Jokes

A lady's husband dies. She heads to the funeral home to make arrangements. She's emphatic that the arrangements must be done with elegance, and attention to detail.

"For example," she tells the funeral director, "I want no wooden chairs. Only padded ones. All the comforts possible to be extended to the mourners. Have the air conditioning set to a perfect 72 degrees. The flowers should be beautiful, yet not overpowering in their scent."

The funeral director takes it all down.

The day of the funeral the widow is examining the viewing room. She notices that the funeral director has not yet turned on the air conditioner. She orders the director to turn it on so that when the viewing starts, the room will be a perfect temperature.

As soon as the air conditioner is on, though, she notices her deceased husband's hairpiece is flapping in the breeze caused by the air conditioner. "This won't do!" She orders the director to take care of the problem. He assures her that he will take care of it, if she'll just wait in the outer office for ten minutes. She leaves and comes back after exactly 600 seconds. Sure enough, her husband's hair is all in place.

A month later, the widow is reviewing the bill for the funeral and she notices there was no charge for the hair problem. She calls to inquire as to why. She's told that it was "on the house." "Nonsense," she retorts, "you expended time and materials and I will compensate you for it. Now, give me a price!"

"Ok, madam", the funeral director wearily agrees. He holds the phone away and hollers across the room, "Hey, Charlie, how much did that nail cost to put that toupee in place last month?"

Little Johnny was walking along the railroad tracks when suddenly he got his foot caught under one of the railroad ties. He tried to get it out but it was really stuck. As he struggled to free his foot, he heard a noise and turned around. To his horror he saw a train coming.

Panicked he started to pray, "God, please get my foot out of these tracks and I'll stop being bad!"

Nothing happened, his foot was still stuck. He looked up to see the train getting closer! He prayed again, "God, please get my foot out and I'll stop swearing AND being bad!"

Still nothing his foot was wedged tight. The train was just seconds away! Little Johnny struggled frantically as the train's horn blared.

He tried his plea one more time, "God, please, if you get my foot out of the tracks, I'll quit being bad, I'll stop swearing, AND I'll stop trying to look up little Mary's dress."

Just as the train was about to hit Johnny, his foot broke free and he fell backwards, the train narrowly missing him. He got up, dusted himself off, looked toward Heaven and said "Thanks anyway God, I got it myself."

A young doctor had moved out to a small community to replace a doctor who was retiring. The older gent suggested the young one accompany him on his rounds so the community could become used to a new doctor.

At the first house a woman complained, "I've been a little sick to my stomach." The older doctor said, "Well, you've probably been overdoing the fresh fruit. Why not cut back on the amount you've been eating and see if that does the trick?"

As they left the younger man said, "You didn't even examine that woman. How'd you come to your diagnosis so quickly?"

"I didn't have to. You noticed I dropped my stethoscope on the floor in there? When I bent over to pick it up, I noticed a half dozen banana peels in the trash. That was what was probably making her sick."

"Huh," the younger doctor said, "Pretty sneaky. I think I'll try that at the next house."

Arriving at the next house, they spent several minutes talking with an elderly woman. She complained that she just didn't have the energy she once did. "I'm feeling terribly run down lately."

"You've probably been doing too much work for the church," the younger doctor told her. "Perhaps you should cut back a bit and see if that helps."

As they left, the elder doc said, "Your diagnosis is almost certainly correct, but how did you arrive at it?"

"Well, just like you at the last house, I dropped my stethoscope. When I bent down to retrieve it, I noticed the preacher under the bed."

Fifteen ways to avoid a good southern ass whuppin. Issued by the Southern Tourism Bureau to ALL visiting Northerners and Northeastern Urbanites:

1) Don't order filet mignon or pasta primavera at Waffle House. It's just a diner. They serve breakfast 24 hours a day. Let them cook something they know. If you confuse them, they'll kick your ass.

2) Don't laugh at our Southern names (Merleen, Bodie, Ovine, Luther Ray, Tammy Lynn, Darla Beth, Inez, Billy Joe, Sissy, Clovis, etc.) or we will just HAVE to kick your ass.

3) Don't order a bottle of pop or a can of soda down here. Down here it's called Coke. Nobody gives a flying fuck whether it's Pepsi, RC, Dr. Pepper, 7-Up or whatever...it's still a Coke. Accept it. Doing otherwise can lead to an ass kicking.

4) We know our heritage. Most of us are more literate than you (e.g., Welty, Williams, Faulkner). We are also better educated and generally a lot nicer. Don't refer to us as a bunch of hillbillies, or we'll kick your ass.

5) We have plenty of business sense (e.g., Fred Smith of Fed Ex, Turner Broadcasting, MCI WorldCom, MTV, Netscape). Naturally, we do, sometimes, have small lapses in judgment (e.g. Edwards, Duke, Barnes, Clinton). We don't care if you think we are dumb. We are not dumb enough to let someone move to our state in order to run for the Senate. If someone tried to do that, we would kick his/her ass.

6) Don't laugh at our Civil War monuments. If Lee had listened to Longstreet and flanked Meade at Gettysburg instead of sending Pickett up the middle, you'd be paying taxes to Richmond instead of Washington. If you visit Stone Mountain and complain about the carving, we'll kick your ass.

7) We are fully aware of how high the humidity is, so shut the hell up. Just spend your money and get the hell out of here, or we'll kick your ass.

8) Don't order wheat toast at Cracker Barrel. Everyone will instantly know that you're a Yankee. Eat your biscuits like God intended - with gravy. And don't put sugar on your grits, or we'll kick your ass.

9) Don't fake a Southern accent. This will incite a riot, and you will get your ass kicked.

10) Don't talk about how much better things are at home because we know better. Many of us have visited Northern hellholes like Detroit, Chicago, and DC, and we have the scars to prove it. If you don't like it here, Delta is ready when you are. Move your ass on home before it gets kicked.

11) Yes, we know how to speak proper English. We talk this way because we don't want to sound like you. We don't care if you don't understand what we are saying. All other Southerners understand what we are saying, and that's all that matters. Now, go away and leave us alone, or we'll kick your ass.

12) Don't complain that the South is dirty and polluted. None of OUR lakes or rivers have caught fire recently. If you whine about OUR scenic beauty, we'll kick your ass all the way back to Boston Harbor.

13) Don't ridicule our Southern manners. We say sir and ma'am. We hold doors open for others. We offer our seats to old folks because such things are expected of civilized people. Behave yourselves around our sweet little gray-haired grandmothers or they'll kick some manners into your ass just like they did ours.

14) So you think we're quaint or losers because most of us live in the countryside? That's because we have enough sense to not live in filthy, smelly, crime-infested cesspools like New York or Baltimore. Make fun of our fresh air, and we'll kick your ass.

15) Last, but not least, DO NOT DARE to come down here and tell us how to cook barbecue. This will get your ass shot (right after it is kicked). You're lucky we let you come down here at all. Criticize our barbecue, and you will go home in a pine box.. . . minus your ass!

A husband and wife are traveling by car from Atlanta to New York. After almost twenty-four hours on the road, they're too tired to continue, and they decide to stop for a rest. They stop at a nice hotel and take a room, but they only plan to sleep for four hours and then get back on the road.

When they check out four hours later, the desk clerk hands them a bill for $350. The man explodes and demands to know why the charge is so high. He tells the clerk although it's a nice hotel, the rooms certainly aren't worth $350. When the clerk tells him $350 is the standard rate, the man insists on speaking to the manager.

The manager listens to the man and then explains the hotel has an Olympic-sized pool and a huge conference center that were available for the husband and wife to use. He also explains they could have taken in one of the shows for which the hotel is famous. "The best entertainers from New York, Hollywood and Las Vegas perform here," explains the manager.

No matter what facility the manager mentions, the man replies, "But we didn't use it!"

The manager is unmoved and eventually the man gives up and agrees to pay. He writes a check and gives it to the manager. The manager is surprised when he looks at the check.

"But sir," he says, "this check is only made out for $100."

"That's right," says the man. "I charged you $250 for sleeping with my wife."

"But I didn't sleep with your wife!" exclaims the manager.

"Well," the man replies, "she was here, and you could have."

UCLA STUDY ON FRIENDSHIP AMONG WOMEN

A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are special. They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we really are. By the way, they may do even more.

Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach-quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women. It's a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research---most of it on men---upside down.

"Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible," explains Laura Cousin Klein, Ph.D., now an Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Penn State University and one of the study's authors. "It's an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet by saber-toothed tigers."

Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral repertoire than just "fight or flight". In fact," says Dr. Klein, "it seems that when the hormone oxytocin is released as part of the stress responses in a woman, it buffers the "fight or fight" response and encourages her to tend children and gather with other women instead. When she actually engages in this tending or befriending, studies suggest that more oxytocin is released, which further counters stress and produces a calming effect. This calming response does not occur in men", says Dr. Klein, "because testosterone---which men produce in high levels when they're under stress---seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin. Estrogen", she adds, "seems to enhance it."

The discovery that women respond to stress differently than men was made in a classic "aha!" moment shared by two women scientists who were talking one day in a lab at UCLA. "There was this joke that when the women who worked in the lab were stressed, they came in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and bonded", says Dr. Klein.

"When the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere on their own. I commented one day to fellow researcher Shelley Taylor that nearly 90%of the stress research is on males. I showed her the data from my lab, and the two of us knew instantly that we were onto something."

The women cleared their schedules and started meeting with one scientist after another from various research specialties. Very quickly, Drs. Klein and Taylor discovered that by not including women in stress research, scientists had made a huge mistake: The fact that women respond to stress differently than men has significant implications for our health.

It may take some time for new studies to reveal all the ways that oxytocin encourages us to care for children and hang out with other women, but the "tend and befriend" notion developed by Drs. Klein and Taylor may explain why women consistently outlive men. Study after study has found that social ties reduce our risk of disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol.

"There's no doubt," says Dr. Klein, that friends are helping us live longer." In one study, for example, researchers found that people who had no friends increased their risk of death over a 6-month period. In another study, those who had the most friends over a 9-year period cut their risk of death by more than 60%.

Friends are also helping us live better. The famed Nurses' Health Study from Harvard Medical School found that the more friends women had, the less likely they were to develop physical impairments as they aged, and the more likely they were to be leading a joyful life. In fact, the results were so significant, the researchers concluded, that not having close friends or confidants was as detrimental to your health as smoking or carrying extra weight!

And that's not all! When the researchers looked at how well the women functioned after the death of their spouse, they found that even in the face of this biggest stressor of all, those women who had a close friend and confidante were more likely to survive the experience without any new physical impairments or permanent loss of vitality. Those without friends were not always so fortunate.

Yet if friends counter the stress that seems to swallow up so much of our life these days, if they keep us healthy and even add years to our life, why is it so hard to find time to be with them? That's a question that also troubles researcher Ruthellen Josselson, Ph.D., co-author of Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of Girls' and Women's Friendships (Three Rivers Press, 1998). "Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the first thing we do is let go of friendships with other women," explains Dr. Josselson. We push them right to the back burner. That's really a mistake because women are such a source of strength to each other. We nurture one another. And we need to have unpressured space in which we can do the special kind of talk that women do when they're with other women. It's a very healing experience."

I have playing on Joke A Day Radio some bits by Los Angeles radio star Rick Dees called "Spousal Arousal." The bit's pretty simple. A spouse gets on the phone, with Dees and everyone listening, and attempts to talk his or her mate into coming home for a little lovin'. You'd think that women would be able to get their husbands home right away, but that's not always the case.

Take poor Anna who was trying to get Gary home before noon:

"Hey, Gary, are you busy?"

"Yeah. I'm getting ready to open. What's up?"

"Oh, nothing, I just wanted to know, you remember when you went fishing with Michael and them?"

"Yeh."

"I wanted to know if you wanted to come home and 'throw your fishing rod into your own private fishing pond.'"

Puzzled. "Throw my 'fishing rod' into my 'fishing pond'? What the hell are you talking about?"

"Can you come home?"

Exasperated. "I can't come home!"

"Why not? Look. I'll let you let your 'snake slither into my jungle.'"

"WHAT are you talking about?!?"

"C'mon, babe, I wanna make witchy! Come home and I'll let you play 'hide the chirizo!'"

Big heavy sigh. "What time?"

"About 11:30"?

Still exasperated. "What's for lunch?"

"ME! I'll give you your afternoon delight! So, will you come home?"

"Well. Okay. But I WANT LUNCH, TOO."

Three Italian mothers were attending a football game. Each had a son playing on the same team. At the start of the game, the first boy saw his opportunity, grabbed the ball and running quickly, out-foxed the opposing team, making the first touchdown. His mother, obviously proud of her son, sprang from the bleachers, shouting in her broken Italian accent, "Thatsa *my* boy! I raised him onna da Pet milk. Ain't he-a fine?"

Soon, the second boy received the ball and in a spectacular run down the field, made another goal for the team. Not wanting to be outdone by the first boy's mother, the second boy's mother jumped from her seat, exclaiming, "Thatsa *my* boy!! I raised him onna da breast milk. Ain't he-a wonderful?"

The third boy, hadn't done so well, but finally someone threw him the ball. He fumbled it, then recovered... running in the wrong direction, fell with the ball, ran some more, stumbled again, dropped it once more, recovered it and finally crossed the goal line on the wrong end of the field. The third Italian mother couldn't stand it any longer. Rising from her place in the stands, she shouted, "Thatsa *my* boy! I raised him onna Milk of Magnesia. Ain't he-a the shits?"

Hello.

Yes, you!

You, looking at this screen for hours on end, online. You, bleary-eyed. You, an addict. Have you looked in the mirror lately? Been outside? Know what day of the week it is?

Your name was given to us by a spouse or family member who is concerned about your Internet addiction. At Internetaholics Anonymous, we can help. We're a non-profit society of recovering addicts like yourself that provides support and counseling through weekly meetings designed to help you cope with your problem.

We feature a twelve-step recovery program and in extreme cases, interventions. Although it is our firm belief that you are never "cured," you most certainly can recover.

We have designed a brief checklist to determine IF you are an addict. Do you:

1) Have twitches of the hand when you walk by your terminal?
2) Check e-mail more than five times a day?
3) Spend more time chatting than eating or sleeping?
4) Surf aimlessly with no direction, if only to be online?
5) Leave your name and information at countless sites if only to hope you'll receive a reply one day from a company you'll never do business with anyway?
6) Log on before important personal habits, such as meal preparation, hygiene or bodily functions?
7) Have red, swollen eyes that hang halfway out of your head?
8) Spend hours online on a holiday from work, where you'd usually be griping about your carpal tunnel syndrome?
9) See smoke arising from your computer or WebTV box?
10) All of the above? _______

If you answered yes to four or more questions (or chose #10), you have a problem.

Please call us at Internetaholics Anonymous at:

1-800-LOGOFFNOWFORSWEETJESUSSAKES.

We're here, we're free, and we're confidential. The first step to recovery is an admission that you have a problem. Call us today. If you can power off to free up your phone line, that is.

Letters to a pastor

**Dear Pastor, I know God loves everybody but He never met my sister. Yours sincerely, Arnold. Age 8, Nashville.

**Dear Pastor, Please say in your sermon that Peter Peterson has been a good boy all week. I am Peter Peterson. Sincerely, Pete. Age 9, Phoenix

**Dear Pastor, My father should be a minister. Every day he gives us a sermon about something. Robert, Page 11, Anderson

**Dear Pastor, I'm sorry I can't leave more money in the plate, but my father didn't give me a raise in my allowance. Could you have a sermon about a raise in my allowance? Love, Patty. Age 10, New Haven

**Dear Pastor, My mother is very religious. She goes to play bingo at church every week even if she has a cold. Yours truly, Annette. Age 9, Albany

**Dear Pastor, I would like to go to heaven someday because I know my brother won't be there. Stephen. Age 8, Chicago

**Dear Pastor, I think a lot more people would come to your church if you moved it to Disneyland. Loreen. Age 9. Tacoma

**Dear Pastor, I liked your sermon where you said that good health is more important than money but I still want a raise in my allowance. Sincerely, Eleanor. Age 12, Sarasota

**Dear Pastor, Please pray for all the airline pilots. I am flying to California tomorrow. Laurie. Age 10, New York City

**Dear Pastor, I hope to go to heaven some day but later than sooner. Love, Ellen, age 9. Athens

**Dear Pastor, Please say a prayer for our Little League team. We need God's help or a new pitcher. Thank you. Alexander. Age 10, Raleigh

**Dear Pastor, My father says I should learn the Ten Commandments. But I don't think I want to because we have enough rules already in my house. Joshua. Age 10, South Pasadena

**Dear Pastor, Who does God pray to? Is there a God for God? Sincerely, Christopher. Age 9, Titusville

**Dear Pastor, Are there any devils on earth? I think there may be one in my class. Carla. Age 10, Salina

**Dear Pastor, I liked your sermon on Sunday. Especially when it was finished. Ralph, Age 11, Akron

**Dear Pastor, How does God know the good people from the bad people? Do you tell Him or does He read about it in the newspapers? Sincerely, Marie. Age 9, Lewiston