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GM3YEW > HUMOUR 01.07.20 06:54z 210 Lines 7006 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 21751_GB7YEW
Read: GUEST
Subj: jokes 1/7
Path: HB9ON<IW2OHX<IR1UAW<IQ5KG<IK1NHL<CX2SA<PE1RRR<N7HPX<KC9VYU<W9GM<
GB7YEW
Sent: 200701/0628Z 21751@GB7YEW.#79.GBR.EURO LinBPQ6.0.18
As Grandmother used to say
A swarm of bees in June is worth a silver spoon
Exercise
--------
My friend Tom said he stopped watching golf on TV. His doctor recommended
That he get more exercise. So now he watches tennis.
Tablets
-------
'Viagra' is now available in powder form for your tea.
It doesn't enhance your sexual performance but it does stop your biscuit going soft.
Driving
-------
"I failed my driver's test. The guy asked me, "What do you do at a red
Light?"
I said, "I don't know, look around, listen to the radio"
--Bill Braudis
Fractured Dictionary
--------------------
Arbitrator \AR-bi-tray-ter\: A cook that leaves Arby's to work at
McDonald's.
Avoidable \uh-voy'-duh-buhl\: What a bullfighter tries to do.
Baloney \buh-lo'-nee\: Where some hemlines fall.
Bernadette \burn'-a-det\: The act of torching a mortgage.
Burglarize \bur'-gler-ize\: What a crook sees with.
Control \kon-trol'\: A short, ugly inmate.
Counterfeiters \kown-ter-fit-ers\: Workers who put together kitchen
Cabinets.
Eclipse \I-klips'\: what an English barber does for a living.
Eyedropper \I-drop-ur\: a clumsy ophthalmologist.
Heroes \hee'-rhos\: what a guy in a boat does.
Left Bank \left' bangk'\: what the robber did when his bag was full of
Loot.
Misty \mis'-tee\: How some golfers create divots.
Paradox \par'-uh-doks\: two physicians.
Parasites \par'-uh-sites\: what you see from the top of the Eiffel Tower.
Pharmacist \farm'-uh-sist\: a helper on the farm.
Polarize \Po-lur-ize\: what penguins see with.
Primate \pri'-mat\: removing your spouse from in front of the TV.
Relief \ree-leef'\: what trees do in the spring.
Rubberneck \rub'-ER-nek\: what you do to relax your wife.
Seamstress \seem'-stres\: describes 120 kilos in a size six.
Selfish \sel'-fish\: what the owner of a seafood store does.
Subdued \sub-dood'\: like, a guy, like, works on one of those, like,
Submarines, man.
Sudafed \sood'-a-fed\: bringing litigation against a government.
Motorcycles
-----------
You'd never believe it, but I bumped into a famous stuntman in a motorcycle
Shop the other day. He was complaining because he couldn't decide whether
To buy a bike with a high top speed but poor acceleration, or one with lots
Of torque and a fast acceleration but a poor top speed.
Eventually he decided on the second one because it cost a lot less. After
All, torque is cheap.
Q&A
---
Q: What does a houseboat become when it grows up?
A: A township.
Q: Where do you find giant snails?
A: On the ends of giant's fingers.
.............................
Watch out - the Romans are coming!
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between rails) is 4 feet, 8.5
Inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?
Because that's the way they built them in England, and English
Expatriates built the US Railroads.
Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the
Pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Why did "they" use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools
That they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! So, why did the wagons have that particularly odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break
On some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the
Spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England)
For their legions. The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to
Match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were
Made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel
Spacing.
So the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives
From the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
Specifications and bureaucracies live forever!
So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's
Arse came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman
War chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of
Two war horses.
Now a twist to the story....
There's an interesting extension to the story about railroad gauges and
horses' behinds. When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad,
there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel
tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs.
The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who
designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the
SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.
The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the
mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly
wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as
two horses' behinds.
So, a major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced
transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the
width of a horse's a*se.
(With acknowledgement to G3NPF, who I "lifted" it from).
I live in a part of England where Roman roads are still very much in
evidence, (as they are all over England for that matter). For much of
their length, some, such as Ermine St, and Watling Street are major
roads today, with the foundations laid 2,000 years ago buried underneath
the tarmac.
Many have become bridle roads, some little more than footpaths, some
overgrown and abandoned, but their straightness and width gives them
away.
On bridle roads which haven't been upgraded to carry traffic, it's
fascinating to see blocks of stone laid 2,000 years ago which are
still in place, sometimes bedded down on hardcore which includes
fragments of discarded broken pottery.
The Romans were in Britain from 43 BC to 410 AD, their mark on the
lanscape is everywhere, but for the first 150 years, their influence
on what was to become the English language was very slight - linguists
suggest about 200 words at most. Words such as plant (planta), win (wine),
catte (cat), cetel (kettle), forca (fork), candle (candel), weall (wall),
ancor (anchor), Rosa (rose), mortere (mortar) epistula (letter) straet
(street)..
The Latin influence in the English language came much later, with the
re-introduction of Christianity. Rome came back to England not with a
sword but with a cross. In AD 597, Augustine arrived in Kent, sent
from Holy Rome with all its imperial authority, by Pope Gregory.
That introduced some more Latin words such as angel, mass, bishop, monk,
abbess, nun, verse, Minster, alter. Some Greek slipped in too, such as
psalm, alms, apostle, pope, and school.
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