Welcome to ...

The place where the world comes together in honesty and mirth.
Windmills Tilted, Scared Cows Butchered, Lies Skewered on the Lance of Reality ... or something to that effect.


Wednesday, August 27, 2008

As of this moment ...

Because of the shrub's greed and insanity in Iraq
4,147
brave men and women are gone.


4,147 families have been destroyed

Support our troops ... Bring them home today!

Then and Now

But after this...

we now have this...

And I Quote

If you would like to know the value of money, go and try to borrow some.
Benjamin Franklin

My wife has a slight impediment in her speech.
Every now and then she stops to breathe.

Jimmy Durante.

Kids are quick

TEACHER: Maria, go to the map and find North America .
MARIA: Here it is.
TEACHER: Correct. Now class, who discovered America ?
CLASS: Maria
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TEACHER: John, why are you doing your math multiplication on the floor?
JOHN: You told me to do it without using tables.
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TEACHER: Glenn, how do you spell 'crocodile?'
GLENN: K-R-O-K-O-D-I-A-L'
TEACHER: No, that's wrong
GLENN: Maybe it is wrong, but you asked me how I spell it.
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TEACHER: Donald, what is the chemical formula for water?
DONALD: H I J K L M N O.
TEACHER: What are you talking about?
DONALD: Yesterday you said it's H to O.
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TEACHER: Winnie, name one important thing we have today that we didn't have ten years ago.
WINNIE: Me!
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TEACHER: Glen, why do you always get so dirty?
GLEN: Well, I'm a lot closer to the ground than you are.
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TEACHER: Millie, give me a sentence starting with 'I.'
MILLIE: I is..
TEACHER: No, Millie..... Always say, 'I am.'
MILLIE: All right... 'I am the ninth letter of the alphabet.'
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TEACHER: George Washington not only chopped down his father's cherry tree, but also admitted it. < face="Verdana" color="red" size="4"> Now, Louie, do you know why his father didn't punish him?
LOUIS: Because George still had the axe in his hand.
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TEACHER: Now, Simon, tell me frankly, do you say prayers before eating?
SIMON: No sir, I don't have to, my Mom is a good cook.
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TEACHER: Clyde , your composition on 'My Dog' is exactly the same as your brother's. Did you copy his?
CLYDE : No, sir. It's the same dog.
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TEACHER: Harold, what do you call a person who keeps on talking when people are no longer interested?
HAROLD: A teacher

Puns

It is said that the ability to make and understand PUNS is the highest level of language development. Here are the top 10 winners in the International Pun Contest.


1. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The Stewardess looks at him and says, 'I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.

2. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says, 'Dam!'

3. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly, it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it, too.



4. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, 'I've lost my electron.' The other says, 'Are you sure?' The first replies, 'Yes, I'm positive.'



5. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication.

6. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. But why they asked, as they moved off. 'Because,' he said, 'I can't stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer.'



7. A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named Ahmal. The other goes to a family in Spain ; they name him Juan. Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, 'They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal.'



8. A group of friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened a small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town to 'persuade' them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he'd be back if they didn't close up shop. Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that only Hugh can prevent florist friars.

9. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him (Oh , this is SO BAD, it's good) a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

10. And, finally, there was the person who posted ten different puns, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.

Just in case you missed it ...

It's official: Democrats nominate Obama.

Tree Yoga for a New Relationship with the Environment

Check this out from treehugger.com

TREE YOGA photo

Do you love doing yoga? The "tree" pose (Vrksasana) connecting your body to the earth while your soul reaches to the sky? Then you will enjoy the news that "husband and wife Hal Preussner and Debra Pruessner have taken yoga to new heights with the Tree Yoga Multi-Sling (TYMS)". This device allows users to suspend themselves from any strong tree, in a multitude of poses ranging from beginner to very advanced. Yes, it is yoga meets anti-gravity boots.

Read more: Tree Yoga for a New Relationship with the Environment

Twelve Hundred

Twelve hundred posts are a lot so I thought a vivid reminder was in order.

Let's do the Time Warp again ...



Just a break in reality, mind you.
Nothing to get concerned about.
Please carry on as if it was a normal part of your day.
That is all.

Why Neanderthal man may not have been as stupid as he looks

Neanderthals were not as stupid as they have been portrayed, according to a study showing their stone tools were just as good as those made by the early ancestors of modern humans, Homo sapiens.

Read the rest here.

From the "You're Joking, Right?" Department

Baghdad plans to build giant Ferris wheel

Iraq is calling on companies to submit designs to build a giant Ferris wheel in Baghdad - the latest in a string of lavish proposals painting the capital as a leisure friendly city.

The Ferris wheel, dubbed the Baghdad Eye, will soar more than 650 feet over the city and feature air-conditioned compartments that would each carry up to 30 passengers, Baghdad municipal spokesman Adel al-Ardawi said Wednesday.

Al-Ardawi said the wheel would be taller than the iconic London Eye, which sits on the banks of the River Thames and reaches a height of about 450 feet over the British capital.

The project would including a six-star hotel, spa, an 18-hole golf course and a country club.

Iraq's Tourism Board also is seeking investors to develop a "romantic" island on the Tigris River in Baghdad that was once a popular honeymoon spot for newlywed Iraqis.

*****

Might be a 'tough sell', don't you think?
Sectarian violence, suicide bombings, and general warfare aside - it's the middle east for Pete's sake and it has never been known as a place of leisure or hedonism ... at least as a pan-cultural ideology.
There have been single cultural groups to embrace those ideals throughout history, but as a whole the region has not.

Paul McCartney gig revives Israeli Beatles tale

An upcoming concert by Paul McCartney has revived memories of the 1960s, when an Israeli official supposedly called off a Beatles concert for fear it would corrupt the nation's youth.

The episode is often fondly quoted as a relic of a long-lost Israel where the public's innocence needed protecting.
Trouble is, the story might not be true: With Israelis in a tizzy about McCartney's arrival, the official's blamed for the 'cancellation', son is taking the opportunity to try to clear his father's name, calling the tale a "Zionist urban legend."

So pervasive is the story of the concert's cancellation 43 years ago that this year Israel's ambassador in London wrote a letter expressing regret over the matter to surviving members of the band.
He told them the country would like to make it up to them: come play during this year's celebrations marking Israel's 60th anniversary.
"Israel missed a chance to learn from the most influential musicians of the decade, and the Beatles missed an opportunity to reach out to one of the most passionate audiences in the world," Ambassador Ron Prosor wrote.

On Wednesday, McCartney confirmed the Sept. 25 concert in Tel Aviv, which had been rumored for days.
In a news release, McCartney acknowledged the brouhaha, saying he is finally coming "43 years after being banned by the Israeli government."
He promised to give Israelis "the night they have been waiting decades for."

Even before McCartney announced the show, tickets went on sale at prices ranging from $140 to $430.

The Israeli official blamed for canceling the 1965 concert was Yaakov Sarid, a stern-faced man in horn-rimmed glasses who was the Education Ministry's director.
He is remembered today - to the extent that he is remembered at all - mainly for his alleged role in denying Israeli youth their chance to faint and scream at the Fab Four.
Also implicated is David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founding father and prime minister at the time.

Sarid, who died in 1976, was the father of Yossi Sarid, for years an outspoken member of Israel's parliament and currently a newspaper columnist.
The younger Sarid, now 67, claims his father had nothing to do with the decision.
He wrote a column - only partially tongue in cheek - for the daily Haaretz this week to call the story "a Zionist urban legend."
He has tried to make the point in the past, he said, but the story has become too firmly ensconced to budge.

The real story, Sarid said, involved a more mundane feud between two Israeli concert promoters.
The competition was so bitter that when one of them, Yaakov Uri, was about to bring the Beatles to the Jewish state, the other, Giora Godik, used his official connections to torpedo the government approval his rival needed to get the foreign currency to pay for the gig.
Sarid said his father was not involved.

This version of events is supported by Israel's pre-eminent pop music critic and historian, Yoav Kutner, who recounted the details in Haaretz on Monday.
"It never happened that way," Kutner said of the oft-told story.
Sarid said his father had never heard of the Beatles - his artistic tastes leaned more toward European Jewish liturgical music - and that Ben-Gurion probably hadn't either.

The false version of events only emerged after his father's death, or "after my father was unable to listen to the Beatles," in Sarid's words.
Sarid said the story was first written in a journalist's anthology about Israeli history and gained traction because of Sarid's own political career.
Sarid the son was one of the most liberal members of parliament and an outspoken critic of government censorship, which gave the story the necessary ironic punch.

The story has lived on because - accurate or not - it accurately reflected the times.
The 1960s was the heyday of Israel's socialist ideology, which sanctified sacrifice and scorned materialism and Western frivolities.
Officially, earnest Hebrew paeans to the beauty of the Land of Israel and to the military were in.
"Love Me Do" was out.

Though Sarid wants the record set straight and his father's name cleared, he also finds the story amusing and realizes it has taken on a life of its own.
"It's a nice story, in this case much nicer than the truth," he said.

Ancient Dead Sea scrolls to go online ...

... and they will surprise some with what they contain (if they are published in their entirety and direct translation).

Israeli and American scientists are bringing the oldest known version of the Hebrew Bible into the 21st century.
They're digitally reproducing the Dead Sea Scrolls online.

The ancient manuscripts containing almost the entire Hebrew Bible date back more than 2,000 years.
They are widely considered to be one of the most important archaeological finds ever.
They were discovered accidentally by a Bedouin shepherd looking for a stray sheep in 1947.

The Israeli Antiquities Authority said Wednesday that reproducing the thousands of scroll fragments will take about five years.
Special imaging cameras are being used to record the priceless manuscripts without damaging them.

DHS contractor threatens woman with arrest for wearing "lesbian.com" tee on federal property

It's not just the idiots at the TSA - the entire Department of Homeland Security is rife with mentally ill whack-jobs ...

For example:

Security guards contracted by the DHS threw a woman out of a Social Security office in Van Nuys for wearing a t-shirt that read "lesbian.com." He claimed that "The Rules and Regulations Governing Conduct on Federal Property" gave him the right to throw her out for wearing a t-shirt with the word "lesbian" on it.
As she headed for a line to pick up a Social Security card for her son, Gilbert was stopped by a guard who said her T-shirt, naming an educational and resource Web site for gay women, was offensive.

She said the guard, who works for a private company hired by the Department of Homeland Security, demanded that she leave the building or face arrest.

T-shirt gets Van Nuys woman kicked out of federal building

When will the bigots learn? We keep asking the question even though we know the answer - Never.

Chinese people discovering fortune cookies



Check out the story here.

A Slice of Philosophy

Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.
~ Albert Schweitzer

And I Quote

He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own.
~ Aesop.

An intellectual is someone who has found something more interesting than sex.
~ Edgar Wallace.