many men

Many years ago, a girlfriend of mine attempted to introduce “culture” into my dismal life, by taking me to our nation’s finest museums, art galleries and concert halls. I was genuinely impressed with her love of the arts, and made a serious attempt to learn, but I guess I forgot to mention to her that “creating humor” is ALSO an “art.”

On one journey to a nice art gallery, we marveled at a life-sized replica of the statue of the Venus de Milo. While staring at it, a museum guard strolled past us, his .38 caliber pistol secured inside his holster.

As he walked past the lovely statue of Venus, I couldn’t resist saying out loud, “DON’T SHOOT! SHE’S UNARMED!”

That was my LAST date with that young lady….

Today we took a poll to see how many women would sleep with the President.

10% said “no”
10% said “yes”
and the other 80% said “never again”

I took some friends out to dinner last week, and I noticed a spoon in the shirt pocket of our waiter as he handed us the menus. It seemed a little odd, but I dismissed it as a random thing until our busboy came with water & tableware; he, too, sported a spoon in his breast-pocket. I looked around the room, and all the waiters, waitresses, busboys, etc., had spoons in their pockets.

When our waiter returned to take our order, I just had to ask, “Why the spoons?” “Well,” he explained, “our parent company recently hired some Price Waterhouse efficiency experts to review all our procedures, and after months of statistical analyses, they concluded that our patrons drop spoons on the floor 73% more often than any other utensil at a frequency of 3 spoons per hour per workstation. By preparing all our workers for this contingency in advance, we can cut our trips to the kitchen down and save time … nearly 1.5 extra man hours per shift.”

Just as he concluded, a “ch-ching” came from the table behind him, and he quickly replace a fallen spoon with the one from his pocket. “I’ll grab another spoon the next time I’m in the kitchen instead of making a special trip,” he proudly explained. I was impressed. “Thanks. I had to ask.” “No problem,” he answered, then he continued to take our orders.

As the members of my dinner party took their turns, my eyes darted back & forth from each person ordering and my menu. That’s when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a thin, black thread protruding from our waiter’s fly. Again, I dismissed it; yet I had to scan the room and, sure enough, there were other waiters & busboys with strings hanging out of their trousers.

My curiosity overrode discretion at this point, so before he could leave I had to ask. “Excuse me, but … uh … why, or what …about that string?” “Oh, yeah” he began in a quieter tone. “Not many people are that observant. That same efficiency group found we could save time in the Men’s room, too.” “How’s that?” “You see, by tying a string to the end of our, eh, selves, we can pull it out at the urinals literally hands-free and thereby eliminate the need to wash our hands, cutting time spent in the restroom by over 93%!”

“Oh, that makes sense,” I said, but then thinking thru the process, I asked, “Hey, wait-a-minute. If the string helps you pull it out, how do you get it back in?”

“Well,” he whispered, “I don’t know about the other guys, but I use my spoon.”

“EVERYTHING COMES IN THREES”
Not true. In reality, everything comes in ones. Sometimes, when three “ones” come in a row, it seems like everything comes in threes. By the way, in medieval times it was widely believed that everything came in
twenty-sixes. They were wrong, too. It just took them longer to recognize the pattern.

“YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU (When you die)”
Well….., that depends on what it is. If it’s your dark blue suit, you can certainly take it with you. In fact, not only can you take it with you, you can probably put some things in your pockets.

“YOU LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY”
Actually, you learn something old every day. Just because you’ve just learned it doesn’t mean it’s new. Other people already knew it, Columbus is a good example of this.

“THE SKY’S THE LIMIT”
Well, how can the sky be the limit? The sky never ends. What kind of a limit is that? The earth is the limit. You dig a hole and what do you keep getting? More earth. The earth is the limit.

“YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR”
Clearly this is not true. Have you been shopping recently? Only a very naive person would believe that you get what you pay for. In point of fact, if you check your purchases carefully, you’ll find that you get whatever
they feel like giving you. And if corporations get any more powerful, you soon might not even get that.

“TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY”
Not necessarily true. Today is another day. We have no idea what tomorrow is going to be. It might turn out to be another day, but we can’t be sure. If it happens, I’ll be the first to say so. But, you know what? By that time, it will be today again.

“NICE GUYS FINISH LAST”
Not true. Studies have shown that, on average, nice guys finish third in a field of six. Actually, short guys finish last. By the way, in medieval times it was widely believed that nice guys finished twenty-sixth. You can
see how limited those people were.

“IF YOU’VE SEEN ONE, YOU’VE SEEN THEM ALL”
Do we even have to talk about this one? This should be obvious. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen … one. If you’ve seen them all, *then* you’ve seen them all. I don’t even understand how this one got started.

“THOSE WERE THE DAYS”
No. Those were the nights! Think back. Weren’t the nights better? Days you had to work. Nights you went to parties, danced, drank and got laid. “Those were the nights!”

“THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH”
What about when you eat at home? I don’t pay when I eat lunch at home - it’s FREE! Sometimes I’ll leave a tip, but basically, it’s a free lunch. Yes, I know we had to buy the food at the store. But as the Zen Buddhists say, ‘The Food Is Not the Lunch’.

“YOU PAY YOUR MONEY, AND YOU TAKE YOUR CHANCES”
I think what I said earlier still applies” You pay your money and you take whatever they jolly well give you. Actually, when you get right down to it, you pay your money and you lose your money.

“EVERYBODY HAS HIS PRICE”
Not so. Would you believe there are millions of people who do not have their price? Thanks to a government mix-up, many people have their neighbors price.

“THEY DON’T MAKE ‘EM LIKE THEY USED TO”
Actually they do make ‘em like they used to, they just don’t sell ‘em anymore. They make ‘em, and then they keep ‘em.

“TWO WRONGS DON’T MAKE A RIGHT”
Well, it just so happens that two wrongs do make a right. Not only that, but as the number of wrongs increases, the whole thing goes up exponentially. So that while two wrongs make one right, and four wrongs make two rights, it actually takes sixteen wrongs to make three rights, and
256 wrongs to make four rights. It seems to me that anyone who is stringing together 256 wrongs needs counseling, not mathematics.

“IF IT’S NOT ONE THING, IT’S ANOTHER”
No, not always. Sometimes if it’s not one thing, not only is it not another, but it turns out to be something else entirely.

“YOU CAN’T WIN THEM ALL”
Not true. Believe it or not, there is a man somewhere in Illinois who, so far, has won them all. But don’t get too excited; it has also been discovered that it is possible to lose them all. By the way, there is no record of anyone having tied them all.

“YOU CAN’T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS”
That depends on how intimately you know the other person. Maybe you can’t have it both ways at once, but if you’ve got a little time, you can probably have it six or seven ways.

“THINGS HAVE TO GET BETTER, THEY CAN’T GET ANY WORSE”
This is an example of truly faulty logic. Just because things can’t get any worse, is no reason to believe they have to get better. They might just stay the same. And, by the way, who says things can’t get any worse? For
many people, things get worse and worse and worse and worse.

“NOBODY EVER SAID THAT LIFE WAS FAIR”
I specifically remember as I was growing up, at least twelve different people, telling me life was fair. One person put it this way; “Life, you will find, is fair.” Oddly enough, all twelve of those people died before the age of twenty-seven.

“IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO”
Sounds good, but simple reasoning will reveal that actually it takes only one to tango. It does take two to tango together, maybe. But one person is certainly capable of tangoing on his own. He just might look a little silly.

“THERE’S A SUCKER BORN EVERY MINUTE, AND TWO TO TAKE HIM”
This may have been true in the past, but now, if you adjust for the increased population base, birth control, and the so-called moral decline, not only are there five suckers born every minute, there are now
fifty-three to take him.

“WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW WON’T HURT YOU”
Why don’t we just ask Julius Caesar and John F. Kennedy about this one?

“LIFE IS SHORT”
Sorry. Life is not short, it’s just that everything else lasts so long -mountains, rivers, stars, planets - life seems short. Actually life lasts just the right amount of time. Until you die. Death on the other hand….is very, very short!

The Lord spoke to Noah and said, “I’m very angry with the way things are going on earth — this is not what I had in mind! I have accordingly decided to destroy it and start over! In 6 months I’m going to make it rain until the whole earth is covered with water just like before, and all the evil is destroyed; if not, I will wring it out like an old sponge. But rather than start from scratch, I’m still considering saving a few good people, and two of every kind of living thing on the planet. So I’m ordering you to build an Ark for this purpose.” And with a flash of lightning, He delivered the specs for an Ark.

“Yes Lord!” said Noah, trembling in fear and fumbling with the blueprints.

“Don’t forget!” thundered God’s voice, “In 6 months it starts to rain! You’d better have that Ark built or learn to tread water, indefinitely!”.

Six months passed. The skies began to cloud up and rain began to fall. The Lord saw that Noah was just sitting out in his yard in the rain, weeping. There was no sign of an Ark. “Noah!” shouted the Lord through the thunder and lightning, “Where is my Ark?!”

A sobbing Noah answered, “Lord, please forgive me! I did my best, but there were BIG problems. First I had to get a Building Permit for the Ark, and your plans didn’t meet the code. So I had to hire an engineer to re-draw the plans. You know how that goes.

“Then there was a huge upset about whether or not the Ark needed a fire sprinkler system. My neighbors objected, claiming I was violating zoning by building an Ark in my front yard, so I had to get a variance from the city council!

“Then, I couldn’t get enough wood for the Ark because some earth-sanctifying organizations have instigated a ban on cutting trees in order to save the spotted numbat. I had to convince the Department of Conservation and Land Management that I needed the wood so I could save the numbats; it was the only way out. But then they wouldn’t let me catch any numbats! So, no numbats.

“Then the carpenters formed a union and went out on strike. I had to negotiate a settlement with the Industrial Relations Commission before anyone would pick up a saw or a hammer. Now we have 16 carpenters going on the boat, but how am I to pay them? And still no numbats!

“When I realized the building of the Ark was stalled, I thought I could at least start gathering up pairs of animals, but I promptly got sued by an animal rights group. They insisted if the threat was real, I had to save ALL the animals, not just one pair of each. I just got that suit dismissed when the EPA notified me I couldn’t use the Ark, without filing an environmental impact statement on your proposed flood. They didn’t take kindly to the idea that they have no jurisdiction over the conduct of a Supreme Being that none of them personally knows to exist.

“Then the Royal Australian Army wanted a map of the proposed new flood plain. I sent them a globe. They returned it with a note that read, ‘As any fool can see, water will NOT adhere to a round globe; it will fall off.’

“Right now, I’m trying to resolve a complaint from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over how many Croatians I’m supposed to hire. Most of them are involved in some kind of uprising. In the meantime, the IRS has seized all my assets, claiming I’m trying to avoid paying taxes by leaving the country, and I just received a nasty notice from some state agency about owing them some kind of ‘use’ tax.

“I really don’t see any way I can finish your Ark for at least another five years!” Noah wailed. “Dear God, do you have a solution?”

Suddenly, the sky cleared! The sun came out! A rainbow arched across the heavens! Noah looked up and sighed with relief. “You mean you’re not going to destroy the earth after all?”

“No,” replied the Lord, “the government is doing it just fine, without any help from Me.”