Thursday, March 29, 2012

Good morning crew,

I recently picked up a book called "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid" which is roughly an autobiography of the author, Bill Bryson, but is more specifically a look at what life was like growing up in the midwest in the 1950s. Following is a hilarious excerpt...

Most things that were supposed to be fun turned out not to be fun at all. Model making, for instance. Making models was reputed to be hugely enjoyable but it was really just a mysterious ordeal that you had to go through from time to time as part of the boyhood process. The model kits looked fun. The illustrations on the boxes portrayed beautifully detailed fighter planes belching red-and-yellow flames from their wing guns and engaged in lively dogfights. In the background there was always a stricken Messerschmitt spiraling to earth. You couldn't wait to re-create such lively scenes in three dimensions.

But when you got the kit home and opened the box the contents turned out to be of a uniform leaden gray or olive green, consisting of perhaps sixty thousand tiny parts, some no larger than a proton, all attached in some organic, inseparable way to plastic stalks like swizzle sticks. The tubes of glue by contrast were the size of large pastry tubes. No matter how gently you depressed them they would blurp out a pint or so of a clear viscous goo whose one instinct was to attach itself to some foreign object--a human finger; the living room drapes, the fur of a passing animal--and become an infinitely long string.

Any attempt to break the string resulted in the creation of more strings. Within moments you would be attached to hundreds of sagging strands, all connected to something that had nothing to do with model airplanes or World War II. The only thing the glue wouldn't stick to, interestingly, was a piece of plastic model; then it just became a slippery lubricant that allowed any two pieces of model to glide endlessly over each other; never drying. The upshot was that after about forty minutes of intensive but troubled endeavor you and your immediate surroundings were covered in a glistening spider web of glue at the heart of which was a gray fuselage with one wing on upside down and a pilot accidentally but irremediable attached by his flying cap to the cockpit ceiling. Happily by this point you were so high on the glue that you didn't give a shoot about the pilot, the model, or anything else.

Laugh it up,

Joe

joe@gophercentral.com

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"A helping word to one in trouble is like a switch in a railroad track...an inch between wreck and smooth, rolling prosperity." -Henry Ward Beecher

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"All animals, except man, know that the principle business of life is to enjoy it." -Samuel Butler

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"All mankind is divided into three classes: those who are immovable, those who are movable; and those who move." -Benjamin Franklin

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After many years of trying, the Russian family was finally able to bring grandpa to America to live with them. The old gentleman could only speak Russian.

Each day when the family members were at work grandpa would spend his time in the park, walking, watching the children play and feed the ducks a few crumbs he brought along. So that he would be able to get a little something to eat they taught him to say, "apple pie, coffee."

Each day he would go into the nearby deli, climb on a stool and say to the counterman, "Apple pie, coffee."

This worked well for him until one day he decided that he just couldn't take another piece of apple pie. So the family taught him to say, "Ham sandwich, coke."

He went to the park the next day looking forward to being able to order a ham sandwich in stead of apple pie. Smiling to himself he climbed onto the stool at the counter and waited his turn.

When the counterman asked for his order he proudly said, "Ham sandwich, coke."

To which the counterman asked, "White or rye?"

The old man replied, "Um, apple pie, coffee."


*-------------- Guaranteed to Roll Your Eyes --------------*
I was working in a scrap yard during summer vacation at engineering university. I used to work repairing construction equipment.

One afternoon, I was taking apart a piling hammer that had some very large bolts holding it together. One of the nuts had corroded on to the bolt; to free it I started heating the nut with an oxy-acetylene torch. As I was doing this, one of the dimmest apprentices I have ever known came along. He asked me what I was doing. I patiently explained that if I heated the nut it would grow larger and release its grip on the bolt so I could then remove it.

"So things get larger when they get hot, do they?" he asked.

Suddenly, an idea flashed into my mind. "Yes," I said, "that's why days are longer in summer and shorter in winter."

There was a long pause, then his face cleared. "You know, I always wondered about that," he said.