more pain

[colin (imported)]

Scrooge and Jiminy Cricket

Scrooge was sitting in his office in the week before Christmas. He was counting his money, making sure he had made enough profit for the year.

Suddenly, he became aware of a noise. It was one of those irritating humming Noises that once you've noticed it, you can't concentrate on anything else, so after some time trying to ignore it, he decided to investigate.

He looked all around, and finally managed to pin-point the sound coming from under his desk. Bending down to look under the desk, he was suprised to see Jiminy Cricket, playing a tune.

He crouched down, and said "Jiminy!" (for they already knew each other), "what are you doing?"

"I'm singing you a Christmas carol," Jiminy replied, "but I've forgotten the words, so I'm just humming it instead."

"That's not all," says Scrooge, "You're only playing the first bar, over and over again."

"Well," says Jiminy, "I guess that makes me a bar hum bug."

Food at the Races

The jockey was riding the favourite at a race meeting, and was well ahead of the field.

His horse rounded the final corner, when suddenly the jockey was hit on the head by a turkey and a string of sausages.

He managed to keep control of his mount and pulled back into the lead, only to be struck by a box of Christmas crackers and a dozen mince pies as he went over the last fence.

With great skill he managed to steer the horse to the front of the field once more when, on the run in, he was struck on the head by a bottle of sherry and a Christmas pudding. Thus distracted, he succeeded in coming only second.

He immediately went to the race stewards to complain that he had been seriously hampered.

Chefs at the Zoo

David was a chef for a large catering company. He enjoyed his work with the other chefs, but often liked to relax by going to the zoo. He particularly enjoyed the three-toed sloth which absolutely fascinated him. He would stand and watch it for hours, just hanging there, ever so infrequently making just the tiniest movement. He found it incredibly relaxing. So relaxing, in fact, that when a friend from the catering company complained that work was stressing him out he suggested they go to the zoo to watch the sloth and relax. This caught on among the chefs, and soon more and more of them would go to watch the sloth on weekends and days off.

Eventually David organised a day out for the company at the zoo, and all the chefs were standing in front of the sloth's area, watching it and relaxing. Suddenly, with no warning, the sloth lost its grip on the vine from which it had been hanging - it hit the ground heavily and rolled down a shallow slope into the moat at the edge of its pen, and to the surprise and horror of the gathered chefs the water began to bubble and steam furiously, until the sloth was well and truly roasted!

David suddenly realised what had happened.

"Oh, no!" he shouted, "We should have known better! Everyone knows too many cooks boil the sloth!"

Slave Games

Back in Roman days, as you may know, slavery was part of life. People went to slave markets to buy and sell slaves from all over the known world.

One particular slave market holder became well known for his special promotional contests - people would come from all over the Empire to win one of his slaves.

His most popular contest was a game where you had to try to throw a coin into a Roman urn. If you've seen pictures, you'll know that these urns have very narrow necks, so the game was quite challenging, but if you succeeded, you would win a slave from the market, so the prizes were good.

One day, a fairly poor woman returned from the market with a slave. Her husband immediately berated her for spending so much money to buy a slave, but she told him that she had won the contest, so it had only cost a single penny.

"After all," she said "You've always told me that a penny urned is a penny slaved."

Cliff Shoving

There is a traditional sport in Ireland, called "Cliff Shoving". It involves a small local rodent called a rarie (which is similar to a lemming) being pushed off a cliff.

The aim of the game is to see who can get the poor animal to go over the edge with the least amount of effort.

Of course, these days people aren't so keen on blood sports, and the animal rights people wouldn't like it either, so it's changed from a cliff into a small shallow pit that the rodents are pushed into.

This in turn has made it much easier to get the animals to jump, to the point where, with a properly trained rarie, it takes barely a touch to get it into the pit.

The sport is mostly based only in Ireland, but they do get the occasional overseas competitor. Recently, they had a fellow come all the way from Australia to take part.

During a break, he mentioned that he'd had a eighteen hour journey to get there.

"But I guess I always knew it would be a long flight," he said. "After all, it's a long way to tip a rarie."

Hunting Deer

Two men were out hunting in the woods. One of them was a fanatical huntsman: he went hunting as often as he could. The other was his friend: a peaceful nature loving fellow, who didn't really want to hurt anything.

They had been out in the woods for some time, when they picked up the tracks of a deer. They soon caught up with it, and when they saw it, it was obvious why it had been so easy to catch up to: it had a terrible infection over it's left eye, which it couldn't even see out of.

The hunter started to take aim with his shotgun, but his friend begged him to stop.

He said, "Can't you see that's a bad eye deer?"

The Sailor and the Seagull

A sailor was caught AWOL as he tried to sneak on board his ship at about 3 am. The chief petty officer spied him and ordered the sailor to stop.

Upon hearing the sailor's lame explanation for his tardiness, the officer ordered the sailor, "Take this broom and sweep every link on this anchor chain by morning or it's the brig for you!"

The sailor began to pick up the broom and commence performing his charge. As he began to sweep, a tern landed on the broom handle. The sailor yelled at the bird to leave, but it didn't. The lad picked the tern off the broom handle, and tossed it out of his way. The bird left, only to return and light once again on the broom handle, and was once again tossed overboard.

The sailor went through the same routine all over again, with the same result. He couldn't get any cleaning done because he can only sweep at the chain once or twice before the blasted bird returns.

When morning came, so did the chief petty officer, to check up on his wayward sailor.

"What in the heck have you been doing all night? This chain is no cleaner than when you started! What have you to say for yourself, sailor?" barked the chief.

"Honest, chief," came the reply, "I tossed a tern all night and couldn't sweep a link!"