Investment Perspective...

If you had purchased $1000 of shares in Delta Airlines one year ago, you will have $49.00 today.

If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in AIG one year ago, you will have $33.00 today.

If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in Lehman Brothers one year ago, you will have $0.00 today.
But, if you had purchased $1,000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the aluminum cans
for recycling refund, you will have received  $214.00.

Based on the above, the best current investment plan is to drink heavily and recycle. It is called the 401-Keg.

A recent study found that the average American walks about 900 miles a year.

Another study found that Americans drink, on average, 22 gallons of alcohol  a year.  That means that, on average,
Americans get about 41 miles to the gallon!

Makes you proud to be an American!

Top Ten Reasons Hurricane Season Is Like Christmas

10: Decorating the house (with plywood).

 9:  Dragging out boxes that haven't been used since last season.

 8:  Last minute shopping in crowded stores.

 7:  Regular TV shows pre-empted for 'Specials'.

 6:  Family coming to stay with you.

 5:  Family and friends from out of state calling you.

 4:  Buying food you don't normally buy and in large quantities.

 3:  Days off from work.

 2:  Candles.

And the number one reason hurricane season is like Christmas...

 1:  At some point you're probably going to have a tree in your house!

Mommy & "Uncle" Frank

It's Saturday morning and Bob's just about to set off on a round of golf, when he realizes that he forgot to tell his wife that the guy who fixes the washing machine is coming around at noon. So Bob heads back to the clubhouse and phones home.

"Hello?" says a little girl's voice.

"Hi, honey, it's Daddy," says Bob. "Is Mommy near the phone?"

"No, Daddy. She's upstairs in the bedroom with Uncle Frank."

After a brief pause, Bob says, "But you haven't got an Uncle Frank, honey!"

"Yes, I do, and he's upstairs in the bedroom with Mommy!"

"Okay, then. Here's what I want you do. Put down the phone, run upstairs and knock on the bedroom door and shout in to Mommy and Uncle Frank that my car's just pulled up outside the house."

"Okay, Daddy!" A few minutes later, the little girl comes back to the phone. "Well, I did what you said, Daddy."

"And what happened?"

"Well, Mommy jumped out of bed with no clothes on and ran around screaming, then she tripped over the rug and went out the front window and now she's all dead."

"Oh, my God! What about Uncle Frank?"

"He jumped out of bed with no clothes on too, and he was all scared and he jumped out the back window into the swimming pool. But he must have forgot that last week you took out all the water to clean it, so he hit the bottom of the swimming pool and now he's dead too."

There is a long pause.

"Swimming pool? Is this 854-7039?"

Deer Ropin'

For those of you who hunt deer, want to pet deer, or anything in between, this is too funny! Names have been removed to protect the stupid!

This is an actual letter from someone who writes, and farms.

"I had the idea that I was going to rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it.

The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.

I filled the cattle feeder, then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it.

After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up -- 3 of them. I picked out a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me.

I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold. The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation.

I took a step towards it...it took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope and then received an education.

The first thing that I learned is:
While a deer may just stand there & look at you funny while you rope it; they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope. That deer EXPLODED.

The second thing I learned is:
Pound for pound, a deer is a LOT stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope and with some dignity. A deer -- no chance.

That thing ran, bucked, twisted, and pulled. There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had originally imagined.

The third thing I learned is: (the only upside)
They do not have as much stamina as many other animals.

A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head mostly blinded me. At that point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope. I figured that if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slow and painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between that deer and me. At that moment, I hated the thing, and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual.

Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer's momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in, so I didn't want the deer to have it suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined back up in between my truck and the feeder - a little trap I had set before hand...kind of like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and I started moving up so I could get my rope back.

The fourth thing I learned:
Did you know that deer bite? They do! I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very surprised when I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head -- almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts. The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective. It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds.

I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now) tricked it. While I kept it busy tearing the bejesus out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose.

That was when I got my fifth lesson in deer behavior for the day:
Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They raise right up on their back feet, strike right about head, and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp. I learned a long time ago that, when an animal -- like a horse -- strikes at you with their hooves and you cannot get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal. This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape.

This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy. I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run. The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head.

Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong and 3 times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down.

Lesson six:
Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and covering your head. I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away.

So now I know why when people go deer hunting they bring a rifle with a scope -- so that they can be somewhat equal to the prey.

Lipstick in School

According to a news report, a certain school in Garden City, MI was recently faced with a unique problem.

A number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the washroom. That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints.

Every night, the maintenance man would remove them and the next day, the girls would put them back.  Finally the principal decided that something had to be done.   He called all the girls to the washroom and met them there with the maintenance man.

He explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night. To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, he asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required.  He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it.

Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.

THE MORAL OF THIS STORY.. There are teachers, and then there are Educators.