Humour for a Wednesday

[Abeyance]

I'm bored at work and nobody is replying to any posts on here, so I might as well go for it. These first three are bought to you by three wise men:

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

~ George Bernard Shaw ~

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

~ Winston Churchill ~

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself.

~ Mark Twain ~

[Abeyance]

America vs Canada

"Tim Hortons has supplanted McDonald's as Canada's largest food service operator; it has nearly twice as many Canadian outlets as McDonald's, and its system-wide sales surpassed those of McDonald's Canadian operations in 2002. The chain accounted for 22.6% of all fast food industry revenues in Canada in 2005. Tim Hortons commands 76% of the Canadian market for baked goods (based on the number of customers served) and holds 62% of the Canadian coffee market (compared to Starbucks, in the number two position, at 7%)."

Let's address that final statistic. Tim Hortons 62, Starbucks 7. Our coffee shop is also named after record-breaking NHL star Tim Horton who died tragically in an alcohol related car accident on Feb 21, 1974.

Starbucks is named after a Battlestar Galactica character with really bad hair.

On to celebrities. Canada has given the world comedians Jim Carrey, Mike Myers, and Dan Akroyd. America has given us Pauly Shore. Canada has given the world James Cameron, creator of The Terminator. America has given us director James Sargent, creator of Jaws 4: The Revenge, a film hailed as one of the worst films ever made. It also won the award for "Worst Special Effects" due to "Bruce", the painfully obvious small rubber shark model who roared. I am not making that up. In the movie the shark roars. Like some kind of aquatic lion.

Roars. Out loud. In the air.

Sigh.

Jack Bauer, America's darling anti-terrorist superhero? Played by Canadian actor Kiefer Sutherland. His tremendously hot daughter Kim Bauer? Played by Canadian vixen Elisha Cuthbert.

But perhaps the most powerful and frightening evidence of Canada's superiority comes in the form of James Tiberius Kirk. That's right, Mr. "I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am." was brought to life by Canadian thespian William Shatner.

And for those who still aren't convinced. Two words.

Wayne Gretzky

Number 99... a.k.a "The Great One". The greatest hockey player who ever lived.

And the truly scary part? I haven't even scraped the surface.

[Abeyance]

Reading something earlier reminded me of this (it actually happened):

I Walked into Game back in 2003 (nearly a year after the game Dungeon Siege was released, by Microsoft... which means a very wide release, it's important) and was browsing the PC games section; which was much larger back then. The store was very busy and there was a guy standing right in front of me browsing the same shelf.

A sales monkey came over and asked the man if he needed help finding something. This guy asked if they had any copies of "Dungeon Siege". The sales dude replied...

"I've never heard of it. We don't carry it."

I said, "Excuse me" and without moving my feet, reached between the sales monkey and the man to the shelf, where I pulled out one of their six copies of Dungeon Siege. I handed it to the guy and said, "There you go." He thanked me and asked me if it was good. I gave him a quick review; The game is pretty and has a great soundtrack and it's easy to get into. On the down side it almost plays itself and it gets boring and repetitive quite quickly. He said that sounded exactly like the light couple of hours of entertainment he was looking for, thanked me again and went over to the counter to buy it.

The sales dude looked at me and said...

"Can I help you find something?"

I turned and walked out of the store.

If you work in retail sales, let me give you a bit of advice. Nobody cares whether you've "heard of it" or not. If you don't know, say "Let me look it up on the computer." or something. Anything. We didn't come to the store to hear your vaunted opinions on whether something exists or not and whether it's worth buying or not. We came to buy something. So shut up and sell it to us.

I went into another computer store last year (so that would be 2006), with their flyer in my hand and the sales people swore up and down that the flyer was a misprint. They they had the nerve to tell me (I built my last computer from parts and I've worked in tech support forever, I have a much higher level of intelligence than most people my age) that the PC I was interested in could not be connected to the Internet.

What? No seriously, what? I can connect my left sock to the Internet with the right equipment. Are these people on drugs?

I got the manager's attention and asked him about the flyer special and told him what I wanted. He refused to look at the flyer and said...

"I've never heard of that. We don't have that."

I turned around and walked out of the store.

I don't shop at Game (or any other computer store for that matter) any more. It's the fault of the sales people, and these stores wonder why they're losing customers to online retailers? Yes, I bought my last PC online. And it was a wonderful experience.

Nobody told me I couldn't connect my PC to the Internet.

[Abeyance]

[Abeyance]

A nervous young minister, new to the church, told the flock, "For my text today, I will take the words, 'And they fed five men with five thousand loaves of bread and two thousand fishes.'"

A member of the flock snickered at the preacher's snafu, raised his hand and said, "That's not much of a trick. I could do that." The minister didn't respond. However, the next Sunday he decided to repeat the text. This time he did it properly, "And they fed five thousand men with five loaves of bread and two fishes." Smiling, the minister said to the noisy man, "Could
you do that, Mr. Perkins?" The member of the flock said, "I sure could."

"How would you do it?"

"With all the food I had left over from last Sunday!"

[Abeyance]

Two blondes are waiting on a bus stop, when a bus pulls up and opens the door. One of the blondes leans inside and asks the driver: "Will this bus take me to 5th Avenue?"

The bus driver shakes his head and says, "No, I'm Sorry." At this the other blonde leans inside, smiles and twitters: "Will it take ME?"

--

Several nurses on break in the Boston General cafeteria were discussing boyfriends, past and present. Suddenly, a nurse from New York City said, "Well, I have discovered men are all alike!"

Whereupon, a pert little nurse from Dallas laughed and slapped the table. "Gal," she said, "men are all Ah like, too!"

--

A Border Patrol agent is on duty. He spots two Mexicans and stops them. They show him their papers, but he thinks they are phony.

He tells them, "Okay, I have a test for you. I want you to use the words liver and cheese in a sentence."

So, the first guy says, "I made a liver and cheese sandwich for lunch."

The agent says, "That was good, you can go. What about you?" he asks the second guy.

He says, "Liver alone, cheese mine."

--

A blonde girl goes into a hair salon and she's wearing earphones connected to her walkman.

She tells the hair stylist to cut her hair but NOT to take off her earphones. He had to cut around it. But, he thought it would look really stupid if he didn't cut under her earphones so he picked them up and lifted them slightly.

Suddenly, she fell to the ground, dead. The hair stylist picked up the ear phones to see what she had been listening to and a recorded voice was saying "Breathe In, Breathe Out. Breathe In, Breathe Out."

[Abeyance]

One morning as Professor Jones was leaving for the university his wife told her absent-minded husband, "Don't forget we are moving today. If you come to this house this afternoon it will be empty."

Predictably he didn't remember until he found the house vacated that afternoon. He mumbled to himself, "And where was it we were moving to?"

He went out in front of the house and asked a little girl, "Did you see a moving van here today, little girl?"

"Yes," she replied.

"Would you know which way it went?"

She looked up at him and said, "Yes, Daddy, I'll show you."

[Abeyance]

A family was having dinner on Mother's Day. For some reason the mother was unusually quiet. Finally the husband asked what was wrong.

"Nothing," said the woman.

Not buying it, he asked again. "Seriously, what's wrong?"

"Do you really want to know? Well, I'll tell you. I have cooked and cleaned and fed the kids for 15 years and on Mother's Day, you don't even tell me so much as "Thank you."

"Why should I?" he said. "Not once in 15 years have I gotten a Father's Day gift."

"Yes," she said, "but I'm their real mother."

[Abeyance]

Three men, an Italian, a French and a Spanish went for a job interview in England. Before the interview, they were told that they must compose a sentence in English with three main words: green, pink and yellow.

The Italian was first:
"I wake up in the morning. I see the yellow sun. I see the green grass and I think to myself, I hope it will be a pink day."

The Spanish was next:
"I wake up in the morning, I eat a yellow banana, a green pepper and in the evening I watch the pink panther on TV."

Last was the French:
"I wake up in the morning, I hear the phone "green...green...", I pink up the phone and I say "Yellow ?..."

[Abeyance]

Two groups charter a double decker bus for a weekend trip to Atlantic City. One group is all brunette and the other is all blonde. Once upon the bus, the blondes head upstairs and the brunettes hang out on the bottom level.

The brunette group has a ball. They're whooping it up and having a great time when one of them realizes she doesn't hear anything from the blondes upstairs. She decides to go and check on them.

When she gets up to the top deck, she finds all of the blondes frozen in fear, staring straight ahead, each clutching the seat in front of them.

"Whoa, whoa -- what's going on here? We're having a GREAT time downstairs!"

One of the blondes replies through chattering frightened teeth, "Yeah, but you guys have a driver!"

[Matan]

Malev, do you EVER do any work?! lol

[Abeyance]

I'm always working. Even more so now. When I'm at work I'm doing technical support, when I'm at home I'm writing music for Neocron. Heh.

[Abeyance]

An old man died and left his talking parrot to his nephew. Unfortunately, the old man's language was not the cleanest, and it would seem that the parrot picked up on this. The nephew did not like this, and tried to break the parrot of its swearing habit. He tried everything. He played religious music, he was kind to the bird, he spent long hours trying to teach it manners. Finally, one day, he became so frustrated, he threw the parrot into the freezer.

"There," he said. "Maybe he'll cool off in there."

For the first few seconds, the parrot swore a blue streak inside that freezer. Then, suddenly, the parrot fell silent.

A few moments later, the nephew heard from within the freezer, "If you would be so kind as to let me out, I promise to rectify my unsavory vocabulary."

Shocked and surprised, the nephew quickly opened the door and removed the
chilly but sedate bird. Before he could say anything, however, the parrot
spoke.

"If you don't mind, may I ask what the chicken did?"

[Abeyance]

A father visiting America, from Europe, for the very first time - goes up & down the aisles with his son, at the local Giant Food Store.

Dad: "Vas diss?? Powdered orange juice??"
Son: "Yeh, Dad. You just add a little water, and you have
fresh orange juice."

A few minutes later, in a different aisle;

Dad: "Und vas dis?? Powdered milk?"
Son: "Yeh, Dad. You just add a little water, and you have
fresh milk!"

A few minutes later, in a different aisle;
Dad: "Und give a look here!! Baby Powder !! Vat a country,
vat a country!"

[Abeyance]

An out-of-towner accidentally drives his car into a deep ditch on the side of a country road. Luckily a farmer happened by with his big old horse named Benny.

The man asked for help. The farmer said Benny could pull his car out. So he backed Benny up and hitched Benny to the man's car bumper.

Then he yelled, "Pull, Nellie, pull."
Benny didn't move.

Then he yelled, "Come on, pull Ranger."
Still, Benny didn't move.

Then he yelled really loud, "Now pull, Fred, pull hard."
Benny just stood.

Then the farmer nonchalantly said,
"Okay, Benny, pull."
Benny pulled the car out of the ditch.

The man was very appreciative but curious. He asked the farmer why he called his horse by the wrong name three times. The farmer said, "Oh, Benny is blind, and if he thought he was the only one pulling he wouldn't even try."