Previous Jokes of the Week 2
A man goes into a pet shop and tells the owner that he wants to buy a pet that can do everything.
The shop owner suggests a faithful dog. The man replies, "Come on, a dog?"
The owner says, "How about a cat?" The man replies, "No way! A cat certainly can't do everything. I want a pet that can do everything!"
The shop owner thinks for a minute, then says, "I've got it! A centipede!"
The man says, "A centipede? I can't imagine a centipede doing everything, but okay... I'll try a centipede."
He gets the centipede home and says to the centipede, "Clean the kitchen."
Thirty minutes later, he walks into the kitchen and... it's immaculate! All the dishes and silverware have been washed, dried, and put away; the counter-tops cleaned; the appliances sparkling the floor waxed. He's absolutely amazed. He says to the centipede, "Go clean the living room."
Twenty minutes later, he walks into the living room. The carpet has been vacuumed; the furniture cleaned and dusted; the pillows on the sofa plumped; plants watered. The man thinks to himself, "This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. This really is a pet that can do everything!"
Next he says to the centipede, "Run down to the corner and get me a newspaper."
The centipede walks out the door. 10 minutes later... no centipede. 20 minutes later... no centipede. 30 minutes later... no centipede.
By this point the man is wondering what's going on. The centipede should have been back in a couple of minutes. 45 minutes later... still no centipede! He can't imagine what could have happened. Did the centipede run away? Did it get run over by a car? Where is that centipede?
So he goes to the front door, opens it ... and there's the centipede sitting right outside.
The man says, "Hey!!! I sent you down to the corner store 45 minutes ago to get me a newspaper. What's the matter?!"
The centipede says, "I'm goin� ! I'm goin� ! I'm just puttin� on my shoes!"
The lawyer: "Did you actually see the accident?"
The witness: "Yes, sir."
The lawyer: "How far away were you when the accident happened?"
The witness: "Thirty-one feet, six and one quarter inches."
The lawyer (thinking he'd trap the witness): "Well, sir, will you tell the jury how you knew it was exactly that distance?"
The witness: "Because when the accident happened I took out a tape and measured it. I knew some stupid lawyer would ask me that question."
This is supposedly a true story from a recent Defence Science Lectures Series, as related by the head of the Australian DSTO's Land Operations/Simulation division. They've been working on some really nifty virtual reality simulators, the case in point being to incorporate Armed Reconnaissance Helicopters into exercises (from the data fusion point of view). Most of the people they employ on this sort of thing are ex- (or future) computer game programmers. Any way, as part of the reality parameters, they include things like trees and animals. For the Australian simulation they included kangaroos. In particular, they had to model kangaroo movements and reactions to helicopters (since hordes of disturbed kangaroos might well give away a helicopter's position).
Being good programmers, they just stole some code (which was originally used to model infantry detachments reactions under the same stimuli), and changed the mapped icon, the speed parameters, etc.
The first time they've gone to demonstrate this to some visiting Americans, the hotshot pilots have decided to get "down and dirty" with the virtual kangaroos. So, they buzz them, and watch them scatter. The visiting Americans nod appreciatively... then gape as the kangaroos duck around a hill, and launch about two dozen Stinger missiles at the hapless helicopter.
Programmers look rather embarrassed at forgetting to remove that part of the infantry coding... and Americans leave muttering comments about not wanting to mess with the Aussie wildlife...
As an addendum, simulator pilots from that point onwards avoided kangaroos like the plague, just like they were meant to do in the first place...
Time and again, Abdul would scamper off and return with a glass of water, but then came the time when he returned empty-handed.
"Abdul, you son of an ugly camel, where is my water?" demanded the Grand Emir.
"A thousand pardons, O Illustrious One," stammered the wretched Abdul, "white man sit on well."
If automotive technology had kept pace with computer technology over the past few decades, you would now be driving a V-32 instead of a V-8, and it would have a top speed of 10,000 miles per hour. Or you could have an economy car that weighs 30 pounds and gets a thousand miles to a gallon of gas. In either case the sticker price of a new car would be less than $50.
In response to all this goading, GM responds: "Yes, but would you really want to drive a car that crashes twice a day?
The electrical engineer said, "Well God has to be an electrical engineer. Look at the nervous system, how well it works."
"No way," said the chemical engineer, "God must be a chemical engineer. Look at how well the circulatory system works."
"You're both wrong," said the civil engineer, "Who but a civil engineer would take a great recreation area and put a sewer line through it."
"Hell," said Herman, "It�s not just one car. It�s hundreds of them!"
The manager said, "To fix this problem we need to organize a committee, have meetings, and through process of continuous improvement, develop a solution."
The engineer said, "No that would take too long, besides that method never worked before. I have my trusty pen knife here and will take apart the brake system, isolate the problem and correct it."
The programmer said, "I think your both wrong! I think we should all push the car back up the hill and see if it happens again."
Before he could offer his apologies for being so rude, the young woman said to him, 'I'll do anything, absolutely anything, that you want me to do, no matter how kinky, for $100 on one condition.'
Flabbergasted, the man asked what the condition was.
The young woman replied, 'You have to tell me what you want me to do in just three words.'
The man considered her proposition for a moment, withdrew his wallet from his pocket & slowly counted out five $20 bills, which he pressed into the young woman's hand. He looked deeply into her eyes & slowly, meaningfully said, 'Paint my house.'
Canterbury, England. A.D. 999.
An atmosphere close to panic prevails today throughout Europe as the millennial year 1000 approaches, bringing with it the so-called "Y1K Bug," a menace which, until recently, hardly anyone had ever heard of. Prophets of doom are warning that the entire fabric of Western Civilization, based as it now is upon monastic computations, could collapse, and that there is simply not enough time left to fix the problem.
Just how did this disaster-in-the-making ever arise? Why did no one anticipate that a change from a three-digit to a four-digit year would throw into total disarray all liturgical chants and all metrical verse in which any date is mentioned? Every formulaic hymn, prayer, ceremony and incantation dealing with dated events will have to be re-written to accommodate three extra syllables. All tabular chronologies with three-space year columns, maintained for generations by scribes using carefully hand-ruled lines on vellum sheets, will now have to be converted to four-space columns, at enormous cost. In the meantime, the validity of every official event, from baptisms to burials, from confirmations to coronations, may be called into question.
"We should have seen it coming," says Brother Cedric of St. Michael Abbey, here in Canterbury. "What worries me most is that THOUSAND contains the word THOU, which occurs in nearly all our prayers, and of course always refers to God. Using it now in the name of the year will seem almost blasphemous, and is bound to cause terrible confusion. Of course, we could always use Latin, but that might be even worse - The Latin word for Thousand is Mille, which is the same as the Latin for mile. We won�t know whether we are talking about time or distance!"
Stonemasons are already reported threatening to demand a proportional pay increase for having to carve an extra numeral in all dates on tombstones, cornerstones and monuments. Together with its inevitable ripple effects, this alone could plunge the hitherto-stable medieval economy into chaos. A conference of clerics has been called at Winchester to discuss the entire issue, but doomsayers are convinced that the matter is now one of personal survival. Many families, in expectation of the worst, are stocking up on holy water and indulgences.
Outside of beautiful scenery, a spring-fed pool, bananas and coconuts, there was little else. He lost all hope and for hours on end, sat under same palm tree.
One day, after several months had passed, a gorgeous woman in a small rowboat appeared. "I'm from the other side of the island," she said. "Were you on the cruise ship, too?"
"Yes, I was, " he answered. "But where did you get that rowboat?"
"Well, I whittled the oars from gum tree branches, wove the reinforced gummy from palm branches, and made the keel and stern from a Eucalyptus tree."
"But, what did you use for tools?" asked the man.
"There was a very unusual strata of alluvial rock exposed on the south side of the island. I discovered that if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into forgeable ductile iron. Anyhow, that's how I got the tools. But, enough of that," she said. "Where have you been living all this time? I don't see any shelter."
"To be honest, I've just been sleeping on the beach," he said.
"Would you like to come to my place?" the woman asked. The engineer nodded dumbly. She expertly rowed them around to her side of the island, and tied up the boat with a handsome strand of hand-woven hemp topped with a neat back splice. They walked up a winding stone walk she had laid and around a Palm tree. There stood an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white.
"It's not much, but I call it home." Inside, she said, "Sit down please; would you like to have a drink?"
"No, thanks," said the man. "One more coconut juice and I'll throw up!"
"It won't be coconut juice," the woman replied. "I have a crude still out back, so we can have authentic Pina Coladas."
Trying to hide his amazement, the man accepted the drink, and they sat down on her couch to talk. After they had exchanged stories, the woman asked, "Tell me, have you always had a beard?"
"No," the man replied, "I was clean shaven all of my life until I ended up on this island."
"Well if you'd like to shave, there's a razor upstairs in the bathroom cabinet."
The man, no longer questioning anything, went upstairs to the bathroom and shaved with an intricate bone-and-shell device honed razor sharp. Next he showered -- not even attempting to fathom a guess as to how she managed to get warm water into the bathroom -- and went back downstairs. He couldn't help but admire the masterfully carved banister as he walked.
"You look great," said the woman. "I think I'll go up and slip into something more comfortable."
As she did, the man continued to sip his Pina Colada. After a short time, the woman, smelling faintly of gardenias, returned wearing a revealing gown fashioned out of pounded palm fronds.
"Tell me," she asked, "we've both been out here for a very long time with no companionship. You know what I mean. Haven't you been lonely, too...isn't there something that you really, really miss? Something that all men and woman need? Something that would be really nice to have right now!"
"Yes there is!" the man replied, shucking off his shyness. "There is something I've wanted to do for so long. But on this island all alone, it was just...well, it was impossible."
"Well, it's not impossible, any more," the woman said.
The man, practically panting in excitement, said breathlessly: "You mean... you actually figured out some way we can CHECK OUR EMAIL HERE!!??!!"
As soon as the Associate Pastor left the room, Father Norton headed out of town to a golf course about forty miles away. This way he knew he wouldn't accidentally meet anyone he knew from his parish. Setting up on the first tee, he was alone. After all, it was Sunday morning and everyone else was in church!
At about this time, Saint Peter leaned over to the Lord while looking down from the heaven and exclaimed, "You're not going to let him get away with this, are you?"
The Lord sighed, and said, "No, I guess not." Just then Father Norton hit the ball and it shot straight towards the pin, dropping just short of it, rolled up and fell into the hole. It WAS A 420 YARD HOLE IN ONE!
St. Peter was astonished. He looked at the Lord and asked, "Why did you let him do that?"
The Lord smiled and replied, "Who's he going to tell?"
This page was last updated on the 6th June, 2000
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