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A Guy goes into the store and asks the clerk, "I'd like some Polish Sausage."
The clerk looks at him and says, "Are you polish?"
The guy says, "Well, yes I am. If I had asked for Italian sausage would you ask me if I was Italian??? Or if I had asked for German sausage, would you ask me if I was German?? Or if I had asked for a taco would you ask if I was Mexican?"
The clerk says "Well, no."
The guys says, "WELL, why do you ask me if I'm Polish just because I ask for Polish sausage????"
The clerk says "Because this is a hardware store."
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Dear Mom and Dad:
It has been four months since I left for college. I have been
remiss in writing and am very sorry for my thoughtlessness. I will
bring you up to date now, but before you read on, please sit down.
Don't read any further unless you are sitting down ... OK?
Good. I am getting along pretty well now. The skull fracture and the concussion I got from jumping out of the window of my dormitory when it caught fire, shortly after my arrival, are pretty well healed now. I only spent two weeks in the hospital and now I can see almost normally and only get three headaches a day. Fortunately, the fire in the dormitory and my jump were witnessed by an attendant at a nearby gas station, and he was able to call the Fire Department and the ambulance. He also visited me at the hospital, and since I had no where to live because of the burnt-out dorm, he was kind enough to invite me to share his apartment with him. It's really a basement room, but it is kind of cute. He is a very fine boy and we have fallen deeply in love and are planning to get married. We haven't set the exact date yet, but I'm sure it will be before I start to show.
Yes, Mom and Dad, I am pregnant. I know how much you are looking forward to being grandparents, and I know you will give the baby the same love and devotion and tender care you gave me when I was a child. The reason for the delay in our marriage is that my boyfriend has some minor infection which prevents us from passing our premarital blood tests, and I carelessly caught it from him. This will soon clear up, thanks to my daily penicillin injections. I know you will welcome him into our family with open arms. He is kind,and although not well educated, heis ambitious.
Also, he is of a different race and religion than ours, but I know, after all your years of teaching me tolerance, that you won't mind the fact that he is somewhat darker than we are. I am sure you will love him as I do. His family background is good, too; I am told that his father is an important gunbearer in his native African village.
I guess that's it. Now that I have brought you up to date, I want
you to know ... There was no dormitory fire, I did not have a concussion
or skullfracture, I was not in the hospital, I am not pregnant, I am not
engaged, I do not have syphilis and there is no man of another race in
my life. However, I am getting a "D" in History and an
"F" in Science, and I wanted you to see these marks in their proper perspective.
Your loving daughter,
Chelsea
P.S. Stanford is great...I love it, though I miss you both terribly...and Socks, too!
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Here are some amusing pearls of wisdom:
Never raise your hands to your kids. It leaves your groin unprotected.
I'm not into working out. My philosophy: No pain, no pain.
I am in shape. Round's a shape...
I'm desperately trying to figure out why kamikaze pilots wore helmets.
Ever wonder if illiterate people get the full effect of alphabet soup?
I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific.
Did you ever notice when you blow in a dog's face he gets mad at you?
But when you take
him in a car he sticks his head out the window.
Have you ever noticed? Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and
anyone going faster
than you is a maniac.
You have to stay in shape. My grandmother started walking five miles
a day when she was
60. She's 97 today and we don't know where she is.
The reason most people play golf is to wear clothes they would not be
caught dead in
otherwise.
Anytime four New Yorkers get into a cab together without arguing a bank
robbery has just
taken place.
I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I lock every
other one. I figure no
matter how long somebody stands there picking the
locks, they are always locking three.
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is
suffering from some form
of mental illness. Think of your three best friends.
If they are okay, then it's you.
I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say
because it's such a
beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother
is attractive, but I only have
photographs of her.
Future historians will be able to study at the Gerald Ford Library;
the James Carter Library;
the Ronald Reagan Library and the Bill Clinton Adult
Bookstore.
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SUBJECT: The Pig
Bill Clinton and his driver were cruising along a country road one night
when all of a sudden
they hit a pig, killing it instantly. Bill told his driver to go up
to the farm house and explain to the owners what had happened.
About 1 hour later Bill sees his driver staggering back to the car with a bottle of wine in one hand, a cigar in the other and his clothes all ripped and torn.
"What happened to you?", asked Bill.
"Well, the Farmer gave me the wine, his wife gave me the Cigar and
his 19 year old daughter made mad passionate love to me," said the driver.
"My God, what did you tell them?", asks Clinton.
The driver replies, "I'm Bill Clinton's driver, and I just killed
the pig."
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A blonde hurries into the hospital emergency room late one night with the tip of her index finger shot off.
"How did this happen?" the emergency room doctor asked her.
"Well, I was trying to commit suicide," the blonde replied.
"What?" sputtered the doctor. "You tried to commit suicide by shooting off the tip of your finger?"
"No, silly!" the blonde said. "First I put the gun to my chest, and I thought: "I just paid $6000 for these breast implants, I'm not shooting myself in the chest."
"So, then?" asked the doctor.
"Then I put the gun in my mouth, and I thought, "I just paid $3000 to get my teeth straightened, I'm not shooting myself in the mouth."
"So, then?"
"Then I put the gun to my ear, and I thought: This is going to make a loud noise "so I put my finger in the other ear before I pulled the trigger."
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Subject: Spaghetti
A doctor was having an affair with his nurse. Shortly afterward, she told him she was pregnant. Not wanting his wife to know, he gave the nurse a sum of money and asked her to go to Italy and have the baby there.
"But how will I let you know the baby is born?" she asked. He replied, "Just send me a postcard and write "spaghetti" on the back." "I'll take care of expenses."
Not knowing what else to do, the nurse took the money and flew to Italy. Six months went by and then one day the doctor's wife called him at the office and explained "Dear, you received a very strange postcard in the mail today from Europe, and I don't understand what it means."
The doctor said "Just wait until I get home and I will explain it to you". Later that evening the doctor came home, read the postcard, fell to the floor with a heart attack. Paramedics rushed him to the ER. The lead medic stayed back to comfort the wife. He asked what trauma had precipitated the cardiac arrest.
So the wife picked up the card and read "Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti - Two with sausage and meatballs, two without.
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Subject: The Old Maid
In a tiny village lived an old maid. In spite of her old age, she was still a virgin. She was very proud of it. She knew her last days were getting closer, so she told the local undertaker that she wanted the following inscription on her tombstone: "Born as a virgin, Lived as a virgin, died as a virgin."
Not long after, the old maid died peacefully, and the undertaker told his men what the lady had said. The men went tocarve it in, but as the lazy no-goods they were, they thought theinscription to be unnecessarily long.
They simply wrote: "Returned unopened."
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A young boy asked his mother, "Ma, is it true that people can be taken apart like machines?"
"Of course not, where did you hear such nonsense?" replied his mother.
The young boy answered, "The other day, Daddy was talking to someone on the phone, and he said that he screwed the ass off his secretary."
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ENTERING HEAVEN
A minister dies and is waiting in line at the Pearly Gates. Ahead of him is aguy who's dressed in sunglasses, a loud shirt, leather jacket and jeans.
Saint Peter addresses this guy, "Who are you, so that I may know whether or not to admit you to the Kingdom of Heaven?"
The guy replies, "I'm Joe Cohen, taxi driver, of New York City."
Saint Peter consults his list. He smiles and says to the taxi driver, "Take this silken robe and golden staff and enter the Kingdom of Heaven." The taxi driver goes into Heaven with his robe and staff, and it's the minister's turn.
He stands erect and booms out, "I am the Right Reverend Joseph Snow, pastor of Saint Mary's for the last forty-three years."
Saint Peter consults his list. He says to the minister, "Take this cotton
robe and wooden staff
and enter the Kingdom of Heaven."
Just a minute," says the minister. "That man was a taxi driver and he gets a silken robe and golden staff. How can this be?"
"Up here, we work by results," says Saint Peter. "While you preached, people slept; while he drove, people prayed."
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The US Standard railroad gauge
The US Standard railroad gauge (distance between rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That is an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and the first U.S. railroads were built by English expatriates.
Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first rail lines in Europe were designed and built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Why did they use that gauge then? Because the people who designed and built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that same wheel spacing.
Okay, why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, when they tried to use any other spacing, the wagons were prone to breaking down on some of the old, long distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts.
So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were all made to certain specifications for or by Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification (Military, as it were) for an Imperial Roman army war chariot.
But one "nagging" question still remains. Why did the design of the Roman army war chariots incorporate that specific wheelbase?
Answer: Because the chariots were designed to be just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.
So, the next time you are handed some odd ball specification and you assume that some horse's ass was responsible for coming up with it, you may be exactly right!
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