The "Not So Great Books" literary series:
I did something kind of unusual this weekend. Unusual for
me, anyway. I went to a meat raffle. This is just like any
other kind of raffle except the prizes are...meat.
The event was held in a bar in downtown Mundelein, Illinois
which is a hop, skip and two jumps from the great state of
Wisconsin. In this neighborhood the folks hold the cow in
almost as much reverence as a Hindu would. The reason for
this is because from cows come the midwestern ambrosia most
people know as cheese.
And when I say reverence I mean they consider eating a thick
juicy steak on par with taking a sacrament. The only thing
they love more than eating a thick, juicy steak is eating a
thick, juicy steak covered in cheese (you think I'm kidding,
don't you).
As far as the raffle itself was concerned there isn't too
much to tell. The tickets were fifty cents each which was
just cheap enough to get me to keep coughing up ten dollar
bills. I had to buy about 100 tickets before I finally won
eight pounds of ribeye. But I had spent the rest of my money
on beer so that was the end of the raffle for me.
Anyway, in an unprotected moment somebody managed to snap
a picture of me holding my meat...so I have to track that
person down and break his camera.
***
IN THE NEWS: A bar owner in Colorado has been charged with
unlawfully discharging a firearm after shooting his laptop
computer. George Doughty is said to have fired four bullets
into his Dell computer in the middle of his bar and rest-
aurant in Lafayette, Colorado. He then hung the destroyed
machine on the wall like a hunting trophy.
***
No matter how hard my mom tries, every plant or flower she
has attempted to grow seems to wither and die an untimely
death under her care. But she never gives up hope. While she
was visiting home recently, my sister nudged me and pointed
to a line of new plants placed by the kitchen window.
"Look," she whispered, "death row."
------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------
Two nuns who worked in a hospital were out driving in the
country when they ran out of gas. As they were standing
beside their car on the shoulder of the road, a truck
approached them.
Noticing the nuns in distress, the trucker stopped and
offered to help. When the nuns explained they had run out
of gas, the trucker said he would be more than happy to
drain some from his tank, but he didn't have a bucket or a
can.
Hearing this, one of the nuns dug out a clean bedpan from
the trunk and asked the trucker if it would do. He said it
would and proceeded to drain a couple of quarts into the
pan. He then handed the pan to the sisters, got back into
his truck and waved goodbye.
While the nuns were carefully pouring the precious fuel
into their gas tank, a cop happened by. He stopped and
watched them for a few moments, then said, "Sisters,
somehow I don't think that's going to work, but I sure do
admire your faith!"
------------------------------------------------------------
Our son, who's in the Army stationed in Georgia, invited my
husband and me for a visit. After driving endlessly through
unfamiliar streets in search of an entrance to Fort Stewart,
my husband suddenly said, "We're getting closer."
"How do you know?" I asked.
He pointed to a sign that read, "Sonny's Bar & Grill -- Tank
Parking Available."
*-------------------------------*
Jennifer had applied for a job and when she returned home,
her mother asked how the interview went.
"Pretty good, I think," replied Jennifer, "but if I go to
work there I won't get a vacation until I'm married."
Her mother, of course, had never heard of such a thing. "Is
that what they told you?"
"No",replied Jennifer, "but right on the application it said
'vacation time may notbe taken until you've had your First
Anniversary.'"
***********---------------
Having had little opportunity to test my standing with Lady
Luck while in Las Vegas, I took it upon myself to drag poor
Mason to our own local casino here in Joliet, Illinois last
weekend. I had the itch and one way or another I was going
to scratch it.
Unfortunately, I didn't think I'd have to scratch it with
quite so much money. The only upside was that we got our-
selves an education out of the day.
I had lost almost my entire stake at the Black Jack table
when Mason pulled me over to the craps table. And I'll tell
you this much about craps...for a ridiculously simple game
it employes the most complicated and convoluted rules for
betting in the entire casino.
The basics of the game are as follows...when a new shooter
throws the dice, if he gets a 7 or an 11 he wins. If he
gets a 2, 3 or 12 he loses. If he gets any other number than
these five numbers, he can still win by rolling that number
again without rolling another 7 first.
Simple, right? It is. However, there are no less than 750
different ways to bet on how the dice will come up on any
given roll.
I must have stared in bewilderment at the game for 45 minutes
before I threw a few of my remaining chips down (I must admit
completely randomly). I was surprised to discover on the next
roll that I had won! I continued in this fashion for another
half hour, winning back about half of my original stake, before
we finally decided to give up.
So the lesson here is...when you're winning on dumb luck keep
your mouth shut until you start losing - then leave!
***
The "Not So Great Books" literary series:
HOW TO WRITE BIG BOOKS, by Warren Peace
I LOST MY BALANCE, by Eileen Dover and Phil Down
THE GREAT GERMAN BANK ROBBERY, by Hans Zupp
I HATE THE SUN, by Gladys Knight
PRISON SECURITY, by Barb Dwyer
HOW I WON THE MARATHON, by Randy Holeway
WHEN THE LION ATTACKED, by Claude Yarmoff
TAKE THIS JOB AND SHOVE IT, by Ike Witt
-------------------------------------------------------------
At a boat-rental concession, the manager went to the lake's
edge and yelled through his megaphone, "Number 99, come in,
please. Your time is up." Several minutes passed, but the
boat didn't return. "Boat number 99," he again hollered,
"return to the dock immediately or I'll have to charge you
overtime."
"Something is wrong here, boss," his assistant said. "We only
have 75 boats. There is no number 99."
The manager thought for a moment and then raised his mega-
phone: "Boat number 66," he yelled. "Are you having trouble
out there?"
*-----*
Driving along the freeway in Southern CA, I spied two land-
scaping trucks loaded with sod and bearing these slogans:
"Instant Grassification" and "Sodisfaction Guaranteed."
------------------------------------------------------------
I've got an exciting evening of laundry tonight. So don't
nobody wait up for me. I always know it's time to do laundry
when I'm forced to wearing my swimming suit under my pants.
And let me just say those Speedos are getting a little
restricting.
***
"The worst thing about television is that everybody you see
on television is doing something better than what you're
doing. You never see anybody on TV just sliding off the
front of the sofa, with potato chip crumbs all over their
shirt." --Jerry Seinfeld
***
"Karaoke bars combine two of the nation’s greatest evils:
people who shouldn't drink with people who shouldn't sing."
--Tom Dreesen
***
"I took a course in speed waiting. Now I can wait an hour in
only ten minutes." --Steven Wright
-------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------
A priest is walking down the street one day when he notices
a very small boy trying to press a doorbell on a house
across the street. However, the boy is very small and the
doorbell is too high for him to reach. After watching the
boy's efforts for some time, the priest moves closer to the
boy's position.
He steps smartly across the street, walks up behind the lit-
tle fellow and, placing his hand kindly on the childs shoul-
der leans over and gives the doorbell a solid ring.
Crouching down to the childs level, the priest smiles benev-
olently and asks, "And now what, my little man?"
To which the boy replies, "Now we run!"
*-----*
A guy walks into an empty bar and says, "Hey, Bartender,
give me a drink." So the guy sits down, sipping his drink,
when he hears a small voice, "I like your tie."
The man turns to the bartender and says, "Did you say some-
thing?"
"No, I didn't say anything," says the bartender.
The man shrugs it off. And again he hears the small voice
call out, "Your hair looks really nice."
The man turns to the bartender and asks. "There it goes again,
didn't you hear that?"
"No, replied the bartender, "I didn't hear anything."
Once again, the man returns to his drink when he hears, "Gee,
that suit looks great on you."
"Bartender!" exclaimed the man, "I am absolutely sure I heard
something. What's going on here?"
"Oh", said the bartender. "That must be our peanuts. They're
complimentary."
_____________________________________________________________
----------------------------------------------------------
Ooops. I guess I threw a curve ball at everybody with the
binary joke in yesterday's "Roll Your Eyes" section. Tell
you the truth I wasn't sure anybody was reading that any
more. But I guess you are! Since folks seem to be thrown
off by the whole binary thing I dug up a brief explanation
that I though might be helpful and informative...
***
Ever since the Stone Age we humans have counted on our ten
fingers. Our system of numbers shows it. We have ten ele-
mentary numbers called "digits"; a word that also means
fingers. We count on our fingers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
and 9. To go further, we use sequences of digits. When we
run out of two-digit numbers at 99, we go to three digits,
with 100.
This may be fine for humans, but the idea of tenness is
unknown to computers. All they understand is on and off.
That is just two values. Therefore, computers are built
based on a number system where one counts by twos, the
binary system.
In binary, there are just two digits, 0 and 1. You don't
need ten digits to count all conceivable numbers. All you
need is just two digits, or bits (short for binary digits).
So one can start counting with 0, 1. What's next? Use place
notation. The next number can't be 2, since we are not
allowing use of that digit. So we must go to the next place
and call it 10. This is not ten. It is two. We continue
counting, and go 0, 1, 10, 11. Now we run out just like we
did at 99 in decimal. So we go to the third place and get
100, which we call "four". So the third place represents
fours. Each place is double the previous one. This is how
the binary number system works.
[Thanks to Jim Blowers' Mathematics Page.]
Next week we'll tackle Duodecimal and hexadecimal. And you
thought all I did was jokes.
***
"I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all
mankind! The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong
building." -Charlie Brown
***
"The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your
sources." --Albert Einstein
***
"Chaos Theory is a new theory invented by scientists
panicked by the thought that the public were beginning to
understand the old ones." --Mike Barfiel
------------------------------------------------------------
I was getting ready for a garage sale one summer day. Since
it was so hot and humid out, I decided to stay inside my
air-conditioned house and mark the special stickers I had
bought for the sale.
I would stick several of them on my blouse, run outside,
stick them on the appropriate items and rush back inside.
I did this until every item was labeled.
Later that day a UPS man came by the house with a delivery.
I noticed that as I was signing for the package, he was
looking at me strangely.
It was only after he left that I noticed there was one sticker
still attached to the front of my blouse. It read "Make me an
offer."
------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------
Now that they are retired, my mother and father are discussing
all aspects of their future. "What will you do if I die before
you do?" Dad asked Mom.
After some thought, she said that she'd probably look for a
house-sharing situation with three other single or widowed
women who might be a little younger than herself, since she
is so active for her age.
Then Mom asked Dad, "What will you do if I die first?"
He replied, "Probably the same thing."
*-------------------------------*
The bride came down the aisle, and when she reached the altar
the groom was standing there with his golf bag and clubs by
his side.
She said, "Dear, what are your golf clubs doing here?"
He looked her right in the eye and said, "This isn't going
to take all day, is it?"
me, anyway. I went to a meat raffle. This is just like any
other kind of raffle except the prizes are...meat.
The event was held in a bar in downtown Mundelein, Illinois
which is a hop, skip and two jumps from the great state of
Wisconsin. In this neighborhood the folks hold the cow in
almost as much reverence as a Hindu would. The reason for
this is because from cows come the midwestern ambrosia most
people know as cheese.
And when I say reverence I mean they consider eating a thick
juicy steak on par with taking a sacrament. The only thing
they love more than eating a thick, juicy steak is eating a
thick, juicy steak covered in cheese (you think I'm kidding,
don't you).
As far as the raffle itself was concerned there isn't too
much to tell. The tickets were fifty cents each which was
just cheap enough to get me to keep coughing up ten dollar
bills. I had to buy about 100 tickets before I finally won
eight pounds of ribeye. But I had spent the rest of my money
on beer so that was the end of the raffle for me.
Anyway, in an unprotected moment somebody managed to snap
a picture of me holding my meat...so I have to track that
person down and break his camera.
***
IN THE NEWS: A bar owner in Colorado has been charged with
unlawfully discharging a firearm after shooting his laptop
computer. George Doughty is said to have fired four bullets
into his Dell computer in the middle of his bar and rest-
aurant in Lafayette, Colorado. He then hung the destroyed
machine on the wall like a hunting trophy.
***
No matter how hard my mom tries, every plant or flower she
has attempted to grow seems to wither and die an untimely
death under her care. But she never gives up hope. While she
was visiting home recently, my sister nudged me and pointed
to a line of new plants placed by the kitchen window.
"Look," she whispered, "death row."
------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------
Two nuns who worked in a hospital were out driving in the
country when they ran out of gas. As they were standing
beside their car on the shoulder of the road, a truck
approached them.
Noticing the nuns in distress, the trucker stopped and
offered to help. When the nuns explained they had run out
of gas, the trucker said he would be more than happy to
drain some from his tank, but he didn't have a bucket or a
can.
Hearing this, one of the nuns dug out a clean bedpan from
the trunk and asked the trucker if it would do. He said it
would and proceeded to drain a couple of quarts into the
pan. He then handed the pan to the sisters, got back into
his truck and waved goodbye.
While the nuns were carefully pouring the precious fuel
into their gas tank, a cop happened by. He stopped and
watched them for a few moments, then said, "Sisters,
somehow I don't think that's going to work, but I sure do
admire your faith!"
------------------------------------------------------------
Our son, who's in the Army stationed in Georgia, invited my
husband and me for a visit. After driving endlessly through
unfamiliar streets in search of an entrance to Fort Stewart,
my husband suddenly said, "We're getting closer."
"How do you know?" I asked.
He pointed to a sign that read, "Sonny's Bar & Grill -- Tank
Parking Available."
*-------------------------------*
Jennifer had applied for a job and when she returned home,
her mother asked how the interview went.
"Pretty good, I think," replied Jennifer, "but if I go to
work there I won't get a vacation until I'm married."
Her mother, of course, had never heard of such a thing. "Is
that what they told you?"
"No",replied Jennifer, "but right on the application it said
'vacation time may notbe taken until you've had your First
Anniversary.'"
***********---------------
Having had little opportunity to test my standing with Lady
Luck while in Las Vegas, I took it upon myself to drag poor
Mason to our own local casino here in Joliet, Illinois last
weekend. I had the itch and one way or another I was going
to scratch it.
Unfortunately, I didn't think I'd have to scratch it with
quite so much money. The only upside was that we got our-
selves an education out of the day.
I had lost almost my entire stake at the Black Jack table
when Mason pulled me over to the craps table. And I'll tell
you this much about craps...for a ridiculously simple game
it employes the most complicated and convoluted rules for
betting in the entire casino.
The basics of the game are as follows...when a new shooter
throws the dice, if he gets a 7 or an 11 he wins. If he
gets a 2, 3 or 12 he loses. If he gets any other number than
these five numbers, he can still win by rolling that number
again without rolling another 7 first.
Simple, right? It is. However, there are no less than 750
different ways to bet on how the dice will come up on any
given roll.
I must have stared in bewilderment at the game for 45 minutes
before I threw a few of my remaining chips down (I must admit
completely randomly). I was surprised to discover on the next
roll that I had won! I continued in this fashion for another
half hour, winning back about half of my original stake, before
we finally decided to give up.
So the lesson here is...when you're winning on dumb luck keep
your mouth shut until you start losing - then leave!
***
The "Not So Great Books" literary series:
HOW TO WRITE BIG BOOKS, by Warren Peace
I LOST MY BALANCE, by Eileen Dover and Phil Down
THE GREAT GERMAN BANK ROBBERY, by Hans Zupp
I HATE THE SUN, by Gladys Knight
PRISON SECURITY, by Barb Dwyer
HOW I WON THE MARATHON, by Randy Holeway
WHEN THE LION ATTACKED, by Claude Yarmoff
TAKE THIS JOB AND SHOVE IT, by Ike Witt
-------------------------------------------------------------
At a boat-rental concession, the manager went to the lake's
edge and yelled through his megaphone, "Number 99, come in,
please. Your time is up." Several minutes passed, but the
boat didn't return. "Boat number 99," he again hollered,
"return to the dock immediately or I'll have to charge you
overtime."
"Something is wrong here, boss," his assistant said. "We only
have 75 boats. There is no number 99."
The manager thought for a moment and then raised his mega-
phone: "Boat number 66," he yelled. "Are you having trouble
out there?"
*-----*
Driving along the freeway in Southern CA, I spied two land-
scaping trucks loaded with sod and bearing these slogans:
"Instant Grassification" and "Sodisfaction Guaranteed."
------------------------------------------------------------
I've got an exciting evening of laundry tonight. So don't
nobody wait up for me. I always know it's time to do laundry
when I'm forced to wearing my swimming suit under my pants.
And let me just say those Speedos are getting a little
restricting.
***
"The worst thing about television is that everybody you see
on television is doing something better than what you're
doing. You never see anybody on TV just sliding off the
front of the sofa, with potato chip crumbs all over their
shirt." --Jerry Seinfeld
***
"Karaoke bars combine two of the nation’s greatest evils:
people who shouldn't drink with people who shouldn't sing."
--Tom Dreesen
***
"I took a course in speed waiting. Now I can wait an hour in
only ten minutes." --Steven Wright
-------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------
A priest is walking down the street one day when he notices
a very small boy trying to press a doorbell on a house
across the street. However, the boy is very small and the
doorbell is too high for him to reach. After watching the
boy's efforts for some time, the priest moves closer to the
boy's position.
He steps smartly across the street, walks up behind the lit-
tle fellow and, placing his hand kindly on the childs shoul-
der leans over and gives the doorbell a solid ring.
Crouching down to the childs level, the priest smiles benev-
olently and asks, "And now what, my little man?"
To which the boy replies, "Now we run!"
*-----*
A guy walks into an empty bar and says, "Hey, Bartender,
give me a drink." So the guy sits down, sipping his drink,
when he hears a small voice, "I like your tie."
The man turns to the bartender and says, "Did you say some-
thing?"
"No, I didn't say anything," says the bartender.
The man shrugs it off. And again he hears the small voice
call out, "Your hair looks really nice."
The man turns to the bartender and asks. "There it goes again,
didn't you hear that?"
"No, replied the bartender, "I didn't hear anything."
Once again, the man returns to his drink when he hears, "Gee,
that suit looks great on you."
"Bartender!" exclaimed the man, "I am absolutely sure I heard
something. What's going on here?"
"Oh", said the bartender. "That must be our peanuts. They're
complimentary."
_____________________________________________________________
----------------------------------------------------------
Ooops. I guess I threw a curve ball at everybody with the
binary joke in yesterday's "Roll Your Eyes" section. Tell
you the truth I wasn't sure anybody was reading that any
more. But I guess you are! Since folks seem to be thrown
off by the whole binary thing I dug up a brief explanation
that I though might be helpful and informative...
***
Ever since the Stone Age we humans have counted on our ten
fingers. Our system of numbers shows it. We have ten ele-
mentary numbers called "digits"; a word that also means
fingers. We count on our fingers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
and 9. To go further, we use sequences of digits. When we
run out of two-digit numbers at 99, we go to three digits,
with 100.
This may be fine for humans, but the idea of tenness is
unknown to computers. All they understand is on and off.
That is just two values. Therefore, computers are built
based on a number system where one counts by twos, the
binary system.
In binary, there are just two digits, 0 and 1. You don't
need ten digits to count all conceivable numbers. All you
need is just two digits, or bits (short for binary digits).
So one can start counting with 0, 1. What's next? Use place
notation. The next number can't be 2, since we are not
allowing use of that digit. So we must go to the next place
and call it 10. This is not ten. It is two. We continue
counting, and go 0, 1, 10, 11. Now we run out just like we
did at 99 in decimal. So we go to the third place and get
100, which we call "four". So the third place represents
fours. Each place is double the previous one. This is how
the binary number system works.
[Thanks to Jim Blowers' Mathematics Page.]
Next week we'll tackle Duodecimal and hexadecimal. And you
thought all I did was jokes.
***
"I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all
mankind! The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong
building." -Charlie Brown
***
"The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your
sources." --Albert Einstein
***
"Chaos Theory is a new theory invented by scientists
panicked by the thought that the public were beginning to
understand the old ones." --Mike Barfiel
------------------------------------------------------------
I was getting ready for a garage sale one summer day. Since
it was so hot and humid out, I decided to stay inside my
air-conditioned house and mark the special stickers I had
bought for the sale.
I would stick several of them on my blouse, run outside,
stick them on the appropriate items and rush back inside.
I did this until every item was labeled.
Later that day a UPS man came by the house with a delivery.
I noticed that as I was signing for the package, he was
looking at me strangely.
It was only after he left that I noticed there was one sticker
still attached to the front of my blouse. It read "Make me an
offer."
------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------
Now that they are retired, my mother and father are discussing
all aspects of their future. "What will you do if I die before
you do?" Dad asked Mom.
After some thought, she said that she'd probably look for a
house-sharing situation with three other single or widowed
women who might be a little younger than herself, since she
is so active for her age.
Then Mom asked Dad, "What will you do if I die first?"
He replied, "Probably the same thing."
*-------------------------------*
The bride came down the aisle, and when she reached the altar
the groom was standing there with his golf bag and clubs by
his side.
She said, "Dear, what are your golf clubs doing here?"
He looked her right in the eye and said, "This isn't going
to take all day, is it?"
