From fridayfunny at internetgremlin.com Fri Jan 4 05:22:50 2008 From: fridayfunny at internetgremlin.com (The Friday Funny) Date: Fri, 04 Jan 2008 05:22:50 +0000 Subject: [Friday Funny] Christmas with Mom Message-ID: <477DC2AA.7090409@minstrel.org.uk> One last themed Friday Funny for this season, from the inimitable Bruce Cameron... I hope you all had a good holiday! ------------------------------------------- The Cameron Column # 245 A FREE Internet Newsletter brought to you by W. Bruce Cameron with almost no impact on global warming! If you are not a subscriber, I would really love it if you'd consider subscribing. To do so, please send a message to TheCameronColumn-on at letters.webvalence.com. To unsubscribe, DON'T reply to this message. See the footer following this message for more information! Hey, visit the Cameron Column Website at http://www.wbrucecameron.com/ Write to me at Bruce at wbrucecameron.com ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Well, I had this one all ready to go so that it would arrive before the holidays, but I neglected to push the button that says, "push this button." Probably every single one of you felt that I ruined your holiday joy! I hope you enjoy this one. I received several requests for it, so okay, the requesters had their holidays ruined, too. I am so not worthy! Best wishes from everyone here at the home offices of the Cameron Column for a safe and prosperous New Year. Bruce ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Christmas with Mom I am a firm believer in the old adage that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results each time is the definition of my mother. At Christmas my mother always expected that if she prepared carefully enough, every single aspect of the holiday would turn out to be perfect, despite ample evidence that the closest my dad could come to "perfect" was "incompetent." It started with the tree, which by tradition my father purchased from a place that seemed to specialize in arboreal deformities. "Only six bucks!" he would beam, showing us the twisted, bent trunk, thin branches poking out like broken fingers. We'd do our best to fix it up with handfuls of tinsel and ornaments, but when we were done the thing always looked to me less like a Christmas tree than some kind of military weather station. The only family member who seemed delighted with the tree was the dog; finally it, too, had a bathroom in the house. Then there were the presents, which my mother wrapped with painstaking attention to sharp edges and crisp bows and my father put together by slapping on tape like it was a coat of paint. Often when he did this the tape became twisted during its application, which meant his gifts came coated with a festive film of carpet lint. Pick up a present from my father and you'd have a tough time setting it back down without losing a layer of skin. Dad was also responsible for putting up the outside decorations, something the kids wanted done the day after Thanksgiving and he preferred to do never. Nothing could make him more grumpy than when the string of lights became tangled, and at some point he always lost patience and just threw the whole mess on the roof, so that our house was entirely dark except for one blazing clump over the door. "It's the Christmas supernova," he explained to anyone who asked. Our yard display consisted of a plastic snowman whose illuminated interior had become stained from a year in a leaky basement, so it appeared that his white skin was covered with prison tattoos. Next to him stood Rudolph the Headless Reindeer, who despite his mysterious decapitation still possessed a working nose bulb. It dangled from his neck stump like a glowing eye socket, which gave me nightmares for years. When my mother saw the ghoulish display she always went to bed with a migraine. Christmas morning my mother orchestrated so as to end in a climactic crescendo, each gift more treasured than the last until the final, "big" gift of the morning, which didn't always work out. Me: This is nice, but why do I need film? I don't have a camera. Mom: It's always a good idea to have film around, even if you don't own a camera. Dad: Maybe some day really, really soon, like, later this morning, you'll have a use for that film. At this point my mother would whirl on my father and hiss "You're ruining Christmas!" Sometimes the gifts got out of sequence, which meant one of us would be unwrapping when my mother would suddenly lunge and snatch it out of our hands. This always made my baby sister cry. Because it's so difficult to figure out what's in a box when it's all wrapped, my mother always wrote little codes on the wrapping of each present, which she read aloud with a bewildered look on her face, unable to figure out her own cipher. Mom: 'BBG'? What could 'BBG' stand for? Dad: Baseball glove? Mom: You're ruining Christmas! Later, my parents, nerves frazzled from listening to their children destroy toys all afternoon, would serve a huge turkey. My dad would slice the big bird and make the same comment every year: "Looks overdone." He would have said this even if my mom had served turkey sushi. My mother would throw down her napkin and storm off, my dad following and apologizing for ruining Christmas. I've always said my mother believed that the lesson of Christmas is that when things go wrong, they go wrong for a reason--and that reason is my father. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ For reprint permission, including web sites, please write me at Bruce at wbrucecameron.com This newsletter may be distributed freely via e-mail but you MUST include the following subscription and copyright information: The Cameron Column, A Free Internet Newsletter Copyright W. Bruce Cameron 2007 http://www.wbrucecameron.com/ Yes we want more subscribers! Please tell your friends about the Cameron Column. If you want to unsubscribe, write TheCameronColumn-off at letters.webvalence.com To subscribe to this list, please send an e-mail message to: TheCameronColumn-On at letters.webvalence.com To unsubscribe, send an e-mail to: TheCameronColumn-Off at letters.webvalence.com W. Bruce Cameron C/O Lloyd Entertainment 610 S Main Street, Loft #513 Los Angeles, CA 90014 -- Peter SJF Bance http://www.minstrel.org.uk/ XMPP: GreyMinstrel at jabber.org | AIM: GreyMinstrel MSN: Minstrel at minstrel.org.uk | ICQ: 254652398 From fridayfunny at internetgremlin.com Fri Jan 11 07:02:42 2008 From: fridayfunny at internetgremlin.com (The Friday Funny) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 07:02:42 +0000 Subject: [Friday Funny] In the Beginning Message-ID: <47871492.4050501@minstrel.org.uk> In the beginning, there was the computer. And God entered: C:\Let there be light! Enter user ID C:\God Enter password C:\Omniscient Invalid password Enter password C:\Omnipotent And God logged on at 12:01:00 AM, Sunday, March 1. C:\Let there be light! Unrecognizable command C:\Create light Done C:\Run heaven and earth And God created Day and Night. And God saw that there were 0 errors. And God logged off at 12:02:00 AM, Sunday, March 1. And God logged on at 12:01:00 AM, Monday, March 2. C:\Let there be firmament in the midst of water and light Unrecognizable command. Try again. C:\Create firmament Done. C:\Run firmament And God divided the waters. And God saw that there were 0 errors. And God logged off at 12:02:00 AM, Monday, March 2. And God logged on at 12:01:00 AM, Tuesday, March 3. C:\Let the waters under heaven be gathered together unto one place and let the dry land appear and... Too many characters in specification string. Try again. C:\Create dry_land Done. C:\Run firmament And God divided the waters. And God saw that there were 0 errors. And God logged off at 12:02:00 AM, Tuesday, March 3. And God logged on at 12:01:00 AM, Wednesday, March 4. C:\Create lights in the firmament to divide the day from the night Unspecified type. Try again. C:\Create sun_moon_stars Done C:\Run sun_moon_stars And God separated the light from the darkness. The sun ruled over the day and the moon and stars ruled over the night. And God saw there were 0 errors. And God logged off at 12:02:00 AM, Wednesday, March 4. And God logged on at 12:01:00 AM, Thursday, March 5. C:\Create fish Done C:\Create fowl Done C:\Run fish, fowl And God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that creepeth wherewith the waters swarmed after its kind and every winged fowl after its kind. And God saw there were 0 errors. And God logged off at 12:02:00 AM, Thursday, March 5. And God logged on at 12:01:00 AM, Friday, March 6. C:\Create cattle Done C:\Create creepy_things Done C:\Now let us make man in our image Unspecified type. Try again. C:\Create man Done C:\Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that creepeth upon the earth. Too many command operands. Try again. C:\Run multiplication Execution terminated. 6 errors. C:\Insert breath Done C:\Run multiplication Execution terminated. 5 errors. C:\Move man to Garden of Eden Filename: Garden of Eden does not exist. Abort, Retry, Ignore? C:\Create Garden_of_Eden Too many parameters C:\Create Garden.edn Done C:\Move man to Garden.edn Done C:\Run multiplication Execution terminated. 4 errors. C:\Copy woman from man Done C:\Run multiplication Execution terminated. 2 errors. C:\Create desire Done C:\Run multiplication And God saw man and woman being fruitful and multiplying in Garden.edn Warning: No time limit on this run. 1 errors. C:\Create freewill Done C:\Run freewill And God saw man and woman being fruitful and multiplying in Garden.edn Warning: No time limit on this run. 1 errors. C:\Undo desire Desire cannot be undone once freewill is created. C:\Destroy freewill Freewill is an inaccessible file and cannot be destroyed. Enter replacement, cancel, or ask for help. C:\Help Desire cannot be undone once freewill is created. Freewill is an inaccessible file and cannot be destroyed. Enter replacement, cancel, or ask for help. C:\Create tree_of_knowledge And God saw man and woman being fruitful and multiplying in Garden.edn Warning: No time limit on this run. 1 errors. C:\Create good, evil Done C:\Activate evil And God saw he had created shame. Warning system error in sector E95. Man and woman no longer located in Garden.edn. 1 errors. C:\Scan Garden.edn for man, woman Search failed. Abort, Retry, Ignore? C:\Delete shame Shame cannot be deleted once evil has been activated. C:\Destroy freewill Freewill is an inaccessible file and cannot be destroyed. Enter replacement, cancel, or ask for help. C:\Stop Unrecognizable command. Try again C:\Ctrl_Break C:\Ctrl_Break C:\Ctrl_Break ATTENTION ALL USERS *** ATTENTION ALL USERS: COMPUTER GOING DOWN FOR REGULAR DAY OF MAINTENANCE AND REST IN FIVE MINUTES. PLEASE LOG OFF. C:\Create new world You have exceeded allocated file space. You must destroy old files before new ones can be created. C:\Destroy earth Destroy earth: Please confirm. C:\Destroy earth confirmed COMPUTER DOWN *** COMPUTER DOWN. SERVICE WILL RESUME SUNDAY, MARCH 8 AT 6:00 AM. YOU MUST SIGN OFF NOW. And God logged off at 11:59:59 PM, Friday, March 6. On Saturday, March 7, God rested. On March 8, God created Macintosh. -- Peter SJF Bance http://www.minstrel.org.uk/ XMPP: GreyMinstrel at jabber.org | AIM: GreyMinstrel MSN: Minstrel at minstrel.org.uk | ICQ: 254652398 From fridayfunny at internetgremlin.com Fri Jan 18 05:23:38 2008 From: fridayfunny at internetgremlin.com (The Friday Funny) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 05:23:38 +0000 Subject: [Friday Funny] Strange but True Message-ID: <479037DA.9080300@minstrel.org.uk> Several years old I'm afraid! --------------------------------- These are some weird but true facts which you might not have heard before: 1. A Saudi Arabian woman can get a divorce if her husband doesn't give her coffee. 2. A shark can detect one part of blood in 100 million parts of water. 3. A rat can last longer without water than a camel. 4. Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks otherwise it will digest itself. 5. The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle. 6. A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continually from the bottom of the glass to the top. 7. A person cannot taste food unless it is mixed with saliva. For example, if strong-tasting substance like salt is placed on a dry tongue, the taste buds will not be able to taste it. As soon as a drop of saliva is added and the salt is dissolved, however, a definite taste sensation results. This is true for all foods. 8. A male emperor moth can smell a female emperor moth up to 7 miles away. 9. George Washington grew marijuana in his garden. 10. A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue! 11. In Lebanon it is legal to have sex with a female animal, but illegal with a male one. 12. 40% of McDonald's profits come from the sales of Happy Meals. 13. Every person has a unique tongue print. 14. During the chariot scene in 'Ben Hur' a small red car can be seen in the distance. 15. Einstein couldn't speak fluently when he was nine. His parents thought he might be retarded. 16. On an average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily. 17. Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister. 18. Chocolate kills dogs! Chocolate affects a dog's heart and nervous system, a few ounces being enough to kill a small dog. 19. Money isn't made out of paper, it's made out of cotton. Before the 1950's it was made from hemp, the stem and leaves of a marijuana plant. 20. Most lipstick contains fish scales. 21. Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into to shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode. 22. Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants. 23. Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as medicine. 24. Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time. 25. The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000. 30. It took Leonardo Da Vinci 10 years to paint the Mona Lisa's lips. 31. Upper and lower case letters are named 'upper' and 'lower', because in the time when all original print had to be set in individual letters, the 'upper case' letters were stored in the case on top of the case that stored the smaller, 'lower case' letters. 32. There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos. 33. There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with: orange, purple, and silver! 34. The numbers '172' can be found on the back of the U.S. $5 dollar bill in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial. 35. Leonardo Da Vinci invented scissors. 36. Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to SLOW a film down so you could see his moves. That's the opposite of the norm. 37. Bubble gum contains rubber. 39. The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen's 'Born in the USA' 40. By raising your legs slowly and laying on your back, you can't sink in quicksand. 41. Cat's urine glows under a black light. 42. Celery has negative calories! It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with. 44. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying! 45. The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries. 46. Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them. 47. Debra Winger was the voice of E.T. 48. Pearls melt in vinegar. 49. It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs. 50. Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married. 51. The 3 most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order. 52. It's possible to lead a cow upstairs... but not downstairs. 53. Humans are the only primates that don't have pigment in the palms of their hands. 54. Ten percent of the Russian government's income comes from the sale of vodka. 55. A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why. 56. Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: Spades - King David; Clubs - Alexander the Great; Hearts - Charlemagne; Diamonds - Julius Caesar. 57. 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321 58. The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado. 59. Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older. 60. Snails can sleep for 3 years without eating 61. The fingerprints of koala bears are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene. 62. Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a "Friday 13th." 63. The man who plays Lt. Commander Montgomery Scott on 'Star Trek' is missing the entire middle finger of his right hand. 64. The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies. 65. There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar. 66. All of the clocks in the movie "Pulp Fiction" are stuck on 4:20 (am or pm?). -- Peter SJF Bance http://www.minstrel.org.uk/ XMPP: GreyMinstrel at jabber.org | AIM: GreyMinstrel MSN: Minstrel at minstrel.org.uk | ICQ: 254652398 From fridayfunny at internetgremlin.com Fri Jan 25 05:52:41 2008 From: fridayfunny at internetgremlin.com (The Friday Funny) Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 05:52:41 +0000 Subject: [Friday Funny] Boys and Girls (and more) Message-ID: <47997929.909@minstrel.org.uk> Today's bit of nonsense, followed by an interesting follow-up I received to last week's 'Strange but True' (many thanks to Kit for these)... -------------------------------------- Boys and Girls --------------- "Equal" is not always synonymous with "the same." Men and women are created equal. But, boys and girls are not born the same. 1. You throw a little girl a ball, and it will hit her in the nose. You throw a little boy a ball, and he will try to catch it. Then it will hit him in the nose. 2. You dress your little girl in her Easter Sunday best, and she'll look just as pretty when you finally make it to church an hour later. You dress a boy in his Easter Sunday best, and he'll somehow find every mud puddle from your home to the church, even if you're driving there. 3. Boys' rooms are usually messy. Girls' rooms are usually messy, except it's a good smelling mess. 4. A baby girl will pick up a stick and look in wonderment at what nature has made. A baby boy will pick up a stick and turn it into a gun. 5. When girls play with Barbie and Ken dolls, they like to dress them up and play house with them. When boys play with Barbie and Ken dolls, they like to tear off their appendages. 6. Boys couldn't care less if their hair is unruly. If their bangs got cut a quarter-inch too short, girls would rather lock themselves in their room for two weeks than be seen in public. 7. Baby girls find mommy's makeup and almost instintively start painting their face. Baby boys find mommy's makeup and almost instinctively start painting the walls. 8. If a girl accidently burps, she will be embarrassed. If a boy accidently burps, he will follow it with a dozen fake belches. 9. Boys grow their fingernails long because because they're too lazy to cut them. Girls grow their fingernails long - not because they look nice - but because they can dig them into a boys arm. 10. Girls are attracted to boys, even at an early age. At an early age, boys are attracted to dirt. 11. By the age of 6, boys will stop giving their dad kisses. By the age of 6, girls will stop giving their dad kisses unless he bribes them with candy. 12. Most baby girls talk before boys do. Before boys talk, they learn how to make machine-gun noises. 13. Girls will cry if someone dies in a movie. Boys will cry if you turn off the VCR after they've watched "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie three times in a row. 14. Girls turn into women. Boys turn into bigger boys. ------------------------------------ > 2. A shark can detect one part of blood in 100 million parts of water. Depends on the specie. That figure applies for killer sharks: for reef sharks (the ones most commonly dived with) it's more like 1 in 10M - but that can still be "smelled" at 1/2 km. Use waterproof plasters (not fabric ones) over cuts and grazes when diving with sharks! What's reckoned to be the only sort of animal currently on the planet more unpredictable and more vicious than the sharks? [Us.] [Alligators, for example, are very predictable.] [That's a routine part of pre-dive briefings for people who've never dived near sharks before.] > 5. The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle. And (unsurprisingly) the dash of a lower-case t or a lower-case f is a tattle. > 19. Money isn't made out of paper, it's made out of cotton. Before the 1950's it was made from hemp, the stem and leaves of a marijuana plant. That's US money. UK (paper) money is mainly a mix of paper and (Bodmin) china clay - the clay is what gives our money the unAmerican shine. The Yanks expensively changed in the 1950s to try and keep the Southern US cotton trade in business [they failed, but didn't revert]. The old coarse brown sacks (both sides of the Atlantic) were made from hemp fibre (from the stems). Careless manufacture in the States left viable seed clinging to the sacks: moving them by train spread the seeds along railway verges: especially donkeys liked to eat the resulting plants, hence "to go/be loco" in US slang, also m being known as "loco-weed". > 24. Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time. Either way round. Also draw (different things) with both hands at the same time, or write (different things) with both hands at the same time. But he most commonly did write+draw, to illustrate and write about the same thing efficiently. But whenever he wrote with his left hand (no matter what he was doing with the right) his left-hand-writing came out mirror image. This "sinstra" capability got him in trouble with the Inquisition. > 56. Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: > ... > Diamonds - Julius Caesar. Neither a King, nor an Emperor - merely a Dictator. -- Peter SJF Bance http://www.minstrel.org.uk/ XMPP: GreyMinstrel at jabber.org | AIM: GreyMinstrel MSN: Minstrel at minstrel.org.uk | ICQ: 254652398