Insisting

A famous Hollywood director dies and reaches Heaven. At the proverbial gate, St. Peter meets him and explains that God
would like the director to make one more movie.

The director grimaces, “But I retired years before I died. I’m tired of all the hassles involved in making movies.”

“Listen,” St. Peter explains, “we got Ludwig von Beethoven to write a new score for the movie…”

“You’re not listening to me,” the director protested. “I don’t want to make any more movies.”

“But we’ve got Leonardo de Vinci to do the set design for you,” St. Peter exclaimed.

“I don’t want to make any more movies!” the director insisted.

“Just look at this script,” St. Peter said. “We got William Shakespeare to write it for you!”

“Well,” said the director, “a score by Beethoven, set design by de Vinci, a script by Shakespeare…How can I go wrong?
I’ll do it!”

“Great!” exclaimed St. Peter. “There’s only one small hitch… I’ve got a girlfriend who sings…”

Preparation for Parenthood

Preparation for parenthood is not just a matter of reading books and decorating the nursery. Here are 12 simple tests for expectant parents to take to prepare themselves for the real-life experience of being a mother or father.

1. Women: to prepare for maternity, put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front. Leave it there for 9 months. After 9 months, take out 10% of the beans.

Men: to prepare for paternity, go to the local drug store, tip the contents of your wallet on the counter, and tell the pharmacist to help himself. Then go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office. Go home. Pick up the paper and read it for the last time.

2. Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels, and how they have allowed their children to run riot. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child’s sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behavior. Enjoy it — it’ll be the last time in your life that you will have all of the answers.

3. To discover how the nights feel, walk around the living room from 5 PM to 10 PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 lbs. At 10 PM put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1 AM. Put the alarm on for 3 AM. As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2 AM and make a drink. Go to bed at 2:45 AM. Get up again at 3 AM when the alarm goes off. Sing songs in the dark until 4 AM. Put the alarm on for 5 AM. Get up. Make breakfast. Keep this up for 5 years. Look cheerful.

4. Can you stand the mess children make? To find out, smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains. Hide a fish finger behind the stereo and leave it there all summer. Stick your fingers in the flowerbeds then rub them on the clean walls. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

5. Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems: first buy an octopus and a string bag. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that none of the arms hang out. Time allowed for this — all morning.

6. Take an egg carton. Using a pair of scissors and a can of paint, turn it into an alligator. Now take a toilet tube. Using only Scotch tape and a piece of foil, turn it into a Christmas tree. Last, take a milk container, a ping pong ball, and an empty packet of Cocoa Puffs and make an exact replica of the Eiffel Tower. Congratulations, you have just qualified for a
place on the playgroup committee.

7. Forget the Miata and buy a minivan. And don’t think you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don’t look like that. Buy a chocolate ice cream bar and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there. Get a quarter. Stick it in the cassette player. Take a family-size packet of chocolate cookies. Mash them down the back seats. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car. There! Perfect!

8. Get ready to go out. Wait outside the toilet for half an hour. Go out the front door. Come in again. Go out. Come back in. Go out again. Walk down the front path. Walk back up it. Walk down it again. Walk very slowly down the road for 5 minutes. Stop to inspect minutely every cigarette butt, piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way. Retrace your steps. Scream that you’ve had as much as you can stand, until the neighbors come out and stare at you. Give up and go back in the house. You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.

9. Always repeat everything you say at least five times.

10. Go to your local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child — a fully grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat. Buy your week’s groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goats eat or destroy. Until you can easily accomplish this do not even contemplate having children.

11. Hollow out a melon. Make a small hole in the side. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side. Now get a bowl of soggy Froot Loops and attempt to spoon it into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane. Continue until half of the Froot Loops are gone. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor. You are now ready to feed a 12-month old baby.

12. Learn the names of every character from Barney and Friends, Sesame Street and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. When you find yourself singing “I love you, you love me,” at work, now! you finally qualify as a parent.

Food shortage

A world wide survey was conducted by the UN. The only question asked was: “Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?”

The survey was a huge failure…

In Africa they didn’t know what “food” meant.

In Eastern Europe they didn’t know what “honest” meant.

In Western Europe they didn’t know what “shortage” meant.

In China they didn’t know what “opinion” meant.

In the Middle East they didn’t know what “solution” meant.

In South America they didn’t know what “please” meant.

And in the USA they didn’t know what “the rest of the world” meant.

Quickie

Q: What’s the difference between an oral thermometer and a rectal thermometer?

A: The taste.

Thou Shalt Not Steal

Murphy showed up at Mass one Sunday and the priest almost fell down when he saw him. Murphy had never been seen in church in his life.

After Mass, the priest caught Murphy and said, “Murphy, I am so glad you decided to come to Mass. What made you come?”

Murphy replied, “I got to be honest with you Father, a while back, I misplaced me hat and I really, really love that hat. I know that McGlynn has a hat just like me hat, and I knew that McGlynn comes to church every Sunday. I also knew that McGlynn had to take off his hat during Mass and I figured he would leave it in the back of the church. So, I was going to leave after Communion and steal McGlynn’s hat.”

The priest said, “Well, Murphy, I notice that you didn’t steal McGlynn’s hat. What changed your mind?”

Murphy said, “Well, after I heard your sermon on the Ten Commandments, I decided that I didn’t need to steal McGlynn’s hat.”

The priest gave Murphy a big smile and said, “After I talked about ‘Thou Shalt Not Steal’ you decided you would rather do without your hat than burn in Hell, right?”

Murphy shook his head and said, “No Father. After you talked about ‘Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery’, I remembered where I left me hat.”

Abbreviations

“I told you 158 times I cannot stand little notes on my pillow.

‘We are out of cornflakes. F.U.’

It took me three hours to figure out F.U. was Felix Unger. It’s not your fault, Felix: it’s a rotten combination, that’s all.”
- Walter Matthau to Jack Lemmon in The Odd Couple, 1968

Attractive

Panicking when her toddler swallowing a tiny magnet; my sister, Betty, rushed him to the emergency room.

“He’ll be fine,” the doctor promised her. “The magnet should pass through his system in a day or two.”

“How will I be sure?” she pressed.

“Well,” the doctor suggested, “you could stick him on the efrigerator. When he falls off, you’ll know.”

Counting

Donald Rumsfeld was briefing George Bush in the Oval Office. “Oh, and finally, sir, three Brazilian soldiers were killed in Iraq today.”

Bush goes pale, his jaw hung open in stunned disbelief. He buries his face in his hands, muttering “My God … My God”.

“Mr. President,” says Cheney, “we lose soldiers all the time, and it’s terrible. But I’ve never seen you so upset. What’s the matter?”

Bush looks up and says … “How many is a brazilian?”

Thanks anyway

A guy is walking along when suddenly he got his foot caught in the railroad tracks. He tried to get it out but it
was really stuck. He heard a noise and turned around to see a train coming.

He panicked and started to pray, “God, please get my foot out of these tracks and I’ll stop drinking!” Nothing happened, it was still stuck, and the train was getting closer! He prayed again, “God, please get my foot out and I’ll stop drinking AND cussing!” Still nothing and the train was just seconds away!

He tried it one more time, “God please, if you get my foot out of the tracks, I’ll quit drinking, cussing, smoking and
fornicating.”

Suddenly his foot shot out of the tracks and he was able to dive out of the way in the nick of time.

He got up, dusted himself off, looked toward heaven and said, “Thanks anyway, God. I got it myself.”

A plan to save bankrupt airlines

Replace all female flight attendants with some good-looking strippers!

What the hell? The attendants have gotten old and haggard-looking. They don’t even serve food anymore, so what’s the loss?

The strippers would double, triple, perhaps quadruple the alcohol consumption and get a “party atmosphere” going in the cabin. And, of course, every heterosexual businessman in this country would start flying again, hoping to see naked women. Muslims would be afraid to get on the planes for fear of seeing naked women. Hijackings would come to a screeching halt and the airline industry would see record revenues.

Why the hell didn’t Bush think of this? Why do I still have to do everything myself?

Sincerely,
Bill Clinton