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Our friends send us 300 jokes a week.  We want to share a few of the best ones with you, to tease your mind and soul, as well as your funnybone.  We will be frequently adding to this page, so come back and visit often. More importantly, send us some global jokes: advisors at beecom.net.

426. -new- Full Employment
Flying back to the United Kingdom on El Al, a Jewish psychiatrist comments to his seatmate: “Its great being a shrink in Jerusalem, you are never out of work ... it's like being an oncologist in Chernobyl! ” (4/16/08)

425. A Sailor's Prayer
“O Lord above send down a dove with wings as sharp as razors to cut the throats of them there blokes what sells bad beer to sailors—ANON.”  From the menu of The Red Lion in Mayfair-London.  (4/2/08)

424. World’s Greatest Trencherman—Obit
“He once won a contest in Idaho Falls, Idaho, by eating 30 pounds of elk and moose meatloaf.  He boasted of downing 25 bowls of minestrone and 30 pounds of shrimp, and drinking a whole bottle of gin in a single chug on a bet, then offering to buy the loser a drink.”  He “became one of Oakland’s most prominent men about town, driving a bright-yellow Cadillac with boxes of perfume and pearls in the trunk as presents for the ladies.” He ‘recalled seeing Seabiscuit best War Admiral in 1938 at Pimlico.”  “His hobby was getting people drunk.”  “He boasted that he owned 10,000 records.”  “He slimmed down to 175 pounds from more than 300 at his peak.”  Eddie ‘Bozo’ Miller died January 7, 2008 at age 89. We only wish we knew which of his feats is remembered on his gravestone.  See the Wall Street Journal, January 12-13, 2008, p. A10.  (2/13/08)

423. Too Fast for Me
A sloth was walking through the jungle one day when he was set upon by a gang of vicious snails.  The snails left him bleeding and confused at the bottom of a tree.  Hours later he made it to the police station.  He was asked by the desk sergeant to describe his attackers.  “I don’t know,” he said, “what they looked like.  It all happened too fast for me.”  (1/9/08)

422. Branding Gone Wild
Open Eye Café in Carrboro, North Carolina (next door to Chapel Hill) has “an unwritten policy of providing free brewed coffee to those with visible Open Eye tattoos.”  A nearby tattoo parlor figures it has etched the open eye onto people some 20 times. In general the freebie idea does not cover expresso—just plain-jane coffee.  Maybe that’s just as well because expresso quality is erratic at virtually every expresso parlor in the Triangle, so half the time it’s not worth drinking anyway. (Chapel Hill News, August 15, 2007, p. A8.)  To think all this foolishness probably began with clothiers who were able to get rubes with coin in their pockets to buy shirts and shoes with the company logo—all for an excessive price. A million years ago, when Brooks Brothers still amounted to something, preppies used to cut the labels out of worn-out Brooks clothing, and sew them in garments that came from everyday clothiers. (1/2/08)

421. Pearls of Wisdom
“Sara wore her pearls to the beach because, she explained, they wanted sunning.” From “Modern Love,” New Yorker, August 6, 2007, p. 74, celebrating  a show about Gerald and Sara Murphy at the Williams College Museum of Art.  (12/12/07)

420. Close the Borders
“Ask the American Indians what happens when you don't control immigration.”  (12/5/07)

419. A Golfer with a Different Slice
Angel Cabrera of Argentina won the 2007 U.S. Open at Oakmont, a devilishly tough course.  Talking about how he maintains his spirits and composure, he quipped: “There are some players that have psychologist, sportologists; I smoke.” On winning, he assessed his victory: “I was able to beat the best player and the best players here, but I wasn’t able to beat the golf course.  The golf course beat me.” In fact, not one player came in under par.  See John McPhee, “Rip Van Golfer,” New Yorker, August 6, 2007, pp. 26-33. (11/28/07)

418.Totally Absorbed
“[H]ow can you spot the extroverted mathematician?  He’s the one staring at the other person’s shoes.”  -Wall Street Journal, August 1, 2007.  (11/14/07)

417. Achilles Heel
Lionel Tiger’s “Core Incompetencies” is not meant to be funny, but, in a droll way, that’s what it adds up to.  See The Conference Board Review, July/August 2007, pp. 36-38.  “Management theorists have overlooked a more arresting and practical emphasis: core incompetence. Tiger, an anthropology professor at Rutgers, finds this concept as or even more arresting than the faddish core competence.”  “The obvious one is the Pentagon’s profound incapacity to procure the equipment it needs, when it needs it.”  “The EU’s core incompetence stems from bureaucrats who are permitted to occupy the judgment space that politicians have always inhabited….  But the European Union achieved the most imaginative of results when it permitted 46 percent of its 2007-13 budget to go to agriculture and rural development though the sector provides only 5 percent of EU jobs and less than 2 percent of its output.”  “Meanwhile, the EU spends some 50 billion euros annually boosting farmers—more than its expenditures on science, education, and R & D combined.”   “In ideal form, forced ranking mandates that the bottom 10 percent of any group doing anything should be dismissed after a fair evaluation by well-meaning and well-trained superiors and colleagues.”  GE’s “false bioanalyis that regards the bottom 10 percent of a group as dispensable is a bad idea taken for granted.”

416. I’m Speechless
“An old Finnish joke has two men sitting in a sauna, drinking beer. “Cheers!” says one, raising his glass.  An hour and a few refills later, he raises his glass again and repeats: “Cheers!”  Another hour on, and he breaks the silence yet again: “Cheers!”  The second man is speechless with anger, but eventually brings himself to reply: “Are we here to drink or to talk?” From The Economist.  (10/17/07)

415. Undies Awry
Ms. Linda Gottleib, a film producer, recently lent out her duplex at the Beresford on Central Park West to an English lady film critic.  She knew something was wrong when she got a call in London from her secretary that a party, for 100 guests or more, had been held there in her absence.  Returning home, she quickly found out about the dead ficus and the $400 phone bill.  Unpacking, she looked in the hamper and found every pair of her underwear—used and not washed by her guest.  See the New York Times, July 5, 2007, pp. D1 and D5.  Several other such tales in this article suggest that you have to be very choosy about whom you install in your quarters while you are on vacation.  (10/10/07)

414. Death by Chick Lit 
“Death by Chick Lit is a funny whodunit, ideal for beach, hammock, or plane” (Yale Alumni Magazine, July-August 2007).  Lynn Harris is a former standup comic.  Lola, her heroine, is annoyed that all her Brooklyn neighbors seem to “have agents, book deals, or bestsellers.  When a serial killer starts offing It Girl authors, Lola decides to crack the case and write a blockbuster.”

In Huffington Post, Harris talks of others who give her inspiration:

In DBCL, the primary objects of satire are the publishing business and the ever-gentrifying, mall-ifying city of New York.  So I read other books in which the setting of the mystery is the target of the satire, like Carl Hiassen’s Skinny Dip, which skewers evil Everglades-destroying developers, and Jennifer Weiner’s Goodnight Nobody, a murder mystery set in the perfect Connecticut suburb where all the doors of the houses always have seasonally appropriate wreaths.  I tried to learn from books like that how to strike the balance between letting the characters drive the plot—which is essential—but also using the plot to make your point.

Her target audience is:

Wise-ass New Yorkers, fans of satire and humorous mysteries, people who enjoy relatable characters, women, my mother’s e-mail list.  (10/3/07)

413. Kudzu Cutters
“Chattanooga’s goats have become unofficial city mascots since the Public Works Department decided last year to let them roam a city-owned section of the ridge to nibble the kudzu, the fast-growing vine that throttles the Southern landscape.”  “Now embedded in the South, as well as in parts of Oklahoma, Texas and some Northern states, kudzu can be found on at least a million acres of federal forest land, and probably millions more acres of private land, said James H. Miller, a research ecologist for the Forest Service.”

412. Your Prayers Are Answered
“All prayers are answered but frequently the answer is no.” – Alistair Cooke from the Quote/Unquote Newsletter.  (8/22/07)

411. The Fishing Priest 
Shigeru Tsukiyama “is a Buddhist priest and caretaker of a congregation of approximately 400 members at a 1,200-year-old temple in Tokyo.  He drives a busload of kindergartners to school at the temple each morning and serves as soccer coach” (New York Times, February 23, 2007, p. C11).  He came to the U.S. in February 2007 for the Bassmaster Classic.  “Japan has become the second-largest market in the world for bass fishing….”  “Asked if he thought he could win the tournament, Tsukiyama said, ‘Only Buddha knows.’”  (8/8/07)

410. The Indiana Jones of Beers 
Alan D. Eames, who searched the Amazon and looked at tombs in Egypt in order to uncover esoteric details about the brewing of beer, passed away recently (New York Times, February 27, 2007, p. A17). He liked to think of himself as a beer anthropologist and authored many books including The Secret Life of Beer!  He was “founding director of the American Museum of Brewing History and Fine Arts in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky.”  (8/1/07)

409. London’s Gherkin
30 St. Mary Axe has garnered all sorts of nicknames in the British press, including ‘erotic gherkin,’ ‘towering innuendo,’ and ‘crystal phallus.’  “In December 2005, the building was voted the most admired new building in the world, in a survey of the world’s largest firms of architects, as published in 2006 BD World Architecture 200.  Conversely, in June 2006, it was nominated as one of the five ugliest buildings in London by viewers of BBC London News, who placed it fourth out of the five choices they were given” (Wikipedia).  (7/11/07)

408. Voting for Trees 
We know of Reims as the home of a great cathedral and as the crossroads (along with Epernay) of the champagne trade.  But it’s more.  With pleasure we have read of a recent computerized election (apparently, many of the French share our fear of these machines which may get rigged) in which voters decided on what variety of tree should get planted along its byways.  Naturally the two opposition parties have come out against the computers, and the party in power is all for them.  What a joy to hear that somebody cares about trees, knowing there’s a different between the beautiful and mundane that’s worth celebrating: 

Last week in Reims, one of the largest towns to sign on to electronic voting, 100,000 registered voters were given the chance to try out the machines.  Only a few voters showed up.  They voted on what kind of tree—juneberry, golden bamboo, magnolia, photinia and rhododendron—should be planted on a main avenue under renovation. No irregularities were reported (International Herald Tribune, April 3, 2007). 

408. Dead Weight
A British Airways passenger traveling first class has described how he woke up on a long-haul flight to find that cabin crew had placed a corpse in his row.

The body of a woman in her seventies, who died after the plane left Delhi for Heathrow, was carried by cabin staff from economy to first class, where there was more space.  Her body was propped up in a seat, using pillows.

The woman’s daughter accompanied the corpse, and spent the rest of the journey wailing in grief.  But the passenger named Trinder in first who was beside her was much put out.  (Times of London, March 18, 2007).

“The police even started interviewing me as a potential witness, although I had no idea what had happened to the woman.  I just kept thinking to myself: ‘I’ve paid more than £3,000 for this’,” Trinder said.

When contacted by BA about the complaint, Trinder says he was told he would not be compensated and should “get over” the incident.  Trinder, chief executive of Capital Safety, which makes products for the building industry, holds a BA gold card and travels more than 200,000 miles a year with the airline.

One politically correct reader who obviously does not fly a lot took Mr. Trinder to task: “Mr Tindra, you're a selfish man.  All you kept thinking was how much you paid for a seat?  Is that more important than the respect and hostility you should show others in times of distress?  What did you expect BA to do, keep the corpse in economy class where space is cramped?  Rather than complaining you should have put yourself in the shoes of the woman’s daughter.  It’s really sad to see you complaining about others misfortune coming in the way of your enjoyment.”  (6/13/07)

407. Funereal Wit
Being Dead is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral.  That’s the title and it is the best line in the whole book.  This probably would have been an okay book if it were half as long, but 243 pages is too long for too little.  Still, you do learn a thing or two about the Delta and Greenville, Mississippi.  Episcopal funerals are as mediocre as Methodist, but at least the Episcopalians give you a few snorts to get through it.  “A cardinal rule of Southern funeral cooking: Fresh is not best.”  The flowers, on the other hand, should be hale and hearty.  The book is laced with recipes that are so bad that they easily would fine a place at prep schools and out-of-the-way women’s colleges. (5/30/07)

406. Getting Fired  
At the age of 16, Malcolm McLaren was dragooned into a job as a trainee wine taster at Sandeman’s.  Even though he was good at it, he had other things on his mind in 1962, knowing he had to get free of the colonial Army officers who ran the program for Sandeman’s:   

I had to get fired.  But how could I offend this group of sexist and racist military men?  There was only one way. 

The following week, during that dreaded lunch hour, I stayed behind, puffing on one Gitane after another, trying to ruin the taste buds in what was now a smoke-filled room.  I must have smoked a whole box.  And then, a voice: “What filthy Turk has been in here?” 

“Sir,” I announced myself. “Sir, it’s me.” 

“What are you smoking?” 

“Gitanes,” I said, trying to sound provocative. 

To his delight, he was labeled a saboteur and fired with dispatch to become, in time, an artist, musician, and designer. Hardly the type for snifters.  

405. Mortimer’s Follies
John Mortimer, the delightful barrister and writer, who most of know as the author of Rumpole’s immortal pranks, is the sort of fellow who creates new smiles in every other sentence.  Here is a note on his animal husbandry:

404. Better than a Single Malt 
“This evening one of our married ladies, a lively pretty little woman, good-humouredly sat down upon Dr Johnson’s knee, and, being encouraged by some of the company, put her hands round his neck, and kissed him.  ‘Do it again,’ said he, ‘and let us see who will tire first.’  He kept her on his knee some time, while he and she drank tea.  He was now like a BUCK indeed.  All the company were much entertained to find him so easy and pleasant.  To me it was highly comick, to see the grave philosopher—the Rambler—toying with a Highland beauty!  But what could he do?  He must have been surly, and weak too, had he not behaved as he did.  He would have been laughed at, and not more respected, though less loved.”  From The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides by James Boswell.  (5/9/07)

403. George Carlin on More or Less
Ostensibly Mr. George wrote this.  We hope so.

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways, but narrower viewpoints.  We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less.  We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time.  We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.  We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.  We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values.  We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.  We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life.  We’ve added years to life not life to years.  We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor.  We conquered outer space but not inner space.  We’ve done larger things, but not better things.  We’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul.  We’ve conquered the atom, but not our  prejudice.  We write more, but learn less.  We plan more, but accomplish less.  We’ve learned to rush, but not to wait.  We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.  These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships.  These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes.  These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill.  It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom.  A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete.  (5/2/07)

402. Flubber Flubbed
Hasbro had an immensely successful toy named Flubber, until its design gremlins snatched endless defeat from the jaws of victory:

“Flub'ber (n.): from the term flying rubber.  A viscous, gooey, green blob that defies the laws of physics and makes basketball players bounce and cars fly.”  In 1962, Hasbro produced a flubbed flubber: “The product was introduced in September of 1962 and Hasbro sold millions of units.  They advertised: ‘Flubber is a new parent-approved material that is non-toxic and will not stain.’

But then, reports started to come back that some children were developing full-body rashes and sore throats from the product.  The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began investigating the product to see if these claims were true.”

“The company decided to retest the product.  Instead of testing it on kids, they ended up using volunteer prisoners as guinea pigs.  (One would guess that they had nothing better to do with their time).  One prisoner developed a rash on his head.  Why he was rubbing Flubber on his head one will never know, but it became clear that there was a problem with the product.  It seems that the hair follicles in a very small percentage of the human population could be irritated by the product.”  This led to recall, but what to do with the stuff?

“The obvious answer was to send it to the local dump to be incinerated.  This sounded like a good idea until Hasbro President Merrill Hassenfeld received a call the very next day after they hauled it away.  The call was from the mayor of Providence, Rhode Island claiming that there was a huge black cloud hovering over the dump.  Apparently, the Flubber would not burn properly in the city’s incinerator.  The remaining material was returned to Hasbro.” 

“Hassenfeld’s next step was to call the Coast Guard to ask for permission to weigh down the Flubber and dump it out at sea.  Permission was granted, but that dreaded phone call from the Coast Guard came the next day.  Apparently, the Flubber was floating all around Narragansett Bay.  Hasbro had to pay the Coast Guard and other fishermen to sweep the ocean.  You can guess what happened next—the recovered material was returned to Hasbro.” 

401. -new- Retirement’s Dress Code
Journalist Ellen Graham finds that dressing, in retirement, is perhaps even more complicated than when, back in New York, she was dressing for success.  “Ironing is the bottleneck in our household; if a garment needs ironing it rarely gets worn.”  “In palmier days, when I actually got a salary, most of our soiled clothes went to the dry cleaners.”  (4/18/07)

400. The Big Donut
“‘Ich bin ein Berliner” (I am a jelly donut).  What JFK meant to say was ‘I am a citizen of Berlin’ which is ‘Ich bin Berliner’ but the ‘ein’ changes the meaning to ‘I am a jelly donut.’” (See http://www.belmont.k12.ca.us/ralston/programs/itech/KENNEDY.HTM.)  You might also read more about Kennedy’s famous speech and his embarrassing grammatical error, Ich Bin Ein Berliner.  Others have avowed that Kennedy was correct to use “ein,” since he was a foreigner.  That said, it gives many Germans a giggle anyhow.  (4/4/07)

399. Art Buchwald Has Last Laugh
Art Buchwald, the wryest man in Washington or Paris, passed away Wednesday, January 17, 2007.  Richard Severo, in an obit for the New York Times, January 19, 2007, shows how Buchwald artfully banished tears with laughter.  In an accompanying online video just before his death, he said, “Hi, I’m Art Buchwald; I just died.”  “In the Watergate years, he wrote about three men stranded in a sinking boat with a self-destructive President Richard M. Nixon.  As the president hid food under his shirt, he bailed water into the vessel.”  “In the early 1960s, Mr. Buchwald theorized that a shortage of Communists was imminent in the United States and that if the nation was not careful, the Communist Party would be made up almost entirely of F.B.I. informers.”

398. The French are Bonding
Often the French have a way of taking Anglo (both English and American) culture a bit more seriously that we take ourselves.  They not only love Jerry Lewis: they study him, even as we relegate him to yesteryear.  Now they have made so much out of James Bond that, a bit late, they virtually capture him as one of their own.  See “The French Know Where James Bond Acquired His Savoir-Faire,” New York Times, January 19, 2007:

“But he speaks French—at least in the 1953 novel ‘Casino Royale.’  He detests English tea.  He insists that his tournedos béarnaise be served rare and his vodka martinis be splashed with the French aperitif Lillet.” 

“He has sported a French cigarette lighter and French cuff links (S. T. Dupont) and drunk rivers of French Champagne (Bollinger).  He has romanced beloved French actresses like Sophie Marceau.” 

“For three days this week, French and foreign researchers came together in a conference sponsored in part by the National Library of France and the University of Versailles to dissect and psychoanalyze, criticize and lionize Ian Fleming’s debonair creation.

Titled ‘James Bond (2)007: Cultural History and Aesthetic Stakes of a Saga,’ the conference—France’s first scholarly colloquium on James Bond—was aimed at developing a ‘socioanthropology of the Bondian universe.’” 

“The conference was a breakthrough in French scholarly circles.  Umberto Eco, Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin have all written seriously about Bond, but the French intelligentsia has been slow in embracing global popular culture.” 

“But on the political and the popular level, the French appreciate James Bond.  Sean Connery, who is married to a French painter and played Bond in seven films, is a chevalier in the French Legion of Honor and commander of Arts and Letters.  Roger Moore, a star of seven later Bond films, is a French officer of Arts and Letters.” 

397. Ruining a Tune
Albert B. Friedman, an emeritus medievalist at Claremont, just died at 86.  He told how Sir Walter Scott got his comeuppance: “Sir  Walter Scott thought to flatter an old Scotswoman from whose singing he had taken down a number of ballads by showing her the printed texts of the ballads she had sung to him.”  “But the old woman was more annoyed than amused.  He had spoiled them altogether, she complained: ‘They were made for singing and no for reading, but ye has broken the charm now and they’ll never be sung mair.  And the warst ting o’a’, they’re nouther right spell’d, nor right setten down.’”  New York Times, November 20, 2006, p.  A25.  (2/21/07)

396. WashPost—Where You Hang a Lot of Dirty Laundry
ANNUAL NEOLOGISM CONTEST: Once again, the Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words: 

1. Coffee (n.) the person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted (adj.) appalled over how much weight you have gained.

3. Abdicate (v.) to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade (v.) to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly (adj.) impotent.

6. Negligent (adj.) describes a condition in which you absent-mindedly answer the door in your nightgown.

7. Lymph (v.) to walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle (n.) olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash (n.) a rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle (n.) a humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude (n.) the formal, dignified bearing adopted by Gastroenterologists.
    Pokemon (n.) a Rastafarian proctologist.

13. Oyster (n.) a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

14. Frisbeetarianism (n.) (back by popular demand): The belief that, when you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there. Circumvent (n.) an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.  

The Washington Post’s Style Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are this year’s winners: 

1. Bozone (n.) The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

2. Cashtration (n.) The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

3. Giraffiti (n.) Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

4. Sarchasm (n.) The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

5. Inoculatte (v.) To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

6. Hipatitis (n.) Terminal coolness.

7. Osteopornosis (n.) A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

8. Karmageddon (n.) It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

9. Decafalon (n.) The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

10. Glibido (v.) All talk and no action.

11. Dopeler effect (n.) The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

12. Arachnoleptic fit (n.) The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

13. Beelzebug (n.) Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

14. Caterpallor (n.) The color you turn after finding half a grub in the fruit you're eating.

15. Ignoranus (n.) A person who's both stupid and an asshole.  (2/14/07)

395. Toulouse-A Little But a Lot
“Toulouse Lautrec, who carried a vial of absinthe inside a hollow cane, told his friends, ‘One should drink little … but often.’”  Forbes Life, October 2006, p. 86.  (2/7/07)

394. The Depressing State of Maniacs
“Santa Claus will not be coming to Maine this year, at least not on a beer label, if state officials have their way.”  See “Ban of Saucy Beer Labels Brings a Free-Speech Suit,” New York Times, December 3, 2006, p. 24.  The Bureau of Liquor Enforcement has banned everything from a label that depicts St. Nick’s behind, to a rather decorous nude sitting on a person’s lap on a Belgian lambic beer, to a French beer that dares to use Eugene Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People,” which is obviously a threat to the stability of a state locked in chains.  One of the beer makers has had to sue some other states over the labels, and they relented since they did not like the unfavorable publicity.  (2/7/07)

393. Unconsoling Health Thoughts
In the 60s, people took acid to make the world weird.  Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal. 

Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing. 

Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die. 

392. Curmudgeon’s Quotation
Gary Henry has put together quite a list, and we have only bitten a few choice morsels here: 

1. The problem with the gene pool is, there’s no lifeguard. - Steven Wright

2. Some open minds should be closed for repairs

3. The supply of government exceeds the demand. - Lewis Lapham

4. I suppose some editors are failed writers—but so are most writers. - T. S. Eliot

5. You’d be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap. - Dolly Parton

6. Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them. - Bill Vaughn

7. The purpose of the doctor is to entertain the patient while the disease takes its course. - Voltaire

8. The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true. - James Branch Cabel  (1/24/07)

391. -new- Lieberman’s Lance
Having been hit from behind by his best friends in the Senate, Al Gore, and a suicidal Democratic Party, re-elected Joe Liberman has decided to be liberated and is truly striking out on an independent course.  Both parties have killed off and the voters have killed for some of the best politicians for instance, moderate, thoughtful, responsive Jim Leach went down in Iowa, and the nation is the loser. 

390. Tasteless Meat
We can remember seeing meat curing in the locker of a Springfield hotel so many years ago—in the 1950s—the encrusted mold breaking down fiber and produce the tenderest of cuts for the cook.  No more.  As Chef Peter Hoffman of New York’s Restaurant Savoy says, “Refrigeration rules destroy the fine art of curing meat.”  “More recently, in 1996, the Agriculture Department established the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, which detail how production facilities can minimize the chances of contamination.  And the key requirement is that all meat be held at temperatures less than 42 degrees.”  “Yet Italy’s finest prosciutto producers and Spain’s great Iberico artisans hold their products at 55 to 60 degrees,” enhancing flavor without killing off any consumers.  What Mr. Hoffmann only hints at, of course, is that our meat is less safe than it was when we were young.  It is now impregnated with more chemicals and hormones.  More documented outbreaks are occurring with both meat and poultry than we formerly experienced.  Our controllers are not even dealing with the real problems, which are largely caused by the industrialization of beef, pork, and chicken breeding and production.  But they have put in place poorly conceived refrigeration standards.  (1/10/07)

Update: Curing Meat
To learn how meat is safely cured and achieves a delectable estate, we cannot recommend enough “Feet in the Trough,” Economist, December 23, 2006, pp.88-90.  It reminds us of some curing and smoking exercises in which we indulged on the West Coast in more leisurely times.  Apparently we can go back to Cato the Elder’s “De Agricultura” to learn how his Sabine family put taste and preservation into pork legs. “Traditionally, western Europeans smoked meat over alderwood, though oak and beech are becoming more prevalent.  North Americans tend to use hickory, mesquite, pecan, apple or cherry.”  “A famous Portuguese cookbook of the early 20th century contains 365 salt-cod recipes, one for every day of the year.”  Because of variant local conditions, Italy produces six strikingly different varieties of prosciutto, each reflecting the region from which it comes, avoiding the one-taste of the large manufacturing houses, that same global one-taste that is now infecting our wines.  “Dry-curing sausages, … as opposed to whole hams, introduces another element beyond dessication: fermentation.”  They employ an acid—usually a wine—to kill the bacteria.  This also inhibits the growth of mold in the sausage, but encourages the growth of tenderizing white mold on the outside.   Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing is taken to be excellent book about curing, and this interesting author has a series of food books worth a look at http://www.ruhlman.com/books/index.html.  Paul Bertolli, one-time cook at Chez Panisse and Oliveto, has now turned to making sausages and other handcrafted products.  (3/7/07)

389. Desporting
An incident at New York’s long ago paper, the Daily Mirror.  “This young fellow walks off the elevator.  He has a gun in his hand, blood all over his shirt.  The first desk he comes to is Jim Hurley’s.  Hurley was the hunting-and-fishing editor.  The guy says to him, ‘I came home and found my wife in bed with another guy.  So I shot her.  I want to turn myself in.’  And Hurley says, ‘This is outdoor sports.  Indoor sports is over there.’” From the New Yorker, October 9, 2006, p. 29.  (12/20/06)

388. Perl’s Pearls
Mike Arms has gathered together a bemusing collection of one-liners here.  Here’s our pick of the litter: 

You sound reasonable … time to increase my medication.

It might look like I’m doing nothing, but at the cellular level I’m really quite busy.        

I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it. (Mark Twain)

Conservative: One who admires radicals centuries after they’re dead. (Leo C. Rosten)

Reality continues to ruin my life. (Bill Watterson, from Calvin and Hobbes)  (12/6/06)

387. Ted Kennedy’s Boston
We call this section “Ted Kennedy’s Boston” because the Senator himself so aptly symbolizes the comic affliction that is the Boston disease.  Traffic doesn’t get around there, not because it couldn’t, but because the politics is so buffoonish that sensible things don’t come to pass easily.  The Big Dig, the most ridiculously expensive public works project in America, is the Big Leak, riddled with incompetence and perhaps more than a shred of corruption.  The Senator, as you will remember, once tried to turn his car into a boat, and made Chappaquiddick infinitely more famous than even the Watergate Hotel.  We are sure that he’s been advised to see that old Glenn Ford movie Don’t Go Near the Water.  He is not even too competent at cheating, having gotten himself evicted from Harvard for kadoodling on a Spanish exam.  Bostonians at best are a charming lot, and we easily forgive them their sins and errors, which is fortunate, because they are many. Occasionally these missteps lead to a death, or two, or three, but that’s just the price of glory.

3. The Great Boston Molasses Flood.  Boston, as we know, has a proud tradition of leaks, with a little flooding here, a porous tunnel there.  We don’t hear much about the Great Boston Molasses Disaster anymore, when a bursting tank in the North End sent molasses down the streets and sent 21 locals to see their makers, another 150 merely wounded.  Used then as a sweetener, liquor ingredient, and additive to munitions, it got around.  It took six months to get it off the streets, and the smell lingered for years—some say it is still there.  If you want to really get into this story, look for Stephen Puleo’s Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919.   (12/13/06)

2. August 2006—The Boston T.  Should you have made the mistake of buying subway tokens at Harvard Square for the days ahead, you will have a hard time getting on the underground.  As you descend the stairs at Kendall Square, you will find the tokens are useless.  Finally, when you go down another entrance, you will find two transit workers who have exempted themselves from the demands of work: they can guide you through the six steps needed to get a fare card at a machine there, once you have inserted your token in it.  The machine is not an intuitive experience.  One commuter even maintains a website about all the dysfunctional aspects of the MBTA.  Oddly enough, Boston does endless things to make sure you don’t get where you are going.  At the airport, you will pick up your baggage downstairs at the carousels but have to haul it upstairs to the 2d Floor in order to catch the car you have reserved to take you to your hotel.  It’s said that one day, back in the 20th century—July 27, 1988—all traffic in Boston came to an absolute halt for a while because of a traffic jam. (10/25/06)

1. Massachusetts. The Baked Bean State is absolutely the home of featherbedding.     Should you doubt it, go to any construction site along any street.  There’s a policeman standing there to save you or the workmen from gosh knows what: he is the beneficiary of a law to keep policemen on the streets and off the breadline.  See Police.  (10/25/06)

386. Down with Scum
“Robert Hughes is proud to be a snob, he tells Men’s Vogue.” (See The Week, September 15, 2006, p. 12).  “I am, after all, a cultural critic, and my main job is to distinguish the good from the second-rate….  I don’t think stupid or ill-read people are as good to be with as wise and fully literature ones.  Consequently, most of the human race doesn’t matter much to me….”  Hughes has previously been rebuked for his airs by the Australian press, having put down the staff of the hospital that treated him after a 1999 auto accident and the drivers of the vehicle that struck him as lowlifes.  When it’s said and done, he finds much that’s worthy in Spain.  He has done books on Barcelona and Goya.  He is highly familiar with excremental man since, in Barcelona, he remarked that the locals are more devoted to their elimination processes than to sex.  We read this book as we sailed to Barcelona and had to get it out of our head in order to see the wonderful city clearly.  (10/18/06)

385. Polite Society
Teddy Roosevelt remembered that if he and his pals swam the Potomac, they usually doffed their clothes.  He remembered one occasion when Jules Jusserand, the French ambassador, was along for a dip.  Somebody said, “Mr. Ambassador, Mr. Ambassador, you haven’t taken off your gloves,” to which he promptly responded, “I think I will leave them on; we might meet ladies.”  From Candice Millard’s The River of Doubt, p.83.  (10/11/06)

384. Tuscan Milk Tanked
A bunch of jolly saboteurs, all in good clean fun, planted cranky product reviews of Tuscan milk on Amazon’s website.  See the New York Times, August 9, 2006, pp. C1 and C4.  Hundreds of spoof reviews of Tuscan popped up on Amazon as the word got around.  YTMND and Boing Boing got the word around about this scam on the grapevine, leading to a deluge of posts.  Dean Foods, which owns Tuscan, was not at all unhappy.  One sample review read: 

I had a problem where my roof was leaking.  I poured some Tuscan Whole Milk over it to seal it up and it just flowed right into the hole and didn’t do anything.  I now have milk constantly dripping down from the ceiling and it has stained the drywall as well.  The milk trapped in the ceiling is now rancid and smells horrible.  It has also induced a pest infestation problem.  The pest control company won’t deal with it because of the odor is unbearable in the house.  My wife and children are now leaving me as well.  This product has ruined my life.  Do not buy this product, I suggest some roof caulking or tar instead.  (10/4/06)

383. Bad Sounds and Static
Bob Dylan, just out with a new album, doesn’t “know anybody who’s made a record that sounds decent in the last 20 years” (The Week, September 15, 2006, p. 12).  “You listen to these modern records, they’re atrocious, they have sound all over them.”  He thinks technology has run over quality:

Brian Wilson, he made all his records with four tracks, but you couldn't make his records if you had a hundred tracks today.  We all like records that are played on record players, but let’s face it, those days are gon-n-n-e.  You do the best you can, you fight that technology in all kinds of ways, but I don’t know anybody who’s made a record that sounds decent in the past twenty years, really.  You listen to these modern records, they’re atrocious, they have sound all over them.  There’s no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like—static.  Even these songs probably sounded ten times better in the studio when we recorded ‘em.  CDs are small.  There’s no stature to it.  I remember when that Napster guy came up across, it was like, “Everybody’s getting’ music for free.”  I was like, “Well, why not?  It ain’t worth nothing anyway.” (Dylan in Rolling Stone)  (9/27/06)

382. Godishness
The divine Trinity—“Father, Son and Holy Spirit”—also could be known as “Mother, Child and Womb,” or “Rock, Redeemer Friend” as delegates to National Assembly of the Presbyterian Church anointed a paper on God-naming in Birmingham, Alabama on June 19, 2006.  See the Associated Press Report in The Tennessean, June 20, 2006, p. 4A.  Other options are “Lovers, Beloved, Love,” “Creator, Savior, Santifier,” and “King of Glory, Prince of Peace, Spirit of Love.”  God, of course, did not know he was up for a corporate identity remake, thinking that the delegates might have more substantial matters to discuss.  (7/19/06)

381. What a Revoltin Development
Back in the mid-20th century there was a radio comedy called The Life of Riley.  When Reilly really got fed up with something, he would say, “What a revoltin development this is!”  Wall Street guru Ray DeVoe figures that’s about where we are on taxes (See The DeVoe Report, May 12, 2006.)  “Revoltin.”

He likes to cite Charles Adams’ “lengthy book Fight, Flight, Fraud: The Story of Taxation … [which] is a monument to bad taxes and how people have reacted to confiscatory rates.”  He figures that taxes are bad enough that Americans are doing all 3 things in spades—fighting against taxes, fleeing the country to avoid the taxman, and committing plenty of fraud on their taxes.  “Since taxes are payment for services rendered, the services provided have either broken down (Katrina), are out-of-control (earmarks & spending) or are in many sectors shoddy merchandise (education).”  The Tax Foundation figures sundry governments get about 31.6% of the average American’s income, well above the 20% that Adams feels people will pay willingly.  That’s when honest people turn into rebels, skip out of the country, or cheat on their taxes.  DeVoe figures the IRS estimate of $290 billion of tax fraud on the part of Americans is way below the real number.  (7/12/06)

380. No Pun in Ten Did
1. Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married.  The ceremony wasn’t much, but the reception was excellent.

2. A jumper cable walks into a bar.  The bartender says, “I’ll serve you, but don’t start anything.”

3. Two peanuts walk into a bar, and one was a salted.

4. A dyslexic man walks into a bra.

5. A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm and says: “A beer please, and one for the road.”

6. Two cannibals are eating a clown.  One says to the other: “Does this taste funny to you?”

7. Patient: “Doc, I can’t stop singing ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home.’”  Doctor: “That sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome.”  Patient: “Is it common?”  Doctor: Well, “It's Not Unusual.”

8. Two cows are standing next to each other in a field.  Daisy says to Dolly, “I was artificially inseminated this morning.” “I don’t believe you," says Dolly. “It’s true, no bull!” exclaims Daisy.

9. An invisible man marries an invisible woman.  The kids were nothing to look at either.

10. Deja Moo: The feeling that you’ve heard this bull before.

11. I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn’t find any.

12. A man woke up in a hospital after a serious accident. He shouted, “Doctor, doctor, I can’t feel my legs!”  The doctor replied, “I know you can’t—I’ve cut off your arms!”

13. I went to a seafood disco last week ... and pulled a mussel.

14. What do you call a fish with no eyes?  A fsh.

15. Two fish swim into a concrete wall.  The one turns to the other and says “Dam!”

16. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft.  Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

17. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories.  After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse.  “But why,” they asked, as they moved off.  “Because,” he said, “I can’t stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer.”

18. A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption.  One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named “Ahmal.”  The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him “Juan.”  Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother.  Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal.  Her husband responds, “They’re twins! If you’ve seen Juan, you’ve seen Ahmal.”

19. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet.  He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him (Oh, man, this is so bad, it’s good) A super-calloused-fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

20. And finally, there was the person who sent twenty different puns to his friends, with the hope that at least ten of the puns would make them laugh.  No pun in ten did.  (7/5/06)

379. Tory Platform
John Kenneth Galbraith recalled that his father once climbed on a pile of manure to lecture the assembled at a political rally in Canada..  “He apologized with ill-concealed sincerity for speaking from the Tory platform,” Mr. Galbraith related.  “The effect on this agrarian audience was electric.  Afterward I congratulated him on the brilliance of the sally.  He said, ‘It was good but it didn’t change any votes.’”  (6/28/06)

378. We're Not as Sick as We Think We Are
American health is not as good as it should be, but it’s not quite as bad as we think.  First off, we are a nation of pill-takers and hypochondriacs.  Secondly, our health system is so avid that it reports complaints that others miss.  Though the statistics make us look like we are all one step from the grave and suggest that the Brits are healthier, a closer examination shows that they’re cholesterol and mortality are in the same range as ours.  See “If You’ve Got a Pulse, You’re Sick,” New York Times, May 21, 2006, pp. WK 1 & 5.  “Dr. Hadler has written a book about the problem of medicalization, calling it Last Well Person:  How to Stay Well Despite the Health Care System.  The title refers to a story told by Dr. Clifton K. Meador, director of the Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance”: 

One day, as Dr. Meador tells it, a doctor-in-training was asked by his professor to define a well person.  The resident thought for a moment. A well person, he said, is “someone who has not been completely worked up.” 

377. The Power of Irrational Explanations
“Economics and politics prevented the professor from returning to more literary pursuits until 1990, when he published A Tenured Professor—this still stands on its own merits as a darkly funny campus novel, to my mind.  The novel’s protagonist, Professor Montgomery Marvin, is the inventor of the Index of Irrational Expectations, or IRAT.  IRAT , which allows him to profit from the wrongheaded optimism of the market through comfortable statistical means.  Marvin and his wife use their well-gotten gains for altruistic, liberal purposes, while Galbraith gets in his digs at everyone from the Wall Street raiders to Ronald Reagan to Cambridge’s intellectuals: ‘No one has ever been known to repeat what he or she has heard at a party, only what he or she has said.’” 

376. Ignorance and Apathy
Chairman William Safire, in his letter for the 2005 Dana Foundation Annual Report, talks about an educator who was asked what is the biggest problem for education today—ignorance or apathy.  In a split second, the wise man replied, “I don’t know and I don’t care.”  (6/28/06)

375. Retro Kim
“At Pyongyang Moran Bar in Taejon, service is bad and sign praises Kim Jong II, the North Korean leader, as ‘a man who comes along only once in a thousand years.’ South Koreans call it retro, and can’t get enough” (New York Times, May 25, 2006, P. A3).  “The North Korean waitresses wore traditional dresses in the bright colors that were fashionable in the South a few years back….  Service was bad and included at least one mild threat.  Drinks were spilled, beer bottles left unopened and unpoured.”  “North Korean defectors and South Koreans alike are opening North Korean-theme restaurants, selling North Korean goods and auctioning off North Korean artwork on www.NKMall.com.”  (6/7/06)

374. Heraclitus Squared
Master Wit Chuck Wheat tells us how he went Heraclitus one better.  In a speech for something or other, he opined: “Things are moving so fast these days, you cannot even step in the same river once.”

373. Afghanistan Best
Thomas J. Abercrombie, photographer and writer, passed away in April 2006.  Working for National Geographic, he had been everywhere (New York Times, April 16, 2006, p. 27).  “In 1957, Mr. Abercrombie as the first civilian correspondent to reach the South Pole.”  “He was famous for wrecking cars and went through many.  He once put a very small plane on his expense account.”   “Of everywhere he had been … he loved Afghanistan best.”  “In the late 1960s, traversing a mountain pass in Afghanistan, he was thrown by his horse and dangled by one heel from his stirrup over a yawning chasm.”  One of his most famous photographs “portrays an Afghan woman, veiled in a chador from head to toe, carrying two birds in a cage balanced on her head.”  His life and work were recounted in the “White Tiger: The Adventures of Thomas J. Abercrombie.”  (5/24/06)

372. Upcoming Mergers
We have been advised by the grapevine to watch out for the following mergers in 2006-2007: 

1. Hale Business Systems, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Fuller Brush, and W. R.Grace Co. will merge and become Hale, Mary, Fuller, Grace.  

2. Polygram Records, Warner Bros., and Zesta Crackers join forces and become Poly, Warner Cracker.  

3. 3M will merge with Goodyear and become MMMGood.  

4. Zippo Manufacturing, Audi Motors, Dofasco, and Dakota Mining will merge and become ZipAudiDoDa.  

5. FedEx is expected to join its major competitor, UPS, and become FedUP.  

6. Fairchild Electronics and Honeywell Computers will become Fairwell Honeychild.  

7. Grey Poupon and Docker Pants are expected to become Poupon Pants. 

8. Knotts Berry Farm and the National Organization of Women will become Knott NOW!  (5/17/06)

371. Silent Beans
“A method of creating super-nutritious but flatulence-free beans has been developed by scientists” (BBC News).  “Researchers from the Simon Bolivar University in Caracas found that by boosting the natural fermentation process by adding a particular type of bacteria, called Lactobacillus casei (L casei), the amount of these indigestible wind-causing compounds were reduced.  Soluble fibre was reduced by two thirds and the amount of raffinose, another flatulence-causing substance, by 88.6%.  But the amount of insoluble fibre, which is thought to have a beneficial effect on the gut and help the digestive system get rid of toxins, increased by 97.5%.”  (5/10/06)

370. Bellying up to the Bar
No, not law school.  A bunch of bar buffs, we are unclear how much they know, are opening up a school “called the Beverage Alcohol Resource.”  Don’t ask us how people invent stupid titles like that.  It “claims to be the world’s first academy dedicated to teaching the finer points of distilled spirits and mixology.”  “The partners in BAR, and its faculty members, are F. Paul Pacult, the editor of Spirit Journal; Dale DeGroff, the former bartender of the Rainbow Room and founder of the Museum of the American Cocktail; Steven Olson, … lecturer on wine and spirits; Doug Frost, [an] … educator who has passed both the Master Sommelier and Master of Wine examinations; and David Wondrich, a cocktail historian….”  For a sampling of the curriculum, consult the BAR site. 

369. The Professor and the Chauffeur
A professor of theology would tour the country to lecture on the doctrine of the church. Wherever he went, he was driven by his personal chauffeur.

One day he said to his chauffeur, “I get so tired, James, always delivering the same lecture.  You’ve heard me so many times now, you could deliver it yourself.  Wouldn’t you like to deliver my next lecture for me?”

”I’m sure I could do it, Sir,” said the chauffeur, “but what about the question and answer time?”

”I wouldn't worry about that,” said the professor. “The questions are always the same.  I should think you’ve heard them all.”

So the professor donned the chauffeur’s uniform, and the chauffeur put on the professor’s pinstripe suit.

At their next stop, the chauffeur delivered a flawless lecture. “Any questions?” he asked.

At that, a professor from the local university stood up, and asked him a theological question of frightening complexity.

For a moment the chauffeur stood stunned.  Then he said, “Ah, yes.  That question is so simple, professor, I am certain that even my chauffeur could answer it!”  (4/26/06)

368. Patent Foolishness
“This Essay Breaks the Law,” by Michael Crichton, New York Times, March 19, 2006, p. 13. 

• The Earth revolves around the Sun.

• The speed of light is a constant.

• Apples fall to earth because of gravity.

• Elevated blood sugar is linked to diabetes.

• Elevated uric acid is linked to gout.

• Elevated homocysteine is linked to heart disease.

• Elevated homocysteine is linked to B-12 deficiency, so doctors should testhomocysteine levels to see whether the patient needs vitamins. 

Actually, I can't make that last statement.  A corporation has patented that fact, and demands a royalty for its use.  Anyone who makes the fact public and encourages doctors to test for the condition and treat it can be sued for royalty fees.  Any doctor who reads a patient’s test results and even thinks of vitamin deficiency infringes the patent.  A federal circuit court held that mere thinking violates the patent.” 

368. Disability Clause
“Earlier in his career, according to John J. Tarrant's biography Drucker, he responded to distracting requests with a preprinted postcard that read: 

Mr. Peter F. Drucker appreciates your kind interest, but is unable to:

– Contribute Articles or Forewords,
– Comment on Manuscripts or Books,
– Take part in Panels or Symposia,
– Join Committees or Boards of any kind,
– Answer Questionnaires,
– Give Interviews and,
– Appear on Radio or Television.

367. Gilded Toilet Paper
Toilet Business In Hong Kong (1/28/2006, SCMP—South China Morning Post): A group of young entrepreneurs saw their $80,000 investment in one of this year's hottest-selling items at the Victoria Park Lunar New Year fair flushed away when HSBC “advised” them yesterday to stop selling rolls of “banknote” toilet paper.  The cheeky product—selling at $38 a roll—had buyers queuing for it since the market opened on Monday.  The paper is printed with an $800 “note” on each sheet, featuring a dog in place of the bank’s iconic lion to mark the Year of the Dog.  And instead of “HSBC”, the sheets carry the letters “HPNY”, standing for Happy New Year.  “We have stopped selling it.  The bank is rich and powerful—we can't take them on,” he said.  “More people have been asking about the paper today but we had to tell them we don’t sell it any more.”  Mr Chan said the notice was an advisory and did not threaten legal action.  “But we take the hint.”  HSBC yesterday admitted that no one would mistake the toilet paper for real money.  “There is no possibility of that,” a spokesman said. “It’s just a straightforward infringement of our copyright.  We are obliged to protect the integrity of our banknotes.”  (3/22/06)

366. The Enigmatic Mr. Turing
“While at Bell Labs, he became engrossed with a question that came to occupy his postwar work: was it possible to build an artificial brain?  On one occasion, Turing stunned the entire executive mess at Bell Labs into silence by announcing, in a typically clarion tone, ‘I’m not interesting in developing a powerful brain.  All I’m after is just a mediocre brain, something like the president of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.”  And we know what has happened to AT&T.  From Code-Breaker by Jim Holt, The New Yorker, February 6, 2006, pp. 84-89, a review of David Leavitt’s The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer.”  (3/15/06)

365. George Stalk’s Resurrection
BCG’s George Stalk is based in Toronto and, as much as anybody, is known as the father of time-based competition.  In everything he does, he is always figuring out how one runs faster than the other guy.  The trouble, of course, with running is that you can die from exhaustion, and “The 10 Lives of George Stalk” tells how the physicians declared him dead and how he almost ran his last race.  We suppose this makes him a tactical wunderkind but a stumbling strategist, ironic for a star at what was once the nation’s pre-eminent strategy firm.  With its cost curve and its other findings, BCG taught corporations how to do more with much less, the theme of consultancies for the last 30 years—but ultimately a way of doing business that leaves the corporation anorexic.  Now the challenge is to raise revenues, not to shave costs, and the consulting firms need to be retreaded.  (2/22/06)

364. Living with Contradiction
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function” - F. Scott Fitzgerald  (2/22/06)

363. Shades of Black
We used to say that the French got all their perfume out of the same vat, with only the packaging providing the scintilla of difference between brands.  Well, the skeptical observer should bring the same perception to vodka, especially the premium varieties.  “How strange that this bland, neutral spirit has triumphed in an era that otherwise celebrates food and drink with intense and complicated flavors” (“The Emperor’s New Vodka,” Wall Street Journal, January 7-8, 2006, p. 14).  “Pubs selling artisanal spirits distilled on-site are a novelty.  And what are many of them making?  Vodka.”  It’s the water, apparently, that “defines what little discernible difference there is between vodkas.”  (2/15/06)

362. Blind Tasting
“Dining out was never so challenging.  Held weekly at the Hyatt Regency on Sunset Boulevard, Opaque’s Dining in the Dark is precisely what the name implies.  A three-course meal served in a pitch-black room with an added twist—the entire wait staff is blind or vision-impaired” (Wall Street Journal, January 5, 2006, p. D8).  “Blame it on Jorge Spielmann, a blind minister,” who “opened his 60-seat Blindekuh (Blind Cow) restaurant in an abandoned Zurich church.”  Knockoffs have cropped up in Berlin, Brussels, Paris, London, and New York.  “It took German-born Ben Uphues to bring truly blind dining to the U.S.”  (2/8/06)

361. Inn-U-Endo Reporting
“Answering a question at the Economics Association of New York, former President Nixon stated that he didn’t mind reporters examining his every move through a microscope, but he strongly objected when they wanted to view him through a proctoscope.”  -Ray DeVoe in The Devoe Report, January 6, 2006.  (2/1/06)

360. Heavy Metal in Santa Fe
Christmas 2005.  This, just in from Santa Fe: 

359. Sin Sweeps South
Henry Louis Mencken thought that the South was a cultural wasteland and blamed many of its shortcomings on rampant religion.  After all, this is the man who said, “Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.”  Well, he would see glimmers of hope for the region today.  No matter how hard organized religion pushes back, a tsunami of sin is sweeping through the South.

This can easily be seen by recent events in the Carolinas.  2006 will give birth to a lottery in North Carolina, as the financially strapped state realizes that it should not be exporting gambling dollars to neighboring states.  In fact, it was formerly the only state on the Eastern Seaboard without a lottery, and it also had the distinction of being the largest state in the Union to shun the guilty pleasures of playing numbers at the local convenience store.

But, as well, South Carolina is taking up the Seven Deadly Sins.  It had been the “only state to require that bars and restaurants serve liquor from mini-bottles.”  “The mini-bottle law has been in effect since 1973, and bartenders who’ve worked only in the Palmetto State have never had to measure liquor.”  “The state’s mini-bottle law is one of the last echoes of the Prohibition era….”  “Before 1973, South Carolina did not allow liquor to be sold by the drink.”  See USA Today, December 30, 1005, p. 3A.

358. Frenchfrying the French
“France has neither winter nor summer nor morals.  Apart from these drawbacks, it is a fine country.  However, France has usually been governed by prostitutes.”
~ Mark Twain

“I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me.”
~ General George S.  Patton

“Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion.”
~ Norman Schwartzkopf

“We can stand here like the French or we can do something about it.”
~ Marge Simpson

“As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure.”
~ Jacques Chirac, President of France
(And as far as France is concerned, he's right!)
~ Rush Limbaugh

“The only time France wants us to go to war is when the German Army is sitting in Paris sipping coffee.”
~ Regis Philbin

“The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore.  True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whisky I don't know.”
~ P.J O'Rourke (1989)

“You know, the French remind me a little bit of an aging actress of the 1940s who was still trying to dine out on her looks but doesn’t have the face for it.”
~ John McCain

“You know why the French don't want to bomb Saddam Hussein?  Because he hates America, he loves mistresses and he wears a beret.  He is French, people.”
~ Conan O’Brien

“I don’t know why people are surprised that France won’t help us get Saddam out of Iraq.  After all, France wouldn’t help us get Hitler out of France either.”
~ Jay Leno

“The last time the French asked for ‘more proof’ it came marching into Paris under a German flag.”
~ David Letterman

“Only thing worse than a Frenchman is a Frenchman who lives in Canada.”
~ Ted Nugent.

“War without France would be like ...  uh ...  World War II.”

“The favorite bumper sticker in Washington D.C.  right now is one that says ‘First Iraq, then France.’”
~ Tom Brokaw

“What do you expect from a culture and a nation that exerted more of its national will fighting against DisneyWorld and Big Macs than the Nazis?”
~ Dennis Miller

“It is important to remember that the French have always been there when they needed us.”
~ Alan Kent

“They’ve taken their own precautions against al-Qa’ida.  To prepare for an attack, each Frenchman is urged to keep duct tape, a white flag and a three-day supply of mistresses in the house.”
~ Argus Hamilton

“Somebody was telling me about the French Army rifle that was being advertised on eBay the other day.  The description was: ‘Never shot.  Dropped once.’”
~ Rep. Roy Blunt

“The French will only agree to go to war when we’ve proven we’ve found truffles in Iraq.”
~ Dennis Miller

“Raise your right hand if you like the French.  Raise both hands if you are French.”

Q.  What did the mayor of Paris say to the German Army as they entered the city in WWII?
A.  Table for 100,000 m’sieur?

“Do you know how many Frenchmen it takes to defend Paris?  It's not known; it’s never been tried.”
~ Rep. R. Blount

“Do you know it only took Germany three days to conquer France in WWII?  And that’s because it was raining.”
~ John Xereas, Manager, DC Improv

“The AP and UPI reported that the French Government announced after the London bombings that it has raised its terror alert level from Run to Hide.  The only two higher levels in France are Surrender and Collaborate.  The rise in the alert level was precipitated by a recent fire, which destroyed France’s white flag factory, effectively disabling their military.”

“French Ban Fireworks at Euro Disney, (AP), Paris, March 5, 2003...  The French Government announced today that it is imposing a ban on the use of fireworks at Euro Disney.  The decision comes the day after a nightly fireworks display at the park, located just 30 miles outside of Paris, caused the soldiers at a nearby French Army garrison to surrender to a group of Czech tourists.”

357. Some Ogilivy Aphorisms
David Ogilvy put together the best advertising agency on wheels, because his crew could put wit and substance in their ads.  And he could turn a phrase himself, as evidenced on “Ogilvy on Advertising”:

·      We sell or else.

·      We pursue knowledge the way a pig pursues truffles.

·      You aren’t advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade.

·      The manufacturer who finds himself up the creek is the shortsighted opportunist who siphons off all his advertising dollars for short-term promotions.

·      It pays to make your poster a “visual scandal.”

·      Commercials with a large content of nostalgia, charm and even sentimentality can be enormously effective.

·      When people aren’t having any fun, they seldom produce good work.  Kill grimness with laughter.  Encourage exuberance.  Get rid of sad dogs that spread gloom.

·      If you always hire people who are smaller than you are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. If, on the other hand, you always hire people who are bigger than you are, we shall become a company of giants.  (1/4/06)

356. What’s Happening, Man?
“Some people make the world happen, more watch the world happen, most wonder what happened.” -Bala Pillai in Sydney, Australia.  (12/28/05)

355. Drucker's Managing Dumbness
In an interview with Brent Schlender of Fortune, Peter Drucker, when asked whether there was anything else he wished he had done in life, responded, “Yes, quite a few things.  There are many books I could have written that are better than the ones I actually wrote.  My best book would have been one titled Managing Ignorance, and I'm very sorry I didn't write it” (Fortune, January 12, 2004).  No book would have been more deliciously ironic in this so-called era of knowledge management.  This comment would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad.  In America these days, you do have to manage your way through ignorance—an ignorance that runs through the workforce right up to the office of the president.  In part, this stems from an educational system run amok from primary school right through the university.  But, more importantly, it stems from a culture that has insulated itself from the flow of ideas that’s swirling around the globe.  Perhaps it is this dumbing down that accounts for the fact that the New York Times thought the article above appeared in Forbes, according to the tattered obituary it did on Drucker (November 12, 2005, p. A13).  For a thoughtful obituary on Drucker, see the Financial Times at Christian Sarkar.com.  (12/21/05)

354. Scotch Is Better
Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems for Hard Times claims “the meaning of poetry is to give courage.”  In his critique of the book, David Orr say it’s not so: “That is not the meaning of  poetry; that is the meaning of Scotch.”  (12/21/05)

353. Wry Epitaphs
We like best humorous epitaphs that are spun by a bloke before he dies.  Nonetheless, Nigel Rees is out with I Told You I Was Sick: A Grave Book of Curious Epitaphs, a trim collection that proves death does not have to be a completely serious business.  He’s the author of the “Quote … Unquoute” Website, and he gets an airing on the BBC to boot.  In a Liverpool cemetery you will find “None Could Hold a Candle to Him,” as a grave marker for John Edwards, who perished in a 1904 fire.  In some pet graveyard for an anonymous pup there appears “Born a dog.  Died a gentleman.”  (12/14/05)

352. Some Pithy Insults
"A graceful taunt is worth a thousand insults." -Louis Nizer
"I feel so miserable without you.  It's almost like having you here." -Stephen Bishop
"He is a self-made man and worships his creator." -John Bright
"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." -Winston Churchill
"A modest little person, with much to be modest about." -Winston Churchill
"I've just learned about his illness.  Let's hope it's nothing trivial." -Irvin S. Cobb
"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." -Clarence Darrow
"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." -William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)
"Poor Faulkner.  Does he really think big emotions come from big words? -Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)
"He had delusions of adequacy." -Walter Kerr
"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." -Abraham Lincoln
"You've got the brain of a four-year-old boy, and I bet he was glad to get rid of it." -Groucho Marx
"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening.  But this wasn't it." -Groucho Marx
"He has the attention span of a lightning bolt." -Robert Redford
"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him." -Forrest Tucker
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." -Mark Twain
"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." -Mae West
"She is a peacock in everything but beauty." -Oscar Wilde
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go." -Oscar Wilde
"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." -Oscar Wilde
and...
"He has Van Gogh's ear for music." -Billy Wilder

See www.JumboJoke.com/000512.html (12/7/05).

351. A Reason to Live In Rhode Island
We have never had the urge to live in Rhode Island, journeying there mainly to see Newport again, the Last Best Resort of the Flamboyantly Wealthy.  As we remember, all white males of 21 had the vote in every state of the union except Rhode Island by 1825, and it has been a laggard ever since.  But tiny Rhode Island has only had 6 Federal disaster declarations since 1953, just ahead of Utah and Wyoming.  So it is now number one at something.  California, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and New York have each had more than 45 federally anointed disasters.  See The Raleigh News and Observer, September 30, p. 3A.  For complete data, see www.fema.gov/library/drcys.shtmm.  (11/23/05)

350. Top Hong Kong Story
We have been vaguely keeping track of this story, but it has gripped Hong Kong and the Orient in the same way as the O.J incident. transfixed the United States.  An overpaid U.S. banker—out of Greenwich we think—and his wife have for years apparently led an absolutely wretched life there together, both mentally askew.  Right or wrong, the courts have found her guilty of his murder.  You can read most of it on East West blog—in several entries—whose author obviously has as big a taste for low-life matters as the next guy, whatever the ambitions of his blog.  To read about Robert and Nancy Kissel’s very soiled underwear, you can start at Zonaeuropa.  One of our associates out in the Kong also promises to do a write up.

349. The Best Friend Joe Louis Ever Had
We all know that Max Schmeling floored Joe Louis in the first fight, and Louis returned the favor later.  But we know little of their friendship and Schmeling’s generosity to Louis.  “Schmeling treasured camaraderie and friendship and somehow, each of his ring opponents became his friend.  He regularly and discreetly gave the down-and-out Joe Louis gifts of money, and the friendship continued after death: when the great champion died in 1981 Schmeling paid for the funeral.”  See our commentary about Schmeling in “Sportmanship.”  Both Joyce Carol Oates and David Margolick, author of a new book called Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling (see tha New York Times Book Review, October 2, 2005, pp. 10-11 and the New York Times Sports, October 2, 2005, p. 11) are, on the other hand, very disparaging about Schmeling.  See also www.journalcommunity.com/entry.php?EntryID=7890.  (10/26/05)

348. The Burning Man Festival
Black Rock City, Nevada.  “A dry lakebed in the remote desert of northern Nevada is not the most inviting campsite in the world….  But … 35,000 people could be found there.  They had come for the week-long Burning Man Festival, which has been countering the capitalist culture for two decades.”  At the end a 4-story wooden statue, the Burning Man, is torched and turned to cinders.  Meanwhile “burners” “get a chiropractic adjustment, meet psychic healers, eat sushi at midnight, float across the desert in a wheeled pirate ship, or just sit at a bar and have a beer.”  “At Burning Man all buying, selling, or advertising was banned … a commerce free zone.”  You do buy a $300 ticket for the week, and coffee, tea, and ice are on sale.  See The Economist, September 24, 2005, p. 41, www.burningman.com, http://vrm.vrway.com/issue11/BURNING_MAN_FESTIVAL_ONE_MAN_S_EXPERIENCE.html, and www.time.com/time/daily/special/photo/burningman (this photo pastiche is a lot of fun).  Wikipedia provides the best over-all summary at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Man.  (10/19/05)

347. -new- Plenty of Room at the Bottom
Richard Feynman has to be the most playful of scientists.  Doing a primer speech on nanotechnology, he proved to us “That There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom” (www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html).  “ Now, the name of this talk is ‘There Is Plenty of Room at the Bottom’—not just ‘There is Room at the Bottom.’  What I have demonstrated is that there is room—that you can decrease the size of things in a practical way.  I now want to show that there is plenty of room.  I will not now discuss how we are going to do it, but only what is possible in principle—in other words, what is possible according to the laws of physics.  I am not inventing anti-gravity, which is possible someday only if the laws are not what we think.  I am telling you what could be done if the laws are what we think; we are not doing it simply because we haven’t yet gotten around to.”  When you look at anything in the right way, no matter how solid it seems at first, you will learn soon enough that it is really just another piece of Swiss cheese.  (10/19/05)

346. -new- Nobody's Guilty
A one-time boxer, Gordon Marino teaches philosophy at St. Olaf’s (you know, one of those very interesting liberal arts colleges in the cold of Minnesota), is curator of the Kierkegaard Library (lord knows what anxieties are archived there), coaches the football team, and trains amateur boxers in his spare time.  Apparently some academics scoff at his pugilistic endeavors, so he feels pressed to defend them in public journals, which we suspect is a losing cause.  Naturally his defense becomes a bit convoluted: he draws in Aristotle who, as best we remember, counseled light athletic activities for growing young men (www.godspy.com/life/Fellowship-of-the-Ring-Boxing-Courage-and-Philosophy-by-Gordon-Marino.cfm).  At any rate, even the Brits give him a platform to