Today is the 22nd Anniversary of one of the worst days in America’s history.  And although we say, “Never Forget” in many ways and in many places we saw signs and still do.  Just google “Never Forget”…

But in some ways…heck, in a lot of ways, I think we have forgotten.  We don’t realize that the number one thing the federal government is charged with is protection of the people.  In fact, it is the only real mandate that they have.  All the rest of the things that they do they have taken upon themselves to do.  Most of all of it is supposed to be the States responsibilities.  But be that as it may, we need to remember how vulnerable we are.  We need to take steps to mitigate that problem, not do things to exacerbate the issue.  We need to hold our government accountable for the nonsense they are pulling right now.  We need:

1.  Closed borders!  Not the wide open, full on invasion borders that we have going on right now.

2.  A strong, fierce, always ready military.  We are not there right now.  And we don’t need this touchy-feely, everybody welcome, let’s use cross-dressing sailors as recruiters military.  We need people who tear up telephone poles and eat nails for breakfast.  I want the ones who want to rip off their heads and spit down their necks.

3.  Strong, fierce allies.  See #2 above.

4.  Strong leaders, with God fearing, Judeo-Christian values.  Those are the values this country was based on, the Constitution was written on, and until we get back to those, we are going to flounder as a country.

That’s a good start.  (Boy did THIS opening go way far afield from where I thought it was going to go).  We need to remember.  We need to Never Forget.  Sadly, we have the memory of goldfish.  And I think that’s going to turn around and bite us in the butt if we don’t change things pretty darn quick.

Sprinkled throughout today you’re going to see some 9/11 stuff.  This is a weird holiday for me.  While this was going on, I was driving an hour and a half and listening to the broadcast on the radio in real time, as it was happening while going to see my brand new Izzy Dragon who had been born the day before.  See, Izzy was adopted.  My Mary was in the delivery room when Izzy was born and we’ve had her since the very moment she was born.  In fact, when she came out, the nurse handed her to Mary and not to the birth mother.  That’s the way everybody wanted it.  But that was in Indianapolis, we live an hour and a half from there.  I was working that day when she went into labor.  So, I wasn’t there and had to drive up the next day.  The next day was September 11, 2001.  Being former military, I knew exactly what was going on.  I hadn’t even seen my new baby girl yet.

And within about a month, I would have lost the restaurant job I was working, been unemployed for a couple of weeks, got a job as a civilian cop on base as a temp, which started me down the road to the brand new career …again…that brought me to where I am today.  

So… to Izzy

And for the rest of us…

We’ll take a fast moment to thank for the latest donations.  They’ve slowed down quite a bit, which is to be expected.  And that’s fine.  I appreciate all that you guys have done and continue to do to show your support for me and for what I do.  It swells my heart to feel so appreciated.  

Kenn R. – (and the note was so very touching.  Thank you!)           

Michael F.          Dan T.          Scott H.          Joseph H.

Recently a guy in Paris nearly got away with stealing several paintings from the Louvre.

However, after planning the crime, getting in and out past security, he was captured only 2 blocks away when his Econoline van ran out of gas.

When asked how he could mastermind such a crime and then make such an obvious error, he replied: “Alas, I had no Monet to buy Degas to make ze Van Gogh.”

Yes, I know, it’s an old one…but it’s still funny!

My wife said she hides snacks from me so she can put them out when guests come over, in case you were wondering why I invited you here tonight.

Yup, I’ve got two of those exactly like that!

“We’re all just friends.”

Smart is when you only believe half of what you hear.
Brilliant is when you know which half.

Some grade school teachers must agree with that, because they keep journals of amusing things their students have written in papers.

Here are a few examples:

– The future of “I give” is “I take.”

– The parts of speech are lungs and air.

– The inhabitants of Moscow are called Mosquitoes.

– A census taker is man who goes from house to house increasing the population.

– Most of the houses in France are made of plaster of Paris.

– The people who followed the Lord were called the 12 opossums.

– The spinal column is a long bunch of bones. The head sits on the top and you sit on the bottom.

– We do not raise silk worms in the United States, because we get our silk from rayon. He is a larger worm and gives more silk.

– One of the main causes of dust is janitors.

– A scout obeys all to whom obedience is due and respects all duly constipated authorities.

– The climate is hottest next to the Creator.

– Syntax is all the money collected at the church from sinners.

– Iron was discovered because someone smelt it.

– In the middle of the 18th century, all the morons moved to Utah.

Thoughts from Joe…

Ever wonder if illiterate people get the full effect of alphabet soup?

I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific.

Did you ever notice when you blow in a dog’s face he gets mad at you?

But when you take him in a car, he sticks his head out the window.

Have you ever noticed? Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac.

You have to stay in shape. My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She is 97 today and we don’t know where she is.

The reason most people play golf is to wear clothes they would not be caught dead in otherwise.

Anytime four New Yorkers get into a cab together without arguing, a bank robbery has just taken place.

I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three.

The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they are okay, then it’s you.

A lady came up to me on the street and pointed at my suede jacket.

“You know a cow was murdered for that jacket?” she sneered.

I replied in a psychotic tone, “I didn’t know there were any witnesses. Now I’ll have to kill you too.”

Future historians will be able to study at the Gerald Ford Library; the Jimmy Carter Library; the Ronald Reagan Library and the Bill Clinton Adult Bookstore.

I know some people who need that warning when they eat.

Our security here at Dragon Laffs, Inc. is second to none!  We dare you to try and break in to the castle.  Go on.  Try us.  See what happens.

Peter walks into an insurance office and asks for a job. 

“We don’t need anyone” they replied. 

“You can’t afford not to hire me. I can sell anyone, anytime, anything!” 

“Well we have two prospects that No One has been able to sell. If you can sell just one, you have a job.” 

He was gone about two hours, and returned and handed them two checks, one for $25,000.00 and another for $50, 000.00. 

“How in the world did you do that ?” they asked. 

“I told you I’m the worlds best salesman, I can sell anyone, anywhere, anytime!” 

“Did you get a urine sample?” they asked him. 

“What’s that?” he asked. 

“Well, if you sell a policy over $20,000.00 the company requires a urine sample. Take these two bottles and go back and get urine samples.” 

Peter was gone about 6 hours and they were fixing to close when he walks in with two five gallon buckets, one in each hand.  He sets the buckets down, and reaches in his shirt pocket and produces two bottles of urine, and sets them on the desk and says, “Here’s Mr. George’s and this one is Mr. Robert’s.” 

“That’s good” they said, “but what’s in those two buckets?” 

“Well, I passed by the Holiday Inn and they were having a teachers convention, so I stopped and sold them a group policy!” 

Problems with my laptop required calling the dreaded company help line.

The service rep, based in another country, did not speak English very well.

So I tried to explain it as simply as possible: “I can’t get the computer to work.”

“Ah, I see,” he responded. “You are unable to transport your computer to your place of employment.”

The City of Miami advertised for somebody to help rid their city of a growing rat infestation.  A man answered the ad and showed up, guaranteeing that he could do the job, so he was put to work.

He started his efforts and opened a box and took out a green rat. The rat ran all over the city and all of the pesky rats followed him to an inlet near South Beach.  At the last minute, the green rat jumped aside and all of the Miami’s rats jumped into the inlet and drowned.

When the man went to collect his money, the Mayor said, “I want to talk to you first.”  The man said, “I don’t want any bull, I want my money.”

“No problem, you will get your money,” replied the Mayor.

“I want to know if you have access to a little green Cuban!”

Rest in Peace dear friend.

Joe on Laws:

Laws

The Law of Volunteering – If you dance with a grizzly bear, you had better let him lead.

The Law of Avoiding Oversell – When putting cheese in a mousetrap, always leave room for the mouse.

The Law of Common Sense – Never accept a drink from a urologist.

The Law of Reality – Never get into fights with ugly people, they have nothing to lose.

The Law of Self Sacrifice – When you starve with a tiger, the tiger starves last.

The Law of Motivation – Creativity is great, but plagiarism is faster.

Boob’s Law – You always find something in the last place you look.

Weiler’s Law – Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn’t have to do it himself.

Law of Probable Dispersal – Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.

Law of Volunteer Labor – People are always available for work in the past tense.

Conway’s Law – In any organization there is one person who knows what is going on. That person must be fired.

Iron Law of Distribution – Them that has gets.

Law of Cybernetic Entomology – There is always one more bug.

Law of Drunkenness – You can’t fall off the floor.

Heller’s Law – The first myth of management is that it exists.

Osborne’s Law – Variables won’t; constants aren’t.

Main’s Law – For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.

Weinberg’s Second Law – If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would have destroyed civilization.

“You and your husband don’t seem to have an awful lot in common,” said the new tenant’s neighbor. “Why on earth did you get married?”

“I suppose it was the old business of  ‘opposites attract’,” was the reply.  “He wasn’t pregnant and I was.”

And announcing it with a straight face.

I heard on the radio today that this new variant of covid that’s coming out is called the Election Variant.  And I have to agree.  The timing is just too perfect.  And the stupid people will not have learned anything from last time and will fall right back into doing whatever Big Brother tells them to do.  There will be a NEW vaccine that everyone will HAVE to get and it will kill even MORE people and just like at the end of the last wave, they will say something stupid like, “Well not having any symptoms is one of the symptoms!”  Honest, I’m not making that up.  You’re not sick, you feel fine…well, that’s one of the symptoms!!  And people were falling for that crap!  And then dying from the stupid shot!  I really think it was the design of the shot to kill people.  We have an older couple at church who have gotten every single vaccine and booster that has come out and they have been in and out of hospital and almost died multiple times with covid over and over and over again.  And a bunch of the rest of us who haven’t been sick at all who’ve never gotten shot or just had the minimum to keep their jobs.  I’ve tested positive twice and had nothing more than the sniffles.  But, I believe you will see mask mandates come back, and they will try and push new shot mandates…all in time for the election.  That is Impish Dragon looking into his crystal ball. 

Okay, got a little far afield there…sorry…let me kick that soapbox back under the counter where it belongs.

And here comes the best one of all…

This was sent in by Lynn…who likes to send us all kinds of cool things like this.  Thanks Lynn!

The new “guidelines” being floated by Biden’s officious National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, which announced on Aug. 25 that Americans should only have two alcoholic drinks a week, a huge swing from the two per day it has been suggesting until now.

Yes, it’s an old joke, but it’s made absolutely no funnier with Kirk and Spock.

Okay, this was sent to me as a PDF, but it was so funny, I just had to type it all out here for your guys to read.  So, here goes:

This assignment was actually turned in by two English students: 
Rebecca <last name deleted> and Gary <last name deleted> English 44A
SMU
Creative Writing
Prof Miller
                           In-class Assignment for Wednesday

Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story.  The process is simple.  Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right.  One of you will then write the first paragraph of a short story.  The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story.  The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back and forth.  Remember to reread what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent.  The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached.
________________________________________

At first, Laurie couldn’t decide which kind of tea she wanted.  The camomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked camomile.  But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl.  His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again.  So camomile was out of the question.

Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago.  “A.S. Harris to Geostation 17,” he said into his trangalactic communicator.  “Polar orbit established.  No sign of resistance so far…”  But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship’s cargo bay.  The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying our of his seat and across the cockpit.

He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt on last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him.  Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4.  “Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel.”  Laurie read in her newspaper one morning.  The news simultaneously excited her and bored her.  She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth –when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her.  “Why must one lose one’s innocence to become a woman?”  she pondered wistfully.

Little did she know, but she has less than 10 seconds to live.  Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu’udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles.  The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through Congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race.  Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu’udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet.  With no one to stop them they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan.  The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded.  The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion which vaporized Laurie and 85 million other Americans.  The President slammed his fist on the conference table.  “We can’t allow this!  I’m going to veto that treaty!  Let’s blow ’em out of the sky!”

This is absurd.  I refuse to continue this mockery of literature.  My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic, semi-literate adolescent.

Yeah?  Well, you’re a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium.

You total shit.

I assume it digresses at that point to an outright screaming match in class.  Either that or she slapped him.  I don’t picture him doing anything physical to her.  She’s the one who dropped out first … but anyway, that’s where it ends and by the time I got to that point I could hardly read I was laughing so hard.  I’ve done projects like that with Lethal Leprechaun where we told stories together and where we TRIED to sabotage the other person.  What a blast that was.  You guys got to read many of the results.  Thank you Lynn for sharing that with us.

Maybe I’ll just cut out that e and post that to warn you from now on that the next joke coming is an oldie but goodie.  LOL!

A man goes into a drugstore and asks the pharmacist if he can give him something for the hiccups. The pharmacist promptly reaches out and slaps the man’s face. “What did you do that for?” the man asks, rubbing his aching cheek. “Well, you don’t have the hiccups anymore, do you?” asked the pharmacist with a knowing smile.

 “No, but my wife out in the car still does!”

Petey was a snake, only so big. Petey lived in a pit with his mother.  One day Petey was hissing in the pit when his mother said, “Petey, don’t hiss in the pit, go outside the pit to hiss.” 

So Petey went outside of the pit to hiss.  Petey was hissing all around when he finally leaned over and hissed in the pit. Petey’s mother heard Petey hissing in the pit and said, “Petey, if you must hiss in a pit, go over to Mrs. Pott’s pit and hiss in her pit. 

Petey went over to Mrs. Pott’s pit to hiss in her pit, but Mrs. Pott was not at home so he hissed in her pit anyway. While Petey was hissing in Mrs Pott’s pit Mrs. Pott came home and found Petey hissing in her pit.  She said, “Petey, if you must hiss in a pit, don’t hiss in my pit; go to your own pit and hiss.” 

This made Petey very sad, and he cried all the way home.  When Petey got home, his mother saw him crying and said, “Petey, what’s the matter?” 

Petey said, “I went over to Mrs. Pott’s to hiss in her pit but Mrs. Pott was not at home, so I hissed in her pit anyway.  Mrs. Pott came home and found me hissing in her pit and said, “Petey, if you must hiss in a pit go to your own pit and hiss, don’t hiss in my pit.” 

This made Petey’s mother very angry and she said, “Why that mean old Lady! I knew Mrs. Pott when she didn’t have a pit to hiss in! 

Procrastinator’s Creed

1. I believe that if anything is worth doing, it would have been done already.
2. I shall never move quickly, except to avoid more work or find excuses.
3. I will never rush into a job without a lifetime of consideration.
4. I shall meet all of my deadlines directly in proportion to the amount of bodily injury I could expect to receive from missing them.
5. I firmly believe that tomorrow holds the possibility for new technologies, astounding discoveries, and a reprieve from my obligations.
6. I truly believe that all deadlines are unreasonable regardless of the amount of time given.
7. I shall never forget that the probability of a miracle, though infinitesimally small, is not exactly zero.
8. If at first I don’t succeed, there is always next year.
9. I shall always decide not to decide, unless of course I decide to change my mind.
10. I shall always begin, start, initiate, take the first step, and/or write the first word, when I get around to it.
11. I obey the law of inverse excuses which demands that the greater the task to be done, the more insignificant the work that must be done prior to beginning the greater task.
12. I know that the work cycle is not plan/start/finish, but is wait/plan/plan.
13. I will never put off until tomorrow, what I can forget about forever.
14. I will become a member of the ancient Order of Two-Headed Turtles (the Procrastinator’s Society) if they ever get it organized.

I was meeting a friend in a bar, and as I went in, I noticed two pretty girls looking at me.

“Nine,” I heard one whisper as I passed.

Feeling pleased with myself, I swaggered over to my buddy and told him a girl had just rated me a nine out of ten.

“I don’t want to ruin it for you,” he said, “but when I walked in, they were speaking German.”

“Talent does what it can; genius does what it must.”

– Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)

And that’s it my friends.  Let’s end this issue this way, but first, as always, my God bless you with Love and Happiness until we meet again.