[Rhodes22-list] jokes

[Michael Meltzer]

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water
temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be.
Here are some facts about the 1500s:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May
and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell
so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the
custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had
the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then
the women and finally the children-last of all the babies. By then the water
was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't
throw the baby out with the bath water."

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath.
It was the only place for, animals to get warm, so all the dogs, cats and
other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became
slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence
the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a
real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could really mess
up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over
the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into
existence. The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than
dirt. Hence the saying "dirt poor."

The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet,
so they spread thresh (straw) on the floor to help keep their footing. As
the winter wore on, they kept adding more thresh until when you opened the
door it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the
entranceway. Hence the saying a "thresh hold."

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always
hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot.
They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the
stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then
start over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been
there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, "Peas porridge hot, peas porridge
cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."

 - from Sue Greene

--
To anyone with kids of any age, or anyone who has ever been a kid, here's
some advice Bill Gates recently dished out at a high school speech about 11
things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how
feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with
no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the
real world.

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it.

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect
you to accomplish something BEFORE you can feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $40,000 a year right out of high school. You won't
be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think you teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had
a different word for burger flipping -- they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about
your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are
now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and
listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain
forest from the parasites of your parents' generation, try delousing the
closet in you own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has
not. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give
you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the
slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and
very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on
your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. Real life people actually have to
leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one!

 - from Jimi Pocius

--
The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been
reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European
communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part
of the negotiations, the British government conceded that English spelling
had some room for improvement and has been accepted a five year phased plan
for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).

In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly,
sivil servants will reseive this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be
replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters
kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the
sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replased by "f". This will
make words like "fotograf" 20 persent shorter. In the third year, publik
akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more
komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of
double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also,
al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the language is
disgrasful, and they would go. By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to
steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by "v". During ze fifz year, ze
unesesary "0" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou", and similar changes
vud, of kors, be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters. Und efter ze fifz
yer, ve vil al be speking German lik zey vunted in ze forst plas...

 - from Peter Kent

--
"As long as I can smile at the end of the day I call it a success."

 --Paul Perrotti

 - from Kevin Haggerty

--
Brent had been looking forward to his lunch break all morning. Whether his
anticipation was a testament to the quality of the Italian sub at the deli
around the corner, or the tedious nature of his job as a Help Desk
technician, was anybody's guess.

His stomach rumblings registering on the Richter scale, Brent prepared to
dart out into the hot July day, eager to trade the telephone in his hand for
a Quarterpounder with cheese. But as luck would have it, the phone came to
life as soon as he placed it back in its cradle -- another troubled soul
waiting for Brent's help on the other end.

Sigh. His lunch breaks having been interrupted and shortened all week, Brent
longed only for a lunch of leisure. "Helpdesk. How can I assist you?" he
chimed, just like he had 37 times already that day. Loose translation:
"Helpdesk. How can I get you off the phone, and me sitting in front of a
slice of double pepperoni Chicago-style deep dish as quickly as possible?"

Luckily, the user in question was ready with a detailed and well thought out
description of the problem at hand: "My computer is frozen and I can't do
anything." Frozen...frozen like a rocket Popsicle or an ice cream sundae,
perhaps? Brent shook his hungry head, determined to focus instead on the
problem.

A reboot seemed a likely remedy, but the voice on the phone said she'd
already tried that. What was more puzzling is that after the supposed
reboot, the user claimed that nothing on the screen changed -- the error
message remained. Brent then had to assume that she knew about as much about
how to reboot a computer as she did about the Colonel's secret recipe.

"Have you actually restarted the computer?" Brent inquired. The user asked
how she was supposed to do that. "Press the power button to turn it off, and
then once more to turn it back on again." Brent waited on the phone amid a
series of grunts, clicks and sighs, confident that the source of his
starvation would at least be able to handle that much.

"The error is still there," came the reply, and an exasperated Brent assured
her he'd come down and have a look at the machine. The vending machine, that
is. After quickly jamming a Kit-Kat into his face, he continued down to the
cubicle in question.

Brent located the lady in waiting and introduced himself. "Now, show me what
you've been doing," he requested.

She leaned forward and pressed the power button on her monitor, switching it
off. Brent forced a smile as she turned it back on, looked up at him
triumphantly and said, "I told you, the error is still there!"

After Brent showed his noontime nemesis how to locate and restart the
computer under her desk, and explained the difference between it and the
monitor, he looked at his watch and headed quickly for the street. The day
had been saved, but his leisurely lunch possibilities were once again
reduced to mediocre Thai take-out back at his desk.

 - from John Raso


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