Some Good Stories

Good Stories

The George Carlin Theory:

"The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death. What's that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch and you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities. You become a little baby, you go back into the womb, spend your last nine months floating. . .and you finish off as an orgasm."

The Dangers of Bread

A recent Cincinnati Enquirer headline read, "Smell of baked bread may be health hazard." The article went on to describe the dangers of the smell of baking bread. The main danger, apparently, is that the organic components of this aroma may break down ozone (I'm not making this stuff up). Well, I've done a little research, and what I've discovered should make anyone think twice....

1: More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread eaters.

2: Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.

3: In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever and influenza ravaged whole nations.

4: More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread.

5: Bread is made from a substance called "dough." It has been proven that as little as one pound of dough can be used to suffocate a mouse. The average American eats more bread than that in one month!

6: Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low occurrence of cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and osteoporosis.

7: Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water to eat begged for bread after only two days.

8: Bread is often a "gateway" food item, leading the user to "harder" items such as butter, jelly, peanut butter and even cold cuts.

9: Bread has been proven to absorb water. Since the human body is more than 90 percent water, it follows that eating bread could lead to your body being taken over by this absorptive food product, turning you into a soggy, gooey bread-pudding person. (Addendum to original findings - this fact accounts for Madison Avenue's glorification of the "Dough Boy," thus predisposing young people to a life of bread consumption! Not to mention the glorification of bread earting by some fundamentalist religious sects!)

10: Newborn babies can choke on bread.

11: Bread is baked at temperatures as high as 400 degrees Fahrenheit! That kind of heat can kill an adult in less than one minute.

12: Most American bread eaters are utterly unable to distinguish between significant scientific fact and meaningless statistical babbling.

Please send an e-mail on to everyone you know who cares about this crucial issue.

Darwin Awards

1. In September in Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in two feet of water after squeezing head first through an 18-inch-wide sewer grate to retrieve his car keys.
2. In October, a 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker, who "totally zoned when he ran," according to his wife, accidentally jogged off a 200-foot-high cliff on his daily run.
3. Buxton, NC: A man died on a beach when an 8-foot-deep hole he had dug into the sand caved in as he sat inside it. Beachgoers said Daniel Jones, 21, dug the hole for fun, or protection from the wind, and had been sitting in a beach chair at the bottom Thursday afternoon when it collapsed, burying him beneath 5 feet of sand. People on the beach, on the outer banks, used their hands and shovels, trying to claw their way to Jones, a resident of Woodbridge, VA, but could not reach him.. It took rescue workers using heavy equipment almost an hour to free him while about 200 people looked on. Jones was pronounced dead at a hospital.
4. In February, Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed in Lompoc, CA, as he fell face-first through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was burgling. Death was caused when the long flashlight he had placed in his mouth (to keep his hands free) rammed into the base of his skull as he hit the floor.
5. According to police in Dahlonega, GA, ROTC cadet Nick Berrena, 20, was stabbed to death in January by fellow cadet Jeffrey Hoffman, 23, who was trying to prove that a knife could not penetrate the flakvest Berrena was wearing.
6. Sylvester Briddell, Jr , 26, was killed in February in Selbyville, Del, as he won a bet with friends who said he would not put a revolver loaded with four bullets into his mouth and pull the trigger.
7. In February, according to police in Windsor, Ont, Daniel Kolta, 27, and Randy Taylor, 33, died in a head-on collision, thus earning a tie in the game of chicken they were playing with their snowmobiles.
8. In September, a 7-year-old boy fell off a 100-foot-high bluff near Ozark, Ark, after he lost his grip swinging on a cross that marked the spot where another person had fallen to his death in 1990.

Honorable mentions

1) In Guthrie, Okla, in October, Jason Heck tried to kill a millipede with a shot from his 22-caliber rifle, but the bullet ricocheted off a
rock near the hole and hit pal Antonio Martinez in the head, fracturing his skull.
2) In Elyria, Ohio, in October, Martyn Eskins, attempting to clean out cobwebs in his basement, declined to use a broom in favor of a propane torch and caused a fire that burned the first and second floors of his house.
3) Paul Stiller, 47, was hospitalized in Andover Township, NJ, in September, and his wife Bonnie was also injured, by a quarter-stick of dynamite that blew up in their car . While driving around at 2 AM, the bored couple lit the dynamite and tried to toss it out the window to see what would happen, but they apparently failed to notice that the window was closed.
4) Taking "Amateur Night" Too Far: In Betulia, Colombia, an annual festival in November includes five days of amateur bullfighting. This year, no bull was killed, but dozens of matadors were injured, including one gored in the head and one Bobbittized. Said one participant, "It's just one bull against [a town of] a thousand
Morons."

Also rans

1) Four people were injured in a string of related bizarre accidents. Sherry Moeller was admitted with a head wound caused by flying masonry, Tim Vegas was diagnosed with a mild case of whiplash and contusions on his hest, arms and face, Bryan Corcoran suffered torn gum tissue, and Pamela Klesick's first two fingers of her right hand had been bitten off. Moeller had just dropped her husband off for his first day of work and, in addition to a good-bye kiss, she flashed her breasts at him. "I'm still not sure why I did it," she said later "I was really close to the car, so I didn't think anyone would see. Besides, it couldn't have been for more than two seconds ". However, cab driver Vegas did see and lost control of his cab, running over the curb and into the corner of the Johnson Medical Building. Inside, Klesick, a dental technician, was cleaning Corcoran's teeth. The crash of the cab against the building making her jump, tearing Corcoran's gums with a cleaning pick.. In shock, he bit down, severing two fingers from Klesick's hand. Moeller's wound was caused by a falling piece of the medical building.
2) TAOS, NM -A woman went to a poison control center after eating three birth-control vaginal inserts. Her English was so bad she had to draw a picture describing how she believed she had poisoned herself. A translator arrived shortly thereafter and confirmed doctors' suspicions. Marie Valishnokov thought the inserts were some kind of candy or gum, being unable to read the foil wrappers. After the third one, she realized something was wrong when her throat and mouth began to fill with a sour-tasting foam. She ran for the Poison Control Center, only a few blocks away where doctors were able to flush the foam from her mouth,
throat and stomach with no ill effects. Another bilingual education success/failure?
3) La Grange, GA -Attorney Antonio Mendoza was released from a trauma center after having a cell phone removed from his rectum. "My dog drags the thing all over the house," he said later. "He must have dragged it into the shower. I slipped on the tile, tripped against the dog and sat down right on the thing. "The extraction took more than three hours due to the fact that the cover to Mr Mendoza's phone had opened during insertion. "He was a real trooper during the entire episode," said Dr Dennis Crobe. "Tony just cracked jokes and really seemed to be enjoying himself. Three times during the extraction his phone rang and each time, he made jokes about it that just had us rolling on the floor. By the time we finished, we really did expect to find an answering machine in there".
4) TACOMA, WA -Kerry Bingham, had been drinking with several friends when one of them said they knew a person who had bungee-jumped from the
Tacoma Narrows Bridge in the middle of traffic. The conversation grew more heated and at least 10 men trooped along the walkway of the bridge at 4:30 am. Upon arrival at the midpoint of the bridge they discovered that no one had brought bungee rope. Bingham, who had continued drinking, volunteered and pointed out that a coil of lineman's cable lay nearby. One end of the cable was secured round Bingham's leg and the other end was tied to the bridge. His fall lasted 40 feet before the cable tightened and tore his foot off at the ankle. He miraculously survived his fall into the icy river water and was rescued by two nearby fishermen. "All I can say," said Bingham, "is that God was watching out for me on that night. There's just no other explanation for it." Bingham's foot was never located.

Great Quotes

Question: If you could live forever, would you and why?
Answer: "I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live
forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever."
Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss USA contest

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"Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like
that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff."
Mariah Carey
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"I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law."
David Dinkins, New York City Mayor, answering accusations that he failed to pay his taxes.
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"Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life."
Brooke Shields, during an interview to become spokesperson for a federal antismoking campaign
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"I've never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body."
Winston Bennett, University of Kentucky basketball forward
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"Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country."
Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, DC
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"We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees."
Jason Kidd, upon his drafting to the Dallas Mavericks

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"I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the
Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves."
John Wayne
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"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."
"I love California. I practically grew up in Phoenix."

"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
"We are ready for an unforeseen event that may or may not occur."

"The loss of life will be irreplaceable."
"I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have is that I didn't study my Latin harder in school so I could
converse with those people."
"What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is."
"It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago..."
Dan Quayle
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"It's no exaggeration to say that the undecided could go one way or another."
"I have opinions of my own -strong opinions- but I don't always agree with
them."
George Bush, US President
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"We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need?"
Lee Iacocca
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"The word "genius" isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein."
Joe Theisman, NFL football quarterback and sports analyst
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"We don't necessarily discriminate. We simply exclude certain types of people."
Colonel Gerald Wellman, ROTC Instructor
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"Traditionally, most of Australia's imports come from overseas."
Keppel Enderbery
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"Your food stamps will be stopped effective March 1992 because
we received notice that you passed away. May God bless you.
You may reapply if there is a change in your circumstances."
Department of Social Services, Greenville, South Carolina
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"If somebody has a bad heart, they can plug this jack in at night as
they go to bed and it will monitor their heart throughout the night.
And the next morning, when they wake up dead, there'll be a record."
Mark S. Fowle, FCC Chairman
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Product Labels

On a Sears hairdryer: "Do not use while sleeping."
On a bag of Fritos: "You could be a winner! No purchase necessary. Details inside."
On a bar of Dial soap: "Directions: Use like regular soap."
On some Swann frozen dinners: "Serving suggestion: Defrost."
On Tesco's Tiramisu dessert (printed on bottom of box): "Do not turn upside down."
On Marks & Spencer Bread Pudding: "Product will be hot after heating."
On packaging for a Rowenta iron: "Do not iron clothes on body."
On Boot's Children's Cough Medicine: "Do not drive a car or operate machinery after taking this medication."
On Nytol Sleep Aid: "Warning: May cause drowsiness."
On most brands of Christmas lights: "For indoor or outdoor use only."
On a Japanese food processor: "Not to be used for the other use."
On Sainsbury's peanuts: "Warning: contains nuts."
On an American Airlines packet of nuts: "Instructions: Open packet, eat nuts."
On a child's Superman costume: "Wearing of this garment does not enable you to fly."
On a Swedish chain saw: "Do not attempt to stop chain with your hands or genitals."
On a blanket from Taiwan - NOT TO BE USED AS PROTECTION FROM A TORNADO.
On a helmet mounted mirror used by US cyclists - REMEMBER, OBJECTS IN THE MIRROR ARE ACTUALLY BEHIND YOU.
On a Taiwanese shampoo - USE REPEATEDLY FOR SEVERE DAMAGE.
On the bottle-top of a (UK) flavoured milk drink - AFTER OPENING, KEEP UPRIGHT.
On a New Zealand insect spray - THIS PRODUCT NOT TESTED ON ANIMALS.
In a US guide to setting up a new computer - TO AVOID CONDENSATION FORMING, ALLOW THE BOXES TO WARM UP TO ROOM TEMPERATURE BEFORE OPENING. (the instruction was inside the box.)
On a Japanese product used to relieve painful hemorrhoids - LIE DOWN ON BED AND INSERT POSCOOL SLOWLY UP TO THE PROJECTED PORTION LIKE A SWORD GUARD INTO ANAL DUCT. WHILE INSERTING POSCOOL FOR APPROXIMATELY 5 MINUTES, KEEP QUIET.
In some countries, on the bottom of Coke bottles - OPEN OTHER END.
On a packet of Sun maid raisins - WHY NOT TRY TOSSING OVER YOUR FAVOURITE BREAKFAST CEREAL?

1000 Marbles

The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings. Perhaps it's the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it's the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable. A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the basement shack with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning, turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it.

I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. You know the kind, he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business. He was telling whoever he was talking with something about "a thousand marbles". I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say.

"Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you're busy with your job. I'm sure they pay you well but it's a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. Too bad you missed your daughter's dance recital and your friend who was in town the other day." He continued, "Let me tell you something Tom, something that has helped me keep a good perspective on my own priorities." And that's when he began to explain his theory of a "thousand marbles." "You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years." "Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900 which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now stick with me Tom, I'm getting to the important part." "It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail", he went on, "and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy." "So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round-up 1000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside of a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear. Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life. There is nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight." "Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time." "It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend more time with your family and friends. I hope to meet you again here on the band. 75 year Old Man, this is K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!" You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow signed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to work on the antenna that morning, and then I was going to work on the next club newsletter. Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss.

"C'mon honey, I'm taking you and the kids to breakfast." "What brought this on?" she asked with a smile. "Oh, nothing special; it's just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. Hey, can we stop at a toy store while we're out? I need to buy some marbles."

* * * Take times for family and friends...you don't know how many marbles you have left in life.

Analogy of the Apes

Start with a cage containing five apes. In the cage, hang a banana on a string and put stairs under it. Before long, an ape will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the apes with cold water. After a while, another ape makes an attempt with the same result - all the apes are sprayed with cold water. This continues through several more attempts. Pretty soon, when an ape tries to climb the stairs, the other apes all try to prevent it. Now, turn off the cold water. Remove one ape from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new ape will see the banana and will want to climb the stairs. To his horror, all of the other apes will attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted. Next, remove another of the original five apes and replace it with a new one. The newcomer will go to the stairs and be attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm. Again, replace a third original ape with a new one. The new one will make it to the stairs and then be attacked. Two of the four apes that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest ape. After replacing the fourth and fifth original apes, all the apes, which have been sprayed with cold water, will have been replaced. Nevertheless, no ape ever again approaches the stairs. Why not?

............... Because that's the way they've always done it and that's the way it's always been around their cage.

The Singer

My wife and I were invited to a retirement party hosted by long time friends Sheila and Del. During the celebration we were dancing, along with several other couples, to a lead singer and a 6 piece band. Shortly after the band began playing, a man dancing right beside us separated from his wife and sauntered up to the lead singer. He motioned to the singer to give him the microphone. Surprisingly the singer gave the microphone to him. The man began singing and was exceptional! We were amazed at the quality and how smoothly he handled the song. After he finished he went over and sat down with his wife. Later my wife and I sat down at the same table. We congratulated him and remarked that he should really consider a singing career. The man chuckled and thanked us. In December we received a Christmas letter from Sheila and Del. In it they thanked everybody for attending their celebration. They gave special thanks to James Clark, who belted out some terrific jazz on the saxophone, and Herb Feemster for singing a song. Unbeknownst to us, the man that we suggested “try professional singing” was in fact Herb of Peaches and Herb, a duo possessing a long string of top ten hits and Grammy awards.