Jokes, Stories, Cartoons: Good, Bad, or Indifferent

Subject: FURNITURE BUSINESS

A furniture dealer from Alabama decided that he wanted to expand the line of furniture in his store. So he decided to go to Paris, France to see what he could find.

After arriving in Paris (this being his first trip ever to The French capitol), he met with some manufacturers and finally selected a line that he thought would sell well back home in Alabama.

To celebrate the new acquisition, he decided to visit a small bistro and have a glass of wine.

As he sat enjoying his wine, he noticed that the small place was quite crowded, and the other chair at his table was the only vacant seat in the house.

Before long, a very beautiful young Parisian girl came to his table, asked him something in French (which he did not understand), and motioned toward the chair. He invited her to sit down.

He tried to speak to her in English, but she didn't speak his language. After a couple of minutes trying to communicate with her, he took a napkin and drew a picture of a wine glass and showed it her.

She nodded, and he ordered a glass of wine for her.

After sitting together at the table for a while, he took another napkin and drew a picture of a plate with food on it, and she nodded. They left the bistro and found a quiet cafe that featured a small group playing romantic music.

They ordered dinner, and after their meals he took another napkin and drew a picture of a couple dancing. She nodded and they got up to dance.

They danced until the cafe closed and the band was packing up.

Back at their table, the young lady took a napkin and drew a picture of a four-poster bed.

To this day, he has no idea how she figured out he was in the furniture business....

Subject: I.Q. & Conversation

A man walked into a very high-tech bar. As he sat down on a stool, he noticed that the bartender was a robot. The robot clicked to attention and asked "Sir, what will you have?"

The man thought a moment, then replied, "A martini, please".

The robot clicked a couple of times and mixed the best martini the man had ever had. The robot then asked, "Sir, what is your IQ?"

The man answered, "Oh, about 164."

The robot then proceeded to discuss the theory of relativity, inter-stellar space travel, the latest medical break through, etc........

The man was most impressed. He left the bar, but thought he would try a different tact. He returned and took a seat. Again, the robot clicked and asked what he would have.

"A martini, please."

Again it was superb. The robot again asked, "What is your IQ, sir?"

This time the man answered, "Oh, about 100".

So the robot started discussing NASCAR racing, the latest basketball scores, and what to expect the Dodgers to do this weekend.

The guy had to try it one more time. So he left, returned and took a stool.... Again a martini, and the question "What is your IQ?"

This time the man drawled out "Uh... 'bout 50."

The robot clicked, then leaned close and very slowly asked, "A-r-e y-o-u-r p-e-o-p-l-e g-o-i-n-g t-o n-o-m-i-n-a-t-e H-i-l-l-a-r-y-?"

Subject: Andy Rooney's tips for handling telemarketers

Andy Rooney's CBS Newsman

Tips for Handling Telemarketers: Three Little Words That Work !!

(1)The three little words are: "Hold On, Please..."

Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much more time-consuming that boiler room sales would grind to a halt.

Then when you eventually hear the phone company's "beep-beep-beep" tone, you know it's time to go back and hang up your handset, which has efficiently completed its task.

These three little words will help eliminate telephone soliciting.

(2) Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end?

This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls and records the time of day when a person answers the phone.

This technique is used to determine the best time of day for a "real" sales person to call back and get someone at home.

What you can do after answering, if you notice there is no one there, is to immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7 times, as quickly as possible This confuses the machine that dialed the call and it kicks your number out of their system. Gosh, what a shame not to have your name in their system any longer !!!

(3) Junk Mail Help: When you get "ads" enclosed with your phone or utility bill, return these ads" with your payment. Let the sending companies throw their own junk mail away.

When you get those "pre-approved" letters in the mail for everything from credit cards to 2nd mortgages and similar type junk, do not throw away the return envelope. Most of these come with postage-paid return envelopes, right? It costs them more than the regular 37 cents postage "IF" and when they receive them back.

It costs them nothing if you throw them away! The postage was around 50 cents before the last increase and it is according to the weight. In that case, why not get rid of some of your other junk mail and put it in these cool little, postage-paid return envelopes.

One of Andy Rooney's (60 minutes) ideas. Send an ad for your local chimney cleaner to American Express. Send a pizza coupon to Citibank. If you didn't get anything else that day, then just send them their blank application back!

If you want to remain anonymous, just make sure your name isn't on anything you send them.

You can even send the envelope back empty if you want to just to keep them guessing! It still costs them 37 cents.

The banks and credit card companies are currently getting a lot of their own junk back in the mail, but folks, we need to OVERWHELM them. Let's let them know what it's like to get lots of junk mail, and best of all they're paying for it...Twice!

Let's help keep our postal service busy since they are saying that e-mail is cutting into their business profits, and that's why they need to increase postage costs again. You get the idea!

If enough people follow these tips, it will work ---- I have been doing this for years, and I get very little junk mail anymore.

THIS JUST MIGHT BE ONE E-MAIL THAT YOU WILL WANT TO FORWARD TO YOUR FRIENDS

534. Subject: How Long Do We Have?

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer "Present" or "Not guilty."
--Theodore Roosevelt

Interested in statistics? How about these: How Long Do We Have?

About the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior:

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency;
6. From complacency to apathy;
7. From apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage "

Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:

Population of counties won by: Gore: 127 million; Bush: 143 million;

Square miles of land won by: Gore: 580,000; Bush: 2,427,000

States won by: Gore: 19; Bush: 29

Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Gore: 13.2; Bush: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off government welfare..."

Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some 40 percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.

If the Senate grants Amnesty and citizenship to 20 million criminal invaders called illegals and they vote, then good-bye USA in less than 5 years.

Pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.

---

535.
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There'll be two dates on your tombstone,
And all your friends will read 'em,
But all that's gonna matter,
Is that little dash between 'em.
- Kevin Welsh

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New & Old Viruses

The George Bush Virus - Causes your computer to keep looking for viruses of mass destruction.

The John Kerry Virus - Stores data on both sides of the disk and causes little purple hearts to appear on screen.

The Clinton Virus - Gives you a permanent Hard Drive . . . with NO memory.

The Al Gore Virus - Causes your computer to keep counting and recounting

The Bob Dole Virus - Makes a new hard drive out of an old floppy.

The Lewinsky Virus - Sucks all the memory out of your computer, then e-mails everyone about what it did.

The Arnold Schwarzenegger Virus - Terminates some files, leaves, but will be back.

The Mike Tyson Virus - Quits after two bytes.

The Oprah Winfrey Virus - Your 200 GB hard drive shrinks to 100 GB, then slowly expands to re-stabilize around 350 GB.

The Ellen Degeneres Virus - Hard Disks can no longer be inserted.

The Prozac Virus - Totally screws up your RAM, but your processor doesn't care!

The Michael Jackson Virus - Only attacks minor files.

The Lorena Bobbitt Virus - Reformats your hard drive into a 3.5 inch floppy .. then discards it through Windows.

Subject: Kilts

These Scots girl never miss an excuse!!!

Subject: Tiny Bells

John the farmer was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred young layers (hens), called "pullets" and eight or ten roosters, whose job was to fertilize the eggs.

The farmer kept records and any rooster that didn't perform went into the soup pot and was replaced. That took an awful lot of his time so he bought a set of tiny bells and attached them to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone so John could tell from a distance, which rooster was performing.

Now he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report simply by listening to the bells. The farmer's favorite rooster was old Butch, and a very fine specimen he was, too.

But on this particular morning John noticed old Butch's bell hadn't rung at all! John went to investigate.

The other roosters were chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing. The pullets, hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover. But to Farmer John's amazement, Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't ring. He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one.

John was so proud of Butch, he entered him in the Renfrew County Fair and Butch became an overnight sensation among the judges.

The result...The judges not only awarded Butch the No Bell Piece Prize but they also awarded him the Pulletsurprise as well.

Clearly Butch was a politician in the making: who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most highly coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when they weren't paying attention.