Occasionally I’ll see things on eBay that I want that are in the UK, and the seller is not always up-front about wanting to ship to the United States. In fact, many of them are pretty clueless, so I try to ask as reasonably as possible if they wouldn’t mind shipping to the US, and how much it might cost.
Whenever a seller concedes and names his price, I suggest a £0.02 discount. That way - to borrow the gag from Benny Hill - whenever his mates ask him how much he charged that pushy Yank for shipping, he can tell them, “2p off.”
Stopped for speeding in a trap on a two-lane blacktop a stone’s throw from an interstate on ramp. Officer: “Do you know how fast you were going?” Me: “No.” Officer: “53. Do know what the speed limit is here?” Me: “No.” Officer: “35.” Me: “Would you believe I’m dyslexic?”
At a rheumatology appointment at a teaching hospital at the end of a long, thorough exam and professor and resident are reviewing my file. Professor: “So there is obviously something going on here, what do you think it is?” Pause, during which I pipe up: “It’s not lupus. It’s never lupus.” Resident, quizzically looking from me to professor: “Why not?” (Professor didn’t get it either, guess you don’t have time to watch House when you are living it.)
A boy about eight with his grandmother in the checkout line. Granny pays with cash, and the register drawer opens.
Boy: I want to work here when I grow up!
Me: Why?
Boy: Look at all that money!
Me: Yes, but it doesn’t belong to me.
Boy: Why?
Me: It’s the store’s money. I get a paycheck just like everyone else.
Slight pause, than the boy says with perfect comic timing: Then I don’t want to work here when I grow up.
I believe I posted this somewhere several months ago but it fits here:
We used to live in a very nice, dog friendly (but strict) apartment community. One morning, I’m walking our Gracie and here comes the cutie with the friendly Chow Chow. While we’re chatting, our respective dogs check each other out and proceed to ignore each other. Well, here comes the guy with the Boxer twins. They’re not on leashes, but they’re so well behaved/trained, and so friendly to everyone, including other dogs, that I’m not going to make a fuss–to him or anyone. So he holds up a tennis ball to get their attention, they’re standing side by side focused on the tennis ball, and Gracie has wandered over to check them out (she’s on one of those retractable, 15 foot leashes). As she’s attempting to sniff their nether regions, I glance over my shoulder and call out, “Gracie, get your nose out of that pair of Boxers.” Everybody loses it.
We were moving (again) for my wife’s job. Some folks from her new employ came out to help us unload the truck. One of the guys hopped up in the truck and he and I handed boxes to the others to take in the house. My partner grabbed hold of a box containing pictures in glass frames on which I had Magic-markered (in HUGE letters) Fragile. He spun around, showed the others the box, and eight people–including him–hollered:
An ex-girlfriend of mine had just started a new job. She was sitting quietly at lunch with her coworkers while one of them was telling about getting her prize dog bred. Unable to resist Val piped in, “About time that bitch got layed”.
A couple weeks ago, my wife attended a seminar in San Antonio and I went along for something to do. We had reservations at a downtown La Quinta. The building was 14 floors high, the desk clerk asked if we would like the top floor as there was hardly anyone up there. Sure! Wife discovers there’s no 13th floor (11, 12, 14, 15). We unload the bags off the dolly and I volunteer to take it back down. As the elevator door opens, a slightly younger couple comes up from behind me and we jockey to see who gets on first. The husband has a brochure or phone in front of his face (I just glanced; that’s why I’m not sure). The elevator starts to move and I couldn’t help myself–I called out “13, please.” The husband’s smile got much bigger and the brochure/phone came up further on his face to cover his chuckling. His wife, God love her, searches for 13, then calls out HEY! And hubby and I both lose it! Like 5 year olds laughing about their first dirty joke. She was a good sport; she says to me I don’t know you, so I can’t slug you one, but (to hubby) YOU, mister are dead meat! I apologize to her, but we’re still guffaw-ing and she joins in. I told my wife the tale and she says if she runs into the couple, she’s giving the wife permission to slug me one. Didn’t see them again. That was the highlight of the trip for me!
Back in college, a frequent source of free entertainment was Brother Jim, a self-ordained evangelical preacher, who liked to get up on a low wall on the plaza near the student center and tell us that we were all sodomite, fornicators and perverts, and bound for an eternity of torment (possibly via an infinite string of Brother Jims, screeching “I told you! I told you! I warned you this would happen! But would you listen? Noooah!”). He always got a good crowd, as needling him was something of a campus sport.
Needless to say, Brother Jim didn’t have a high opinion of other religions, and he would spice up his usual denunciations of liberal atheist homma-sexshuls with shots at Catholics, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists. One time he asked “Do yew know why Jewish men are circumcised?” Like a shot, a voice in the crowd replied, “Because Jewish women can’t resist anything that’s 10% off!”
Okay, a little anti-Semitic, but it got a laugh, even from Jim.
I make no representations as to the veracity of this anecdote. I personally didn’t witness the exchange, but my buddy Mark swears he did. He also said he thought the guy with the snappy comeback was Jewish.
Art History in high school, the teacher was talking about Egypt, he shows a picture of Hatshetsup’s Temple, I primed for it, he says “Hatshetsup” and I quip “Bless you!”.
I used to get allergy shots every Thursday. One week I was mentally off, and wandered in on a Wednesday. No one said anything and I got my shot as normal. Afterwards, the receptionist asks if I’m coming in early next week too, and that’s when I figure out the error.
While I’m waiting the normal 10 minutes to see if I react to the shot, there’s a bit of hubbub behind the counter as the receptionists try to figure out why the computer is acting funky.
“Why is the computer suddenly acting up?”
I quickly chimed in,
“Why am I here on a Wednesday? Who knows these things?”
I was working tracking down a number of problems in the TVs at a sports bar I service. The manager and I were working down a list of small fixes with TVs and sound system.
As we walked through with the background music playing, she pointed at a light and asked why it was humming.
I immediately told he, with a perfectly straight face, that it was because it didn’t know the words.
She cracked up.
I was lucky that time because I had an audience. Another time I was in O’Hare airport changing planes. I heard the following over the paging system:
Mr. Smith, return to Gate 27 to retrieve your satchel. Mr. Smith, return to Gate 27 to retrieve your black satchel.
…and I immediately said, out loud to nobody, “This must be the famous Black Satchel Paige.”
In the late '80s, I was a hell-bound fornicating sodomite… at the University of Georgia.
Somebody threw some fruit or something at him, hit him in the face. I was standing next to him and Brother Jim handed me his Bible so he could wipe his face off. The audience started yelling at me to throw the book to them, but I just handed it back to the man.
Gerard Alessandrini, creator of the Broadway parody show Forbidden Broadway, took his mother to a Boston preview of the revival of the show Grand Hotel. The production is very minimal, the sets being chairs that the actors move.
Actor on stage: Not much happens at the Grand Hotel. People move in, people move out.
Mrs. Alessandrini (in the audience) People move chairs.
Gerard put that line into his “Grim Hotel” parody.
I’ll be damned. (At least, according to Brother Jim. I was always a bit flattered that he assumed I was actually fornicating on a regular basis.)
Sister Cindy… that doesn’t sound quite right. But it was something that ended in -y. I’ll poll my fellow alums on Facebook and see if anyone remembers.
You weren’t a Demosthenian, by any chance, were you?
