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Adolescence: The period when a teenager feels he will never be as dumb as his parents.
Americans: People with more timesaving devices yet less time than anybody else in the world.
Banker: A pawnbroker with a manicure.
Budget: A systematic way of going in to debt.
Coach: One who is always willing to lay down your life for his job.
Dentist: A magician who puts metal in your mouth and pulls coins from your pocket.
Dermatologist: One who makes rash judgments.
Diplomacy: The art of saying "nice doggie" until you can find a rock.
Disarmament: An agreement between nations to scuttle all weapons that are obsolete.
Efficiency Expert: The person smart enough to tell you how to run a business but too smart to start his own.
Experience: The name we give our mistakes.
Honeymoon: A vacation a man takes before beginning work under a new boss.
Hunch: An idea you're afraid is wrong.
Incentive: The possibility of getting more money than you earn.
Lame Duck: A politician whose goose is cooked.
Life Insurance: A policy that keeps you poor so you can die rich.
Pacifist: A guy who fights everybody but the enemy.
Planning: The art of putting off until tomorrow what you have no intention of doing today.
Professor: One who talks in someone else's sleep.
Rich Man: One who is not afraid to ask the clerk for something cheaper.
Automobile: A mechanical device that runs up hills and down people.
The IRS sent John a letter last Friday. They audited his return and denied two of his
dependent deductions! He sent them the following letter:
Dear Sirs:
I am responding to your letter denying the deduction for two of the three dependents
I claimed on my 1998 Federal Income Tax return. Thank you. I have questioned whether
these are my children or not for years. They are hard to handle and expensive.
It's only fair that since they are minors and not my responsibility that the government
(who, evidently, is now taxing me more to care for these waifs) knows something about
them and what to expect over the next year. You may apply next year to reassign them
to me and reinstate the deduction. This year they are yours!
The oldest, Kristen, is now 17. She is brilliant. Ask her! I suggest you put her to
work in your office where she can answer peoples questions about their returns. While
she has had no formal training, it has not seemed to hamper her knowledge of any other
subject you can name. Taxes should be a breeze. Next year she is going to college.
I think it's wonderful that you will now be responsible for that little expense.
While you mull that over, keep in mind she has a truck. It doesn't run at the moment
so you have the immediate decision of appropriating some Department of Defense funds
to fix the vehicle or getting up early to drive her to school. Kristen also has a
boyfriend. Oh joy. While she possesses all the wisdom of the universe, her alleged
mother and I have felt it best to occasionally remind her of the virtues of abstinence.
This is always uncomfortable and I'm quite relieved you will be handling it in the future.
Patrick is 14. I've had my suspicions about this one. His eyes are a little to close
together for normal people. He may be a tax examiner himself someday if you don't
incarcerate him first.
In February I was rudely awakened at three in the morning by a police officer who was
bringing Pat home. He and his friends were TP'ing houses. In the future would you
like him delivered to the local IRS office or sent directly to Ogden, UT? Kids at 14
will do almost anything on a dare. Oh, and his hair is purple.
Permanent dye, temporary dye, what's the big deal? Learn to deal with it. You'll have
plenty of time since he is sitting out a few days of school after instigating a food
fight. I'll take care of filing your phone number with the vice principal. Oh yes,
he, and all his friends, have raging hormones. This is the house of testosterone and
it will be much more peaceful when he lives in your home. DO NOT leave any of them
unsupervised with girls, explosives, inflammables, inflatables, vehicles or telephones.
(I'm sure you'll find the telephones a source of unimaginable amusement, be sure to
lock out the 900 and 976 numbers!)
Heather is an alien. She slid through a time warp and appeared quite by magic one
year. I'm sure this one is yours. She is 10, going on 21. She came from a bad trip
in the sixties. She wears tie-dyed clothes, beads, sandals and hair that looks like
Tiny Tim's. Fortunately you will be raising my taxes to help you offset the pinch of
her remedial reading courses. Hooked on Phonics is expensive so the schools dropped
it. Good news! You can buy it yourself for half the amount of the deduction you are
denying! It's quite obvious we were terrible parents (ask the other two) so they have
"helped" raise this one to a new level of terror. She cannot speak English. Most
people under twenty understand the curious patois she fashioned out of valley girl/boys
in the hood/reggae/yuppie/political doublespeak. I don't. The school sends her to a
speech pathologist who has her roll her R's. It added a refreshing Mexican/Irish touch
to her voice. She wears hats backwards, pants baggy and wants one of her ears pierced
four more times. There is a fascination with tattoos that worries me but I'm sure
you can handle it. Bring a truck when you come to get her, she sort of "nests" in her
room and I think it would be easier to move the entire thing than find out what it's
really made of.
You denied two of the three deductions so I guess it's only fair you get to pick which
two you will take. I prefer you take the two youngest, I still go bankrupt with
Kristen's college expense but then I'm free! If you take the two oldest at least I
have time for counseling before Heather becomes a teenager. If you take the two
girls I won't feel so bad about putting Patrick in a military academy. Please let me
know of your decision as soon as possible as I have already increased the withholding
on my W4 to cover the $395 in additional tax and made a down payment on an airplane.
Yours Truly,
Mr. "John Smith"
Did You Know…
(It's a Fact)
A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
Certain frogs can be frozen solid, then thawed, and continue living.
Cinderella's slippers were originally made out of fur. The story was changed in the 1
600s by a translator error.
It was the left shoe that Aschenputtel (Cinderella) lost at the stairway, when the
prince tried to follow her.
Until 1965, driving was done on the left-hand side on roads in Sweden. The conversion
to right-hand was done on a weekday at 5pm. All traffic stopped as people switched
sides. This time and day were chosen to prevent accidents where drivers would have
gotten up in the morning and been too sleepy to realize *this* was the day of the
changeover.
The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the
only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
In Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart never said "Play it again, Sam." Sherlock
Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson."
Captain Kirk never said "Beam me up, Scotty." (He did say, "Beam me up, Mr. Scott.")
More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.
The flag of the Philippines is the only national flag that is flown differently during
times of peace or war. A portion of the flag is blue, while the other is red. The blue
portion is flown on top in time of peace and the red portion is flown in war time.
Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when they rode past their
king. This custom has become the modern military salute.
The "huddle" in football was formed due a deaf football player who used sign language
to communicate and his team didn't want the opposition to see the signals he used and
in turn huddled around him.
If you are locked in a completely sealed room, you will die of carbon dioxide
poisoning first before you will die of oxygen deprivation.
The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you
couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
Money isn't made out of paper, it's made out of linen.
Coca-Cola was originally green.
Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than for the US Treasury.
Smartest dogs: 1) border collie; 2) poodle; 3) golden retriever;
Dumbest dog--afghan
Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters.
Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear better.
City with the most Rolls Royce's per capita: Hong Kong
State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska
Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33
Percentage of Americans who say that God has spoken to them: 36
Percentage of Americans who regularly attend religious services: 43
City with the highest per capita viewership of television evangelists: Washington DC
80% of American men say that they would marry the same woman if they had it to do over. Only 50% of American women say that about husbands.
Average number of people airborne over the US any given hour: 61,000.
James Buchanon was the only President to remain a bachelor.
Hummingbirds are the one bird that can fly backwards.
Antarctica is the only continent without reptiles or snakes.
The only animal besides human that can get sunburn is a pig.
In the Caribbean there are oysters that can climb trees.
Pilgrims ate popcorn at the first Thanksgiving dinner.
Your nose and ears never stop growing.
They have square watermelons in Japan...they stack better.
Starfish have eight eyes--one at the end of each leg.
Iceland consumes more Coca-Cola per capita than any other nation.
There are more collect calls on Father's Day than any other day of the year.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
The little bags of netting for gas lanterns (mantles) are
radioactive--so much so that they will set off an alarm at a nuclear reactor.
The actual Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel) pronounced "Seuss" so that it rhymed
with "rejoice."
Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.
Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.
The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When
arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured
exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their
ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards."
If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the
person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as
a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground,
the person died of natural causes.
The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Uses every letter in the
alphabet. (Developed by Western Union to test telex/twx communications)
A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it
was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that
would occupy the building.
Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history.
Spades - King David
Clubs - Alexander the Great;
Hearts -Charlemagne
Diamonds - Julius Caesar.
"I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language
Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's
kissing the conveyor belt.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary.
When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws
requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.
Cat's urine glows under a blacklight.
Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world's nuclear weapons
combined.
There are an average of 178 sesame seeds on a McDonald's Big Mac bun.
A mathematical wonder: 111,111,111 multiplied by 111,111,111 gives the result
12,345,678,987,654,321
No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple.
Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and
Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2nd, but the last signature wasn't
added until 5 years later.
The term, "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" is from Ancient Rome.
The only rule during wrestling matches was, "No eye gouging." Everything else was
allowed, but the only way to be disqualified was to poke someone's eye out.
Most American car horns honk in the key of F.
There are more plastic flamingos in America than real ones.
Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.
Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.
The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contain seven letters.
Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.
Both Presidents were shot on a Friday. Both were shot in the head.
Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy's secretary was named Lincoln.
Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners.
Both successors were named Johnson.
Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.
John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy was born in 1939.
Both assassins were know by their three names.
Both names compromise fifteen letters.
Booth ran from the theater and was caught in a warehouse.
Oswald ran from a warehouse and was caught in a theater.
To cap it all off, Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.
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