The squeeze

The local bar was so sure that its bartender was the strongest man around that they offered a standing $1,000 bet. The bartender would squeeze a lemon until all the juice ran into a glass, and hand the lemon to a patron. Anyone who could squeeze even one more drop of juice out would win the money. Many people had tried over time weightlifters, longshoremen, etc.) but nobody could do it.

One day a scrawny little man came in, wearing thick glasses and a polyester suit, and said in a tiny, squeaky voice, “I’d like to try the bet.”

After the laughter had died down, the bartender said OK, grabbed a lemon, and squeezed away.

Then he handed the wrinkled remains of the rind to the little man.

The crowd’s laughter turned to total silence as the man clenched his fist around the lemon and six drops fell into the glass.

As the crowd cheered, the bartender paid the $1,000, and asked the little man, “You must have one of the best jobs Philly has to offer. What do you do for a living? Are you a lumberjack, a weightlifter, or what?”

“No,” the man replied. “I work for the IRS.”

At the dentist

A man walks into the dentist’s office after reading an advert about their dental discounts and after the dentist examines him, he says, “That tooth has to come out. I’m going to give you a shot of Novocain and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

The man grabs the dentist’s arm, “no way. I hate needles I’m not having any shot!”

So the dentist says, “okay, we’ll have to go with the gas.”

The man replies, “absolutely not. It makes me very sick for a couple of days. I’m not having gas.”

So the dentist steps out and comes back with a glass of water, “here,” he says. “Take this pill.”

The man asks “What is it?”

The doc replies, “Viagra.”

The man looks surprised, “will that kill the pain?” he asks.

“No,” replies the dentist, “but it will give you something to hang on to while I pull your tooth!”

Company Exercises

Joe worked for a fulfillment center and received an interesting memo informing him that the company had discontinued all physical fitness programs since everyone gets enough exercise by:-

  • jumping to conclusions,
  • flying off the handle,
  • beating around the bush,
  • running down the boss,
  • going around in circles,
  • dragging their feet,
  • dodging responsibility,
  • passing the buck,
  • climbing the ladder,
  • wading through paperwork,
  • pulling strings,
  • shooting the breeze,
  • throwing their weight around,
  • stretching the truth,
  • bending the rules,
  • pushing their luck,
  • shuffling papers,
  • and playing hide and seek.

As you can imagine .. he wasn’t all that happy.

An astronomer for lunch

An astronomer, taking a holiday from a commercial satellite company is on an expedition to Africa to observe a total eclipse of the sun, which will only be observable there, when he’s captured by cannibals. The eclipse is due the next day around noon. To gain his freedom he plans to pose as a god and threaten to extinguish the sun if he’s not released, but the timing has to be just right. So, in the few words of the cannibals’ tongue that he knows, he asks his guard what time they plan to kill him.

The guard answers, “Tradition has it that captives are to be killed when the sun reaches the highest point in the sky on the day after their capture so that they may be cooked and ready to be served for the evening meal“.

“Great”, the astronomer replies.

The guard continues, “But because everyone’s so excited about it, in your case we’re going to wait until after the eclipse.”

Shopping for a husband

A store that sells husbands has just opened where a woman may go to choose a husband from among many men. The store is composed of 6 floors, and the men increase in positive attributes as the shopper ascends the flights.

There is, however, a catch. As you open the door to any floor you may choose a man from that floor, but if you go up a floor, you cannot go back down except to exit the building.

So a woman goes to the shopping center to find a husband.

On the first floor the sign on the door reads:

Floor 1 – These men have jobs.

The woman reads the sign and says to herself, “Well, that’s better than my last boyfriend, but I wonder what’s further up?” So up she goes.

The second floor sign reads:

Floor 2 – These men have jobs and love kids.

The woman remarks to herself, “That’s great, but I wonder what’s further up?” And up she goes again.

The third floor sign reads:

Floor 3 – These men have jobs, love kids and are extremely good looking, especially when wearing men’s sunglasses.

“Hmmm, better” she says. “But I wonder what’s upstairs?”

The fourth floor sign reads:

Floor 4 – These men have jobs, love kids, are extremely good looking and help with the housework.

“Wow!” exclaims the woman, “very tempting. BUT, there must be more further up!” And again she heads up another flight.

The fifth floor sign reads:

Floor 5 – These men have jobs, love kids, are extremely good looking, help with the housework and have a strong romantic streak.

“Oh, mercy me! But just think… what must be awaiting me further on?” So up to the sixth floor she goes.

The sixth floor sign reads:

Floor 6 – You are visitor 6,875,953,012 to this floor. There are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please.

We’re backed up!

Back in the 70s, disk drives were about the size of washing machines. One type had two disk platters: one was embedded and could not be removed except by a technician, and the other was in a large plastic shell and was easily removable. Each platter held five megabytes. Yes, that’s right: five whole megabytes, an insignificant amount of space now but humongous then.

Many used this dual platter drive to keep their operating system and database on the embedded one, and at the end of the day they’d copy it to the removable one. Then they would open the disk drive, take out the removable disk, store it in a safe, insert a new removable disk, and close the drive. Then they’d be ready for business the next day.

We got a call one morning from a customer when I used to work for an Orange County computer support firm. He couldn’t boot. One of the techs went over to have a look and found that the embedded disk had a bad sector. It would need to be replaced.

  • Technician: “The embedded disk is bad. Are you backed up?”
  • Customer: “Yes!”

So the technician replaced the disk, snapped the old one in half so it would fit in the garbage can, and threw it away.

  • Technician: “I’m done — she’s all yours.”
  • Customer: (after playing with the system a bit) “I can’t find any of my data.”
  • Technician: “Right — you’ll have to restore it.”
  • Customer: “What does ‘restore’ mean?”
  • Technician: “Uh, it means you have to RESTORE it from a copy.”
  • Customer: “Copy? What copy?”
  • Technician: “The one you make every night.”
  • Customer: “WE DON’T HAVE A COPY!!!”
  • Technician: “When I asked you if you were backed up, you said YES!”
  • Customer: “We ARE backed up! We’re SO backed up that we haven’t had time to make any recovery disks!”

Goodbye Mother

Walking through a supermarket, a young man noticed an old lady following him around. He ignored her for a while, but when he got to the checkout line, she got in front of him.

“Pardon me,” she said. “I’m sorry if I’ve been staring, but you look just like me son who died recently and he used to have kids clothes just like yours.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” the young man replied. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Well, as I’m leaving, could you just say ‘Goodbye, mother!?’ It would make me feel so much better.” She gave him a sweet smile.

“Of course I can,” the young man promised.

As she gathered her bags and left, he called out “Goodbye, mother!” just as she had requested, feeling good about her smile.

Stepping up to the counter, he saw that his total was about $100 higher than it should be. “That amount is wrong,” he said. “I only have a few items!”

“Oh, your mother said that you would pay for her,” explained the clerk.

The young businessman

A young businessman had just started his own Irvine web design company. He rented a beautiful office and had it furnished with antiques. Sitting there, he saw a man come into the outer office. Wishing to appear the hot shot, the businessman picked up the phone and started to pretend he had a big deal working.

He threw huge figures around and made giant commitments. Finally he hung up and asked the visitor, “Can I help you?”

The man said, “Yeah, I’ve come to activate your phone lines.”

Where’s the fire?

A photographer for a national magazine was assigned to take pictures of a great forest fire. He was advised that a small plane would be waiting to fly him over the fire. He was mumbling about how they couldn’t have chosen to use one of those live video casting solutions.

The photographer arrived at the airstrip just an hour before sundown. Sure enough, a small Cessna airplane was waiting. He jumped in with his equipment and shouted, “Let’s go!” The tense man sitting in the pilot’s seat swung the plane into the wind and soon they were in the air, though flying erratically.

“Fly over the north side of the fire, ” said the photographer, “and make several low-level passes.”

“Why?” asked the nervous pilot.

“Because I’m going to take pictures!” yelled the photographer. “I’m a photographer, and photographers take pictures!”

The pilot replied, “You mean you’re not the flight instructor?”

Insurance claims

The following are actual statements found on insurance forms where car drivers attempted to summarize the details of an accident in the fewest possible words. The instances of faulty writing serve to confirm that even incompetent writing can be highly entertaining.

  1. Coming home I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don’t have.
  2. The other car collided with mine without giving warning of its intention.
  3. I thought my window was down, but I found it was up when I put my head through it.
  4. I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way.
  5. A truck backed through my windshield into my wife’s face.
  6. The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him.
  7. I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law and headed over the embankment.
  8. In an attempt to kill a fly I drove into a telephone pole.
  9. I had been shopping for plants all day and was on my way home. As I reached an intersection a hedge sprang up, obscuring my vision and I did not see the other car.
  10. I had been driving for forty years when I fell asleep at the wheel and had an accident.
  11. I was on the way to the doctor with rear end trouble when my universal joint gave way causing me to have an accident.
  12. As I approached an intersection a sign suddenly appeared in a place where no stop sign had ever appeared before. I was unable to stop in time to avoid the accident.
  13. To avoid hitting the bumper of the car in front I struck a pedestrian.
  14. My car was legally parked as it backed into another vehicle.
  15. An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my car and vanished.
  16. I told the police that I was not injured, but on removing my hat found that I had a fractured skull.
  17. I was sure the old fellow would never make it to the other side of the road when I struck him.
  18. The pedestrian had no idea which way to run as I ran over him.
  19. I saw a slow moving, sad faced old gentleman as he bounced off the roof of my car.
  20. The indirect cause of the accident was a little guy in a small car with a big mouth.
  21. I was thrown from my car as it left the road. I was later found in a ditch by some stray cows.
  22. The telephone pole was approaching. I was attempting to swerve out of the way when I struck the front end.

You wouldn’t use those for any insurance marketing would you?