There are 9 messages totalling 465 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Politics 2. more real questions asked by lawyers--this time w/answers 6. Shipwrecked 7. HUMOR List Traffic Report 8. Confession Humor 9. Body language ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 03:43:28 -0400 From: Jim Moore Jr Subject: Politics * These days there's a new tradition in Washington. Now, when a politician retires, they give him a testimonial probe. - - - - - * What's the difference between crime and politics ? In politics, you take the money and run, but for re-election. - - - - - * But I'm not being entirely fair. Politicians didn't invent crime... They've just improved on it. - - - - - * Most politicians have three hats. One they wear, one they toss in the ring, and the third, they talk through. - - - - - * A real politician can easily be spotted by his answers... They're so long and rambling, most people forget the question. - - - - - * It's a damn shame who runs for office though. All of the people who really know how to run the country are driving cabs or cutting hair. - - - - - * Ever hear of a politician being called a "statesman" ? All that means is that they haven't been caught at anything yet. - - - - - * I find most candidates more than ready and willing... Now if they were only "able" too. - - - - - * People keep saying "Things just can't go on like this." They're right. In Washington, they just get worse. * * * * * - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Enjoy humor ? Visit me @ (joke page) http://www.corpcomm.net/~llittle/jimmy.html (postings) http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/6293 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 07:17:06 -0400 From: Cyn MacGregor Subject: more real questions asked by lawyers--this time w/answers Subject: offensive to Mormons Time Magazine featured an extensive article about the Mormons but they didn't include this one story. It seems Brigham Young had 27 wives over the years. There was no house big enough for all of them and it would have created too much havoc, so he maintained separate households for each wife with her children. He had a trusty servant John, whose job it was to run across town to each of the houses to fetch the woman that Brighan Young picked to spend his evening with. In rain and shine, sleet and snow, John faithfully carried out his duties, running to the homes, picking up the wife, taking her back the following morning and resuming his duties at sundown. One day, a blizzard came upon Salt Lake City, and John was found dead the next morning, covered under 3 feet of freshly fallen snow. So, if the facts be told, it's not too much sex that kills you, but the running after it does. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 13:27:17 -0700 From: Jack Kolb Subject: Ultimate product warnings and Anthony H Provost> Call for More Scientific Truth in Product Warning Labels by Susan Hewitt and Edward Subitzky (the Journal of Irreproducible Results, Vol. 36, No. 1) As scientists and concerned citizens, we applaud the recent trend towards legislation that requires the prominent placing of warnings on products that present hazards to the general public. Yet we must also offer the cautionary thought that such warnings, however well-intentioned, merely scratch the surface of what is really necessary in this important area. This is especially true in light of the findings of 20th century physics. We are therefore proposing that, as responsible scientists, we join together in an intensive push for new laws that will mandate the conspicuous placement of suitably informative warnings on the packaging of every product offered for sale in the United States of America. Our suggested list of required warnings appears below. --Warning: This Product Warps Space and Time in Its Vicinity. --Warning: This Product Attracts Every Other Piece of Matter in the Universe, Including the Products of Other Manufacturers, with a Force Proportional to the Product of the Masses and Inversely Proportional to the Distance Between Them. --Caution: The Mass of This Product Contains the Energy Equivalent of 85 Million Tons of TNT per Net Ounce of Weight. --Handle with Extreme Care: This Product Contains Minute Electrically Charged Particles Moving at Velocities in Excess of Five Hundred Million Miles per Hour. --Consumer Notice: Because of the 'Uncertainty Principle,' It Is Impossible for the Consumer to Find Out at the Same Time Both Precisely Where This Product Is and How Fast It Is Moving. --Advisory: There is an Extremely Small but Nonzero Chance That, Through a Process Known as 'Tunneling,' This Product May Spontaneously Disappear from Its Present Location and Reappear at Any Random Place in the Universe, Including Your Neighbor's Domicile. The Manufacturer Will Not Be Responsible for Any Damages or Inconvenience That May Result. --Read This Before Opening Package: According to Certain Suggested Versions of a Grand Unified Theory, the Primary Particles Constituting This Product May Decay to Nothingness Within the Next Four Hundred Million Years. --This is a 100% Matter product: In the Unlikely Event That This Merchandise Should Contact Antimatter in Any Form, a Catastrophic Explosion Will Result. --Public Notice as Required by Law: Any Use of This Product, in Any Manner Whatsoever, Will Increase the Amount of Disorder in the Universe. Although No Liability Is Implied Herein, the Consumer Is Warned That This Process Will Ultimately Lead to the Heat Death of the Universe. --Note: The Most Fundamental Particles in This Product Are Held Together by a 'Gluing' Force About Which Little Is Currently Known and Whose Adhesive Power Can Therefore Not Be Permanently Guaranteed. --Attention: Despite Any Other Listing of Product Contents Found Hereon, the Consumer Is Advised That, in Actuality, This Product Consists Of 99.9999999999% Empty Space. --New Grand Unified Theory Disclaimer: The Manufacturer May Technically Be Entitled to Claim That This Product Is Ten-Dimensional. However, the Consumer Is Reminded That This Confers No Legal Rights Above and Beyond Those Applicable to Three-Dimensional Objects, Since the Seven New Dimensions Are 'Rolled Up' into Such a Small 'Area' That They Cannot Be Detected. --Please Note: Some Quantum Physics Theories Suggest That When the Consumer Is Not Directly Observing This Product, It May Cease to Exist or Will Exist Only in a Vague and Undetermined State. --Component equivalency notice: The Subatomic Particles (Electrons, Protons, etc.) Comprising This Product Are Exactly the Same in Every Measurable Respect as Those Used in the Products of Other manufacturers, and No Claim to the Contrary May Legitimately Be Expressed or Implied. --Health Warning: Care Should Be Taken When Lifting This Product, Since Its Mass, and Thus Its Weight, Is Dependent on Its Velocity Relative to the User. --Important Notice to Purchasers: The Entire Physical Universe, Including This Product, May One Day Collapse Back into an Infinitesimally Small Space. Should Another Universe Subsequently Re-emerge, the Existence of This Product in That Universe Cannot be Guaranteed. Jack Kolb (kolb@ucla.edu) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 20:08:52 -0400 From: Sue Sevin Subject: Optimists and Pessimists My friend Jeff and I were discussing how optimistic I am and how pessimistic he is. We were comparing our perspectives on the age-old question: "Is the glass half empty or half full?" I said that I'd read a great quote which sums up the true optimist (I don't remember where) "Not only is the glass half full, but it sits next to an everlasting spring which will never run dry." Jeff responded that, "Not only is the glass half empty, but somebody else will probably come along and drink it before I get to it." Or as Spider Robinson sums it up in the book *Deathkiller* (which I highly recommend; his new book *Life House* is even better...) "It is said that the pessimist sees mostly the overwhelming darkness of the tunnel, and the optimist sees mostly the tiny point of light that promises the end of it...whereas the realist understands that the light is probably an oncoming train." ----Copyright 1987 by Spider Robinson -------- ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 21:46:51 -0400 From: Craig Ehrlich Subject: Shipwrecked There were three men out on a boat. It began to storm and their boat was wrecked. After the storm, they were washed up on a beach. They started to walk alo= ng the beach and found a bottle. They picked it up and started to rub the sa= nd off of it when, all of a sudden, a genie popped out. He said, "I am Hassa= n. Since you have released me from the bottle, I will grant each of you one wish." The first man said, "I really miss my wife and grandchildren. I wish I we= re back home." Poof! He was gone.=20 The second man said, "This is great! I wish I were in Hawaii on the beach= , with a drink in my hand." Poof! He was gone, too! The third man looked around and said, "You know, it's lonely around here,= I really miss those guys =97 I wish they were back." ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 22:39:50 -0400 From: Jim Subject: HUMOR List Traffic Report 1997 is now 2/3 of the way over. Do you know where YOUR HUMOR list owners are? Hi, everyone. This is Jim, with this week's, er, month's Traffic Report. I send this message to the contributors of the HUMOR list every week, and on the first Sunday of the month, I send the numbers to the entire list. First off, in the past few months I have been a bit lax in my duties, for which I humbly apologize to the entire list. I will be on vacation for the next couple of weeks, but as soon as I return, I will be much more vigilant about updating the HUMOR website and keeping the traffic report up-to-date, sending the reports out the way I did when I first took over this job. I learned my lesson this morning, when my hard disk crashed, and I needed to reboot all of my files from scratch. It is for this reason that there is a possibility that the numbers listed here for the subscribers and contributors may not be wholly accurate for the "1 Week Ago" line. Furthermore, if you sent me an email in the past week, and I didn't answer it, it has been lost, and I therefore request that you send it to me again. One issue that seems to be coming up every once in a while, is people are receiving notices from the listserver that they need to renew their subscription to the list, but then when they try to respond to the renewal request, they receive a message that says that they are not subscribed to the HUMOR list. The instructions say to reply to the message with the command SUB HUMOR. The problem lies in one of two areas: the first is that there is a communications gap between your email software and the listserver software that does not recognize that SUB is a shortened version of the command SUBSCRIBE. The second possibility is that the listserver cannot match your name to your email address. If you get a renewal request, and you follow the directions exactly, but still receive a rejection notice, we ask that you do exactly what you did to subscribe to the list in the first place. Send LISTSERV@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU the command (in the body of the email, not the subject) SUBSCRIBE HUMOR firstname lastname. Should you continue to have problems with this, feel free to email me or Jay Harman (jharman@ix.netcom.com) and we'll manually renew your subscription. This procedure ONLY applies to receiving the list itself. If you are a contributor and receive a request to renew your subscription to HUMOR-P (the contributors' list), you must go through either me or Larry Randall (randall@mailstorm.dot.gov.) As of right now, all mail to Larry is bouncing back, because he is going through an email conversion. Larry is also the person in charge of granting new people the right to become posters. Be patient with this; everything should be working with Larry again by the end of this week. And here's an added nugget of information for those of you who might be interested in this. The most recent update of my Traffic Report that I had at my disposal was posted two weeks ago. I was able to piece together the numbers of posts each day since then (up to and including today) by sending LISTSERV@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU the command INDEX HUMOR. This will give a list of all of the available archives of the list's traffic. So I got the current NOTEBOOK and the most recent complete LOG and manually counted each day's postings. If you miss something, and want to search HUMOR's archives (which purge themselves approximately every six months...) use this command. Each log is at least 3000 lines long. In the time before it becomes a log, it is in the archives as the notebook. I'm going to miss the next two week's worth of traffic reports, as I will be on vacation, but I'll be back, fully rested, and with a much more consistent tan. I'm actually going to be leaving this coming Thursday, so if you have any questions between now and then, feel free to email me at jimphynn@mindspring.com, visit my home page at http://www.webcom.com/jimphynn/, or visit HUMOR's website at http://www.webcom.com/jimphynn/humor/humor.html I'll see those of you who are contributors in a couple o' weeks, and all of you next month! Traffic Report for HUMOR, 27 July - 2 August (Number of articles posted each day) 4 Weeks 3 Weeks 2 Weeks 1 Week Last Date Day Back Back Back Back Week 27 Sunday 6 8 4 7 12 28 Monday 12 16 13 12 16 29 Tuesday 16 12 10 9 12 30 Wednesday 10 9 8 10 15 31 Thursday 16 13 12 15 5 1 Friday 8 12 11 11 9 2 Saturday 6 7 6 6 5 Average 10.6 11.0 9.1 10.0 10.6 Subscriptions 9 877 9 844 9 797 9 742 9 589 Countries 100 100 100 100 100 Contributors 805 807 811 813 816 These are based on addresses registered to our listserver. It does not include addresses which receive HUMOR via local bulletin board, area distribution lists, etc. These numbers include both concealed and non-concealed subscribers. HUMOR is dispatched daily to the following countries: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Fiji, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Guam, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Korea, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Moldova, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, USA, Venezuela, Zambia, Zimbabwe Total countries: 100 Email me if your country is not listed here. ----- And now for my usual contribution of humor: Subject: Makes you wonder if anyone else got caught... Excerpted from the book _Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest,_ (c) 1996 by John J Kohut and Roland Sweet After nine police officers on a narcotics raid at an apartment building in Coventry, England, squeezed into an elevator made for eight, it stalled. The officers wound up being trapped for 45 minutes until resident Eddie Laidle heard their cries for help. "I told them I would get the police," he said, "and they shouted, 'We are the bloody police -- get the fire brigade!' " ----- Jim Goldman, HUMOR list Traffic Reporter and Webmaster jimphynn@mindspring.com http://www.webcom.com/jimphynn ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 23:57:57 -0400 From: Michael Murphy Subject: Confession Humor Tommy Shaughnessy goes into the confessional box and says. "Bless me Father for I have sinned. I have been with a loose woman." The priest says, "Is that you, little Tommy Shaughnessy?" "Yes, Father. It is." "Who was this woman you were with?" "I cannot tell you, Father, because I don't want to ruin her reputation." The priest asks, "Was it Brenda Patty O'Malley?" "No." "Was it Mary Patricia Kelly?" "No." "Was it Elizabeth Mary Shannon?" "No." "Was it Fiona Mary McDonald?" No." "Was it Cathy Moran Morgan?" "No, Father! I cannot tell you." The priest finally gives up and says, "Tommy, I admire your perseverance, but you must atone for your sins. Your penance will be three Hail Marys and four Our Fathers. Go back to your pew." Tommy walks back to his pew and his friend Sean slides over and whispers, "What happened?" "Well, I got three Hail Marys, four Our Fathers, and five good leads." ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 09:36:58 -0400 From: Chalapathi Rao Poduri Subject: Body language A bus stops to let on a passenger. This attractive lady steps onto the bus and puts her right thumb to her nose and wiggles her fingers without saying a word. The bus driver puts his right thumb to his nose and his left thumb to the palm of his right hand and wiggles all eight of his fingers. The woman then looks a bit confused and in silence grabs her boobs! The bus driver in a growing lack of patience grabs his balls, the woman then turns around, grabs her ass and struts off the bus!! A frequent passenger who sits at the front of the bus looks to the driver, and says, "Tom, I've been riding your bus for quite a few years now and I've never seen anything as vulgar as this! I'm going to have to ride a different route!" Tom, the driver looks to the woman sitting in the front seat and replies, "You are mistaken, that woman was deaf. She asked me if this bus was headed for 5th. street, I said, 'no, 10th street.' She asked if it went to the Dairy Mart, I told her that it went to the ball park and she said, 'shit, I'm on the wrong bus' and left.'" Chalapathi ['Border' est un movie,okay.Question is would you like to hear more unpronouncable words like mine for knowing the starcast?:)] ------------------------------ End of HUMOR Digest - 3 Aug 1997 to 4 Aug 1997 **********************************************