Jokes and Stories from this months issue.

*A BIG CITY Californian lawyer went duck hunting in rural Wyoming one fine day. He shot and dropped a bird, but it fell into a rancher's field on the other side of a fence. As the lawyer was climbing over the fence, an elderly rancher rode up on his horse and asked him what he was doing.
"I shot a duck and it fell in this field", responded the lawyer, "and now I'm going to retrieve it."
The old rancher replied, "This is my property, sir, and you are not coming over here".
The indignant lawyer said, "I am one of the best trial attorneys in the US and if you don't let me get that duck, I'll sue you for everything you own, you old varmint."
The old farmer smiled and said, "Apparently, you don't know how we do things in Wyoming. We settle disputes like this with the Wyoming Three-Kick Rule."
"What on earth is that?" The lawyer asked.
The rancher replied, "Well first I kick you three times and then you kick me three times, and so on back and forth, until one of us gives up. The other guy is then declared the winner of the dispute."
The attorney thought about the proposed contest and decided that he could easily take the old codger, who had to be at least twenty years older. So he agreed to follow the local custom. The old rancher climbed down from his horse and walked up to the city gent. His first kick planted the toe of his heavy work boot into the lawyer's groin and dropped him to his knees. His second kick nearly ripped the nose off the lawyer's face. The barrister was flat on his belly when the rancher's third kick to his kidneys doubled him in agony. After several minutes of extreme pain, the lawyer summoned every bit of his will and managed to get to his feet. "Okay you old coot, now it's my turn," he gasped.
The old rancher smiled again and said, "Naw. I give up, mister. You can have the duck."
*WHAT HAPPENS when you play Country & Western music backwards? You get your wife back, your dog back and your farm back. (But the slashed wrists don't heal - you picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille)
*THE AVERAGE resting pulse is 72 beats per minute. But highly trained athletes have a much lower normal pulse rate. Britain's Lord Sebastian Coe, for example, boasted a resting pulse of 33 bpm when he was fully fit, and he could rapidly move that to 180 beats per minute whilst racing as his heart pumped blood around his body with great efficiency. Coe is still the only man in history to retain the Olympic 1500 metres title. He won at Moscow in 1980, and again at Los Angeles in 1984 with an Olympic record that lasted 16 years until Kenya's Noah Ngeny broke it at the Sydney 2000 Games.
*FAMOUS QUOTE: "Darling, I never hated a man long enough to give him back his diamonds!" (Zsa Zsa Gabor)
*MACABRE FACT: The widow of Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) carried his embalmed head around everywhere with her in a bag until her death in 1634.
*EVERY TIME a person steps forward he or she uses 54 muscles in the human body.
*EAU DE COLOGNE was originally marketed as a way of protecting users against the plague. Oddly enough it did not work.
*THE GREAT composer Irving Berlin (1888-1989) changed his name from Israel Baline before achieving fame. He wrote over 3,000 songs during his long lifetime, and many hit musicals including 'Top Hat' (1935) and 'Annie Get Your Gun' (1946). But amazingly he was never able to read music.
*A MANNED ROCKET can reach the moon in less time than it used to take to travel the length of England by stagecoach in the 18th century.
*THE FIRST Academy Awards (known as 'Oscars') were presented on 16 May 1929. The most successful person in the history of these awards is Walt Disney. Between 1931 and 1969 he collected thirty-five (35) 'Oscars' thanks to Mickey Mouse and other creatures of the Disney family.
*THE RIVER NILE in Egypt has frozen over only twice in living memory - once in the ninth century, and then again in the eleventh century.
*THE ACTOR F Murray Abraham deservedly won as Oscar for his brilliant performance as the Italian composer Antonio Salieri (1750-1825) in the 1984 hit movie 'Amadeus' which won eight Academy Awards. He once related an incident that occurred during the making of the film, which was shot in Prague. Abraham shared a suite of rooms in a hotel in the Czech capital for the six months of shooting (Prague in the 1980's made an excellent setting as eighteenth century Vienna, Austria, where the film is set). Abraham's colleague was an anti-Communist zealot who was convinced that their rooms were 'bugged' by Soviet-era agents. In spite of Abraham's protests, he searched everywhere for hidden microphones, looking behind and under beds, drawers and fixtures. Eventually, on pulling up the living room carpet, he found a small white oval device, fixed to the middle of the floor with two screws. "I knew it!" He shouted to Abraham. "This has to be a listening bug!" Taking out a penknife, he carefully unscrewed it - until there was a loud crash in the room below them, as an ornate set of glass chandeliers hit the floor. "I suggest we go to dinner right now", Abraham told his frightened colleague who was by now hastily attempting to replace the carpet. (Recommended: 'Amadeus, the Director's Cut' now available on DVD with 20 extra minutes of footage).
*QUOTE: "There is no God of Mercy, father. Just a God of Torture. Suffering is the only promise that life keeps." (Part of Antonio Salieri's confession to the young priest in the play 'Amadeus' by Peter Shaffer).
*A LONDON Policeman found a drunken Irishman wandering around the streets of the West End looking thoroughly confused. "Can I help you, sir?", he asked.
"Oh to be sure, officer", replied the Irishman. "I tink I'm lost."
"Do you have any ID?" asked the policeman.
"Oh Jeeze sur, I haven't a clue", said the man.
*IF SADDAM HUSSEIN stood on the border of his own (old) country and Kuwait, where would he be? Between Iraq and a hard place.
*TWO SAUDI businessmen were looking around a car showroom. "Okay" said one to the salesman; "I'll take the black Mercedes. Just bullet-proof the windows for me."
The rich Arab then took from his pocket a large bundle of notes held together with an elastic band. "Did you say 145 thousand dollars?" He asked the merchant.
His friend stepped in and pulled out his own bundle of notes. "No, let me get this one for you, Omar", he said. "You got lunch."
*THE GUINNESS organisation has just ratified a New World record. William Sichel from Sandhay ran on a treadmill for 24 hours on 30 November - 1 December 2002 at Kirkwall, Scotland. He "covered" 100 miles in 20 hours 31 minutes, and completed 112.46 miles in the allotted time span. Now there is a strong boredom factor here. Running on a treadmill for 24 hours sounds about as exciting as watching paint dry, but I guess that some people will do anything for an officially approved record.
*FAMOUS QUOTE: "We don't know much about the human conscience, except that it is soluble in alcohol." (Sir John Mortimer, creator of 'Rumpole of the Bailey')
*UNTIL 1970, FRENCH families could only name their children from an official government list of approved names. I bet that Romeo Beckham (son of David and Victoria) would favour that system if he had been given the choice.
*THE TEMPERATURE of the planet Mars can go as high as eighty degrees Fahrenheit during the Martian day, and as low as minus one hundred and ninety degrees during the night. The hardiest pioneering settlers may find these extremes rather tough to handle.
*SPORTS HOWLERS: (a) "I'm glad to say that the weather has stopped right here on the finish line in Kuala Lumpur." (b) "Lars Bak has now taken the lead, which means that Bak is at the front." (Phil Liggett, at the Tour de Langkawi, Malaysia, 2003) (c) "She's so tiny that you can't even see her, yet there is - Zola Budd!" (Alan Parry). (d) "Manchester United will be wearing either red or white for this match." (Jim Rosenthal)
*WE UNDERSTAND that President George Walker Bush has reported the Rentokil Corporation to the Security Council of the United Nations. He has reason to believe that the company is harbouring weapons of mouse destruction. He's also worried about the corn crop in the Midwest. He feels that it may contain an excess of weevil.
*DID YOU KNOW that men are ten times more likely to be colour blind then women? Don't ask me who discovered that astounding and useless fact.
*SOME UNANSWERED questions: (1) Why does your gynecologist leave the room when you get undressed? (2) If a person owns a piece of land do they own it all the way down to the core of the Earth? (3) Why can't women put on mascara with their mouths closed? (4) Is it possible to brush your teeth without wiggling your bum? (5) Why is it called Alcoholics Anonymous when the first thing a member does is stand up in public and say, "My name is Bill, and I'm an alcoholic"? (6) If you mated a Bulldog with a Shitsu, would it be a Bull…t? (7) Why are they called 'stairs' inside but 'steps' outside? (g) Why is there a light in the fridge but not in the freezer? (8) Why does mineral water that has 'trickled through mountains for years' always have a 'use by' date? (9) Why do toasters always have a setting that burns toast to a horrible crisp that no one would want to eat? (10) Is French kissing in France just called 'kissing'? (11) Who was the first person to look at a cow and say, "I think I'll squeeze these dangly things and then drink whatever comes out of them"? (12) What do Chinese people call their good plates? (13) If the professor on Gilligans's Island can make a radio out of a coconut, why can't he fix a hole in a boat? (14) Why do people point to their wrists when asking for the time, but don't point to their crotch when asking where the bathroom is? (15) Why does Goofy stand erect whilst Pluto remains on all fours? They are both dogs! (16) What do they call male ballerinas? (17) Can blind people see in their dreams? (18) Why is a person that handles your money called a 'Broker'? (19) If corn oil comes from corn, and vegetable oil is made from vegetables, what is baby oil made from? (20) Why is it that a dog will get angry if you blow in its' face, but on a car ride, it will stick its' head out of the window? (21) If a man is talking alone in a forest, and no woman is there to hear him, is he still wrong?
*AMERICAN AIRCRAFT CARRIERS are floating cities with a crew complement of around 7,000 persons. Such a large mix of personnel also carries a degree of crime, even with military discipline in place. The payroll detail, which went around these big vessels every month, had to include at least two armed guards. Even then, crewmembers taking monthly pay in cash around the ship risked being mugged and robbed by their own shipmates. The robbers would escape detection by disappearing into the warren of corridors on every deck of these monsters of the sea. Nowadays payment by electronic credit transfer has eased the problem of paying military crews at sea.
*AN INTERESTING FACT about the infamous Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour (Sunday 7 December 1941) concerns the torpedoes used by the aggressors. Experts who planned the Japanese attack were aware that the harbour entrance to Pearl was too shallow for conventional torpedoes. A torpedo dropped from the air would dive and sink to 75 feet before levelling out; and the harbour entrance at Pearl is only 40 feet deep. They studied the British attack in Taranto on 11 November 1940, when ancient Swordfish biplanes (known as 'stringbags'), using specially adapted torpedoes, crippled an Italian fleet in shallow waters. The Japanese experts finally came up with an ingenious device. Each torpedo was fitted with a simple wooden cradle around the propeller housing. These kept the explosive devices running close to the surface after release, and were carried by all Japanese aircraft tasked with destroying American vessels in the harbour. Other planes carried conventional bombs to hit land installations at this large American military base.
The degree of destruction at Pearl Harbour was pretty severe, but would have been even worse if the attackers had sent in a second wave of bombers. Flight crews of the latter aircraft were ordered to remove their torpedoes and replace them with bombs, but as they were doing this, Japanese top brass suddenly called off the attack. The aggressors had missed their primary target - the American aircraft carriers stationed at Pearl. These were out on patrol, and the Japanese admirals were aware that they would be sitting ducks for American planes if their task force were discovered with all their own planes busy attacking Hawaii. But 19 military vessels bottled up in the harbour were either sunk or badly damaged, 349 aircraft were destroyed, and over 3,700 American servicemen were killed.
Due to a chapter of errors, the Japanese declaration of war was delivered in Washington two hours after the attack on Hawaii had commenced; a fact that infuriated President Roosevelt and the American public. Admiral Yamamoto told his officers, "I fear that all we have done is awaken a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve". Japan's deadly surprise attack in Hawaii brought the USA into World War II and opened up a new theatre of operations in the Pacific, which became every bit as hellish as the warfare in central Europe. By August 1945, over 55 million people had been killed.
*AN AUSTRALIAN sapper reported for duty in the trenches at Tripoli. The British colonel looked him up and down as he saluted. "Young man, have you come here to die? He asked. "Nah mate", replied the irreverent Aussie trooper. "I came here yesterdie."
*NEW VERBS for your dictionary - To 'Bush-Blair' is to bomb a country into liberation. To 'Rumsfeld' is to bully and annoy the hell out of military top brass.
davidcox@loxinfo.co.th

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