It's Almost May!

As incredible as it sounds, men and women took baths only twice a year! (May and October) Women kept their hair covered, while men shaved their heads (because of lice and bugs) and wore wigs. Wealthy men could afford good wigs made from wool. The wigs couldn't be washed, so to clean them they could carve out a loaf of bread, put the wig in the shell, and bake it for 30 minutes. The heat would make the wig big and fluffy, hence the term "big wig." Today we often use the term "here comes the Big Wig" because someone appears to be or is powerful and wealthy.

In May some school folks start thinking about finals

            At Duke University, there were four sophomores taking Organic Chemistry.  They were doing so well on all the quizzes, midterms and labs, etc., that each had an A so far for the semester. These four friends were so confident that the weekend before finals, they decided to go up to the University of Virginia and party with some friends there. They had a great time, but after all the hearty partying, they slept all day Sunday and didn't make it back to Duke until early Monday morning.
            Rather than taking the final then, they decided to find their professor after the final and explain to him why they missed it. They explained that they had gone to UVA for the weekend with the plan to come back in time to study, but, unfortunately, they had a flat tire on the way back, didn't have a spare, and couldn't get help for a long time. As a result, they missed the final.  The professor thought it over and then agreed they could make up the final the following day. The guys were elated and relieved. They studied that night and went in the next day at the time the professor had told them.
            He placed them in separate rooms and handed each of them a test booklet, and told them to begin. They looked at the first problem, worth five points. It was something simple about free radical formation.  Cool, they thought! All at the same time, each one in his separate room, thought, this is going to be easy.   Each finished the lengthy problem and then turned the page.
            On the second page was written: For 95 points: Which tire?

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Shakespeare’s birthday was on April the 23rd. Had he lived he would have been 443 years old. In light of his challenging all of those poor kids in English literature classes for centuries, here’s what some have said about LITERATURE:

When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen. But if you have not a pen, I suppose you must scratch any way you can. ~Samuel Lover, Handy Andy 1842

How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December's bareness everywhere!
~William Shakespeare, "Sonnet XCVII"

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs. ~William Shakespeare

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. ~Sylvia Plath

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Invented in 1825, limelight was used in lighthouses and stage lighting by burning a cylinder of lime which produced a brilliant light. In the theatre, performers on stage "in the limelight" were seen by the audience to be the center of attention.

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In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes when you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase "goodnight, sleep tight"

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Actual similes and metaphors found in real high school essays:

"His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free."

"He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it."

"She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was a room-temperature Canadian beef."

"She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like the sound a dog makes just before it throws up."

"He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree."

"The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM."

"The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't."

"McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup."

"From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and The Simpson's comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30."

"The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease."

"Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36pm traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 pm at a speed of 35 mph."

"John and Melinda had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met."

"Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do."

"The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for awhile."

"Oh, Jason, take me!, she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night."

"He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something."

"The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant."

"He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up."

"She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword puzzle."

"She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

"It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall"

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1. Did you know . . .
2. Sometimes size does matter.
3. If you’re one in a million in China . . .
4. There are 1,300 people just like you.
5. In India, there are 1,100 people just like you.
6. The 25% of the population in China with the highest IQ’s . . .
7. Is greater than the total population of North America.
8. In India, it’s the top 28%.
9. Translation for teachers: They have more honors kids than we have kids.
10. Did you know . . .
11. China will soon become the number one English speaking country in the world.
12. If you took every single job in the U.S. today and shipped it to China . . .
13. China would still have a labor surplus.
14. During the course of this 8 minute presentation . . .
15. 60 babies will be born in the U.S.
244 babies will be born in China.
351 babies will be born in India.
16. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that today’s learner will have 10-14 jobs . . .
17. By the age of 38.
18. According to the U.S. Department of Labor . . .
19. 1 out of 4 workers today is working for a company they have been employed by for less than one year.
20. More than 1 out of 2 are working for a company they have worked for for less than five years.
21. According to former Secretary of Education Richard Riley . . .
22. The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 didn’t exist in 2004.
23. We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist . . .
24. Using technologies that haven’t been invented . . .
25. In order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.
26. Name this country . . .
27. Richest in the World
Largest Military
Center of world business and finance
Strongest education system
World center of innovation and invention
Currency the world standard of value
Highest standard of living
28. England.
29. In 1900.
30. Did you know . . .
31. The U.S. is 20th in the world in broadband Internet penetration.
(Luxembourg just passed us.)
32. In 2002 alone Nintendo invested more than $140 million in research and development.
33. The U.S. Federal Government spent less than half as much on Research and Innovation in Education.
34. 1 out of every 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met online.
35. There are over 110 million registered users of MySpace.(2006)
If MySpace were a country, it would be the 11th-largest in the world (between Japan and Mexico)*
36. The average MySpace page is visited 30 times a day.
37. Did you know . . .
38. We are living in exponential times.
39. There are over 2.7 billion searches performed on Google each month.
40. To whom were these questions addressed B.G.? (Before Google)
41. The number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the population of the planet.
42. There are about 540,000 words in the English language . . .
43. About 5 times as many as during Shakespeare’s time.
44. More than 3,000 new books are published . . .
45. Daily.
46. It’s estimated that a week’s worth of New York Times . . .
47. Contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century.
48. It’s estimated that 40 exabytes (that’s 4.0 x 1019) of unique new information will be generated worldwide this year.
49. That’s estimated to be more than in the previous 5,000 years.
50. The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years.
51. It’s predicted to double every 72 hours by 2010.
52. Third generation fiber optics has recently been separately tested by NEC and Alcatel . . .
53. That pushes 10 trillion bits per second down one strand of fiber.
54. That’s 1,900 CDs or 150 million simultaneous phone calls every second.
55. It’s currently tripling about every 6 months and is expected to do so for at least the next 20 years.
56. The fiber is already there, they’re just improving the switches on the ends. Which means the marginal cost of these improvements is effectively $0.
57. Predictions are that e-paper will be cheaper than real paper.
58. 47 million laptops were shipped worldwide last year.
59. The $100 laptop project is expecting to ship between 50 and 100 million laptops a year to children in underdeveloped countries.
60. Predictions are that by 2013 a supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computation capability of the Human Brain . . .
61. By 2023, a $1,000 computer will exceed the computation capability of the Human Brain . . .
62. First grader Abby will be just 23 years old and beginning her (first) career . . .
63. And while technical predictions further out than about 15 years are hard to do . . .
64. Predictions are that by 2049 a $1,000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the human race.
65. What does it all mean?
66. Shift Happens.
67. Now you know . . .

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BLONDE LOGIC
Two blondes living in Oklahoma were sitting on a bench talking, and one blonde says to the other, "Which do you think is farther away... Florida or the moon?"
The other blonde turns and says "Helloooooooooo, can you see Florida ?????"

CAR TROUBLE

A blonde pushes her BMW into a gas station. She tells the mechanic it died.
After he works on it for a few minutes, it is idling smoothly.
She says, "What's the story?"
He replies, "Just crap in the carburetor"
She asks, "How often do I have to do that?"

SPEEDING TICKET

A police officer stops a blonde for speeding and asks her very nicely if he could see her license.
She replied in a huff, "I wish you guys would get your act together. Just yesterday you take away my license and then today you expect me to show it to you!"

RIVER WALK

There's this blonde out for a walk. She comes to a river and sees another blonde on the opposite bank. "Yoo-hoo!" she shouts, "How can I get to the other side?"
The second blonde looks up the river then down the river and shouts back, "You ARE on the other side."

AT THE DOCTOR ' S OFFICE

A gorgeous young redhead goes into the doctor's office and said that her body hurt wherever she touched it.
"Impossible!" says the doctor. "Show me."
The redhead took her finger, pushed on her left shoulder and screamed, then she pushed her elbow and screamed even more. She pushed her knee and screamed; likewise she pushed her ankle and screamed. Everywhere she touched made her scream.
The doctor said, "You're not really a redhead, are you?
"Well, no" she said, "I'm actually a blonde."
"I thought so," the doctor said. "Your finger is broken."

KNITTING

A highway patrolman pulled alongside a speeding car on the freeway. Glancing at the car, he was astounded to see that the blonde behind the wheel was knitting!
Realizing that she was oblivious to his flashing lights and siren, the trooper cranked down his window, turned on his bullhorn and yelled, "PULL OVER!"
"NO!" the blonde yelled back, "IT'S A SCARF!"

BLONDE ON THE SUN
A Russian, an American, and a Blonde were talking one day. The Russian said, "We were the first in space!"
The American said, "We were the first on the moon!"
The Blonde said, "So what? We're going to be the first on the sun!"
The Russian and the American looked at each other and shook their heads. "You can't land on the sun, you idiot! You'll burn up!" said the Russian.
To which the Blonde replied, "We're not stupid, you know. We're going at night!"

IN A VACUUM
A blonde was playing Trivial Pursuit one night. It was her turn. She rolled the dice and she landed on Science & Nature. Her question was, "If you are in a vacuum and someone calls your name, can you hear it?"
She thought for a time and then asked, "Is it on or off?"

FINALLY, THE BLONDE JOKE TO END ALL BLONDE JOKES!

A girl was visiting her blonde friend, who had acquired two new dogs, and asked her what their names were. The blonde responded by saying that one was named
Rolex and one was named Timex. Her friend said, "Whoever heard of someone naming dogs like that?"
"HELLLOOOOOOO......," answered the blond. "They're watch dogs!"

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SHAKING HANDS WITH PEOPLE

During an hour's swimming at a municipal pool you will ingest 1/12 liter of urine.

In an average day your hands will have come into indirect contact with 15 penises (touching door handles, etc.)

An average person's yearly fast food intake will contain 12 pubic hairs.

In a year you will have swallowed 14 insects - while you slept!

Annually you will shake hands with 2 women who have recently masturbated and failed to wash their hands.

Annually you will shake hands with 26 men who have recently masturbated and failed to wash their hands.

In a lifetime 22 workmen will have examined the contents of your dirty linen basket.

At an average wedding reception you have a 1/100 chance of getting a cold sore from one of the guests.

Daily you will breath in 1 liter of other peoples' anal gases.

HAVE A GREAT DAY...
...and wash your damn hands

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MISS BLACK AMERICA CONTEST

Since Don Imus started this, and also in keeping with the spirit of political correctness I present the following to you...

There will only be 49 contestants in the Miss Black America Contest this year because no one wants to wear the banner that says, IDAHO.

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Colonoscopy

All the organs of the body were having a meeting, trying to decide who was the one in charge.

"I should be in charge," said the brain, "Because I run all the body's systems, so without me nothing would happen."

"I should be in charge," said the blood, "Because I circulate oxygen all over so without me you'd all waste away."

"I should be in charge," said the stomach," Because I process food and give all of you energy."

"I should be in charge," said the legs, "because I carry the body wherever it needs to go."

"I should be in charge," said theeyes, "Because I allow the body to see where it goes."

"I should be in charge," said the rectum, "Because I'm responsible for waste removal."

All the other body parts laughed at the rectum And insulted him, so in a huff, he shut down tight.

Within a few days, the brain had a terrible headache, the stomach was bloated, the legs got wobbly, the eyes got watery, and the blood Was toxic. They all decided that the rectum should be the boss.

The Moral of the story?

The asshole is usually in charge !!