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Veterans Golf Club of Victoria
Keep in Touch - Jun 16 to Jun 30

Webmasters Preamble

Remembering that our Club is a Social and Golf Club I added these Keep in Contact pages to the web site to help us through the Corona Virus shutdown and to maintain the Club in our lives.

At the moment these Keep in Contact pages are being updated daily with new jokes or Club chit chat. But more of the chit chat needs to come from members. When you read this consider putting finger to keyboard and tell us something as your contribution.

Anything you provide may be sanitised for the sensitive but otherwise published unadorned.

As file size is significant, this page will cover the second half of June.

We restarted on 15th June at Centenary Park and will continue at Southern.


30th Jun 2020 - An ordered world Click here to enroll for engineering

End of June

Celebrating two and half months of producing these 'Keeping in touch' notes I thought I'd give a clue where some of the inspiration came from.

Blarney not found
This is how you have to contort to Kiss the Blarney Stone. You need a friend with a camera for the record as the offical photographs are only marginally cheaper than the Mona Lisa.

The drop under the shoulders is about 27m, so staff keep a firm grip while you lean backwards to kiss the stone.



Engineers should rule the world

As most of you would know I'm an engineer, so I thought I'd end the financial year by showing why we should rule the world!

As there are lots of engineering stories, this is the biggest page by far.

The dispute

An engineer dies and reports to the pearly gates. St. Peter misreads his dossier and says, "Oh, you're at the wrong gate. You'll have to go to the other place."

So the engineer reports to the gates of hell and is let in. Pretty soon, the engineer gets dissatisfied with the level of comfort in hell, and starts designing and building improvements. After a while, they've got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and the engineer is a pretty popular guy.

One day God calls Satan up on the telephone and says, "So, how's it going down there in hell?"

Satan replies, "Hey, things are going great. We've got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and there's no telling what this engineer is going to come up with next."

God replies, "What??? You've got an engineer? That's a mistake - he should never have gotten down there. Send him up here."

"No way. I like having an engineer on the staff, and I'm keeping him."

"Send him back up here or I'll sue"

Satan laughs uproariously and answers, "Yeah, right. And just where are YOU going to get a lawyer?"

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How to understand an engineer

  1. Two engineering students were walking across campus when one said, "Where did you get such a great bike?"

    The second engineer replied,"Well, I was walking along yesterday minding my own business when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike. She threw the bike to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, 'Take what you want.'"

    The second engineer nodded approvingly, "Good choice; there's no way the clothes would have fitted. "

  2. To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

  3. A pastor, a doctor and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers. The doctor fumed, "What's with these guys? We must have been waiting for 15 minutes!"

    Then added,"I don't know, but I've never seen such ineptitude!"

    The pastor said, "Hey, here comes the greens keeper. Let's have a word with him."

    ""Hi George! Say, what's with that group ahead of us? They're rather slow, aren't they?"

    The greens keeper replied, ""Oh, yes, that's a group of blind firefighters. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year, so we always let them play for free anytime."

    The group was silent for a moment. Then the pastor said, "That's so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight."

    The doctor said, "Good idea. And I'm going to contact my ophthalmologist buddy and see if there's anything he can do for them."

    The engineer said, "Why can't they play at night?"

  4. What is the difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers? Mechanical Engineers build weapons and civil engineers build targets.

    From the dictionary: The definition of a Chemical Engineer is a person who does for profit what a chemist does for fun. see also "Prostitution"

    So what is the difference between a chemist and a chemical engineer?
    About $30,000 a year.

  5. The graduate with a Science degree asks, "Why does it work?""" The graduate with an Accounting degree asks, "How much will it cost?" The graduate with an Engineering degree asks, "How it work?"

    The graduate with an Arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?"

  6. Normal people believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it still doesn't have enough features.

  7. An architect, an artist and an engineer were discussing whether it was better to spend time with the wife or a mistress. The architect said he enjoyed time with his wife, building a solid foundation for an enduring relationship. The artist said he enjoyed time with his mistress, because the passion and mystery he found there.

    The engineer said, "I like both."

    "Both?"

    The engineer, "Yeah. If you have a wife and a mistress, they will each assume you are spending time with the other woman, and you can go to the office and get some work done."

  8. An engineer was crossing a road one-day when a frog called out to him and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess."

    He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket.

    The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will stay with you for one week."

    The engineer took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket.

    The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I'll stay with you and do ANYTHING you want."

    Again the engineer took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket.

    Finally, the frog asked, "What is the matter? I've told you I'm a beautiful princess, and that I'll stay with you for a week and do anything you want. Why won't you kiss me?"

    The engineer said, "Look, I'm an engineer. I don't have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog, now that's cool."

  9. There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired. Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multi-million dollar machines.

    They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine to work but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who has solved so many of their problems in the past.

    The engineer reluctantly took the challenge. He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small "x" in chalk on a particular component of the machine and stated, "This is where your problem is." The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again. The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for this service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges.

    The engineer responded briefly:

    One chalk mark $1
    Knowing where to put it $49,999

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Brains beats brawn

An narcissitic young man, sick of working at Red Rooster's for what had seemed an eternity decided to get a job working as a labourer at a construction site. Being a usual overconfident fellow, he soon began to brag to the other workers about all sorts of things. One day he decided to brag that he could outdo anyone in a feat of strength. He made a special case of making fun of the wiry engineer on the site. After several minutes, the engineer had had enough.

"Why don't you put your money where your mouth is," said the engineer. "I will bet a week's wages that I can haul something in a wheelbarrow over to that outbuilding that you won't be able to wheel back."

"You're on, little guy!" the braggart replied. "Let's see what you got."

The engineer reached out and grabbed the wheelbarrow by the handles. Then, nodding to the young man, he ordered, "All right. Get in."

Technical expertise

Once upon a time there lived three men: a doctor, a chemist, and an engineer. For some reason all three offended the king and were sentenced to die on the same day.

The day of the execution arrived, and the doctor was led up to the guillotine.
As he strapped the doctor to the guillotine, the executioner asked, "Head up or head down?"

"Head up,"

""Blindfold or no blindfold?"

"No blindfold"

So the executioner released the guillotine, and z-z-z-z-ing! Down came the blade--and stopped barely an inch above the doctor's neck. Well, the law stated that if an execution didn't succeed the first time the prisoner had to be released, so the doctor was set free.

Then the chemist was led up to the guillotine.
The executioner asked, "Head up or head down?"

"Head up,"

""Blindfold or no blindfold?"

"No blindfold"

So the executioner released the guillotine, and z-z-z-z-ing! Down came the blade--and stopped barely an inch above the doctor's neck. Well, the law stated that if an execution didn't succeed the first time the prisoner had to be released, so the chemist was set free.

Finally the engineer was led up to the guillotine.
"Head up or head down?"

"Head up,"

""Blindfold or no blindfold?"

"No blindfold"

Just as the executioner was about to release the guillotine, the engineer yelled, "WAIT! I see what the problem is!"

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Aspects of travel with Rudolf et. al.

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the population reference bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming there is at least one good child in each. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000 th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get onto the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about one km per household; a total trip of 120 million km, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 1050 km per second -- 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 40 km per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 22 km per hour.

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set (1.5 kg), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousands tonnes, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 140kg. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 times he normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them---Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).

An object weighing 600,000 tons traveling at 1050 km per second meets enormous air resistance - enough to heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 1050 km per second in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 g's. A 120kg Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 2,100,000 kg of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering smear of pinkish goo. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

Go to top

There are ways and means

A math and engineering convention was being held. On the train to the convention, there were both math majors and engineering majors. Each of the math majors had his/her own train ticket. But the Engineers had only ONE ticket for all of them. The mathematicians started laughing and snickering. The engineers ignored the laughter.

Then, one of the engineers said, "Here comes the conductor"

All of the engineers piled into the bathroom. The mathematicians were puzzled. The conductor came aboard and collected tickets from all the mathematicians.

He went to the bathroom, knocked on the door, and said, "Ticket please"

An engineer stuck their only ticket under the door. The conductor took the ticket and left. A few minutes later, the engineers emerged from the bathroom. The mathematicians felt really stupid.

On the way back from the convention, the group of math majors had ONE ticket for their group. They started snickering at the engineers, who had NO tickets amongst them.

When the engineers' lookout shouted, "Conductor coming!" all the engineers again piled into a bathroom. All of the mathematicians went into another bathroom.

Then, before the conductor came on board, one of the engineers left the bathroom, knocked on the other bathroom, and said, "Ticket please"

And lastly, some engineers' pickup lines

  • I won't stop bugging you until I get the address of your home page.
  • You fascinate me more than the Fundamental Theorems of Calculus.
  • Since distance equals velocity times time, let's let velocity and time approach infinity, because I want to go all the way with you.
  • My love for you is like a concave up function because it is always increasing.
  • Let's convert our potential energy to kinetic energy.
  • Wanna come back to my room? ...and see my super gaming computer?
  • How about you and I go back to my place and form a covalent bond?
  • You and I would add up better than a Riemann sum.
  • You're sweeter than glucose.
  • We're as compatible as two similar iPads.
  • Why don't we measure the coefficient of static friction between you and me?
  • Wanna see the games on my computer?
  • Your body has the nicest arc length I've ever seen.
  • Isn't your e-mail address beautifulgirl@mydreams.com
  • You're hotter than a bunsen burner set to full power!

Close this page segment


29th Jun 2020 - How to avoid tax Click here if you succeeded

Decisions - Decisions - Decisions

John Field's third video tells of of a man who can make up his mind rapidly.

An astute church leader

This is very short reflecting yesterday which was long and tomorrow which will be long also.

Father O'Malley answers the phone. "Hello, is this Father O'Malley"

"It is"

"This is the Tax Office here. Can you help us?"

"I don't don't know. What is your problem?"

"Do you know a Ted Houlihan?"

"Yes"

"Is he a member of your congregation?"

"Yes"

"Did he donate 10,000 to the church?"

"He will."


28th Jun 2020 - Preparation for children Click here if you still want a child

The Pre-Offspring Preparation Test

Conduct this highly scientific but simple set of tests and see if you still want children at the end of it.

Editor's note: This is quite a long expostition, but then so is child raising.

Test 1 - Preparation

Women - To prepare for pregnancy:

  • Put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front;
  • leave it there;
  • after 9 months remove 5% of the beans.

Men - To prepare for children:

  • Go to a local chemist, tip the contents of your wallet onto the counter and tell the pharmacist to help himself;
  • go to the supermarket - Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office;
  • go home, Pick up the newspaper and read it for the last time;
  • find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels and how they have allowed their children to run wild. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behaviour;
  • enjoy it. It will be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers.

Test 2 - Nights

To discover how the nights will feel:

  • Walk around the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 4 - 6kg, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly;
  • at 10pm, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to sleep;
  • get up at 11pm and walk the bag around the living room until 1am;
  • set the alarm for 3am;
  • as you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2am and make a cup of tea;
  • go to bed at 2.45am;
  • get up again at 3am when the alarm goes off;
  • sing songs in the dark until 4am;
  • put the alarm on for 5am Get up when it goes off;
  • make breakfast.
  • Keep this up for 5 years LOOK CHEERFUL

Test 3 - Dressing Small Children

  • Buy a live octopus and a string bag;
  • put the octopus into the string bag so that no arms hang out.

Time allowed: 5 minutes.

Test 4 - Cars

  • Forget the BMW Buy a practical 5-door wagon;
  • buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment - Leave it there.
  • get a coin. Insert it into the CD player;
  • take a box of chocolate biscuits; mash them into the back seat;
  • run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Test 5 - Going for a walk

  • Wait;
  • go out the front door;
  • come back in;
  • go out;
  • come back in again;
  • go out again;
  • walk down the front path;
  • walk back up it;
  • walk down it again;
  • walk very slowly down the road for five minutes;
  • stop, inspect minutely and ask at least 6 questions about every piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way;
  • retrace your steps;
  • scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbours come out and stare at you;
  • give up and go back into the house.

You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.

Test 6 - Conversation.

  • Repeat everything you say at least 5 times.

Test 7 - Grocery shopping

  • Go to the local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child - a fully grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat;
  • buy your weekly groceries without letting the goat(s) out of your sight;
  • pay for everything the goat eats or destroys. Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Test 8 - Feeding a one year old

  • Hollow out a melon;
  • make a small hole in the side;
  • suspend the melon from the ceiling and swing it side to side;
  • now get a bowl of soggy cornflakes and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon while pretending to be an aeroplane;
  • continue until half the cornflakes are gone;
  • tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor.

Test 9 - TV

  • Learn the names of every character from the Wiggles, Bananas in Pyjamas, Teletubbies and Disney;
  • watch nothing else on television for at least 5 years.

Test 10 - Mess

Can you stand the mess children make? To find out:

  • Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains;
  • hide a fish behind the stereo and leave it there all summer;
  • stick your fingers in the flower beds and then rub them on clean walls. Cover the stains with crayon. How does that look?
  • empty every drawer/cupboard/storage box in your house onto the floor &leave it there.

Test 11 - Long trips with todlers

To discover how the nights will feel:

  • Make a recording of someone shouting 'Mummy' repeatedly (Important Notes: No more than a 4 second delay between each Mummy. Include occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet);
  • play this tape in your car, everywhere you go for the next 4 years

You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Test 12 - Conversations

  • Start talking to an adult of your choice;
  • have someone else continually tug on your shirt hem or shirt-sleeve while playing the Mummy tape listed above.

You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

Test 13 - Getting ready for work

  • Pick a day on which you have an important meeting;
  • put on your finest work attire;
  • take a cup of cream and put 1 cup of lemon juice in i;
  • stir;
  • dump half of it on your nice silk shirt;
  • saturate a towel with the other half of the mixture;
  • attempt to clean your shirt with the same saturated towel;
  • do not change (you have no time);
  • go directly to work.

You are now ready to have children ENJOY!!

BUT!!! There's an important test missing.

Test 14 - Dealing with sick kids

  • Take the wet bag used in Test 2;
  • at around 1am when your partner is interstate/overseas for work, hold the wet bag and pour rotted mush over your hair, pyjamas and bedroom;
  • simultaneously try to: comfort the wet bag; give the wet bag a bath and change its PJs; take a shower and change your PJs; change the bed; put the next load of washing on, empty out the dryer and clean the mush off the floor;
  • for a more realistic experience, try doing this with two wet bags; when you're sick, and when you're behind on important projects at work and have a big meeting at work the next day;
  • get up the next morning AND KEEP SMILING. How else are you going to persuade child care to look after your child whilst you attend that meeting?

Close this page segment


27th Jun 2020 - Politics clarified Click here to restore sanity

Tony Abbott &the Queen

While this is old news, it does help explain the disaster of our federal parliament.

In a rare moment of acknowledging that a woman might know something, Tony Abbott asks the Queen, "Your Majesty, how do you run such an efficient government? Are there any tips you can give me?"

"Well," said the Queen, "The most important thing is to surround yourself with intelligent people."

Abbott then asked, "But how do I know if the people around me are really intelligent?"

The Queen took a sip of champagne. "Oh, that's easy; you just ask them to answer an intelligent riddle, watch."

The Queen pushed a button on her intercom."Please send Prince Charles in here, would you?"

Prince Charles walked into the room and said, "Yes, Mummy."

The Queen smiled and said, "Answer me this please Charlie. Your mother and father have a child. It is not your brother and it is not your sister. Who is it?"

Without pausing for a moment, Prince Charles answered, "That would be me."

"Yes! Very good."

Abbott returned home and decided to ask Joe Hockey the same question.

"Joe, answer this for me. Your mother and your father have a child. It's not your brother and it's not your sister. Who is it?"

"I'm not sure," said Hockey. "Let me get back to you on that one."

He went to his advisers and asked everyone, but none could give him an answer. Frustrated, Hockey went to the toilet, and found Malcolm Turnbull there. Joe went up to him and asked,

"Hey Turnbull, see if you can answer this question."

"Shoot Joe."

"Your mother and father have a child and it's not your brother or your sister. Who is it?"

"Obvious, It's me!"

Hockey then, went back to find Abbott. "Tony, I did some research, and I have the answer to that riddle. It's Malcolm Turnbull."

Tony Abbott got up, stomped over to Joe Hockey, and angrily yelled into his face,

"No! You *&%$#! idiot! It's Prince Charles!"

Close this page segment


26th Jun 2020 - Cricket explained Click here if no longer confused

Cleaning up - will it happen?

John Field's second video calls up Slim Dusty making some political statements.

Understanding Cricket

In order to assist people who are not familiar with the game of Cricket, we offer this explanation.

  • Cricket is a game in which there are 2 sides - one out on the field, and the other in.
  • Each man in the side that is in goes out, and when he is out he comes in, then the next man goes out until he's out and then he comes in.
  • When the side that is in is all out, the side that has been out goes in, and the side that was in goes out and tries to get out the side that went in.
  • Sometimes there are men still in and not out when the side that is in is finally out.
  • When both sides have been in and out, including those not out and no longer in - that is the end of the game .


25th Jun 2020 - Relaxing Click here for healthy food

Evolution of health - God and vegetables

In the beginning, God covered the earth with broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, and green and yellow and red vegetables of all kinds so Man and Woman would live long and healthy lives.

Then using God's bountiful gifts, Satan created hamburgers and thickshakes. And Satan said, "You want hot fudge with that?" and man said "Yes" and woman said I'll have another one with sprinkles."  And lo, they gained 5kgr.

And God created healthful yogurt that Woman might keep the figure that Man found so fair.

And Satan brought forth white flour from wheat and sugar from cane and combined them. And Woman went from size 2 to size 10.

So God said, "Try my fresh green salad."

And Satan presented crumbled bleu cheese dressing and garlic toast on the side. And Man and Woman unfastened their belts following the repast.

God then said, "I have sent you heart-healthy vegetables and olive oil in which to cook them."

And Satan brought forth deep-fried coconut shrimp, butter-dipped lobster chunks, and chicken-fried steak so big it needed its own platter. And their cholesterol went through the roof.

God then brought forth running shoes so that his children might lose those extra pounds.

And Satan came forth with a cable TV with remote control so his children would not have to toil changing the channels. And Man and Woman laughed and cried before the flickering light and started wearing stretch jogging suits.

Then God brought forth the potato, naturally low in fat and brimming with potassium and good nutrition.

And Satan peeled off the healthful skin and sliced the starchy center into chips and deep-fried them in animal fats and added copious quantities of salt. And Man put on more weight.

God then gave lean beef so that Man might consume fewer calories and still satisfy his appetite.

And Satan created fast foods like the 99-cent double cheeseburger. Then Lucifer said, "You want chips with that?" and Man replied, "Yes, and super size 'em!" And Satan said, "It is good." And Man went into cardiac arrest.

God sighed and created quadruple bypass surgery.

And Satan created Health Insurance Companies.

An engineering aside

In my background as a road engineer, one of the things I did was to design road pavements to survive everything from normal traffic to seriously overloaded trucks on private property. I'm also a fairly active cyclist and when I see letters to the editor insisting that cyclists should pay registration to help pay for roads I think about how roads fail and so put some numbers together to give a feel for the scale of the issue.

Road pavement failure

Roads are designed to survive a specific number of traffic axle loads.

So, if we say a cycle axle is one unit, by comparison a car axle is about 25,000 units, a legally loaded 5 axle semi-trailer is about 10 billion units, so if we could ride a cycle past a point every five seconds, in approximtely 1500 years it would do as much damage as one pass of the semi-trailer.

Do you wonder why cyclists see no value in registering their cycle to contibute to road construction?

Note that some 400,000 passes (over 3 weeks worth at 5 second intervals) of the car are required to match the truck.

We could also consider how far each of these vehicles are likely to travel in a year. The ABS reported cars at 12,600km/year, articulated trucks at 79,400km/year. I could not find figures for cyclists, but would be very surprised if the average bike was ridden more than 1,000km/year.

This leads to the conclusion that the semi-trailer will do over 600 thousand million times as much damage to the road per year as the cyclist and over 160 million times as much damge as the car.

Who says trucks are unfairly charged for using the roads?

Close this page segment


24th June 2020 - The internet: (7) CSS files 2 Click here if bored

23rd Jun 2020 - A viewpoint Click here if androgenous

The diaries

The wife

Tonight, I thought my husband was acting weird. We had made plans to meet at a nice restaurant for dinner. I was shopping with my friends all day long, so I thought he was upset at the fact that I was a bit late, but he made no comment on it. Conversation wasn't flowing, so I suggested that we go somewhere quiet so we could talk. He agreed, but he didn't say much.

I asked him what was wrong. He said, 'Nothing..' I asked him if it was my fault that he was upset. He said he wasn't upset, that it had nothing to do with me, and not to worry about it. On the way home, I told him that I loved him. He smiled slightly, and kept driving. I can't explain his behavior. I don't know why he didn't say, 'I love you, too.'

When we got home, I felt as if I had lost him completely, as if he wanted nothing to do with me anymore. He just sat there quietly, and watched TV. He continued to seem distant and absent. Finally, with silence all around us, I decided to go to bed. About 15 minutes later, he came to bed. But I still felt that he was distracted, and his thoughts were somewhere else. He fell asleep; I cried. I don't know what to do. I'm almost sure that his thoughts are with someone else. My life is a disaster.

The husband

A two-foot putt. Who the hell misses a two-foot putt?


22nd Jun 2020 - A smorgasbord Click here if you believe in Genesis

Just a smorgasbord of short stories

  • Road maintenance

    No giraffe

    What have you found when driving along the road in Central Africa at night and you see two eyes in the middle of the road ?

    A giraffe that's fallen down a pothole

  • Discomfort

    A little old man shuffled slowly into an ice cream parlour and pulled himself slowly, painfully, up onto a stool. After catching his breath, he ordered a banana split.

    The waitress asked kindly, "Crushed nuts?"

    He replied "Arthritis."

  • Romantic bliss/violence

    After being married for thirty years, a wife asked her husband to describe her.

    He looked at her for a while - then said, "You're A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K"

    She asked, "What does that mean?"

    Smiling, he asnwered her, "Adorable, Beautiful, Cute, Delightful, Elegant, Foxy, Gorgeous, Hot."

    She smiled happily too and said, "Oh, that's so lovely, and what about I, J, K?"

    "I'm Just Kidding!"

    The swelling in his eye is going down and the doctor is fairly optimistic about saving his testicles.

  • Celebrations

    The Smiths were dining out when his wife noticed a familiar face at the bar. "Honey, he said as she pointed the guy out."

    "That man at the bar has been drinking like that since I left him seven years ago."

    Calmly he replies, "That's silly, no one celebrates that much!"

  • A dying wish

    A six year old goes to the hospital with her grandmother to visit her Grandpa. When they get to the hospital, she runs ahead of her Grandma and bursts into her Grandpa's room, "Grandpa, Grandpa. As soon as Grandma comes into the room, make a noise like a frog!"

    No Disney

    "What?" says the Grandpa.

    "Make a noise like a frog - because Grandma said that as soon as you croak we're all going to Disney Land!"

  • And we'll close with some religion

    No sphere

    From Genesis: "And God promised men that good and obedient wives would be found in all corners of the earth"

    Then he made the earth round!

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21th Jun 2020 - Distracted ministers Click here to hire a proof reader

Hold onto your hat

John Field has supplied me with a few new videos. You can get a grip on the first one here.

Church notices

These church notices were put together to ensure church members fully participated in the church activities. We would never have known any of this if they'd used a proof reader.

  • The Fasting &Prayer Conference includes meals.
  • The sermon this morning: Jesus Walks on the Water.
    The sermon tonight: Searching for Jesus.
  • Ladies, don't forget the rummage sale. It's a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Bring your husbands.
  • Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our community. Smile at someone who is hard to love. Say 'Hell' to someone who doesn't care much about you
  • Don't let worry kill you off - let the Church help
  • Miss Charlene Mason sang 'I will not pass this way again,' giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.
  • For those of you who have children and don't know it, we have a nursery downstairs.
  • Next Thursday there will be tryouts for the choir. They need all the help they can get.
  • Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.
  • A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow.
  • At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be 'What Is Hell?' Come early and listen to our choir practice.
  • Eight new choir robes are currently needed due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones.
  • Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles and other items to be recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children.
  • The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment and gracious hostility.
  • Potluck supper Sunday at 5:00 PM - prayer and medication to follow.
  • The ladies of the Church have cast off clothing of every kind. They may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon.
  • This evening at 7 PM there will be a hymn singing in the park across from the Church. Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin.
  • Ladies Bible Study will be held Thursday morning at 10 AM. All ladies are invited to lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the B. S. is done.
  • The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the Congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday.
  • Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM . Please use the back door.
  • The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare's Hamlet in the Church basement Friday at 7 PM . The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy.
  • Weight Watchers will meet at 7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church. Please use large double door at the side entrance.
  • The Associate Minister unveiled the church's new campaign slogan last Sunday: "I Upped My Pledge - Up Yours".

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20th Jun 2020 - A religious upbringing Click here to pray for enlightment

Early enlightment

Like most parents, mine felt we should have some background in the religious culture where we lived.

So, we learnt this chant to enhance our memory of Old Testament events.

Bible stories

"Old folks, young folks, everybody come,
Join our happy Sunday school and make yourselves at home,
Bring your sticks of chewing gum and sit upon the floor,
And you'll hear some bible stories you've never heard before.

Adam was the first man so we all believe,
One day he was filleted and introduced to Eve,
He had no one to show him, but soon found out the way,
And that's the only reason we're standing here today.

Chorus

Young folks, old folks, every body come,
To our little Sunday School and have a lot of fun,
There's a place to check your chewing gum and razors at the door,
And we'll tell you bible stories you've never heard before.

Solomon and David lead very wicked lives,
They used to spend their afternoons with other peoples wives,
And then in the evenings when their consciences gave the qualms,
Solomon wrote the proverbs and David wrote the Psalms.

Golieth was a large man so big and strong and tall,
And David was a little man. The handy man of Saul,
But David took his little sling and half a brick as well,
And when he swung the brick at him, Golieth went to Hell.

Jonah was a mariner, so goes the ancient tale
who booked a steerage passage on a trans-Atlantic whale.
When the atmospheric pressure grew too heavy on his chest,
Jonah pressed the button and the whale did the rest.

Pharoah had a daughter with a most bewitching smile,
She found the infant Moses in the rushes by the Nile.
She took him home to dear Papa, and he believed the tale,
Which is just as about as probable as Jonah and the whale.

Pharoah's lovely daughter was walking by the Nile,
When down among the bullrushes she found a Hebrew child,
She took it home to Papa, "Look what I've found on the shore"
But Pharoah winked his eye at her, "I've heard that one before"

Moses was the leader of the Iraelite flock,
He used to get their water by striking on a rock.
Till one day from the multitude there arose a mighty cheer,
For instead of water -- "Fosters lager beer".

Salome was a dancing girl of abbreviated skirt,
She invited John the Baptist to a harmless little flirt,
But Johny was a wowser and wouldn't grant her wish,
So she sent him up to heaven with his head upon a dish.

Samson was a fighter of the highest class,
He slew forty thousand Phillistines with the jawbone of an ass,
But the roof fell in one day when he leaned upon a pillar,
And that was the end of Samson and lady friend Delilah.

Jehu had a chariot, ninety nine horsepower,
He drove it through the desert at one hundred miles an hour,
Till one day from the desert there arose a mighty squeal,
And little bits of Jezabel were caught up in the wheel.

Old Job was most unfortunate with boils and things from birth,
In fact he was the most unlucky man on earth.
He advertised in all the periodicals for years,
For something to take away the spots behind his ears.
"

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19th Jun 2020 - An Irish concoction. Click here to hire a leprechaun

Vera Lynn

On the news this morning is that Vera Lynn has died at the age of 103. That appears here because Vera was a social force to keep people together during times of severe stress, something I've tried to emulate with these pages.

Her most famous contribution was We'll meet again and here it is.

Some aspects of Irish life.

  • The Irish home doctor

    Paddy staggered home very late after another evening with his drinking buddy, Paddy. He took off his shoes to avoid waking his wife, Kathleen.

    He tiptoed as quietly as he could toward the stairs leading to their upstairs bedroom, but misjudged the bottom step. As he caught himself by grabbing the banister, his body swung around and he landed heavily on his rump. A whiskey bottle in each back pocket broke and made the landing especially painful.

    Managing not to yell, Paddy sprung up, pulled down his pants, and looked in the hall mirror to see that his butt cheeks were cut and bleeding. He managed to quietly find a full box of Band-Aids and began putting a Band-Aid as best he could on each place he saw blood.

    He then hid the now almost empty Band-Aid box and shuffled and stumbled his way to bed.

    In the morning, Paddy woke up with searing pain in both his head and butt and Kathleen staring at him from across the room.

    She said, "You were drunk again last night weren't you?"

    Feeling sheepish, he replied, "Yes, but how could you telll?"

    "Well, "" Katherine said, "it could be the open front door, it could be the broken glass at the bottom of the stairs, it could be the drops of blood trailing through the house, it could be your bloodshot eyes, but mostly, it's all those Band-Aids stuck on the hall mirror."

  • The Irish fighter

    Paddy had been arrested for punching his wife, the latest of many altercations.

    The Magistrate asked him, "Tell me, Mr. Fitzpatrick, why do you keep beating her?"

    Paddy replies, "I think it's my weight advantage, longer reach and superior footwork."

  • Dying with dignity

    O'Brian was dying.

    "Sister. Call the Vicar." he asked.

    "Don't you want a priest?"

    "No, I want to become a Protestant". he said, "Better one of those bastards die instead of a good Catholic."

  • Dying with joy.

    One night, Mrs McMillen answers the door to see her husbands best friend, Paddy, standing on the doorstep.

    "Hello Paddy, but where is my husband? He went with you to the beer factory"

    Paddy shook his head. "Ah Mrs McMillen, there was a terrible accident at the beer factory, your husband fell into a vat of Guinness stout and drowned"

    Mrs McMillen starts crying. "Oh, don't tell me that, did he at least go quickly?"

    Paddy shakes his head. "Not really - he got out 3 times to pee!"

  • Wishful thinking

    An Irish priest is driving down to New York and gets stopped for speeding in Connecticut. The state trooper smells alcohol on the priest's breath and then sees an empty wine bottle on the floor of the car.

    He says, "Sir, have you been drinking?"

    "Just water," says the priest.

    "Then why do I smell wine?"

    The priest looks at the bottle and says, "Good Lord! He"s done it again!"

  • The generous guess

    Paddy and Mick are walking down the road and Paddy's got a bag of doughnuts in his hand.

    Paddy says to Mick, "If you can guess how many doughnuts are in my bag, you can have them both."

  • Paddy's defence

    Into a Belfast pub comes Paddy Murphy, looking like he'd just been run over by a train.

    His arm is in a sling, his nose is broken, his face is cut, and bruised, and he's walking with a limp.

    "What happened to you? " asks Sean, the bartender.

    "Micheal O'Connor and me had a fight", says Paddy.

    "That little O'Connor," says Sean.

    "He couldn't do that to you, he must have had something in his hand."

    "That he did, a shovel is what he had, and a terrible lickin' he gave me with it."

    "Well, you should have defended yourself. Didn't you have something in your hand?"

    "That I did," says Paddy, "'Mrs O'Connor's breast, and a thing of beauty it was, but useless in a fight"

    Truck
  • Irish dreaming

    Paddy was waiting at the bus stop with his mate when a truck went by loaded up with rolls of turf.

    Paddy said, "I gonna do that when I win the lottery."

    "What's dat?" says his mate.

    "Send me lawn away to be cut."

  • And lastly for today, Irish revenge.

    Mary Clancy goes up to Father O'Grady after his Sunday morning service, and she's in tears.

    He inquires, "So what's bothering you, Mary my dear?"

    She replies, "Oh, Father, I've got terrible news. My husband passed away last night."

    "'Oh, Mary, that's terrible. Tell me, Mary, did he have any last requests?"

    "That he did, Father."

    "What did he ask, Mary?"

    "He said, Please Mary, put down that damn gun!"

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18th Jun 2020 - Service fee. Click here to set the fee

Animal Husbandry

A Queensland farmer drove to a neighbours' farmhouse in his Holden ute, and knocked at the door. A boy, about nine, opened the door. "Is your Dad or your mum home?" the farmer asked.

"No, they went into town."

"How about your brother, Howard? Is he here?"

"No, he went with Mum and Dad"

The farmer stood there for a few minutes, shifting from one foot to the other,and mumbling to himself leading the boy to comment, "I know where all the tools are, if you want to borrow one, or I can give Dad a message."

Dad

Uncomfortably the farmer responded, "Well, I really wanted to talk to your Dad. It's about your brother Dave getting my daughter Susie pregnant."

"Yes, you would have to talk to Dad about that. I know he charges $500 for the bull and $50 for the pig, but I don't know how much he charges for Dave.""


17th Jun 2020 - Insults with class. Click here to seek a dictionary

Insults

Earlier I quoted my Mother's favourite dressing down:

"How dare you insinuate that I should tolerate such bombastic phraseology from such an inferior phenomenon as you."

However that pales into insignificance compared with this:

" And your ranting is reminiscent of the antics of a maladjusted two year old with a dockworkers' vocabulary coupled with the emotional maturity of a blueberry scone. But have at us my good man, show again the perceptiveness of your erudite arguments, the pundatory perspicacity of the crusty learned scholar you try to emulate. "

Advice to a novice writer

Scholar not found

" In promulgating your esoteric cogitations and in articulating your superficial, sentimental or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your conversational communications possess a clarified conciseness, a compact comprehensibility, a coalescent consistency and concatenated cogency. Eschew all conglomerations of flatulent garrulity, abjure gabblement, and asinine affectation. Let your extemporaneous descantings and unpremeditated expiations have intelligibility, and veracious vivacity, without rodomontade or tharasonical bombast. Sedulously avoid polysyllabic profundity, pompous proximity, pscittocreous vacuity, and vaniloquent rapidity. "


16th Jun 2020 - The internet: (6) Google and us. Click here to seek peace from Google

Google

Google is a huge company which has come to dominate internet searching. It also tracks these searches in vast detail, obstensively to assist the searcher by analysing the things previously searched for and having possible results available without necessarily having to go into the whole data set.

Naturally, all this knowledge of the searcher makes using Google to advertise your product highly desirable as Google can focus the advertising such that Eskimos don't receive ads for bikinis etc.

$$$$$$ Yeaahh - Money!! Money!! Money!! $$$$$$

$$$$$$ Yeaahh - Money!! Money!! Money!! $$$$$$

$$$$$$ Yeaahh - Money!! Money!! Money!! $$$$$$

Google and our web site.

Each month Google send me as webmaster showing the interactions with our site from Google searches.

Some of the information which comes out from this includes:

  • up to January we were getting over 200 Google searches pointing to our site a month with a drop of in December, but since then the searches have dropped dramatically to 60 for the month of April;
  • in most months we get a few searches from overseas. Once there was one from Brazil;
  • about 10 searches a month go direct to the login page.

Google fonts.

I'd started with the intention of tabulating the stuff Google sent, but it's too complex, so changed just a little bit to include the financial information above in unusual fonts which may not be on your computer/phone/pad, but are actually on Google's web site, from where they are made available at no cost to anyone who wants to use them.

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