturers of farm equipment were selling their wares. He thought that this would be a great opportunity to finally purchase a tractor of his very own! He walked up to the first dealer who was selling a large green tractor and asked the salesman if he could sit in it. It was love at first sight!! Unfortunately, the cost of this model was far beyond what our hero could afford, so he thanked the man and carried on through the show.

It wasn't long before he came across another dealer selling blue tractors. They were a little smaller than the green ones, so he thought that he might be able to afford one of these. He spoke hopefully to the dealer only to be disappointed again at the high cost of his favourite farm machine. He accepted several brochures and, slightly more downcast than before, left the booth to tour through the rest of the exhibition.

Just as he was approaching the exit, he caught sight of a third tractor dealer. Hardly daring to get his hopes up he approached the booth where there was a small red tractor. "Surely I can afford one of these" he thought, "they are so small".

Alas, our poor friend was disappointed for a final time. In fact he was so upset that as he left the arena he threw away all the brochures and posters of tractors into the trash and stalked off into the night, a bitter man.

On his way home he passed by a bar and decided that if he couldn't have a tractor then he would drown his sorrows. He goes into the dark and very smokey bar and the barman asks "Hey buddy, why the long face?"

The man explains his love of tractors and his intense unhappiness at being unable to afford one. In fact it is at this moment that the man swears off tractors forever vowing to dispose off his collection never to look at a tractor again!! He then orders five straight whiskies. The barman, a sympathetic soul, recognizes true heartbreak when he sees it and offers the man a deal. He tells the man that if he can clear all the smoke from the bar he will let him drown his sorrows all night for free.

The man agrees and then suddenly gives a mighty inhalation and to all the patrons amazement sucks in all the smoke in the bar!!! As the bartender pours him his drinks one of the barflies at the end of the bar turns to his buddy expresses his incredulity at this feat. His buddy, unimpressed, turns to his friend and says, "So what? I overheard him say to the barman that he was an ex-tractor fan"

Walter

A scientist named Walter invented a shrinking ray. He tried it on himself, and it worked. Unfortunately he couldn't reverse the process, and he was stuck being the size of a normal man's thumb.

He had a loyal lab assistant who worked with him, though, so his diminutive size didn't affect Walter's work too much. Still, after a while, Walter began to long for female companionship.

His lab assistant thought up a highly unethical plan. He would get a couple of "ladies of the evening", shrink them down to Walter's size, and keep them shrunk until they could figure out a way to reverse the process for all of them.

The lab assistant went to Kings Cross and tried to get the young ladies, but it was more difficult than he had thought it would be. They were reluctant to travel all the way to the lab, but when the lab assistant offered to double their usual rate, they finally agreed.

As soon as they stepped into the lab, the assistant turned on the shrinking ray. There was a flash of light, a puff of smoke, and, when the air cleared ... the prostitutes were exactly the same size!

"What's the big idea?" shrieked on of the women. Then, "Eek!" as she saw Walter scurrying across the floor. Rushing over, she squashed him flat with her shoe.

Walter was dead. The experiment was ruined. And all because the lab assistant forgot ... You can lead the whores to Walter, but you can't make 'em shrink.

I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, carefully flossing my teeth. "Oooh!" I would sigh every once in a while, or "Aaah!" as the little thread did it's work.

Suddenly and without provocation, my wife walked into the bathroom and started getting her shower prepared. You'd think I wasn't even there!

Bewildered, I demanded, "What the hell are you doing? Don't you see me here?"

"I'm sorry," she said, "I saw you, but I didn't think you were real."

"What!!! What the hell is that supposed to mean!" I shouted.

She replied calmly, "It's just that I don't believe in sighing flossers."

Epic Tale

A guy has spent five years traveling all around the world making a documentary on Native dances. At the end of this time, he has every single native dance of every indigenous culture in the world on film. He winds up in Australia, in Alice Springs, so he pops into a pub for a well earned beer. He gets talking to one of the local Aborigines and tells him about his project.

The Aborigine asks the guy what he thought of the "Butcher Dance."

The guy's a bit confused and says, "Butcher Dance? What's that?"

"What? You no see Butcher Dance?"

"No, I've never heard of it."

"Oh mate. You crazy. How you say you film every native dance if you no see Butcher Dance?"

"UmmSUM. I got a corroborree on film just the other week. Is that what you mean?"

"No no, not corroborree. Butcher Dance much more important than corroborree."

"Oh, well how can I see this Butcher Dance then?"

"Mate, Butcher Dance right out bush. Many days travel to go see Butcher Dance."

"Look, I've been everywhere from the forests of the Amazon, to deepest darkest Africa, to the frozen wastes of the Arctic filming these dances. Nothing will prevent me from recording this one last dance."

"OK, mate. You drive north along highway towards Darwin. After you drive 197 miles, you see dirt track veer off to left. Follow dirt track for 126 miles 'til you see big huge dead gum tree - biggest tree you ever see. Here you gotta leave the car, because much too rough for driving.

You strike out due west into setting sun. You walk 3 days 'til you hit creek. You follow this creek to Northwest. After 2 days you find where creek flows out of rocky mountains. Much too difficult to cross mountains here though. You now head south for half day 'til you see pass through mountains.

Pass very difficult and very dangerous. Take 2, maybe 3 days to get through rocky pass. When through, head northwest for 4 days 'til reach big huge rock - 20 ft high and shaped like man's head. From rock, walk due west for 2 days and you find village. Here you see Butcher Dance."

So the guy grabs his camera crew and equipment and heads out. After a couple of hours he finds the dirt track. The track is in a shocking state and he's forced to crawl along at a snails pace and so he doesn't reach the tree until dusk and he's forced to set up camp for the night.

He sets out bright and early the following morning. His spirits are high and he's excited about the prospect of capturing on film this mysterious dance which he had never heard mention of before.

True to the directions he has been given, he reaches the creek after three days and follows it for another two until they reach the rocky mountains. The merciless sun is starting to take its toll by this time and his spirits are starting to flag, but wearily he trudges on until he finds the pass through the hills - nothing will prevent him from completing his life's dream.

The mountains prove to be every bit as treacherous as their guide said and at times they almost despair of getting their bulky equipment through. But after three and a half days of back breaking effort they finally force their way clear and continue their long trek.

When they reach the huge rock, four days later, their water is running low and their feet are covered with blisters. Yet they steel themselves and head out on the last leg of their journey.

Two days later they virtually stagger into the village where the natives feed them and give them fresh water. They begin to feel like new men.

Once he's recovered enough, the guy goes before the village chief and tells him that he has come to film there Butcher Dance.

"Oh mate. Very bad you come today. Butcher Dance last night. You too late. You miss dance."

"Well, when do you hold the next dance?"

"Not 'til next year."

"Well, I've come all this way. Couldn't you just hold an extra dance for me, tonight?"

"No, no, no! Butcher Dance very holy. Only hold once a year. If hold more, gods get very angry and destroy village! You want see Butcher Dance you come back next year."

The guy is devastated, but he has no other option but to head back to civilization and back home.

The following year, he heads back to Australia and, determined not to miss out again, sets out a week earlier than last time. He is quite willing to spend a week in the village before the dance is performed in order to ensure he is present to witness it. However, right from the start things go wrong.

Heavy rains that year have turned the dirt track to mud and the car gets bogged every few miles, finally forcing them to abandon their vehicles and slog through the mud on foot almost half the distance to the tree.

They reach the creek and the mountains without any further hitch, but halfway through the ascent of the mountain they are struck by a fierce storm which rages for several days, during which they are forced to cling forlornly to the mountainside until it subsides. It would be suicide to attempt to scale the treacherous paths in the face of such savage elements.

Then, before they have traveled a mile out from the mountains, one of the crew sprains his ankle badly which slows down the rest of their journey enormously, to the rock and then the village.

Eventually, having lost all sense of how long they have been traveling, they stagger into the village at about 12:00 noon.

"The Butcher Dance!" gasps the guy. "Please don't tell me I'm too late!"

The chief recognizes him and says "No, white fella. Butcher Dance performed tonight. You come just in time."

Relieved beyond measure, the crew spends the rest of the afternoon setting up their equipment - preparing to capture the night's ritual on celluloid as dusk falls, the natives start to cover there bodies in white paint and adorn themselves in all manner of bird's feathers and animal skins.

Once darkness has settled fully over the land, the natives form a circle around a huge roaring fire.

A deathly hush descends over performers and spectators alike as a wizened old figure with elaborate swirling designs covering his entire body enters the circle and begins to chant. Some sort of witch doctor or medicine man, figures the guy and he whispers to the chief, "What's he doing?"

"Hush," whispers the chief. "You first white man ever to see most sacred of our rituals. Must remain silent. Holy man, he asks that the spirits of the dream world watch as we demonstrate our devotion to them through our dance and, if they like our dancing, will they be so gracious as to watch over us and protect us for another year."

The chanting of the Holy man reaches a stunning crescendo before he moves himself from the circle. From somewhere the rhythmic pounding of drums booms out across the land and the natives begin to sway to the stirring rhythm.

The guy is becoming caught up in the fervor of the moment himself. This is it. He now realizes beyond all doubt that his wait has not been in vain. He is about to witness the ultimate performance of rhythm and movement ever conceived by mankind.

The chief strides to his position in the circle and, in a big booming voice, starts to sing,

He says,.....

"You butch yer right arm in. You butch yer right arm out. In out In out and shake it all about"

Toll booth

The Toll Booth The driver of a huge tractor trailer lost control of his rig and plowed into an empty tollbooth, smashing it to pieces. Unhurt but a bit shaken up, he climbed down from the wreckage and looked around. Within a matter of minutes, another truck pulled up and unloaded a crew of workers.

The men picked up each broken piece of the former tollbooth, spread some kind of creamy substance on it, and fitted the pieces together. In less than an hour, they had the entire tollbooth reconstructed and good as new.

"Astonishing!" the truck driver said to the crew chief. "What was that white stuff you used to get all of the pieces together?"

The crew chief replied, "Tollgate booth paste."

Yogurt

Two tubs of yogurt walk into a bar.

The bartender, a tub of cottage cheese, says to them, "We don't serve your kind in here."

One of the yogurt cartons says back to him, "Why not? We're cultured individuals."

Once a beautiful colt was born. It was perfect in every way, except it had a strange blood condition. Its red blood cells had a mind of their own.

Let us consider, if you will, one such blood cell. Once the red blood cell was formed it ran its course through the heart and soon was being carried merrily up the neck, through the brain, back down through the neck, into the heart again and then along the colt's spine by way of a large, swift blood vessel.

"This is nice!" thought the little red corpuscle as it was carried along. Soon it came to a point in the blood vessel where it branched downward into two arteries; one flowing into the right leg and one flowing into the left leg. As circumstance and fate would have it, the flow took the tiny red corpuscle down the left leg.

Now I mentioned that this colt had a blood condition causing the blood cells to have a mind of their own. This particular red blood corpuscle, as it was floating down the left leg started to think that it was not in its best interest to be going down the left leg. It reckoned that it would be better to be swimming down the right leg, and it resolved to make the switch.

So the little red corpuscle slowed in the bloodstream and painfully and slowly, it started swimming against the current. It took all of its strength, but the little red corpuscle finally reached the point where it was perched at the exact division between right leg and left leg.

He was very happy to be at this division and joyously let himself be swept down the right leg. The struggle had been worth it, but it had really tired him out and soon he was asleep.

What a terrible mistake that was. In his weakened and tired condition he was easy prey for the hunters of the bloodstream, the big, bad white corpuscles. Soon one saw him and in a wink was on him and gobbled him up, and that was the end of the little red corpuscle.

Now that leads us to make some sense of this little adventure and that is, "Never change streams in mid-horse!"

Stars in their eyes

A young man walks onto the stage of Stars in their Eyes, on crutches, with a cast from his feet to his hips.

Matthew Kelly Introduces him as Simon. 'It's very brave of you to come out here,' says Matthew. 'Please tell the audience what happened?'

'Well' replies Simon 'about a year ago, I was driving with my uncle when we had a really bad accident. Unfortunately my uncle was killed outright but I survived. I was trapped in the car for six hours before I was eventually cut free.' 'The doctors had me in surgery for 12 hours but they couldn't save my legs.'

'That's terrible. But I see you have legs now. Are they artificial?' asks Matthew.

'No Matthew. while I was in hospital the doctors informed me that my uncle had in fact died, but that his legs were fine and with all the advances in medical science, they could graft his legs onto my body. The operation was successful. I have been having physiotherapy for six months and hope to be walking fully again by the end of the year.

A huge round of applause erupts from the audience.

'That's an unbelievable story. So, who are you going to be?'

Tonight, Matthew, I am going to be Simon and Halfuncle'

In Prison

Several years ago, Andy was sentenced to prison. During his stay, he got along well with the guards and all his fellow inmates.

The warden knew that, deep down, Andy was a good person.

So, the warden made arrangements for the inmate to learn a trade while doing his time.

Some three years later, Andy was recognised as one of the best carpenters in the local area.

Often, he would be given a weekend pass to do odd jobs for citizens of the community.

And he always reported back to prison by early Sunday evening.

Andy was a model inmate.

One day, the warden considered remodeling his kitchen, though he lacked the skills to build a set of kitchen cupboards and a large countertop.

So he called Andy into his office and asked him to do the job for him.

To the warden's surprise, Andy simply refused to help.

"But you're an expert, Andy, and I really need your help," said the warden.

"Gosh, warden, I'd really like to help you, but counter fitting is what got me into prison in the first place."

Birthday Hamster

A man asked his son what he would like for his forthcoming sixth birthday. The son said he wanted a hamster so the man visited the local pet shop. There he found the perfect hamster who was in the peak of health so he bought it. He also bought a cage with a wheel and a water bottle. As he was leaving the store owner said "Any problems what-so-ever, just come back here. I live right above the shop and I'll help you out any time you want."

The man put the hamster and cage in his car and drove home. He left them in there until his son had gone to bed so that he wouldn't see them when he brought them in. Next morning is the son's birthday so the man gets up early to wrap the other presents and to check on the hamster. He is horrified to see that the hamster is lying dead in the bottom of the cage with it's legs in the air! He realises that his son will be distraught as he's talked about nothing else for weeks! Quickly he pulled on his coat and drove round to the pet shop and knocked on the owner's door. He explains the problem and the owner is quite understanding and gives the man a new hamster, refusing to take any payment for it.

The man then says "What can I do with the old one? I don't want to bury it as the cat may dig it up and I don't want to throw it away in case my son sees it in the bin".

The pet-shop owner replies "What I do is mix up a strong sugar solution - about 1.5kg of sugar and 2 litres of water, bring it to the boil and then add the hamster and simmer for about two hours, stirring periodically. It makes quite a nice jam."

The man says thank you and that he will try the rather strange recipe and then dashes home with the new hamster. He gives the new hamster to his son who is thrilled with it and promptly goes off to play with it. The man then decides to try the pet-shop owner's recipe so goes to the supermarket to get some sugar, then gets the largest saucepan he has and starts cooking. After two hours, the mixture has become jam-like so the man decides to try it. He gets a slice of bread and smears a layer on and takes a bite. And it is (not unsuprisingly) absolutely revolting! In disgust he throws the rest of the mixture out of the window, all over his garden, and does his best to forget about the whole thing.

But after a few days he notices that daffodils are springing up all over his lawn. He is at a loss to explain it as he's never had any in his garden before! Next day, his son asks him to take him to the pet-shop as he wants to get some more food for the hamster so the man agrees. Whilst his son is looking around at the other animals, the pet-shop owner, recognising the man, comes over to talk to him.

"So", he said, "did you try that recipe I gave you?"

"Yes, but it tasted disgusting so I threw it out the window. Odd thing is, where is landed I've got daffodils growing!"

"Daffodils?" asked the store owner, "Are you sure? You usually get tulips from hamster-jam"

Beer power

A man is waiting for his wife to give birth. The doctor comes in and informs the dad that his son was born without torso, arms or legs. The son is just a head! But the dad loves his son and raises him as well as he can, with love and compassion.

After 18 years, the son is now old enough for his first drink. Dad takes him to the bar, tearfully tells the son he is proud of him and orders up the biggest, strongest drink for his boy. With all the bar patrons looking on curiously and the bartender shaking his head in disbelief, the boy takes his first sip of alcohol.

Swoooosh! Plop!! A torso pops out! The bar is dead silent; then bursts into whoops of joy. The father, shocked, begs his son to drink again.

The patrons chant "Take another drink!"

The bartender continues to shake his head in dismay. Swoooosh! Plip! Plop!!

Two arms pop out.

The bar goes wild. The father, crying and wailing, begs his son to drink again.

The patrons chant, "Take another drink! Take another drink!!"

The bartender ignores the whole affair and goes back to polishing glasses, shaking his head" clearly unimpressed by the amazing scenes.

By now the boy is getting tipsy, but with his new hands he reaches down, grabs his drink and guzzles the last of it. Plop! Plip!! Two legs pop out.

The bar is in chaos.

The father falls to his knees and tearfully thanks God. The boy stands up on his new legs and stumbles to the left then staggers to the right through the front door, into the street, where a truck runs over him and kills him instantly.

The bar falls silent.

The father moans in grief. The bartender sighs and says,

"He should've quit while he was a head!"

Tug Boat Captains

Two tugboat captains who had beenfriends for years always cried “Aye!” and blew their whistles whenever their tugboats passed each other. A new crewman asked his boat’s mate, “What do they do that for?”

The mate looked surprised and replied, “You mean that you’ve never heard the expression ‘An aye for an aye and a toot for a toot’?”

Ah, Hellman's

Most people don't know that back in 1912 Hellman's mayonnaise was manufactured in England. In fact, the "Titanic" was carrying 12,000 jars of the condiment scheduled for delivery in Veracuz, Mexico, which was to be the next port of call for the great ship after New York. The people of Mexico, who were crazy about the stuff, were eagerly awaiting delivery and were disconsolate at the loss. So much so that they declared a National Day of mourning which they still observe today.

It is known, of course, as... Sinko de Mayo

Native American Artifacts

Artifacts are a major portion of an American Indian reservation's economy. Annually, thousands of tourists visit reservations and most will not leave without purchasing at least one memento of the traditional Indian culture.

One enterprising Indian was able to outsell his competitors in the sale of wooden dolls by selling them at only a fraction of the cost others had to charge. On examination of his dolls they found that where traditionally hard wood was used, this Indian would use cheap pine on which he glued thin pieces of fine mahogany, thus being able to produce the dolls at only a fraction of the cost.

While he claimed his dolls were still authentic, his competitors complained that it was only a cheap Sioux Veneer.

This guy goes out with his buddies for a night on the town and they cap off the festivities by going to a house of ill repute.

A week later, the guy visits his doctor complaining of a large green lump on the end of his penis.

The doctor does a thorough exam, then pulls down a weighty medical book and flicks through it till he finds what he's looking for. He looks up and says, "I'm afraid this is serious. We'll have to operate!"

"Operate?", exclaims the fellow, "Why, Doc? What's the problem?"

"Well, you know how boxers can get a cauliflower ear? You've developed the same sort of thing. You've got a brothel sprout."

A man was sitting at home one evening, when the doorbell rang. When he answered the door, a 6 foot tall cockroach was standing there. The cockroach immediately punched him between the eyes and scampered off.

The next evening, the man was sitting at home when the doorbell rang again. When he answered the door, the cockroach was there again. This time, it punched him, kicked him and karate chopped him before running away.

The third evening, the man was sitting at home when the doorbell rang. When he answered the door, the cockroach was there yet again. It leapt at him and stabbed him several times before running off. The gravely injured man managed to crawl to the telephone and summoned an ambulance. He was rushed to intensive care, where they saved his life. The next morning, the doctor was doing his rounds. He asked the man what happened, so the man explained about the 6 foot cockroach's attacks, culminating in the near fatal stabbing.

The doctor thought for a moment and said, "Yes, there's a nasty bug going around."

Due to poor annual profit management at the local crisp factory in the north of England decided to bring in new practices and methods of work.

Part of the manufacturing process involved the transportation of the crisps around the factory in purpose made metal bins. Ever since anyone could remember the materials for the bins had been supplied by a local sheet metal manufacturer with final construction of the bins carried out by the workers within the factory. The bins were hand crafted with neatly soldered seams they were a true work of art.

As a cost saving measure management made the decision to replace the costly hand crafted bins with cheaper ready made plastic bins. Not only would material costs be reduced but also staff levels within the factory could be reduced.

This proposal angered both the workers within the factory and the local union. A vote was taken and strike action was unanimously agreed. As part of the action a locally rally was organised with a march taking place from the factory to the rally.

To lift the workers spirits as they marched with their banners they sang....
"Onward Crisp Bin Solderers"

Cotton Mills

Economic conditions caused the closing of several small cotton mills in the English countryside. A man from Germany bought the buildings and converted them into dog kennels for the convenience of German tourists who liked to have their pets with them while holidaying in England.

One summer evening, a local resident called to his wife to come out of the house.

"Just listen!", he urged. "The Mills Are Alive With the Hounds of Munich!"

Max: Doc, everywhere I look I see frogs, rabbits, and kangaroos! What’s wrongwith me?

Therapist: Don’t worry, it’s just a hoptical illusion.

The trusty knight has been riding for three days to save a beautiful damsel in distress kept captive by the evil Lord John in his dark castle, when it starts to rain. His tired steed, already exhausted from the hard riding slips in a muddy hole, falls into a ditch and breaks its neck.

The knight, trapped under his trusty mount, starts to shout for help, after all, it is raining and the water is rising around him. Luckily, nearby was an old Inn, and the Inn Keeper hears our hero's shouts, pulls on his sou'wester and goes to investigate.

The Inn Keeper, being a helpful soul pulls the knight from under his dead horse and drags him to the Inn. After a few reviving brandies the knight relates his mission of rescue to the Inn Keeper. The Inn Keeper, suggests that nothing can be done in the awful weather to aid the knight on his way, and suggests the knight gets a good night's sleep. And the Inn Keeper says he will organise a new horse for the knight in the morning, so he can continue his quest.

"It's no good," says our hero, "I cannot sleep whilst the Lady Lenora lies chained and in danger at the hands of that evil Lord John. I must have a horse tonight!"

The Inn Keeper is much touched by the knight's devotion to duty and wracks his brain for an idea where he can get a horse, on a dark and stormy night to aid the knight on his way.

"I can think of nowhere to get a horse at this time of night, but I do have one beast of burden which may be of use, my trusty Jules." Saying this the Inn Keeper leads the knight out to the kitchens where lying by the fire is this massive Irish Wolfhound!

"I use him when I go to town, I ride him, but he is old and not very reliable."

Desperate to be on his way to rescue the lovely Lenora, the knight says, "I must have your dog, Inn Keeper. Jules can be the difference between Lenora being rescued or ravaged!" I'll give you this bag of gold for him".

Tempted, the Inn Keeper says, "Well, you must be pretty desperate, on such a dark and stormy night, to even consider this. But, you must consider poor Jules's health, he's not young any more and quite arthritic, the wet will play havoc with his arthritis! You wouldn't get very far on him."

"Five bags of gold, and this silver chalice" says the knight.

"No," says the Inn Keeper. "Why don't you stay here tonight and get some rest, and I will procure a horse for you in the morning."

"I must rescue the Lady Lenora tonight!" says the desperate knight. "I will give you all my lands, and my castle, if you let me take your trusty Jules tonight!"

"Look," says the Innkeeper, "It's not the money. I just wouldn't send a Knight out on a dog like this!"

Sky TV

Sky have just won the rights to screen the first World Origami Championships from Tokyo.

Unfortunately it's only available on Paper View.

A string walks into a bar with a few friends and orders a beer. The bartender says, "I'm sorry, but we don't serve strings here." The string walks away a little upset and sits down with his friends.

A few minutes later he goes back to the bar and orders a beer. The bartender, looking a little exasperated, says, "I'm sorry, we don't serve strings here."

So the string goes back to his table. Then he gets an idea. He ties himself in a loop and messes up the top of his hair. Then he walks back up to the bar and orders a beer.

The bartender squints at him and says, "Hey, aren't you a string?"

And the string says, "Nope, I'm a frayed knot."

A man is working on the buses in the US collecting tickets.

He rings the bell for the driver to set off when there's a woman half getting on the bus. The driver sets off, the woman falls from the bus and is killed. At the trial the man is sent down for murder and seeing as it's Texas he's sent to the electric chair. On the day of his execution he's sat in the chair and the executioner grants him a final wish.

"Well" says the man, "is that your packed lunch over there?" "Yes" answers the executioner. "Can I have that green banana?"

The executioner gives the man his green banana and waits till he's eaten it. When the man's finished, the executioner flips the switch sending hundreds of thousands of volts through the man. When the smoke clears the man is still alive. The executioner can't believe it.

"Can I go?" the man asks. "I suppose so" says the executioner, "that's never happened before."

The man leaves and eventually gets a job back on the buses selling tickets. Again he rings the bell for the driver to go when people are still getting on. A man falls under the wheels and is killed. The bloke is sent down for murder again and sent to the electric chair. The executioner is determined to do it right this time so rigs the chair up to the electric supply for the whole of Texas.

The bloke is again sat in the chair. "What is your final wish?" asks the executioner. "Can I have that green banana in your packed lunch ?" says the condemned man. The executioner sighs and reluctantly gives up his banana. The bloke eats the banana all up and the executioner flips the switch. Millions of volts course through the chair blacking out Texas. When the smoke clears the man is still sat there smiling in the chair. The executioner can't believe it and lets the man go.

Well, would you believe, the bloke gets his job back on the buses. Once again he rings the bell whilst passengers are still getting on, this time killing three of them. He is sent to the electric chair again. The executioner rigs up all United States electricity supply to The chair, determined to get his man this time. The man sits down in the chair smiling.

"What's your final wish ?" asks the executioner. "Well" says the man, "Can I have that green banana out of your packed lunch.?" The executioner hands over his banana and the man eats it all, skin included. The executioner pulls the handle and a brazillion volts go through the chair. When the smoke rises the man is still sat there alive without even a burn mark.

"I give up" says the executioner, "I don't understand how you can still be alive after all that?". He stroked his chin. "It's something to do with that green banana isn't it" he asked.

Nahh" said the bloke,

"I'm just a really bad conductor"

A bloke is sitting by his car at the side of the road looking unhappy.

A passer-by sees his glum face and asks what the problem is. "I've locked myself out of my car" replies the man.

"That's not a problem" replied the passer-by, "Step out of the way, and let me try rubbing my bum on the door".

The motorist is a bit perplexed, but reckons there's no harm in it letting the man try - it might be worth a laugh.

The passer-by turns his bum to the car and slowly rubs it up and down the driver's door. Suddenly, the lock opens and the passer-by turns and opens the car door.

"That's amazing!" says the motorist, "How did you do it?"

"It's easy" replies the pedestrian...

"I'm wearing khaki trousers."

Snow White received a camera as a gift. She joyfully took many pictures of the Dwarves, the forest, the animals, etc. She quickly finished her first roll, and immediately took the film into town to be developed.

"How long before they're ready?" Snow asked the clerk. He informed her it would be at least 6 days, as they had to send it to the Big City to be processed (remember, they didn't have 1-hour processing OR FedEx back then!) After a week, she went to get the finished photos. The clerk told her they were not yet back from the processor.

"Come back next week", he said to her. Of course, as the story goes, she returned the following week for her 4x6 glossies, but they still had not returned! Snow White was so distraught that she started to sob right there at the counter.

The clerk, trying to console her, (and wanting to relax the other customers, who were already starting to shift uncomfortably), so they didn't bolt from the store said kindly, "Don't worry, Dear... Someday your prints will come."

The FBI and the DEA are joining efforts and will be assigning some of their agents to a quasi-FBI/DEA enforcement team specifically targeting the illegal allergy pills sales that occur on the black market.

The agents will be called "Pseudo Feds."

The confused young man couldn't decide whether to marry Kathryn or Edith.

Try as he might, he just could not make up his mind.

Unwilling to give up either, he strung them along for far too long.

This indecision continued until both young women got tired of the situation and left him for good.

The moral of the story:

You can't have your Kate and Edith too!

There was a mummy balloon, daddy balloon and baby balloon and they were all asleep one night. The baby balloon woke up and couldn't get back to sleep so decided to get in bed with his mum and dad.

But the baby balloon could not fit in the bed, so he quietly let some air out of his dad and tried again. But still the baby ballloon could not fit into bed. So he let some air out of his mum and tried to get in bed again. But still he could not fit into bed, so he let some air out of himself. Finally he squeezed into bed with his mum and dad and soon fell asleep.

The next morning his dad woke him up in a rage, his dad said "son, you've let me down, you've let your mum down but worst of all you've let yourself down!"

On A Beach

A guy is feeling depressed and goes for a walk on the beach. He finds an old bottle on the shore, and when he picks it up a spirit comes out and says, "You look tense. Would you like a good back rub?"

"Well, actually, I'm depressed because I'm so broke. I wish you would give me a million pounds instead."

"I can't do that, but I can give you a back rub."

"Aren't genies supposed to grant wishes?"

"I'm not a genie. Does that look like an oil lamp? And you call what you did rubbing it? I'll show you what a real rub is!"

"If you're not a genie, what are you?"

"Haven't you ever heard of a massage in a bottle?"

Did we Order This?

A couple goes for a meal at a Chinese restaurant and order the "Chicken Surprise." The waiter brings the meal, served in a lidded cast iron pot. Just as the wife is about to serve herself, the lid of the pot rises lightly and she briefly sees two beady little eyes looking around before the lid slams back down.

"Good grief, did you see that?" she asks her husband.

He hasn't, so she asks him to look in the pot. He reaches for it and again the lid rises, and he sees two little eyes looking around before it slams down. Rather perturbed, he calls the waiter over, explains what is happening, and demands an explanation.

"Please sir," says the waiter, "what you order?"

The husband replies, "Chicken Surprise."

"Ah, so sorry," says the waiter, "I bring you Peeking Duck."

Careless Apprentice

A young apprentice optometrist recently got careless and got his hand caught in the lens grinder.

He wasn't seriously hurt...he just made a spectacle of himself.

Koala Tea

A dying man was told by his doctor that his only hope of cure was to admit himself to Mercy Hospital in Adelaide, Australia. There he was to receive a tea made from Koala Bear hairs, which was the only known cure for his disease.

He does so. As the nurse is giving him the tea, he notices Koala Bear hairs floating in it, and asks the nurse to please strain it.

The nurse archly replies,

"The Koala Tea of Mercy is never strained."

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