D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
August 2010
Savvy Seniors, Texas Archaeologists and Fishing with Jack Daniels
Plus a smartypants quiz and imponderables to, well, ponder.
You're only as old as you feel Don't mess with senior citizens, warns Jess Hossinaround in Arenas Valley in passing along this yarn:
"We went to breakfast at a restaurant where the 'seniors' special' was two eggs, bacon, hash browns and toast for $2.99. 'Sounds good,' my wife said. 'But I don't want the eggs.'
"'Then I'll have to charge you $3.49 because you're ordering a la carte,' the waitress warned her.
"'You mean I'd have to pay for not taking the eggs?' my wife asked incredulously.
"'Yes!' stated the waitress.
"'I'll take the special then,' my wife said.
"'How do you want your eggs?' the waitress asked.
'Raw and in the shell,' my wife replied. She took the two eggs home and baked a cake."
Can you dig it? Don't mess with Texas, either, seems to be the moral of this technological tale sent our way by the Silver City Greek:
"After having dug to a depth of 10 feet last year, New York scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 100 years and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network more than 100 years ago.
"Not to be outdone by the New Yorkers, in the weeks that followed, a California archaeologist dug to a depth of 20 feet, and, shortly after, a story in the Los Angeles Times read: 'California archaeologists, finding 200-year-old copper wire, have concluded that their ancestors already had an advanced high-tech communications network a hundred years earlier than the New Yorkers.'
"One week later, a local newspaper in Texas reported the following: 'After digging as deep as 30 feet in his pasture near Maypearl, Texas , Bubba, a self-taught archaeologist, reported that he found absolutely nothing. Bubba has therefore concluded that 300 years ago, Texas had already gone wireless.'
"Just makes a person proud to live in Texas, don't it?"
Persons of the blonde persuasion It wouldn't be Desert Diary without a joke about people of a certain hair hue — which, as always, you are invited to alter to suit your follicle prejudices. This one comes courtesy of Pop Hayes:
"I bought a late-model used truck that was full of bells and whistles. One of the features was a warning when a light bulb burns out. I was able to check all the lights by myself except for the turn signals, so I asked my sweet wife — who happens to be blonde — for assistance. I got in the truck and asked her to watch the turn-signal lights and tell me if they were working. I flipped on the right turn signal and asked her if it was working. Her response: 'Yes... no... yes... no... yes!'"
Send your favorite jokes about getting old, being Texan or blonde, or any other
topic that makes you crack up to Desert Diary, diary@desertexposure.com
Pop quiz Feel free to hum the "Jeopardy" theme to yourself while you
ponder this "quiz for people who know everything" (or
think they do) passed along by Ned Ludd, who adds, "These are not trick
questions. They are straight questions with straight answers." Those answers
are below — no
peeking!"
1. Name the one sport in which neither the spectators nor the participants know the score or the leader until the contest ends.
"2. What famous North American landmark is constantly moving backward?
"3. Of all vegetables, only two can live to produce on their own for several growing seasons. All other vegetables must be replanted every year. What are the only two perennial vegetables?
"4. What fruit has its seeds on the outside?
"5. In many liquor stores, you can buy pear brandy, with a real pear inside the bottle. The pear is whole and ripe, and the bottle is genuine; it hasn't been cut in any way. How did the pear get inside the bottle?
"6. Only three words in standard English begin with the letters 'dw' and they are all common words. Name two of them.
"7. There are 14 punctuation marks in English grammar. Can you name at least half of them?
"8. Name the only vegetable or fruit that is never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked or in any other form except fresh.
"9. Name six or more things that you can wear on your feet beginning with the letter 'S.'"
Answers to quiz (click and drag inside the box to reveal the answers):
| 1. Boxing. 2. Niagara Falls. (The rim is worn down about two and a half feet each year because of the millions of gallons of water that rush over it every minute.) 3. Asparagus and rhubarb. 4. Strawberry. 5. The pear grew inside the bottle. The bottles are placed over pear buds when they are small, and wired in place on the tree. The bottle is left in place for the entire growing season. When the pears are ripe, they are snipped off at the stems. 6. Dwarf, dwell and dwindle. 7. Period, comma, colon, semicolon, dash, hyphen, apostrophe, question mark, exclamation point, quotation mark, brackets, parentheses, braces and ellipses 8. Lettuce. 9.: Shoes, socks, sandals, sneakers, slippers, skis, skates, snowshoes, stockings, stilts. |
"Two caterpillars are munching on mulberry leaves when a butterfly lands nearby, then flits away.
"One caterpillar says to the other, 'You'd never catch me up in one of those.'"
Annals of angling We'll drink to this tale of bait and tackle submitted by Corky's Mom. No amphibians or reptiles were harmed in the making of this joke:
"I went fishing this morning, but after a short time I ran out of worms. Then I saw a cottonmouth with a frog in his mouth. Frogs are good bass bait. Knowing the snake couldn't bite me with the frog in his mouth, I grabbed him right behind the head, took the frog, and put it in my bait bucket.
"Now the dilemma was how to release the snake without getting bitten. So, I grabbed my bottle of Jack Daniels and poured a little whiskey in his mouth. His eyes rolled back; he went limp. I released him into the lake without incident and carried on fishing using the frog.
"A little later, I felt a nudge on my foot. There was that same snake with two frogs in his mouth.
"Life is good in the South."
Losing the gender wars Some lady-friend of Old Grumps must have told him this tale of when the shoe is on the other, er, foot. The easily offended should skip ahead:
"Last night, my Red Hat friends and I went to a Ladies Night Club. One of the girls wanted to impress the rest of us, so she pulled out a $10 bill. When the male dancer came over to us, my friend licked the $10 bill and stuck it to his butt cheek!
"Not to be outdone, another friend pulled out a $20 bill. She called the guy back, licked the $20 bill, and stuck it to his other butt cheek.
"In another attempt to impress the rest of us, my third friend pulled out a $50 bill and called the guy over. She licked the $50 bill. I was worried about the way things were going, but fortunately, she just stuck it to one of his butt cheeks again.
"Seeing the way things were going, the guy raced over to me! Now everyone's attention was focused on me, and the guy was egging me on to try to top the $50. My brain was churning as I reached for my wallet.
"What could I do? The woman in me took over!
"I got out my ATM card, swiped it down the crack of his butt, grabbed the 80 bucks, and left!"