A guy was sitting at the Super
Bowl in the very best seat available.
The guy on his left noticed there
was an empty seat next to him and said, "Can you believe someone actually
paid for that seat and didn't come to the game?"
The fellow next to him replied, "Actually,
that's my wife's seat...we bought these tickets months ago. Unfortunately,
my wife passed away so I came alone."
"I'm sorry to hear that, but why didn't
you give the ticket to a family member or friend?"
"Oh, they're all at the funeral."
The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered
as Ke-kou-ke-la.
Unfortunately, the Coke company did not
discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the
phrase means "bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with
wax" depending on the dialect.
Coke then researched 40,000 Chinese characters
and found a close phonetic equivalent, "ko-kou-ko-le," which can be
loosely translated as "happiness in the mouth."
MEN vs. WOMEN -- HOW THEIR THOUGHT PROCESSES
DIFFER
Let's say a guy named Roger is attracted
to a woman named Elaine.
He asks her out to a movie; she accepts;
they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to
dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each
other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody
else.
And then, one evening when they're driving
home, a thought occurs to Elaine, and, without really thinking, she
says it aloud: ''Do you realize that, as of tonight, we've been seeing
each other for exactly six months?''
And then there is silence in the car. To
Elaine, it seems like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself:
Gee, I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he's been
feeling confined by our relationship; maybe he thinks I'm trying to
push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn't want, or isn't
sure of.
And Roger is thinking: Gosh. Six months.
And Elaine is thinking: But, hey, I'm not
so sure I want this kind of relationship, either. Sometimes I wish
I had a little more space, so I'd have time to think about whether
I really want us to keep going the way we are, moving steadily toward
. . . I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to keep seeing
each other at this level of intimacy? Are we heading toward marriage?
Toward children? Toward a lifetime together? Am I ready for that level
of commitment? Do I really even know this person?
And Roger is thinking: . . . so that means
it was . . . let's see....February when we started going out, which
was right after I had the car at the dealer's, which means . . . lemme
check the odometer. . . Whoa! I am way overdue for an oil change here.
And Elaine is thinking: He's upset. I can
see it on his face. Maybe I'm reading this completely wrong. Maybe
he wants more from our relationship, more intimacy, more commitment;
maybe he has sensed -- even before I sensed it -- that I was feeling
some reservations. Yes, I bet that's it. That's why he's so reluctant
to say anything about his own feelings. He's afraid of being rejected.
And Roger is thinking: And I'm gonna have
them look at the transmission again. I don't care what those morons
say, it's still not shifting right. And they better not try to blame
it on the cold weather this time. What cold weather? It's 87 degrees
out, and this thing is shifting like a garbage truck, and I paid those
incompetent thieves $600.
And Elaine is thinking: He's angry. And
I don't blame him. I'd be angry, too. I feel so guilty, putting him
through this, but I can't help the way I feel. I'm just not sure.
And Roger is thinking: They'll probably
say it's only a 90-day warranty. That's exactly what they're gonna
say, the rats.
And Elaine is thinking: maybe I'm just too
idealistic, waiting for a knight to come riding up on his white horse,
when I'm sitting right next to a perfectly good person, a person I
enjoy being with, a person I truly do care about, a person who seems
to truly care about me. A person who is in pain because of my self-centered,
schoolgirl romantic fantasy.
And Roger is thinking: Warranty? They want
a warranty? I'll give them a warranty. I'll take their warranty and
stick it right up their ass.
''Roger,'' Elaine says aloud.
''What?'' says Roger, startled.
''Please don't torture yourself like this,''
she says, her eyes beginning to brim with tears. ''Maybe I should
never have . . . I feel so . . ." (She breaks down, sobbing.)
''What?'' says Roger.
''I'm such a fool,'' Elaine sobs. ''I mean,
I know there's no knight. I really know that. It's silly. There's
no knight, and there's no horse....''
''There's no horse?'' says Roger.
''You think I'm a fool, don't you?'' Elaine
says.
''No!'' says Roger, glad to finally know
the correct answer.
''It's just that . . . It's that I . . .
I need some time,'' Elaine says.
(There is a 15-second pause while Roger,
thinking as fast as he can, tries to come up with a safe response.
Finally he comes up with one that he thinks might work.)
''Yes,'' he says.
(Elaine, deeply moved, touches his hand.)
''Oh, Roger, do you really feel that way?''
she says.
''What way?'' says Roger.
''That way about time,'' says Elaine.
''Oh,'' says Roger. ''Yes.''
(Elaine turns to face him and gazes deeply
into his eyes, causing him to become very nervous about what she might
say next, especially if it involves a horse.)
(At last she speaks.)
''Thank you, Roger,'' she says.
''Thank you,'' says Roger.
Then he takes her home, and she lies on
her bed, a conflicted, tortured soul, and weeps until dawn, whereas
when Roger gets back to his place, he opens a bag of Doritos, turns
on the TV, and immediately becomes deeply involved in a rerun of a
tennis match between two Czechs he never heard of. A tiny voice in
the far recesses of his mind tells him that something major was going
on back there in the car, but he is pretty sure there is no way he
would ever understand what, and so he figures it's better if he doesn't
think about it. (This is also Roger's policy regarding world hunger.)
The next day Elaine will call her closest
friend, or perhaps two of them, and they will talk about this situation
for six straight hours. In painstaking detail, they will analyze everything
she said and everything he said, going over it time and time again,
exploring every word, expression, and gesture for nuances of meaning,
considering every possible ramification. They will continue to discuss
this subject, off and on, for weeks, maybe months, never reaching
any definite conclusions, but never getting bored with it, either.
Meanwhile, Roger, while playing racquetball
one day with a mutual friend of his and Elaine's, will pause just
before serving, frown, and say: ''Norm, did Elaine ever own a horse?''
I asked a user if he was running his program
under Windows. He said "No. My desk is by the door -- but you know,
you make a good point. Tony sits under a window and his program is
working fine."
Outside of a dog, a book is mans' best friend.
Inside a dog it's too dark to read. -- Groucho Marx
SOFTWARE ALERT ... DISCRETION ADVISED WHEN
UPGRADING!
Last year a friend of mine upgraded from
Girlfriend 4.0 to Wife 1.0 and found that it's a memory hog leaving
few system resources for other applications. He is also now noticing
that Wife 1.0 is also spawning Child-Processes which are further consuming
valuable resources. No mention of this particular phenomenon was included
in the product documentation, though other users have informed me
that this is to be expected due to the nature of the application.
Not only that, Wife 1.0 installs itself
so that it is always launched at system initialization where it can
monitor all other system activity. Some applications such as PokerNite
10.3, Bachelor Party 2.5 and PubNite 7.0 are no longer able to run
in the system at all, causing the system to lockup when launched (even
though these apps worked fine before).
Wife 1.0 provides no installation options.
Thus, the installation of undesired plug-ins such as Mother-in-law
55.8 and the Brother-in-law Beta is unavoidable. Also, system performance
seems to diminish with each passing day.
Some features my friend would like to see
in the upcoming Wife 2.0:
* A "Don't Remind Me Again" button.
* Minimize button.
* An install shield that allows Wife 2.0
to be installed with the option of uninstalling at any time without
loss of Cache and other system resources.
* An option to run the network driver in
"promiscuous mode" which would allow the system's Hardware Probe feature
to be much more useful.
I myself wish I had decided to avoid all
the headaches associated with Wife 1.0 by sticking with Girlfriend
3.0. Even here, however, I had found many problems. Apparently you
cannot install Girlfriend 4.0 on top of Girlfriend 3.0. You must uninstall
Girlfriend 3.0 first, otherwise the two versions of Girlfriend will
have conflicts over shared use of the I/O port. Other users have told
me that this is a long-standing problem that I should have been aware
of.
To make matters worse, the uninstall program
for Girlfriend 3.0 doesn't work very well, leaving undesirable traces
of the application in the system. Another identified problem is that
all versions of Girlfriend continually pop up annoying little messages
about the advantages of Wife 1.0.
* * * * BUG WARNING * * * *
All users should be aware that Wife 1.0
has an undocumented bug. If you try to install Mistress 1.1 before
uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will delete MSMoney files before doing
the uninstall itself. Then for some reason Mistress 1.1 won't install
at all, claiming insufficient resources. To avoid the aforementioned
bug, try installing Mistress 1.1 on a different system and never run
any file transfer applications (such as LapLink) between the two systems.
"When I die, I want to go peacefully in
my sleep like my Grandfather did, not screaming like the passengers
in his car."
I was in the grocery store. I saw a sign
that said "pet supplies". So I did. Then I went outside and saw a
sign that said "compact cars." -- Steven Wright
A friend of mine is into Voodoo Acupuncture.
You don't have to go. You'll just be walking down the street, and...ooooohhhhhh,
that's much better. -- Steven Wright
"When you enjoy something, you must never
let logic get too much in the way. Like the villains in all the James
Bond movies. Whenever Bond breaks into complex: 'Ah, Mr. Bond, welcome,
come in. Let me show you my entire evil plan and then put you in a
death machine that doesn't work'." -- Jerry Seinfeld, "Sein Language"
"Alice came to a fork in the road and saw
a Chesire cat in a tree. 'Which road do I take?' she asked. His response
was a question: 'Where do you want to go?' 'I don't know.' Alice answered.
'Then,' said the cat, 'it doesn't matter.' " -- Lewis Carroll, "Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland"
There's this fella with a parrot. And this
parrot swears like a sailor, I mean he's a pistol. He can swear for
five minutes straight without repeating himself. Trouble is, the guy
who owns him is a quiet, conservative type, and this bird's foul mouth
is driving him crazy. One day, it gets to be too much, so the guy
grabs the bird by the throat, Shakes him really hard, and yells, "QUIT
IT!"
But this just makes the bird mad and he
swears more than ever. Then the guy gets mad and says, "OK for you."
and locks the bird in a kitchen cabinet. This really aggravates the
bird and he claws and scratches, and when the guy finally lets him
out, the bird cuts loose with a stream of vulgarities that would make
a veteran sailor blush.
At that point, the guy is so mad that he
throws the bird in the freezer. For the first few seconds there is
a terrible din. The bird kicks and claws and thrashes. Then it suddenly
gets very quiet. At first the guy just waits, but then he starts to
think that the bird may be hurt. After a couple of minutes of silence,
he's so worried that he opens up the freezer door. The bird calmly
climbs onto the man's outstretched arm and says, "Awfully sorry about
the trouble I gave you. I'll do my best to improve my vocabulary from
now on."
The man is astounded. He can't understand
the transformation that has come over the parrot. Then the parrot
says, "By the way, what did the chicken do?"
I was a peripheral visionary. I could see
the future, but only way off to the side. -- Steven Wright
What's another word for Thesaurus? -- Steven
Wright
"In theory, there is no difference between
theory and practice, but in practice, there is." -- Author unknown
I made a chocolate cake with white chocolate.
Then I took it to potluck. I stood in line for some cake. They said,
"Do you want white cake or chocolate cake?" I said, "yes". -- Steven
Wright
My aunt gave me a walkie-talkie for my birthday.
She says if I'm good, she'll give me the other one next year. -- Steven
Wright
I went to the bank and asked to borrow a
cup of money. They said, "What for?" I said, "I'm going to buy some
sugar." -- Steven Wright
I bought a million lottery tickets. I won
a dollar. -- Steven Wright
I xeroxed my watch. Now I have time to spare.
-- Steven Wright
I took a course in speed waiting. Now I
can wait an hour in only ten minutes. -- Steven Wright
You know how it is when you go to be the
subject of a psychology experiment, and nobody else shows up, and
you think maybe that's part of the experiment? I'm like that all the
time. -- Steven Wright
The sky is falling...no, I'm tipping over
backwards. -- Steven Wright
If you tell a joke in the forest, but nobody
laughs, was it a joke? -- Steven Wright
A beautiful woman moved next door. So I
went over and returned a cup of sugar. "You didn't borrow this." "I
will." -- Steven Wright
Romance is dead. It was acquired in a hostile
takeover by Hallmark and Disney, homogenized, and sold off, piece
by piece. -- Lisa Simpson
Bill Gates died and went to stand before
God...
God stood over Bill Gates and said, "Well,
Bill, I'm really confused on this one. It's a tough decision...I'm
not sure whether to send you to Heaven or Hell. After all, you helped
society enormously by putting a computer in almost every home in America,
yet you also created that Windows95, among other things. I believe
I'll do something I've never done before...I'll let YOU decide where
you want to go.
Bill pushed up his glasses, looked at God
and replied, "Could you briefly explain the difference between the
two?"
God said, "I'll do better than that. I'll
let you visit both places briefly, then you can make your decision.
Which do you want to visit first...Heaven or Hell?"
Bill said, "I think I'll try Hell first."
So, with a flash of lightning and a cloud
of smoke, Bill Gates went to Hell.
When he materialized in Hell, Bill looked
around. It was a beautiful and clean place...a bit warm...with sandy
beaches and tall mountains, clear skies, pristine water and beautiful
women frolicking about. A smile came across Bill's face as he took
in a deep breath of the clean air. "This is great!", he thought. "If
this is Hell, then I can't wait to see Heaven."
Within a second of his thought, there was
another flash of lightning and Bill was off to Heaven. Heaven was
a place high in the clouds where angels were drifting about playing
on their harps and singing in a beautiful chorus. It was a very nice
place, Bill thought, but not as enticing as Hell.
Bill cupped his hands, called out his decision
to God and Bill Gates was sent to Hell for eternity.
Time passed and God decided to check up
on Bill to see how he getting along in Hell. When he got there, he
found Bill Gates shackled to a wall in a dark cave amid bone thin
men and tongues of fire, being burned and tortured by demons.
"So...how is everything going?", God asked.
Bill responded in a cracking voice filled
with anguish and disappointment, "This is awful! It's NOTHING like
the Hell I visited the first time! I can't believe this is happening!
What happened to the other place...with the beaches and the mountains
and the beautiful women?"
"That was the demo.", replied God.
|
|
