New High School Exit Exam

To pass this new high school test you only need 4 answers right. What has this country come to?

1) How long did the Hundred Years' War Last ?
2) Which country makes Panama hats?
3) From which animal do we get cat gut ?
4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution ?
5) What is a camel's hair brush made of ?
6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are Named after what animal ?
7) What was King George VI's first name ?
8) What color is a purple finch ?
9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from ?
10) What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane ?

Remember, you need 4 correct answers to pass. Check your answers below:

ANSWERS TO THE QUIZ
1) How long did the Hundred Years War Last ? 116 years
2) Which country makes Panama hats ? Ecuador
3) From which animal do we get cat gut ? Sheep and Horses
4) In which month do Russians celebrate theOctober Revolution ? November
5) What is a camel's hair brush made of ? Squirrel fur
6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are Named after what animal ? Dogs
7) What was King George VI's first name ? Albert
8) What color is a purple finch ? Crimson
9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from ? New Zealand
10) What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane ? Orange (of~course)


What do you mean, You failed? Me, too. If you try to tell me you passed, you lie!

Jewish English now dubbed Hebronics

The New York City Public Schools have officially declared Jewish English, now dubbed Hebronics, as a second language. Backers of the move say the city schools are the first in the nation to recognize Hebronics as a valid language and a significant attribute of American culture.

According to Howard Ashland, linguistics professor at Brooklyn College and renowned Hebronics scholar, the sentence structure of Hebronics derives from middle and eastern European language patterns,as well as Yiddish.

Professor Shulman explains, "In Hebronics, the response to any question is usually another question with a complaint that is either implied or stated.

Thus 'How are you?' may be answered, 'How should I be, with my bad feet?' "

Shulman says that Hebronics is a superb linguistic vehicle for expressing sarcasm or scepticism. An example is the repetition of a word with "sh" or "shm" at the beginning: "Mountains, shmountains. Stay away. You should want a nosebleed?"

Another Hebronics pattern is moving the subject of a sentence to the end, with its pronoun at the beginning: "It's beautiful, that dress."

Shulman says one also sees the Hebronics verb moved to the end of the sentence. Thus the response to a remark such as "He's slow as a turtle," could be: "Turtle, shmurtle! Like a fly in Vaseline he walks."

Shulman provided the following examples from his best-selling textbook, Switched-On Hebronics:

Question: "What time is it?"
English answer: "Sorry, I don't know."
Hebronic response: "What am I, a clock?"

Remark: "I hope things turn out okay."
English answer: "Thanks."
Hebronic response: "I should be so lucky!"

Remark: "Hurry up. Dinner's ready."
English answer: "Be right there."
Hebronic response: "Alright already, I'm coming. What's with the 'hurry' business? Is there a fire?

Remark: "I like the tie you gave me; I wear it all the time."
English answer: "Glad you like it."
Hebronic response: "So what's the matter; you don't like the other ties I gave you?"

Remark: "Sarah and I are engaged."
English answer: "Congratulations!"
Hebronic response: "She could stand to lose a few pounds."

Question: "Would you like to go riding with us?"
English answer: "Just say when."
Hebronic response: "Riding, shmiding! Do I look like a cowboy?

To the guest of honor at a birthday party:
English answer: "Happy birthday."
Hebronic response: "A year smarter you should become."

Remark: "It's a beautiful day."
English answer: "Sure is."
Hebronic response: "So the sun is out; what else is new?"

Answering a phone call from a son:
English answer: "It's been a while since you called."
Hebronic response: "You didn't wonder if I'm dead already?"

Daddy Longlegs

This is so touching, it will make you cry!!

A father watched his young daughter playing in the garden.

He smiled as he reflected on how sweet and pure his little girl was.

Tears formed in his eyes as he thought about her seeing the wonders of nature through such innocent eyes.

Suddenly she just stopped and stared at the ground.

He went over to her to see what work of God had captured her attention.

He noticed she was looking at two spiders mating.

'Daddy, what are those two spiders doing?' she asked.

'They're mating,' her father replied.

'What do you call the spider on top?' she asked.

'That's a Daddy Longlegs,' her father answered.

'So, the other one is a Mommy Longlegs?' the little girl asked.

As his heart soared with the joy of such a cute and innocent question he replied, ‘No dear. Both of them are Daddy Longlegs.'

‘The little girl, looking a little puzzled, thought for a moment, then lifted her foot and stomped them flat.

'Well, we're not having any of that crap in our garden' she said.

Pirates in 2009

I have no idea of the original source or the accuracy but this is an interesting read.

Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as "one of the great menace of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell -- and some justice on their side.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the "golden age of piracy" - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda-heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't? In his book Villains of All nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O' Nine Tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century." They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed "quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy." This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.

The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: "What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live." In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish-stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia's unprotected seas. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."

This is the context in which the men we are calling "pirates" have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a 'tax' on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia - and it's not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was "to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters... We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas." William Scott would understand those words.

No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters - especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But the "pirates" have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news-site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence of the country's territorial waters." During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America's founding fathers paid pirates to protect America's territorial waters, because they had no navy or coastguard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn't act on those crimes - but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 percent of the world's oil supply, we begin to shriek about "evil." If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause - our crimes - before we send in the gun-boats to root out Somalia's criminals.

The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know "what he meant by keeping possession of the sea." The pirate smiled, and responded: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor." Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today - but who is the robber?

POSTSCRIPT: Some commenters seem bemused by the fact that both toxic dumping and the theft of fish are happening in the same place - wouldn't this make the fish contaminated? In fact, Somalia's coastline is vast, stretching to 3300km. Imagine how easy it would be - without any coastguard or army - to steal fish from Florida and dump nuclear waste on California, and you get the idea. These events are happening in different places - but with the same horrible effect: death for the locals, and stirred-up piracy. There's no contradiction.

Costello Calls to Buy a Computer from Abbott

ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?

COSTELLO: Thanks. I'm setting up an office in my den and I'm thinking about buying a computer.

ABBOTT: Mac?

COSTELLO: No, the name's Lou.

ABBOTT: Your computer?

COSTELLO: I don't own a computer. I want to buy one.

ABBOTT: Mac?

COSTELLO: I told you, my name's Lou.

ABBOTT: What about Windows?

COSTELLO: Why? Will it get stuffy in here?

ABBOTT: Do you want a computer with Windows?

COSTELLO: I don't know. What will I see when I look at the windows?

ABBOTT: Wallpaper.

COSTELLO: Never mind the windows. I need a computer and software.

ABBOTT: Software for Windows?

COSTELLO: No. On the computer! I need something I can use to write proposals, track expenses and run my business. What do you have?

ABBOTT: Office.

COSTELLO: Yeah, for my office. Can you recommend anything?

ABBOTT: I just did.

COSTELLO: You just did what?

ABBOTT: Recommend something.

COSTELLO: You recommended something ?

ABBOTT: Yes.

COSTELLO: For my office?

ABBOTT: Yes.

COSTELLO: OK, what did you recommend for my office?

ABBOTT: Office.

COSTELLO: Yes, for my office!

ABBOTT: I recommend Office with Windows.

COSTELLO: I already have an office with windows! OK, let's just say I'm sitting at my computer and I want to type a proposal. What do I need?

ABBOTT: Word.

COSTELLO: What word?

ABBOTT: Word in Office.

COSTELLO: The only word in office is office.

ABBOTT: The Word in Office for Windows.

COSTELLO: Which word in office for windows?

ABBOTT: The Word you get when you click the blue 'W'.

COSTELLO: I'm going to click your blue 'W' if you don't start with some straight answers. What about financial bookkeeping? You have anything I can track my money with?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: That's right. What do you have?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: I need money to track my money?

ABBOTT: It comes bundled with yo ur computer.

COSTELLO: What's bundled with my computer?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: Money comes with my computer?

ABBOTT: Yes. No extra charge.

COSTELLO: I get a bundle of money with my computer? How much?

ABBOTT: One copy.

COSTELLO: Isn't it illegal to copy money?

ABBOTT: Microsoft gave us a license to copy Money.

COSTELLO: They can give you a license to copy money?

ABBOTT: Why not? THEY OWN IT!

(A few days later)

ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?

COSTELLO: How do I turn my computer off?

ABBOTT: Click on 'START'

Nurses aren't supposed to laugh...

'Of course I won't laugh, said the nurse. I'm a professional. In over twenty years I've never laughed at a patient.'

'Okay then,' said Fred, and he proceeded to drop his trousers, revealing the tiniest 'man-thingy' the nurse had ever seen. Length and width, it couldn't have been bigger than a AAA battery.

Unable to control herself, the nurse started giggling, then fell to the floor laughing.

Ten minutes later, she was able to struggle to her feet and regain her composure...'I am so sorry,' she said. 'I don't know what came over me. On my honor as a nurse and a lady, I promise it won't happen again.

Now, tell me, what seems to be the problem?'

'It's swollen,' Fred replied.

She ran out of the room.

Nervous New Priest - Joke

A new priest at his first mass was so nervous he could hardly speak. After mass he asked the monsignor how he had done.

The monsignor replied, 'When I am worried about getting nervous on the pulpit, I put a glass of vodka next to the water glass. If I start to get nervous, I take a sip.'

So next Sunday he took the monsignor's advice so at the beginning of the sermon, he got nervous and took a drink and then proceeds to talk up a storm.

Upon his return to his office after the mass, he found the following note on the door:

1) Sip the vodka, don't gulp.

2) There are 10 commandments, not 12.

3) There are 12 disciples, not 10.

4) Jesus was consecrated, not constipated.

5) Jacob wagered his donkey, he did not bet his ass.

6) We do not refer to Jesus Christ as the late J.C.

7) The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are not referred to as Daddy, Junior and the spook.

8) David slew Goliath; he did not kick the shit out of him.

9) When David was hit by a rock and was knocked
off his donkey, don't say he was stoned off his ass.

10) We do not refer to the cross as the 'Big T.'

11) When Jesus broke the bread at the last supper he said, 'Take this and eat it for it is my body.' He did not say 'Eat me'.

12) The Virgin Mary is not called 'Mary with the Cherry'.

13) The recommended grace before a meal is not: Rub-A-Dub-Dub thanks for the grub, Yeah God.

14) Next Sunday there will be a taffy pulling contest at St. Peter's not a peter pulling contest at St. Taffy's.

Three Cajuns, One Ticket

One morning, three Cajuns and three Yankees were in a ticket line at a train station. The three Northerners each bought a ticket and watched as the three Cajuns bought just one ticket.

"How are the three of you going to travel on only one ticket?" asked one of the Yankees.

"Watch and learn," answered one of the boys from Louisiana.

All six boarded the train where the three Yankees sat down, but the three Cajuns crammed into a restroom together and closed the door.

Shortly after the train departed, the conductor came around to collect tickets.

He knocked on the restroom door and said, "Ticket, please."
The door opened just a crack and a single arm emerged with a ticket in hand. The conductor took it and moved on.

The Yankees saw this happen and agreed it was quite a clever idea. Indeed, it was so clever that they decided to do the same thing on the return trip and save some money.

That afternoon when they got back to the station, they bought a single ticket for the return trip and watched while to their astonishment, the three Cajuns didn't buy even one ticket.

"How are you going to travel without a ticket?" asked one of the perplexed Yankees.

"Watch and learn," answered the three Cajun boys in unison.

When they boarded the train, the three Northerners crammed themselves into one restroom and the three Cajuns crammed into another one just down the way. Shortly after the train began to move, one of the Cajuns left their restroom and walked over to the one in which the Yankees were hiding.

The Cajun knocked on the door and said, "Ticket, please."

There's just no way on God's green earth to explain how the Yankees won that war.

Where Did The White Man Go Wrong???

Indian Chief 'Two Eagles' was asked by a white government official, 'You have observed the white man for 90 years.. You've seen his wars and his technological advances. You've seen his progress, and the damage he's done.'

The Chief nodded in agreement.

The official continued, 'Considering all these events, in your opinion, where did the white man go wrong?'

The Chief stared at the government official for over a minute and then calmly replied. 'When white man find this land, Indians running it, no taxes, no debt, plenty buffalo, plenty beaver, clean water... Women did all the work, Medicine man free. Indian men spend all day hunting and fishing; all night having sex.'

Then the chief leaned back and smiled. 'Only white man dumb enough to think he could improve system like that.'

Jewish Yiddish Proverbs

If the rich could hire other people to die for them, the poor could make a wonderful living - Yiddish Proverb

The wise man, even when he holds his tongue, says more than the fool when he speaks - Yiddish Proverb

What you don't see with your eyes, don't invent with your mouth - Yiddish proverb

A hero is someone who can keep his mouth shut when he is right - Yiddish Proverb

One old friend is better than two new ones - Yiddish Proverb

One of life's greatest mysteries is how the boy who wasn't good enough to marry your daughter can be the father of the smartest grandchild in the world - Jewish Proverb

A wise man hears one word and understands two - Yiddish Proverb

"Don't be so humble - you are not that great." - Golda Meir (1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself - Golda Meir

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction - Albert Einstein

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving - Albert Einstein

Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them - Albert Einstein

You can't control the wind, but you can adjust your sails - Yiddish proverb

I don't want to become immortal through my work. I want to become Immortal through not dying - Woody Allen

Imagination is more important than knowledge - Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton

We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them - Albert Einstein

Jemish Pregnancy - joke.

An 18 year old Jewish girl tells her Mom that she has missed her period for 2 months. Very worried, the mother goes to the drugstore and buys a pregnancy kit. The test result shows that the girl is pregnant.

Shouting and crying, the mother says, "Who was the pig that did this to you? I want to know!"

Without answering, the girl picks up the phone and makes a call. Half an hour later, a Mercedes stops in front of their house. A mature and distinguished man with gray hair and wearing a yarmulke steps out of the car and enters the house.

He sits in the living room with the father, mother, and the girl and tells them, Good morning. Your daughter has informed me of the problem. I can't marry her because of my personal family situation but I'll take charge. I will pay all costs and provide for your daughter for the rest of her life.

"Additionally, if a girl is born, I will bequeath two retail furniture stores, a deli, a condo in Miami, and a $1,000,000 bank account."

"If a boy is born, my legacy will be a chain of jewelry stores and a $25,000,000 bank account.

"However, if there is a miscarriage, I'm not sure what to do. What do you suggest?"

Very calmly at this point, the mother, who had remained silent until now, places a hand firmly on the man's shoulder and tells him, "You'll try again, right?"

Your Yearly Dementia Test for senior citizens

It's that time of year to take our annual senior citizen test.

Exercise of the brain is as important as exercise of the muscles. As we grow older, it's important to keep mentally alert. If you don't use it, you lose it! Below is a very private way to gauge your loss or non-loss of intelligence.

Take the test presented here to determine if you're losing it or not. The spaces below are so you don't see the answers until you've made your answer.

OK, relax, clear your mind and begin.

1. What do you put in a toaster?

Answer: 'bread.' If you said 'toast,' give up now and do something else. Try not to hurt yourself.
If you said, bread, go to Question 2..

2. Say 'silk ' five times. Now spell 'silk..' What do cows drink?

Answer: Cows drink water. If you said 'milk,' don't attempt the next question. Your brain is over-stressed and may even overheat. Content yourself with reading a more appropriate literature such as Auto World.
However, if you said 'water', proceed to question 3.

3. If a red house is made from red bricks and a blue house is made from blue bricks and a pink house is made from pink bricks and a black house is made from black bricks, what is a green house made from?

Answer: Greenhouses are made from glass. If you said 'green bricks,' why the hell are you still reading these???
If you said 'glass,' go on to Question 4.


4. It's twenty years ago, and a plane is flying at 20,000 feet over Germany (If you will recall, Germany at the time was politically divided into West Germany and East Germany.) Anyway, during the flight, two engines fail. The pilot, realizing that the last remaining engine is also failing, decides on a crash landing procedure. Unfortunately the engine fails before he can do so and the plane fatally crashes smack in the middle of 'no man's land' between East Germany and West Germany. Where would you bury the survivors? East Germany, West Germany, or no man's land'?

Answer: You don't bury survivors.
If you said ANYTHING else, you're a dunce and you must stop If you said, 'You don't bury survivors', proceed to the next question

5. Without using a calculator - You are driving a bus from London to Milford Haven in Wales. In London, 17 people get on the bus. In Reading, six people get off the bus and nine people get on. In Swindon, two people get off and four get on. In Cardiff, 11 people get off and 16 people get on.. In Swansea, three people get off and five people get on . In Carmathen, six people get off and three get on. You then arrive at Milford Haven.

What was the name of the bus driver?

Answer: Oh, for crying out loud!
Don't you remember your own name? It was YOU!!