Amateur Archeologist

Ok, the story behind this… There’s this nutball who digs things out his back yard and sends the stuff he finds to the Smithsonian Institute, labeling them with scientific names, insisting that they are actual archeological finds. The really weird thing about these letters is that this guy really exists and does this in his spare time!

Paleoanthropology Division
Smithsonian Institute
207 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20078

Dear Sir:

Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labeled “211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post. Hominid skull.” We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it represents “conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Charleston County two million years ago.” Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety one of our staff, who has small children, believes to be the “Malibu Barbie”. It is evident that you have given a great deal of thought to the analysis of this specimen, and you may be quite certain that those of us who are familiar with your prior work in the field were loathe to come to contradiction with your findings. However, we do feel that there are a number of physical attributes of the specimen which might have tipped you off to it’s modern origin:

1. The material is molded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are typically fossilized bone.

2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic centimeters, well below the threshold of even the earliest identified proto-hominids.

3. The dentition pattern evident on the “skull” is more consistent with the common domesticated dog than it is with the “ravenous man-eating Pliocene clams” you speculate roamed the wetlands during that time. This latter finding is certainly one of the most intriguing hypotheses you have submitted in your history with this institution, but the evidence seems to weigh rather heavily against it. Without going into too much detail, let us say that:

A. The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that a dog has chewed on.
B. Clams don’t have teeth.

It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your request to have the specimen carbon dated. This is partially due to the heavy load our lab must bear in it’s normal operation, and partly due to carbon dating’s notorious inaccuracy in fossils of recent geologic record. To the best of our knowledge, no Barbie dolls were produced prior to 1956 AD, and carbon dating is likely to produce wildly inaccurate results. Sadly, we must also deny your request that we approach the National Science Foundation’s Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning your specimen the scientific name “Australopithecus spiff-arino.” Speaking personally, I, for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance of your proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the species name you selected was hyphenated, and didn’t really sound like it might be Latin.

However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this fascinating specimen to the museum. While it is undoubtedly not a hominid fossil, it is, nonetheless, yet another riveting example of the great body of work you seem to accumulate here so effortlessly. You should know that our Director has reserved a special shelf in his own office for the display of the specimens you have previously submitted to the Institution, and the entire staff speculates daily on what you will happen upon next in your digs at the site you have discovered in your back yard. We eagerly anticipate your trip to our nation’s capital that you proposed in your last letter, and several of us are pressing the Director to pay for it. We are particularly interested in hearing you expand on your theories surrounding the “trans-positating fillifitation of ferrous ions in a structural matrix” that makes the excellent juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex femur you recently discovered take on the deceptive appearance of a rusty 9-mm Sears Craftsman automotive crescent wrench.

Yours in Science,

Harvey Rowe
Curator, Antiquities

Priests

The elder priest invited the younger priest to dinner. The younger priest was startled at how attractive the elder priest’s housekeeper proved to be. When she left for the evening, the elder priest observed: “I could not help but notice the attention you gave to my housekeeper. No doubt you have questions in your mind. Let me assure you that our relationship is strictly professional.”

Sometime later, the housekeeper called attention to the fact that the silver gravy ladle had been missing since the younger priest’s visit. “Surely he did not take it; but it has been missing since he was here.”

The elder priest decided to inquire. Said he in a letter: “I’m not saying you took the silver gravy ladle, nor am I saying you did not take it. But the fact remains, the silver gravy ladle has been missing since your visit.”

In response, the younger priest replied: “I am not saying you are sleeping with your housekeeper, nor am I saying that you are not sleeping with her. But the fact remains, had you been sleeping in your own bed you would have found the silver gravy ladle!”

How to tell if you’re an e-mail junkie

You know you are an Email/Internet Junkie If:

  1. You wake up at 3 a.m. to go to the bathroom and stop to check your e-mail on the way back to bed.
  2. You get a tattoo that reads “This body best viewed with Netscape Navigator 3.0 or higher.”
  3. You name your children Eudora, Mozillia and Dotcom.
  4. You turn off your modem and get this awful empty feeling, like you just pulled the plug on a loved one.
  5. You spend half of the plane trip with your laptop on your lap…and your child in the overhead compartment.
  6. You decide to stay in college for an additional year or two just for the free Internet access.
  7. You laugh at people with 9600-baud modems.
  8. You start using smileys in your snail mail.
  9. Your hard drive crashes. You haven’t logged in for two hours. You start to twitch. You pick up the phone and manually dial your ISP’s access number. You try to hum to communicate with the modem…And you succeed.
  10. You find yourself typing “com” after every period when using a word processor.com
  11. You refer to going to the bathroom as downloading.
  12. You start introducing yourself as “John Doe at AOL dot com.”
  13. All of your friends have an @ in their names.
  14. Your PET has its own home page.
  15. You can’t call your mother…she doesn’t have a modem.
  16. You check your mail. It says “no new messages.” So you check it again.
  17. Your phone bill comes to your doorstep in a box.
  18. You don’t know what sex three of your closest friends are, because they have neutral nicknames and you never bothered to ask.
  19. You move into a new house and decide to Netscape before you landscape.
  20. You tell the cab driver you live at “http://1000.edison.garden/house/brick.html”
  21. You start tilting your head sideways to smile

Genie

A couple was golfing one day on a very, very exclusive golf course, lined with million dollar houses. On the third tee the husband said, “Honey, be very careful when you drive the ball- don’t knock out any windows. It’ll cost us a fortune to fix.”

The wife teed up and shanked it right through the window of the biggest house on the course. The husband cringed and said, “I told you to watch out for the houses! Alright, let’s go up there, apologize, and see how much this is going to cost.”

They walked up, knocked on the door, and heard a voice say, “Come on in.”

They opened the door and saw glass all over the floor and a broken bottle lying on its side in the foyer.

A man on the couch said, “Are you the people that broke my window?”

“Uh, yeah. Sorry about that.” the husband replied.

“No, actually I want to thank you- I’m a genie that was trapped for a thousand years in that bottle. You’ve released me. I’m allowed to grant three wishes-I’ll give you each one wish, and I’ll keep the last one for myself.”

OK, great!” the husband said. ” I want a million dollars a year for the rest of my life.”

“No problem-it’s the least I could do. And you, what do you want?” the genie said, looking at the wife.

“I want a house in every country of the world,” she said.

“Consider it done.” the genie replied.

“And what’s your wish, genie?”, the husband said.

“Well, since I’ve been trapped in that bottle, I haven’t had sex with a woman in a thousand years. My wish is to sleep with your wife.”

The husband looks at the wife and said, “Well, we did get a lot of money and all those houses, honey. I guess I don’t care.”

The genie took the wife upstairs and ravished her for two hours. After it was over, the genie rolled over, looked at the wife, and said, “How old is your husband, anyway?”

“35.” she replied.

“And he still believes in genies – that’s amazing.”

Dumb Frog Joke

A mangy looking guy named Harvey goes into a bar and orders a drink. The bartender says, “No way. I don’t think you can pay for it.”

Harvey says, “You’re right. I don’t have any money, but if I show you something you haven’t seen before, will you give me a drink?”

The bartender says, “Only if what you show me ain’t risque.”

“Deal!,” says Harv, and reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a hamster.

He puts the hamster on the bar and it runs to the end of the bar, down the bar, across the room, up the piano, jumps on the keyboard and starts playing Gershwin songs. And the hamster is really good.

The bartender says, “You’re right. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

Harvey downs the drink and asks the bartender for another.

“Money or another miracle,” says the bartender.

Harv reaches into his coat again and pulls out a frog. He puts the frog on the bar, and the frog starts to sing. He has a marvelous voice and really great pitch. A fine singer. A stranger from the other end of the bar runs over to the guy and offers him $300 for the frog.

Harvey says, “It’s a deal.” He takes the three hundred and gives the stranger the frog. The stranger runs out of the bar.

The bartender says to Harv, “Are you some kind of nut? You sold a singing frog for $300? It must be worth millions. You must be crazy.”

“Not so,” Harvey snickers, “the hamster’s a ventriloquist.”

Windows95 JRR Tolkien

Recently one of my friends, a computer wizard, paid me a visit. As we were talking I mentioned that I had recently installed Windows 95 on my PC, I told him how happy I was with this operating system and showed him the Windows 95 CD. To my surprise he threw it into my micro-wave oven and turned on the oven. Instantly I got very upset, because the CD had become precious to me, but he said: ‘Do not worry, it is unharmed.’

After a few minutes he took the CD out, gave it to me and said: ‘Take a close look at it.’ To my surprise the CD was quite cold to hold and it seemed to be heavier than before. At first I could not see anything, but on the inner edge of the central hole I saw a inscription, an inscription finer than anything I have ever seen before.

The inscription shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth:

12413AEB2ED4FA5E6F7D78E78BEDE8209450920F923A40EE10E510CC98D444AA08E1324

‘I cannot understand the fiery letters,’ I said.

‘No but I can,’ he said. ‘The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter here. But in common English this is what it says:’

One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

Lawyer Jokes

What is the difference between a tick and a lawyer?
A tick falls off of you when you die.
—
Why does the law society prohibit sex between lawyers and their clients?
To prevent clients from being billed twice for essentially the same service.
—
What can a goose do, a duck can’t, and a lawyer should?
Stick his bill up his ass.
—
What do you have when 100 lawyers are buried up to their neck in sand?
Not enough sand.
—
What’s the difference between a dead dog in the road and a dead lawyer in the road?
There are skid marks in front of the dog.
—
What is black and brown and looks good on a lawyer?
A Doberman.
—
Why are lawyers like nuclear weapons?
If one side has one, the other side has to get one. Once launched, they cannot be recalled. When they land, they screw up everything forever.
—
What do lawyers and sperm have in common?
One in 3,000,000 has a chance of becoming a human being.
—
Did you hear that the Post Office just recalled their latest stamps?
They had pictures of lawyers on them … and people couldn’t figure out which side to spit on.
—
Lawyer’s creed:
A man is innocent until proven broke.
—
What’s the difference between a female lawyer and a pit bull?
Lipstick.
—
What do you call 20 lawyers skydiving from an airplane?
Skeet.
—
What do you get when you cross a bad politician with a crooked lawyer?
Chelsea.
—
If you see a lawyer on a bicycle, why should you never swerve to hit him?
It might be your bicycle.
—
A Mexican bandit made a specialty of crossing the Rio Grande from time to time and robbing banks in Texas. Finally, a reward was offered for his capture, and an enterprising Texas ranger decided to track him down.

After a lengthy search, he traced the bandit to his favorite cantina, snuck up behind him, put his trusty six-shooter to the bandit’s head, and said, “You’re under arrest. Tell me where you hid the loot or I’ll blow your brains out.”

But the bandit didn’t speak English, and the Ranger didn’t speak Spanish.

Fortunately, a bilingual lawyer was in the saloon and translated the Ranger’s message. The terrified bandit blurted out, in Spanish, that the loot was buried under the oak tree in back of the cantina.

“What did he say?” asked the Ranger.

The lawyer answered, “He said ‘Get lost, Gringo. You wouldn’t dare shoot me.'”
—
For years, the young attorney had been taking vacations at a country inn. The last time he’d finally managed an affair with the innkeeper’s daughter.

Looking forward to an exciting few days, he dragged his suitcase up the stairs of the inn, then stopped short. There sat his lover with an infant on her lap!

“Helen, why didn’t you write when you learned you were pregnant?” he cried. “I would have rushed up here, we could have gotten married, and the baby would have my name!”

“Well,” she said, “when my folks found out about my condition, we sat up all night talking and talking, and decided it would be better to have a bastard in the family than a lawyer.”
—
You’re trapped in a room with a tiger, a rattlesnake and a lawyer. You have a gun with two bullets. What should you do? Shoot the lawyer. Twice.

Religious Dog

A farmer named Muldoon lived alone in the Irish countryside except for a pet dog he doted on. The dog finally died and Muldoon went to the parish priest, saying “Father, the dog is dead. Could you possibly be saying a mass for the poor creature?”

Father Patrick told the farmer “No, we can’t have services for an animal in the church, but I’ll tell you what, there’s a new domination down the road apiece, and no telling what they believe in, but maybe they’ll do something for the animal.”

Muldoon said “I’ll go right now. By the way, do you think $50,000 is enough to donate for the service?”

Father Patrick replied “Why didn’t you tell me the dog was Catholic?”

Obscene Clone Fall

A scientist finally succeeded in cloning himself, but all his clone would do was hang around and spew out cuss words. After a week of that, the scientist finally got fed up and pushed his clone out of his 10th story office window.

A short time later there was a knock on his office door. The scientist opened the door to find a policeman who said ” I’m going to have to arrest you for making an obscene clone fall.”