A man got on the bus with both of his front trouser pockets full of golf balls and sat down next to a beautiful blonde.

The puzzled blonde kept looking at him and his bulging pockets.

Finally, after many glances from her, he said, “It’s golf balls.”

The blonde continued to look at him for a very long time, thinking deeply about what he had said.

Finally, unable to contain her curiosity any longer, she asked, “Does it hurt as much as tennis elbow?”

An Indian walks into a cafe with a shotgun in one hand pulling a male buffalo with the other.  He says to the waiter: “Want coffee.”

The waiter says, “Sure. Coming right up.” He gets the Indian a tall mug of coffee. The Indian drinks the coffee down in one gulp, turns and blasts the buffalo with the shotgun, causing parts of the animal to splatter everywhere and then just walks out.

The next morning the Indian returns. He has his shotgun in one hand, pulling another male buffalo with the other.  He walks up to the counter and says to the waiter: “Want coffee.”

The waiter says “Whoa! We’re still cleaning up your mess from yesterday. What was all that about, anyway?” The Indian smiles and proudly says,  “Training for position in United States Congress:  Come in, drink coffee, shoot the bull, leave shit for others to clean up, disappear for rest of day.”

Paraprosdokians are figures of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected and frequently humorous. Winston Churchill is said to have loved them.

1. Where there’s a will, I want to be in it.
2. The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but it’s still on my list.
3. As light travels faster than sound, some people appear to be bright until you hear them speak.
4. If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.
5. We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.
6. War does not determine who is right – only who is left.
7. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
8. They begin the evening news with ‘Good Evening,’ then proceed to tell you why it isn’t.
9. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.
10. Buses stop in bus stations. Trains stop in train stations. My desk is a work station.
11. I thought I wanted a career. It turns out I just wanted pay checks .
12. Filling out an application form in the box: ‘In case of emergency, notify:’ I put ‘a doctor’.
13. I didn’t say it was your fault. I said I was blaming you.
14. Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut and still believe they are sexy.
15. Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of successful men is usually another woman.
16. A clear conscience is the sign of a fuzzy memory.
17. You do not need a parachute to skydive, only when you intend to do it twice.
18. Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with.
19. There’s a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down, so they can’t get away.
20. I used to be indecisive. Now I’m not so sure.
21. You’re never too old to learn something stupid.
22. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot and then call whatever you hit the target.
23. Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.
24. Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.
25. Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
26. Where there’s a will, there are relatives.
27.    I’m supposed to respect my elders, but it’s getting ever harder for me to find them now.

This may be the definition of a True Friend

This made my day

I hope it made yours!

Funny but Scary! These are from a book called ‘Disorder in the Court‘ and are things people actually said in court. If you would like more the book is available at Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Disorder-Court-Fractured-Courtroom-ebook/dp/B0047O2J7W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382396861&sr=8-1&keywords=disorder+in+the+courtATTORNEY:

ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn’t know about it until the next morning?
DOCTOR: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
_________________________________________

ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: He’s twenty, much like your IQ.
_________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you shitting me?
_________________________________________

ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: getting laid
____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS: Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?
____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Take a guess.
____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town, I’m going with male.
_____________________________________

ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice that I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
DOCTOR: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.
_________________________________________

ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.
_________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 pm.
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished.
____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?
______________________________________

And the best for last:
ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

I got back into a reading mode over the past few days revisiting a couple of favorite authors and one new one.

John Sandford, a long time favorite and the author of the Prey series featuring Lucas Davenport also has another series of books featuring Virgil Flowers. Flowers is an agent for the Minnesota Bureau Of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) and works for Davenport. While Flowers, who is thrice married and thrice divorced, is a cop he doesn’t like carrying a gun and often doesn’t. Besides his job at the BCA he is an outdoor writer and often tows his boat around as he moves about outstate Minnesota preforming his law enforcement duties just in case there is an opportunity to go fishing. In the latest adventure, Storm Front, Flowers is chasing down an antiquity supposedly stolen from an archeological dig in the Middle East by a highly respected professor who is suffering from terminal cancer. For seasoning throw in the; Mossad, FBI, CIA, Israeli Antiquity folks and a highly feared international mob boss. Add to that a few colorful local folks including an attractive young woman that operates on the fringes of the law, and sometimes across the fringes, and the result is a throughly enjoyable read. I challenge you to read the book and tell me you saw the ending coming. Highly recommended. In an earlier post I reviewed an earlier books in the Flowers series which also are great reads. As an aside if you haven’t tried them you might want to sample the books in the Prey series. If you do it helps, but is not necessary, to read them in the order they were published.

In earlier posts I’ve discussed books by Kathy Reichs. Reichs, in real life is a Forensic Anthropologist, after whom the Temperance Brennan in the books and the Bones television series are based. Also in earlier posts I have wondered why the Temperance Brennan in the television series was not modeled after the character in the books as Brennan in the books is, in my humble or unhumble opinion as the case may be, a much more interesting character than the one in the TV series. But what do I know? In her latest offering, Bones Of The Lost, Brennan gets involved attempting to identify a young girl who was the victim of a hit-and-un. The supposition is that the victim is an illegal and probably a prostitute. In the midst of investigation Brennan is convinced by her almost ex-husband to do an exhumation and forensic autopsy in Afghanistan. The reason for the trip is to assist the son of a retired general who has been accused of, and is facing a court martial for, shooting two unarmed locals. She agrees to the trip, gets shelled, gets together with her daughter who is in the Army stationed in Afghanistan and returns to Charlotte and the aforementioned hit-and-run. As is usually the case the plot thickens and morphs into human trafficking and murder. I have enjoyed all of the books in this series and this one did not disappoint. As an aside, reading this and other books in the series will probably ruin watching the Bones TV series for you – it did for me.

In a much earlier post I featured Tony Hillerman. Hillerman passed away in 2008 but left an amazing legacy of novels about two Navajo policemen, Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. The Leaphorn/Chee books, and there are 18 of them, are sited in the Four Corners area in Northern Arizona. If you have not tried Hillerman you owe it to yourself to give one a try but thats not what this is about, I typically have substantial reservations when someone picks up the characters and story-lines of a departed author. So with more than a little trepidation I ordered Spider Woman’s Daughter by Anne Hillerman, Tony Hillerman’s daughter. In the opening Joe Leaphorn is grievously shot and the incident is witnessed by Bernadette Manuelito, a Navajo police officer and Jim Chee’s wife. By the way Manuelito also was a character in the earlier Hillerman works. As the story unfolds the shooting of a police officer, even one that is retired, causes quite a stir and kicks off an investigation that prowls through Leaphorn’s old cases searching for someone with a motive. To give you a sense of Leaphorn’s character and standing he was referred to as the “Legendary Lieutenant”. Along the way we are introduced to a substantial transfer of valuable collection of Navajo and other tribes historical artifacts that Leaphorn was researching and a few missing pages from his assessment. Anne Hillerman is a journalist and author and she did a remarkable job of replicating not only the characters but the tone and tenor of her father’s writing. If, like me, you enjoyed Tony Hillerman’s work you will find Anne’s equally enjoyable. Highly recommended.

That’s it for now. I have a new Stuart Woods book in the wings but more about that later.

Students in an advanced Biology class were taking their mid-term exam. The last question was, ‘Name seven advantages of Mother’s Milk.’ The question was worth 70 points or none at all.

One student, in particular, was hard put to think of seven advantages; however, he wrote:

1) It is perfect formula for the child.

2) It provides immunity against several diseases.

3) It is always the right temperature.

4) It is inexpensive.

5) It bonds the child to mother, and vice versa.

6) It is always available as needed.

And then the student was stuck. Finally, in desperation, just before the bell rang indicating the end of the test, he wrote:

7) It comes in two attractive containers, and it’s high enough off the ground, where the cat can’t get it.

He got an A.

After a little over 1,400 miles from Alexandria Minnesota to Boise Idaho on our interstate highway system here are a few observations. Lets start with how our state governments seek to maximize the level of inconvenience for the driving public. Instance one occurred on I94 in Minnesota between Alexandria and Moorhead. The contractor established a two-mile single lane stretch to accomplish bridge work that covered something around 100 feet. The second instance, again on the same stretch, was an over 10 mile single lane established for work on the east bound lane, we were west bound. However, traffic was already using the east bound lane but the west bound obstruction was still in place. Things did not get better as we crossed into North Dakota and Montana. Again, there were restricted lanes with little or no work, or even workers on lane restrictions of a length that did not at all coincide with the amount of work being done. On one 25-mile segment there were workers only on the last coupe of miles with the balance either completed or not even started – could not tell for sure. I guess my problem is that I think the primary purpose for our roads is for use by the driving public but judging by the way road construction is managed the real primary purpose must be to provide employment for road construction and maintenance workers and their companies.

Now lets talk about the bullies of the road. Here I am talking about the drivers of the semi trucks. They do not think they own the road – they know they own the road, at least that is the way they drive. On a number of occasions truckers moved into the left lane to pass when there was not sufficient space between traffic to safely make the change causing me and other drivers to brake hard to avoid a collision. Now I understand why they do that – they do not want to lose their momentum – but that selfish reason does not give them the right to endanger other drivers. In one of the above mentioned construction zones we had the misfortune to be one car behind a semi whose driver was moving at well below the posted speed limit – even the reduced limit in the construction zone. By the time we cleared the construction zone he was over a mile behind the next vehicle. And who has not been stuck behind one semi attempting to pass another semi on an uphill grade and taking an inordinate amount of time to accomplish the task. On one occasion the driver had to eventually drop back into the right lane as he could not make the grade. Don’t know exactly how long that took but it was well over five minutes again moving at well below the posted speed limit. This is exacerbated in states like North Dakota and Montana that have lower speed limits for trucks. Then there is my problem with the amount of recap tire litter that the trucks leave behind.

Both the actions of the state maintenance authorities and the truckers not only add substantial inconvenience to the driving public but I would submit compromise safety. Driver frustration can lead to more aggressive driving and taking chances resulting in more accidents and unfortunately highway deaths. So if we can bring more attention to the issues maybe, just maybe, change might result. Let’s hope so.

I was testing children in my Dublin Sunday school class to see if they understood the concept of getting to heaven.

I asked them, ‘ If I sold my house and my car, had a big garage sale and gave all my money to the church, would that get me into heaven?

”NO!’ the children answered.

‘If I cleaned the church every day, mowed the garden, and kept everything tidy, would that get me into heaven?

‘Again, the answer was ‘NO!

”If I gave sweets to all the children, and loved my husband, would that get me into heaven?’

Again, they all answered ‘NO!

I was just bursting with pride for them. I continued, ‘Then how can I get into heaven?’

A little boy shouted out: ‘YUV GOTTA BE FOOKN’ DEAD.’

It’s a curious race, the Irish.

Brings a tear to the eye, doesn’t it?