Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2001 08:51:44 -0500 (EST)
Subject: humor:  watch what you say

  It was opening night at the Orpheum and The Amazing Claude was topping
the bill. People came from miles around to see the famed hypnotist do his
stuff.

  As Claude took to the stage, he announced, "Unlike most stage hypnotists
who invite two or three people up onto the stage to be put into a trance,
I intend to hypnotize each and every member of this audience."

  The excitement was almost electric as Claude withdrew a beautiful
antique pocket watch from his coat.

  I want you each to keep your eye on this antique watch. It's a very
special watch. Its been in my family for six generations. He began to
swing the watch gently back and forth while quietly chanting, "Watch the
watch, watch the watch, watch the watch ..."

  The crowd became mesmerized as the watch swayed back and forth, light
gleaming off its polished surface. Hundreds of pairs of eyes followed the
swaying watch, until suddenly it slipped from the hypnotist's fingers and
fell to the floor, breaking into a hundred pieces.

  "Shit!" said the hypnotist.

  It took three weeks to clean up the theater.

Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 09:47:49 -0500 (EST)
Subject: humor:  wait for it...

  An 80 year old couple was having problems remembering things, so they
decided to go to their doctor to get checked out to make sure nothing was
wrong with them.

  When they arrived, they explained to the doctor about the problems they
were having with their memory. After checking the couple out, the doctor
tells them that they were physically okay but might want to start writing
things down and make notes to help them remember things.

  Later that night while watching TV, the old man got up from his chair
and his wife asks, "Where are you going?" He replies, "To the kitchen."

  She asks, "Will you get me a bowl of ice cream?"

  He replies, "Sure."

  She then asks him, "Don't you think you should write it down so you can
remember it?"

  He says, "No, I can remember that."

  She then says, "Well I also would like some strawberries on top.  You
had better write that down cause I know you'll forget that."

  He says, "I can remember that, you want a bowl of ice cream with
strawberries."

  She replies, "Well I also would like whipped cream on top. I know you
will forget that so you better write it down."

  With irritation in his voice, he says, "I don't need to write that down
I can remember that."  He then fumes into the kitchen.

  After about 20 minutes he returns from the kitchen and hands her a plate
of bacon and eggs.

  She stares at the plate for a moment and says, "You forgot my toast."

Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 08:27:55 -0500 (EST)
Subject: humor:  fortune OTD

  Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of
them keeps paying for it.
                -- Peggy Joyce

Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2001 10:28:41 -0500 (EST)
Subject: humor:  Sound familiar?

  Once upon a time the government had a huge, abandoned scrap yard in the
middle of the desert. A Congressman discovered its existence, and worried
that someone may steal from it at night. So they created a Night Watchman
Position and hired a man for the job.

  Then Congress asked, "How can the Watchman do his job without proper
instruction?" So they created a Planning Department and hired two more
people: a Documentation Specialist to write the instructions, and a
trainer to teach the Night Watchman how to watch.

  Then Congress said, "How will we know the Night Watchman and the
Documentation Specialist are doing their tasks correctly?" So they created
a Quality Control Department and hired two more people: One to do
efficiency studies and one to write reports.

  Then Congress said, "How are these people going to get paid?" So they
created positions for an accountant, a Payroll Officer, and a Manager to
keep track of everyone's time, and hired three more people.

  Then Congress said, "Who's going to be accountable for all of these
people?" So they created an Administrative Section and hired three more
people: an Administrative Officer, an Assistant Administrative Officer,
and a Legal Secretary. Then Congress said, "We have had this facility in
operation for one year, and we are $22,000 over budget! We must cut back
our overall costs!"

  So they laid off the Night Watchman.

Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2001 09:59:05 -0500 (EST)
Subject: humor:  QOTD

  "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit
there."
-- Will Rogers

Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 22:39:32 -0500 (EST)
Subject: humor:  fire engine

  A firefighter was working on an engine outside the station when he
noticed a little girl next door in a little red wagon. There were little
ladders hung off the side and a garden hose tightly coiled in the wagon's
middle. The little girl was proudly wearing her firefighters helmet. She
had a cat and dog tied to the wagon.

  The firefighter walked over and took a closer look. "That sure is a nice
fire truck", the firefighter said with admiration.

  "Thanks mister", the girl said.

  The firefighter looked a little closer and noticed the girl had tied the
wagon to the dog's collar and to the cat's balls.

  "Little partner", the firefighter said, "I don't want to tell you how to
run your fire truck, but if you were to tie that rope around the cat's
collar, I think you could go faster."

  The little girl replied, "Your probably right, but then I wouldn't have
a siren..."

Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 10:44:41 -0500 (EST)
Subject: humor:  OK... well...

A wife says to her friend, "Our sex life stinks."

Her friend says, "Do you ever watch your husband's face when you're having
sex?"

She says, "Once, and I saw rage."

Her friend says, "Why would he be angry during sex?"

The wife says, "Because he was looking through the window at us."

Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 10:36:54 -0500 (EST)
Subject: humor:  How Jerry Springer could'a been

Crowd: Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!

Jerry: Today's guests are here because they can't agree on fundamental
philosophical principles. I'd like to welcome Todd to the show.

[Todd enters from backstage.]

Jerry: Hello, Todd.

Todd: Hi, Jerry.

Jerry: [reading from card] So, Todd, you're here to tell your girlfriend
something. What is it?

Todd: Well, Jerry, my girlfriend Ursula and I have been going out for
three years now. We did everything together. We were really inseparable.
But then she discovered post-Marxist political and literary theory, and
it's been nothing but fighting ever since.

Jerry: Why is that?

Todd: You see, Jerry, I'm a traditional Cartesian rationalist. I believe
that the individual self, the "I" or ego is the foundation of all
metaphysics. She, on the other hand, believes that the contemporary self
is a socially constructed, multi-faceted subjectivity reflecting the
political and economic realities of late capitalist consumerist discourse.

Crowd: Ooooohhhh!

Todd: I know! I know! Is that infantile, or what?

Jerry: So what do you want to tell her today?

Todd: I want to tell her that unless she ditches the post-modernism,
we're through. I just can't go on having a relationship with a woman who
doesn't believe I exist.

Jerry: Well, you're going to get your chance. Here's Ursula!

[Ursula storms onstage and charges up to Todd.]

Ursula: Patriarchal colonizer!

[She slaps him viciously. Todd leaps up, but the security guys pull them
apart before things can go any further.]

Ursula: Don't listen to him! Logic is a male hysteria! Rationality equals
oppression and the silencing of marginalized voices!

Todd: The classical methodology of rational dialectic is our only road to
truth! Don't try to deny it!

Ursula: You and your dialectic! That's how it's been through our whole
relationship, Jerry. Mindless repetition of the post-Enlightenment
meta-narrative. "You have to start with radical doubt, Ursula."
"Post-structuralism is just classical skeptical thought re-cast in the
language of semiotics, Ursula."

Crowd: Booo! Booo!

Jerry: Well, Ursula, come on. Don't you agree that the roots of
contemporary neo-Leftism simply have to be sought in Enlightenment
political philosophy?

Ursula: History is the discourse of powerful centrally located voices
marginalizing and de-scribing the sub-altern!

Todd: See what I have to put up with? Do you know what it's like living
with someone who sees sex as a metaphoric demonstration of the
anti-feminist violence implicit in the discourse of the dominant power
structure? It's terrible. She just lies there and thinks of Andrea
Dworkin. That's why we never do it any more.

Crowd: Wooooo!

Ursula: You liar! Why don't you tell them how you haven't been able to
get it up for the past three months because you couldn't decide if your
penis truly had essential Being, or was simply a manifestation of Mind?

Todd: Wait a minute! Wait a minute!

Ursula: It's true!

Jerry: Well, I don't think we're going to solve this one right away. Our
next guests are Louis and Tina. And Tina has a little confession to make!

[Louis and Tina come onstage. Todd and Ursula continue bickering in the
background.]

Jerry: Tina, you are ... [reads cards] ... an existentialist, is that
right?

Tina: That's right, Jerry. And Louis is, too.

Jerry: And what did you want to tell Louis today?

Tina: Jerry, today I want to tell him ...

Jerry: Talk to Louis. Talk to him. [Crowd hushes.]

Tina: Louis ... I've loved you for a long time ...

Louis: I love you, too, Tina.

Tina: Louis, you know I agree with you that existence precedes essence,
but ... well, I just want to tell you I've been reading Nietzsche lately,
and I don't think I can agree with your egalitarian politics any more.

Crowd: Wooooo! Woooooo!

Louis: [shocked and disbelieving] Tina, this is crazy. You know that
Sartre clarified all this way back in the 40s.

Tina: But he didn't take into account Nietzsche's radical critique of
democratic morality, Louis. I'm sorry. I can't ignore the contradiction
any longer!

Louis: You got these ideas from Victor, didn't you? Didn't you?

Tina: Don't you bring up Victor! I only turned to him when I saw you were
seeing that dominatrix! I needed a real man! An Uber-man!

Louis: [sobbing] I couldn't help it. It was my burden of freedom. It was
too much!

Jerry: We've got someone here who might have something to add. Bring out
... Victor!

[Victor enters. He walks up to Louis and sticks a finger in his face.]

Victor: Louis, you're a classic post-Christian intellectual. Weak to the core!

Louis: [through tears] You can kiss my Marxist ass, Reactionary Boy!

Victor: Herd animal!

Louis: Lackey!

[Louis throws a chair at Victor; they lock horns and wrestle. The crowd
goes wild. After a long struggle, the security guys pry them apart.]

Jerry: Okay, okay. It's time for questions from the audience. Go ahead, sir.

Audience member: Okay, this is for Tina. Tina, I just wanna know how you
can call yourself an existentialist, and still agree with Nietzsche's
doctrine of the Ubermensch. Doesn't that imply a belief in intrinsic
essences that is in direct contradiction with with the fundamental
principles of existentialism?

Tina: No! No! It doesn't. We can be equal in potential, without being
equal in eventual personal quality. It's a question of Becoming, not Being.

Audience member: That's just disguised essentialism! You're no
existentialist!

Tina: I am so!

Audience member: You're no existentialist!

Tina: I am so an existentialist, bitch!

[Ursula stands and interjects.]

Ursula: What does it [bleep] matter? Existentialism is just a cover for
late capitalist anti-feminism! Look at how Sartre treated Simone de Beauvoir!

[Women in the crowd cheer and stomp.]

Tina: [Bleep] you! Fat-ass Foucaultian ho!

Ursula: You only wish you were smart enough to understand Foucault, bitch!

Tina: You the bitch!

Ursula: No, you the bitch!

Tina: Whatever! Whatever!

Jerry: We'll be right back with a final thought! Stay with us!

[Commercial break for debt-consolidation loans, ITT Technical Institute,
and Psychic Alliance Hotline.]

Jerry: Hi! Welcome back. I just want to thank all our guests for being
here, and say that I hope you're able to work through your differences
and find happiness, if indeed happiness can be extracted from the dismal
miasma of warring primal hormonal impulses we call human relationships.
[Turns to the camera] Well, we all think philosophy is just fun and
games. Semiotics, deconstruction, Lacanian post-Freudian psychoanalysis,
it all seems like good, clean fun. But when the heart gets involved, all
our painfully acquired metaphysical insights go right out the window, and
we're reduced to battling it out like rutting chimpanzees. It's not
pretty. If you're in a relationship, and differences over the fundamental
principles of your respective subjectivities are making things difficult,
maybe it's time to move on. Find someone new, someone who will accept you
and the way your laughably limited human intelligence chooses to codify
and rationalize the chaos of existence. After all, in the absence of a
clear, unquestionable revelation from God, that's all we're all doing
anyway. So remember: take care of yourselves -- and each other.

Announcer: Be sure to tune in next time, when KKK strippers battle it out
with transvestite omnisexual porn stars! Tomorrow on Springer!

Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 17:16:29 -0500 (EST)
Subject: humor:  having a good time

  A pissed off wife was complaining about her husband spending all his
time at the pub, so one night he took her along.

  "What'll ya have?" he asked. "Oh, I don't know. The same as you I
suppose," she replied.

  So the husband ordered a couple of Jack Daniel's and threw his down in
one go. His wife watched him, then took a sip from her glass and
immediately spat it out.

  "Yuck, it's nasty poison!" she spluttered. "I don't know how you can
drink this stuff!"

  "Well, there you go," cried the husband.  "And you think I'm out
enjoying myself every night!"

Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2001 09:45:07 -0500 (EST)
Subject: humor:  QOTD

We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own
facts.		
-- Patrick Moynihan

Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 20:06:27 -0500 (EST)
Subject: humor:  options

  Mr. Smith goes to the doctor's office to collect his wife's test
results. The lab tech says to him, "I'm sorry, sir, but there has been a
bit of a mix-up and we have a problem. When we sent the samples from your
wife to the lab, the samples from another Mrs. Smith were sent as well and
we are now uncertain which one is your wife's. Frankly, it is either bad
or terrible news!"

  "What do you mean?" asked Mr. Smith.

  "Well, one Mrs. Smith has tested positive for Alzheimer's and the other
for AIDS. We can't tell which is your wife."

  "That's terrible! Can we do the test over?" asked Mr. Smith.

  "Normally, yes. But you have an HMO and they won't pay for these
expensive tests more than once."

  "Well, what am I supposed to do now?" Smith asked.

  "The HMO recommends that you drop your wife off in the middle of town.
If she finds her way home ... don't sleep with her."

Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 10:08:14 -0500 (EST)
Subject: humor:  alert for the males

  You better be careful out there.

  Police warn all male clubbers, partygoers and unsuspecting pub regulars
to be more alert and cautious when accepting a drink offer from a girl.

  There is a date rape drug going around called "beer" and it appears in
liquid form.

  The drug is being used by female sexual predators at parties to convince
male victims to have sex with them.

  "Beer" is available virtually anywhere.

  All girls have to do is persuade a guy to consume a few units of "beer"
and simply ask him home for no-strings-attached sex.

  Men are rendered helpless against such attacks.

  After several "beers" men will often succumb to performing sex acts on
horrific looking women whom they would never normally be attracted to.

  Men often wake up after having "beer" with only hazy memories of what
happened to them the night before, just a vague feeling that something bad
occurred.

  At other times these unfortunate men might be conned into a familiar
scam known as "a relationship" - apparently men are easier victims for
this scam after the "beer" has been administered and they have already
been sexually attacked.

  Forward this to every male you know. However, if you fall victim to this
insidious drug and the predatory women administering  it, there are male
support groups where you can discuss the details of your shocking
encounter in an open manner with a bunch of similarly affected guys.

  For your nearest support group just look up 'Bars' in the yellow pages.

Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 12:11:58 -0500 (EST)
Subject: humor:  .sig OTD

Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you
count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.

Dave Barry

Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 09:52:01 -0500 (EST)
Subject: humor:  QOTD

  Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal
power should not become too important in any church.
- Eleanor Roosevelt