Chicken Surprise

Rhoda and Harry go for a meal at a Chinese restaurant and order the ‘Chicken Surprise.’ The waiter brings the meal, served in a lidded cast iron pot. Just as Rhoda is about to serve herself, the lid of the pot rises slightly and she briefly sees two bedy little eyes looking around before the lid slams back down.

‘Good grief, did you see that?’ she asks her husband, Harry. He hadn’t, so she asks him to look in the pot. Harry reaches for it and again the lid rises, and he sees two little eyes looking around before it slams down. Rather perturbed, he calls the waiter over, explains what is happening, and demands an explanation.

‘Please sir,’ stammers the waiter, ‘what you order?’
Harry replies, ‘Chicken Surprise.’
‘Ah! So sorry, is mistake,’ says the waiter, ‘I bring you Peeking Duck!’

New viruses on the loose!

Oprah Winfrey virus:
Your 200MB hard drive suddenly shrinks to 80MB and then slowly expands back to 200MB.

AT&T virus:
Every three minutes it tells you what great service you are getting.

MCI virus:
Every three minutes it reminds you that you’re paying too much for the AT&T virus.

Politically Correct virus:
Never calls itself a “virus”, but instead refers to itself as an “electronic microorganism.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger virus:
Terminates and stays resident. It’ll be back.

Government Economist virus:
Nothing works, but all your diagnostic software says everything is fine.

New World Order virus:
Probably harmless, but it makes a lot of people really mad just thinking about it.

Federal Bureaucrat virus:
Divides your hard disk into hundreds of little units, each of which does practically nothing, but all of which claim to be the most important part of your computer.

Texas virus:
Makes sure that it’s bigger than any other file.

Adam and Eve virus:
Takes a couple of bytes out of your Apple.

Congressional virus:
The computer locks up, screen splits erratically with a message appearing on each half blaming the other side for the problem.

Airline virus:
You’re in Dallas but your data is in Singapore.

Freudian virus:
Your computer becomes obsessed with marrying its own motherboard.

Public Television virus:
Your programs stop every few minutes to ask for money.

Elvis virus:
Your computer gets fat, slow and lazy, then self destructs only to resurface at shopping malls and service stations across rural America.

Nike virus:
Just does it.

Congressional virus #2:
Runs every program on the hard drive simultaneously, but doesn’t allow the user to accomplish anything.

Star Trek virus:
Invades your system in places where no virus has gone before.

Health Care virus:
Tests your system for a day, finds nothing wrong, and sends you a bill for $4,500.

Pregnant with my child

An 85-year old man is having his annual checkup. The Doctor asks him how he is feeling.

“I’ve got an eighteen-year old bride who’s pregnant with my child. What do you think about that?”

The Doctor considers this for a moment, and then says, “Well, let me tell you a story. I know of a guy who’s an avid hunter. He never misses a season.

But one day he’s in a bit of a hurry and he accidentally grabs his umbrella instead of his gun.

So he’s walking in the woods near a creek and suddenly spots a beaver in some brush in front of him! He raises up his umbrella, points it at the beaver and squeezed the handle. BAM! The beaver drops dead in front of him.”

“That’s impossible!”, says the old man in disbelief, “Someone else must have shot that beaver.”

The Doctor says, “My point exactly.”

Brideshead Revisited book review

We’ve had Brideshead Revisited lying around the house for years so I finally picked it up last week. First off, I want more Evelyn Waugh. Second off, why hasn’t any writer written their own version of what happens next? Does Charles Ryder ever find happiness? Does Julia ever remarry? What becomes of Sebastian in the end, does a brilliant young man like him truly end his days as a porter for a monastery?

It’s such a tragedy, of no discernible cause. Why does Sebastian hate his mother so much that it drives him to drink? From all I can see his family is a bit odd, a bit eccentric, a bit cold to each other, but not to the extent that it would drive him to despair. But I guess the point of seeing things through Ryder’s eyes is to show that each family has its strange dynamics that no outsider can ever truly appreciate, no matter how long they spend with the family. And so in the end poor Charlie finds himself booted to the curb and the family goes on as dysfunctionally as ever. I can only hope they found some measure of contentment in their final decisions.

I hear there’s a movie and a TV series out now, but I don’t think they could capture the true magic of the book, because most of it depends on the power of your own imagination. I might give them a shot one day, though.

Speeding

A blonde lady was driving along the highway when a blonde police officer pulled her over for speeding.

Officer: ‘May i see your license?’

Lady: ‘What does it look like?’

Officer: ‘It’s a rectangular thing with a photo of you on it.’

The lady looks through her bag, pulls out her compact mirror and hands it to the officer.

The officer opens it up and says: ‘If you had told me you were a police officer I wouldn’t have pulled you over!’