NOAH’S ARK – A MODERN TALE

And the lord spoke to Noah and said: “In six months I’m going to make it rain until the whole earth is covered with water and all the evil people are destroyed. But I want to save a good people, and two of every kind of living thing on the planet. I am ordering you to build and Ark,” said the Lord.

And in a flash of lightning He delivered the specifications for an Ark.

“OK,” said Noah, trembling in fear and fumbling with the blueprints. “Six months, and it starts to rain,” thundered the Lord. “You’d better have the Ark completed, or learn how to swim for a very long time.”

And six months passed.

The skies began to cloud up and rain began to fall. The Lord saw that Noah was sitting in his front yard, weeping. And there was no Ark.

“Noah,” shouted the Lord, “where is my Ark?” A lightning bolt crashed into the ground next to Noah, for emphasis

“Lord, please forgive me,” begged Noah. “I did my best. But there were big problems. First I had to get a building permit for the Ark construction project, and the plans didn’t meet Code. So I had to hire an engineer to redraw the plans. Then I got into a big fight over whether or not the Ark needed a fire sprinkler system. My neighbors objected claiming I was violating zoning by building the Ark in my front yard, so I had to get a variance from the city planning commission.

Then I had a big problem getting enough wood for the Ark because there was a ban on cutting tree to save the Spotted Owl.

Then the carpenters formed a union and went out on strike. I had to negotiate a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board before anyone would pick up a saw or a hammer. Now we got 16 carpenters going on the boar, and still no owls.

Then I started gathering up the animals, and got sued by an animal rights group. They objected to me taking only two of each kind. Just when I got the suit dismissed, EPA notified me that I couldn’t complete the Ark without filing and environmental impact statement on your proposed Flood.

Then the Army Corps of Engineers wanted a map of the proposed new flood plain. I sent them a globe.

And the IRS (The tax authorities) has seized all my assets claiming I’m trying to avoid paying taxes by leaving the country, and I just got a notice from the state about owing some kind of use tax.

“I really don’t think I can finish the Ark for at least another five years,” Noah wailed.

The sky began to clear. The sun began to shine. A rainbow arched across the sky. Noah looked up and smiled. “You mean you’re not going to destroy the Earth?” Noah asked, hopefully.

‘Wrong!’ thundered the Lord. I fully intend to smite the Earth, but with something far worse than a Flood. Something Man invented himself.

“What’s that?” Asked Noah

There was a long pause, and then the Lord spoke:
GOVERNMENT!!

  PREPARATION FOR PARENTHOOD

Preparation for parenthood is not just a matter or reading books and decorating the nursery. Here are 12 simple tests for expectant parents to take to prepare themselves for the real-life experience of being a mother or father.

Women: To prepare for maternity, put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front. Leave it there for 9 months. After 9 months, take out 10% of the bens.

Men: to prepare for paternity, go to the local drug store, tip the contents of your wallet on the counter, and tell the pharmacist to help himself. Then go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office. Go home. Pick up the paper and read it for the last time.

Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels and how they have allowed their children to run riot. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child’s sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behavior. Enjoy it – It’ll be the last time in your life that you will have all of the answers.

To discover how the nights feel, walk around, the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 lbs. at 10PM put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM. Put the alarm on for 3AM. As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink. Go to bed at 2:45AM. Get up again at 3AM when the alarm goes off. Sing songs in the dark until 4AM. Put the alarm on for 5AM. Get up. Make breakfast. Keep this up for 5 years. Look cheerful.

Can you stand the mess Children make? To find out, smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains. Hide a fish finger behind the stereo and leave it there all summer. Stick you fingers in the flowerbeds then rub them on the clean walls. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems: first buy an octopus and a string bag. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that none of the arms hang out. Time allowed for this – all morning.

Take an egg carton using a pair of scissors and a can of paint, turn it into an alligator. Now take a toilet paper tube. Using only scotch tape and a piece of foil turn it into a Christmas three. Last, take a milk container, a ping-pong ball, and an empty packet of Coco Puffs and make an exact replica of the Eiffel Tower. Congratulations, you have just qualified for a place on the playgroup committee.

Forget the Miata and buy a Mini Van. And don’t think you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don’t look like that. Buy a chocolate ice cream bar and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there. Get a quarter. Stick it in the cassette player. Take a family-size packet of chocolate cookies. Mash them down the back seats. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car. - There!, Perfect!

Get ready to go out. Wait outside the toilet for half an hour. Go out the front door. Come in again. Go out. Come back in. Go out again. Walk down the front path. Walk back up it. Walk down it again. Walk very slowly down the road for 5 minutes. Stop to inspect minutely every cigarette butt, piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insects along the way. Retrace your steps. Scream that you’ve had as much as you can stand, until the neighbors come out and stare at you. Give up and go back in the house. You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.

Always repeat everything you say at least five times.

Go to your local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child – a fully grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more that one goat. Buy your week’s groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goats eat or destroy. Until you can easily accomplish this do not even contemplate having children.

Hollow out a melon. Make a small hole in the side. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side. Now get a bowl of soggy Froot Loops and attempt to spoon it into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane. Continue until half of the Froot Loops are gone. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor. You are now ready to feed a 12-month old baby.

Learn the names of every character from Barney and Friends, Sesame Street and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. When you find yourself singing, “I love you, you love me” at work, now!, you finally qualify as a parent.

PLAYING GOLF WITH THE ALMIGHTY

Moses and Jesus were in a threesome playing golf one day. Moses pulled up to the tee and drove a long one. The ball landed on the fairway, but rolled directly toward a water hazard. Quickly Moses raise his club, the water parted and it rolled to the other side, safe and sound.

Next, Jesus strolled up to the tee and hit a nice long one directly toward the same water hazard. It landed right in the center of the pond and kind of hovered over the water. Jesus casually walked out on the pond and chipped the ball onto the green.

The third guy got up and randomly whacked the ball. It headed out over the fence and into oncoming traffic on a nearby street. It bounced off a truck and hit a nearby tree. From there, it bounced onto the roof of a shack close by and rolled down into the gutter, down the drain spout, out onto the fairway and straight toward the aforementioned pond. On the way to the pond, the ball hit a stone and bounced out over the water onto lily pad, where it rested quietly. Suddenly a very large bullfrog jumped up on a lily pad and snatched the ball into his mouth. Just then an eagle swooped down and grabbed the frog and flew away. As they passed over the green, the frog squealed with fright and dropped the ball, which bounced right into the cup for a hole in one.

Moses turned to Jesus and said, “I hate paying with your Dad.”

  SUBJECT: MEN VS. WOMEN

Some "wise" words passed on to me today...

1. NAMES

If Laurie, Linda, Elizabeth and Barbara go out for lunch, they will call each other Laurie, Linda, Elizabeth and Barbara.

2. EATING OUT

If Mark, Chris, Eric and Tom go out, they will affectionately refer to each other as Fat Boy, Godzilla, Peanut-Head and Scrappy.

 

When the bill arrives, Mark, Chris, Eric and Tom will each throw in $20, even though it's only for $32.50. None of them will have anything smaller and none will actually admit they want change back.

When the girls get their bill, out come the pocket calculators.

3. MONEY

A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he needs.

A woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn't need but it's on sale.

4. BATHROOMS

A man has five items in his bathroom: a toothbrush, shaving cream, razor, a bar of soap, and a towel from the Marriott.

The average number of items in the typical woman's bathroom is 337. A man would not be able to identify most of these items.

5. ARGUMENTS

A woman has the last word in any argument.

Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

6. CATS

Women love cats.

Men say they love cats, but when women aren't looking, men kick cats.

7. FUTURE

A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.

A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.

8. SUCCESS

A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.

A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

9. MARRIAGE

A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't.

A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change and she does.

10. DRESSING UP

A woman will dress up to go shopping, water the plants, empty the garbage, answer the phone, read a book, and get the mail.

A man will dress up for weddings and funerals.

11. NATURAL

Men wake up as good-looking as they went to bed. p class=MsoNormal style='text-autospace:none'>Women somehow deteriorate during the night.

12. OFFSPRING

Ah, children. A woman knows all about her children. She knows about dentist appointments and romances, best friends, favorite foods, secret fears and hopes and dreams.

A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.

13. THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Any married man should forget his mistakes. There's no use in two people remembering the same thing.

Here are some facts about the 1500s:

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be.

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children-last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water."

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the dogs, cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could really mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying "dirt poor."

The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they kept adding more thresh until when you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway. Hence the saying a "thresh hold."

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, "Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man "could bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat."

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning and death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or "upper crust."

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a "wake."

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a "bone-house" and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard shift") to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered a "dead ringer."

And that's the truth...

Now, whoever said that History was boring ! ! ! ! !