Punnies! Thanks Sonny!

The ability to make and understand puns is considered to be the highest level of language development. Here are the 10 first place 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. 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 delivers a set of identical twins and decides to give 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 up 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" the friars 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, dude, this is so bad, it's good…..) a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

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

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Marketing editorial- SamKat

It is always made somewhere but most is bought here in the USA.

Should we even think this may continue?

Circleville, Ohio has a large Wal-Mart.  Jeanie and I stopped there on our way home from a weekend at a her KY cousin's funeral and an overnight at Portsmouth.  I just looked at a few garment tags for the place of manufacture and, although expecting all to say Made in China, I was a little surprised to see places like, India, Nicaragua, Indonesia, and many other countries I cannot  now recall.

I learned in graduate business school at Ohio State that manufacturing is normally half of the cost of getting goods into the hands of the customer and marketing is the other half.  Profit is of course within the pricing.

Marketeers have discovered the "greenfields" of manufacturers in these countries with low labor costs.  There is still the cost of distribution which has been lowered for the Walton's of the world by larger and larger shipping vessels in which to pack the goods destined for our retailers.

I was taking an English course from an Ohio University professor nearly fifty years ago and we had to read a tome called "Modern America Thorugh Foreign Eyes".  A poll was taken of foreigners who had vacationed in the USA and they were asked what one word would they use to describe our country.  The most often used word was "Advertising".

Our glitz, even then, was memorable.  When most of our employees were making less than ten thousand a year while "Father Knows Best" was showing on our black and white TV's, father Robert Young, would have to have made so many   more times the income than those of us watching the shows.  The family's standard of living far exceeded the normal viewers; however, the things shown for that family were so "wanted" by us viewers that the marketing effect was an advertising  stimulus.

This American standard of living was so enhanced by earnest industrialism on the part of the capitalists and the workers who also shared an enormous patriotism for the USA.

We may not be able to "go Home" again to that standard of living. A great aid would be the election of representatives of our people rather than those who get into office and perpetuate their own station and its attendant standard of living far above our own.

Socialist governments have failed wherever they have been tried and our progressive-leftists want socialism for America.  Guess what?  I- and many of you- don't!

I want religion and tolerance in our schools and communities as they used to be.  Let the American Civil Liberties Union go to socialist countries and attempt to get their citizens civil liberties there.  The ACLU has only served to tear our country apart.

This is an unpaid- for opinion of my own- except for my own personal costs.

At 79, this grouch wants all others to stay out of my small retirement fund pile.

TEA- Taxed Enough Already!

When insults had class ... thanks Ramey Hoskins!

Glorious insults from an era before the English language got boiled down to 4-letter words.




* A member of Parliament to Disraeli: "Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease."
* "That depends, Sir," said Disraeli, "whether I embrace your policies or your mistress."

* "He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr

* "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." - Winston Churchill

* "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." Clarence Darrow

* "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." - William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway).

* "Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it." - Moses Hadas

* "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." - Mark Twain

* "He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.." - Oscar Wilde

* "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one." - George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill
* "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second ... if there is one." - Winston Churchill, in response.

* "I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here." - Stephen Bishop

* "He is a self-made man and worships his creator." - John Bright

* "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." - Irvin S. Cobb

* "He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others." - Samuel Johnson

* "He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up." - Paul Keating

* "In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily." - Charles, Count Talleyrand

"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him." - Forrest Tucker

* "Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?" - Mark Twain

* "His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." - Mae West

* "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go." - Oscar Wilde

* "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

* "He has Van Gogh's ear for music." - Billy Wilder

* "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx